Chapter 12 – The Raven Gang

The rest of the first week passed fairly uneventfully. Potions was fastly becoming Adam's least favourite lesson however. Following his performance in the first lesson, Professor Slughorn appeared to favour him over the rest of the students and expected more from him, which led too much teasing from Aaron and the other Ravenclaws. Even History of Magic seemed favourable to Potions, despite it being the most boring subject on the curriculum. They had it double on a Thursday afternoon and Adam and Aaron, to save themselves the boredom, had taken turns at writing notes and sleeping like everyone else.

Aside from these, the other lessons all proved quite enjoyable. Professor Flitwick had similar expectations to Professor Slughorn, but most people were at a similar level so there wasn't so much pressure. Herbology and Transfiguration, which was still taught by Professor McGonagall were progressing slowly and nothing particularly exciting had happened yet, but all the background research was quite interesting. Defence Against the Dark Arts was also proving interesting but for different reasons. All of the students raised in wizarding families had been aware of Harry for a long time and spent most of the lessons bombarding him with questions about his adventures, much to his embarrassment.

Throughout the week, Adam and Aaron were becoming well acquainted with the other Ravenclaw's and by the weekend, eight of them were quite a tight-knit group. Only Matt French and Hannah Lampford were not complete parts of the group. They were both actually a year older than their fellow students but had been prevented from coming to Hogwarts the previous year. Matt as a muggle-born had not been permitted to attend and Hannah had been taken out of the country by her parents to stop her from going to the school.

Although friendly with the other first-years, Matt had some muggle-born friends in the second year who he spent most of his free time with. Hannah also had friends in the second year and didn't seem too happy about being in a year with other people. She was quite loud with her opinions, but went strangely quiet around Aaron, though he didn't seem to have noticed. In spite of this, they did spend some time with the others and they could all get on perfectly well.

Kayden and Dexter were both quite athletic and enjoyed being able to pass new information on to the muggle-borns. Laura Burton was a cheerful person who spent quite a bit of time revising the work they had gone over, even if the teachers didn't ask for it. Alice Norton had quickly become Laura's best friend and the two of them seemed like the female equivalents to Adam and Aaron. Alice proved to be quite innocent and gullible, but a generally nice person who was very funny. Nadia Rahman turned out to be similar to Aaron. Despite how shy and quiet she had appeared at first glance, she soon proved to be very chatty and slightly hyperactive compared to her fellow Ravenclaws. Finally, Katy Hilton proved to be one of the most normal out of all of them. She was friendly, relatively chatty and had a good sense of humour, though she was quite naïve.

The group spent a lot of time together and alternated sitting with each other during lessons. Adam and Aaron always sat together and were usually joined by one of the others. In History of Magic, where Professor Binns probably wouldn't have noticed if a student died of boredom, they would push three desks together and all chat quietly. The others, having noticed Adam and Aaron's tactic of dictating notes for half of the lesson each, also adopted it so that four of them would write notes while the other half either relaxed or chatted amongst themselves.

Even though they had gotten quite close to their fellow Ravenclaws, Adam and Aaron still spent some time with Hermione, Ginny and Luna. This was usually at meal times, though Luna sometimes spent evenings with the others in the common room. They soon learnt not to take anything that Luna said too seriously, with the half-bloods usually starting to argue with her over some of the things she would say, including the existence of Nargles and Crumple-Horned Snorkacks. The only one who really took her seriously was Alice.

As the first weekend arrived, Adam and Aaron went down to breakfast to find Luna sitting with Hermione and Ginny. None of the other Ravenclaws had come down yet.

"Hey, how's your first week been?" Hermione asked.

"Great. It's so much better than muggle school." Adam helped himself to an egg and began cutting some bread up into soldiers.

"Hopefully it'll be a nice quiet year this year." Ginny muttered to herself.

"Why?" Aaron looked up from his bowl of cereal.

"We've had magical stones, giant snakes, criminals, dragons, battles and worst of all Dolores Umbridge during our years here. It should be nice to have a quiet year." Hermione told them.

The five of them ate their breakfast slowly before heading down to visit Hagrid. Although surprised to see two first-years, he welcomed them in and offered him some of his rock cakes but a warning look from Hermione saw them slip them carefully into their pockets. They spent the rest of the morning chatting about their weeks with Hagrid over tea before finally heading back up to the castle for lunch. The afternoon was dedicated to a Potions essay, Adam having been set an extension much to Aaron's amusement, before relaxing in the evening with the other Ravenclaws. Adam went to sleep that night, feeling better about the past three days than he had over the last eleven years.