Gryffindor Common Room

"Sorry. Didn't know." Tommy said, rolling his eyes. "All I know is she gave me TONS of homework."

Matthew started to frown. That Josiah kid was getting all the attention again. And where the hell was that Will kid popping up from!? He did a few double takes, frantically searching for a trap door.

"Why are you twitching like that?" Josiah asked Matthew.

"I-I'm not twitching!" Matthew protested. "Just looking for where that Will guy keeps popping up from."

"From the chair, stupid!" Will called, raising his hand, and waving in their direction, and Phil began to giggle a little.

Matt glared at the hand. "Anyways... is there anymore homework tonight Phil?"

"Nope! Well, I don't have anymore, but... let's see... there was the essay for Transfiguration, the plant diagrams for Herbology, and practicing the spells for Charms. That's it." he replied, ticking the assignments off his hand.

"Oh, I did the diagrams during lunch so I'm a free man! Besides the essay of course. But cool."

"Good luck..." he mumbled, watching him right. Phil didn't know how Matt was going to get out of this one. Matt was never the best writer, and Professor Brown was expecting perfection out of this essay."

"You wanna go skip stones or something?" Matt said eagerly, desperate to get outdoors.

"No Matt. You need to finish your essay!" he exclaimed. "We can go outside AFTER you're done." Phil felt quite a lot like a father or mother scolding their son.

Matt scurried to the seat nearest to the couch and started to write again, every once and a while looking up at Philip with sad, pouting eyes.

"When we're done..." And Phillip turned, and watched the bright red flames of the fire dance and skip around in the grate. Before long, he had dozed off, making soft breathing noises.

Leah entered the common room looking pissed off. She kicked the foot of a couch before flopping down into it.

"What happened, milady?" Will asked, glancing at her from his chair.

"Oooh, Leah, what's wrong?" asked Josiah sarcastically, grinning at his cousin all smug-like. He loved pissing off Leah.

"None of your beeswax, you stupid arses," muttered Leah angrily, glaring at the two of them.

"If you're not going to say anything, don't go around kicking and complaining." Will said, giving her a reproachful look.

"Don't tell me what to do! You're not the one who got detention, are you!?"

"You got detention?" Josiah stared at her, trying not to laugh. "Who gave it to you?"

"Detention, that's it?" Will sat up now, staring at her and trying not to laugh at that PO'd look on her face. "Detention is no problem. You're probably just going to scrub the entire second floor corridor is all, but what are you in for?"

"It's from that stupid caretaker... I didn't think he'd see me! I mean, the guy's like a million years old! And I just thought it would be funny to start annoying some painting..."

"That's just asking for trouble..." Will said, smiling at her faintly. "But, that's a pretty small offense-scratch scrubbing the floors, you're probably just going to be working at the library."

"Oh, do you think? That's even WORSE though! I hate libraries! They're for... goody-goodies!"

An hour or so after Philip fell asleep, Matt chirped, "Done! Can we please go now? I wrote extra, rewrote, double checked, the load of it. So can we?"