This particular cleaning venture was selfish because like the Girls' dormitory, Ella planned on spending a lot of time at the study tables this term. Well, when she wasn't on the pitch, of course. The blonde had OWLs to worry about and she couldn't study if she was sneezing every ten seconds from the dust overload now could she? Nope. Not at all. Luckily for the sixteen year old, Professor Airey had provided just the equipment she'd need to fix that little hiccup in her studying plans.

With a small smile and a tap of her wand on the vacuum, Ella said, "Vacavus!" The vacuum came on immediately and the blonde got right to work.

She carefully dragged the machine along, getting underneath and around the tables as best she could. The blonde then moved the chairs out of the way and got those spots too. She even went over the actual table and shelves, sucking up as much dirt and dust as she could without damaging the supplies or lack there of. See? This cleaning thing was easy as pie.

After Kace was finished doing his Astronomy homework he thought he should start on his Transfiguration homework. After he brought down his gargoyle from class and placed it on the table, he got out his notebook with all the notes he took down from class.

Well the spell he needed to use was Piertotum Locomotor. Alright he remembered that and his wand movement was simple. Now he needed to know what tricks he wanted his gargoyle to do. Kace had a few ideas and was ready to put it into action.

"Alright mr. stone gargoyle let's get you moving first." he smiled and then got out his wand and said "Piertotum Locomotor!" and then the gargoyle sprang up and was walking on the desk. It seemed happy to be moving again and it even hugged his arm.

Kace beamed and felt his gargoyle was his friend. "Alright ready to do one trick?" It nodded vigorously. Kace contemplated and said.."Let's do something easy and do a back flip!" The gargoyle nodded and did the back flip with its wings. "Now that is cool..." he smiled. Then he said "Finite!" and he froze again while he was beginning to think of a new trick.

He had been putting this off and he knew it. And now it was getting a little late and... well... what if he couldn't get the spell right? Or couldn't get the gargoyle piece to do the tricks he was making it do? Frown.

With a box held in his hand and grumbling something about being stupid, Alec made his way down to the study tables to get himself in the correct mind-frame. Because... study areas helped you concentrate, yeah? And didn't you need to concentrate properly for these things? Exactly. Serious!nod.

Reaching a clean table -- were these tables cleaned by the only house elf? -- Alec took a seat and placed the box on the table an arm's length away. He opened it carefully and took out the gargoyle, placing it in front of the box. "Hey there, Mr Gargoyle, you okay?" Not that the gargoyle could answer but... you know. Manners. "We'll start with the basics first, yeah?"

But first... "Piertotum Locomotor!" he said, waving his wand over the gargoyle. Basic... basic... "Walk up to me!" Oh LOOK! It was actually moving its little legs and walking! How awesome was this? "Now... walk back to where you started off!" And look at it walking back to where it started off! Obediently and all. SO. AWESOME.

... Except... this wasn't part of the big production or whatever it was they had to put on.

"Okay, now just wave with your right hand!" Alec tilted his head slightly as he watched the little gargoyle dude wave a little at him. Except... it wasn't as cheerful of a wave as the young boy hoped it would be. Maybe it had something to do with the surroundings? "Finite!" The gargoyle stopped waving and stood as still as it was before it had been Locomotored. "We'll go somewhere else, yeah? Somewhere happier?" Without saying another word, Alec packed up the gargoyle, took hold of the box and walked out of there.

Minerva had her yellow vacuum she had gotten from the astronomy class under her arm as she made her way into the puff study tables. Now this place needed to be very clean. How were students going to study and really learn if there was dust everywhere. As she made her way in, it looked like someone had already cleaned a little, but there was still more work to do.

Walking to the table she placed the vacuum down. Pulling her wand from the holster, she thought about the spell. Vacavus, Vacavus.. she was feeling nervous about the spell, why? She was good at spells it was planets and stars and stuff she wasn't good at.

Taking a deep breath Min waved her wand over the vacuum "Vacavus" The vacuum sprang to life with the suction noise. Taking the hose, Minerva moved the vacuum along the floor until it stopped working. Well that didn't last long did it. Why couldn't they just use a spell and have it be done quicker. She shrugged it off and waved her wand again "Vacavus" The vacuum came to life and she finished the first part of the floor.

After tiring himself properly by touring the grounds, Forrest came back to the common room, panting a little. Tomorrow there was transfiguration lesson again, and he had yet to practise the spell properly. With the gargoyles in one hand and the other holding his wand, he sat down on one of the tables by the study corner and set the three materials on the desk.

Now. Where to begin?

He needed to grab his wand before anything, so he held the wooden stick and set his eyes on the bigger gargoyle. Working on the smaller one was all good, but that was kind of cheating and he doubted the professor would like that. So, he pointed his wand on the normal size one instead and said "Piertotum locomotor."

The gargoyle's head came to life first, turning towards the little boy.

"Get up." It got up sloooowly. It was like a will-war, whoever's will was stronger won it.

"Your name will be... Gala." Because it was a lion, and Galatasaray's emblem was a lion too. Gala nodded somewhat reluctantly, but it was cooperating at least.

Now, to prepare a chorepgraphy... "Move your wings at the same moment with your hands, and just... I dunno, move your feet at the same rhythm too. Take one step left, and one step right. One to the front, and one to the side. Clap your hands once, and clap your hand twice."

As the instructions fell faster than rain drops, the gargoyle did its best to keep up with the requests, but it was too hard for the boy's ability, and the gargoyle stopped moving in the middle. He sighed and poked it with his wand.

"Get up, move! I've gotta get this right by tomorrow, hurry up!" The gargoyle gave an involuntary step towards it, and then another to the right, but it was too much for it. Forrest pursed his lips as he leaned back a little to eye it from a broader angle.

"Stop moving your wings, and just do the rest." Now, that seemed to work and he clapped himself with a pleased smile on his face.

Now he could attend the next class proudly, without faking stomach aches.

When she was done hoovering the Common Room, the Hufflepuff automatically made her way to the study tables. The area was pretty much linked to the larger area after all, so it was only natural.

Besides, it was nice having a nice, clean area to study, right? And she had a couple other homework thingies she needed to do soon. So there, it was good to have that area hoovered as well.

......Did her spell just worn out? Meeehhhh.

"Vacavus!" She tapped the vacuum once again and pocketed her wand when the thing started to work.

Lalalalalalaaaaa..... she walked around the study tables, making sure to hoover every spot.

Hmmm..... Sophie had an idea and grinned, pulling out her wand once again. Holding the vacuum with her left hand, she ignored it for a bit as she concentrated as hard as possible in another incantation.

The fifth year waved her wand around in a large motion, making the tables and chairs moved around a bit.

Uuugh, come on, Sophie, you can do this! Non-verbal spells shouldn't be that hard! Merlin!

Frowning slightly in concentration - and a bit of frustration too, actually - Sophie focused even harder. Another wave of her wand. The chairs and tables moved a bit again and started to levitated quite unsteadily. But hey, they were levitating!! An expression of deep thought and concentration took the place of the frown on Sophie's face. She could do iiitttttt!!!

Moving her wand upwards, the furniture that was floating a few inches from the floor actually started hovering much higher. FDJNFDJKGNFDJK YES!!!! She had done it!! SHE HAD DONE IIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTFDGNDFKJGNDFJKG

Grinning like mad, Sophie happily hoovered underneath the floating objects rather quickly before going back to the entrance and placing them all down with another wand movement.

KSDJFNJSKFNSDJKFNDSKJFNSJKD

Were those happy tears in her eyes?? She wouldn't doubt that.

BEEEEAAAAAMMMMMMM!!!

She couldn't WAIT to tell Mordred! Teeheeheeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

Ella made her way over to the study tables and flopped down, placing her notebook and Ancient Runes textbook open in front of her. She was kind of behind on her term project and she figured she'd better play catch-up while she had the time. Busy badger had been extremely busy lately.

First things first, picking out what kind of tree she wanted to use for her Gandr. It was exciting, y'know, them making their very own Gandrs. Ella just hoped she didn't mess it up too badly. It was a complicated process and just looking at the instructions made her green eyes grow a bit wide. She was up for the challenge, though. Letting Botros down just wasn't an option, obviously.

Scanning her text book, the blonde decided that the wood from the Yew tree would be her best option. She'd seen them growing along the edge of the Forbidden Forest in the shade of the other trees and she figured as long as she didn't go in the forest, she'd be okay. She'd simply take the wood from the side of the tree facing away from the forest, yeah? Yeah! She could manage that. Besides, Yew had a lot of symbolism attached to it. The tree was all about life and rebirth and protection, lots of positives as far as Ella was concerned. What could go wrong?

...Yeah. Shuffle. She'd obviously have her wand so it'd be totally fine.

So... Study Tables. Hey. We're meant to be mates this term, right?

Alec made a face. Studying. It was February. OWLs were... more or less three months away. And he hadn't studied as much as he probably should have. There was still time, though, right? He just needed to study for all the things he didn't really like/understand in the space of these three months and... and...

... Why was he thinking about studying at a time like this?

The boy reached up a spare hand to ruffle his hair, his grey-blue eyes scanning the nearby area. Okay... so there actually weren't a lot of things in here that looked, you know, Phi-like. Or Golden Ratio-like. Books, tables, chairs... it was all more or less mundane. Sort of. And not to mention, there were portraits dotted here and there too. They weren't mundane but he knew that he couldn't just start measuring someone's face for this piece of homework. He was pretty sure that that was considered to be rude.

So... chairs then. He could measure that. Maybe the longer back edge up against the legs? Alec shuffled backwards a couple of steps and eyed up one chair in particular. The two edges didn't... look like they were the same length. He shuffled forwards again and placed his journal and quill down but keeping his ruler in his hands. There was only one way to find out, after all.

The Hufflepuff measured the back edge of the seat and scribbled down the number before measuring one of the legs and scribbling down that number as well. There. Scribble... scribble... scribble... ... GOLDEN RATIO!

Oh and HEY THERE Bridgit Wenlock! GRIN and wave!

Ella had been looking for her boyfriend all over because he'd said she could use his face for her homework. N'aww! How nice was he allowing her to measure him and stuff? Awesome Alec was awesome. Just saying.

The blonde wandered back into the common room and over to the study tables after having searched everywhere else, GRINNING when she spotted him. Thank Merlin! Now she could finish her homework and stare at her boyfriend's adorable face!


"Hi Alec!" BEAM! "Doing your Arithmancy homework?" She guessed so seeing as he had a ruler and was taking notes. The blonde wandered closer and stood behind him, peering over his shoulder. "That was a good idea, measuring the chair. I didn't think of that one." He was smart, Alec was. Anyway, she was here for a purpose, yeah?

"So um... can I have your face now?" Pretty please? Grabby hands for you, Summers.

Alec continued grinning and waving over at Bridgit Wenlock who, he was sure, probably thought he was weird right about now. Maybe. It wasn't his fault though. He was doing Arithmancy homework and the woman was famous in the Arithmancy world! He could just see it now... lots of Hadleys dotted around in a big room talking about Bridgit Wenlock and the way she had discovered the magical properties of the number seven.

He... needed to stop thinking so much.

But speaking of faces, GIRLFRIEND. A wide grin spread across the sixteen year old's face as she walked over towards him. "Hey Ells! ... Erm... yeah! Nothing like doing homework at the last minute," Or... something. "Thanks! I haven't found much though. Are you doing yours now as well?"

His face? "Sure! Only if I can borrow yours afterwards as well?" She had a nice face, did she know? ... Grinning, he jumped up onto the table and sat there. Although, he couldn't do that swinging legs thing someone smaller could have probably done. Being tall sucked sometimes.

Ella laughed a bit and nodded her head. "Well, studying for OWLs and quidditch has had us sort of busy, yeah?" And hopefully Hadley wouldn't be too cross with them for saving her assignment for last. She smiled as he thanked her, nodding at his question. "Yup, nearly done actually. There's a lot of the golden ratio floating around the school, y'know." Not literally or anything but still.

Anyway, face! That's why she was here. As for him using hers when she was done. "Of course you can." GRIN. It was only fair.

The blonde walked forwards and picked up her ruler, all business now. She was trying very hard not to look Alec in the eye too because then she'd lose her focus and she didn't want that. This...was probably why they didn't do homework together. Yeah...focus, Ella, focus.

She started by checking out the measurements of his nose...and mouth. Yeah, the mouth part was a bit harder than she thought it was going to be and she tried not to stare at his lips for too long. Ahem. When she was done with that, she focused on the distance between his eyes and chin. Hm. Tilting her head, she put down the ruler and smiled a little at him. "You have a very nice face, y'know. It's got that whole golden ratio thing going for it and you should be proud." BEAM!

The boyfriend got a kiss on the nose before Ella sat down and added some face facts to her notes. He could measure hers next, okay?

Scribble. Scribble. Scribble.



Alright, she was done. "Your turn, Summers!" BEAM.

Alec let out a small chuckle at the blonde's words before nodding. "You're right! It's been a busy year, actually," And he had done quite a few assignments at nearly the last minute. That was weird. "Really?" What did she mean 'lots'? And where were the most common places? ... Questions, he had lots of those! "Well... well done, you!" GRIN.

And he can measure her face too? Awesome. This was going to be a challenge on its own but... he'd just worry about that later. First, it was time for her to measure his face.

Secretly praying that his face matched up to the golden ratio thing, Alec gave the girl a sheepish smile as she approached him. This... felt weird. As if he was pretending to be some sort of wax work or that someone was painting a portrait of him, olden times style, and he had to stay there as still as anything. And that wasn't the worst part! No... what if he needed to sneeze? And he couldn't cover his nose in time? And he ended up covering his girlfriend in bogies. ... She would definitely not kiss him after that.

Speaking of kiss, sort of, the girl was... working on his lip area. Okay. He was just going to try not to moisten his lips or anything, even if he was very self-conscious about how dry they may or may not be. ... Oh, she was speaking! "Thanks!" he said, grinning at her, "So I have a golden face?"

What?

Moving on... HER TURN!

"Awesome! Let me know if I poke you, yeah?" he asked, taking hold of the rule and holding it up to the girl's face. He started measuring around her face, trying not to look at particular areas where he could get distracted. Like her eyes. Or her lips. And speaking of lips, if she did that lip biting thing she liked to do, he would definitely forget all about Arithmancy. (Sorry Hadley!)

Measure... measure... she had a really nice face... measure... She had to do something about her hair because that was distracting too! ... Measure... He jotted a couple of things down in his journal, working a couple of things out as he went, before grinning widely. "Looks like you have a golden face too!" ... You know, it had that Golden Ratio thing going on. Phi. That was there. "And they say that those faces are beautiful." Just saying, girlfriend, just saying.

...

"So... what do we do now?"

It had been a busy year and maybe a bit busier than she'd planned for but Alec had helped her sort out all that stuff. The stressful stuff, that is. Speaking of, she'd said she'd help Oakey do that too and she still had yet to sit down with him and have a chat. She should probably get on that soon. Anyway.."Thanks!" BEAM.

...

A golden face? GIGGLE! "Yes, you have a golden face. The most golden of faces, in face." GRIN. Alec was really funny sometimes without even trying, did he know?

Then it was her turn and she nodded, sitting up a bit straighter. "I'll definitely let you know if you do." Besides, poking her wasn't advisable unless he wanted to start a poke war or something. Heh.

And Ella just sort of tried to think of other things as Alec got close to her face and measured it. Like...elephants and ducks and ice cream with gummy worms. Things that would distract her from doing something like biting her lip or tucking her hair behind her ear. She knew how Alec felt about those things and she didn't want to be distracting. Not while he was doing Hadley homework. Hadley homework was to be concentrated on. YUP.

Oh...and he was done? That was good. The sixteen year old grinned at the boy and took his hand. "Looks like we're both golden, then?" Which wasn't a bad thing, obviously. "I...Aleccc." He was making her do that blushing thing again. He knew how she felt about that, yeah? "Thanks."

What did they do know? Um...

"Ice cream? I mean, if you're done." Cause all the thinking of ice cream made her want ice cream and who better to share ice cream with than Alec?

Asher carried his parchment, stick, pouch of bark shavings, and quill down to the study tables. He needed to write a thank you song to his tree. He had never considered himself a writer, and this task was weighing on him. He did want to thank the tree properly, but wasn't sure why it had to be with a song.

He put his parchment on the table, pulled out his ink and dipped his quill in it. Putting quill to parchment was going to have to spark his creativity. Feeling moved, he began to write.

After what seemed like several hours, Asher was finally finished with the words. Now he needed to find a place to practice his song. He gathered all of his things and headed off to a much less crowded area of the castle.

Writing songs.

Ella had never been particular good at this but she did sing to Dino alot. She mostly took out bits of songs and substituted them for facts about her dog. She then proceeded to belt them out at the top of her lungs while Dino sat at the edge of her bed just staring at her. Yeah, he clearly liked it when she sang to him. Clearly.

Now Ella had to write a song about the Yew tree and she figured this would be even more complicated than writing about her dog. What did you even say about trees, anyway? Like...thanks for letting us burn you in our common room? That seemed kind of morbid, actually. She'd really need to think on this.

The sixteen year old pulled out some paper and a pen, eyes focused on the pouch filled with bits of bark from the Yew. Maybe it'd give her some inspiration? ...Maybe.

Okay, so Tobias hadn't REALLY spent that much time at the study tables. In fact, most of his time was spent dashing around and having fun and expending energy. The study tables seemed to house the more serious academic people, but the more time Tobias spent in the company of his housemates, the more HE realised that HE wanted to be one of those serious academic people. He never did his homework at this part of the common room because often it was done late at night when he was in bed, having remembered all about it just as he was dropping off to sleep. Maybe it was time to start changing his ways... the 5th and 7th years looked so stressed with the exams coming up and they didn't seem to be as blase about homework as him.

But, all musing aside, it was time to work on Ancient Runes, for the professor Tobias was very anxious to please. And seeing as it was still early afternoon, why not make use of the study tables?

Taking a seat, Tobias got out his parchment and quill and ink. He'd noted down the BIIIIIG assignment so he had it in front of him, and got that out too. A quick scan of the instructions pretty much informed him exactly of what he needed to do, and the Hufflepuff got out his text book and read through the chapter on making a gandr.

Once that was done, he checked the to do list for the project again. First up, he had to 'choose a wood and locate a suitable living tree'. So... that clearly meant deciding on one from the list and then find the tree which made that wood. Super simple stuff. RIGHT.

Going back to the book, Tobias found the list of woods and their magical properties and quickly ran his finger down it. He briefly considered oak or pine, but oak would be a bit difficult to get a branch from, because it was so big and thick. He thought he'd made up his mind with pine when hazel caught his eye.

Tree of wisdom... cut away impurities to see the self honestly... WOW. YES. Tobias was DEAD SET on hazel now. That was by far his favourite and he underlined the word in his book just in case he needed to refer back to it again.

After tucking the parchment he needed into the page he was on in the book, Tobias closed the textbook and grabbed his wand, intending to go looking for a hazel tree. He was about to leave the table, leaving his bag and other books and writing stuff behind, when he had a thought.

How was he going to know how to find a hazel tree?

...

Okay, so maybe this would require a trip to the library for a book on trees first.

Toby made sure he had enough money for any turnstiles he might come across before he left the Hufflepuff common room. Right. Library, then grounds.

Decorating.

Ella wasn't a pro or anything but she figured she could make her Gandr look nice. The blonde had even gathered some ribbon from the Ancient Runes classroom to help her out. Ribbon was nice looking, yeah? Yeah.

The sixteen year old pulled out the Gandr and different colored material from her bag, spreading them out carefully on the study table. She'd chosen ribbon for each house color, deciding that this was a good way to go. She then used a pair of scissors to curl the ends of the ribbon, liking the way it looked.

After she finished curling each color, Ella began fastening it to the bottom of her Gandr. She made sure not to cover up any of the runes and tied the ribbons carefully together so that they wouldn't come loose. When she was finished, she smiled to herself.

Her Gandr looked a bit like a wand she'd had when she was little. Not that her toy wand had had runes or anything but that it had colorful curled ribbon on it. She hadn't even known magic really existed back then and now she was making an actual wand. It was crazy.

And now she had a finished wand to deliver. That part was crazy too. She'd done it.

With an ice cold glass of water in his hand that was sending freezing cold droplets of condensation rolling down his hand, Tobias re-entered the common room after paying another knut. His stuff was still waiting for him at the table, nobody had shifted it out of the way. That was good. And it wasn't stolen because who want want his books and quills and ink and parchment?

Other than the school, obviously. They were clearly lacking in supplies.

POINTED LOOK AT... uh... SOMEWHERE.

After setting his water down at on the table, Tobias took the books from under his arm and placed those and the stripped branch down as well. Instead of sitting down straight away he made a quick dash to the first year boy's dormitory to grab something from his trunk. He returned holding a navy blue silk handkerchief with gold trimming and he now held it flat on his palm while he reached into his pockets. Sitting down, Tobias pulled out the bark shavings and set them carefully onto the handkerchief. When he was sure that was all of them, Tobias folded the hankie so they were all safely tucked in and, after taking a sip of water, got to work on his song.

First, he wrote a list of words he should include, like branch... thanks... wood... hazel. That kind of stuff. Then a quick plan; two verses, or stanzas, maximum, and four lines to each of those. That wasn't too difficult, but then Tobias had never written a song before.

He scrunched up his nose and started to jot down ideas.

What was a good rhyming word for hazel? Somehow Toby didn't think 'nasal' would fit into the song.

"Hufflepuffs are particularly good finders... Hufflepuffs are particularly good finders..."

Alec headed over towards the study tables as slowly as possible, looking this way and that for his old watch. He had the one that Ells had given him back in October strapped on his right wrist but... where was the other one? The one he had completely neglected from then? And it was one he had had for a REALLY long time.

Frown.

Reaching the study tables, the sixteen year old walked along the gap between the tables, occasionally bending down to look underneath the table for a possibly shiny object. Where... was this thing? It had to be somewhere here! And if it wasn't in the dorms -- which, thanks to his searching, was now messier than ever -- it had to be here, yeah? But he couldn't spot--

OH! THERE WAS SOMETHING SHINY!

Eager as ever, the boy knelt on all fours and crawled under the table towards the shiny object which, upon closer inspection, turned out to be a bracelet. A GIRL'S bracelet, at that. "I... that's definitely not mine..." he mumbled to himself. Shaking his head, he put the bracelet down again and, forgetting that he was under a table, stood up only to--

"OWWWWW!"

Rub rub rub...

This was... a LOT harder than it had seemed when Tobias was reading the assignment brief. Like... he'd heard a LOT of songs over his twelve nearly thirteen years... so why were none of those working as inspiration for him now? What was UP WITH THAT?

Crossing out YET ANOTHER LINE, Tobias huffed slightly in frustration and reached for his water. He glugged down half of the glass' contents and grabbed his quill to concentrated again.

Right... he could just do one stanza is necessary, and that was 4 lines. He wanted it to rhyme because otherwise it just felt WRONG.

At his old school they had covered poetry in English lessons, and mentioned rhyming schemes like AABB... he could do that, couldn't he? And even Toby knew when a line of poetry or song sounded like it fit. He could DO THIS.

Dipping his quill into his ink, Tobias started jotting down more ideas for his little song thing, and soon had too MANY ideas for two verses, let alone one. He started to cut out all the things he didn't want in and began to play around with how the song sounded when it was spoken. Still... he kept quiet as he said it aloud in case anyone laughed at him.

Eventually, Tobias had in front of him an extremely well used piece of parchment. He'd scrawled all over it and scribbled tinier and tinier words as he'd thought of more things and re-wrote certain verses. And right there, in the bottom right hand corner, in teeeeensy handwriting, was the final edit of the song Tobias had written. Two verses, four lines each.

He knew there was a danger of the ink smudging or maybe the possibility that Tobias would forget the song and then not be able to read his own tiny handwriting, so the Hufflepuff pulled a fresh piece of parchment towards him and re-wrote the song yet again with bigger and neater handwriting. He then blew on the ink to dry it and make sure it wouldn't smudge on the way back to the tree and prepared the stuff he needed to finish today's work. All he needed was the stripped branch, the park pieces he had in the handkerchief and the song, which was now in his pocket.

After arranging his things so he'd be ready to start on some other homework when he got back, Toby grabbed his glass of water, finished drinking it and then grabbed what he needed before exiting the common room again. A quick stop to drop the glass off at the kitchen and then to Hazel!

The search for the mighty watch continued.

Alec crawled out from under the table and stood up before reaching up a hand to continue rubbing the top of his head that had hit the underside of the table. His hair was okay, right? And there wasn't any chewing gum on the underside of these tables, yeah? So he didn't have chewing gum in his hair and needed a horrible haircut to get rid of it?

...

Frowning, the sixteen year old bent down again and STARED at the underside of the table. ... No... only in the corners and near the edges. Not right there where he had hit his head. Point point. Good. Because he didn't want to chop off any more of his hair than was necessary. What he did want, though, was some pancakes. Pancakes with syrup on top and maybe... maybe some chopped strawberries.

... Mmmmmm...

No. Watch. He had a watch to find.

And since he'd have to check underneath the tables... he was going to do this baby!style. The Hufflepuff bent down on all fours and started crawling along the gap between the tables. Watch, watch, where are you?

Tobias had run straight from the Forest to the study tables. By the time he'd reached the castle he was pretty sure he'd just been spooked by nothing, or was at least reassuring himself that whether it was true or not.

He'd been tempted to go to his dormitory and do some carving there, but whenever he was on or around his bed, no matter how bouncy he was, within ten minutes or so he always ended up sleeping.

So, study tables it was.

The Hufflepuff quickly set up his books and notes, before resuming with the Gandr as though nothing had happened.

"Okayyyyy... Teiwaz is next. Teiwaz is for, like... protection, victory, strength... uhhh... victory over adversity and also justice." So he was focusing on victory, it seemed. "Tiwaz tiwaz tiwaz... t i i i i i r r r r r... tu ta ti te ter tor... tur tar tir ter tor... ot et it at ut... (Tyr Tyr)... T i i i i i r r r r r..."

Soon enough Tobias found the right spot. He focused on 'victory' and 'strength' for the rune and got to work. He remembered this on because it had been T for Toby and looked like an upwards arrow. "Intaglio Teiwaz Teiwaz Teiwaz Teiwaz..." It was a lot easier when the runes were this small, that was for sure.

Next up...

"Berkana... healing, fertility, health..." Tobias smiled. This was a NICE RUNE. He liked it already. "Calming troubled minds too apparently. Oooh, I could carve this for a few people." FOCUS TEMPUS. "Berkano berkano berkano... bu ba bi be bo... b e e e e e r r r r r... (burk bark birk berk bork)... ob eb ib ab ub... b e e e e e r r r r r..."

He waited patiently for the right place for the rune to make itself known, and as soon as he did he held his wand up ready to trace the shape of the rune and cleared his throat. Okay, Berkana. Health and fertility and all that stuff. Right. "Intaglio Berkana Berkana Berkana Berkana..." Yet another easy one to remember, because it basically looked like a B.

Tobias didn't have to check what the next two were, because they were the ones he always mixed up and the ones he had properly DRILLED himself with to remember them properly. Because it was Ehwaz, that looked like an M, and Mannaz, which looked like an M but kind of... crossed. Tobias always thought they ought to be the other way around.

"Next up is Ehwaz, and it's for power and communication and transformation and stuff... and causes changes too, which is like transformation, so yeah. Right. Ehwo ehwo ehwo... e e e e h w o o o... ehwu ehwa ehwi ehwe ehwo... ehwo ehwe ehwi ehwa ehwu... e e e e h w o o o..." Tobias rattled off the galdr straight after talking about the rune and then looked at the wand again. There, straight away, was the perfect spot.

Hmm... running out of room. How many were left?

Instead of checking, Tobias focused on the rune and casting the spell. "Intaglio Ehwaz Ehwaz Ehwaz Ehwaz..." he intoned as he traced the M looking rune. Right, now onto its confusing partnet.

"And this one's Mannaz. Errr... I think it's like, to do with humanity or something. Oh yeah, it says here about attracting goodwill and new social contacts." Pretty nifty. "Okay, ready?" It was a lengthy galdr. "Mannaz mannaz mannaz... m m m a a a a a a n n n... mu ma mi me mo... mun man min men mon... um am im em om... mon men min man mun... m m m a a a a a a n n n... m m m m m m m m m..."

It wasn't long before Toby found the ideal area, and he started carving the weird crossed out M while focusing on the rune. "Intaglio Mannaz Mannaz Mannaz Mannaz Mannaz Mannaz..."

Taking a break and flexing his fingers again, Tobias blew away the sawdust he'd created again. Oops.

Crawl... crawl... crawl...

... Because he was a baby...

Crawl... crawl... crawl...

And he was STILL looking for that watch! A small frown spread across the sixteen year old's lips a he continued crawling slowly along the gap between the tables. Anyone walking by would have thought that he was some sort of man!baby. ... Man... because... according to his age from September, he would be a man, yeah? An adult!wizard.

... That was a little scary to think about.

Shrugging, the boy continued crawling slowly, his mind now completely off the subject of the watch he was meant to be finding. He didn't really know how he felt about the topic of his birthday. He was MUCH more excited about Ella's birthday which just so happened to be eight day before his. But his... frown. Birthdays can be bad. Summers, however... they were always awesome. ... The season, that is.

He shook his head and started crawling backwards to the spot where his mind first started wandering. Crawl... crawl... crawl...

Tobias didn't allow himself to get distracted by ANYTHING because he was so full of FOCUSED ENERGY that he was afraid that letting himself get into anything else would be disastrous and then he'd not have the focus to finish this. No. Better to get it done all in one sitting, Tobias was sure of that.

"Sooooo, next on the agenda is Laguz. Uhhh... this is like about enhancing and manifesting psychic stuff, which is pretty neat. And it says about stabilising mental or emotional things... so this one is all about the mind," Tobias said, more to himself than the stick of wood that he held. "Laguz laguz laguz... l l l l l l l l l... lu la li ke lo... (lug lag lig leg log)... ul al il el ol... lo le li la lu... l l l a a a g g g u u u... l l l l l l l l l..."

Now where to put you? [/sorting hat]

Ah, perfect spot. Really there wasn't much room left, but all the runes seemed to have a perfect place to be carved.

"Intaglio Laguz Laguz Laguz Laguz..." Psychic ruuuuune give me your powahhhhhhh...

Ahem...

"Right... Inguz, then," Tobias got BACK TO THE FOCUSING. "Inguz is for... fertility, farming and growth... haven't we already had that?" Hmm. "Well, let's just go with that. Ingwaz ingwaz ingwaz... i i i i n n n n g g g g... ung ang ing eng ong... ong eng ing ang ung... i i i i n n n n g g g g..."

Doop doop doooooooooooop... ah, it could go riiiiiiight there. AhEM.

"Intaglio Inguz Inguz Inguz Inguz... Inguz Inguz..." This was a looooong rune to do BUT it reminded Toby of a HUG SO THAT WAS TOTALLY FINE.

BOOM. NEXT.

"Now it's Dagaz... that's quite fun to say." Eheheheh- FOCUS. "Happiness. Positivity. New beginnings. RAH RAH RAH and so on and so forth." Basically it was Toby in Rune form. "Dagaz dagaz dagaz... dh dh dh dh dh dh dh dh dh... d d d a a a g g g a a a z z z... du da di de do... dh dh dh dh dh dh dh dh dh... odh edh idh adh udh... od ed ud ad ud... d d d a a a g g g a a a z z z..."

Okay, saying sounds was getting a bit, you know, silly now. Not that it wasn't already a bit silly but... well you know.

Finding the best spot (it was out of two big enough spaces really so it didn't take too long), Tobias got to carving. It was like the infinity sign but with corners and infinity was a happy thing and this was a happy rune. Toby focused on the happy. "Intaglio Dagaz Dagaz Dagaz Dagaz Dagaz..."

When that was done, he looked at his book and... the last one? Only one more?

COOL.

A little more exuberantly now, Tobias started the process for the final rune. "Okay, last one, and this is Othala. This one is all about, like... property and home and is all around that kind of stuff." Andddd now for the galdr... "Othala othal othal... o o o o o o o o o... o o o o o o... othul othal othil othel othol... othol othel othil othal othul... o o o o o o..."

So yeah, now there was only one decently size space, and that was exactly where this one would go. Tobias focused his mind on 'property' and 'home' and stuff and started carving Othala.

Or as he liked to call it, 'O but with legs'.

"Intaglio Othala Othala Othala Othala Othala..."

And... he was done? He'd finished carving?

Tobias BEAMED and looked over the Gandr. Making sure the runes were all evenly carved and of course that they were all THERE. He kept losing count of the runes but he was PRETTY sure they were all there. He swung his legs under the table and smiled as he blew away the dust again.

Oh... dust in the eye. Ow ow ow.