Hiding In Plain Sight ((Matthew))

[evelyn]

Another year at Hogwarts over and finished with. Another summer with her parents. It was funny, but nothing ever seemed to change between the journey to the castle and the journey to Kings Cross. Not funny in the sense that she was hysterical with uncontrollable laughter and rolling around on the floor like an idiot; Evelyn had never been in such a state. It was more of an ironic, mirthless exhale of breath that could possibly pass for a laugh if someone wasn’t paying much attention. It happened often; she might be a Prefect and patrol the corridors with little leniency for rule-breakers but Evelyn wasn’t very well known. She liked it that way. What was the point in surrounding herself with people who called themselves her friends but didn’t really care about her? Most teenagers tended to be fickle, annoying and ultimately predictable. It didn’t help matters that she had yet to meet one Hogwarts student who shared her faith in Catholicism. How could people exist without the intrinsic faith in some higher being that would always be watchful and alert and loving? Whether they called the being ‘God’ or some other name, the faith would still be there and Evelyn would be tolerant of whatever she could find as long as she could believe that she wasn’t the only religiously saved person in the wizarding world.

She had grown weary of the routine accompanying her journey home a long time ago but still stuck to it with fervour similar to the intensity of her prayers. If there was one thing Evelyn didn’t want on the long journey home, it was to be trapped in a Thestral-pulled carriage or on the train with Seth or Eva Wright and certainly not both of them. They were the bad parts of Hogwarts and she couldn’t even escape their accusing glares at home when they lived right next door to her. They seemed to deliberately haunt every aspect of her life, never letting her have a moment of easy peace. There was something to be grateful for though, and Evelyn thanked God for it every single day. Neither Seth nor Eva seemed to have shared their history and the blame they undoubtedly laid upon Evelyn and her mother with any of their friends or anyone else. Avoiding the Wright siblings, even in such a big castle as Hogwarts, was quite hard enough and near impossible at times. She didn’t want to even imagine striding nervously past all of their friends, holding her breath because she really, really didn’t want to duel in the corridors when she couldn’t bring herself to fight back. It wouldn’t be right to fight back when she blamed herself for the situation too.

The three of them seemed to have come to some sort of unspoken understanding though, which was unmistakably miraculous since Seth and Eva quite pointedly never spoke to Evelyn, who in turn kept her distance and lowered her eyes so that she didn’t have to see the hatred she already imagined clearly on their faces. Evelyn claimed one of the middle compartments on the train for her own use, literally for herself since she didn’t have anyone to sit with and was quite content with that situation, and remained unbothered by her half-siblings. With a quietly contented purr, Azure butted her head against Evelyn’s elbow and was rewarded with her undivided attention. The little cat didn’t seem any happier to be going back to Leeds than Evelyn was, but Evelyn knew that her imagination was just working overtime. Whether they were at Hogwarts or Leeds, Azure received the best care from Evelyn. Her mother had thought that caring for a ‘poor, defenceless animal’ would teach Evelyn the compassion preached in the Bible. Evelyn, who was receiving a companion more responsive than her books, hadn’t argued or complained.

After a few minutes, Azure curled up a few centimetres away from Evelyn’s hip, occasionally reaching out a paw to bat lazily at the rosary dangling from Evelyn’s wrist. With a genuine smile, Evelyn detached the cat’s claws from the loops of her rosary before retrieving her book from the depths of her bag. She could be making a start on her summer homework but why should she? Doing it over the summer would at least give her a truthful excuse to escape from the intense scrutiny of her mother. The door to her compartment slid open when Evelyn was only a few words into her reading and she lifted coolly unwelcoming eyes to the unwanted intruder into her peaceful solitude. The boy was one of the younger Ravenclaws, Evelyn noted as she arched an eyebrow questioningly. She was a Ravenclaw Prefect, though Edward Summers was probably more approachable than she was, who strove for perfection; naturally it was her duty to recognise all of the Ravenclaws younger than her. “If you’re staying, close the door. If you’re not, what do you want?”

[Matthew Dorm R3]

'Roger, c'mon, please, i promise we'll be back,' Matthew stood just a couple foot from the doors of the train, but moving Roger was proving more difficult than he could have ever expected. Small and adorable, he sat there, his tiny little face sadly looking up at the castle. He still remembered his first day, how full of surprises it had been. The large amount of the little tasty grey things on legs there were, how every night in the common room he could stretch out peacefully in front of the fire, how at breakfast time, no one would say anything if he crept up onto the table and discreetly took a kipper and the amount of furry slippers that were left abandoned in the common room, and as a result were never returned to their owners as Roger would gleefully tear them apart at his own pleasure.

Matthew stopped in his efforts, and looked at Roger who's face was now spread into a mischievous grin, a thoughtful expression set upon his face, as if he was recounting past experiences. Hoping that there hadn't been any small female cats at Hogwarts over the past term, he resumed with his efforts to make Roger come on the train. Deciding on a course of action, he picked him up from the ground, and carried him inside, hoping that Roger wouldn't start crying; it was enough to make anyone give in to his needs.

Jumping into the hallway, with a happily content Roger, who was just simply glad to have someone carry him rather than go to the effort to walk, draped over his shoulder, Matthew begun to look cautiously from side to side, in search of a compartment. Setting off one way, he drew closer to a seemingly empty compartment, and pressed his ear closely to it. He thought he heard some muffled movement, and, pressing his ear even closer to the door, he thought he heard a laugh. There was an Almighty bang, as if someone had sprinted into the door, causing Matthew to leap back wards, crashing with an even louder bang into a door opposite. He quickly picked himself up, as he heard some angry deep voice yelling coming form the door he had crashed into, and some hysteric giggling coming from the one that he had been listening into. Roger stood outside both doors, his tiny jaw hanging slightly ajar in shock, before he chased after the figure of Matthew.

Finally reaching a compartment that sounded empty, he nervously slid the door open, peeping his head inside, just as Roger copied him, and stuck his tiny head into the compartment as well; intriguingly looking inside. There was someone inside that Matthew had seen before, a Ravenclaw prefect, sitting there quietly with a cuddly looking cat perched happily next to her. Not sure whether it was safe to enter or not, both Matthew and Roger stayed hesitantly by the door, nervous looks set on their face. “If you’re staying, close the door. If you’re not, what do you want?” the girl spoke, and, Roger, not understanding what she had said but taking her making a noise as an invitation to come in, gleefully sprinted into the compartment, jumping onto a seat directly opposite her, and begun to curiously stare at the girl's cat, amusingly tilting his head to one side. Laughing slightly at Roger's confidence, Matthew followed him in, closing the door behind him and nervously sitting next to Roger. Absent mindedly ruffling his own hair and making it even messier, he nervously introduced himself. "Hey, is it okay if i share this compartment?" and then, laughing as Roger sprung up from his sitting position to run over to the window, ready to watch as the train set off, he added "I'm Matthew Dorm, I'm in third year, and this is my cat, Roger."

[evelyn]

Well, at least it wasn’t some petty fight that she was being asked to sort out. There was always at least one person who wanted to make trouble one last time before getting home. The second she had spoken her first words, the boy’s cat had trotted inside the compartment curiously and proceeded to sit opposite Evelyn and Azure with an inquisitive stare. The action made the corner of Evelyn’s mouth twitch slightly with hidden amusement but Azure shared none of her entertainment, instead pointedly turning her back to the smaller cat and smoothing her black fur with her tongue. The message couldn’t have been clearer, not even to the humans: Azure would tolerate the intruder if she really had to but he was completely beneath her notice in every way. There was really something to be said for the idea that animals grew to act like the humans they spent most of their time with, Evelyn thought as she patted Azure’s head lightly and received a short lick from the rough tongue in loving acknowledgement, because neither she nor Azure really cared for company but they wouldn’t openly ask people to leave them alone either.

“You can stay if you want to,” Evelyn answered after a moment, flicking her eyes from the cat to the boy still hovering in the doorway. His messy dark hair made her grimace inwardly and she had to resist the urge to smooth down her own straight hair pointedly. She disliked anything that wasn’t perfect, or at least close to perfect. The need for perfection had been drilled into her by her mother from a young age and Evelyn had nursed her urge for perfection carefully. Nothing was ever good enough unless it was perfect. That had been one of the first lessons Evelyn had been taught by her mother, directly after the hypocritical messages of ‘do not steal’ and ‘do not covet another person’s belongings’, both paraphrased from the Bible and broken liberally by Evelyn’s mother. If she had the impudence to break one of the Lord’s laws then she might have shown rudeness to her mother by asking precisely why she, a self-professed Catholic of the highest standing, had not only coveted another woman’s husband but actually taken him and begotten a child off him. Even the thought of asking such audacious questions had Evelyn’s fingers twisting nervously around the rosary clasped around her wrist. The action reminded her of the previous summer, when the rosary had shattered and Theo Darke had fixed it for her and dragged her to the hospital because the glass had cut into her hand. Evelyn had been grateful, but she had not actually talked to him since. Not only did she prefer her own company to anyone else’s but her religion called Theo a sinner and thinking about it too deeply made her feel like a traitor to Catholicism. If Theo had been so kind and pleasant to her, even fixing her rosary and making sure she had her deep cuts healed, then how could he be a sinner in any way? Yet Catholicism decreed him sinful and even unnatural. It was the first time she had ever doubted her religion and Evelyn resented Theo for ruining her belief in her religion for even a moment. He had made her a sinner in the worst way for she had not actually broken any of the laws laid down in the Bible but she had doubted them just because of a coincidental meeting with a compassionate boy who was almost a stranger to her.

Evelyn shrugged, gesturing to the seats opposite her and Azure carelessly. “Your cat seems to have made himself right at home anyway, so you may as well join him,” she added after a moment of being distracted by her thoughts. Hating to appear rude no matter how much she was enjoying her solitude because, after all, her mother had taught her manners and how to be a polite young lady, Evelyn closed her book and laid it down at her left side since Azure had curled up on her right. “I’m Evelyn Winter,” she introduced herself with a smile, unable to stop herself running a hand through her hair to make sure it hadn’t gotten tangled in the short moments since she had sat down. Perfection at all times, Evelyn reminded herself, even when she was alone but most especially when someone else was present. That was what her mother had taught her and Evelyn obeyed her parents because that was what the Bible instructed her to do. “I’m a fifth year, and this is Azure. She’s not always friendly with other cats so I’d suggest keeping Roger away from her unless he wants to risk being scratched,” she warned neutrally, her right hand automatically scratching behind Azure’s ears to keep the black cat purring and happy. She hadn’t wanted to deal with an argument between the younger years so she certainly didn’t want to be pulling two fighting cats apart.