Ch. 6: Secrets
The nice weather from Shion's birthday degraded day by day in the following week and, by the time the weekend came, it was pouring rain. Nezumi insisted they go running on Saturday morning anyway, much to Ciel's annoyance, and it added to Ciel's other reasons as to why the second week of school was even worse than the first one.
For one, half of the students failed the Transfiguration test in their class. Ciel wasn't worried about that one, however, and as he expected, he passed well enough to not be the subject of their teacher's anger. Nezumi did a bit worse, but still acceptable and who would worry when Weasley and Potter failed miserably? However, the consequence of that was a copious homework for everybody. He still hadn't quite finished it and it seemed like he was going to be forced to join Shion and Safu in the library that afternoon.
To add to his worries, Ciel fully expected that his results from Snape's sudden test on safety and hazards in a potions classroom would be worse than Nezumi's. His brother has always been better in Potions, probably partly because he didn't mind getting his hands dirty. Ciel hated getting his hands dirty, so he hated Potions almost as much as he hated Herbology, although at least in Potions it helped to be careful. Nevertheless, when Snape announced that it has been brought to his attention that they had never "documented their knowledge of emergency proceedings", Ciel wished that Shion was sitting next to him. He fully expected the Ravenclaw to have all the "emergency proceedings" memorised, like everything else he thought was useful and he considered all safety matters useful. Even Nezumi didn't seem happy with the sudden test and most of the class was horrified.
At least, Ciel thought, when he and Nezumi were walking back to their dormitory, dripping wet after their running, the Defence against the Dark Arts test went well. Oh, most of the students did badly, but Ciel's and Nezumi's scores almost rivalled that of Hermione's and Professor Kruspe was much fairer than Professor Smith and gave them homework depending on their results.
'I don't know why I bother following you,' Ciel complained, slightly out of breath. Nezumi, walking next to him, shot him a mocking smirk.
'Because you know I'm right,' he replied smugly. The corridors were deserted, since it was still very early and only the other students who went running were out. While they were quite a few in the older years, most of them have only started running now, so they weren't around. Ciel was grateful, because he was sure he looked thoroughly undignified for an heir to the Phantomhive family.
'And if Shion laughs once today, I'm going to drag him by that pretty, white hair of his to run with us tomorrow,' he continued complaining, ignoring Nezumi's smugness. 'Or I will shoot you in the leg so that you cannot run,' he added, making his brother laugh.
'You are a sore loser, Ciel,' Nezumi mocked him, earning a glare. Ciel promised himself to get back at his brother for that. Maybe he could transfigure his underwear into girl's one? He did it once and it was well worth the risk. He smirked to himself as they turned the last corner on the way to Slytherin common room. He was ready to take his wand out when, suddenly, Nezumi stopped as though he bumped into somebody and Ron Weasley appeared splattered on the floor, much to Ciel's shock. What the hell? Where did he come from?
'Watch where you're going, weasel,' Nezumi sneered, covering up his surprise.
'Watch where you're going yourself, rat,' Ron spat back, getting up as he talked. He looked Nezumi up and down. 'What did you do? Swim in the sewer or something?' he asked.
'You would know all about scouring the sewers, now, wouldn't you?' Nezumi asked back with a disdainful tone. The Gryffindor looked like he was going to attack, fist raised and all, but he only twitched weirdly and stayed on spot. Ciel raised an eyebrow at his weird behaviour.
'Seriously,' Ciel muttered and nudged Nezumi to go on. His brother followed his lead and they quickly disappeared into the common room. 'I wonder what Weasley was doing in the dungeons at this hour,' he muttered as they made their way to the dormitory. Nezumi shrugged. 'He wasn't alone either, was he?'
'No, it looked like someone held him back before he could charge,' his brother agreed lightly, taking a towel and heading towards the showers. 'He's so explosive when one insults his family, or if he even imagines his family insulted. This kind of insecurity must be hard to carry around,' he added. 'Lucky for him that he has smart friends.'
'I suppose it was Potter. It is rumoured that he has an Invisibility Cloak,' Ciel commented, smirking. Although of course that meant that Malfoy hadn't been paranoid when he talked about Potter, he thought. Speaking of Malfoy, he remembered. 'Since when did you call him "weasel"?'
'Weasel, ferret,' Nezumi muttered. 'What difference does that make?' he asked back. They both found it amusing how similar the animals looked. 'I don't appreciate people bumping into me and, when those people are sneaking around in places that should not concern them, I like them even less,' he added. Ciel wondered briefly if he was talking about Weasley or Malfoy, because both fitted the description perfectly. Without further hesitation, they took a shower each and dressed up to go for breakfast.
Some twenty minutes later, Ciel was helping himself to some food in the nearly abandoned Great Hall. It was still quite early in the morning and most students opted to sleep in during the weekends. As it was, only the two of them were sitting at the Slytherin table and there was only one person sitting at the Gryffindor table: Hermione Granger. She was reading a book, oblivious to the jam dripping from her toast to her plate.
With a quiet snort, Ciel glanced at the couple of Ravenclaw students and then at Nezumi, reading the newspaper next to him. They only got one to share and usually Nezumi was faster to grab it, so Ciel simply waited for him to tell him if there was something worth his attention. As every day, Nezumi would call him lazy and Ciel would shot back that he was managing his resources well. They didn't even realise how repetitive they were in their morning routing, until Lizzy mentioned it last year.
A couple of meters away Ciel's black cat, Sebastian, was mock-chasing Nezumi's mice. The three little things were making a racket, squeaking and screeching as they took turns in trying to bite Sebastian's tail. Ciel found it amazing that his cat allowed such things to happen, even if all four animals took obvious pleasure in the antics.
He sat straighter in his chair when he noticed a red cat close by, looking like he wouldn't mind to eat a mouse. He recognised it as Hermione's Crookshanks and was about to tell Nezumi to call his mice back, when Sebastian turned to the cat. His playful manner was gone in a split of a second and the hairs on his back were standing as he hissed at Crookshanks. Ciel nudged Nezumi and pointed towards the two cats. The mice were looking at them as well.
'Are you going to let Sebastian attack?' Nezumi asked with some worry. Ciel smirked. His cat was smaller than Crookshanks and thinner, but he had no doubt who would be the winner if they fight. Sebastian was quite a demon cat when he wanted to be, as the students, who stepped onto his tail by mistake, found out painfully. He also had red eyes, which freaked everybody out and were the reason why Ciel picked the black kitten as his pet.
'Would you stop him?' he asked back. Nezumi whistled at his mice and they jumped onto the table obediently. Ciel knew that he cared about his mice more than he cared about most human beings. It was only lucky that Sebastian got on well with Hamlet, Cravat and Tsukiyo, because otherwise Ciel couldn't imagine how he and Nezumi would ever get along.
'I would not miss the show for anything,' Nezumi replied calmly and Ciel smirked again.
Unfortunately, students arriving scared Crookshanks away. Sebastian hissed at Malfoy, making the boy take a step back. Ciel would have laughed if he wasn't too proud. Malfoy glared at him fatefully.
'Get that beast away from me,' he ordered as though he was the king of the castle. Ciel's eyes narrowed at him.
'Get away yourself,' he replied coldly. 'Is the Malfoy heir afraid of a little kitten? No wonder that you are worried about how you'll manage to lead the family if you can't manage a cat,' he mocked. He had overheard Malfoy talking with one of the seventh-year students the other day, complaining about how difficult it was to invest his father's money. With a snarl, Malfoy moved to kick Sebastian but Ciel was faster. Even though he knew that his cat would duck on time, he pulled out his wand and caught Malfoy in a body-binding spell.
Some students laughed when Malfoy fell to the floor gracelessly. Ciel put his wand away as though nothing had happened, letting Crabbe and Goyle try to figure out the counter curse with their small brains. Nezumi shook his head, although Ciel could see that he enjoyed the show as much as Ciel did.
'What happened here?' Shion asked, coming up to them and sitting opposite to Ciel, to have breakfast. Just then, Malfoy finally managed to get up and glared at Ciel hatefully. I'll have to watch out for his revenge, Ciel thought, what a bother. Sebastian jumped onto the bench next to Shion and leaned into the white-haired boy's touch.
'Nothing much,' Nezumi answered Shion's question, putting away the newspaper finally as Shion gushed over Sebastian and fed him some sausage from the table. Ciel noticed that Malfoy was still glaring at them and wondered what made the other boy move away, until he noticed that some teachers arrived.
'You'll make him fat,' he complained to Shion, who scratched behind Sebastian's ear skilfully, grinning up at Ciel as he looked away from the purring cat. For some reason, Sebastian had accepted him immediately, like he had accepted Ciel, Nezumi and just about nobody else. Ciel wasn't sure if he should be angry at that. After all, Sebastian was supposed to be his demon cat, not the object of girly cooing. Then again, Hamlet, Cravat and Tsukiyo also accepted Shion as their friend immediately.
'He will never be fat with all the exercise he's getting, pretending to chase after Hamlet, Cravat and Tsukiyo,' Shion protested and looked down at Sebastian. 'Will you, pretty cat?'
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Shaking her head, Hermione looked away from the commotion at the Slytherin table. She looked back at her book, wanting to continue reading, when Crookshanks jumped on the table next to her.
'Crookshanks,' she scolded the cat. 'Get off the table immediately,' she ordered, shoving him off, despite his protesting meowing. She took a piece of sausage and gave it to Crookshanks to placate him. 'What got you so worked up, huh? Did you get into a fight with another cat?' she asked, petting his head as he ate. She could see that he was irritated. Without a reason, she looked back up at the Slytherin table, where Shion had just joined the twins.
'Did you pick up a fight with Sebastian?' she asked Crookshanks, looking back at him, laughing shortly when he meowed to get another sausage. 'How many times do I tell you to not fight with other cats, hmm?' she asked, giving him more food as Harry and Ron arrived, looking rather unhappy.
'What got into you two?' she asked, abandoning the idea that she would get anything more done during the breakfast. With resignation, she closed the book and put it away after Crookshanks licked her fingers clean.
'We got caught sneaking around,' Harry admitted dejectedly. 'Ron bumped into Phantomhive and fell out of the Cloak so I guess the Slytherins know now that I have one,' he explained. Hermione could sense that there was more to the story, but she decided to not press for details. For all she knew, Ron let himself be provoked again and did something stupid. Not that sneaking around the Slytherin common room wasn't stupid.
'You guys should get rid of those habits,' she muttered, deciding that she could eat if she couldn't read and putting some porridge into her bowl. 'It's all over, Malfoy doesn't have the Dark Mark and there is no reason why he would be plotting,' she reminded them forcefully. They knew for a fact that Malfoy didn't have a Dark Mark because the call for all the pure blood families to prove their innocence included children from the age of three, which Hermione thought was insane.
'First, it is fun,' Ron protested. 'Second, we think that Malfoy is in fact plotting. I heard him talk about some scheme with another Slytherin student and we want to know what their scheme is,' he added. Hermione rolled her eyes. In her mind, the most Malfoy could be scheming about was how to pass all the tests with flying colours, without his father looming over the grading committee. She told that to her friends.
'Come on, Hermione,' Harry said with a charming smile. 'Don't you miss figuring out mysteries?' he asked and Hermione bit her lip, unwillingly glancing in Shion's direction. There was one mystery she wanted to figure out. She had tried asking Safu, but the girl just said that it was nothing and Hermione should forget it. But Hermione couldn't let it drop if somebody was being hurt or mistreated, which she feared Shion might have been. Why else would he have red marks on his neck? When she asked if it had something to do with the contact lenses and dyed hair, Safu just looked at her weirdly and said that she needed to go.
Next to her, Harry and Ron laughed, triumphal, snapping her out of her thoughts. She looked at their eager faces.
'So you do have a mystery you would like to solve, eh?' Harry asked with a wicked grin. 'Wanna share it so that we can have some fun?' he asked. Hermione bit her lip, thinking if it would be alright to share her suspicions. After all, she trusted Harry and Ron with her life.
'Come on, Mione,' Ron poked her. 'We cannot only think about lessons and exams and our future plans. We need some fun,' he tried to convince her. She looked at him doubtfully and then at her plate.