It was a cold, rainy day so being outside was not an entirely pleasant option.  Ezra had to entertain himself doing homework, of all things.  He didn't quite feel like doing the reading for history so he was in the Great Hall with his tarot cards.  They were an old, well used set he gotten from his father.  They're surface was was soft and the edges had turned grey in places from long use. 

He glanced at the young girl sitting across the table from him.  She was frowning at the cards he'd turned for her with dislike.  "Sorry, sweetheart," he grinned.  "Glaring at them won't change anything."  The girl huffed at him and flounced away.  Ezra just shook his head and wrote down the sequence, along with his interpretation of the cards in his journal.  This was the heavily coded script of his personal journal, not the divination journal he had to turn in.  He was generally quite fond of selectively editing the information he passed on to his professor. 

When he finished, he shuffled the cards back into the deck and looked around.  There were plenty of others sitting around, doing homework, and playing Exlpoding Snap.  He was done, he could take some time, but who would be an appropriate victim with which to entertain himself?

Water dripped lazily from the boy’s shaggy hair, leaving a trail of wet right down his face. His clothing was soaked through and his skin was icy. Even the thick cloak covering the Ravenclaw’s shoulders couldn’t keep a shiver from running through his lanky frame. The days since returning to Hogwarts after winter break had been the most stressful to date, and while Elijah was extremely excited about being back at the castle, he sometimes wanted the support that only a close-knit family can provide.

Elijah’s mind was like a minefield – one false thought, one bad move, and the boy’s sanity would go spinning uncontrollably into a black abyss that threatened to never give Elijah back to himself. Being a seer was horrid, and why Elijah had begged for it his whole life, he wasn’t sure. Truly, he’d give it back in a heartbeat and wouldn’t feel even the smallest twinge of emotion for its loss. A mind numbing walk through the sloshy rain had helped, for a bit, to distract the NEWT student from his thoughts but now he was back in the castle and the worry returned just as quickly – rushing up like a wave off the ocean, both uncontrollable and overpowering.

A wave of dizziness washed over his body and Elijah had to put a hand against the doorframe to regain his composure. As his gaze swept over the room, the boy’s eyes met on the back of a shaggy head that could belong to only one, very delectable (and poisonous) snake. Eli took a few steps over, took a seat directly in front of the boy, and shook his head… hard. Water globules splattered around the table and then the Ravenclaw took a couple seconds to remove his waterlogged cloak and sat it beside him.

“Ezra! How was your holiday?” He asked, avoiding even gazing at the cards of prophesy sat between them.

Ezra jerked backwards when Elijiah Grimlish sat down across from him and shook cold water all over the place.  He flinched as it wet his face a bit.  He rubbed his face dry with the sleeve of his shirt.  "Fine," he responded bluntly, suddenly less inclined to be friendly.  He was tempted to lay into the boy with snark and sarcasm to spare just because but there was something that made him pause.

His sharp, Slytherin eyes missed very little as a general rule and right now they did not miss the look in Eli's eyes.  There was a tired, haunted look behind their overt friendliness.  Ezra considered it carefully, trying to decide whether or not it was worth worrying about.  Or even if it was any of his business.  Was he caring about this?

He'd probably regret this, but he felt compelled.  Damn it.  "I'm assuming your holidays were a little less than fine.  You look like shit."  He tilted his head and aimed a penetrating stare at the Ravenclaw, clearly expecting an honest answer.

No matter how hard the Ravenclaw tried to look away from both the cards beneath him and the face of the snake in front of him, he failed. His hands twitched in his lap and he had to force them to still, to keep from reaching up to touch the smooth surface of the prophetic cards. The pull to the future was compelling and almost overwhelming – but Elijah managed to hold still. He kept still mainly out of fear for what they held, more so than anything else.

When he did look up into the face of Ezra, a smile crept into his features. True, the smile was hollow, but it was a smile nonetheless. “Holidays were fine,” He said, “Nothing important to chat about, anyway,” Then he bit his lip… was Elijah ready to tell anyone else about his newfound gift? He wasn’t ashamed of it, not at all, but that didn’t mean that he wanted to blab to the entire world that he got gripped by otherworldly visions that left him weak and out of sorts.

“I’ve been getting… headaches,” He said evasively. It wasn’t a lie, but not exactly the whole truth either. He liked Ezra… actually, he liked Ezra a lot, but he’d learned long ago that just because you like a snake doesn’t mean you should trust one… they were still poisonous. “What about you, mate?” He reached over and ran a thumb across the Slytherin boy’s chin, collecting a droplet of water from his face. “You’re a bit damp,” he said with a wink.

Curious, Ezra thought to himself as he regarded Eli quietly.  The Ravenclaw's words meant nothing.  They were empty platitudes offered in hopes that they would divert the conversation.  Ezra was more interested in the unspoken communication.  Eli was practically shouting in pain, fear, and anxiety.  He wondered what the cause of it was.  What happened to Eli over the holidays to produce this kind of response?  Could it be of use to him in some way?  Ezra wasn't sure and didn't think the other boy would even tell him about it but it was always worth a shot.

"Let's pretend for a moment that I believe your headache is just a headache," he drawled with a critical gaze.  He knew there was more to it.  "Let me know if it gets to be too much.  I might have a few old family remedies for you that could help.  I wouldn't have made it this far into school without them."

 He caught Eli's hand as it moved over his chin to wipe away a drop of water.  He leaned in across the table.  "It's all your fault," he teased.  A light-hearted smirk hovered on his lips.

As the boy moved back to his seat, a smile split his face. A truly happy smile, something that hadn’t touched his lips in a while. It was nice to forget about the jumbled up mess in his head and worry about normal teenage problems, like curious boy crushes that made one’s head hurt even more than it did before. Was Elijah interested in men? Even he wasn’t sure, but there was obviously some pull toward the Slytherin. Either it was his proficiency with divination or it was his sheer beauty, either way… it was nice and made Elijah feel giggly inside.

“Can you keep a secret?” He asked, willing to tell this boy all his secrets if only he continued to smirk in an offhand way. Before waiting for a reply, he plowed on, “I don’t think your grandmother’s herbal teas are going to help me. I’ve been getting… visions. And it’s really confusing, because I don’t want the Ministry to find out, because as you know, I’m half vampire, and vampires aren’t supposed to be clairvoyant. It’s like… too many awesome attributes, y’know? Anyway, so I’ve had super harsh headaches, because it’s like there are a million hands in my skull, pulling my brain in ten thousand directions. It’s hard to concentrate; it’s hard to keep track of what day it is. Hell, I don’t even know if I showered today,”

A laugh escaped his lips, because either he laughed or the fear would swallow him up and Eli had been too scared lately. He didn’t want that to happen anymore. “Do you know what that’s like, Inkwood? To never know if a thought is truly your own? It’s torture.”

Ezra, who'd actually had a vampire in the family, highly doubted that was the case but having visions would be extremely intriguing if it was true.  He leaned forward and soaked up the information eagerly.  He had to work to keep the smile off his face.  It was too easy and the boy was just letting his secrets spill all over the table right here in the Great Hall.  Where anyone could hear them! 

Ezra looked around and then stood up to skirt the table.  He straddled the bench and leaned in close to Eli in order to be heard at a whisper.  The prospect of being in on the ground floor with a seer was enough to make him giddy.  His voice betrayed nothing though.  "I wouldn't underestimate the power of Cajun potions.  Cajuns deal with the primal forces of nature and..."  He grinned and tilted his head.  "That's what a seer's visions are, right?  You could learn to control them."

His grin widened into a genuine smile of pleasure and the challenge and opportunity in his grasp.  "I could help."

Why, oh why did this boy have to toy with Eli like he did? Elijah was bad with emotions at the best of times, but when his mind was frazzled by the otherworldly visions that kept overtaking his consciousness; he was pretty much a sitting duck. Hormones ran rampant through his body, sending shocks of longing through his veins. If it weren’t for the lack of privacy, Elijah would have snogged the boy right there! Then again, Eli had never snogged another person, so he might have just chickened out. Thankfully he didn’t have to deal with that, because just as the thought occurred, his mate spoke.

“You can help me control my visions? Without getting rid of them, yes? Because even though they’re a pain in my arse, they’re still a gift. It’s still something special that puts me apart from the rest,” Elijah’s eyes bore into the eyes of Ezra, pleading. Elijah really needed Ezra to understand how important these visions were to the seer. It was like a whole new part of him was opened up; he just didn’t know how to control it. It was like when you learned to ride a broom – sometimes the broom ran away with you and you couldn’t control it, but eventually you got the hang of it.

“And what does the spiciness of the potion have to do with anything?”

"I do hope you're joking about the spice," Ezra said flatly, giving Eli a look that clearly meant the boy ought to know better than that.  Ezra couldn't always be sure how stupid Ravenclaws were when it came to everyday knowledge.  He hesitated to underestimate anyone out of hand but this was hardly out of hand for Eli.

He shrugged it off because the very idea that he might actually try to stop Eli's visions was quite insulting.  Really now, it was if the boy didn't know him at all.  Or even know of a Slytherin's reputation for acquiring powerful assets.  Ezra took a moment to remind himself that this was the boy who thought he was part-vampire.  There was a likelyhood that these... visions... were merely vivid dreams of psychotic episodes.  It wouldn't be the first time someone claimed to be a seer because of something like that.

"I can't promise anything," he informed the Ravenclaw cautiously.  "But I can try to help you.  Nor will I tell anyone about this," he added, hoping that Eli would also want to keep this relatively quiet.