Chapter Text
Baz hated autumn and he hated pumpkins and it absolutely didn’t help that everyone around him— his Mother, the headmaster of Watford, included— were apparently obsessed with them. The proof was all around him as he stepped into her office: bigger pumpkins were on windowsills and fireplace and few smaller ones were decorating his Mother’s desk. And even his Mother’s black blazer had a pumpkin pin on. Baz frowned— that last detail was definitely too much.
“Basilton.” his Mother’s voice was tired and a little bit surprised as if she wasn’t the one who sent a note asking him to come over after finishing with his homework. Well, and it wasn’t his fault that Magic Theory essay took forever to accomplish.
“Mother.” Baz nodded trying to not pay attention to the dark circles under her eyes.
“Basilton,” his Mother repeated as if trying to find the right tone. “You look pale, did you have a dinner?”
“Yes, Mother.” And technically it wasn’t a lie if you counted half of a sandwich sneaked from Penelope in library. But what other choice did Baz have if first course at Watford’s dinner was pumpkin soup and second pumpkin curry?
“And walks? Do you take walks as doctor prescribed you?” Their family doctor was almost eighty and Baz didn’t consider his opinion as valuable, but he still nodded, especially since his everyday walks from the dormitory to the library was as good as any other workout.
“I have something for you.” His Mother stood up and with familiar gesture reached for the envelope laying on the edge of her desk.
“I don’t need money yet.” Baz said quickly. He loved his Mother, he really did. But they both lacked the ability to interact with one another and some days it just was more obvious than the others.
“This is not money. Me and your aunt Fiona thought—” his Mother stumbled and Baz’s heart sank down — nothing good ever came out from something that Mother and aunt Fiona planned together. “The neighbor of yours, Simon Snow, how is he doing?”
“He is doing fine.” Baz said dryly, he really didn’t wanna discuss Snow with his Mother.
“I see that his grades are not so good recently.” She sat down and opened a folder with “Simon Snow” label on top.
“Recently?” Baz raised his eyebrow sarcastically.
“I mean,” she said, “his grades were never that good, but recently… Especially since he started being friends with this girl… Agatha.”
“Being friends?” Baz repeated outrageously. “Is that what your notes say?”
His Mother closed the folder and sat silently for some time, looking down. Baz wondered what exactly aunt Fiona told her.
“Basilton,” she said finally, “you and Simon Snow, are you getting along well?”
Baz froze. He will kill Aunt Fiona. He definitely will. With his own hands and with one of the dark spells that he will have no problem finding in the enormous library inside their house.
“What do you mean?” He still asked, hoping that his voice didn’t sound as tense as he felt.
“I mean,” she replied, “someone like Simon Snow can definitely benefit from having you as his friend. I don’t know how things are between two of you, especially after the accident—“
“Mother, the accident you are referring to happened three years ago.” Baz interrupted. Of course the fact that Snow pushed him from the stairs wasn’t something easy to forget. But he tried to. And he didn’t understand why Mother had to remind him over and over again. Yes, he broke his leg and he was still limping sometimes and their family doctor was still subscribing him some old fashioned ways of treatment (like taking walks around campus or applying weird smelling ointments - and how he was supposed to do that while sharing his room with Snow?), but it wasn’t even the main issue between him and Snow right now. The main issue was… Well, everything else. He caught his Mother staring at him. Suddenly he felt irritated. “And what do you mean someone like him?”
His didn’t expect that his Mother to reply, but she did. “When we took Simon Snow to Watford he was an orphan. He spent half of his life with Normals.” She said with hesitation. “We always wanted to help him to become a part of our community, we wanted him to feel he belonged.”
We meant old families, we meant Baz’s parents and their friends, we meant whole world where Baz belonged and Snow so obviously didn’t. Baz suddenly felt empty inside. “It is about his father, right? You don’t want him to hate you because you’ve killed him.”
Sixteen years ago Snow’s parents were rebels. They wanted to changed everything, to fix magical world and to fix society. They had a circle of followers and they hired vampires to kill Baz’s Mother. The attempt failed, everything failed. Snow’s parents were killed during the rebellion. At least, that’s what history books said. There was a fight and they lost, but Simon Snow remained.
He lived among Normals for some time until he was found in one the orphan homes. He was found and they took him to Watford, because it was a rule of a magical world — you could never leave one of your own behind. But they could never figure him out, he was one of them and he wasn’t.
He despised magic, or at least that’s what he tried to show by constantly skipping classes. He tried so hard to be different: he was wearing second hand clothes instead of a school uniform and painted his nails black just to annoy teachers.
That’s what everybody else knew, but Baz knew something else. He knew how amazed by magic Snow was his first few years at Watford, and how disappointed he got later, when everybody keep on telling him that he was not good enough. Naturally, later he only pushed it further away, not wanting to be a part of a world that his parents died trying to change.
Strangely, sometimes Snow still practiced magic alone in his room. Baz could tell later by the smell, that Snow’s magic remained. He liked it, but recently it almost never happened. Probably when Baz will be back today the room will only smell of smoke.
“You know, when the spell chose you from all others to be Simon’s roommate I was devastated. It was Fiona, who made me change my mind. She said, ‘let Simon Snow be Basilton’s friend. Basilton is a good kid, he will help him, he will bring him to our side’.”
Baz squeezed his eyes shut. “He never wanted to be my roommate. He hated me from the first day.” It felt like confession even though his Mother probably already knew the truth. He failed. He wasn’t meant to be the one to make other people his friends.
“Basil,” she said seriously, “I know he likes you, everybody does.”
Baz froze. It was untrue on so many levels. First of all nobody really liked him. Well, except for some teachers, and his parents and aunt Fiona, and maybe Penelope sometimes, when they were not arguing on Witchcraft Science matters. He was plain, he was boring. Two things Snow despised the most — magic and old families, and Baz was representing both.
“I would really like you two to get along. We all would.”
That meant the whole magic community, his Mom included, wanted Baz to become Snow’s friend. Which was impossibly lame and pretty ironic, all things considered.
“Me and aunt Fiona came up with few tips to maybe help you communicate better.” His Mother reached for the envelope again.
“You and Aunt Fiona did what?”
“We made a list. Well, I started the list, and then Fiona helped me and added a few things herself… You can just take a look yourself.”
Baz didn’t move. Mother thought some stupid list would fix all the things that were wrong in his and Snow’s relationship: silent evenings when they didn’t have anything to say to one another, gloomy mornings when Snow acted like he didn’t exist, all those years at Watford where ignoring one another first became a rule and then just a dull a habit they both followed.
And if aunt Fiona was participating it meant a whole other thing as well. Because she knew. A few years ago he was hurt and soft and stupid enough to tell her everything.
His Mother’s hand with envelope hung in the air. Baz stayed still, looking at it as if she was handing him a snake.
“Basilton,” she said. “We trust you with this.”
And just like that he agreed. In his universe these words were enough. He could never let his Mother down. He took the envelope and then took few steps back. He wanted this conversation to be over as soon as possible. “Can I go now?”
“Just one more thing.” His Mother said. “What will you wear to the Autumn Ball?”
Baz cringed. Autumn Ball was all of the worst cliches combined: pumpkin decorations, non-alcoholic cider and awkward conversations. Also he didn’t wanna spend the evening witnessing Snow been all over his girlfriend, while slow dancing. He had enough of that over the past years.
“I am not going.”
“As you wish.” His Mother sighed. They both knew that she already reached the limit of favours she was allowed to ask tonight.
Five minutes later he was standing behind the doors in the dark Watford's corridor, the envelope crumpled in his back pocket. As if he wasn’t already stressed enough with the school and Autumn Ball, he was trying not to think how it would feel to live a world where he could actually ask his roommate Simon Snow to go out there together.
***
Baz hated entering their room, especially when Snow was in. He never knew what to say and this time wasn’t an exception, he came in staying silent, no greetings, just creak of the old door, which Snow didn’t pay attention to anyway. He was laying on his bed, headphones on, eyes closed. However this was a relief — Baz wasn’t in a mood for a fight.
As he expected, the room smelled of tobacco and Agatha’s perfume. Baz wondered if it smelled like sex. He didn’t wanna know, not really.
He silently picked up his night cloth and crossed the room to the bathroom, trying not to step over the yellow tape on the floor. He put the tape himself on their second year, when Snow dared him to. The tape stayed there through all Watford years, separating their room in two equal parts. His part clean and organised and Snow’s — always messy and staffed.
As he closed the bathroom’s door behind him, the tension of sharing the same space and been ignored slowly left him and he let himself breath out. It was ridiculous how his Mother wanted him to be friends with Snow, when they didn’t even speak on a daily basis.
But promise was a promise and he made himself pull out the envelope with the list inside. He will read it just in case his Mother or aunt Fiona ask him questions later. Not that he believed even for a second that it might contain something useful.
First said: “Start each day with greetings. Saying good night and good morning, might feel like small things, but they are important in order to let other person know that you are friendly and interested in their wellbeing.”
That definitely wasn’t a promising start, and Baz just quickly glanced the whole thing through. The list was printed and from the first sight it looked just like a copy from any crappy psychology book. He did not know why, but he kinda expected more from his Mother. Then Baz noticed few marks in his aunt Fiona handwriting, which made the whole thing much more real and harder to ignore.
For example near second point, that said: “Have you meals together, as frequent as possible. Shared dinner is a perfect opportunity to speak and get to know one another better.” His Aunt added: “fyi Snow’ favorite food are sour cherry scones” (as if he didn’t know it already, after seeing Snow stuffing his mouth with them each morning) . And on the third point which suggested “Help him to study in order to keep friendship not only interesting, but useful ” his aunt wrote: “Yes, please. I am tired of Snow’s shitty essays.”
Aunt Fiona was a teacher of History of Magic at Watford and even though Baz liked to see her almost everyday, sometimes he was terrified of how much she actually knew about his life. Especially about his and Snow relationship.
Finally the last point was written completely in his aunt’s writing and said: “Your Mother won’t read it, so I will say as it is: stop playing fool and finally ask him out to the Autumn Ball. I can’t wait to see you two dancing.”
Baz crumpled the paper. It sucked having his Aunt as his best friend and it sucked even more to share his best friend with his Mother. Because they plotted this whole thing together just to manipulate him into being friends with Snow. They didn’t want him to growing apart from magic community and becoming a threat like his father was. And Baz somehow agreed to be a part of that. He threw the crumpled list into the trash.
No, he will go back to their room and just act like the whole thing never happened. And let Snow to decide his own life for himself. Except… Except he didn’t really wanna go back to how things were between them. They don’t need to be friends, of course, but maybe talk time to time would be nice. And in theory he could help Snow study a little bit.
He squatted to get the crumpled list from the trash. No way he was letting Snow accidentally find this . Because, one, it was embarrassing and, two, of course Snow would automatically assume the worst. No, he needed a much safer place. He ended up carefully folding it and putting it back inside envelope.
When he came out Snow was laying on his side reading a comic book. Baz looked closer wondering if it was the same one that Snow was reading for the last three days. He honestly couldn’t understand how you can read something with so little text for such a long time. But then he didn’t understand the comic book as a concept in general as well.
Snow was bringing dozens of them each summer from the Normals world. Sometimes Baz thought that he wanted to surround himself with as many non-magical things as possible - their room was practically a Normals museum, at least Snow’s half. There were posters on the wall with bands Baz never heard of, piles of comics on the floor and a collection of old cassettes that Snow listened with his vintage Walkman. All those things just reminded Baz of a world that Snow loved and he could never even start to understand.
He went to his bed and turned off the light. He watched Snow holding a comic book, apparently not being able to move to the next page just staring into the void. Something was wrong. Once again Baz wished that he could ask what’s going on. Or at least talk .
“Good night.” He said before he had time to think what he was doing.
Snow blinked. One moment passed after another. The silence fell, heavy as a stone into the water and the world fell apart into million pieces.
“I broke up with Agatha.”
Snow was still looking into a void in front of him. His voice sounded tired. Finally he threw the comic on the floor and turned off the light near his bed. Baz heard him crawling under the blankets.
Was it the reason for Snow being sad before? Was he regretting the breakup already? “Does this mean that our room won’t smell like her perfume anymore?”
“I don’t know.” He imagined Snow shrugging. Merlin, they didn’t speak for so long that he forgot how bad Snow was with words. “She still might come over time to time.”
Oh. That’s what their breakup meant. “I see.” Baz said. He hoped his voice didn’t sound too disappointed.
“What about you and Penelope Bounce?” Snow asked. “Are you still going out?”
“Merlin, Snow. We are just friends.”
“Oh yeah,” Snow mumbled. “Sorry, didn’t know that.”
Well, Baz didn’t really expect Snow to know anything about his life. He tried to fix awkward silence. “What is your comic about?” He asked.
“It is about children who run away from their evil parents and later were fighting them.” Snow cleared his throat. “You know, I can relate sometimes. I mean, I never knew my Father, but—“ His voice broke.
“Do you think your Father was evil?” Baz asked carefully.
“I mean he tried to kill your Mom, didn’t he? And your Mom is kinda cool.”
“My Mother is dreadful sometimes.”
“Well, she was always nice to me.” It was a surprise to learn that Snow didn’t hate his family. Oh at least his Mother. It didn’t mean that he felt the same way about Baz, though.
There was a pause after that. Either Snow fell asleep or wasn't interested it keeping conversation further. “Tell Agatha not to smoke on my bed next time. I can’t change my sheets everyday.” Baz said dryly into the darkness, but of course nobody answered.