Chapter Text
You are a peer to them, but you’re no scholar; you just happen to work at the tavern where they often meet up. Rowena would drag you into their debates before she even knew your name.
“Miss, you know I’m not as smart as any of you, don’t you?” you would say, uncomfortably.
(“You’re making them uncomfortable, Rowena,” Helga observed the first time it happened, flashing an apologetic look your way.)
“I’m aware that your intelligence is of a non-academic bent, if that’s what you’re asking,” Rowena said, “but academia doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Inevitably there are things hovering in other spheres of knowledge that we collectively fail to account for; an additional perspective is never wasted.”
“You’re just hoping they’ll be intimidated into agreeing with you,” Godric said (causing Salazar to roll his eyes; observing the gambit aloud was so much less interesting than piling onto it with a gambit of one’s own. What a waste.). Godric winked at you. “You don’t have to answer her questions if you don’t want to.”
But you did answer the questions, where possible. Sometimes you didn’t even know how to begin to address the topics they mulled over together, but when you had a thought (and when that thought was asked for) you shared it.
You felt positively stupid, in their presence, but the way Rowena seemed able to peel some bit of wisdom out of anything you said, and the way Helga nodded along encouragingly as you spoke, and the way Godric grinned at you as though his expectations from other people were so low that any semi-coherent string of words was alright by him, and the way that Salazar seemed indifferent to whether or not you said anything at all brought you out of your shell somewhat.
You just knew that everyone (except for Rowena, whose mind was running at such a high level that you expected she could have found something profound in chipmunk chatter just as easily) was only humoring you if not altogether ignoring you, until one day Salazar interrupted Rowena with a calm, “But that’s not what they said, though, is it Rowena?”
“Pardon?” Rowena said, just as mildly.
“You misunderstood their point entirely. What they actually said was…” And then he proceeded to rephrase your statement in a much cleverer way, calling attention to the slight semantic divergence in what Rowena had assumed you meant.
Helga hummed in acknowledgement. “Sal’s right. That is what they said.”
“Interesting…” Rowena mulled it over.
From that day on, you began to notice that they were paying attention to you. You began to hear your name in their conversations even when you weren’t with them, when you were moving about the tavern or tidying up the bar. And you became aware that Salazar seemed to always be keeping track of you- not watching constantly, but his gaze would flick to you if you moved from one part of the room to another, or if someone else moved closer to you.
One day, a drunken customer was a bit too close. Not threatening or even hostile, but awkwardly close and flirtatious as you wiped up a spill on the counter. That was nothing new; you smiled at him uncomfortably and carried on working. It was a busy day in the tavern; anyone would have been forgiven for not noticing the man, but across the room, Salazar whispered a few words to Godric, and a second later Gryffindor was shoving the drunken man away from you with a casual flick of his wand.
“Why don’t you come sit with us?” he offered, taking a moment to glare darkly at the man as he stumbled away.
“I shouldn’t…” you said, glancing over at his table to see Helga beckoning warmly. “I’m supposed to be cleaning up…”
“We’ll see to it that your employers don’t trouble you over it,” he assured.
And they did.
Every time they came to the tavern- which was every day, now -they asked you to sit with them, and every time you sat with them, they left several Galleons behind, for the tavern and for you.
You sat between Godric and Salazar, placing you entirely in the corner, practically in shadows. Helga asked what you wanted to eat and drink; she refused to let you sit there without eating something. Godric joked with and about you, sometimes wrapping an arm around your shoulders companionably. Rowena kept probing you for your opinions on things outside your understanding and pretending your answers were smart. Salazar continued appearing to ignore you while paying extremely close attention. You started to feel quite comfortable with them.
So you didn’t think much of it when they started to ask where you lived, how you lived, who you lived with.
“That area,” Salazar weighed in, sniffing with distaste. “Crawling with Muggles, isn’t it.”
“Don’t start,” Helga chided.
“You know they burn magical people at the stake,” Salazar continued.
“They burn each other at the stake, misidentifying magic,” Rowena corrected. She only seemed to be half-in the conversation, as most of her attention was on the sketches she was making of their school’s floor plan. (You had asked her about those before and couldn’t fathom the sorts of magic she planned to imbue in the stones themselves, in the stairs and doors. Layers on layers, shifting and changing.)
“They do manage to catch witches and wizards who don’t know how to defend themselves,” Salazar said pointedly. “Hence why we are doing any of this in the first place.” He gestured at her sketches.
“You’re beating around the bush, Sal,” Godric said, rather lightly considering the subject at hand. He turned to face you, then. “Maybe you should stay with us.”
You blinked a few times. “What do you mean?”
“Well, we’re all living in Rowena’s manor, for the time being. Maybe you should stay there with us, rather than live where you risk discovery.”
“You don’t have to go to work, either,” Helga said, then blushed a little. “Hard work is a virtue, but I…we worry about you, in a place like this. It can get rowdy.”
“Are you…Are you being serious?” How were you supposed to agree to something like this, out of nowhere, from people you hadn’t known for more than a year, maximum?
“We like having you around,” Rowena said candidly, still sketching as though barely aware of the conversation she was in. “We miss you when we leave here, or when you’re absent. It’d be nice to have you…” Then she trailed off, as if finally losing focus completely. She added a note to her sketch.
“…have you in the manor with us,” Godric finished for her. “And then when our school is finished, you can live there with us as well. It would be perfect.”
“I don’t know…” You shift nervously.
“Now you’re all beating around the bush,” Salazar said, then looked you directly in the eye, which was rare. “I already offered to owl the tavern a hundred Galleons a week if you stay in the manor with us. I’m pretty sure they’ll fire you if you refuse, and if you find other employment, I can make the same deal with them.”
“Sal, how indelicate,” Helga said, although her tone was not nearly scornful enough. “I’m sure we could have convinced them without-”
“Well, now we won’t have to,” Salazar said succinctly.
“It was a creative solution,” Rowena opined. “So long as they don’t take issue with it.”
“I take issue,” you stammered out.
“Then that’s a new problem,” Rowena sighed, sliding her sketches over to Godric. “But I have a few questions for you: Do you like working here, or do you only do it to survive?”
“Of course I work to survive, but…” You can’t figure out an end to your sentence; you’re too flustered.
“Well, survival is something we can provide; we’re fairly wealthy. We can keep you in comfort. Do you like living in your current home, or do you live there because you had nowhere else to be?”
“That’s not fair,” you protest.
“And that’s not an answer,” Godric said. “The point is this: You can be happier with us than you are here, and we will be happier if you are with us than if you are not.” He held Rowena’s sketch up close to his eyes, set it back down on the table, added another note, and slid it back to her.
“We really do want you to be happy,” Helga emphasized. “Salazar included.”
“We also don’t think it benefits you or us when you interact with other people,” Rowena said whilst eyeing Godric’s edits. “Godric and Sal were quite close to hexing the-”
“Ro,” Godric interrupted. “Maybe a bit less candid?”
Rowena frowned perplexedly at him. “But it bolsters our argument. No one stands to benefit from them being around other people. Eventually, one of us is going to curse someone- it’ll probably be you.”
“What? Why me?”
“Salazar is the most possessive, but he wouldn’t settle for cursing someone under most circumstances; he’d unravel the person’s entire life. Helga would harm anyone who upset our dear one, but she’d do something more in the vein of incapacitation than violence: turn them into a badger, maybe.” (Helga chuckled as though the idea appealed to her.) “And I would curse someone, but I feel you’d likely get to them first, as I imagine I would have a more convoluted way of doing it than you would. And at any rate, your tolerance is lower. You’ve gotten angry with people for brushing against them by accident, whereas I just don’t like it when they talk to them.” Rowena handed the sketch over to Salazar. “This is good.”
There was a pause in which you could have said something, but you couldn’t imagine what. Protestation got you nowhere, and it was quite clear to you that you weren’t skilled enough at magic to get away from them if you tried.
“Inside the walls?” Salazar observed, tracing a finger along the page’s incoherent web of ink.
“Where else would we keep them?”
“Is a room that only we can enter too straightforward?”
“Well, they’ll need space,” Helga said. “To take walks, and things. It’s only healthful. This way, they can roam freely without being troubled by students or staff.”
“I don’t…” Your voice gave up on you. Godric patted you on the back as if consoling you over your weak attempt.
“We can talk about this at home,” Helga said gently. “Come on; let’s go.”
Godric guided you to your feet (You didn’t resist.), and Salazar’s hand hovered near your elbow as you rose, as if ready to catch you if you fell or grab you if you pitched in either direction.
Helga drew you into an embrace and walked with you into the fireplace. “Ravenclaw manor,” she said, and she dropped the Floo powder, and you were devoured by green flames.