"Nitwit, blubber, oddment, tweak!"

With those quite mystifying words, the feast began. As soon as Dumbledore had sat, food materialised on the tables, more food than Harry had ever seen in his life. It seemed like it continued on forever. There were roast meats of every kind imaginable - Harry had his eye on some perfectly pink roast beef - surrounded by a multitude of potato: mounds of glistening roast potatoes, great tubs of creamy mashed potato, even a large platter of chips. There was hot stew with steam rising off of it, fresh bread, and a variety of soups. Studiously ignoring a tureen of vegetables, Harry reached over to cut himself some beef.

"Cut me some of that, will you?" asked the girl opposite him. She was a short girl with sleek brown hair and a smattering of freckles. Harry thought her rather pretty.

"Sure," Harry replied, and he cut her several generous slices, juices oozing from the meat as he sawed into it.

"Thanks," she said, "I'm Alexandra, by the way. Alexandra Woodbridge."

"Harry Potter," he replied as he spooned a large number of roast potatoes onto his plate, before covering the whole thing with thick brown gravy. All around him the hall was alive with the sound of chatter. Harry was very aware that this was the time to be making new friends, but he didn't really know how to go about it. He supposed you just asked questions about each other.

"Pass the gravy, Potter!" called a boy a few seats down. He was easily the tallest boy in their year. Harry pushed the jug down the table and turned back to Alexandra. She was eating her food rather daintily, taking the smallest bites yet chewing them forever. Harry was reminded of the time Petunia tried to make him chew his food 100 times before swallowing. He was suddenly rather conscious that he had been shovelling his food in. It really was very good.

"So where are you from?" he asked her between mouthfuls.

"The middle of nowhere, really," she replied, looking unhappy about it. "And I mean it. I live in Suffolk. I swear there's nothing but Muggles for miles and miles. The Potters are from Camelot, aren't they? I wish I could live in Camelot."

From what Harry could glean from Marissa, the Potters had lived in Camelot, before Thomas had argued with his father. The older Potters still lived there, close to Lord Peverell, but Thomas had left when he changed allegiance to Dumbledore. He didn't think Alexandra would be interested in that, though.

"Well, it's true that most of the Potters live in Camelot, but I live in Sanctum," he said, trying to keep it simple.

"Oh, yes, I forgot," she said. Harry wasn't quite sure what she meant, but supposed she knew his family history already. She definitely had the advantage on him there. The name 'Woodbridge' was familiar to him, but he couldn't remember anything else about them. "But Sanctum!" she continued, "that's even better! Suffolk is so boring. Of course, Sanctum is just a Floo away, but mother never lets me go on my own. I've only been there a few times, you know, to see the ballet. I don't suppose you dance?"

Harry, who was quite sure that dancing was for girls, shook his head. Alexandra sighed.

"No one seems to! Mother told me that Hogwarts has a dance club, but I'm sure it's quite small." She leaned in, as if she was telling a great secret. "I wanted to go to dance school, but Lady Asquith insisted on Hogwarts. She said I had to get a 'proper education'." She sniffed. "I don't see how alchemy is any better than ballet."

Harry decided that Alexandra was a bit silly. Who would pick ballet over alchemy? You got to blow stuff up! - or so he had heard. Still, she was pretty. And she was in Ravenclaw, so she couldn't be a complete idiot, even if she was a girl.

"So if you don't dance, what do you do?" Alexandra asked.

Harry thought. He didn't really think he did anything, not in the same way Alexandra did stuff. The magical world was still all so new, he hadn't had a chance to take up a hobby. He'd spent most of his summer playing around with magic, so he went with that.

"I like magic," he said, aware that he sounded stupid. Alexandra rolled her eyes, and Harry felt the need to boast. "I can light a candle by blowing on it."

She didn't look like she believed him, but they were interrupted before she could speak.

"Spoken like a true Ravenclaw!" said a familiar voice, and a hand came to rest on his shoulder. Harry looked up to see Arcturus Greengrass standing behind him. "All right, Harry? You managed to throw your wand at everyone, you know. Ravenclaw, of all places..."

Harry smiled, and noticed that Greengrass had managed to draw the attention of all the first years. Many were looking at Harry with something bordering awe - to have the favour of a seventh year, and the Head Boy at that, was apparently a feat worthy of respect. Arcturus turned his attention to the tall boy who had asked for gravy.

"You're a surprise too, Winters. I thought you were Gryffindor for sure. Our Lady will be pleased. Send my regards to your father, will you?"

Winters responded by holding up his goblet in a toast.

"Now, time to reveal the true purpose of my visit," Greengrass said, and he reached over for the platter holding the beef. "I hope you won't mind me taking this! So long, Firsties!"

Before anyone could raise an objection, Greengrass made a rapid escape with the beef. Across the room, a group of 7th year Slytherins cheered his successful raid. The boy to Alexandra's right scowled.

"I hadn't had any of that yet!" he said, "and it was from my father's farm, too."

"You can tell?" asked Harry, surprised.

"You mean you couldn't? I don't know whether to be insulted or amused."

Harry frowned. He was clearly missing something - it seemed like normal beef to him.

"Isn't beef just... beef?"

Alexandra tried to come to his rescue.

"It's Selwynn beef, Harry," she said, as if that explained everything. Harry was still in the dark.

"Oh, yeah, of course," he said, pretending to know what that was. The boy laughed, but seemed disappointed that Harry hadn't asked what it was. After the boy became distracted by a different conversation, Alexandra leaned over the table again.

"You don't know what Selwynn beef is, do you?" she said quietly. Harry considered denying it, but shook his head.

Alexandra giggled.

"Honestly, why didn't you just say? It's not important," she said.

Harry shrugged and watched as his plate disappeared to be replaced by a desert bowl. He helped himself to a large slice of treacle tart.

"Well then? Aren't you going to ask what it is?" Alexandra said, apparently unhappy that he was more interested in his treacle tart than he was her. Harry decided to indulge her.

"Fine. What's Selwynn beef?"

She smiled.

"How to explain... it's a type of beef that's always perfect."

"That's it? How can you tell it's not just really good beef, then?" Harry asked.

"Oh, I'm saying it all wrong," Alexandra moaned. "Okay, how about this: what did the beef look like to you?"

"It was pink?" Harry replied, not really sure where she was going.

"Exactly!" she said, "For you, it was pink. For me, it was red. I bet someone here likes it frazzled to a crisp. Selwynn beef is always perfect! Do you see?"

Harry nodded. Over the summer he had become quite used to strange things like doors that opened to different rooms at different times of day, or things being bigger on the inside than the outside. It had never occurred to him that food could be magical too. He wondered what other magical foods there were.

Soon enough, the feast began to wind down. The older students began to drift out, and some of the staff got up to leave. After Dumbledore left, two prefects made their way down the table to the first years.

"If everyone's finished, we'll take you up to the common room," said one of them, a girl with ginger hair.

The way to the Ravenclaw common room was long and winding. Along the way they passed through several huge stairwells filled with criss-crossing staircases. Whenever they did, they always travelled upwards. Harry was quite lost. He was walking with Alexandra on one side of him, Winters on the other.

"Do you have any idea where we are?" Harry asked them, "I think I lost track about two staircases back."

"You were keeping track?" Alexandra said, as if doing such a thing had never occurred to her.

Winters laughed.

"I reckon I could make it back with only a couple wrong turns," he said. It sounded like his voice had already broken. "We should go to breakfast together tomorrow, just in case. Less chance of getting lost if we stick together."

"That's a good idea," said a prefect who was walking behind them. He had blond hair and a serious face. Though he looked unremarkable there was something familiar about him. "I remember my first day here: I got so lost that I was almost late for breakfast."

"How much further to the common room?" asked a chubby boy at the back of their small group. Harry noticed he was a bit red in the face.

"Just around the corner," replied the prefect, and when they turned the corner he told them to stop. They were standing in a long corridor, no different from any number of corridors they had already passed. It was wide and tall, lit by torches attached to the walls. Portraits lined the walls at intervals, and every here and there a suit of armour stood in an alcove. They were standing next to one such alcove. Two stone ravens were carved into the wall on either side of the armour, level with its waistline. The prefect they had been talking to spoke.

"Entry into the dorms is easy enough: you just have to tap one of the ravens on the head with your wand. You used to have to answer a question, but too many students got stranded outside. Penny, would you demonstrate?"

The female prefect who had gathered them earlier came forward. She drew her wand and gave a raven a sharp tap. The raven squawked loudly, and the suit of armour stepped backwards into the wall.

"Follow me through," she said, before stepping through the wall. There was a brief pause – no one seemed to want to go first – before Harry felt a push from behind. It was the prefect, who winked at him. Feeling everyone's eyes on him, he walked into the wall, hoping that he wouldn't hit stone and look like an idiot.

He need not have worried. He stepped through the rock as if it were air and emerged into a large yet warmly inviting room. Moving away from the entrance to let the others through, Harry took a good look around. To the left of the entrance a staircase rose upwards; the common room lay to his right. It was a long, thin room, like an expanded corridor; one wall was dominated by a long window looking out onto Hogwarts' front lawn. He expected it would be a great view over Hogsmeade during the day. From the inside, the entrance looked like a doorless archway leading out into the hallway. Harry could see Alexandra and Winters on the other side, waiting to come through. The wall opposite the window had multiple fireplaces set into it; all of them were roaring, giving the room its warm glow. Arranged around the fireplaces were circles of armchairs and settees, many of which were occupied by the upper years. Between the fireplaces the walls were lined with bookcases. There was another staircase at the other end of the room.

"Come on," said Penny once they were all through, and she led them to an unoccupied fireplace. "Have a sit down, everyone. There's a few things we have to get through." They just about managed to all fit around the fireplace. Harry counted: there were thirteen first years, including himself. The prefects stood in front of the fire.

"Welcome to Ravenclaw!" the boy said. "I'm Decimus Ollivander, and this is Penny Balfour. We're your 7th year prefects. Basically, that means you have to do what we say."

He laughed, and they laughed too, but Harry got the feeling that it wasn't entirely a joke.

"Tonight is designed to help you get to know each other better," Penny said. "We've got games to play and some supper later on – yes, you are going to get hungry again before bed – but first we should all introduce ourselves. We'll go around in a circle, giving our names and an interesting fact about ourselves."

Harry tried desperately to think of an interesting fact. Nothing he could think of was interesting – or suitable. He certainly wasn't going to tell them he was raised like a Muggle. He was so busy thinking that he missed the first couple of names. Very soon it was his turn.

"I'm Harry Potter, and I live in Sanctum," he said rather lamely. No one seemed to care. Alexandra was already introducing herself enthusiastically.

"I'm Alexandra Woodbridge and I want to be a dancer," she said. Apparently she wanted to make this clear to everyone she met.

"Dorian Winters. Fencer, duellist, Quidditch enthusiast."

Harry was pretty sure he heard a few of the girls giggle at Dorian's dramatics. He tried not to feel jealous.

"Sebastian Selwynn," said the boy from the feast. "I saw the Sirens of Greece over the summer."

"Clare Penrose," said a girl. One of her eyes was blue, the other green. "My element is water."

That made everyone pause. Harry had never heard of people having elements before, and he was fairly sure it wasn't in any of their textbooks.

"You're one of LeFey's lot, then?" asked Penny.

The girl nodded, and there were various sounds of realisation from the other first years. He would have to ask someone about it later.

More introductions followed. There was Euphemia Gamp, who preferred to be called Effie, and Portia Savage, whose father was a tribune in the Saharan Legion. Then came Ethan MacDonald, the chubby one, and Stephanie Lawson, a strange girl who was met with horrified silence when she told them how she once saw a man eaten by a Quintaped.

By the time the introductions finished, Harry had already forgotten half their names.

"Excellent," said Ollivander, who was still sending Stephanie concerned looks. "You probably won't remember it all, but hopefully a few names stuck. You've got the rest of the evening to learn them – don't be afraid to ask for them again. Okay, a few things you should know before we play 'Mad Muggles': our Head of House is Professor Prewett, who is also Head of Alchemy. If you have any problems you should come to us first, but if they're really serious, or about us-" his tone betrayed his disbelief that this would ever occur "-then you can go to him. I think some of you actually have him for Alchemy, which is unusual for first years. Which brings us to our next point. Penny?"

"You should have looked at your timetable by now," she continued, "and if you haven't picked between French and German yet, you should do so now. You've probably also realised that you won't necessarily be in all the same classes with each other. It's possible that you may find yourself in some classes without any Ravenclaws at all, since there's so few of us. It's down to you to support each other out of classes. We don't want anyone falling behind or feeling excluded. We expect you to sit together during your supervised homework period, and work together when appropriate. Understand?"

They all nodded. Ollivander took over.

"Finally, as you know, Hogwarts runs on a 30 hour day. It's going to take some getting used to. For the first week or so you're going to experience Chronosickness. The first day is going to be the worst. We're going to spend this evening with you, keeping you awake beyond what you're used to. Right now it's 21:00. At home, you might be going to bed around now. We've got to keep you awake until around 27:00. After that you can go to bed. But don't worry, we've got lots of games to play, and food to eat if you get hungry, and Endurance Elixir for when you feel like you can't keep your eyes open any longer."

The rest of the evening passed in a haze of laughter and tiredness. They played Mad Muggle – a kind of quiz revolving around all the things Muggles do to make up for not having magic. Everyone found it hilarious. Harry hadn't ever thought about it that way before, but he supposed that there was something quite absurd about flying inside a metal tube with wings. Needless to say, he won by a large margin. Ollivander said he could probably pass O.W.L. Muggle Studies.

They played other games too, and not all of them sitting down. At one point, when everyone looked like they were about to drop, they were given the Endurance Elixir and led back into the castle for a game of Merlin and Rebels. That game came to a rather abrupt end when it turned out that Sebastian Selwynn knew a locating divination.

Harry learned more about his classmates, too. Alexandra turned out to be gifted at more than just dance: she showed them how to make drawings that came to life when you had finished. Harry drew a picture of a snake and managed to get it to wiggle a bit.

Stephanie drew a picture of Professor Bagshot losing her clothes, which Penny confiscated.

Harry tried to teach them how to light candles by blowing on them, but no one could get the hang of it – not even the 7th years. Ollivander seemed quite put out by it, but Dorian said that it was awesome. Harry just about resisted the urge to show off.

It was a good thing he did, because Dorian then showed them how to duel and beat everyone handily - except for the prefects, who batted his spells away casually. Ollivander told them about duelling club, and Harry considered joining. Unlike the other houses, where it was optional, Ravenclaws were expected to join several clubs. They had three hours set aside every day for extra-curricular activities, and seven on Saturdays.

Finally, it was time for bed. Penny took the girls to their dorms, up the staircase by the common room entrance, and Ollivander took the boys to theirs. They were all in one room together; it was large and circular with seven grand four-poster beds. Their trunks sat at the base of their beds. After using their rather lavish bathroom across the hall, they settled into bed. They fell asleep almost instantly.