Sawbones PV Kaegen Closed

A smell, sweet and pungent, permeated the corridors and halls of Hogwarts.
Most of the other students failed to notice the smell, or else pretended to ignore it. The only one that took any interest was a boy with unkempt hair and a grey scarf that caught and wafted up at the slightest breeze. He noticed and was dimly aware that his heart had just sped up.
It was beautiful, intoxicating. The kind of smell you wanted to bottle up and turn into a candle you could burn by your bedside forever. He had never smelled anything like it before arriving at Hogwarts, never smelled anything quite as marvelously delicious. It had taken him a while to discover what it was, to discover where the smell was coming from. But he had done it. It made no sense, but he had done it.
The smell was coming from blood. The blood of a fellow student or a teacher. The blood he could always smell coming from animals and magical creatures was never as good. Humans and creatures both had blood and muscles and skin, but there was something about one of his kind, Humans, that made their blood make his boil and froth in joy.
He ignored it whenever he could, ignored the smell of a scrape, or the smell of a small cut that the occasional student got while playing some game. And he would ignore it this time, too. He did not have time to be distracted by smells, did not have time to make a detour unless it was very, very short.
Eris’ classes were over the same time his were, and that meant there was a brief moment of vulnerability. A brief moment when you could attack or hurt the girl and he would not be there.
The moment may be a brief one, and she may have been a lot stronger than he was. But that did not make a difference to him. The fact she could easily destroy him, the fact that he was nothing compared to her all meant nothing. It was the principle of the thing.
She was a friend, and friends were protected. He was not going to not be there the one day some kid decides to hurt her.
He had nothing against her making other friends, he wasn’t trying to separate the little redhead from any of the other students. He didn’t have a right to do that. But if anyone or anything was deemed a threat to her, it was his self-appointed responsibility to deal with it before she had to.
He was the weaker, first line of defense against the unknown and strange, and he was not going to fail her. Not again.
His tired eyes had been looking dully ahead, but they had not been paying attention to where he was going, which was strange in and of itself. Usually he could count on himself to keep track of where he was and why he was doing whatever it was he was doing while still thinking about whatever interesting thought had recently piqued his interest.
But this time, it hadn’t happened. He hadn’t even gone in the direction of Eris’ classroom. He had gone in the direction of the abandoned toilets and was walking inside of them. He could sense a light fog, a light obscuring mist that had settled in and around his mind. It was not noticeable enough to worry him, or else the odd mind fog was stopping him from worrying.
A quick sniff revealed to the boy why he had ended up here. The smell was stronger here, he had been following the smell of blood. It made sense to him. In fact, he was slightly surprised that there weren’t any more people congregating around this place. How did the other students resist? How did they stop themselves from coming in, at least for a quick look. He hadn’t meant to come here and even he had ended up in this room.
He saw a small girl, or was it a boy, standing in the old room, messing with a black bag. The student had concealed any easy means of identifying what gender he was from the eyes of the young ravenclaw, whose eyes had sharpened enough to stare at the form. Kaegen stared with the intent of a predator, of someone that was going to find out what was in front of him even if it meant boring holes through that thing using his sight alone.
Boy or girl… Boy or girl…
The eyes continued to stare as they attempted to work out this riddle, blood momentarily forgotten, the smell fading down the sink drain.

“Are you a boy or a girl?”
Kaegen’s whispery, quiet voice carried to the form, eyes still unblinking. This was going to annoy him, how could anyone be that mysterious? That impervious to the eagle eyes of Kaegen Deathmote?
And besides, he still had to get back to Eris.

And then there was a sound. Small, hardly noticeable, but unmistakeably there.

November froze.

If he was caught down here... Images of the tiny place in the world he'd only barely begun to conceive of carving out here were crumbling before they even began. If that was a teacher, he'd be doomed for sure. But even another student was a threat...

But then, there were no outcries of horror, no shrieks, no gasps. No judgement. Instead, only a quiet question, which shocked November in its sheer innocence. He'd just been caught quite literally red-handed, trying to stuff bloody knives and scalpels back into secrecy, and this fellow wanted to know if he was a boy or a girl?

A halting, shaky breath escaped his lungs, and slowly, carefully, he turned around.

The boy he turned to face looked nearly dead. He was pale, even paler than November, and there was something about his eyes... They were like bottomless pits, glittery and black like a doll's eyes, but... There was something far, far too alive in there to ever call them anything like empty. They were predator's eyes.

He recognized a little of that look: It was what he saw when he looked in the mirror. But this, this was far more honed and sharpened than his own. This was far more unafraid and unmasked. This was far more free.

And in that moment, he wanted nothing more than that, wanted so much he felt his heart could burst.

Alright. Deep breaths. Calm down.

"I'm a boy," November whispered, his own tone nearly as silent. He had a lot of practice keeping quiet, and didn't want to attract the attention of anyone that wasn't this wild strange creature of a boy, "I know this isn't the boy's room, but, I needed somewhere, quiet." He wondered, briefly, if divulging this much was a mistake, if this boy was actually nothing like himself, if he'd look at what was in November's hands with horror, scream and run for the nearest adult.

No.

He knew a fellow predator when he saw one.

He'd just, never seen one before. Not really. Not like this.

His gaze remained locked with the other's, hidden depths in his mahogany eyes flaring to life after so many lonely years of being so carefully smothered and masked. His hands shook around his tools with a swirling tumult of desire and confusion and conflict and so much repressed coming loose. His heart pounded in his ears, and eventually, he found the voice to speak again. "My name's November. What's yours?"

A boy? Kaegen was momentarily thrown off guard. He had started to lean towards the small student in front of him being a girl. But he could see how he was a boy, there were a few distinctive boy-ish features. For example, most boys had hair. Most girls did too, so it wasn’t a fullproof rule, but it was still a characteristic of a boy.

His name was November, which was a interesting name. If he interpreted the name correctly, it was referring to the boy’s birth month. Born in November. What that cool or important? Did it even matter when you were born? Kaegen knew he had a birthday, but for the life of him he didn’t know when it was. Before he came to Hogwarts, the young ravenclaw didn’t even realize that the days had names, that calendars existed.

It would be nice to know his birthday, nice to know what his name could have been had he known what month he was born in. However, that would mean no one else knew what month they were born in, or else only the month of November was special.
“Does that make you powerful, or weak?”

Being born in november was either a bane or a boon, and Kaegen didn’t even know how to go about starting to figure out which one it was. But he stopped himself before his tangent grew to be too overly long and gave his name to the boy.
“Kaegen Deathmote, Fens-Born Scarf-Wielder”


The blood was pushed from his mind, and an observant eye would notice the pupil becoming less dark, becoming smaller. It wasn’t a very big difference, but it was still there, still noticeable. A small change that just didn’t seem to fit with a human, didn’t seem to correspond to any natural human motion, reflex or otherwise. Assuming you even noticed, anyway.

"Does that make you powerful, or weak?"

Already, the other predator was trying to figure out where the pecking order lay. But November didn't mind, he didn't think. This one was an apex, and he knew it, and he suspected the other knew it already as well. So he just gave him a small, shaky smile, shifted about a bit, as if another child who was under the gaze of an adult they wanted to impress. But impressing adults had always been the last thing on November's mind, in fact, he couldn't really recall encountering anyone he'd truly, deeply wanted to impress like this before.

But then, that stood to reason, didn't it?

"You mean my name? I... I don't know, really. It's... I always thought it was beautiful, sounded like poetry, but.... It makes me stick out. Makes people spot me better. And-.... And I don't want to be spotted. Not when I'm trying to do something, important. So, weaker, I think." His speech was halting, stumbling off his tongue, as if it was the first testing croaks of a parrot who was attempting human language. All the while he was watching, watching the other boy's every tiny movement, straining to see in the twitch of an eye or the shift of a finger whether or not the other understood.

"I think your name's beautiful too," November whispered as Kaegen at last spoke it aloud. He held it in his heart like a treasure snatched up from the air, and knew a little piece of this magnificent predator now belonged to him, never to be surrendered.

"You say you were born in the fens? That sounds lovely, those have got butterwort in the-.... Your eyes-...." Suddenly, alarm captured his features, but the fear was for the other boy, not of him. Kaegen's pupils had shifted, shifted in a very unnatural way, and for a boy who had read Grey's Anatomy before bedtime that was a frightening sign indeed. "Did you-... Did you hit your head recently?" His heart pounded, his hands shook, the thought that this brilliant, merciless boy might be taken from him almost as soon as he'd had him twisted in his gut. He couldn't let that happen. He couldn't.

A name was supposed to make you stick out, it was supposed to herald who you were to anyone who asked for it. If you were being quiet they would never see you, and your name wouldn’t even be relevant. It made sense that he didn’t want to be spotted, Kaegen shared that love, understood what it meant to not want to be seen. His life had been based off of hiding for a long time, for most of his life.

This boy did not act like any student Kaegen knew of. He acted like a creature of the fens, a being, not a human. In fact, he very well might be a creature, be something less than human. Something that would fit in a dark forest, dungeons and caves. In fact, looking closer at this boy, Kaegen determined something. He was a new species of magical creature. A species that had yet to be discovered, or maybe just one that Kaegen didn’t know about yet.

A scared creature, which made him a dangerous one. The boyish creature was obviously nervous, obviously just recently having learned how to speak like a human, how to act like a young student. It was evident by how much it was failing at it. This creature was fascinating to the young boy, vastly interesting. Did someone teach it how to be a student? Could it even cast magic, or was it’s magic more like a hag’s.

Regardless, Kaegen knew how to act around creatures, how to act around monsters without morals or human conscience. The first rule was to never let them out of your site, the next was to act nicely, or in a way that it perceived as nice. Kaegen was operating off of a hunch, a hunch that was based off of what little information he could gather from the boy. There was nothing that gave him a clue as to what this creature liked.

But then he remembered why he came, he remembered the smell of blood and a little light dawned. The same smell of blood that had lured him into that room could have also lured this creature here. He wasn’t sure how far he should go, however. Was the creature here just because he found the smell nice, like Kaegen was? Or was he hunting prey? Another possibility was that he had been the cause of the blood.
“Blood. what is it?”

The creature seemed to know the fens, mentioning something about butter before halting to ask if Kaegen had gotten hit on the head recently. It was random, out of nowhere. A bizarre question that stuck out like a jagged stone out of the conversation. But it was still a question, and it deserved an answer.
“No, I have not. Why are you asking?”

And then Kaegen remembered that he hadn’t answered the boy about his name. He had kept his answer hidden, going over it in his mind.
“To survive you have to be quiet, but what good is that without a name that stands out, a name that makes you who you are?”

He hoped that the creature would follow which question he had answered. The limits of the creature’s intelligence had yet to be tested, but it could obviously speak, and pass for a student. Otherwise how could it have gotten itself into Hogwarts?

November took a deep breath as those sharp, shifting eyes focused on him, seemed to capture him in their gaze, hold him like a crystal. Something lit up in him then, to be, regarded, this way. For the first time, he wasn't trying to shrink out of and avoid another's gaze, suddenly found that he wanted to be seen, couldn't get enough of it in fact.

So it was a good thing that Kaegen's eyes never seemed to leave him anymore.

Though now, he was staring into them intently, trying to gauge the strange reaction he spotted, the danger it presented. "Oh, your eyes, they just-... I don't wish to scare you, but your pupils, moved, in a way that would be very worrisome if you had had a head injury. But if you didn't, then maybe that's alright, I would just, watch for any seizures, speak to a nurse if you have any..." He mumbled the words very softly, caught in the crossfire between making sure he was alright and showing his hand, and just how much anatomical knowledge lay within it.

However, he froze at the boy's other words, because no matter how softly he spoke, it seemed the secret was out.

Panic froze him for an instant, a thousand possibilities rushing through his head. Did he try to lie, to hide, like he always did? Or did he give this boy with the strange, dead gaze, the purposeful, catlike movements, the trust of one of his greatest secrets?

At last, the words came spilling out, and he made his choice. "I-... I was cleaning my tools down here. I'm-...." Deep breath. "-A doctor. A, secret, doctor. I didn't think they'd let me, most places tell me I'm too young to be 'playing' with anything like medicine, but I'm not playing, I'm not, I know exactly what I'm doing." The light flared in his eyes again, his narrow body tightening, his knuckles white on his bag of oh so carefully hoarded tools.

But the fire flashed through him in an instant, his gaze turning imploring as it locked with Kaegen's yet again. "You won't, tell anybody, will you?" He sighed, winding himself down from the terror that squeezed at his heart, tried to concentrate on something else... Kaegen's other question. "A name that makes me stand out...."

A sigh. He hadn't thought much about that, hadn't thought much about his name at all. He didn't need a name to make him who he was, it was always just, there, inside his heart. But then, names were different for him than they were for everyone else as it was: the others spoke of their names by the way they connected them to their families, great lines of ancestors that stretched on through centuries. But November had none of that, his line had begun with himself alone, his name just a handful of letters on a note and nothing more.

"I-... I suppose it does make me stand out, my name," he mused, his eyes drifting around the room again, his body shifting, fidgeting with thought, "but, everybody knows my name, and-... I'm not sure if I want everybody to know who I am, not just yet." His dark gaze rose to meet Kaegen's again as he said this, glistening like hematite.

A creature that wanted to be a doctor. This was high up on the list of things that Kaegen never thought to encounter. A secret doctor fighting against the rules that forbade him to carry out his medicine. It even seemed like November was trying to convince himself that the rules were not founded, that he was special and important, old and smart enough to circumvent them without just repercussions.

“How do you think adults came to be?”
It was a question Grandfather had once asked him, a question that seemed to be relevant to the conversation.
“Kids decided to grow up. You've just done it early.”

This was only true for humans, as far as Kaegen could tell. Baby animals were helpless and weak, depending on their parents to get anywhere. Even baby humans started out that way. But as soon as they can think, a baby is faced with a choice between staying a baby or growing up. This was one of the many odd philosophies Kaegen had collected in his mind, gleaned from twisted information gathered from a more twisted world.

But the creature was worried that Kaegen would tell others what it, or he, had been doing. That meant that Kaegen had a reason to tell someone, which meant that there was something important to hide. The ravenclaw boy completely ignored the obvious answer to the question, the fact that the creature was, in fact, a secret doctor, looking instead for something more. Coming up empty, he who wields the scarf decided to go for a question.
“Why would I tell?”

Kaegen may not have been the sharpest when it came to deciphering the meaning of other students, but he was able to realize what the creature was getting at. If people knew your name they might as well know you. That was the problem. He didn’t want to be known, didn’t want anyone to realize who they were talking to.

What the creature needed was a cloak, something to hide behind, a distraction embedded into his name. With humans, this idea would be ludicrous. But creatures were easy to deal with, fun to be around. They were powerful and straight forward. If he came across a creature in need, Kaegen would help it unless he had reason not to. And so far, he had no reason not to.
“You can have part of my name, if you want. They would think of me a little whenever they think of you. It would split their attention. Or I could give you your own name. A new one, something different to go by for a little bit. It would help.”

That was all he could do for the creature, all he could do to protect the skinny beast from whatever it was worried about, be that humans or other creatures that also infiltrated the school, probably alongside the deathwitches. Kaegen’s eyes stayed where they were, staring at the creature intently. They were trying to catch every little movement and interpret it. The eyes did a very good job of seeing the body language, but a very poor job at interpreting it.

"Why would you tell?" November's head tilted slowly with curiosity, and the tiny seed of hope he dared to have grew larger. "Well, um, I don't know, maybe you'll decide you don't like me, or maybe you'll think that rules are to never be broken and report me for the good of the school or some such, but, oh, I don't know, something about you makes me think that you're not like that, and I-... Well, maybe I'm just hopeful." He sighed, blinking those big dark eyes up at Kaegen, his cheeks flushing faintly as he realized he was gushing words like a punctured artery.

Well, it was too late now, if Kaegen would think him a fool for rambling, he certainly already thought so, and there was only one way to go but forwards. Besides, this was such a strange occurrence; November almost never wished to open up like this to anyone, dreaded it in fact. So the moment he felt like he had a connection, even a connection so fleeting as a shared glance in which they both could find nothing human in one another's eyes, and what could he do but pour it all out?

"I-... I know I'm probably being silly, telling you all this when I hardly know you, but-..." He paused as Kaegen spoke again, eyes going wide and body going still in shock. Then, the pinpricks of tears appeared as shining beads in the corner of his eyes. "Part of your, name?" his jaw had gone the faintest bit slack with awe. "You-, really mean that? You would do that? For me?" A single glittering tear escaped the confines of his eyelid, began to travel down his cheek, a tiny droplet of pure liquid gratitude. "Sharing a name would be like, like we're, family...." He'd never known family, true family, before in his life.

"Train and befriend what creatures you don't kill. They're not like humans, they will stay by your side."
-Grandfather

This thing truly was a creature. Some beast from a foreign fen. It was rambling, trying to find the right words to describe some human emotion it was trying to emulate. It was probably close, but creatures had less defined emotions. Their emotions simply were. Like a swirling undefinable mist that you knew existed but could not describe.

The message that had gotten through to Kaegen was that the creature had expected the young ravenclaw to not like him. Had expected some kind of rejection, was still expecting it. But Kaegen had settled in his mind that this creature was going to be his companion. The pale skinned dhampir would teach the creature tricks, help it learn more of the english language, bring it with him on hunts.

His old pets had been taken away after the diffindo incident, and he had not found any suitable creatures since then. This creature would mark the first, assuming Kaegen could even survive whatever brutal natural defences and hunting instincts this creature had.
“You’re my companion now.”

It was less of a question and more of an extremely quiet, extremely neutral statement that lacked most if not all of the emotion that should have been present. The boy was happy about the situation, glad that he was getting a new pet, a new companion. A creature that possessed magic similar to that of a wizard, could speak english and wanted to be a doctor. It was the last thing Kaegen had expected to have as a companion, but that just made it more interesting.

The creature started to stammer, clearly not believing that Kaegen would share his name. But it was something you did. If you had a creature companion you granted it a title that included your name. He had already come up with one for the odd creature. It followed all the rules. Kin meant family, it meant like. It gave proof that this creature was bound to the ravenclaw boy, and the boy to the creature.

I don’t lie. From this day forward, until the privilege right and honor get rescinded, your name will be November, Deathmote-kin, he whose name was granted authority by Kaegen Deathmote, Fens-born scarf-wielder whose authority was given by grandfather whose authority comes from the conqueror of the 14th dark place.

As Kaegen said the words, he put two fingers together and gently, smoothly poked the creature in the forehead. It wasn’t nearly enough to cause any damage or even pain and discomfort. It was just to show who was the companion and who was the human. If you didn’t make sure the line was clear and the creature turned out to be a man eater you would be breakfast in a heartbeat.

The creature had asked if it made them family. In a way, it did. It placed the creature under Kaegen’s questionable protection just as it placed Kaegen under the creature’s even more questionable protection. It was a questionable beginning to a questionable end of a lot of people’s peace of mind.