It would probably not come as a surprise to anyone that homework was not one of Billy's favorite pastimes. Still, he had to do it, and it sucked. There were so many better things to be doing with life than scribbling on paper, when was this ever going to help him in life? Billy sighed yet again. He was in the Pecari common room with his books sprawled out around him on the table. His head had flopped down to lay upon the paper he was supposed to be writing. Sleep would be better than this, at least then he'd wake up with potential fun ahead of him. This was just agony.
He sat back up and looked over the assignment again, but his eyes refused to read the words on the paper. They just didn't register. He had to do this though, if he didn't... they might make him do extra work or studying instead of Quidditch. That would be truly horrible. Plus Ray would probably get mad at him as well. Dangit, why wasn't she in these classes as well? Last year had been so much easier, she'd actually made classes and learnin' fun. She hadn't been there his first year though, and that hadn't been to bad. The stuff had be easier than this, it was fore beginners, but he hadn't seen it before. He'd had Oz. Last year he'd had Oz some, but he'd been acting weird. So far this year...? He didn't really know. They hadn't said much on the topic.
Then the door opened an in came Oz. "Hey Oz!" Billy called out without much thought. "Didja do the Transfig stuff?" He glanced down at his paper quickly, "So far I got that the Professor could know if we didn't switch it properly if she saw me moving it by hand." He had 'tested' that theory in class. It proved accurate. "Did you come up with anything else?" He asked hopefully.
OOC: Mentions of interactions with other characters approved by their authors. BIC:
Most of the time, Oz did his homework in Professor Carter-Xavier's office. His grades and completion rate had steadily improved, and no one had called him out for cheating or said he must be copying off Henry to do so well. Still, he partially accounted that to having a witness, or at least appreciated the security that was giving him.
He left her office, going back into the corridor so that it wasn't obvious that was where he was coming from, and made his way back into the common room, where he was promptly hailed by Billy.
Oz was used to keeping his outward appearance casual and neutral whilst his entire insides tensed up, like his stomach was contracting around a big ball of ice. Firstly, he wasn't exactly sure where things stood with Billy. After their almost-fight last year, they hadn't really said anything. Not that they weren't speaking, but just that they had lapsed back into behaving more or less normally to each other like nothing was wrong. Oz had enough experience of faking his way through life with a smile on his face that he very much knew that nothing appearing to be wrong was very different from nothing actually being wrong. Secondly, Billy was asking about homework. Billy was stupider than Oz, and he was pretty sure everyone knew that. If their homework looked identical, it would be clear who had copied from whom. The trouble was, both parties were in the wrong if they thought the copying had been done with consent. That was the threat Ms. Clarkwell had held over his head all those years ago. If his homework didn't start looking like his classwork, then she would bring both him and Henry in. In that case, he hadn't even been copying. It was just easier to get stuff done in the quiet of his kitchen with Henry being like 'Dude, focus' than it was in a class full of people who thought school was for losers.
In this case, there would be actual copying. Oz saw the careful trust he had built with all his teachers going up in flames. That, or his relationship with his roommate. Geez, why did the universe constantly want to take a dump on him?
"I dunno," he shrugged. "I feel like most of the time Skies just wants you to say what it says in the textbook but without sounding like you're saying that, y'know?" he offered with a roll of eyes, playing the part of someone who was so over that. "Just copy some of the stuff from chapter twelve but replace the long words with like.. actual English from this century."
Oz's response was not as helpful as Billy would have liked. He was probably right about what the Professor wanted, but it wasn't really as easy as his roommate made it sound. He was about to comment something along those lines when something that Oz had said struck him. "Chapter...?" Billy turned to look down at his book, "Twelve?" Why were the pages open way farther in the book than that? Oh right, he'd stumbled across some reference that had sounded way more interesting than swapping two blocks. He'd been reading that when someone else had passed through the common room and distracted him. Which had set him back on the actual homework assignment, but without any progress being made. "Right." Granted, now that he'd looked at that section of the book again, he turned back to Oz with a grin.
"Hey, didja know that there are ways to transfigure yourself into a critter?" It sounded awful farfetched, but he'd read about it in the book so it must be true. "It's probably complicated, but that'd be pretty awesome, wouldn't it?" Billy wondered what it'd be like to run through the mountain as a wolf, or soar through the skies as a hawk. His homework once again completely forgotten, he continued along the line of thought. "I think a wolf or hawk would be neat. What kinda critter would you pick? I'm not sure if you're stuck with one form, or you can just pick whatever you want, but either way it'd be a blast!" He began flipping the page back and forth trying to figure out exactly where he'd been when he'd gotten distracted.
There was a reason Oz did his homework next to a teacher, or someone responsible like Henry. There was a reason he ended up off task and in trouble during class. This was it.
"What, no way!" he exclaimed, pulling Billy's book over. "Are there gross illustrations? Do you reckon people ever get stuck halfway? I bet they do!" That could be really badass or really inconvenient depending on what you were half way turned into and what you were trying do. Having giant bear paws would be great when trying to get Archer to leave him the heck alone but definitely wasn't going to mix well with going to the bathroom.
"Those would be sick," he confirmed of Billy's choices. "Something like that for sure, or a mountain lion or a bear or something. Something that can slash stuff up and do some major damage.
"Dang," he said, his face falling. "Do you reckon this means we have to keep taking Skies' FOR-EV-ER. I bet they don't teach this stuff until super advanced classes or something." If it was in their current textbook, perhaps there was some hope, but he was pretty sure he was several years away from going full bear-ninja on someone.
Now this was the Oz that Billy liked to hang out with. He was excited and having fun, not sulking or brooding or whatever else it was. He thought he knew Oz well enough by now that all that calm and cool stuff was just him trying to cover for being unhappy about something. Now he was having fun. Billy grinned wide at his roommate. "I dunno," he answered to Oz's first question, "I didn't get to far 'fore I got distracted by something else." It had been the realization that he hadn't been doing anything homework related, but that wasn't important. "Probably, we're gettin' warned all the time in class about how magic can do terrible things if it ain't done right." A thought struck him, "Wonder if that's where all them fish-folk and centaurs came from?"
Billy's innards sunk a bit as Oz reveled in the possibilities. A bear, yeah.. that could slash stuff up and do some major damage... right. The memory flashed out once more of the enormous creature bursting out to kill him. The memory that had found it's way out side his head the other year. "Yeah," he added with maybe just a slight hint of hesitation, "That'd be great."
Thankfully the subject changed and Billy nodded a bit dejectedly. "Probably..." His voice trailed off a bit as an idea kindled in his brain. A fantastic idea. "Still... we're at school, and it's not like they could get mad at us for learnin' extra stuff, could they? That's what we're here for, right?" He shot Oz a look, "They're always saying we gotta study."
Flora rolled her eyes at the two boys next to her.
‘Honestly guys?’, she asked, leaning against the back of the sofa. ‘I’m not stopping you from doing whatever you are doing, but seriously, just finish your homework first. You may not want to do it, but I don’t want to lose points.’
She pushed her hair back and glared at them. She glanced over her own neatly written essay, and looked back at them.
‘So please just finish the damn homework and do whatever the hell you want.’
With another roll of her eyes to prove her point, she turned back to her own work, dipping the quill in the ink well and continuing to write.
She honestly didn’t care about what the two boys were doing, she just cared about her house. And her own work of course.