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Lando felt lost as he was wandering Hogwarts' endless corridors after dinner. It was early enough that the majority of the other students were still eating, so the corridors were mostly empty and Lando was left alone with his thoughts.
It was only the second week of his school year and already the fourth time he'd been locked out of his common room. Stupid door knocker. He had simply wanted to go up early after dinner to catch up on his Herbology homework, but when he'd stood in front of the entrance to the Ravenclaw common room and the eagle had asked him the dreaded riddle, Lando had had no idea what to answer.
"What can you only gain when someone else finds it at the same time?"
What kind of stupid question was that? Why couldn't he have been sorted into a normal house with a normal password instead of being forced to solve a riddle every time he wanted to get into his common room? His older brother was a Gryffindor and he had never had any problems with getting into his common room.
Lando cursed the Sorting Hat for about the millionth time as he climbed down the steps of the Ravenclaw tower, determined to not be discovered in front of the locked door by his peers again, clearly not smart enough to get in on his own. He was already on his best way to becoming a laughing stock among the other Ravenclaw first-years, he really didn't need to give them even more ammunition.
No, it was safe to say that Lando wasn't too happy about being sorted into Ravenclaw. It had been entirely unexpected too – his whole family had been sure he'd be a Hufflepuff and even though he hadn't voiced it out loud, he'd silently agreed with them. He had just never been particularly brave or ambitious and he was definitely not as intelligent as the Ravenclaws. Deep down, Lando knew that that was the reason he still didn't feel welcome there – in comparison to the others, it was plainly even more noticeable how painfully average he was.
Lando paused and noticed that he had arrived in a part of the castle that he'd never seen before. This wasn't a new occurrence since he had only been living there for two weeks at this point, but unfortunately, he had been so lost in his thoughts that he hadn't paid any attention to where he was going and now he had no idea in what section of the huge castle he had ended up in. The corridor he was in was broadly lit by a collection of torches lining the stone walls, and he couldn't see any windows, so he must be in an underground part of the large castle. The walls were lined with large paintings that depicted mostly food and at the end of the corridor he could make out a stack of barrels, but there was no door in sight. Sighing, Lando turned around to go back the way he came only to discover that the staircase he'd apparently walked down had moved, leaving him with no way to get back to the upper floor.
"Exactly what I needed," he muttered to himself, settling himself on one of the barrels in the corner. "First I'm getting locked out of my own common room and now I'm stuck in a frickin' hallway without any doors! This just keeps getting better." Lando had absolutely no idea how long it took for stairs to move back and forth and how long he'd be trapped down here. He sighed again, pulled out his wand and pointed it at the stone wall opposite from him. "Colovaria," he whispered. Better find a way to pass the time.
Some time later, Lando's concentration was broken by a loud shuffling noise directly next to his right arm. He startled and jumped with a yelp (he did not shriek, thank you very much) – just in time to see the lid of the barrel next to the one he'd been sitting on be pushed up and a head appear in the stack of barrels.
"What the hell?", he shouted, causing the owner of the head to jump as well and hit his head on the lid of the barrel.
"Ow! What the fuck?", the other kid exclaimed in return. He stared at Lando a moment longer before he climbed fully through the opening and shut the lid behind him. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"
"I could ask you the same," Lando replied, cautiously eyeing the dark-haired boy. He wore the black-yellow Hufflepuff robes and was probably an entire head taller than Lando, but his posture gave away the same kind of uncertainty Lando felt.
"What am I – I live here!", the boy retorted, gesturing vaguely at the stack of barrels.
"What, you live in a barrel?"
"No, of course not! That's the entry to our common room! Oh shit," his eyes widened almost comically. "I wasn't supposed to tell you that, was I? Shit, I'm sorry. This is still all very new to me." He shook his head, seemingly giving himself a mental shake and smiled awkwardly at Lando. "I'm Alex, by the way."
"I'm Lando," Lando introduced himself and shook the other boy's – Alex' – outstretched hand. "I'm, uh, sorry for surprising you there. I didn't know it was the entry to your common room, I swear! I was just waiting for the stairs to come back!"
Lando was fully aware that his last sentence would absurd to most people outside of the school – even the old, traditional wizarding houses were not equipped with moving staircases – but they were living in Hogwarts after all and these things were a common occurrence here. Alex was just about to reply when his eyes were drawn to the wall behind Lando and his jaw dropped open. "Holy shit, did you do that?"
Lando turned, having already partly forgotten what he'd been doing before Alex showed up, and followed Alex' gaze to the huge landscape he had started to paint onto the corridor's wall. The painting showed the green rolling hills of the English countryside Lando had grown up in stretching out beneath a few scattered clouds that were slowly giving way to a half-finished sunset. It was the view of his childhood – he had watched the sun set from the windows of his childhood home almost every evening and painted the scene hundreds of times by now and he still didn't get tired of seeing it. Sadly, his whole family had had to move to London three years ago because of his parents' multiple demanding businesses, so he hadn't been able to see the sunsets in person since he was eight, but they had never vanished from his memory.
"Uh, yeah," he answered eloquently, realising that Alex was still gaping at him. Hufflepuffs were probably far too nice to even think about drawing on school property. "I'll vanish it before I leave, don't worry! I wasn't planning on vandalising the corridor, I was just trying to kill some time."
"Vandalising?" Alex shook his head in pure disbelief. "No, no – this is amazing! I can't even transfigure that stupid match into a needle yet! How are you able to do such a complicated spell already?"
"Uh, my mum taught me the actual spell, but this has always been the way through which I expressed my magic most easily. Even as a child – I remember that I'd just hold my hands above a piece of paper and the colours would start to appear. Having the wand now helps with focusing my magic though, so it's improved a lot, I guess." Lando regarded Alex' stunned expression curiously. He'd never really seen his painting as impressive; it was simply something he did when he was bored or very emotional, and yet Alex seemed to be profoundly impressed by it. So, either his magical talent was truly more remarkable than he'd ever believed or, the more likely explanation –
"Are you muggle-born?" he asked, cringing immediately at how blunt the question had come out. He knew it wasn't very polite to ask about someone's blood status and Alex had been very nice to him so far, so he really didn't want to offend him or scare him off. But Alex just nodded, confirming Lando's suspicions, and Lando couldn't help but feel a little dejected. Of course Alex would be fascinated by his display of magic if he hadn't even been aware of its existence before receiving his letter.
"You're not… from one of those pure-blood families that look down on muggle-borns, are you?" Alex asked apprehensively and took a step backwards. "Pierre told me that not everyone is super welcoming towards people like me." His friendly and open expression from before had turned sceptical and Lando felt even more terrible about his crude question.
"No! No, definitely not! I'm so sorry about the rude question," he quickly tried to reassure Alex. "I mean, yes, I am from a pure-blood family, but I have absolutely no problem with Muggles and neither do my parents. They're actually working closely together with them quite often! I was just…" Lando hesitated, not quite wanting to show his deep insecurity about his abilities in front of the other boy, but taking one more look at Alex' distressed expression helped him make his decision rather easily.
"I just never really thought of myself as particularly talented, you know? The reason I came down here in the first place was, well, it was because the door of my house wouldn't let me in and it just made me feel like I didn't belong there in the first place. And then you were so impressed by the painting and it felt…really good. But I still couldn't really believe it and thought that it could maybe be explained by you not having a lot of experience with magic yet…" He trailed off and shrugged awkwardly. It certainly had not been his best thought-out reaction, that was for sure.
"Oh," Alex said, clearly relieved. "Well, I don't know if it helps, but I think obvious why you were chosen for Ravenclaw with this much creativity! And if you stick around and wait for a couple of weeks, I can tell you if I'm still impressed by your painting after getting used to magic a bit more, how about that?" He gave Lando a broad smile. "Friends?"
"Friends!", Lando replied with a matching grin on his face.
Lando was still smiling fifteen minutes later when he was climbing the spiral staircase to the Ravenclaw common room for the second time this evening. The vanished stairs had reappeared almost immediately after he and Alex had declared their friendship and Lando wondered how sentient the castle actually was. This had definitely not been how he had expected his evening to go, but he was grateful for it.
And when he reached the door and the eagle asked him again "What can you only gain when someone else finds it at the same time?" it was with a light heart that he replied:
"Friendship."