Lady of the Eyrie

## Helena Ravenclaw

**Helena Ravenclaw**, also known as the **Gray Lady** or the **Lady of the Eyrie**, is one of the guardian ghosts at Hogwarts. She was the daughter of one of its founders, Rowena Ravenclaw, and is considered to be one of the most famous ghosts in Britain.

## Appearance

Helena has the ghostly form of a young woman in her early 20s, with waist-length hair and dressed herself in a floor-length cloak. She carries herself in a serene manner, and although she could be considered beautiful, it's hard to see through her proud and haughty appearance.

When she was alive, she had fair skin, dark-gray eyes, and brown hair falling down her back in wavy locks. She dressed herself in her clan's colors of blue and bronze.

## Personality

As a highly intellectual young woman, Helena was a scholarly, literary, and cultured woman. Similar to her mother, she was once known for her thirst for knowledge which had led her into many troubles in her youth. Even nearly a thousand years after her death, she still maintained her curiosity, enjoying attending classes and reading about new magical knowledge and theory.

She had high standards and was a perfectionist, always striving toward absolute perfection and satisfaction in all of her projects, research, and plans. Although she and her mother had fled her father's land soon after her birth, she was still given an upbringing befitting that of a noblewoman.

However, for as much graceful as she appeared, she possessed a great inferiority complex, as she believed she would never be great as her mother in any way, either it was intellect, beauty, grace, or in the magical arts.

As such, when Hogwarts opened and she became one of her mother's many students, she began to feel as if she had become worthless in her mother's eyes and grew distant with her, to the point she stole her mother's priceless diadem and fled the school.

Many years later, only after her mother died and she was killed did she realize that her mother had always loved and been a great mother to her, and all the hatred she felt was born from her own insecurities. She became remorseful of what she had done and since then always tried to help students salvage their relationship with their parents if they still can.

She was serene, yet somewhat taciturn, with a preference to secluded places, from deep forests to hidden caves, abandoned towers to lost hallways. Despite hundreds of generations of students having accosted her for her past and/or her mother's diadem, she had dismissed them all, though she was unable to resist Tom Riddle's charm due to his thirst for knowledge reminded her too much of herself and her own mother. However, after he had tainted it with dark magic and turned it into a horcrux, she once more wallowed in self-hatred, disgust, and regret.

## History

Helena was born the only daughter of Rowena Ravenclaw and her husband, a Scottish lord who descended from Roman noblemen. Soon after her birth, after her father was assassinated by their family's enemies, she and her mother were forced to flee from their home in Scotland to Ireland to seek refuge with her mother's old betrothal, Salazar Slytherin.

There, she was raised by her mother and Salazar, who was her only father figure from an early age, and began to show signs of accidental magic at a young age when she transformed the table they were having lunch on into a kaleidoscope of blue-and-bronze butterflies.

When Hogwarts opened, she became one of its first generations of students, being sorted into Ravenclaw and was taught directly by her mother in the magical arts. However, as time went on, insecurities began to grow inside her as she started to feel like nothing she'd ever do could ever match up to her famous mother, and soon, a great rift began to grow between them. During her time at Hogwarts, she also made friends with Hywel Weasley, a second son from House Weasley, who fell in love with her but was never reciprocated due to her high standards.

At about 17-18 years old, her envy soon got the most of her and she stole her mother's diadem, and fled Scotland upon a thestral in the middle of the night. According to her, she did so because she thought the diadem would make her wise enough to surpass her mother, though whether she succeeded was never mentioned. Heartbroken because of her daughter's betrayal, Rowena never admitted Helena's treachery, hiding the fact that the diadem was no longer in her possession.

When Rowena fell fatally ill and ended up on her deathbed while Helena was gone, Rowena desperately asked Hywel, who was deeply in love with Helena, to find her daughter and bring her back so she could see her one last time. At the same time, having heard about her mother's illness, Helena returned to Scotland with the diadem, but never had the courage to return and face her mother. When she discovered Hywel's tracking spell leading him toward her, she hid the diadem inside a hollow tree in the nearby forest.

When facing Hywel, Helena refused to come with him and rejected his affections again. Furious at her refusal and envious of her freedom, he stabbed her in a fit of rage with a knife. After seeing the consequences of what he had done, remorseful of his action, he stabbed himself to death. Years later, she returned to Hogwarts as a ghost alongside Hywel - Now known as the Bloody Baron due to his bloodstained attire - and became the guardian spirit of the Ravenclaw dorm, nicknamed the "Gray Lady" or the "Lady of the Eyrie" by the students. Since then, she had been at Hogwarts, protecting its students from malicious and unwanted spirits, though she did attend the Wild Hunt's raid unofficially every year.

During the last few years of Tom Riddle's education at Hogwarts, he became interested in horcruxes and planned to create some out of objects he deemed worthy of the "honor". Having heard of Ravenclaw's Diadem, he questioned Helena about it. Unaware of Riddle's true intentions, she found him charming and understanding, revealing its secret hiding spot. However, after she discovered what he had done, she once again wallowed in self-hatred and regret.

## Equipment

**Magic Wand** (魔法の杖, *Mahō no Tsue*): Like most wizards, Helena owned a wand that served as the magical foci for her own magical power. While its current location is unknown, it could be assumed that, per wizarding traditions, it was buried alongside her body within Hogwarts' underground crypt when they discovered her death.

**Diadem of Ravenclaw** (知恵の女神の冠ダイアデム・オブ・レイブンクロー, *Daiademu obu Reibunkurō*): An ancient magical artifact created by the sorcerer-priests of the Roman Empire and supposedly carried within it the divine blessing of Minerva, the Roman Goddess of Wisdom. In reality, sealed within it is a sleeping fragment of the consciousness of Menrva, the Etruscan Goddess of War and Wisdom that was absorbed by Athena when the Etruscan civilization was assimilated into the Roman Republic.

## Trivia

* She was in her mid-20s to early 30s when she was killed.
* During her entire time with the diadem, Menrva never made contact with her.
* She is one of the most famous white ladies in England, as well as the only non-violent one.
* She is the only house ghost whose nickname is not alliterative. This is perhaps a little ironic, as most members from Ravenclaw, both the house and the clan, have alliterative names.
* While never explicitly mentioned, it's implied that she was on the asexual spectrum when she was alive as she has stated to "have no desire of the flesh, both dead or alive".