“I'm not a healer but I've done my best. I only used what I was comfortable with, and it seems to have worked out nicely,” she explained as Lucas complimented her work on the kneazle so far. Though she no longer took potions class now that it wasn't a required subject, Lucas had spent five years in the potions dungeons with her, watching as she refused to have any part in brewing potions that didn't meet her very persnickety moral standards. Her feelings about the abuse that creatures suffer at the hands of the potions industry had never been a secret. There was often some big to-do made during potions class about how Evie was protesting the use of any ingredients without a verified cruelty free source, or refusing to use anything that didn't come from her own potions kit, or doing some other idiosyncratic thing that nobody understood. Her mother was in support of her choices, even despite the fact that she'd never once in five years come even close to passing potions class. Her classmates were never quite as understanding. They made it seem as if she stood up and rallied when the truth was that she only did what Evie always did – sat down quietly and didn't do anything she didn't want to do.

The kneazle, likewise, could be just as stubborn when he was in the mood. He looked up as the both of them as they laughed, seemingly perplexed by the sound, his ears perking slightly. His interest did not stray from the food for long, however. As soon as there was a treat to be had he went about eating it in the very focused, methodical, and somewhat graceful way cats tended to eat, chewing contentedly and with purpose. Though he was a very small creature in a very large room, Evie swore she could hear purring. She may not have been imagining it, either. His bum rose high in the air as he stretched, clearly contented.

”We can fix the claws if we get him wrapped up again. In a towel or a jumper, maybe.”

“He won't like it, but I think it's for the best,” she decided softly. She was clearly right about that. The kneazle's attempt to get another treat into his belly as soon as possible resulted in one of his claws catching on Luc's comforter. It was obvious that it was too long to be retracted properly. Evie winced as he fought his way out, then looked to Luc. “Would you like to help me?” she asked. She wasn't sure this was something she could do by herself without going to extremes – which was exactly what she didn't want to do. The kneazel was a dangerous weapon all on his own with his over long, razor sharp claws – but add in a tool that is intended to cut, and a stressful situation, and suddenly you could have a massacre on your hands.

The kneazle did not seem to appreciate their amusement in him as he looked up. Cats had their own personalities and demanded to be treated as such. Lucas had learned to ignore the times Artemis, his large and overly maternal tuxedo cat, took a misstep as to not upset her delicate ego. She was somewhere in the Ravenclaw tower, lounging by the fire probably, and would return when it was time to eat. Like clockwork. It was just her way. Really, it would be more surprising if Evie's furry Dragon did not express some sort of personality at all. His indignation did not last long, however, and he was helped himself to a treat.

No, the kneazle wouldn't like being held against his will while a stranger snipped a his overgrown claws. It was, as Evie said, a necessary evil though and one Evie couldn't avoid for too much longer. Would he help her? "'Course," Lucas said as if it were obvious at this point. He had offered to begin with, the story hadn't changed just because the rogue cat turned out to be a fugitive kneazle.

There was a hoodie he normally hung on the foot of the bed, but in his hasty tidying, he'd shoved it in the trunk. With nothing else on hand, Lucas carefully peeled off his jumper and handed it to Evie. His tie had long since been loosened and he tugged it over his head, discarding it on top of his night stand. "You'll need to be able to hold him though," he said as he dug into his drawer for the nail clippers. Lucas wasn't confident in Evie's ability to wield them against her new friend, nor did he want to be accused of hurting the creature. "Even when he's fighting it. Think you can?" It was a very important question to ask, the whole effort hinged on it.

Evie took the jumper in her hands, imagining that it was what Lucas expected her to use to keep the kneazle contained. As he removed his tie, she took the time to look down at the jumper, and then over at the cat, wondering if it would be large enough to do the trick. Luc was a very fit, broad boy (yes, despite her dreamy, sometimes otherworldly nature she did notice the physical assets of her peers on occasion), but she still worried that it might be difficult to keep the cat wrapped up when the fabric was stretched as far as it could go. She wouldn't dare use any sort of magic his shirt without permission, though – she was far too invested in the sacred nature of ownership in her post-orphanage world, even eight years out.

“Will it be big enough?” she asked simply as she came to sit daintily on the edge of his bed. She imagined that sitting nearby would begin to sensitize her kneazle to her proximity now that he seemed a little bit more content. In the cat's thoroughly unpredictable way, he made his way over to her almost immediately, where he began to nuzzle the jumper in her hands with the side of his head. He liked her. No matter how many times she kidnapped him or held him down to apply medicines, he always seemed to forgive her. It was nice. People weren't like that.

”You'll need to be able to hold him though. Even when he's fighting it. Think you can?”

“Yes,” she replied immediately. “I have had to do it before, to put the poultices on. I used some charmwork on the material to get it to stay, because he would try to bite it off afterward, and I didn't want to frighten him again in order to reapply them so soon. It isn't easy taking a wand to an angry cat,” she explained as he settled down right next to her and shut his eyes, dozing. It was difficult to look at a cozy creature like that and not feel the all consuming desire to reach out and pet him, but she didn't think it was wise to allow him to slice her open before putting him in a stressful situation that would result in an even more violent reaction. She eyed Luc as he went through the drawer, wondering how much longer her dragon friend would be allowed to snooze contentedly at her side.

“I don't mind if I get hurt,” she confided faintly, spreading the jumper out across her lap. “If he scratches me, you shouldn't stop. A bite is more dangerous, but I can clean it. If we cut them well the first time then I won't get hurt in the future.”

"It should be, he's wee," Lucas replied when Evie asked if his jumper would be big enough to hold the kneazle. Evie pointed out that she'd been nursing the little creature by herself so she was more than up for this challenge. It went a long way in reassuring Lucas that this went didn't have to be done in stages. Not that he minded per se, but he wasn't trying to extend what could potentially be an uncomfortable experience for all involved either. "We'll do what we need to do," he nodded absently as he finally found what he was looking for. "Gotcha," he said seizing the tool from the depths of his drawer with a low toned grumble as if the thing had been hiding on purpose. "I should have had it ready," he said by way of apology as he turned to her.

Evie had sat on his bed when he wasn't paying attention and the sight of her kneazle cuddled up next to her drew another smile out of him. The smile didn't last very long though when Evie admitted she didn't mind if she got hurt doing this. She might not mind, but Lucas minded enough for the both of them. She didn't want Luc to stop if she got scratched and he was starting to second guess this whole endeavor. It was the scratches, after all, that had drawn his attention to this whole thing to begin with. He ran his free hand down his face and shook his head some to shake the though away. If he did it well enough, she wouldn't have anymore scratches. Not for a while anyway. "I'm ready if you're ready," he finally told her.

Evie didn't want to catch her dragon off guard while he was dozing, so she offered him her hand to sniff. Lazily, his eyes slid open and he pitched his head forward to take in her scent. She reached out her hand to try and pet his head, as she would have any ordinary cat, but stopped at the scruff of his neck – his tried and true weak point – and picked him up like a mama cat would lift her baby. He didn't become truly submissive, however, just more subdued than he normally would have been. He writhed and yowled and she made quick work of wrapping him in the jumper, keeping all of his paws contained but one.

Evie's normal speaking voice had the slow and soothing timbre of a valium addict's, and she used that calming, gentle quality to her advantage as she tried to calm the cat. “You're okay, sweetheart. You're okay,” she soothed, even as he fussed and lashed out in his confusion. She settled him on her lap so that he couldn't back away anywhere except further into her clutches, but that didn't mean he was any less threatened by the looming form of Lucas, who he barely knew, approaching. He cried and made a swipe for her, slicing through her tights (which were already ripped, anyway) and through to her leg. It was hard to tell if the attack had been intentional or if he was just frightened and couldn't control his claws. Evie hissed, glancing down at her most recent battle wound with a faint grimace. She was lucky his claws hadn't gotten stuck and snagged on her tights, because he could easily have done even more damage to the soft, pale skin underneath. “Sit beside me,” she encouraged Luc as she tried to keep the creature contained, certain that a less head-on attack would prevent further blood loss.

Without even thinking about it, Evie's soft reassurances had turned into humming. She wasn't humming any song in particular, just a few deep, soothing notes in succession. It wasn't clear if it was for her own benefit or for the kneazle's. Evie's feathers were not very easily ruffled (at least not in a visible way), but it was definitely helping to keep her calm and focused, despite the fact that this task was difficult and a little bit scary for everyone involved. At the ideal moment, she reached out and caught his tiny little paw in hers, detaining his weapon and gently massaging it to spread out the razor sharp, overlong claws. It was a struggle, but she hummed on, hoping Luc would be quick.

Lucas winced and grit his teeth when the claws slashed against Evie's thigh. Yeah, he was well past second guessing and had veered right to what was I thinking territory. He was on the verge of calling the whole thing off when Evie invited him to sit next to her. So he did. Backing out wasn't an option at this point, Evie had the kneazle wrapped in his jumper resdy to go. The scratch could be dealt with afterward, he told himself. Right now he needed to focus on the task at hand.

Evie's comforting chant had turned into a soothing hum. It helped enough to allow Evie to get ahold of the creatures paw and extend give Lucas something to work with. Lucas let the kneazle be for several seconds until he was sure he wouldn't jerk aeound while Lucas was snipping. Hitting the quick was the last thing they needed in this situation.

"Here we go," he murmured and carefully began to snip. His hand got steadier as he went, his confidence returning more and more with each shortened claw. Paws were traded out and the task continued and when he was finished back, Lucas took in a deep breath at last. "You made it," he told the creature.

It was over almost as soon as it had begun, and the total amount of blood lost was relatively low. Evie hummed all the while, trying to keep herself and the animal calm, and preventing the perfect silence in the dorm from becoming too heavy. Silence, Evie believed, was a lovely thing – but she also knew how much of a presence it could become when you were too aware of it. Even with her quiet melody filling the air around them, the click, click, click of the clippers severing the tips of claws had sounded harsh and slightly grating. The cat continued to make displeased, throaty noises so that the two students wouldn't forget that he was annoyed. At no point was Dragon pleased with what they were doing, but once he figured out what was going on, he lost some of his fight. As the clippers clicked on, his tiny, fang-like claws became shorter, blunter, and less weapon-like. He was able to retract them again. There was nothing poking him. The claw situation had officially been taken care of.

“You did a very nice job,” Evie told him as the grumpy, newly liberated kneazle jumped from her lap and paced at their feet. Even with his funny leg, he seemed to be walking with a new sort of confidence – sauntering, maybe, if kneazles could saunter. Every so often he turned his head to look at them as if he were saying 'are you seeing this?' as he walked back and forth, back and forth, like a lion in captivity. “He seems happy,” Evie observed, one of those elusive, here-one-minute-gone-the-next sort of grins finding its way to her face. “Thank you.”

The cat had clearly moved on, but the two humans were still sat knee-to-knee on Luc's bed in the boy's dorm, which was not a typical sight. She looked at him, unsure what exactly to say. They'd just survived a small war – it didn't seem right to just take her kneazle and go. Now the silence that had been covered up by her humming felt hefty. They'd never had anything to say to one another before, and now that they'd accomplished their task – the one thing they had in common - Evie once again found herself stuck. She didn't know much about him, and she didn't know where to start. Being Evie, she just said nothing.

"He does," Lucas laughed, watching the kneazle before making the mistake of looking to Evie. "You're welcome."

Noticing girls was fine. He could notice all the girls he liked and never find himself neck high in shit with no hopes of swimming to shore. No, there was no harm in noticing, it was the doing things part that always did him. The trouble from last year came from doing things as quickly as he noticed them. For a bloke that often considered himself on the logical side of things, having been a slave to his own hormones was not something to brag about. Exactly how he had talked himself into kissing Livi was a good idea, he couldn't quite recreate, and thankfully he didn't have to anymore.

There were all sorts of reasons to dismiss Evelyn Grimlish. She was odd. She didn't talk much, much less seem to have a lot of emotion about much of anything. She didn't seem to mind that her clothes were spotted with clay or paint. She wore fairies in her hair. (Admittedly this had caused him a bit of a distraction in the past, not that anyone could possibly blame him.) And most of all, it had become painfully obvious Avalon adored her. And mates simply did not go about noticing birds the other wanted. It was a rule.

And yet.

Here he was, alone in his room with a girl on his bed and their knees still pressed together. And she had to go and flash that grin again. In that way that had caught him off guard the first time and he wasn't anymore prepared to handle seeing it a second time. Evie wasn't helping by not saying anything. If she filled up the silence with something he'd be able to latch on and go. Something, anything. He didn't even care at this point as long as they weren't just sitting here and his head didn't have the chance to negotiate what else he could get up to.

"Your leg," he finally blurted, remembering the battle wound and he looked to the slash on her thigh. "I almost forgot. Does it hurt? You said you didn't want to stop and it took a lot to keep going, because, yeah." Luc shook his head a bit. "I'm sorry."

Evie noticed boys occasionally - their chests and eyes and smiles. She knew what kind of features she liked, and what kind she loved. It didn't seem to matter, though. Evelyn was certain that she wasn't the sort of girl that boys looked at. She didn't know why she thought this, other than the simple fact that she had no experience with boys. Nobody had ever told her they thought her pretty or considered her a romantic prospect, and nobody had ever ravaged her on the spot like in the novels. Except for an interest in intimacy itself, she didn't mind terribly much that she didn't have a gaggle of boys following her around and trailing drool. She had plans, after all, which involved striking out on her own and seeing parts of the world that she'd only ever dreamed about while flipping through the pages of travel diaries and guidebooks. She hadn't even wanted to take in the kneazle for fear of being tied down to another living thing, so how could she even humor the idea of falling in love?

Thus, Evie noticed boys, but never engaged. The same went for Lucas – broad chest, pretty blue-gray eyes and all. Even as their knees knocked together, his looks and his lips weren't more than a passing thought in Evie's dreamy head. As she stared right at him, silently trying to come up with the next step, there wasn't a single hormone fueled thought on her mind. If she'd known his own thoughts were on her she would have been floored.

”Your leg. I almost forgot. Does it hurt? You said you didn't want to stop and it took a lot to keep going, because, yeah. I'm sorry.“

Evie glanced down at the spot now that her attention was drawn to it, her passive eyes taking in the slight of the blood seeping through the thin material of her tights. She had many pairs of tights in her collection. She fancied wearing dresses and skirts too much to go without, and the school uniform required them, too, especially in the winter. Most of the pairs she owned were ripped or running in places, so she wasn't terribly fazed by the slash she was looking at now.

“It stings,” she admitted, studying the wound the best she could through the gauzy fabric. It was only a few scratches, albeit  deep ones, and they definitely weren't the first of their kind. “I'll soak a cloth in an herbal solution and rest it on top, which will take all of the sting away and bring some swelling and redness down. That's what I've done for the rest of them and I think it has done me good,” she explained. Granted, the scratches on her arms and face had still gotten her noticed. Her hedgewitchery couldn't come close to real healing magic, but she believed in it and it sat well on her conscience, so she planned to keep it up. “You shouldn't be sorry. You helped,” she told him, keeping her eyes trained on the wound and the odd stain it was creating as it seeped further into the fibers. “It's only a little bit of blood.”

Evie was a strange creature for sure and one Lucas had never had any real urge to puzzle out before today. Not beyond idle and ultimately passing curiosity anyway and now... Well, now here they were as she was once again studying a wound as if it were somehow beyond her. Stepping back and analyzing a situation was one thing, but physical harm to ones own body was different, wasn't it? At least this particular wound stung. It made her seem a little more real, even if she didn't seem to be bothered enough to want to do anything about it. It was definitely baffling to say the least. Should he find something to quench the blood blooming in her tights or should he pull out his wand? He knew a few healing charms.

Evie didn't seem distressed by the blood and if anyone was having issues with it, it was definitely Lucas. He stood up from the bed without warning and ran a hand through his hair.

"So, what are you going to do with him after you get him all healed up? Secrets don't stay too secret for long around here," he pointed out. "I mean, I wouldn't tell, I just..." What was he trying to say exactly? "I know from experience."

What was she supposed to do about the wound while sitting in someone else's room? Evie couldn't think of anything short of going through her brother's things, which she preferred not to do. That was why the quiet witch didn't do a thing beyond staring down at the scratches, waiting to see if they looked like they might stop bleeding on their own anytime soon. She wasn't one to fuss about stains, so she wasn't in any kind of hurry to salvage her tights. When she was back in her own room, surrounded by her own things, then she'd work on her leg. She had the herbs, the cloth, even the bowl to mix it all in – it was just a matter of getting to it. She knew how to take care of it, she didn't need help, and it didn't bother her. What was the rush?

"So, what are you going to do with him after you get him all healed up? Secrets don't stay too secret for long around here.  I mean, I wouldn't tell, I just... I know from experience.”

“I'm not sure,” she admitted faintly, shifting her eyes from the sight of the bright gashes to the kneazle who'd caused them. He appeared to still be testing out his new, improved pain-free paws, jumping up on the vacant bed next to the one Evie occupied. “I won't set him free again. He's not a wild animal and he doesn't deserve that,” she declared softly but firmly, as the little cat stretched his front two paws up and onto the bed frame, looking out at the rest of the room with an ethereal gaze that matched Evie's own. “When we domesticate creatures, we have a responsibility to care for them. He needs somewhere safe to live, but I'm not certain that place should be with me,” she admitted, “I know he needs me for now, but I don't know how long to keep him, or where else he'd go.”

 She didn't want to admit that she was already beginning to care about the creature, or that she looked forward to seeing him as soon as she arrived back in the dorms. For so many years she'd silently shaken her head 'no' when asked if she wanted her own familiar, despite the tenderness she exhibited when handling the pets of her family members. She'd always loved visiting pet shops, but she'd felt strange there, too. This creature, however, had come to her for some unknown reason dictated in a prophecy she'd heard with her own ears. It felt different, which made knowing what to do about him much more difficult. The best choice at the moment was to live life and wait for another sign.