"Next to him," the stout professor continued, gesturing expansively with one arm, "Professor of Divination, Advanced Enchantments, and Remote Parapsychology, Desdemona Delacroix. She also makes a rather, er, intimidatingly delicious gumbo, although you'll consider yourselves very fortunate indeed if you are allowed to taste it."

        The dark woman with the scarf over her hair smiled at the speaker, and the smile transformed her face from that of a skeletal hag to something resembling a desiccated but pleasantly mischievous grandmother. She turned and her blind eyes roved, unfocussed, over the crowd, crinkling as she smiled. James wondered how he could have thought that blind, milky gaze had been the same one he'd seen piercing him through the darkness across the lake the evening before. Besides, she'd just arrived, he reasoned. She couldn't even have been there the night before.

"And finally," the stout professor said, "last and, quite possibly, least, allow me to introduce myself. Your new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, head of the Alma Aleron debate team, and unofficial, but very willing, wizard chess contender, Benjamin Amadeus Franklyn, at your service." He bowed deeply, arms wide, his stringy grey hair drooping.

        "That's who I was trying to think of!" Ralph whispered harshly. "He's on your money, you goon!" He elbowed Zane in the ribs, nearly knocking the smaller boy off his feet.

        Minutes later, James, Zane, and Ralph were pounding up the stairs toward the Ravenclaw common room.

        "Benjamin Franklin?" Zane repeated disbelievingly. "That can't be the original Ben Franklin. He'd be…" He thought for a moment, frowning. "Well, I don't know how old, but he'd be really, really old. Crazy old. Older than McGonagall even. No way."

        Ralph wheezed, trying to keep up. "I'm telling you, I think these wizard types--us wizard types--have ways of sticking around for a long time. It's not all that surprising when you think about it. Ben Franklin almost seems like a wizard when you read about him in the Muggle history books. I mean, the guy caught lightning with a key on a kite string."

        James was thoughtful. "I remember my Aunt Hermione telling me about some old wizard they learned about in their first year. Nicholas Flannel or something. He'd made a sort of stone that made him live forever, or close to it. Of course, it was the sort of thing that always seemed to be falling into the wrong hands, so eventually he destroyed it and ended up dying just like everybody else. Still, I think there probably are lots of ways for witches and wizards to prolong life for a long time, even without Flannel's stone."

        "Maybe you should get his autograph on one of your hundred dollar bills," Ralph mused to Zane.

        "I don't have any hundreds. I gave my last five to that elf doorman downstairs. It was all I had."

        "He wasn't a doorman!" James tried again to convince Zane.

        "Well? He got the door for us," Zane said placidly.

       "Ralph knocked him over when he shoved it open! He wasn't trying to open it for us!"

        "Well, I'm out of money anyway. I just hope the service doesn't suffer."

        Zane stopped in front of the door to the Ravenclaw common room. The eagle door knocker spoke in a high, trilling voice. "What is the significance of the hat in magical mastery?"

        "Ahh, sheesh, these are supposed to be the easy ones," Zane complained.

        "Are you sure it's all right for us to go in there?" Ralph said, shuffling his feet. "What're the rules for hanging out in common rooms other than your own?"

        "There aren't any rules about it that I know of," James said. "I just don't think people do it much." This didn't seem to ease Ralph's mind. He looked up and down the corridor fretfully.

        "The hat… the hat…," Zane mumbled, staring at his shoes. "Hat, hat, hat. Rabbit out of a hat. You pull things out of a hat. It's probably like a metaphor or something. You wear a hat on your head… your brain's in your head, under the hat. Ummm…"

        He snapped his fingers and looked up at the eagle door knocker. "You can't pull anything out of a hat that you haven't already put in your head?"

        "Crude, but close enough," the door knocker replied. The door clicked and swung open.

        "Wow!" James said, following Zane into the common room. "And your parents are Muggles?"

        "Well, like I said, my dad makes movies, and my mom has E.S.P. about anything I try to sneak past her, so I assume I am unusually prepared for the magical world," Zane said in an offhand manner. "So this is the Ravenclaw common room. Not an electric light or a Coke machine in sight. We do have a really cool statue, though, and a talking fireplace. Saw my dad in it last night. He's adapting to all of this a little too well, if you ask me."

        Zane toured them through the Ravenclaw rooms, apparently making up details whenever he didn't know them. Ralph and Zane tried to teach James how to play gin rummy with a deck of Muggle playing cards, but James couldn't get interested in King, Queen and Jack cards that didn't actually attack one another. When they got bored, Ralph took them to the Slytherin common room, leading them through a maze of dark, torch-lit cellar passages. They stopped at a large door that dominated the end of a corridor. Set in the middle of the door was a brass sculpture of a coiling snake, its wedge-shaped head protruding menacingly, open-mouthed.

        "Oh, yeah," Ralph muttered. He shook back his sleeve, revealing a new ring on his right hand. The ring was set with a large green emerald, shaped like an eye with a slit pupil. Ralph pressed it carefully into one of the snake's eye sockets. The other socket glared to life, glowing green.

        "Who sssseeks entry?" the snake's head said in a thin, hissing voice.

       "Me. Ralph Deedle. Slytherin, first year."

       The glowing green eye flicked over James and Zane. "And thessssse?"

        "My friends. I, uh, I can vouch for them."

        The glowing eye studied Zane then James for an uncomfortably long time, and then finally winked out. A series of complicated ratchets, clicks, and clanks came from within the door. It swung ponderously open.

        The Slytherin rooms occupied a large, gothic space carved from beneath the lake. Thick, stainedglass windows in the vaulted ceilings looked up through the depths of the lake, making the filtered sunlight flicker greenly on the glass portraits of Salazar Slytherin and his progeny. Even Ralph seemed jumpy as he showed them around. Only a few other students were in the common room, draped over the furnishings with extravagant indolence. They followed Zane and James with their eyes, smiling cryptically, but apparently without malice. Ralph stiffly mumbled greetings.