Hufflepuff dormitories
late night

To anyone that knew how fish or birds slept, an important distinction is how their eyelids differed from other creatures. As in, not closing. So for birds the solution was tucking a head under a wing or having a drape over their birdcage. For fish, kind of drifting to the side in murky corners of their pond.

As for semi-diluted merperson genetics...

It was known amongst the roommates that Heliotrope slept with an eye mask because of that freaky thing with her eyelids. Known as well as there was never confusion as to which was her bed. It was the kind of bed that resisted all attempts at pressing, tucking and pillow fluffing, the housekeeping from the house elves never lasting long. The quilt and sheets often disheveled and moist. The pillows in squashed shapes. And the unmistakable odor as if something was molding, of lake greens and something fishy. It might be from the lobalug kept in Heliotrope's beside pitcher of water. Or whatever exactly had happened underneath Heliotrope's bed.

Luckily the smell from Heliotrope's bed did not pollute the whole room, ever sense the first year Herbology final had netted some aromatically freshening spice flowers around Obderedria Pienas' 'pet' dwarf peach tree.

It was a green tinged darkness under that crevice. The bed sheets would be pulled down under there, tangled into ropes. Itself not too unusual to the other roommates by this point. For a majority of Heliotrope's first year she didn't even sleep on the bed.

It would be incorrect to call her a restless sleeper because she did not wake up tired. A still sleeper, however, Heliotrope was not. Having spent the first ten or so years of her life nestled in loch crevices while sleeping, a mattress had been an unusual change of pace. During the night hours Heliotrope would cycle through different positions. If she started sleeping in the 'correct' way at first, over the hours she would twist around her bed top like the hands of a clock, then gradually hang off the bed to the floor, a few hours underneath the bed frame, then up the other side. A kind of mostly unconscious motion, being aware of surroundings only for a brief moment while changing position and then back to sleep.

And given the extra quilt and blankets she used in winter, in the mornings when it was time to wake up it wasn't surprising for Heliotrope to spend a minute squirming out from and untying herself from the snarled bedsheets.

So it was that partially conscious moment of the night, when Heliotrope had just made the nightly migration to the floor, that her other senses were more active. When her ears heard the mumbling.

A sound enough to slowly bring her to a fully awake state. Blinded by her mask, Heliotrope spent a moment doing nothing until reaching out to trace the familiar confines of the floorspace under her bed frame.

"--should that be--everywhere--?"

That was a voice. Heliotrope, for as odd has her sleeping habits were, never made full conscious connection with the habits of others in the night. If there were snorers, bed wetters, sleep talkers or insomniacs. She contorted until her head was sticking out from under the foot of her bed to better listen.

"--I don't like this place anymore--can't we leave--?"

The dormitory was dark. Then Heliotrope recalled her sleep mask. After edging it up on her forehead she could see scant detail in the dimness.

"--that smell--"

Louder mumbling. And the sensation, a barely registered sound, of an occupant of another bed rising to a sitting position.

"--pleasant--not nasty smell--"

The creak of another bed frame from shifting occupant. Heliotrope withdrew under the frame and emerged again from the sideboard. Another quilt flung off to the floor. She reached out to grab the quilt, snuggle with it. It could not be denied that the texture obsessed Hufflepuff did not like the feel of the bedsheets, if abusive of their typical use.

Shuffling now from somebody walking.

"--could follow that--"

Heliotrope crawled to a different vantage point again. In time to see the form of another girl tread to the round form of the bedroom door.

Heliotrope soon put her sleep mask back into place and flipped around into her definition of a 'comfortable' sleep space. What did it matter to her if her roommate Obderedria Pienas was sleep walking?