The raven, it keeps rapping, gently tapping, at my chamber door. NO! It can't be back! Raven- raven!'
A black haired girl fell into an abyss, leaving a blonde standing beside it, shocked. The Raven didn't stop tapping though. It just kept going -Tap, tap, tap- at the glass.
Taylor Petterson's pale green eyes snapped open as the tapping continued. Of course, everywhere she looked from the moment she opened her eyes of a morning, she saw a raven, but then again, she was in Ravenclaw, wasn't she? But the tapping, she knew it wasn't Poe's raven. Glancing at the window beside her bed, she saw Silas, her black barn owl with his ghostly-pale heart-shaped face. 'He must have a letter from Mom,' she thought wearily.
Taylor's mother was a Muggle; she hadn't gone to Hogwarts and had no idea that magic existed. That was until Taylor got her letter five years ago. She told Taylor that she wasn't going to raise something as unnatural as a witch, and that she wanted her to leave her house and go to Hogwarts- anything just so long as she was gone. So Taylor exchanged her quiet life in the Tennessee woods for a castle in a magical world that she would have never believed existed. And she was glad. She needed to get away before it was too late for her. She only wished-- No, Petterson, don't go there, she told herself.
Throwing open the window, Taylor greeted her owl, whose intelligent eyes seemed to know what she was thinking. "Come on, Silas, you and I both know it's coming up on the anniversary. You can't blame me for dreaming of her," she told him as she untied the letter attached to his leg.
She looked at her mother's writing and didn't feel like reading it. Today just wasn't the day for "I don't want you home for the holidays. Your uncle says you can't stay with him this summer. Your unnaturalness isn't welcome there." She didn't want to think about it; she was sick of hearing about her family's reactions, she was tired of pretending everything was okay at home, and most of all, she just wanted her mother to understand that she hardly cared what she thought.
"Come on, Silas, let's go to the Great Hall, and maybe after we eat, we can go see Dumbledore." She pulled on a pair of tattered jeans and an oversized tee before lifting the owl in the crook of her arm and setting off out of the tower, refusing to glance at Rowena Ravenclaw as she left.