IT HAPPENS

[Pippin LeBeau]

ain't no rhyme or reason
no complicated meanin'
^credit

His hands were on her hips for just a moment. He seemed to be questioning what to do next, and she had to chuckle, because virgins were absolutely adorable when it came to their hands. They had to learn, and she liked being the one to teach them. So, smiling up at him, she placed her hand on his right, guiding it up her side to cup her breast before putting her other hand behind his neck. “Relax,” she encouraged gently, lowering his head toward her collarbone. “You’re going to be just fine.”

Finally, after three hours of struggling with writer’s block, Pippin had managed to get her saucy female protagonist into bed with the shy male librarian - or on top of a library table, as the case may be.

When it came to fiction, Pippin wasn’t the best of writers. She definitely couldn’t do anything more than a short story, because nothing would keep her attention span. Yet, somehow, she had found her niche in erotica.

How that came to be was… well, she supposed it was to be expected. She was seventeen, and she was quite attractive, as far as she was concerned. She was surrounded by just-as-attractive males, some of whom – okay, one of whom – seemed to be attracted to her, too. Yet she hadn’t even gotten so much as a kiss from him, but he could find time to go kiss some ginger he barely knew. Pippin’s only actual kiss happened at the beginning of sixth year, when she marched up to Ian Fleming and asked him – with permission from Sooz Brownell, his girlfriend at the time – to give her her very first kiss, because if she had to wait this long for it, she at least wanted it to be from someone who was handsome as hell and super experienced. And then Pippin ended up stalling because she either laughed when he moved in or she kept talking or actually put her hand in front of his face until he caught her off-guard with a kiss and then it had been quite lovely, but… Still! She must have been one of the last remaining virgins in the school, and even though she’d tried it, she couldn’t quite get the hang of… remedying the situation herself.

So she turned to fiction, writing out unrealistic fantasies concocted in her repressed virgin head and penning them to paper, only to stuff away the pages deep inside a sock in her trunk for no one to find but for her to read in her spare time. Her past favourite had to be the one with the mysterious-yet-handsome professor and the intelligent-yet-naïve student (written shortly after that Lestrange bloke arrived as a remedial professor, but she’d never admit that); now, she thought this one was beating it, because it wasn’t the man leading on the woman this time. Nope. This time, the woman was in control, and the man had to trust her to make everything feel good. And she knew exactly what she was doing.

She pressed her lips to his neck, just below his ear, before giving his lobe a gentle tease with the tip of her tongue. His slight gasp and the way his skin trembled beneath her touch was a clear indicator that he enjoyed it. She chuckled lowly, giving him another kiss before a tender nip. He groaned, his body tensing with pleasure, and she

Pippin was pulled out of her fantasy world at the sound of her name; she jumped, slightly guilty, making sure to shield her story as she turned toward Ani. “Huh?” she asked, and Ani told her that it was curfew and time to head back to Ravenclaw. Pippin nodded for her to go ahead as she started gathering up her things. She stood up, knocking into the table and sending her parchment flying. “Shit!” she hissed, scrambling to pick them up before someone else did. After all, it was the Concourse. Anyone could find her shit, and this was private. Ani called her name again, and Pippin shouted back that she was coming as she gripped her books and paper and ran out to meet her.

“Sorry, I was working on something. For the paper,” she lied, glancing through her pages. Okay, so that was where they met… oh, they were really out of order, she wasn’t supposed to go back to the library until he called her, and that was two pages later—wait.

Wait.

Wait a goddamn moment.

Where the hell was the climax?!

“Frig, I forgot something—you go on ahead, all right?” Not waiting for an answer, Pippin turned on her heel and raced back toward the Concourse, hoping someone utterly embarrassing hadn’t picked it up or—

“Oh.”

Well, it could have been worse.

benji!

[Benjamin Burke]

Things were finally starting to have some semblance of normality for Benjamin. Or, at least, that's the impression that his friends were trying to give him, although it was entirely possible it was just another attempt to insure that he didn't fly off the handle or go off the deep end (again). Either way, he was grateful for it. Maybe it was selfish of him to want things to be easy, but he was just tired of everything being so damn hard. He was tired of making things hard on himself, but he didn't know how else to function. He was - well, to put it simply, he was a guilt machine. The guilt reminded him that he shouldn't have been forgiven so quickly, that there was still a long way before he could look at Rose without flinching. It reminded him of Marlene, in some twisted way, and that made him not want to lose it. Because when all the guilt and hurt is gone, what's left? Just memories? He knew more than anyone that memories started to fade away when you forgave yourself, because sometimes he had to think twice about the first pocket he'd picked, the first time he and Jamie split a loaf of bread. Did he have to start forgetting Marlene, too? He didn't want that. He didn't want to forget her. But he didn't know what moving on meant. For all his wise statements and supposed maturity, Benjamin was still a kid who knew little to nothing about death, despite the experience he had with it. Or, perhaps he should rephrase - he knew very little about accepting it, because he'd never really accepted any of the deaths he'd experienced. So did forgiving himself, did accepting it, mean he had to let go of her, and of Jamie, of everyone, too? Benjamin didn't think he was quite ready for that. But for Rose, and for Ian and even for Imogen, he put up a front that he was really okay. Because if he didn't, they'd be worried about him, again. And he didn't think he could put them through that. Not again.

He was jolted back into reality when he felt a foot nudge his stomach and he blinked several times, shaking his head to get the remnants of his train of thought out of his head. "Bennyyyyyy, you have your serious thinking face on again," the owner of the foot complained, and he couldn't help but smile indulgently. "My serious thinking face?" he repeated questioningly. "I have a serious thinking face, Ro?" He wrapped his fingers around her slim ankles, mostly to make sure her feet - which were currently in his lap - didn't do anymore kicking. "Yes. You do. And it's on your face," she pointed at him, almost accusingly, and then seemed to reconsider. "Well, it was. What were you thinking about?"

[/color] she asked curiously, wiggling her captured limbs in an attempt to get free. He chuckled and released her; she stopped fidgeting immediately. "Just...stuff." he said vaguely. He didn't want to lie to her, but speaking his thoughts aloud would only worry Rose. It'd worry anyone, probably. He licked his lips and picked up the pages of his newest novel. Rose had all but dragged him to the concourse ("you spend too much time in the Ravenclaw common room and I hardly ever get to see you!") and told him to write only under her supervision. He had to appreciate how well she knew him - that she knew he had a tendency to rip whatever he wrote to pieces whenever he was feeling particularly museless. Rose was a lot of things, but ignorant was not one of them.

After skimming the first two pages of the novel-in-progress, though, Benjamin could already feel the itch to dump it start to creep up on him. And he probably would, when he got back to the common room. He'd never thought much of his writing at all, but recently whenever he forced himself to write, everything came out overly bright and cheery that quickly turned dark and...well, twisted, for lack of a better word. There was no consistency, the characters were bland and one-dimensional, some of them, he realised later, didn't even have names, all he'd used was pronouns. There was no real beginning, no middle, no climax, and he never reached the end anyway before he realised it was absolutely no good. He'd been too ashamed to let Rose read it, despite her constant pleas to see it. Not only were parts of it very badly written, but the darkest parts...he didn't want anyone to read that. No one needed to know how screwed up his head was right now.

"Oh my gosh!" Rose exclaimed suddenly, her feet flailing and knocking the pages out of his hands. "It's almost curfew! And I told Tristan I'd meet him an hour ago! I can't believe I forgot! Oh gosh -- oh,"[/color] she seemed to have suddenly noticed what her suddenly reaction had done. "Oh, I'm sorry Benny!"[/color] she exclaimed, starting to bend to help him pick up his things. He chuckled and shook his head, gently pushing her hands away. "No worries. You go ahead to Tristan. I'll see you tomorrow morning, Ro." He dropped a quick kiss on her forehead and watched her leave before he bent to gather the rest of his papers, looking through them in so that he could put them somewhat in order. He was surprised when he found he'd accidentally picked up a page that didn't seem to belong to him - the loopy handwriting was very different from his. Curiosity getting the better of him, Benjamin stacked up his pages to the side and then began reading, his eyes widening a little when he immediately realised what genre he was reading - erotica. Once the initial surprise wore off, Benjamin felt his lips twitch a little and found himself continuing to read in spite of himself, noting that this wasn't just pointless smut - the writer was obviously quite gifted. He had almost reached the end of the page when he heard an oh and he raised his head, his gaze landing on Pippin LeBeau, fellow Ravenclaw and his Captain on the Quidditch team. Schooling his expression into a fairly innocent one, he stood up and held out the paper he'd accidentally picked up. "Yours?" he guessed. "It's good."


[/blockquote][/blockquote][/color]

[Pippin LeBeau]

ain't no need to overthink it
let go laughin'

Pippin didn’t like to admit to anyone that she had a short attention span, so she could never sit down and write any sort of novel. She could tell a good story, sure. She even did voices and characterisations. But she could never write one down, and it did embarrass her a little to think that she just couldn’t focus long enough to actually write her stories down. But if she was ever asked again why she didn’t, she figured that this was a perfect reason. After all, no one wanted their private thoughts strewn about in public and found by the wrong person!

Maybe Benji Burke wasn’t the wrong person, though. He was a pretty serious guy, so the likelihood of him teasing her was slim to nil. And even though Pippin had no idea what was going on with his attitude the past few months, he seemed to be better now, or at least he acted like it in Quidditch. He was part of the reason Ravenclaw beat Slytherin in the last match with his amazing Beater skills. Anyway, if nothing else, Pippin was his captain, so he definitely couldn’t say anything bad against her. Then again, Benji was a prefect. HMM. Bit of an Old West showdown here; she could almost hear the twangy music in her head. … Her next piece of erotic adventures was definitely going to be set in the Old West.

“Not bad for a virgin, eh?” she said with a smirk. Pippin wasn’t being conceited, but when she found herself in an awkward situation, she tended to find that the best thing to do was make the other person feel more uncomfortable than she did. “I guess I have a big imagination.” Her eyes flickered downward on Benji’s body before looking back up at his face, which was totally unintentional but probably added to the desired effect. “Clearly I – no one got to finish, yet. I can’t really decide how I want it to end. Technically he’s losing his v-card, so it shouldn’t last too long anyway, but she knows what she’s doing, so couldn’t she make it last longer? See, I’ve never had personal experience with this whole thing. Technically I haven’t even had a real kiss. You know, maybe it’s a good thing you found it. If you think it’s good, at least that means they’re doing it right and everything’s in the right place.”

Okay, maybe she should work on saying things in her head before letting them come out of her mouth. Even she was weirded out by that one; what if Benji lost all respect for her as Quidditch captain because he thought she was too weird to take seriously? After all, he just found out she wrote what was essentially smut; god, whatever, she was doomed to die a virgin anyway. She might as well sell some works of fiction detailing romantic lives more exciting and pleasurable than her own, and use her proceeds to buy a dozen cats and name them after her leading men. Though naming them after her leading ladies would be more accurate, since… Well, she didn’t like that word, so she wasn’t gonna go there.

“Well, Mr. Burke, here’s what can happen. You can either give me the page and we’ll forget this whole thing ever happened, or if you’re actually curious, I can give you the rest to read and work on the ending later. Or maybe be inspi-i-ir-r-red,” she rolled her tongue on the last word, batting her eyelashes at him in what she hoped look like a flirty way – though she wasn’t really flirting, because really, it was Pippin. Glancing down, she noticed some parchment in his other hand, which could easily have been an essay, but maybe… “Or we could say that I showed you mine, so you show me yours.”

She was just lucky he wasn’t squirming with discomfort yet, really.

… And her mind really needed to get out of the gutter.

[Benjamin Burke]

Benjamin didn't know Pippin very well at all. They'd never really spoken outside of Quidditch practice, which was mostly Benjamin's fault. He wasn't the type of person to get close to anyone very quickly. As a matter of fact, he could probably count the number of close friends he had on just the fingers on one hand. All right, maybe two. Not counting those he'd lost, that is. But let's not go down that path. Still, despite the fact that Benjamin didn't know Pippin personally, he'd observed her behaviour for a while now, much like he did with most other people, and, to him, she was clearly uncomfortable by the fact that he'd found her story - or part of it, anyway - which implied the fact that she hadn't told very many people (if anyone at all) about her hobby. He couldn't really blame her. Although he didn't think she had anything to be ashamed about (but Benjamin generally didn't feel ashamed about much of anything), he supposed a girl would be embarrassed by someone knowing she thought of such things. Honestly, he hadn't seen it coming from Pippin. She didn't strike him as a very sexual person. Then again, it wasn't like he'd attempted to get to know that part of her. All he was really basing this off of was her interactions with other people, and much of them had seemed pretty platonic; he'd learned over the years not to judge a person purely based on how long he'd watched them for.

Her reaction was intriguing - instead of blushing or stammering out some sort of explanation, maybe even denying it, she seemed to take it all in stride. Although it was entirely possible she was making light of the situation to feel better about herself. Still, his eyebrows rose swiftly at her insinuation, and where her gaze clearly went. "Good writers generally do," he responded, his lips twitching a little, although he continued to regard her rather seriously. He didn't want to make her feel even more uncomfortable or awkward by outwardly appearing to laugh at her - although he was starting to think she was trying to even the playing field by making him feel awkward, and wondered if he should pretend to be uncomfortable for her sake or not. By the time he was considering it, though, she'd already started speaking again and he mentally shrugged the notion off. He was genuinely startled by how open she was to discussing it. It could be just a simple case of word vomit, of course, but he wasn't entirely disappointed by the track the conversation had taken. It was certainly amusing, at least. "I don't have much experience with smut. I was more talking about your style of writing and choice of wording," he commented lightly, tapping the parchment that was still in his possession. Keeping his tone fairly professional to avoid making her increasingly uncomfortable, Benjamin continued, "Realistically, even if she was experienced, it probably still won't last very long at all. It depends on how old the male lead is, how much stamina he might have, and his self control in general. Most likely, though, she won't be able to, ah, finish as well." Only Benjamin Burke could say all that to a girl he barely knew with a completely straight face. He really didn't see the problem with it, though. While he wasn't the most sexual guy (Ian had a lot more experience on him; Benjamin's had had only about three or four sexual partners in his lifetime), he still knew enough to have an accurate depiction of what it was like. Plus, he'd been there once himself.

It was a bit refreshing to talk to someone who was so expressive and open, even if it was because she seemed to lack a filter. At the very least, she had spunk. But Benjamin already knew that - he'd seen it in practices often, and in the occasional bits of conversation he had unwittingly overheard when he passed by her while she was chatting with one of her friends. He shook his head a little at her first two suggestions, although he didn't get a chance to properly respond before she noticed his pages in his grip and he automatically stiffened, his fingers tensing around the pages briefly. He'd always been a little protective over his own writing; he didn't let just anyone read it, especially his most recent work. Still, not wanting her to think anything was off, Benjamin forced himself to relax and tried to keep his smile friendly. It was easier because her use of double entendre was still amusing, despite the real meaning behind it. "Call me a hypocrite, but I don't feel comfortable showing just anyone everything. This in particular is...not my best work." There. That didn't sound like an out-right rejection, right? He held out her page for her to take, tilting his head. "I'll pretend it never happened if you want me to. But I'm not judging you for writing this. I'm just surprised; I had no idea you were interested in writing." His eyebrow quirked with interest. "Or is it just particular genre that you're interested in?" He couldn't help but throw in the slightly teasing remark at the end - he'd been serious throughout the entire conversation so far, but even he had his limits with maturity.

[/color]

[Pippin LeBeau]

ain't no need to overthink it
let go laughin'

Ugh, well, this was annoying. Clearly Benji here was just too calm to get all flustered. She even forgot to hide the irritated look on her face for a few moments. “Well, maybe you should try it sometime!” she quipped. Maybe it’d get the broomstick out of his bum. “It can be quite the stress… release.” She waggled her eyebrows suggestively, positive he understood her innuendo. She tried to act calm as he handed her some knowledge, but even Pippin couldn’t help but blush.

“Well, if I was going for realism, they wouldn’t be boinking in a library, would they? This stuff is all about the willing suspension of disbelief. I mean, everyone knows that it really wouldn’t last long, but people don’t want to read about realistic sex. Do you know how unfulfilling that would be? People wanna read about the sex they don’t have, you know, the completely amazing, mind-blowing, oh-my-gah-ah-ahh!d sex.” … And yes, she did make sure to make the proper face and have the high-pitched voice.

Because reasons.

Hm, he seemed to be relaxing a little bit. At least, he wasn’t completely stone-faced anymore. She eyed the rest of the parchment in his hand, her brow furrowing a little as he seemed to actually refuse to let her look at it. She gave a huff, clearly offended by this, and put her hands on her hips. “Hey, come on. You’ve just seen something that no one has seen. If nothing else, you totally owe me. I promise I won’t judge too harshly.” She grinned innocently, batting her lashes despite knowing that only French people could pull that off and she most certainly was not French. Still, maybe it was best she didn’t read it. He clearly didn’t want her to, even though technically she didn’t want him to read what she’d written, but it was best not to bug him about it. Maybe he’d think she was commanding him as his Quidditch captain or something, and she couldn’t abuse her power like that. Morals and shit made it “wrong”. “Oh, all right. You don’t have to, this time, but I definitely wanna read something of yours someday.”

Pippin took back her page, putting it in her back among the others. She’d have to sort through them later and finish the story; haha, maybe Benjamin would want to read it. Or her others. But nah, she wasn’t gonna share them. He didn’t need to see them, and anyway, this was just an accident. He wasn’t gonna read these ever again, if she could help it. Sure, it was funny, but more of an ‘oh my god I can’t believe this actually happened’ kind of funny.

“Huh? Oh. Well, I don’t really do… novels, or anything. I just, I dunno, I get bored if it’s longer than a couple pages. Too many plots and characters and stuff, I can’t keep it all straight. I can tell a story fine, you know, verbally, but writing it down takes too much effort. This stuff… I mean, it keeps me interested, haha. And, you know, when you’re boyfriendless and all that, it comes in handy on the lonely nights.” She winked. “But I’ve written other stuff. Non-fiction, I guess. I’m taking over the paper from Malfoy, so there’s that. What about you? What kinds of stuff do you write?” It was funny that Benjamin was the writer; out of all her classmates, he was the least likely to be imaginative – or so she thought. He just seemed so serious. Huh, maybe writing was his way to unwind.

Or maybe he was lying and he actually did write porn too.

… Yep, so that was what Pippin was going to believe from now on.

[Benjamin Burke]

"Oh, I've written smut before," he said casually, his broad shoulders rising and falling in a quick shrug. "Probably not very well and it wasn't the main point of my stories, but I'm not the type to restrain myself to only one or two forms of writing. If I think it's necessary, I'll put it in. It's a pretty interesting experience, yes. Although I wouldn't say it's a release. Generally that kind of things gets you even more worked up, doesn't it?" He's sure she didn't expect him to say anything like that, because Benjamin Burke didn't exactly elicit the image of someone who wrote smut, of all things. The first time he had tried had been, oddly enough - or perhaps not odd at all - after his first time with Marlene. He'd been strangely...inspired. And, coincidentally, it had been rather fitting for where the story he'd been writing at the time was at. He'd cut it out of the story afterwards, though, since Rose had demanded to read it and, at the time, he'd had an even more difficult time saying no to her. Since he never wanted to spoil her innocent, Benjamin would honestly rather cut off his hand then give her smut to read.

Benjamin considered what she said as seriously as if she had been talking about a homework assignment, nodding a little in agreement. His eyebrows rose when she mimicked the tone one normally used in such a situation, a short chuckle leaving his lips. "Actually, it's not really that unrealistic. The ahhh - what was the terminology you used? Ah, yes, boinking. Boinking in a library isn't very unrealistic. Doing it without getting caught might be unrealistic, unless it takes place by the back shelf and they're both fairly quiet. I've personally found it fairly difficult to be completely silent. Unless the sex is really that awful." He really couldn't stop the smirk that overtook his lips. It had been a while since he'd talked so freely in front of someone; his mind had been kind of too wrapped around the entire situation that happened on Christmas day to really let his thoughts wander beyond death and lost friendships.

For a moment, Benjamin thought that she would pull the I-am-your-Quidditch-captain card and would threaten to boot him off the team if he didn't show her his writing. He honestly wouldn't put it past Pippin to do such a thing, even if she would be (mostly) joking. But she surprised him by letting it go - albeit reluctantly - and his smile was grateful. "I don't mind you reading something of mine. I just don't want you to read this and get the wrong impression. Like I said...not my best work." He couldn't begin to imagine what she would think if she was to get her hands on his musings about death, about losing someone so violently that it completely tore you up until you became a shadow of yourself. It was incredibly dark, even for him, and would definitely be going under the bottom compartment he'd built into his trunk, where he kept much of the things that he didn't want people's hands on. Once she'd taken her page back, Benjamin picked up his backpack and put his own story in it, zipping it up carefully and then replacing it on the floor. It contained the books he'd had classes for today and he'd rather not carry it longer than necessary, since he wasn't sure how long this conversation would last.

"Yeah, I started off with short stories, too," he responded with a small nod. "All sorts of genres, really. Adventure, drama. I've written fluff a couple of times, when I was in the mood. I guess that's the biggest factor for what I'm writing at a certain time - my mood." He stuffed his hands into his pockets and rocked on his heels. "I'm glad you're the head of the paper now. Wasn't a big fan of Malfoy." That made Pippin the boss of him in Quidditch and the newspaper. The thought was strangely amusing.

[/color]

[Pippin LeBeau]

the indisputable, irrefutable fact is
Shh... it happens

The more Pippin learned about Benjamin Burke, the more she liked him. Not that she didn’t like him in the first place; she knew he was a good teammate and Prefect and all that. But she hadn’t really known about him, and, okay, she still didn’t, but she was more on her way than before and she knew she liked what she was learning.

He wrote smut.

This was good news. She found herself grinning impishly, bobbing her eyebrows up and down and clicking her tongue against her teeth. “Have you now? I’d love to read that,” she teased, reaching out and poking his rib. “So was there a certain inspiration for your erotic romance? Or just general experimentation?” She shrugged at his musing; maybe he felt that way, but he had experienced the real thing: Pippin’s imagination was all she had, really. Of course, she couldn’t help but grin at his ‘advice’, and she assured him that she’d definitely take it into consideration. “Have experience in a library, Burke? Or just really bad sexy times?” She could picture a look of disappointment on his face when things didn’t go as planned; the image made her snort.

She really had no choice but to accept Benji’s explanation as to why he wasn’t letting her read his current project; curious as she was, it was impolite to push, especially over something this private. No matter; she’d just bug him – remind him, sorry – that she needed to read something of his sometime soon. Eventually he’d find something he felt okay with showing her, right? Of course he would. There was no way Benji was a bad writer, whether or not he was crazy about recent work. Maybe she didn’t expect him to actually be a writer, but he was too smart to be bad at it. Besides, she didn’t know him to be bad at anything he cared about.

A quick glance at the clock behind Benji showed that it was very close to curfew; she was sure Benji wouldn’t take points away from her, given that he was the reason she was late, but another prefect might not be so forgiving. She faked a yawn and stretch that turned into a real yawn and stretch halfway through, giggling a little as it ended.

“Malfoy was an asshole; you know he would have started filling the paper with pureblood propaganda and shit. You know, you’re a very interesting man-boy, Benji Burke,” she told him with a nod, as if he didn’t already know. “I think I like ya. But, it’s late, you probably have some prefect business to attend to, and I have a climax I need to finish, if you know what I mean.” She patted her bag and winked. “I booked the pitch for practice at seven-thirty Saturday morning. I know, it’s wicked early, but we gotta kick ass next game too, all right? All right. Goodnight!” And, just because she felt like doing it, she reached up and ruffled Benji’s hair before giving him a friendly, light push on the arm with her fist – she just really didn’t want to call it a punch, since it sounded far too violent. Then she smiled and turned back, heading toward Ravenclaw, and hoping Ani had some sort of snacks hidden under her bed.

Writing smut always made her hungry, for some reason.

[Benjamin Burke]

Chuckling again, Benjamin moved away when she poked his ribs and simply shook his head in response to her questions. He wasn't about to admit to her what he had or hadn't done in his sex life. That sort of thing was entirely too personal, and their friendship wasn't quite there yet. It was more than enough that he'd admitted to writing "smut", as she called it. He really didn't think she ought to be privy to his sex life, and he was glad that she didn't push it. Either that, or she had lost interest. Whatever it was, Benjamin was glad he could dodge that bullet because he'd rather not admit anything to her (but Marlene had been rather adventurous, and Benjamin definitely hadn't minded that). Briefly, he wondered how long Pippin would let him get away with things like that, and figured that if it wasn't so close to curfew she would have pressed him some more about everything he'd managed to avoid thus far. Really, he was just grateful that, for once, time was on his side.

"I know he would have," Benjamin agreed, smirking when she said he was interesting. It wasn't anything new, he'd been told that before, although he didn't necessarily believe it. Most people only assumed he was interesting because he didn't talk and that gave off the impression of being mysterious, which was quite the presumption to make because it was entirely possible that some people were silent simply because they had nothing to say. And other people who talked more than him, well, most of what they said was completely irrelevant and they would have been better off minimizing the amount of talking they did because it was all codswallop to him. Chuckling after her, he called out a "Good luck and good night, Pippin," and then simply watched her leave. He stood for a few moments later, letting the conversation he'd just had sink and then shook his head and picked up his backpack, slinging it over his shoulder. He had to go back to the common room to drop off his books before he started on tonight's patrols, and thus he followed the path Pippin had taken, walking at a leisurely pace.

With a small smirk, Benjamin made a mental note to talk to Pippin more often in the future, because she sure was an interesting individual.

the end