As a general rule, Thea was not a nurturing person. Ramrod straight posture and a general disdain for physical contact with others were not qualities that lent themselves well to comforting hugs. At the sight of tears on another's cheeks she was more likely to craft an excuse and back out of the room than attempt to remedy the situation. Perhaps it was because of the disgust she felt at anyone's loss of control, despite the knowledge that tears did not equal weakness. Maybe it was the result of years of conditioning to believe emotions were to be known only by the person experiencing them--and not even them, if they could help it.

Whatever the reason, when she encountered Mason slouched and  brooding in the hallway as she was dragging herself toward the library, Thea's first instinct was to turn tail and run. However, as he was her friend--despite a recent period of distance between them--she quashed this impulse and, though her feet felt like lead, attempted a springy step over to where he sat.

Every book and movie she'd taken in on the subject had been rather clear on comforting people in that humor was always a good method for doing so. This presented a problem for Thea, however, as even on her best day she was about as funny as a colonoscopy. She had to try, though, for Mason's sake, and so she contorted her face into what she believed was an exaggerated frown--although due to the already subdued nature of her facial expressions looked more like a mild pout--and stared down at him. "Mason Hawkins," she demanded stiffly in her best (read: an awful) Joker voice, "Why so serious?"

She felt immediately ridiculous, but the foolish words already hung in the air between them. She couldn't move until he replied, so she stood there with arms crossed, every fiber of her being glowing with embarrassment, and looked down at her bewildered friend.

Valentines Day...Ugh.

Mason had wandered as far away from Ravenclaw Dormitory as he could get without burying himself. He just sat in a quiet corridor with a few graphic novels that he would sit and read all day. He was half-way through The Hobbit, for the fourth time when Thea  came along and attempted to imitate his favorite super villain. Mason smiled a bit. "Hiya Thea, just thinking." Sonny put his book down and put his cheek on his knees, turning his curly-top towards Darby.

"I hate Valentine's day, well, I think it's a perfectly reasonable holiday, but I dislike the commercialism of Valentine's day. I don't think this was what St. Valentine was thinking about when he was wedding young Roman couples." Mase was sick to death of relationships, especially weddings. He still couldn't believe Katherine was engaged and didn't tell him until yesterday. How suckish was that timing?

"I think I might make an anti-commercialism club, where we get to the facts of all holidays, and take out the candy companies and marketing. No one would come, because they wouldn't know about it, because I wouldn't commercialize it...." Mason looked at Thea's hands, free of anything rings on her left ring finger, the way it should be. "Anyways, how are you? Enjoying Glad to be single day?"

Oh thank God Thea thought, as Mason let her absurd behavior pass. Dropping her bag, she sunk down until she was criss-cross beside him, listening to his complaints about the commercialism of Valentine's Day. As if that were the problem with it, and not the fact that it made anyone not paired off in some starry-eyed couple feel like a leper.

Or maybe that was just her, the feelings magnified as she sat beside the boy who she had voluntarily surrendered all relationship rights to, only to be overcome by regret.  Watching him fawning over Katherine had rendered her temporarily incapable of sustaining a conversation with him. All she could think about when she saw him was his face the first time they'd kissed, and as Katherine was a generally nice girl in her dormitory toward whom she bore no ill will, it seemed inappropriate to be suddenly seized by such a strong urge to throw the girls' hairbrush out the window. She frowned in distaste and shook herself from her internal monologue in time to hear him ask her about her own V-Day experience.

She laughed bitterly, "Oh yeah Sonny, it's been a real ball. I've just been embracing my singlene--" she stopped abruptly. If Mason had his lovely girlfriend, why was he alone in a hallway, cursing the evils of the Most Romantic Day of the Year? "Mase, I thought you were with Katherine...?" she half-stated, half-asked. The tiniest bubble of hope began to form in her chest, and she brutally crushed it, awaiting his reply. She did not want Mason. She did not.

Mason knew it was coming, it had to. Apparently, Alexa had spread the news of Katherine and Mason's relationship like a fatal disease, even after all the work they put into keeping it a secret. "We broke up after she told me she was engaged. her parents arranged it and she couldn't say no. So we ended it so she wouldn't get in trouble with her grandparents, it's a very long and aggravating story, sorry."

Mason felt like a kite in the wind, he had his feet planted on the ground, but he didn't know what was controlling him anymore, he felt like an empty shell of what he was. It's not like he was incomplete without Katherine, but he felt terrible for her, being forced into a marriage at age seventeen, it made him a little sick to think about it. "I could have guessed it, but I was so busy with the tournament, I wasn't the easiest to catch a moment from."

A thought occurred to Mason, "Will you be my anti-Valentine Abby?" he said, rather dreamily, he looked at the floor tiles, counting the speckles of color.

"Wait, she's engaged?" Thea replied, caught off guard. Even considering her own family's archaic traditions and worldviews, that seemed absurd. "Well I suppose that could be a bit of a deal breaker." She studied Mase's face, looking for signs of what he might be feeling. He looked sad and bewildered, and she felt the twinge of echoing emotions in herself, perturbed by her friend's unhappiness, along with the by-now-familiar pang of jealousy that Katherine coudl have such an effect on his emotions.

"That's sort of awful," she said softly, awkwardly, but with feeling. "I'm sorry, Sonny." After another moment of silence, it occurred to her that the same movies that advised humor in these situations were wrought with hugs. Stiffly, she began to extend her arms, looking more like the undead than a shoulder to cry on. Fortunately, his attention was focused elsewhere, and at the sound of his whimsical query she dropped her position and bit her lip.

An anti-Valentine? She almost laughed, remembering back in their first year, when the opposite gender had seemed foreign when thought of romantically. It felt like she was tumbling back through time to nod. "Yeah, of course I will."

"It is awful, for her anyways, I'm just the third party that could possibly ruin everything." Mason took a deep breath as Thea tried to give him a hug, it was as okay hug, for a beginner. "It's okay." He leaned onto her shoulder. "Oh good, I've always wanted an anti-Valentine." Mason turned his toes inward, his socks rubbing on the inside of his shoes, which he needed to polish sometime in the next week.

"How are your classes going? I don't really have challenging homework, it's mostly non-verbal spells, kind of boring, I kind of wish I had stuck with transfig, how's the new professor? I heard the new CoMC professor is getting a lot of attention from girls. I don't get what the big deal is, I think he's cosplaying as a cowboy or something like that. It's weird."

"Happy to help," Thea replied, laughing a little bit as Mason pigeon-toed himself. Then the rapid-fire questions began. It was odd and disconcerting that he was asking these things and didn't just automatically know from their usual constant dialogue.

In that moment, unbeknownst to Mason, she took a moment to make a promise to herself, not to let something as stupid as jealousy come between her and the people she loved--the few and far between. She had missed her goofy best friend.

Usually the mention of classes would drop an instant curtain of grey over Thea's vision, but she was so happy to be back in the saddle of friendship that she answered his queries with an air of slightly amused indifference. "Classes are fine. I've been having...well...quite a bit, actually, of trouble with Transfiguration. The professor's very nice about it, but I hate not doing well. As for the CoMC teacher well..." she tried to picture him with spurs and a fringed vest and snickered, "He's not...unfortunate looking. How 'bout you?"

"I'm stuck in a rut of classes, I've mostly studied everything in my textbooks working on the tournament, so there's not much else they can teach me this year. But practice is good, until I turn seventeen in April." Mason said honestly "And Professor Storm isn't getting much prettier either." Sonny laughed at his own silly quip and pulled out a black pen from his pocket and began to doodle on his hand.

"Look" He said, showing Thea his hand, "I drew a unicorn"

"Oh please don't even talk about Storm," Thea murmured, dropping her head into her hands. She wasn't doing as badly in his class as in Transfiguration, but she was so drained that it was a strain to think of pretty much anything academic--if you could call wand-waving academic. Once again Thea was filled with the familiar panic that she was falling too far behind in her Muggle (read: normal) studies to ever catch up. The feeling, however, was so familiar that she as quickly able to beat it back, and she found herself smirking down at Mason's self-done tattoo.

"Cute, Mase." she supplied, reaching out a hand to lightly trace the little unicorn. "Although I hope that's not indelible ink."

"Not my best work, and yes, I am adorable, " Mason shot Thea a cheeky smile and put his head on her shoulder. Just like when they would meet up on the Hogwarts Express and just sit and talk in their car. "Remember when I made that igloo third year and I fell asleep inside and my butt froze to the wall? And you had to douse me with a hot water spell? That was fun." Mason sighed, not really knowing why he brought up that painfully awkward story, maybe it would make her laugh, maybe it would make him feel a little better about his current situation.

"I wish I could drive my car at school," Sonny brought up the first thing that came to mind, "Do you think they'd let me?"

Thea felt the familiar weight of Mase's head on her shoulder, and dropped hers on top of his, laughing at the years-old memory. "Oh God, yeah. And then you wouldn't talk to me for three whole hours because I burned your butt. But then I offered you chocolate and you gave in."

For the first time in ages Thea felt relaxed, a genuine laugh bubbling out of her. At the mention of Sonny's car, she perked up further, remembering the first time she'd seen it and how they'd spent an afternoon driving aimlessly around. "That'd be so excellent, if they would. But normal technology--'muggle stuff'--usually doesn't work around here."

"Chocolate is delicious, no thirteen year old boy can resist that." Sonny smiled, sort of wishing he had some chocolate now. His smile turning into a grin when Thea laughed, crisp and genuine, like a ringing bell. He missed Oulton Broad, and he missed his sister, and his parents, and his car. "Yeah, you're probably right, but it would be nice. My car would look so good parked outside the castle, don'tcha think?" Mase joked.

"I heard Puddifoots is doing a half-off couples special for any tea or coffee. You wanna head down to Hogsmeade where we can make fun of the other gushy couples there?" Mason offered, just wanting to get out of the castle for a bit. He slid himself up the wall and into a standing position, and he stuck his hand out to Thea.

"Oh yes, it would look lovely...so long as you didn't park it next to the Whomping Willow." Thea's head was briefly filled with images of Sonny's car being swung through the air by a massive tree branch, and she cringed. "The Muggle Studies professor would love it though."

Without warning, Mason jumped up. For a moment she thought she'd said something wrong, and cast about desperately for what it might have been, finding nothing. Her fears were alleviated by his offer. She thought about the library, about the assignments sitting in her bag...and smiled at Mason, reaching forward to grab his hand and allow herself to be pulled to her feet. "Perfect. You know I can't resist a deal."