She wasn't clumsy.

But it probably wasn't the best of her ideas to try juggle ALL of her textbooks, a stack of parchment, a pot of ink, her quill AND a new jar of sweeties. She'd balanced them...almost perfectly on her way back towards the common room, with a few ink spillages here and there and definitely needing to rewrite her notes because they were ruined now. But after a stumble on an untied lace, the prefect now just lay in the middle of the mess. And she sighed.

She still wasn't clumsy.

What time was it, exactly? Hayden was not so good at keeping track of time and being where she was supposed to be. She was very easily distracted. It was lucky she'd managed to make it to all her classes on time, and back to the common room before curfew. It probably wasn't quite curfew yet, maybe not even close. Hayden really had no idea, but she thought it was best to head to the common room anyway. She had to do homework no matter what time it was.

But she did not enter the common room as planned, because someone else had decided to do their homework in the middle of the floor right in front of the barrels. Or no, they'd decided to throw their homework on the floor and lay down in the middle of it. Odd strategy. But the girl who lay in the mess looked a lot older than Hayden. Well not a lot, she didn't look elderly or anything but she appeared to be several years older. If she'd gotten that far, maybe her strategy did work.

OR MAYBE SHE'D FALLEN DOWN. That would make sense too. Who would even think of throwing their homework on the ground and laying in the middle of it? Why would that even work? Why had Hayden even thought of it? Whatever the case, there was still a mess in the middle of the floor and an older girl on the ground. "Do you need some help?" Hayden asked tentatively. She had never met anyone older than second year so she didn't know if this girl would be nice to a firstie like herself. She was in front of the Hufflepuff common room so she was probably a Hufflepuff - Hayden couldn't really get a good look at her because she was on the ground - and if she was a Hufflepuff she had to be nice, right? Wasn't that the point of the house?

Did she need some help? NO. Did she want some help? NO.

"Of course not. I'm just lying here covered in ink for the fun of it. A project, even!" And then she rolled from her front to her back to look up at the rugrat checking up on her. Ah, she definitely was a rugrat. Small and small and small. Rugratish, for definite. Elodie let out a loud sigh and flopped her arms back onto the floor and the mess and all too quickly realised she looked very starfishlike. Not that it mattered much, but she was on the floor and there was a child just watching her.

"I dropped it." The stuff. Not herself. She had just given up and fallen with her belongings. None of that tripping or uncoordinated business. "I dropped it and I am under no contract that insist I pick it up immediately or get up off the floor. Unless you were intending on getting into the common room." If so...she was going to have to wait. Prefect Robertser was having a MOMENT HERE.

A moment.

Hayden retreated a few steps so she was standing right next to a barrel, as if it could offer her protection. Well she would be able to hide behind it if the need arose. She thought Hufflepuffs were supposed to be nice, but this girl was not being very nice to her at all. And, wait, wasn't she the prefect? Hayden frowned. "I was just trying to be nice," she mumbled. The girl had looked like she needed help. No need to snap.

"A project?" Had Hayden been right about the homework after all? Or was the girl just being sarcastic? Hayden heavily suspected the latter but there was no harm in making sure. Unless the prefect was going to get mad, in which case Hayden was prepared to hide behind her barrel. "No I'm okay," she said in a small voice. She didn't need to get into the common room badly enough to walk through this girl's stuff. "Feel free to...lie on the ground as long as you'd like." It couldn't possibly be comfortable enough to lie there for too long.

Okay. Rugrat was moving away. That gave Elodie the freedom to let her head lie back on the ground and just stare up at the ceiling. Trying to be nice.. Right... Yeah. People still did that around here. The rugrats hadn't yet learnt that not everything was peachy and people left you behind and life was generally a big pile of horse turds. They'd come to learn it in the next few years. Wait until they hit their big exam years. Then they'd be screwed. Completely and totally bowled over by everything and just want to lie down on the floor randomly in the daytime. It was a LIFE CHOICE. "I was just trying to get comfortable in my new moisturiser." Aka ink. Aka NO. AKA GOOD GOLLY GOSH.

Deciding that she was actually going to get nowhere with just lying here, Els sat herself up and was then just sat in the middle of the mess with an annoying rugrat nearby. "I'm working out how many rugrats I can lock up in cages in the common room before someone notices."

...., Kidding.

When she heard the girls last comment, Hayden's eyes widened and a frightened look was etched onto her face. She jumped sideways a bit so she was hiding behind one of the barrels. She stayed crouched on the ground for several seconds, hiding completely from the girl's sight. When most of her fear had worn off, mostly due to Hayden repeatedly telling herself that it had been a joke, she slowly peeeeeked over the top of the barrel. She peered over to where the girl was sitting in the mess of stuff.

"How many have you gotten so far?" Despite her fear she could not help but inquire about the findings of this girl's malicious, yet scientific, experiment. She hadn't seen anyone in a cage, so she was either kidding or not doing a very good job at actually locking anyone up. OR she was doing a very good job of trapping first years without anyone noticing. Maybe it would be best if Hayden just ran away.

Oh. Brilliant. A few minutes into introductions and the kid was hiding. Hiding behind a barrel. That was just crazy, huh? Elodie tilted her head and slowly started to gather her papers and stuff into a small pile, ignoring the puddle of ink and everything down her uniform. "Barrel bugs might eat you if you stay behind there." Did kids do that? Did rugrats still get scared of bugs? Barrel bugs that didn't exist? Bed bugs? Any kind of bug? Rugrats were strange. She didn't even think of what she dealt with when she was a rugrat. Not that she was as annoying as some of the rugrats around now. They were BORING. With a capital EVERYTHING.

"Three or four.... What year are you in?" Hahahaha. What year was she in? Did she believe this whole cage thing? Could.. Elodie use it as a way to get what she wanted with this rugrat? Was she going to have a personal little slave?

Oh, this was wonderful.

But she was still covered in ink.

Barrel bugs? Were those a real thing? They sounded pretty legit. The barrels did look pretty old, like they'd been around since the time of Helga Hufflepuff herself. Okay they probably weren't that old, but you never know. Hogwarts could hold any sort of seemingly impossible thing like barrels that were centuries old and bugs that lived in them. Hayden glanced around nervously but she didn't see any. Even if she had she'd rather take her chances with them than someone threatening to lock her in a cage.

What year was she in? Why? Was she going to get locked in a cage? "First," Hayden answered slowly. Was it a bad idea to answer? She was certainly small enough to be able to be locked in a cage and hidden somewhere no one could find her. This girl was a PREFECT so she had POWER that could easily be abused - probably - into kidnapping poor little firsties such as herself. Great.

But she was still covered in ink. "Don't you know a spell or something that could get rid of that?" Hayden motioned to the ink on her robes. It probably wasn't a great question to ask, given the circumstances, but she couldn't help it. Her curiosity got the better of her. Mostly because she really did want to know if there was a spell that could clean the mess, and if there was she wanted to learn it. It wasn't her fault that the situation of said curiousness was less than ideal.

The lack of barrel bug questions left Elodie wondering whether the girl had figured out that she was lying or was just in shock and forever scared? All the questions that were not coming from the young Hufflepuff actually might have worried her if she wasn't in a state of almost death. AKA INKED. If this was a black and white film, it might have looked like she was bleeding or something. Which she was not. And this girl hadn't assumed that, so Elodie knew that she didn't just see in black and white. All good things. No blood, no bad eyesight. All good things.

"Ah, the main year group on my lists." Hehehhee. Come to the cage, little pretty. Come on in. Lock you up. Hehehhee. If this was actually happening...then...well.. she'd probably just feed them lollipops. Full of sugar. Science experiment if they could survive on it. The cages were just an extra. BUT IT WAS COOL. None of this was happening. "I bet you'd fit nice and snug in the smallest of my cages." So, see ya later kidda!

A spell? "Of course I do." She was OLDER. She knew things, duh. She just had other things that were in her focus right now.

Eep. Hayden almost let a small noise of fright escape from her, but it probably wouldn't have mattered because it all showed on her face anyway. Did this girl really plan on locking her in a cage. She thought probably not but she didn't know for sure. This was Hogwarts, so unexpected things could happen. "Please don't lock me in a cage," she said in a small voice. But who ever claimed evil could be reasoned with?

So she did know a spell. "Why aren't you using it?" Shouldn't that have been the first thing she did? Instead of sitting in the middle of the mess and threatening to lock Hayden in a cage?

Awww, she said please. Elodie tilted her head just slightly and reached for a plain piece of paper and her quill. "Tell me your name and I'll add you to my list of rugrats to not lock up." She'd write her name down on a pretend list for her pretend project with her pretend first years and pretend cages. It was all pretend. But it was cool. It was also fun to see the kid squirm a little. She was a bad person for revelling in that, wasn't she? Oh, never mind.

Why wasn't sh- uh.. "Well I'd fallen over and was too busy lying there on the floor and wishing I hadn't landed on my face?" Wasn't that a plausible enough answer?

"My name is Hayden Malone." Why was the actually giving out her name? What if it was going to be added to a list of first years to make sure to lock up? Or if first years weren't actually being locked in cages, which they probably weren't but maybe, why did her name matter? It would probably be good under normal circumstances for her to know the house prefect but Hayden didn't think she'd be seeing any more of this girl than absolutely necessary.

Right. That made sense. Hayden studied the girl in front of her carefully. A question mulled in her mind but she wasn't sure if she could ask it. Several things had the potential to go wrong. However, Hayden was not very good at containing her curiosity. "Theoretically, if you weren't preoccupied, what spell would you use exactly?" Bad question? Bad timing? No? Yes? Hayden waited anxiously for…something.

Hayden Malone.

Hayyyyyyden Malone.

Hayden Ma-loner.

She scribbled that last option down on her pretend list and gave the first year a grin, before adding things to the pile she was forming again. Of parchment and homework and textbooks. All the things. Notes were mentally taken that she hadn't been offered any assistance once the stacking had began, but she certainly didn't mind, because it wasn't like she wanted any help. Other mental notes were taking that she had actually offered help when she first got here. Good kid, good kid. Raised right.

Tapping her fingers on the floor, Elodie laughed a little. "Isn't that something you should be finding out for yourself?" Like looking in her textbooks? Elodie wasn't her mama.

Hayden watched in silence as the older girl - she still didn't know what her name was - put her stuff in a pile. She considered offering to help but decided against it because she'd tried that earlier, and that's what had gotten her into this mess in the first place. Though now she was probably not going to be put into a cage, whether or not said caging of first years was actually going to happen. Hayden had decided she really didn't wan't to know.

"Technically I am. I'm asking you." Weren't they encouraged to do that? Ask questions? That was a good way to learn. In fact, this girl should be flattered. If she was the one being asked, it meant Hayden thought she was smart enough to know the answer. She couldn't ask questions of just anyone. "But you don't have to help if you don't want to," she added, because she didn't want to get on this girl's bad side.

Elodie tilted her head, gave up on putting her things in a pile and folded her arms. "Do I look like your parent?" Did she look like a professor? Maybe she'd have helped her on another day, but right now? She was NOT in the mood. She was inky and gross and everything. In fact, she was tempted to throw her papers at this girl just for being a butt. "I'm not going to help. You're going to head on into the common room, and go look in your textbooks." Maybe she'd learn a thing or two and get out of Els' way.

Like right now.

Before papers went at her head.

"No," Hayden said meekly. She sure was glad that Elodie was not her parent or professor or anything. Because she was MEAN and THREATENED to lock first years in cages. "Sorry, I'll go look it up myself." And never ask this girl for help ever again. Note to self, the hufflepuff prefect was not to be asked for help.

"Right now?" Was she supposed to go find out right now? At that moment? In the common room? That meant she would have to walk through this girl on the ground and that seemed like too much to ask. The thought mildly terrified Hayden. She was perfectly happy hiding behind her barrel thank you very much. Maybe she could duck down and hide out of the girl's sight until she left.

Practically giggling her whole way here, lost in her thoughts, was Coral-Bay Aldrich. Oh, how she needed to tell her sister alllllll about her day. It wasn't very eventful per say. Just.. there was one particular event that she thought her sister ought to hear about.

Boy stuff. Y'know?

Sisters should know that. Coral flounced down across from the barrels with a grin on her face and her fingers entangled in her skirt, fussing with the the fabric that happened to look like it'd been watercolored on. With little flowers of course. Her favorite type of print.

A slight flush still on her cheeks, she waited.

Oh Hallieeeeee. Where are you?

Anna stepped out of the common room and sighed. She really didn't know why she wanted to leave, but being cooped up all day was killing her. She needed to get out and away from her housemates. No doubt it was starting to seem odd that she never left. Annaleecia sighed and sat down outside entrance, maybe just outside the common room would be enough for today, yes? The now fifteen year old just buried her head, not sure how long she should just stay out of her common room.

Hallie emerged from behind the barrels with her gloved fingers laced into her hair. She was restless from all the snow and wanted to be on her feet, gliding around with what she hoped others saw as ethereal grace. She was mid-braid as she fled the common room - which though comfortable wasn't up to her regal taste - and bumped into none other than her twin.

"Coral." She blinked. It'd been weeks since Hallie loitered outside her sister's common room because she'd been busy with scheming plotting preparing for her summer secret plans. For some reason it hadn't occurred to her that CB would continue occasionally waiting for her if she wasn't occasionally waiting for CB.

Halcyon gave her sister a quick glance from head to toe. Hmmmmm. Someone is blushing. And not in the normal way that she does. A smirk suggesting superiority settled in on Hallie's lips and she lifted her eyebrows amusedly. "Coral, your face is coral. Hmmmm? What's this abouuuuut?" She lifted her eyebrow further in suggestion and leaned over to better inspect her sister's pink cheeks. Of course, knowing CB, this was probably about boys, or maybe just one boy. Hallie hoped CB had learned from her to keep her options open, though, because boys are useful to do dirty work and get in trouble for you.