The Hall Brawl PV Rosie Parker Finished

Were all the older years like this? What was the problem with them, were they drinking placid juice? Or did getting older just make you soft in the head? It definitely couldn't be the latter of the options considering how sharp his father was (and how easily the man always seemed to triumph in their battles of wit), so perhaps it was just this girl. Or even her House. Hufflepuff... he didn't really know any other Hufflepuffs, but if they were all like this one then there was no point in meeting them.

"What a pointless conversation to have first thing in the morning," he groaned to himself, scrubbing at the corners of his eyes. What was the point of being alive if not for that metallic taste of adrenaline during debates or danger? He swore half the people in this school behaved like NPCs in games - no matter what you did to them, they followed their preordained paths of pleasantry. Maybe everyone was in The Matrix, but it was a really shitty version of The Matrix where instead of cool characters bursting in, everyone was non-self-aware characters like Free Guy but without Ryan Reynolds.

The pat from the taller girl made his eyes roll back so far in his head he may as well have been possessed. Not only was she boring, but she had no sense of personal boundaries. Half of him wanted to clutch his head and fall to the ground screaming at the top of his lungs about some sort of horrible scalp disease that she'd just irritated.

The other half couldn't be bothered. He was quickly losing his ability to care about teasing a reaction from her, and he settled into a neutral shrug. "Sure." He was the NPC now, falling into numb monosyllables as he went back to meandering his way down the hall. He hoped he didn't see her around, but if he did... he'd probably ignore her. She was so uninteresting that if he ever talked to her again it would probably be if he was having a sleeping problem and needed a voice to knock him out.

Matthew Exits the Thread