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Despite the lack of any formal survey, it’s commonly accepted that Night Raven College has a distinctly high number of idiosyncratic students compared to its rival, the Royal Sword Academy. Then, a look at the meticulously noted history of the College will reveal the fact that there is never a normal entrance ceremony initiation. These two facts, assured by the Headmaster, have no relation.
So, one student holding up the Dark Mirror is considered one of the more minor shenanigans that can happen and much preferred over unauthorized uses of magic, collateral damages or general chaos. The only reason this incident became of note is due to the Dark Mirror's increasingly intense expression. (Rook Hunt later would also cause the Mirror to ponder but he clearly belongs to Savanaclaw as he is right now.)
The aforementioned student, a Cater Diamond, braces himself in a mostly successful manner as the Dark Mirror drags on and whispers break out in the ceremony hall.
Headmaster Crowley, expecting interruptions by the rare skill of seeing the pattern, doesn’t naturally assume that the Mirror has malfunctioned or centuries-old spellworks failing when they need it the most. Accordingly, he discreetly taps the back of the Mirror not unlike the way one would thump a glitching electronic device.
The Dark Mirror, finally remembering it still has works to do, unnecessarily clears its throat, with a tone honed through the years, spits out a “Heartslabyul”. Cater, who is now no longer the center of unwanted attention, prances toward the Heartslabyul waiting area.
Dismayed, the housewarden of Heartslabyul, Absolem exhales rings of colored smoke. As another person with the skill of seeing the patterns, feels that his tenure would be interesting at the very least and he can’t wait until next year to foist the seat on a more driven student.
As a person, Trey Clover has been praised to be cool-headed and adaptable. He himself doesn’t see anything special in himself. His family and friends might perhaps counter this view, but they are predisposed to think well of him to begin with.
Trey doesn’t mind being ordinary. He has seen and known extraordinary, he can’t envision that life for himself. So, it would be a lie to say he isn’t apprehensive about being roomed with the disruption at the entrance ceremony. In a rare two-people room instead of the normal four-people room for freshmen due to the uneven distribution of new students.
In the end, Cater and his laid-back cheer are potent. He’s also a good roommate. Another early riser, mindful of personal space, neat and incredibly easy to talk with. It could have been much worse.
The only problem is, Trey doesn’t know if that can be called “problem” in the first place but he can’t find any other suitable word, the animals.
In his previous sixteen years of life, Trey had never been woken up by birds singing outside of his window before. His home is in the middle of a town. He barely saw any wild animals that weren’t a stray in the first place. There are rats but rats are everywhere.
He, however, is aware of the existence of the so-called “animal magnets”. Cats tend to gravitate to Chenya. The time he dragged a veritable army of stray cats though the town during a festival had gone down in the Town legend, the sort of thing the habitants warn out-of-towners to be aware of.
(Trey had been at the bakery to accommodate the increased traffic and neatly dodged being associated with the cat parade or became Chenya’s accomplice. While Riddle…hadn’t been allowed.)
In the morning after the sorting, he woke up to birds singing outside the window on Cater’s side. His roommate dropped a hand-full of seeds on the sill for the living alarm clocks. Having received the tithe, the birds scattered into the sky. Two squirrels didn’t leave until Cater petted each once on the head and snapped a few pictures.
“Is that a normal thing for you?” Trey had to ask.
Cater, waving at a trio of tortoise-shelled cats, said, “Pretty much. Do you mind animals? I can ask them not to go in our room.”
Trey, under the mistaken assumption that there would only be some small woodland critter, said “no, as long as they don’t cause a mess”. He would be proven wrong thoroughly. Cater’s Animal Magnetism doesn’t stop at some or small.
“Wow, that’s absolutely Magicammable, Trey-kun~”
Trey jumps, nearly ruins the frosting flower on the Unbirthday cake. For someone who radiates energy, Cater needs a bell or someone would die of fright one day. The chances of it being himself are far higher than he cares to contemplate.
“Cater,” he greets. “You finished feeding the hedgehogs already?”
From what he knows, the current batch of hedgehogs is terrors in small packages. He has heard more than one horror story about ill-tempered escape artists and once has joined in the search for one particularly sneaky spiny mammal.
(He found the thing chittering next to Cater on one of the benches behind the dorm, wearing the angriest tiny little face Trey had ever seen on an animal. Cater hummed and gasped at the appropriate pauses. The hedgehog carried on with an indignant air, staring up at Cater as though she was being forced to endure the most horrific slight against her person.
Trey didn’t know nearly enough Animal Languages to understand the tirade but Cater didn’t seem to have any problem. Eventually, Cater put his foot down and bundled the hedgehog into his arm, declaring that he was talking with the Headwarden about “a grave injustice”. The pissed-off spiny ball was mortally offended by another spiny ball sharing her cage. The escape attempts were her demands for attention. The rest of the batch were just starved for entertainment outside of Croquet season.
The hedgehogs end up adoring Cater and the ground he walks on. Trey should stop being surprised at this point. )
“Yes~ they’re all super sweet darlings. Totally undeserving of their mean reputation,” Cater waltzes in with unnervingly quiet footsteps, hooking a chair and pulling it close to perch on it not unlike one of his birds.
“Only for you,” Trey corrects that mistaken assumption, piping the last rose petal. He’s almost certain that those “sweet darlings” feast on sufferings to stay energetic and age only makes them worse. An upperclassman has told him those things were around even before he came to Night Raven (how long do hedgehogs live anyway?) There is a reason he volunteers for cake duty and it isn’t only because he gets to keep his skill sharp on the dorm budget.
“Chamer. You’re making me blush.” Cater smiles and leans forward. No blush, elbows on the counter top, phone up for a picture or twelve.
That isn’t what Trey meant at all.
Well. As long as someone is happy.
Trey starts to gather up the dirty tools. Cater wipes the island down with a damp tower for prime background.
For a while, there is no sound other than running water and tiny clicks as Cater rotates around the cake for the best lighting. It is, Trey has to admit, profoundly flattering to see somebody appreciate his creation with the respect it deserves. From what he’s seen, Cater’s MagiCam account is a blend between food and trend, intersected with cute animals and memes. A bizarre combination that works. The number of followings isn’t comparable to the more famous accounts but respectable nevertheless.
Trey follows mostly because Cater asked him to. He’d have appreciated the free serotonin of cute animals more if he hadn’t had a front row seat to watch critters fawning over Cater.
“I’m done! Thank you for your service. 10/10, will do it again!” Cater declares when Trey is putting the last bowl on the drying rack. “See you later, Trey-kun.”
Cater gives a lazy wave as he slips out of the kitchen. Knowing him, he’d probably come in only to take pictures. Trey puts him out of his mind, and continues to put everything back in their place.
“Well, color me impressed,” Headwarden Absolem drawls, slouching in his seat with a lit pipe between his fingers. The on-going Cater versus Vice-headwarden Wock croquet match is vaguely terrifying. “It’s not everyday Jacob meets his match. He usually destroys everyone in the tournament.”
It’s impressive, Trey has to admit that. Mostly because of Vice-headwarden’s skill. Cater is in the lead due to Hedgehog Bias but the upperclassman is gaining by pure skill alone. It takes real talent to keep up when the ball itself is biased.
“Huh,” Absolem-senpai says and exhales a cloud of blue. Cater’s hedgehog swerves from a misaligned shot to go through the hoop. “Interesting.”
Three months into the school year, Trey is enlightened with the fact that avian mafia, namely corvids, exists. All thanks to Cater, again.
One of their fellow dorm mates accidentally dropped his magic pen and after reading through the process to request for a replacement, decided to try to find it himself with little success. Cater suggested the assistance of the unkindness of ravens currently ruling over the avian population of the college.
For a price of “three full-sized bags of shelled peanuts from Sam’s”. Cater helped with the negotiation, with the expansive instruction to “pay them within three days of receiving your pen, okay? Cay-kun isn’t liable for anything that happens if you don’t.”
The pen was delivered the same day. A week later, the same person came to wail with Cater about the birds running a terror campage on him.
Cater, having given it all five seconds of consideration, said, ”Do you remember how I told you to pay them within three days? The unkindness runs a no-mercy policy on double-crossers and are too willing to show them the consequences. You received what you asked for. Pay the birds.”
Cater is chatting animatedly with a blond Savanaclaw boy.
On its own, this isn’t a strange thing. Cater is a social butterfly. Trey is quite certain that Cater has friends in all the dorms. True to his social butterfly-ness, he once saw Cater goading half a dozen Ignihyde students into a heated discussion about photo editors in public.
The only strange thing about this situation is that they’re talking about Animal Languages. Cater’s mastery of Animal Languages is unreal. However, for the love of the Sevens, he can’t properly explain anything, rendering any attempt to gain tutelage from him moot.
Trey continues on his way when they switch to another utterly alien language.
A pair of deers knock on Cater’s window one cloudy morning. Trey covers his head with a pillow then rolls over back to sleep. There are things not worth getting out of bed for.
“Lucius is so mean~” Cater wails dramatically. “I know he doesn’t like me but his comments were uncalled for. Cay-kun’s heart will never recover from this shock!”
Professor Trein’s cat might be the only animal on campus to treat Cater with disdain. The rumor mills have that the Professor’s jaws had actually fallen open in shock. The mills have no real answer for the cat’s comments because there were exactly two people and a cat with enough knowledge about the obscure dialect Lucius used in the room and no desire to translate.
Scarabia loses a tiger on the campus. A tamed and smart and magical tiger. But still a tiger nevertheless.
Apparently this is a thing that can happen in Night Raven College. This is the sort of thing upperclassmen warn underclassmen to be aware of, not just as the kind of thing which might happen, but the kind of thing that might happen to them.
Students are urged to return to their dorm, except for the tamers, until the tiger is found. By the time Trey gets to his room, Cater is still missing and doesn’t answer the phone. For someone with the ability to literally be in many places at once, this is a valid reason for panic. Until Cater’s MagiCam updates.
In the expertly edited picture, Cater is posing with a tiger and two blue birds nesting on its head. As Trey’s friendship with Chenya has ticked over the decade milestone at this point, he’s very familiar with the expression in the whole body of the missing tiger. The tiger is lying in the pose of a cat which is very well aware that it has let its owner down, it has let its ancestors down, it has let its ambush down, but most of all it has let itself down and doesn’t care a lick.
Trey turns on his heels to go find the Housewarden.
Absolem-senpai raises an eyebrow while Wock-senpai bursts into raucous laughter, then chokes as the Housewarden jabs him in a particularly sensitive region.
“I’ll inform the Scarabia Housewarden. Tell Cater-kun to try to keep track of the tiger if it wants to leave. It’s fine if he can’t. His safety is utmost important.”
Over the red haze from the Housewarden’s ever-present pipe, there is a touch of incredulousness in the upperclassman’s voice. Trey is pathetically grateful that this situation is as strange for them too.
At this point, Trey has made peace with the fact that if a dragon was ever let loose on the island, there is a high chance it would gravitate to Cater too.