According to the law of teenagers, Saturday evenings were for fun, frolicking, illegal drinking in the forbidden forest of the room of requirement and definitely not studying. These such evenings were for taking your boyfriend or girlfriend into a broom closet for unmentionable acts and secretly hoping to be caught. These evenings were for forgetting you had exams coming up far too fast and being excited about the future that lay ahead.

Gabriella Dagon wasn’t enjoying a Saturday evening anything like the above mentioned. She was sat in the library surrounded and very nearly buried by piles of books for her overdue DADA essay and the assignment for Ancient Runes that was due yesterday. She didn’t have a boyfriend to take to the broom closet and she didn’t have the time to drink in the forbidden forest. A couple of years of being the flaky girl with no ambition and simply the desire to make friends and have fun had led to Gabby Dagon faced with leaving school in a couple of months with no decent OWLS and no plans. She’d spent months avoiding the terrifying reality of ending up on her Dad’s Dragon Ranch as a shit shoveller or a feeder because she had no other prospects.

Everyone around Gabby knew exactly what they wanted to do in the future. They’d all secured internships, apprenticeships and jobs. It felt as if she was the only seventh year without a single idea for her future.

The pressure of such thoughts and the lack of progress in the two assignments she endeavoured to complete at the same time suddenly overwhelmed the girl and, very uncharacteristically, she stood, yelled out and threw her arms out, tossing the piles of books to the floor in frustration.

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Ariadne Gamp had been snoring quietly on the other side of the pile of books. She had been completing yet another analysis for arithmancy when a combination of boredom and lethargy had overcome her. It was the flying around she’d done that morning with the rest of the Gryffindor quidditch team, it had finally caught up with her, that and the sleepless night Thursday into Friday to complete her Transfiguration essay for Professor Singh. She’d been really grappling with some finer elements of cross-species transfiguration theory and realised she’d drawn her transmutation diagrams back to front in horror on late Thursday evening. Unlike Gabby, she had completed the homework for Storm on time, only because she valued living to see her exams.

“DEMENTORS!” Ariadne yelled out in fright at Gabby’s exclamations and book throwing, awoken suddenly. She spilled her inkpot across the table in her scramble to sit up. In a moment it looked like a small bomb had gone off over the table, between books and papers sprawled across and onto the floor, and the ink rushing like a deep blue tidalwave into it all. “Cock!” Ari followed it up with, when she realised there was no dementor, but she was about to get a massive fine from Mr Morgan for ruining books, and fumbled for her wand.

Gabriella had quite forgotten about Ari sat on the other side of the large table. Oddly, her fellow Gryffindor had fallen quiet and Gabby had continued with her assignments. Or, at least, until she’d lost her temper and decided to fling her books onto the floor. So, unsurprisingly, Gabby nearly jumped out of her skin at the yell from behind the rest of the books.

“Shit, Ari!” The girl exclaimed, hand over her chest. At least the librarian wasn’t within earshot. Cussing was probably seen worse than being noisy. But books thrown to the floor or covered with ink? They’d be forever banned from the library if caught! Not exactly something either could afford to risk during their seventh year. This essay for Storm wasn’t going to materialise out of nowhere, after all.

It took a moment for her heart to stop going at a ten to dozen before Gabby looked across at her friend with a knowing smile.
“You were sleeping! You snore like a drunken banshee.” That was a lie. As previously stated, Gabby had forgotten her friend was even there. “Stops me concentrating you see.”

Wand in hand, Ariadne was quick to charm the ink, and it rushed back towards the inkpot. Unlike her back-to-front transfiguration notations, Ariadne was a dab hand at practical charms, not least those that involved liquids. Most of her childhood had been spent living on water, and it was important to have an arsenal of suitable charms against nature.

Gabby exclaimed in alarm in response, and both of them were being far too loud in that sudden instance of waking. However, once their reflexes had finished, they realised in relief that Mr Morgan hadn’t been summoned, and crisis had been averted for the time being.
“You were sleeping! You snore like a drunken banshee.” Gabby claimed from the other side of the table. “”Stops me concentrating you see.”

“Bollocks I was,” Ariadne replied, hands on hips, wand in hand. Her inkpot righted itself with a clunk, the ink returned and books safe again. “You snore like an erumpent, I should know, I’ve slept in the bed next to you for almost seven years!” Maturely, Ari stuck her tongue out at her friend and housemate. “Anyway, keep it down, don’t want Mr Morgan spying on us between the shelves,” she plonked herself back down on her chair, “he’s one thing I won’t miss from here. Creepy-eyed bugger. Don’t see what Professor V sees in him.”

“Keep it down so you can carry on sleeping more like.” The scruffily dressed witch retorted, reaching to pick up the books she’d thrown to her floor in her frustration. Practical charms were good, yes, but Gabriella had had it drilled into her from an early age to not rely on magic for everything. She’d spent enough hours of physical work at home to make picking up a few books a quick chore.

“You agreed to come and help me with this essay, Gump, not snore and fawn over Mr Morgan.” Despite herself, the young witch smirked and stood, dropping a hefty pile of books onto the desk with a loud thump. Unlike her fellow Gryffindor, Ariadne had already completed Storm’s long winded and dull essay on the legislation for magical defence against beings. Gabriella had until the next night to hand it in in order to avoid detention and merlin knew what else the Deputy Headmaster had in mind for tardiness.

The original idea had been to drill her friend for ideas, sources and evidence. Unfortunately, Ari cared as much for her friend’s future as she did about the rights of hags. The selfish girl had fallen asleep and left her friend to suffer alone.

“Perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate our so-called friendship.”

“Nope,” Ari replied quickly, “You’re stuck with me. Forever.”

She huffed and leaned forward, arms outstretched to pick through the books.
“Here, this one. I used this one because it’s got a good example for defence against giants. Some guys claim they chance upon a young one and end up killing it in self-defence. But the curse marks on body weren’t right…”

Ariadne flicked through the book to try and find the section as she summarised. “You remember what he said, they want us to know the laws, give an example of where it’s been applied, but we’ve got to critique it for the best marks. You gotta decide which camp you’re in, whether you agree it’s valid or whether we should be able to strangle young giants and take a photo with the corpse in celebration, and argue the toss for three different beings.”

She extended the book back to Gabby and prodded a finger at the part of the page, illustrated with the photograph in question. Two wizards sat on the shoulders of a dead giant propped against a tree.

Gladly, Gabby took the book from her friend and placed it in front of her. She stared at the picture rather than reading the text. Big chunks of text in books was off putting and boring. All textbooks should have plenty of pictures in to break up the drudgery of study. But all giants should definitely not be killed and used as trophies.

“Is Storm judging us on our moral instincts or our ability to fish out facts and argue a point?” Not that it mattered. Gabby’s moral compass was pretty secure; she was probably far too liberal with the truth. “Because I bet his moral instincts are severely lacking! Have you heard about what happens when you get detention alone with him? One third year told me that he had a collection of boggarts that he let out just for the fun of it. Apparently, the boggart by Storm turned into his wife!” It had to be a lie. But Gabby desperately wanted to believe it.

With her quill snatched up, Gabby started to scribble some notes onto her parchment about the page before her. She didn’t stop talking as she did this.
“He’s a bloody weird old man. I imagined his boggart would be the grim reaper. I imagine it’s just a waiting game at that age. Or can you see him living forever and terrorising our kids?”

“Er…” Ariadne replied, surprised at Gabby’s sudden infatuation with the Deputy Headmaster. Ariadne didn’t know anything about the Professor’s wife. It was weird enough he was married. As her housemate continued, Ariadne looked down at her arithmancy work and remembered why she’d fallen asleep. Dagon could keep up a running commentary of life while she worked, and Ariadne eventually tuned it out to the point of slumber.

“I imagined his boggart would be the grim reaper-”
“I don’t imagine he’s scared of death.” Ari uttered quietly. He didn’t seem the sort.
“… can you see him living forever and terrorising our kids?”
“What?” Ariadne replied, blinking, “if we had kids together, Gabby, they’d be gobby and never sit still. He’d have them in detention all the time.” She grinned and winked.

“I don’t know. How old is he, like, seventy? He hasn’t died yet, he’s too tough. Wasn’t he meant to last month? Or something. I don’t know. Look, just do his essay. If we’ve any chance of winning the house cup in our last year we don’t need his hefty point losses. Professor Donovan’s quite enough to contend with.” Ariadne referred to their charms professor who seemed incredibly fond of stealing points as he had no house alliance, rather like the Deputy Headmaster.

“And if you want your kids taught by him, we better get busy.” Ari laughed, re-inking her quill to finish off her grids for Professor Duerr, who was too sweet to impose much of a consequence for late work, but too good hearted to let down either.

"Did I miss the cock?"  Nicholas said as he turned the corner and saw his housemates at the table and a complete absence of anything phallic.  Though now that he thought about it, if the librarian showed up now, he'd definitely be accused of being the cock that caused the outburst that had drawn him over.  Instead of leaving though, as he probably should have, he walked over, pulled out a chair and promptly made himself comfortable, pushing books out of the way with his feet as he put them up on the table.

He took in the state of the table, and the obvious work being done and sighed.  "What are you working on?  No, better question...why are you working on it now?"

“And if you want your kids taught by him, we better get busy.”
  The jump from having children in the future to her and Ari getting busy to have children together left Gabriella staring at her friend and blinking, confused.

"Did I miss the cock?" Fortunately, there was no time to gently let Ariadne down about having children together. Bevans had come into view and of course such a swear word from Gamp’s big gob had drawn him near. Gabby rolled her eyes, and sat back in her chair.

“He’s just arrived.” Despite her words, the girl smiled sweetly. She wasn’t nasty but it was too good an opportunity to turn down.

“Some of us actually take our work seriously.” Said the curly haired witch. Taking things seriously was rarely something she could have been accused of but that was perhaps why she’d ended up in the library on a Saturday night preparing an overdue essay for the scariest professor there.

Ariadne spluttered into laugher at Nick’s sudden appearance due to her mention of one of his favourite words. It only became a guffaw as Gabby replied. Gosh she loved her housemates.

“What are you working on? No, better question… why are you working on it now?” Nick asked.
“Some of us actually take our work seriously.” Gabby retorted.

“That’d just be me out of the three of us then,” Ari chimed in, gesturing from one to the other with an outstretched finger. “Since Storm’s essay was due in Friday morning.” She pointed downwards at the work in front of Gabby.

“Why, are we missing something important?” She asked Nick, with a raised eyebrow. “Or are you just worried you’re missing out on cock?”

Nicholas grinned at Gabriella's comment on his arrival and put his hand over his heart, "Ow, right through the heart, Gabby."  He laughed when she tried to claim she took her work seriously.  Certainly more seriously than him, but that was not a high bar to get over.  "Wait, you didn't turn in an essay?  Even I turn in something.  Are you a ghost?"  He shook his head, if there was one professor even he didn't push it was Storm.

"But really at this point, why bother, there is certainly something better to be doing than homework.  But, Ari, you have to ask nicely and promise not to take away points if you want to know about them."  He gave her a look and patted a pocket that had a vague outline of a flask in it.  He might not have been drinking as much but alcohol was generally involved in most of his Saturday plans.

"And of course I wouldn't want to miss out on any cock."  He added innocently, before grinning again at his housemates, "Or anything else," he waggled his eyebrows.  Sure he was enjoying his time spent with the Ravenclaw quidditch captain but it wasn't serious even if he was starting to wonder if he wanted it to be.  In the mean time, he was going to keep flirting and more.

Josh had been sitting nearby, seemingly asleep. However, he chuckled at hearing Gabby hadn't finished an essay for Professor Storm. "He has high standards- and, to be fair, he holds himself to the same high standard. I may not particularly like him- Dad's passed on too many rumors about him for that- but yeah, i wouldn't have left an essay for him not completed." He said, he respected Professor Storm as a teacher, he was less sure about if he was entirely comfortable with the man.

If people were to listen to Nick, Ari and now Josh, they would presume that Gabby, not having handed in an essay to the scariest professor in the school, was a dead girl walking. she preferred to think of it as brave. Who else was going to stand up to the old grump, showing him how his deadlines and essays were a ridiculous expectation to put on teenagers that already had enough pressures? Everyone else put up with it in fear of his nasty detentions. Usually, that was Gabby.

“You wouldn’t leave an essay for anyone, Josh.” Gabby stated, deciding to ignore the discussion about a rude body part going on between the other two. Both were cruder than the girl who wasn’t even going to pretend she understood those things.

Her eyes, did, however, drift to the pocket Bevans had indicated. “She won’t dock points.” Her dark gaze darted between both prefects, fixing Josh a stare for a moment. “Neither will.”

Gabby then leaned towards Nick, fixing him with her sweetest smile.
“You are my favourite Gryffindor seventh year boy.”

As if by magic…

“Wait, you didn’t turn in an essay? Even I turn in something. Are you a ghost?”
“He has high standards - and, to be fair, he holds himself to the same high standard. I may not particularly like him-”
“Who does…?” Ari breathed beneath Josh’s reply,
“-Dad’s passed on too many rumour about him for that-”
“What now?” Ariadne replied quietly, but it was swept along.

“… Ari you have to ask nicely and promise not to take away points if you want to know about them.” Ariadne raised one eyebrow quizzically.
“Er… right… okaaaay?” Ariadne replied. It didn’t look like gillyweed, which Ariadne had established at Christmas with her uncle and auror aunt that she didn’t like to smoke. That was decidedly more solid.

“She won’t dock points. Neither will.” Gabby decided for both prefects. Ariadne sighed, her shoulders lifting and dropping as she glanced to Josh to see whether he’d be happy. “You are my favourite Gryffindor seventh year boy.”

“Ewww…. arse kisser.” Ariadne retorted, “and poor Josh. Don’t worry, I like you. I don’t play favourites.” She reached out and patted Harcroft’s arm in a sisterly manner. “She’s just trying to get us to write her essay so she lives to see next week.”