[sep mp] not shy • { phillip }

"Sorry for being twelve," , she'd told him, and although Phillip was reminded that she was just a kid, she was still annoying. Phillip was not very good at this whole mentoring thing. He could barely handle conversations with his year-mates without getting judgemental; how was he supposed to carry out one with a twelve-year-old. Sighing, he chose not to respond to her quip and instead focussed on the work before them. If he could teach her this, then he could leave, and hopefully, there was still enough time in the day to find the professor and quit this SNAIL program entirely.

If only they could keep on the topic of her classwork, maybe, just maybe, he could have figured out how to help her. But no, teeny tiny ballbuster Tomie Vos had more things to say. Phillip's green eyes rose as she called him out on being a prefect, and even though she was one hundred percent right, it was still frustrating to hear. The Ravenclaw had never wanted to be a Prefect; he was awful at it, he took advantage of it, Phillip never did the jobs he was supposed to, and he was generally horrible to the first years. Of course, the one year he wouldn't have minded being one (now that Billie had been named Prefect), it was taken away. That was just his luck, though.

"I think twelve-year-olds are supposed to have basic math skills," He replied just as sarcastically as she had. Blinking a few times, Phillip wasn't angry with her, but he sure was aggravated. Enough that he'd sunk low enough to argue with a preteen. This was not where he thought the day was going to go, and he sighed again.

I think twelve-year-olds are supposed to have basic math skills.

Tomie’s mouth fell open at his words, and remained opened for a comical moment before she laughed – just a single, sarcastic Ha! as she stood straight up where she was sitting. Her chair made a loud scraping sound against the floor and several people looked over, alarmed. “Well sorry I don’t meet your standards Mr. ex-Ravenclaw-prefect,” she snapped haughtily.

Tomie could feel the blood pumping in her ears, and even though something in the back of her head told her she should check her volume, she wasn’t bothering to be quiet at all. The brunette glanced down at her workbook, thensnatched it up unceremoniously. Her face felt hot. “Let me relieve you of my idiotic presence so you can get back to your diary-writing,” she said, and slung her backpack over her shoulder. She had to get out quick, because when she got angry like this sometimes she cried, and she really hated crying in front of people when she was mad.

The young witch slung her backpack over her shoulder as she marched away, raging.

Grimacing as she made just about as much noise as someone so tiny was probably physically capable of Phillip, watched her get out of her seat. She was obnoxious, he thought, but not that he hadn't deserved every ounce of it. Phillip really should not have been a mentor. Honestly, the professor who accepted him into the program shouldn't have been a professor. What poor judgment. She grabbed the book off of the table, and for a split second, Phillip thought she might try to smack him with it. She seemed like she would burst at the seams, she was so angry, but Phillip just watched her move away from him.

It's not a diary was all he thought when she spat more insults his way because, of course, that was the one thing he latched on to. Did he care that he'd been rude to her? Not really. Did he care that she thought he had a diary? Yup. "Okay," he told her pathetically, his eyebrows raising as though he was unphased by this development. He would much rather return to his writing; it was far more peaceful. "Bye, then?" He said as she threw on her backpack and stomped her feet toward the exit.

There were plenty of looks cast his way as she did, both from the noise and the apparent assumptions that it was his fault. What did he care about what people thought of him? He only had one year of this nonsense left anyway. Returning to his not-diary, Phillip began writing Billie. He thought about telling her what had just happened, but for some odd reason, he didn't want her to know. Sometimes it felt like she was the only person in the world who didn't look at him like he was the bad guy.

/end