Of Rooks and Ravenclaws

Of Rooks and Ravenclaws

Prologue: Badgers and Tea

A pair of very angry, very deranged, very yellow eyes snapped open in the dark. They glowed with a light of their own. A moment later, a hoarse voice croaked "Lumos," and a wand tip lit up to reveal a rather normal, if messy, bedroom.

Rather normal, that was, except for the large quantities of blood liberally spattered over every available surface, including the sole inhabitant of the room.

Huff le Puff, the owner of the yellow eyes (they were actually the result of tinted contacts, but she would sooner kill you than admit that. Of course, she would sooner kill you than do most things to you, so that wasn’t saying much), gazed around herself, absently scratching at the back of her neck with her free hand. She had no idea why her bedroom was bloody, though she could take an educated guess. She didn’t particularly care, either.

It came to her that the sheets she was sitting on were soggy, probably from more blood, and that she was getting her robes all wet. She stood up, letting her wand fall to her side point down so that it shed a focused cone of light on the floor at her feet. All of that red made her angry.

She moved her scratching hand around to the front of her throat, then winced involuntarily. The flesh under her jaw was a mass of bruise tissue and lacerations, as if somebody had tried to choke her. That would explain her hoarse voice, at least.

The door on the opposite side of the bedroom creaked open, throwing a bright beam of golden light across le Puff. She raised a hand to cut some of the light, squinting to see who it was. Her grip on her wand tightened instinctively. She relaxed when a familiar form trundled into view around the unmade bed and stopped by her ankle.

She bent down to pat the badger, heedless of its vicious teeth or hefty claws.

"Nice badger," she crooned. "What do you have for le Puff?"

The badger didn’t speak, and neither did le Puff, but they seemed to reach an understanding. When the badger lumbered towards the door, le Puff followed it.

Outside she met a smiling and altogether too cheerful Rave’n’claw, who grasped le Puff by the arm and dragged her into the kitchen. Le Puff was shoved onto a stool, where she sat blinking blearily and rubbing the gashes in her arm inflicted by Rave’s talons.

Rave skipped around the kitchen, interspersing high pitched giggles with mismatched snatches of song. Her final circuit resulted in her flying off balance and onto le Puff’s lap.

"Hello," she trilled brightly, "do I know you?" This inspired a new spate of shrill laughter.

Le Puff shoved her partner off of her lap roughly and shambled over to a cupboard to search for something edible. She dug out an ancient packet of tea and set a dented kettle of water on to boil. While she waited for the water to heat up, she tried to question Rave’n’claw.

"What happened last night?" she asked, rubbing her throat fitfully.

"We got another one," Rave sang. She grinned unevenly at le Puff. "She put up a fight."

Le Puff’s fingers flinched away from her wounded throat. "I noticed."

"Aaaw," Rave whined. "Don’t be angry, Huff, don’t. I hate it when you’re angry." She pouted.

Le Puff started to growl, then thought better of it and just glared. Rave’n’claw was the only one who could get away with calling le Puff ‘Huff’ without instant evisceration, but that didn’t mean that le Puff had to like it.

The kettle chose that moment to begin hooting, and le Puff took it off the stove and finished making her tea.

She had barely seated herself again, clutching a blessedly warm cup of tea, when a crow careened in through the window and dropped onto the table on its back.

Rave hurried over from where she had been seated, sharpening her nails with a carving knife. Le Puff poked lackadaisically at the bird with her spoon.

"Your bird’s stoned again," she informed Rave.

Rave looked doubtfully at the crow, then leaned forward to peer into its decidedly unfocused eyes.

"I do believe you’re right," she declared, and giggled again. "Doesn’t matter so long as it does its job," she said dismissively, untying the roll of parchment from the bird’s leg.

She carried it over to the broken window to read, where the first light of the day was filtering in through the shattered panes of dirt-caked glass.

"They’ve found another one," she informed le Puff at length, after she had spent a few minutes poring over the letter for possible uses of repetitions, simile, metaphor, or foreshadowing.

"Where?" asked le Puff, still prodding the motionless crow with her spoon.

"Hogwarts."

Le Puff looked up at that, a wide grin nearly splitting her face in two. Her head cocked to an almost unnatural angle for a living person, the bruised flesh on her throat standing out spectacularly against her natural pallor. Her fingers tightened convulsively around the cup until it broke under her hands. She didn’t even notice when the shards of porcelain cut into her fingers.

"Should we take it, Huff, should we?" Rave asked anxiously, bounding over to le Puff.

Le Puff thought for a moment, her head still cocked at that same broken angle. She wanted revenge for her hurt throat, and more importantly, her damaged pride. She considered then dismissed the idea that she was letting her ego control her, that she might be too weak to take on another one this soon. Rave’n’claw certainly wouldn’t be able to do it on her own. She was enthusiastic, but she didn’t have the raw power vested in her that le Puff did. "Let’s go," she said. "And don’t forget to leave a note for the cleaner," she added hurriedly. "My bedroom’s all bloody, and I don’t want to deal with it when we get home." Their cleaning lady, an implacable woman by the name of Letitia Filch, sister to the infamous (among the student body at least) Argus Filch of Hogwarts, was an expert at getting bloodstains out of everything. She had to be, with le Puff and Rave’n’claw as her employers.

Rave squealed delightedly, swooping over to seize the comatose crow by the feet and swing it around in the air.

"Do you hear that, Nevermore?" she shrieked. "We’re going to Hogwarts."