Chapter Text
The first thing Bucky Barnes thinks when he opens his eyes on February 14th in his seventh year at Hogwarts is ‘oh hell.’
The second thing he thinks is ‘oh fucking hell.’
It becomes evident within seconds that he’s said both thoughts out loud, because Clint gives him a distinctly amused look from where he’s wrangling on his robes. It takes a moment for Bucky to register that the asshole’s digging through his trunk from where it’s stashed under the bed, and in his frantic scramble to get out from under the blankets he ends up rolling straight out of his position on the top bunk with a shout and a series of muffled expletives. The fucking bastard’s howling now, and Bucky has the distinctly un-Hufflepuff urge to rip his bunkmate’s head off and send it to Natasha in a gift-wrapped box.
“Bad day?”
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, Barton.” Bucky pulls himself gingerly from the twisted snarl of blankets before launching himself at Clint. “And give me back my goddamn cologne! Jesus Christ, how are you the one with a girlfriend?” Clint darts back, but Bucky has the advantage of being half-asleep and therefore having extremely clouded judgement and no self-preservation instinct. Some of the other Hufflepuff seventh years give them the side-eye as he knocks Clint clear into the nightstand, but most of them are used to this by now. “It’s a miracle Nat stands you, can’t even be bothered to take care of your own stink...”
“Aw, don’t be so bitter. I’m sure it won’t be that bad.” Clint claws himself back up and ruffles Bucky’s hair, snickering as it sweeps right over his murderous eyes like a curtain. “It’s just Valentine’s Day, after all.”
Bucky tries for a threatening growl, but it comes out as more of a defeated groan.
“The most romantic holiday of the year...”
“Ugh.”
“...All the hearts and roses...”
“Clint.”
“...And people making out in the Great Hall...”
“Barton.”
“...And enchanted cupids, and singing valentines...”
“Oh, God.” Bucky throws himself melodramatically onto the bottom bunk; Clint calmly smooths the corner of his sheets down and goes back to marinating in a cloud of Bucky’s cologne, thank you very much. “Singing valentines. Singing valentine howlers.” He puts an arm over his eyes.
The sadistic fuck’s giggling now. “That’s right, Barnes. Singing valentine howlers. During the entire day. Throughout all our classes.” Clint sprays the bottle into the air another couple times just to piss him off before tossing it at him; Bucky catches it automatically before letting it drop onto the mattress, not moving from his position of abject despair. “Our romantically-themed classes. With all our pals. Including Steve.”
Bucky shifts his arm, cracks a single eye open. “Is it too late to skip?”
“Suck it up, soldier.” Clint yanks Bucky’s robes from where they’re dangling from his bunk, throwing it into his chest with the force of a beater’s arm. “And hurry. If the bacon’s gone by the time we get there, I swear to God I’ll bring Nat back to our room tonight.”
There’s something of an unspoken tradition for the Hogwarts seventh years on Valentine’s Day, and it’s a development that Bucky’s successfully avoided thinking about for the past six years of his magical education.
For the most part, the professors of Hogwarts are strict, no-nonsense witches and wizards who in equal parts command the respect of and scare the shit out of their students. While a few of them make time in their curriculum for special classes around major holidays like Christmas, and Halloween always has special significance in the magical world, they usually adapt a practical approach to their schedules and keep their lessons separate from the festivities around them. They definitely try to avoid encouraging the hormone-driven antics of their students with a ten foot pole. Sure, Bucky knows on a distant, abstract level that they have personal (and therefore potentially romantic) lives of their own. And yes, he knows that love (familial, platonic, and yes, romantic) can play a part in magic. He just really does not need to hear about anything related to any of that from his wise, old, pruny professors. Purity of academics or whatever.
Mostly, he just doesn’t wanna have to hear about love and romance while sitting right next to Steve Rogers in all his classes.
Lately (and okay, yes, Clint, ‘lately’ is entirely subjective and in this case means something like ‘since fourth year’), Bucky’s noticed that he’s been a little...interested in his friend. ‘Interested’, in and of itself, is not unusual for a friendship. If you want to get technical, Bucky’s been ‘interested’ in Steve since before Hogwarts, back when they were next door neighbors finishing each other’s fights on the playground. He’d looked out for him back then against the big, bad high schoolers who said mean things to Bucky’s sisters; he’d kept doing so when they’d got their matching letters to Hogwarts, kept doing so when Steve finally hit his growth spurt in sixth year, and he continued doing so now whenever anyone so much as thought ‘mudblood’ within Steve’s presence. ‘Interest’ was harmless, pretty standard. Heck, most of their mutual friends had a special interest in him, keeping eyes on Steve to make sure the reckless idiot didn’t get himself into trouble. Bucky had seriously considered making a watch schedule, back before Steve finally hit his late growth spurt and they could be reasonably certain he wouldn’t get himself seriously maimed with any of his regular altercations.
However, ‘interested’ and ‘interested’ are two different things. Bucky learned this the hard way in fourth year, when he hit puberty and realized he was thinking about Steve the way most of his roommates were starting to think about the people they’d been dating...and he keeps learning it the hard way, every time he fights beside him and patches him up and strolls around Hogsmeade with him and banters with him from the opposite side of the quidditch field, keeps learning it when they catch eyes across the breakfast table and laugh at an unspoken inside joke, and he keeps learning it and learning it and learning it. It had been exhausting for a while, sure, but by the end of sixth year it was just a normal part of his life. The sky is blue. Water is wet. His friends are assholes. His stomach swoops sometimes when Steve does something innocuous. Just another day in the life.
Except this particular day in the life is Valentine’s Day, which means the professors want to give their poor dying graduating class a break from hyperventilating over NEWTs. And God’s a fucking sadist, which means the professors are giving them a ‘break’ by ‘taking things easy’ and giving all the seventh years lessons on ‘romantically-themed course material.’
And okay, yes. Under different circumstances, Bucky would rather spend transfiguration class animating statues of cherubs to sing inappropriate pop music than spend another goddamn second reading about the scientific limits of conjuration (he’d also rather drive his wand through his skull, but that’s neither here nor there). It’d be worth it just to see the look on Professor McGonagall’s face, honestly. The problem is that his interest in Steve is a constant white noise in the back of his head, a perpetual part of his environment, and it stays that way because he never has any reason to think about or consider romance or love or dating whenever he’s in his friend’s immediate vicinity. It’s pretty simple. As long as Steve stays in this corner of his mind and romantically inclined thoughts stay in this corner of his mind, everything’s going to be fine and Bucky won’t start stressing himself out about things that don’t need to be worried about, what with NEWTs coming up and the Auror application process to prepare for. As long as he can be reasonably confident that romance is not gonna play any role in either of their lives anytime soon, he can keep admiring that crooked smile without anything getting weird.
Except today’s Valentine’s Day, and he’s sat next to Steve in every class since first year, so he’s been Steve’s partner in every class since first year, so he’s gonna be Steve’s partner in class today on Valentine’s Day in seventh year, where they’re gonna have to sit through almost five straight hours of love-related talk or spells or...whatever. And go over said love-related talk-or-spells-or-whatever together. He is going to have to talk about them with Steve. And then those two very happily separate corners of his mind are going to have to get together, and make him think about love and romance with Steve, and being romantically involved with Steve and hearing Steve talk about his own opinions on love and his love life.
This is Bucky’s nightmare. This is the day he dies.
Luckily for Bucky and what remains of his innocence, the bacon is not in fact completely gone when he and Clint make it to the Great Hall. At this point, house tables don’t exist beyond the start-of-year feast; instead, Bucky spies Tony waving them over from the far table with the rest of their friends. Clint abandons him at the end of the row so he can sit next to Natasha, while Bucky nudges himself unceremoniously between Steve and Sam on the other side. He grins lazily as Sam complains, swiping a piece of toast from Steve’s plate and biting into it cheekily as Steve fixes him with a disapproving glare.
As he tucks into his stolen food, he does a quick head count.
All four Gryffindors are present and accounted for; he’s wedged comfortably between two of them, who are now complaining about him over his head. Rude. Thor seems occupied with housing as many doughnuts as humanly possible while waxing poetic about some muggle girl back home to...no one. Meanwhile, Rhodey is preoccupied with two of the three Ravenclaws. Tony is in the middle of insisting that yes, Pepper, he has definitely not planned some embarrassing display of affection for her and no, what are you talking about, he’s not looking a little too excited for the mail, what are you talking about.
“Where’s Bruce?” He spits out the words around the last mouthful of toast, taking Steve’s fork and spearing it through one of the sausages on the plate in front of him.
“You have your own utensils, you know!”
“Hiding out in the Ravenclaw common room until breakfast ends.” At least Sam still loves him. “I’m not supposed to tell Pepper this, but this morning’s post might—”
“Say no more.” He fixes Clint with a deadpan stare until he finally looks over from Natasha, then mouths the words exaggeratedly so they get the message. Singing howler.
Natasha smirks, holding her hand out, and Loki sighs before dropping a handful of sickles into her palm. Steve twitches like he wants to tell off the Slytherins for betting on their friends, but Bucky elbows him and he sighs instead. It’s not like Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes had swept the pot for Natasha and Clint’s relationship pool or anything, after all. Perish the thought.
“Now that everyone who’s coming to breakfast is here—glad you two made it, Clint, Bucky—”
“Tony.” Pepper is nervously casting her gaze upward every few seconds. “Tony, this conversation is not over!”
Tony smiles, pats her hand, and very pointedly does not respond. “—I’m taking bets on how long we get before McGonagall blows a fuse in Transfiguration. Personally, I’m feeling ten minutes.”
“What makes you think that?” Steve crosses his arms, frowning mildly; Bucky shuffles automatically to make space for his elbows.
“Don’t play dumb with me, Rogers.” Tony points at him with his fork. “V-Day-2018? We’re seventh years?” He leans forward to stab said fork through the very mini-quiche Bucky just stole from Steve; Bucky squawks indignantly. “She does her best, bless her, but McGonagall always ends up getting sick of the shenanigans and reverting back to normal lesson plans.”
“Oh, you of little faith. I bet she secretly enjoys it...up to a point.” Clint rummages a little before slapping down a galleon. “She’ll get through the class this year. She’s made of stronger stuff.”
“Mm.” Bucky waves his hand to catch their attention, making meaningless noises around the one (1) entire muffin in his mouth. He drops his own loose change on the table, then holds up three fingers.
“What?”
“He’s putting his money on thirty minutes, Tony.” Steve gives a long-suffering sigh, reluctantly turning out his pockets. “And I’m putting it on an hour.”
Sam shakes his head. “C’mon, man. What happened to house solidarity?” He coughs up his own money. “I’m with Clint. I believe in her.”
Bucky snorts. Sam elbows him hard.
Natasha draws back from Clint a little, squinting at Tony for a second. “I don’t trust this. You’re planning something.”
Tony puts a hand over his heart. It fools no one. “What, me? I would never.”
She stares for another few seconds before shaking her head. “Stark’s gonna do something stupid at ten minutes so he can win the bet. Pass.”
Fuck, of course he is. Bucky goes frantically to retrieve his money, but Tony sweeps his wand in a fluid motion and it’s in his hand, the slippery bastard. Rhodey groans.
“Any other takers? Anyone?”
Pepper glares, Rhodey shakes his head. Thor is still oblivious to the world. Loki’s busy insisting that he’s above this when the sudden swooshing of wings indicates the arrival of the morning post.
Pepper’s eyes snap immediately to the ceiling, so she’s the first to see it; she winces, standing up quickly, mouth opening to make some excuse, but Tony grabs her arm without even turning and yanks her back down. Rhodey, who is single and therefore free to leave, beats a swift retreat. Natasha just smirks, pulling out two pairs of earplugs and passing one to Clint as Sam and Steve tense.
Bucky’s desperately grabbing for the disappearing breakfast bacon when he realizes what’s about to happen, but by then the red envelope’s already smoldering in front of Pepper’s horrified stare.
“Oh no.” His eyes widen as the envelope begins to shake; Pepper’s got her lips pursed so hard they’re white, her arms are crossed, and she’s refusing to touch it. He reels back. “Oh no, no, no—”
Steve sighs, putting his hands over Bucky’s ears as the letter explodes. Even then, the muffled, dulcet tones of Tony Stark’s screeching pound at his skull.
“WE’RE NO STRANGERS TO LOVE...YOU KNOW THE RULES, AND SO DO I — ”
Somehow, Pepper’s screaming is even louder.
“ANTHONY EDWARD STARK, I AM GOING TO MURDER YOU!”
By the time the howler’s finished singing and Pepper’s turned Tony’s hair into multi-colored cornrows (the points deducted and added to Ravenclaw for the respective public disturbance and charmwork cancel each other out), the breakfast food is gone and everyone’s getting ready to go to class. Steve lets out the breath he’s been holding, uncovering Bucky’s ears and standing. He adjust the straps on his bag for a few seconds before turning, all bright blue eyes and blinding smiles.
“Ready for potions, Buck?”
Potions class, first period. This, at least, is an easy one. Valentine’s Day and NEWT-level potions class can only mean one thing, and that’s amortentia. He can do this.
Unless he’s going to be standing in the dimly lit dungeons over the warm glow of a dozen small fires, making amortentia with Steve that probably will smell exactly like Steve—
Who’s he kidding. He can’t do this.
“V-Day-2018.” Bucky sighs, downing the last of his bacon before falling into step with Steve. As he cracks his knuckles, he resists the urge to cuff some sense back into his own head. “Alright, let’s get this over with.”