Just Walking

It wasn't a terribly far walk to go from the common room to the clock tower, although it did involve quite a few stairs, which Bri could have done without. She was more of a reader than she was a climber. "So what have you been up to so far this year?" she asked. She felt like she didn't see Andy very often, despite the two of them being in the same house. She considered telling him about Ethan being at the school, but she decided to wait until he had answered her question first, since it would have been extremely rude to interrupt him to interject her own thought.

Andy stared at the considerable amount of stairs that Bri obviously thought were a good idea to climb. He blinked but took to them with gusto; he needed his daily exercise anyway.

Turning his head towards the Ravenclaw, Andy thought about her question. What had he been up to?

"Not a great amount. Same old, really. What about you?" Andy wasn't lying; his year had been dreadfully dull so far.

"Same, I guess," Bri replied. It mostly was just the same routine that she'd had last year, minus the jaunt into the forest, except for the one detail she had been thinking of. "My cousin's here though, Ethan Carter, he's a Hufflepuff."

She still thought it was odd that, coming from a long line of muggles, both her and her cousin would inherit magical abilities, but she supposed life was odd like that. "I think you two would get along," she said. "He's a bit odd though..." Hopefully if they met, Ethan would contain himself and not call her by her familial nickname. That would be embarrassing...

Andy turned to Bri. "Yeah? That's awesome," he said, slightly puffed from all the stairs. When he said 'Let's go for a walk' he didn't expect to keel over from a heart attack.

Andy laughed. He hadn't met many 'odd' people, as Bri put it, before. Well.. apart from Natalie Olivier, but she was definitely one of a kind.

"I'll have to meet this Ethan then," Andy remarked, stopping to catch his breath; his hands on his knees, "Gee, I'm so unfit," he said, in between deep breaths. "I'm thinking early morning runs are in order."

Bri couldn't help herself as she giggled at Andy. She hardly got any exercise at all but she seemed to be doing fine with all the stairs. "You're totally fit," she smiled before blushing when she realized just what she'd said. "What I mean to say is that the stairs will be no problem for you if you just do them every once in a while and maybe have a run around the lake here or there."

She felt like she was starting to dig a hole for herself. First she'd essentially told him that he was attractive, then she was giving him exercise advice. She closed her mouth so that she wouldn't be tempted to say something else and therefore embarrass herself further.

Andy turned to look at her, and raised an eyebrow. He heard what she said, but really didn't think that she meant it as it sounded. She was merely commenting on his fitness level... surely.

Andy was far more interesting in watching her cover up her freudian slip. That was entertaining, to say the least.; she was even blushing. "Careful, if you back peddle any further, you'll fall down the stairs."

He nodded. "Perhaps you'd care to join me for pre-dawn jogs up these stairs and around the lake, seeing as you suggested it?" he asked, half joking.

Andy's light teasing made Bri temporarily blush even deeper. "I didn't mean that you're not, I just meant..."

She sighed; nothing that she wanted to say was coming out right and her hole just kept on getting deeper to the point where the stairs were starting to look like a plausible option. At least if she took that route she might knock herself out and stop herself from saying yet another thing to make her situation even more embarrassing.

"Nobody said anything about pre-dawn," she replied. "Maybe if you do them once the sun is shining and it's normal for people to be awake."

Andy raised his eyebrows at Bri's response. He noticed the blushing on her cheeks and decided not to comment. He didn't want her to feel embarrassed, and even though he found the situation highly amusing, he'd drop it for Bri's sake.

"Early morning runs are the greatest. Being up before everyone else; it's almost like you're the only one left on the Earth. I take it you're like James and love to sleep?"

Bri didn't like to sleep in per se, she just didn't like to be up before the sun; it just didn't feel right. "So you actually get up and run in the morning? Because I heard a little rumor that you like to sleep through meetings with your friends to study potions," she teased. It was just an off-hand comment that James had made, but it fit perfectly into this moment and the opportunity was just too good to pass up.

(James Wilson GM-ed with permission)

Andy ran a hand through his hair; something that was becoming a nervous habit of his.

"Erm..." he stammered. "How did you know about that?" he asked, genuinely interested. Andy didn't know that James and Bri knew each other, but then again, they were all second years, and Andy wasn't in every class with James, so they could know each other from there.

"He said it so offhandedly, I completely forgot about it." Andy didn't even know why he was defending himself. He just didn't want Bri to think he was someone who couldn't commit to something, even if he only did it the once.

"Did he tell you about all the times he's been late for things?" Andy questioned, still feeling oddly defensive about his punctually.

"I was trying to help him with his Muggle Studies work in the library the other day and he just sort of mentioned it," Bri said nonchalantly, though she was laughing internally.

She held her laughter back, masking it with a face of interest as Andy started to try to explain himself. "Uh-huh, sure," she said in mock agreement. She was rarely one to tease others, so she had to say that it was nice being the teaser rather than the teasee for a change.

"He didn't say that, but he did say that it was nice of me to be there on time and that I'm a delightful friend," her calm facade started to crack a bit and a small smile broke though. It was a complete and outright lie, but it was funny and she would tell him soon that she was kidding, if he hadn't already figured it out.

Andy stopped walking, abruptly. "James is taking Muggle Studies?" he asked incredulously. "Seriously?" Andy shook his head. The boy had laughed at Andy when he said he was taking that class. Andy dropped out after first year. He realised that he actually knew a great deal about the non-magic folk than he thought he did.

Andy rolled his eyes. "Doesn't sound like James to me," he commented, trying to picture the Gryffindor saying that Brianna was a delightful friend. "I'm surprised that you put up with him for so long. He's become a right royal pain in the arse, as of late. Don't know who's he's hanging out with that's making him so. Can't obviously be me, because, naturally, I'm awesome. Probably you," Andy smirked.

"Me? No, it can't be!" Bri insisted. "I've honestly only talked to him the one time. I just happened to see him in the library and I decided to go say hello since he's your friend. I only stuck around because he needed help," she caved, telling him what had really happened. "So really, it has to be you, unless he's gone off and made friends with someone else who is turning him into a bit of a... pain in the bum," she just couldn't bring herself to repeat Andy's exact words, even though he'd just said them. What if her mum found out? The shock might be enough to kill her. "You don't think he's been spending time down in the dungeons with the Slytherins, do you?" she asked.

Andy laughed and shook his head. "Maybe you make an impression?" He sincerely doubted that Bri was the reason James was acting odd. If anything, he'd become a nicer person having met the Ravenclaw.

"Hmm... Doesn't really sound like something James would do. Besides, a Gryffindor down in the Dungeons? They're lucky they can make it to Potions relatively unscathed from the Slytherins. I really don't think he'd actively risk a hexing just for the fun of it."

Andy thought about it. "Maybe he is hanging out with the Slytherins. Celare isn't so bad, from what I've heard, but the rest of them..." Andy thought about Jasmine Delaware, the girl he had a row with last year, and Allison Walker, and shuddered. "He wouldn't be that mad, surely."

Bri felt a little bad for judging an entire group of people based on what was surely only a few individuals. She'd met Lavender Parkinson briefly in the library and she had seemed alright, but she was still pretty intimidated by the rest of them. She even did her best not to sit by them in classes, for fear that they would do something awful to her. "Have you met many of them?" she asked, wondering if Andy was a braver soul than she when it came to conversing with the dungeon-dwellers.

Andy nodded solemnly and replied coldly. "Yeah. Jasmine Delaware. She's a nasty piece of work, with an acid tongue. Let's just say that I really don't like the person she brought out in me."

Andy didn't like to talk about the fight the two of them had in first year. He hadn't even told James about it. He was ashamed at how he reacted, even if she did provoke him. Better that things like that were left alone.

"What about you?" he asked, hoping she hadn't met any of them. Andy felt a tinge of something he couldn't quite place at the thought of someone being mean towards Brianna. He could quite honestly say, that Bri was the nicest person he had ever met, and for someone to tarnish that.. Well.. Andy couldn't stand the thought of it.

Bri was glad to have never met this Jasmine person, if she made Andy turn from being happy to a bit angry in such a short span of time. "What happened?" she asked, concerned that it was affecting him like this, especially since it didn't seem to be a recent occurrence.

"Just one, Lavender Parkinson," she replied to his question. "I met her in the library. She was very nice."

Andy looked at Bri and shook off his anger. He didn't need to take it out on her, even if the memory still made him want to punch something hard.

"It doesn't matter. We were less than amicable towards each other. I said somethings that weren't nice, she did the same. I..." Andy stopped and caught Brianna's expression. She looked concerned. He smiled softly to show her that he wasn't upset about it anymore.

"As I said, it doesn't matter." He started to walk again, seeing the top of the stairs were close by.

"I'm glad that your first experience was a good one." Andy then thought about what he said and how bad it sounded. "Meeting a Slytherin, I mean," he added, his face flushed slightly. He was just glad he had his back towards Bri so she couldn't see his face.

"If you say so," Bri said, starting to walk behind him. She wasn't buying it 100%, but there was nothing she could do if he didn't want to talk about it and she didn't want to push him.

His addition to his last statement confused her a bit; of course he had been talking about meeting a Slytherin, what else would he have meant? She caught up to him rather quickly and thought that she saw him blushing, though it could have been her eyes playing tricks on her, which made her think that it had kind of sounded like he was talking about something else, which in turn made her blush a bit. "Yeah, it was a good experience... meeting a Slytherin," she said.

Andy saw her catching up and tried to control the hue on his face. He could just pass it off as being puffed from all the stairs if she brought it up.

"Good good," he remarked, finally reaching the top of the stairs and having a look around. There sure was an awesome view.

"Come check this out," he called to Brianna from the ledge. "Cool, huh?" From here, they could practically see the entire grounds of the school.

Bri stopped for a moment at the top of the stairs to clutch at a stitch in her side that was quickly growing from a dull ache to a sharper throb; she really needed to get more exercise or something. She trudged over to the ledge where Andy was standing to have a look at the grounds.

The view was spectacular. "Cool doesn't even begin to describe it," she said in a bit of disbelief that this was actually where she went to school. "That's where we went into the forest at," she pointed out, grinning.

Andy smiled. He often thought about the first time that him and Bri met. It was high up there on his list of favourite memories.

"Yeah, so it is. We should explore it again sometime." Thinking about the forest, rekindled a thought and he voiced it with Bri.

"James got a detention from being in there. He went in with Sami and some other girl. Pretty amusing, I must say. I'm looking forward to tease him about it. He's looking at two detentions now. I've still only got the one."

Bri nodded in agreement. She wouldn't mind going back in; they might even get to see a unicorn again. Her only experience with the Forest had been positive, so it didn't even cross her mind that there could be something in there that might want to eat them.

"Did he now? That's interesting," she said. She wondered who the other person was, but it probably wasn't important if Andy couldn't remember it. "Two detentions?" she thought maybe she'd heard him wrong, but the thought was wiped from her mind when he said something that she was certain she'd misheard.

"You got a detention?" she asked, mixed with amusement and shock. "What did you do?"

Andy's hair was getting certainly messy as Bri questioned him. He really shouldn't do it; it was a dead giveaway that he was nervous. In his mind, he didn't have anything to be nervous about. It wasn't like he did anything worthy of a detention, so he really had no reason to feel guilty, but something about Bri thinking less of him for getting into trouble, pained him.

"Hamilton gave me one," was all he said, but knowing how inquisitive Bri would be, he decided to elaborate of his own back.

"James, Hester Alderman, Natalie Oliver and I were..." Andy blushed again. How to make this sound less childish than it definitely was. "We were playing Armour Tag." Andy mumbled the last line.

Bri watched as Andy once again messed with his hair, something that he seemed to be doing an awful lot during this conversation. It was possible that it just felt nice, but it was more likely that her questions were making him a smidge self-conscious (either way, she wouldn't mind fixing it for him, just to see if his hair was as soft as it looked).

"I'm sorry, what was that last part?" she asked, an amused grin breaking out across her face. She'd been worried that it had been for something bad, but she doubted that he would do that, so it had to be something that had simply annoyed a teacher (which wouldn't be surprising, considering it was Hamilton and he seemed annoyed by something as tiny as a speck of dust floating in his path, so a bit of fun would definitely be out of the question).