"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.
The Slytherin sleeping quarters felt to James like someplace a very tasteful and wealthy pirate captain might sleep. The room was wide, with a sunken floor and low ceilings hung with gargoyle head lanterns. The large beds were mahogany with great square pillars at each corner. The Slytherin House crest hung on curtains at the end of each bed. The three boys clambered onto Ralph's immaculately made bed.
"These guys are pretty hardcore," Ralph admitted in a low voice, indicating the owners of the other beds. "To tell you the truth, I feel a little out of place here. I like the Ravenclaw rooms better."
"I don't know," Zane said, looking around the room admiringly. "They sure have a flair for decorating. Although it'd be hard to sleep with all those stuffed animal heads on the walls. Is that one a dragon?"
"Yes," Ralph replied, his voice strained and terse. "These guys bring them from their houses. They have families that actually go out dragon hunting."
James frowned. "I thought dragon hunting was illegal."
"Yeah," Ralph whispered severely. "That's the thing, isn't it? These guys' families have hunting preserves where they can go shoot just about anything! That over there is the skull of a unicorn. Still has the horn on it, although they said it isn't the real horn. The real horn is too valuable for magical uses to leave hanging on the wall. And that thing back behind Tom's bed is a house-elf head! They put them on the wall when they knock 'em off! And I swear it looks at me sometimes!" Ralph shuddered, and then seemed to decide he'd said too much. He pressed his mouth into a thin line and looked from James to Zane and back.
"Yeah, it is pretty creepy," James admitted, deciding not to tell Ralph any of the things he'd heard about how some of the Slytherin families lived. "Still, I expect it's mostly just for show."
"What's that?" Zane said suddenly, pouncing forward on the bed. "Is that a GameDeck? It is! And you've got the wireless uplink for online competition and everything!" He rummaged into a duffle bag at the end of Ralph's bed, pulling out a small, black box about the size and shape of the deck of cards they'd been playing with earlier. It had a tiny screen set into the front, with a mind-boggling array of buttons beneath it. "What games do you have for it? Do you have Armageddon Master Three?"
"No!" Ralph rasped, grabbing the tiny machine away from Zane. "And don't let anybody else see this thing! They flip out about stuff like this."
Zane was incredulous. "What? Why?"
"How should I know? What's the deal with wizards and electronic stuff?" Ralph addressed the question to James, who frowned and shrugged.
"I don't know. Mostly, we just don't need it. Electronic stuff, like computers and phones, are just Muggle things. We do what we need to do with magic, I guess."
Ralph was shaking his head. "That's not how these guys act about it. They talked about it like I'd brought something nasty to school with me. Told me if I meant to be a real Slytherin, I needed to abandon all my false magic and machines."
"False magic?" Zane asked, glancing at James.
"Yeah," he sighed, "that's what some wizarding families think of Muggle electronics and machines. They say those things are just cheap knockoffs of what real wizards do. They think any wizards who use Muggle machines are traitors to their magical heritage or something."
"Yeah, that's pretty much what they told me," Ralph nodded. "They were, like, passionate about it! I hid my stuff right away. I figure I'll give it all to Dad at the next break."
Zane made a low whistle. "I'll bet your orthodox wizard types didn't like seeing my guys landing today in those hunks of rolling iron. You can't get much more machine-y than a Dodge Hornet."
James considered this. "Yeah, they might not like it very much, but there's a difference between electronics and clockwork. They think of cars as just a bunch of cogs and pistons. They aren't so much false magic as just unnecessarily complicated tools. It's the computers and stuff they really hate."
"I'll say," Ralph breathed, looking down at his GameDeck, and then stuffing it back into his duffle bag. He sighed. "Let's get out of here. Dinner's soon and I'm starved."
"Are you ever full, Ralph?" Zane asked as they jumped off the bed.
"I'm big-boned," Ralph said automatically, as if he'd said it many times before. "It's a glandular problem. Shut up."
"Just asking," Zane said, raising his hands. "Frankly, around here, I like the idea of having a friend who is the size of a dumpster."
At dinner, the three of them sat together at the Gryffindor table. James was a little worried about it until Ted appeared and slapped Zane on the back affectionately. "Our little Ravenclaw imp. How's life in the second best house on campus?" After that, James noticed that Zane and Ralph weren't the only students to sit down at other House tables.
After dinner, they discussed the following day's schedules. Zane would be joining James for his Technomancy class with Professor Jackson, and Ralph would be with James in Defense Against the Dark Arts. The boys explored the library, hovering outside the Restricted Section for a while until the librarian shooed them away with a stern warning. Finally, they said their goodnights and went their different ways.
"See you tomorrow with Professor Stonewall!" Zane, who had a unique predisposition for nicknaming teachers, called as he climbed the staircase to the Ravenclaw common room.