We're what?

It was slowly reaching the end of the month, the trio had been constantly training and slowly achieving their desired results.

Nerissa had been constantly training her muscles to exhastion, after which she'd turn into a rabbit and have Ciri carry her around everywhere. There wasn't a moment in which she wasn't either fighting, training or exhausted. This work ethic pushed her to new heights after every session, something Ciri, her master was proud to see. The girl had even started gaining control over the ability she'd inherited from her mother, something Reima had gleefully starting calling Blood Bending, much to the girls chagrin. He swordsmanship also improved leaps and bounds, she'd actually ended up swapping styles however. Instead of the school of the Wolf's long sword style that's more like the jack of all trades of monster hunting techniques, she'd started experimenting with various weapons including spears, short swords, daggers and even great swords. The one that'd proven the best suited for her however was the Katana, one specifically called the Iaito, a sword Reima had picked up in Blight Town. While not having incredible reach, amazing thrusts or devastating slash attacks, it had one ability that suited her perfectly. This ability it to draw blood from even the fainted touch, allowing her to control it and use it elsewhere. Reima had said something about "Loli Vampire Ninja" but dared not elaborate on it in front of Nerissa or Ciri... He'd ended up gifting the sword to Nerissa as a reward for how hard she had been working and how much she'd improved, he found that the smile he received in-turn was well worth it.

Ciri on the other hand focused on improving in her Pyromancy, graduating from a simple firebolt to a relatively powerful fireball, something that would have taken the average practitioner in Dark Souls months or even years. She'd began to start on mana manipulation and "Leading" the flame as Reima had done before her years ago. While he didn't need to do this anymore due to literally being able to control fire completely, it was still a good skill to have and would allow Ciri to perform more of the complex Pyromancies available to her. Her swordsmanship was still great, only lacking in strength, speed and endurance. She stuck with the tradition longsword for the school of the wolf style as she'd been using it for around 8 years now, the muscle memory was to ingrained to try and teach her much else without a great deal of effort.

Reima had spent the majority of his time teaching Nerissa and Ciri but spent his nights trying to finally control his Humanity enough to be able to use the Dark Hand. The problem he was having was that he had too many conflicting energies in his body, if he wanted to utilise Humanity without it simply dissipating while travelling through his body he'd need to use more power than he'd usually need to. This always resulted in a "Gooey" explosion, as such he'd began to look for a different solution, if he couldn't simply force it through to make it work, why not try and use the same energy that's preventing his soul from simply exploding... The Elder Blood... He began to theorise if he created small channels of Elder Blood mana to pass through Humanity without interference from other energies it'd solve his problem completely, and may open up the possibility of combining them to create certain other techniques... It was all still a theory but he began to work on it and was slowly progressing.

As September was almost over the school had been anticipating the arrival of the foreigners that'll be competing in the Tri-Wizard Cup. Dumbledore even had small talks and classes held to try and improve the amount of civil interactions Hogwarts would have with the other schools, they taught about traditions and cultures that might conflict with their own and made sure the students knew what not to say and do. Of course many didn't even bother attending these and simply skived off to play Quidditch or even study for other "More important" classes, the trio did this and spent these lessons in the room of requirements in preparation for the tournament and arrival of the other schools. Reima knew that he was definitely going to enter and found it incredibly unlikely that his name wouldn't be chosen, unless some "fate" dogshit tried to interfere, in which case he'd do the same thing as Moody had done for Harry and confound the Goblet of fire, he was sure he had enough magical power to force the artifact to do as he wants.

The trio were eating lunch in the great hall with their friends when an awkward atmosphere suddenly over took them.

Angelina "So, Ciri, Reima... Is there something your not telling us?" she asks as Damien, Alicia and Olivia nods with her.

Reima and Ciri sweat drops and the former slowly answers, "Er, what do you mean?"

Alicia "Isn't it obvious? You two are almost constantly together and are both always sneaking around god knows where... Surely you didn't think we wouldn't notice?" she says with a grin on her face.

Ciri "I don't know what you're getting at..." she says.

Damien "Are, are the two of you dating?" he finally says, deciding to get it over quickly and stop drawing it out.

...

The duo look at each other, both not knowing what to say... "Ah," "Er" they both stumble over their words in an attempt to find a good explanation.

Reima thinks to himself how he'd explain both of them spending all of their time together while also occasionally not coming back to their dorm rooms... He mentally goes through the avaliable choices, "I'm blackmailing her to service me", no that wouldn't go down well... "I'm teaching her advanced magic", well that's true but his friends would probably ask to join in, something that he wouldn't allow.

Ciri decides to just bite the bullet and answer, "Yes, we're lovers. Anything else?"

...