S1E3 — Part A: The Staircase with an Opinion
Ravenclaw woke to a thin blue morning that smelled like chalk and lakewater. Corvus dressed by instinct more than order—shirt, tie, locket under the collar, wand against the wrist like a second thought—and descended toward breakfast with the peculiar confidence of someone who has decided the world ought to accommodate his curiosity.
Halfway down, the staircase stopped pretending to be architecture and remembered it was a living thing.
A sigh moved through the treads. The handrail shivered. The entire stair swung sideways in a smooth, bemused arc that deposited him on a landing he hadn't chosen.
"Good morning," Corvus said to the nearest newel post. He meant it. "If you're taking requests, I'd like a view."
The staircase obliged—he thought it did, anyway—rotating again, slower, until an arched window framed a slice of grounds and a sliver of lake filmed in pewter. Below, tiny Gryffindors trotted after a prefect like ducklings. A suit of armor on the landing opposite saluted no one, quite gallant about it.
Corvus dropped a pair of breadcrumb charms—dust-thin motes that drifted when the stairs were deciding—and watched them bob along an invisible current.
"Density, intent, time of day," he murmured, and pulled out his Mystery Log.
> 15. Stairs track traffic + desire + schedule. Prefer to surprise those who refuse to be surprised.
He rode the next swing to a corridor that smelled of beeswax and old quills, and turned left because left felt... promising. Hogwarts had the energy of a library that could rearrange itself to suit the person who asked the most interesting question.
He asked by walking like someone who expected to be answered.
---
The Gargoyle and the Quiet Door
The Transfiguration corridor ran straight as a statement, lined with portraits pretending to be asleep. Daphne Greengrass leaned against a pillar like she had been poured there, a green ribbon a blade across her tie.
"You look like you're looking," she said by way of greeting.
"Only always," Corvus replied.
She tipped her chin toward the fourth gargoyle, whose stone face had the resigned expression of one who had seen too much homework. "Curiosity pays there."
"Does it pay in coin or data?"
"Both," Daphne said, and was gone, Slytherin smooth and sovereign.
The gargoyle's plinth had a hairline crack at the base. Corvus crouched, slipped his wand into the seam, and pushed a murmur of intent along the grain of the castle. The stone warmed under his palm. A knee-high door—more suggestion than structure—quietly admitted him to a passage that shouldn't have had the courtesy to exist.
Inside: dust, and the pears-and-ink smell of rooms that remember their last purpose. It was a classroom once. A forest of unused desks slumbered in shadow; chalk letters clung to the far board in ghostly fragments—runes, arithmetic, and what looked like an unfinished proof of something that didn't want to be solved.
The window was narrow and tall, the kind meant for moonlight rather than sun. On a table near it sat a tin box—dented, patient, not quite in the world. Corvus ran a finger along the lid. The metal hummed faintly back. Not unlike his wand when it approved of an idea.
He didn't open the box. Not yet. The room deserved an introduction.
"Hello," he said, and listened. Somewhere in the walls a filament of magic thrummed, as if checking his pulse and finding it acceptable.
He set his bag on the table, laid out parchment and quill. Then he reached into his cloak and drew out Professor Flitwick's gift—the small battered box the Charms Master had said was a key and a question.
He had promised to open it when he stepped into Hogwarts proper. He'd delayed on purpose; sometimes it was a better experiment to see how long you could stand not knowing.
"All right," he said to room and box and himself. "Answer time."
The silver wire binding gave under the pressure of his thumb. Inside lay a folded square of parchment and something small and dark that caught light like it had been drinking it. He took the parchment first.
On one side, a constellation sketched in a hand he knew from the letters he had not yet finished reading: Corvus and Arcturus linked by a line that shouldn't have been there. On the other, a sentence, also in Regulus's hand:
> Non cruore nobilis, sed electione.
Not by blood noble, but by choice.
Below it, smaller, as if written by someone who does not trust hope but uses it anyway:
> The castle listens.
Corvus let air out slowly. "Understood," he said, and he meant it like a promise.
He lifted the second object. A coin, perhaps, though thicker. Black metal, cool as if it had just been thinking in the shade. One face bore the Black family crest—a dog rampant—but altered: a raven perched above, wings tucked; a quill crossed behind. The other face was blank except for a single rune. Algiz—protection, if you asked some books. Connection, if you asked the older ones.
When he closed his fist around it, heat bled into his palm. Not scalding. A pulse. It felt like being noticed by an instrument you hadn't realized was switched on.
"Key and question," he repeated, and slid the coin into the pocket nearest his heart. The room seemed to approve, or he was getting sentimental.
He tested the tin box next. No wards, just stubbornness. Inside: a curl of old ribbon; a few pence with the king's profile worn almost smooth; a scrap of parchment with four lines of handwriting in the tidy, self-satisfied script of a person who had been a prefect in 1923.
> If found, put back.
If opened, put right.
If wronged, be kind.
If bored, learn.
Corvus smiled despite himself. "Good rules," he told the empty desks. "I'll steal them with attribution."
---
Mrs. Norris and the Hypothesis
On his way out, the passage breathed a draught and someone else's footsteps stitched the corridor—soft, soft, sharp. Mrs. Norris appeared first, eyes like needles threaded with malice. Then Filch, materializing out of shadow with the special authority of a man who could smell guilt from three corridors away.
"You," he said, as if practicing for an arrest. "First-years don't belong in—" His nostrils flared, hunting for a specific sin. "Where were you?"
"Between," Corvus said, which was true.
Filch's eyes narrowed. "Between what?"
"Curiosity and trouble," Corvus said, equally true.
"Mind yourself," Filch snarled, and Mrs. Norris's tail made a question mark.
Corvus inclined his head. "Always."
He waited until Filch's steps faded toward the Great Hall, then returned to the hidden room long enough to set a modest ward—no lock, just a polite suggestion: Knock with a question. He wrote it into the wood with his wand, the way one writes with light instead of ink.
On the back of his hand, the Black coin warmed, then cooled, as if offering commentary. He didn't know the language yet. He'd learn it.
---
Proper Mischief #002
Hogwarts tolerated pranks the way an old cat tolerates kittens: with dignity, reluctant amusement, and quick correction if claws came out. Proper mischief was a matter of engineering—non-destructive, self-limiting, with a measurable effect and some grain of kindness hidden under the laughter.
During break, Corvus timed the traffic near the north landing where Slytherin often scythed by with their prefects corralling first-years like sheep with ambitious futures. He stepped into the alcove's lee and murmured a charm that persuaded echoes to carry compliments further than they had planned.
It wasn't much. A draft of murmurs. The subtlest of suggestions that the corridor itself might have a word to say.
A tall Slytherin boy elbowed a smaller one aside. The corridor cleared its throat in a perfectly neutral tone and repeated—with admirable fidelity—the last kind thing the tall boy had said that morning: "Good form on that stir."
Startled, the boy glanced around, ears pinking. The smaller one straightened, confused, then a bit pleased. Two steps later, the echo gave the tall one a nudge of his own: "We'll get you to a proper cauldron next time." The words had his exact voice. So did his baffled snort.
No harm, no mockery—just the acoustics of decency played back where a bit of decency had been lacking.
Corvus timed the reach—eight paces, three sentences max—and snipped the charm before it drew attention. He wrote:
> 16. Corridor Echo (CE-1): reflects last positive utterance to nearest mismatch in behavior. Non-shaming. Measurable shift in spine angle + eye dart. Repeat with different houses.
He drifted away, hands in his pockets, expression vaguely innocent. On the turn, he nearly collided with Fred and George, who had been lounging like bookends around an empty suit of armor.
"We didn't see you," said Fred.
"We heard nothing," said George.
"You'll have a problem if you hear anything," Corvus said, "because I plan to patent silence."
They gave him twin, feral grins capable of causing an Ofsted inspection.
---
A Boy and a Broom (At a Distance)
After lunch, the timetables split the houses like cards. Gryffindor had flying; Ravenclaw did not. Corvus went to the top of the Astronomy Tower anyway, because data sometimes traveled on the wind.
Below, a ribbon of green lawn stretched between stone arms. Brooms lay in rows like very thin horses sunbathing. From this height, the voices were only color, but the motions were the same in any language: someone was showing off; someone else was sick with wanting to be better at it; a third person was making the wrong decision because being laughed at is a very loud sound in your own head.
A boy with black hair and a scar lifted into the air like he had been born there. He wasn't graceful yet, but grace had noticed him. A cluster of students on the ground became points oriented around him, like iron filings around a magnet. A teacher shouted something. A red-haired boy looked acutely offended by gravity.
Corvus leaned on the parapet and let himself be pleased, the way one is pleased by meteors: no wish, only acknowledgment. He had no interest in flying today. He liked being where the school thought he wasn't.
When he turned away, the coin at his chest warmed again. He patted it as if it were a small opinionated animal. "Yes," he said. "I saw. No, I won't interfere."
---
Library Weather
Madam Pince guarded the library like a dragon who had taken a vow of silence. Corvus approached her desk with all the courtesy due a sovereign and requested Advanced Magical Theory (abridged) and Wards and the Ethical Use Thereof.
"First-year," she said, as if diagnosing a rash.
"Temporarily," he said.
Shelves breathed. Dust rearranged itself in the light. He took a table near a window and began designing a charm that would politely discourage hexes from reaching people who were very obviously reading. Controlled Variables #003 would have to wait for Part B, he decided—this much paper required a long afternoon and possibly biscuits.
On the margin of Wards, someone had written a note in a careful, looping hand: Kindness is a shield you can cast without a wand.
Corvus tapped the page. The coin warmed once, bright and brief.
"All right," he said. "I see the syllabus."
---
Night Note
Back in the Tower, the bronze eagle asked, "What cannot speak but repeats every word you say?"
"An echo," Corvus answered, and smiled at the coincidence.
Ravenclaw's windows held a grid of stars. The lake had gone back to black ink waiting for a story. Corvus set the coin on the windowsill, beside the locket he still refused to open, and wrote:
> 17. Flitwick's box contained a creed. Father's hand, not Father's cage.
17a. Not by blood noble, but by choice. Test this hypothesis daily.
18. Proper Mischief #002 — Corridor Echo (CE-1): effective; no casualties; adjust radius; monitor for unintended bravado.
19. Hidden classroom located. Key phrase written: Knock with a question. Room responded with good manners.
He paused, pen lifted. Distant and faint, the castle hummed again. Not approval exactly. Not warning. Something in between: Go on then. Let's see what you make of me.
He closed the Log.
"Gladly," he told the stones.
By late afternoon, Hogwarts had settled into that particular hush that isn't silence so much as suspended breath. Corvus left the library with Wards and the Ethical Use Thereof folded under one arm and a biscuit he had convinced from the kitchens under the other. The hidden classroom behind the fourth gargoyle accepted him with the dignified creak of a door that respects purposeful feet.
"Field notes," he told the empty desks, and set out his kit: parchment, quill, wand, biscuit. The coin in his pocket—black metal, raven-and-quill sigil—warmed once, approving, and went prim again.
He tested chalk lines on the floor—thin concentric rings with gaps, the way a harp string has a single missing heartbeat—and traced an old ward from the book in air only, no power. The shape liked him. Power would have to wait until he understood what it wanted to do to the room and to the people in it.
> 20. Ward design (library variant): discourage hexes, encourage whispers, repel show-offs.
20a. Ethical constraint: opt-out baked in (ward thins for anyone who chooses to be loud + mean).
20b. Test outside library first (Madam Pince has claws).
He erased the chalk with a flick and re-drew the pattern smaller, like teaching a spell to ride a bicycle with training wheels.
When he finally stepped back into the corridor, the day had rolled toward evening; portraits were waking up to gossip and the stones were cool through his shoes. He almost made it to the stairwell before the corridor decided to conduct an experiment of its own.
"Oi!" A voice gained on him. Draco Malfoy, pin-perfect and pale, with two Slytherin satellites bobbing in his gravity. "Black, isn't it?"
Corvus pivoted as if he had been hoping for exactly this. "Mr. Malfoy."
Draco looked him up and down with the clinical interest of a boy who's handled expensive things all his life. "Heard you chose Ravenclaw. Pity. You'd have had a real House."
"Ravenclaw is very real," Corvus said. "We keep our reality in books. You might have missed it."
Crabbe snorted. Goyle attempted a smirk and arrived at confusion. Draco's eyes cooled. "You're a half-blood, aren't you," he said, very careful with the phrasing, like spelling a curse he wasn't supposed to know yet.
Corvus smiled in the way that suggested there would be no blood in this conversation, only mirrors. "I am a boy reading a corridor," he said. "Right now it says, three students passed a suit of armor and decided to become braver at the last second. That's interesting, don't you think?"
Draco blinked, caught off guard by the refusal to play the expected game. He rallied, of course. "Stay out of my way," he said lightly. "And out of Potter's. He'll trip over you, and I'd hate to watch."
"As a Raven," Corvus replied, "I prefer to watch from height."
He stepped aside, not yielding so much as choosing a better vantage. As the trio moved past, the corridor—which remembered Proper Mischief #002—took the liberty of repeating, to Draco alone, the last kind thing he'd said that day, in Draco's own crisp voice: "Good luck on your potion, Nott." Draco startled, ears pinking; Crabbe and Goyle looked around, mystified. Nobody laughed. The sound wasn't for them.
Corvus did not smile. He did, however, note the way Draco's spine re-aligned by a quarter inch. Then he let the charm dissolve like a polite cough.
> 21. CE-1 (Corridor Echo): Slytherin sample successful; minor posture correction; no visible resentment. Hypothesis: ego tolerates praise better than censure. Apply sparingly.
Proper Mischief #003 — The Reader's Halo
Outside the library, Corvus set his back to cold stone and whispered power into the chalk pattern he'd been rehearsing. It rose like a soap bubble and settled again; for a ten-foot circle around a chosen table, the air grew fractionally thicker to noise and fractionally thinner to malice.
A Hufflepuff second-year flopped down within the circle, spread books like a picnic, and proceeded not to notice that the passing whisper-fights dulled themselves to cotton. When two Gryffindors started to cast a playful jinx at one another's quills, the spell curved away, harmless as a moth.
He timed the effect: fifteen minutes on a breath of power, twenty if he fed it a compliment ("You are a very fine ward" apparently counted as calories). Then he pinched it closed before Madam Pince looked up.
> 22. CV-003 — Reader's Halo: non-intrusive, consent-by-lingering, fails safe. Side effect: increased page-turning speed? Re-test with biscuits.
As he was leaving, a familiar bush of hair appeared at the end of the aisle, dragging a stack of books of such size they should have had a prefect's permit. Hermione Granger. She paused, sniffed the air like someone who can smell rules being obeyed, and stepped into the cleared circle without realizing it. Her brow unknotted. She read twice as quickly. Corvus left the ward to expire on its own and felt unreasonably pleased with the quiet good of it.
The Wrong Harmony
Evening drifted down the stones. Students spilled toward dinner, traffic thinned, and the castle's deeper sounds emerged: pipes, a distant laugh from an empty classroom, something scuttling that one pretends not to hear.
Corvus let his feet choose. They chose the third-floor corridor with the sign Dumbledore had put there for children who confuse dares with destinies. Out of Bounds… painful death…—the usual.
He did not test the door. He tested the space around it—the air's pitch, the way wards hum when they've been set by very clever hands. The coin at his chest warmed, then cooled, as if it had opinions on the matter.
And under the careful tapestry of Dumbledore's magic, something else murmured in a contrary key. Not loud. Not yet. A note out of tune with the castle's patient song.
"Wrong harmony," Corvus said to the banister.
"P-please," said a voice behind him.
Professor Quirrell stood there, pale as chalk, eyes bruised with sleeplessness, a smell of garlic stitched into his robes. Fear lived about him the way static lives in hair. "Y-you shouldn't b-be here," he stammered.
"I'm not," Corvus said, perfectly polite. "I'm at a safe distance, practicing not touching things."
Quirrell's mouth twitched into something almost like a smile and then flinched back from it. "S-sensible."
For a fraction of a second—less—a shadow passed under his words, something cold enough to fog the glass inside your bones. Corvus's wand hand prickled. The coin went abruptly cold against his skin, as if the castle had reached through it to say, Take the scenic route, child.
"Good evening, Professor," Corvus said, with a bow smaller than fear. He turned his back on the door and left the corridor exactly as he had found it: guarded, humming, displeased.
> 23. Third-floor wards: layered, deliberate; secondary presence in disharmony with castle; avoid direct contact; increase data indirectly.
23a. Quirrell = induced static; observe, don't confront; carry garlic as placebo if useful.
Flitwick's Pointers (And A Favor)
On the landing above Charms, Professor Flitwick appeared as if the stairs had conjured him. "Mr. Black! A word."
Corvus tucked his hands behind his back to keep them from confessing. "Professor."
Flitwick's eyes quick-counted his thoughts. "Your feather orbit—elegant. Your control—better today than yesterday. Your timing with the candles—do not think I didn't see you proving the three-second refill."
"I would never assume your blindness," Corvus said gravely.
"I am flattered. Two tips: when you twirl your wand for balance, you tend to overcorrect to the left. And—purely hypothetically—if you were to… establish a reading ward outside the library," he glanced far too innocently down the corridor, "remember to give it a bedtime."
"It tucked itself in after fifteen minutes," Corvus said before his sense of self-preservation could throttle him.
"Very considerate," Flitwick said, delighted. Then, softer: "Take care near the third floor."
Corvus blinked. "I did."
"Good." The Charms Master's voice went warm, iron under velvet. "The castle is old. It leaves its doors open for children with questions. It closes them for monsters."
He cleared his throat briskly, the moment folded away. "A favor! Do keep an eye on the Weasley Twins when within Ravenclaw's airspace. They are weather events. I would like them to remain playful and un-electrical."
"Understood," Corvus said. "I'm fond of the tower's hair."
---
Supper and a Small Negotiation
At dinner, Ravenclaw glowed with the soft pride of people who like having done well. Susan caught his eye from Hufflepuff and mimed a halo over a book; he shrugged modestly. Fred and George passed by behind the Gryffindor bench, leaving a wake of laughter and a suspiciously lemony scent. Corvus tapped his goblet twice and shook his head once—don't—and the Twins, to his surprise, diverted to Hufflepuff instead. A small negotiation. An experiments treaty. He'd take it.
He ate like a scientist—sampling, timing, making a note about treacle tart as a possible bribe currency—and let the hum of the Hall wash through him. Harry Potter laughed at something a red-haired boy said; Hermione gestured with a fork like a conductor; Draco Malfoy watched the ceiling storm and pretended it didn't affect his mood. The school made a low, pleased sound that no one else seemed to hear.
---
The Raven's Answer
Night braided itself through the windows by the time he reached Ravenclaw Tower. The bronze eagle asked, "I turn once, what is out will not get in; I turn again, what is in will not get out. What am I?"
"A key," Corvus said, touching the coin through his shirt because he could not help himself. The door swung wide.
The common room felt thoughtfully lit. People had found their corners and their kinds of quiet. Corvus took the window seat that behaved like a nest and set two items side by side on the sill: the coin and the locket.
He had promised himself not to open the locket yet. Promises were experiments too. He kept this one.
He wrote instead.
> 24. Day's sum:
– Hidden room remains courteous; adopt; furnish with biscuits.
– CE-1 effective; "echoes as correction" > "public scolding."
– CV-003 (Reader's Halo): success; expands when praised (typical).
– Third floor sings wrong note; avoid crescendo; collect periphery data.
– Quirrell: static + shadow.
– Flitwick: conductor + weather report.
25. Thesis, provisional: Not by blood noble, but by choice isn't a motto—it's a measurement. Take it daily.
He blew the ink dry and leaned his head back. The coin warmed, then cooled, then—strangest of all—made the glass nearest it pearl with a breath of frost, just enough to take writing. Letters drew themselves in a slow hand he did not know and did: Knock with a question.
Corvus grinned, teeth and all. "Already on it."
He wiped the frost with two fingers. Paradox shuffled in the rafters, deeply offended by everything. Somewhere below, a door shut on a decisive click. The castle shifted its weight, settling around its first-years like a great cat settling around its kittens.
"Tomorrow," Corvus said to locket and coin and stars. "New variables."
He doused the lamp with a thought. The lake outside held the moon like a secret it intended to keep until asked correctly.