Third floor commoon room, Monday night

[peter--parker.livejournal.com]

Peter was bored. He had a deck of cards. He decided that he was going to build a house of cards in the common room.

It wasn't going so well. He couldn't get above the first level of the house without collapsing portions of it. Maybe he could do the cheat with cutting notches. Or using glue...

"I wasn't meant to be in construction, that's obvious," he muttered to himself.

Comments

[smartestone]

Hermione comes out to the common room with a book some book, any book and frowns a little when she goes to take a seat. "That looks... interesting."

[peter--parker.livejournal.com]

"Hey, Hermione," Peter said. "Thanks. It'll look better once it's not a bungalow."

[smartestone]

"What were you aiming for?" she wonders, setting her book in her lap.

[peter--parker.livejournal.com]

"Well, eventually it'll hopefully be five levels," Peter said. "But as it turns out, I don't quite have the technique for getting the cards on the second level set yet. Give me some time or some glue and I'll get it, though."

[smartestone]

"I think glue would be cheating," Hermione tells him.

[peter--parker.livejournal.com]

"I agree," Peter said. "But I'm just doing this for fun, so I can cheat if I want."

"Which isn't to say that I will, but I can. That's the important thing."

[smartestone]

"But it's better if you don't. Especially if you can complete it on your own," she points out.

[peter--parker.livejournal.com]

"That is very..." Peter managed to get one square set up on the second floor steady, "... true. But it's also much less frustrating in the long run."

"Have you ever put together a house of cards?"

[smartestone]

She shakes her head. "I've seen it done, but never done it myself."

[peter--parker.livejournal.com]

"Want to try?" Peter asked, passing some cards across the table. He also managed to get another set of cards up. "Hey, go me."

[smartestone]

"I suppose I could try," she says, and sets the book up to come closer and take the cards. Very very carefully she starts setting up the cards at just the right angle.

[peter--parker.livejournal.com]

"Slow and steady," Peter nodded as he managed to get another bit set up. He was getting into a rhythm. "That's probably why I keep knocking stuff down."

[smartestone]

"Probably," she says, moving on to the next part. "Have you ever successfully built one before?"

[peter--parker.livejournal.com]

"I haven't actually tried since I was little," Peter said. "I wasn't successful then, either."

[smartestone]

Still concentrating very hard on her work, she asks, "What made you want to do this now?"

[peter--parker.livejournal.com]

"I was bored, noticed a deck of cards, and had no desire to play solitaire," Peter answered. He couldn't quite place this next wall. Fine. He switched cards and tried again. The Jack of Clubs was just being a jerk.

[tyler-gone.livejournal.com]

Tyler wandered out to the common room and kind of stared at the house of cards. "Building something, Parker?" he asked mildly.

[smartestone]

"So you decided to do something constructive?" Hermione says, and smirks because she can too make a joke.

[peter--parker.livejournal.com]

"Trying to build a house for no real reason," Peter said. "I call it Habitat for Insanity from Boredom, but that's a little wordy."

[auroryborealis.livejournal.com]

Rory poked her head in and looked thoughtfully at what Peter was doing. "I know a guy back home who does that for fun. He's pretty good, too. But the sacrifice is that he's really weird, too."

[peter--parker.livejournal.com]

Peter laughed. "Good one, and yes. It at least gives me some sort of goal to achieve."

[peter--parker.livejournal.com]

"Hey, Rory," Peter said, looking up. "I'm pretty weird, but I'm not very good at this. I'm trying to decide if that tradeoff is worth it at the moment."

[smartestone]

"It's good," she says, setting up a couple more cards. "Productive. Next you might want to think about taking up chess."

[peter--parker.livejournal.com]

"I play chess, actually," Peter said. "I haven't since I've been here. Well, against people. But I have a computer program that gets used regularly."

[auroryborealis.livejournal.com]

"Hi, and you're not weird like him. That takes effort," she assured him. "I personally don't have the patience to even try. I'd breathe or something and it'd topple over."