Last of the Patrols

The end of the school year was still a long way off but already Linette had a feeling it would fly by. Soon enough she would have her final exams and be giving up the positions she'd loved. That of leader of SOP and Quidditch announcing. There was also her prefect badge but Linette wasn't quite as attached to that as the other two mentioned responsibilities. It only caused problems like having to be more careful not to break school rules than she'd been in her first four years at Beauxbatons.

And then there were the patrols. Watching out for miscreants who were out after curfew. All she wanted was her own bed and maybe just a little more time before that to get on with homework and study. She wouldn't want to jeopardise her future career and make lots of money by failing her exams. With a lower paying job she would have less income for book buying and building up a significant library.

She yawned and then froze. There was someone else here. "Lumos. Who's here? Show yourself or run back to your dorm." She was perfectly willing to let give them the option since it saved her the trouble of reporting anyone.

Galen had serious issues sleeping. It wasn't that he couldn't sleep, he just slept walked a lot, and tonight he had forgotten to lock his dorm room door like he normally did to prevent himself from becoming Ponce De Leon Jr. feared sleepy explorer of the halls. Well, it just so happened tonight he was having a seriously intense dream. He was a brave knight from the village of Paintshire known around the world for his ability to out paint anyone he came face to face with. Then all went wrong in Paintshire as the fair princess of the village was taken by the evil dragon who lived up on Mt. Graphite. He climbed up the mountain in a fearless bout to save Princess Paintbrush who he was able to see caught in a cage in the evil dragon's art studio. Wow...she looked a lot like...that really pretty girl named - never mind. Galen stood, chest puffed and raised his pencil towards the mighty dragon. "I have come for the princess!" Only as he blinked awake from his dream he realized he wasn't pointing a pencil, but his finger, and that there was no dragon, just an exhausted looking seventh year. It hadn't even registered he'd screamed about a princess to a seventh year in the middle of the night. "W-Where am I?" He rubbed at his eyes trying to brush the sleep out of them.

In the more than two years she'd been a prefect Linette had yet to come across a sleepwalker. Well now it'd happened and she was speechless. The seventh year lowered the lit wand a little so she could shine it on the boy's face. "You're in Cerisier," she observed. He may not be in uniform but she'd taken pains to memorise every face of the students who ended up in that house. It made it easier in situations like this. Names though, amongst the younger years, could be a little slower in coming.

She knew how to deal with deliberate disobedience to school rules (not her favourite thing) but how did you deal with a student out of bed after curfew who hadn't been aware they were wandering the halls of Beauxbatons? "I can tell you where you are not. You're not in a palace which holds a princess. You're in a palace which holds young witches and wizards in training." She smiled at she added, "but at least you somehow ended up in a tower. That's where the princess normally is found in the stories isn't it?" Somewhere in the back of her mind was the nagging voice reminding her she should be sending him back to bed. Not chattering away with a young boy who must be feeling cold by now.

Galen blinked blankly at least five times at the prefect from his house. "I'm in Cerisier." He repeated back and then he had completely woken. His cheeks and ears went more red than the surface of Mars upon the realization he'd sleep walked right over to a seventh year while questing to save a princess. He could have literally fainted or screamed or both. "I-uh-I sleep walk a lot and I guess I talk in my sleep a bit too much too..." Galen then nodded. The princess were always found in the towers like one of his favorites, Rapunzel. His muggle grandparents had taken him and his sister to see that movie a while back and now he watched it nearly 24/7 back at home. The artwork was just so superb. "Yeah, I guess they usually are in the tower, but in my dream she was trapped on the top of a mountain."

"Sleep walk and sleep talk," Linette said for clarification of the nonsense he'd just spoken. Poor kid. It was one thing to humiliate a classmate on the Quidditch pitch. It was another altogether to humiliate an underclassman who had the misfortune to be sleep walking all the way up to the Northwest Tower she'd been patrolling before her bedtime. There had to be a better way to handle a situation like this. Maybe some sort of handbook for prefects on what to do when...

She nodded. "Right. Well I think the pair of us need to walk off this mountain and back to the Cerisier Common room. My patrolling time is almost over." Thank goodness. "So let's go on down." She hadn't seen or heard anything else suspect up here so she thought it would be safe enough to leave now. Just to be certain she shone her lit wand around the corridor and nodded. "Ready to go?"

Galen was already halfway into his dream world. However, it was his living dreamworld where everything was in extreme color. Everything was defined in hues and shades. There was no world outside of the world of color and the world of art. However the talking going on around him especially because the conversation was directed at him made him focus back in on the boring mundane world of color he lived in. Where he had no friends besides his sister and maybe Stephanie, but he'd often wondered if she was just being nice when she accepted his invitations to hangout with himself. "Going back to the Common Room sounds like a good idea." He watched as she checked the halls and nodded. "I'm ready to go."