How is a Raven like a Writing Desk

The evening of the sorting was filled with inane topics and the insane amount of food that Alice only experienced on a Thanksgiving table in her previous life. There was a large number of things that she wasn't familiar with like butterbeer was strangely sweet and nothing like beer she remembered in her previous life. Not that they would give minors actual alcohol.

"Alice are you alright?" Daphne asked, looking around the rather large bird in the center of the table between them. "You're not hungry?"

"I'm fine," Alice said as she sipped her drink. "All the excitement curbed my appetite is all."

"I don't understand that at all. I'm extra hungry," Millicent said, emphasizing the extra. The young girl forgot her manners as she talked with some food in her mouth. Meanwhile, Pansy was next to her fawning over Draco, by showering him with compliments.

"Is there any way I can be excused early to where we're staying?" Alice asked. Putting on a fake smile to get along with the others were starting to drain her energy.

"You're not alright at all," Daphne said with a deep sigh. She waved her hand to signal a pale ghost covered in blood to come over from his seat next to Draco. He climbed onto the table in his ghostly form and walked throughout the meal until he planted his feet and chains right in the turkey that sat in front of Alice. Only Millicent continued to eat without hesitation.

"Blood Baron sir, can you show Alice the way to the Slytherin Common Room?" Daphne asked politely. "Or would you rather go to the infirmary?"

"The dorms would be wonderful, thank you, Daphne," Alice said with a slightly eager nod.

"Normally a Prefect would show you to the dungeons," the Baron said leaning close to Alice's face. "But you look paler than I...and I'm dead."

The Bloody Baron hopped through Alice and bowed slightly in an odd form of courtesy. He offered his hand, even though Alice could not touch it. The blond girl humored him and pretended to take his help. That earned her a deep laugh by the stained ghost before she was shown the way to the dungeons.

Along the way, the Bloody Baron told Alice about the many famous wizards and witches that came through Slytherin. He carefully avoided the time that he attended and most of the names flew over Alice's head except Merlin. Alice quietly wondered what other fabled magicians or witches were real in this dimension.

"Ah here we go," the Baron said as Alice was lead to a damp stone wall. Alice wanted to roll her eyes. Another wall that leads to a secret passageway, how creative. "The password this year is Silver Rain."

"I thought it would be something like Pure-Blood," Alice said with a sigh of relief.

"Oh how did you guess next year's password?" the Bloody Baron asked. "Is it that obvious?"

"A bit," Alice admitted. "But who would come to a den of snakes without being one, right? Okay. Silver Rain."

The wall slid open to reveal the way to the Slytherin common room. Alice looked around at the windows that showed the slightly green waters of the lake. A mermaid decided to peer in from the other side and gave a very casual wave to Alice.

"This way, this way," the Baron said as he gestured for Alice to come closer to a hallway that seemed to dive deeper underground. "Your luggage should be in your room already. Don't worry none of the male students can go into the female dormitory."

"Can you?" Alice asked, looking suspiciously at the eleventh-century ghost.

"I am not allowed inside either," the ghost confirmed and knocked on the barrier that stopped him from visiting the students. "Your room should have your name on it. You're lucky you're with us. We're one of the few houses that even the first-years get private rooms. Only us and...Ravenclaw."

Alice didn't question why the ghost suddenly got lost in his thoughts and simply thank him before heading inside the female Slytherin's dorm. She wondered lost for a few moments as the rooms were rather uniform. In the end, she finally found her door that had her name written in the air by wispy silver smoke.

When she touched her doorknob she found the letters faded away into the door and a small unlocking sound echoed. It must have been a charm to ensure that no one entered a room that they weren't supposed to. She opened the door and headed inside.

Finally, Alice was alone.

She entered the room and was graced by a bed with a silver canopy with her window that had green drapes to ensure her privacy from mermaids and other magical creatures that lived in the lake.

Normally, an eleven-year-old girl would probably want to quickly get into pajamas lay down on the cushioned bed, but Alice had some work to do. She cracked her knuckles and swung open the pink carry-on that was placed in the center of the room.

She reached deep inside and started unpacking what she needed. She pulled out the official Hogwarts suitcase that held all of her books and actual school supplies and the bag filled with Juno's enchantment tools. Alice wanted to compare the Extension Charm on the official Hogwarts suitcase alongside with the enchantment done on her pink suitcase.

Alice was originally worried about mixing these two storage items since she remembered vaguely that a bag of holding combined with another bag of holding causes a portal to emerge and damaging both bags permanently.

She had taken extra precautions and had to throw the Hogwarts Suitcase into her own from across the room. It was amusing seeing how she tried to throw the suitcase before she packed for Hogwarts. She had missed several times to the point that Mary Ann had barged in wondering what she was up to. Alice managed to distract her by pointing out that Mary Ann's right eyeliner was noticeably thicker than her left. Her mother left with a sharp gasp to look in a mirror to confirm. Alice threw the Hogwarts suitcase one last time out of frustration and it ended up flying into the pink carry on. When the Hogwarts one had landed inside with a thud, Alice sighed in relief. She was glad that this universe didn't obey that rule because it would have difficult to explain.

The reason why Alice had waited until she had gotten to Hogwarts to examine further was that she found that Juno's tools didn't work for her. Alice had to read the Enchantment Basics Book to figure out why. She couldn't channel the magic because wandless magic wasn't available for her. To do any magic at a young age, a wand was needed. Even wandless magic at a young age needed some contact with a wand. That's why a lot of witches and wizards were useless without their wand. They relied on the stick to channel their magic. Right now Alice was forced to use training wheels, but in the future, she had to remember to take the training wheels off.

Accidental magic was an exception because it takes a lot of raw emotional energy to do. Alice found that she lacked that energy and that type of magic could not be controlled purely because it's accidental. So Alice was stuck at home, as she didn't want to alert the ministry about her illegally using magic as a minor.

"That's why here," Alice said to herself as she laid out the tools on the bed as a mock desk. "I can finally do some magic."

She took out her wand and awkwardly looked at the enchantment book for instructions on how to turn the magnifying glass on. Activating an advance enchantment was interesting, Alice had to tap key runes that looped around the metal edges of the magnifying glass. The runes shifted upside down and the glass glowed a dim blue. When Alice looked through she could see many colors on the tools and her two suitcases.

The Hogwarts's suitcase with the Extension Charm was covered in a grey fog while the enchanted pink carry on had two grey fog in the shapes of circles and triangles. The carry one had a very thin layer of grey over on the plastic interior. The same visual was on the walls of the bedroom. Alice found the trimming to have runes engraved in them. Without magic, the bedroom might have been the size of a closet.

Alice took out a stack of printer paper that she nicked from her father's home office printer and writing materials she had for school. She didn't want to use anything expensive to write enchantment runes on while she was experimenting after all. She stretched her arms before diving right in.

Before Alice knew it, the room was littered with papers that were all performing weird functions. Some papers where floating downward continuously as she had written a function where the paper would bounce off any surface that it touched. While on it's own it wasn't very useful, Alice found that she could fold a paper airplane and write the bouncing enchantment with a finding enchantment to make it so that the airplane wouldn't get stuck or stop until it reached it's intended receiver.

Alice also found that enchantments were heavily influenced by how she had written each rune. If she took longer to write the enchantment and poured more magic into the effort, the effect was stronger. If the enchantment string looped in a shape, then the enchantment will be in effect until the loop was destroyed. If she wrote it as a line or if the runes weren't evenly spaced, the effect would activate once she tapped her wand on the runes but would deactivate quickly after.

Writing enchantments required neat handwriting and a lot of logic, Alice could understand why this wasn't taught until 5th year. Comprehension of this type of magic was like programming software.

That's when Alice came up with a fun idea. She wrote a series of rune enchantments on two pieces of paper that described how they would receive and transmit regular writing. She also tacked on an enchantment string to erase the writing that on the paper once a message was sent. It took her several tries and attempting different runes and wording to get it correct, but she could write a note on the clean side of paper A and it would transfer to paper B. When she wrote a reply on paper B, it would erase the info and only show the reply on paper A.

Since Alice was rapid prototyping this creation, based on the cursed book in Harry Potter's Chamber of Secrets, the distance that this enchantment would work wasn't too useful. Alice's message enchantment didn't work if they were more than 3 meters away. The only use that she could think of right off the bat was as a way to exchange notes in class. Alice would need to pour in more magic and take hours to write the enchantment if she wanted to make an owl-less system.

She tried doing replicate results with charms but had zero luck since she didn't know how the incantation and wand flicking worked. By the time that Alice was ready to turn in for the night, a knock was heard from her door.

"Alice, I was wondering if you want to join us for breakfast?" Pansy called out on the other end.

Alice looked at the window which showed only the murky waters and cursed under her breath. She should have set up an alarm clock. How do these Slytherins keep track of time without muggle clocks? It was perpetually dark in their dorm rooms.

She looked at her ink-stained arms and rubbed her sleep-deprived eyes. Alice was not going to go see them like this. If she learned anything from her mother, these types of girls would look at imperfections like a hawk and use it as a reason to step on her.

"Oh, sorry I just woke up," Alice lied as she broke out her muggle bag of beauty supplies that her mother forced her to bring. "I'll meet you guys there?"

"You're such a sleepyhead," Pansy mused. "I'll save you a seat. But don't forget! I called dibs on the seat next to Draco."

Alice groaned softly to herself as she looked for the eye concealer in her beauty purse. In her previous life, she was used to "Crunch Time" to complete projects before the quarter ends, but Alice's current body couldn't handle it. She felt somewhat ashamed about putting on makeup since she was still in a prepubescent body without her mother's forcing her, but Alice resolved as she knew how physical appearance helped first impressions.

Alice sighed deeply. She craved a cup of coffee right about now.