Chapter 4a In which we meet Josh and Remie
Ten minutes later a tapping was heard on the window of the bed-sit on one of the numerous dirty back-streets in London. A sleepy looking boy opened the window yawning. When he saw Moon-drop he grinned widely and moved out of the way. The ball of light bobbled past him and floated to a stop in the middle of the bedroom, at head-height. At least it should have been head height, if he had been a normal height for someone who was 21, instead, Remi was only 5'5 something which he made up for slightly by having spikey hair which was at the moment dyed bright fuschia-pink at the ends. Remi took the paper from Moon-drop who was hovering excitedly at least a ft over his head. He called out happily to the seemingly empty room, but as he did a pile of blankets curled on a mattress on the floor moved and stretched.
"Josh, we got a letter from Tairra, she's going shopping on Saturday and taking Nick, wanna go watch him try and stop her from blowing all her money?" The blankets rumbled in reply and then a head poked out from under them. The face was contorted in a huge yawn, and the long brown-green hair stuck out at odd angles. It looked a lot like the face had been asleep, and so it had. Josh shook his head to try and clear it; and stared at Re with dark nearly-black eyes." What was that Re? You knew I was asleep, so why did you bother asking?" Re, who was standing on the other side of the room, giggled. "Tairra wants us to go and watch her shop on Saturday. Nick's gonna be trying to stop her. The rest of the letter is routine, except we've got to send it on with an answer, oh, and she's had another one, and says that it's going to be a very, very interesting year. I'm suddenly filled with an overwhelming sense of happiness that we aren't at Hogwarts anymore." Josh groaned loudly, and growled under his breath. He rolled over to face Re properly.
"Yes I'll go, I too am glad not to be where all the excitement is of a fatal kind. Now let me go to sleep, what time is it?" Re looked at his watch, "it's half nine lazy, now get up." "No." Josh lay solidly in the bed and refused to move. He considered making fake-snoring noises, but decided against it. Re paused to consider his options for a moment. "If you don't get out of that bed this minute Joshua Astin I will send a pair of your cartoon boxers to Tairra with this letter, and I will tell her how to put them up all around the college. Are you getting up Pumpkin?" He asked sarcastically. Josh rolled to face his back at Re. "I'm still not getting up, I don't care how many people around here know that I wear cartoons on my boxers, but I do know that you've got more friends here than I have, and I'm sure they'd like to know that the guy you're in love with wears cartoon boxers and you let him. What do you think, Watermelon?" Josh had definitely won. Remi scrawled their answers on the back of the letter and gave it to Moon-drop. As he zoomed out of the window Re climbed into bed behind Josh, hugging him. "You'd be in such trouble if I didn't love you, you know that?" "Yep," answered Josh and snuggled back into the embrace.