Ilvermorny

A strange rhythm crept into Raul's dream. Something in the veiled antechamber of his wandering mind was relaying a soft staccato, breaking abruptly, then returning. A code? Was it a part of dreaming, the subconscious knocking?

Books on Curses were strewn about his bed. The olive hued student groggily awoke, barely asleep for only a few hours. His lips pursed as he ran a hand through his thick hair. The knocking in his mind was distant, maybe only in the fog of lack of sleep.

He checked his watch, exhaling at the time, before standing from the bed. Stretching, and then grabbing his robe, throwing it over his flannel pajamas.

"Really not looking forward to midterms..." He muttered to himself, beginning to make his way down to the common room.

The groggily ambiguous wakedness didn't banish the persistent, regular sound, that now seemed to have been having a reverberating resonance from some place alonged the windowed wall.

"Huh?" Rubbing an eye, yawning after, Raul began to shuffle along the wall of the common room, finding that the knocking was getting louder.

It took a sleep addled moment, and then Raul shook his head, making his way, then opening the door to the common room. "Hello?"

Now that he investigated, it looked like the knocking was coming from a likely corporeal being, a dark avian shape from behind the glass. Peck-peck, pe-pe-peck.

Opening the glass, he looked at the being quizzically. Of all the things, Raul finds himself curious as to what was happening. At such an early hour.

"You know midterms are today, right?"

The raven was speechless. But it extended the talon and dropped a rolled piece of paper under Raul's feet, tied up with something that looked like a braided wrist bracelet. The intertwined yarns were chaotically woven, in the mathematical sense of the word - exhibiting high complexity of an unobvious pattern, as if it was just a fraction of a larger fractal. Dark blue interspersed with yellow, red and orange.

"Of course you do..." he whispered, as he looked to the Raven. Taking the bracelet in hand, he looked it over closely. Fingertips moving over the pattern. Examining it closely. Leaning out, looking around, and then back to the bird.

Undoing the bracelet, and then unfolding the paper.

Mission accomplished, the bird ogled Raul with a yellow eye for a brisk moment, then suddenly soared back into the dying night, cawing. The bracelet itself felt like a charm, the patterns seemed to be moving along their dimensions, but only when he wasn't looking; they settled immediately into a position as he would try to observe their dance. If the bracelet had other properties, they were yet to be revealed.

The note was done in black ink and with quill, the lettering tall and sharp, the contours paling toward the edges, however.

"Think of me fondly." That was all that was written, at least in this light.

Raul took the note, holding it up to the dim lighting of the room, trying to discern more from it. Breathing in deeply, he took the bracelet, and wrapped it around his left wrist.

"It's easier to think of you fondly when you sign your notes." He whispered to himself, heading to one of the lounge chairs in the room.

His eyes looked over the note again and again, just trying to get a clue.

Once the bracelet got wrapped around his wrist he could swear he started hearing music... an ambient melody that became distant when he focused but grew closer when he let his mind wander. A hum, a chant, or a particular unknown instrument - it was hard to tell.

His investigation yielded him a single dark hair and a print pressed into the paper itself, that of stylised avian talons.

He delicately touched the hair, tilting his head as he noted it. And with the stylized talons. "Asi es la vida..." he murmurred to himself, lips curling to a slight smile.

After four years, you start to know classmates you see.

"Wait... when's that dance again!?"

Nothing more than side-conscious ambience of ephemeral melody could reply.