“You surprise me, Munro. I thought all prefects had to be major killjoys with a stick shoved up their bums. How did you manage to skip those qualifications?”

"You're probably the only one."  Laughed Walt.  He thought himself to be quite horribly predictable actually, but that was before he took into account the being in jail, the cliff diving, the hangover.  In truth he was more concerned about the spirit of the rule breaker.  Being out of bed hurt no one but the student in question, and seemed a silly thing to punish for.  There were a relatively limited amount of reasonable reprecussions to being out alone past curfew.  Therefore it was a silly thing to lose points for.  Hurting a younger student, making a scene in front of the student body, defacing the school...those seemed like much more punishable offenses off hand, but with the exception of hurting another student Walt supposed intent and curiosity must always be factored in.  He'd given the whole matter quite a bit of thought actually, and had come to a good many conclusions, including that a Prefect had to uphold the code and shouldn't really make his own rules.  So he did his best, even if occasionally that meant looking in the other direction.  Still.  That was quite dull, and certainly not a talking point.

"Very few volunteers."   He said finally, "what else?"

The parchment in front of her was not homework, and so he was 0 for 2. 

“Letter, actually. But I’m a bit rubbish about writing them in general, so you can see how far I have gotten. Dear Dad, that’s it. Oh and the date but that’s just as bad

Walt helped himself to a scone and did his best to look thoughtful and not distracted.   "Just put what you think he wants to hear." The boy advised at last.  "Blain--that's well, he and Bess.  Um."  This was more difficult than he expected.  "Well, my dad, technically.  He wrote that his wife was pregnant and what am I supposed to say except congratulations?"

“There should only be two letters ever, bad news and love letters Every thing else is kind of trivial, don’t you think? I mean, there’s only so much ‘Miss you dad and I’m going to lie about studying. Oh and I haven’t lost any points for Gryffindor so far but hey, it’s just the first week back so...yeah, you know?”

"I could go back and get the badge." He offered, "if you'd really like to write about losing points.  You could tell him..." He was having some trouble thinking of something actually.  Besides, her dad assumedly knew her better than he did.  "Your plans for Valentine's Day." He said finally.  "You know. If you have any.  Or anything."  He drank his hot chocolate  to shut up.