It was breakfast. It was exams week. Ergo, Erin was not a happy camper. He like the rest of the student body was functioning on a mix between procrastination and sleep-deprivation (the latter partially caused by the former), and now that the Quidditch season was over he had absolutely nothing to look forward to. Going home was not a cause for celebration, even if he did get his own room again. So when he spotted Georgiana at the Slytherin table, her two black pigtails recognizable even across the hall, he made a beeline for the empty spot(s) next to her. Gigi was one of the few tolerable Slytherin girls, not at all prone to the kind of plotting and giggling that made Erin rather uneasy; she had a sharp mouth on her that Erin just loved. Especially during this week of all others, he had to get his jollies where he could.

"Morning, Georgie," he said cheerfully as he leaned over her, and then snitched a pastry from her plate in what was clearly a wordless plea for assisted suicide. "You been up all night studying for OWLs? I think maybe you shoulda reserved some more time for some beauty sleep..."

"Morning, Erin," Georgiana said, the roll of her eyes thick in her tone. She sat apart from everyone else, as usual, and when he snatched a pastry she accidently shifted her legs and scraped the heel of her shoe down his leg.

"You're one to talk," she said with a snort, reaching forward and getting herself a new pastry  and biting into it right away this time. "Good thing you're staying up all night to study, 'cause if you got any prettier you'd have to switch bathrooms." She smirked nastily. "But no. Unlike some people I don't really have to study." Because she had no idea what she wanted to do, yet, she was winging it. She'd only been studying the subjects or spells she wasn't clear on. As for Defense, well...she had extra help there. Kind of. When Storm wasn't trying to drown her.

"How about you? Gonna fail out and go pro Quidditch?" Maybe that was a mean spot to kick. The rumors of Callum's scouting were already wafting through the Slytherin house; though as Knight's top Seeker, Erin likely knew that as a fact rather than a rumor.

"Watch, Li'll be Quidditch captain next year," she said, with a laugh. "You'll never win a game because she'd just have you lot kill everyone on the other team."

Manfully, Erin suppressed a wince. He'd been all ready to duck - he hadn't been expecting her to go for the shins. Ah, well. He'd still gotten off pretty easy.

"Then I could be incognito and spy on all the girls," he said, unperturbed. "Yeah? Well, look at our resident Ravenclaw. You should help me study, I'm rubbish."

"How about you? Gonna fail out and go pro Quidditch?"

"That's the plan," he said. "Or maybe just take as few a classes as I can get away with. What else are the Care of Magical Creatures and Muggle Studies NEWTs gonna get me?" If the reminder that his fellow fifth year was already getting drafted pained him, it didn't show in the way he promptly began piling his plate high with food. If Erin had to be up for breakfast, he might as well enjoy it.

"Yeah, well. It doesn't matter what she does. What matters is how you fly."

Gigi did have a point. IF Kitty was to be next year's captain, the rest of the team might as well throw in the towel. They'd be getting so many penalties they'd never make it into the air. That didn't matter for Erin, though. As long as he held the Seeker position and kept his hands clean (on the field), he only had one goal, and it wasn't teamwork.

"I wouldn't mind being captain," he said, chewing thoughtfully. "Except Kitty would shank me." He would make  a better captain, definitely. Erin's reputation was already terrible, so the only thing that stopped him was the knowledge that Kitty would somehow make everything worse. She'd probably get Razzy to break with him, or ruin his potential Quidditch career, or tell everyone Landis was his brother - something awful. Erin wasn't as a general rule scared of Kitty Li, but it would be exhausting trying to captain a team and fend her off at the same time.

"Well, considering my technique is pretty much 'read what I can't remember' or 'cast what I can't'," she said, around a mouthful of pasty, "You're not really gonna get any better. So I'll pass." She sneered, though the good-natured rimming was fairly normal for her.

"You could be like Sellaphix and be a janitor," she said, with mock thoughtfulness. "Or a broom polisher for some quidditch team." Did they even hire those? Georgiana just watched the game and enjoyed that. The specifics of the sport's locker-room level dealings didn't really bother her much.

"I wouldn't mind being captain," Erin was saying. Georgiana snorted at the thought, and looked at him over her glass of milk.

"You could just kill her," she said, and her tone was hardly a jesting one. "Arrange an unfortunate accident. It's not like anyone would care. And if they started looking for people with a grudge against her it'd be half the school." She shrugged.

"Actually, maybe you should piss her off," she said. "Can you imagine what Razzy would do if she did try to shank you?"

Erin shrugged, reaching for the bacon (the pastry was long since devoured). Oh well. Tough luck, he supposed. He'd survive... somehow.

"Your contributions are helpful and insightful as ever, Gigi," he said, in tones of sarcastic import. "I'll be sure to keep them in mind when Landis calls me in for career counselling. 'Ere, what're you gonna do then?" A pause, as he thought of potential careers that compared to the ones she'd suggested to him. The suggestion of broom polisher had gotten him on a certain track of mind, so it was with great sincerity he widened his eyes into that realm of big, blue, and innocent as he said, "I bet you'd make a great dominatrix."

"You could just kill her."

"She's not that bad," he said, in the dismissive manner of one who'd gotten on quite well with Kitty (until she decided to take his dating Razzy as a personal slight) and was sure they'd get on again one day. But the thought of her vs. Razzy made him break into a slow, sweet grin. Quickly he bent his head over his plate so that no one would see the unholy glee this mental image caused, hunching his shoulders like he was only hoarding food.

"It'd be pretty good," he admitted, around a mouthful of bacon whose insertion had not smothered the smile quite as well as he'd hoped. He couldn't help it! It gave him such a warm, dreamy glow to think of Razzy's inevitable beatdown. He'd go apeshit. It'd be cute.

"What do you mean, make a good one?" She asked, playfully, and kicked him under the table. "You want me to walk on your back, you know where I sleep. I even got shoes with the spikes on the bottom." She almost giggled, her smirk as lewd as it ever got. She wouldn't mind beating Erin a bit, know what I mean, nudge nudge. Bow-chika. Etc.

"She's not that bad."

She sobered at that remark, however. "You don't have to sleep with her - and no, not that way - or have to hear her and her 'friends'," she made finger-quotes, "Talk about stupid shit and trash people over shoes every day, Erin. I'll trade you, though. Seriously." She sipped her milk again. "The 5th year boys dorm? I'm all over that. Callum and Xavier can roll around on the floor all day long, if I get to watch."

Razzy and Kitty...hmm. "I dunno, who do you think would win?" She asked, head cocked to the side. "Razzy is pretty scary, you know, but Kitty might claw his eyes out and eat them. Though she might retreat after one scar to the face." Rubbing her chin, she smiled. "Or that might make her get worse."

She kicked him again. This time Erin did not hide his wince, but let out a yelp and pulled such a face of anguished pain it could only be put on.

"That's not very professional," he complained, drawing his abused legs in closer. "Imagine what the other blokes would think, what with all this kicking and spiked heels and me not paying a knut." Well, honestly, they'd probably be terribly jealous. Erin pretended he was operating from the angle of fairness and justice for all instead of a desire to get out of breakfast unbruised, but it didn't work for very long. Soon enough his lips curled into a smile as he added thoughtfully, "Besides, Professor Trishna'd probably notice if his whips went missing," and braced himself for another, less loving kick.

"Er, no thanks." Erin was not stupid. There was a big difference between a spot of harmless flirting and being at Kitty's mercy twenty-four seven. "Don't you know? Knight doesn't tussle anymore."

"I dunno, who do you think would win?"

"Razzy would, of course," Erin said, surprised. "Are you kidding? He's like twice her size, and he fights dirty."

"Yeah, well, you get a discount, how's that work? You get it for only a knut. Or a nut." Her smile showed her teeth; there was a reason for that, too. But then...Erin was a fun kid to beat on.

She nearly choked on her pastry. "Whips? My brother?!" Her laughter was a loud bark, and she slapped Erin on the back hard enough to almost send him forward into his plate. "How'd you find out, you walk in on him? He wouldn't notice, though. It's not like his wife's usin' em anymore. He's even got fuzzy handcuffs! Pink ones." They'd been a joke gift from a friend, but Erin didn't need to know that. "Think about that in Astronomy. Thankfully you won't take it next year, eh?"

Kitty vs Razzy....hrm. "I dunno. If she had time to think about it, she'd have Strelnikov sneak up behind him and hex the hell out of him."

Erin rolled his eyes. "Shoulda known you couldn't have turned that opportunity up. One of those things is more valuable than the other, Trishna..." He sucked some icing off his finger, wiped it on his pants, and then shook it in her face. "Avoid the temptation of telling me which you think is, yeah? That's just too predictable."

And Slytherins hated being predictable, right? Besides, he'd made it so easy for her it was hardly worth the effort. He hoped. Erin didn't like being backed into a conversational corner, but for all his worldly pretend, when one entered into a conversation of lewd jokes and bad puns with Gigi Trishna... Gigi won. She had the ability to reduce any poor country lad to a stuttering, blushing mess in under two minutes, too. It was enough to make a bloke wonder what it'd be like to shag her.

Probably, Erin'd decided once, equal parts brilliant and ego-crushing.

She slapped him on the back, and Erin's shoulders tensed. Slowly he wiped sugar off his nose and tried to look like he hadn't been joking when he'd said her brother had whips. Hell, he didn't want to hear about Professor Trishna's fuzzy pink handcuffs! He was too young, and what the professors did in their own time - especially concerning sex - was an arcane business he ought not to know wot of. Erin arranged his features in a look of mild interest instead of mild horror and rode the subject out.

"I dunno. If she had time to think about it, she'd have Strelnikov sneak up behind him and hex the hell out of him."

"Don't be silly," Erin said mildly. "I'd be behind him, of course."