Thornton shook his head a little as the prefect raced past and had turned to continue his way down the corridor when he heard Zander double-back. Pausing, he looked over his shoulder to see the older boy racing back toward him.

Did he... have a birthday? Blinking a bit, Thornton nodded. Of course he had a birthday. Were there people who didn't? Particular creatures perhaps that just sort of sprang into existence? Though, Thornton supposed that would be a sort of birthday too.

Or did the boy mean whether Thornton knew his birthday? Because he supposed that some kids who were adopted or had been abandoned didn't know their actual birthdays and celebrated some other sort of annual thing...

Or maybe he just meant to ask what Thornton's birthday was... though the second year couldn't really puzzle together why he would need to know, and so urgently. But this was the question he chose to assume the boy was really asking. And so he offered a tentative answer. "Yes... It's in December. The twenty-third."