Johan was late for kitchen duty the next morning.
Sebastian and Dorin were already placing their 1st batch of meat pies in the oven when he came running into the kitchen.
"Well, look who decided to join us!" Mrs. Cooper teased him.
"Sorry..." mumbled Johan, "I've never over-slept before..."
"Well, hurry up and help with the baking," said the head cook as she kneaded more dough for her pies.
"Did you sleep well?" Dorin asked him with a friendly grin.
"Yeah..." Johan replied absentmindedly. "...for some reason..." his voice trailed off. Dorin and Sebastian exchanged knowing glances.
The three had their first diagnostic test after their kitchen duty. They were later called to the Dorm Head's office where Ms. Ermingard was waiting for them inside, holding a big ring of keys and a thick ledger.
"Ignacius, Revious, Silvius, huh..." she huffed as she checked the ledger. "Congratulations, as of today, you three will be transferred to the room for the Special Class." She looked at them over her spectacles and smirked. "It seems your crazy antics have some use after all."
"Thank you, Ms. Ermingard," Dorin happily replied.
"I didn't mean that as a compliment," said the Dormitory Head. "Anyway, have you got all your belongings ready for the room transfer?"
"Yup!" Dorin answered immediately.
[Yes, ma'am] Sebastian seconded.
"Um... actually... I still have to pack some stuff..." Johan mumbled, "But I don't have much, so I won't be taking too long..."
"We'll go to your room first then," said Ms. Ermingard, "These two can help you pack."
"No thanks, I don't want people touching my stuff," Johan grunted. "It's great that I'll be having my very own room."
"Oh, right, you didn't know," Dorin interrupted Johan. "We're all staying in the Special Class room on the top floor," he told the fire mage as they entered the 2nd floor and turned to room 213. "It's one big room where the three of us can all stay together."
Johan stopped on his tracks.
"What the he– what are you talking about? What Special Class?"
[Don't worry, you will still have a separate sleeping area] wrote Sebastian as he entered the room and stopped in front of Johan's bed. There were several trash scattered around the floor, but the bed itself was immaculate.
"What's all this litter doing around your bed?" the dorm head asked.
Several students who were inside the room kept their gazes down.
"Beats me." Johan jumped on his bed, pulled out the mattress and reached his arm inside it, pulling out a small coffee canister from within. He then placed it in a battered bag he got from beneath his bed and proceeded dumping some articles of clothing on top of it. "There, I'm ready," he said after closing the bag. It barely bulged.
"Johan..." called a timid voice from behind. "Is it true? You're leaving for the scholars' rooms?" Johan looked at a pale looking kid with big gray watery eyes and clicked his tongue.
"Yeah, what ever..." he slung his bag on his shoulder and turned his back on the person. "You can have the bed if you want, Johnson." He then faced the dorm head. "I'm ready to go."
As they left, Sebastian heard the students in the room murmuring.
"Stuck up bastard!" one said.
"Good riddance!" said another.
He looked at Johan who didn't seem to care, then at Dorin who was beginning to look pissed. He touched Dorin's arm just as the other touched one of Johan's bed posts. He felt power surge from Dorin down to the bed, as a small spark settled on it.
"Johnson, right?" he called to the pale kid. "The bed's yours. Have a good night sleep here tonight," he said with a grin.
"Silvius, Revius, time to go," Ms.Ermingard called from the doorway.
"Coming!" Dorin called back, pulling Sebastian along with him.
They went to their room next on the 4th floor.
Dorin only had his sachel, while Sebastian had several boxes in tow. Johan and Sebastian had to help him carry the stuff to the top floor.
[Please be very careful, those are fragile] He wrote for Johan to read.
Johan stared at the words, his frown getting deeper, when a drawing of a broken glass appeared on Sebastian's slate. Understanding suddenly came into the boy's face.
"Don't worry, I won't drop your junk." He lifted two boxes and followed Dorin and the dorm head to the main staircase.
They went up another flight of stairs where the single rooms were located – these were for thefull scholars, and for paying university students who were used to a life in luxury. They went to the end of the hall and climbed up another flight of stairs to reach the top floor.
The attic floor, like the rest of the Dorm, was carpeted, but the carpet here was so thick that no sound could be heard as they entered wide entryway. There were 3 doors on either side of the long hallway. Ms. Ermingard opened the first door to the left labelled SC01 and led the small group inside.
"This will be your room for now," she told the 3 students who where busy exploring the room. "There are 5 bedrooms in all, a kitchen and dining area, a living area, and a spare room for your experiments, if ever you have any."
She went across the room to show the students the kitchen.
"There' a working fridge and a stove – which hopefully Dorin would stay away from. The toilet and bath is at the other end, and yes, there's a tub in it," she nodded at an excited Sebastian. "Your rooms have a bed and a walk in closet, as well as a small table and shelves." She went to the living area last. "This here TV is time locked," she said.
Dorin and Johan stared at the flat empty screen with their mouths open.
"You can watch from 6 am to 9 pm only." Ms. Ermingard opened the TV with the remote. The two ignorant boys jumped back as the screen came to life, showing a crowd of people in a rock concert.
"What in Vulcan's name is that?!" Johan blurted out as he jumped on top of the couch. Sebastian secretly thanked Professor Raevers for sealing his fire away.
"That is a TV," Ms. Ermingard answered, not at all surprised. "You can watch movies in it, or real time news from around the world." She looked at Sebastian and smiled sympathetically. "I'll leave the explaining to you, teacher Sebastian," she said with a smirk.
Ms. Ermingard left shortly.
Dorin checked out one bedroom after the other, then the spare room at the end of the hall and the spacey bathroom. Johan, on the other hand, fell entranced by the television set.
"Which room are you choosing?" Dorin asked Sebastian as he came back from the bathroom.
[The one next to the spare room.] replied Sebastian who was already taking his stuff to the end of the hall.
"Okay, I'll take the one next to it then." Dorin ran to Johan and asked the same question. "Which room are you choosing?"
"I'll take any room left..." Johan trailed off. He was watching a documentary about snow leopards. "That's snow..." he mumbled to Dorin. "I've never seen it before..."
"Oh, you want to see some now?" Dorin asked happily.
Later, when Sebastian went back to take the rest of his stuff, he noticed that the temperature had dropped drastically and that white flurries where drifting all over the place.
"More! Make more!" Johan was shouting from the top of the couch.
He was shivering from the cold, but he did not care. He jumped face first into the piling snow in the middle of the living room. When he got up, there was a big grin on his face. He looked like a small kid on his 1st vacation to the alps. Sebastian couldn't believe the 5 foot 8 inches tall kid was capable of making such an expression.
Sebastian stomped his feet to catch their attention. Dorin was making a small snowman by the door, using one of his test tubes as a nose.
[What are you doing?!] Sebastian almost shoved the slate under Dorin's face. [You're gonna get us in trouble! And you're gonna spoil that fabulous carpet!]
"Don't worry, we'll get rid of the snow later!" Dorin said with a laugh.
"Yeah, I'll just dry it up after we play!" Johan piped in, the smile still on his face.
[But if Ms. Ermingard finds out about this]
"Who's gonna tell?" Dorin threw a snowball that hit Sebastian right between the eyes, his glasses fell off on the snowy carpet.
[Why you little] Sebastian, forgetting about his worries, took a handful of snow and threw it at Dorin. It crumpled before it hit the wind mage.
"You need to get it nice and compact!" said Dorin as he threw another one at Sebastian, hitting his shoulder this time.
"Nice and compact!" Johan mimicked.
He took two hands full of snow and smacked them together, then threw it at Dorin's direction. The big ball flew halfway and fell near Dorin's feet.
"Too Heavy!" Shouted Dorin as he let fly a snow ball that hit Johan squarely in the face.
The fire mage gave a grunt and fell on the floor.
Sebastian stared, expecting the fire mage to loose his temper, instead, he sat up with a laugh and started bombarding Dorin with smaller snow balls.
Soon the snowball fight was at full swing. Dorin hid behind a coat rack white Sebastian and Johan made a fort behind the couch. When the three were finally exhausted – and shivering uncontrollably, Dorin stopped the snow by breathing out hot air, while Johan evaporated the water and damp that remained.
The three of them collapsed on the warm couch, still laughing, and finally settled down. Johan took a deep breath and sighed.
"I have never laughed this much before," he said dreamily. "Not even when I burned that mine contractor who kept hitting grandmother, I didn't laugh this good..."
"Ah, the last time I laughed this hard was when I finally learned how to make my own goat's cheese, and I had all the cheese I could eat and ended up all day the next day in the restroom..."
"You were laughing inside the restroom?" asked Johan.
"No, I was laughing the day before, because my mother told me that only good boys can eat goat's cheese," Dorin laughed as he explained, "and I certainly was no good boy for taking the milk from the nearest village's goat herd!"
The two looked at Sebastian, still grinning like crazy. "What about you, Sebastian?" Johan asked him. "When was the last time you laughed?"
[I can't laugh.] Sebastian wrote down. [I can't remember when I last laughed since I killed my father.]
The two lost the smiles on their faces.
[But this sure is fun, more fun than turning my whole class into lizards] he wrote with a straight face.
"Yeah, well, I better choose my room," Johan said with a smirk.
"I'll help you carry the rest of your stuff." Dorin picked up Sebastian's boxes and followed him to his room. As he placed the box down on the floor he looked at Sebastian and was about to speak when Sebastian interrupted him.
[I don't want to talk about it] he said. [Just hurry up and unpack.]