The Hallway

[-bows- THANK YOU, THANK YOU! IT WAS FUN! I LOVE BEING PERCIFUL!]

Fred was wandering through the hallway on his way to the library to get a bit of homework done... Not that that's what would get done with him in the library.

Padma meandered down the hallway without a real purpose, but after realizing she had been a recluse, she needed to fix that. She spotted a boy fairly near her, so she went up to him. "Hi," she said, holding out a hand. "I'm Padma, have we met?"

"Hey there," Fred replied with a smile. "I don't believe we have. Name's Fred," he finished shaking the hand she had held out.

"Do you, by chance, happen to be dating a certain Nikki Orwell?" Padma asked, remembering Nikki mentioning a Fred one time.

Fred smiled. "I do, in fact, happen to be dating her," he replied. "...Unless there's another Nikki Orwell in this school that I'm not aware of," he added.

"I don't believe so," Padma said, grinning. "I'm a friend of hers, and she's talked about you before. In a good way, of course," she added hastily.

"Really?" he asked in an intrigued sort of tone. "What sort of things does she say about me?"

Padma grinned. "Oh, just 'He's really cute, nice, funny...' That sort of thing."

Fred opened his mouth into an 'O' of surprise. "Only cute?" he asked indignantly though his tone hinted that he was being sarcastic. He waved it away with a flip of his hand. "Nah. I understand how it is," he said with a chuckle. "So what do you do around this lovely castle for fun?" he inquired.

Padma laughed, realizing how lucky Nikki was. "For fun?" she asked, smiling. "Oh, nothing much, just slide down the banister of the Grand Staircase, swim in the lake, have raves in the common room..." Trailing off and thinking about how glad she was that she hadn't gotten pranked so far, she said, "And what about you?"

[Oooh. You brought up pranking. Beware!]

Fred arched his eyebrows. That sounded like quite a bit of excitement for a brainy Ravenclaw. "Raves, you say?" he repeated. "You are talking about Ravenclaw... right?" he asked. They never seemed much like partiers, but hey. Ya never know.

[...oops...]

"Well, yes, I am," Padma said, laughing when she saw his reaction. "I know it doesn't sound like a typical Ravenclaw activity, but they're pretty awesome! I'm surprised Nikki hasn't told you about them yet."

Fred made a face. "No. She hasn't," he said. "Do you have a lot of them?" he asked.

[Sorry it took forever. I got distracted.]

"Once in a while, yes," Padma said. "It depends... A lot of the time, we don't have very many people in the common room. So when we have more than three people, we celebrate." She grinned.

[It's fine... I'll probably have to go in about thirteen minutes or so.]

[Ok. You wanna wrap this up?]

Fred chuckled. "I see. The Gryffindor common room is usually pretty full," he said. "I'm not in there a lot though..."

"I would expect so," Padma said. "There are a lot more people with brawn and bravery than there are with intelligence and wits." She grinned. "Fortunately, you seem to have been blessed with all of those qualities." She sneaked a peek at her watch, which we'll pretend was there the entire time, and said, "Well, I'm sorry to say that I've got to run, but I'm glad I got to meet you, Fred!" She walked away, wondering if she would get away from this encounter pranked-free.

Fred began walking away as well. "Nice to meet you too!" he called over his shoulder. "Oh, and I'm actually George," he added just before he turned the corner.

Polly hadn't wanted to go back to her dorm, but she didn't really know where to head to right now. So she was just going to wander the halls. It was better than going to another empty room and crying, like she wanted to do. As long as she was where other people could run into her at any point, she wouldn't cry. Wouldn't let anyone see her cry. She felt like she'd messed up majorly somehow; she'd apologize to Gideon when she saw him next. He had to understand right? Sighing, she continued on down the hallway.

Marcus wandered down through the hallway, heading back to the common room.

Penny walked down the hallway, still feeling confused about Cormac coming back

Marcus heard footsteps coming from behind him and turned around to see who it was and saw Penny. "Hey." He smiled at her.

she smiled immediately and gave him a hug "Hi!"