Study Buddies Go Wrighty Write.
DESPITE THE COMINGS OF THE EASTER HOLIDAYS, it was far from relaxing.
Instead, it was a tense sort of silence in the Gryffindor common room, the loudest thing of all at the moment being the clock.
Tik Tok. Tik Tok.
An occasional rustling of papers.
Tik Tok. Tik Tok.
A disheartened sigh and a whimper from Neville Longbottom's part.
Tik Tok. Tik Tok.
A repeated pattern until-
BANG!
Seamus Finnigan was suddenly standing, his palms down on the table as he looked wide-eyed up at the heavens.
"Call this a holiday?! The exams are ages away, what are they playing at!?"
"Seamus," Percy looked up from a chair disapprovingly, "We moved the first and second years out of the common room so this could be a quiet thinking place, do you want to be kicked out too?"
"We wanted to be kicked out." piped up Fred in a mournful tone from a table where he, Lee Jordan, and George were at.
"Yeah, but you said we had to stay or you'd tell mum, like a tattletale." added George with a sigh.
As Percy began a speech to them about the importance of their studies and all the reasons, he wasn't a tattle tale followed by a soon sound and interesting argument on why Fred's 'random' comment of 'I don't know what Mirabella sees in you' was horribly irrelevant, Harry looked up
from his homework for the first time in half an hour to check on Will. Even without Divination, he was taking more subjects than anybody else. He was usually last to leave the common room at night, first to arrive at the library the next morning; he had shadows like Lupin's under his eyes and seemed to find almost everybody irritating, his lips pressing together when there were distractions nearby.
Freya had a similar problem for she was also studying with abandon. When she wasn't doing her own work, she was pouring over enormously thick volumes with names like The Handbook of Hippogriff Psychology and Fowl or Foul? A Study of Hippogriff Brutality. She was so absorbed, she even forgot to be horrible to Crookshanks.
"Scoot over, you dumb cat," she said now distractedly and without malice, as she gently shoved Crookshanks away from a book he'd been perched on, still looking down at the notes she was scribbling down as she grabbed for the book. "Go do something productive like tearing up a Slytherins homework, would ya?"
Both the cat and his owner's eyes seemed to brighten at the polite exchange.
Later that night once Harry had completed his homework and it was already past nine o clock, he finally convinced Will to go to sleep after telling him for a half-hour he would possibly die if he stayed up any longer and it would be all Will's fault that everybody failed their exams for they'd all be too grief stricken to concentrate.
"I think you're-" Will yawned, "-overestimating how much people care for me, Harry."
"Well, who cares about the rest of that lot? Harry and I would be affected, wouldn't we?" Freya questioned sleepily as she turned a page of her Hippogriff book. "We'd be too blinded by tears to do stuff like studying because all it would do is..." Freya yawned. "Remind us of you. So really, William, school would be torture if you weren't in it anymore."
Will stared down at the ground for a minute so Harry couldn't see his face expression.
When he looked up though, Will looked amused.
"You're obviously sleep-deprived if you're complimenting me so highly."
"We're all sleep-deprived, just you most of all." Freya yawned again. "Both of you leave. Harry, you have to wake up for Quidditch and William you have to wake up so you can accomplish your goal of reading the whole bloody library."
"Aren't you going to sleep?" Harry questioned.
"Soon," she replied tiredly. "First I..." she yawned again. "First I've just gotta finish this chapter, I think it'll really help the case..."
Will frowned, "Then we could stay up unti-"
"No," Freya said frowning. "Go to sleep. Both of you. Really, I'm begging not on your behalf's but mine. You guys aren't even a pretty sight when you've got your beauty rest so how do you think you two look without i-"
She faltered as two pillows were thrown at her and she gave a laugh as she put them aside, grinning at them two.
"Goodnight, boys."
***
In the morning when Harry woke up for Quidditch practice after waking Will up as well, for Will said he needed to get up at the same time to go to the library, they walked down the stairs to see Freya sitting where they'd left her last night, leaning against the chair fast asleep, her red hair curtaining her face as she was still partly gripping the quill in her hands.
Together, they walked towards her.
"She looks rather stupid with her mouth wide open," Will muttered as he took out his cloak from his bag and tossed it over her body.
"Very." Harry agreed as he gently moved her head from tipping off the chair so it was set laying on the pillow he set down behind her head.
They made sure to close all her books and stack all her notes before they left.