The Great Hall, Alec decided, was not designed with the intention of holding four large house tables as well as the entirety of the student body milling around in between. The house heads had given out their students' individualised time tables, and people casually sauntered over to their friends' house tables to compare classes, re-familiarise themselves with the whereabouts of forgotten classrooms, and generally chat about a variety of topics that weren't breakfast. Most of the students that were actually eating were Leg students, who had picked their timetables up from their common room and already had some time to study them. Meredith wasn't too keen on handing out timetables during the first breakfast back, and it was evident why.
Alec gradually lost interest in scanning the Great Hall and returned to his timetable. Karen looked over his shoulder. "Why are you still taking Divination?" she asked. Alec shrugged, and picked up her timetable. "It's just a bit of fun," he replied, "Casey thinks it's hilarious. Why are you taking… Ancient Runes?" He quickly scanned her timetable, noting that they had no common classes outside the core classes.
"It's interesting. Sure, it's a huge workload, but it's useful when I'm studying for other subjects, especially History of Magic. Ancient Runes works with tangible facts, whereas Divination is just…"
"Earl Grey and a warm fire," Alec finished. "Sounds pretty good to me. Who else is doing Runes?"
Karen counted on her fingers, "Luke, Oliver, Ivan, and Paige."
Alec laughed. "Great, it's the nerdy subject!"
"No it's not!" Karen gently punched his arm. "Besides, you could keep up with the 'nerdy' subjects if you really wanted, you're smart enough to do them."
"What's the point though? Nobody's going to recognise that it's the Leg students excelling at these subjects."
"Perhaps not," she conceded, "but you could still challenge yourself. Not everything has to be done in the name of your house."
"Fine, let's say I get top marks in everything, I get all my NEWTs, and I become a Healer at St Mungo's. What are people going to say? 'Typical Hufflepuff, he was such a hard worker.'"
"You're not going to be defined by your Hogwarts house forever, Alec. I'd better give the first years some help finding the classrooms."
"Yeah, I'll see you in Charms," Alec grinned and joined Casey on the way to Divination.
O0o0O
In a corner of the common room, Josh, Ro and Hayley were already bored of waiting for the second class of the day to begin. Josh and Ro had quickly claimed the couches, leaving Hayley to aimlessly wander around the room. Ro, eyes bloodshot and weighed down by dark bags, defensively held onto a plate of bacon.
"I'm so depressed," Ro said softly.
"Why are you depressed? " Josh asked incredulously, "It's the first day back, and Meredith didn't even wake you up for swimming this morning."
Ro half heartedly attempted a shrug. "I miss carbs."
Hayley rolled her eyes. Josh replied, "Hey, you're getting bacon or nothing at all. If you miss carbs so much, you can get your own damn breakfast."
"Carbs is my dog. She's only six months old, I hope mum and dad are taking good care of her. Poor baby." Ro stared into the distance and slowly raised another rasher of bacon to her mouth.
They lapsed into silence for another few minutes. Hayley continued investigating the notice boards, which were carbon copies of the ones in the other common rooms. While the notice boards were a potentially flawed idea, as they allowed all of the Leg students to see each house's announcements, Meredith had decided it was necessary for students to be aware of issues and notices within their 'cover' house. As a precautionary measure, the notice boards had been jinxed so that each student could only see one of the boards clearly. The remaining three appeared fuzzy and indistinct. The Leg notice board was twice as big as the others and occupied the left side of the wall.
Hayley leaned in closer to look at the Ravenclaw notice board. "The Ravenclaw prefects are starting a chess club," she noted with interest.
"A chess club? Gay. It's not even a real sport," said Josh. Hayley shook her head slightly and continued reading the notice. "You're not thinking of playing with them, are you, Hayley?" Josh asked.
"Depends. Would you want to play chess with me instead?"
"Fuck no."
"Awesome, I'm going to play with the Ravenclaws," Hayley stated.
"Dude, you're not a Ravenclaw, you're a fucking Leg."
"Josh, that doesn't even matter, I was officially sorted into Ravenclaw and that's good enough as far as they're concerned."
Josh considered her words for a moment, then swiped some bacon off Ro's plate and sauntered over to the notice boards. "Let me see," he said, passing Hayley a rasher of bacon and pushing her aside. "I want to see if the Gryffindor Quidditch trials have been announced yet."
"But Josh, you're not a Gryffindor," Hayley mocked.
Josh gave her a look and turned back to the notice board. "Quidditch isn't a house-exclusive event. Anyway, I'm not going to spend my Monday mornings cooped up in here with you guys and listen to Ro complain about the amount of carbs in bacon."
"Carbs is my dog," Ro cried, "I'm not going to eat my dog as bacon!"
"You could have joined me in the pool to practice. Remember that competition that Meredith was talking about?" Natasha asked as she entered from the pool room.
"Breakfast started at seven thirty. I'm not going to miss breakfast just to get a few extra hours swimming in," Josh replied testily.
Hayley shrugged. "you could have breakfast afterwards. You took some bacon for Ro, I took some porridge for Natasha and left it on her bed." Natasha nodded her thanks and went up to her dorm to get ready for class.
Josh narrowed his eyes at Hayley. "You've already chosen a team, then. Hey, don't look at me like you have no idea what I mean. You can only support one person for this swimming tournament. Besides, I swam for an hour this morning and I'm doing two hours tonight. I'll be fine."
"Three hours, that's only one eighth of your day. Do you really think you'll win with that effort?" Hayley grinned cheekily. She knew that he could win Meredith's competition no matter how long he practiced.
Josh sighed in frustration. "Fine, I'll do three hours tonight, and I'll ask Luke and Paige to join me so they can't go to your Ravenclaw chess club thing."
"Yeah, you try that. I've got Charms with them next, though, and I'll go play chess with the Ravenclaws regardless." Hayley laughed as Josh glared at her, and followed Natasha up to the dorms.
O0o0O
"So you goaded Josh into competing against the whole house?" Paige asked. Hayley nodded brightly, and Paige groaned. "You do know that the whole swimming competition is just a bit of fun, right? Now he's going to be behind in his classes from the very start."
"Yeah, so? He's always behind in his classes, the only things he pays attention to are swimming and Quidditch. " Hayley casually leaned back in her chair and shot a pillow across the room. Flitwick's speech about the OWL exams, while largely ignored by many of the Leg students, had finally brought the other students down from their holiday buzz.
Hayley stared at her pillow thoughtfully before summoning it back with her wand. "He's keeping an eye out for Gryffindor Quidditch tryouts now."
"Well, I hope he isn't expecting anyone to help him through his homework later in the year, because I definitely won't be."
"Of course you won't, you'll be too busy helping me with mine," Hayley said, grinning.
Paige raised her eyebrow at her friend, and returned to her charms textbook. "I'm not going to carry you through your OWLs, Hayley. You're going to have to take more responsibility for your classes instead of relying on Casey and me."
"Yeah yeah, I know. I'll concentrate on that after the swimming competition's done, I want to see how that turns out. Can you at least help me until then?"
"You do realise that the others who are concentrating on actually swimming will also be doing their own homework, right?" Paige said, her voice bordering on threatening. Hayley rolled her eyes and, the conversation having reached its natural end, Paige directed her full concentration to her textbook.
Hayley turned to her other side and poked Alec with her wand. "What about you guys? You're getting ready for this big swimming comp, right?" Karen and Alec had both exhausted their piles of pillows, and on the opposite side of the room, Luke was knocking Oliver's pillows out of the air with his own.
Karen shrugged. "I don't know. I did the training Meredith set us over the holidays, but I'm not sure I'll be able to keep my standard up throughout the year. I'd prefer to concentrate on my homework and prefect duties."
"Fair enough," Hayley replied, "What about you, Alec?"
"I dunno, I'm not sure I really want to do it. I'll give it a shot though, even if it is just to mess with Josh a bit." Alec smiled lazily, slouching back in his chair.
"Why would you want to mess with Josh?" Karen asked, looking up from her notebook.
"Because it's funny," Alec laughed, "He's taking it too seriously, why wouldn't you mess with him?"
Karen raised an eyebrow at him as he kept laughing. "I hope Josh realises that Meredith's thing isn't the actual competition, it's after she chooses the two students to go against the other schools."
Paige groaned. "Don't remind him. I don't want to have to teach him the content of all of his subjects in the week before exams, last year was bad enough." Karen mimed locking her lips and smiled.
Alec tossed a pillow in the air thoughtfully. "Where is it going to be held?"
"It's in Europe, Meredith told me that much," Karen replied. "The people who are entered miss out on a week of school, so I'm hoping I'm not chosen."
"Me neither," said Paige, raising her hands. "I can't mess up my OWLs, I'm hoping to get at least five."
Hayley dug her elbow into Paige's side. "Dude, you're going to get, like, eight. It'll be a miracle if I get anything close to five."
"Well, it's Meredith choosing the competitors, and not us," Alec sighed. "And at least we all know who the strongest swimmers in this class are."
Across the room, Luke and Oliver had seemingly forgotten about the aim of the lesson, and were each leading a handful of students in the construction of a pillow fort to protect themselves against enemy attacks.
O0o0O
"No, I'm telling you," Josh said, "This is a test of skill and she's your main competition. We can't work with her until the tournament's over."
"Maybe not even then," Ro added with a hint of sarcasm, raising her eyebrows.
Casey laughed. "You're taking this a bit seriously, Josh. Natasha's one of my best friends, she's not my enemy."
"Don't you want to win? Would you rather just hand it over to her on a silver platter?"
"Of course I want to win," Casey replied, rolling her eyes. "And she wants to win too, that's not necessarily a bad thing." She put her dragon hide gloves on and followed Ro across the greenhouse. Josh tried to pull her back but she kept walking, dragging him along with her. They eventually made it over to Natasha and Ivan, who were collecting bubotuber pus from one of the more docile plants. Ivan smiled slightly as they approached, but kept his attention focused on the plant in front of them.
"What, you're actually going to talk to me after I did extra training this morning?" Natasha asked. Her tone suggested that she was slightly offended after Josh's treatment of her this morning, and Casey let it slide. "Sorry Natasha, we don't ignore people until the third day back," Casey replied, smiling. Josh grumbled slightly, and started attacking the plant in front of him. Ivan moved further around the bush to give him some room.
Rowena jumped onto one of the empty benches, making no effort to approach the plant. "Calm your shit, Josh," she said half heartedly. Shane approached from the other end of the greenhouse, and Casey sniggered. Ro lightly kicked her in the side to shut her up.
"C'mon, get in there Ro, I thought you'd be into this kind of stuff," Shane said.
Ro smiled. "Nah, I'm right, I reckon Josh has it covered." Josh scowled, and his attacks the plant became more violent. He showed no signs of slowing down, so Casey and Natasha quickly collected the pods while they listened to Ro and Shane talk about their holidays. Ivan abandoned his scissors and started extracting the pus. He looked up at Josh warily.
"You guys are invited too, of course."
"Hmm?" Casey looked up at Shane, frowning slightly.
"Some of the Slytherins are meeting in the trophy room at midnight tonight. You guys are welcome too," Shane glanced at Natasha, Josh and Ivan, "Any friend of Ro is a friend of mine." His eyes fell to the ground and he shrugged, as if doubting that he could ever actually be friends with a Gryffindor student.
"No thanks, I'm exhausted already. Thanks for the offer though," Natasha smiled. Josh's elbows flew everywhere and Ivan murmured something into his bowl of pus.
Casey rolled her eyes at Shane. "Sorry, I'm babysitting my cousin tonight. I'm sure you two will be fine without us though." She winked at Ro, who smiled gratefully back. Shane smiled. "Your loss," he replied, and led Ro away to work with some of the other Slytherins for the rest of the period.
"He's a bad influence," Natasha noted, watching Shane and Ro walk away.
"He's not even a Leg student," Josh hissed, not noticing when he elbowed Ivan in the cheek. "If he does anything I'm going to punch him in the mouth." He spent the rest of the lesson fuming over Ro's choice of friends and insulting the founders of Hogwarts. Natasha agreed with him, offering suggestions on appropriate insults for Helga Hufflepuff. Casey grinned to herself, relieved that Josh and Natasha were bonding over something other than the swimming competition.