On the way to the library he had been stopped by several passing students, some friends and others just younger housemates wanting answers to some of their questions. Silas was always willing to help the new students with their questions; he had been in their shoes at one point and it had been hell trying to learn things that most of his classmates had known for their entire lives, he didn't want other kids to go through the confusion that he did. It surprised Silas when a first year Slytherin student approached him. The boy was at that sort of awkward 'I'm too tall and haven't grown into it yet' stage and Silas couldn't help but think of his younger brother Ezra. 

He normally associated only with his fellow Hufflepuffs, not out of house pride or anything but because most of the time the other houses kept to themselves. Hufflepuff was something of a joke it seemed - any witch or wizard [i]'unlucky'[/i] enough to get into Hufflepuff clearly wasn't worth the time of the other houses, since everyone was under the impression that Hufflepuff had no extraordinary qualities. Silas believed differently but he couldn't change the attitude of the entire school. "I'll show you where the library is. I was just on my way there actually." The Slytherin first year smiled and offered his name.

"My name is Michael, what is yours?" 

"Silas Hayward. Nice to meet you." 

Michael asked more questions about the school, well actually most were about Quidditch and when try outs were. "I honestly can't remember, I can always ask for you." Silas said as he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his robes. During his second and third years at Hogwarts he had been on the Quidditch team; a nasty injury had effectively retired him midway through his third year. Michael loved Quiddtich and once Silas mentioned that he had once played, the boy had hounded him with more questions.  The pair stopped when the sounds of a scuffle, well actually it was more like a one sided conversation, caught their attention. Michael was the first to round the corner and he stopped in his tracks with wide eyes. "Michael?" Silas questioned, coming to stop next to the boy before glancing at the scene before them.

The blue eyed teen gave Michael orders to stay put around the corner. The first year nodded and scurried to safety while the seventh year fished around for his wand. In a bout of frustration he ditched finding his wand in favor of just resorting to physical ways to stop the group of students. It was easy tackling the farthest of the three students. Given that Silas was not a small boy; the two came crashing down rather harshly onto the stone floor. The commotion caused a momentary panic in the other two students and they reeled on Silas, intending to take care of the annoyance before going back to their original prey. One of the students stopped and gripped his stomach as he laughed. "What's a stupid Hufflepuff going to do to us?" Silas wouldn't be able to get to his wand fast enough if they decided to use magic but he felt that he had the upper hand. Most relied on magic to do their fighting, he only knew a handful of people who liked to ditch magic every once in a while and use more 'muggle methods' of dealing with their problems. 

He fumbled with his robes, rolling out of the way to avoid a few spells, before ripping his shoe off and throwing it at the closest offender with decent accuracy - it bounced off of the boy's shoulder. Unfortunately Silas wasn't able to dodge the sudden kick that was sent his way by the student he had tackled. He was a bit wobbly but had recovered from the sudden shock of being taken to the floor by the bigger Hufflepuff. On the ground Silas clutched his stomach and curled in on himself in an attempt to relieve the pain. Hopefully their former prey could escape while he could. Silas wasn't a brave man by any means. He didn't want to be a hero, he just didn't want to see an innocent student get beat up and bullied.


[@Arista]