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THINGS ABSOLUTELY DO NOT get better on Monday. Which is, to the misery of the people, pretty characteristic for any typical Monday. Once the weekend passes, it's as if the universe can't stop flinging chaos curveball after chaos curveball.
For one, classes were starting again, which meant more homework, and although Sawyer's extant adversity towards putting in any effort into anything at all remained ceaseless, she wasn't above skimming through the bare minimum for the sake of keeping her mother off her back. Even if it meant just barely coasting. For student athletes—most of whom were already taking the bare minimum electives—on top of homework, there was also Quidditch training three times a week which left little time for much else besides living and breathing industrious productivity for the rest of the semester.
In addition to the standard Hufflepuff team's scheduled practice, Sawyer also had Oliver's insane plan for supplementary training for Harry and Violet, which he'd campaigned for four times a week. For fifth year students like Sawyer, the eminent inevitability of O.W.L.s meant that professors were starting to pile up on paramount revision material, essay after essay after essay, reading after reading after reading. Enough to suffocate any shred of reprieve that could possibly present itself once a task was complete. Don't worry, look to your left, there's another mountain of work left to move.
In special cases like Sawyer's, only two choices prevailed: drop out ASAP or waste more time trying to learn things she'd be too slow to pick up.
By the time Sawyer slumped like a murderous sack of stones into her usual seat at the end of the Slytherin table for breakfast, the notion of death by defenestration sounded increasingly appealing.
Without lifting his eyes from the copy of the Daily Prophet in his hands, Jeremy—always the first to arrive, always the earliest to rise on his own volition—pushed a plate of waffles stacked in a glistering mountain dripping and soaked through with maple syrup (just the way Sawyer liked it) across the table. Behind Jeremy, the Bloody Baron, Slytherin house ghost, glowered at her yolk yellow Hufflepuff tie over his shoulder as he drifted by, chains shackled to his translucent body rattling. Sawyer met his resentful gaze with no shift in her expression besides the ice in her eyes, and stabbed her fork through her waffles with a savage vehemence.
As the minutes ticked by, the last dregs of students began to trickle through the doors of the Great Hall. Slow chatter filled the bleary-eyed morning, building up a momentum to a riotous background static, punctuated by the rustle of pages as Jeremy flipped through the news, that dug persistently into Sawyer's skull like an ice pick as she fought to stay awake. Professors were already perched like vultures on their raised platform, making small talk and picking at their breakfast spread.
