Saito visited the kitchen, Marteau became more attached to Saito, and Siesta's respect for him deepened even further.
Although that particular day… there was a crimson shadow spying on Saito from a window of the kitchen. One of the young cooks took notice of it.
“Hey, there's something outside the window.”
The shadow gave a garbled 'kyuru kyuru' and slinked away.
Then, after breakfast, cleaning, and laundry, he accompanied Louise to class. Originally, he was made to sit on the floor, but after Louise realized he had become rather transfixed with peering up other girls' skirts, she reluctantly let him sit on a chair. And she made it clear to Saito that should his vision ever stray too far from the blackboard, he would be denied lunch.
In the beginning, the lessons fascinated Saito with their marvels: turning water into wine, combining various reagents to brew special potions, materializing fireballs out of nothing, levitating boxes and sticks and balls out of the class windows for their familiars to fetch, etc… but after a while, the novelty wore off.
And so he took to napping instead. The professor and Louise would give Saito evil looks every once in a while, but there were no rules forbidding familiars from sleeping during lessons. And just looking around the class, all the nocturnal familiars were snoozing away, even someone's owl. In fact, if they were to wake Saito up, it would mean that they were acknowledging him as a human. Louise chewed her lips from the overwhelming desire to give the sleeping Saito a piece of her mind, but she couldn't because doing so would mean contradicting herself about him being nothing more than a familiar.
That same day, bathed in sunlight, Saito was fast asleep during another lesson.
The wine he drank that morning was taking effect, and Saito dreamed.
It was quite an unbelievable dream.
A dream in which Louise crept into his hay pile at night as he was sleeping.
“What's wrong, Louise…?”
At hearing her name being called, Louise shot a glare at Saito.
“You can't sleep? Oh, all right… can't be helped. Munya~”
Oh, he's just muttering in his sleep,
she thought, and faced the front again.
“…Munya. H-hey, don't hug me all of a sudden.”
Louise's gaze snapped to Saito once more. The other students were starting to take notice of the situation, and perked their ears to listen.
“…Jeez, for the slave driver you are during the day, you're such a sweet little thing in bed.”
A trickle of drool ran down from the corner of Saito's mouth as he continued to enjoy his dream.
Louise grabbed his shoulders and shook him vigorously.
“Hey! Just what kind of dream are you having?!”
Her classmates burst out laughing. Malicorne the Windward made a passing comment.
“Oi oi, Louise! Is that the kind of thing you do with your familiar at night? I'm surprised!”
The female students whispered something amongst themselves.
“Wait! This is just some stupid sleep-talk! Ah, jeez! Wake up already!”
“Louise, Louise, you're like a kitten; stop licking me there like that…”
At this, the laughter threatened to burst through the ceiling.
Louise kicked Saito off the chair, violently returning him to reality from his soft and gentle dreamscape.
“Wh-what was that for?!”
“Since when have I ever snuck into your hay pile?!”
Louise crossed her arms and looked down imposingly on Saito.
Saito shook his head profusely, only further amusing the class.
“Saito, explain to these rather rude people that I never take one step out of my own bed during the night.”
“That's right, everyone. I was simply dreaming out loud just now. Louise would never do such a thing.”
The students turned away disappointedly.
“Isn't it obvious? Like I would ever do something like that! With this thing, no less! This thing! To even think that I would curl up in bed with this lower life form is far beyond being a joke!”
Louise huffed haughtily, averting her gaze upwards.
“But, my dreams often come true.”
Saito piped up.
“Indeed! Dreams do have the power to foretell the future, after all!” Someone in the room supplied in agreement.
“My master here, with her personality, probably won't ever find herself a lover.”
A vast majority of the students nodded. Louise shot Saito another evil look, but it was too late. Saito was on a roll.
“My poor master gets quite „frustrated“ as a result, and instead resorts to slipping into this familiar's humble hay pile.”
Louise put her hands on her hips and strongly reprimanded Saito.
“Enough! Close that unclean mouth of yours right now!”
That didn't stop Saito from continuing either.
“When she does, I have to fend her off a bit…”
By this point, he was too far gone. Louise's shoulders began to tremble angrily.
“And tell her, 'this isn't where you sleep.'”
The class applauded. Saito mimicked an elegant bow and went to sit back down.
Louise kicked him away, sending him rolling across the floor.
“Don't kick me!”
But Louise was beyond the point of reasoning. Her gaze was fixed firmly forward, and as always, her shoulders shook with barely contained fury,
Once again, there was a crimson shadow watching Saito.
It was Kirche's salamander. With its belly to the floor, it stared at Saito through the gap in the row of chairs.
“Hm?”
Noticing it, Saito waved his hand at it.
“You're Kirche's salamander, aren't you? I know you have a name. What was it… Oh yeah, it's Flame. Flame—”
Saito motioned for it to come closer, but the salamander flicked its tail around and spat out a few embers before running back to its master.
“Why would a lizard be so interested in me?”
Saito tilted his head in puzzlement.
And while Saito was having a staring contest with a salamander during class…
At the Headmaster's Office, Miss Longueville the secretary was busily writing away at something.
She stopped writing for a moment and glanced over at the sequoia desk at which Sir Osmond was busy taking a nap.
The corner of Miss Longueville's lips rose in a faint smirk, an expression she had never shown anyone before.
She stood up from her desk.
In a low voice, she murmured the incantation for a Spell of Tranquility. Dampening her footsteps so as not to wake Osmond, she crept out of the office.
Her destination was the treasury, located on the floor directly below the Headmaster's Office.
Stepping off the stairs, she confronted enormous iron doors. They were kept shut with a thick bolt mechanism, which in turn was secured with an equally large padlock.
This place was where artifacts dating from even before the Academy's establishment were contained. After cautiously surveying her surroundings, Miss Longueville withdrew her wand from a pocket. It was about the length of a pencil, but with a flick of the wrist, it extended to the length of an conductor's baton, which she whirled expertly.
Miss Longueville cast another spell.
Once the invocation was complete, she pointed the baton at the padlock.
However… nothing happened.
“Well, it's not like I really expected a Spell of Unbinding to work anyway.”
Smiling deviously, she began reciting the words to one of her specialty spells.
It was a Transmutation spell. Chanting loud and clear, she waved her baton at the heavy lock. The magic cascaded over it… but even after a considerable wait, there was no visible change.