Anyone Else

The sun was still high in the sky and the grounds blissfully deserted when the two seventh years walked past the bustling Great Hall and out the front doors of the castle. They made their way down to the lake, both heavily laden, though very differently.

Reilynn spread out a checkered blanket decorated in Hufflepuff colors on the shore and flopped down, casting their basket of food aside.

"Please tell me you didn't steal this blanket," entreated Mattie, eyeing it doubtfully.

The Slytherin rolled her eyes. "Puh-leeze, don't tell me I've never told you the blanket story. Have a seat, my dear; it's legitimate."

Mattie joined her, carefully placing her books in a neat pile. "You're going to tell me the story, right?"

Reilynn raised her arms in a placating manner. "What's with all the skepticism tonight, Mat? It's quite unbecoming to your Ravenclaw nature."

The dark haired girl tried to scowl at her friend but couldn't stop a smile.

"And if you must know, the blanket was a gift from my parents when I got my Hogwarts letter."

"And they didn't get you a new one when you went into Slyth?"

Reilynn gave her a look.

"Right," Mattie conceded, "stupid question."

The Ravenclaw picked up the top book from the stack, a large volume entitled Gorbshwack duk Morcoste, Understanding Gobbledegook, the Language of the Goblins. Before she could open it, however, Reilynn nonchalantly put her hand on the cover.

"What should we do now?" she inquired.

Mattie removed the other girl's hand from her book, opened it to the marked page, and remarked, "I thought we were here to study."

"Well, that's what I said to lure you here." Avoiding her friend's murderous glare, she hastily continued, "But we can do that, though we're really out here because it is an unusually nice day, and I was beginning to think you'd forgotten what sunlight is."

The Rave gave her a puzzled look. "Light from the sky, right?"

"Well, yes..."

"Good," she stated firmly, "then I can study."

Reilynn wrestled the book from her grasp and held it behind her back. "You've got a serious problem, you know."

"No I haven't. There's nothing wrong with me. Give me my book back."

"I'm sure there are programs out there for compulsive studiers. We can get you some help."

"I do not need help. I can quit anytime I want."

"Uh-huh," the Slytherin uttered, obviously unconvinced.

Mattie slapped the girl's shoulder, executed an attempt at retrieving her book, and failed miserably. Sighing, she picked up the next book in her pile and reasoned, "I could easily go extended periods of time without visiting the library."

Reilynn's eyebrows nearly disappeared into her hair. "Oh really? Define 'extended.'"

The girl's bright blue eyes rose, faltered, and fell back to the open page. Reilynn saw the Rave's fingers begin to absently separate imaginary pages and grinned mischievously. Mattie turned a few pages, then, furrowing her eyebrows, mumbled something.

The Slytherin's smile grew, and her eyes sparkled with unbridled amusement. "What was that, Mat?"

The dark haired girl's eyes flashed as she shut the book and snapped, "I said a week, okay?"

"Whoa, take it down a notch," said Reilynn calmly, looking unbothered by the sudden show of aggression. "They're just books, nothing to get excited about." She took the text from Mattie's lap and set it on top of the other she had confiscated.

"I happen to enjoy-" the other began but was interrupted by the appearance of Adrian Pucey.

"Oy, Rei!" he shouted, waving enthusiastically.

The Slyth girl tried to shoo him away, but he took her gesture for an encouraging one and continued his approach.

"We missed you at dinner," he told her as soon as he was near enough. "What are you doing out here by yourself?" He flopped down, nearly on top of Mattie.

"You've sat on Mattie," Reilynn informed him when he made no sign of getting up.

Adrian jumped up in surprise and wheeled around. "Where did you come from?"

Mattie giggled as the Slytherin girl said in an annoyed tone, "Listen, Adrian, I'll talk to you in the common room when I get back, all right?"

"Sure." He gave her a winning smile, looked at the other like she was some sort of demon, and walked back to the castle.

The Rave turned around from watching him go and immediately frowned at her friend, who was busy pushing the armload of books she'd brought along out of her reach.

"All right," Reilynn chirped with a smile, totally ignoring the death glare she was receiving, "so where were we?"

Mattie pulled a small journal from her robes, opened it to a dog-eared page, and studied her writing. "I've been doing some research. Do you know that the highest percentage of Muggle-borns end up in Hufflepuff?"

Reilynn sighed in defeat. "Oh, really?"

"Yes, the best I can figure is that it has something to do with that whole 'peace and acceptance' thing. I do find it strange though that Slytherins get along fine with the house with the most Muggle-borns but not with the Gryffindors, who have their fair share of them, but no where close to Huffie House."

"I wouldn't say we 'get along great' with them," the Slytherin girl countered. "It's more like, they don't care what the Slyths say about them. They don't hate us back... not that I hate them."

"True, but why all the Gryff hate? And if you say, 'it goes all the way back to the founders,' you'd better have good reasoning for why it's continued."

Reilynn shrugged. "They're annoying?"

"No, think about it, Lynn. The Huffies won't rise to insults and hate, but the Gryffs will for them. Slyth-Gryff enmity is not because they're Muggle or Mixed blood, but because they'll defend those who are."

"I suppose that makes sense. Where does your house come into all of this?"

"Ravenclaw, after Slytherin, has the lowest occurrence of Muggle-borns but one of the highest Mixed population. The two houses are seen as natural allies, but it has nothing to do with blood. I found a book in the restricted section on the founders that said Rowena and Salazar were apparently both for having higher standards to accept students into Hogwarts. Salazar based on blood and Rowena on intelligence and skill. Eventually, frightened by Sal's obsession with it, she changed her mind, but it's strange how many Rave students still feel that's how it should be. And trust me, none of them have read that book. Madam Pince told me it hadn't been checked out for sixty years."

"This is all very interesting, Mattie McKnowledge, but why all the study?"

"Well we were studying house relations in my History of Hogwarts class, and I did some background reading-"

"Which," Reilynn interrupted, "takes us back to the fact that you study far too much. I'm willing to bet you couldn't make it that week without the library."

Mattie's eyes sparkled with the challenge. "Need I remind you that you still owe me a butterbeer from the last time we had a bet?"

"Don't worry; you'll get your butterbeer. So are we on?"

The Rave smiled smugly. "Of course."

Reilynn leaned forward. "Here are the terms. You don't go to the library for a week, starting right now. And you don't ask any housemates to go get you books from the library either. If they've already got it, you may ask to borrow."

"I-I can't even ask?" she sputtered.

"Don't tell me you want out already."

Mattie scowled. "No... of course not. But when I win I want you to wear a shirt in Gryff colors that says 'I love Harry Potter's quill' to five consecutive tutoring sessions with Malfoy."

The Slyth grinned. "I'm glad this is one bet I don't have to worry about losing, because when I win, you're going to be asking Ron Weasley on a date for the next Hogsmeade weekend." Reilynn watched her friend's face turn a peculiar shade of red. "Now I'll have to put a tracking charm on you. Hmmm, how can I make this work?"

"Hold on." The dark haired girl rummaged in her bag for a minute before pulling out a peace of parchment that looked like... "A map," she told Reilynn, "of Hogwarts. We had to make them in my 'History of' class. It's layered, so that you need only to tap it with your wand and choose which floor to view. If you put the tracking charm on me, you'll be able to put the tracker charm on the map and see wherever I go and it will change floors automatically as I do."

"Right," the Slyth drawled, "but I haven't got time to watch this thing twenty-four hours a day."

"Em, well, we can probably modify the tracker charm to record my movement instead of showing it, and then you can use a charm to view what it's documented."

"In theory that sounds great, but can you do it?"

Mattie gave her a look. "I'm a Ravenclaw. I can do anything."

An hour later, the girls passed through the empty Great Hall. They separated in the corridor, Reilynn turning to go down to the dungeons, Mattie continuing up the stairs in the direction of the Ravenclaw dormitories. On the second floor, she ran into a group of noisy sixth and seventh year boys. They didn't acknowledge her presence; Mattie doubted they even noticed that she was in their midst. She was far too used to being overlooked to let it bother her. In fact, she valued her anonymity most of the time.

The Rave seventh year could have started the school's biggest rumor mill if that's what she desired. Being largely invisible made her privy to conversations she had no business hearing - at the moment, dating conquests of her fellow housemates.

Though the entrance to the Ravenclaw common room was seven floors up, Mattie thought the walk never seemed long. Most days she thoroughly enjoyed it. The location of the entrance was a heavily guarded secret; very few other students knew where their blue and bronze schoolmates slept.

She remembered the first time Reilynn showed her the way to the Slytherin common room; she'd laughed heartily when she realized it was a place she'd walked past several times before. Mattie was sure no one had ever accidentally found her dorms. The path there from the great hall twisted and turned though the castle, passing through six large tapestries and ducking into three narrow and hard to spot corridors. Mattie's favorite part, however, came at the end. The last of the tunnel-like passages ended in a blank stone wall, which, in the spirit of Platform Nine and Three Quarters, the Ravenclaws simply walked through.

She paused for a moment as those walking ahead of her adjusted to fit single file though the smallest and final passage. The sixth year behind her nearly knocked her through the false wall as he tripped over her robes, but she stumbled all the way across the large chamber they'd entered until she was at the front of the group. A few of the boys stopped to comment on the Hufflepuff Quidditch practice visible from the large windows while the others gathered around the suit of armor, the lone object in the room.

"Ingenium superat vires."

She heard the clanking of their guardian's helmet as he nodded to them. They wasted no time entering the common room through another stone wall, the blocks of which hastily flipped and rearranged themselves into a small opening. The boys bent nearly double to enter, but Mattie had never found this necessary. She smiled as they filed into a small antechamber that had been giving first year students false initial impressions of their new home for centuries. The chamber was small and close. Block stone walls opened on her right and left into dark stairwells flanked by elegant marble eagles. Footsteps echoed ominously, and the girl easily remembered her own terror on that first night. Owing largely to the fact that prefects never showed the actual common room to the first years - even though it was mere steps away, straight through an opening the opposing wall - and coupled by darkness and fatigue, it was easy to have a negative outlook on the house.

It took only one glance the next morning to drive these thoughts away forever. The Ravenclaw common room was nothing short of awe inspiring, even compared to the safe comfort in the Gryffindor tower, the surprisingly gentle and deep underwater scape of Slytherin dungeons, and the dark welcoming quality of the Hufflepuff den. Mattie had visited all House common rooms over Christmas the year before and merely felt doubly blessed to return to the loft everyday. It was the perfect place for often busy and high-strung students to relax, put things back into perspective, or at least have a calm environment to read and work.

The common room was a large, open octagon with high ceilings and cathedral archways. The cold stone blocks of the entryway were gone. In fact, the room had more of the feel of an old library or study than that of a castle tower. The floors were made of cherry, centuries old and magically held in a state of perfection. Plush blue sofas and armchairs with their bronze satin pillows were neatly arranged around the fire. Though the fire crackled merrily and despite the hot, sunny day ending outside, the common room remained at a comfortable temperature. To the left, fitting into the corner of the room's octagonal shape, were three rows of floor-to-ceiling bookcases, the Ravenclaws' own private library. Between the comfortable seating and the books were scattered triangular work tables, commonly piled high with textbooks and parchment, and sometimes chess pieces. Mattie's favorite part of the room wasn't any of these things, however, not even the extensive and personal library. It was the windows.

The three walls completing the octagon and facing the outside were beautiful picture windows. She loved nothing more than completing homework at the corner tables or curling up with a book on one of the window seats and being able to look across the magnificent landscape, forest, grass, and lake stretched out below. It was hard to not feel like an eagle with such a view.

"Hello, Mattie!"

Startled, she whirled around. Being publicly addressed, even in her own common room, was a rare occurrence, meaning it never happened. Aware again, she realized she'd unconsciously wandered over near the bookshelves. Processing the voice quickly, she turned with a smile and addressed the young, red-haired wizard in the painting that had been behind her.

"Hello, Philip. I hope you're well."

He grinned at her, laying down his eagle feather quill. "As always. And you are too, I hope? You looked distracted."

"I'm fine, just lost in thought."

In lieu of response, Philip picked up his quill and added a line of new script to his parchment. "Yes," he murmured vaguely, "I quite understand."

Mattie giggled at him. Philip was something of a joke among her housemates, with his constant writing and insistence that he was a real person, not just a painting. The dark haired girl had - in a true mark of isolation - always enjoyed talking with him, indeed with all of the portraits. She found him interesting and somewhat quirky and tried to make it a point to at least say hello when she was in his part of the common room.

"What are you working on today?" she asked sincerely, leaning carefully back against the shelf and only dislodging two books from their rightful places.

Philip returned his quill to the desk for a second time, looking like Christmas had arrived early. "I've started on the next chapter in my book about Muggles. Would you like to hear what I've got so far?"

Mattie checked her watch. "You know I'd love to, Philip, but I need to try and find a book so I can get started on an essay tonight. Next time I see you, I will give you my full attention, I promise."

"Of course." He reluctantly picked up his quill. "I wouldn't write this if not for you, Mattie. You're my inspiration, you know. I'm going to dedicate this book to you."

Mattie felt her face go red. "Thanks, Philip," she stammered, "but you might find someone else before it's finished."

"Never," he vowed solemnly. "I'm going to write it right now."

He pulled out a fresh piece of parchment and bent low over it, eyebrows scrunched in thought. The girl took this as her cue to go. Her eyes began to scan the rows of books for one that would help her write her History of Magic paper on werewolf rights.

"Liber werewolf," she commanded, sweeping her wand along the length of the shelves. The spell, invented by Professor Flitwick, allowed students to find books on the topic they wanted in a matter of moments, since the Ravenclaw library was arranged solely by year.

Matted scowled as all the books remained still on their shelves. She turned and used the spell again, waving rather more forcefully that necessary. To her immense relief, a single book flew to her around the shelf. She reached out to catch it with a grin that did not falter when it smacked into her face and fell to the floor, but it fell completely when she caught a glimpse of the title, Attack of the Vengeant Werewolf. The high cry of a prepubescent boy, probably a first year, came from near the fire.

"My book disappeared!"

Mattie lobbed the book back around the shelves and heard it hit the floor with a loud smack, followed shortly by scraping chairs and the patter of feet of the first year and his friends who ran over to investigate.

"Wow, I never knew books could do that!" one exclaimed.

Rolling her eyes and cursing Lynn for tricking her into a stupid bet, the girl stalked around the edge of the bookshelves. The first years were looking fearfully at their friend's novel. One would stoop down, nearly touch it, and pop back up suddenly, looking sheepish.

Muscling her way between the book's owner, a pudgy-cheeked, blond eleven-year-old who had an inch on her and a lithe but surprisingly solid girl with sharp features and at least two inches on the seventh year, Mattie swooped down, grasped the book, and held it out to its owner. He met her annoyed stare with wide eyes.

"There's nothing wrong with it!" she exclaimed, throwing the book back at the sofas from whence it came. It bounced off a cushion and into the fire where it ignited immediately, causing the first years to stampede with the blond boy as their leader shouting, "My book! My book!"

"That was some toss, Miss Hayes," shared a delighted-looking wizard painted in Quidditch robes who hung near the other end of the bookcases. "You should join the Ravenclaw team!"

Mattie's forehead thudded against the nearest shelf. "Why me?" she moaned, one eye taking in the titles of the books left by the class before hers.

If Mattie hadn't known which book she was going to add since her third year, she would have seriously considered a volume on werewolves and their rights to add to their library. Since the dawn of time, or at least several hundred years, departing Ravenclaw students were asked to choose a favorite book to contribute to the shelves.

Mattie had first read her book as an eleven-year-old after writing a sincere letter to a ministry official concerning her family background. She had been passionately curious to learn who had been the witch or wizard in her family, - who had been responsible for her gift - and she'd sent a copy of her detailed family tree to the ministry. The witch who responded had been very kind and helpful. Though she told Mattie that no one in her family had ever been a wizard, and therefore, her magic blood was unexplainable, she recommended a book to the young Ravenclaw. Mattie read Muggle Magic voraciously. By the beginning of her fourth year, her whole family had finished the book as well; it had changed things for all of them.

Until then, the girl had felt like a stranger in her own home. Her parents couldn't understand why their middle child, between two perfectly normal sons, was so different. Mattie vividly remembered the summer her younger brother Jack turned eleven. Tension had filled the Hayes household. The air felt solid for weeks, and the girl could practically feel her parents holding their breaths. In the end, the letter didn't come, but that was all it took for Mattie to strategically place the book on the kitchen table before going to bed one evening. After that, things had gotten much better, to the point where her brothers were back to teasing her constantly and her parents began acknowledging her existence.

Mattie smiled over at the corner, where she could see Philip's quill scratching against the parchment. He had no idea that the book he'd been working so diligently on for all of her seven years was already written and had already made such a difference. It was all she could do to not show him her copy, or the leather bound, bronze embossed edition she'd already purchased for the shelf. He would never see it, either, for it was going in the area right where she was standing, and Mattie was sure none of her housemates would ever pick the author of this book to be the quirky man in the painting in their common room.

"But I still don't have a book on werewolves," she muttered to herself, scowling at a Gilderoy Lockhart book left behind by the class before hers. She fervently wished that Reilynn would have allowed the bet to begin tomorrow, but then again, the Slytherin was probably smart enough to know that Mattie would have tracked down all of her professors, seeking the coming week's assignments and returned home with an armload of books.

The girl shook her fist at the floor. "Hate you, Reilynn."

She sighed resignedly. There was really nothing she could do about it, unless she was ready to ask Ron on a date. Mattie shuddered involuntarily. She really liked Ron, but she was not at all ready to be rejected by him. She was going to have to live without the library.

"Besides, Hayes," she told herself as she began walking towards the stairs, "you've read tons of books on werewolves. I bet you could write that whole paper from memory."

"There she is!"

"Excuse me."

Mattie looked up in surprise to find herself surrounded by a gang of seventh year and first year boys, all of whom were much bigger than she.

"Yes?"

Eddie Merrick looked down at the blond boy Mattie recognized as the werewolf book kid.

"That's her, all right," he said in his high, squeaky voice.

Eddie grinned maliciously, taking a few steps closer to the frightened seventh year.

"Ed-Eddie?" she stammered, trying to pull away though there was nowhere for her to go.

"Oh, you did your homework didn't you, Hufflepuff spy?"

"What?" Mattie managed over the laughs and jeers of the crowd around her.

Eddie leaned forward, tugging on her blue and bronze tie until it hung awkwardly loose, and he ran his finger along the blue edging of her robes, making her shiver in fear.

"Where did you get this?" he asked in a low voice, his eyes cold and dangerous.

Mattie found that her voice was no longer functioning, as she stared at him with wide eyes, her mouth opening and closing silently.

"What are you going to do with her, Eddie?" asked one of the boys behind Mattie.

He grabbed the girl's arm so tightly she thought it would break. "Boys, we're going to take her to Flitwick."

A loud cheer went up, and the next thing Mattie knew, she was no longer standing. A boy had gripped her right arm; another lifted her legs from the ground as the rest formed a swarm around her.

"I'm not a spy! I'm not a Hufflepuff! I'm Mattie Hayes!" she cried, trying to thrash as much as she could in the firm clutches of her housemates.

At her name, the whole lot of them fell silent, studying her seriously.

"She says she's Mattie Hayes."

Critical eyes focused on her.

"She doesn't look like a seventh year."

"Hey," piped in Thomas Mitchell, a fellow seventh year, "isn't Mattie Hayes a blond?"

"No, she's not! I mean, I'm not!" the girl cried helplessly as the group began moving again towards the entrance to the tower.

They had only just left the common room when a voice came out of the darkness ahead of them.

"What are you doing to Mattie?"

The boys stopped and fell silent as Cho Chang appeared from the shadows, gazing perplexedly at the scene.

"She's a Hufflepuff spy!" exclaimed the first year whose book had been incinerated.

"No, she's my roommate," the girl said pointedly, "so why don't you put her down."

Simultaneously, the three boys holding her up let go and Mattie fell to the floor with a thud. She chose to lay motionlessly with her face pressing into the floor for a few moments, praying everyone would forget she was down there.

"Er, sorry Cho," Eddie drawled.

Mattie heard the footsteps retreating back into the common room but didn't care enough to go back in herself and possibly be mistaken again. Finally, after about ten minutes, she picked up her head slightly to see a shiny pair of Mary Janes which she followed up to take in the sight of her roommate who was looking down at her as if she were a very smelly pair of knickers.

"Are you going to get up?"

Mattie flushed as she rose to her feet. ck into the common room but didn'back into the common room. wn there.

floor with a thud. the scene.

She was unused to receiving so much direct attention from the girl she had lived with for seven years. "Thanks," she offered awkwardly.

Cho shrugged and walked brusquely past her into the common room. Sighing, Mattie followed. Her relationship with her roommate wasn't what anyone might call conventional. They'd never been friends; they hardly even tolerated each other. Mattie didn't approve of Cho's hatred of Slytherins, and Cho, in return, resented her for being so close to Reilynn.

She turned and began heading up the staircase to the girls' dormitories, perplexed by her roommate's behavior. As she passed the third years' landing and started the second flight of stone stairs, she remembered her essay with a groan that nearly knocked her backwards. Turning once more at the sixth years' landing, she breathlessly climbed the final flight, making the decision to just write her essay with what she knew already. It would be too hard to ask Cho, and she would force Mattie to explain, find out it all went back to Reilynn, and refuse to help.

The floor leveled out, and the girl paused for a moment to clutch the wall and catch her breath before entering the large, top-of-the-tower room she and Cho shared. If there was one benefit to having only one roommate, it was the vast amount of space each could have within their room. Even during their first six years together in the smaller, tower-side rooms given to younger students, they had more than enough personal space. Now, in the final year room that stretched the entire diameter of the tower, they hadly had to see each other if they didn't want to, which was the case most of the time.

The two of them had also managed to acquire a large amount of furniture to fill the empty space not being occupied by other seventh years. Cho had a large table which was usually covered in Quidditch playbooks, model sets, and gear on her side; Mattie had procured bookshelves to keep her library books neatly organized and an expansive writing desk to retreat to whenever she wanted. The desk, in fact, was her destination as she carefully skirted Cho's overturned trunk and haphazard pile of magazines to reach her half of the room.

Mattie carefully removed the parchments, quills, and texts from her bag and hung it on the small coat rack near her bed. The books were swiftly ordered and stacked; graded essays put in a drawer to be reviewed later; and partially completed assignments dropped into her paper tray. With a sigh, Mattie lit the lamp on her desk and sat before a fresh roll of parchment. Five minutes later, she picked up her favorite quill. It hovered over the paper for a moment while the girl's eyes searched vainly for some help from the books on her shelf. Realizing that no matter how long she looked, no book would magically transform into one she needed, she returned her gaze to the completely blank paper.

"I give up," she told it after another half hour had passed. She reached for a lone piece of parchment, kept beneath her copies of Muggle Magic, dipped her quill in ink and quickly scrawled:

Lynn, you have no idea how much I hate you right now.

The reply was instantaneous.

I'm a Slyth, remember? Your pathetic Rave hate has no effect on me. How's that essay coming?

FINE! It's fine!

I'd be willing to cancel the bet if you could prove to me that you haven't been freaking out all night and that you managed to write anything on that Werewolf essay.

I'm going to bed now.

Haha, night Mattie. I'll see you in Defense tomorrow.

Scowling, Mattie cleared the parchment and shoved it back under the books. She pulled a book at random from the shelves and was not disappointed to see it was Gorbshwack duk Morcoste. Taking the lamp from her desk, she retreated to her bed, nestling between the soft cotton sheets and blue down comforter with the book open before her. She fell asleep long before the lamp burned out, still in her robes, glasses slipping down her nose and the book cradled closely to her chest.