It was a bright Monday morning, and the sunlight was slanting in through the window of Justin Russo's dorm room, creeping its way along at a rate that, had he been awake, Justin could have informed you was one degree every four minutes, which brought it onto Justin's eyes at 9:41 AM. It took about another twenty seconds before the reddish light that filtered through his eyelids woke Justin up, but the effect when it did was immediate.

"Shit!" he cried out, sitting bolt upright and turning to look at the clock on his desk, which Justin regularly reset to keep its time accurate. Beside him, a girl with hair that matched his in its black color (although much longer, curlier, and considerably more shiny) opened her eyes and gave out a sound that would have caused any vulture in a hundred-yard radius to look for the dying animal that was obviously its source.

"Shit," Justin repeated as he straddled his sister in the process of getting out of bed, then crossed the tiny dorm room in three quick strides to get to the closet. Opening it, he blinked to clear his sleep-blurred eyes, reached to turn on the room's light (drawing another tortured-animal sound from his sister Alex), then reached in with both hands and started picking through his clothes, scowling as he did.

"You've got to quit turning the alarm off," Justin growled. "I've got fifteen minutes to get to class!"

A muffled response came from the bed, which years of dealing with Alex's hatred of mornings enabled Justin to interpret as, "So teleport there already."

"I did that when you turned off the alarm Friday," he snapped back, pulling on a pair of tan pants as he did. "If I keep doing it all the time, someone's going to see, Alex. And then -"

"And then wizardry will be exposed to the world, they'll lock us all away, and it'll be the end of the world as we know it. Which I'm fine with, if I can sleep through it." Alex grabbed Justin's pillow and pulled it down the bed, standing it on its side to make it a barrier against the sunlight coming in, at the same time moving into the center of the bed and drawing the covers tighter around her.

Justin watched as she did that, scowling as he pulled on a sweater over his shirt and grabbed for his jacket, not looking forward to the November air outside even with the layers he was putting on. And would it hurt the university's budget that badly to turn it up a few degrees in the dorm? He thought. I feel like I'm freezing already.

He ran his hand through his hair, grabbed his backpack, opened the door and looked jealously back at Alex, snug in the bed. "Don't forget to meet me for lunch at one at the commons," he said back to her.

A muffled, "Uh-huh," was his answer, and Justin pulled the door shut as Alex started to say, "Don't forget to -" The door slammed shut, and Alex winced at it, then finished "- turn out the light. Great." Unwilling to get out of the warm bed, Alex reached a hand out behind her to the desk, felt for her wand, grasped it, muttered, "Fiat tenebrae" as she waved it, then wriggled deeper under the covers as the light went out.

Justin slipped in the door of the lecture hall three minutes late, sidling through it and then closing it by hand instead of letting it swing closed, so as not to make any extra noise. The hall was amphitheatre-styled, with curving rows of seats rising up from the lecturer's area, where Professor Billingsley's teaching assistant Alan was writing on the board while he spoke, making his usual near-spasmodic jerks of the chalk that somehow managed to form recognizable words. "… should be your last resort. What's the first thing you should do to prevent bugs in your programs? Anyone?"

By the time Alan turned around at the end of his question, Justin was in a seat and had his backpack on the floor. He raised his hand immediately, but Charlotte was a hair faster - and was closer to the professor. "Yes, Charlotte?" Alan said,

"Use language and library features that prevent the types of bugs that are most likely," the brown-haired girl said.

"Yes," Alan replied with a smile and a nod, his long dark blond hair bobbing a bit with the motion. "You can also prevent errors keeping your code simple," he went on, turning back to the board and starting to write again. "Simple to understand is simple to write and simple to debug. Your next line of defense is…."

It was all review at this point - this was the last week before 'dead week', and then finals would follow. And then would come Christmas break…. Yeah. And mom and dad are going to expect me to be home for those two weeks. Which is going to cause all kinds of fun with Alex. Even as he thought, Justin kept listening to the review in the background, scratching down notes on things the TA was emphasizing, knowing there was a good chance those would be on the final.

And Alex should be studying too. That GED certificate isn't going to just magically appear. At least, not a real one. She'd tried that early on - using magic to make one. While she was able to make the certificate just fine, though, as soon as the school she took it to tried to verify it online, she was sunk. Justin had actually been glad of that, in a way: Alex could definitely stand the experience of actually having to work for something for a change. Hell, it'd be nice if she'd just do something to help out without my having to nag her.

The last five months really hadn't gone quite the way Justin had hoped. Yes, it was great to have Alex living with him - to get to go to sleep with her and wake up with her every day, to be able to spend every evening with her. On the other hand, though, the previous six months of living in the dorm away from her had insulated Justin from some of Alex's other traits. Like how easily she got bored - trying to do any studying or get his homework done felt like a struggle these days, with Alex wanting his attention every half hour or so… and of course, if she didn't get that attention, she'd revert back to getting his attention in other ways.

He smiled a little at that. Some of her ways of getting his attention were quite… stimulating, to say the least. But other times….

"Justin!"

"Not now Alex - I'm trying to study." He hadn't even looked up at her this time, after two hours of trying to review for his sociology midterm, which Alex didn't seem to understand was 33% of his grade. As in, fail this, and you won't pass the class.

"Okay," she said with the what-happens-next-won't-be-my-fault tone that Justin knew only too well. "If you don't want to do anything about the fire over here, then I'll just have to go pull the alarm."

"Fire? What?" Justin jerked around to look where Alex was, then jumped up and rushed over toward the smoking microwave. "Ah! Gah! Alex!" he called out as he ran to it, in unconscious imitation of their father. Hitting the "stop" button, he popped it open, grabbed the smoldering bag of popcorn by the corner, hoping it wouldn't actually burst into flames, and ran out of the room at full tilt, heading for the bathroom and water.

Justin's smile had turned into a scowl as he remembered that incident. And just to add insult to injury, I was in my underwear, and had to spend two minutes apologizing to Alex through the door before she'd let me back into my own room. Yeah.

With finals coming up, Justin wasn't looking forward to going through it again. I'd better talk to her beforehand, let her know how important this is. And maybe talk to her about Christmas break too. Justin nodded to himself and turned his attention back to the review.

The lecture's time slot ended at noon, and Justin went from there to the library, found a reasonably quiet spot, set up his laptop, and started to work finishing his paper for Sociology - which was the other third of his grade, besides the midterm and final. But no pressure there. Right? Right. He couldn't keep his mind from straying back to Alex, though, even as he worked. She's probably still sleeping, he thought with more than a tinge of jealousy. While I've got two papers to finish this week, and still need to do something about a Christmas present for her. Not to mention everything else….

"Damn," Justin said aloud, then immediately looked around in embarrassment. The library wasn't too busy at this hour, but there were a few other people around... and sure enough, one of them was looking at him. A girl - a beautiful girl with blue streaks in her brown hair, dark eye makeup, and ruby-red lipstick. Justin stopped and blinked, staring at her as she smiled, got up, and walked to his table.

"Hey, Justin! I didn't know you were going here!" the girl said, and Justin found himself getting to his feet to greet her, only to be hugged very, very tightly. When he spoke, his mouth felt very, very dry.

"Hi, Miranda," he said, and his voice sounded strange even to him.