It was afternoon after the end of classes, Hannah was bored stiff, and now that the Hospital Hut had taken up permanent residence as the school's infirmary, the old infirmary sat unused and irresistible. She'd heard there'd been some sort of fire here, or something - that was before her time - but she'd first gone in three weeks ago and it wasn't all that messy. Hardly no one ever came around, she'd noticed, so it made it an excellent place to explore.

It also made an excellent place to hide, and - now that the library was packed full of students studying for end-of-the-year exams - a pretty good substitute for peace and quiet. Hannah loved being in Gryffindor, but sometimes her House mates could be pretty loony. Quiet in the common room was like water in a desert, and Hannah (for all her cheerful bubbly nature), sometimes just wanted to get away. Hogwarts was an awfully public place, so it was a good thing there were all these nooks and crannies.

She was still lurking in the outside corridor, about to slip through the door, when she heard the scuff of footsteps from further down the hall. Instantly Hannah dumped her school bag on the floor and rummaged through it, pretending to have stopped to look for something in case it was a professor or a prefect who'd come calling. If it was, she'd wait until they were gone to sneak in.

Elly had just finished up one of her daily trips to see her owl and was now wandering the halls in search of something to do. The library had been packed and she hadn't really felt the need to study for exams considering how much she'd been doing in the last few days. She reached into her satchel and dug out a small bit of chocolate she'd been saving as her snack for the day. One of the greatest things she was learning about wizard life was the overabundance of candy she could get her hands on.

As she nibbled on the small bit of the candy bar, she heard something down the hallway that sounded like someone had dropped a load of things on the floor. Wrapping the chocolate back in its packaging, she slowly made her way towards the old infirmary, tying up her mousy brown hair into a sloppy bun and holding it together with a small pencil and drawing her wand just in case. Ghosts in this school had a way of making mischief but students did too and she had been scared by both enough times to know to be prepared for anything.

Her anxiety was relieved when she caught sight of one of the girls from Gryffindor she knew from class. "Hannah?" she called out apprehensively,  still holding onto her wand.

If anyone asked, she was looking for a hair tie. Bending over her bag like this, her hair eclipsed her view of the hallway (and anyone's view of her face) in a long blonde curtain; it'd be an easy excuse to believe. Let's see...a bottle of ink, two rolls of parchment, a tiny pink unicorn, her charm bracelet, a few knuts down near the bottom, and the misc. clutter any student accumulated over the school year. Time to clean it out soon, she decided, and kept rummaging.

"Hannah?"

At the sound of Elly's voice Hannah relaxed. She stopped digging diligently through her bag and straightened, giving the other girl a smile. "Oh, hullo Elly. I thought you were a prefect," she explained.

Her eyes zeroed in on the wand pointed in her direction, and she blinked. "Why've you got your wand out, then?" she asked amicably, as though students pointing wands at her were quite a common occurance. Tthey weren't, but Elly was hardly about to hex her.

"I'm a lot of things," Elly replied with a laugh,"a prefect isn't one of them, I'm afraid."

"Why've you got your wand out then?"

Elly had almost forgotten in a moment she saw Hannah was no ghost that she still clutched her wand. A small nervous laugh came instinctively as she put it back. "Sorry, I honestly thought you were a ghost. What are you doing here anyway?"

She bent down to help Hannah gather her things back into her bag. As far as she knew there wasn't anything terribly special about this corridor other than it was a good place to hide and read if you really wanted to and that there was an old infirmary. Still though, maybe her friend from Gryffindor knew something she didn't. It also wouldn't be terrible to have the company. This was one of those days that Elly actually had been exploring just to see what everyone else had been up to rather than letting them come to her as she normally did. Not that she was a sucker for attention but sometimes she preferred others to find her rather than the other way around.

"Yeah, thank Merlin," Hannah agreed, beaming. Already she was thinking maybe it wouldn't be so bad to have company, if Elly was up for it. She didn't know the girl as well as she'd have liked to; this was as good time as any to learn. And, come on. What first year wouldn't be up for a spot of sneaking? Well, except Noriko. And Eirene. And, come to think of it, she couldn't see Effie doing anything but sneering at such a suggestion. Maybe she should try and gauge the willingness of her would-be accomplice first.

"Oh, the ghosts aren't too bad," she said absently, still mentally debating the best way to invite Elly along. "Even the Bloody Baron isn't that scary if you just ignore all the blood and the staring and stuff. He helped me one time when Peeves stole my bag." The sight of him swooping all silent and silvery down the hallway was a little jarring, but since the end result had been Peeves dropping her bag to flee Hannah counted him as an ally. "I suppose you've got to like kids at least a bit if you choose to hang around Hogwarts for eternity."

"What are you doing here anyway?"

"Um," Hannah said. "Well. I was just - look, Elly, you're not going to tattle on me, are you? 'Cos I was about to go into the infirmary here and if you won't you can come along."