Chapter Text
Todoroki Shouto manages to avoid Hogsmeade the first weekend the third-years can go. He listlessly hands in his permission slip to Aizawa and fakes a stomachache before spiriting away to the Slytherin common room. He feels the castle quiet as the upperclassmen file out to trek through the cold and watches the first and second-years tiptoe through the hallways. The room he shares with Bakugou and Monoma is empty, the two of them no doubt on their way to the village.
It’s not so bad. Shouto has always been fond of the quiet, and uses the empty room and cold air to brush up on Charms.
He does it the second weekend too, slipping away as soon as his last class of the day – Potions, with the Ravenclaws – ends. This time he watches from a window as his classmates leave for the village, filing out of the castle grounds in easy lines.
Midoriya Izuku brings it up on the third.
“You’re not coming with us to Hogsmeade?” he asks on as Aizawa wraps up for the day. Next to him, his partner Bakugou takes one glance at the three of them before moving away, muttering angrily. Shouto lets it slide.
Beside Shouto, Yaoyorozu inclines her head, blinking at the two of them as she gathers up her books. “I agree, Todoroki-san. Have you been to Hogsmeade since the winter started?”
Shouto glances around him. The other students are already filing out of the room, and Aizawa-sensei has no doubt already scurried back to his chambers. The three of them are the only people left in the room.
He’s been cornered, then. “I haven’t,” he says, clear and simple.
Yaoyorozu glances at Midoriya. “You could go with us,” the other boy says. “Me and Uraraka and Iida from Hufflepuff, there’s this café we always go to–”
“No thank you,” he interrupts, his tone clipped. “I had hoped to catch up on History of Magic readings this weekend.” A brief bow. “Thank you for the invitation, Midoriya-san. Yaoyorozu-san.” With that, he excuses himself, walking down the halls to the Slytherin common rooms, Midoriya and Yaoyorozu’s soft murmurs behind him.
They don’t let up about it, however.
“Todoroki-san, about last Friday,” Midoriya says the next week, turning around to face him. It’s three minutes before the start of class and neither Yaoyorozu nor Bakugou aren’t here yet, which is odd. “Sorry if I was intruding, or too forward,” the other boy is saying.
Shouto stares at him. “Oh, no. That isn’t it at all,” he says, comprehension dawning. “I appreciated the invitation, Midoriya-san. It’s just that–”
Yaoyorozu chooses that moment to rush into the classroom, her ponytail ruffled, papers flying from her book bag as she sits down beside him. “I made it,” she breathes to Midoriya and Todoroki, both of whom blink at her. “Did I interrupt–”
“Cauldrons out,” Aizawa’s voice drones from the classroom entrance. Their teacher lumbers inside, a surly-looking Bakugou trailing behind him. Midoriya turns back around, quickly moving to make space for his partner. Bakugou nods at Shouto, before proceeding to plunk his bag down on the floor and take up as much space on their shared desk as possible. Inwardly, Shouto winces out of pity for Midoriya.
“The Antidote to Uncommon Poisons,” Aizawa says once he’s reached the front of the room, eyeing them all distastefully. “Who would like to tell me what the ingredients are?”
Shouto has barely comprehended the question before Yaoyorozu’s hand is up in the air. “Fire seeds, powdered graphon horn, billywig stings, and carapaces of the Chizpurfle,” she recites dutifully.
Aizawa nods. “Correct. Five points to Ravenclaw. Now, today…”
He continues talking, but Shouto stops paying attention and instead helps her set up their cauldron. “Sorry I was late,” she whispers, rifling through her pockets before she procures a small candy. “Sato-san from Gryffindor got sent these chocolates – his dad works in Honeydukes, you see. He was handing them out earlier, and they were so good I lost track of time eating them. I saved you one.”
He stares at the candy. It’s wrapped in offensively pink foil, but Yaoyorozu is staring at it in his hand, so against his better judgement he deftly unwraps it and slips it in his mouth when Aizawa isn’t looking.
She’s right. It’s delicious.
“A group of us are going down to Honeydukes later to get some more for ourselves,” she continues in that same hushed voice, now turned back to the front of the room. To anyone who wasn’t sitting next to her, she looks the picture of the diligent student. “You can come with us, if you’d like.”
He eyes her. Yaoyorozu is a good Potions partner – she’s level-headed and more by-the-book than he is, deserving of her top marks. He glances at Midoriya, who’s resigned himself to powdering the graphon horns Aizawa hands out.
Once can’t hurt, right?
He sighs. “Sure,” he says, very softly, but Yaoyorozu turns her head to grin at him.
A group winds up being the three of them plus Midoriya’s and Yaoyorozu’s friends – Jirou from Ravenclaw, and Asui, Uraraka, and Iida from Hufflepuff. Yaoyorozu and Jirou walk next to each other in front of him, close in the shivering cold, and Uraraka and Asui laugh at something Iida says behind him. Midoriya falls into step beside Shouto, his hands in the pockets of his coat.
“Sorry if it seems like we badgered you into it, Todoroki-san,” Midoriya offers, looking up at him.
“It’s all right,” Shouto replies. “The castle gets kind of boring when everyone’s gone.”
“I guess I can imagine that,” his companion says. “But I’d never gone to Hogsmeade before coming here, so I’m going every weekend. Have you ever been to Hogsmeade before?” he asks, turning to him.
Shouto looks away. “I used to go a lot as a kid. With my mom.” He lets the statement hang in the air and quickly regrets it. “Sorry.”
“Oh.” Midoriya realizes that he’s not going to say anything anymore, and changes the subject to Aizawa’s potions homework, for which Shouto is grateful.
Hogsmeade hasn’t changed much from his childhood. The main street is still something straight out of a postcard, pretty little shops lined up in even rows, gardens bare in the stark cold, but bustling with people and laughter. It isn’t December yet so the lights aren’t up, but despite himself, Shouto remembers his mother holding his left hand and Fuyumi holding his right, his brothers laughing and running ahead –
“Todoroki-kun?” Iida’s hand is on the doorway to Honeydukes, and he’s looking at Shouto expectantly. He shakes himself out of the memory and follows his classmate inside. The warmth of Honeydukes is a welcome respite from the outside cold, and Shouto hears Uraraka sigh happily behind him as they crowd inside. Yaoyorozu is the one to spot Sato behind the corner, waving at them. “We’re here to get more of those chocolates, Sato-san!” she says cheerily.
“Anything for Yaomomo!” Sato turns around from where he’d been talking with his dad to grin back at her, making space for their group at the counter. “You guys want anything else?”
They get a large bag of the chocolates to split between them. Uraraka orders an overly-sugary drink that makes Iida cringe, Jirou and Yaoyorozu split a cheesecake slice, Asui gets two cookies, and Midoriya gets a simple cup of hot chocolate. “What about you, Todoroki-kun?” Sato’s dad asks.
He stares. His mother’s breathy laugh, the strong scent of nutmeg and cinnamon filling his nostrils.
“A vanilla latte,” he says, after maybe a too-long pause.
The seven of them crowd around a table. Asui, Jirou, and Yaoyorozu are speaking in hushed tones about something, while Midoriya listens to Uraraka and Iida chatter animatedly about Hufflepuff’s victory against Gryffindor. Shouto alternates between watching them and watching the shop – it’s currently all cheery pastel yellows and browns to match the fall, but he suspects a change to the gingerbread brown and holiday red of his childhood will soon be in order. The shop isn’t full yet, more people are still coming in, and he watches the room slowly fill up with smiles and warmth.
When Jirou interjects into Uraraka and Iida’s recap with commentary of her own, Midoriya pulls himself out of the conversation, knocking his mug against Shouto’s. “What was Hogsmeade like?” he asks, his voice kind. “When you went here, before. Does it look a lot different now?”
Shouto’s fingers curl around the warm mug. “It looks mostly the same. Honeydukes hasn’t changed at all. We’d always go in winter. My mom really loved the snow.”
Midoriya’s still looking at him with that open stare, and despite himself Shouto shrinks a little bit. He thinks of telling everything to this hodgepodge group of people – his mother telling him about the winters of her homeland, snowball fights on the estate, his brothers sprinkling cinnamon into their hot chocolate, his sister’s fingers curling around a pair of knitting needles. But that would also mean talking about after – the stopped visits, his father’s sneer at dinner, the emptiness of his mother’s and brothers’ rooms, Fuyumi staring after him when she thought he couldn’t see.
That would mean opening a can of worms he doesn’t even think he’s ready for, so Shouto just leaves it at that.
When they leave Honeydukes Jirou drags them into a novelty store – presents, she says, for her parents; her father is a muggle musician who is endlessly fascinated with wizard music. She picks out a singing box enchanted with a muggle singer’s voice – Elvis, she enunciates, her accent only barely stumbling over the syllables – and pays for it as Shouto hangs behind, listening to some long-dead witch croon Christmas carols. In the street Midoriya stops for candied nuts and Uraraka and Asui try catching snowflakes on their tongues in the middle of the street, Yaoyorozu hovering anxiously, and the sight makes Iida laugh, loud and deep.
On the walk home it’s Yaoyorozu who walks next to him, her every step careful and measured, her nose reddening in the cold.
“Did you have a good time, Todoroki-kun?” Her voice is impressively polite, but there’s an undertone of anxiousness, as if she’s afraid of the implications if he didn’t enjoy himself.
But he barely hesitates when answering. “I did,” he says quietly. “Thank you for inviting me, Yaoyorozu-san.”
She beams.
He goes with them the next weekend, and the next.
The first day of winter break, Shouto comes down for breakfast to find Midoriya and Uraraka chatting happily at the Hufflepuff table. The Great Hall is much quieter now that most of the students have gone home, so he blinks at his two friends when they turn and notice him. They’re wearing similar-looking sweaters, Midoriya in forest green and Uraraka in pink.
“You’re staying for the holidays?” he asks. He expected Uraraka, who often spoke adoringly of her parents, and Midoriya, whom Bakugou had once gruffly admitted had an extremely kind mother, would make the trip home.
Uraraka and Midoriya glance at each other, then at him. “Yeah,” she replies, sheepish. “My parents are all the way on the other side of the country. This year I can’t really afford to go home.”
“I normally go home, but my mom is abroad on a trip for this year,” Midoriya explains.
“And Iida?”
“Iida goes home early every year,” says Midoriya. “His family, you know the type, they take the holidays very seriously. And, uh – Yaoyorozu, too.”
Shouto nods. She had mentioned doing so. He knows exactly the type of circles Iida’s and Yaoyorozu’s families run in, especially in such a tightly-knit wizarding community. He wants to say, I would have, too, but…
“We spent some time at the Iidas’ last year!” Uraraka pipes up, bright. “But this year they’ve got some major family event, so we didn’t really wanna intrude.”
Midoriya cocks his head at him. “Do you normally stay over the break, Todoroki-kun?”
Shouto shakes his head. “No. I normally go home, too, but this year, I thought it might be better if I didn’t.”
Midoriya looks like he wants to press on the matter, but Uraraka powers through without asking questions, and Shouto doesn’t know whom he’s more grateful for. “Well, that’s fine,” Uraraka says. “Between the three of us, we’ll have some fun, right?”
Shouto blinks, the thought of Uraraka’s beaming grin and bright eyes, Midoriya’s soft voice and mugs clinking against each other on Hogsmeade with thim throughout the holidays settling into his stomach, warm and syrupy. “It’s all right, you don’t have to–”
Midoriya and Uraraka glance at each other again. “Deku,” Uraraka chides. “You should give him the thing.”
“Ah!” Midoriya rifles through his bag. “Todoroki, um, this is for you.” It’s an unassuming parcel wrapped in brown paper, and Midoriya looks sheepish as he hands it to him. “You can open it. Think of it like an advanced Christmas present.”
He does, carefully tearing the brown paper and pulling out the contents.
Shouto blinks. The wrapper falls to the floor.
It’s a sweater, large and warm and soft-looking, carefully knit in royal blue. He doesn’t have to look twice to realize that it’s nearly the same as the sweaters Uraraka and Midoriya are wearing.
“Do you–” Midoriya starts, before faltering. “Do you like it?”
“Deku’s mom made it,” Uraraka adds, a blush scattering across her cheeks. “She knit sweaters for us last year, too, me and Deku and Iida! And, uh, Bakugou gets one too, but that’s mostly tradition – and now you’ve got one.” She’s beaming at him, wide and honest, and Shouto barely comprehends what she’s saying.
“You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to,” Midoriya says, that note of nervousness creeping back into his voice. “I know my mom can be a little over-the-top, and if it’s too much, I–”
“I like it a lot,” Shouto says bluntly, looking the smaller boy in the eye. “Thank you.”
As he slips on the sweater Shouto knows he wants to say more, wishes he could convey the feeling of his mother’s tinkling laughter and the smell of Hogsmeade in December. He wants to speak of what had happened after, the stuffy parties, the single moving photographs of his mother every year, of practicing Charms in an empty Slytherin bedroom.
But for now, twisting his arms and torso around the sweater to find the snuggest fit and moving his head to see Midoriya’s pleased smile, for now, this is a start.
Uraraka claps her hands together. “It looks really good on you, Todoroki!”
Despite himself, he flushes. “Thank you, Uraraka.” He pauses. “I didn’t get you anything, Midoriya.”
Midoriya grins again, sheepish. “It’s all right! Besides, we’ll be around all of winter break, so you have plenty of time to make it up.”
Shouto lets himself smile. “I suppose.”
Uraraka clucks her tongue. “Ah, now we’ve gone and distracted Todoroki – you should get some breakfast! The hot chocolate today is really good too!”
“A-ah, it wasn’t my fault, Uraraka…”
It’s ridiculously endearing. Shouto smiles to himself, takes a seat on the other side of the Hufflepuff table when his food arrives and listens to Uraraka speak about babysitting over the holidays, while Midoriya shares childhood Christmas memories with Bakugou. Shouto mostly picks at his eggs and watches them, softly interjecting occasionally, next year’s Christmas list already writing itself in his head.