With approximately two months to go before they had to sit for NEWTS (and graduate), Katherine and Mason were sitting in the Ravenclaw common room. They were enjoying the lovely evening, and each other's company. Doing what they did best.

Knitting.

And by lovely evening, it was really past midnight. And by enjoying each other's company, well, it was a little more hectic than that.

"No, nonono, Hawkins. I swear to Rowena, stop losing your stitches. You have to hold the needles like this," Katherine said, abandoning her own project and yanking Mason's out of his hands. "You just, have to be gentle, see? Feel the yarn, let it have a little slack, and just make a loop. It's that easy."

She pulled her knot out and handed it back to Mason, "Now you try." She said as she reached for her cup of tea. "If you would just give it a little more effort, you'd learn a lot faster. You don't have to suck if you don't want to."

Mason didn't understand why this hobby had to be so complicated. He just wanted to clack the knitting needles together and bam, instant sweater. His fingers were already cramping and he didn't understand why his scarf didn't look like Katherine's. It was nice of her to help him learn and all, but she was not the best teacher. Poetry was much easier than this, there was a flow to the words, not an irritating tapping of needles every second. He watched Katherine's hands carefully, but still wasn't quite understanding the various loops.

He shrugged and took the needles back, "Slack, I feel like I'm fishing with my Dad." Mason looped, slipped, and pulled a loop around the needle on his right, that seemed right. He wanted to add that he also hated fishing with his dad, but he didn't want to get shivved with a knitting needle. It was black as pitch outside and Mason was starting to get too cozy and sleepy sitting next to the fire. But it was the burning intensity in which he hated yarn that kept him awake and alert. The sleepy cozy's could get him another night. He had a war to wage with these needles that he'd rather stick in his eyes then loop another inch of yarn around. "I am putting in my best effort, you know I have poor fine motor skills. And I can suck as much as I desire, and if knitting is the only thing I suck at in my life, I am glad it is this confounded string twisting magic."

Then an idea struck him. "Can I just knit with my wand while I do other stuff? I feel like that's something I could do." Mason put down his tangled mess of a scarf and grabbed a charm book off of a nearby shelf. He licked this thumb and perused through the pages until he found what he was looking for. "Aha! Got it." Mason pulled his wand out of his sweater sleeve, he charmed the knitting needles to levitate and loop the yarn around themselves to perfectly knit and purl.

"See? I don't have to suck if I don't want to." Mason looked at Katherine with a smug grin on his face, waiting for her to be at least mildly impressed.

Chloe was lying with her feet on the seat of the couch and her long red hair dangling off of it. The past few months had been a long few. She reached out to her parents, proved to them she wasn't dead, (they were about to sick the ministry on her for running away) and then threw a bag into Shade's apartment.

That was the other development. Her and Shade were like, legit. They were still going strong. She spent the holidays with him, and visited him on weekends. They cuddled and read, and drew. It was everything she wanted and more. And she wouldn't trade him for the world. He was her new home. And she loved that. She loved him.

Being away from him was the hard part.

But, they wrote letters. And he came and watched her games. And she would visit him. And they would fall deeper and deeper in love. Ugh. They were so mushy and gross sometimes. Right now, as she lied upside down, staring at her friends, she fiddled with the key to Shade's apartment around her neck. She always kept it there, close to her heart.

Right now, she watched him and her fuss over knitting. Chloe looked at her watch. "Guys, it's Friday night, and we are in the common room knitting. What's wrong with this picture,"

She flipped herself over and lied on the ground. "What's wrong is we are three good looking adults, who are sitting around a common room on Friday night. What's also wrong is that we've done this for the last four weeks consecutively."

She rolled over, and towards the couch. "We're seventh years. We're supposed to be enjoying ourselves. Not sitting by and knitting our year away. We should be laughing, and getting drunk, and getting in trouble! And painting nude paintings! And streaking!" Her voice got louder and louder with each big idea.

"This is our last year here. Our last hurrah. I've packed some good stuff in, but you two. You two are a mess!" She stood up, and then sat down on the edge of the table. "You two are what, 80 years old? Reading the post each morning, sipping on non-spiked tea?" She shook her head. "No. I won't allow this."

"I refuse to sit idly by as my two best friends in the entire world waste away their last year of childhood! Before adulthood! And bills! And jobs!" She leaned forward, two hands on either side of Katherine's head. "You need to relax. Let loose. You're young, and smart, and, well, if you'd let me fix your eyebrows, so pretty!"

"And you!" She said, swinging around to Mason. "You're just a sad excuse for a teenage boy! You got in one fight once, and ended up vomitting. Everywhere. You've never out drank me, but you can tell me ten famous authors before I've downed my first shot! Something is wrong here, guys!"

She let go and leaned back. "We've been good kids for so long. For six years. And I just don't want to graduate, without having some lasting bad decisions riding on my conscious. Who's with me?"

Fishing. Mason was comparing her beloved hobby to a task where one caught slimy, disgusting sea things and then threw them back for no good reason. If she could, she would have smacked him upside the head. But Katherine couldn’t do that.

Mainly because if she reached out towards him, she’d probably ruffle up his hair, fluff his curls, and give him a kiss on the cheek for that matter. No touching, none, Katherine reminded herself. She had to be good. She had a fiancé to marry soon. A family to be loyal to. Promises to keep. There was no room for error. So she could sit and teach Mason how to knit under the careful supervision of Chloe, but she was in no way allowed to get close and snuggle up to that boy.

“You can’t cheat!” She exclaimed when he whipped out a charms book and got his knitting needles to do the work for him. “That’s, that’s, it’s against the rules! No charms! None at all!” She reached out and tried to grab a knitting needle, but when she got close they just turned on her and started furiously poking her hand. Apparently the charm gave the knitting needles a rude personality too.

When Chloe suddenly asked what was wrong with the picture, Katherine gave a simple reply as she held out her cup. “I’m out of tea?”

But no, that was not what was wrong with the picture.

“Oh no no no,” Katherine said, standing up and pushing Chloe’s hands off her head. “My eyebrows are the way I want them, also I don’t love the idea of nude paintings. As much as I respect the arts, that’s not for me. No nudity, no profanity, no illegal consumption of any substances.

“I can’t be with you!” She blurted, cheeks growing redder by the minute. “I, I can’t drink or smoke or do anything bad! My grandparents would murder me!”

But... what if her grandparents didn't find out? What if she could do it and get away with it? Just one night, a night to unwind. To escape her troubles and worries and fears. Spend some quality time with her best friends and just be a normal teenage for a night. Not an heiress, not engaged to a pureblood, not having the hopes and dreams of her family ride on her shoulders. Just Katherine.

She started to smile, she liked the idea of being just Katherine.

"That you haven't picked up a pair of needles, Chlo, look, it's great fun." Mason gestured to Katherine being warded off with his angry needles. He chuckled, "It's not cheating! I learned how to knit! And I learned a new charm! So HA!" Mason pulled his notebook out of the cushions and started scratching things down while Chloe continued her crusade for her so called 'fun.

"I'm already working and paying my parents' bills, thank you very much." Mason grumbled and stuck his nose between the pages before Chloe turned on him. Mason put his sock feet on carpet and closed his notebook. He didn't mind being compared to a geriatric man, at least he was acting like he'd live to be eighty.

"I will remind you, that fight was for your sketchbook, and I am a pacifist, or was. Well, I was, and then I wasn't, and now I have once again resumed my title." Mason used his hands to show the progression of time, "and drinking will mess you up big time, I know it's gumdrops and wearing Shade's clothes in Bohemia," Mason pointed at Chloe's sweatshirt, clearly too big for her, and obviously belonged to her boyfriend, "but we could get in serious trouble for drinking, smoking, or doing anything like that at Hogwarts, especially so close to NEWTS."

Mason kicked his feet up on the arm of the chair he was sitting in, "Sorry Chloe, I does not smell like Teen Spirit in here." Mason opened his notebook back up and started scratching again. His handwriting slowed to a stop as he thought about it more.

"Well, I mean. I wouldn't be the absolute worst thing in the world if we harassed some of the paintings or tapped into some of the barrels by the Hufflepuff common room." Mason had been working every summer since he was twelve, and growing up much faster than he should have. He may have been only seventeen, but he really did feel much much older. "I'm wondering how bad it would be if we managed to sneak up to the Astronomy tower..." Mason shook his head, "No, it's too crazy, we couldn't possibly do that kind of stuff."

The answer to her question? No one. No one was with her on this pursuit of ill-advised, irresponsible fun. She sighed. Of course, Chloe expected this push back but that didn't mean ah wanted to deal with it. She just wanted her friends to say 'yes. Let's go be dumb together and get into trouble. Let's do it.'

Obviously, it wouldn't be that easy. "Kath, you're an engaged woman. As soon as that pompous prince of wherever puts that ring on your finger, your life is over. You'll be confined to breeding and sitting, and drinking tea. You'll have your grandparents constantly buzzing in your ear. They will never stop expecting things from you, especially when you're going to be bringing up their new heirs. You'll never escape it, as soon as we graduate, so now is the time to go wild! They'll never know, and what they don't know can't hurt them."

She then turned to Mason. "And Mr. Pity-Party. I get it. Your family is broke, and you're providing for them. You can't screw up because tens too much on the line or something. Well, newsflash, later on, there's going to be even more on the line. You super won't be able to do fun things. So, now is your chance! Now is the time to go wild before life catches up and doesn't let you go!"

"I'm making a list." She said, standing up, and grabbing a piece of parchment. "Of things I'm making you two do with me between now and the end of the year." She wrote down a few things. "We are going skinny dipping in the lake. I'm dying my hair. We are getting tattoos. We are smoking gillyweed. We are going to sneak into somewhere. We'll sneak some firewhisky and do shots from the astronomy tower. We are going to have a party. And, here's the kicker. We're going to skip our classes."

She put a hand up when they started protesting. "We will do that before newts get too close, okay? God, you guys are such nerds." She smiled, and looked over to her friends. "Come on. Take a few hours out of your crammed schedule of studying and doing other boring things. Let's have fun! We only live once."

She sat back down, happy with her speech. "We've been goody-two-shoes for much too long. It's time we took a breather. I'm doing this for your mental health, guys. You'll snap under all the pressure you've put yourselves under." And then another idea came to her head. They should go on midnight broom rides. Just fly away, and be free. That would be ridiculous fun.

"Now wait just a minute, I am perfectly happy remaining my goody-two shoes self. Is that so hard to accept?" Katherine interjected as Mason rambled about harassing paintings. First of all, she was pretty sure she'd done that as a first year when they were being stupid and boring her as she walked by. Second of all, no there was no second of all. Harassing paintings and portraits was definitely a first year past time, if anything.

"We're just so close to graduating, Chlo," she sighed. "We've gone almost seven years of having no trouble save for a few mishaps in class and general teenage moodiness. We're almost adults and then we can be stupid under our own supervision and not worry about being caught by our professors."

She stood up, cheeks flaming red at the idea of being Alexander's stay-at-home wife and human incubator. "I will not be confined to that kind of a life, I can choose the life I deserve!" Katherine countered, though she knew what Chloe said was true. Her grandparents had already started planning the wedding, the reception, the honeymoon tour, the banquets, the announcements. She wouldn't be surprised if Grandmother Beckett had begun preparing for babies as well.

Katherine Faith Beckett would not stand for her future as arm candy and homemaker.

But getting in trouble? Was that really the immediate answer to her long term problems?

"There can't be a list," she said, making a go to grab the parchment out of Chloe's hand. "Tattoos? Those are permanent. And require maintenance. Gillyweed kills brain cells, and so does alcohol! We're not Gryffindors, we don't have brain cells to spare!"

There was a moment of pause after Chloe suggested.... skipping classes. Katherine sat back down, "But I love my classes." She whined in a childlike voice.

Chloe never just let him wallow. Even when they were kids, she never let him off the hook for his family's financial situation, she never acted like she had money, so she couldn't understand why Mason couldn't do the same about his lack of money. Chloe wasn't taking it easy on either one of them tonight. She really wanted to go absolutely crazy. Mason grimaced and cringed as Chloe dug into Katherine. He didn't need reminding that graduation was probably the last time he was ever going to see Katherine again. He didn't want to be reminded that she was being manipulated into a marriage by her pushy purist grandparents. "Jeez, Chloe, you don't have to hit that low below the belt."

"She was making a list, sweet Merlin, not a list" Mason covered his face in his hands and sank into the arm chair. "Katherine's right, I'm all for a good skinny dip, but we've slaved over our courses for almost seven years and now you want us to risk it all?" Mason may have said what sounded like the right thing, but in his head he was thinking of who he could buy gillyweed off of, probably a Hufflepuff...

He shook his head, clearing his mind of the thought completely. He knew that Chloe was going to chip away at Katherine piece by piece, she'd already gotten a rise out of her. Now more scandalous ideas were entering his head, he wouldn't mind getting a tattoo, he just didn't know any tattoo parlors nearby. He didn't care if Chloe dyed her hair, he could actually go for a haircut before the heat blew in with late spring. He'd skipped a History of Magic class once before, but only because he slept in. Mason wouldn't mind skipping another first period History Class, and his Potion didn't need to have any ingredients added for another few weeks, and he could make up any work he missed in history or potions no sweat.

He was starting to warm up to the idea of having a little more fun than usual, but if Chloe saw him entertaining the thought, she'd pounce on him and break him in a second, she was always good at getting him to do things he'd regret later. His wandering eyes met Chloe's.

Crap.

She had him.

Chloe's eyes met Mason's, and a grin spread across her face. She slowly nodded. "Still got it, Mase." She then sat down next to him, squeezing him in a side hug. "Don't worry! You're going to love it! It's going to be so much fun! And it won't be nearly as dangerous as it may seem!"

She was smiling huge now, as she looked over to Katherine. "It's two against one now, Katherine. You gotta join! If you don't, and I go out and do these dumb things, what happens if I get hurt? Who will patch me up? Won't be Mason, over here. You know he's useless in crisis." She turned to Mason. "No offense, sweetheart. You're great all the other times." She patted his chin, before standing up and sitting on Katherine's lap.

"Pleeeeaasse," she begged, throwing her arms around her roommate. "If you loved me you'd do this for me," Chloe was bumped off, and landed on the ground. "Come on, let's add to this list. What else should we do? Wanna break into the restricted section?" She looked over to Katherine. "Think of all the books you could glance at."

Books didn't exactly hold that much value to Chloe. She was a different kind of Ravenclaw, not obsessed with reading and writing, but instead drawn to art. It kinda made her an outsider, but when the smart ravenclaws needed a creative solution to something, she always had something in mind. That was her strength- thinking ahead and getting creative. And it came in handy, on occasion.

Her eyes flickered over to Mason's face. His inability to lie well stemmed directly from his face and how easily his emotions were displayed across it. He looked curious now. And not curious in a good way. Curious in a, oh maybe I'll actually try this, kind of a way. Which couldn't be good for anyone, certainly not her. Because if Mason caved in... How was Katherine going to hold her own?

"No pleases, and no bribing me with my own love," Katherine said as she unwrapped Chloe from herself and pushed her to the ground. She leaped out of her own chair as she did so and backed up away from her friends.

Her friends. Could they truly be stupid enough to try these kinds of things? Illegal substances, altering their body and hair, skipping classes and missing out on valuable educational opportunities that could arise at any moment! What if they learned about something ridiculously amazing in  History of Magic? What if the day they chose to skip was the day they were told the secrets of everything?

"Did you say restricted section?" Katherine's head perked up from her gaze that had been cast to the floor. Now there, there was an idea. She could get her hands on the books stowed away back there. The one's she had been dying to read since she first step foot in the Hogwarts library. All the knowledge hidden away, all of the secrets passed down... Bribing Katherine with books was one way to get her to misbehave.

"We could consider our options. I suppose. If I'm going to go get married and start popping out babies in a few months, I may as well try something now while I have the chance," Katherine said softly. "But, we can't do really bad things. Or get into trouble. I would die if I got into trouble. I just want to be a good student and graduate and not get expelled."

"Op" Mason submit himself to Chloe's squeezes and grunted as he watched the mighty fall of Katherine's case. "Hook, line, and sinker." Mason tugged on an imaginary fishing rod.

"Well, since Rohan transferred to Durmstrang[1], I don't see who could get us in trouble." Mason glanced at his watch, "And Everyone is already in bed." He shrugged, "Filch and the ghosts would be the only ones who could bust us around this time of night." Mason stood up from the sofa and stretched his back. "And why have a restricted section in a school? If no one is allowed to read them, why keep the books around?"

"I guess you've got us to go along with your crazy plan, Chlo. So are we going to start with Restricted, or do something a little less intense to start off? For your poor little adrenaline junkie virgins." Mason pouted his lower lip and put an arm around Katherine's shoulder, pathetically whimpering.

"He kowtow to your knowledge of the unwise and unsound judgement." His scarf had grown a few inches in the last few minutes. He grinned, he was pretty good at knitting.

1.	Luke loved the idea

She watched as they slowly agreed. "Oh, I've got something careful in mind," she said, going into her room and returning with a book. "I bought this book off some guy in Hogsmeade. Try to open it," she flipped through the pages. It was a typical book. "You get nothing but normalcy. However, stroke the spine right," she then stroked it in a zig-zag formation. The book opened. "And you've got a storage space." She pulled out her beanie, and tucked inside her beanie was a small cloth bag.

"Follow me, my friends. You're about to have your nerdy eyes opened to a world of fun," and with that, she put her beanie on her head, and the book under her arm. She snatched up her sketchbook, and grabbed her friends hands, pulling them out of the tower.