Adenoidal: being characteristically pinched and nasal in tone quality.
April 26, 1998
The Ravenclaw common room was really a beautiful place. High windows looked out at the soaring mountains, giving the feel of being perched in an eagle's nest, fine statues and paintings decorated the walls with an elegant beauty, old, leather-bound books lined the bookcases with inviting swirls of gold and silver lettering and bright paintings animating the covers. But most breathtakingly impressive of all was the ceiling. It glittered with hundreds of bright, glowing stars, shooting meteors, gemlike planets. It was better than the Great Hall's ceiling in many ways because it was not found to reflect the weather, but always showed a more-vivid-than-life picture of the night sky.
It was not uncommon for students to linger in their common room long after most of their classmates in other houses had would have already gone to bed, lying back on the thick rugs and gazing up at the glittering ceiling. Such was the case on a blustery evening at the end of April, in a time when darkness had encroached on the rest of the castle, and it seemed that no one wanted to be alone in the dark anymore.
Most of MandyBrocklehurst's year had vanished. They must be somewhere in the school, but no one could figure out where they had gone. They didn't come to meals. They didn't attend classes. Yet once in a great while they'd be spotted roaming the corridors, although their dorm mates (if any were left to testify) swore their beds hadn't been slept in for ages. Mandy knew they hardly had a choice. They had pushed the rebellion so far that if they were ever caught, she shuddered to think what would become of them. And that thought scared her immensely.
Of the eleven Ravenclaw seventh years, only three remained. Mandy, Kevin Entwhistle, and Lilith Moon. Oliver Rivers was a Muggle-born, but all the rest had disappeared in groups of two and three because they spoke out, acted out, and refused to go down without a fight. This marked the brave. Mandy admired them, and if she could have, she liked to think she would have joined them. Lisa was one of her best friends, after all.
But Mandy Brocklehurst had three younger brothers to think of. And someone needed to stay in Ravenclaw Tower, to keep fear at bay as best they could within the confines of those few circular rooms. And that evening, as Lilith Moon plucked at the strings of a large bass in the corner and thought of Terry Boot and how he'd played it so beautifully as the first snow fell last December, and Kevin Entwhistle slumped in his chair and stared at a picture of the beautiful, laughing face of Lisa Terpin, Mandy began to tell a story.
She lay back on the hearth rug, wild dark curls splayed behind her. Her youngest brother – barely twelve – was curled beside her, using her stomach as a pillow, and she absently rubbed his hair as she began to weave the stories of the constellations.
It was as though she were casting a spell. More than half the house was crowded into the round common room, gazing upward at images they fancied to move and change with the story, but the stillness outside of Mandy's voice was absolute. As the embers died, Mandy's high, nasally voice, most often heard gently nagging after her brothers, or soothing her friends if it was heard at all, rose into the darkness and filled it with light and color and the hope of valiant heroes.
Even Lilith and Kevin were drawn out of their somber musings, enraptured by Mandy's stories. And for a time, thanks to sweet, quiet, little Mandy Brocklehurst, all their fears were pushed away.
After all, only in the black of night can you see the stars.
A/N: I've been wanting to do some random Ravenclaw character exploration for a while, so I went and reread that essay about the original forty, combined it with the class list on Pottermore, and developed some hardly-mentioned-at-all-if-ever characters. Unfortunately only a few got to be showcased here. I wish I could paint a better picture for you…. Maybe later. Hope you liked it anyway. And can anyone tell me if/where they've heard that last line before? I did in fact get it from somewhere else, and if you can guess where (which might be awfully tricky), I'll dedicate a chapter to you! :)