The Heart of the Raven

Disclaimers: Please be advised that this is an Alternate Universe story. Some of the names in this story come from mythology, the works of Edgar Allan Poe and The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. I also borrowed my title "The Heart of the Raven" from "The Heart of Ravenclaw", which was a rumoured possible title for book seven.

Author's note: Please be aware that I started writing this before the release of "The Deathly Hallows" therefore book seven is disregarded but all established information from the previous six books is not.

Chapter 1: Ravens and Riddles

"Let's face it Harry: we've got no place left to look."

These dejected words came from Hermione Granger as she slammed shut yet another textbook.

"How can the Hogwarts library not have a single detailed book about its founders?" Ron Weasley asked in disgust.

"You'd think they would," Neville Longbottom put in. "And yet we haven't found out a single important thing about Rowena Ravenclaw."

Harry stared around at his friends. They had been so close. Hogwarts had seemed like their last hope to research Rowena Ravenclaw. The Ministry of Magic archives had proved to be a complete waste of time and the wizarding library hadn't been too helpful either. All their hopes had been placed in the Hogwarts library, and that hope was slowly dwindling away.

"I wonder if Luna's managed to find anything," Harry mused. "Where'd she disappear to anyway?" He glanced around the room but there was no sign of Luna's straggly blonde hair and radish earrings anywhere in the vicinity.

"I think she went to ask Professor Flitwick some questions," Hermione told him. "He is the head of Ravenclaw house after all. If anyone knows something about Ravenclaw, it would be him."

"I hope she gets back soon, there's nothing more we can do here," Ron sighed impatiently.

"It just doesn't seem right," Hermione muttered. "Not a single book on Rowena Ravenclaw... I mean, she designed the layout of this school! And she supposedly wrote many books herself."

"But Hagrid said he remembered seeing a book on Ravenclaw here in the library when he was at school," Harry reminded her. "It can't have just gotten up and walked away..."

"Unless someone doesn't want us to find it," Ron said gravely. "Maybe You-Know-Who had the same idea as us: to use the book to research relics of Ravenclaw!"

"But then... why wouldn't he bring it back?" Neville wondered.

"Maybe he wanted to destroy the evidence," Hermione suggested darkly. "So no one else would ever find out what he was up to."

"It's possible," Harry said at last. "But if that's true... then we've reached a dead end."

And to think, everything had been going so well. So far Harry and his friends had managed to track down two of the Dark Lord's horcruxes: Slytherin's locket and Hufflepuff's cup. They had found the locket in the possession of none other than Kreacher, the old house-elf of the Black family. It was Hermione who had deduced that R.A.B. was Regulus Black, and so the friends were led on a wild chase to track down the relic. Luckily, it hadn't been chucked out with the other Black family heirlooms: Kreacher had rescued it before Sirius had thrown it out and he hadn't been very happy to part with it. But in the end, Harry prevailed and managed to destroy the locket for good.

Hufflepuff's cup had been found in the attic of the orphanage where the young Tom Riddle had spent his early years. Interestingly, a member of Hufflepuff house had been on hand to help neutralize the spell on the cup and to return it to the present day descendents of Hufflepuff after it had been de-Horcrux-ified. After this interesting turn of events, Harry thought it might be wise to get a member of Ravenclaw house to help track down Ravenclaw's relic. That was where Luna came in.

At that moment, Luna Lovegood came wandering back into the library. She looked rather excited.

"Let me guess: Flitwick had some information for us?" Harry addressed her.

Luna nodded her head enthusiastically, her radish earrings bouncing along. "Professor Flitwick said that there had once been a whole section of books on the Hogwarts founders, but they were all destroyed in a library fire decades ago."

"That's hardly good news," Ron protested, but Hermione shushed him.

"But Flitwick also mentioned that a few of Ravenclaw's ancient personal scrolls that her books were based on were supposedly stored away in a secret hiding place, but no one's ever been able to find them."

"Makes sense," Harry remarked. "Ravenclaw designed Hogwarts. She could have hidden those scrolls anywhere."

"Maybe... maybe she had a hidden room, just like old Slytherin did!" Neville suggested.

"Well of course she did," said Luna earnestly. "All of the Hogwarts founders had secret rooms, you know."

Hermione frowned. "But in Hogwarts, a History there's no mention of the other founders building secret rooms. Just Slytherin."

Luna cast her a withering look. "Well they wouldn't be very secret if people knew about them, would they?" She asked, pointedly.

"I suppose not," Hermione looked slightly perturbed. "But how are we going to find Ravenclaw's secret room, if it even exists at all?"

"And how did Flitwick know about it?" Neville added.

"All Ravenclaws know about the room," Luna told them. "It's our house secret."

"Not anymore," Ron remarked dryly.

"But... you don't know where it is?" Harry asked her.

"Oh yes, I know exactly where it is!" Luna announced. "And so do you, Harry. We all know where the room is." Luna seemed to be enjoying the looks of bewilderment on their faces as they struggled to comprehend what she was on about.

"What are you talking about, Luna?" Neville asked in confusion. "We don't know where any room of Ravenclaw's is!"

Harry felt just as confused as Neville sounded. But a look of dawning comprehension was forming on Hermione's face.

"The Room of Requirement!" she gasped. "Luna, you're brilliant!"

Luna looked rather pleased with herself as this news sunk in. She gazed dreamily at them all for a few moments, then she spoke: "Let's go then," she announced to the group at large. Still a bit bewildered; Harry, Ron, Hermione and Neville followed Luna out of the library. They made haste to the seventh floor corridor where the Room of Requirement lay. The corridor was mercifully deserted: not a single student with prying eyes was in sight.

"But... what will we need to think to get into the room?" Harry wondered. "We don't need the Room to be anything specific. We just need it to be there."

Luna smiled serenely. "Exactly."

And with that, she walked up to the wall and began to pace, clearly concentrating hard on something. Harry and the others watched her intently. Sure enough, the worn wooden door of the Room of Requirement appeared after Luna had completed the customary three paces.

"See?" she whispered triumphantly. "Come on, everyone."

Luna reached out and grasped the handle, beckoning the others forward. After a quick glance up and down the hall to ensure that no one else was present, everyone quickly and quietly slipped into the Room.

Harry couldn't believe his eyes. The Room of Requirement had transformed itself into an old-fashioned drawing room. Bookshelves lined the walls which were painted a deep royal blue. Soft Celtic music was playing in the background and a bronze chandelier lit with bluebell flames cast light over a huge framed portrait of the Hogwarts founders, each decked out in the regal robes of their respective houses.

"Wow, look at them!" Hermione breathed. "They're practically life-sized!"

"This is Ravenclaw's room alright," Ron remarked. "Everything's blue and bronze!"

"Indeed," Luna sighed dreamily.

Hermione was already at the nearest bookshelf, scanning the titles. Ron and Neville were checking out the founders' portrait. Harry made his way to the shelves as well, with Luna drifting along in his wake.

"Flitwick said Ravenclaw wrote her original manuscripts on papyrus scrolls," Luna informed him.

"I don't see anything like that here," Harry remarked. "Just books."

Ron and Neville were also scanning the shelves by that time, pulling down books at random and rifling through them. There wasn't a papyrus scroll in sight.

"There must be a trick to this," Harry thought.

Ron nodded. "I reckon old Ravenclaw wouldn't have left her biggest secrets out in plain sight. Maybe the scrolls are hidden in the books."

"There's so many though," Hermione pointed out. "And it seems too obvious somehow." Ron nodded in agreement with her.

"It would take a very keen person to find this room in the first place," Neville added. "There must be more to this than meets the eye."

"A secret within a secret," Harry concluded. "The scrolls must be hidden."

"There are symbols carved into some of these shelves," Ron observed. "Ancient Runes, perhaps?" he asked Hermione.

"Could be," she mused, stepping over beside Ron. She brushed some dust away from one of the symbols to get a better look.

"This is the symbol for "my"," she announced.

"...And this one means "secret"," Luna added, pointing to the next symbol. The others turned to stare at her. "I took Ancient Runes as well, you know," Luna told them all.

"This next one means... "lies"," Hermione translated. "My secret lies..."

"..."Beneath"," Luna murmured, translating the next symbol.

"Beneath what?" Ron wondered. Harry shook his head, and continued to watch the two girls translate the symbols.

"I'm not sure if this one is "a" or "the"," Hermione puzzled over the second last symbol. "The creation of a definite or indefinite article would depend on the final word in the..."

"It's "raven"," Luna announced, translating the final rune.

"A raven for Ravenclaw?" Ron breathed. "But... the symbol for Ravenclaw house is an eagle."

"It's an eagle now," Hermione said, "but not many people know that the original symbol for Ravenclaw house was a raven. It was changed to an eagle during the Renaissance."

"'My secret lies beneath a raven?" Harry repeated. "Or 'beneath the raven'? Which one is it?"

"I'd like to supply a wild guess," came Neville's voice from the far side of the room. "Maybe her secret lies beneath this raven."

Harry and the others charged across the room to find Neville standing beneath a large ornamental statue of a raven in flight mounted on a high pedestal. The raven was carved out of bronze and a plaque beneath it bore the following inscription:

"Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure. The secret of my heart is man's greatest mystery, on raven's wings I retell my history."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Ron puzzled.

"'On raven's wings... I retell my history," Harry repeated the last line of the inscription. "Could someone bring a chair over here so I can climb up?"

Hermione flicked her wand and summoned a nearby winged armchair over to the statue. Harry climbed up on it, finding himself face to face with the raven statue.

"Is there anything up there?" Luna called to him.

"More runes," Harry said dismally, jumping down from the chair. Hermione climbed up next, and quickly translated the new set of runes: "'upon these wings I take my cry, for you to look into my eye.' The eye of the raven, I suppose." Hermione frowned and focused her gaze on the hollow eyes of the raven statue. Nothing happened.

"Maybe it means... the eyes of the portrait," Ron suggested.

Harry jogged back across the room to the portrait of the founders. He focused his green eyes on Rowena Ravenclaw's blue ones as Hermione once again stared into the eyes of the statue.

"Still nothing?" Harry called to her. She shook her head.

"Maybe there's another portrait of Rowena somewhere in here," Neville spoke up.

Immediately they all began to look. There were many other paintings and statues in the room, but none of them seemed to depict Rowena Ravenclaw. Hermione continued to puzzle over the raven statue.

"Maybe by "you" she means the raven has to look into her eyes, not one of us," she called down to the others. "We need to bring that portrait over here!"

"I hope it doesn't have a permanent sticking charm on the back," Harry said grudgingly as he brandished his wand at the painting. Luckily there wasn't. He carefully levitated the portrait off the wall and began to guide it over to the statue, lining them up so that they faced each other.

"You need to bring it higher," Hermione commanded. "They aren't quite lined up yet..."

Harry levitated the portrait further into the air, keeping an eye on Hermione as she tried to direct him.

"Just a little more to the right," she called to him. "There! Stop, that's perfect!"

The eyes of the portrait were now lined up perfectly with the eyes of the raven. And sure enough, there was a sharp clicking noise: the beak of the raven statue opened and spit out a papyrus scroll bound in a blue velvet ribbon with bronze trim. Hermione gingerly reached towards the mouth of the statue, as though half afraid that it would bite her hand off. She carefully took the scroll and leapt down from the chair. Harry sent the portrait back to its place on the wall and raced back over to the others who were now gathered around Hermione.

"Let's see what the raven has for us now," she said triumphantly as she untied the ribbon. She let the scroll unravel to reveal many paragraphs written in a navy blue ink.

"We've done it!" Luna exclaimed. "We've found one of Ravenclaw's scrolls!"

"But shouldn't there be more?" Ron wondered.

"The symbols on the shelves will help us find them!" Hermione told him. "It says so on here."

She rolled up the scroll and walked purposefully over to the shelf which bore the first symbol. She picked up the book that lay directly beneath the symbol and ran her finger down its spine. She let the book fall open to reveal a tasselled bookmark with a fancy ornamental bead on its end.

"Look at that bead on the end of the tassel!" Ron gasped. "It's the same symbol that's on the shelf!"

"It's a key!" Luna realized, taking the bookmark in her hands. She stared at it for a moment, then placed it in the engraved rune on the bookshelf. There was another clicking noise and the key was ejected revealing a hole in its place: and out came another scroll!

The others dispersed themselves around the room, finding the books beneath the symbols, pulling them down and finding the bookmarks and putting the keys in their respective slots. They soon had a collection of six large scrolls plus the original smaller one.

"This is amazing," Harry said. "Everything we've ever wanted to know about Rowena Ravenclaw is right here in our hands."

"Well then, what are we waiting for?" Hermione said suddenly. "Let's floo back to Grimmauld Place and start reading them!"

"Right," Harry nodded, packing the scrolls in his travelling sack. He led the way out of the Room of Requirement his head held high, his friends following closely behind him.