"Regrets are only bad if you can't move past them, I think," Mo obediently seated himself, sort of melting at the joints and coming back together on the ground in a jumble of arms and legs. He really was an overgrown puppy, when it came down to it. "I'm not sitting around kicking myself for it. I just think I probably should have been... more circumspect." Like not letting everyone in the world know how he felt about things, for one.

Mo tilted his head and examined Olly, trying to read her level of sincerity behind the smirking demeanor. Didn't she already know it was about Alice? Surely even the most unschooled in the ways of Mo-and-West were aware that Alice was a bone of contention between the two of them. West sort of broadcasted that with every look and gesture.

"Everything that has ever gone wrong between West and I was, on some level, about Alice." But no need to bring up all that, right? "This is boring, isn't it? I feel extraordinarily boring when I'm with you, Olivia Clarke. I can't tell if it's because of how unimpressed you are with me, when I'm normally quite certain of my impressiveness, or if I'm actually boring and you're the first person honest enough to let me know." Mo tilted his head the other way and smiled crookedly. He didn't honestly find himself impressive, to be fair, but he could be engaging, at least. Usually. Not today, apparently.

Olly watched him sit down in silence, leaning back on her hands slightly. He was quite good at following her orders it seemed, both verbal and non-verbal. At least what sitting down concerned. Good. This was making this conversation so much easier. And oddly interesting as well. "Like, regretting something and then just not regretting it anymore?" That sounded confusing. And didn't really make any sense.

Just shrugging at his next words, Olly smirked slightly. "Sometimes it's really hard to think about the consequences first." Like, most of the time. That was why she opposed to having regrets. If she didn't she would probably spend most of her time regretting things. "And unnecessary." Not that she was really defending his actions. It was just...a general observation.

Alice. Alice. Alice. So Alice was the key to everything. And no, she hadn't known that. Though, some things did make a lot more sense now. "Huh." Olly didn't really have any urge to discuss this in greater detail with Mo. She'd found out what she wanted to know. So there was really nothing else for him to....

....now THAT was amusing to say the least. Which was why Olly just looked at him with slightly confused yet also amused look on her face. "Do you honestly value my opinion of you?" That didn't really make any sense. Why would he? "And don't call me Olivia." Just don't.

"No, not like that," Mo waved a hand impatiently. He was explaining it so badly, obviously, and as a Ravenclaw, he just wanted to get it right. He wanted to find the right words to explain what he was thinking and feeling. They had to exist, so it was about stringing them together correctly. "You can do something and beat yourself up about it forever. Never get over it, and have it shade how you feel about yourself and other people. That's bad regret. But you can also simply wish you had handled something differently, learn from it, and move on. I guess it still impacts you in the long run, but you aren't raking yourself over the fire for something long gone."

Did it make sense, or was he still making a mess of it? And more importantly... was he giving away big pieces of himself in the process of trying to explain it? "I like to be able to live with myself at the end of the day. I like to believe I'm a good person." And part of believing you were a good person, unfortunately, was believing that other people also thought you were a good person.

He tilted his head at her question. Why was he trying so hard to make a conversation work when Olly was the most confusing person? Ever, actually. Most confusing ever. She seemed to want him gone but kept inviting him to stay. "I value everyone's opinion, but this is less about how you see me and more about how you make me see myself. It's new, so it makes me curious." Ravenclaw.

Olly wasn't entirely sure why she was so intent on understanding what exactly Mo was trying to say but she just was. Her eyes even followed his hand when he flailed slightly. Almost impatiently. Which once again was oddly amusing. "But the second thing isn't even regret. It's just realizing that you could've handled something better." Her eyes lowered to her own hands for a moment, thinking. "I think regret always implies beating yourself up over something." Her eyes were back on his now, lips curling into a small smirk.

"Which is just stupid." Because there was no way to take something back anyway.

A good person. Olly shook her head slightly, snorting softly at his choice of words. He wanted to think he was a good person? Well, wasn't that nice. What did that even MEAN, good person. What kind of qualities did a good person have? Who set the rules for that? Who was a bad person? What were the people in between? "So you think you're a good person then?" Whatever that meant. But if Mo thought he was then he had to know what it meant too.

The amused look stayed while the confusion slowly faded away from her face. Mo was strange. To be honest, she hardly ever understood what he was on about. Somehow that was a little intriguing though. For now anyway. "Shouldn't you be answering that question then? How I make you see yourself." Made sense, yeah? She couldn't answer that FOR him after all.

"We'll just agree to disagree on how pervasive the definition of regret is," Mo grinned as he shrugged one shoulder. She didn't agree, but she generally got the idea that Mo wished he hadn't said anything about West. Not that he hadn't meant it, not that he was really unhappy with himself, just that he wished he hadn't said it.

Another thing he wished he hadn't said? That he wanted to be a good person. That was ammunition Olly could run all the way to Gringott's with. Mockery for years to come, probably. Mo smirked a little too, in anticipation of the ribbing that was to come. "No, I don't think I'm a particularly good person, but I'm trying. You have to live with yourself, y'know?"

Mo leaned back on his hands and glanced up at the flickering sconce over Olly's head. This was one of the weirdest, twistiest, most backwards conversations he had ever had. "I already said. You make me feel boring. And I find that now that the novelty has worn off, I don't fancy it. D'you want to go have an adventure with me, or do you want to stay here and spin your wand?"

Olly really was the last person to argue over something as mundane as the definition of a word. And Mo seemed to share her opinion. "Right." Why had they been discussing this in the first place again? She remembered of course but didn't really think it worth going back to their original topic. They had moved onto other things now.

Like whether or not Mo was a good person. Her lips curled into an amused smirk when he tried to explain exactly that. She considered him in silence for a moment, almost as if she could SEE if he was in fact a good person or not. Which, naturally, she couldn't. And wasn't trying to either. "What IS a good person, though? Like, what does that even mean?" Weren't they all way past the whole good and bad, black and white thing?

In spite of her expectations for this conversation and in spite of what Mo had by now suggested various times, Olly did NOT think he was boring at all. Though, she wasn't sure why and if asked to explain would probably simply deny it. She was about to point it out when Mo said something that made actually made her laugh. "An adventure. Does that line usually work for you?" She was only messing with him, though, indicated by the small grin on her lips.

Olly didn't move though but continued to just sit there and watch Mo. Waiting for him to do something. Or at least say something.

What was a good person? Did she not know any, or was it a philosophical point? Either way, it wasn't really a conversation Mo thought he could win. That was not to say he only had conversations where he came out on top, but he also didn't like to pick fights if he knew there was no chance.

"Do you object to the idea on the grounds that if I think there are 'good people', it suggests that people are either good or they aren't? Because I don't think that. I just think everyone has some goal they strive towards... some ambition to be smartest or fastest or richest. I just happen to be striving towards being good to people, if I can do it without losing myself in the process." Ick, they were deep in the weeds of philosophy now, and Mo didn't want to stay there.

She was smirking at him again. He could see it, although it didn't particularly bother him anymore. An adventure would be nice, especially with all the studying and end of term things going on. Mo just shrugged, though. "That line always works. It helps that I generally only it use it when I mean it, and usually it's on Cat, who has never turned down an adventure in her life."

Huh. Who knew a simple question about motives would lead to a discussion like this one. Olly was listening. Attentively too. So he DIDN'T think that the world was divided into good and bad people. That was a relief. Because honestly if it had come down to that, she would have probably ended the conversation. Or else she would have ended up giving him a history lesson.

"So like an ideal then. A 'good person' is the ideal you're striving towards?" That made sense. Sort of. Not that she shared this ambition. Not in the same way he did anyway. "So you're not very good at reaching your goal then." Because he'd said he didn't think he was a particularly good person. See, and that was why something like this was NOT her ambition.

That line always worked? That made her raise her eyebrows in doubt. "Yeah?" Though, she had to admit she WAS intrigued so maybe he was right. Even though for her it was probably because she was just really looking for a distraction from studying...and just life in general. "Oh I suppose I should feel honored then. If it's usually the girlfriend who's getting these kinds of offers." She grinned at him.

"What is it then? The adventure?" They'd have to get up, yes? Though he wasn't moving so she wouldn't either.

Mo had to laugh at the suggestion that he was bad at reaching goals. Or the goal of being a good person. It was all relative, wasn't it? And she'd asked if he was a good person already, not if he was better than he'd been before or mostly successful or any of those things. He wasn't perfect. He wasn't always good. Sometimes he had to work at it. But sometimes the wanting to do something was nearly as good as the doing it.

Wanting to be good was an important part of actually being it.

"I've never not gotten what I put my mind to," Mo offered, pushing up to his feet and wiggling his fingers at Olly in an invitation for her to take his hand. "Except Alice, obviously, but that really worked out in my favor. Now then... you were giving in to my inevitable charm. And feeling honored and delighted about it." He'd have to think of an adventure, though, before she asked many more questions.

"You want a sitting adventure?"

The laugh surprised Olly, though not enough for it to show. Nor was it a bad kind of surprised. Mo was a curious one somehow. She didn't even get to dwell on this thought too much however, seeing as it was HER turn to laugh now upon hearing his next words. He usually got what he put his mind to? Really? How did he do that? Olly was pretty sure he had different methods than she had. Or maybe he didn't.

That thought earned him another curious look.

But he was getting up and saying more things. Things about Alice. After staring at his hand for a full second, Olly took it and pulled herself off the floor and to her feet. After grabbing her wand and putting it back in its holster of course. "Yeah, I know how that feels." Which was somewhat ironic. And the fact that she thought so was clearly etched on her face too. She smirked after a brief pause and added, "Though I guess not...really." She assumed that Mo had had (did have?) actually a THING for Alice so there was that.

Riiiiight. But yes, his charm, of course. Olly made a point of rolling her eyes and throwing him an unimpressed look. "Riiight. I almost forgot about that." A sitting adventure? "It's your adventure. You make the rules." Sort of. Not really. Small reference to their earlier conversation. "Though I'd appreciate it if it involved getting out of this corridor. Not a lot of interesting things I can think of that we could do here." There were SOME but yeah no. She doubted that was what Mo had in mind.