Ether stepped up to the makeshift podium. Because of how effectively he had made the school better, he was now the elected speaker for the Raven house.
As such he had the dubious duty of introducing the new kids to the dorms.
"Welcome fellow nerds and bookworms! You are one of the privileged few to be accepted into the house of Ravenclaw, where knowledge is challenged and expanded. As such you have the exclusive first tester's rights to the new gear I'll be introducing occasionally as the years go on! And for all returning Ravens, I have great news! I recently got a shipment of scanners so we can commence with digitizing the entire private Ravenclaw library to share with the other houses. Just for amusement's sake, we'll be keeping a track on who borrows what, for how long and how many times they come back to reread it~!" said Ether with a wink.
The older Ravenclaws laughed. Some were relieved, since it meant they could keep an eye on the library even if it was digitized.
"Now, before we send you off to see Morpheus, we do have to lay down a few grounds rules. First off, boys are not allowed in the girl's dormitory, though why the reverse isn't true we have no idea. Second, the library is open an hour before breakfast starts, though Madam Pince isn't around until after it's over, so if you want to skip breakfast for some extra reading time you are free to do so. Just know that the Grey Lady is the unofficial keeper of the books until Madam Pince is there to check them out for you. Any attempts to leave without checking them out will result in Peeves making you his target for a week. You have been warned. Second, even though Professor Snape has finally gotten his wish to avoid teaching everyone under fifteen, he is still a teacher. That being said, I wouldn't recommend asking him any questions, since he generally does not like to deal with children. Finally, if any of you have any special dietary needs, please inform either a prefect or our head of house Professor Flitwick so that we can tell the house elves in charge of food. On another note, anyone caught trying to avoid eating just to read and have been warned more than three times will be banned from both libraries, their PET and their own personal stash until Madam Pomphrey is through chewing you out and you start eating regularly again. Skipping meals every once in a while because of books is acceptable occasionally, but continuing to do so at the sake of your health is not. Any further questions can be directed to either the prefects, Professor Flitwick, or your new students guide. In order to avoid any missed classes, we have included a rudimentary 3D map that you can download for six knuts that will tell you where the classes are."
"Alright girls, your dorms are to your right. Boys, yours are on the left. Remember, we don't mind answering questions here," said the new Fifth year prefect.
With his part done, Ether found himself leading the new firsties up to their dorms. He found it mildly amusing.
The second his head hit the pillow, he was dead to the world.
Ether found it highly amusing that he had acquired a fresh set of ducklings in the form of the firsties. So did the prefects.
The fact he didn't hesitate to show them how to make their battles more fun on their PETs didn't hurt either.
In fact, out of the new crop of children to enter Hogwarts, only one of them stuck out in his mind.
Luna Lovegood.
While she was a pure blood, she at least knew her way around a PET somewhat without instruction. It was more than could be said of Draco, who still had trouble with net battling.
Fortunately for the boy, Ether never made fun of him because of that.
Luna had actually approached him during the scheduled maintenance of the servers, which Ether had enlisted the aid of several muggleborns who knew what they were doing. And the two just clicked.
Ether was very pleased that a pure blood actually knew what a modem was, let alone knew what an ether net cable did and yet didn't feel the need to remind him about his name.
That being said, Ether wasn't surprised in the least when he first attended Lockhart's first (and soon to be only among those who actually wanted to learn the subject, since the new teachers had no issue filling the great void Lockhart created) only to find the man was just a big a ham as rumors had said.
Their first test was about what little details they had picked up from the books about the man himself, and after that he had one of the students reenact scenes from whatever particular book he had on hand.
Ether had been thoroughly disgusted with the half assed teaching in that subject, and wasn't surprised in the least when the servers were nearly bogged down from people renting the book detailing the real facts behind Lockhart's so called achievements.
Clearly Dumbledore wasn't aware that the book existed, or Lockhart would have been kept from being hired at all. The man was an out and out fraud.
That being said, the new staff had created a defense club solely so they could give the students some homework that actually qualified as such. Only the extremely lazy or especially dense of the houses kept going to Lockhart's class.
Among those was a certain Ron Weasly, who Ether didn't particularly like. The boy was a natural strategic genius, yet his mind was completely wasted because he was so damn lazy.
He had one of the highest scores in the 'bot Net Battling sessions, yet he couldn't get off his lazy bum to do his homework unless he had to.
It baffled Ether as much as it frustrated him. Still, he managed to keep that from bothering him during his real life by challenging the boy to chess using a secondary Navi that his father had given him since he was so interested in Megaman.
It was a perfect cover to challenge Ron with, since the user said EH and Ron thought he was playing against a Slytherin.
Ether's secondary Navi (which he used when he wanted to be anonymous while annoying someone, to the Navi's amusement) was female with red hair, green eyes and wore white. She also had tiger ears and a tail, though that was alternating red and gold.
It was one of the few memories he had of his birth mother, a woman with red hair and green eyes much like his own. He named his spare Navi Tigerlily, because it was the only thing he could think of that would fit it.
Amusingly enough, she was rather playful and got along smashingly with Fukurou.
Plus there was the rather drab nature of Luna's Navi that bothered him. It was a standard one that had no personality, and as someone who had two personalized Navis, that bothered him greatly to see one so boring.
Still, he scarcely knew Luna that well, so he did a wait and see. And what he saw did not impress him.
Lovegood was being bullied by almost everyone because as far as he could tell, she had the Sight and a rather impressive imagination. Both of which did little to endear her to the backwards English magical society.
Which resulted in her clinging slightly to Ether, who treated her normally and even entered spirited debates about her father's magazine (she was pleased to hear that he actually read it and found it a more amusing read than the Daily Prophet) from time to time.
The fact that he happened to send some scanners to her father so that he could have a digital copy for students to subscribe to didn't hurt either. In fact the profits from that actually doubled what he was already making from the physical copies.
When asked why he didn't offer the same thing to the Daily Prophet, Witch Weekly, or Quidditch Illustrated (the magical equivalent of Sports Illustrated funnily enough) he was able to cover himself by claiming that he wasn't sure if they would know how to work the device, let alone be willing to try it.
This case was proven when they saw an article by Rita Skeeter who disparaged the use of muggle items at Hogwarts.
Ether knew he would face opposition by bringing the English out of the Dark Ages finally, but he hadn't expected this much. Then again, he had an idea of why they were so upset about the PETs.
They were scared. This was muggle in origin, yet they did as much as they could to avoid catching up with the non-magical societies of the world.
That being said, Ether had little to no respect for the English Ministry. And since he was a legal Japanese Citizen who only attended the school as part of an exchange program (seeing as how he attended magical college before coming here) they had little sway on what he did.
Ether was about to leave the library when he ran into Nick mumbling about a spectral letter he had received a week ago. It was almost Halloween, a day that for some reason he wasn't that enthusiastic about at all. He reasoned it had something to do with his heritage which he refused to learn until it was safe to do so.
(The goblins had already offered to give him Occulmency lessons for free, seeing as how he had helped them with the money exchange issue with muggle banks. He planned to take them up on that in the summer when he had more free time.)
"Hello Sir Nicholas. What seems to be troubling you this evening?" asked Ether.
"Oh nothing young Raven. Just ghostly business."
"It can't possibly be nothing good sir, if it bothers you this much. I have free time right now so I would be happy to listen to your complaints," said Ether politely. Ether made it a point to be polite to ghosts. In Japan there were far, far too many stories of ghosts taking offense and killing people. Or worse, arranging accidents by their mere presence and forcing them to stick around even after death until their business was settled.
Nicholas took him up on that invitation, because he told Ether about the Headless Hunt and their refusal to let him join simply because he didn't technically fit the requirements of a dullahan.
Ether, however knew something Nicholas didn't. The existence of other ghostly clubs, some of which didn't have a European ghost in their membership.
Which was why Ether told the unhappy Gryffindor ghost about said clubs and how to contact them. Nicholas brightened up when Ether commented that by excluding someone as hardy as Nick, they were acting decidedly Slytherin about it all, which as a Gryffindor, Nicholas would naturally be against.
Nicholas was so pleased with the news of other clubs he could join that he invited Ether and any friends interested to his Death Day party. Since it meant he wouldn't be forced to endure the cheer the other children had for the holiday (which he only put up with because it would involve explaining why he didn't like it that much) he agreed to it, provided that there would be food for the living as well as the dead.
Ether left Ravenclaw house with Luna, Hermione and Mandy. They were joined by the twins (who planned to use it as an alibi should they prank anyone during that time period), Neville and a rather bored Draco Malfoy who didn't feel like dealing with his house at the moment.
Ether later learned it was because Draco had been caught with some muggle books, and spells nearly went flying because of it.
Fortunately for Draco, all those books had been inside his PET, which had quickly become a standard item for school seeing as how it made note taking infinitely easier. None of his dormmates could ruin those books, and Ether had supplied a program to hide the books in until Draco felt like reading them later.
(It should be noted that Ether's special magically-ran PETs worked similar to a Kindle or tablet as the screen could be projected above the actual LCD display. Or in the case of those able to afford it, a special visor that only worked one way that allowed them to see it directly in front of them similar to that EyePhone episode of Futurama.)
Needless to say Draco was very happy with the fact Ether sent some free books for him to read later...and a link to a site for a story that was written with pictures and words that he called manga.
(Ether would later learn that Draco had become absolutely addicted to certain series like Negima, Naruto and Bleach. Naturally he found this fact amusing.)
"Welcome friends..." said Nick in a mournful tone. Ether found that amusing, but didn't say anything.
"This is a very interesting party, Sir Nickolas," said Ether tactfully. His friends nodded quickly in agreement...though their attention was on the three tables of food. One was for the ghosts, the other two for the living.
Once they had introduced themselves properly to the other ghosts (and filled themselves with food and candy) they mingled with the ghosts. Ether had proposed to his fellow ravens that they should ask about what events in history the ghosts had witnessed personally, and since it would make the evening less awkward overall they did.
Needless to say all those present got rather high marks for their papers from Binns, who actually seemed to notice them for a change.
Everything was going great (Ether had managed to keep Myrtle the bathroom ghost from leaving the party early in tears simply by asking her about how Hogwarts was in her time...apparently few people wanted to be near the emotional ghost) until the Headless Hunt appeared right as Nick was trying to give his speech.
Nick was irritated beyond belief, now that he had been accepted by a different group of ghosts who had died in rather rough manners. Clearly his inability to die because of the blunt axe qualified. He was their first European ghost.
Before Sir Patrick could mock Nick in front of his guests, a samurai who had many stab wounds and a nasty looking arrow wound walked between him and Nick.
"Excuse me gentlemen, but I have to ask why you chose to wait until our friend was about to make his speech to interrupt his party?" asked the samurai.
Ether translated for his friends, since most ghosts didn't have the language barrier once they were dead. It was the reason why, on the rare occasions that a foreign child was accepted and couldn't speak English clearly or at all, a ghost was there to translate for them.
Patrick sneered at the foreign ghost.
Nickolas regained his wind and he glared at Sir Patrick.
"Ether was correct. You are a Slytherin with the way you act. If you must know, Sir Patrick, I have decided that I simply cannot join a club of ghosts that look down on everyone else like they were nothing. Fortunately, one of the students was kind enough to hear my problem and direct me to a better one," said Nick.
The twins shared a look before giving Ether a thumbs up for helping Nick.
The samurai looked at Sir Patrick with clear disapproval.
"I must ask, sir, that you leave. Clearly you are not welcome here."
Patrick finally noticed the glaring from the other ghosts. Even Peeves, the nuisance maker of the castle, was giving the man the evil eye. He may be a poltergeist, but that didn't mean he had no loyalty. Sir Patrick was a foreign ghost from outside the castle. Nick was a sorta friend who was nice enough to invite him.
In the end, Sir Patrick left without causing too much trouble and they got to hear Nick's speech in it's entirety. A few of the Dullahans did congratulate Nick for reaching five hundred in ghost years before leaving.
Unfortunately that was the only good thing about the evening...as when they passed the hallway leading to Myrtle's bathroom they ended up soaked (she had flooded the place prior to leaving for the party and the elves were too busy with the Feast to clean it up) and in full view of the message that someone had painted on the wall. Ether confirmed it was blood, though he had no idea which kind.
He scraped off a sample and sent it to a friend of his in Scotland Yard since they were closer.
(A few days later he got a letter back telling him it was chicken's blood.)
Draco recognized the name, but in an effort to remain friends decided against the first thing that came to mind when he read it. Mostly because he knew Ether wouldn't like it, since he was likely a muggleborn anyway.