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Kei's been loafing around the owlery a lot lately. It's good and secluded around this time, and there's a great view of the grounds and mountains beyond. Besides, it's easier to slip in the Great Hall near the end of supper, when most students are either gone or too engrossed in their food to pay attention to some random third year Slytherin. Get it? Slytherin... slither-into-the-Great-Hall-to-avoid-having-to-talk-with-idiots.
"I spend too much time alone," Kei mutters to himself, playing with a twig by his foot.
“Hoot,” agrees an owl.
Kei shoots it a withering look.
"There's this kid," Koutarou begins one day on his way to Care of Magical Creatures.
"Nope," says Kuroo, immediately spinning a 180 on his heels and making as if he’s going to walk back to the main school. But Koutarou simply grabs him by the back of his cloak and drags him along, not breaking stride or sweat. "Five points from Gryffindor," Kuroo says weakly, making no effort to break free.
"Abuse of power!" Koutarou shouts in outrage for the millionth time.
"Five points to Gryffindor."
"I can't believe they made you a prefect and not me! So unfair! What the hell, I'm so angry, this injustice—"
"I fixed it, didn't I?"
A shrug. "Yeah, that's fair."
There’s an amiable silence as he continues to drag an all-too-pliant Kuroo behind. Maybe there’ll be a fire-breathing creature in class today. Let’s hope so!
"So there's this kid," he tries again after an acceptable pause (ignoring his best friend's smug hmm), "who keeps skipping supper to hang around the owlery."
Kuroo shrugs Koutarou's hand off and straightens his robes, falling back into step beside him. "Bokuto, you do the same thing every day."
"No, I don't!"
Kuroo gives him a weird look. "Why are you arguing this point? You literally do. Like, you—" he waves his hand in the air in a vague gesture "—literally do. You've been flying every day before supper since we were, like, thirteen. You..." Another weird hand wiggle. "You do. Like, you… do. Why are you arguing."
Koutarou winces. "You killed it, man."
"Yeah," Kuroo sighs, "I did, didn't I."
He purses his lips, before glancing behind them to see if there's anyone watching. "So, like," Koutarou attempts for a third time, "there's this kid who keeps making me late for supper because he's always hanging around the owlery every time I get back, and it's not like I can shift back around him—"
Kuroo snorts with laughter. “Oh my God.”
"—and he's in your house so I was wondering if you could make him go away or something? Because I gotta eat, man, this isn't fair on me, it was barbecue yesterday and I missed it—!"
When Kei settles on a stone step leading to the tiny outdoors courtyard jutting out from the owlery, the last thing he expects is company.
But — and don't ask him where it came from because he hasn't the faintest clue — a lithe black cat pads its way down the steps behind him, takes a leisurely trot around the balcony before settling at Kei's feet with a small (teasing) tilt of its head (and he swears the cat’s making fun of him).
Kei stares at it silently for a moment.
"Shoo."
It gets up and plonks itself ten centimetres closer to his foot. Kei snickers despite himself.
"Alright. Don't shoo," he mutters, glancing around (as if anyone’s gonna be around) before gingerly reaching down to pet it.
"Alright, here's the intel," Kuroo announces grandly while Koutarou gently tickles the painting of a pear. "Tsukishima Kei, third year, hardly ever in the common room. The other third years tell me he's either in their dormitory fiddling with 'muggle earmuff things'—"
Koutarou, a muggle-born more than familiar with the mystery that are in fact just headphones, pauses to cackle while Kuroo smirks, knowing Koutarou would appreciate that detail.
"—or apparently he won't be in the dungeons at all, probably skulking through the castle. I hear his only friend is one of your kids, a Yamaguchi or something."
Koutarou huffs proudly. "He's one of our beaters!"
"Yeah." Leaning against the wall, Kuroo purses his lips in a rare moment of seriousness. "I don't think he talks to other students much. That's all I really found out, other than one other thing."
Koutarou wiggles his eyebrows at the chuckling pear, bringing up his other hand to tickle it silly, but then Kuroo taps his shoulder in interruption. It's all the indication he needs to drop his hand and pay attention to what he’s saying. So it's that kind of thing.
Kuroo is frowning, gaze far away. "I heard that his brother was put in St Mungos from an attack four years ago. Because he’s a squib."
Koutarou's stomach drops. "That's awful," he says sadly.
"Yeah, I think it was in the Daily Prophet and everything." Kuroo shoves his hands in his pockets. "So, from what I can deduce... I don't think this Tsukishima kid really wants to be here at all. He doesn't talk to students and his classmates told me he puts in the bare minimum effort in lessons, just enough to scrape a good grade even though he's more than capable. I hear he's even a natural flier, but he's not come near our team once. To be honest...” He shrugs away from the wall, and sighs before running a hand through his unruly hair. “I think he hates magic, man. It's strange, but—"
Koutarou shakes his head immediately. "It's not strange. I think I get it." Memories of his parents staring terrified when a temper tantrum lit the kitchen on fire or he accidentally made their pet dog fly (because as cool as it was at the beginning, Kiki broke five bones when she dropped to the ground). "Going muggle to magic is tough, I think. I mean, for me, it wasn't until I got controlling my own magic that I kind of... stopped... You know?" He waves his hand around in the air distractedly. "I needed that moment, and then I got hooked, sure. But before that, nah, not really, it wasn't... You get me?"
Kuroo blinks before nodding quickly, because he always gets him, they're reliably on the same wavelength. It's why they became best friends in the first place; two first years with a taste for mischief who didn't care about houses beyond their red and green colours.
“But it’s not like I have a squib brother or anything, so I don’t really get it all that much.” Koutarou shrugs. “Just a muggle family.”
“Same thing, though, wizards and muggles. If you take away the magic,” Kuroo says quietly. “Sort of.”
Koutarou hums non-commitally and returns to tickling. Kuroo waits, looking at nothing in particular. (Koutarou thinks his best friend is one of the most decent guys in the world, Slytherin or not, pureblood or not.)
When the giggling pear relents and the tapestry slides back to reveal the kitchens, a house elf immediately notices and recognises them from their many sneaking excursions because of missed dinners due to over-running Quidditch practices — just like tonight. Koutarou bounds forward with a wide grin, darker thoughts of the past forgotten (and a reminder of a lonely third year kid tucked away for later), more than ready to regale all the house elves with a dramatic retelling of his most recent match.
The eager kitchen staff crowd around him, already preparing plates of food. Koutarou sails through his grand story. Kuroo provides sound effects. It’s awesome.
Out of all the owls in the owlery, the weirdest is definitely a boisterous one who hoots enough to make up for its lack of human speech — perhaps even upstage it. It has huge bright golden eyes and shocking-white and charcoal-black feathers, wingspan long and smooth and strong – without a doubt, a notably handsome bird.
Kei really doesn't pay much attention to it. He's probably stroked it, like... twice? Maybe? So he's at a total loss when, as soon as he closes the owlery door behind him one day, it swoops down from the rafters and settles on him, happily using his arm for a perch.
He blinks at it, too taken by surprise to do much other than blurt, "Huh?"
When he tries to gently push it off with his other hand, it nibbles affectionately at his finger.
When did I make friends with a bird? Kei wonders. He doesn't even like owls. (He does likes crows. But apparently the magical community is too far up its ass to utilise the genius birds for what they're worth. Which, whatever, not his problem. Idiots.)
The owl flaps its wing when Tsukki tries to pull his hand away, and that's when he catches the glint of something gold clutched tight against its body beneath the other wing. As if realising that he's noticed it, as if it was waiting for that sign, the owl lets the collected treasure slip through its feathers and clutter to the floor. Without hesitation, it then leaps off Kei's arm with a powerful beat of its wings and soars right out a glassless window into the open evening sky.
Kei stares after it with a raised eyebrow, before glancing down at what it dropped.
A golden snitch.
Dumb bird. He thought magpies were supposed to be the hoarders.
Kei doesn't know why the Slytherin Captain and Keeper bursts into laughter when he tries to return the snitch, explaining that some random owl dropped it right in front of him. But he hates him for it.
It's so annoying... What's even so damn funny?
(You know what isn't funny? The fact that the sneaky git managed to cajole him into trying out for his Quidditch team in return for not reporting Kei's 'suspected theft of Golden Snitches'. He hates him, ugh…
Still, it’s been a while since he got to fly on a broom, not since before Akiteru’s… accident.)
Kuroo sidles up to Kei in the wait before they can mount their brooms. "You ready?"
Kei shrugs. Even he, with all the distance he puts between him and his classmates, knows the reputation Kuroo has. He's famous — infamous — throughout the school for his classroom tricks and general... eccentricity. Him, and his apparent partner in arms, his 'first mate, 'cause I'm the captain!' as Kuroo likes to boast (and did so at length in the changing room, to pronounced groans at the lame pun): a fellow sixth year and captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team.
Kei wrinkles his nose at the rowdy group across the pitch. Why are Gryffindors always so loud? Kuroo's over there playing out his comedy routine with Bokuto Koutaro, said Gryffindor captain, who also happens to be his best friend (which just seems so typical because trust them to invert their inherited cliché of rivalry). Kei can't help but roll his eyes when Kuroo and Bokuto carry out a very long and clearly rehearsed complex handshake routine. Talk about fraternising with the enemy.
Yamaguchi — a friend he picked up in first year Potions and never managed to shake off —catches his eye from across the pitch and sends him a nervous smile. Kei replies with a small nod of his head, ‘cause not all of them are all that bad, sort of. Thank God.
When Kuroo returns, looking smug, he asks Kei what he thinks of their competition.
"I don't know…" He glances around Kuroo, watching Bokuto's antics. "He looks like an idiot."
This makes Kuroo snicker. "Nah, he's a good guy. You'd like him." Kei shoots him a disbelieving look, and Kuroo grins, amending, "He grows on you. Trust me, I think there's a lot you'd respect about the guy if you got to know him."
Kei stares silently as Bokuto lets out a particularly loud whoop and thumps a small ginger kid on the back so hard he faceplants into the mud.
"No, I'm..." He glances back at Kuroo with an expression of mild disgust. "I'm fine with this distance, actually."
Kuroo snorts with laughter and looks back at his best friend before levelling Kei with an unreadable expression of his own. And it feels weird for Kei not to be able to read the people around him, when usually that’s all he’s ever doing. Kuroo’s eyes glint with a hidden spark.
Kei quirks an eyebrow. "What."
All he gets in answer is a small smile. (Really gross, to be honest.) It's a secretive smile, as if he knows something you don't and he's going to get the better of you for it. But then again, this is Kuroo Tetsurou, Slytherin Prefect and so-called Crafty Keeper, a renowned sly guy with a selfish agenda, and Kei doesn't trust him in the slightest. So he settles for ignoring the silent leer with a roll of his eyes, because you know what, he probably doesn’t want to know.
With a quiet hum of amusement, Kuroo turns away and mounts his broom. “Let’s have a good game, hmm, new kid?”
“Whatever.” Kei just hopes this won't be too huge a disaster.
He was too optimistic. Yamaguchi ends up pelting a bludger Kei's way halfway through the match, and then proceeds to yell, "Sorry, Tsukki!" in a voice so loud and frantic the whole pitch hears. Kuroo and Bokuto of all people -- who seems to have taken a liking to Kei, much to the latter's dismay and very pointed bewilderment -- absolutely love it and vow to start exclusively calling him that from now on. And they do it.
He swears he feels a migraine coming on as soon as the match is up.
Still, weird upperclasmen aside, Kei did... kind of distract the Gryffindor seeker long enough for Slytherin to catch the snitch. So there's that.
Nobody noticed, of course, because Kei fights with quiet tactics, not flashy swooping dives or leaping off your broom into mid-air ten metres from the ground (hello, ginger kid re: moron re: re: suicidal idiot).
So of course nobody paid attention. Nobody except, for some reason, Kuroo and again, Bokuto (what the hell?). Except that’s not a good thing because the congratulatory thump on the back the latter gives him after the game actually leaves a bruise. And for the life of him, Kei can't figure out why Bokuto was paying attention to some random rival third year in his debut Quidditch match in the first place. Even for a sports captain, that’s too much.
And looking at Bokuto, at his weird round staring eyes and salt-and-pepper hair — which Kei honestly does suspect is achieved with a self-electrocuting spell — it’s definitely too much. Let’s just say he doesn’t exactly look like the observant type, and leave it at that.
Kei notices how Kuroo and Bokuto, a pureblood and a muggleborn, a Slytherin and a Gryffindor, rival Quidditch players, joke and laugh around like the whole wizarding world isn’t set on splitting them apart. He doesn’t get how Bokuto does it.
Bokuto reminds him all too much of Akiteru, and not in a good way. You immerse yourself like that in a world that’s going to hate you, and all that’ll happen is you’ll get chewed up and spat out.
When they offer to sneak him into Hogsmeade’s famously well-stocked sweet shop Honeydukes the following weekend as celebration for his performance on the pitch, Kei politely declines, bows, and forgoes waiting for Yamaguchi to walk back to the castle alone, broom slung over his shoulder.
He doesn’t need their absurdity in his life. That disregard for the rules… it doesn’t get you anywhere.
Kei really doesn’t need to be around when Bokuto realises that.
The black cat and electrified-looking owl have taken to hanging with him during his hideaway hours in the owlery. Kei can't find any fathomable reason why he warrants their attention; it's not like he's been feeding them, or even really paying them much mind other than to occasionally stroke the cat or straighten the owl's ruffled feathers. They play with each other more than nuzzle at him (although nuzzle at him they will do on occasion), running and flapping around the owlery and kicking up a right fuss.
He also can’t find any foreseeable reason why he should let it get in the way of his routine. Kei takes to bringing his homework and practicing his spellmanship in the owlery courtyard. Other than the occasional student dropping in to send a letter or parcel, it’s quiet. And the cat meows when his wand-work is a little off, which is weird because it’s a cat, but you know what’s also weird? Wands. So Kei lets it go.
One time, he stayed too long, too engrossed in a new theory of Transfiguration in an unusual moment of blinkered focus, and missed dinner altogether. Although not ideal, it’s hardly rare, especially on days when there’s a feast. He has no interest in being around so many people; so many loud, obnoxious, idiotic careless magic-wielding people.
But the thing about it is the cat and the owl show up with food on days like that, as if they’ve guessed that Kei won’t be eating supper and snuck into the Great Hall or the kitchens and got him food themselves.
Overall… he likes them. They’re easy to talk to, and they don’t piss him off or make him uncomfortable, and they aren’t going to spout off a lecture on painfully bigoted ill-informed wizarding politics at the slightest suggestion that Kei’s brother — Kei’s brother who Kei will stand by no matter what anyone says — was born without magic in his veins.
Yamaguchi has even taken to joining him sometimes. With the cat and the owl around, making a mess in the background, it’s even easier to talk to Yamaguchi. Which, on some level, Kei definitely appreciates.
It’s not too bad. Yes, there was that one time he had to re-write his whole Charms class essay thesis on the potential side-effects of reversing memory charms because the owl accidentally crashed into the cat on a low swooping flight, and they ripped it to shreds with talons and claws. That was ridiculous. Kei glared at them so hard they both slinked off to a corner and sulked for an hour.
But in general, Kei doesn't mind them being around.
Sometimes, he’ll catch himself smiling into his hand as he watches the cat chase the owl around the courtyard, affronted hoots and obnoxious meows littering the air. They’re annoying, but Kei really doesn’t mind all that much.
The company's not too bad.