After arriving in the Slytherin common room and sitting down next to his friends, the first thing Julius did was making use of a few privacy wards again.
His friends both noticed and quickly stopped their homework while looking at Julius expectantly.
Unbothered by the heavy atmosphere and under the protection of the visual privacy wards Rachel also decided to stick her head out of Julius robes where she had been sleeping until Julius' conversation with the twins and take her favourite place on his right shoulder, even though she seemed a bit peeved when, instead of warm sunlight, she received the green light, which was dimmed by the water of the black lake.
Maybe because he wanted to delay the conversation with his friends Julius pulled out a strip of meat and held it towards Rachel, who, without any hesitation, immediately snapped it out of his hands and then swallowed it whole.
This was not because she was underfed or something, on the contrary, after Julius had asked the house elves if they could provide food for her she had probably not gone hungry for more than an hour, it was probably just because of what the meat was Julius had given her.
She had apparently developed a preference for murtlap meat after her first days with Julius, so he usually always had a few strips of it with him.
But he didn't want to dally any longer so Julius turned towards his friends again, which had taken the chance to stare at Rachel for a bit; she was after all still a rare magic creature.
Well, Lia stared at her, Habol just watched her with a slightly interested expression.
‚I guess he might have seen quite a few of them due to his family.'
At this moment his doubts fully got to him and he just chickened out, deciding he would just not be telling them about his more important secrets and despite his original plans just hope they would not question the source of his knowledge.
„You might be curious towards my business with the twins and I promised I would give you an explanation but to do that I will need to confess something else to you. That is; I know of a network of mostly unused pipes in the castle which can allow someone to reach basically everywhere inside it, obviously with a few exceptions. And since I am a curious person I plan to explore the castle after curfew, partly using those and partly normal secret passages or even just the corridors. I will also at least try getting into the forbidden part of the library and also probably just use the normal part of it for more studying time when there are no students disturbing me at night. I might even go into the forbidden forest at a later date for a few potion ingredients or visit Hogsmeade on weekends.
After all of this you might question was that has to do with the twins or you might have already realised the problem with my plan, I have no map of the sewer system and secret passages of the school and I really wouldn't appreciate getting caught, even though it is not probable in my second form. But the twins have access to exactly this map and I made a deal with them to get it."
After this long lecture Julius finally stopped to draw breath.
"Any questions?", he asked jokingly.
Looking at Lia and Habol, the former's face showed a clearly excited expression, while the latter still seemed a bit thoughtful, a bit as if he was still hesitating over something.
But while Habol was still hesitating and Julius was waiting for any kind of reaction, Lia asked a question:
„So while you will be exploring the castle you want us to just stay in our dorms all night? You can forget about that. I don't know about Habol, but I'm definitely coming with you."
„So will I", it seemed Habol had made his decision.
But despite the warm feeling Julius got from this reminder that he really did have friends now, it also put him into a dilemma.
His plan was after all closely connected to his ability to turn into a crystal viper with its useful natural properties of near perfect invisibility and their small size which should allow him to get through the smallest of holes or pipes if need be.
But now he had a bit of a problem since, while Habol was at least likely to be an animagus considering some of his comments about his past and Uagadou and the fact he came from the Imamu family which was also famous for its animagi, Lia was almost certainly not an animagus and if she was, she was an illegal one which probably meant she wouldn't reveal herself for just sneaking through the school, not to mention neither she nor Habol would be guaranteed to be any kind of small or strongly camouflaged animal.
After explaining this problem to Habol and Lia the reaction was not exactly what Julius had expected their reaction to be.
Habol's was still not too unexpected considering everything:
"As you might have expected I am actually an animagus myself and while I can't boast the same camouflage ability you can in your second form, I am still on the smaller side and also have decent night vision. So I don't think it would be much harder for you if I went with you, as. even if I do get caught, I will be able to distract them from you and at the end of the day they will probably just let me go since they think I'm just someone's pet. The bigger problem though is Lia since I personally am still not able to use the disillusionment charm, nor do I think you are able to cast it proficiently enough to hide her from the Professors senses, I don't even know if any of us could trick Filch and Ms. Norris."
Lia looked as if she was quite uncomfortable with being the weakest link in the group but she still spoke up:
"I understand how you may think this way and for now I completely understand if you want to leave me here during your trips, but I already have a plan for it. You will just need to wait a bit since it's not yet complete and I'm also not completely sure about it myself. But since I think it will take a while until you get the map I will try to figure it out until then."
Julius really wanted to question her about this mysterious „plan" she had but he decided to respect her decision and not be a dick about it.
At least for now, he wasn't sure how long he would be able to contain his curiosity.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
This time most of the time it took to finish the chapter was just due to me being unable to decide what Julius was going to reveal, the delay with Rachel was actually just me being irresponsible and writing something else instead of what I was supposed to.
And then I just didn't really reveal anything, sorry if you wanted him to be more honest.
Also I think this whole development is a bit rushed concerning their trust in each other, I mean, I have a reason for Habol trusting the both of them that much, and Julius didn't tell them anything too important. Important yes, but not that important, anyways, Lia on the other hand (spoiler warning) is about to reveal something very important to two boys she only met a day ago without any real reason.
Well anyways, thank you for reading!