This night, Daryl was within the company of a great, majestic lion known to be the mascot of Gryffindor house. Forget Godric. The lion was where it was at. The walls hadn’t changed in years with their deep maroon and smatterings of gold, the intricate patterns of the paper and delicate coving and beading. They had become a classic characteristic to the Gryffindor’s and without all its small charms, the tower would never be as half as precious or homely. The only criticism Daryl had was one of the haunting portraits that hung like ancient watchmen. They were drab and gloomy and he was almost certain they were there for the sole purpose of observing and reporting mischief to the Head of House. One particular gentleman had the face that was befitting of Azkaban, with a deep, coiling beard and a heavy set brow which showed only warning in its expression. Daryl as a superstitious young fool was deeply affected by the man’s presence and every time he ventured into the room, positioned himself in a place where he wouldn’t be in the portrait’s line of sight.

There were plenty of mismatched armchairs placed in a circle around the fire but as a child who had been raised by two cranky old biddies who had assigned chairs to themselves, Daryl had gotten into the habit of sitting on the floor with the comfort of crossed legs. In front of him was a sea of different magazines and newspapers, both muggle and magical of all colours, cultures and features, but not one of them without a rip of tear somewhere or other. The idea was to achieve the most outstanding collage of images which highlighted the similarities between muggle and wizarding lifestyles, through politics, atrocities, human rights, music and arts and general culture. However, the fifth year had only managed to construct a frightful mess of trimmings, faces and headlines, and had even managed to cake a small area of the carpet in glue.

As he rose, Daryl shook his hands vigorously trying to detach the small pieces of paper stuck to his fingertips and also noted that his lounge pants were speckled with paint and glue alike. They had at one point been part of a green check pyjama set, so kindly forced upon him by his grandmother, but the tee had disappeared after the decision that it would look better on the little house elf that sometimes smuggled him cupcakes from the kitchens in the evenings. With a loud scraping noise, Daryl hugged one of the great armchairs, pulling it backwards over the incriminating glue patch. It was time for a sugar injection, a little top up.

Reaching into a tatty rucksack, Daryl produced first some ice mice, sugar quills, every flavour beans and chocolate frogs, then caught the whole thing by the bottom to empty the remaining licorice wands. He may have been fifteen, but he wasn’t dead. Without the aid of complex sugars, the young Gryffindor wouldn’t survive the morning classes. Behind the scene of young man versus sugar mountain, was a small muggle radio which had been filling the common room with motown hits. Emerging from a pile of gluttony, Daryl near missed tripping over the leg of a table to turn up the volume. Technically speaking, it was frowned upon to bring muggle apparatus, they sometimes called it, into Hogwarts, but they were quite alone, and The Temptations were playing. Whilst continuing to snip pieces of magazine and newspaper around the floor, Daryl moved milled around doing what some might call very bad dancing. And singing, through a mouthful of sugar quills. “Ah knooow you wanna leave meh, but I refuse to let you GO!” He bellowed, “Aint too proud to beg!”