Iris had a foreboding feeling. She wondered if this had anything to do with the little prank she had set up with another freshman who gleefully agreed to walk Fluffy for her as long as she didn't mind the hellhound being used for a prank.

She not only agreed to it, she helped take pictures that Ruggie promptly sent to his housewarden's older brother for blackmail. It had taken the king less than an hour to find the sender (and learn exactly how Ruggie got his personal number) and send Ruggie a large sum of money for more pictures to his personal account.

Leona was not happy, but he was unaware Ruggie had sent the pictures to his older brother either.

King Falena told the hyena he would happily pay for more hilarious pictures of Leona. After all, the hyena was merely helping him keep tabs on his little brother, rather than selling them to the highest bidder.

Coincidentally, Iris was now Ruggie's new best friend.

Ortho seemed unusually happy about something as he lead her to a small side room to where the housewarden was waiting. In all fairness, being called out by the person running the dorm was never a good thing.

Iris looked at Idia with some confusion as he looked both nervous and hopeful about something.

He also had a potion of some sort next to him, one she tentatively identified as some sort of blood-based potion. After what happened, she had spent a lot of time in the Black family library and had found a book on the subject. It looked almost identical to one of the potions in the book for determining whether someone was a legitimate relative or not.

"If this is about the prank I pulled with Ruggie walking Fluffy that resulted in Leona getting drenched in drool, I am not apologizing."

Idia blinked at that.

"Why would I care about Kingscholar being drenched in hellhound drool?" he said confused. "It's his own fault for napping in random places."

"Then why did you call me in here?"

Idia looked visibly conflicted, before doing his best to explain.

"What do you know about your family?" he asked finally.

"I know my parents were murdered by a psychopath and that my mother's sister is a complete bitch who couldn't raise a slug, much less a child," said Iris without hesitation.

Idia's expression became bewildered.

"Nii-san, why don't you just show her the pendant?" asked Ortho.

"Pendant?" repeated Iris.

Idia pulled something out of his jacket. It was a fairly simple pendant that looked like it was radiating enough heat to cause actual pain and was glowing like it was ready to explode. Iris took a half step back from the thing.

"16 years ago, our sister went missing. She was taken when she was only seven months old and our parents have been looking for her ever since. She'd be about seventeen now," said Idia.

"Wait...you can't honestly believe that I'm your missing sister," said Iris. "I'm barely eighteen!"

"There's an easy way to tell if you're her or not," said Idia evenly. "Azul is pricey, but he knows what he's doing and he brewed this up when I asked. Professor Crewel said it was a flawless potion."

Iris looked at the potion with some trepidation.

"What exactly do you want me to do?"

"I just need three drops of blood. That's all the potion needs. If there's a relation, it'll turn blue. If not, then it stays red," said Idia.

Iris considered this.

"Just three drops?" she clarified.

Idia nodded. He had a pair of sharp knives and a small bowl to pour the potion in.

Iris walked over and cut into her finger. She left three fat drops of blood in the bowl. Idia took the other and left three drops in the bowl. He carefully poured the potion until it covered both contributions.

Iris honestly though the potion would stay red. So you could imagine her shock when the potion began turning blue.

"I don't believe it," she said, and felt a sudden need to sit down. Everything she knew about herself was a lie.

Ortho was quick to bring her a chair, and she sank down in it.

"Are you alright?" asked Idia.

"Wait...how do we know the potion didn't react to the basilisk venom in my blood?" she said, trying to cling desperately to what she knew to be truth.

"Basilisk venom?" repeated Idia. "I don't know if that would affect it, but we can always send our samples to a mundane facility to check the DNA results."

"Please," said Iris.

It took about a week or so, but the test merely confirmed what the potion had told them. Iris was Idia and Ortho's missing sister.

It was a strong shock to the system, learning her entire life had been a lie. That her real family had expended no end of money and resources looking for her this entire time.

She honestly didn't know how to react to this.


It had come as a shock to the system, learning she had brothers and people who wanted her around.

Idia wasn't very good with social situations, and honestly he never thought his missing sister would show up on her own accord at Night Raven.

So rather than try to force a relationship, Idia instead gave her the special passcode into his room. It was as close to an open invitation as he was comfortable giving out. Ortho had one as well, but he used his rarely.

For a while, Iris pretended that she was nothing more than another student. Idia was fine giving her space as well.

However something nudged her into trusting her older brother, just a little bit.

"Onee-san!" said Ortho cheerfully. Iris nearly winced, as she still wasn't used to having a little brother. "Are you heading to class too?"

"...I'm heading to the library," said Iris quietly.

She wanted to find some sleep charms, or better yet spells to deal with bad dreams.

"Are you looking up something?" asked Ortho.

"Dream spells," she replied.

She couldn't hate Ortho...he reminded her of Luna. That being said, she still wasn't comfortable around others after what happened.

"Dream spells?" said Ortho. "Are you still having trouble sleeping Nee-san?"

"How do you know about my insomnia?" she asked.

"Idia-nii has cameras, nee-san," said Ortho. "You've visited Fluffy nearly every night this week, usually between the hours of 3 to 5 in the morning."

Iris stared at him in disbelief.

"You're having trouble sleeping, Black-chan? Why not have your boyfriend keep you company then?" asked a voice.

Iris turned to find Cater Diamond there, having overheard the entire thing.

"I don't have a boyfriend," she replied.

"Then why did he call you 'big sister' if you're not dating his brother?" asked Cater confused.

"It's none of your business," said Iris annoyed.

"If you're having trouble sleeping, have you tried potions or herbal teas?" asked Cater. Now that he was looking at her, he could see the major bags under her eyes.

"I was told rather bluntly by the nurse that if I took any more dreamless sleep on such a consistent basis, I would become dependent on it and ruin my natural ability to sleep. And herbal teas have limited effect on me, considering why I can't sleep," said Iris annoyed.

"Maybe Nii-san would have ideas, nee-san!" said Ortho.

"I don't want to bother anyone with my problems," said Iris.

"Still, I didn't know you were dating the older Shroud. Talk about a big scoop!" said Cater, changing the subject.

"We're not dating," said Iris. Having enough of the awkward conversation, Iris walked off in a foul mood. She wasn't going to get anywhere with trying to find dream spells, she just knew it.

Later that night, Idia's search engine alerted him to something involving him by name which was weird. The second he saw what it was, he immediately hacked into the account in question and forcibly shut it down.


In Heartsabyl...

Cater was having a bad night.

"What the heck is going on?" he said in frustration, trying to log into his account.

"Is something wrong?" asked Riddle.

"My MagiCam account is locked. It says I'm entering the wrong password or something," said Cater in frustration.

He had posted he found a big scoop about Black and Idia Shroud, and then he was suddenly kicked off his account. Nothing he could do was letting him in.

"Riddle, you're a housewarden now right? Do you think you could ask Shroud if he knows what's going on?" asked Cater.

"I hardly know him," said Riddle. "Why not ask him yourself?"

"His brother is currently mad about something I said," said Cater.

"Ortho's mad at you? What did you do to anger him?" asked Trey.

"I was congratulating him because his brother found a girlfriend, but Ortho and Black insisted that she wasn't dating Idia."

Riddle frowned.

"What made you think they were dating?"

"Ortho was calling Black 'big sister'," said Cater. "If they're not dating, then why would he call her that?"

"Maybe she's really close to Shroud?" asked Trey. "You might want to get the record straight first, if only so you don't go starting rumors."

Cater frowned, but resolved to visit Ignihyde tomorrow. If only to ask for help getting into his account.

Trey sighed, and went to check his own MagiCam account to see if it was just Cater. Only to blink.

"Hey Cater? I think someone deliberately hacked your account."

"Why?" asked Cater.

Trey handed him his phone. It took all of two seconds to register what was wrong.

"My account's completely frozen...what the heck?"

Cater should have had at least one comment regarding the 'big scoop', especially for such a rare topic like Shroud. But his page was not only frozen, but the last post he made was deleted. Not even the view count was going up, which was extremely weird.


The next morning, Cater made a beeline directly to the Ignihyde dorm...and froze in place when he ran into the new guard dog.

Fluffy was growling at him, making it clear he wasn't to come any closer.

"What do you want?" said Ortho, annoyed.

"I wanted to know why your brother locked my account."

Because that was honestly the only explanation he could come up with for what happened.

You could imagine Cater's surprise, when Idia showed up personally.

"I won't let you spread lies about Iris," said Idia flatly.

"Lies?" said Cater.

"That 'big scoop' you were planning to spread about us dating," clarified Idia.

Cater blinked.

"Wait...that's the reason you blocked my account?" said Cater.

"Iris isn't my girlfriend...she's my sister," said Idia pissed off.

"Sister?" said Cater. "But she looks nothing like you!"

"Did you ever think there was a reason why I always wear a hat, you halfwit?" snapped Iris. She had been hiding behind Fluffy the entire time, so Cater didn't see her. "I hate idiots like you who spread nothing but lies, slander and gossip over a small piece of information without bothering to get the bigger picture first. You never seem to understand the level of damage you cause and are only contrite once the ripple effect is felt and your victims are openly suffering from what you've done."

Cater openly winced at that, hurt.

Iris' eyes, which were normally obscured by her hair, shown gold.

"And the absolutely worst part? You do it to make your own 'image' look better because the amount of gossip you spread makes people pay attention to you. You're nothing but a shallow, vain jerk."

"If I'm a shallow person, then what does that make Vil?" said Cater, sniping back. "He has way more followers than I do."

"He at least doesn't bother with idle gossip...the only reason he's more popular is because unlike you, he's comfortable in his own skin and isn't afraid to show it," said Iris bluntly, causing Cater to flinch.

"I'll give you back your account...but if I find any sort of rumor or post about Iris before she's ready to come out with the truth, I'll delete every record of you from the net," said Idia flatly.

Cater knew he wasn't joking. He looked dead serious.