All On My Mind PV Kaegen Deathmote Closed

If someone needs to go somewhere, take them. Then make them pay you back a thousand fold. It's how the world works, boy. You want to survive, don't you?
-Grandfather

Kaegen was tired. Not too tired, not enough to slow him down, or make any noticeable difference in how he went about his day, but it was still there. The tiny beginnings of dark patches under his eye that looked like a very light shade of eyeliner.

He wasn’t upset about it, as far as he was concerned missing a few bedtimes was not going to keep him down. Who needs sleep anyway? It was optional, more of a guideline than anything else, wasn’t it? The young ravenclaw had been hitting more books than he thought possible, waving his wand until his wrist hurt every night, trying to get better. He still got some sleep, of course. His 11 year old body would shut down on him a little past midnight.

But it was worth it, he was getting a little bit better. Not a lot, but enough. Enough to make him feel like he had earned a break, a break to go exploring a little, off to the other side of the lake and perhaps beyond that. He was moving along the shore, soft scarf waving off to one side like a morose streamer, trying to get away from the neck it was tethered to.

He paused when he noticed a girl sitting down by the shore, a ways in front of him. His eyes glanced on her, and were about to dart to something else, in their customary way, but he stopped them. His eyes moved so quickly, but seemed to miss so much. He had been wrong about too many people too many times.

They were fine for picking up movement, for seeing things coming. But not for really understanding what was already in front of him. He had gotten in too much trouble already because of his inability to understand what was right in front of him, he had learned his lesson and was going to fix it. But old habits die hard, which led to his eyes twitching every second or so, trying to dart about and look at whatever it is they wanted to look at.

Arriving near the girl, Kaegen caught a bit of what she was saying. He didn’t have any context, and wasn’t sure what she had said before that, but he did hear that she wanted to go too. There wasn’t anything much to be afraid of here, so his curious mind quickly latched on to the mystery of what the girl was talking about, trying to guess the answer.

She was looking across the lake, at the blossomfest grounds. So maybe she was thinking about that? But if that was the case, why didn’t she just stand up and go herself? Why just wish she could? It would only make sense if something was stopping her from going and she wasn’t capable of pushing back against whatever boundary was keeping her from the festival grounds.

In situations like this, full of unclear answers to questions he wasn’t sure if he should even be asking, Kaegen found the best course of action to be the straightforward question, his soft voice sounding like a faraway whisper that hitched a ride to some breeze, taking it’s time on the way to whoever’s ears were in range.
"Where do you want to go? Why can't you go there?"

𝓣he girl's body jolted as she heard another voice come into the conversation. It was a quiet one, that of a boy, but that's about all she could recognize. It was obvious whoever she was speaking to now wasn't someone she's met before, and because of that she rushed to get herself on her feet and to turn in the direction of the voice immediately. Her top lip picked up in a snarl, but she quickly dismissed it when she processed his question through her mind. With an unimpressed huff, she crossed her arms over her chest, "None of your business,"

 𝓚atya was never really one to share much with people, especially those she just met, and there was nothing that was going to change that. She let her eyes look up and down his figure, a weird look coming across her face, "What are you, from the Forbidden Forest? Don't tell me you are goblin, because you look like one." She scoffed, shaking her head at his poor taste in fashion. Judging based on fashion sense was probably the one thing that had passed on from her mother to Katerina. Whether it were good or bad, she wasn't sure, it was a part of who she was though.

 𝓐 gust of wind blew her hair back behind her, causing her to flip one piece behind her shoulder so that it wasn't flying into her face. She looked around them, not happening to spy anyone, but she still felt as though she wanted to move. Or for the other boy to move. But she wasn't going to say that - this could be a chance for her to redeem her social skills and possibly make a friend. Plus, if they were friends, then she should be able to cure whatever disease he had that made him dress that way.

 "𝓘 am Katerina Anya Petrov, but call me by Katya. Who are you?" She asked curiously. She had become far too used to the way her accent happened to affect her English, but for some reason when she spoke while at the school, she felt a little self-conscious concerning it. She scrunched her nose up slightly for a few seconds before she relaxed, a small sigh escaping her. Hopefully she wasn't acting one way or another, or both. She had issues with being herself in front of people, oftentimes finding a way to do differently. 

 𝓝ow wasn't the time to ponder on that though, not in front of someone who she didn't know if he mattered or not, but he seemed to look like an absolute mess so she seriously doubted he was anywhere above her. Not that she thought she was above everyone - okay, so maybe she did a little bit, but it wasn't that noticeable - but he definitely did look a little questionable. She pursed the lips, wanting to turn back to look at the lake and the festival again, but she didn't quite trust this person not to come up and stab her while she wasn't looking. He definitely appeared to be that kind of person who would be in movies. 

It’s small because it’s a baby. You’re a baby too, Kae. One of these days you’ll grow. Just like that little salamander
-Mother

This girl was…
Kaegen searched for a good word to describe it, a good word to quite sum up what she was. He couldn’t really find one at first, none of them seeming to accurately portray her, until he finally found what he was looking for. Found the perfect descriptive word that summed up who she was.

Weird.

This girl was very weird, and maybe a little bit strange, assuming that those two words were any different. For example, she seemed to think that something interesting wasn’t his business. If it was interesting, why wouldn’t it be?
Everything was his business if he wanted it to be. The very act of thinking about something made him a part of it, didn’t it?

He was about to comment on it, but what she said next made him worry slightly. The girl obviously didn’t have very good eyes. How was she going to survive in the world with something that debilitating? It was almost inconceivable that something as weak and blind as the girl could survive anywhere, let alone a school full of death witches.

What she said didn’t even make any sense. She first asked him to not tell her he was from the forbidden forest, which he didn’t plan on doing anyway. He wasn’t from there, so why would he tell her that he was?
Thinking about it a little bit more, what she said did kinda make a little bit of sense. She must have known that he wasn’t from the forest, and was just making sure that he knew she didn’t want him to tell her he was from somewhere he wasn’t.

At first glance, the next bit sounded like the first, and this is where the confusion began. She said to not tell her he was a goblin, which of course made sense. Just like with not telling her he came from the forbidden forest. But then she said “because you look like one.”
If he looked like one, she probably thought he was one. It didn’t much matter, he knew that blind people existed. She was probably just one of them.

But then why would she tell him to not tell her he was a goblin? Did she think that he was a boy that looked like a goblin, and was warning him to not try and trick her by pretending to be a goblin? It was equally likely that this was all some extravagant mindgame designed to trick him. It could be a paradox, with no clear answer.

And then she stopped her confounding mindgame completely, halting it so suddenly Kaegen had to scramble to understand what page he was on. She had been speaking in riddles and telling him what not to say, but then she had swapped over to introductions. Was this all some kind of brain trap?
If it was, then it was working. Maybe a bit too well.

She had a odd name, but an acceptable one. He kindly liked how it sounded, in all honesty. It didn’t have any titles to it, and wasn’t exactly an important name. But it was a good one nonetheless. He stared at her blankly for a few long seconds, wrapping his head around everything before attempting to answer anything she had just said.

His eyes darted to the side, down and then up, unimpeded as he worked out what to say. He wasn’t shy, or worried about not saying the right thing and making the wrong first impression. He just didn’t know what to say, not used to conversations, even after the time he had spent at hogwarts leading up to the blossomfest.
Most of the conversations he had lead to fights or arguments, stressed situations and messes he had to fight to get out of.

There had been a few good ones, a few he had actually enjoyed. But not many.
“My name is Kaegen Deathmote, Fens-born Scarf-wielder.”
He would have gone on, but it wasn’t really a formal enough setting. And besides, he wasn’t really worried about impressing the blind girl.

“Are… you okay?”
He was asking if she was sick, or if she was going to die. Stricken down by a debilitating eye disease that was spreading closer to her brain every second.
But his tone didn’t exactly help with that. It sounded like it always did, a quiet whisper. It was only after he finished asking her his question that he realized that his eyes were darting about. Closing them for a second, he tried to stop, and then opened again.

They were more or less still. Not perfectly, but good enough.

 𝓣his boy was weird, Katerina finally decided. He wore a scarf in May, he looked like he hadn't been introduced to sleep his entire life, and he dressed weird. His hair looked like it was a mess, and it wasn't exactly impressive. Her lips pursed to the side and she rolled her eyes a little bit. Then again, she could also be just a little irritated with him, but this felt a lot more like judgement than anything else. She kept this to herself though, she didn't exactly share her feelings. 

 𝓝ot to mention, his eyes kept darting around whenever he wasn't speaking. It was intriguing, but simply because it was an awfully weird habit. What was he looking at? Or was he trying not to look at her? He had obviously confused her, because she just shook her head, turning her gaze onto the ground instead. His silence bothered her, and she almost wanted to threaten him in some way to get him to go. But for one reason or another, she didn't. Instead, she came out with a question, "What's your problem?" It was a simpler query, one even he should be able to understand. Because even though people were weird, most of them could understand what she had said.

 𝓐dmittedly, she was a little harsh in her own mind. Years of growing up with elitist parents, who although were kind, looked down on anyone lower than them. It came from her mother, and naturally caught onto Katya as well. Then, he introduced himself. She rose an eyebrow at his name. What kind of last name is Deathmote? Obviously, just his name was quite the curse. Perhaps that was why he was so weird - he was cursed. "Fens-born Scarf-wielder? What kind of title is that?" She asked, honestly curious. Perhaps she wasn't the best with words, but at least she was trying.

 𝓐s for his questioning if she was alright, she ignored it. She wouldn't answer it simply because it was none of his business. What gave him the right to know? Nothing at all. Perhaps she was still agitated from the previous month - the process she was currently going through was far too much to handle for someone so young. She was tired, and having to deal with classes for the past five days was just awful. She still had a pit of guilt in her stomach whenever she got an owl from her parents - she'd yet to tell them.

 𝓦ithout further a due, she snapped out of her thoughts, and hopefully her slightly sour mood, looking down at the ground to make sure she wouldn't sit on anything before lowering herself down onto the grass, crossing her legs underneath her. Thankfully, she had worn jeans that day, so it was perfectly proper for her to be doing so. She didn't want to stand, but she couldn't exactly comfortably sit on the ground without some sort of uncomfortability. Annoying, definitely, but for now she didn't have that annoyance.

The girl asked him what his problem was. It was a strange question, because it operated off of the assumption that he had a problem to begin with. And that meant that she already knew that he had a problem, and that meant that she had somehow gotten information on him. He didn’t know how, but it demonstrated this girl’s aptitude. She either had a network of spies working for her, or she was on a whole new level of stealth

He hoped that it wasn’t the latter, because that meant that he was hopelessly outclassed by a girl he had never even paid attention to before. His tired gaze hardened slightly as he realized what this could mean. And he didn’t even know her motives, what made her want to move forward with what she was doing. Was she hoping to help him by asking him to talk to her about his problems, or was she demonstrating her power over him.

He naturally decided to lean for the latter. It didn’t make sense for her to be nice to someone she had never met before that moment. Which means she was an adversary, and a dangerous one. But an enemy that used words instead of brute force. Kaegen did not know how to fight on a verbal battlefield, and wasn’t sure how to go about launching a counterassault. So he decided to reach for confirmation of verbal war and see if there was any hints as to what was going on he could spot.
“Which problem are you talking about?”

The other comment the girl made was much more understandable. It was a common thing for people to ask about titles, they were often vague and difficult to understand. It was no different this time, as this girl clearly just didn’t understand. Kaegen also detected something in her voice that he had heard once before. It was an accent, a weird form of English that meant that the person speaking had a hard time of it. Something about other countries and languages being a thing. And this girl definitely had an accent.

It may have just meant that she wasn’t very good at English, but Kaegen thought it made the English sound nicer. If it wasn’t a badge of shame that broadcasted the ineptitude of the person that had it to the world, he probably would have tried to copy it. As it was, he resolved to make sure to not take any death threats as death threats until he could prove that was actually what she wanted. It would suck if he misunderstood something and something died that didn’t have to.

“Fens-Born means I come from the Fens, and Scarf-Wielder is because of my scarf.”
His eyes darted down to look at his scarf, before moving back up to look at the girl. The scarf never came off, but surprisingly hardly got dirty, the few stray pieces of dust and dirt sitting on top, but rolling off whenever the opportunity arose. Nothing seemed to stick to the light, soft fabric.
“My name’s authority comes from Grandfather, whose authority comes from the conqueror of the 14th dark place.”

Another thing that bugged him was the way she acted. She scrunched up her face and tried to look in the back of her head like a weirdo. Plus, there was something about her that made him feel more on edge. He wasn’t sure what it was, but deep down in his gut, something was poking his mind, telling it to avoid this girl and leave while the leaving was good. But Kaegen didn’t feel like running, he was feeling curious. The girl hadn’t heard him when he asked if she was alright. It made sense, he was kind of quiet.

He responded in his quiet, whispery voice, the kind that had no hint of deceit, and not hint of ulterior motives, good or otherwise. The best ways to describe it would be neutral, or weird.
She had told him it was none of her business, but it was probably just because it was something embarrassing, like maybe she didn't know how to go back to the castle that obviously loomed in the distance.
“Are you alright? If you need to go somewhere, I might be able to take you.”

[font=times new roman]𝓣[/font][font=times new roman]he boy asked which problem she was speaking of, which caused Katya to quirk an eyebrow at him. [/font][font=times new roman]What problem?[/font][font=times new roman] Well, he had plenty of them, but more than obviously he had a serious problem with his sense of style. Sure, being different was good and all, but he really seemed like the kind of different that someone wouldn’t quite want to talk to. Yet, here she was, talking to some complete weirdo. Maybe he was a figment of her imagination - it would make sense, she hadn’t seen him around the school before. Then again, she hasn’t exactly tried to seek people out.

”𝓜erlin, you’re odd,” She muttered under her breath, shaking her head at him. He confused her, to say the least, but she would still try and answer to some extent. “Your problem is, obviously, that you haven’t been raised properly. Where are you from?” She asked, turning her gaze back to him, “You know, if you are not from Forbidden Forest.” She mentioned, gesturing to the forest not too far away from where the pair currently were. She hoped he wasn’t some kind of shapeshifting thing, and that she was safe. Although, her parents had definitely warned her to stay away from weird people, especially if they were strangers.

𝓐t this point in time, she was getting more and more uninterested with this boy. Who he was, she didn’t know. Was he from an influential family? With the way he dressed, highly doubtful. So for what reason would he be able to captivate her attention? None, really. She narrowed her eyes at the boy as he explained his title, not quite believing it was as much of a title as it was some sort of make-believe. The Fens? Highly doubtful that this was even a place in the real world, the girl nodded her head as though she understood. “Right..” She trailed off, shaking her head.

𝓦hoever this ‘Grandfather’ figure was, was probably delusional if he thought that he had some sort of authority to give a boy such a silly name. Seriously, Deathmote? Fens-Born? Scarf-Wielder? It was like he was living in some sort of imaginary world. Katya sure hoped that he got a reality check soon. She wasn’t even too sure what that was, but it had the word ‘reality’ in it, and that’s something that Kaegen definitely needed. And the dark palace didn’t exactly sound like the best possible place to be.

𝓦ait.

𝓣hat would have been an odd place, unless… This boy was a descendant from one of the followers of Voldemort! At the thought, Katya quickly scrambled up to her feet, retrieving her wand from her pocket and pointing it at him. She didn’t know many spells, except for Periculum, and she doubted that would do much. At least it was some kind of threat. “You! You’re loyal to dark magic, aren’t you?!” She accused him, her eyebrows furrowing together as an angry look came upon her face.

𝓘f this boy really was a Death Eater spawn and was going to be exactly like those who cursed the world with his birth, then Katya would have to run - and quick. She didn’t like to get into sticky situations, especially since the one back in January. Though the only place she could run right now would be either past him, or into the lake. Of course, she could always climb a tree, but she definitely didn’t have the stamina for that. Being raised in a world of prim and proper resulted in her not knowing hardly any way to defend herself, leaving her helpless if he was a Dark Lord enthusiast.

"𝓓on’t ask me if I’m okay, are you crazy?! You’re some- some… Dark Lord!” She shouted, jousting her wand in his direction for emphasis. She was convinced that this boy was both evil and crazy, unless he proved otherwise. Which she highly doubted, because he was a total Death Eater! “Back off! Don’t make me use a spell on you!” She threatened, despite knowing that she wouldn’t be able to follow through with it.[/font]

Loyal to dark magic? What even was dark magic? Magic of darkness, magic that made darkness? So like the fumos spell? Fumos made a state similar to darkness, a state of unknown that you couldn’t escape from anyway. It was the only candidate that followed the girl’s accusation at all. How was he loyal to a spell? And did that girl really think she was able to take him down from that short of a range?

Spells were powerful, deadly. A different sort of power than Kaegen was used to. They were not a force to be trifled with, turning the most physically powerful of opponents into mice and then burning them into a cinder. But you had to make the motion, you had to correctly pronounce the spell. There was no way a girl like that would be able to fire off a decent spell before Kaegen got past the tip of that wand. As soon as he did, she was dead.

So why was she doing it? Was this all a joke? Why did no one in this school know how to kill anything, anyone? It was a joke. The classes here only gave you a few tools. A teacher should help the students learn how to apply what they learned to a real-life scenario. The girl should step sideways, draw back the front foot. Back up, using the entire back foot as a pad from which to pivot in an instant, the front foot balancing on the ball of the foot, ready to move in any direction. It wasn’t the best of stances, and it did have its flaws. But it was better than what she was doing.

And besides, her accusation wasn’t even founded. Dark magic, fumos, wasn’t something he was loyal to. Fumos was loyal to him. The spell worked when he made it work and not before then. He didn’t even depend on the spell, preferring to use other skills to navigate the school’s many traps and hazards, death witches and incompetent professors.
“No, dark magic is loyal to me. Assuming I get it right.”

The last part was added as an afterthought, to make sure it didn’t sound like he was infallible or anything. He would have to be diplomatic if he wanted to not kill this girl. She started to yell at him, telling him to not ask her if she was okay. The way she yelled it made him think that she was, in fact, very much not okay. Probably mad that he had discovered her state of not-okayness and pointed it out to her. It was like finding a cripple and telling him that he was a cripple. It would no doubt be met with some annoyance or aggression.

But then she called him lord. A dark one, but it did make sense, considering his black hair and robe. How had he risen so high up in the rankings of Hogwarts that this girl now thought him a lord! It was probably a misunderstanding, but it was still a nice thought. That someone respected him enough to call him nobility. It was kind of strange how she said the words angrily as she pointed her wand at him, but that may or may not just be a weird greeting he didn’t know about.

And then she threatened to use a spell on him. That meant that dark lords were probably the girl’s enemy, which made him her enemy. He wasn’t a dark lord, not really. He would have known if he was one, right? There would have been a coronation ceremony or at least a feast in his honor. The girl was probably confused, but at the same time he had to admit it was a bit difficult for anyone to mistake him for someone else. He was unique, extremely so. So maybe there was a doppelganger running amok pretending to be him? A doppelganger that had somehow become a lord?

“Are you threatening to kill me? Should I kill you? I don’t really understand.”

The alternative to all of his musings was that she was joking, she didn’t actually think he was a lord, dark or otherwise and was screaming because she was mentally ill.
All things considered, it was pretty likely.

Kaegen stayed still, looking at the girl with slightly more interested eyes. He could be tired later. His body swayed with the wind, in tune with the grass, although he didn’t sway quite as much. It made him look a bit more natural, like he belonged in the field of grass. The natural movement of his body was stranger still when you considered the boy’s appearance, pale, almost corpse like skin and black hair sitting on top of filthy, burned patched and melted robes.

His scarf felt soft against his neck, the smooth and surprisingly clean fabric being the only nice thing about his appearance. There were even a few pink marks on his face, cuts and scratches from some encounter or another he had managed to survive.