Chapter Text
1 September 1989
Revan Adarii stands in a small room off the side of the Hogwarts Great Hall, too many people pushing up against her as the groundskeeper shuffles them all into a line, alphabetically by last name. Alek has been tugged away from her side (where he belongs, where he’s always supposed to be) and put in line down with the S’s, and she decides then and there that she’s going to find a way to change his last name in the books. He hates it anyway, and if they have the same last name they’ll always be next to each other.
Through the wall, Revan can hear the sound of a couple hundred students, cheering and chatting, waiting for the start of term feast - waiting for the Sorting that precedes it.
Waiting for her.
She’s the first in line, and as the groundskeeper opens the door and nudges her forward, into the Great Hall, she hates that fact; in her shabby second-hand robes and the boots just a little too big for her feet and the wand she can barely make herself touch, she feels small, she feels horribly out of place, she feels afraid. The Great Hall is huge and filled to the brim with people, more people than she’s seen in one place before, students and teachers both, and all their eyes are on her as she walks towards the single chair set out in front of the professors’ table.
“Adarii, Revan,” an older man calls - he’s standing behind the chair holding the wrinkled old thing that must be the Sorting Hat. If she concentrates on the flow of magic in the room, she can nearly feel it; it feels kind, friendly, welcoming, and very very old. Not as old as the stones beneath her feet, though - those are so ancient she imagines they must be the very bones of the earth, and they resonate with power that curls around her ankles like wisps of mist, nearly glowing. The castle is like a living thing around her, and she soaks in the feeling of all that magic, all that power, the way it flows like water.
Wards, maybe? The orphanage she and Alek grew up in has wards too, stiff ones rigid like rock but fragile enough she could shatter them with a burst of power, if she needed to. They don’t protect much - not that the adults there care much about protecting them. These, though, if wards are what she’s feeling… they don’t break, they bend under the firm push of her magic, sliding together into a flexible coat like fish scales. Revan tilts her head to one side, studying the soft pulse of magic she can more feel than see, and reaches out with a gentle touch, a light nudge, asking instead of telling, darting tendrils of power between the overlapping edges. There’s a half-second of tension, then the wards pull apart, and she smiles (just a small thing, but a proud one nonetheless), and-
“Miss Adarii,” the old man - Deputy Headmaster Vandar Tokare, she suspects, given how short he is, there's only one professor who isn't fully human at Hogwarts - says, a thread of annoyance in his voice, and Revan jumps.
The Sorting. Right. She’s supposed to be- She shakes herself, takes a few quick steps forward, and sits herself down on the chair, folding her hands tightly together in her lap. If everyone was staring at her before, it’s certainly gotten worse now, and she flushes and stares down at her fingers, then glances over at the rest of the first years. Alek gives her a smile and that helps, steadies the uncomfortable jangling of her nerves and her magic beneath her skin, and she takes a deep breath and lets it out, slowly.
She’s fine. The Hat isn’t going to tell her she doesn’t belong - how can it, when the adults at the orphanage have whispered about her power since she was old enough to remember, when even at five years old her magic was never accidental, when if she looks at someone’s face just right she can see herself through their eyes (small and scrawny with too-big green eyes and twigs caught in her braided hair because she won’t stop stealing the awful toy broom they have out back and going flying, and when they look at her they don’t just see her but the wings of power that spread out behind her, curl around her narrow shoulders). The Hat won’t, she is determined; she is going to be Sorted, and she is going to be the best witch the world has ever seen, and she is not going to flinch from the eyes of everyone she will be stronger than.
The Hat drops down onto her head and there’s a quiet hum in her mind, a voice she knows isn’t her own. Aren’t you an interesting one, it says, the Hat says, and Revan lifts her chin.
I’m going to be the best, she tells the Hat, and you won’t stop me.
There’s something like laughter. Revan tenses - she doesn’t like being laughed at - but then the Hat just says, I wouldn’t dream of it, and then out loud, “Slytherin!”
Slytherin. The house of cunning, of ambition, of true friends (according to the song) and of Dark magic (according to adults).
Revan smiles as the Hat is pulled from her head, pushes herself to her feet and makes her way through the other students to the table full of green and silver. This will do, she thinks, as they make space for her to slide in on one of the benches. “You better make room for one more,” she informs the older boy next to her. “Alek is going to be Sorted with me.”
“You’re awfully sure about that,” he says, good-natured, and she meets his eyes and for a moment she sees herself, chin raised and steady metal in her spine and something wrong in her eyes (her eyes, green like the color of her new house). For a moment, she feels a flicker of wrong, wrong, wrong, and then it gets shoved away, and then the boy’s eyes slide off hers and she’s back inside her head again. “Friends don’t always get Sorted the same.”
“Alek stays with me,” she says firmly, and twists so she can see the chair at the front of the room. Now that he knows what house she’s in, she knows he’ll argue with the Hat until he gets it; after all, he belongs at her side. And if the Hat won’t let him, Revan will make the Headmaster understand, will make him do the Sorting over. Not for her - she is meant to be in green and silver, is meant to be in the house of snakes - but for Alek, because she leads and he follows. It’s how they’ve always been, and the professors will just have to accept that.
Slytherin, she thinks to herself, tests the name. Yes, this will do nicely.
And maybe, just maybe, it could be a home too.
~
It’s only because Alek knows Revan as well as he knows himself that he can see her hesitation as the minutes drag on and the benches begin to fill. He’s kept an eye on her since she took her seat amidst green and silver; the Sorting Hat had barely had to deliberate before calling out, “Slytherin!” amidst the deathly silence of the Great Hall. She fits in with them already, has clearly ingratiated herself with the students sitting around her—she’s close enough that he can pick out the flash of green as she meets his eyes and grins for a moment before the crowd swallows him again. Slytherin is Revan’s home already.
And so it’s going to be Alek’s. They’re inseparable, have been since they met, and that’s hardly going to change now. If the Hat thought Revan belonged in Slytherin, then it has to see that Alek belongs there too. He doesn’t care who he has to argue it with. He’s never going to leave Revan, and certainly not now, not when they’re finally at Hogwarts, finally free. They’ll never have to call the orphanage their home again, not when the castle’s magic is this alive around them. If Alek can feel it this strongly, can feel the way the wards are built up so much more than the ones at the orphanage, then he knows Revan will be able to sense it so much stronger. No wonder she stopped, no wonder she reached for them even over the promise of the Hat and her rightful place—Hogwarts is welcoming them. All of them.
By the time his name is called (surname first, and he flinches at the bubbles of laughter from the other kids; he hates his name, but he hates even more how it’s nothing but a joke, just another thing he has that isn’t right, like the too-short robes he’s wearing and the boots with their worn-down soles, like the holes in his pockets where time has worn its mark) it feels like hours since Revan was Sorted. She’s watching him, he can feel her eyes on him, but he doesn’t dare look as he separates himself from the crowd and starts his walk towards the table full of professors and the stool with the Hat. The hall feels so much longer now that he’s alone, now that he’s the one called up—the castle’s ancient stones stretch out before his feet, a subtle encouragement to take just one more step.
So he does. One, then another, and it’s easier to forget the condemning stares of the purebloods and the curious looks of the others, the way his blood will follow him like a stain for the next seven years, the way the orphanage didn’t have the money to buy their kids anything but secondhand gear. That doesn’t quite matter in the face of everything that Hogwarts is.
Alek has never belonged anywhere in his life, except for at Revan’s side. Hogwarts and its magic will change that.
He barely feels the Hat as it’s placed on his head, ears buzzing with too much frantic energy to concentrate on the brush of rough leather over his ears. His eyes flutter closed of their own accord; he can’t look at the sea of students, can’t focus with all those eyes on him, not even when one of them is Revan. The blackness is almost a comfort. His world narrows to his shallow breaths and the stool digging into his legs and the Hat as it sinks further down over his head.
Well now, here’s a quandary, a voice echoes inside his skull, and—it’s the Hat. The Hat is talking to him. He was expecting it to sift through his memories, to draw out a name after silent deliberation, not this.
I want Slytherin, he says firmly, hoping somehow this communication goes two ways and not just one. He won’t leave Revan. Her home is his.
The Hat is silent for a long, terrible moment. Slytherin, it repeats, sounding almost amused. You would be better suited to Hufflepuff, I think. Loyalty and kindness are their traits, and only one of those is truly valued in Slytherin. It falls silent again, and Alek feels it shift upward—
No! he says, almost panicked. I’m not going to Hufflepuff. Revan Sorted Slytherin, and I need to be with her. If it’s her place, it’s mine, too.
A Muggleborn will have twice the difficulty in Slytherin than in any other house, young Alek, it murmurs. If you learn to thrive there, it will be despite what you are, rather than because of it.
Alek shrugs, then stifles the movement when he knows it’s drawing curious looks from the professors gathered around. I need to go to Slytherin. Everything I do is already in spite of what I am. Memories flash across his mind—Lucy’s tiny scaled body curled around his wrist, pressed against his pulse even now, and the snakes that led him to Revan all those years ago (a tiny, angry girl with too-wide eyes and messy braids and fury at her fingertips right next to pain), the way the adults whisper when he starts hissing.
A Parselmouth. That’s a rare gift, young one. But it doesn’t determine your place.
Revan does. He won’t budge on this, and if he has to argue with the teachers, he will. He can’t leave Revan, she’s all he has, she’s always been the leader between them.
For another too-long moment, the Hat is silent. Alek can feel sweat beading on his spine (from fear, from the heat of the Hall, from sitting here poised before more people than he’s ever seen in his life, all watching him), and for half a second a bolt of fear roots him in place. Hufflepuff, it’s going to say Hufflepuff and he’ll have to leave Revan and they’re still going to look at him strangely for everything he is—
Calm yourself, the Hat speaks, a quiet admonishment. You may thrive in more than one place, though I cannot say your life will be less than a struggle. Very well. If you wish to join your friend, then— “Slytherin!”
For a moment, Alek can’t move. Even though he all but begged for it, the hissing name that echoes across the waves of children freezes him. Slytherin. He’s in Slytherin now, the house of ambition and cunning and loyalty, the house the Hat chose for Revan after merely a heartbeat. Slytherin, his home.
And when his boots hit the ground, the castle’s bones echo with a welcome.
Revan is waving as he approaches the Slytherin table, green eyes lit up brighter than he’s seen since they got their acceptance letters. As he slides into place, she turns triumphantly to the older boy next to her.
“I told you,” she says haughtily. “Alek stays with me.”
The boy shakes his head and grins a little. Alek would ask what that’s about, but Revan’s elbow is driving into his side and she’s demanding to know what it was like, what the Hat told him, why it took so long to sort him.
“I was worried,” she insists, shuffling over so the lengths of their legs are pressed together. “Everyone kept saying friends don’t Sort the same, and the Hat didn’t take nearly as long to sort me.”
“I’m a quandary,” Alek informs her seriously. “The Hat said so itself.”
“You’re a problem,” she mutters. “I’m glad it saw reason.”
“C’mon, Rev,” he says a little softer, nudging her. “You know I’m never going to leave you.”
Revan grins, as happy as he’s ever seen her. “Promise?” she asks, only half paying attention, eyes already searching out the student now plodding towards the hat.
“Of course,” Alek swears, and there’s no universe where it won’t be true.
~
Revan’s first full night at Hogwarts is awful.
Well- it’s not bad, really, the dorms are bigger with less beds than the ones in the orphanage and the beds themselves are huge, four-posters with their own individual canopies, thick green blankets and soft sheets and the mattresses sink down when she sits on them. She’d love the dorms if it weren’t for the fact that she’s alone in them.
She and Alek have shared a cramped, too-thin twin mattress since they were four, whispering to each other in the dark until long after the orphanage staff called lights out, curled up and tangled with each other and Alek’s snakes (most people might find it weird, sleeping with snakes, but Revan has never found them dangerous, not when her best friend can talk to them as easily as he can talk to people, or maybe even more easily). It only takes her some ten minutes laying in her new bed, tossing and turning behind the curtains, to decide that without his presence, she’ll never be able to sleep.
Getting up to the boys’ dorms isn’t a problem - the spells are laughably easy to untangle - nor is finding the one Alek’s in; she can sense his presence when she reaches out into the flow of magic around her, can trace the feel of him back to the room that must be the first years’ dorm.
No, the problem comes when the fifth year boy’s prefect steps out of the shadows and informs her she’s not allowed up here, and as long as he can catch her, he’ll send her back down.
Revan hates that, hates the way he laughs at the expression on her face. “You’re a Slytherin now, kid,” he tells her as he escorts her back down the stairs to the thankfully-empty common room. “Nothing’s going to be easy for you now, but that’s how you know it’s worth it. You’ll find your ambition soon enough.”
Nothing has ever been easy for her, and she has plenty of ambition - but the lesson sticks. The next day is a Saturday, anyway, and Revan drags Alek along with her the moment they’re done eating breakfast and hunts down the library.
The prefect is a fifth year. To get past him, she’ll need spells better than the ones he knows, which means none of her first year books are going to be helpful. The head librarian - a pale woman named Atris - looks strangely at Revan when she requests access to a fifth year charms spellbook, directs her to a shelf, and immediately vanishes. And Merlin, there’s so many books here, so much knowledge; Revan almost hadn’t known there could be so much to learn in the world. The orphanage’s library had been two waist-height shelves made from corrugated wood and staples and glue, sparsely filled with tattered books, some about magic and some for children, and every single one of them read cover to cover by the time she was nine.
She thinks she could spend hours here and not even get through one shelf.
But she has seven years to read the entire library, and the longer it takes her to master some kind of invisibility charm, the more nights she’ll be forced to sleep alone, and she already misses Alek’s constant presence.
Revan spends all morning practicing the charm, making Alek turn his back while she casts it and then turn and try to find her again, and at first she can’t manage it, can’t do more than a part of her hand or her leg or her arm (or once, just her head, which sets Alek laughing for almost five minutes straight). It’s been almost three hours, and this might be the most difficult thing she’s ever tried to cast, but she’s good, she knows that (knows it in the way the adults at the orphanage have always been afraid of her and the way they’ve always whispered about her power), she should be able to do this. She wraps her magic around the incantation, lets it echo in her mind, focuses on the warm surge of her magic under her skin and the desire to hide, to be unseen, and-
There’s a soft pop and this time, when Alek turns around, his eyes don’t immediately land on her. Revan grins, a sharp sense of victory filling up her chest, and creeps around the edge of the table they’ve taken over, waits for Alek to frown and look in the other direction, and then jumps up onto his back, arms going around his neck, as she drops the spell.
“Surprise,” she says cheerfully, and Alek yelps.
“Merlin, Rev,” he says, groaning, rolls his shoulders and shoves uselessly at her arms where they’re tangled around him. “Get off me.”
Revan grins and drops her chin onto his shoulder. “No,” she says, leaning her head against his.
“I’m not carrying you around all day,” he warns her, and she pokes him in the collarbone.
“Spoilsport.” Reluctantly, she unwraps herself and drops off his back, shoving her braids off her shoulders and out of her face. “I want to try casting it again.” She needs to make sure she’s actually gotten the charm down before she tries to use it against that prefect.
“I hear I have a pair of charms prodigies to watch out for,” a voice says, and Revan startles and nearly falls over a chair.
The voice belongs to a tall man with close-cropped brown hair, one of the professors, she recognizes him from the head table during the feast. He’s leaning against a nearby shelf, smiling warmly at both her and Alek, and Revan shifts, crosses her arms across her chest and frowns at him. “We have permission to be in here,” she says, “the head librarian knows.”
“I don’t doubt it,” he says. “Orgus Din, charms professor,” and he smiles a little more at her. When she meets his eyes- warmth, sincerity, interest, concern, care, and he looks at her and sees her instead of power and wrongness, and that shouldn’t relax her as much as it does but no one’s ever looked at her like that but Alek. “What are you two studying?”
Revan looks away, shrugs one shoulder. “Invisibility charms,” she says. “I wanted to learn how to do one.”
“Disillusionment charms are easier,” Orgus says, but calmly, not challenging, “and they’re based off the same theory - why not start there?”
“Because I didn’t want to learn a disillusionment charm,” she says, which should be obvious. Fifth year prefects probably know how to spot those, and she doesn’t intend to get caught. “I wanted to learn proper invisibility.”
“Yeah,” Alek mutters, “and Merlin forbid we do anything easy.”
Revan whirls to glare at him. “This wasn’t hard,” she says, with all the confidence she possesses, and he makes a face at her.
“Sure it wasn’t,” he says. “That’s why you turned your head invisible on accident instead of the rest of your body.”
“I’ll turn your head invisible, and I won’t put it back.”
“No you won’t,” Alek says, grinning at her, and she narrows her eyes, reaches for the warm pulse of her magic, and flicks her fingers at him, holding onto the shape of the spell in her mind and pushing it out through her hand in a flash of silver-gold that hits Alek and-
And makes him vanish entirely.
Revan mutters a word she overheard the orphanage’s director say that definitely would’ve gotten her mouth washed out, and the professor, Orgus, laughs. He pulls a wand from his sleeve, aims it in Alek’s general direction, says, “Finite incantem,” and when Alek has faded back into view - grinning even wider now - he adds, “A solid grasp on the theory’ll let you do something like concentrate the charm on his head, if that’s really how you want to use it.”
“It is,” she grumbles, and then furrows her brows, frowning and tilting her head to one side. “Could it be used to do something like turn part of an object invisible, too?”
“Very clever,” Orgus praises, and Revan shares a small grin with Alek. Nobody at the orphanage ever called them clever - it’s a reminder of how different things are going to be now, at Hogwarts, somewhere they’ll finally belong. Orgus flicks his wand, summoning a spellbook to his free hand, and sets the book down on the table, pulls out a chair and sits down and gestures for her and Alek to do so as well. “There are a lot of different potential uses, and that’s certainly one of them.”
Revan sits down, scooting the chair closer as the professor flips open the spellbook, Alek dragging his chair over to join you. “May I borrow your quill and parchment?” Orgus asks, and she nods, slides them over to him. He starts writing out a pair of- diagrams, maybe, side by side, and she frowns, peering over his arm. “How much do you know about spell creation?”
“Not a lot yet,” she admits. “At least - not the numbers side of it, but I can make up new spells in other ways, I think.”
“Magic works off your intentions and emotions just as much as it does off theory,” the professor says, smiles at her. “If you prefer to cast without your wand or spoken spells, you’ll be relying a lot more heavily on intentions than the arithmancy behind it, but studying the theory will give you a better understanding of how it works, not just why.”
“And that’ll improve my control?”
“Exactly,” Orgus says. He smiles a lot, Revan finds herself noticing - it’s so different from the orphanage, and it makes her glance over at Alek, share a grin and a feeling of eagerness with him. (She’s spent so many years seeing what Alek sees, feeling what he feels, every time she meets his eyes, that by now she doesn’t even need to be looking at him to know, and she thinks if she stretched she could almost talk to him, in her head, and maybe he could even hear. Not that she ever told the orphanage staff about that; they’re afraid enough of her and Alek already, and she’s never heard of anyone else being able to do what she does - unless everyone can, and they just keep it quiet? She’s not sure.) “Now, one of the biggest differences between a disillusionment charm and a true invisibility charm is the way the magic accomplishes your intent of hiding - in one, your magic works almost like a mirror, and the other it’s more of a shroud. Does that make sense?”
Revan nods and Alek murmurs an assent, and Orgus slides the parchment towards them. “There are two main reasons for that difference - the incantation and the arithmancy. You can cast a spell without knowing the formula behind it, but it’s much more difficult, and more likely to go in a direction you didn’t intend.”
Alek frowns. “Rev and I cast basic spells all the time without knowing any formulas.”
“Simple spells have less moving parts, so there’s far less that can go wrong. Lumos, for example,” Orgus says. “You know the incantation, and you have the intention of creating a light - there’s not much space for your magic to go in another direction without the formula.”
“So the formula and the words give a spell more structure?” Revan asks curiously, and Orgus nods.
“Yes, although there’s more to it than that - that’s more of a discussion for an arithmancy class, though,” he says. “The important thing is, can you find the differences between these two formulas?” And he gestures at the piece of parchment he’d pushed over to them.
It doesn’t take long. Revan and Alek alternate pointing out the differences, and Orgus talks them both through the process of writing out the arithmantic formulas behind the two spells, showing them where the differences are and what they mean, how they affect the way the spells work. It’s interesting and Revan can’t help sharing a grin with Alek whenever they get a correct guess. Merlin, she hopes all the professors are like this.
“Now that you have the theory behind it down,” Orgus says, after a while, “why don’t you try casting it again? Both of you.”
“Alek can go first,” Revan says, grinning, and her best friend narrows his eyes at her but reaches for his wand anyway. “What year is all this stuff covered in anyway, professor?”
“Well,” he says, amused, and she’d be annoyed but it’s clear he’s not laughing at her, “arithmancy is an elective you can’t even take until third year, and I don’t tend to teach proper invisibility charms until fifth, so make of that what you will.”
“Why teach us now, then?”
“Let’s just say I have a vested interest in giving students challenges equal to their skill level,” he says. “Go ahead, Alek.”
Alek lifts his wand and she can almost feel him concentrating, and then there’s a flash of pale blue and he vanishes entirely, though she can still feel the slow pulse of his magic and his feelings where he was. “Did it work?” he asks, voice echoing a little strangely.
“Look down at yourself and see,” Revan says, and he must, because he laughs, bright and cheerful. “If you try to tackle me I’ll hex you.”
“No one is tackling anyone,” Orgus says with a smile, shaking his head and flicking his wand, the charm undoing itself. “Even with me here, Atris will still have you both thrown out of the library. Very well done, Alek.”
“Thanks, Professor Din,” Alek says, nudges Revan with an elbow, and she rolls her eyes at him. “Your turn, Rev.”
“Yeah, I know,” she says, and reaches for her magic and for an ever-so-slightly adjusted version of the arithmancy Orgus showed them and the spell leaps out from her fingers easily.
And just like she’d hoped, Orgus’ head - but not the rest of his body - disappears.
She grins triumphantly as Alek snickers beside her, and she can almost feel the professor’s confusion as he lifts his hands, presumably attempting to see what happened - and then he sighs and she can’t help bursting into laughter. “Headless professor,” she manages to get out, over the giggles, grabbing onto Alek’s arm and leaning into him as she laughs. It feels good, something bright and warm bubbling up in her chest, and she wonders if this is what it would’ve been like, in the orphanage, if she was normal, if she wasn’t too-powerful and wrong, if her best friend didn’t speak to snakes.
There’s a very resigned, “Finite,” and Orgus’ head comes back into view, and despite the look on his face his eyes are smiling at her. “Alright, I should’ve expected that,” he says. “Good work, Revan - you learn quickly.”
“Thank you,” she says, and she means it, manages to stop laughing enough to smile sincerely at him. Then she lets her grin widen and adds, “It’s not like it’s hard.”
“Somehow,” he says dryly, “I have a feeling my usual first year curriculum isn’t going to keep you very busy.”
“I want to do more stuff like this,” she says, nudges Alek in the side. “So does Alek, this is fun.”
Orgus is quiet for a minute, then he leans forward and rests his arms on the table. “Well,” he says, “if you have the extra time, I could always give the two of you extra lessons, an evening a week, covering the more advanced charms and techniques you wouldn’t be learning until later years.”
For a moment, Revan can only just stare. He wants to teach her? The man they’d brought in when she was eight and they’d forced her to get a wand, in the hopes that maybe her magic would be less terrifying, had given up after barely two months of her refusing to use the wand, and none of the rest of the orphanage’s staff even dared to try. “You- yes,” she says, grinning, “of course we want to. You really mean it?”
“I do,” he says. “Although maybe you could tell me why you wanted to learn invisibility charms on your first full day in Hogwarts?”
“No,” Revan says cheerfully, “I don’t think I could.”
The sun is warm through the windows and Alek is laughing beside her and there’s more magic around her than Revan’s ever felt before. It feels - it feels like hope, like maybe, just maybe, things are going to be good now.
Maybe people won’t be afraid of her anymore.
She clings to that hope and Alek’s hand and the warmth in her chest and lets herself believe that finally, finally, she’ll get to know what it’s like to have a home.
~
Monday dawns clear and cool, the sky a steel-grey that feels almost alive, and with it comes the first day of actual classes. Their time in the library all weekend doesn’t count, as Alek has had to tell Revan time and time again (when she bothers to lift her head up from the books she’s taken out from underneath the assistant librarian’s nose). That’s just Revan being Revan and somehow convincing a professor to give them extra lessons once a week. Even if Professor Din likes them, he alone can’t teach them everything.
Revan is sullen and sleepless when Alek emerges from the boys’ dormitory the next morning, her robes wrinkled as she kicks listlessly at a chair leg. The moment she sees Alek, she bounces to her feet and rushes over, nearly colliding with him in her haste, already talking his ear off—she’s been up for ages, she says, and if he doesn’t hurry, they’re going to miss breakfast and classes both. She hates the way they’re separated every night just like Alek does; they can’t sleep apart after this many years, too many nights spent clinging to each other with the orphanage’s cracking walls closing in around them, and Revan still can’t quite sneak into Alek’s room (though she’s getting closer every day, her invisibility charm all but perfected now). Even Lucy’s tiny brown body curled around his wrist does little to actually ease his sleep.
They talk the whole way to the Great Hall and through their meal just to fill the silence. Revan declares that she knows she’ll get up to the dorms within the week, she’s certain of it, and now she knows when all the prefects tend to go patrolling—the fifth year boy and girl typically stay with the dormitories, but she swears she’s seen the sixth year boy slipping out every night, returning with mussed curls and wrinkled robes whole hours later. He’s a pureblood, apparently, some scion of one of the big houses judging by the way the other students address him, and Revan’s face is set when she says that she can sneak in while he’s gone.
“You’re sure?” Alek asks between bites of the buttered roll he’s chewing on. Of course he wants Revan back, but if she gets in trouble, gets caught by a prefect—
“You worry too much,” she says dismissively. “I’m a Slytherin. I’ll find a way in.”
Alek disguises his sigh with a sip of water, frowning at her over the rim of his goblet. There’s no arguing with Revan when she’s set her mind to something, but he’s worried. Neither of them can afford to be in trouble now. They’re orphans, not even purebloods, two kids in worn robes with wands that neither of them really need (that Revan can’t even use without her spells going sideways). And it’s clear that here, just like back in the stark building where they were raised, they have no power.
Alek shouldn’t be focusing on this right now. Classes start in only a few minutes, if the pair of them can even manage to find the dungeons—the castle is so utterly massive that Alek’s half afraid they’ll spend their first year being late to all their classes. And here, at least, they can have a home, they can belong somewhere. Neither of them will be freaks. Everyone is like them.
“The schedule says that Potions is first,” Alek says to Revan when they finally manage to get their hands on a map from a sympathetic-looking Hufflepuff seventh year. She wrinkles her nose and glares at the map as if the sheer force of her anger is going to make it any clearer.
“Here’s the potions lab,” she says after a few seconds. “C’mon, apparently there’s a stair near here.” She yanks on Alek’s hand and drags him off towards a nearby alcove before he can do anything more than splutter in protest, and it’s only when they’re a few steps down a slightly damp marble staircase (can Hogwarts not afford a decent plumbing system or do they just let water drip everywhere for the atmosphere?) that she lets go of him in favor of half-running, half-sliding her way down the staircase as though she’s racing herself. Alek can’t keep back the laugh as Revan stumbles on the final step and goes careening into the wall. She glares up at him, but despite the outrage written across her face, her eyes are bright.
“Lucy says that wasn’t very careful.” Alek says it with a straight face, lifting his wrist so the tiny snake’s tongue can flick the air, and just like always, Revan glares at him.
“That snake,” she sniffs, “isn’t a traitor like you are. Now come on. ”
Alek’s laugh echoes down the hall long after he catches up to Revan.
The door to the potions lab is half-open when they manage to find it. A faint scent of spice wafts out from the inside, and when Alek pushes the door open a little more, he is greeted by the sight of a massive shelf filled with glass vials and a hundred ingredients he can’t name. Cauldrons and brewing equipment line a whole second wall; the third is taken up by a blackboard and what is clearly the teacher’s desk, already set up for demonstrations, and the fourth wall is even more storage, large locked cabinets bracketing the door and making Alek feel as though he’s passing through a tunnel to reach the classroom proper. Spells glimmer along the edges of the ceiling when Alek looks closely. He can’t read them, not even with the lesson Professor Din has given them over the weekend, but they have to be some sort of safeguard against accidents. As high as they are, they wouldn’t interfere with the brewing process—or at least they wouldn’t interfere with the sorts of things the lower-years are brewing down here.
A sharp elbow digs into his side, drawing his gaze away from the ceiling. Revan’s glare is real this time as she tugs him towards a nearby seat and says that their teacher is here, now can they please sit down? And indeed, when Alek looks past her, a middle-aged man in black robes chased with red has taken a seat behind the desk at the front of the room. It must be near the start of class; voices are echoing off the stone outside the classroom, and the professor is actually smiling at them—however faintly—as Revan slides into a desk, Alek close behind. The lion on his robes proclaims him a Gryffindor, if the red left any doubt. Not the Head of House (that’s Professor Tokare, Deputy Headmaster, the part-human professor shorter than most of the students), just one more Gryffindor professor.
It’s only once the classroom has filled up that the professor stands and clasps his hands behind his back, eyes skating over the assembled students. The class is mixed, Gryffindor and Slytherin (and the Gryffindors are surprisingly unhappy about it, if the disquiet from their side of the classroom is any sign). Green sits with green, red with red, but the professor spends no longer looking at his own students than he does the Slytherins.
“Welcome,” he says when the noise has settled, “to your first class, both of the school year and of your academic career. I am Professor Zhar Lestin. You may address me as Professor Lestin or as Potions Master.
“Potions is not your typical subject. Unlike all of your classes during your first and second years, and most of them beyond that, this class will involve very little wandwork. I am not here to teach you how to use magic in the traditional sense. I am here to see which of you have a talent or a desire to learn that can be fostered in this classroom, and which cannot.
“Potions is an exact science. The smallest deviation can at best make a potion impotent, can at worst have catastrophic consequences. Inside this classroom, you will find me a strict teacher. Failure is enough of a risk that I cannot and will not tolerate willful misbehavior. Any attempt to sabotage another student will result in severe punishment. Is this understood?”
The room is silent for a few seconds before a chorus of, “Yes, professor,” fills the classroom and Professor Lestin nods, satisfied.
“Good. Now, that being said, I’m not here to terrorize you. If you find yourself struggling with this class, go to your fellow students, then come to me. Likewise, if you discover that you wish to make for yourself a career in this subject, I will be your best resource in that regard, and do not hesitate to contact me. I am a teacher, not a jailer, and Potions will go far easier for you if you remember that. Clear?”
“Yes, professor.” This time, the hesitation is minimal.
“Wonderful.” Professor Lestin finally cracks a smile and returns to his desk, tossing a piece of spelled chalk at the blackboard. It begins to scrawl instructions across the board as the professor lays out ingredients before his cauldron. “Today, we will not be brewing a potion as a class. I’ll be introducing you to the classroom and various ingredients you’ll make use of, along with what you won’t need to use during your first year. It’s very important that you not use ingredients I have not specifically instructed you to use. Be very careful about what you take from the cabinets. Despite the labels, mistakes have been made in the past, and I’d rather keep you all uninjured. Understood?”
“Yes, professor.”
It’s clear Professor Lestin is fond of making sure they reply to him. “Good, good,” he tells them all, leaning back and relaxing. “Now, I’d like you to come up here and familiarize yourselves with the equipment and ingredients I’ve laid out. Neatly, please, no shoving.” The last part of that instruction is spoken more sharply, and the students do obey (for the most part; Revan slams a toe into Alek’s shin when he manages to squeeze into the front row and block her view, and Alek doesn’t miss a Gryffindor elbowing a Slytherin out of her way), lining up around his desk like a group of fresh-hatched chicks waiting for food.
The rest of the hour passes surprisingly fast. Alek is so caught up in memorizing and taking notes on everything he sees that he almost misses Revan’s subtle boredom; where the class has ensnared him, Revan wrinkles her noses at every exact measurement, rolls her eyes at the strict instructions to never tamper with ratios and ingredients. Alek is halfway through writing down how dew gathered on a full moon must be stored when Revan mutters that if they can’t experiment, there’s no point, it’s all just repetition. Luckily, Professor Lestin—halfway across the room and peering at the notes of a diminutive little Slytherin boy—doesn’t notice, but Alek frowns sideways at her.
“Of course we can’t experiment,” he says as quietly as he can manage. “We don’t know anything about potions. It’s not like the way you do magic.” Revan’s answering glare is poison-green.
“And how are we supposed to learn without trying new things? It’s boring, Alek, I don’t see why you like it so much!” Her anger is evident enough, has been since Alek took his seat and started listening, but there’s something else behind it, a flash of emotion that crosses her face before she turns back to her notes with a huff; Alek frowns.
“Rev—”
“Just leave it,” she mutters. Her quill is sketching diagrams in the margins of her notebook, notes for a new spell based on what Professor Din taught them over the weekend; Alek doesn’t have to be a legilimens to tell she’s far more interested in that than in the careful columns of ingredients and functions still written up on the blackboard. “It’s fine. You like this class.”
“Of course I like it!” he protests. “It’s interesting and I understand it. I’m not required to get your approval for every one of my interests, you know.” It’s petty to say that when Revan is his only friend, but honestly, if she’s just going to sulk about it…
“So what, you’re going to abandon me for Potions?”
“You don’t mean that,” he says as the rest of the class stands up to leave, the class period now long over. Revan remains stubbornly in her seat.
“Yeah, and you know what I mean, too,” she snaps, rubbing tiredly at her eyes. “I—why do you even like it so much? It’s no fun!”
“It’s our first class! And it’s not my fault you barely slept last night,” he replies slightly mulishly, stuffing the rest of his notebooks into his bookbag. “C’mon, Rev. Charms is next. You can sulk all you want in there.”
“I am not sulking! Alek, get back here, I’m not!”
But Alek is laughing as he walks off, and in Revan’s mad scramble to catch up (complete with complaints about the length of his legs), she seems to forget her earlier bad mood. The cloud lifts, Revan slams a shoulder into his, and then they’re both off to chase each other up the stairs and down the school’s long, long hallways. They barely miss running into older students moving at a more sedate pace or professors strolling through the halls on patrol, but no amount of stern words from Professor Kavar shouted at their backs can convince them to slow down until on the second floor, Alek comes to a panting halt in front of a set of massive, ornate wooden doors, Revan only a few seconds behind him. She’s quick to push past and open the doors wide, slipping between them and into the bright, airy Charms classroom with Alek just behind her.
It is everything he expected and more. Three rows of benches lay against either wall, staggered so even the students at the back can look down at the professor, constructed of the same warm and heavy wood as the doors and the smooth floorboards, worn shining by decades of traffic. In front of a massive expanse of windows sits a desk overflowing with books and scrolls, and near the entrance to the classroom Alek notices a wheeled blackboard already inscribed with faint white chalk diagrams. Posters hang on the walls, models from the ceiling, and standing in the middle of it all with his back to his desk is Professor Din. The corners of his eyes crinkle as he smiles at Revan and Alek—the first students in this class, Alek realizes—and beckons them in.
“Welcome, both of you,” he says with a little wave. “Sit wherever you want; I don’t have assigned seating, and you two have first pick. Class begins in five minutes, so don’t expect to be alone for long. Now, how was your weekend?”
Alek manages to get a good out before Revan launches into her explanation, practically bouncing while she recounts the theories she went over after all their time spent with Orgus and the way she is beginning to apply it to her own simple spells. Alek—frankly doesn’t quite understand it all. He’s never had the innate sense for magic that Revan does, though he’s almost as good with a little practice, so he lets her talk while he dumps both their school supplies in an unoccupied bench in the front row near Professor Din’s desk. By the time the other Slytherins appear—apparently this is a single-house class the majority of the time—Revan is in her seat next to him happily working through a notebook of spells and theory.
Professor Din begins the class much the same as Professor Lestin did, with an introduction and an overview of classroom rules. After that, he allows some time for the students to all speak to one another while he goes hunting for a spell scroll that Alek suspects he doesn’t really need, and the moment he steps off the floor and the classroom ignites into whispers, Revan turns to Alek, eyes shining with more excitement than he’s seen on her face in ages.
“This is amazing, ” she says to him, unable to contain her grin as her feathered quill floats half a foot off the desk in front of her. Wingardium leviosa isn’t the spell written on the chalkboard for today, but Revan mastered it long before either of them received their Hogwarts letters, and her fingers twist between movements usually designed for wands as she holds her quill off the wooden desk. He can’t help the responding grin. Even Lucy has uncurled from around his wrist to slither along the desk, tongue flicking out in response to the magic in the room, and the sight of her curled around his inkpot sunning herself is enough to make him laugh.
It didn’t really settle in until today that this is their home now. No more living in the orphanage every day, sneaking away to even be able to practice magic; here, now, they’re free. Free to do what they want, to learn what they want, to…
To be themselves. Revan won’t have to be afraid of judgement like she was when every adult at the orphanage was out to get her; Alek won’t have to be her protector, won’t have to find the quickest route for her to escape before she’s ever caught with her hands up and magic curling around them. Not with the way Professor Din is glancing at them and smiling as he draws a diagram of the theory behind lumos and the way Slytherin has been so quick to welcome them.
Alek leans back in his seat, watches Revan and his little snake and the sunlight falling dappled through the windows to chase the floors with gold, and he smiles.
Professor Din gives them another two or three minutes, then steps around to the front of his desk, pushing his newly-drawn diagram to the side.
“Before we begin,” he says, “I’d like to take a moment to say something important. Hogwarts may be the school for wizarding Britain, but that does not mean that what you’ll learn here will—or should —be the be-all and the end-all of your careers. The spells I teach you will be shown in the traditional style of this island; however, I recognize that some of you may have experiences with other styles of casting, and I’d like you to know that in this class, so long as the spells are performed, I will never force you to cast in a style that’s uncomfortable for you to use. Mr. Ali—” he nods at a dark-eyed, dark-haired boy with skin a sandy brown— “I believe you’re most familiar with the styles present in Pakistan, and Miss Adarii, you and I have discussed your casting style before.
“If any of you are ever struggling, please come to me,” he continues, sweeping his gaze across the entire classroom. “I have resources, and I am here to help you as your teacher. I can promise that.
“And now for what you’re all here for. We’ll be starting with a basic spell: lumos. ” And with that, the mood lifts and attention shifts back to Professor Din and the board with its diagrams and notes. They begin the actual work of magic with his words ringing in their ears and magic settling across the classroom, and as Alek follows the motion of the professor’s wand, he relaxes almost without noticing. Unlike potions, this class doesn’t pass with Revan’s boredom and his own focus on notes. They both pay attention, are both ensnared by the quiet displays of magic they’re shown. Alek loses track of the hour; by the time the bell rings, he’s stiff from bending over a notebook, but he’s grinning ear to ear and Revan is the same. On the way out, she fervently thanks Professor Din, and Alek does the same over the man’s faint laughter and his answering promise to see them both for extra lessons. It feels like Alek barely blinked after he walked in, and now here they are out the door and down the hall, following the swirling crowd towards their next class.
Transfiguration. Revan is almost as excited for that as she was for Charms, and Alek is just as thrilled. Learning to change not only the shape but to transform the material of an object… It’s like no other form of magic either of them know. Alek knows with a deep certainty that this is what Revan will be focusing on when she’s not obsessing over Charms and their newly-secured extra lessons. And as usual, he can’t exactly blame her for it when he’s just as anticipatory. It doesn’t matter that their class is split with Gryffindors again, or that it’s being taught by Professor Tokare—who Revan has already taken a slight dislike to, for the fact that he isn’t Professor Din and he isn’t teaching her anything off the curriculum—the moment they’re in the classroom, Revan is bolting for a seat in the third row and impatiently planting her things in the neighboring chair so Alek (who is less prone to running in classrooms, because he has no desire to split his skull open when he trips) has a place when he reaches her soon after.
But Professor Tokare’s opening remarks are nothing like Professor Din’s. He warns them off bad behavior with a sharp look at the seats filled with green and silver, seems to spend twice as long talking about inter-house rivalries as anyone else—Alek can feel his spine going stiff as the professor’s eyes sweep over him. He can’t mean to insinuate that the Slytherins are going to cause problems, can he?
But indeed, when his introductory remarks are finished and he’s given them his own list of classroom rules, he levels them all with a hard stare from his position in front of the desk at the front of the room. Despite his diminutive stature, his eyes are hard, face set in something almost like challenge.
“Before class starts, I would like to make one thing very clear,” he says seriously. “I will not tolerate any of the behavior some of my fellow professors might overlook. If any of you attack or challenge another student,” and yes, he’s looking at the Slytherins, he’s looking at Revan’s face, open-mouthed with shock, and the others behind them, “I will take enough points for you to seriously reconsider your choices. My classroom is not and never shall be the place for such base conduct. Am I understood?”
“He can’t just—Alek, he’s looking at us,” Revan hisses from beside him, glaring towards the front of the classroom. “That’s absurd! It’s not as if our house is the only one that ever gets into fights!”
Professor Tokare’s piercing eyes land straight on Revan before her mouth has closed, and he narrows them in disapproval.
“Miss Adarii,” he says in a tone as though he’s smelled something foul. “Mr. Squinquargesimus. Something you’d like to add to this?”
“No, professor,” Alek says, and aims a kick at Revan’s shins. It’s not fair, she’s right, but if they argue now—
“Do not let me hear you speaking out of turn again, or it’ll be five points and not a warning. Am I understood?”
Revan doesn’t respond except to glare, and Vandar’s entire demeanor goes frosty as more than one Slytherin titters from the back of the classroom. That dies down quickly enough; it’s more than evident that getting on Vandar’s bad side would be dangerous. Alek doesn’t want a teacher to hate them, even one who looks at them like they’re going dark already. Revan, though…
Revan has very few inhibitions. Her muscles are tense with fury, a snarl at the edge of her lips, and that pent-up frustration just builds when Vandar tells them the spells they’ll be expected to perform today and the rest of the week without even looking towards the Slytherins. Oh, eventually she turns to the matchstick laid on their desks with a look that could burn holes in paper, but she doesn’t relax, and her magic is fraught with anger. She never even tries to reach for her wand. A wave of her hand, a twist of her fingers—and the matchstick shimmers silver until Revan is left with a needle instead. That, at least, causes some of that bubbling rage to simmer into tiredness instead, and Alek hears her heave a sigh as she transforms it back into its original wooden form.
“Now what?” she mutters as Alek traces his wand along the patterns Professor Tokare has left for them on the board. “I’ve done it, is that enough?”
Alek shrugs. “Try it again, I suppose,” he says absently, focusing on the tiny wooden stick. Nothing, nothing, and then a shimmer and it becomes a needle just like Revan’s. Despite the start of the class and her lingering anger, he can’t help but shoot her a triumphant grin, and he warms as she smiles back, faint and tired but real.
And this time, when she transforms her match, it’s with some of the lingering eagerness from Charms and Professor Din, and she does it with a look of determination and only a trace of old anger.
Alek feels the shadow over his shoulder when he’s working on his third complete transformation; when he looks over, Professor Tokare is standing in the aisle between this row of desks and the next, glancing over at the gleam of metal in front of him.
“A good transformation,” he tells Alek with a slightly grudging tone, and then his gaze fixes on Revan and the room goes cold.
Revan’s gaze jerks up as her needle becomes a matchstick again, and with the professor’s gaze heavy on her, her hands drop to the table.
“Professor,” she says, lifts her chin in a challenge, and he just stares her down straight over Alek’s place at the table.
“Miss Adarii,” he says, low and cold and so very angry that Alek wants to disappear. “What exactly do you think you’re doing?”
Now it’s confusion across her face as she gestures to the match. “The transfiguration, like you told us—I’ve done it before, it turned out just like this—”
“My instructions were for the entire class to complete this spell as I had written. You will note that nowhere did I tell you that you could forego your wand for dangerous, uncontrolled casting that you shouldn’t even be practicing at your age,” Vandar all but spits at her with a fury that feels like a living thing. “Explain yourself this instant.”
“It’s not uncontrolled! I’ve been—I’ve done magic like this as long as I can remember, Professor Orgus said I had,” she pauses, as though she’s reaching for the words, “exemplary control. It’s not dangerous, it’s just magic.” Her hand grabs for the matchstick, anger blazing in the air, and she speaks no words and makes barely a movement but its surface ripples in her hand and turns to shining silver once more. “See?”
Professor Tokare’s nostrils flare. “Ten points from Slytherin for disobeying my instructions and performing dangerous magic in my classroom without authorization,” he snaps. “The next time you transfigure anything, if I don’t see you with your wand in your hand, I will take fifteen for every spell you do. Is that clear?”
“But- I can’t. I can’t use a wand, it just—doesn’t work,” Revan snaps, eyes shining with wetness. She won’t cry, hasn’t cried in years, but— “How am I supposed to make it work when my magic doesn’t like it?”
“She’s right,” Alek cuts in before there’s a response. “Please, professor, it’s how she casts! Professor Din let us cast how we liked—”
The moment the inhuman man’s eyes land on Alek, he knows he has made a mistake.
“This is not Professor Din’s classroom,” Professor Tokare says with a voice like ice. “And I am not he. I do not tolerate the sort of behaviors that he allows, nor will I ever. And if you ever speak to me like that again, I will take twenty points from each of you. Ten points from you as well, Mr. Squinquargesimus, for speaking out of turn and interfering with your friend’s punishment.”
In the end, the bell is what saves them, releasing them from Professor Tokare's relentless gaze and furious opposition of Revan’s casting. They both all but flee from his classroom—Revan first, Alek on her heels—until they’re far enough away that no one sees Revan drop into an uninhabited corner with a huff and press the heels of her hands to her eyes. Alek spares a quick glance, but this hallway is empty; he slides down beside her and leans a shoulder into hers with a gesture of reassurance.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs as she glares downward at the castle’s flagstones. “Rev, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, ” she snaps. “But it’s not fair. None of it is fair! Why couldn’t he just listen to Professor Orgus? I can’t cast like the rest of them!”
“I know,” he says, because he does, he’s watched her grow up alongside him, watched the adults whisper about her again and again and again. “It’s not fair. We’ll find a way to make it fair, though. I promise.”
Revan’s sniff is as close to an answer as he’s going to get from her, but she gives him a faint half-smile as she ducks under his arm and curls up against his side. They have a break now, and then lunch, but after that—well, today is Flight, and that has to lift Revan’s mood at least a little. She can put Transfiguration behind her and forget about the way Professor Tokare looked at her and at the other Slytherins. Alek is sure of it.
But for the rest of the time they sit in that hallway, he can’t quite shake the feeling that something small but consequential has gone terribly, irreversibly wrong.