Maxen was most obviously pissed. His day was now officially and effectively RUINED by that incompetent witch of a divination professor. Perhaps she should have divined the consequences of her actions before idly throwing a detention at Maxen simply for pouring syrup and bird poop on an unsuspecting first year. Perhaps the staff should be asking why the house elves so easily gave away gallons of sticky breakfast condiments instead of being total idiots.

It was okay though, Maxen would have his revenge.

Cosmos had informed Maxen that he was to report to the great hall immediately, where decorating for the Yule Ball was well underway and he was to make himself useful. He would, indeed, make himself useful, though probably not in the way the stupid woman had in mind. Divination certainly was not a class he’d be pursuing if she continued to teach the class. It was a right useless bit of information anyway… tea was fecking tea, who cares what the dregs look like? Do you look at your poop when you have a movement? NO, you flush the shit, so why would anyone wanna look at the tea leaves?

He headed straight for the place where they all had meals, just as Cosmos had told him to, but not before taking a quick detour to the dungeons to acquire some decorating supplies. He finally made it to the great hall, bag in hand, and was surprised to see that there wasn’t a staff member in sight! How stupid, to give a detention and then not follow it through, though he supposed she figured there would at least be a prefect or two running around. And who knows, the professor could have just run out to fetch something or whatever.

He looked around the room, taking in the sights and saw lots of people sitting around in small knit groups planning, and some people drawing what appeared to be schematics. Boring. He needed someone else to join him or he’d simply DIE from the injustice of it all.

If Erik had known he'd be reduced to the mannerisms of a house cat due to being dwarfed by a Hogwarts Christmas Tree, well then the Gryffindor would love to serve more detentions in the Great Hall; as long as no one bossed him around or told him to climb down from from the tree and decorate it with proper magic, all was well with the world.

The ragamuffin Collins had just glanced through the myriad of green foliage to look at some students below before he crawled to a different handful of branches. He tied off some ribbon which was messily hanging out of his backpack and then he reached into his bag and pulled out a little glowing lantern orb. Someone told him it wasn't made of fire, so he wasn't afraid of becoming a massive firehazard; but as he looked through the pokey shade of leaves again the boy noticed that a familiar Slytherin had just entered the Great Hall with a bag of something.

Erik definitely would not be able to tell what was in the bag from all the way up in the tree, so there was only one way to figure out what the Whitman was up to. If it was explosive, well Erik didn't mind having a Pyrrhic Victory.

So, the Gryffindor crawled out from the depths of the tree, pulled out a length of fat ribbon from his bag, and then let himself fall down the bouncy and lithe branches of the Christmas Tree, rattling a few fairies from their places on the branches until he was close to the ground.

Then he lunged towards Maxen with a loud, "Whoop!"

Once he landed Erik rolled himself up off the ground in a tangle of ribbon and little round glowy lantern things, "Did you get detention too?" he beamed a bright smile at Maxen as he added,"If not, you're mental."

The first rule of being a super spy was to remember to look up, and had Maxen been a super spy, he would be dead. As it was, Maxen didn’t look into the boughs of the gigantic tree until he heard the rustling branches as the Gryffindor boy shimmied down the limbs. At first he wasn’t sure if the big oaf of a freak Hagrid had tried to decorate the yuletide decorations with those ugly winged monkies, but quickly realized that the monkey coming swiftly toward him was robed and wingless.

A sly grin parted the boy’s lips when he realized who it was, though the reason for Erik being all the way up the tree was still a mystery to the Whitman. Then, a fecking insane thought filled the Gryffindor’s head and he jumped right at Maxen’s face. “Oh shite!” Maxen yelled, jumping out of the way as the insane Gryffindor landed right where the Slytherin had just been standing. In the process of flying out of the way, the little snake’s bag fell to the ground with a large thump, completely disproportionate to the bag’s size.

Maxen’s infuriated face glared at Erik for all of about five seconds before an earsplitting grin replaced it. “I’m mental? Aren’t you the one that just tried to snog me? I’m sorry mate, but you’d at least need to bring me flowers before you come anywhere near these tantalizing lips.” He said, making a puckering face to his awkward friend. “That old bat Cosmos sent me, what’re you in for?”

A sharp, shrill whistle rang out from one of the hall's many doorways, followed quickly by Nick's best authoritative voice, "Oi, you lot!" The voice hadn't come off with the stern disdain he'd hoped, but the booming echo added at least some weight to it. With any luck, he was too far away for either of the boys to recognize him or even, given the height advantage he had on them, make out that he wasn't an adult. On the downside, he couldn't see if he'd managed to make them squirm the way he hoped. Even if they didn't fall for it, at least some of the knitting-and-schematics crowd heard what could pass for decent, stern supervision.

Not that Nick had any plans of actually fulfilling his promise to supervise the young detainees, but it wouldn't hurt for it to at least appear as though his intentions were genuine. In a way, he supposed they were; Nick loved putting up decorations, it was one of the few things that let him feel fancy, growing up, and there was a lot more to work with in the castle's massive Great Hall than in a run-down council flat with a plastic tree. It was a nice way to cheer himself up after his father's owl (West Ham was on a losing streak and Katie had a boyfriend) and wouldn't hurt his reputation with the teachers who still didn't exactly trust him. So, like most school activities Nick undertook, he was genuinely hoping for good results, but he had no intentions of putting in the effort he was supposed to to get them.

As he drew closer, Nick abandoned the charade and let his face break into his typical, lopsided grin. "Snogging before you hung up the mistletoe, lads?" he chided as he drew closer, lowering his voice. "I mean, that's rather putting the cart before horse, innit?" Looking over the pair, he recognized Maxen, the kind of Slytherin he was proud to share a house with; the kind who really made the term "Snake" mean something. His gaze shifted from Maxen to the other boy, who he didn't recognize, though he probably wasn't used to seeing him covered in ribbon and Christmas lighting. "Bloody hell," he said, "I thought they were making you put up decorations, not be them." With a quick look over his shoulder, Nick raised his voice, playing to the crowd. "Now, I'm here to supervise you two, all right, see that really think about what you've done," he said, loud enough to be heard, before lowering his voice and adding, with a conspiratorial wink, "Look, long as you don't gnaw on my ankles too much and don't do nothing that would get me in trouble, you can do whatever you like. Any questions, then? Let's have at it."

Erik gave a laugh before he blew a raspberry at the Slytherin and his accussation that Erik was out to snog him, "Pfft." Then the Gryffindor turned his attention the Whitman's question, "Three of the same detentions from three different professors, I can't be bothered."

Suddenly a whistle blew over the hall and Erik attempted to recall who he knew that whistled like that... Levartian didn't whistle, Storm definitely didn't whistle... his train of thought didn't get terribly far until he turned to face the person in question. Again with the snogging.

"I'd rather lock lips with a bludger," Erik gave a small cringe as he looked from the olde Slytherin to the younger one. Then he gave a quirky smile as he held a hand over his mouth and leaned towards Maxen as he mumbled, "But mistletoe cherries dungbombs sounds brilliant, yeah?"

Once the older boy finished talking, Erik turned towards his classmate, "Yeah, Maxen," Erik then shrugged off an armful of colorful ribbon as he lingered over to the Slytherin's suspicious backpack, "What did you pack for our lovely date?"

As a Whitman, one never shows fear or gets startled and Maxen had mastered the art at a very young age. He picked up poisonous snakes and spiders unflinchingly and dared to try feats that others his age only dreamed of, but the shrieking sound of a whistle unnerved him. He jumped slightly; thankful that his bag was still lying on the floor, he didn’t want to drop it twice… some of the stuff in there was valuable! He whipped his head around quickly, eyes narrowed in annoyance to look upon the elder Slytherin boy.

“Was that truly necessary, Mensforth?” He asked, glare fading from his features. “Collins enjoys dressing in pretty colors and snogging men,” Maxen said with a smile. Sometimes it was just too easy to pick on your friends, especially when others presented you with golden opportunities. “Three detentions in one, eh? I guess that means you’ll have to do double the work then, right?” He said, bending to retrieve his bag.

“That'd be totally disgusting" the Slytherin said with a grin.He took a quick look around to make sure only Erik and Nick were around and looked into his bag conspiratorially. “Well, step right up and gaze into the infinite supply of Maxen’s Merchandise! We’ve everything from dungbombs to exploding ornaments to portable swamps. Also got a few doxy eggs, sneaked ‘em right out of knockturn last visit. All guaranteed to be on the prohibited list.” Maxen pulled open the bag and a nasty sulfuric stench wafted out to assault the trio. Maxen quickly put his free arm over his nose to make sure he didn’t breathe in any of the noxious fumes. “Uh… I don’t think there’s anything lethal in there.”

"Course it was, I wouldn't do a thing like that just for fun, would I?" Nick replied, flashing a grin that indicated he certainly would do a thing like that just for fun. "Wouldn't want that lot thinking I didn't take my duties seriously." Nick was a lot like Erik and Maxen when he first arrived at the school, but he'd learned a lot since then. In example, how to be a lot like Erik and Maxen without getting detention. Every time he signed up to do extra credit work or to help clean up the common or, in this case, to supervise younger students in detention, a little less suspicion was cast his way the next time something went wrong; last year he'd beaten a Gryffindor senseless and managed to convince most of the faculty he was the victim. Of course, every time he did something like that, he had to double his efforts to remove suspicion. In other words, it was all about balance.

"Well, they always said the best way to pick up a bird was by sharing her interests, right Collins?" Nick said with a friendly nod. "Maybe my last girl wouldn't have dumped me if I wore pretty colors and snogged blokes," he added, with a mock-wistful expression. As if having thought it over for a second, he added "Oh, no, nevermind, she didn't like either of those things." His expression actually turning Wistful, he managed to add "Great girl, hell of an arm," before resuming his previous train of thought when a smell not unlike hellfire and brimstone came wafting out of the bag.

"Right, so, I bet there's a way we can get almost all of that up without any of us getting the blame," he told the younger boys with a conspiratorial grin. When he was at home, most of Nick's time around his friends was spent watching either heist movies, bad kung fu movies, or worse horror movies. While the latter two had their charms, it was the first which really taught a young man meaningful life lessons. If you wanted to steal something, you'd have a better chance of getting away if you left something like in it's place, right? Well, same was true in reverse. If they put up the exploding ornaments and dung bombs, everyone would know it was them. If they merely replaced some of the ones that had been set out, however, and put the originals in their own bags, well, all the decorations they put up were fine, right? It was only after them that there was a problem. "You switch the stuff what you've got in the bag with the things they've left out here, leave it for the next lot to put up on their detention, and we get to watch the chaos just the same, but stay free to plot again, eh? We load the originals up in our own bags, do away them or, better yet, plant them on someone else who you hate." And to think, some people might have had suspicion that Nick wasn't here to teach these boys anything.

For Erik, kissing girls was always out of the question; therefore, kissing boys was never even a topic for the Gryffindor, but between the two Slytherins they had a hard time dropping the subject didn't they? "Bloody hell," Erik suspiciously looked from one Sllytherin to the next before rubbing his nose, "With how much you two talk about kissing boys, it's a wonder either of you mention--or so snag a snog from a girl."

He finally shook his head as he finally bowed out of that discussion, "I'll stay single for as long as I can, thanks." And then he smiled and gave the older boy an approving nod as he added, "Slytherins are better off at planning, I say." Erik then began to tug and shimmy out of the Christmas decorations as he looked around the Great Hall. Unlike muggles, Halloween was a big to-do for wizards, and they were just as rambunctious around Halloween as they were around any other holiday for the seasons.

So the magical world seemed to decorate for Christmas much later than the muggle one, at least in Erik's opinion--magic sometimes gave one the ability to be a bit lazy about these things. Erik then pulled at Maxen's bag and--carefully--reached inside to look for something to switch out other decorations with,"Though there's not a lot of decorations up, are we being lazy this time around?"