Dale was trying so hard. SO HARD. He had only cut up his plimpy a little bit, but this class was serving as too distracting. Although... what he was trying hard to do was NOT the plimpy-carving. No. He was fighting the laughter that lurked behind his lips.

First though, he looked thoughtful at what the professor had said. "Aren't Hufflepuffs meant to be the just and true ones?" he mused out loud, and everyone else was choosing this time to erupt into chaos so he figured he wouldn't get into too much trouble.

And then the chaos really DID start.

The prefect freezing, the sliiiiime, the professor totally losing her nut.

Dale burst into gales of laughter. The prefects, they just looked SO FUNNY when they froze like that. Everyone throwing around accusations, his fellow Hufflepuff getting all het up when others were picking on him. He wasn't laughing meanly, it was just... he hadn't had much reason to smile in a while, so this situation, whilst weird as... well... weird as ANYTHING... was just SO FUNNY.

Especially when the prefects froze in mid-word.

And the students seemed desperate enough for those 10 points to find SOMEONE to blame.

And the professor really living up to the legend of her secretly being a dragon.

The indignation of the girl who was splached with water and her accusation directed at Lafay.

He even laughed at the totally unfair prospect of Lafay being unbothered about the Hufflepuff prefect, but seemed quite concerned about her own prefect.

And that was when he realised it wasn't even funny anymore. He just couldn't stop.

Dale dropped the scalpel onto his desk and yanked off his gloves before lowering his head as much as he could and grabbing a handful of his robes to stuff into his mouth.

There. At least his giggles were somewhat masked.

Wait... frozen prefects?