4th Floor Common Room - Sunday Morning

[once-a-traitor.livejournal.com]

There wasn't enough facepalming in the world to cover what had gone on over the past few days. That was why Edmund was in complete denial. Instead of dying of embarrassment, he was sitting on the floor in the common room, occasionally eating from a bowl of increasingly soggy cereal and trying to reply to a letter he'd received.

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[a-demosthenes.livejournal.com]

It was quiet this morning, Valentine had noticed, and she also felt like using the quiet to explore the nuances of dorm-life activity involved in Common Room Hopping. She'd take her breakfast a floor up, she decided, having found that a lot of the random food in the cupboards were often the same; either that, or it was a situation where, if one common room was lacking, the other would provide.

"Morning," she offered to the boy on the floor that she recognized from one of her classes, her hair still a sleepy halo around her head as she drifted over to the cupboards.

[once-a-traitor.livejournal.com]

"Good morning," Ed said, looking up. "There's not much milk left in the carton, but there's more hidden at the back behind the black thing." He wasn't sure what the black thing was, and wasn't very interested in finding out.

[a-demosthenes.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, something with a notable title such as "the black thing" was hard to help being curious about.

"The black thing?" Valentine asked, tilting her head as she set aside her bowl for the moment to open the fridge and inspect.

Half expecting it to be something technically alive.

[once-a-traitor.livejournal.com]

"I didn't think to ask it what it is. If it's alive, asking it that might be rude."

[a-demosthenes.livejournal.com]

"Not necessarily," Valentine said, looking over with a grin. "I mean, otherwise, you're just making an assumption, and you know what they say about when you assume..."

[once-a-traitor.livejournal.com]

"I don't, but I'm guessing it's not very pleasant. If you get a response, let me know. Or it could be a harmless black box."

[a-demosthenes.livejournal.com]

"Like the black box in airplanes?" Valentine wondered and then she shook her head. "I'm going to go ahead and not be surprised if the fridges in this place needed black boxes like airplanes."

She was also going to be very bold and brave and nudge the black box aside while reaching for the milk it was hiding beneath it.

If she wound up losing her hand in the process, she figured she could just go talk to Ben and he could hook her up with a fake hand.

[once-a-traitor.livejournal.com]

"What do black boxes do?"

[a-demosthenes.livejournal.com]

"They're recorders," Valentine explained, moving to put the milk on the counter while she found some cereal, "in the cockpit of a plane that can record information and cockpit conversations so that, if it crashes, people can discern what might have been the cause."

[once-a-traitor.livejournal.com]

Edmund eyed the fridge. "Now I'm worried about why our fridge has one."

[a-demosthenes.livejournal.com]

Valentine chuckled as she poured the milk over the cereal. "One day," she stated, "when they find all of our charred remains among the rubble, they might just be able to discern what caused this dismal, unfortunate carnage."

"Or," she added as she tucked the milk back in, "it's all just another way the squirrels spy on us for their love of gossip, bested only by their love of rum."

[once-a-traitor.livejournal.com]

"That's entirely likely. The squirrels at home are a fairly nosy bunch too, but not exactly discreet."

[a-demosthenes.livejournal.com]

"You have nosy squirrels where you're from?" Valentine, taking her bowl and moving to have a seat on the sofa, couldn't help her intrigue there. Considering what happened to squirrels where she was from, she was growing quite the fascination with them as a whole.

This fascination might have leaned toward an eventual, brutal revenge.

[guardianborn.livejournal.com]

She'd already been up for too long, and Rose was starving as she wandered into the Common Room. It was nice to see someone and not immediately think how attractive he was.

"Hey Edmund," Rose said, flopping down on the couch. "You got more of that cereal to share?"

[once-a-traitor.livejournal.com]

"Plenty more to spare. Bottom cupboard," he nodded in its direction.

[guardianborn.livejournal.com]

Rose made a face and got up again, grabbing the box and bringing it back to the couch. She didn't need no bowl.

"Mmm, sugar cereal. Good call."

[once-a-traitor.livejournal.com]

He set his pen (ballpoint was the best invention ever) and paper down on his lap. "Despite what the box says, I really don't think there's any nutritional value in there."

[guardianborn.livejournal.com]

"That's why it's good," she said, swallowing a mouthful. "Wouldn't be half as good with bran or something."

[once-a-traitor.livejournal.com]

"What's wrong with bran? Fibre is important."

[guardianborn.livejournal.com]

Rose made a face at him. "What's wrong with you?" she teased. "You have tons of time to eat healthy when you're old."

[once-a-traitor.livejournal.com]

"If I don't eat bran, it's very likely I won't live long enough to eat healthy when I'm old."

[guardianborn.livejournal.com]

Edmund had a handful of sugary cereal thrown at his head. "You're all kinds of practical and stuff this morning."

[once-a-traitor.livejournal.com]

"Just this morning?"

[guardianborn.livejournal.com]

"I don't know you well enough to judge," Rose told him. "But you're still eating sugary cereal so I'm not too worried you're totally boring."

[once-a-traitor.livejournal.com]

"And I made you a proper fire once. That has to count for something." He picked a stray piece of cereal off his shirt.