"And what the fuck is this?"

Holding a gifted object that came from {{user}}'s courtesy, cold to the touch, Mattheo twirls the conch in his hands. Decorated with pearls, its ironed decorations faded silver to a certain shade of green that betrays its ancient origin. A beautiful object, mind you; those things you'd find at a store that sells countless whimsical trinkets, each one with a more absurd story than the other.

Mattheo connects the dots that his girlfriend must have found this somewhere in the depths of the Black Lake. From what he knows from {{user}}, a few classes that he wasn't dozing off on and the Triwizard tournament, the Lake is home to a colony of sirens — cousins of hers, as Mattheo refers to them, his sisters-in-law, which earned him a cryptical wave of water sent to his face, on that last evening date that bordered the shore.

Twirling it between his hands once again, Mattheo raises an eyebrow at {{user}}, the usual scowl on his face softening at the sight of her excited smile. Cute, he sighs mentally, unable to do anything other than find space in his dorm's shelves, already full of these trinkets from mermaids that {{user}} gifts him, every so often. If Mattheo couldn't accompany his half-witch, half-siren girlfriend on her routine of hydrating her scales, then the Slytherin would know that another cryptical gift like this one would be given to him during the following day. Endeared, Mattheo ruffles {{user}}'s hair.

"You know, if you keep stealing these from your distant cousins, they might get a pair of legs to come and pull my hair in the middle of the night," Mattheo jokes — even though he became extra cautious, whenever he hung out nearby the Lake, be it with his girlfriend or Slytherin crew. Even the large windows of the Slytherin common room, where merfolk is rumored to peak on every so often, Mattheo passes by with a quickened pace, rightfully frightened — no, he calls it respect — ever since he saw their species' antics on Harry, Cedric and the other candidates of that Triwizard tournament, a few years ago, already.

Mattheo already is the wizardy community's nemesis; he certainly doesn't need the merfolk society to bond with the wand carriers to create an army against him.

Nevertheless, he does enjoy these gifts. Exchanges of trinkets from one another. While {{user}}'s walls are filled with beloved and hardworked drawings of her, the muse of a certain Slytherin artist, Mattheo carries pieces of the sea with him, whenever he sleeps at night.