Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“-and then I handed her the blasted thing, only for her third ex-husband to knock me out with half a cheese wheel!” The warlock rants, munching on a much-too-large slab of raw honeycomb. “Barbaric I tell ya.”

His audience stays still, captivated.

“And that,” He continues through thick sweetness on his teeth, "my friends, is how I caught the great frog-slayer of the 1350s.”

His audience stays still. Perhaps not captivated.

“Tough crowd,” He grumbles. “Although, arguably more calming than the geese.”

The three toadstools remain still.

“Oh, no need to be so bashful-”

“Oi! Lad!”

Merlin rolls his eyes at the voice. Humans. Too many of them for a Sunday mornin- oh. Oh.  

“Kid, you’ve been sitting here talking to bloody mushrooms since the crack of dawn!”

Merlin gives a stink-eye to the now darkening sky. He really needs to give his CV to the sun.

“Kid-“

“Not, actually-“

“Parks closed. Twenty o’clock on the dot. Get out before I have you escorted.”

Merlin groans unrestrainedly. Gets up off the park bench and waltzes out the gates. 

He decides, on his way back, after watching a man reverse park into a garage door thrice before realising the brakes exist, that he needs a fucking job.

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore is an observer. He sees the things others do not.

He has done so since he was a child. He sees the scrubbed ink on nail cuticles, the hidden blushing of young lovers, crumbs under the table, hushed whistling of sinking lilies. The skeletons of wails on his mother’s cold lips.

He tries to prove fate is malleable, that his all-powerful voice and his all-powerful wand can mould the rock like clay. He proves it through grand gestures and mountains climbed and devils slain. He washes the clay off his hands at the end of every day with a smile on his face and a ticked box in his eye. He never looks to see if the water goes grey, because he’s afraid of what he’ll find if he does.

He proves he can sculpt clay through loving the boy with the lightning scar, whilst pretending he isn’t pouring honey on a pig before slaughter.

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, as much as he convinces himself and the world the opposite, is an observer. A witness to the boy who never got to be a child.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Unhesitant, loud, certain.

Albus turns away from his reflection in the window. He walks to his desk and lowers himself into the chair, cloak untwisted and hair falling faultless. He makes sure his half-moon spectacles are straightened perfectly on his dorsum bridge.    

“Enter.” He calls.

The door swings open, a figure walks in. Though their face is painted by the silhouette of morning shadows, Albus immediately identifies the gait of a man with confidence. The way he holds himself doesn’t command authority, per say, instead it’s the kind that whispers it and offers it and puts it on your bedside table as if it doesn’t care if it’s picked up or not.

The man walks closer, sun rays finally kissing his face.  

Black untamed hair sits upon paper white skin, ink upon chalk. The skin stretches across angles and points, sharp features that should seem formidable but are not. There's a softness to his eyes and mouth that dilutes and spreads and breathes, gentleness captured and displayed unashamedly like butterflies in glass bottles.

There’s an empty spot in his lapis lazuli eyes where youth is meant to be. The youth that lets you believe the world can lap at your ankles, and you can just…walk unbothered.

And yet they hold something else – a playfulness, a child, one sculpted by wonder, sculpted by pain. The child leaks through the red neckerchief and the lopsided grin, and the crow feet at the corner of his eyes.  

“Greetings!” The man exclaims in a voice that has no business being so bright on a Monday’s first breaths. “A wonderful morning! Or perhaps afternoon? I’d check the position of the sun, but it seems to have just moved past your window – rather annoying habit it has acquired really – I do have my reservations about the validity of its qualifications,”

“Qualifications?”

“Mm. Being the sun demands impeccable timing and flawless presentation, both of which I can do a much better job at.” The man brushes a pine leaf off his shoulder.

“And I, my dear Dumbledore, know a lot about qualifications.” The man says, the latter part being spoken with the voice of a child presenting their first crayon drawing collection. He waggles his eyebrows, hard.

Albus blinks. Checks his spectacles are straight. “You are interested in a teaching position?”

“Bingo.” The man clicks his fingers. “Got it in one.”

Albus’ eyes betray him as they flicker to the left. He catches the eye of Phyllida Spore’s portrait. She levels her gaze at him, as if testing. He fixes his spectacles again.

Nodding at the seat in front of him, Albus observes as the man obliges, the neckerchief twisting slightly as he sits. The man doesn’t bother to fix it.

“If I may enquire, “ Albus starts after a pause, “By which means did you arrive here? I am merely curious; I been watching the gateway since dawn’s break.”

“Firenze.” The man says, as if it were a statement and not a name. “And, if there’s one thing you must know about gargoyles, it's if you write gullible on the ceiling, they’ll refuse to ever look up.”

There's a pause. Then –

“Tea?”

The man grins like it’s the first and last time he’ll do so.

“Please.”

Albus pours the liquid from the kettle with a steady hand, passing the cup over. The man doesn’t make a move for the milk jug until it’s gestured at in a help yourself way. As if he’s establishing the reigns are in Albus’ hands.

Then, as Albus spoons the perfect amount of sugar into his own teacup, the man’s eyes flash gold, a split second where his pupil is an insect in amber. Old magic, ancient magic, extinct magic. Albus stills, waits. Nothing happens.

Then, he hears the subtle ting ting ting of silver against porcelain. He looks to the man’s teacup, where the spoon is stirring itself. It’s an interesting move from the man, so mundane and subtle, something startingly intentional about how unthreatening it is. A drip from the wall of a dam.

Albus’ spectacles slide slightly down his nose. The gold in the man’s eyes have been replaced with a warmth, a careful promise. A tiger showing his teeth are blunt and his claws are putty and his gaze is not meant for hunting.

Albus hands over the sugar. He does not adjust his spectacles.

 He receives a smile of mirth and a strange sense of approval.

“The name’s Malcolm. Malcolm Emrys.”

The man, Malcolm apparently, throws his name out into the wind like discarded orange peel, like it’s a suggestion, a will you or won’t you. A ball thrown in Albus’ court.

“That is your true name?” Albus starts, blunt, but he dips his words in politeness and nonchalance as if asking about his grandmothers’ newest teacup. He decides it’s best to put an axe to the wood in this situation, rather than the painstaking shaves.

“Well, if you omit the first fifty or so percent.”

“So… Emrys?”

“Mm.”

Albus raises his eyebrows.

“Okay – so what if it’s not the name my mother gave me,” ‘Emrys’ says, rolling his eyes slightly, “It’s still sort of my name nonetheless.”

“…And I’m right to assume you won’t disclose the name given by your mother?”

“Bullseye, Dumbles!”

Albus inhales deeply through his nose, clasping his hands together in a prayer-like motion, pressing his two thumbs through his beard to under his chin. He looks out the window, making eye contact with his reflection. He sees the boy with the lightning scar and an axe hovering over his head.

He wonders if the tiger will hunt by the boy’s side.

“Well, Malcolm,” he speaks, and he lets trust bleed through his words and stand before Emrys like a deer. “Our professor Binns has understandably suffered far much too long amongst the wrath of teenage hormone imbalances. Alas, we have found ourselves with a History Professor position available.”

Albus takes a sip from his daily cup of tea, and it tastes like sun and gambles and half a teaspoon too much sugar.

Emrys grins.

“Oomph!”

“Sorry, sorry,”

Arthur clenches his screaming toes. That’s the fourth time in twenty minutes someone’s trolley has stubbed his foot.

“No harm done,” he grinds out to the woman waiting.

He shifts his basket in his hold, pride re-applied onto his skin. His eyes trace over the grocery isle, landing on a crateful of yellow criss-crossed blobs with green leafy bits spurting out of them. He picks one up for examination purposes, flipping it over and smelling it in the perfect picture of nonchalance. He touches the green leafy bits and gets a pricked finger in return. He puts it back down, offended.

His next target are the white blobs. Pale, strange things cradled in green that have no business being that knobbly. He pokes at the knobs.

Coral flower? Cranky flower? Cronky flower?

Ah, yes. He nods at the label. Cauliflower.

He moves onto the crate next to it. Ah, tomatoes! Finally, a familiar face. He puts the biggest, plumpest one in his basket and moves on.

A gasp from behind him.

“Young man!”

Arthur twirls around to come face to face with an old man with a frankly awful mustard top hat, a moustache that’s curled at the ends a little too much and a breath that smells entirely of coffee and baked beans. The man’s expression is spilling incredulity onto the floor at Arthur’s feet.

“Problem, sir?”

“Problem is too tame of a word for your actions, young man!” The old man violently grabs the tomato from the basket and shakes it in Arthur’s face. “Forgetting something, hmm?”

Arthur blinks.

“It’s decent, elementary etiquette,” the man spits out, taking a small cloth out his front pocket and throwing it at Arthurs chest. “Take a tomato, polish a tomato - for the next person.  It’s basic manners, have your parents not taught you this?”

The man gestures at the tomato crate sharply, eyes filled with nothing but get on with it. Arthur reddens and grabs the cloth. He is on his third round of polishing the same damn tomato when he starts smelling lies.

“Disgraceful,” the old man is still muttering, “No hope for this generation,”

Arthur slowly turns to make eye contact.

Light blue meets dark blue.

“Though, I suppose you wouldn’t know,” The man continues, holding the gaze, “You’re much too toad-faced and snobby-nosed to be from around here.”

“What. The fuck.” Arthur says, deadly.

The old man’s breath hitches, his lips twitch. “Need I wash that mouth out with soap, young man?”

Arthur all but lurches at the stupid hat and the stupid moustache and the stupid grin.

“Merlin!” He growls out, shoving and elbowing and slapping the damn hat off that damn head.

Merlin laughs, evil and triumphant. “Young man! How dare you do this to an elderly-“

“You - bastard!”

Merlin chuckles, albeit a bit more warmly, and goes to pick up the hat. He hobbles a bit and rubs his back as he bends down to retrieve it. Arthur rolls his eyes and releases a loud agony and humiliation induced groan.

Two young children with doughnuts in their mouths scarper away from him.

“For the love of all the gods, Merlin, why?”

Merlin shrugs. “Can’t I talk to my favourite cabbage in the isle?”

Arthur guffaws with a straight face. “Okay, Merlin. Sure thing, Merlin,” he says, flat and dry as sandpaper. “Just, you know, let me know next time you find it so hard to walk two feet out your bedroom and into mine. I can help direct you, no need to be ashamed.”

“Effort required.”

Arthur chokes. “And this, Merlin,” He gestures harshly and theatrically at the whole ridiculous-old-man-disguise thing the lunatic has going on, “This isn’t effort?”

“Of course not.”

Suddenly the idea of slow and torturous self-disintegration appeals to Arthur. The annoying, ear-jabbing voice is still incessantly droning on through his self-wallowing thoughts.

“And since when do you ever set foot in supermarkets?” The voice continues.   

“Newsflash Merlin, I do.”

Merlin releases an honest-to-gods giggle. A little-girl-with-pigtails-and-a-stolen-tart type giggle. His eyes flicker to the tomato crate simultaneously.

Arthur walks off. Goes to find the cheese. And his lost dignity. And to hopefully lose the idiot for enough time to figure out how the hell to pay in a twenty-first century supermarket.

Alas, bliss is not meant for the worthy. The annoying voice hovers over his shoulder again.

“One tomato,” It says, “a slab of ham and a packet of cheese-strings?!”

“Shove off.”

Merlin does not, in fact, shove off.

“I recall,” Arthur begins, long sufferingly, “Some idiot lecturing me that the constant consumption of chicken nuggets is not healthy.” He says, spitting the latter word out as if it left a bitter taste on his gums. “This, Merlin,” Arthur gestures with passion to his basket of three prideful items, “is called health.”

Merlin lets out a strangled sound. “This is why I need the job,” he mutters. “Can’t spend my years gallivanting around and looking after all the incompetent emotionally repressed manchildren.”

“…Emotionally repressed manchildren?

Merlin raises an eyebrow.

Wack!

“Hey!” Merlin rubs his bicep, murdering with his eyes.

“Oh, stop being dramatic, it’s only mozzarella.”

“Mozzarella is harder than it looks.”

“So, you stalked me to the supermarket to tell me you want a job and to defend the texture of mozzarella?”

“Aye aye cap.”

“Fine,” Arthur says, scooting past Merlin to walk to the payment area, praying to the gods he’s going in the right direction. He doesn’t check to see if Merlin follows. “Go scallivanting off somewhere-“

“-it’s gallivanting-“

“-whatever. Go gallivanting off, you hardly need my go-ahead to do anything, nice as that would be.”

“I’m not looking for your go-ahead,” Merlin snorts. “The job just requires me to stay over th –“ Merlin cuts off and smirks at Arthur, who is stood staring like an eagle at a roadside at the self-checkout machines.

Arthur surveys them subtly, arranging his face into the epitome of disinterest. He watches a woman hold a bag of pastries up to the box with fancy lights and fancy writing on it. It beeps. The lady does the same to her next item. And the next. And the next. And the ne-

“Just admiring the view, are we?” The voice is back again. “They do say inspiration strikes in the most unexpected of places,”

“Touché.”

“Oh, for fucks-“ Arthur releases a very manly sound of protest as his basket is yanked from his fingers. “You’re useless, Arthur, absolutely useless.”

Arthur does not pout, thankyou very much.

Operation don’t-make-a-fool-of-yourself-in-the-twenty-first-century has gone to pot before it’s even started.

“Tell me next time you decide on a whim to go to a supermarket for the first time.”

Arthur huffs. He decides staying silent has the least potential bruises to his pride in store.

“Go back to the house, Arthur,”  Merlin says, already slotting into the queue, holding Arthur’s basket hostage. “I’ll take care of this, got a few more errands to tick off the list anyway.”

“No, I’m fi-“

Oomph.

Arthur glares daggers at the trolley that is being wheeled past, ignorant, without a care in the world. His toes are going to bloom into pretty aneurysms with petals at this point.

“Fine. I’ll go. You win this round, happy?”

“Elated.”

“And for Avalon’s sake,” Arthur says as he walks away, narrowly avoiding yet another foot-to-trolley collision, “Get rid of the hat and moustache before you come through the front door.”

Merlin keeps the moustache and turns it ginger.

He trudges through the garden gate, bags of groceries hanging off his fingers like sad helium-drained balloons. The front door opens before he even registers the thought of getting the keys from his pocket.

“You’ve already got the job, haven’t you.”

Merlin lets his eyes do the talking.

“A worry worm, Merlin, is what you are.”

Merlin sighs, dumping the bags on the kitchen counter. “I’m sorry, Arthur, I just-“

“I’ll be fine, Merlin.” Arthur says, fondness pooling in the grooves of his smile. “Believe it or not, I can actually function without your mother-henning,”

“I know. I just needed to get the job because my brain was just – well, antsy, and I can’t tell if it’s some push from the triple goddess because they’re annoyingly subtle like that, or if I genuinely just want to go out there and do something, but that’s not fair to you because you only came back not two years ago and you don’t know anything about modern society and you need some semblance of stability and leaving you here on your own is n-“

“Merlin,” Merlin feels himself being steered by the shoulders to the couch and shoved on the chest with just enough force to fall onto the cushion. Arthur sits next to him. “Three things. Then you can spiral, by all means.” Arthur turns to face him. “First, I cannot take anything you say seriously with that ridiculous moustache on.”

“I see.”

Arthur blinks.

A bird pecks at the window.

“Well, go on! Get rid of it then!”

“What?” Merlin huffs, pathetic. “As you wish, my lord,”

Poof!

“My upper lip feels naked now. Look what you’ve done.”

Arthur squints at Merlin like he’s trying to figure out whether he’s real or a figment of the imagination. Merlin is already concocting elaborate pranks he can pull if Arthur decides on the latter.

“The second thing,” Arthur continues to the very real warlock, and Merlin almost groans in disappointment. “Is my utter objection to your apparent assumption that I know nowt of the functions of modern society,”

Merlin raises his eyebrows and sends a rather pointed look at the grocery bags. If he hadn’t have added basic human supplements to Arthur’s slice of ham, plastic cheese and singular tomato, then they would have starved by next Wednesday.

“Thirdly,” Arthur continues, unfazed, “I’m not a hobbling helpless bald chick in a nest, Merlin, I ”

“Eh, not far off-”

“I’m fully capable-“

“I’m not saying you’re not capab-“

“Well, that’s what you’ve been insinuating-“

“I’m just wor-“

“Worried about me? That’s your permanent state of being, Merlin,”

“You would be too if some dude from 1500 years ago came trotting into your house one day-“

“Everything we’ve been through, only for you to call me some dude?!”

“Don’t click on links, you’ll be scammed,”

“Mer-“

“The water bill comes through on Tuesdays,”

“Merl-“

“If the carbon monoxide alarm goes off-“

“Merlin!”

“Yes, hello.”

Arthur pinches the bridge of his nose. Gets up to put the kettle on. It whistles.

Merlin realises, for once, Arthur has remembered to secure the lid.

“You’ll be fine.” Merlin says.

“I know.” Arthur opens up the tub of hot chocolate powder. “I’ll be fine.”

“I know.”

Silence breathes into the room, broken only by the hum of water being poured into porcelain. Merlin levitates the mug to himself, and it smells of sweetness and relief.  

“It’s a school. Hogwarts, it’s called.”

Chapter Text

Dennis Creevey wants a toad. Not your typical garden-smelling idle-sitting toad-sounding toad, not a toad that would eat and poop and exist all in the same spot, only to repeat it again until there are no more next days. No , Dennis Creevey wants a toad that can –

“Sing?!” Dennis nods at his brother, leaking excitement from his ears. “You want a toad that can sing?!” Colin stares incredulously. 

Dennis nods again, as if his head is on a spring. 

Colin sighs, ruffling the mousy brown mop on Dennis’ head. “Toads in the wizarding world do not differ from our ones, little brother.”

“They don’t?”

“Sorry, Den,”

The two boys walk through the back-to-school hustle of Diagon Alley, the smaller one pouting and scuffing and dragging behind like a sad pup. By the time Ollivander's comes into view, only one boy, predictably, remains. “Dennis? Dennis, where the hell did you sneak off to?”

The sad pup in question patters deeper into the hidden alleyway. Because if Dennis Creevey wants a singing toad, Dennis Creevey shall get his singing toad. 

“Dennis! You little-!”

Dennis starts running, giggling track on repeat as he manages to fish out the Magical Menagerie sign. He glances behind him to confirm the lack of brother sightings, and waltzes into the shop like he owns the place. 

“Can I help you, Mr…?”

“Creevey, sir. Got any singing toads?”

“-Singing …?” The salesman smirks. “Not in here lad. Not anywhere, for that matter,”

Dennis huffs. All this magic is so great you won’t believe it lark from his brother’s mouth is turning out to be a load of pish posh so far. He strides over to browse the fish tanks in the corner, walking close enough that the bubbling tunes out the salesman’s snickers. He flits unimpressed irises over goldfish, turtles, more goldfish. Then – toads! Dennis doesn’t remember running over to them; he stares at them in unbridled hope, reaching his arm over the pen’s barrier and prodding one lightly. He waits. Prods again. Waits. Deflates. Fails to hold in a disappointed sigh. They were much too toad-like and much too silent. 

“I would save the sighs for something more tragic.”

Dennis jumps out of his skin.

There’s a warm chuckle. “Chillax, kid. Didn’t mean to scare ya,”

Dennis looks to his right, where a man with big ears and a navy cloak is stood. The man is not looking at him, instead is swishing his fingers around on the water surface of one of the tanks. “You know what double-ended newts are?” He speaks again.

“No.”

The man smiles. Swishes his fingers around some more. Dunks his whole arm and subsequent sleeve into the tank. 

Curiosity moves Dennis’ feet closer to the man, who has pulled out an axolotl-looking creature from the bottom of the tank. Only, it has two heads. 

“Whoah,” 

“Cool, isn’t it?”

The creature starts spinning around like a caffeinated merry-go-round in the man's palm. The man whispers a word, and the two heads slowly split apart. 

Dennis stares in awe at the two now separate bodied newts.

“We have to do that sometimes,” The man says, releasing the newts back in the tank. “If the heads do not get along, they have a propensity to spin around until they forget what being still was like.” 

Dennis does not know the appropriate response to such a matter, so he does what most 11 year olds would do; he flashes an awkward tooth-gapped smile and skips away. 

“Doo-bee-doo-dah-dah-doo-bee-doo-dah-dah-dah-dah,”

Dennis freezes. Looks down to the source of the scat-singing, heart in his throat.

For there, plonked on the very floor in front of his shoes, is a singing toad. He squeals in disbelief and delight and scoops it up. 

The big-eared man behind him chuckles, and vanishes. 

“My old man told me about you, Emrys.”

“Here we go.”

“Said I should never sell my wands to you. Said there’s never been one who disrespects our craft as much as yourself,”

“I dont-“

“Said you’d buy one of his bests, only to splinter and gut it’s insides the next week,”

“I hardly-“

“Said you’d be infuriating and insolent about it, as well.”

“Don’t you think that’s a bit-“ 

“Our wands are sculpted from the earth, its creatures and its fruits. It takes months for the wood to even be-“

“Look, Garrick, I apologise if my past-doings have-“

“If?!”

“-not been received well, but I really do need this wand. I won’t even use it, if it makes you feel better,”

“Won’t even-?!” Garrick lets out a strangled sound. “Wands are meant to be used, Emrys. Not left to pose and look pretty until they become a piece of the furniture.”

“You know full well your wands cannot sustain my magic,”

“Only precisely the reason you should not buy off us in the first place!”

Merlin groans unrestrainedly. Not having a genuine wand in Hogwarts is the equivalent of being a haystack in a pile of needles. One more glance at Garrick's face confirms this is the fate that awaits him.  

“Alright.”

“Alright?”

“I’ll try my hand at the next Ollivander generation. Seems this one is as unyielding as the last.” He opens the door and the bell rings. “Good-day,” Merlin says to Garrick’s smug look. He strolls in the direction of The Three Broomsticks, the desire for butterbeer becoming increasingly more dominant over all other thoughts. 

Harry bangs the back of his head on the train compartment wall. 

“Harry - it’ll be fine.”

“ Harry, it’ll be fine,” Harry mocks in a high pitched voice. He’s more than aware of his ridiculous childishness right now, but he can’t bring himself to care. He’s so sleep deprived he can’t tell if the real Hermione is the figure in front of him or to his left, he can’t look at pruned bushes without seeing murdered gardeners and green flashes, he can’t close his eyes without seeing the death mark that’s been seared into his eyelids, and he’s seriously considering getting a full-ass forehead transplant at this point. 

“I just don’t understand why mass panic isn’t a more accepted phenomenon around here!”

“…What?”

“A dark mark was cast, Hermione. I saw the bloody guy who did it! It’s plaguing my brain and my head can’t seem to shut up about Voldemort coming back and I don’t understand how you two are treating it like someone served you acorns on toast instead of peanut butter!”

“Acorns?” Ron shakes his head, “Mate, it’s not like we’re not taking this seriously, of course we are, we’re as scared as you.”

“Then why do I feel like the world is just…carrying on?”

“Because it has to.”

Harry heaves a sigh at that, one that deflates all the air out of him in one big swoop and makes him slouch like some pathetic airless balloon. “M’ sorry.”

“All good, Harry. You’re tired and worried, not a good combo in your books.” 

Harry nods miserably, energy drained. 

“Anything from the trolley, dears?”

“Packet of droobles and… a chocolate frog,” Ron says, getting up to hand the coins to the trolley-lady. 

He sits back down and tosses the chocolate frog to Harry. Harry feels himself smile in a way he hasn’t been able to these past few days. 

“Go on, open it! Wanna see if you get Agrippa or Ptolemy,”

“You’ve been saying that for years, Ronald.” Hermione says, rolling her eyes, “I’m beginning to doubt they exist at this point.”

“Oh, they exist alright,” Ron scoffs, “George is sticking a growing collection of Ptolemys on his door-frame, just to get a kick out of me,”

Harry opens the lid just wide enough to slide out the card without unleashing the frog. He snorts immediately at the picture. 

“Tough luck, Ron,” He says, showing the card to him.

“Merlin? Again?!” Ron stuffs a drooble angrily into his mouth. “Bloody wizard. If I see anymore of him I’m not taking accountability for my actions.”

They keep the chatter idle and surface level for the rest of the train ride, and Ron and Hermione let Harry slowly retreat into silence as they bicker over the validity of the latest Quibbler articles. Harry stares out the window at the blur of greens and blues until he spots the turrets of the place he calls home. 

The journey feels shorter than what he remembers. He’d planned to wallow in the injustices of Voldemort's potential return, yet Sirius takes up a larger portion of his thoughts than intended. 

“You think Sirius is okay?” Harry ends up saying quietly after some time, just before the train stops. 

“He’s ok, Harry,” Hermione says, opening the doors and smiling knowingly. “He’s got Buckbeak. He’s got Professor Lupin. He’s got you.”

Harry mirrors her smile and follows his two friends out, finally munching on his chocolate frog.

Behind him, a dragonfly flies out of the compartment, unseen. 

Chapter Text

“There’s a bee in the kitchen.”

“Alright, just open the window then.”

“I’m not asking for a solution, Merlin, I’m just telling you there’s a bee in the kitchen.”

“Mm?”

“I am perfectly capable of dealing with a measly bee, thank you very much,”

“…Arthur, is there a reason you called me other than to tell me about the damn bee?”

“No.”

“…I’m hanging up.”

Merlin folds the phone into his pocket and heaves a long-overdue swooping sigh, half worry, half amusement, and a sprinkle of what the fuck . He checks the café clock. Seven minutes late, and counting. 

“Finished, sir?”

“Finished?” Merlin tosses the word around in his mouth, distasteful. Finished, god; never. There's no such thing as finishing. It’s endless swooping in with a cape to save the day, it’s endless I got here too late s, it’s endless regrets on helping too little, helping too much, helping even when fate steers harder, it’s endless decisions on how long to let the jackass-of-the-day choke on his own vomit and endless wondering how long it'll be ‘till humans stop crapping out history and eating it before they learn how the flush works. Because that's the looped soundtrack of a man with unmatched powers and a lifespan of a fucking Great basin bristlecone pine. 

“Your coffee, sir. Finished?”

“It’s empty, Jim.”

“Jason.”

“It’s empty, Jackson. 

“So, finished?”

“Of course not. Though, I am quite looking forward to the new job.”

The barista looks at Merlin incredulously. Takes the empty cup and cash and retreats to the legal safety of behind-the-counter. 

Merlin scrunches up his nose at himself. Perhaps living in relative isolation with Arthur for four years straight has had consequences, namely losing the social-interaction-with-the-general-public instruction manual. 

He glances up at the clock again. Nine minutes. Ten minutes. 

With a huff he marches out the doors and onto the train platform, which is…startlingly empty, actually. That’s, eh, not the normal turnout, but perhaps witches and wizards these days have caught the latest bout of hermit-itus. 

He catches a glimpse of two red-heads, and strides towards them, wondering if he’s accidentally caused a station evacuation. Again. Maybe they didn’t hear the announcement.

“Excuse me,” He calls, jogging slightly to catch up with the couple before they re-enter platform nine. “You haven’t seen a long rectangular thing with wheels and an obnoxious amount of steam have you? Usually goes on the train-tracks.”

“Oh, bless you, dear.” The woman says, and it’s all honey-sweet sympathy and motherness. “It left ten minutes ago!”

“You’re kidding.” 

“Sorry, dear,”

“Blooming typical, eh! Remind me to never answer bloody calls about bees from guys called Arthur.”

“Lucky for you, I don’t have your landline,” The man next to her says, deadpan. 

Merlin blinks. “Oh, shit - sorry!” he says, snorting good-naturedly. 

The man, Arthur apparently, laughs back, bright and unbridled. 

“Well, on that note,” Merlin says in mock forced cheeriness, “I’ll be off to see which parts of Dumbledore’s security wards I can breach,”

“Ta-ra, son. As long as it’s not via flying car, you’ll be fine.” 

The woman makes a disapproving tutting noise at Arthur, though it’s undeniably dipped in warmth. “Owl a note, dear. With a bit of luck you’ll make it for common room time.”

There’s the usual domino effect of parting smiles and nods before Merlin strolls away, only to stop comically, tracing back along the woman’s latter words. She thinks I’m a student. Freya, save me. 

He huffs sharply and ages himself up a handful of years. After all, Dumbledore’s memory and eyesight can’t be that sharp, surely. 

The warlock, contrary to popular belief, does have an Animagus form. You’d think, being the literal embodiment of magic and all, he would have found a way to bypass the natural instincts and behaviours of an animal. Yet, shapeshifting into a pigeon and attempting to be productive in the face of temptation was borderline, if not completely, impossible. Alas, the almighty pigeon-shaped Merlin was beaten by a mere breadcrumb on the sidewalk. 

After churning out the fifth-and-a-half letter of complaint to Mother Nature, Merlin resignedly decided to try out the Animagus spell, a handy little trick he’d heard some 15th century drunk-head reveal. He’d first performed the spell on himself in an open field, because of course, being an entity with more magic in a singular eyebrow hair than the wizards of Scotland combined thrice would surely mean his form would turn out to be at least a dragon, right? Right?

Predictably so, luck ceased to run through the warlock’s veins that dewy morning of the first transfiguration. Well, either that, or the Triple goddess had not, in fact, become immune to the disease that begins with bore and ends with dom. Merlin’s speciality. 

For all his power, for all his worthiness and deeds, the warlock’s pride was defeated by a three letter word.

Fly.

Merlin was a blasted dragon fly. 

A measly, pathetic little thing, one that would make the most infuriating buzzing sound and cause most infuriating vertigo. 

Merlin never thought he’d become best friends with a pout, but boy, did he wear it religiously. Kilgharrah's laughter when he found out would haunt Merlin for eternity. Literal eternity. 

But, for all the red-tinged ear-tips and hearty complaints this form brought out of him, being a dragonfly did, unexpectedly, turn out to hold some gold within its teeth. Though, it’s up to debate whether these following ventures were the catalyst for clause 56 of Ulick Gamp's Animagus Control Act of 1722 or not. 

He’d had his fun with the form, of course. Namely slotting into nooks and crannies, stalking people, and nicking some middle-aged moron’s saltless chips. And now, apparently, hiding in a train compartment after apparating onto the Hogwarts express. 

He’s perched on the ledge of the luggage shelf, eavesdropping greedily on the conversation below him like slurping smoothie with a straw. And he sure did pick an interesting smoothie. 

“I just don’t understand why mass panic isn’t a more accepted phenomenon around here!” Says the mop of black hair. Merlin can’t see his face, but he thinks he sees the top of some glasses. 

“What?” A girl's voice. Curly, mouse-coloured hair.

“A dark mark was cast, Hermione. I saw the bloody guy who did it! It’s plaguing my brain and my head can’t seem to shut up about Voldemort coming back and I don’t understand how you two are treating it like someone served you acorns on toast instead of peanut butter!”

If Merlin were human his jaw would be half-way to the floor. Riddle was back? Holy maiden, mother and crone. 

He laps up the rest of their conversation like a starving dog. He can only imagine why Tom is back. How he is back, for that matter. He spends the rest of the ride on a see-saw with the orphaned boy from 50 years ago on one side, and the plans to install a bread-maker in his new chambers on the other. Equally of import. 

There lived a certain man in

Russia long ago

He was big and strong, in his eyes, a flaming glow

Most people looked at him with terror and with fear

But to Moscow chicks, he was such a lovely dear

Harry, Ron and Hermione exchange a look. There’s a girl, sitting opposite them in the carriage, sharp-edged features carved out of marble, pale, like breath in the cold. Hair fuzzy and sandpaper-like, condensed into a long pale-yellow braid. There’s rosiness to her lips and tip of the nose, like barely detectable smeared blood. Sepia-toned sunglasses perch clumsily on her dorsal bump, haphazardly placed there like a half-afterthought. Wired earphones hang from her pointed ears, playing obnoxiously loud music three times the volume Harry’s ears could tolerate, never-mind hers.

He could preach the Bible like a preacher

Full of ecstasy and fire

But he also was the kind of teacher

Women would desire

“Pathetic, isn’t it,” She suddenly speaks through the music, gaze idly positioned somewhere above Harry’s head. Her voice is a strange calculated milkiness. 

“What is?” Harry says, unsure. 

“The human lung capacity.” She grins, wily, as if Harry is stupid for even asking. She’s missing a tooth behind the canines on either side, symmetrical. “I mean the guy can’t even get through the first verse without taking a breath,”

Harry looks to Hermione after failing to craft a response, an automatic behaviour born from years of if in doubt, go to Hermione.

The saviour in question shrugs at him, helpless. “Are you…new here?” Ah, clever. Redirection. “Just, we haven’t seen you before, is all,”

“Mm. Transfer student.” The girl takes her sunglasses off, staring almost coolly at the trio, eyes like morning sky absorbed into glass shards. “Mahoutokoro. Killed a teacher so they shipped me off to the furthest place that would take me.”

There’s a moment's silence in which the trio seem to collectively decide that nodding politely like they’ve been told the grass is green is the best course of action. 

“That was a joke, by the way. I only kill the player, and teachers are just pawns.”

The grass is still green. 

“That was also a joke.”

They laugh, all forced and awkward and a little delirious. The carriage comes to a stop and they hold back to let the girl leave first. She moves measuredly down the steps and walks past the thestrals. Her gait is mildly unbalanced, as if not completely in tune with the rhythm of two legs. 

She yelps, sharp and angry, when one of the thestrals kicks her in the shin. 

“You’re fishbones to me.” Harry hears her say to the creature, and she’s stationed her face a thumb’s width away from the poor thestral’s eye. “Thin, brittle and annoying, but swallowed at just the right angle and I won’t be needing the Hogwarts roast tonight.” 

She strolls off towards the castle without a look back to the stunned trio, music finally fading.

Ra-Ra-Rasputin, lover of the Russian Queen

There was a cat that really was gone

Ra-Ra-Rasputin, Russia's greatest love machine

It was a shame how he carried on (on, on)

Chapter Text

Merlin is late.

Which is about as surprising as a chicken is when it lays its daily egg. 

Late is a routine, a lifestyle Merlin has unwittingly zipped up around himself like a onesie, parading around the streets in. He snorted late once and got addicted immediately. 

It’s the little, ridiculous things that make him late. The should I hold the toothbrush with my foot, or the how do I make that paper-aeroplane sentient, or the what are the ethical implications of impersonating presidents? 

But hey, if there’s still new things to be distracted by 1500 years into his life, then he’s not going to take it for granted. They’ll run out eventually, who’s to blame a man for making the most of it whilst he can? 

At-least, that’s his justifiable excuse. 

Perhaps Merlin is late because he’s Merlin. Simple as.

He’d apparated to Hogsmeade after the train stopped, intending to quickly scour whatever information the Daily Prophet had decided to drip-feed out regarding the recent Dark Mark. It is terribly telling, Merlin had thought, as he’d sifted through the papers, that at this stage in life he has to resort to snobby publishers and wart-ridden journalists for his worldly updates. His joints were rusty and he knew it. 

It was after reading the third article with some awful forehead-banging-inducing pun in the title that he decided to give up betting coins on humanity’s societal success. Merlin had felt doomed, the type of doomed that a two-year-old feels when his tower of blocks falls down. The end-of-the-world doomed that means throwing a tantrum and waiting until his parents pick up the blocks and tell him to try again. 

The articles had been made of flowery language and no cut-to-the-chase, they were made of fabricated tales and high-heeled gossip-grabbers, they were made of politics inserted into basic morality and facts distorted into dopamine hits. 

Merlin had slapped the paper back onto the rack like a toddler in strop-mode. He’d currently gotten better facts out of three fifteen-year-olds on a train than these pathetic writings . I mean, who does this Rita Skeeter think she is? Dear Avalon . 

He had been about to scout out a secluded spot to apparate back to Hogwarts when he sees it. A small, pathetic, ugly little thing, teeth like rotting popcorn kernels and a stench rivalling last year’s foot-fungus trials.

“Hello, little one,” Merlin coos, because apparently the holy trinity of small-pathetic-ugly is his forte. The rat waddles up to him, fur sewed in clumps of grease and shit and the chewing gum spat from some skateboarding kid fresh out of primary school trying out this new thing called ‘cool’. 

Merlin fishes out stale breadcrumbs from the canyons of his pockets; tosses them near the rodent. It vacuums up the first one in blinks, then proceeds to staple the following crumbs between its teeth, scarpering off into the shadows. Merlin, rendered from birth as incapable of refraining from nosiness, follows.

He finds the rat placing the crumbs in front of a nest of younglings and a second rat, said rat in question wounded and cowering, copper roses blooming from its chest. Merlin swears. He really wants to get to Hogwarts in time for those roast potatoes. 

He answers his next thought before he’s even had time to form it. Of course I’m healing the bloody rat. The smelly, disease-ridden dying rat. 

He shuffles closer to the creature. Its wounds are deep - too deep. It’s fading. Almost faded.

A web holds a fly. Buzzing fading. Almost faded. 

He looks at the dying rat.

Back at the dying fly. 

Who is he to deem himself worthy enough to judge who’s life holds more value? Who is he to judge which suffering to end over which suffering to heal? Who is he to cut up the cards from the hands of the gods and throw them onto the table in front of them with the aces face-side up? 

In a split but heavy second, he catches the wisps of the rat’s soul just before they reach the veil. He holds the fly’s soul in the other hand, level. 

Is making no choice a choice in itself? 

Merlin’s tongue is bound to the drug called altruism, tied up to it with rope and veins. 

The rat lives. 

He waits out a wingbeat, expectant. The veil opens in front of him and a rage-filled wrinkle-webbed woman storms out of it, her corpse-like eyes locking onto the target scribbled on Merlin’s forehead. He grimaces, resigned. Braces himself. 

“EMRYS!”

“Dramatic much, Cally,”

There is a child. Standing in her way. 

A smelly-breathed snot-nosed baby-faced attempt at a human. 

“Move it, turd-face.” Oh, look, it even speaks. 

Aithusa flares her nostrils and tries to resist the appealing thought of scorching its eyebrows off. She tries to remember children are fragile pathetic little things with sensitive skin and cravings for warm milk bottles. 

“I am not moving, kid.” She says, watching in sharp amusement as it puts its hands on its hips like a bald baby peacock trying to be threatening. “Recalling correctly, I was here first.”

“ No , I was,”

“Bull. You scooted around me like I was some dead wooden stump, just so you could get further in the queue.”

The child huffs and deflates its chest, scowling petulantly. “Just wanted to be next to my new friend, ass-hat. Is that such a crime?”

“Yes, actually. Your parents not teach you manners?”

“At-least they gave me attention. Did they not even tell you your shirt is inside out?”

Aithusa looks down immediately, horrified for her dignity. 

The shirt is fine.

“Hah,” The child guffaws, momentarily scrunching its pudgy face in an uncanny resemblance to a naked mole rat’s buttock. “Made you look!” 

“You little-“

“Was only playin’!” It says. Aithusa tries to think of more bullet points to add to the don’t sear the kid’s eyebrows off list. “Come on, just let me stand by my new friend! We want to get Sorted together!” 

Said friend joins in with the whining performance. Aithusa should have bought salted popcorn and a seat for Kilgharrah.

“Friendships are transactional.” She spits, guarding her rightful place in the line. “You’re living a lie, get your head out the sand before I start calling the water in.”

The child goes all jelly and red-nosed. Its bottom lip wobbles. 

“Oh, for fucks-“ Aithusa mutters. Maybe she should bring its warm milk bottles instead of popcorn. 

She gives the kid a not-so-unfriendly shove on the shoulder until they’ve switched places in the line. It beams, lurching towards her with a squeal, arms wrapped around her like some god-damn leech. 

Pathetic. 

She sweeps her eyes, again, around the Great hall, tuning out the chatter and the glass clinks and the incessant giggling. There’s a limit to how much exposure to warm-blooded creatures she can take, and today’s toes are hovering a little too close to the line. She taps her foot, impatient, double checking the Professors’ table. 

Come on, she thinks. Where is he?  

Merlin, eventually, darts through the Hogwarts gates, lungs openly wheezing and whining for oxygen. He’s sure his face could be in the runners up of next year’s Scotland’s largest tomato contest. He unceremoniously collapses onto the entrance wall to catch his breath and re-insert himself into the dictionary definition of ‘human’. 

He swipes his palms on his cloak and ruffles the dark twines on top of his head into something he hopes resembles hair. 

Gods’ above, he really needs to stop being late. 

The warlock, satisfied that shoes are on the right feet and limbs are attached to the right ligaments, waltzes through the corridors and through the teacher’s entrance in the very picture of nonchalance. He knows if he’s quiet enough, he can sneak in without meeting the front-view of half-moon glasses and pearl-white beards. 

He opens the door. It doesn't creak. Check box one.

He peers around the back of the Professors' table. He spots a spare seat. Check box two.

He walks in the chair’s direction, movement going unnoticed amongst the current Sortings. Check box three. 

He stubs his toe. Yelps. 600 heads turn towards him. All further check boxes abort to immediate effect. 

“Heh,” he says into the sudden silence, trying to remember how to back-pedal his facial expression from the grimace it’s currently in. “Sorry, eh, rats - always making me late - inconvenient little things. Carry on,”

“Allow me to introduce,” Oh, bloody- “Our new History Professor.” Dumbledore says without looking at him, and Merlin rests his hands on the back-board of the chair, all awkward and off-guard. “Malcolm Emrys.”

The warlock inclines his head slightly. “Greetings. Here, we all have the same amount of toes as toenails. Or at least I hope so,” Merlin says, deadpan. “So, to the first years’, happy toe-clipping day.” 

Dumbledore turns almost imperceptibly to his direction, as if to say anything else? Any other words of wisdom? Any life-changing proverbs or tear-jerkers to offer? 

Merlin pulls out a chair and sits.  

He stifles a chuckle at the pathetic dribble of disjointed and hesitant claps that follow. 

“Thank-you, Professor Emrys,” The headmaster says, tone sculptured into something perfectly smooth. “Now, let us continue the Sortings,”

“Cordner, Juliet?”

Merlin observes the following Sortings for a moment, breathing in the unbridled, fresh-faced excitement, the sort that only youths can birth into the world. His grin falls not sixty seconds later, as he notices the most esteemed and important part of the ceremony has not yet arrived.

“Where are the roast potatoes?” He asks to the air, as if it would answer back with a ‘sorry’ and a ‘here you go, sir.’

Silence. Then -

“Grapes.” 

Merlin almost flinches at the silk-filled voice. Then again, he hasn’t exactly tested the hypothesis that oxygen molecules can’t speak. 

“Grapes,” The air speaks again. “Here, you fool,”

The voice sounds to be coming from the molecules to his right. Merlin twists his head to observe the phenomenon, only to be ambushed half-way by beetle black eyes and grease-slathered hair. 

Alright, so the speaking-air-molecules-theory is, once again, yet to be proven. 

“Why, hello-!”

“Roast potatoes arrive as part of the feast, Emrys.” The man says, coating his words with a rotten-chocolate-smelling sneer. “ Grapes,” He continues, words sharpened to a pin-prick point, jutting his head momentarily towards the direction of a bowl, “-are the only morsels available.”

He speaks as if the very act of speaking is inconvenient. 

Merlin hums, intrigue levels almost comically high. Fascinating, he thinks. A bar-humbug spotted in the wild. 

Merlin pops a grape in his mouth. Another. Another. Then another. He chews all four simultaneously, teeth bathing in sweet juice. 

“So,” Merlin starts, before he’s even finished chewing, voice muffled. He swipes a back of hand boyishly across his lips. “What are you up to, these days?”

The beetle-eyed man is silent for a moment, a moment long enough for Merlin to draw the conclusion that either a) the guy is hard of hearing, or b) the sun slacked off the morning shift and Merlin has dreamt up this slimy, snivelling skin-suit of a man as a personification of every crippling regret and survivors guilt moment he’s ever accumulated. 

The man hits Merlin with a calculating gaze, the sort that feels like how some obnoxiously expensive printer would scan a face and churn it out on paper as if the image would make more sense to itself if it was two-dimensional. Merlin smirks; pops in another grape just to elicit a reaction. 

“Why,” the man speaks, lips curling in apparent displeasure, “do you speak as if we are familiar with one other enough to allow informality?”

Merlin snorts. “Unless without my knowledge you don’t have a pulse, skin tissue and calcium lurking in that body - in which case no, we are not familiar.”

The man returns, again, to his default printer mode. “The name is Severus Snape.”

“Oof!” Merlin exclaims, satirically charade-ing a women fanning herself and batting her eyelashes. “Would ya feel that velvet! ”  

Snape stares. “Velvet.”

“I think you’d get substantial revenue if you did a podcast with that voice,” Merlin says, too caught up in juicing the moment to its limit to notice the white-haired girl emerge from the line to be Sorted. “We could talk about how your childhood trauma made you like this. Therapy with Severus. New episodes every Monday and Wednesday.”

Snape stares. 

“I can handle the marketing and promotion side of things, free of charge in the name of the goodness of my heart,” Merlin continues, a train that doesn’t know how to stop. “My, I can already hear your fan-base screaming.”

Snape stares. Merlin’s fingers find the grapes again. 

The woman calling out the Sortings clears her throat. 

“Kwiti, Aithusa,”

Merlin chokes on his grape.

Aithusa had always been.. well - unhinged , for lack of a better word. Like a screw nailed at just the right angle for the wood to splinter only on the underside. Like a needle pulling thread just far enough from the fabric’s ends to pass as a seam. Like a taxidermist with just enough fingertip control and reverence to use animals only from the roadside. 

Perhaps she was formed in the egg wrong. A leg twisted a little too much to the right, a heart beating on its own a little too early, a voice found a little too late. All things just small enough for her to function like nothing was wrong. 

Her body grew around her flaws and they left strange out-dents and bulges under her skin, a beautiful, haunting pattern that she branded in morse code on her tongue and everything she touched, claiming things, seeing how far she could push them to break, just to feel the breath of I was here. 

She blames Merlin, sometimes. She blames the years of red-ringed eyes and chains in holes, she blames the praise and purpose felt only when stopping heartbeats of Camelotians in battle. She blames the lies and the woman’s soft, motherly tones, and hearing his name only when spoken in curses from her mouth. 

She blames Merlin, sometimes, just to have something to blame. 

He knows, of course he does. But he also knows that she sees him like the seed-heads see the breeze. Needed, intertwined, always there. Part of existence. Part of her. 

To the stranger in the bar’s eye, they act like fuel and fire, lice in each other’s hair, two four-year-olds squabbling and slapping each other to get the last cream-egg on the shelf. It’s a strange music-score of forgiveness that they’ll be dancing to as long as the seas kiss the sand.

It’s why Aithusa likes to follow him sometimes. Likes to tease him to the extreme, likes to press and splinter all his buttons until the circuit malfunctions. There’s something about knowing that he’ll remain, despite all her flaws, all the ugly patterns on her skin. 

They’ve been riding this wave for centuries; the one statue-d thing in a world that’s constantly morphing whilst they remain unchanged. 

Which is why, Aithusa muses, as she puts the sorting hat on her head, Merlin has no excuse to look that horrified at the sight of her on the stool. Perhaps she should be offended. But perhaps, more than anything, she can revel in the sight, and listen to the sound of the lute playing their strange music-score through the breeze. 

Chapter Text

Aithusa shuffles, disgruntled, on the stool as the hat is placed on her head. She seems to have obtained a wedgie from the blasted fabric humans insist on wrapping around themselves, and as far as she knows human customs to suggest, it is impolite to adjust it in public. And as Aithusa is the epitome of politeness, she opts to suffer. 

Hurry up and speak, you bastard. Does it look like I’ve got all day? Aithusa snarls in mindspeak, impatient and suffering and polite. 

“Oh, lookie, lookie,” The hat replies, voice all polished and smug. “Don’t you belong in a tank with all the other lizards and serpents?” 

Don’t even. 

“I know you’re lost, little reptile, but no need to stress - Balavil Zoo is just round the corner and-“

And there’s a charity shop forty three acres from here. All the oldies from the local residential care go there to shop for clothes. 

“If you are suggesting I should be used as a hat-“

Well - sorry to burst your bubble, mate-

“Do not mate me-“

Eugh, god no. How would that even-

“Not like that-“

Just put me in blasted Slytherin and we’ll forget about this whole bestiality situation.

The hat clenches its seams together, compressing around Aithusa’s cranium like some stubborn suction cup. 

Ow. 

“I cannot simply ‘put’ you in Slytherin. I need to think and I cannot hear my thoughts with your oversized-axolotl-ness droning on. Quiet.”

Thinking is not necessary here, McMangy. ‘Slytherin’ may as well have been carved into the shell of my egg. 

The hat squeezes harder. 

Salazar said it himself. I’m a Slytherin through and through. 

…

Hoy, O’Mangy. You hearing this? 

Silence. 

Aithusa reaches her hand to the spot above her ear, nonchalant enough for it to look like merely scratching her scalp. She pinches the hat’s fabric between her forefingers and tugs. 

Don’t fuck with me, Mange-wad.

“Hufflepuff!”

Susan Bones’ parents used to call her Solsken. My sweet Solken, her Pa would say. Swedish for sunlight. 

For she is exactly that. Sun-rays trapped in glass jars that she holds against her chest and hands out tender-heartedly to everyone she sees in the form of soft words and gentle grins. She nurtures the precious little flames in others, keeping them warm with the palms of her hands and the chatoyancy between her fingertips. 

The little Solsken’s arms are brimming with said jars when it’s announced the new exchange student will join Hufflepuff. Susan makes space beside her without hesitation, beckoning the student over and smiling unbridledly. 

“Hey,” She says, the voice of water lilies. “Congratulations, you’ll love it here!” 

The exchange student, Aithusa if she recalls correctly, looks at her and groans. “Goddamn bullshitter of a hat,” 

The glow of the Solsken dims. But Susan’s smile doesn’t.

“Is this really, truly, sincerely what I have to deal with?” Aithusa continues, banging the edge of her palm repeatedly against her supraorbital foramen. “Is this my cursed fate for a year?” She stops the banging and melodramatically drops her head onto the table with a wack! that catches the attention of a few students, who politely look away to give her the privacy of a breakdown in peace. She groans again, one that’s long and worn-out and resigned and a touch dramaturgical, if Susan’s being honest. Just a touch. 

Susan watches Aithusa lift her head, full blown misery mask on, to stare at the Slytherin table. There’s enough longing in her eyes for Susan to connect the dots. Susan doesn’t bother to suppress her eye-rolling. She’s dealt with these cases before. The born-to-be-Slytherin-now-cursed-into-pathetic-Hufflepuff cases. Susan and her fellow Hufflepuffs exchange similar nods of duty, just as the headmaster starts the announcements.

The Slytherin withdrawal symptoms are a force to be trifled with, yet Susan is yet to come across a case completely resistant to the conversion to the house of the badger before the year's end. 

Sleeves are rolled up. 

Project Aithusa Kwiti officially commences. 

Harry ceases breathing, shell-shocked.

The mouth-of-a-cartoon-hanging-open shell shocked. The cornea-drying-stare and the heartbeat-paralysing shell shocked. The ice-bucket-numbness and breakneck-disassociation shell shocked. With the blindness and desperation of a drowning man, he flaps his hand out until he finds Ron’s shoulder. He grips it, a lifeline in the storm. Only Ron seems to be caught in it as well. 

No Quidditch?!

For a year?!

Harry feels tendrils of his soul float up into the air. He lets them, surrendering to a silent death in a pathetic pile of clothes on the floor. 

Ron turns to him and they share a deep look of raw despair and brotherhood. Ron says something but Harry can’t hear it between the thundering and grief-filled hollering of the other students, and the ringing in his ears. 

Harry says something back, as to what, he’s not sure. Maybe he had repeated whatever Ron said to him. Maybe he had merely mouthed something. Maybe he had screamed. His brain had cut the wires to his mouth the moment Dumbledore placed the two cataclysmic words of ‘Quidditch’ and ‘cancelled’ in the same sentence. 

Harry hears Hermione calling his name, but he keeps his eyes on Ron, knowing the teasing look he’ll find on her face. He cannot bear his feelings invalidated right now. If he had had any curiosity about the existence of god, it has all been doused in fuel and set alight by now. He doesn’t know who to blame for handling the matches, but he’ll start with Dumbledore. 

“Silence.” The headmaster who-does-not-deserve-to-be-named says, and Harry hears the room release a collective sigh of surrender - the sort of sigh a car makes after the engine gives up and breaks down on the verge of some highway two thirds of its way to the destination. “Instead, it is my very great pleasure to inform you that the Triwizard Tournament will take place at Hogwarts this year.”

Triwizard Tournament?! 

What?!

Harry considers seeking medical attention for whiplash. 

In his peripheral vision, he sees the twins’ ears perk up. Then, when Dumbledore announces the age restrictions, their ears perk back down. 

Somewhere along the way they perk back up again, and they would stay that way for the rest of the speech and competitor introductions. 

Because of this, Harry is too busy smelling ginger-flavoured trouble than witnessing warlock kidnap dragon and vanish from the Great hall. 

The roast potatoes arrive and, though still moping, Harry digs in.