The Really Annoying Bird's Head

The thing about being a Ravenclaw; The Thing about being a Ravenclaw, is that we're all supposed to be really clever. All the time. And I remember the day when we were first Sorted, and Mum had been telling me that it was so much easier being in Hufflepuff because nobody cared whether you were clever or not.

I remember being Sorted and going to sit on the Ravenclaw table and expecting to be part of this really clever conversation and all they talked about was food. And Potter. The food was good but I knew nothing about Potter. I'd never heard of him. Mum just got on with life and didn't take much interest in the wizarding world and Dad, who is Mundane, just thought it was freaky. These Ravenclaw people seemed to know an awful lot about Potter – more than he knew about himself, he told me later – but I reckoned they were just making half of it up.

All I saw, when he was Sorted, was this very nervous dark-haired kid, much smaller than me. But he'd had the sense to make some friends on the train. I hadn't dared talk to anyone but he seemed to know the Weasleys already, and a bunch of others.

Anyway, after the Feast, and a really strange speech from Mr Dumbledore, we were taken to the Common Room by a girl called Penny, who seemed quite normal and not at all like the genius swots that I thought all Ravenclaws were like. All the rest of the first years were sort of eyeing each other and trying to work out who was going to be top of the class. Penny stopped in front of this door and there was no door-handle. There wasn't even a knocker. There was just this bronzy sculpture of a bird's head holding a bronze ring in its beak.

Penny knocked gently. The rest of us stood there like lemons, then the bronze head spoke, very clearly and a bit like a professor. Even its beak moved.

'Which end of the wand do you hold?" it said.

'The right end," said Penny.

'Correct,' said the bird's head. 'On so many levels.' And the door swung open.

We all gawped at the bird's head as we passed, and one or two of us first years cringed a little.

'That is Muriel," said Penny as the door closed behind us. 'We don't have passwords like the other Houses. When you want to come in Muriel will ask you a question that you have to answer. She will always ask you something that you might be expected to know the answer to, so don't worry that you will be asked something too complicated, but you have to keep your wits about you. If you don't know, wait for someone who does.'

'Blimey, it'll be like living in a permanent exam," muttered the boy next to me. Terry Boot, I remembered.

'I think I'd prefer a password," I said quietly. Unfortunately, Penny heard me.

"Passwords change, or get forgotten," she said. "This is a much better system. You learn in the process.' She pointed out the boys' and girls' dorms and we slunk off to our respective beds.

There were five of us in the dorm and there were exactly five beds.

'How come they knew in advance how many there'd be' I said. 'The Sorting's a sham. It must be.'

'Not necessarily,' said Boot. 'They've got a bunch of house-elves. They'd sort it out during the Feast, no problemo.'

I didn't know much about house-elves. We didn't have one, but the Boots were a big wizarding family so they probably had half a dozen.

'All the same,' I said. 'Pretty quick work.'

'Not for a house-elf,' said Boot.

I stared to wonder how well I was going to get along with Terry Boot.

But getting along with Terry Boot was the least of my problems. The first problem was getting used to there being so much magic around. People using magic, People practising spells. It was everywhere. Mum didn't use it much because all our neighbours were Muggles and she didn't want them to see any weird stuff and upset the Ministry.

She had refused to teach me any spells because, she explained, if I looked like I knew what I was doing the staff would know I had been practising and, again, she would be in trouble with the Ministry if they found out. I thought she was just being a wuss and nervous of the Ministry but I quickly realised that none of the first years knew much about magic. They only knew what was in the books we had bought. There was a creep in Slytherin who boasted that he'd been doing magic for years but the rumour was that his father had the Ministry in his pocket.

The only reason my family realised that I was magical was when my brother had been annoying me and suddenly grew a long beard. Not a good look on a nine-year-old. Apparently I was okay with the Ministry because it was an outburst, not a spell. I know that Mum was worried about me being in Ravenclaw because they tend to be a bit competitive. Hufflepuff was much more relaxed, she said, and she was right about the competitiveness.

The second problem was that bloody bird's head. Muriel.

Mind you, it wasn't a great idea to call her Muriel to her beak. Boot did that and she asked him NEWT level questions every time until The Proflet came and told her off.

When we came back from breakfast on the morning after we arrived, all the first years were in a bunch, sort of jostling in reverse, trying to avoid being the one who had to answer the question. Mandy Brocklehurst was too short to see what was happening so she ended up at the front.

'What is the Muggle equivalent of Potions?' said Muriel.

Mandy squeaked. 'I … I …,' she looked around desperately. 'We haven't done any Potions,' she whispered.

'Sounds a bit like drugs,' I muttered. 'Medicines, you know?'

'Drugs,' said Boot loudly.

'Succinct and to the point,' said the head and the door opened. Boot strutted in and we followed, though I had actually given the answer.

And that was the only time I was ever able to answer one of Muriel's question. The others got easy questions like 'What is the difference between a Curse and a Charm?' or 'Count the wings of a Hippogriff'. I got 'Where do sentient objects think?' ('In their true selves,' apparently, to which Muriel commented 'Very Platonic'). I also got 'What is the difference between a raven and a writing desk?' and I know there's no answer to that one because she cribbed it from Alice in Wonderland. She accepted 'Eighteen inches' from Tony Goldstein.

"I didn't realise we could be quite so literal," I said.

'Your trouble is that you let yourself be intimidated,' he told me. 'I reckon you could give her any old rubbish and she'd accept it if you said it with sufficient confidence.'

What happened was that I became very adept at making sure that I was always with someone else when I came back to the Common Room. I found I had a reputation for being super gregarious because I was never on my own, but one day I had to get back to fetch the Potions book that I had forgotten to put in my bag. Snape had been at his most sarcastic so I slunk out of the class and dawdled up the stairs by the longest route I knew, hoping to bump into someone going the same way.

No such luck.

'What are the properties of red?'

'Red?' I said, totally confused. 'It's, like, a colour. Redness, I guess.'

'What are the properties of red?'

'Heat?' I said. 'Anger?'

'What are the properties of red?

'Is this an appropriate question for a first year?' I said.

'What are the properties of red?'

'Look,' I said, starting to lose my rag. 'If you know so much about me that you know what sort of questions I should be able to answer, you must be able to know that I'm in Ravenclaw.'

I mean, what was I saying? I was totally screwed. I had totally screwed myself. I'd never get answerable questions now. I hunched down on the floor, prepared to wait like a turnip for someone to come along.

Then.

'A reasonable proposition,' said Muriel, and the door swung open.

'Thank you,' I said.

'Don't mention it,' said Muriel. 'Ever.'

And do you know? I never had to answer a question again.