Of all the things at Hogwarts Penelope had missed over the summer, the dorms and the four poster beds were definitely among them. Some people probably didn't care much for the whole "sharing their room" thing, but Penelope kinda liked it. It was kinda nice still having a place to hang out with some people if you didn't want to be in the common room with everyone else. And, perhaps because of all this, her dorm bed seemed to be the best place for her to get a decent night's sleep. She hadn't slept very well at night during the summer, and even though some nights were better than others, these Hogwarts nights were already far better than even the best ones during the summer. For this, she was extremely grateful.

Tonight would hopefully be no different, though she wasn't planning on sleeping any time soon. The third year was just sitting cross legged on her bed with a textbook in her lap and her wand in her hand, a sight not often seen in her previous two terms. It wasn't even for homework; she was merely looking up spells to start practicing on. Which...in a way could be homework but technically wasn't. Either way, she flipped through the pages, pausing only when a spell name or incantation happened to catch her attention.

Melanie opened up her charms book and placed it on the bed. She had changed into her pajamas and her wand lay on top of her book. For the Herbology task force thing the professor had wanted them to practice some charms. Melanie could do that. She was really rusty with most of the charms and, honestly, had forgotten some. It was probably best for her to relearn them in case they were on the OWLs anyways.

But what would she practice it on?

The girl tied her hair up, hopped off the bed then looked under it. ... They were still there. And since she wasn't going to be hugging them anymore... Melanie pulled out a few old teddy bears that had been abandoned there last year and placed it on the bed. She could practice on those. She folded her legs, placed a pillow on her lap and flipped through the charms book. What to start with first?

This....this was going to take some getting used to.

From her vantage point in the dead center of her bed, Breigh had her old stuffed, pink rabbit with its floppy ears - hence the naming of Floppsie - squished between her chest and drawn up knees. Yes, she WAS to old for stuffies and the like, but this one was special and it reminded her of home. So, she reasoned, during the adjustment period she was ALLOWED to hug it. As long as few people saw. Hence, her arms were locked tightly around her legs, concealing the faded pink fluff from view.

She felt like rocking back and forth to further try to comfort herself. She wasn't used to so many people sleeping in the same room. Sure, there had been slumber parties when she was younger, but that was different: one night type deal sorta thing. Here, now, was for extended time: extended time with strange habits, snoring, sleepwalking and possible night terrors. She dreaded to think of the possibilities and yet could think of nothing else.

And it seemed, a place to do homework and obliterate the whole of the tower with spell practices. No, it did not seem safe. Not one bit.

Sarah sang as she walked towards her dormroom, and opened the door. Thankfully, the beds in the dorm never seem to change so Sarah had had similar neighbours each year. Penelope on her on side... hey, Penelope was in. "Hi Penelope, how are you?" sang out Sarah as she dropped her satchel on her bed. "What a busy day! Now after this we still have homework though.. Not being a fan of myths and such, the Ancient Runes homework is actually going to require work. I do not know of any Norse gods. Is Odin a Norse god?" she asked opening her satchel and spilling some books over her bed. She had stopped at the library on the way up as she needed to do some reading on Norse gods as well as runes. She doubted if Penelope would know... yet it helped Sarah to destress when she stated what the problem was.
Then she noticed something that she had carried around in her satchel that had come out with the books onto her bed.The Pendent. She still did not know how to wear it. how embarressing. "um.. Penelope" she asked, rather hesitively, "how do I wear this pendent?" she said holding out the pendent. "I am not skilled in the area of jewelarry and adornment as it is, which does not help me in my case. I know its sounds ridiculous- but I only have brothers".

What a long day.

She never thought she'd be so happy to get back to her dorm. Usually she would have stayed down in the common room a bit longer with Felix but not tonight. Nah. Her head was doing that thing where it started hurting her because she'd made an attempt at her Ancient Runes homework. This was why she should have waited for Jake before even considering giving it a go.

Walking into the dorm she almost didn't realize that there was someone else in there. Quite a normal occurrence actually. The girl was terribly oblivious unless it suited her to be otherwise.

However, now that she did notice her she thought it would have been rude to ignore her. Plus...Lex liked meeting people; new things interested her. "Hai!" She said, flopping onto her own bed and startling the kneazle that had been sleeping on it. She giggled at him for a minute before rolling onto her stomach and smiling over at the girl. "I don't remember seeing you before...but that's probably my fault. I usually wait 'til I'm dead tired to come up to the dorms and by then I'm too out of it to notice anyone. I'm Alexa and you are?" And of course there was a nice smile attached to that.

Herbology stuff. Meh. Alice, honestly, was not interested in that subject. It was hard and everything.. but they needed the house points, didn't they? Kurumi had always earned the most, and since she was gone now, the fourth year had made it her personal mission to pick up the slack. And so.. it was time to practice some charms. She was kind of confused about what to practice them on, though, so she went to look for Melanie. It always helped to ask, didn't it?

Once she had tracked her friend in the dorm, the lioness headed toward her immediately, noting the charms book in her hands. "Are you doing the Herbology thing, too?" .. And apparently she was practicing on TEDDY BEARS? .. Well, Alice could work with them, she supposed. "Can we work together?" The fourth year flopped onto the older girl's bad, crossing her legs and staring at the book with Melanie. "The Severing Charm," she pointed out on the page. "I'm good at that one. Lex and I used it on that devilish plant last year." Even though they weren't supposed to and all. "Want to start with that?"

Melanie continued to thumb through the pages. So many spells... how was she supposed to find the ones she was going to use? It probably had a table of contents, but Melanie didn't exactly feel like looking at it. So she continued to flip through the pages. Without taking her gaze off of the book, her hand reached for the top drawer of a table by her desk. Melanie was pretty sure she had placed in there a wrapped up sandwich yesterday or something.

Her hand drew away from the drawer and looked up when she heard a voice. Queen Alice's voice, to be specific. The Gryffindor smiled at the captain. "I am," Melanie said, nodding. It was good practice too. Plus, she didn't remember some of these charms which was definitely not a good thing. Melanie quickly moved some of the old teddy bears to a side when Queen Alice flopped on. Giggling, Melanie nodded her head again. "Of course you can, you don't even have to ask." Plus, the girl seemed to have made herself comfortable on the bed anyways, so might as well, right?

Severing charm? Was that really the first thing Queen Alice wanted to work on? Melanie had planned on doing that one last. Melanie bit her lip before letting out a sigh and grabbing Mister Bear. She wrapped her arms around him and placed her head on top of his. "I guess we can work on that first... but don't you want to work on something simpler? Like the shrinking charm?" Because Melanie was good at that one. And the one to make things bigger. She had loads of practice with those two charms. The severing charm... Melanie was quite grateful she could say that she wasn't skilled in the severing charm. She looked down at her book. Well... she was already on the page...

"Okay... severing charm... then let's do some... nicer ones."

That didn't involve splitting things apart.

Suddenly the silence was broken, and Penelope looked up from her textbook to see Sarah entering the dorm room. She offered a little smile to her dormmate. "I'm alright. How're you, Sarah?" She barely got the question out before her friend continued on. Heh. Sarah always was rather talkative, but Penelope didn't mind. She liked it, really. It meant she didn't have to talk as much if she didn't want to, so they never really had to deal with awkward silences, which was nice.

"I think he is," she answered to the Odin question. "I think he was mentioned in the lesson at some point..." Or was she mixing him up with Thor? Was Thor all they had talked about? She couldn't actually remember now. All she remembered about that lesson was a lot of weird words, Thor and his hammer, and using that rune wand to lift Thor's hammer and break that box open for a pendant.

Speaking of that, Sarah now had hers out. And was asking how to wear it? Hmm. "I guess it could be worn as a necklace?" Penelope suggested, though it sounded more like a question too. She wasn't entirely sure herself, honestly. "Or you could make it a bracelet too, I guess. I dunno really though." She hadn't even worn hers yet. Though it was supposed to be useful or something, now that she thought about it. Right? But she wasn't sure what. "D'you remember what it was supposed to help with or anything?"

Oichi was so happy to be out of detention but she still had lots of emotions welling up inside from the experience of paying her penance for what she did. She got up to her dorm room and it was pretty quiet at that moment. She got on her bed and hugged her pillow as she let her emotions go. She cried for a good 10 minutes but it felt so good to have a comfortable place to let go of all her pent up emotions. Afterwards she got up feeling like a giant anvil was lifted from her shoulders. She then grabbed some fresh robes and headed to the showers. She just had to get the detention stench off of her.

Christmas entered the dorms tired after a busy day exploring and attending classes and she needed to sleep now and she sat on the edge of her bed for a few minutes thinking about whether or not she should owl Claudette

For Sazhale:

Oichi finished her shower and headed out back to her dorm in her bathrobe to pick up a fresh uniform and school robe. There she saw Christmas. She blushed slightly, "Hey Christmas, I did not expect anyone to be here this time of day. But I guess it's not that bad, it's just a bathrobe afterall.", Oichi chucked.

Christmas smiled at Oichi and said "Oh hey Oichi i was just up to get some candy to eat as i have had a pretty long day so far getting a bit lost trying to find my way to classes"

"Ah, that sounds fun. What kind of candy do you have?", Oichi asked and then heard her mention she was having trouble finding classes. Oichi remembered her first year. The castle felt so huge and she felt lucky she managed to find her classes and not be late. She looked toward Christmas with understanding eyes. "I know how that feels, my first year was rough, but I got through it, and you will to. Hey, I can help you learn you're way around the school of you like. Well, once I get dressed", Oichi ended on a chuckle.

Christmas smiled and said "I have all sorts of candy Oichi and sure that would be good"

"You got some exploding bon bons? There my favorite, though I will accept anything you are willing to give. All wizarding candy is awesome", Oichi replied looking toward Christmas with a longing look. She really wanted candy after her long stay in the dungeons.

Christmas smiled and said "Your in luck Oichi i bought quite a few packs of exploding bon bons before i came into school" Christmas gave a pack of exploding bon bons over to Oichi

(I just read just how dangerous the actual exploding bon bons are so I am gonna go with muggle Wizarding World exploding bon bons)


Oichi accepted the box happily and opened it. She plopped one in her mouth and chomped down. She felt an awesome fizzing sensation. It brought her back to when she was 11 and first tasted some at her first wizarding candy shop. It was so good. "Thank you so much, I gonna go get dressed and then you can ask me any questions you like about Hogwarts or go explore the castle, you're choice.". Oichi grabbed her uniform and robe and went back in the bathroom and put on her uniform and robes. She then returned back to Christmas and said, "I'm back.".

Christmas smiled and said "Well how many students do you think have attended Hogwarts since it opened all those years ago"

Now that's a peculiar question, how am I I supposed to know that? However I can guess. "Well, Hogwarts has been around for for over a thousand years. I am guessing millions of students have walked these halls. So, do you have anymore questions? Would you perhaps like to go for a tour of the school.".

Christmas smiled and said "I actually have a few more questions Oichi before we go on a tour"

"Well allright, ask away then", Oichi said happily, he wanted to help her friend in anyway she could.

Christmas smiled and said "Well when you were first sorted Oichi what house did you want to be in"

Ronnie walked into the dorm and made her way over to her bed. She then crouched down and peeked under it, searching for her box. Once she spotted it, she pulled it out and hopped onto the bed.

She opened the box and dug through it for a while, then pulled out a bag of jellybeans and a Batman comic. She then leaned back into the pillows and began to read her comic and popping jellybeans into her mouth. Her kitten Oliver trotted over to her bed and hopped up onto it, curling up beside Ronnie. She was miserable and really needed this...some quiet time in the dorm, reading comics and eating jellybeans and being with Oliver.

"Well that's a rather interesting story for me. I came from the muggle world as a halfblood. It was a shock to find out that my mum was a witch and she kept it from me for so many years. I was too in shock of everything changing so fast that I did not even pay attention to houses, when I made Gryffindor, I did not even know what it meant besides this was my new wizarding family. As I learned the ideals of Gryffindor I really liked them and ever since I have truly enjoyed being a Gryffindor.".