Sitting at the end of a plush couch, Noémie has curled herself up with her knees up against her body as she leans comfortably reading what looks to be a fiction novel, of Wizarding type with a flashy and animated cover. The commonroom is rather deserted, for even though the weather outside is cold, it is clear and many students are taking advantage of their weekend freedom by romping about in it and making use of the little snow there is left. The prefect, however, has opted to stay inside and take in pleasures usually denied in the stead of studies.

“…No, no, no.” The voice of Joseph Wexler starting an argument can be heard across the common room: run for your lives. “The line goes… oh, wait, hold up.” Easily distracted as always, his argument tapers off into silence as he glances over at Noémie, apparently now noticing her presence in the common room for the first time. And he approaches her, pulling a small box out of his pocket and holding it out to her. As a sort of way to announce his presence, he clears his throat quietly and explains, “Ice mice. I thought you’d appreciate it.” He studies her for a moment, apparently unsure of what to say, if indeed a response is called for.

Glancing up as Joseph approaches, Noémie appears slightly startled. “Oh, for me?” she asks, cautiously. After all, didn’t Joseph usually keep his sweets to himself. She takes the box from him, though — it’s Saturday, after all, what better day for sweets? — and looks at it, then smiles up at him. “How thoughtful of you. Did you have, er, any special reason for bringing them to me?” The prefect glances around, her eyes falling only momentarily on his company before flicking back to him with a steady gaze.

Biting back the instinctive urge to make a sarcastic response – something to the extent of ‘No, for the paraplegic monkey you keep under your bed, the one dying of sugar-deprivation because you’re a terrible pet owner’, is just begging to be said, no doubt – Joseph merely shrugs his shoulders vaguely, sitting down on a nearby seat. “Well, no special reason. You’re the closest thing I have to a birthday buddy, so I thought if I gave you a gift now, you’ll feel better in April when everyone remembers my birthday but forgets yours.”

The girl smirks a bit as he says this. “Now, why would they remember yours before mine? Mine is before yours, after all, and I’m a prefect, which, of course, makes me more special.” The grin does not wane as Noémie opens the box of ice mice and takes just a nibble of one, pausing for a moment as she does, and setting the box and the nibbled mouse down. “These are dangerous sweets,” she comments. “I’d make poor conversation if I truly became frozen from them.” She chuckles. “At any rate, I think my birthday will be remembered over yours, so, have one as a consolation?” She grins at him, clearly more than used to his humour.

“Well, yes, but I think they like me better.” Joseph declares, though it is quite evident that he jests, waving aside the offered ice mice. “No, thank you, this is not the weather for freezing to death.” Even so, it is entirely unlike him to turn aside sweets, though this is explained quickly enough as he reaches into a pocket and pulls out a block of chocolate. “But you know, Noémie, we’re closer in age than any other pair of fifth years, you know. Well, any other male and female fifth year in the same house. There is a school of thought that we would therefore understand one another better than any other male and female. Perhaps we should take advantage of that, next Hogsmeade weekend.” Exactly where his comment fades from jesting into serious is uncertain, though the hopeful sincerity is evident by the end of the sentence.

“Oh?” Noémie comments, deflecting her gaze down at the ice mice, and then back up. “I think that would be fine,” she answers and smiles to him, rather widely. Is that a hint of a blush on her cheeks, perhaps? The prefect does not move her gaze again, instead, she closes her book and sets it aside while still looking at him, as if scrutinizing to see whether he’s trying to get her in a joke, or whether his intentions are true. All signs point to true so far, so she pauses to wait to see whether he has anything else to say before she says anything further.

“Oh. Um. Good.” Joseph seems at a loss for anything else to say for a moment, just offering a small, vague smile in turn and taking a distracted bite out of his chocolate bar. Chocolate heals all, including awkward silences. He seems unable to keep eye contact all this time, meeting her eye for only a moment – though it is a rather sincere moment, all told – before looking down at his chocolate bar. “So, that’ll – that’ll be lovely, won’t it? We could have… tea together, perhaps. Do you drink tea?” He seems awkward, unsure of what to say, and tripping over his words a little bit. But he is trying.

“Of course I drink tea,” she replies with a ringing laugh, taking another quiet nibble of the mouse that she’s started. At this rate, it’ll take her eons to finish the whole box of them, but it’s the thought and sentiment that counts, after all. “We could go to that quaint little place off of the main path,” she suggests. “I hear they’ve excellent biscuits, too.” Noémie beams a bit as she says this, and her cheeks turn a bit pinker. She does look away now to tuck the book down next to her, and put the nibbled mouse into the box and tuck it down on top of the book.

Offering a small smile in response, his nervousness beginning to dissipate, Joseph nods in response, even reaching out tentatively, as though to take her hand. “Biscuits are always good, of course. It sounds like a good idea, yes. There’s always less people there, and they’re a lot quieter, so it’s easier to have a private conversation.” He pauses, there, thinking a little more about it. “And after we do that, we could go for a walk. And, when the crowds have thinned down around Honeydukes, I need more chocolate, but apart from that, I just want to spend the day with you, Noémie.” His own cheeks flush slightly pink now. See, the boy has feelings like a normal person.

Her heart seems to flutter with unfelt feelings before as he says this. Could this be what love is? Being fifteen — almost sixteen! — Noémie really can’t say, but whatever it is, she finds that she does rather like it. “I think that sounds wonderful. I look forward to it already.” Her cheeks do not turn more pink, but she does smile a bit wider at him. “So, ah…” she starts, unsure of where she should direct the conversation next. “Are you planning to go to the Quidditch match tomorrow?”

Oh. Right. Quidditch. The fleeting moment of confusion on Joseph‘s face is quickly masked, and he shrugs vaguely. “I hadn’t been planning on it – but now I will.” The last few words are added hastily, almost too quickly, and he smiles almost sheepishly. “I mean, I’ve never been a big fan of Quidditch in what you might call general terms, but,” saying ‘I’m a big fan of you’ would be too tactless, wouldn’t it? He hesitates for a moment, unsure of how to finish this point, then just shrugs again and nibbles on a piece of chocolate.

“Well, now you have to, don’t you?” she ribs, with a wink. “After all, we’re playing Slytherin, and we want everyone there to cheer.” Though tempted, Noémie resisted the urge to say, ‘Because I’ll be in it.’ “Might I have a bit of that chocolate?” she asks, reaching her hand out a bit towards him, unsure of whether he’ll be inclined to bite her, or whether he’s in the mood to share.

As tempting as it probably is to bite her, Joseph wordlessly holds out the chocolate to her (though not before he secures another mouthful for himself), considering her point. “I’ll invent a new cheer for you. ‘Noémie Ribouet is…’.” Here, he pauses, his brow wrinkling in thought. “I can’t think of anything that rhymes with either Noémie or Ribouet. Do you have a nickname that’s easier to find a rhyme for? Or can I make one up?” He offers a little mischievous grin at that, enamoured with the task of inventing a new nickname to aptly describe the prefect that is easy to rhyme.

“People have only ever called me Noémie my whole life,” she answers with a bit of a grin, hugging her knees. “I prefer it, to tell the truth.” She pauses a moment as she glances down at the floor for no really apparent reason. “I’m sure you could come up with something that rhymes with Noémie, though. The ‘ee’ sound is very rhymable.” She chuckles as she says this, just looking him over, seeming to see Joseph Wexler in an entirely new light now.

“Noémie..” Joseph repeats the name to himself thoughtfully. “Noémie, Noémie, she’s a weepinng willow tree, but only metaphorically, that’s my Noémie… does that have a good ring to it, do you think?” He smiles as he offers this, an air of nervousness still remaining around him, though it does slowly begin to dissipate as he talks, and particularly as he nibbles at his chocolate. “I think it sounds lovely.”

“I think it sounds wonderful, Joseph!” Noémie tells him, her face beaming as she does so. “So you’ll come, and you’re going to cheer that?” she asks, a blush creeping up again and a smile seemingly stuck to her face. “It’ll create quite the scene if you do.” ‘And I would love that,’ she adds in her mind, and though her mouth doesn’t say it, her face does as she bites her lip a bit. Is this timidity, in Noémie? How peculiar!

Beaming with pride at her words, Joseph nibbles at the chocolate again thoughtfully. “Oh, perhaps, perhaps.” Feigning a pensive expression, he takes a moment to add anything else, then reaches out for her hand. “Or perhaps I’ll expand on it, and turn it into a sonnet and slip it between the pages of one of your class texts so you’ll open it in class and everyone will know the kind of person you have to put up with.” His expression is completely deadpan – too deadpan to actually be serious – though there is a flicker of sincerity in his eyes. Whether this is promising to embarass her in public, or write her a sonnet is questionable.

“I don’t see what’s wrong with that,” Noémie responds happily, perhaps a bit of mischeif in her voice. “Just so long as you don’t mind when I do the same with reminders to get your homework done.” Yes, Noémie has known this boy for quite a while, and clearly has developed some natural defenses to his humour. “Besides, if you did that, then I’d have to show it around to everyone in the middle of class.”

“Can you at least phrase the reminders poetically?” Joseph asks, leaning back in his chair and biting into his chocolate bar. “Even just ‘roses are red, violets are blue, do your DADA homework, or Professor Rathe will have you in detention until next month’.” A pause, and he clarifies, “It’s blank verse poetry, okay?” Another pause and, although he looks on the brink of saying something else, he eventually just shakes his head slightly as if to dislodge a thought, and shrugs lightly.

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” she tells him with a nod and another resounding laugh. There is a rather extended moment of silence as she looks at him and then leans over on the armrest for the couch. She begins to pick at a bit of fabric on the couch, and then looks up at Joseph, suddenly feeling rather shy, which is not something Noémie ever actually demonstrates, so she speaks a bit more forcefully to hide this feeling. “So, does this mean we’re…?” She leaves the question open, but she does look up him as a punctuation to the question, tucking her legs under neath her instead of in front of her.

This question makes Joseph‘s throat dry – or so it seems, at least, from the stunned sort of expression he affects, and the fact that he clears his throat at least twice before he can properly formulate a response. When he does, he reaches out to take her hand (and his palms are all sweaty, yeah, that’s going to make a really good impression), and shrugs his shoulders vaguely. “Well… I thought…” Oh, yes, very suave. After a moment, he smiles sort of sheepishly and offers, “If you want to be, Weeping Willow Tree Noémie.”

Pausing a moment to look at their linked hands, Noémie then looks back up at him and gives a rather crooked smile. “Sure, that sounds nice,” she tells him, with a bit of a grin. This could very well be one of the most akward moments that the girl has yet in her young life experienced, and her mind seems to resound with, ‘Now what?’ She doesn’t say this, though, and instead gives his hand a squeeze. “So, this Saturday at the Young Lawn Cafe?” She confirms, for lack of what else to say at the moment. After all, how does one segue from something like that?

Squeezing her hand once in turn, Joseph smiles and shrugs his shoulders again lightly. “I will meet you there, and we’ll have a lovely time of it together, won’t we?” This said, he hesitates, as if he’s not sure that he should say or do anything else. After a moment of awkward silence, he offers, quietly, “I ought to do some homework.” This speaks volumes about his feelings, surely, as he rarely leaves any situation to do his homework; perhaps the awkward silence is too much for him, or perhaps he just wants to impress her. Either way, he stands to leave, presumably to find some homework that needs his attention.

Noémie nods and smiles to him. “That sounds like a good idea, Joseph,” she tells him, without adding on that she, for her part, is nearly done with all of her homework. “So, I’ll see you later, then,” she tells him and with draws her hand, bringing the other down to grab up her novel again and discreetly bring it to her lap. She does at least wait until he has exited the room before opening it up to the page where she had been reading before.

“The room was chilled by the silence. Harriet had been honest with all of them, but the honesty had cut through the ties of their friendships, and even the ties of blood. The first threads had unraveled, and… and…” Saphia rips a page out of the dragonhide notebook she carries, and grumbles, “And why can’t I make this /work/?” Crinkling the paper up into a ball, she sets it delicately onto the ground next to her, as she sits curled up next to the side of the path, smelling the scent of the flowers. She’d hoped it would inspire her writing, but it hadn’t. Plus, it really was cold. She curls up in her winter robes, shivering slightly despite her Ravenclaw quidditch scarf being wrapped tightly around her neck.

“Maybe there are some more out here?” Noémie comments to Joseph, her long robes rather bulkier than usual, as if she’s got several extra layers of clothing on beneath them. Her hair is loose and rather voluminous today, though the ends of her hair are all tucked into her white scarf, which is wound around her neck for warmth. Matching gloves are on her hands and she holds a self-inking quill and some parchment as she walks slowly along the path. “Ugh, isn’t it spring yet?” she comments as they make their way down the eastern path. “Oh, hello, Saphia. I didn’t expect to see you out here in the cold.” Her tone is congenial as she pauses, waiting for Joseph to catch up to her.

For his part, Joseph is moving along much more slowly behind Noémie, working his way through a particularly large slab of chocolate as he walks. If he actually expects to eat it all in one sitting without making himself ill, he is truly the sweets master. After a moment, he offers, in a tone almost comically somber, “It will never be spring, Noémie, my sweet. I read in the paper just this morning that Dark Wizards from deepest Africa have stolen our spring and are selling it on the black market.” His expression is completely deadpan as he delivers this line, though he does spoil it a little by taking another bite of chocolate.

Trudging across the grass plodding along with heavy steps as always while watching her feet Rawnie makes his way onto the path. With all her whinterwear on she looks a bit like a fat tick about to pop… a fat tick with red and green mittens and a bright yellow puffball hat… Only just catching the end of Joseph statement as she passes Rawnie looks up a bit surprised and squeaks out a bit excitedly. “Oh! Do yer think he will come ter ‘ogwarts do yer? I’d like ter see me a Dark Wizard once.” Now why a season stealing Dark Wizard would come to Hogwarts isn’t exactly clear but Rawnie seems to beleive it could logically happen.

Saphia Bona blushes as she spots the prefect and a friend of hers walking toward her, and attempts (futiley) to hide the small pile of rejected chapters on the ground next to her. “Um…” she whispers, her tone frenetic and worried, “Um…” She looks left and right. “Um, hello, Ms. Ribouet… I’m, um… I’m planning for the next match! Strategies and …. statistics… and… such. Um. Yes!” She lies terribly.

Noémie makes no response, but she does turn and glance at Joseph, before rolling her eyes and looking away again. “Oh? Can I see?” Noémie asks, glancing over towards Saphia’s work. Though it does not look much like statistics of any sort, Noémie doesn’t say anything about it, and instead smiles at the second year. “After all, we’ve got that game coming up in a couple of days, and I should think it terribly useful to be able to brief everyone one last time if there’s something we didn’t know before.” Glancing back to Joseph, Noémie finally decides to respond. “You oughtn’t say such things around younger students, even in jest.”

Turning on Rawnie, nodding his head somberly even as he takes another small bite of his chocolate and chews it thoughtfully, when Joseph replies, his tone and expression are as emotionless as he can possibly muster. “Yes. He will come to Hogwarts, young one.” He glances over at Noémie, his expression fleetingly pleading, as if this will be the one chance he gets to try and test the gullibility of this particular student, before he turns back to Rawnie seriously. “Now that he has stolen spring, he is intent on pilfering all the left shoes he can get, and where better to look for shoes than a wizarding boarding school?” A smirk flickers on the edge of his lips, giving away the joke (assuming that his jest wasn’t evident enough from the sheer outrageousness of his claim), though he covers it up quickly with – what else? – another bite of the chocolate, and quickly turns to face Noémie again. “It’s just a bit of fun.” He explains quietly. “She didn’t really believe me.”

“Blimey!” Comes loud response from the little gryffindor girl. Rawnie steps in closer to Joseph holding her mittens to the front of her thick winter robes and her wide greeny eyes stare at the older studen from behind a ghastly green checkered blue and orange scarf. “Do tha’ Professors know ‘ees comin? And are they gunner be able ter stop ‘im?” Obviously Rawnie will beleive anything that an older person tells her. After all she did stay up all christmass eve trying to capture the elusive St. Nick. “Is’ee comin soon? Im gunner hide all the left shoes I can find!”

“No!” Saphia blinks, looking to Noémie. “I’m… um, I’m not finished, and… and…” Sighing, she finally opens up her notebook. “I really will come up with some strategies for practice, I promise. It’s just that I can’t get this story right, it keeps becoming too sweet in the closing chapters.” And, finally stressed to the point of snapping, she whispers earnestly to Rawnie, “You know, I’ve heard that since the season’s going to be stolen, all the assignment dates have been moved up to before the season would begin. You’d better go run now and get started on them.” Her face adopts a flat, deadpan expression as she says it.

Noémie just grins a bit down at Saphia and glances down again. “Well, a little sweetness never hurt anyone. Perhaps you oculd finish writing it, and then rewrite it to work the way you want it to.” This suggestion is hardly out of her mouth before she turns to completely look at Joseph, and then to Rawnie. The girl seems enthralled with the idea, but Noémie cannot help putting her hands on her hips, her parchment and quill still in hand. “Honestly, Joseph,” is all she says, though she looks at him half-bemused.

“Very soon.” Joseph tells the young girl as he whirls around to face Rawnie again, his expression a carefully maintained blank. “And yes, this, this girl is correct. The little Ravenclaw one.” Not even commenting on the fact that he can’t recall the girl’s name, if he even knows it, he turns back to face Noémie, affecting a charming smile. At least, he probably thinks it’s a charming smile. “I’m sorry, Noémie.” He replies, looking at least marginally sincere rather than completely deadpan. “Would you like some chocolate?” He offers forth the bar earnestly, as if this will amend any problems that they may have. No, really. It will. It’s chocolate.

Looking between the three older students with an astonished expression on her face Rawnie brings her mittens up to her nose to rub the coldness out. “Who care’s about asignments! A dark wizard is comin ter ‘ogwarts!” She squeals excitedly and seems to litterally bounce rappidly on the spot. “Theres gunner be mayhem in tha halls and wotnot! The Professors are gunner care bout no silly essays an’all that.”

Saphia Bona doesn’t miss a beat, and continues to say earnestly, “Actually, they’re going to care more than ever. Think about what happens if the Dark Wizard /wins/. There won’t be a Hogwarts any more. This is the last chance for Hogwarts to get out qualified students, and why, with Dark Wizards on the prowl, they’re going to be more important than ever! I’m working on mine right now, don’t you see?” She points to her notebook and nods seriously with a quick glance to Noémie.

“Oh, honestly,” Noémie comments, shaking her head. “There are no Dark Wizards who are stealing spring,” she tells the first year, her face looking more stern. “Nothing’s changing, it’s just not time for spring yet, that’s all.” She crosses her arms, and gives a stern look to Joseph, before turning a similar glance to Saphia. “I could let Professor Morgan know that you’re both picking on younger students.” This last threat seems halfhearted, and indeed it is, because Noémie herself doesn’t mind a bit of ribbing on small scales herself, after all.

“I’m not picking on anyone.” Joseph protests, though he does take another bite out of his chocolate and turns away from Noémie huffily, as if he had taken some grave offense to her words. “And you can’t boss me around, just because you’re a whole day older than me.” Though she might be able to do so as she is a prefect. Might. And another bite out of the chocolate, because the poor boy’s sweet tooth is not yet satiated. Yes, he is plowing through it. He won’t have any appetite for his next meal, at this rate.

Saphia Bona bursts out laughing as soon as Noémie speaks, and was apparently holding in a serious case of the giggles the whole time. “I… I’m so sorry, Ms. Ribouet… and to you too, I’m so… ” Giggle. “Sorry.” Curling herself up further, she continues to get little bursts of giggling.

The wide eye’d expression turns into an angry glare at Joseph and Saphia. “You think yer funny do yer? Liein ter a helpless lil’ girl?” Did Rawnie just willingly call herself a helpless little girl? “Well I didn’t beleive a word-o-it! I were just um…. tryin ter….” Rawnie furrows her brow a little when she can’t think of a good exscuse and goes trounceing back to the castle angrily without saying anything else.

The giggles fade out, and a more concerned look flits over Saphia‘s face as Rawnie storms off. “O… oh. Oh no.” She quickly begins to pack up, but it’s too late. Rawnie’s already far too far away. “Oh no.” She whispers, looking terribly concerned.

“Helpless?” Noémie comments, stifling her own laugh, and shakes her head. “You two, you’re awful.” She tells her housemates and looks about. “Did you actually find anything for the project anyway, Joseph, or were you too busy telling a first year that Dark Wizards are going to eat her?” The fifth year raises an eyebrow at him, then flashes a grin at the giggling Saphia before her face darkens with seriousness. “She’ll get over it, I’m sure. Don’t fret on it. Just don’t keep on it next time, right?”

Putting his hands on his hips in protest and turning to face Noémie again, Joseph looks rather dramatically horrified at the suggestion. “I didn’t say the Dark Wizards were going to /eat/ her, Noémie. Just that they were going to steal her left shoes. Besides, it was her silly fault for believing me. If people weren’t so gullible, I wouldn’t say such things.” Then, he shrugs vaguely, biting into his chocolate bar. This boy really must live off sugar and the life force in the air. “I didn’t find anything relevant to the project, though, no.”

Saphia Bona sighs, and wanders back. “Jo…Joseph? When you go on your next trip to Hogsmeade, would you buy some Honeydukes chocolate for me? I’ll need some. I think I’m low on self-raising flour, too. I don’t know if you can get that in Hogsmeade, though.” She seems completely despondant now. “An… and can I have some of that chocolate now, Joseph?”

“Oh, are you going to make something for her?” Noémie comments to Saphia with a chuckle, then turns and rolls her eyes at Joseph again. “Honestly, how are you to expect to do well on your OWLs if you don’t do /anything/?” She glances at the chocolate only momentarily and then shakes herself, as if trying to resist the urge to ask for some. “We’re going to have to finish this project sooner or later. And I /would/ prefer sooner.” She turns back to Saphia. “What are you going to make?”

For a fleeting moment, Joseph‘s expression indicates that he would love nothing more than to invent some witty comeback, denying the girl chocolate for some carefully concocted and curiously deadpan reason – however, he bites the statement back, glancing sidelong at Noémie, then holding the chocolate out to the small girl. “Go for your life. I have plenty. Though, yes, I do need to stock up again, so I suppose I can get a little extra for you.” A pause, and he shrugs at Noémie. “I’ll seduce the professors with my stunning good looks. More than one charmer in my family has gotten straight ‘O’s that way.” Yes, he couldn’t hold back some sort of totally deadpan comeback for too long, with this one being particularly tasteless.

“Pignolata, if I can pull it off,” Saphia whispers, quietly. “But I’m not very good at it. My grandfather is much better.” She chews a small piece of the chocolate and then whispers, “Or if it doesn’t work, chocolate cake. Maybe with strawberries. Do you think she’d like that?” Her voice, quiet as it is, has a slight, far-off quality as she loses herself in thought.

“That’s good to know, Joseph,” Noémie retorts quickly. “I’ll be sure to bring it up to Missus Wexler when I see her next in the Hospital wing.” A grin spreads across Noémie‘s face as she says this, then pulls a bit of crumpled and folded parchment out of her pocket, putting her quill tip in it and then tucking them back into her pocket. The parchment is rolled up and tucked into the other rather deep pocket and she crosses her arms across her chest again. Hearing Saphia’s voice again barely waft through the air, Noémie smiles to the girl. “I’m sure she’ll love having that. I don’t know many little girls who wouldn’t.” At this, Noémie winks.

Smiling that same ‘I think I’m being charming’ smile in turn, Joseph breathes on his knuckles and polishes them on the front of his robes dramatically. “I’ll do fine, Noémie. Piece of cake. I could do with a piece of cake about now, on that note.” Easily distracted as always, the lad seems on the brink of wandering off and finding himself some cake, though he remains there, if only because the prefect might beat him if he wanders off now.

Saphia Bona blinking out of her reverie, Saphia smiles to Noémi, “Miss Ribouet, I promise I’ll still come up with those strategies. I think we need to make good use of our beaters…” She trails off, though, and then returns her thoughts to pastries.

“Well, let me know if you come up with something before the game, and I’ll make sure to relay it to the team,” Noémie comments and smiles, patting Saphia on the shoulder. “Hopefully we’ve put in enough practice to trump Slytherin this weekend.” She chuckles a bit to herself and looks at Joseph pointedly. “So, since we’re not finding anything out here, can we at /least/ get started on our charts for this project?” Knowing full well that she’s going to end up doing most of the work, Noémie still suggests this. At least she’s trying.

Shrugging his shoulders again vaguely, Joseph doesn’t say anything for a moment, though he does bend over and pick a small flower, which he hands to Noémie, along with the grave remark, “Merry Christmas, Noémie.” He pauses briefly, keeping this same solemn expression, though the mood is broken as he turns to face Saphia, brow wrinkled in confusion. “Did you ever return that bar of chocolate to me? I don’t think you did.” Well, it was lovely while it lasted.

Saphia Bona blinks, and breaks off a tiny little piece for herself while handing back the rest to Joseph and smiling, “Thank you so much, Mr… um… Mr Sir.” She blushes and bites her tongue mentally, before whispering, “I’m going to try and finish this story. Thank you, Miss Ribouet. Thank you, Mr.” She smiles, and begins picking up her paper.

“Just come in before it gets too chilly. Last thing we need is you getting frostbite and getting laid up for a few days in the Hospital Wing.” Noémie smiles to her and raises an eyebrow as Joseph hands her a flower. “Cute,” she tells him. “I’ll see you later,” she tells Saphia and without much else to say, she turns and strides back towards the school, her robes trailing behind her a bit, clearly being a bit long for her, though it doesn’t slow her down any.

Sighing heavily, if rather over-dramatically, Joseph shakes his head at Saphia. “I’d much rather be ‘Jo-Joseph‘ than ‘Mister Sir’.” He informs her, his expression turning carefully blank again, though a twinkle remains in his eye as he accepts the chocolate back. “Though, if you do feel the irrepressible need to refer to me by some title, ‘Lord and Master Joseph Wexler‘ is acceptable.” Glancing at Noémie as she departs, he offers one last smile to the smaller girl, then follows her hastily.

Lying face-up on his bed, Seker‘s arm dangles limply off the edge of the mattress. “Aughhhhh,” sighs Seker, bored and exasperated. “Satinkaaa,” he calls, not knowing whether or not his sister is nearby. Things had been so slow for poor Seker lately. Even with a wand, there was nothing he could do with it yet. Cursing the under-aged wizard laws, Seker sighs once more and waits for Satinka to answer.

“What?” Satinka answers from her desk, swirling her wand around in the air. Though the girl has been doing the same motion for quite a while, she seems to be rather enthralled incontinuing to do it. Nothing drastic has yet happened from her swishing and flicking, but ah, the night is young, and Satinka has not yet begun to try any real magic with it.

“Never mind,” replies Seker, smirking. Annoying Satinka was about the only entertainment he could think of right now. “Satinka?” he asks again, though not as loudly this time. It takes a lot of effort on Seker‘s part not to start snickering. He loved this game.

“Whaaat?” she answers. One would think that, by now, Satinka would be used to this game. As it stands, however, she clearly is not, though she does not yet glance at her brother. Instead, she turns around and begins practicing different wand motions that she has seen, twirl, swish, point… twirl, swish, point… Over and over again, as if there were a robot controlling her motions. Just how long Satinka can keep up this practice without being able to do anything with it is anyone’s guess.

Rolling his eyes, Seker replies with the foreseeable, “Never mind,” before rolling over onto his stomach, a new idea boring him of his own game already. “Hey Satinka,” he asks, in earnest this time. “You know, age is just a number. And now, we have wands, too. So, what’s the real difference between us and Hogwarts students?” A flicker of excitement is present in Seker‘s eyes as he pulls his own wand, still it its box for safekeeping, out from under his bed.

“Mum waited until October to have us, is the difference,” She answers, pausing in her motions, then looks over to him, sitting down on her own very pink, very frilly bed facing him, her wand still in hand. “What are you thinking of? I know that tone…” Satinka‘s eyes seem to reveal that she does know what her brother is getting at however, and she can’t stop the little smirk that begins to form on her lips.

“Yes, yes, we wish we were born premature,” Seker says, sitting up and gesticulating with one hand, as if that would get his sister away from that frame of thought. “But no, like I said, age is only a number. Now?” he pauses for effect, raising one eyebrow, “the only difference between us and them is their uniforms. Surely not everyone knows we’re mum’s kids, but people know our faces. If we had uniforms, we could… we could sneak into classes and sit at the Slytherin table!” Truly, the chance of a Slytherin student not knowing the origins of their maternity is quite unlikely, but Seker can’t be bothered with facts like that right now.

“Oh, that’s brilliant!” the girl exclaims and practically bounds up off of her bed. “Let’s see, here,” she briefly disappears into the large closet, and then returns with two rather bulky black bundles. “Here, these are the robes that Uncle Dristan gave to us. I bet they’d make great uniforms. We could just put snakes on them!” She pauses. “What about the teachers, though?” Satinka seems to have realized one rather intense snag. “They’ll recognize us, for sure.”

“I know,” Seker replies to Satinka’s admission of his shear brilliance. Standing up to wait behind, outside the closet, the boy nods as his sister pulls out the robes. Face falling as Satinka mentions the teachers, he bites his lip for a second as he mulls this over. “It’d be kind of tough,” he admits. “Maybe we could try to avoid eye contact or something. Or,” he says, mind racing, “maybe we could learn a spell to change our hair colour. I bet we’d look different enough that way. It might even be better. They’ll recognize us, but not really, so they won’t think they have a stranger in class or something.” Seker is likely not making much sense, but he hasn’t the time to explain his reasoning further. Grabbing one of the robes from Satinka, he holds it up to his chest; the bottom hem of the thing is quite long and would surely drag on the floor when worn. “We’ll need scissors first,” he notes.

Satinka drops her own onto her bed and crosses her arms over, looking around the room. “Spellbooks…” she comments quietly, and then drops to her knees, reaching far under her bed and pulling out a long box. “Aha, look! The spellbooks that Uncle Blair let us look at when we were little!” She says this as if they were quite grown up now. “I’m sure there’s something in there to do that. Let’s see.” Pulling out a book on charms and plopping onto her bed, she begins to leaf through the book’s pages slowly. “Heyyyy…. what about this…” She says nothing more as she more closely examines the book.

“What about what?” Seker asks, tossing his robe onto his own bed and rushing over to his sister’s, from behind, leaping onto her bed and landing with a force that shakes the whole thing. Smirking, he looks over her shoulder, trying to get a look at what she’s suggesting. “Move your head, I can’t even see what you’re talking about. All your hair is in the way,” he says, pushing her shoulder to the side, though half-heartedly.

“Move your own head,” Satinka retorts and pushes her elbow back at her brother to get him to move away. “I’m talking about an invisibility spell! What if we could make cloaks like what mum has? Then nobody would even see us!” Satinka looks over her shoulder, throwing her hair around as she does so and grins at Seker. “Then we could learn everything that we should be learning, and be able to just skip the first year completely!”

Seker Rathe‘s mind nearly explodes at the possibilities. “We’ll be advanced to second year like we should be, and all will be right in nature again,” Seker says dramatically. Surely, it was against all that was good and right in the world that the famous Rathe twins were effectively held back a year. “Yes, that’s a good idea,” he confirms as he backs up a little. “Well? Can you tell how hard of a spell it is?” Without waiting for an answer, Seker slides off the bed and goes rooting around in his dresser drawer, searching for a pair of scissors. This plan was so going to work.

“Great!” Satinka almost yells, getting up off of her bed and carefully putting the book down. “It might be,” she answers. “Perhaps we should practice it a bit on something small, just to make sure whether we can do it yet or not.” She pauses. “If it’s too hard, well…” She pauses. “We’ll just have to keep trying, that’s all.” Not that Satinka thinks it’d be too hard, anyway. “Should we hack these up and put them together somehow, to make a big cloak for both of us, or perhaps we should just make one for each of us.” She pauses and scrutinizes the robe on her bed closely. “We might have to add something to make them fit all the way over, or else just walk hunched over.”

“Actually…” Seker says, stopping dead in his search for scissors. “Maybe we shouldn’t hack them up at all. We basically need them to be too big, don’t we? If people see only shoes walking around… well… it will be quite obvious what’s happening.” Slamming the drawer shut, Seker leaps onto his stomach and vanishes under his bed for a moment, coming out a few moments later with a small pouch. “Marbles,” he discloses as he dumps the bag out on the floor, snatching one in his hand. His other hand reaches across the floor for his wand box, which is discarded carelessly once the wand itself has been withdrawn. “What’s the incantation?” he asks, ready for action.

“Huh.” Satinka says, her wand brandished. “It doesn’t give one. What kind of stupid spellbook is this, not giving an incantation?” She crosses her arms across each other and looks to Seker, with an annoyed expression on her face. “How rude.” Another shake of the head and she sits down on the bed, holding up her robes. “I wonder if the librarian would let us take out books if we wore these down there, do you think? Then we could check out a book that would give us the correct incantation.”

Wilting, Seker drops the marble and sighs. “How can there be no incantation? You’re probably just missing it,” Seker says, extremely disappointed but still holding out some hope. Sliding across the floor, Seker grabs the book and, after searching for nearly half a minute, he mutters, “right, this one,” pointing to the page. This action is immediately followed by his snapping shut of the book and snarling of, “Stupid spellbook.” Sighing, Seker lies on his bed again, looking at the ceiling. “Well, we’ll figure it out eventually. We know it can be done, it’s not like we’re inventing something new,” the boy says matter-of-factly. “Yeah, we’ll go up to the library tomorrow. I still don’t want to cut up those robes yet, though. I mean, who knows, we might just find the answer. I’ll just… I’ll borrow Rafe’s uniform or something.” Never mind it never being able to fit little Seker. “We’ll figure it out,” he repeats, his mind clearly elsewhere.

“And whose am I to borrow? You’re not going alone to the library!” Satinka interjects, sitting up and pointing at him with her wand. “We’ll just wear these black ones. They look enough like school robes anyway.” She nods decisively and then stands up to gingerly ease her wand back into its box, looking at it a bit longingly, as if the wait to be able to use it will be too much for her. “I’m hungry. Let’s go to the kitchens for a snack.”

“You could wear Morgana’s,” Seker says, completely ignoring Satinka’s likening their bulky robes to Hogwarts attire as he drags himself into a standing position. “That’s Rafe’s sister, Morgana,” explains the boy as he carefully puts his wand into his back pocket. “I haven’t ever talked to her, but we’ll have lots of time to get to know her once we’re Slytherins, too,” Seker says as Satinka exits the room. Following after her, Seker shuts the door to their room, still thinking of ways to find the elusive invisibility spell.

are here.

Stepping out onto the Quidditch pitch, Noémie breathes in deeply. She has her broom in hand, though she looks about as distracted as one could get. She crosses her arms across her chest as she surveys the cold, hard pitch before her. While it is not covered in snow, it is still quite cold out, and the ground has little give as she strides out to the center of it, tugging her scarf up higher around her neck. There is oddly nothing set up on the pitch today, no obstacle courses, nor any extra equipment brought out to the course. Just the quaffle, two restrained bludgers and bats, and Noémie with her broom.

Van comes trotting onto the pitch, having also gathered her broom, and crosses her arms over each other. “It’s too bloody cold,” she complains, though one might wonder why she only seems to have meager amounts of warm clothing on. The seventh year yawns a bit, too, as if to make a point, then looks to her captain. “Can we make this quick?” she asks, jumping from foot to foot while she tries to warm herself up a bit. No others have yet made it to the pitch, and she almost looks as if she hopes they won’t, and the practice on this cold day would be cancelled.

Clavicle Gravely is coming back to the pitch, he’d been out earlier. So his face is already red from cold and his scarf lined with frost. But he grins as he adjusts his gloves. “I’d gotten a warming charm on them if anyone else wants one. It’s on my socks too.”

“Good day for a practice, don’t you think?” Tegan comments as she strides up and cuffs Van on the shoulder. The girl grins widely at the older teammate, and it stands to wonder why she is suddenly in such a good mood. “What’s in store today? No obstacle course, I see. Pity, too, because I’d have liked to whack a chaser good with it.” Tegan grins all around and is clearly trying to rile someone up, but the effect just comes off as her being giddy, and she shrugs again, a grin still plastered to her face.

Just behind, on Tegan’s heels, Bailey‘s hair seems to be a mess, and his face is quite red, and is that sweat? Despite the cold, it looks as if Bailey has been up to something before making his way out to the pitch for practice. He doesn’t say anything, though there is a smug grin on his face. Perhaps he’s got a sweetheart now, or perhaps the boy has just managed to beat someone at a particularly rousing game of Wizard’s Chess. Either way, he looks as if he’s raring to get into the air immediately and get some practicing done.

“Well, I was thinking that the chasers, you all could go over and work on your passing a bit. Not that you need it, per se, but I want to see how you manage to do some long passes. So, here, take the quaffle, and try to change it up some, show variety. Don’t worry about dropping it; that’s what practice is for, after al.” A pause as Noémie looks at the other three teammates before her. “You beaters, I think I’ll want you to practice hitting quaffles towards the hoops there, and Van, of course, you’ll try to block those.” She nods, and then sets her broom down, trotting to the shed. It is a moment or six before she’s back out with two extra quaffles in hand, which she tosses one to each of the beaters. She takes the one from the box and throws it to one of the chasers, before ascending. “I’ll be flying about the pitch, and I’ll stop if I think I need to let you know something, but I’ve got to work on my dives.” With that, she picks up her broom and mounts it, beginning to fly around the pitch at a steady pace to start.

With a bit of a sigh, Van realizes that she isn’t going to get off quite as easy as she would’ve liked this time around, and mounts her broom, flying slowly up to the hoops. Hey, Noémie isn’t going to watch them, Van is certainly going to take her time! The keeper gets herself situated in front of the hoops, while glancing out to see if the beaters have made it up yet. She has a moment longer while they situate themselves and she begins to set her hair to rights, which is, by some unknown reason, still hanging freely and not covered by any hat or even earmuffs. Clearly Van was hoping Noémie would cut things extra short today.

Clavicle Gravely snags the quaffle and grins. He an Bailey had been practicing this after all. “You betcha Nomes.” he grins as he takes to the air with the sandsweeper, only wobbling a touch when he pulls his goggles on well. As he circles to make a long pass, “Hey Bailey! you got any broom wax? I’m out.” he zips around a touch as he uses the broom to spin a touch, this gives his throw a lot more force and distance.

Tegan nods and oofs a bit as she is thrown the quaffle. The fourth year tucks it under her arm and makes her way over to grab the smaller of the bats that’s left out for use. Readying her broom, she hops on it and starts to ascend. “This is a bit odd,” she comments, trying to get used to having to handle the quaffle, bat and broom. Soon she manages to get herself put to rights, and tosses up the quaffle, rearing her arm back to give it a mighty whack. The quaffle starts going off in the right direction, but being as it is a much different sort of ball than what she’s used to hitting, it falls short of her target, missing Van by at least ten feet. Accio quaffle is heard! and the quaffle comes flying back towards her as she tucks her wand back away.

Bailey shakes his head. “No, I’ve left all of my broom kit in my dorms. I’ll bring it next time if you need me to, though,” he offers with a shrug, pulling a hat out of his pocket and pulling it down over his ears to try to keep his head warm. “It’s SO cold!” he calls to his fellow chasers as he makes his way wide, to catch the quaffle. Looking about as Noémie passes, He pauses a moment, then chucks the ball out towards David, who in turn tosses the ball back towards Clavicle. “Let’s try flying in a circle while we do this,” he calls, adding demonstration by waving his arm in a circle. “After all, we’ll be flying when we make these passes in the game.”

Flying full circle around the pitch, Noémie seems to have gotten her groove back and glances around as everyone gets set up and gets going on their drills. No comments are made at the time, instead, she flies up high above the pitch, as if it were a match, and looks around, then begins to dive hard towards the ground. Flying, flying, flying, and soon she is down to the ground, pulling up hard from this difficult maneuver, and looking as if she isn’t entirely comfortable with the situation that she has just previously put herself in. Instead of reflecting on it further, however, she flies up high towards the bleachers, and then higher, and higher still, until she is far above her team, and perhaps ready to try this again.

“Augh!” Van calls, diving to block a bludger that Riley has hit to her. She misses catching it, and the quaffle flies past her. It does not go through the hoop however, and instead she flies down quickly to actch it before giving it a return throw to Riley, as far as she can manage. The keeper puts her arms up and rolls her shoulders in anticipation for Tegan’s next shot and manages to dive and block it this time, catching it in her hands and throwing it, too, towards the beater in question. “C’mon, change it up!” she calls. “Don’t keep going for that same hoop!” For one who was largely disinterested in the practice to begin with, she is goading the beaters a bit harshly.

Clavicle says, “Warm yourself by thinking about Slytherin not getting a score on us.” he laughs. He catches the quaffle. “I was also hoping we could come up with a few hand signals to use with each other. So the opposing team doesn’t hear us yell what we’re up to to each other. Y’know? Like a circle is Come round on my left, a counterclockwise circle is come around on my right, and lets make like 4 positions to have one two three or four fingers up to let the person with the quaffle knows where we can be if they need to pass, or they can tell us where to go to get a pass. It’s just an idea I was mulling over.” He hurls the quaffle to David who sends it back towards Bailey. “Bloody bones .. She’s pouring it on!” he states gasping at Noémie’s move. ”

Tegan laughs a bit at Van as she says this, flying down to retrieve the quaffle which hasn’t quite made it the full distance back. Waiting as Riley makes another shot, the beate tosses the quaffle in the air again and gives it a hard whack, not exactly paying attention to where the quaffle is directed, and she manages to send it flying rather upwardly of the hoops. “Oops,” she calls to both Riley and Van and shrugs. “I’ll go it again.” She summons the quaffle back to her once more and then gives it another whack, this time in a more straight line towards the hoops, a different one this time than her previous shot had gone.

“I dunno, I’d never remember that kind of stuff. It could slow us down,” Bailey responds and catches the quaffle more with his stomach than his hands. “I’m moving out a little,” he tells his fellow chaser and widens his berth from them a good deal, though staying close enough to be able to shoot the quaffle to his teammates. “She’s just practicing her dives,” he comments in response to Clavicle’s gaping. “She said that was what she was going to do after all. Anyway, that’s why I’m not a seeker. I’m awful at dives and the like.” Back on topic now, Bailey. He gives the Quaffle a hard throw towards Clavicle this time, using the full force of his arm, now that he’s so much farther from his teammate in the circling.

Noémie has no comments for any of her chasers, even as she comes zooming down through the middle of their circular formation. This could perhaps be because she hasn’t heard any of their comments, or it could conversely be because she simply has nothing to add to their conversations. This dive is considerably less steep, though it is from a much greater height as she begins to fly down more and more quickly, stopping with many feet to spare, and looking much more pleased at this dive, in general. The captain takes a deep breath before doing another two laps around the entire length of the pitch, chuckling as Van mutters some extremeties at just the moment when Noémie is passing behind her.

“And curse you, too, for flying by right then!” Van adds, sucking on her finger some more, having clearly been injured a bit just a moment before. “You don’t have to hit it so bloody hard, Riley,” she calls to her teammate, cradling her hand perhaps a bit dramatically as she waits for the pain to subside. She does continue to cradle the hand still after the pain has stopped completely, but only for show. She then dives, as Tegan bats another quaffle at her, and manages to block this one, too. She then tosses the quaffle back towards Tegan and prepares herself for another of Riley’s shots, which flies right past her and through the hoop with a loud clang. Van doesn’t seem pleased by this and doesn’t make any movement to retrieve it for the younger beater, instead, deciding that he might just gather his quaffle on his own.

Clavicle Gravely nods to Bailey. “Yeah, I hope her hand doesn’t slip, that’s a lot of speed to work off.” he grins, admittedly impressed with her pull outs. “Well Think it over about the handsignals Bails, they could give us a minor advantage against a team.” He grins. “The army uses it. As do muggles in the America’s in games.” He manages a catch but has to drop off the broom by one hand, he flings it back to Bailey and scrabbles back up on the broom to get control as the sandsweeper starts a slow spiral down as he makes the maneuver. He manages a rise again before he’s close to the ground and grins over to the other chasers. “Bother! but I got it.” Clavicle is doing better now that he’s not as worried about bludgers. He pulls back into his place in the circle.

Tegan holds onto the quaffle for a moment, flying to a different angle, both a bit higher, and a bit more to the side, and then readies herself again to make her shot. Up goes the quaffle, and then just as it’s in the right position, she gives it a good hard whack, and it zooms towards the keeper. This time, however, she’s gifted with a loud CLANG! as the quaffle goes through the hoop. Recalling Van’s previous actions towards Riley, Tegan slides her own wand out again and calls the quaffle to her, saving time and energy for the older chaser. Tegan glances over her shoulder, and while the chasers might not seem all that interesting, her gaze seems to linger for just a moment longer than it ought.

“Well, I just think we’re moving too fast in the game to even see the motions,” the chaser comments with a shrug. “Stop goofing around, are you trying to get us into trouble?” Bailey calls while shaking his head. “Don’t let Noémie see you doing that! I don’t want laps today! ‘Specially not the running kind!” He laughs a bit as he says this, obviously recalling that mid-fall practice in the pouring rain, when he had not been more grateful to get off the pitch, for once. “Over here,” he calls with a clap of his hands. “Y’can advise Noémie that you were thinking it might work to use hand signals, though, see what she thinks. I just know I’d forget ‘em all, if we even managed to see them on the pitch.” He shrugs again.

“Do get back onto your broom, Clavicle,” Noémie calls with a shake of her head while she hovers far above the pitch. “It’s better not to have any causalties during practice, after all. We want to have all healthy teammates so we can slaughter Slytherin this weekend!” She laughs as she says this and shrugs a bit, turning her attention back away from the group of chasers to return to her own task of dives. Just a few more, she decides, and she’ll call it good. She soon begins to descend with more speed than any of her previous dives, and is on her way towards the ground quickly before pulling out of it to fly steeply up into the air again. While this dive had had the most speed, it certainly hadn’t been the most impressive that she had managed.

Grumbling, Van readjusts her position on her broom to better be able to see the two beaters with, now that they are farther apart. Two quaffles come at her more quickly this time and she yells. “One at a time, else it’s not even hardly fair!” It appears as if perhaps the Keeper’s attention is waning as she continues to try to block, and indeed manages to block one of the two quaffles that were shot at her, and tosses the one she caught back to Riley, though she is only guessing at this point who the shot came from.

Clavicle Gravely finishes the maneuver and takes his place in the flying circle grinning a bit. “Right. Er…Just had to try it you know? Never know when something like that would be good in a game right?” He catches a shot from David and zips around to toss it towards Bailey. His face is quite red from the cold. “Right then, so tell me? If I can’t feel my nose anymore, is that bad?” he laughs a bit “I should have heat charmed the ruddy scarf!”

Tegan‘s attention is still on a certain chaser as Van has blocked both the shots, and it is several moments before she hears, “Tegan!” shouted rather loudly by two individuals and snaps her attention forward again. “Sorry!” she calls and her face deepens to a rather purple shade as she calls the errant quaffle back to her. She hardly waits a moment before sending it back towards Van with a determined look on her face. It is clear that she does not want to be asked about her moment of distraction.

Bailey nods and lets out a laugh. “Well, it’s normal for this time of year, anyway. Glad we’re moving, else I think I’d be more frozen than just my noze and lips!” He chuckles as he chucks the Quaffle towards David again. “Ugh, I hate winter practice. Too bad we don’t have room to practice it in the school.” Bailey pauses as he ponders this, and nearly misses a toss to him back from David. He grabs onto it with the tips of his fingers though, and brings it back in to toss it over to Clavicle. “I hope we’re done soon. I could really go for some cocoa or perhaps some warm pumpkin juice!”

Clavicle Gravely looks at Tegan “What gives? you got the sun in your eyes?” he doesn’t clue in that one of the chasers is being scoped out, maybe if she drooled and it froze he’d have a clue. He turns and catches the quaffle with an oof. “Good one.” he zips around and heaves it at David. “What’s with Tegan, she’s staring over here.”

“Alright, bring it in!” Noémie calls, slowing out of a dive instead of flying up out of it, and then landing on the ground. She puts her hands on her hips as she looks around at everyone, breathing in deeply and stretching out a bit as she has landed. The captain looks quite worn, clearly the dives have worn her out quite a bit. “This was a good practice, I think,” she hollers to them while still waiting for them all to join her on the ground. She sets her broom down, and rather nonchalantly plops herself on the ground to stretch out in other ways.

Seizing her opportunity to stop practicing, Van avoids the quaffle flying towards her and instead directs herself towards the ground, the glee on her face very apparent. The seventh year doesn’t look as if she even wants to wait out while Noémie gives any final words or instructions. Landing, she strides over to where Noémie is. “I’ve got some homework to do, so if you don’t mind…?” It comes out as a question, but Van does not wait for Noémie’s response before she trots off the pitch and has vanished from view.

Clavicle Gravely looks at Tegan “What gives? you got the sun in your eyes?” he doesn’t clue in that one of the chasers is being scoped out, maybe if she drooled and it froze he’d have a clue. He turns and catches the quaffle with an oof. “Good one.” he zips around and heaves it at David. “What’s with Tegan, she’s staring over here.” He zips down in a Noémie like dive to pull out at the last moment. He grins at Noémie. “Sure thing boss.”

It is Tegan‘s shot that is missed and she quickly calls it to her one last time before giving Clavicle a red-faced glance. She says nothing, however, before flying down to the ground, grateful for the distraction that the end of practice will bring. After all, outing their feelings now would be bad for the both of them, especially as Bailey seems to have been entirely oblivious to her glance. She lands on the ground and seeing her captain stretch, begins to do so as well, though admittedly she is doing it rather half-heartedly (as usual).

Bailey shrugs off the comment and in an effort not to bring any further attention to the situation, comes to land on the ground, rather distant from the rest of them and stretches his arms over his head with his broom in hand. “That’s all then?” he asks in a curious voice, with not a single glance towards the female beater. “It was a great practice,” he tells everyone, looking around. “Very useful for the match, I think.” Then again, his opinion is not exactly the one that matters in this situation and he pauses, waiting for Noémie’s response.

“Yes, good practice all around,” she tells them all with a wide smile. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to go back into the air to practice a bit more — after all, it can’t hurt, right?” Noémie chuckles as she says this and glances at everyone. “Feel free to leave everything here, and I’ll clean it up on my way back into the castle. Go and get yourselves warm, and then you’d all better be working on your assignments. I don’t want to have a handicap because someone didn’t finish his homework!” A pointed look goes to Riley as she says this, though her face is not at all cruel. She stands and picks up her broom, climbing onto it and then flying up high into the air, doing figure eights up far above the stands.

Clavicle Gravely carries his broom in with him to work on waxing it. “I need to tim the brush too.” he chatters with a shivver. “See you all Later.” But as Noémie goes off to practice, He gathers all the practice equipment into the bags and carriers to make it easier for her. He then tramps off towards the castle.

“Good practice, everyone! See you tomorrow!” Tegan calls, tucking her broom under her shoulder to fix an unbuttoned bit of her sweater, and then trots towards the broom shed. A moment later, she emerges and makes her way back to the castle, sans broom. The speed at which she exits the pitch seems to signify that she has somewhere important to be. Soon she is gone from view.

Bailey, too, heads off the pitch, offering a wave to his teammates as they all disperse. The chaser seems to hesitate a moment before putting his own broom into the shed, and then leaves, strangely in a different direction than the one Tegan had headed in, though it is safe to assume that they would either head to the Great Hall for something warm, or to their commonroom, so the varied paths could increase suspicion on the part of others, should they choose to notice. It is not long before he, too, is out of sight, however, and his doings concealed from those who are not specifically following him.

Classes have just finished for the afternoon and most students are traipsing about the school, filling time between class and dinner. Morgana DeWitt, however, makes her way down to the cellars as quickly as she can, dumping her bookbag on the floor and taking a moment, in the privacy of the empty cellar, to pull out a mirror and quickly reassure herself that her appearance is more or less in order. After a moment, she lowers the mirror and turns her eyes onto the stairs down into the cellar, evidently waiting for someone else to join her. Absentmindedly, she combs her fingers through her hair as she does so.

Not long after Morgana waits a long shadow is cast down the steps and footsteps echo down the dark celler. The shadow is cast by the sizable nose an young Marcus Winsley‘s face and his hair is exceptionally untidy today sticking up in jagged points here and there as if he had stuck his nose in a Muggle lamp. As he comes down the steps he spots Morgana and with her note still in is hand he steps closer to her. “Well what do you wan’t?” Why did he even show up?

Slipping her mirror back into her pocket and smiling – yes, smiling, though it is quite humourless – at Marcus as he approaches, Morgana shrugs her shoulders lightly at his query, eying him appraisingly. “Hello, Winsley,” she offers, after a moment of silence. “So, are you going to give me your class notes or not?” Because obviously, that’s a matter you summon someone to a cellar for.

“Thats what you wanted?” Marcus glares hard at her but after a moment his expresion softends. “Well whats in it for me Dewitt? How are you going to pay?” Ah yes there his shrewd herritage shineing through.

“Pay?” Morgana scoffs in turn, folding her arms and shaking her head. “Of course I’m not going to pay you, Winsley. Which rather brings me to the reason I asked you to meet me here instead of the common room. What’s in it for you? Me not telling everyone… things about you.” Whether this is a threat to reveal known secrets or merely just malicious and untrue gossip is uncertain from her tone, though either way, she delivers the statement with a sort of all-knowing, smug – not to mention, inherently malicious – air.

“Who’s sharing notes?” Satinka asks, turning a corner and putting her hands on her hips. The girl is not that menacing, being in a monster of a periwinkle robe, but she does appear to have a bit of a smug expression on her face. “I should tell my mum that you’re paying for notes.” Nevermind that Satinka‘s never met either of these people before, she wants to know just what’s going on in this corridor.

With a roll of his eyes Marcus sets his things down in a corner and takes a seat in the floor. “There isn’t much you can do to me Morgana. No one likes me remember?” Marcus shrugs and opens his book bag takeing out his notes. “But since you won’t stand a chance of passing without them… and we are in the same house…” Marcus holds the notes out to Morgana.

Turning a rather dark gaze on Satinka, raising an eyebrow in confusion, Morgana only offers a vague, “And who are you when you’re at home, kid?” Then, back to Marcus without another word to Satinka, smiling the same humourless smile and taking the notes in hand. If she sees the insult for what it is, she discards it just as quickly as her interest in Satinka’s identity. “Good, Winsley. Very good. And, well, perhaps no one likes you, but there are worse things than just being disliked.”

A startled jump has Marcus on his feet as he spots Satinka for the first time. “Your Professor Rathe’s daughter aren’t you? What does it matter if I want to sell my notes. There mine aren’t they?” Marcus nods in Morgana’s direction. “And even if she had paied me for them… she’s dumb as a stump and not likley to pass anyway.”

“I am Satinka Rathe, if you must know,” Satinka replies and flips her hair over her shoulder. She strides towards the two. “So are you really selling your notes to her?” she directs to Marcus, pointing her finger out at him and then crossing her arms over one another. “Anyway, I’m no kid, and I’m to be sorted soon, and I plan on being Slytherin, so you’ll be best to get used to me.” She looks at them both with a grin on her face, as if she’s expecting something from the both of them.

Unable to, for the moment, think of a decent comeback, Morgana simply swivels and stares blankly, eyes wide and unblinking, at Satinka for a full half-minute, before just shrugging and turning her attention back to Marcus. “You had better take that back, Winsley, otherwise I might just make a slip of the tongue in the common room later on. There are worse things than just being disliked, like I said.”

Marcus Winsley shrugs silently and sits back down on the cold floor. “Do whatever you want. I gave you my notes. You win DeWitt.” Marcus looks over to Satinka. “So you and um… whats his name…” He pauses for a momment. “That brother of yours… your going to be in Slytherin?”

“Well, I plan on it,” she answers with a wide grin. “I think Seker wants to be in Ravenclaw or something ridiculous, but I know where I’m going to end up.” Satinka speaks as if she’s already had her moment with the Sorting Hat and just biding her time until she can join the ranks. “Slytherin’s the only place worth being.” Satinka is clearly a girl of large opinion. “Mind you, this has nothing to do with my mum, it’s because I want it.” She nods and then looks from Morgana to Marcus again. “What, no sordid deals for notes? What fun is that?”

Slipping the notes into her bookbag, Morgana trains a dark expression on Marcus, remaining silent for a long moment in response. “Winsley, I don’t want to talk to this girl any longer. You’ll walk me back to the common room, won’t you?” This isn’t a question so much as command: Satinka isn’t the only forceful personality in the room, and Morgana‘s sense of entitlement might well remain unmatched. “After all, like you said, I can’t hurt your reputation any more, can I?”

“No I’m not going to walk you anywhere. You got what you wanted so go study.” Marcus‘s tone is a bit more annoyed now. “And anyway she at least seems intelligent Morgana. More than I can say for you.” Ah perhaps Marcus is growing back his spine?

Laughing out loud, Satinka seems quite amused at Marcus’s statement. “What’ve I done to you, then?” she asks the girl, whose first name she still hasn’t managed to catch. “Besides, look who’s talking. You’re acting like a moody child,” Satinka retorts, putting her hands on her hips and affecting a look that she has likely seen her mother or some other parental figure use on her at one time or another. “That is never becoming in a lady.”

“You are walking me back to the commons.” Morgana repeats, glaring at Marcus, pressing her lips together firmly. Slinging her bookbag over her shoulder, she reaches out to grab his arm, almost as if she intends to forcefully drag him back to the commons alongside her – though perhaps a little more dignity than that generally implies. Then, her gaze fixes once again on Satinka, and she rolls her eyes. “Do I look like I care if I appear ladylike to people like you?” She asks after a moment of silence, before she shakes her head and turns her attention back to Marcus.

Looking down at Morgana’s hand on his arm Marcus scoffs. “I am not and if you do anything at all I’m going to tell Professor Rathe you’ve be herassing me!” An empty threat really, everyone knows how Marcus avoids attention from teachers. Marcus pulls away from Morgana and tucks himself into the corner… as if it could protect him.

“Bullying boys, honestly,” Satinka scoffs, though it seems as if the now-eleven-year-old might do the very same thing if the situation suited. “You may not be a Hufflepuff, but you still ought to do your own work.” Satinka pauses and then shrugs after mulling over Morgana’s comment. “If you don’t want to be ladylike, that’s your choice, but for my part, I’d like to at least be a respectable lady. Better to have people on your side than not, after all,” she tells the older girl, and it is only slightly obvious that she’s likely been told that very same thing sometime in her life.

“You will not.” Morgana replies, shaking her head almost pityingly at Marcus. “You will not tell Professor Rathe that I’ve been harassing you at all, because even if you did, what’s she going to do? I haven’t hit you or cursed you or anything, and I certainly haven’t bothered you in front of a professor. Whose word will Professor Rathe take, yours or mine?” The actual answer to this may not actually be in her favour, though she ignores this, brushing her hair over her shoulder with one hand and turning her back on Marcus, climbing the stairs and departing without another word, or so much as a glance to either him or Satinka – or, in fact, any acknowledgement of Satinka’s words, except for a quiet ‘huh’ as she departs, and a vague wave in her direction.

Watching Morgana walk away Marcus sighs just a little. “She’s insaine that one…” He looks over to Satinka. “And she wasn’t bullying me… she was blackmailing me… theres… a difference.” The tone he says this is of course states that he has no idead what said difference is though. “Anyway… the notes I gave her are garbage…”

“Well, she’ll believe mine, and I can tell her if you want, Marcus,” Satinka responds, shrugging in Morgana’s direction as she leaves, and then turns her attention solely to Marcus. “If you want, that is. I don’t want to make you into a snitch if you don’t want to be.” She pauses. “Tell me why you put up with her, though! I don’t think I would. I don’t plan to when I’m in Slytherin.” Hearing Marcus’s statement, Satinka lets out a boisterous laugh. “It serves her right for not doing it on her own. Nobody ever got anywhere without working for it. That’s what my mum always says.” She nods at this.

“Well…” Comes Marcus‘s slow response. “I guess because she is the closest thing I have to a friend…” Marcus shrugs again and stands up picking up his bag. “Well your Mum is weird… you should have seen her last class… She’s in love with that Professor Helit.”

As if the boy has gone mad, Satinka stares at him blankly. “You clearly don’t know my mum very well. I’m relatively certain that she would never like that man that way.” She shakes her head decisively. “Besides, I’ve already got a father, she needn’t bother with him. I’ll have to have words with her about it later.” Satinka speaks as if she’s an adult, and coming from one so young, she likely looks a bit ridiculous to those around her, who in this case, are, well, Marcus. “Besides, she isn’t weird. She’s a perfectly normal person.”

“Thats not what the Dailey Prophet says…” It just creeps out of Marcus‘s lips as a bit of an after thought that had no real thought put behind it at all. “But she’s a great teacher anyway… and I guess we could do worse for a Head of House… I just wish somone would break that stupid cane of hers.” Marcus knows all too well the sting of Astra’s cane.

“Well, everyone knows the Daily Prophet is just absolute rubbish, anyway!” Satinka exlaims rather suddenly. “What if my brother and I got that for her as a present?” She retorts suddenly. “Would you still want to break it then?” Nevermind that the twins would never have gotten Astra such a dangerous gift. The girl crosses her arms before him as she looks at him expectantly. “Well? What do you say to that?”

Chuckling Marcus nods. “Yes I’d still want to break it. I don’t care where she got it… it’s painfull.” Marcus grins just a little looking down his large nose at Satinka. “It’s nothing personal. I just hate that thing.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t do anything to make her use it, then,” Satinka offers with a quirk of her head. Coming out that way, it sounds so simple, and she seems to say it as if it were the most obvious answer in the world. “Obviously she wouldn’t use it unless she needed to.” She nods at this and looks about the hallway. “Believe me, I know.” And of course, Satinka being who she is, she would.

“I havn’t in a while… and the first time was that Harper’s fault.” Marcus looks up the hallway and back again at Satinka. “And everyone knows Harper is Foster’s lapdog I bet he got out of that hexing in the Great Hall easy last year.” Sour grapes anyone? “But I’ve been keeping a low profile now… ” He dosn’t mention that it’s because his brother graduated last year.

“Well, I don’t know anything about this Martin fellow, nor Louis, but I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that. If it is, well…” She pauses. “Then do something about it.” Satinka shrugs and giggles a bit, flouncing her periwinkle skirt. “Anyway, I’m going to the kitchens for a snack. I’ll see you around!” It’s either a promise or a threat, and it’s clear that Satinka does mean it, but soon she’s tickled the pear on the painting and slips in to get to the kitchens and is gone.

Marcus Winsley watches as the little Rathe tickles a pear and he is about to say somthing untill the painting opens. “Erm right. See you.” With that he turns to make his way to the commons.

It is clear that Noémie has been on the pitch for a while, and for one in the midst of study for her OWL exams, the girl looks surprisingly calm. The pitch is set up with an elaborate obstacle course, strangely enough, set up on the ground rather than being up in the air. A shorter set of hoops are at the end of the course. There are hanging-type large bags, which seem to sway only slightly in the wind, hoops moving back and forth to dodge around or jump through, and various other charmed distractions to make the running of the course more difficult. The girl steps back from her creation and looks about, picking up her broom while she waits for the rest of her team to show up.

Being a bit late from a class that didn’t seem to finish, David runs on the pitch. He has barely had the time to change his clothes and take his broom in his commons, and he is completely breathless when he finally stops near the other players of the team. He just nods to greet them, as he tries to calm down, and it is only after a little while that he notices the various obstacles set up, apparently, by the team captain. “What”… he says, still trying to breath correctly, “… are we going to do, today?”

Van trots out to the pitch with her broom in hand and she pauses at the edge of the pitch, staring a bit. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she calls, then starts walking towards Noémie. “Not again.” Van has clearly gone through one of these before, and she doesn’t look entirely pleased as she sets her broom down in the stand that has been set up near the edge of the pitch. “Only a couple of times through. Last time I did one of these, it bruised me for a week, and that is the last thing I need now.” The seventh year just shakes her head and crosses her arms over her stomach.

“An obstacle course!” Tegan calls, as if her teammates haven’t already noticed this. She and Bailey come running to the pitch together, having come from the same class just before, and for her part, Tegan looks thrilled to be at practice for once. The fourth year stows her broom next to where Van has put hers and trots over to the rest of them, looking as if she’s raring to give the course a try.

Bailey doesn’t seem quite as enthralled as Tegan does as they approach, though he quickly stows his broom next to where Tegan and Van have put theirs, for easy retrieval later. “Bruises, huh?” he chuckles in response to Van, and shrugs. “Bruises aren’t so bad. At least they aren’t broken bones.” Another shrug is gifted and he elbows Tegan nonchalantly. “I bet I can beat you through it any day.” Not that it’s much of a threat, being as the two of them play different positions.

“Alright, we’ll go Chasers first, and then beaters. Van, I want you to go put yourself in front of those hoops and try to block shots when the chasers get through. Tegan, you and Riley go on either side of the course, and hit this bludger back and forth through it. That’s the last obstacle.” Noémie crosses her arms, looking almost smug as she says this, glancing to everyone. She leans down and picks up the quaffles that she has brought out for the express purpose of this course. She tosses one to each of the chasers. “Let’s get set up, I want to see this course run!”

David looks at the obstacle course, then the other players, and finally the team captain. “I take it we don’t need our brooms for the moment, right?” he says, and before waiting for an answer, puts his broom near the box where the balls are stored. He then takes out the red Quaffle, and readies himself to run through the obstacles. When the other chasers look ready to dash towards the hoops, he starts to run, and after a few meters, throws the Quaffle to Bailey.

Van trots over to the hoops as she is told to do, and stands in front of the hoops, looking up at them. “They’re a bit high,” she calls, looking up at them, and jumping up. When she jumps, she finds she is able to block the hoops, but it isn’t easy. This doesn’t look promising to the Keeper, and though she does start to look more sullen, she doesn’t say anything more to the captain, who seems to have her mind made up for the day’s practice.

Taking her own position near to the end of the course, Tegan readies the bat she has grabbed and waits for the bludger to be released. “Alright, Riley, try not to hurt anyone too badly. Especially me.” The emphasis on this statement almost seems to indicate that she thinks he will hurt her somehow in their practice. As the bludger is released, Tegan runs a bit and gives it a hard whack towards Riley, trying to keep her line as straight as possible.

Starting to run, Bailey takes speed and starts to jump over several obstacles which were magically moving so as to distract him. After the third obstacle, starting to feel a bit breathless, his course slows down a bit. The fourth obstacle, a mere sandbag, seems easier than the two previous ones, but as he jumps, Bailey‘s foot suddenly gets trapped in a sort of ring that was hidden on the other side. “Ow!” he yells, as he falls forward in the mud. He stands up, massaging his ankle for a while, then looks back. “That’s a nasty one you’ve put here!” he yells, reproach clearly audible in his voice, but he resumes his course and finally comes in front of the hoops protected by Van. With a large swing, he tosses the Quaffle at the goalie…

“Well, we’re playing Slytherin soon, and I want you all to be on your toes!” Noémie calls in response, jogging down the length of her course as she watches Bailey run through. “Get on through, you can do it!” she calls as he makes his way through. Noémie looks to have quite a bit of extra energy today. “Good run,” she calls and turns her attention to Van as she is shot at. “Next up, go!” she calls to whoever is next in the line, while she glances momentarily at the Beaters who are both steadily hitting the bludger back and forth.

Coming back from his first run, David pants and holds his knee with his ankle, after having fallen a couple of times. Noticing that nobody else is waiting in the line, he starts to run back towards the goals, holding his Quaffle (which Van threw back to him after his attempt at scoring a point.) Despite the sore ankle, the second run seems way easier than the first one, since David now knows where the obstacles are and is a bit warmed up. Reaching the hoops, he throws the Quaffle at the rightmost hoop, hoping that Van wouldn’t catch it, this time. But it is unlikely: this time he has thrown it harder than the first time.

Van jumps up, and she misses this first one, grumbling a bit, and she pushes her sleeves, despite the cold, freeing up her arms and hands to better catch the quaffles flying towards her. The second quaffle that comes towards her, the first from David, she manages to catch, and she tosses it towards the other end of the obstacle course, more or less aiming to hit him. “Take that!” she calls and turns her attention back to the course, jumping up and again missing as David makes his second shot. “God, did you have to make them so HIGH?” she complains at Noémie, jumping as another of the chasers makes a shot, which she does manage to block this time.

Tegan hits the bludger high, and it comes down low to Riley’s side, crashing into the ground. She shakes her head and readies her bat as another bludger is hit her way, sending it flying in a more straight path towards Riley this time. “Look out!” she calls as another of the chasers comes running through the obstacle course. “Don’t need injuries before the match or anything!” The girl continues hitting the bludger back and forth with her fellow beater.

Another turn for Bailey Williams. This time, the boy runs faster, jumps higher and dodges the obstacles more effectively than he had done before. This time, the practice seems to pay off and Bailey reaches the goal hoops in the shortest time yet. Letting out a loud roar, he tosses the Quaffle towards the hoop, aiming at the nearest one. The boy halts and watches the ball fly, wondering if Van would be able to catch it…

Noémie claps loudly at her team as they make it through. “You’re getting better,” she calls as less of the obstacles trip them up, and as Van does manage to make some blocks. “Just a couple more, and then we’ll wrap up. I’ve got to get back to studying, and I’m sure you all could do with a healthy dose of it, too.” She chuckles at her own comment and crosses her arms and watches as the chasers continue their rounds through the obstacle course.

Coming back from another run, panting from the effort but grinning widely since he managed to do his last tries without too many falls, David jogs back to the line where the other Chasers are waiting. “It’s getting a bit dark, isn’t it?” he asks Noémie. “And we’ve all made at least fifteen runs each. How long do you want us to practice further?”, he asks.

Van jumps up and catches the last quaffle that’s come to her and walks away from the hoops holding it. “Honestly, I’m exhausted, can’t we stop?” she whines, coming completely out of the obstacle course and tossing the quaffle towards where the brooms are. She puts her hands on her knees and shakes her head as she tries to catch her breath again.

Pulling her wand out quickly, Tegan immobilizes the bludger. Calling it to her, she trots over to Noémie and plunks it into the box that it had come from, breathing a sigh of relief. “Good practice,” she tells everyone with a happy grin. The girl does a twirl and plunks the bat down next to the box, shoving a quaffle in, completing the set. “I’ll put this away, I’ve got to go somewhere!” she hollders and practically prances off.

“Is it finished, already?” asks Bailey, making a mock pout at the other Chasers. “I was just warmed up… too bad.” he says, but if the whole truth has to be told, he is as happy as the others to call it an evening. “Seriously, I think we’ve practiced well tonight. That was a great drill you prepared for us, Noémie.” he says, nodding with respect at her. “And now, it’s time to hit the showers!”

“Yes, good practice,” Noémie echoes. “Everyone off, I’ve got some cleaning to do.” In addition to her own bit of training. She turns without another word to grab her broom and soon is in the air, doing a series of laps, clearly not allowing anyone to even try to ask her if she needs help. No, Noémie is in an interesting mood today, and her behavior has demonstrated this, but now, she is in the air, swooping and diving, and completely ignoring the couple of teammates still on the field.

Van stands up and takes a deep breath, grabbing her broom and Tegan’s, which she had left when she so quickly. The seventh year waves at Noémie, though she is already in the air, and makes her way to the broomshed, storing the brooms away safely from the elements, then heads out of that shed, and into the school, set on perhaps a snack, or maybe a secluded meeting with a ‘certain someone’.

“Well, if everybody is leaving, I’m not going to wait, either.” says David, who grabs the broom he left near the ball box. “Goodbye Noémie, thanks for the practice and the drill.” he says, and he walks away towards the locker rooms. The house elves will surely have a hard time cleaning up the mud stains out of his Quidditch outfit…

David looks at the obstacle course, then the other players, and finally the team captain. “I take it we don’t need our brooms for the moment, right?” he says, and before waiting for an answer, puts his broom near the box where the balls are stored. Catching one of the Quaffles tossed to him by Noémie, he starts to run towards the goals, trying his best to dodge as many obstacles as he can. He falls a couple of times, nothing serious, but soon his clean Quidditch outfit is completely filled wih mud. He curses mildly as another Chaser of the team passes in front of him with a laugh, then starts to run again.

Curiously free of her usual large stacks of essays, Bonnie sits comfortably in a chair near the cabinets. Holding a novel, Bonnie appears to be quite contentedly engrossed in the book, which the cover claims to have ACTION and ADVENTURE within. The woman is clad in thick wooly robes and her hands are gloved, and it appears as if she has opted against lighting a fire on this afternoon, though one might be lead to guess why. The staff room is unusually quiet today, and, in fact, Bonnie is the only one present in it at this moment.

Stepping into the staff-room and looking around almost expectantly, perhaps trying to find someone – rather unusual, all told, given his tendency to avoid other people at all costs – Quintus hardly presents a good impression. His eyebrows have been largely burnt away, his robes are even shabbier than usual and the hems are singed, and his curly black hair is dishevelled. Still, eying Bonnie, he takes a deep breath, brushes his hair back (making some concession to looking presentable), and approaches her, clearing his throat quietly to alert her to his presence. “Professor Kensington?” He offers quietly, the address pitched more as a question than a statement of fact.

Torn away from her story, Bonnie looks up and blinks a moment. “Oh, hello, Professor Helit,” she greets her coworker. The woman puts a finger in her book and closes it gently, setting it into her lap. “So nice to see you,” she tells him congenially, though it is a bit obvious that this congeniality is just the same as she would use with any other of the faculty or staff, should it have been them who entered.

Having alerted the woman to his presence and his desire to speak with her, Quintus suddenly turns shy, clearing his throat and looking at the wall rather than at Bonnie herself. There is a moment of hesitation – he seems on the brink of speaking, but unable to find the words – before he finally speaks again, his words slow and laboured. “Professor Kensington, I have,” cough, “admired your, er, your you for, for some,” clear throat, “time. I was wondering if you would,” cough, look at ceiling, “do me the honour of, of… dinner?”

“Oh, dinner?” Bonnie responds, after he finally gets through his statement, which does seem to take longer than she had expected any normal question to take. “Oh, er, well, what a sweet sentiment,” she tells him, staring blankly for a moment. It seems a few moments before she realizes that he is, in fact, serious. “Could you, er, look at me?” she does finally say. “Your looking at the wall is scaring me a bit.” A pause. “I suppose having dinner wouldn’t hurt,” she relents, though his diverted gaze does still make her uncomfortable. “I suppose we could schedule it for the next Hogsmeade weekend.”

Clearing his throat and dragging his gaze away from the wall to briefly rest on Bonnie – though he still does not look her in the eye, and his gaze slips away to the wall again quickly afterwards – Quintus seems entirely taken aback by her response. “Next Hogsmeade weekend?” He echoes, rubbing his hands together nervously. “I was, I was hoping, perhaps, that we could… sooner?” He coughs again, gaze flickering to her again before slipping back off towards the ceiling.

Bonnie is still feeling somewhat uncomfortable at Quintus’s lack of eye-contact, but she seems to think that this is as good as it will get, and chooses instead to try to ignore it. “How soon were you thinking of having it?” she asks, standing up now to be on his level while he attempts to ask her this. “If we’re to go off of the grounds, we ought to make sure it’s alright first. After all, one never knows when we might be needed by the students.”

“I’m sure it will be fine.” Quintus replies, quite firmly, though he does continue to refrain from making eye contact and his throat seems to need clearing altogether too often. “If any students need us specifically, it would surely not be so important that they cannot approach us sooner or later.” Another cough, and he adds, more hesitantly, “I am only asking a few hours of your time, Professor Kensington, during which we can get to know each other better. We don’t even have to leave the school grounds, we can have a – a – a personal dinner together here at school.” His eyes flicker over to her again, still not meeting her eye, but lingering in the general vicinity of her for a much longer moment.

“Alright,” she finally consents, smiling a bit at him. Bonnie does not feel the flickers of attraction like all the characters in the books often do in situations such as this, nor does she suspect that she will fall head over heels for Quintus, but it would be rude to refuse, after all, especially for no reason. “So, when did you want to have the meal?” she asks, quirkng her head a bit, as if trying to meet his eyes, at least once.

The day that any female actually does feel a flicker of attraction for Quintus, especially Quintus sans eyebrows, will be a sad day indeed. However, he doesn’t seem to register this, only offering a small smile and a shrug in response. “Perhaps, perhaps tomorrow night? Or whenever would be good for you, Professor Kensington.” This is added quickly, a rather rushed statement, and his tanned cheeks flush faintly pink. “Er. I suppose… I’ll be going… things to do… I’ll be seeing you soon, Professor?”

“Tomorrow night is fine,” Bonnie answers, nodding and giving Quintus a half smile. “I’ll meet you here tomorrow evening, then,” she tells him, and takes her seat again as he professes to leave. “Oh, and, do call me Bonnie,” she tells him, a wider smile offered before she opens her book again, though she will, of course, wait until he leaves before she returns her attention to the story in the book.

Smiling vaguely at Bonnie, Quintus nods his head to her and offers, “Thank you, Bonnie.” A pause. “Please, call me Quintus. You would be one of very few who do.” On this vague, uncertain note, he turns and leaves the staff room, almost walking into the doorframe on the way out. Apparently, talking to women for too long impairs his ability to move in a normal fashion. But, look, see, he can talk to girls. Isn’t he a good little professor.

Striding out onto the pitch in the early evening, there is still enough light to hold a good practice. The balls are out on the field, and Noémie herself is already out on the pitch, and has a bucket of golf balls to aid in her own practice as well. She seems to be attempting to fine-tune her broom as she waits for her teammates to approach the field for the practice she has called.

For once not looking quite as pleased as usual, Van stomps onto the pitch, her broom in hand, and crosses her arms at Noémie. “You had to schedule a practice on Valentines day, didn’t you?” Van‘s displeasure at this is apparent, and though she does not say another word about it, her face does not come out of its stony position een while she begins to stretch out for the practice.

Following the captain of the team, David walks silently on the team, his broom in his hand, with an air of concentration on the face. Looking back at Van, he replies in a sharp tone: “We must practice if we want to be the best, Van. You know that.” It’s not as if David had someone to spend the nascent evening with, either. In fact, Quidditch could prove to be a good distraction today. “What are we going to do today, Noémie?” he asks.

A fine day to practice. Even if he had other plans for the evening, Bailey Williams doesn’t see anything wrong with a bit of practice before dinner: “Exactly, Van. Training never hurts.” he chimes in, his broom in his hand. The boy seems more than ready to fly, and waits for his captain’s instructions.

Tegan tromps onto the pitch, wearing no less than five layers of clothing. “It’s so bloody cold,” she tells them with a visible shiver. While this is not something that any of them need to be told, after all — it is winter. But Tegan seems to think it is something important for them to know, and half-heartedly begins practicing just as Van is doing, though Van’s are perhaps a bit better than her own.

“It’s a lovely day, and you snog with your boyfriend all the time; how would today have been any different Van?” Noémie chuckes as she says this and mounts her broom. “Alright, here’s what I’d like to go on. Bailey, David, and Clavicle, if you’ll go run a few plays at Van, who’ll try to block them. Do some creative things, I want you all to stay on your toes. And, Tegan, if you’ll stay on the ground today and throw golfballs at me, that would be great. Riley’s out sick today, so it’ll be best for you to stay on the ground and help me practice up a bit. You can use your bat to hit them, if you like.” Noémie smiles and begins to ascend, not giving much room for complaint or protest.

Van‘s face doesn’t move from stony annoyance as she, too, mounts her broom and begins to fly up into the air, headed directly towards the nearer set of hoops. “Make it interesting at least so I’m not bored over here watching you do the usual formations.” Van shrugs and looks almost bored, though the annoyance in her face has not yet subsided. Being u in the air seems to help her out, however, in appeasing her sour mood.

Tegan shrugs idly at Noémie’s request and grabs a bat as well as the bucket of balls that Noémie has set out for her, and trots down the pitch some so that she’ll be out of the way of the chasers. After all, she doesn’t want to take any of them out with a golf ball! She tosses one up in the air and gives it a hard whack, missing a bit too late and causing the ball to fly low to the pitch and get embedded into the turf. Trying again, she manages to send the second one flying high above the pitch, looking almost smug as she manages this.

“Alright, Captain,” says David, making a mock salute before jumping on his broom and flying away. Yes, it was a bit freezing tonight, but his scarf is doing a good job at protecting his throat from the stinging cold and wind. The condensation on his glasses, created by his breath, is a bigger problem though, but David knows that it is going to fade in a few instants anyway. The boy finally stops midway to the hoops, waiting for the Quaffle to be tossed up in the sky. “Make it interesting, eh? Hmm. Let’s see what I can do.”

Bailey Williams rolls his eyes at the comment about snogging made by Noémie, but doesn’t say anything, actually agreeing with her about the importance of training. “Okay… let’s find some new tactics for a change.” he says, as he puts his own broom into position and mounts it. “Hey, David, wait for me!” he yells, but he soon manages to catch up with the third year. He takes his own position, a few meters behind and at the right of David, ready for the training to begin.

Flying around a bit while Tegan gets into place, Noémie dives a bit as the first one arcs just short of her, and dives to catch it. She does manage it and gives it a hearty toss towards Tegan, though the ball does not quite make it to the younger girl. Soon another is flying at her and another so that Noémie is having to make sharp turns to catch them, and is now just tossing them generally towards Tegan, rather than trying to get them close. Soon, there is a break, and Noémie pauses to get her breath up again. It isn’t long though before the balls start up again, and Noémie has to dart around, back and forth.

Van now flies about before the hoops, trying to get herself into her groove. It doesn’t take long, in fact, she seems to be at the top of her game today, despite her bad mood. The seventh year looks to the chasers before her with a sly grin. “Let’s see what you’ve got, then!” she laughs, apparently having quite quickly forgotten about her anger just moments before. “Show me what you plan to do to Slytherin this next match!” She laughs a bit, rather loudly, and it echoes across the pitch.

Pausing a moment to give Noémie another breather, Tegan again begins to toss the ball up, and then whacking it with the bat high, low, left or right, trying to make the most variety for her captain, as well as trying to refine her own aim for the impending match. “Hold up,” she calls, “I’m out of balls, I’ll have to gather them!” Accio golfball! is heard over and over again while the white balls fly towards Tegan and she gathers them into the pail that has been provided for them.

“Okay. So, where’s the Quaffle?” says Bailey, turning his head and noticing that David hasn’t it, either. “Oh, you didn’t take it?” he asks, taking out his wand. “Accio Quaffle!” he yells, and the shiny red ball suddenly flies up in the air towards Bailey, who deftly catches it. “Right. Let’s try to practice some side shoots. Those are the hardest to do, after all.” he says, pushing his broom forward, taking a turn and flying in a parallel direction relatively to the hoops. When he comes near enough, he throws the Quaffle over his shoulder towards one of the rings.

Tegan finally manages to gather all the balls together, and then begins hitting the balls towards Noémie again, with varying degrees of success. “Sorry about that!” she calls, as one errantly flys towards the chasers who are all grouped, nearer than she had expected them to be. It is but a fleeting moment before she readjusts her aim and is again shooting the golfballs towards Noémie instead of her other teammates.

Van zooms up towards the hoop, but a loud CLANG is heard, and it is clear that she missed catching the shot. She flies around the hoops to retrieve the quaffle and heaves it back towards the chasers. “Alright, well, you got me this time; I’ll get the next one!” She laughs a bit and centers herself in front of the hoops, and this time keeps her eyes more on the chasers this time than the previous.

David catches the Quaffle and readies himself to do a side pass as Bailey has shown. He suddenly feels a bit nervous; throwing the Quaffle sideways has never been his strongest move. David takes a deep breath, then pushes forward to launch his broom on its trajectory. As he flies in front of the hoops, he throws the Quaffle. His throw completely lacks the style and power of Bailey, though, and it is only by pure luck that it somewhat flies in the general direction of the hoops. David lets out a soft swear as he turns his head to watch the result of his throw.

Noémie flies around, missing more now, and she grits her teeth as she starts missing some. No, this is not a good thing. Pausing for a moment and letting some of the balls deliberately fall to the ground as she readjusts herself on her broom. A few more golfballs are caught, and Noémie looks about. The fading light has started to weigh heavily on her ability to see the balls flying about, and after she is hit in the shoulder hard by one she sighs a bit and begins to fly lower. “Let’s wrap it up!” She calls to everyone. “It’s getting to be a bit dark for practice!” Landing near by to where Tegan is, she smiles. “Good shots. That was a good workout for me.” She pauses and starts summoning the balls back to her as well, trying to help her teammate clean up.

This next shot, Van manages to get her hands on, and lets out a loud whoop at it. The sky is, in fact, getting quite dark, and she starts to fly down towards the pitch, the Quaffle in hand. “Good run, guys,” She calls to the chasers as she lands on the ground, plunking the quaffle into its spot in the box that Noémie had brought out. The keeper takes it upon herself to close the box up and take it to the broomshed along with her own broom. “I’m off to supper,” she calls, and she is quickly off to the school, clearly intent more on her sweetheart than the actual eating.

“Look where you throw your Quaffle, David!” shouts Bailey, who has observed the younger Ravenclaw doing his pass. “You can’t throw it correctly if you don’t aim.” he says, just before the call of the captain comes to his ears. “What, finished, already? We only did a couple of passes, do you call that a training?” he answers good-naturedly. “Okay. Let’s get down. I’m hungry as well.” he says, before diving slightly and landing near the box where the Quidditch ball are stored.

Chuckling, Tegan finishes putting all the balls back into the bucket, then plops her bat onto it, striding over a ways on the pitch where she had set her broom down upon hearing Noémie’s request. “It was good practice for my aim,” she admits to Noémie. “Thanks for a good practice,” she calls, stretching her arms a bit, and reaching tall. This motion causes her to readjust herself completely and rewrap her scarf. It seems that Tegan doesn’t want a bit of cold to get to her, even as the practice is nearly over.

“Hmm…” says David, a bit flustered by the fact he didn’t manage his throw correctly. “Look where I aim… right… and shouldn’t I also look where I fly?” he asks. “You do that as if it were totally easy… except it isn’t.” he protests slightly. “But yeah… I don’t mind a good dinner.” he says, finally, following Bailey and landing next to him. “Too bad we’re only in February. The night comes so quickly…”

Laughing a bit, Noémie nods. “Well, it’s the dark that’s keeping me from catching the golf balls. We’ll get together again tomorrow, a bit earlier, I hope, for the practice, and that way we’ll be able to go for longer.” The girl chuckles and picks up the bucket of balls as well as the bat that Tegan has left for her. “I’ll put this away if you all want to go to dinner. I promise we’ll get more complete practices in this week. Perhaps when some of our members aren’t distracted by the silly holiday.” Despite these comments, Noémie looks quite cheerful as she strides off towards the the broom shed.

Tegan waves at her teammates as she starts to run to the school, holding onto her hat as she does so. It seems as if Tegan herself might have someone to rush off for, perhaps, on such a day as this, though she hasn’t yet said a word about such a thing. The girl is soon gone, vanished into the school, and the warmth that it holds.

Donovan Harrison stands in the center of the Quidditch Pitch, not in his usual robes but in more appropriate referee robes for the game. With a broom in one hand, he also has the box full of those well-known Quidditch balls that are needed. He waits patiently for the two teams to arrive and the captains to come over to him to do the usual pre-game ‘meeting’ with the referee of the game.

Rhian Brecon settles into the announcer’s seat and clears her throught. “Good afternoong everyone, what a wonderfully white day to have a quidditch game, isn’t it? I hope everyone is nice and bundled up like I am, though I’m sure the two teams today won’t need it. Today’s game we have Gryffindor vs. Hufflepuff, two excellent teams so this should ideally be a good game, despite the weather. Today we have, for the first time this year Professor Harrison of Transfiguration refereeing this game. Let’s just hope that we will be able to see this game, as well as the Quidditch players.”

Marie-Anna Greyton steps out onto the pitch in the colours of Gryffindor House. Broom in hand the captain makes her way over towards the referee of todays match. “Professor,” the teen gives with a slight nod of her head as she looks towards the rest of her team, and towards the Hufflepuff team.

Wandering out to the pitch, Briony seems to be feeling almost ill as she steps onto the pitch for the third and last time during the season. Granted, the girl has practiced all she could manage for this last and final match, but while she is quite adept at blocking the shots of her own team, her confidence is still lacking when it comes to blocking shots from those whose movements she cannot predict.

As it is his first match for the Gryffindor team, Sebastian Praw is more than nervous. He is trying to hide his excitement behind short smiles and because he’ll be the seeker today, he’ll be watched especially hard by everyone. Of course dressed in Gryffindor colors, his nearly mint broom in hand, Sebastian is standing on the pitch next to his teammates, waiting for the game to begin. Agitated, he rubs his short blonde hair with his free hand, wondering if he’ll be successful today.

Eliza Marlow strides onto the pitch with a confident gait, her broom on one shoulder. She gives her team a wide smile, projecting her confidence at them, hoping to calm their nerves. “We will do just fine,” she said to them as she motioned for all the members to gather around for a quick huddle. “We’ve worked hard, and we’ve really improved, even after our last game. We won against the Slytherins, and we will win here. Now let’s go out and play hard. Chasers, remember to work together, and keep an eye out for the bludgers. Beaters, you need to know where everyone on the pitch is, on our teams and theirs. Alex, don’t let your nerves take over your flying.” She paused in her impromptu little speech, and flashed a grin at her team. “You are all great flyers, now let get out there and win this for Hufflepuff!”

Donovan Harrison gives a nod to Marie-Anna and then looks to Eliza as they both stand on either side. “Well, I’m sure I don’t have to tell either of you that we should have a good, clean game. Just be careful of course, with this weather. Now, shake hands, get in position and let’s get this game started then.” He lets the captains do such and turns to the box with the Quidditch balls and opens it up to get ready to release the four different balls into the air.

Following the team captain, Eldric Carver walks on the pitch, sporting his trademark confident smile. The boy walks with his chest sticking out proud, his broom is swung over his left shoulder. As he walks forward, he toys with his heavy bat in the right hand, and he occasionally waves to a few people he knows and who are sitting on the bleachers. “We’ll smite them!” he replies with a broad grin to the captain’s little speech.

Marybeth Campbell wanders out to the Pitch, this time with her very own scarf on, near Carrie as usual. Her own broom is held carefully, and she keeps brushing snowflakes off of her robes with her free hand, if just to keep them from melting and soaking through before the game has even properly started. Listening to the speech, she punctuates the end with a bit of an excited yelping noise and “Right! We’ll win!” but then she gets into position for kicking off.

Charlie Linwood is practically bouncing on his feet as he comes out, not even half as ridiculously bundled as he has been for the last several …dozen… practices. No, he’s still got on a full set of clothes under his Quidditch robes, gloves, scarf, hat, and cloak, but that’s about a layer less than usual. After all, it’s a game and if he’s used to being weighed down, this should help. The other Hufflepuffs get a grey-eyed glance, but any turn of the mouth up or down is concealed, as usual, with the thick black and yellow stripes of his scarf. Clutching his broom, it seems that Charlie is not about to display any nerves. Just don’t mind the way his eyebrows are kind of twitchy. Even with Eliza’s characteristic enthusiasm, he’s Charlie.

Marie-Anna Greyton nods towards the Professor and turns to offer Eliza her hand. Once the formalities are done she offers a smile at the Gryffindor team. “You guys’ll do fine, you’ve worked hard for this match, just like all the others,” she gives in a calm voice before she takes her position on the pitch. Her stance is that of someone ready to play the game.

Feeling remarkably dizzy, while stepping onto the field, Andy Carver clings to his broom. Today he does not care about its tousled looking tailtwigs. He positions himself next to Briony and glances over to her, while tying up his hair to a ponytail, so that they won’t bother him during the match. As acclimates slowly, the spectators seem to come out of reach. ‘You’re playing here. Don’t care about them. Don’t-care-about-them’ he says to himself under his breath and puts on his father’s old quidditch gloves. Finally he puts his head back and breathes in deeply, looking up to the sky.

Alexandra Leong titters nervously, bouncing on her toes, toying with the handle of her broom. She gulps as Eliza mentions her nerves, but nods in response, bobbing her head up and down vigorously. “I won’t let you down, Captain,” she blurts, and turns a bright red. She looks at the rest of her team, then, in a small voice, adds. “Good luck, everyone.”

These words to not soothe Briony‘s nerves, and she looks to her fellow second-year with a bit of a gulp, then readies her broom for when the whistle is given to fly up to the hoops. The only thing Briony can hope is that there is a large tussle for the quaffle and she won’t have to see it for a good long time.

“Yes… we’ll smite them.” Carrie Whittier repeats after Eldric, clutching her own broom firmly with her right hand and smiling back, for the briefest moment, at the sixth year boy. “We’ve trained a lot and I’m sure this will pay off eventually” she goes on, mostly for herself. She wonders how she’ll fare in this match and if she would be able to do justice to her team, but now is not really the time to doubt about such things, is it?

Eliza Marlow steps forward and shakes Marie-Anna’s hand firmly. “Good luck,” she said to the opposing captain, with a friendly smile. “Alright team! Let’s get started!” She mounts her own broom with an almost careless grace, like something she’s done a thousand times (and perhaps have), and could do in her sleep. There is a certain edge to her movements, however, as soon as she is on the broom. Poised and ready to take off, her grips her broom firmly, adjusting her grip until it is perfect, flexing her gloved hands.

Donovan Harrison looks up at the two teams and waits for them to be in the proper position as he takes the Quaffle out of the box into his hand. His wand is in his hand to be quickly used though. Once everyone was relatively settled despite the weather, he points to the box and has the Golden Snitch released, which flitters in place for a while and then goes zooming off into the snow. Following that the two bludgers were let go, which he dodges one while they go to create mayhem. Once that is done, he waves the box off the field and then tosses the Quaffle up into the air between the Chasers, letting them argue over it as he moves to his broom and kicks off to keep an eye on the game.

Charlie Linwood is not in the habit of mounting his broom until the referee has signaled the start of game. With a “Why do they always release them before we’re even airborne?” under his breath, Charlie pulls out his beater’s bat, mounts, and zooms upward. He watches as the other members of both teams begin to play. He looks, as always, a strange combination of menacing and ridiculous, holding the bat and moving rather quickly from here to there, but thin and all bundled up against the cold.

Marie-Anna Greyton makes her way up into the air, with Landon no ttoo far behind. Both beaters have bats in hand as they prepare to keep their teams from getting knocked out cold from the flying monsters that are bludgers.

Andy Carver sets up as the game is about to start. His toes seem to dig themselves into the ground to perform a proper kick off the ground. Since the quaffle is taken out of the box his eyes only know one direction. As it gets thrown into the air he shoots up into the air, trying to reach it earlier than the Hufflepuff chasers.

“I don’t know, but we’d better take off quickly” Carrie Whittier says to Charlie. Mounting her own broom, Carrie quickly takes off and takes her own position with the other Chasers of the Hufflepuff team, and starts manoeuvering so as to get closer to the red ball.

Marybeth Campbell moves with her team-within-a-team toward the quaffle as well, racing with the set of Gryffindor Chasers to gain hold of the ever-important red leather ball. “Oi!” she calls briefly, moving suddenly to the left, “Mind the wind!” Down, toward Andy, then, expression set rather seriously, for Marybeth.

Eldric Carver follows suit, and jumps on his own broom, bat firmly held in his right hand. He kicks off the ground, flying directly towards the nearest bludger, which is, however, still a bit too far away to be hit directly. Eldric mutters something under his breath as he presses his broom forward towards the heavy iron ball. The beginning of the game is the best moment to shoot a Bludger against the opponents and wreak confusion amid their ranks, he thinks.

Alexandra Leong kicks off hastily. Once in the air, her hair black hair flying, she lost some of her nerve, and began to fly a search pattern above the game, her eyes scanning the pitch for any sign of the snitch. So far… nothing. She does a fancy little turn, to change directions, more to calm her own nerves than anything.

Sebastian Praw decided to always keep an eye on Alexandra, as she is the opponent seeker and he really isn’t experienced. Of course he already caught a Snitch in his life, but this was a real Hogwarts quidditch match and not a fluffy training session. He whisks off some snowflakes from his broomstick, to make it more handy and looks up again. Where is Alexandra? Apparently gone. “Argh.” Sebastian curses himself and kicks off, following the Hufflepuff seeker and glimpsing out for the nasty bludger he has heard of.

Marie-Anna Greyton flies towards a bludger and takes a heavy swing at it, doing her best to aim for the Hufflepuff seeker. Meanwhile, Landon’s on his way towards the other bludger.

Seeing that he has a small lead in the race for the quaffle, Andy reaches out for it and plucks it out of the air. A bit surprised that he made it again to catch the first quaffle, he zooms upwards, trying to get out of the trajectory of the Hufflepuff chasers and starts looking for Josh and Gabe, who were flying next to him a second ago.

Rhian says, “And the two teams have come out. The captains, Eliza Marlow and Marie-Anna Greyton come to the center, getting last minute advice from Professor Harrison, shake hands and go to get their teams into position. Once everyone is settled, Professor Harrison releases first the Golden Snitch, good luck in this weather Seekers, then the Bludgers, which one attempts to hit Professor Harrison, and now the Quaffle is tossed into the air, with… Gryffindor taking it, Carver managing to get a hold of it. Greyton manages to get a hold of one of the bludgers and sends it off toward someone else.”

Too late for Landon. As he reaches the bludger, Eldric Carver swings his bat and sends it towards Andy, who seems to have caught the quaffle. This would give him something else to think about, he smirks.

Eliza Marlow launches herself with a firm kickoff, and within seconds she was bobbing about her goal posts. Her eyes narrow as she watches her team and the trying to keep an eye on the play, but so far, everything seems to be fine. “HUFFLEPUFFS! Communicate!” She yells out, sounding a bit short, although her tone of voice is usually like this during a game or a practice. Short and to the point, although not unkind or angry. Hopefully the team remembers that what “communicate” means in Eliza terms.

Charlie Linwood watches Eldric go for for the bludger and so heads in the direction of the other ball, rerouting when Marie-Anna hits it, with a bit of a glower. Actually, the ball is now closer and becomming rapidly more so. Quickly applying the breaks he glances very briefly around the pitch and barely has the time to swing and hit the bludger back toward Andy and the Gryffindor Chasers, with a bit of a shout.

Pushing her own broom forward, Carrie begins to chase Andy, trying to get the quaffle, exactly as her role requires. As she hears the sound of the bludgers drawing nearer, she breaks off the pursuit. It wouldn’t do much good to be targeted by the bludgers. Better leave them all for Andy to taste.

Marie-Anna Greyton flies upward a bit to have a better view of the players below, and the bludgers. Just as she’s about to head off towards the bludger Landon beats her to it. A swift hit of his bat sends the bludger in the general direction of the Hufflepuff end of the field.

For the very first time in her life, Alexandra felt complete at ease with her direct competition. After a few minutes of flying, she felt completely comfortable with her broom, and actually started enjoying the flight, although her muscles are still tense and she still overreacted to every sound or shout. She could tell that the Gryffindor seeker was following her, and that gave her an idea. Suddenly she zooms in the opposite direction as she was flying before, hoping to distract the other seeker and maybe lose him with a bit of fancy flying.

Marybeth Campbell frowns as Andy gains the quaffle, but follows Carrie out of the path of danger, swooping rather unexpectedly sideways (hopefully not into anybody else’s airspace). “Linwood! We’re down here too!” she calls in a surprisingly good-spirited tone, not that it’s likely to reach his ears. For all she knows, Eldric hit the ball in this direction, but it’s more fun to blame Charlie, for one reason or another.

Sebastian does not really search for the snitch, he’s more trying to keep track of Alexandra and avoiding bludgers. As Alexandra performs a hard turn, Sebastian wonders if she is trying to trick him, but then he just decides to stay behind or at least near her.

Andy hears the sounds of the bludger rushing towards him and hectically passes the quaffle to Gabriel, who caught up and swooped down to his left side. An adequate toss and Gabriel catches the quaffle. A grin escapes from Andy‘s lips and then he the bludger slams into his chest. “Ugh.” Andy moans and fights back onto his broom. Sitting on it again holding his side, he watches Gabriel engaging the Hufflepuff hoops.

Rhian says, “Ooo, the Hufflepuff chasers have to break off their attack following the Gryffindors due to the bludgers coming in from their own beaters, not a good thing. Leong seems to behave that she’s found the Snitch every now and then, but keeps changing direction, Praw following her almost like a lost puppy. Carver tosses the Quaffle to Goden, just before Carver is hit straight on by a bludger, that had to hurt. Carver tries to get air back into his lungs while the other two chasers head off toward the hoops.”

Marie-Anna Greyton looks towards Andy. “Come on, keep it going, Carver!” she shouts as she flies overhead, still, taking on the bludger that hit Andy. With an oomph she winds up and hits said bludger, intent on getting it towards the Hufflepuff chasers.

Charlie Linwood hit someone who isn’t a team member! Far from feeling bad that Andy took the quaffle to his stomach, he gives a bit of a whoop, grinning a bit (still obscured by his scarf) and waving about his bat. Andy isn’t Leong, who is the only person (or broom) he’s managed to hit yet (it was Louis’s fault, really!). As Marie hits the offending bludger toward his own chasers, however, Charlie urges his broom forward, eyebrows set. “Not if I can help it!”

Eliza Marlow watches calmly as a bludger heads towards her end of the field. The other bludger is hit towards the her chasesrs, which is a bit of a relief, as two quaffles might be a bit dangerous to deal with, if the Gryffindors get towards her end quickly enough. “Hufflepuff chasers! Watch for the bludgers!” she warns her team.

Alexandra Leong rights herself from her turn, just in time to see a glimpse of something glittering gold in the falling snow. For a moment the small Seeker shocked into a kind of trance, but the moment passes and a plan quickly forms. She still closer to the snitch than Sebastian, but not by much. Quickly she pulls into a sharp dive for about 10 feet, then she shoots straight up again (something she’s learned how to do from losing control of her broom way to many times), pulling up hard, then righting herself. She makes another swerve, then heads straight for the snitch, her body pressed against the handle of her broom as she urges it faster, everything around to beginning to blur as she gains speed.

Rhian says, “Gryffindor heads for the Hufflepuff hoops, but what is this? Leong has suddenly picked up speed. Has she actually spotted the Golden Snitch? And where is Praw?”

Marybeth Campbell pushes snow flakes away from her face, but it seems they’re coming down thicker than before, or maybe she’s just looking at them instead of through them. “What?” She urges her broom toward a blur of red that must be a Gryffindor chaser, as they haven’t been much far apart, and finds herself flying ridiculously close to Josh. “Ugh, you haven’t got the quaffle at all!” is her statement, as the whistle of a bludger reaches her ears and she leans sideways to increase the distance between herself, the ball, and Josh.

Sebastian suddenly sees Alexandra swooping down, but has no idea where the snitch could be. His new broom giving him a faint boost, Sebastian catches up to Alexandra slightly but still is a few yards behind her. Then he focusses something glimmering in front of the snow covered scene. It the snitch. Come on, broom. Sebastian leans forward to hide from the wind. The opponent’s seeker coming nearer in front of him, just in form of a fluttering robe.

Andy tries to catch up to Gabriel and Josh, who is also trying to maneuver into a good position. As Marybeth let’s go Josh, Gabriel tries to throw the quaffle to him, fooling the Hufflepuff chaser, who is heading for the other direction. Josh gets a hold of the quaffle, but then he gets entangled in his cape and drops the red ball. The three Gryffindor chasers seem to sigh simultaneously and discontentedly steer downwards to recover the quaffle.

Charlie Linwood finally notices the bludger heading toward Eliza and, figuring that the Chasers are, for starters, not in possession of the quaffle, and for seconds, much more able to avoid the hurting ball of metal, changes course. He isn’t about to let his Captain and Keeper have to deal with the bludger, even if it’s unlikely she’ll be his. Away, and then CRACK!, with an awful lot of force, he sends the bludger in the opposite direction, toward Gryffindor’s end of the field.

She’s close now. Only feet away, Alexandra raises one arm, reaching forwards, but she’s not close enough. She mutters to herself, pushing for her broom to go faster, and it obliges, although the increase in speed is only slight. With the golden ball so tantalizating close, she is aware of nothing else, not even the other seeker.

The race goes on and Sebastian is getting nearer inch by inch. He’s approaching a bit faster now, that he is right behind her, but there its still a long way, if he is going to overtake her. The Hufflepuff’s cloak whips into his face, but he won’t concede. Sebastian swerves to the left, as it seems to be a good moment and perceives, that Alexandra’s fingers are only inches away from the fluttering golden ball. He reaches out and tries to catch it with a single strike. He misses and tumbles, doing a awkward roll in the air and falling back immediately, losing several yards in a second.

Sebastian’s sudden appearance (and disappearance) startles Alexandra, and she nearly falters, but as she turns to check on the other seeker, her outstretched hand brushes against something fluttering. Instinctively, she closes her fist. A second later she is slowing down, and in a few moments she is stopped, right dead center of the pitch, looking a bit confused, her hand closed on something. She opens in hand a little, taking a peek, and suddenly she breaks starts to laugh. Finally, she raises her arm into the air, holding the snitch, now visible in her hand, it’s wings protruding from between her fingers. “I catch it!” she says intelligently.

Rhian says, “The Seekers are so close it seems in catching the Snitch, Praw makes a grab for it but fails in getting it, quickly loosing ground on Leong. Leong has stopped and… she has the Snitch! Hufflepuff wins! The final score is Hufflepuff 150, Gryffindor 0 as they failed to get a score before the Snitch was caught. That’s it for the game and lets all get back to the castle and warm up.”

Marie-Anna Greyton screeches to a halt as she hears the words from Alexandra. “Oy, good try guys,” she gives to her teammates as she looks around and offers a nod towars Alexandra. “Yeh did good,” with that she lets her broom make it’s way to the ground. Once having touched down she offers her congratulations to the Hufflepuff team before heading back to the castle.

Donovan Harrison gives a whistle as he sees that Alexandra has caught the Snitch. He flies up to her and nods. “Good job Miss Leong. I’ll take the snitch now. Go ahead and get cleaned up and celebrate with your House.” He also goes around and gathers up the bludgers and quaffle, putting them away as he also makes sure the pitch is cleared of players before he goes to get warm himself.

No longer followed by his usual pack of snickering Slytherin cronies Marcus walks into class alone today looking a bit morose. He takes a seat at the front of the class for once away from his ‘friends’ while removing his books and notes from his bag. With a quick glance over his shoulder as if looking for somone Marcus turns back in his seat kicking his feet back and forth (easy to do when your feet don’t actually reach the floor) and waits for class to begin.

Bookbag slung carelessly over her shoulder, her steps rather less careful and precise than usual, it is evident to the close observer than Morgana DeWitt has not been getting adequate sleep lately. Her blonde hair is, as always, in pristine condition, and her robes are perfectly in order, though the self-assured mode she affects seems unconvincing – the discolouration under her eyes detracts from her arrogance, to a degree, and there is a certain weariness about her actions, as carefully choreographed as they are. As she sits down – she takes care not to just slump into her seat, but to take it with a certain grace and rest her bookbag daintily by her feet – and directs her gaze to the front of the classroom, there is a sort of vagueness to her expression, as if some part of her mind refuses to accept that she is in DADA.

Christine Keller walks happily in the classroom, coming in from the corridor and walking past a couple of Hufflepuffs who were busy discussing a last-minute trade of Quidditch cards right next to the door (probably not a smart move). “Hello, Professor Rathe.” she says, before sitting at the second row. She takes a couple of parchment sheets out of her bag as well as a quill, greeting some of the other students she is friends with, with a happy smile. Defense is not her best subject, but she is feeling strangely happy today and doesn’t mind this class much… for once. A whole ration of cookies brought by owl can have that effect, sometimes.

As always, Saphia steps into the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom tentatively, holding a pile of books as her shield up against the frightening presence of this classroom. Unlike most of her housemates, it’s not the professor that does this. While Professor Rathe can be scary, Saphia knows that she’s not really all that frightening. Despite, well, everything she read in the Daily Prophet recently. But the class itself terrifies her. She’s just never been able to show any command of the spells here… Hesitantly and timidly, she sits down at a front desk, rolls open a scroll of parchment, and writes down “DADA, Term 2…”

Seeming to almost bounce in, Briony enters the classroom with a beaming grin on her face. “And then he dropped it, so he had to fly laps,” she tells her Gryffindor comrade with a stifled giggle. Without much thought or analyzing, the girl skips over to her usual seat, near the front, and puts her things down, haphazardly setting up her things in front of her. It appears as if organization isn’t Briony‘s strong suit.

Drinking from a large mug, Astra watches her second year students arrive to class. Since the trial she has been more reserved and even a little more lenient in class, more tired but still strict enough to maintain enough decorum. Looking around with a bright expression, her eyes dart over each of the children. Finally, when the last student has arrived and the final bell has rung, she sets down her drink. Not even bothering to close the door to keep latecomers away, she grabs up the stack of papers nearest her and begins to hand the essays back. Haphazard, rather than her careful and fastidious way of handling class, some papers wind up in the wrong hands, “You didn’t disappoint me this time and most of these were at least amusing if not accurate. A few of you,” “still manage to continue your excellent work.”

Saphia Bona relaxes. Ahh, the written part of the class. The only thing holding up her grades and giving her a decent chance of passing. She happily receives her essay back and looks it over before her hand FLIES to her mouth to stifle a scream. How!? How did this hap– Wait. “Alexandra, this is YOUR essay,” she grumbles softly, trading it with the young Hufflepuff. She gets her essay back in exchange, with a nice large ‘E’ written on it. Saphia breathes a sigh of relief.

Looking over the paper Marcus blinks a few times to make sure his eyes were working. “How did I get such a low mar…. oh” He spots the name on the paper. “No whonder this one belongs to DeWittless…” Marcus rolls his eyes and reads over the paper slightly amused giving a glance back to Morgana now and again.

“How was yours?” Briony asks the person sitting next to her, glancing to her own paper with a rather absent shrug. The mark is not excellent, nor is it awful, so Briony is not upset at her own achievement in the matter. “Hey, hey Morgana!” Briony whispers down the way, leaning over to see Morgana better.

Wiping her eye with one hand – she is quite half-asleep, it is possible that her eyes simply aren’t working properly – Morgana peers at the mark on what she believes is her paper. “Oh. For a moment, I thought I’d passed…” she murmurs, peering at the mark, and the name at the top of the page, ‘Marcus Winsley’. Rather than actually returning his paper to him, she pulls out a quill and begins to copy out the key points. If he won’t let her see his notes, this is a good substitute. Then, she seems to realise someone is talking to her – she looks up in surprise, then looks back down without so much looking at Briony. “Don’t talk to me, Wexler.”

All the papers seem to be mixed, today. At first shocked by her grade –she knows she’s not that good, but still, a T– Christine only realizes a couple of seconds later that the writing is not hers. She is finally poked in the back by another student, a Hufflepuff boy, who hands her the essay. Relieved that she got an A, Christine puts the parchment in her bag and takes out her quill to write the date, waiting for the lesson to begin.

Usually the nasty comments between students would get at very least a sharp word from the professor, but today Astra either doesn’t pay enough attention or care enough to do something about any snide remarks. Even whispering in class is unheeded as she moves quickly back to her desk and hops to sit on top of it. Grabbing the mug, she takes another drink and then looks around the class. “Today we’re going to work on learning about the charming little demon known as the Ovinnik.” “I even had a live specimen but it kept setting things on fire,” running her words together quickly this is not the typical class at all. “So, I thought that the oh so brave and manly,” but she’s still sarcastic, “Professor Helit could *save* me.” Grinning impishly, she shares the rest, “I dumped the creature into one of his cages. I’m sorry we don’t have a live one. Maybe Helit will come by and share his discovery. If not, we’ll still have a good class.” “Are there any questions or anything? Has anyone read ahead and can share some information with us about the demon-cat-thing?”

Marcus Winsley tucks Morgana’s paper away and sits still while the Professor speaks. Sure he wanted his paper back but not badly enough to actually talk to Morgana. At the mention of a fire spitting cat …. thing Marcus grins widley at the thought of getting to see one but his hopes are quickly dashed as it turns out the CoMC Professor now has it… wether he likes it or not. Marcus sighs a litlte and begins writing down in his notes “Ovinniks apparently spit fire when angry and are apparently feline in nature.”

Saphia Bona raises her hand and whispers, “According to Gauntlet and Barricade, the Ovinnik is one of the most dangerous creatures for an inexperienced wizard to deal with. Ovinnik infestations can rapidly become critical in size because of how they reproduce — When killed, their corpse spawns as many as three more ovinniks. While nobody is sure, because it’s never been seen, it’s believed these ovinniks are spawned fully grown. The effects can be avoided by removing the head of the ovinnik, burning the body and head separately, and then scattering the ash and bone into a river. Or, possibly, by never leaving the corpse unobserved, presumably.”

Christine Keller would have liked to answer and bring some points to Ravenclaw as well, but she just happens not to know anything about Ovinniks. And tentatively leafing through her book in order to find an answer is not helping much, either. Sighing slightly, she does her best to listen and takes some notes out of what has been said so far –which isn’t much.

“Well, fine DeWitt. I dunno what I ever did to you.” Briony frowns hard at the slytherin girl and then turns her attention to Astra. Oh, right, class. Pausing for a moment in thought, Briony seems ready to hazard an answer, but hearing Saphia speak up, the girl leans back in hear seat with a sort of sigh. Usurped again. The girl twiddles her quill between her fingers and looks to see how this long and thorough answer is accepted.

Finishing up copying up Marcus’ notes from his essay, Morgana actually begins paying attention to the lesson for the first time, looking up at the Professor through tired eyes and offering a sort of half-smirk at the mention of Professor Helit. Not that she has had much chance to interact with him, but he seems to have had it coming from her point of view. Briony is completely ignored this time, and not only because the Slytherin girl looks on the brink of falling asleep.

Listening to the young Ravenclaw, Astra grins with a pleased expression. “Very good Saphia, er, I mean Miss Bona.” Not even bothering to correct the girl for speaking without waiting to be called on, she brushes over the incident. “Two points to Ravenclaw for a very good response.” Banging her feet against the front of her desk, she looks quickly around the room. “Okay, time to get to the good stuff.” “How were Ovvinks created? Saphia, err, Miss Bona let someone else try this time before answering. I know you probably know so let’s see if anyone else can tell me something.” “I’m sure some of you have read ahead, yes?”

Saphia Bona ‘s hand is halfway up when Astra’s admonishment comes. With a quietly whispered, “Oh…” and a tremendous pink blush, Saphia retracts into her chair.

Thunk. Yes, that’s Morgana‘s head hitting her desk. Forget grace and maturity, she’s tired and would really, really like to go to sleep around about now. She hasn’t done the reading, and she doesn’t care about the silly demon things at all. She would just like to sleep, and is taking this moment to do so. Right up until such times as Astra notices, of course.

Raiseing his hand Marcus begins to speak up in class, somthing that he hasn’t done in quite a while. “Professor the Ovinnicks were created in the 800′s or about by feuding Wizards. They were used back then to annoy your rival by setting them loose on there farms and land and sometimes they are even set onto muggle farms to give nearby wizards a bad name.” Looking around a bit Marcus clears his throat a little and continues. “Since they are lazy freeloaders they will steal food and… well they can eat pretty much anything we can. They might even steal the food off your plate…” Marcus gets quiet and sits back in his seat again hoping that his answer had been good enough.

“PROFESSOR RATHE!” The booming voice of an angry CoMC professor reverberates through the castle before Quintus even enters – when he does, it is plainly evident that he has had some kind of fiery mishap, his eyebrows still smouldering and his robes burnt. “Would you happen to know why a fire-breathing feline managed to find its way into my cages? I’d be very interested in finding out.” He must be angry – he’s voluntarily talking to another person, a woman, even. How horrifying. And, apparently, somewhere in his anger someone forgot to remind him who he was talking to, for he cannot resist the muttered, “Foolish woman.”

Briony is about to make some giggly comment to her Gryffindor friend again, when the door seems to burst apart — or that is her perception anyway — upon the entrance of Professor Helit. Briony has heard rumors about the teacher, but nothing like what she is seeing at present. The girl’s mouth drops open and she just stares for a moment, before sharing a bit of a giggle with her friend again. “Hey, Winsley, can you get Morgana’s attention for me? I wan’a ask her something.” This is whispered quietly, taking advantage of the distraction which has just entered their midst.

With an audible “EEP!” Saphia ducks behind the pile of books on her desk, away from the crazy burning professor who she knows is named Professor Rathe but otherwise doesn’t even really know anything about. Peeking out from over the top of her books, she desperately tries not to be seen.

As she tries to find out a sensible answer, Christine is interrupted first by Marcus, then by Professor Helit, who she doesn’t know, being only a second year. “What… oh…” she says, her mouth gaping from surprise. “I wonder what is going to happen, now…” she says with a little grin to the girl next to her. “He really seems to be furious…”

Going about her business Astra just looks more amused than annoyed when Morgana falls asleep. “Oh, we lost someone to naptime. I can’t blame her really; afternoon classes are always terribly mind-numbing.” Wide-eyed and chattering, she takes another drink of whatever is inside that mug of hers and springs off her desk. “Oh very good Mister Marcus or whatever your last name is.” No, this is certainly not a usual class. “Two points to er,” squinting she then beams, “Slytherin. Oh good, my House is finally trying to do right. Thank you!” And then, the explosion of anger from the CoMC as he arrives. Falling into a fit of laughter, she really can’t help herself. Doubling over she points at Quintus. “Oh by the white hairs of my grandfather’s beard, you should see yourself.” Sniffling back tears of merriment, she actually *skips* over to Quintus and stares up at him with a manic grin. “Thank you *so* much for taking care of that scary demon cat for me!” Gesturing with her hand, she urges him to come closer. “Stoop down so I can talk to you better. You’re too damn tall, just like a man.”

Marcus Winsley is looking a bit pleased with himself and is all smiles untill Professor Helit bursts into the class looking singed. He watches quietly as Proefssor Rathe begins acting strange and even gets a bit of a scared look on his face. He is sure to write down in his notes. “Professor Rathe has gone nutters. Steer clear.”

“I’M ON FIRE!” Quintus bellows in response, gesturing to his robes. “Because of your stupid demon cat!” For a moment, he looks almost tempted to stoop down as per her instructions, though he instead stands tall. Beware, students. Next year, this might be your teacher. “What were you thinking, Professor Rathe?” Even when enraged, he must use this honorific. “You’d think even a woman – ARGH!” He pats at his eyebrows, trying to put out the remainder of the fire. He probably looks quite comical, but he is trying to be scary.

Jolting into alertness again at the booming sound of Professor Helit’s voice, Morgana almost jumps out of her seat before slinking back under her desk almost guiltily, fixing a glare on the CoMC professor. Really. Getting so angry just because Professor Rathe set him on fire. After a moment, she waves a regal hand at Marcus, beckoning him over. “Collect your paper from my desk,” she tells him waspishly, apparently feeling free to speak out of turn while the Professors are distracted. “And whoever has mine, please feel free to return it.”

Glareing back at Morgana Marcus grabs her paper and hops down from his seat to waddle over to her and hold out her paper. “Here…. Mine please?” He obviously isn’t happy about having to actually talk to her.

“Awww poor widdle Care of Magical Cweatures Professor can’t stand the heat.” “Does he need a kiss to make it all better?” Astra can’t help herself as she goads her co-worker and she winks. “I thought you could stand to prove your manliness, after all I’m just a ‘weak and foolish woman’ how could I possibly handle a demon? Surely someone like you could.” Fluttering her lashes, she imitates those females that normally make her ill even to think about as she raises a hand to her forehead. “You are *my hero* Professor Helit. You’re so tall, so strong, so brave. Kiss me!”

Saphia‘s eyes widen. At this point she really DOES duck under the table, curls up, and waits for the explosion.

Christine Keller rolls her eyes at what Professor Astra is saying. “Has she suddenly gone mad, or what?” she whispers, really wondering about how the Care of Magical Creatures is going to react in front of this.

Stare. Stare. Quintus stares at Astra for a full minute. Does she really expect him to…? Well, this is how women act, isn’t it? But… even Professor Rathe? Well, they’re all women, it’s fairly a given that they’ll all act like this once in a while. But… Professor Rathe? In front of a room full of students…? Well, he is certainly not going to comply to her requests. Finally, he offers the gruff response, “Calm down, Professor Rathe. I will speak with you on the matter late.”

Barely suppressing a chuckle as she watches the saga unfold – like it or not, Professor Rathe can be particularly amusing from time to time – Morgana seems to barely comprehend what Marcus is saying for a moment, waving his paper at him vaguely. Finally, she offers the quiet, “You did fairly well, Winsley. You’ll share your notes with me sometime.” It isn’t a request, not my any stretch. It is unmistakably a command.

Feigning sorrow at the man’s response, Astra sighs. “Ah well, it’s always the way. The men come in and break my heart and then run away to hide. I’m never meant to find love.” Mocking him, she blows him a kiss, “Until later my love. I’ll be waiting.” Turning back to her class, she grins brightly. “Now then. Let’s seewhere were we?” “Does anyone have anything else to add? If not, I suppose I should dismiss class. There are some essay questions for you to take on your way out.”

Stareing terrified up at the front of the class as Professor Rathe begins baby talking to Professor Helit Marcus begins to look as though he may turn green. He turns to Morgana snatching his paper angrily. “Are you an Professor Rathe related or somthing?” With a shake of hos head he storms away back to his seat stareing at Professor Rathe and Morgana in turn as if trying to find some family resemblance.

Ignored again, Briony seems to be getting into a rather sour mood. The girl turns her attention to the parchment in front of her, for while the scene at hand is entertaining, the girl is annoyed at having been ignored. Granted, the two were Slytherins, but this does not occur to Briony who now begins doodling on the margins of her essay. Ah, well. The girl perks up as Astra mentions a dismissal of class and starts to gather her things together and pack them all up.

Blink. Blink. Stare. Blink. Completely unsure of what to say or do next, Quintus just stands there, rooted to the spot, staring at Astra. Then, he turns and storms out, being especially sure to slam his fist down on a desk nearest to the door as he passes it. He completely ignores whether there is a student there. There might be, there might not be. Either way, he is gone before anyone can distract his attention from the insane women within this school.

Saphia Bona tentatively picks herself up off the floor and, moving to collect an essay topic, asks Astra as politely as possible, “Pr… professor Rathe, are you all right?”

Raising an eyebrow at Marcus, Morgana simply shakes her head slowly. The goading baby talk is for private moments – and that in itself says everything that will ever need to be said about their relationship – and certainly not for a classroom full of people. A smirk flickers on the edge of her lips as she seems tempted to break her own rule just to torment the boy a little further, but she eventually concedes to, “If I was related to Professor Rathe… that would not bode well, needless to say.”

“All right? Never better. At least until I crash.” Hopping over to her desk, she picks up the mug “See this? Cocoa. Sugar is very bad for me, but it’s oh so lovely one in awhile.” “Next class will be better I’m sure and don’t worry about Professor Helit. As you see, the best way to face danger is to not be intimidated. I know he what he thinks of women and used that against him, even in my rather slappy state.” The smile Astra beams at the class is quite pleased and very happy.

Turning to look at Briony Marcus whispers low hopeing she can still hear him. “You don’t want to talk to her Wexler, trust me. She isn’t worth the effort.” Marcus turns to look over his shoulder stareing cruely at Morgana. He turns and begins writing down in his notes.

Finally having packed her things up, Briony stands up and begins her chatter again to her comrade, who seems to be mysteriously silent, as if she were used to listening to Briony‘s chatter. “So, did I tell you I got asked to the Governor’s ball?” she begins as she picks up her essay questions and laughs a bit as she exits the room, chattering about the ball at an animated pace.

Apparently only now registering that class is over, Morgana packs up her things and rubs at her eyes again with her hand. “Mm. Winsley?” She adds, picking up her bookbag and turning to face him. “You will walk me to our next class. We have things to discuss.” Again, it is far more a command than a request – one would think, from her manner, that she thinks herself to be several years older than him rather than a mere six months.

Grumbling Marcus hops down from his chair and follows after Morgana. “Wait up!” He yells after her. Wait a minute…. doesn’t Marcus hate Morgana? Strange relationship.