You're Still Standing By This Sinner's Side.

She frowned lightly at him. "Which one did you have? I had muggle studies, it was boring," she too made a face. "I think I have the other one later, I only glanced at my time table this morning," Evanna shrugged. "You okay though?" she asked, prodding him gently.

"Defense, and it was awful," Toby said pitifully. He looked down at his plate and poked listlessly at his food, not feeling particularly hungry. "Do I look okay?" he asked, knowing very well that it was a loaded question. There was no right answer to it.

She shrugged at him. "You look a little worn out," though he hadn't been sleeping well, and even if he had managed to fix it, one night wouldn't solve that completely. "First day of classes is always pretty tiring though." Added to the mound of homework they got before they'd been at the school a full day.

"It's not the classes that are the problem," Toby protested. "Or well, they aren't the majority of the problem." He shrugged, pushing his plate away. "I don't think I'm going to look any less tired for the rest of the year. It's just going to be a thing."

She swivelled around on the seat so that her feet were under the table, she might as well eat a little while she was talking to her brother. "What's the rest of the problem then?" she asked, grabbing and placing food onto her place. "You should speak to the matron about that sleeping thing if it doesn't right itself."

He snorted softly. "You wouldn't understand the rest of the problem, probably. It's outside the realm of your beliefs," he said, trying and failing to keep the snappishness out of his voice. The lack of sleep did little for Toby's temper and it flared more when he was in need of a good nap. "No potions will help either. It goes deeper than just being physically tired."

Halfway to reaching for some food, she stopped and glanced sideways at him with a frown. "What's outside the realms of my beliefs?" she asked. Trying to ignore the snap in his tone, which didn't really work, as she wasn't completely sure why it was there. As far as she was aware she hadn't done anything to upset him. "Potions might be able to do a little, sort of the physical tiredness, so you can sort of the rest..."

He just shrugged at her, laying his head down on the table. "I don't want to talk about it," he muttered, voice muffled by his arms. "I just want to go home, or to Peter's. Preferably Peter's."

She scrunched her nose slightly, where Toby couldn't see it. "Oh, well," she shrugged, even though he couldn't see that either. She was quiet, not quite sure of what to say. Because he couldn't, go home and especially not to Peter's. But she also wasn't going to say that. "Just don't seclude yourself from your other friends. They may not be Peter but..."

"Don't tell me what to do, Evanna," he said, lifting his head. "You're not Mum or Dad, so you can't tell me what to do. And if I don't want to talk to people, you can't make me talk to them, okay?" It was rare that he was so serious with her, but this year was already getting to him and he just wanted to go somewhere else. He loved Hogwarts and he wanted to go somewhere else. What did that tell him?

Evanna blinked at him. "Okay," she said softly. "If you don't want to that's fine. Not trying to tell you what to do, I'm just worried about you is all... thought maybe your friends could help with that. They're good at that sort of thing," she pushed her food around her plate awkwardly.

Toby immediately felt guilty. "Sorry. I just... I'm already stressed out. And while I like being around my other friends, they've got nothing on my best friend," he said, trying to make up for his attitude. "I didn't mean to take it out on you..."

"It's fine," she said putting a hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry about it," she pulled him into a hug. "I just don't want you to seclude yourself okay? You're going to need your friends this year, fifth year's a busy year. And they're probably worried about you too."

"Yeah," he agreed, tone very monotonous. "But I can't stand to be around them right now. It feels wrong and I hate it. I hate this. I hate how the school is being run this year."

She bit down on her lip. Because she knew her opinion on the matter wasn't exactly what Toby wanted, she was happy with how the school was being run. Glad that Dumbledore was finally gone. "It's...different, but it shouldn't be all bad. Muggle studies is a bit of a budge but," she shrugged.

He just stared at her for a long moment. "Right," he finally said, sounding altogether quite skeptical and disbelieving. "Sure." If this was meant to be not all that bad, he didn't want to see what it would like if it was really, really bad. Because he had a feeling it was going to escalate quickly.

She frowned, and went back to pushing her food around the plate. Not really very hungry anymore. It was difficult, to talk to Toby sometimes, especially on conversations such as this. So she stayed sitting down next to him for the rest of lunch, though neither of them said anything until they left to go to classes, and then it was just a 'I'll see you later' 'bye.'

After parting ways with his sister after lunch, Toby found himself feeling horribly guilty and made a plan to reconcile with her later, once classes had finished, even though technically he didn't need to for just having a different view on things than she did. But it would make him feel better, and it was best to not push away the one person he could currently stand being around. Mostly, at least.

Vanna and Liam were later playing chess in the common room, the others had all disappeared elsewhere, except for Esme who was sleepily watching them play, a book in her hand that she wasn't reading. Evanna swore under her breath, as her queen was taken and frowned at the chess board, ignoring Liam's smug smile.

"You can take him with your bishop," Esme pointed out.

"Esme!" Liam protested, as Evanna did just that. Esme shrugged at him, and he made a face at her.

Toby stood off in the shadows, waiting for his sister's chess game to be over before walking over to her. "Um... Evy?" he asked somewhat quietly, shuffling his feet around awkwardly as he did so. Apologizes and conversations like the one about to happen were always so very awkward.

Liam had won. Which wasn't surprising. Because he was the best out of the lot of them at chess. He was also an insufferable gloat when he won, which earned him a pawn to the head. She glanced around hearing Toby say her name. "Hey Tob," she said with a smile, and a questioning glance about why he was there. "Oh shut up Liam."

"I didn't say anything."

"I can feel your gloating and I'm not even looking at you."

He snorted.

Toby waited until they were finished bantering to speak again. "Can I talk to you...?" he asked. "Over there." He gave a nod in a direction that had a relatively empty area.

She nodded, and got to her feet. "Of course," the two headed over to the area. "Pack it up properly!" she called back at Liam. "You still owe me from last time you didn't and my queen went walkabouts," she leaned back against the wall and turned her attention to Toby. "What's up?" she asked him.

He stared down at his feet as he spoke. "I just wanted to say sorry for how I was acting earlier. I know we don't agree about this stuff, and I shouldn't be taking my bad mood out on you just because you're there and I can. So I'm sorry."

"It's okay," she said, once he had finished. "I- I understand why you did," she wasn't really happy with it, wished that Toby had ended up with the same ideals that she and their parents had. She understood why it made him unhappy, she just didn't understand why he had those views. "But it's okay, I just don't want us to start fighting or anything."