Disclaimer: Despite repeated attempts, I have yet to gain intellectual property rights for Harry Potter, Hogwarts School, or anything else invented by J.K. Rowling. So this is all still fanfiction; please enjoy, but do not send me any money or I'll have all kinds of legal trouble.
Unfortunately, Richard still had two more classes to get through that day, and neither one went particularly well. Herbology started out alright, until Professor Sprout left Richard working alone with a Slytherin named Malcolm Braddock. When Sprout was on the far side of the greenhouse helping someone else, Braddock pulled his wand out, waved it at Richard with a smirk, and whispered something Richard couldn't hear.
Fortunately, the idiot had taken enough time smirking and waving his wand for Richard to draw his own and snap a perfectly audible "Protego!" Either Braddock was not up to Foster's level, or else saying the curse so softly had made it weaker; the shielding spell held, and it was the Slytherin who was curled up on the ground losing his lunch when Sprout arrived.
"Let me see your wands," she instructed, casting a priori incantatem as soon as she had them. When she saw the spells, Richard would have sworn that the professor repressed a smile before turning back to the Slytherin. "Well, Braddock, I suppose your current state will count as both partial punishment and a learning experience. Two points from Slytherin, and I'll be watching you the rest of the period."
Richard shook his head in disbelief as the teacher dragged Braddock after her, leaving him to work in blissful peace. One would think that a greenhouse full of magical plants would provide enough interesting things that even Slytherins didn't need to entertain themselves by hexing people. No such luck, apparently.
Half an hour later, in History of Magic, Richard found himself almost wishing for someone to throw hexes around, just to relieve the boredom. Quite aside from the fact that he already knew far more detail on the founding of the school than the ghostly Professor Binns was giving, the professor had a painfully monotone voice that made it all but impossible to focus. About ten minutes into the lecture, Richard noticed that Stebbens was working on the essay assigned from Herbology. Deciding he wasn't going to learn anything else in this class, he followed suit - by the time they left for dinner, he had finished all of his written work from the earlier classes.
After dinner, he headed back to his room to get started looking into mages and wizardry. A quick scan of the titles in the shared bookshelves showed nothing specifically about mages, so he grabbed the most likely looking things he could find, took them down to a couch in the common room, and began to search. The index of Hogwarts, A History showed no reference to mages, and Waffling's Magical Theory had only the briefest comment in the introduction, explaining that this book would be focused on wand magic and that other books in the series included Magical Theory for Mages. Great Wizards of the Twentieth Century and its companion Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century were both likewise Wizard-focused (which, Richard had to admit, ought to have been foreseen from their titles); if there was a mage equivalent, the wizarding books did not mention it. A History of Magic (written by Richard's great-aunt Bathilda) provided some interesting descriptions on the Mage-Wizard War (ended by their forced alliance during the Goblin Revolts), the eventual normalization of relations, and the subsequent maneuvering that left wizards with greater political power but mages continuing to look down on them socially. Idly, Richard wondered what the Mages had done when You-Know-Who was threatening the wizarding world (and suspected "not much," as they seemed generally to consider wizards a fairly trivial threat); at any rate, none of this history included any incident of a mage attempting to learn wizardry, or what might happen if one did.
When he went to put the books back on the shelves, he realized his roommates were already asleep - he had, as usual, completely lost track of time while reading.
Richard went to the library after Potions the next morning to continue his search. The Encyclopedia Magica had several articles relating to mages, but nothing about how their magic interacted with wizardry. A Guide to Medieval Sorcery and Modern Magical History both included commentary on mages, but neither mentioned anything relevant to Hannah's collapse. Weird Wizarding Dilemmas and Their Solutions was, naturally, wizard-focused; alas, there did not seem to be a comparable book for mages. A quick search of Common Magical Ailments and Afflictions revealed only that Hannah's affliction was not common enough to be in it, which was hardly surprising. Richard did manage to find a copy of Magical Theory for Mages, and checked it out on his way to Charms class - this one would require closer study over the weekend.
Charms was fairly subdued, Hannah's empty seat seeming to stick out more than it had in DADA. A remarkably quiet class reviewed the levitation spell until everyone could cast it, and then worked with larger or more complex objects, including balancing full cups without spilling water. Richard earned five points for Ravenclaw when he levitated the water by itself after Lochrin's glass tipped over.
"How did you do that?" the muggleborn asked as they left the class and headed to dinner.
"What, the water? Nothing to it, I'll show you."
This turned out to be rather more public than Richard intended, the entire group of first years insisting that he show them right in the great hall at dinner. Hoping that there was no rule against this, or that if there was no one would be paying attention, Richard picked up a glass of juice. "Ok, the first thing is that you have to see the juice as all one piece. If you let yourself look at it as a bunch of drops together, you'll wind up with your attention divided a million ways. Second thing is to cast the spell quick, before the juice lands. Get both of those, and it's just like levitating anything else. Like so," and with a flourish he dumped out the juice and flicked his wand. "Leviosa!" The juice congealed in a sphere. "Sometimes you don't have time for the full spell," he explained, floating the juice towards Lochrin. "Now you cast it. Remember, it's all one ball of juice, no different than lifting a glass." Lochrin repeated the spell, and Richard let his go. The juice floated in the air, hanging over Lochrin's plate.
"Pass it this way," called Bradley, pulling out his wand. Smiling, Richard poured himself another glass and ate. The ball of juice floated from one first year to another for about ten minutes as they ate and talked.
Perhaps it was inevitable that floating food would lead to trouble; eventually, the Slytherins at the next table noticed. "Sad, isn't it?" said Braddock, whose spell Richard had deflected the day before. "Wizards playing games with juice." He spoke loudly enough to make sure the Ravenclaws heard. "I guess there's some excuse for the mudblood - what more could he do? - but-" whatever else he was going to say was lost; Stebbens, holding the juice at the time, had lobbed it right into his face. Spluttering, the boy stood and stalked towards them - which was rather a bad idea when the Ravenvclaws all had wands out and wingardium leviosa on the tip of their tongues.
By the time Braddock took his second step, the other Ravenclaws were flinging potatoes, soup, stuffing, jelly, butter, and more juice right into his face, and Richard took the moment while the Slytherin was blinded to carefully drop the small tomatoes from the salad right in front of him; on the third step, the bully went tumbling face down to the floor.
It had been only a matter of seconds, but somehow Snape was already there, appearing as if by apparation. "Are you alright, Braddock?" he asked brusquely as one of the other Slytherins helped the boy up.
"Fine, sir," Braddock answered.
"Good," Snape said, and turned on the Ravenclaws. "What in Merlin's name do you think you are doing?"
"Sir," said Lochrin, "he called me-"
"I am not interested in what anyone said, only in what you all did. I am not accustomed to seeing one of my students assaulted by a dozen others - and of Ravenclaw, at that - without any visible provocation. Wands, now."
Resigned to their doom, the Ravenclaws handed over their wands; needless to say, every one showed the levitation charm being used on food under priori incantatem, and even more needless to say, Snape was not interested in hearing that some of them had only been practicing floating juice (from the volume of food covering Braddock, Richard rather doubted any of them were innocent; still, it would have been nice if the professor at least considered the possibility).
"That is enough!" Snape cut off exactly that explanation from Orla Quirk. "Five points from Ravenclaw for each of you, and I will see you all for detention in the dungeons after dinner tomorrow." Jaws dropped all around, but none of them were stupid enough to risk worse by protesting - at least not while Snape was in front of them.
"Fifty house points," breathed Lochrin when he'd gone. "I think we're nearly as low as Gryffindor now."
A chorus of angry voices growled variations of, "We noticed." The rest of the table was giving the first years looks suggesting that only the loss of more house points was keeping the older students from hexing them into oblivion, and they all slid closer together in the face of their house mates' glares.
"This had better not happen again," said one of the prefects - Tragyl, maybe? - glaring down at them. "It's still early in the year, but Ravenclaw won't stand a chance at the House Cup if the lot of you do not improve your behavior. I'll be watching you.."
"But Snape-" Richard began, and stopped immediately at a glance from the prefect. "Yes, sir," he whispered, sinking into his seat.
"Snape is Tragyl's favorite teacher," explained a second year, sotto voce. "Blame it on him and it'll just get worse."
"Thanks," Richard whispered back.
"You want to thank me, shape up," the older boy answered, turning to glare at the first years. "The whole lot of you ought to be re-sorted for acting like a bunch of Gryffindors. For Merlin's sake, you can't start hexing people whenever they say something stupid." The boy's eyes flickered to Braddock for a moment, and some of the hostility seemed to transfer to the other table. "If nothing else, you'll run out of hexes trying to beat the ignorance out of that house."
"This way," Stebbens motioned to the other first years as they left the great hall. "Something tells me we don't want to go back to the common room just yet, and it's gorgeous outside." Nodding, the ten of them wandered out to the north, about halfway between the Quidditch pitch and the Forbidden Forest. "How's everyone doing on the DADA work?" Stebbens asked. Richard cringed; he had completely forgotten it in the much more interesting task of studying mages. Several other people had similar reactions: apparently they'd put the part of their homework that involved hexing each other at the bottom of the list.
"Right," Stebbens continued, drawing her wand. "Let's get to it then."
Richard caught Lochrin's eye, and the two of them split off a little ways. "You try it first," Richard offered, drawing his wand.
"Expelliarmus!" Lochrin shouted, adding an unnecessary ricochet to his thrust, and Richard's wand flew off in the general direction of the rebound. Shaking his head sheepishly, Lochrin retrieved it and handed it back to Richard.
"Well cast," Richard congratulated him. "Just keep your wand pointed straight at me next time, and mine should fly right to your hand. Now, my turn. EXPELLIARMUS!" Richard had to shout a good deal louder than most of the others to make the spell work, but Lochrin's wand came right to him.
They kept practicing, Lochrin quickly getting the hang of the gesture and Richard learning exactly how much he had to put into it; the others seemed to be getting it as well, though several had problems of their own. Finn shouted loud enough to match Richard and sent Ackerly flying twice before he settled down, and Orla Quirk mispronounced the word once, somehow setting fire to Stebben's robe.
By the time the Ravenclaws headed back in, Richard was feeling quite exhausted from the repeated spell-casting. But he was also feeling at home in the group, a rather new sensation.
"Ok, Finn," Stebbens was saying. "Just try to remember: do that to Foster or Braddock, but not to the rest of us."
"So Orla," one of the other girls asked at the same time. "What's with the pyromania?" As the banter floated around him, Richard just smiled, soaking it in. Tom's family was like this, but they'd always seemed like a mob or a circus, with Richard being a spectator at best; Richard's own family only included three cousins, two of them far too young to be interesting.
"I don't care if we have detention all weekend," Finn declared as Richard's attention wandered back to the conversation around him. "It was worth it. Did you see the look on Braddock's face?"
"Classic," agreed Bradley. "I used to take all kinds of abuse from him at Newark's pre-wizarding."
"Ditto," said Finn. "Never again, though. We may still be nerds, but we're a group of nerds now."
In the general chorus of agreement that met this, Stebbens added a cheerful, "All for one, and one for all!"
Richard and Lochrin grinned, while most of the others just seemed confused. Glancing around, Stebbens sighed, "You guys have got to get out more."