Cool Cat Ravenclaw Kids (Kaleb)

Hogwarts was still really awesome, but it was really tiring. Derek hadn’t expected it to be all sunshine and rainbows, yet had been overwhelmed by the homework he had to do and classes to run to and stairs he had to conquer. At first, he had stayed up late just because his mother wasn’t here to tell him otherwise, but now he had realised what a bad idea that was and how horrible and exhausted he would be the next day.

After dinner, he went to chill in the common room for a while. Before long, he had decided that he wanted to go and read in his dormitory for a while before he went to sleep. Even though he shared a room with a boy in his year, he had hardly seen this Kaleb boy at all. At least, he hadn’t really socialised with him much. Kaleb was probably cool and he was eager to get to know him but the only opportunities seemed to be when Derek just wanted to sleep. And when he wanted to sleep, he slept, no matter what, because sleep was sleep. And sleep was sleep. Yes.

He flopped onto his bed and spread out, then grabbed his Transfiguration book from his backpack. It was a huge, heavy, scary sort of book. Nothing like a bit of light reading before bed. Maybe it seemed boring, but he became very absorbed in the textbook quickly.

Kaleb ran down a hallway. He had spotted her in a corridor and didn't feel like dealing with her and her friends today. He felt the safest way to avoid her would be to go to his own common room. He checked every hallway before entering it to see if he would have to find another way around.

He wondered if his roommate would be in there...He hadn't seen the kid much, and actually didn't know his name (was that bad?). The only time he was in his room was to sleep, and he tried to avoid all other ways to avoid people. He didn't feel comfortable around other people, and he preferred to be alone.

It was a sad life he was living, but who could blame him? His whole life had just been him and his mom. And now he was thrown into a family who he didn't even know he had, and then after he was kind of settling into his new home, they tossed him in a boarding school with his least favorite person in the family. Ugh. The struggle.

He answered the question correctly to get into the common room. It was quite simple actually. And he walked into the common room and went straight up to his and his roommates room, and laid down on his bed and sighed. Another obstacle accomplished. He didn't realize that there was somebody else in the room. He looked over to the other four poster bed, and saw...what's his name... He couldn't remember it for the life of him.

He said, "Hey."

Derek laughed. Then he stared at Kaleb for a moment. And then he bounced up from his seat and jumped up and down a little bit. All this positive energy, it had to go somewhere. He was just very excited to see him roommate, so he had expressed this through happy chuckles, pleased stares and some exercise. This was all because Kaleb was such an affable, amicable friend to have. If he really counted as a friend. They hardly knew each other, but he imagined in the future they would spend a lot of time together so it was important that they made friends now.

A simple "hey" was Kaleb's greeting. That was a clever move. Not committing to anything, still sounding quite cool. And enigmatic, almost esoteric. Esoteric was an adjective which described something intended for a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest. Like few people would be able to understand his esoteric research on the details of algorithms. "Hey Kaleb," he replied casually. "Can I call you Kal? Maybe K? Kaleb is so much effort to say." Maybe he'd even get a cool nickname in return. It was hard to shorten, his name, but this was a smart child.

"Oh, I meant to ask you something!" he suddenly remembered. "I met this pretty girl, Lily, she said you were her brother... she wasn't lying, was she?" Derek hoped not because that would crush his dreams and high opinions of this girl. "She also accidentally mentioned that you have a tragic, undesirable, miserable, unfortunate past and you find her quite unpleasant?" He couldn't understand at all. "I don't mean to delve into your personal life and come across as nosy." By the way.

He flopped back on his bed, resting his head on the fluffy, congenial, perfect pillow. "We have a nice dorm," he commented. "More than nice, incredibly satisfactory, actually."