The current rumour that was circling through the many students of Hogwarts was that the current (well, now ex-) Potions teacher had "accidentally" downed a bottle of veritaserum, confessed his love not to one but five students, and then fled the school on the back of a hippogriff - most of the teachers actually didn't say anything on the topic when asked, but there were five students suffering from an unexplained memory loss, which all of the teachers refused to comment on. The teacher hadn't shown up to a single lesson, meeting or meal in a month, so the headmaster was forced to call in a replacement. Teachers had went missing before, though many with circumstances greatly unalike the ones with Professor Rollsworth, but they more often than not turned up within a month. The students were disappointed as they now had to attend Potions, but the most disappointed was probably Nezumi, as he had been spending his now free time stalking Shion.
If you asked Nezumi, he'd either straight up deny it, or say that it wasn't stalking, per se. It was more of a liking towards one particular student and he wanted to find out about him and then obsessively talk to him, about him and think about him non stop. He would ask any student anything about him, and on one occasion, even dared to ask one of his exes about him because they sat together for one lesson in the third year.
Not stalking though, just to clarify.
In the first lesson, the teacher, who introduced herself clumbsily as Miss Karlshaun, didn't resort to a seating plan but allowed a group of teenagers to choose their partners for the rest of the year.
Nezumi did the first thing that his instincts told him to when it was announced that they could pick their own partners; stand up on the nearest table, and scan the room for Shion. This was his chance to get closer to him, his chance to partner with him in one of their few lessons together.
Shion ducked behind someone as soon as he saw Nezumi jump up onto the table, but it was hard to not see his snow-white hair, and Nezumi proceeded to bound across tables, ignoring the yells of the teachers and the screams of a few students, and grabbed Shion by the back of his robes.
"We're partners." He bluntly stated, but a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth as he stood beside his shorter counterpart for this lesson.
Professor Karlshaun was making her way over to the pair quickly, a stern look plastered on her face as she glared at Nezumi. He waved at her casually, jumping down from the table and standing beside Shion, draping his arm over his shoulders.
"Hi, Professor. Was just finding my partner," he deadpanned, not minding the fact that he had endangered himself and multiple students when he had walked across multiple tables (and someone's head, he was pretty sure, but that wasn't really worthwhile mentioning while he was in trouble).
Shion blushed as the teacher began yelling at Nezumi, trying to worm his way out of Nezumi's arms; this wasn't something that he wanted to be caught up in or involved with. Shion was extremely sure that Nezumi had been stalking him, as Safu had told him that Nezumi had been questioning her about him, and the only questions she had answered was his star sign and the exact shade that she thought Shion's eyes were.
After a prolonged argument that lasted around half an hour (making them both late to their next lesson, leading Nezumi and Safu to get into another argument) and a consultation of around seventeen colour charts, Nezumi and Safu finally decided that his eyes were somewhere between "antique fuchsia", "byzantium" and "eminence", but Nezumi swore that in the sunlight they could go the same exact shade as fuchsia.
The teacher continued to yell at Nezumi for well over five minutes; and the silence quickly died down within the first, all the eyes of the class turning to face him being yelled at, his arm casually holding Shion close to him. It wasn't a secret that Nezumi swung the other way; he had had many boyfriends throughout all of his time at Hogwarts.
He was relaxed as he stood while being lectured on the dangers of walking on tables, using them to cross a class, endangering other students, endangering his life - the works. Some students thought that there was a certain pretentiousness around Nezumi that made him feel inclined or obliged to ignore the professors while they were yelling at him. There wasn't actually a certain answer to his actions or anything actually about Nezumi, he was private. He kept to himself.
The yelling died down as the teacher told him to stay back after class, and when Shion began moving again (he had seemed to be frozen from the shock of basically being directly yelled at, and the attention of the entire class being focused on his general area), it seemed that he had been pulled closer to Nezumi.
Nezumi was pulled along to a table quickly by Shion after the teacher approached her desk at the front of the room. He was still visibly shaken but Nezumi didn't seem bothered by the loud reprimand.
Shion glared at Nezumi for a couple moments before then breaking the silence between them with an angry, "What the fuck?".
"What?"
"Couldn't you have just walked across the classroom? You have to do the most dramatic thing instead of a simple, easy task don't you? Fuck," Shion grumbled, slamming his hands on the table as Professor Karlshaun began talking about
