Good friends don't let you do stupid things... alone

"Bran wake up, or you'll be late." Brandon awoke to Toby shaking him awake. 

"Five more minutes!" Brandon complained.     

"You don't get five more minutes, now get up!" Toby whacked his friend on the head.

"Oh fine." Brandon grumbled and sat up, earning a satisfied look from his friend.

"Come on already! I'm starving." Toby grumbled, but he waited until his friend was ready, before dragging the boy downstairs, where they met the girls.

"What took you so long?" Rosa asked, sounding annoyed.

"Someone wouldn't wake up." Toby answered with a glare at Brandon, who shrugged.

"I was sleeping!" He defended himself.

"Come on! I need food!" Lily announced loudly, earning a few grumbles of 'me too' and the group began to walk down to breakfast together.

Brandon followed behind, all the late nights and late mornings he had had over the summer seemed to finally come and haunt him. Rubbing his eyes, he almost walked into Professor Longbottom.

"Are you alright Brandon?" The Professor asked, the boy nodded.

"Sorry Professor, I wasn't watching where I was going?" He answered, the teacher laughed at him.

"Alright, go and get your breakfast." Brandon nodded and quickly walked to his table, earning a confused look from his friends.

"What did Longbottom want?" Toby asked curiously.

"I walked into him, almost." Brandon answered with a shrug, shoving a piece of toast into his mouth.

"You're an idiot." Lily told him, taking the last pancake as he was about to reach for it. He glared at her, earning a smirk.

"And you eat too much." Rosa told Lily, breaking off part of the pancake she was eating and taking a bite from it. Brandon looked between the two in confusion, Helen seemed to be doing the same as him. The two looked at each other.

"Are you...?" They asked at the same time.

"Hungry?" Lily asked at once. "Yes, I am." She took Helen's blueberry muffin and shoved it into her mouth.

"Rosa's right, you do eat too much." Toby commented, taking a sip of his coffee.

"Yeah, like her uncle." Lily's cousin Hugo told them as he walked past.

"Which one?" Brandon muttered to Helen, who laughed.

"God knows, she has too many to count on one hand." Helen replied, Brandon laughed loudly.

"He meant Ron." Rosa answered with a sigh.

"Oh!" Toby, Brandon and Helen said in sync, before laughing.

"Come on! I want to see how the thestrals are before we go to class." Toby said.

"But we haven't got our timetables." Brandon pointed out. Lily sighed and grabbed his head, forcing him to look down at the table, where his timetable sat. "Oh."

"Tobes, you have a weird obsession with weird creatures, but we'll come with you." Helen said.

"I take offence at that, but thanks guys." Toby picked up his bag and left the room, the others following him.

Brandon ended up in detention. And he could honestly say it wasn't his fault. Apparently sneaking off into the forbidden forest to see thestrals was a breach of school rules. Who knew?

at the end of the detention, he was sat in Hagrids hut, helping Helen as she threw up. Cleaning up blown-up flobberworms was a stomach churner, that's for sure.

"Hagrid, was that really necessary for a detention?" Brandon sighed, the others had got out of there at once, but someone had to stay with Helen, so he had.

"Well, I didn't want to do it." The half-giant answered. Brandon sighed.

"You don't have to deal with her throwing up!" Brandon yelled at him, dragging Helen out the door, the girl luckily, not throwing up.

"What took you so long?" Lily asked as they arrived.

"She wouldn't stop throwing up. God I hate Hagrid." He sighed, helping his friend sit down and then heading in the direction of the dormitory he shared with Toby.

"Where are you going?" Rosa asked after him.

"To rant!" Brandon answered, before disappearing from their view completely. He wanted to write to Danny, before it got too late and his owl refused to take his letter. She was temperamental like that.

He fetched a piece of paper and a normal pen, he hated using parchment and a quill and liked to avoid it as much as possible.

Hey Danny,

I miss you so much. Sorry this is so late, our groundskeeper/ biology teacher gave me and my friends a detention, all we were doing was looking in the forest for some rare animal my friend Toby wanted to find. Apparently that's against school rules.

Brandon sighed, he hated lying to Danny, but technically some of it was true.

He made us clean up some dead animals, which made my friend sick, that was pretty gross. I also kind of yelled at him, so I might end up with another detention, or a lecture. I just hope not both.

Anyway, I have literally nothing to tell you, but I hope you're okay.

I wish you were here, or I was there, I don't know.

I miss you.

Love you

Brandon x

Brandon looked up to see his owl sat on the window sill, he frowned at her. "How did you get here?"

He of course got no answer, as she couldn't talk, so instead he gave her his letter and told her to take it straight to Danny. He watched her fly away, not noticing his Toby walk in behind him.

"It's a bit late to send letters isn't it?" He commented, sitting down on his bed. Brandon shrugged.

"Well I would have sent it earlier, but someone decided that we should go and look at thestrals." He defended himself.

"You didn't have to come with me." Toby countered.

"We weren't going to let you go alone, we're your friends, if we one of us goes down, we all go down." Brandon told him. And then sighed. "Toby, we're almost finished here!"

"Brandon we have two years left, including this one. Calm down." Lily entered the room.

"It's scary!" Brandon exclaimed.

"So? Stop being a baby and grow a pair." Lily rolled her eyes. "And hurry up, you can't sit up here forever and mope about the future." With that she went back down to the common room, the boys exchanged a look and had to laugh. Their lives were so weird, weird was normal.

"The future, god, we have to start thinking about that." Brandon mused.

"Lily's right though, not right now." Toby patted his friend's shoulder and left the room.

Brandon groaned, he knew he would have to wait at least two hours for a letter back from Danny, so he decided to use the time to unpack his things.

He ended up falling asleep, and awoke in the middle of the night to find a letter on his bedside cabinet. He turned a light on, seeing that Toby wasn't there, but guessing he was downstairs with the girls.

Opening the letter, he recognised Danny's neat handwriting at once.

Bran,

I miss you too. Nothing much has happened here either, Mia got a new puppy today, which is the spawn of the devil and we all hate it, but she likes it for some reason.

Your school sounds weird, and I'm pretty sure a punishment like that is against some sort of regulation. And as much as I love you, you're an idiot. Try not to yell at your teachers, your detentions sound like hell.

I wish you were at home already!

I love you so much Bran,

Danny xx

Brandon smiled, and then jumped as Toby entered the room. "I thought you were asleep." He commented.

Brandon just laughed, putting the letter in the drawer, with every other one Danny had ever sent. "I was."