Gabe couldn’t be more bored. By some miraculous series of events, Gabriel as successfully completed all his homework to the best of his ability, practiced flying drills twice in the last four days and even fished all the scrunched up socks out from under the covers of his bed– the ones that got kicked all the way down in his sleep. Sighing, Gabriel sprawls out in one of the chairs in the common room, staring at the ceiling.

Yawning and coming slowly down the stairs, it appears as if Briony has had quite a bit of a lie-in. The girl’s hair is quite a mess, showing signs of wear from sleep, and her clothing is haphazardly put on, and it appears that the girl has grown, as the pants she has put on come down only to the tops of her ankles. “Morning, Gabey,” the girl greets her good friend with a yawn and plops into a chair kittycorner to his. “Y’look –” yaaaawn, “Bored.”

Recognizing the voice and presence well enough to know who it is, Gabriel doesn’t even move when Briony sits down, except to say, “I am,” in a deadpan tone. Continuing to stare upwards, it’s a couple seconds before he reacts in any meaningful way. Eventually he does sit up properly in his chair and turns to look at his friend. “I’ve been up for two hours, you know,” he notes with a grin. “Getting some beauty sleep, then?”

“Oh, right, beauty sleep,” Briony responds, stifling another yawn and then grinning. “It’s Sunday, no reason to get up early!” The girl lets out a little giggle and presses down her hair as she tucks her legs — and rather pouffy looking pair of slippers — up underneath her and shrugs. “So, has anyone asked you to the social yet, Gabe?” The same question as the year previous, in likely the same tone, but this time, there seems to be a different glint in her eye as she turns a bit toward her friend, facing him more.

Raising his eyebrows, Gabe leans back into the chair, eyes downcast for only a second before glancing back up to her. “No, not yet,” he explains, shrugging. “I haven’t been much of Felicity lately, though, so… I don’t know if she wants to go with me again this year or anything.” Another indifferent shrug. “Or maybe Kalynn will ask me. But I’d be okay with not going. Now that, you know, pretty much my entire family will be there too,” Gabriel adds, smirking.

“Well, you should go with me,” Briony states frankly and rather chirpily, given the fact that she had just moments before been yawning and lethargic. “Not Felicity, ugh.” She shakes her head as she mentions her cousin and then shrugs. “I heard this year it’s going to be different than last year somehow. I’m not sure how much different it could really be unless we’re going to have it inside this time instead. That would be interesting, don’t you think?” the girl comments, as if she hasn’t just asked him to go with her almost in the same breath.

“Go with you?” Gabriel repeats, basically ignoring all the rest of what Briony’s said. Gabe leans in a little. “What… like… as a date? Or as friends?” he asks cautiously, trying not to sound like he’s expecting a particular answer. A Social with Briony. Gabe would have to get used to the idea. Realizing his hands are more or less clenched into fists and his attention is rapt, Gabriel falls back into the squishy chair, relaxing his tension purposefully.

“Oh, honestly,” Briony retorts with a laugh. “You act like it’s a big deal. It’s just the social, Gabe! Anyway, you could be my date. It’s not a big deal anyway.” She shrugs and grins at him. “So what’re you going to do today? Are you going to practice Quidditch? Because if you are, I want to practice with you. Did you see those notices about the announcer tryouts? I was thinking of looking into that. Wouldn’t that be fun, being the Quidditch announcer? If I did that, then Dad wouldn’t be so jumpy about Quidditch. He hates that I’m on the team, you know?” Of course, Gabe likely knows that already, but this has never stoped Briony in the past.

In order, Gabe shakes his head, nods, shrugs and nods again. “No, I’ve been doing a lot of Quidditch these past few days. I think I’ll be taking today off from it.” Gabriel can understand what it’s like to have an unsupportive (well, not unsupportive. Concerned. Over-concerned.) parent in terms of Quidditch. “My mum doesn’t really want me on the team either, but it hasn’t stopped me yet. You know, it’s like we’re taking over the school! Or Gryffindor anyway. Now I’m Quidditch captain and she’s head of house,” he says cheerfully– more cheerful than he’s been lately at any rate. “It’s just kind of funny,” he says, not realizing he’s completely glazed over the fact that they now both have dates– each other– to the social.

“Well, I’m sure this will be Gryffindor’s year, what with the Good Deed Club and us on Quidditch. We’ll win for sure, of course.” Briony grins at his, not seeming at all concerned that he hasn’t really said much at all in response to the social. He’s going with her now, of course. No more to it than that! “We should see about a game of chess! Dad worked with me on it this summer and I just know I’ll be able to beat you now! Do you want to give it a go?” The girl sits up and yanks at her too-short pant leg with a grin. “We could play with the Magical Creatures set! I’m sure nobody would mind. C’mon, Gabe!” The exhuberant girl apparently does not seem bothered by whether Gabriel actually wants to do, and instead, grabs at his hand in an attempt to pull him toward where the chess set is set up.

“Fine, fine,” he resigns quickly, allowing himself to be led/dragged over to the set. Bored as he is, Briony could likely suggest almost anything that he hadn’t done to death in the last week and he’d be completely on board. “I get to be the black side,” Gabriel calls quickly with a smirk. “Now to warm up my strategy-nerve,” he says, geekishly rubbing his hands together. “Actually… my strategy-nerve has been broken for a long time. You probably will win today. Did I tell you about my so-failed strategy plan for over the summer?” he asks almost rhetorically, knowing full well he hasn’t told anyone.

“No! You were going to do, but then you wouldn’t,” Briony tells him with a gasp as she plops down in front of the white side of the board, which is curiously pinkish, as if someone had tried to charm the pieces to be a different color. “Okay, hmmmm,” she states aloud as she begins to survey the board. Being that it is a blank chess board, one would think that making a move would be relatively easy. Just move something. But, no, not for Briony, she has to take in all the possibilty of the board before she moves. There is quite a long pause of quiet from the girl before she finally moves a piece out and then looks back at Gabriel. “So, what was your strategy?”

Quickly moving a black pawn two spaces out from its beginning line as if he’s put no thought into it, Gabe replies, “Well the strategy came in later. The original plan,” he looks downwards for a second before smiling hopefully at Briony, “was… was… that my parents still love each other. I can tell they do. So there has to be a way to get them back together. It’s stupid that they haven’t already. So I thought I could, you know, help it along.” Gabriel pauses. “It’s your turn,” he says with a smirk, but knowing she knew.

“I know, Gabe,” Briony responds with a light scoff as she looks down at the board. “Did you really think it’d work? I mean, it seemed like your parents didn’t want to be together. Or else, wouldn’t they be still?” Briony quirks her head, her hand hovering over an animal-shaped chess piece, though she isn’t looking at it. “I mean, I really wouldn’t know, really.” Briony bites her lip, apparently unsure of what to say, so instead of saying anything, she clacks her piece to a different spot, stifling a giggle as it makes a bit of a screeching sound, and then readjusting herself in her seat to sit on her leg. “I guess it didn’t work, though, since you said it was failed. What were you trying to do, exactly?”

Moving another pawn, Gabe sighs. “I didn’t really know how I could help at first. Then I thought if they maybe just… saw more of each other that some kind of spark would come back. I mean, you’ve seen my mum. Doesn’t see look lonely? Look at her eyes next time you see her,” Gabriel instructs, interlocking his fingers. “Anyway, at the end of July when we, my sisters and me, were leaving dad’s place and going to stay with mum, we all met in Diagon. It was supposed to be a quick exchange and everything. But I pretended to fall down,” he stops, thinking and revising his story to, “well, did fall down. I even scraped my knee a bit! I thought they’d both get concerned at once and it’d be a meaningful moment or something… but a witch passing by said she used to be a healer and suddenly my knee was completely fine.” Sighing, Gabe rolls his eyes at the recollection.

The girl bites her lip as Gabe says this, quirking her head to the other side and quickly moving a pawn of her own. “Well, it’s too bad that healer happened to come by. I don’t suppose you tried it again somewhere else, did you?” the girl asks, her loyalty to her friend obviously superceding that of her loyalty to his mother. “Did you get your sisters to help you?” A pause. “Though I s’pose you probably didn’t want them to help, huh?” Briony shrugs. “You could have asked me to help. I’m sure we could have come up with something.” Such a serious turn of conversation, Briony doesn’t seem to know how to handle.

Gabriel Goden shakes his head. “I couldn’t even think of anything else. That’s part of why I got so discouraged and was so moody near the end of summer. I started losing hope, and that’s never good! Now I have the dream again, so I will eventually succeed. The only question now is ‘when’, right?” The boy smiles as he moves a bishop out of its place, diagonally, quite far into ‘Briony territory’. “Kate wanted to help, but she’s not the best for coming up with ideas. Jamie… doesn’t want to talk about things ever. At least, not with me.” Such a statement seems depressing, but Gabe glazes over it as if it’s just the way things have been for a long, long time. “I know I should have asked you. But… for a while I was a little embarrassed about what I was trying to do. Now, though,” he says with great determination, “I know that all people want their parents to be together. Nothing to be ashamed of, right?”

“Of course there’s nothing to be ashamed of, Gabe! I don’t know what I’d do if Mum and Dad weren’t together anymore.” Briony pauses as she eyes the bishop carefully, moving a pawn slowly out and then pulling her hand out quickly. “So, what’re you going to do now that you’re at school? I mean, you can’t very well get your dad out here very often, can you? He doesn’t have a whole lot of reason to come here. Unless he comes to the Governor’s Ball. Do you think he will?” Briony‘s eyes light up with their usual conspiratal light as she grins at her friend. “Maybe they could dance together somehow at the Governor’s Ball and then they could realize that they do love each other. Do you think?”

“I didn’t even think of that!” Gabe replies excitedly, accidentally knocking over a knight before moving it forward. His mind really isn’t in the game. “That’s a fantastic idea, Bri. Maybe he would come, I mean, he works for the Ministry. Didn’t some people from the Ministry come last year?” Gabriel asks, truly oblivious. If he had to be honest, that day was quite a blur in Gabriel‘s memory. “I’ll have to owl him and tell him to come. With mum here, he’ll feel like it’s her domain and he shouldn’t intrude or anything. Do you… do you think I should owl him and say that mum wants him to come? Or will that just get messy…?”

“No, don’t do it that way. Then they’re sure to find out that you were meddling and then it might backfire. Maybe you should tell your dad that you want him to come. It’s not a lie that way, right? And your mum will probably come because it will be at the school, right?” The girl bounces a little and captures the bishop which has been left quite vulnerable. Plunking the piece next to her side of the board Briony sits up a little more. “You don’t think your mum would get angry if your dad showed up to it, do you?” the girl asks, leaning back again, putting a finger on her chin thoughtfully.

Sinking down a little after his nodding at her prior statements, Gabe rests an elbow on the table and plops his chin into his open palm. “She probably will be mad…” he says, thinking about it. It’s with less fervor that he used his knight to take Briony’s bishop-stealing piece, not realizing that his king is quite exposed from the diagonal. “But, I mean,” Gabriel says, starting to rationalize things in his mind and out loud, “it’s a chance I’ll have to take. If she’s mad at first but then gets dad back, she’ll be happy. So, I’m going to do it.”

“Are you sure your mum would even talk to him? I would think, if she’s mad, then maybe she won’t stop being mad enough to realize that she misses your dad.” Briony sighs a bit and puts her bishop out. “Check,” she tells him and matches his own posture by putting her own chin in her hand and leaning forward a bit. “I don’t understand why grownups do stupid things like that. They should just stay together if they love each other.” Briony shakes her head and tuts a bit, looking down at the board and then back at Gabriel.

“I basically never understand what–WHAT!” Gabriel exclaims, Briony’s check only just registering with him. “But there’s only…” he trails off, moving the only defensive piece he can in between Briony’s bishop and his king. As soon as she takes that piece, though, the came will be over for Gabe. “I can’t believe–” he stutters, his parents’ marital issues forgotten temporarily. “I was just distracted, you know,” he says, already making weak excuses for his soon-to-be loss with a good-natured grin.

“Oh, come on, I told you dad had practiced with me all summer!” Briony protests, moving forward and capturing the one piece cheerfully. This is possibly the shortest win the girl has had in which nobody threw the game intentionally. “Checkmate!” she calls happily and jumps up, doing a bit of a happy dance. “What do you want to do now? It’s too early to make plans for the Ball, but maybe we could go and practice for our Quidditch match, even though it’s a while away. Or we could go see if there’s anything of interest in the kitchen. What do you say?” Briony seems entirely oblivious to the fact that she is still in her pyjamas.

Smirking, Gabriel decides to see just how far he can take Briony into the public of the school before she realizes she isn’t exactly dressed for social interaction with the general population. Briony always could be counted on for fun, couldn’t she? “Let’s see what’s in the kitchens,” he agrees, standing up and making for the portrait hole. “C’mon, Bri, if we wait, there won’t be anything left!” he says, snickering into his sleeve as he leaves.

“Alright!” Briony agrees and runs in her slippers with some attempt to catch up to Gabriel. This only causes her to slide a little bit and then nearly fall over as she grabs at Gabriel for leverage, also smacking her hand on a chair haphazardly. “Whoops!” she comments as she regains her balance and stands up. “Last one to the kitchen’s a gooseberry!” she tells him and darts out of the commonroom in pursuit of getting to the kitchens, slipping and sliding in her pouffy slippers the whole way. Ah, the adventures of youth.

Other Interesting Logs:

• And Time for a Race, Too
• Gryffindor’s First Practice of the New Season
• Gryffindor Quidditch Tryouts
• Gabriel the Dragon?
• Only A Little Nervous