Progress on the Impress Rachel Front had been minimal. There had been one conversation which would have gone horribly if not for Eliza acting as a buffer. With Eliza's help he managed to come off, he thought, as merely taciturn instead of completely incapable of intelligent speech. The fact that he actually was taciturn by nature no doubt helped foster this impression.
The Quidditch game had about equivalent results. With the Crotalus Chasers in charge of the Quaffle for nearly the entire game, he had been given no opportunity to either embarrass himself horribly or earn glory in the eyes of a spectating Rachel Bauer. He blamed Renee most of all for this lost chance because she had prevented the Quaffle from reaching him or the goals on the only occasion Pecari made it over to their side of the Pitch and thus rendered his Keeper position entirely useless.
Over midterm, however, a new door had opened. The egg hunt would normally be a childish and pointless activity in Nic's opinion, but the current situation transformed it into another opportunity to impress Rachel if he came back with a higher than average number of eggs. Unfortunately, there was one thing his stalking observation of his fellow Crotali had not told him: whether or not Rachel was even at Sonora over break.
There were two ways to discover whether or not she was, and he dismissed the idea to ask his parents immediately. They would only tell him to stop stalking the poor girl, and Nic was doing no such thing. He just wanted to know if she was here so he would know how hard to work at the egg hunt. It was an entirely reasonable question.
The second process of determining her presence did not have such drawbacks: he would sit in the common room until she either showed herself or he found some evidence to suggest she was not here. Preparing himself for a long stake-out, he brought down a sufficient amount of material to look busy but not odd. He also took a quick run to the Cascade Hall and filled his bag with food so he wouldn't starve over the course of the day. Then he claimed his usual Watching Rachel homework seat in the Common Room, pulled out a sketch pad, and began stalking the girl's staircase drawing.
Of its own accord, his pencil began to recreate the shape of Rachel's face on the paper.