A/N This was a fake History assignment that I turned into a House story. Disregard their age differences. I also took some creative liberties, and made James and Allison brother and sister.

I walked downstairs, and was immediately met with the smell of oatmeal. I groaned. Usually, I loved oatmeal, but my mother was out of town for a conference, and my father hadn't been allowed near the stove since a rather unfortunate incident involving a raw chicken, a pint of lemon juice, and an entire roll of tinfoil. Anyway, this meant it was Allison—my older-by-five-minutes sister—cooking the food. Don't get me wrong, I love her. In fact, we get along better than almost any other brother and sister I'd ever met; but she couldn't boil water if her life depended on it.

I dragged my feet into the kitchen, and found my dad sitting at the table, reading the newspaper. He had on his usual attire—a white t-shirt, flannel pants, and a robe. "Hey Jimmy," he said, not looking up.

"Mornin' dad, mornin' Ally. Where's Lily?"

"I think she's in her room," Allison responded, waving her wooden spoon in the general direction of the staircase.

"Oh. Is…breakfast almost ready?" I was hesitant to call it breakfast, which implied food, as the oatmeal may very well end up as an uneatable brick.

"Yup!" With that, Allison whirled around, pot in hand, and proceeded to trip over her own feet. The oatmeal flew through the air as though in slow motion, before splattering against the floor. "Oops." Allison looked at dad, who looked from the oatmeal (which, if inedible then (I'm sure it was) was surely inedible now), and proceeded to burst out laughing.

"Looks like the Floor-magnet has struck again!" Allison's clumsiness was a long-running joke in our family, and Floor-magnet was a name she had affectionately been given a while ago.

"I'll go get a towel from the dryer, shall I?" Dad nodded his head, and I went to the laundry room. I pulled out a few towels, before noticing there was a lot more fabric in the dryer than the usual towel load. And, it was all the same color. A realization struck me, and I went pale. I grabbed a fistful of fabric, and, praying I was wrong, pulled the fabric out. "Oh no," I muttered. Towels and fabric in hand, I raced back to the kitchen. "Dad! What did you do?" He shot me a confused look, until I held out the fabric.

"What? They were dirty, so I put them in the wash."

"Dad, you're not supposed to do that," Allison yelped, agitated. "Look. Look what happened!" She pointed at a large rip in the fabric.

"Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no. What have I done? Those were your mother's favorite curtains!"

"It's all right dad. We'll try and fix them up tonight. Right now though, we should all get dressed, or Allison and I will be late for the bus. Plus, remember, you have to take Lily to daycare," I told him, putting a hand on his shoulder, reassuringly.

I hurried out the door, and ran down the block, Allison right on my heels. When I got to the bus stop, I skidded to a halt, watching with amusement as my best friend, Greg argued heatedly with Allison's friend, Lisa. "…And furthermore, if someone were to sneak up on me, I could hit them with it!" he yelled, brandishing his crutch.

Greg had twisted his ankle last week, and he and Lisa had an ongoing argument about whether his single crutch looked dumb or not. "Yeah, but that has nothing to do with whether it looks stupid! I'm just saying that it looks like you're using it for sympathy. I mean, I've seen plenty of people walk around with a twisted ankle and no crutch!"

"Guys, would you please drop this dumb argument?" Allison asked them, interrupting their bantering.

"Yeah. Come on. You've been going at it for the past week, and you've made no progress at all," I told them, ever the voice of reason.

Greg stuck his tongue out at us. "Stupid voices of reason."

Finally, the bus that would take us to our school, Redwood Elementary, arrived, and we climbed in. "Hey Jimmy, have you got the math homework?"

"Yeah," I said, sitting down in my seat, followed by Greg.

"Switch with me."

"What? Why?" I blanched.

"Because, I think Mrs. Selene is bias against me. I bet, that if I turn in one of your perfect assignments, she'll give me an F anyway."

"No way am I going to do that!"

"Why not? My paper is correct! Just a little messy."

"No! I'm not going to encourage your rule breaking! You do enough of it without it. And besides, you've got the handwriting of a doctor. Trust me, I would know."

"My! Jimmy! Have you been sneaking looks at your mothers papers from work?" Greg feigned shock.

"No. She's been showing them to me. You know that stuff is really interesting?"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever."

"I'm serious! There are so many different kinds of cancer, it's incredible!"

"Yeah, yeah, we all know you want to become an oncologist and hold the hands of millions of people as they die from brain tumors, and puke their guts up from chemotherapy. Now can we please talk about something more interesting?"

I shook my head at my friend. He'd always had a cynical sense of the world. When I asked about it, he said it was from some brain rearrangement caused by him being pushed into an empty pool when he was younger. I was ninety percent true he had been lying.

When we got to school, we walked down the hall with Lisa and Allison. We parted ways when we got to room 13, me and Greg entering, and Lisa and Allison going on to room 15, parting with a brief "See ya at lunch!" We walked over to our seats, and Greg tossed his backpack to the floor, before maneuvering into his seat. I rolled my eyes, set my bag on the floor, and sat down. I leaned over and pulled my binder from my bag. When I sat back up, I noticed Greg pestering the girl at our table, Remy.

"…Hey, Hadley, what's with the bruise?" he asked, poking a large bruise on her cheek.

"It's nothing!" She slapped his hand away.

Greg, however, always needed an answer, and so he persisted. "What happened? You trip on your own feet?" I could tell that Remy was getting annoyed by his sarcastic tone, and felt bad for her. She was often on the receiving end of Greg's jokes, sarcastic comments, and prying questions. However, all she did was inhale slowly, then exhale, obviously trying not to yell at him. "If you must know, my mom hit me on accident yesterday, when turning around. And my name's not Hadley."

"Sure it is. And your mom hit you on accident?" he asked, obviously not believing her.

"Yes. She gets…overexcited sometimes." With that, she turned away from him, tersely.

"Gee, you'd think her mom never taught her any manners," Greg said, turning to me.

"Greg, leave her be. You know she doesn't like being talked to."

"I know. It's so weird."

I rolled my eyes at my friend. He didn't get the fact that when some people, like Remy, didn't share information, it wasn't an invitation to start prodding at every aspect of their life.

"Hey, James, do you have a spare pencil?" the boy, Chris, sitting across from me, asked.

"Yeah, here you go." I handed him my spare pencil, and began working on the assignment on the board. After I had finished, Mrs. Selene made me help this dumb boy, Eric. He almost never turned in assignments, and was the oldest of us all, as he'd been held back a few times. I explained the work to him until the lunch bell rang, and when I walked out with Greg, he still looked confused.

We met up with Lisa, Allison, and, surprisingly, Remy. "Hey, Hadley! What're you doing here?"

"Allison invited me to hang out," she muttered, barely above a whisper.

I wondered for a moment how they knew each other, then remembered they both took an advanced science class together. I shrugged, then walked over to our usual table, Allison, Lisa, Greg, and Remy following.

"Remy, can I see your notes from science? I didn't get them," Allison asked, turning to Remy.

"Um, I didn't get them either. Sorry. Amber was right in front of me."

"Amber?" I piped up. "You didn't tell me Amber was in your class," I exclaimed, turning to my sister. I'd had a crush on Amber for a year, ever since she and I were paired up for a lab in fifth grade.

"No, I didn't. Because I don't think she's good for you. She's an evil little—" Allison cut herself off, unwilling to swear, though I knew what she meant.

"Bwahahahahahaha!" Our conversation was cut off by Greg's malicious laughter. I looked over to see him holding a gingerbread man up above the table by—get this, a piece of spaghetti. Only Greg would think to hang a gingerbread man by a noose made of spaghetti.

"Hey, wait a minute! That's my gingerbread man!" I made a dive towards it, but Greg brought it to his mouth and bit off the head. I sighed in defeat, and glanced back at my sister and Lisa. They were talking animatedly about Lisa's current crush, Lucas. He was in the detective club, but from what I'd heard from them, he was sweet, if a little forward. Remy was sitting at the end of the table, hunched over a soggy looking PB&J. She seemed very uninterested in the conversation.

I turned back to Greg, and smacked his hand away as he tried to steal more of my food. "What's with Hadley?" he asked me. I shrugged my response, and then took a bite out of my sandwich. "I mean, seriously, aren't all girls supposed to fawn over guys? Yet there she is, sullenly eating her sandwich, and looking like something the cat dragged in." I smacked his arm, and told him to be quiet, glancing at Remy to see if she'd heard. She didn't appear to have, though who knows.

When lunch was over, we shuffled back to our classrooms. I sat down, and watched Greg go over towards Eric's desk, probably to tease him. Lucky for Eric, the teacher came in just as Greg reached the desk, causing him to hurry over and take his seat at our table group.

Mrs. Selene gave us instructions for the math worksheet, then got Robert, the exchange student, to pass them out. Once we had all started working, Greg turned to pester Remy once more. "So, Hadley, what was with you at lunch? Cat got your tongue?" To Remy's credit, she didn't respond, just bent her head a little more, and kept on diligently doing her work. "Well? I'm sure Jimmy here wants to know too. He's just too polite to ask, or something like that." When House realized he was getting no response, he picked up his crutch, and proceeded to use it to knock everything from Remy's desk.

"Greg, what the hell?" she yelped, jumping to her feet, obviously livid. Her markers were rolling across the floor, and there was an entire folder's worth of assignments scattered around.

"Miss Hadley! What is all this yelling about?" Mrs. Selene asked, furious that her class had been disturbed. The entire class was looking from Greg, to Mrs. Selene, to Remy.

"Greg knocked everything off of my desk," Remy told her. She was trying to remain calm, though her anger was still obvious.

"Mr. House, Miss. Hadley, report to the principle's office at once!"

"Wait, Mrs. Selene, it wasn't Remy's fault!"

"Well, if you're so eager to become a part of this, you can go down there too. All of you! Now!" We walked sullenly out the door, and trudged down the hallway. We got to the teacher's office, and, after much retelling of the story, the principle assigned Greg two weeks of detention, and gave Remy and me one week each. Great, I thought to myself angrily.

"Look at what you've done Greg!" Remy shouted the moment school let out.

"Me? You're the one who screamed at me!"

"After you shoved all of my things to the ground!"

"Because you were ignoring me!"

"Ugh! You are insufferable!" With that, Remy turned, and stormed off down the street.

"What's with them?" Allison whispered in my ear.

"Greg knocked everything off her desk during math. She yelled at him, the teacher was going to send them to the principle's office, I defended Remy, and now Greg has two weeks detention, and Remy and I have one week each," I whispered back.

"Oh."

Yup. Just a typical day at Redwood Elementary school.