Open Official Gryffindor Business

Jasper Beese

Flaky friend | Gobstones forever!
 
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104
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Single (Not Looking)
Wand
Straight 13 Inch Unyielding Acacia Wand with Kelpie Hair Core
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Open after @Victoria de Lacey

"Tori, are you sure you forged Professor Cade's signature properly?" Jasper asked for the third time as they walked down the deserted and dark corridor after curfew. He had been confident in their plan until they left the Gryffindor Common Room, but now he was second guessing everything. From a vague sense of unease to outright doubts about the plan, Jasper was looking for any excuse to turn back. But Tori wouldn't let him, and so he trudged on, reminding himself to stick to the plan. If anyone stopped them, he could simply show the note and explain that they were on official business. It was supposed to be easy and the plan wasn't going to fail, apparently. He unfolded the note again and read it over:

Dear Professor or prefect,

This letter gives permision for students Victoria de Lacey and Jasper Beese to be outside of the common room after curfew. They are conducting official business under my direct authorisation.

Please note that there is no need to confirm this permision slip with me, as it is entirely legitimate.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

Sincerely,
Professor James Cade
Gryffindor Head of House

"Huh, now I think about it, permission is spelt double S" Jasper commented after reading the note back. "We should go back and correct it."
 
"Stop fussing Jasper, no one is going to pay that much attention to what's in the note, only the signature!" She told him in a harsh whisper. After all, everything about the signature was perfect. When she'd visited James in the Head of House office the other day she'd nicked a piece of parchment he'd incinerated, but it hadn't completely gone to waste. She'd managed to spend several hours on the signature, until she got it exactly correct, why she was so confident in it's exactness that she was convinced that even her Head of House himself would have been completely fooled (he would not have, the signature's not that good.) "If we go back now someone will spot us for sure." She told him, trying to reassure him that not only were they totally fine, but that worrying about it would only make the adventure a problem. If they stood here worrying about it they were never going to get anywhere. All she hoped was that the portraits let them be, after all, they had a note.

"Once we've seen all we can see, we'll go back, besides, Mr. Professor Cade likes me, there's no way he'd get me in trouble," she said, believing fiercely in that. He knew her mother too, and her mother wouldn't want her getting into trouble. They were friends, and she was sure he would give her a chance to explain herself if anything happened. But it didn't matter, because nothing was going to happen.
 
Jasper frowned, still feeling uneasy and glancing around nervously. He had to admit, she’d done an impressive job with the signature and the note was good, "Okay, I guess you're right."

Taking a deep breath, he nodded and tried to draw reassurance from her words. "Do you think Professor Cade likes you enough to also not be angry with me?" Jasper asked, he didn't have contacts like Tori and felt a little vulnerable and anxious. This anxiety was spoiling the adventure for him and he could hear Tori wanted to get on with it. He needed to be more of a Gryffindor and be brave, he stowed the note away, took a deep breath and carried on walking.
 
Tori patted her friend on the shoulder. "Don't worry about it, Mr. Professor Cade is nice, and since you're practically my best friend in Gryffindor, there's no way he can be mad at you." She assured him, nodding resolutely. She didn't know what he was being so worried about anyway, since there wasn't anyone even in the corridor. "I heard there was like a... a room around here on one of the corridors. I can't remember which one. But like it comes and goes at will... or something. Do you reckon we could find it? Then we wouldn't even need the note we could just hide out in the room." And what an adventure that would be honestly. She really hoped Jasper would gain a bit more confidence, she couldn't afford for him to run out on her at a moment's hesitation.
 
Being best friends comforted Jasper, he wasn't normally very good at making friends but he and Tori had hit it off with the help of playing Gobstones regularly. And now they had to stick together, Jasper had to block out the instinctive flight messages his brain was giving him on red alert and stick with his best friend. He gave a small smile, then raised an eyebrow at the suggestion of a room that came and went. "But where does it go when it goes?" Jasper asked, puzzled by the idea. "What are you supposed to do if you have a lesson in there and it's not there?" He assumed it would be a classroom like most other rooms in the castle. "Yes lets find this room, it probably isn't expecting anyone to be around at this hour and we can catch it off guard." He felt weird talking about a room as if it was a thinking being, but at least it was something to distract his thoughts away from the impending doom he was otherwise feeling.
 
Tori had to admit, she didn't actually know. Where did the room go when it went away? Maybe that was one of the things they would be able to discover about it because it sounded like it would be an obvious point to know. She wondered if anyone in the school had ever found the room before them, or if they would be the first. That was kind of exciting to think about. "Maybe we'll be the first ones to find out! And, we could have some of the gobstones clubs meetings here too, what do you think? Maybe it could move around a little bit, different rooms every time right?" Jasper seemed to have his heart set on the fact that gobstones would be in the other common room they found before, but Tori (as vice president and co founder) was more of the belief that it should be something that moved around a little. "Maybe it knows there's a lesson and so it makes sure it's around? Maybe we can't find it without a schedule do you think?" Catching it off guard might be a good idea, but some of the portraits were watching them, what if they alerted the room?
 
Jasper and Tori were working out plans for their Gobstones club bit by bit and it was beginning to take shape through ideas that came and went, not unlike the room. He listened to Tori suggest that they should host meetings in the room that comes and goes. "It depends what the room looks like." Jasper replied sensibly, they had never seen it before and could be the size of a broom closet for all they knew.

"I wouldn't mind the occasional meeting outside of the student lounge though. When the weather is nice we could host outside sometimes."
He suggested, he agreed they needed to find this rooms schedule but Jasper had no idea where to start with that. He was curious to know more about what Tori knew. "Who told you about this room?"
 
Tori nodded solemnly at Jasper. He was right after all, it was probably a good idea that they find the room first so they could make an informed decision about whether or not the room would work out for their purposes. Tori had a lot of ideas about what they should do here, but she also didn't want to overwhelm herself. After all, the official wizards games club, featuring gobstones, would be a lot of work if they got people to join. Tori was okay at wizards chess, though she'd yet to beat Lumos. She wondered if he and Nox would join their club. "The courtyards! Or there's a lake, we could do a nice picnic or something?" She said, wondering if that would be helpful. She wasn't much of a cook but she wasn't bad, maybe they could go down to the kitchens and get some food from there, if they had a lot of people join she wouldn't be able to make that much food. "I heard about it from my dad, he went looking for it once, he reckons he narrowed it down to one of the three corridors either this one, or the fifth floor or the seventh floor."
 
Conan had never thought that a day would come when he would be patrolling the castle. He was never a prefect in his years as a student, so there had been no reason to be up and about during after curfew. Except he had been up and about. A lot. Like a lot, a lot. So it felt kind of criminal now to be the one patrolling because he could kind of remember his own hidey-hole. Thank Merlin that the stories they'd told the kids were heavily edited; otherwise, they could be utter nightmares. He'd been about to check an area on the sixth floor that he'd used to hide out in when he heard voices just down the corner. Well, that was just insulting. Didn't kids these days know how to sneak around? He approached the sources of the voices and found two students who couldn't be older than second year. Third, if he was being generous. His money was on first years though considering they didn't even know that they should be quiet if they'd decided to be out at this hour. He came up behind the two and cleared his throat. "You're going in the entirely wrong direction if you're looking for the room I think you're looking for and this is definitely not the time you should be looking for it."
 
It was helpful that Tori's dad had done a lot of the investigating for them. "Three corridors? Well, I guess that gives us a starting point. We can check those out and see what we find," Jasper said, feeling optimistic. However, his optimism turned out to be short lived.

He heard footsteps and turned to see a professor approaching. Jasper winced, feeling caught but not quite defeated. "Uh, sorry, Professor. We were just, uh, told it was down here" he stammered, glancing at Tori for help, for all he knew the professor was talking about a different room to the one they were looking for. Jasper relied on Tori who was the better talker out of the two of them, she was far less likely to breakdown, and for all he knew, might know the professor personally.

He scratched the back of his head sheepishly, feeling his brain turn to noodle soup. Maybe this was the moment to pull out the note? Jasper shifted nervously, hoping Tori would jump in and save the day.
 
Tori nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, I mean we can try them all, we have a lot of time now with this note and -" she trailed off, hearing the voice that called into the very soul. She hadn't really expected a Professor to be out this late. Why would they be out this late anyway? Weren't everyone supposed to be in bed? She cleared her throat, quickly grabbing the note from Jasper. He clearly had no idea what to say so she was going to have to save them both with her quick thinking. She turned to the professor and gave him a smile. "It's okay Professor, we have a note!" She said, handing it over and looking back at Jasper. Nothing could possibly go wrong here.
 
Conan looked at the two kids skeptically as he took the note and read it. Well. He had to give them points for creativity. "Very well. I understand of course that I cannot in good conscience meddle in Gryffindor business being a Hufflepuff," he said as he turned around and discretely used his wand to duplicate the note, albeit making changes of his own and putting both notes in his pocket, just in case. "As you are Miss de Lacey and Mr. Beese, I believe the two of you need to follow me," he said as he started to walk, "as I've received a note from your head of house that you must report your findings immediately. It seemed urgent," he said before looking back and realizing that he probably shouldn't be the one in front. Merlin knows he would have run by now. So he moved back to position himself behind the two of them, and place a hand on their shoulder, "Now we must hurry, or I'll be forced to deduct points starting at ten. Each."
 
Jasper let Tori take the note from him and hand it to the professor. For a moment, the Gryffindor had a look of absolute sickening horror on his face, only to be replaced by relief as it seemed the professor was fooled by the note. That relief was short lived, and he found himself on an emotional rollercoaster. Stuck in one place, he hesitated to move even with the professors encouragement. He wondered how Professor Cade could have sent this professor a note when theirs was a fake. He decided to push the line that the note was real.

"Um, well professor," Jasper began, glancing nervously at Tori and hoping she would go along with this and not silently will him to shut up, "We've only been out a short time and we don't have any findings to report. Not yet anyway." His voice wavered slightly and betrayed his nerve. His plan wasn't a solution exactly, but it might buy them time which was always a good thing in these situations. "I thought that Professor Cade gave us, uh, a week?" He looked at Tori for support on this. More time was a good thing, right?
 
Tori didn't know how this professor had managed to get a note from Professor Cade to come and see him immediately when the note had been fake in the first place, but it didn't seem like he was lying about it. Had Professor Cade actually given them permission then? She didn't think so, and she frowned, looking over at Jasper who seemed just as confused as she was. She hoped the confusion would come off as them being surprised they were being recalled so quickly. "But hang on," she said, looking at this professor who's name currently eluded her, he wasn't one of the lower years professors then, so he had to be upper years, or a caretaker, which was probably worse. Since they probably knew all of the hidden places that people could be hiding. Not that Tori wanted to be hiding right now, since they'd already been found. Dang, she should have been quieter. "We aren't ready to go back yet, we only just got this note, how could Professor Cade expect us back already, like Jasper said, he gave us a week, and probably more!" She added, frowning and trying to look as confused by all of this as possible, to really sell it. "We won't have found anything yet, and so there's no point going to see him, we might as well just go straight back to our common room, hey Jasper?"
 
Conan already knew that the kids would be confused, but he nodded along. "Well, you know how you get graded every lesson, but you only get the final grade at the end of the semester. It might be like that," he said in explanation. He thinks he did well explaining that one. "Well, then all you have to report is that you have nothing to report. Adults are weird like that," he said with a long-suffering sigh. He frowned a little though at the thought of the two returning to the common room. Well, he didn't mind that either. Might be easier to just bring them there and send James a note. "Okay then, let's get you two back to your Common Room," he said as he gently pushed the two to start walking back. "Now start walking, or it's 15 points each."
 
Jasper tried to keep his emotions under control, hoping it would come off as genuine surprise rather than the panic that was feeling right now. He glanced at Tori, who was doing an admirable job of looking perplexed and indignant, she had Jasper fooled. "Yeah, exactly," he chimed in, trying to back her up, but the professor still wasn't listening.

As the professor started to steer them back, Jasper shot a desperate glance at Tori. This plan was unraveling faster than he had anticipated and he no idea how to salvage it. Tori should have listened to him all along he thought, and he would likely remind her of that later. "Okay I get it, I suppose back to the common room then," he muttered, walking, but walking slowly.
 
"But you said ten before, why is it going up?" she asked turning to look over her shoulder at the professor as he marched them along the corridor, she didn't think that was fair because they were complying, maybe if they weren't complying that would be fair, but they were, so why were they being potentially punished? He hadn't taken the points yet, sure, but that hardly mattered did it? "We'll go back to the common room, like you asked, you don't need to take us there," she had no way of knowing if their head of house was in or not and the professor might just take it on himself to check, Tori had no idea if other professors could be in their common rooms and she didn't think today was the day she wanted to find out.
 
"Because you're both dragging this out and if you drag this out we'll all be in trouble," Conan said with a long-suffering sigh. Which was technically both true. He was pretty sure that catching students wandering out of the Common Room past curfew was currently part of his job description, which was honestly a bit hypocritical considering the number of times he was out after curfew. He had to give the kids credit though. Don't need to escort was definitely something he would have told professors too had he been caught. As it was, he was rarely caught, because he knew to be quiet. "If we, as in all three of us, get back to your Common Room quickly I'll bring it back down to ten," Conan conceded because he didn't want to risk them leaving his sight and not heading back to the Common Room.
 
Jasper exchanged a quick, almost panicked glance with Tori before turning back to the professor with a nod. “We are heading back,” he said, trying to sound casual and polite. "But, uh, just for the record, I really don’t think we should be losing any points. Since we have permission to be out here." He was still running that line for what it was worth.

As they were walking in the direction of the common room, Jasper kept glancing over his shoulder, half-expecting, but mostly hoping, the professor would disappear. When they finally reached the Gryffindor common room, he let out a sigh of relief, turning to the professor with a grin that was a little too forced, even for Jasper. "Well, thanks for the walk," he said, hoping this was the end. "Er, goodnight then." With any luck, this was it.
 
Jasper seemed to be doing a great job of sticking to the story, Tori thought that was a very good idea, since they couldn't be caught out for not telling the truth easily if they didn't keep chasing their story and so far this one had worked. "Yes, you can just drop us off here and you won't need to do anything else, we can report our findings to Professor Cade in the morning, since it's so urgent," she added, thinking it might be easier to sneak away if they weren't going and knocking on their head of houses door. It made more sense, she thought, and then they could just pretend like none of this ever happened. Maybe she could even get Jasper to try this again with her, that would be a lot of fun. She looked over her shoulder at him with a grin. "Thanks for the escort professor, but we have it from here I think."
 
James was on his way back to the Gryffindor common room for the evening, forced to have to take the long way as he had been meeting a colleague on a higher floor than his office and couldn’t take the shortcut through the fireplace. He heard voiced from the other side of the corridor and recognised one as being Tori, he decided that as he was going to catch her out of the dorms past curfew, he could make an entrance while doing do. He hide himself in the far corner of the corridor which was covered mostly by shadow and watched as Tori and Jasper appeared with Professor Edogawa, it seems he’d caught them first and was perhaps bringing them to him for punishment. “Since it’s so urgent, why don’t we go inside,” James said stepping out of the shadow to greet his students. “Sorry, couldn’t resist making an entrance, thanks for bringing them up Conan, what did she do this time?”
 
Since they'd gotten back to the Common Room in record time, Conan considered making the point deductions he promised back to ten. The two kids were interesting enough and he must say that he found it quite amusing that they'd stuck to their story the whole time. He just needed to make sure first that the kids actually go into the Common Room. The next thing Conan would need to do though was to probably let James know that he'd caught some of his lions, except he didn't know where the Gryffindor Head of House would be. He was stuck with these two dilemmas when he practically jumped because a professor stepped out of the shadows to address all of them and think Sh*t, we're in trouble. Or well, at least until he realized that it was James and that... well... he was a professor too. He cleared his throat as he pulled out the note that Tori had given him earlier, handing it to James. "Well, I told them that I got a note from you to report their findings on the Gryffindor business you authorised."
 
Jasper jumped when Professor Cade emerged from the shadows. What on earth had he been doing there? Jasper would’ve thought on it further if he wasn’t currently on the verge of a panic attack.

He had to focus on not breathing too fast, or too slow. Oh crap! Was he breathing at all?! Jasper felt his chest tighten and his vision blur at the edges. He thought of fainting. Yes. Fainting might actually be useful right now. If he fainted, he and Tori could avoid punishment. It seemed like a solid plan. He just had to let go and swoon gracefully like those elegant ladies in those Regency Romance novels mum read.

Jasper wobbled a little, testing the waters. He tilted his head back slightly, trying to encourage his brain to shut down. Nothing. His body stubbornly refused to cooperate, remaining inconveniently conscious. As it turned out it was really hard to consciously fall unconscious. He rebalanced himself just in time to look on horrified at their note being passed on to their Head of House.
 
Tori looked wide eyed at Professor Cade as he seemed to slink out of the shadows like some shady creature and she frowned at him. Well that was just entirely unnecessary. She searched his face to try and gauge how angry he might be, but it was hard to tell. As much as she had spent time with him, she'd mostly spent time with his twins so any real information she had on him was from experiencing him outside of a school setting and it had already become pretty clear to her that he was a different man professionally. She frowned as Professor Edogawa handed over the forged note, stepping in front of Jasper to, what? shield him? They already knew he was there, but she didn't care, she tilted her chin defiantly. She was annoyed that he'd immediately jumped to her being the instigator instead of Jasper, he didn't know Jasper, maybe it was his fault! Sure, she'd made the forgery and he'd probably know her handwriting immediately, but that wasn't the point, she hadn't been the only one there.

@Jasper Beese @Professor Conan Edogawa @Professor James Cade
 
James took the note in his hand and examined it, smiling to himself as he admired the signature but the text of the note needed a lot of work. He admired the ingenuity involved to pull something so brazen, even he hadn't dared to forge a professors signature during his time at the school, but he had to punish them no matter how impressed he was. "Which one of you would like to claim responsibility for the note? Or am I punishing you equally?"
 

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