It's back! I want to say a big thank you for the reviews, and... that's it. Now let's move on.

Disclaimer: I own my Ruth Kelly And Alison Roberts. The're mine.


3. Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw if you're a ready mind, where those of wit and learning will always find their kind.

"Scientia potentia est."

-Sir Francis Bacon

The first beep of her alarm clock found Alison Roberts sitting cross-legged on the closed window, carelessly drawing on a piece of paper.

For the last six years she had been coming to Hogwarts, Alison was accustomed to be the first one to wake up. It was mostly due to the fact that she couldn't fall back asleep once she woke up at five in the morning or because sometimes she didn't sleep at all. This, combined with the fact that she didn't go to sleep until after midnight contributed to her coffee addiction. Ruth Kelly, a Hufflepuff girl and Alison's best friend, always provided her with a cup of coffee from the kitchens in the morning, along with a lecture on why it was very bad for her health.

"Someone make that horrible sound stop!" Mandy Brocklehurts cried, her voice a little muffled since she had put her pillow over her head in an attempt to draw out the noise.

"If I turn it off then you are going to be late for breakfast Mads." Alison said without looking up from her drawing. Mandy groaned, just as Lisa Turpin reluctantly made her way towards the bathroom.

"Let me guess," Padma Patil said, only turning her head to the side as she was spread over her mattress "you're up since five?"

"Five and a half." Alison corrected.

"I envy you." Mandy said.

"Envy what? My insomnia, the sleep-deprivation or the coffee addiction that comes from the insomnia?" Alison asked. Ice blue eyes glared up at her as Mandy fished her uniform from the trunk at the feet of her bed.

"I don't envy you at all." Padma said, diverting her gaze at the ceiling. "You sleep late, you wake up early, you don't function properly without coffee and you have that pointless habit of making your bed every morning."

"Probably got it from that Hufflepuff friend of yours, Beth-"

"Ruth." Alison corrected Mandy with an eye roll. "It's been six years Mads, get her name right."

"Whose name?" Morag MacDougal asked with a yawn, joining the awake girls.

"Ruth's." Padma said as she pushed passed Lisa and went into the bathroom.

"Ruth, Beth, whatever." Mandy waved a hand dismissively while Lisa settled herself on Alison's bed.

"Will you braid my hair?" She asked Alison with a pleading look. Alison nodded and jumped from the window. Suddenly Padma appeared at the opening of the bathroom door again.

"Guys where is Sue?"

"Breakfast." Alison answered and Padma nodded and closed the door again. Sue Li was one of the sixth-year Ravenclaw girls, and she never waited for anybody. It was pointless to tell her to do so, she would just ignore you, so the girls had learned not to be offended when she left for breakfast all by herself.

"Do we have DADA today?" Morag asked, causing Mandy to groan, rummaging through her bag; probably searching for a parchment to write Snape's essay.

"Oh don't remind me!" She said.

"Braid or fishtail?" Alison interrupted, holding Lisa's black strands in her hands.

"One braid." She said before continuing on what she was going to say before. "If we thought Snape was horrible once when he taught potions, he's twice as bad now."

"He has the class he always wanted to teach." Alison shrugged.

"I don't know what Dumbledore was thinking." Lisa went on. "I mean, I know he's not some loony like the ministry makes him out to be, but honestly, sometimes he acts just like that!"

"Like with the philosopher's stone, the dementors, and then allowing Potter to compete in the Triwizarding Tournament and having a deatheater right under his nose-" Morag wisely avoided mentioning Cedric in her rant, two years after, it was still a sore point for the friends, mainly Cho Chang from the seventh year; but anyhow, they didn't mention him. "I mean, I respect Dumbledore, I do, but-"

"WHAT IS TAKING YOU GUYS SO LONG?" Terry Boot's voice yelled from behind the door, accompanied with a loud banging on the wood. The barrier between the girl's and the boy's dorms had been broken sometime in the past, and students easily visited each other's dorms.

"DAMMIT TERRY IT'S BEEN TEN MINUTES, COME BACK HERE!" Anthony Goldstein, Terry's best friend yelled and the girls laughed.

"PADMA! Get out of there, I want to go down for breakfast!" Alison yelled at the closed bathroom door as she finished Lisa's braid. Moments later, the bathroom door opened.

"Fine, fine, I'm here, you don't have to yell." Padma raised her hands in surrender.

"Finally!" Morag said dramatically, as Lisa opened the dorm door and the five girls went down to the common room. Neither Anthony nor Terry were there, so Alison concluded that they must have already gone to the Great Hall for breakfast.


"There you are!"

Alison turned her head and spotted Ruth running towards her.

"What took you so long?" The Hufflepuff girl asked, handing the redhead girl a cup of hot coffee. "As black as your soul, although not healthy for you." She said, but Alison was spared the lecture that was following by the arrival of Sue Li's owl, that had everyone in the Ravenclaw table ducking. The eagle owl was known because it basically hated everyone; and the entire Ravenclaw table knew to duck when they saw it coming through the Great Hall because if you so much as looked at it the wrong way, it would go for your hair. Or your breakfast.

"I left Ernie alone with Zachariah, so I have to go." Ruth said apologetically. "Also, I know you don't care about potions, but we are studying tonight." Ruth threatened and run away with a wave of her hand. Ever since the Hufflepuff girl had found out that Alison usually neglected the classes she wasn't interested in favor of her personal studies, she had taken it upon herself to keep her on track so that her grades wouldn't drop.

"Did you guys hear about Professor's Burbage pro-Muggle campaign?" Terry asked, leaning towards them.

"Yeah." Alison said, helping herself with some orange juice. "It will end up with her dead, I'm telling you."

Lisa gasped. "Don't say that!"

"She's right." Anthony piped in with his mouth full. He had a habit speaking quickly, to make sure he would manage to speak and not be interrupted. He swallowed before continuing. "It's not a very clever move. With You-Know-Who..."

"Especially after what happened in the Ministry." Terry said, waving his fork around with his unconscious hand movements.

"At least Fudge finally accepted that he's back." Morag said, snatching a waffle.

"It took him long enough." Padma said before stuffing her mouth full of bacon.

"And he's not the Minister anymore." Mandy pointed out.

Alison snorted. "After that, it's no wonder."

"Oh, for Merlin's sake..." Sue teared the letter his owl had just brought her. At her friends' concerned glances she added "It's my mom. Again. For the fourth time since yesterday." She sighed.

Morag gave her a sympathetic smile. "She's just worried about you."

"Yes, I know, but that doesn't mean she has to send three letters every day. I have better things to do than repeat that I am still alive over and over again."

"You could tell her that." Oliver Rivers piped in from behind Anthony. Sue shrugged helplessly.

"Anyway," Mandy decided to change the subject, "do you think I could finish correcting the potion's book today?"

"It's Tuesday, isn't it?" Alison asked without actually expecting an answer. "The library is open two hours more."

That was all Peeves' fault. The mischievous ghost spent hours bouncing around the common every single Tuesday night without fail, and as a result the library stayed open two hours longer than usual so the Ravenclaws could study.

"I can't believe the book they gave us is so bloody inaccurate." Padma complained. "How are we supposed to do the potions right if the instructions on the book are completely wrong?"

"We should make our own correct books and sell them, like the coffee." Terry suggested with a glint in his eyes.

"That's... actually a pretty good idea." Lisa admitted.

"I'm in." Oliver declared. "As long as it's Alison who organizes that stuff because we all know I'm a messy person."

Anthony snorted. "That's saying it lightly."

The biggest problem in the Ravenclaw tower had never been Peeves -they had solved that- neither had it been the loss of points for stupid experiments and the bad grades, no, the real problem had always been Oliver's mess. He would leave his belongings everywhere, socks on the fireplace, jackets on the floor, crumbled papers all around. Granted, that was the usual state of the Ravenclaw common room and dorms, but Oliver left behind him the remains of a hurricane.

"I say we meet up at the library to sort this out after charms, because we're all going to be late." Michael Corner showed up suddenly next to them with his bad slanged over his shoulder.

"Where the hell have you been all morning, mate?" Terry asked.


The quote at the start of the page means "Knowledge is power."

What do you guys think?