Chapter Text
The letter came at the end of July. A small, unassuming thing with curly green writing and his address on the front of it. Not just his address. The bedroom of his family estate and the covers he was hiding under after his father’s taunting words had chased him up three flights of stairs.
He was supposed to attend a military boarding school in Switzerland come September and now he was going to Scottland. His mother, thin, blond hair, blue eyes, and a voice so frail you might shatter it by closing the door too roughly, convinced her husband to accept the new school invitation. Her son, her precious, miracle, boy is a wizard and there was no chance in hell was she was going to let that opportunity pass him by.
His father only grumbled, unable to deny her, and shoved the letter back into his son’s trembling hands. With a voice like molten iron, he instructed him to follow the directions laid out in its contents and prepare himself for departure.
Now, cold toes tucked under his thighs and a fag he’d pinched between his teeth, the eleven year old boy with sandy hair (a mix of his father’s brown and his mother’s blond) watched the murky sky of Hackney, London atop the roof. He wasn’t allowed to come out here. Last time a maid had seen him and shrieked like a startled alley cat; he’d nearly lost his life in a fall and gotten a beating of a lifetime. Still, he came, if only to watch the stars.
The midsummer night was cold but the stars were out, a rarity for the city. Besides the inherent comfort he got from seeing them, he savoured his moments of rebelliousness. Away from the eyes of his father, that is. He’d never return the spiteful glares or the angered yelling in the daytime but at night he’d keep a fag between his teeth and a long fall under the edge of his toes. While there may not be anything more congenial than spitting in the face of a merciless dictator, the boy on the roof was not one to do so outwardly. He used to; in a small moment of weakness, he’d let himself fail a final examination, costing a passing grade for the course, and berated it in front of the stern blue eyes of his father. Hoping, maybe, that it might spark some sort of understanding wrapped in a glare and coated generously with swears. He was wrong. If he learned anything through the bruises along his ribcage, it was that his father was not a place to go looking for affection.
Now he found joy in the silent acquiescence of spitting at his feet when his back was turned.
Puffing on the fag and fiddling the carton with the red top, he wondered if the woman who’d signed the letter was certain her tawny owl found the right window in the right house on the right street. Because Arthur Pendragon knew himself very well, and he most certainly was not a wizard. He was only eleven and he was only a boy in a big house with lots of empty rooms.
Throughout the entirety of the last week of August, Arthur was a nervous blur of poorly contained, childish energy and nearly missed his final fencing class of what could be a very long time. However, his butler and driver, Edwin, a stiff sort of person who didn’t speak much and handled most issues with a stern look that conveyed more threats than Arthur thought possible, made sure he found his way.
Edwin shuffled him into the back of his father’s brand new, 1970, auburn Stutz Blackhawk and drove him down the way to the studio. The radio was playing a soft guitar beat that Arthur found soothing but he wouldn’t dare to ask him to raise the volume, nor would he grip the handle of the window and crank it down even if fluttering his hand over the breeze rushing by them was one of his favourite things to do.
Arthur loved fencing, but he wasn’t entirely sure if this was because he was excellent at it or because he genuinely enjoyed the sport. He was tall for the boys his age, broader, and stronger; fostered by his father’s ridged physical exercise routine, and had become the star in his class quite quickly. Raised to keep his chin high and his bumped nose in the air, he never let his crown tilt and had been the first to make the instructor put in effort not to lose.
Since his introduction to the sport nearly five years ago, fencing had become the no-man’s land he and his father needed to nurture civility between them. Essentially, it was the thing they talked about. He’d come home from practice and his father would ask for the statistics of his victories, to which Arthur would happily but not too happily declare that he had won every spar, and they’d spend the rest of the night swaying to the peaceful tunes of their slurping teacups.
“Lads,” he hummed, waltzing through the doors of the studio and pulling on his white uniform. His mask, pristine quality, waited inside the foam padding of a sleek chrome box on the middle shelf. He removed it, knowing their eyes were on him, knowing they had to tilt their heads up to do it.
“Wotcher Arthur,” a boy said, unlike the others, shuffling into the space beside him and knocking shoulders with him. Arthur didn’t stumble.
“Killian.”
Moving away from the boy with the mop-like brown hair and the – very in-fashion – wide-rimmed, ebony, Rivieria glasses, Arthur settled himself in front of the instructor’s podium.
A thin sort of man with a Beatlemania hair cut and a young smile came into the room and got them started on their usual bout of technique lecture. Arthur listened, or if not, gave off the appearance of genuine care, startling out of his stupor when the instructor called them into position for practice.
The following twenty minutes were much better spent, mirroring the man dressed identical to himself and feeling his mind float away in the effort of maintaining proper fencing decorum. He followed the motions of the playful man in the front, taking the time to make them more focused, more precise than the others. His knees bent like he was sitting down on a chair, facing outwards. His feet, flat against the floor, left arm up and ready for balance. One step forward, right foot then left: prancing not jumping.
Then, sweet mercy, it was time to spar.
He played Alexander first, a small boy who Arthur was often called to take pity on. The instructor must have thought him a philanthropist with the way he was always paired with the child no older then eight and no taller than Arthur’s sternum. Maybe he thought that exposure to the best would teach him faster then observation. Arthur didn’t know, Arthur didn’t care. It wasn’t his job to teach, it was his necessity to practice. And so he did, repeatedly. The button of his sword forcing through the child’s guard before he’d had the time to swing a proper block. The bell rang and Arthur dropped the blade, settling into a chivalrous ready position while the next student took three steps to the right and faced him. He was a head taller then the previous but still short of Arthur’s height. He had a confident gate and failed to keep his sword in the proper position for motion around a studio. It was Killian.
The bell to begin rang and years of conditioning had Arthur’s sword in ready, scraping along his opponent’s sabre blade before he knew to command it so. They moved in a careful gate, back and forth, their feet shuffling like a horses on the floors of studio while the spars around them came to steady ends. No one was as matched as Killian and Arthur.
Killian played dramatically, too caught up in the eyes around them to focus and it often cost him. Someone would cough and he’s scream bloody murder for the distraction while Arthur chuckled, comfortable in public eyes.
Killian moved too much too and Arthur was beginning to be able to predict it. He was bested with a swift point to his right peck, which Arthur didn’t retract until he was certain every eye in the room saw the pristine edge of the cut.
“That was a right load of shit, Pendragon,” Killian snapped, pulling off his mask too fast and sending his expensive glasses falling onto the floor. He didn’t bend to pick them up, though Arthur wished he did. It would have been all too sweet to poke him in the arse.
“You favour your left side,” Arthur said simply, “leaves your right open. Work on that.”
“You tried a flunge,” the boy said. A flunge is an aggressive deep lunged attack, much too mature for someone of Arthur’s stature to attempt. He’d learned it on his lonesome over the summer. It wasn’t an easy feat to miss to observers, so Arthur had tweaked it.
“This is sabre,” Arthur replied, raising a mocking brow and glancing at his audience, “it’s permissible and I didn’t actually do a flunge. I doubt you’d miss me diving to the floor like that.”
“You did, we haven’t even learned the counter strike yet! It’s unfair. It’s cheating.”
“I beat you, again, Kill. Want to get me back? Put in more hours.”
“My father has a studio in the home,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Get acquainted with it.”
“Boys, please. You know I always encourage friendly competition,” the instructor mused, stepping between them. Arthur glared at him. He didn’t like the instructor much, thinking him too easy on them for their age and too gentle for a contact sport. He also thought that The Beatles were over-glorified. “But arguing is not how we end a match. Now,” he nodded his head and Arthur placed a cocky smile on his face, sticking out his ungloved hand to Killian.
Killian, red in the face himself, took his hand, squeezed it, and shook. The instructor, dim-witted as he was, found this suitable and dismissed the group for the day, complimenting their improvement as if participation was some kind of accomplishment. Arthur knew it wasn’t.
When he’d finished, Arthur shoved Killian’s shoulder on the way to the cupboards as he passed him, delighting in the redness around the other boy’s face and the sweat on his brow making his hair look like a yob’s.
Arthur didn’t consider himself a cheat, though some might argue that using a simplified spin on borderline disallowed fencing techniques in a class of eight to eleven year olds was clearly cheating. However, Arthur was raised to believe that this wasn’t the case. His father, a recognized fencer, retired in his older age and accumulation of injuries, was very stern in believing that accomplishing any means to reach your end was not cheating. It was resourcefulness, unwillingness to fall victims to the tragedies of life because you are too busy following the make-believe rules which dictate our social mazes. He would not, as he said, slow down for the larrys. If they want to move slow, they can fall behind and eat the dust of the doers.
“Try harder next time,” Arthur said as his cupboard neighbour joined him to stow his mask. The words were simple, yet affective the thousands of times Arthur had heard them, and he felt no regret in passing along the wisdom.
Outside, he saw his father’s car waiting for him, though he knew it would be Edwin in the driver’s seat. He started towards it but a hand grabbed him by the back of the collar and he stumbled, nearly cracking his head open on the concrete but was saved the fate at the last second by his elbows. They’d be black and blue in the morning.
“What the fuck?” Arthur whirled, getting to his feet. He’d barely passed the front doors when the hand grabbed him and now he was standing under the canopy, hidden from sight of his father’s car.
“What did you do?” Killian asked, he’d changed into his ratty jeans and t-shirt, though his feet were bare of shoes in his rush to meet Arthur out the door. “How did you do it?”
“Learn it yourself,” Arthur scoffed, going to leave. Once again his collar was tugged and this time he felt hot rage spark a red fire in his stomach. “Bugger off.”
“I want to know what you did; I want to learn to do it.”
“Why?” Arthur shot back, “So desperate to be the new best talent when I’m gone? Learn it on your own like I did or you’re just some daft knock off.”
“You’ve got a stonking father to teach you the tricks, I haven’t got that.”
“My father taught me nothing,” Arthur sneered, “he just expected me to know it.”
“You’re leaving,” Kill continued, ignoring the candour, “come on Arthur, I know we’re not always eye-to-eye but at least I’m one of the few blokes in there that actually appreciates the sport like you do. We get each other.”
“Do we?”
“Yes,” he said. Arthur eyed him. They’d been friends once upon a time. Or not friends per se, but mutually allied bullies, skiving off lessons and homework to do beastly things to undeserving twerps behind alleys. It started off as good fun but after a while it gave Arthur a sense of satisfaction he couldn’t deny. It made him feel invincible and it made him feel powerful. It made him feel unignorable.
He remembers it clearly, the rush of each punch and the reverberations ringing through his bones, waking him up from the inside out. The cowardly, pitiful screams of the lower schoolboys, their gazes on him like he was both their God and their Devil; and they were nothing if not deity-fearing people. Arthur would walk home, knuckles bruised, and cradle his injured hand like a junkie on the street might cradle their last hand-rolled fag, protecting its precious contents from the breeze threatening to rip it from them.
Killian had been there the entire time, whispering to Arthur in the halls of their private school, uniform untucked and imperfect, whenever he found who he thought might be fun to hit. The bloke of choice would always be their age or younger, smaller, and have a nervous energy that made them slouch and their eyes flutter around the room. It was a clear sign of poor confidence.
It was always good fun when the beaten believe they deserve it.
Killian and Arthur didn’t talk too much in school, and when they did they talked like people who hated each other, threatening each other and making fun of each other’s mum’s. They jabbed their fingers into each others’ ribs like they were constantly trying to catch a moment’s weakness. They jammed each other’s lockers and stole the back wheels of each other’s bikes.
They weren’t friends.
Arthur never stopped searching for his next target really, even if it had been some time since he’d had his last fix. A boy called Julian Craigsley by the alley behind the prick-ish old playground. It was the near miss by the coppers, a pat on the back from his father after a carefully planned lie, and a three hour long political-relations meeting which turned him off the game. It never stopped appealing though. Killian never stopped pointing out the boys, and Arthur’s nails never stopped grinding into the flesh of his palm.
“I was the only challenge you had in there,” Killian announced as Arthur turned towards his car for a third time, “worried I’ll be too much of one when you get back?”
“God. It was a flunge, you damn knob,” Arthur spat, ducking into the backseat of the car, “I just didn’t do it quite right ‘cause I didn’t want to get caught.”
“I fucking knew it.”
“Don’t think you’re bloody smart,” Arthur said, “you didn’t stop it when I outed you.”
Killian sauntered over to the car window, which Arthur rolled down as he shut the door. It was spitting rain as evening approached and it splashed the end of Arthur’s nose.
“I’ll get it next time, and when I do, maybe we could celebrate. When are you back?”
“Christmas,” Arthur yawned, “I assume.”
“A holiday ripe for pickings,” Killian grinned, “we could have fun again, yeah?”
Arthur glanced at Edwin in the front seat, eyes forward, ears craning, “I’ll see you around, Kill.”
***
Edwin drove him to King’s cross station to arrive no later then 10.37 in the morning. His trunk, dark leather with snake’s skin brandishing the border of silver clasps and bright shiny wheels, rolling behind his person. He was left there at 10.43, no later then the moment Edwin caught sight of the sign that read ‘platform 9’ and that of its neighbour, ‘platform 10.’ Arthur watched him go until he disappeared in the crowd, Knox Homburg hat perched atop his head and bobbing above the masses for a good twenty seconds until it disappeared in the morning commotion. Removing the ticket from a long pouch in his suede jacket, Arthur stared at his train’s information confusedly.
Platform 9 ¾.
Platform 9 ¾? Arthur looked back up at the platform sign, rereading the number ‘9’ and ‘9’ alone. Unless he was completely irredeemable, he was sure that 9 ¾ came between the numbers 9 and 10, in which case, his platform existed between the sorry looking brown tiles that he was standing on right now.
For another twenty seconds, Arthur stared at the ticket, waiting for it to change to his liking. He wouldn’t ask a guard; they’d probably find a reason to rip up the ticket and send him away for wasting their time. He wouldn’t call home, even if he could, the booth had a three person line up and he only had another fourteen minutes before the train departed.
He didn’t know the bus system very well but he could hop aboard a tube and be back home within an hour. Arthur listened to the blood rush in his ears and wondered what his father might have in store for him if he showed up on the doorstep. It wasn’t too late to join the Swedish military academy but it would cost a small donation and his precious time, barking orders at poor administration women on the phone until it they cried anxious tears. His mother would crumble, upset that he wasn’t going to do magic like she’d begged him to, and the sight of that would make him hurt more then the strap which his father had hanging next to his bedroom door, for ‘easy access.’
Being a wizard was so important to his mother. It was everything. She’d begged him to do magic the moment they’d received the letter. She wanted sparks to fly out of his fingertips, she wanted to see the impossible that so few got the opportunity to see and she wanted her son to be the one to show her.
Arthur didn’t know any magic, not yet at least, so he’d taken to a deck of cards for the next week. In late July, in the solitude of evening while his father was still working, he’d found her two of spades in a deck of fifty-two. It wasn’t magic, but his mother had lit up like Christmas tree, grinning like a Cheshire, and laughing weakly as the monitor beeped with the steady rhythm of her heartbeat. He was a wizard, for her, and he was going to find platform bloody 9 ¾.
Just then someone raced by him, her trunk atop a cart and a mean looking barn owl screeching in a medieval cage. He watched her, heard her laughter, and saw her disappear between the brick support structures separating platform 9 and platform 10.
A man with the same black hair laughed manically and followed her, “Morgana Le Fay, you nasty child!” But he seemed rather happy about that fact.
Arthur blinked at them, and without an ounce of fear, ran at the brick wall, shutting his eyes before the inevitable impact that did not, thankfully, come. Peeling his eyes open he gazed at the platform sign bearing that blessed ¾ he was looking for.
The first thing he noticed was not the mass of people that did not exist a moment prior. Nor the animals squawking in cages and the cat slithering by his feet , rubbing its whiskers along his trunk as it passed. It was their clothing. They all wore a strange combination of long robes and pointed hats, dull colours, and elaborate stitching around the cuffs. They looked normal enough in the face, which was a small comfort as Arthur looked down at his plain jeans and white t-shirt. His suede jacket, the coolest thing he owned as it had a flask pocket currently filled with packs of Marlboros and a vintage lighter, his prized possession, suddenly felt a lot less charming than it’d been on the platforms 9 and 10.
The train hummed with anticipation; the kids laughed as they said goodbye. The conductor called a warning for departure in ten minutes.
Arthur shuttered, feeling suddenly out of his depth. A wizard. He wasn’t a wizard. He didn’t know a thing about this school besides the words he’d studied on his introduction, which had told him very little besides instructions to obtain the things he needed.
Arthur was good at orders, he’d always been taught to handle his own problems, but obtaining things such as a ‘wand’ and a ‘cauldron’ were lost on him. Confused and nervous, he’d went to write back to the woman on the letter and found no address to send it. He’d panicked like a girl for most of August, unable to ask for help but understanding it was the only means of doing what his father said.
A boy with nasty black hair falling like worms over his face, a long nose, and thin lips pressed into a snarl glanced at Arthur’s trunk and grinned coyly.
“Nice trunk,” he said, nasally, “but I doubt Slytherin’s about to accept a mudblood.” He pressed his nose into his face and Arthur, though not recognizing half the words he’d said, knew an insult when he heard it. “No matter who you impress.”
“Can it, knob, I don’t give a damn about being accepted with the likes a them,” Arthur snarled, not knowing exactly what he was rebuffing.
“A true muggle-born then,” the boy hummed. “Have you ever heard of the word mudblood, mudblood?”
Arthur considered lying but didn’t see the point. He’d never been a swot in his life and he’d learned the hard way that faking that sort of stuff never worked out for him. He always ended up being talked circles around. If he punched this boy, though, would the non-departure of the train work as an excuse for not breaking school conduct?
“No,” he said, head high. Why should he care about not knowing wizard words? Not like being a wizard meant much to him yet. “Should I care?”
The boy’s eyes glinted, “let me do you a favour, learn to make friends with the right sort of people. Avoid the others like you and find those who know a thing or two about this world, else be confused for the next seven years.”
“Like you then.”
“You won’t be a Slytherin,” the boy practically spat, “so I can’t help you, I may not be sorted yet but there’s not a drop of other house blood in me. I’ll be there, though you’ve got the nerve I like to see in my friends.” Arthur squirmed, taking his familiar comfort in being taller like a lifeline. “I’m Severus. Severus Snape.”
He stuck out his hand and Arthur took it, shaking stiffly like he’d been taught. The boy didn’t know how to shake. “Arthur Pendragon.”
“Pendragon,” the boy said, “doesn’t sound like muggle name.”
“My family’s from Cardiff.”
The boy grimaced more, “good luck, Pendragon. You’ll need it.”
Whisking away towards a girl with fiery-red hair, the boy called Severus disappeared into the closest car. Arthur eyed the door a car away, moving idly until the train’s whistle sounded then running until he was safely on board, ticket punched and nerves bubbling.
Compartment doors rushed by him, all full of older kids, happy and hugging as they reunited with friends after the lonesome summer months. Arthur found an empty one next to the loo doors and ducked inside, stowing his trunk above his head with severe difficulty. Thankfully, he’d shut the curtains before anyone could see the struggle.
Opening them again, Arthur took a seat by the window so he could see the parents on the platform gaze longingly at their children, waving tearful goodbyes and smiling brightly. There was a few younger children on the platform too, some crying as they watched their older sibling embark. Arthur wondered what it might be like to see parents on the platform, caring about you, hoping you were well, maybe even sending you post while you were gone. He wished his mother had sent him off but she was too weak and couldn’t go without his father who downright refused to bother with the journey.
He shook his head and flipped himself to the other side of the compartment bench, now gazing at the dark stone of the tunnelway instead. He resigned himself to think about the boy on the platform called Severus Snape. What made Pendragon a strange name in comparison to a name as vile as Severus? Twat-ish snob.
The door rustled as someone jolted by but did not enter.
Ten minutes of quiet passed before it was jostled again as two boys around Arthur’s age shuffled inside his compartment.
“- if you wanted to play then you should have bought the cards.”
“I thought you had them, you said you had them.”
“I said my father had them, not me. Not all of us are content to nick from our parents. You know how he is. I take one little thing and the next two hours are lectures on the importance of man’s word and the honor in keeping it.”
“Convinced magic is going to make a corner-cutter out of you?”
“No, actually, he thinks you’re a bad influence.”
“Should have got a pisshead for a father. A lot more lenient, though the smell is enough to murder,” the boy jeered. He had a mass of curly brown hair, much too long, and a mischievous face with a sly smile. The other boy was tall and broad, maybe more so than Arthur, and had short, light blond hair, a bland face, and prominent ears which should have been hidden behind longer hair. They were both wearing jeans and plain shirts under a traveling cloak like something out of Robin Hood.
They strode into the compartment, sitting across from each other, and didn’t even look up at Arthur.
“Quit joking about that, you know it makes people all uncomfortable,” the boy with the short hair teased, before the two of them took a long, silent look at each other and promptly fell into a fit of hysterical laughter.
“You first!”
“Wasn’t me, you laughed first!”
“Did not!”
“I was laughing at your face,” the boy with the short hair grabbed the other boy around the neck and locked him in a headlock, this time jostling the entire carriage, “did you pick it off your East End yobs? Buy it with your spare shrapnel?”
“For your information,” the boy in the headlock grumbled between noogies, “the Queen of bloody England gave it as a gift.” Tossing the smaller boy into the bench next to Arthur, the bigger boy finally noticed that they were not, in fact, alone.
Arthur must have had on a very unimpressed face, because the boy promptly fell over himself, “Gwaine, Gwaine, shut up,” he wacked the boy called Gwaine who was still giggling. “Sorry about that, we get ahead of ourselves. We were so excited because, well, it’s Hogwarts! About bloody time, I’ve been waiting for my letter since my accidental magic incident at – like – six.”
“Alright,” Arthur muttered, disinterested.
“I’m Percival Owyne,” the bigger boy said and Arthur couldn’t help but wonder if he might be the ‘right sort of people.’
Never one to refuse a handshake, Arthur took his firm grip and said, “Arthur Pendragon.”
“This here’s Gwaine.”
Gwaine leaned into Arthur’s personal space, “never heard the name Pendragon before, are you a half-blood?”
Arthur reared, “what did you just call me?”
“It’s just a simple question.”
“Doesn’t sound simple,” Arthur grumbled, turning back towards the window, though he didn’t miss the sight of Percival in his peripheral vision, whacking Gwaine alongside the head.
“He’s muggle-born idiot.”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“Look at his clothes.”
“Even muggle-borns know words like ‘half-blood’.”
“Quite clearly, they don’t.”
“I can hear you,” Arthur announced glumly. “And I don’t know what those words mean so either you start explaining what you’re saying or get the fuck out of my compartment.”
“Look mate,” Gwaine said, turning towards him on the bench, “I wasn’t calling you anything, yeah? Wizards have something called ‘blood status’. The wizarding community in the UK is small so a lot of wizarding names are familiar if their pure, but if they ain’t then they start getting skewed with the muggle names and become less familiar by sound. S’like meeting a witch called Janie Jones, doesn’t happen unless they’re muggle-born.”
“Blood status,” Arthur repeated, looking at the other boy.
“Yeah,” Percival said, “I’m a half-blood, cause one of my parents is a witch and the other’s a muggle, a person without magic, and Gwaine’s half too ‘cause both his parents are half.”
“So I am…?”
“Muggle-born. It happens, you probably had a witch or wizard in your blood line a few generations ago and just got the right combination of magical genes or whatever. S’pretty cool really.”
Somehow Arthur doubted this, given the looks he’d amassed on the platform.
Percival and Gwaine continued to explain the lingo of the magical community for the following hour, talking over each other in their rush to include Arthur properly in conversation, which, he had to admit, made him feel pretty good. By the end of the discussion, he knew what purebloods were and what the sacred twenty-eight was, a few descendants of which were in there year, or so the gossip train rolls. A boy called Sirius Orion Black, a girl called Susan Abbott, and a boy called Merlin Ambrosius. The Blacks were practically the first of the twenty-eight, or so Arthur heard, marrying their cousins to keep themselves ‘pure,’ while other purebloods like the Potter’s, Loreson’s, and Pettigrew’s, also boys in their year, were ‘pure’ besides the occasional half-blood in the bloodline, strategically avoiding the incestuous demands of the ‘sacred’ status.
He’d also been well and truly briefed on the Hogwarts Houses, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. To Arthur, it sounded like something from a children’s game, the idea of being sorted into houses which are supposedly based on personality and remaining in those houses for the following seven years seemed ridiculous. How could Arthur’s personality at eleven years old possibly hold a card to his personality at sixteen years old? Or seventeen?
To make it worse, there was considerable drama between the houses, a bad combination of house pride and tradition boiling what could have been bonds of school unity. The houses had their own teams, and their own dorms hidden in different parts of the castle. There were clubs specifically by houses, and the dining hall was divided into four long tables where the houses would sit together at mealtimes.
Both boys had been hearing stories about life at Hogwarts from their parents all their lives, they were prepared for this, and for the first time since the platform, Arthur understood what Severus Snape meant by choosing friends unlike himself. He was learning now what they’d known all their lives.
Percival’s mother, a witch, had been in Gryffindor, while his father was a muggle factory worker and so he was armed with the knowledge of both the wizarding and muggle worlds after spending the first ten years of his life completing years R through 5. Gwaine, on the other hand, knew little about muggles and hadn’t, to Arthur’s shock, been in any formal schooling until now. He and Percival went to the equivalent of magical pre-school every summer together and while Percival departed back to a regular public school, Gwaine remained with the other magical kids.
Gwaine’s mother was a Ravenclaw and his father was Gryffindor and both boys favoured Gryffindor over the other houses.
“Where’d you think you’ll be, Arthur?” Percival asked kindly, leaning over his bench. He had excited energy like Gwaine and Arthur noticed that they tended to feed off each other and rile themselves up like untrained mutts. Arthur was trying not to get caught in the crossfire.
“Don’t care,” Arthur growled, turning back to the window. He was nervous, properly nervous, like he might be before a maths final test, and he didn’t like it. If he was a wreck at muggle school how the fuck was he supposed to achieve adequacy in a wizard school?
“He’ll be a Gryffindor,” Gwaine said easily, “look at him, got the chin for it. Hey Arthur, you ever been in a fight?”
“Why?” Arthur asked, keeping the grin off his face though it tried to poke through.
Gwaine smiled at him, “you’re a Gryffindor alright.”
Percival laughed like a wild dog.
Hours later, a trolly came up to their window and Percival bought a few of everything to ‘teach’ Arthur. There were Bertie Bott’s every flavour beans, one of which tasted of salty pickles while another was of apricot tart. Arthur quickly found that the risk was not as exciting as it was led to be after ingesting the taste of earwax. Spluttering, he spit onto the floor and rubbed his mouth. Gwaine and Percival patted him on the back fondly.
Arthur opened the next box handed to him tentatively. It was gold with a blue design on the front and folded like origami. He opened it, blinking at the small brown frog which looked up at him for a split second before leaping right out the train compartment doors. There was a card left in the box depicting a man with sandy hair and freckles, a small brown rat sitting on his shoulder.
Gwaine leaned over and gasped, “that’s Newt Scamander. I’ll trade you for him. I’ve been looking for him for ages. They say he’s a pretty common card but it’s a load of bollox.” Reaching into his sack, Gwaine pulled out a wide metal box that Arthur thought might be a loaded pack of Altoids and opened it. Inside were a bunch of cards just like the one he had in his hand, though the space where the character was supposed to be painted was empty. Arthur looked back at his own card and gasped. The man was gone! “I’ll give you a Dumbledore. I’ve got four.”
Arthur let the boy pull the card from his fingers and looked at the name on the card he was traded with, Albus Percival Wilfred Brian Dumbledore was printed on a painted beige banner under an empty archway. As he watched, the character in question walked into the frame. He had golden half-moon spectacles, dark blue robes dotted with constellation, a pointed hat, and long white hair. This was a wizard if Arthur had every seen one.
Arthur turned over the card and read the short inscription about the character, shocked to see that this was, in fact, a real person. And not just any real person, it was the headmaster of school he was nearly halfway journeyed too. Once again hit by a pang of nervousness that he was out of his depth in this new world, Arthur took out something familiar. Pulling his pack of Marlboros from his coat pocket and ignoring the other boys’ glances which he assumed was awe or jealousy, he tucked the card inside.
He expected that the train’s next stop would be a platform a short walk from the front gates of the school. He was sorely wrong. They had to take a boat over the lake in the dark, watching the tongs of the castle creep closer and closer like needles piercing through the cloudy sky. It was glowing with the light of windows and positively humming with activity. Horseless carriages carrying older students passed over a narrow strip of the lake and entered the front gates while Arthur’s small mass of first years were still too far to properly distinguish the armed knights from the lions by their side. They were led by a rather enormous young fellow called Hagrid, with bushy hair and a meter of height more then Arthur thought possible for a man to grow. Arthur wondered if he was related to that famous French Roussimoff wrestler.
Dressed like any other student now, Arthur felt a bit more at ease. His tie-less chest and buttoned shirt, tucked into black slacks and an impractical cape over his shoulders was the first taste of belongingness he’d felt since platform 9 and 10. His muscles eased as he followed the group through the gates.
A boy with dark skin and round glasses that reminded him of Killian’s stood at the front of the pack like he knew the insides and out of what was about to happen. Next to him, a boy with scraggly black hair and a pristine birdlike-pointed face wore the same expression of confidence only his was masked with a bit of nervous tension. Arthur, Percival and Gwaine settled behind them, waiting for another professor to collect them for house sorting. They were standing in front of two grand doors which muffled the sound of chattering coming from within.
“You’ll be fine, mate,” the boy with the glasses was saying to his neighbour, “the sorting hat’s never wrong.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” the dark-haired boy replied in a posh, upper-class accent, “if I get Slytherin, it’ll be right about it.”
“I’ve heard it takes your wishes into account,” a small round-ish boy piped up, “my dad said it nearly put him in Hufflepuff but he asked for Gryffindor and got it!”
“That’s nice, Petey,” the glasses boy said, “there you go, Sirius, just tell it Slytherin’s not for you.”
“Five hundred years of Blacks in Slytherin, I don’t think my whinging is going to change things.”
“Chin up, nothing’s decided yet.”
They were greeted by Minerva McGonagall, the woman whom Arthur had nervously contacted via bird message not two weeks ago, and led inside.
The room was spectacular. Better then the lovely arches of a church, with tall windows running down either side and four long benches sitting beneath four house banners. Teachers of all shapes and sizes sat at a table at the front of the room, behind a podium with an owl carved on it’s front. There were clouds, dark and stormy like the ones they’d passed under the lake outside above them, twinkling with quiet lightning and trying to rain over their feast. Candles floated over their heads and fires burned along the perimeter but the air was clean and fresh like it would be in the center of a forest, smelling of something vaguely sweet.
A chair with a ragged old hat on top it was placed before the owl podium and Arthur noticed the others watch it nervously. He had to work hard to keep his face free of the same fear. The crowd that watched him was suddenly a lot more striking than those at home.
“Ambrosius, Merlin.” The first name, the first boy. Whispers rang out and a few dampened chuckles of laughter followed as the boy called Merlin separated himself from the group and approached the bench.
Gwaine giggled next to him, “the bloody twenty-eight can’t ever name their kids something normal?”
“He’s a direct descendant,” Percival whispered back, “not like one of us being named after the greatest wizard of all time. He’s literally his great, great, great –”
Gwaine smacked him in the stomach and they fell into a fit of giggling.
Arthur turned his eyes back to the spectacle in the front of the room, eyes wide, as Professor McGonagall lowered the musty old hat onto the boy’s wavy, raven, locks and a voice boomed across the room, startling Arthur so hard he nearly choked.
“RAVENCLAW.” Hearty applause followed as the boy rushed towards the table under the blue banner of a raven.
The Black boy was a few people later, and his arrival caused a roar of activity in the audience. The table under the green banner started cheering though no sorting had begun, while the rest whispered to their neighbours.
“GRYFFINDOR.”
Silence. Muted cheers. Loud whispering.
And it went on.
Percival and Gwaine got their wish and scurried toward the table under the red banner alongside the Potter boy and then it was Arthur’s turn.
“Pendragon, Arthur.”
There were no whispers, just a bit of boredom, which Arthur wasn’t sure whether to appreciate or not. No one but the muggle-born’s knew the name of the Pendragon family, the muggle names meant nothing to wizards, he was learning. He wasn’t used to this, being the son of the Prime Minister of London, the Pendragon name was one that got followed but stares and photographers but silence? That was new.
Straight backed and feigning a lot more confidence than he truly possessed, Arthur settled himself on the chair and felt the folds of the musty hat fall on his hair.
‘Hmm, very interesting. Very interesting indeed,’ a voice said inside his head. If he hadn’t recognized the tangy way it spoke from the shouting he’d been hearing throughout the sorting he might have yelped aloud. ‘Not a bad mind, though Ravenclaw would have to disagree. Definitely not a Hufflepuff but maybe one day you’ll impress Helga herself. I see the potential here. Slytherin… that could work. You have the ambition, certainly, the drive. But no, too much rashness, too bold, better be… GRYFFINDOR.”
The hat was lifted from his head and Arthur walked smugly towards the red banner, repressing the urge to run from the public eye like all the boys and girls before him and instead stalking with his head high like his father taught him to do.
Gryffindor, the brave and chivalrous, interesting.
Once everyone was sorted and the room began chatting excitedly, Arthur saw the man on the chocolate frog card stand up at the owl podium. The metal creature shifted, drawing its wings to its full width, announcing the speech silently. Arthur’s eyes widened at the display. He wasn’t sure why this knocked the shock of magic back into his bones, he’d walked through walls already, his chocolate completed the great escape, and Percival showed him the moving photos on a newspaper called The Daily Prophet. A hat spoke in his ear for God’s sake.
“Welcome, class of 1971, I know we are all rather hungry and I hate to make you wait for your meal but let me please lay down a few gentle reminders for the coming term. The Forbidden Forest is quite accurately named and so please remain a safe distance from it’s border else be in danger of a gruesome end to the beasts which dwell there.
“The older students might have noticed on their way passed the grounds; the addition of a tree gifted by a kind donor to our school. While the Whomping Willow may seem harmless, I urge you not to near its branches. I’ve been informed it has a bit of an attitude problem, not too unlike some of our beloved owls.
“I trust you all to head my warnings. Now,” he clapped his old hands together, “without further adieu, please tuck in.”
***
There were a lot of things Arthur didn’t understand about Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry but he resigned himself to accept the moving staircases, the appearing food, the living paintings, and other things that look very easily like magic. However, he didn’t understand why the Slytherins were considered nasty people, why everyone seemed shocked to see a Black in Gryffindor ranks or laughed at the Merlin boys name when he met a ‘Severus’ on the platform.
He also didn’t understand how he arrived at his dorm room and found himself sharing it with three others including Percival and Gwaine. The likelihood that one happens on the exact two boys whom he’s to be living with the following seven years at a chance meeting on the train is quite small.
His things were already at the foot of his bed, his trunk and his texts. He saw the other boys in a similar situation, however two of the three also had cages next to their things, with sleeping owls cooing peacefully within the bars.
What was with the bloody animals? Arthur’s father despised pets and never let Arthur have a dog no matter how many years he’d begged for one, desperate for the companionship, and how reliable he’d proved himself to be to take care of it. Uther Pendragon called pets dirty and waste of time, money, and energy. Wizards seem to be swimming in them, but why a bloody owl?
“They deliver mail,” Percival replied to Arthur’s question a few moments later, stroking the head of his owl who was named ‘Edgewise.’ The owl squawked loudly and Percival simply yelled over it, “wizards don’t have postman, Arthur, everything’s delivered by owl.”
“Aren’t they too stupid to know where to go?” The owl squawked louder at this and turned its beady eyes on Arthur, iris’s contracting in anger.
“They’re magical creatures,” Percival yelled back and Arthur was beginning to understand why Edgewise was called Edgewise because Arthur couldn’t get a word in edgewise over the fucking screeching. “They always know where to go.”
Just then, the door swung wide and a skinny boy with auburn hair, freckles and a tense face gazed in confusion at the three of them. Arthur didn’t remember his name from the ceremony, but he didn’t look too unfamiliar.
“Hi,” he said, and walked up to them, looking disappointedly at the loudmouthed bird and back at his own snowy owl perched quietly in its pen. “I’m Leon, Leon Loreson.” Arthur looked the newcomer up and down. Poking out of his shirt was a thin gold cross and he had a tacky gold ring on his finger with a family crest on the front of it.
The rest of them introduced themselves unenthusiastically and Leon quietly trotted over to his case, opening it up and looking inside, though Arthur got the sense he was doing it more as a distraction from the rest of them.
“God almighty can we shut that thing up?” Gwaine asked, glaring at Edgewise. Diving into his case and pulled out a simple wand which could easily be mistaken for a stick on the ground save for the green stone poking out the handle of it like a scepter.
“Don’t do magic on my owl.”
“If it won’t shut it’s mangy beak, it’s going to lose it.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Relax, Perci, it’s a simple spell. Come on,” he whined, drawing out every syllable, “I can do it!”
“You’ve done magic before?” Leon perked up from his case and turned to look at Gwaine and his stick wand.
“No,” Gwaine replied, looking sheepish, “but I’ve done loads of accidental magic, all the teachers used to get so irritated with me like it’s not called ‘accidental magic’ for a reason. One time I turned the matron’s skirt up because she was trying to check my hair for lice like a muggle instead of using a spell. Apparently, they’ve a policy about using magic on children.”
“Doesn’t sound like reason to let you use magic on an owl now,” Leon said.
Arthur chimed in, excited, “I want to see it.”
“It is!” Gwaine glared at Leon, “I know what magic feels like, I know when it’s working.”
“Accidentally,” Leon shot back.
“And I know the spell,” Gwaine huffed, turning to the bird who squawked harder at the sight of a wand tip its face. Before anyone could stop him, Gwaine cleared his throat and said, “silencio.”
The squawking died to silence. Arthur, Gwaine, and Percival roared excitedly, looking at the confused bird who continued to open and close its beak while not a sound piped through. Just as soon as their celebration died, a shrill wailing sound came from it, like a hole had poked its way through the spell and let a whistle of sound ride through it. It sort of sounded like a kettle.
“It was worth a go,” Gwaine said triumphantly, flopping down onto Percival’s bed. “Still better then before.”
“What would you have done if your stupid failed spell had killed it instead,” Leon grumbled, turning towards his own bed.
He might have been hoping Gwaine didn’t hear. Gwaine did. Springing up from Percival’s bed onto all fours, he glared at Leon from across the room, “strung up its dead body above your bloody head at night and let ya’ wake to it’s face it’s yours. Knob.”
“I’m just saying, magic isn’t a toy, it’s meant to be used once learned and used respectfully.”
“Ever heard of the spell volans colorum?” Leon looked sidelong at Arthur, who was in no mood to help him crawl from the hole he’d dug himself, “it’s the spell Zonko’s uses on their beta fish so they literally crap out colourful feces.” Arthur choked on the image in his mind, “magic is nothing but a toy, especially now. What do people use magic for? Honestly. Take a guess, number one modern uses?”
Percival nodded his head knowingly, “household chores.”
“Bullseye.”
“That’s not playing, that’s work and convenience.” Leon said, leaning against his bed at the three boys, “it’s a very human thing to do.”
“Right, because if they’re not using it to wash their arses the next number one modern use is the unforgivables, is it?” Leon scoffed and turned away from them. “That’s what I thought,” Gwaine grumbled, “bloody purebloods.”
Arthur glanced at him then, “you don’t like purebloods.”
Gwaine raised his voice to ensure that Leon heard him, “actually I don’t. I have this theory, see–”
“Here we go,” Percival signed, moving to pull his night things from his trunk but Gwaine quickly spun on his bottom and planted his feet against the lid of it, slamming it shut.
“One day in the not too distant future there’s going to be a shift and everyone is going to stop caring about blood status and all the purebloods who upheld those shoddy traditional values are going to start hiding those statuses, opposite to how their wearing them like a bloody crown nowadays.”
“That’s not true,” Leon said, moving over to join their circle confidently, “not all the purebloods wear their status like a crown. That’s only the sacred twenty-eight.”
“I suppose you don’t?” Gwaine teased.
“No. I don’t.”
“But you wouldn’t marry a muggle,” Gwaine pressed, his wild hair nothing like Leon’s pristine auburn locks, which flowed around his face in effortless perfection.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Point proven.”
“How is that ‘point proven’?”
“All purebloods, including the ones who aren’t part of the twenty-eight, have the same motivations to keep their pure-bloodedness pure, even if their a little more lenient about it. So, they’re not fucking their cousins, they’re still avoiding muggle-borns. It’s the same bloody thing.”
“It’s not,” Leon grumbled.
“Go sort your socks, Loreson,” Gwaine spat and Leon retreated, grimacing, ‘I’m not bloody prejudiced.’
“Why would there be a shift in the future?” Arthur asked, butting in before Leon could retaliate louder.
“Because” Gwaine leaned in close, “muggle-borns like yourself are the only reason the magical community isn’t dead on arrival. We’d have died out without marrying muggles and so many of us now are descendants of those decisions in the past. Really, we should be thanking muggles, not inbreeding to avoid their ‘dirty blood’.”
The words clicked in Arthur’s head and he whispered to Gwaine and Percival, shooting a look at Leon’s back, “what does ‘mudblood’ mean?”
The boys shared a worried glance.
The answer was exactly what he expected.
Arthur hated not knowing all these little words. He hated that he was so far behind though first year was supposedly the start line. So, within the first week of classes, Arthur grew to fall in love with a small leather-bound notebook that he’d packed originally to use an agenda and was now marking topics and words he needed to learn about the magical community.
So far he had,
Zonkos
Squib
Nearly Headless Nick
Animagus
Apparition
Hogwarts founders
And the list went on. By the end of the week, he’d gotten most of them scratched out with a fine line, a small definition scrawled into the margins on the side. He even went so far as to check out a book from the library entitled, ‘Hogwarts: A History’ and learned a fair deal regarding the final topic in his book. But still he struggled. Receiving his timetable on the morning of the first day of school was like a slap to the face, he’d never even heard of the word ‘transfiguration’ nor was he aware that ‘dark arts’ were something that existed in the world of magic.
By the second Monday of September, however, Arthur was in a considerably brighter mood, now able to reach his classes somewhat easily, and recognizing the faces there. Mondays he had morning Herbology with the Hufflepuffs, followed by History with the Slytherins, then Potions with the Ravenclaws, and ending with transfiguration with the Ravenclaws once more.
While hoping that History of Magic would answer some of his questions, Arthur was disappointed to learn that entire topics for the year revolved around ancient history; troll wars and giant peace treaties with a splash unit on the development of wizarding political systems.
The ghost who taught it was exceptionally evasive. Whenever Arthur tried to catch him at the end of the lessons to help cross off a few of those ruddy words in his book, he’d soar through a wall and go missing. Percival was quite certain that ghosts were remnants of the living, in which case they mustn’t have the capacity to be as mentally aware. He was also confident that Professor Bilshins always walked through the back wall of the castle because in his life the door was there while now it isn’t. He believed, for whatever reason, ghosts could only follow the floorplan that they remembered in their life.
“S’like they can’t take in new information,” Percival exclaimed, “they’re not alive to process it. Honestly, try and ask him about current events and tell me the white of his eyes don’t glaze over.”
“What do you want to ask him anyway, Arthur? You know you can just ask us,” Gwaine chimed in, gathering his bag.
“I just figured he be a good choice to get some of the basic questions off my chest,” Arthur replied, “I don’t want to ask McGonagall, she always looks like she got a foul stench up her nose and I don’t want her glaring down at me with those eyes.”
“Bilshins won’t have any modern answers for you, I think he died in the seventeen hundreds.”
Arthur groaned, “fine.” He pointed to his notebook, the image there scrawled and messy. He’d been reading up on wizarding politics and the symbol came up in a scrap of old Prophet kept in the archive filing cabinet at the back of the library. Based on the layers of dust, he figured he was the only muggle-born with a desperation to be in the know on this sort of topic. “What’s this then?”
Percival and Gwaine stopped in their tracks on their way to the great hall and peered over Arthur’s shoulder to get a look at the pages. “Why do you want to know about that?”
“You know why.”
“Snape and Mulciber?” Percival plucked the book from Arthur’s fingers and looking down at the crude drawing, “tell me those twats haven’t mentioned this to you.”
“I hear plenty.”
Gwaine grimaced and grabbed Arthur by the crook of his neck, pulling him into the boy’s lavatory around the corner. It was relatively deserted as everyone parted for lunch hour.
“The dark mark is what you-know-who’s follows get to prove their allegiance to him and to communicate between one another but you can’t just go around talking about this stuff, Arthur, we’re in a middle of war.”
“A war,” Arthur repeated. He was going to have to start reading more modern news and groaned inwardly. Yes, objectively a war was very bad but research of this nature was all too familiar for the Prime Minister’s son. He already spent most Saturdays of his young life learning the proper responses to any invasive questions he might be subjected to on the streets. He knew to read up on all current political happenings and now he had a second world to keep tabs on? God help him.
Pieces of what he’d read came back to him as he looked down on the image of the snake escaping the mouth of a skull, drawn in the sky above a ruined home, “why do they hate muggle-borns?” He asked, pathetically, “please, Gwaine, I just need to understand it.”
“It’s not you they hate is who you come from, it’s muggles. I know we haven’t really done any magic yet so it’s sort of hard to get but you come from people who literally turn water into wine and then you meet muggles who need cars to move around and haven’t got the cure to common diseases. It was very easy for wizards to let that get to their heads.”
“War. All this, is a glorified power trip?”
“You’ve got it.”
“And the twenty-eight, they’re all with that wizard, the bad one?”
“A good chunk of them. Like I said to Leon, there’s a reason the ‘pure’ want to stay ‘pure’ so badly.”
Arthur nodding, the understanding he’d searched for making his head throb uncomfortably. “Guess I should learn them, if only to keep my distance.”
A toilet flushed, shocking Arthur to his core as he spun around to see a boy walk out of a stall.
“Christ, mate,” Gwaine squealed, “you scared the ruddy hell out of us. What are you doing snooping in the fucking loo?”
The boy was skinny, with wavy black hair, a long face, prominent cheekbones, and very prominent ears. He looked like a wizard in the same that the Black boy looked like a wizard; with features too… different.
“If you want a private conversation to stay private don’t go to a public place,” he said, not a trace of nervousness about him.
“It was deserted when we opened the door.”
“You didn’t open this one,” he pointed at his stall door, which swung wildly on its hinges like a gust of wind had gone rushing by. The boy didn’t even have his wand out. He stalked by them, stopping to wash his hands in one of the sinks arranged in a strange circular fashion. Arthur noticed his eyes on them through the mirror, grey and piercing. Just as he was about to leave, hand resting on the doorhandle, he turned back to Arthur, “guess I won’t be seeing you around. Consider it your loss.”
Arthur was only able to attach a name to the boy’s face after they’d left lunch and were on their way to their next class, potions. Merlin Ambrosius. Twenty-eight descendent with the name most use as a common swear in this world. He was a pureblood and worse, he was a Ravenclaw, which meant he would be present in Arthur’s vicinity for the rest of the afternoon.
The wordless magic was a shocking sight, enough to quiet Gwaine’s prattle and shake Arthur roughly by the shoulders the second the loo door had swung closed (‘do you know how bloody rare that is?’). He seemed twenty-eight-ish enough by his aggressiveness but Arthur had also gotten a week’s impression of the Black boy who was nothing like he’d expected. Leon was infinitely more posh-like then Sirius.
“Gather around class,” Professor Slughorn chuckled. Their potion master a was man in his early thirties probably but he had a beer gut and scraggly blond-ish hair already laced with grey and tied in a loose ponytail at the base of his neck. It aged him. He was waving a pristine green wand around a bubbling cauldron at the front of the classroom when the students entered as the bell rang. A scent like plucked grass and heavy metals wafted through the air and made Arthur hold the sleeves of his robes to his nose to block it as he entered. “Today we’ll be working on brewing the babbling beverage, but,” he yapped, “I have altered the seating arrangements you all settled into last week.” He cast a stern look at James and Sirius, then at Gwaine and Percival, “I think it better not to spend all your time with students in your own houses. So, I’ve made a seating chart which you will find on the blackboard. One Gryffindor and one Ravenclaw to a table. Pip, pip, find your seats.”
Arthur shuffled forward with the rest of the group and found his name written over the left seat on the far right side of the room, two from the back. Next to him, was none other then Merlin Ambrosius.
“Bloody fuck,” he whispered and found his seat.
Percival was, thank God, seated directly behind him, alongside girl with wavy brown hair, warm skin, and a kind heart-shaped face.
“Guess who I’m seated next to,” Arthur announced, shooting Percival a look.
Percival choked on a laugh as Merlin found his seat, looked once at Arthur, and turned around in his own seat. The girl perked up and smiled; she had a lovely smile. “Gwen, I’ll give you five galleons to trade places with me.”
“Five?” She exclaimed, glancing at Arthur, “how’ve you gone and made a nemesis? It’s not even Hallowe’en yet.”
“He started it. Two different worlds and whatnot,” Merlin said, not even looking at Arthur, “are you sure you’re not up for that trade?”
Gwen’s eyes flickered to Arthur’s, then back to Merlin, “as much as I’d love to, you’re not good for the money.”
“Harsh, Gwenevere , everyone knows the twenty-eight are loaded.”
“Except the Ambrosius’.”
“Whatever, not sure being caught next to the walking thumb will do me much better,” he grinned at the girl, “good luck reigning in your Gryffindor.”
“And you.”
“Are you done?” Arthur asked, glaring at Merlin.
“Why?” Merlin turned to him now, grey eyes sparkling with confidence, “need me to call you a slur?”
“This is going to be fun,” Arthur groaned, turning forward as Professor Slughorn’s voice soared around the classroom.