Jericah Shiori Edogawa did not understand how exactly Kakeru managed to worm his way into the NEWT Charms class. She had hoped that he wouldn't get the grade required to even continue in this class and yet here they both were again. The last year's coverage had been pretty challenging, and while Rica was a lot better at Potions, she wasn't a bad hand at Charms either. She knew though that this was one of Kakeru's worst classes so to see him here was really less than ideal because that meant she would probably suffer through most classes with him. "How are you here when you couldn't even manage the hover charm last year?" Rica hissed at Kakeru seated beside her. Oh Merlin he was going to sit beside her all year. She was not going to have any respite from him. In their NEWT year. She should probably try to show up late again just to be the last one to sit. But no, that didn't work last year since Kakeru just saved her a seat and always called her to sit beside him as soon as she came in. Loudly. Was it too late to transfer to HNZ?
Kakeru flashed a cheeky grin at Rica, his eyes twinkling with mischief. "Oh, come on, Rica. Have a little faith in me," he replied, leaning back in his chair with a casual air. "I might surprise you this year." Truth be told, Kakeru had always struggled with Charms. Last year’s coverage had been a nightmare, and his inability to master even basic spells like the Hover Charm had been a constant source of embarrassment. But he'd spent the summer determined to improve, practicing until he could cast the spell without thinking. He glanced at Rica, who was glaring at him with a mixture of disbelief and annoyance. He knew his presence irritated her, but he couldn’t help himself. There was something about pushing Rica’s buttons that was endlessly entertaining. Besides, they were twins. They’d been through everything together, from their first wobbly steps to their first day at Mahoutokoro. There was a bond between them that he cherished, even if it meant enduring her scorn and frustration.
"And for the record, I’ve been practicing. A lot," he added, trying to sound sincere. He leaned closer, lowering his voice conspiratorially. "Besides, who else is going to keep you on your toes if I’m not here?" Their relationship had always been a mix of rivalry and camaraderie. Growing up, they had been inseparable, often mistaken for one another despite their differences. Rica had always been the more studious one, excelling in Potions and other subjects with ease. Kakeru, on the other hand, had a knack for getting into trouble and barely scraping by in his classes. But no matter how much they bickered, they always had each other’s backs. Well, that was until the most recent years at least. These days Rica seemed to hate him.
He straightened up, giving her a wink. "Let’s make a deal. If I manage to get through this class without messing up too badly, you owe me an alcohol free sake, Deal?" Kakeru knew that his persistence was both his greatest strength and his biggest flaw. It was what kept him going, even when things got tough. And this year, he was determined to prove to Rica – and to himself – that he could succeed in Charms. He had spent too long living in the shadow of his more accomplished twin, and it was time to step up. "Come on, Rica," he said, softening his tone. "Give me a chance. I promise, I’ll make it worth your while." He knew it would be a long, hard road, but with Rica by his side – even begrudgingly – he felt like he could conquer anything.
"You've been in this class this long and I swear to Merlin if this - the last year - is the year you fail, I'm disowning you," Jericah ran her hand through her face. Have a little faith he said. It wasn't that Rica didn't have faith in Kakeru, if anything, the issue was that she had a lot of it. Try as she might be to hate him, she doesn't really. He was more of an irritating fixture in her life - like a peeled-off paint on the wall in one corner of the house that one never bothers to fix. They were twins and they were inseparable and while that had been fine in the first maybe twelve years of their lives, there had been a point where Rica wanted to be Rica instead of Rica and Ru. It didn't help that Rica could barely make friends in school, people tended to gravitate towards Ru when they were together while she was harsh, sarcastic, and demanding. And she liked to pick on Ru, but she was his twin so it was her right. In a boarding school, you're practically judged on your first day and everyone will know everyone in the year, if you didn't have friends by the end of the first semester, it was probably a hopeless case. News flash! Since she picked on Ru a lot, he was her only friend in their year. He was just always there even when she didn't want him to be, even when she was harshest with him.
It was annoying that he was right. While she scored higher than he did, he was the one to keep her on her toes in class, mostly cause she'd had to watch out for disasters for years. It was just easier to know how to counterbalance most potion disasters than to keep calling the professor whenever Kakeru eventually dropped the wrong ingredient. Or a shield charm for his overpowered spells. But she was also better mostly cause she had time to study whenever he was off on his adventures. She only had Quidditch. And Kakeru. And Kakeru's friends now and then. It was a sad social life really. She gave him the stink eye. "I'm not casting a cushioning charm if you get thrown back by your spell again."
Honestly, this was probably going to be a disaster. There tend to be a lot of those whenever Kakeru was involved. It was just a matter of how disastrous, cause it could scale from "a tiny hole in the wall no biggie we can hide it from Mum" to "do you still have all ten fingers? good" kind of disaster. But this would at least bring his grades up to more than just scraping by. "Tell you what. If you get an E, I'll owe you sake and one favor no questions asked," that should probably do it. If he could scrape up grades just to be in the same class as her, he could sure as hell scrape up more.
Ru couldn't see how most of this was his fault. People kept blaming him for things and he couldn't always understand why. The stuff at the dinner, okay, maybe he'd been a little hasty about asking such things, but his family were also so weirdly hush about it and he didn't understand why it was such a big scandal. Jai was Uncle Jeremiah's son, and he was born really suspiciously close to Aunt Ai's graduation, he was smart enough to know that so why was he always called a dummy? Maybe it was his sister's influence, honestly, because sometimes it just didn't seem fair to him, not that he was always sure what he was and wasn't prepared to consider fair, to be honest. Even Rica, his twin sister, who was always supposed to be supportive seemed to have completely written him off. He supposed that was valid. His parents - his mother specifically - called him an idiot enough times he'd started to believe it. She didn't call anyone else that, just Ru. He'd started to believe it after a while.
"I'm not gonna fail, keep your voice down," he reminded her, despite them speaking in English, most of the class also could speak English, and most would hear and understand them. They were lucky their instructor mostly ignored them at this point, it was too late in their education to start caring now. "Mind your business, I'll be fine. I know what I'm doing," his internship with the Nightray group was mostly responsible for that, but no one seemed to listen or care about how far he'd come. He was just an intern, sure, but he had wishes and goals and wants like everyone else and they all just wanted to leave him behind. He was used to it, since none of his family really liked spending time with him anyway, and it was entirely his fault to be fair. Still hurt though.
"I hope you're ready to buy me that Sake, because our end of year project is to create a new spell, and I've been working on that since last year."
Jericah glanced at the instructors that had only glared at them for a moment for talking in class. A lot of the instructors had gotten used to it and while she and Kakeru had been disciplined about disrupting class, some of them had just given up. Besides, at some point, it was really only the instructors that tend to get distracted by her and Kakeru. Their classmates had understood ages ago that ignoring the "disruptions" was the best way since she and Kakeru could manage to resolve most things on their own. A third-party just made things worse because then they usually end up on Kakeru's side, and that just made Rica more defensive and biting with her words since she didn't like being ganged up on. Considering the instructor had decided to just continue on with their lecture, Rica decided that they were probably one of the ones that had given up which took them long enough - she and Kakeru were already in their last year. She looked at her twin skeptically though when he told her to mind her own business. "Pot. Kettle," she said pointing at herself and then him, which she was pretty sure was called for. "And I'll believe it when I see it," she thought he would probably be fine but as to whether he knew what he was doing, Rica had sincere doubts. Now that he said though that he'd been working on creating a new spell since last year, she could see how exactly he got into the class. That needed really advanced Charms and Arithmancy work which even she had trouble with on her best days. She realized that maybe his Nightray internship wasn't all for show after all. She'd heard that Cousin Misa and Cousin Feli were both really good at research and development, even if they specialized in Potions more than spells. "Well, hope you've also been brushing up on your theory since the year-end project isn't all that's involved with your grades." Can't let Kakeru get to big of a head just in case.
Kakeru thought his sister was being unnecessarily harsh to him. He supposed he did deserve it with everything that happened over the break, but he'd been right and he didn't see the point in not understanding life situations. It seemed silly to him to keep things like that under wraps when it might have been important later. Still, he loved Rica for the most part, well no he did love her and he knew she was usually just trying to help him. She always came to his defence when he needed her to and he wasn't going to pretend she didn't. "You can see it after class if you want, I have most of the work down, I'm working on the movement, that's the tricky part," he admitted, hoping she might actually be willing to give him some advice. Maybe she hadn't started working on hers yet, but he knew she would help him if he asked, she was his sister. Just like how he would help her if she asked him, not that she ever asked him. She was usually good to go on her own. She didn't need his help. "My theory will be okay, actually my internship has been helping and our cousins are surprisingly good with explaining things in simple terms." Because that was usually the difficulty. It was hard to figure things out some times.
Jericah stared at her twin for a few moments before nodding. "After class," she acquiesced with a nod. Considering he'd gotten most of the work done, she doubted he'd need much more help from her except to recheck his calculations. Especially if he'd had help from their cousins when he'd been working on it. Besides, she wasn't really opposed to helping him with stuff. She didn't like helping him when he brought his friends. Nor did she like helping him when he hadn't put in the work before asking her. But for things like this, she had no problem with brainstorming with him or checking his work. It was also good for him perhaps that their cousins were really good at their field and they were brilliant enough to teach. Rica had no such talents for teaching, which was probably half the reason that Ru didn't ask her for help much anymore. She couldn't explain things any other way than how she understood them. And given that she usually understood it from the theory written in the book after a couple of reads, and the whole point of Ru coming to her was that he didn't quite get the book, well, one could say it just spelled disaster from the beginning. Because they both get frustrated. Rica gets frustrated that Ru doesn't understand, and then she gets frustrated that she can't explain it any better, and then Kakeru gets frustrated because she's frustrated. She's honestly a little jealous that the twins can make Kakeru understand when she couldn't. "That's good," she said with a nod as she turns to look at where they were at for the lesson. "You should listen to this part," she reminds him, it would probably help.
"You're the best," and she was, she might not have been the best teacher, but certainly no one was asking her to be a teacher, she was one of those people that could understand do do better than she could teach and that was okay. Ru now knew that he could go and seek out the twins to help him because they had a much better way of explaining things to him so he understood it - even some of their instructors would probably do well in having Misa and or Feli explain a concept to them. More Misa than Feli he thought. Certainly not his Uncle. Either of them. Though Uncle Miah certainly did seem to be hanging around a lot more often at the company than he would have thought given the supposed relationship between he and Uncle Liam. They were always having quiet conversations in back corners. He turned to listen to what the instructor was going over, talking about the more destructive charms and their application in every day life as well as some of the ways in which they had been used in professional duels that have made them banned in several divisions. Ru admired duellers, honing their craft like that. He could have never been a duellist, but it was still fascinating. "Did you know Uncle Miah has been hanging around a lot, I wonder why."
Rica didn't really know Uncle Miah all that well except that he was Jai's biological father. And Tiziano's. And Cousin Misa. And Cousin Feli. And probably a lot of other Nightrays if rumors are to be believed. Mum seemed to like him enough but Dad always looked like he'd eaten something that had gone bad in the rare times that Uncle Miah came around. Add to the fact that Uncle Miah rarely ever came around unless he was with either Uncle Liam and Aunt Ai. He was like some weird bodyguard, which was silly considering that Uncle Liam and Uncle Miah supposedly don't get along. "In the New Zealand branch? Or the England one?" Rica was ever rarely sure which branch Kakeru was at. Sometimes he was interning with Uncle Liam which put him in the England branch. Other times he was with the Raven twins, which meant he was in the New Zealand one. No wonder he was learning quite a bit. "Maybe he's visiting Misa and Feli?" she said with a shrug. It wasn't that weird she thinks, but considering she doesn't know much about how their relationship works then maybe it was weird. "I always thought he worked in the company too, does he not?"
Ru shrugged. He had honestly been hoping that she would know, since she always seemed to know things way quicker than he did. Still, it wasn't like he didn't have things he wanted to know more about and he was tyring to put that all in the same kind of space in his brain. He wasn't that smart honestly, he knew that, not that he liked to have it thrown in his face. "Both, they have a floo connection, but the tine difference can be a little weird, sometimes I'll have breakfast with Aunt Ai in the English branch and an hour later I'm talking to Misa and Feli at dinner," he said shaking his head. He didn't think he would ever get over how weird it was for that to happen. They were both well respected amongst their colleagues too, which he hoped would rub off on him. Learning with them was a lot of fun and he was thinking he might go for his charms mastery after all now that he was sure he could. He shrugged when she suggested Uncle Miah might have been visiting the twins. Maybe, but that didn't necessarily feel right. "Maybe, but I don't know, felt a bit odd," he admitted turning back to his work with a shrug. Perhaps they would never know. "Not really, I see him in a lot of closed door meetings with various people, but I've never seen his name on any official files, not that I would probably, since I barely see any files anyway."
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