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Dean,
I hope this letter finds you well. Winter holidays have never been my favorite, but I hope you are enjoying yours. Gabriel and his brothers are spending the holidays at their estate out in the country, so I only have Anna and our house elf, Muriel, to keep me company. However, Anna is allowed to go to my parents’ various holiday parties and I am not, so mostly I find myself alone or in the kitchen with Muriel.
I like Muriel. She has been in our family for generations, but my mother insisted (I believe under the influence of my real father) that we start paying her a wage. She is free to come and go as she pleases, and still she stays with us. That is very special, when you think about it.
I forgot what it feels like to be this lonely. After nearly an entire lifetime to myself, I spend three months making new friends and suddenly being alone is more taxing than it has ever been. I wanted to write to you the second that I got home, but I waited. I do not know why.
I cannot wait to be back at school. I miss the company of my peers and friends, even if nobody really talks to me except you, Garth, Aaron, and Charlie. Gabriel is my family and has to talk to me, so he does not count.
I think I miss you the most, though.
Happy Holidays,
Castiel
p.s. Say hello to your brother for me.
xx
Cas -
Sorry your holidays suck ass. Mine haven’t been that much better. It’s nice to be with Sammy again though. I would rather be at school too though, or be with you. I could do without the actual school part but I miss you too. I’ve been trying to do my homework on my own but I’m not as good at it without you or Gabe helping me. I called Aaron, but he’s as lost as I am and Garth tried to explain it to me but it’s not the same.
Oh also I got you a Christmas present. It’s kind of a bunch of dumb stuff I thought you might like, but I’m sending Azrael back with it anyway. There’s a dinosaur that if you put it in water it will get super big, and a pack of crayons and a Batman coloring book. Batman is a superhero in muggle comic books I’ll bring some comics back with me and show you. There’s also a pack of water balloons. I don’t know if you’ve ever used those but they’re a lot of fun. Maybe don’t give them to Gabe though.
- Dean
P.S. Hi Castiel - Sam Winchester
p.p.s. Sorry Sammy wanted to say hi but didn’t want me to write it for him.
Castiel read over Dean’s letter at least ten times before he opened up the package attached. There was indeed a muggle toy with ‘GROW DINOSAUR’ written in very insistent letters, as well as a package of bright, multi-colored rubber ‘water bombs’. Not one, but two coloring books laid at the bottom of the box, one Batman, as Dean had indicated, and the other was something called a Superman.
When Castiel opened the front page of the Superman book, he saw in what he now recognized as Sam Winchester’s seven-year-old scrawl, ‘Superman is way cooler than Batman dont tell Dean’.
Castiel smiled. There was a lot he missed about being at Hogwarts, but Dean was definitely, definitely the part he missed the most. He sat on the floor of his room for what seemed like hours every day, thinking about Dean and what he was doing at that very moment.
For the first time in his life, Castiel found himself… well, bored.
Suddenly, books weren’t enough to hold his interest. Now that he knew companionship, he craved it with every fiber of his being. He wanted to run and jump and climb, to get out of his head and just be Castiel, and Dean made him brave enough to do that.
He read over Dean’s letter another time, this time less focused on the fact that Dean had written him back and more on the nature of the gifts. If Batman was a character from a muggle comic book, perhaps Dean would like some wizard comics.
Castiel hopped to his feet and darted down the hallway, all the way to Anna’s room. He busted in without knocking, which he’d been warned against several times, but luckily Anna was only doing homework at her desk. She looked up and, seeing her little brother’s chest heaving as he stood in the doorway, asked, “What’s wrong with you?”
“Where are the comics?” he stood upright. Anna frowned, but stood and strode over to her closet. She retrieved a large cardboard box from the shelf and set it on the floor.
“I thought you didn’t like comic books, Castiel,” she sat beside him on the floor and opened the box.
“I don’t have an opinion on them,” Castiel shrugged. “But Dean loves comic books and he said he was going to show me some muggle ones, so I wanted to show him some of ours.”
Anna pursed her lips and began deftly flipping through the carefully kept comic books, thinking.
“I know I have a couple Abby Acromantula duplicates,” she said. “And Wendla the Werewolf, I have a bunch of those.”
She extracted the comics one by one, making a small pile beside Castiel.
“You like him a lot, don’t you?” she asked then, and Castiel blinked.
“I do, yes,” he decided. “He’s nice to me.”
“I’m glad,” she looked up and gave him a smile. “I worry for you sometimes, Castiel.”
“Why?” Castiel cocked his head. “Because I’m weird?”
“Because our schoolmates don’t quite understand the nature of your curiosities,” Anna reframed Castiel’s guess. “And people can be cruel to people they don’t understand.”
“Dean’s not like that,” Castiel pulled his knees to his chest.
“I know,” Anna nodded, “That’s why I said I’m glad. He seems to be a very good friend.”
Castiel rested his chin on his kneecaps and confirmed, “He is.”
“Would he like Salem Mysteries, do you think?” Anna then asked.
Castiel nodded, “Yes, definitely.”
oo
Dean,
Thank you so much for my gifts. I have already grown my dinosaur, as well as made my way through half of my coloring book. Also, I see why Gabriel should not be allowed to use the water balloons. Apparently, I am not allowed to use them either, as I dropped one on my aunt’s head from the second floor landing during our Yule party. She would not stop her incessant babbling about her work with “underprivileged wizarding communities” and I think deserved a water bomb right on top of that pompous beehived head of hers.
As you can imagine, I am grounded for the rest of my holiday, although being that I am hardly allowed out and about to begin with I don’t know how this is a punishment.
I do have a gift for you too. You will have to wait until we have gotten back to school for me to show you, though. I think I can bring you into my common room and maybe up to my dorm. Gabriel barges in a lot and no one has banned him yet. You can come back with me after dinner.
Be sure to extend both my salutations and thanks to Sam. He will know why.
Yours,
Castiel
Dean kept Castiel’s letters under his pillow for the remainder of the holiday break. He had to--one, because dad would fly off the handle about it, and two, because Castiel’s letters made him feel better.
As suspected, dad had not been pleased, neither by Dean’s house placement nor the fact that he and Sam had kept it from him for so long.
“Having your brother lie like that?” dad had roared not a second after he’d gotten home. “Is that what you want him to learn, that lying is okay!?”
“I’m sorry.”
“For god’s sake, Dean, he’s younger than you. Younger brothers always look up to their older brothers. That’s what they do.”
“I know.”
“Let’s just hope with you out of the house he at least won’t go soft like you.”
Soft.
Boys weren’t soft. Boys were strong and powerful; witches and wizards were strong and powerful.
“I made friends, though,” Dean had argued, albeit weakly.
“Friends?”
Dean still shivered, remembering dad’s mirthless laugh.
“Dean, I don’t know what happened, but somewhere along the line you really got your priorities out of whack. Friends?”
“They’re nice.”
“Nice don’t feed the bulldog, kid,” came that harsh reminder. “No one worth their salt ever got ahead because they were nice. And if all you’re doing is playing nice up at that school, I may as well pull you out and have you look after your brother until he’s ready to go.”
Dean had cried a lot in his life. Silently, more often than not, but that night--that first night home--he’d outright sobbed into his pillow. Dad couldn’t take him out of school. If he took him out of school, that meant going back to muggle school. That meant bad grades and mean teachers; it meant no more Garth and Aaron, no more Charlie or Gabe, and it meant no more Castiel.
Of course, everything had gone to hell the moment dad heard him bawling, which is why he had packaged up Castiel’s gift with finger-shaped bruises on both of his arms.
It’s why, when he hugged Sammy goodbye before he returned to school, he whispered, “If anything happens, let me know.”
“Okay,” Sam nodded. “I love you.”
“Me too,” Dean smiled, and couldn’t resist the urge to hoist him up off his feet and squeeze him with everything he had.
Dad didn’t say anything, even as Dean boarded the train. He tried not to be upset about it, he really did, but Dean had to watch from his compartment while all his classmates got to hug their parents. Dean had to watch Sam throw a fit about waiting to see the train leave.
But dad never once laid a hand on him.
Heat welled up in Dean’s eyes and spilled over before he could stop it. It made the bruises on his arms, old and new, throb with sickening pain, as if each had just been inflicted.
“Dean!” came the most welcome voice on the planet. Hastily, he mopped up his face on the sleeve of his hoodie and turned to give Castiel the warmest smile he could. Castiel, however, was not buying it. “Dean, what’s wrong?”
Dean shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about it, especially with Cas. Even though he would probably listen and everything, and wouldn’t even think he was bad or stop being his friend, it was just… it was too much for anyone to know. And why would anyone care, anyway?
Castiel sat down beside him, and, without warning, looped his arms around Dean’s shoulders and squeezed him tight. Dean tensed for half a second, and then relaxed.
It was just Cas.
But Castiel didn’t know how long hugs typically lasted, and ended up holding Dean rather than hugging him, resting his cheek on Dean’s shoulder and nuzzling. Dean would have told him to knock it off if it hadn’t felt so nice to have a friendly touch again.
“Do you think hugs could be a kind of healing magic?” asked Castiel then. They were still the only people in their cabin, even when the train shrieked its whistle and started rolling forward.
Dean watched Sam run all the way to the edge of the platform, along with several other younger siblings.
He sniffed back his tears and settled low, Castiel’s arms still around him and head still on his shoulder.
“Dean?” Castiel asked again.
“Oh,” Dean wiped his face as best he could. “Sorry.”
“That’s all right,” Castiel still wouldn’t let him go. “I don’t mind hugging you until you feel better. Do you mind?”
A tricky subject, since he should have minded, but in fact did not. His bruises throbbed, once again insistent that he be diligent about heeding his dad’s warnings, but then Castiel looked up at him and smiled and, damn it all to hell.
“C’mere,” Dean lifted one arm out of Castiel’s vice grip so that he could hug him back. The sides of their faces sort of squished together at an awkward angle, but Dean felt it was well worth it for one of Castiel’s hugs. Not a lot of people got them, after all.
Only then the compartment door opened and in strode Gabriel, singing, “Dean and Cassie, sitting in a tree--”
“We are hugging,” Castiel frowned at his cousin as he sat down across from them. Gabriel looked from Cas to Dean and back again before letting out a laugh.
“Hate to break it to you, nerd, but I’m pretty sure you two are cuddling.”
Even the sound of the word made Dean cringe as he realized, yes, that’s exactly what they were doing.
“So?” Castiel challenged. “Perhaps I like cuddling with Dean.”
But rather than start in on a series of endless mocking chants, Gabriel just shrugged and said, “Whatever.”
This seemed to appease Castiel, enough so that he went back to resting his head on Dean’s shoulder.
Unsurprisingly, the rocking motion of the train and the comfy squish of Dean’s body made Castiel doze off with hardly another word out of him. Dean didn’t notice this, however, until Castiel’s body went lax and slid out of his arms.
Dean’s pulse picked up as Castiel’s head was in his lap, and Castiel started to stir.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Gabriel grinned.
“Shut up,” Castiel pouted and adjusted so his head rested on only one of Dean’s legs.
“Uh,” Dean supplied as Castiel dozed off once more.
“Yeah, he does that,” Gabriel explained. “Once he decides he likes you, you can’t shake him.”
He then paused to pull a book out of his bag and looked back up at Dean, “Did you do your Transfiguration homework?”
Dean sighed, “Yeah, but it’s probably all wrong.”
“Where is it? I can check it for you.”
Dean indicated his bag up above in one of the storage cubbies. Gabriel heaved a sigh, but stood up to sift through Dean’s bag, all so Dean wouldn’t have to move and wake Castiel.
Gabriel wasn’t mean about Dean’s homework, either. He read over every single answer carefully, pausing here and there to help Dean understand what he obviously still didn’t grasp. Not once did he condescend, not once did he laugh when Dean’s answer was so, so wrong.
It wasn’t at all the behavior one would expect from a Slytherin, that’s for sure.
“Okay, now can I pick your brain about our Defense homework?” Gabriel pulled out yet another scroll of parchment from his bag.
“Oh… sure,” Dean nodded. Nobody had ever actively sought his help on schoolwork before.
But Gabriel absorbed everything, challenged what he didn’t understand and made Dean discuss it until they both had a firm understanding of nearly everything.
The question at the back of Dean’s mind couldn’t be kept at bay any longer.
“How come you’re a Slytherin?”
Gabriel looked up from rolling up his parchments, sharp hawk eyes fixed on him.
“How come you’re a Hufflepuff?”
“No, I mean,” Dean sighed, trying to word it properly in his head before he spoke it. “You’re nice, when you want to be. And you’re real smart, and you’re pretty brave--”
“I’m not brave,” Gabriel insisted, an edge to his voice. “And I might be smart, but it’s not Ravenclaw smart.”
He let out a breath and looked out the window, “The hat couldn’t decide where to put me. It was between Slytherin and…” he sighed, “Hufflepuff.”
Dean’s face fell.
“Why--how? They’re like, polar opposites.”
“Not really,” Gabriel shook his head. “I would’ve taken anything, though. Except Gryffindor. All my brothers do is fight at home. I didn’t want school to be like that. They always try to get me and Raph to pick a side and Raph always goes to Michael, which means Lucifer expects me to go to him, but I don’t want to be with either of them. I just want to be around other people who aren’t such total douchebags all the time.”
Without realizing it, Dean’s hand had at some point landed in Castiel’s hair.
Maybe if he didn’t point it out, Gabriel wouldn’t notice.
“At least you know the hat had to think about it,” Dean shrugged. “I’m so Hufflepuff it didn’t even talk to me.”
“You’re lucky,” said Gabriel. “Better than sitting up there on display while everyone at the school gawks at you, ‘cause a hat won’t stop talking to you.”
Gabriel looked up at him, "just kinda sucks when there's one place you'd rather go only to end up in the other."
Dean frowned.
"I asked it to put me in Hufflepuff," Gabriel clarified. "At least ten times while it was trying to decide. I was begging it to put me there. I said I’d do anything, that that was where I needed to be. I’d do whatever it took, think whatever I needed to think. Damn thing put me in Slytherin, just to spite me.”
He sighed and leaned his head against the window, watched as the countryside rolled by.
Castiel shifted against Dean’s hand in his hair, and he rolled over onto his back. Looking up at Dean, he smiled.
“Hello,” he greeted.
“Hey, Cas,” Dean’s cheeks grew impossibly warm.
Castiel's eyes slipped shut again, and he hummed, “You could keep petting my hair, if you wanted.”
Dean swallowed the lump in his throat and did just that, all the way back to Hogwarts.
oo
Dinner wasn’t even anything special, it just felt like a feast after being home for so long. Dean knew he would feel much better once Sammy was old enough for school, but for now he couldn’t help that feeling of guilt in his gut. Knowing Sam was likely going to bed hungry a lot of nights…
Dean shook it out of his head. Maybe tomorrow he could send Azrael with some muffins for Sam or something. It wouldn’t be much, but it would at least be better than nothing.
Tonight, he promised Castiel he would come up to his dorm with him. Even though he was tired and wanted nothing more than to sleep for the next ten hours, breaking a promise to Castiel didn’t sit right with Dean.
They bypassed the corridor down to the Hufflepuff common room and started up the stairs. Already, Dean could tell that they had been way, way off in finding Castiel’s common room that first night. Portraits kept asking Dean what sort of robes he was wearing, informed him that they were much too short. As Dean was not even wearing robes to begin with, just his black hoodie, over his black AC/DC t-shirt, and a pair of jeans.
They ended up on a high floor, higher than Dean even realized the common rooms could be. He knew the Ravenclaws were based in Ravenclaw tower, but with just a glimpse back down the Grand Staircase, Dean got a little woozy.
There was a door at the end of this corridor, like any other, save for the eagle-shaped knocker. Up on his tiptoes, Castiel reached up to knocked once. Dean jumped when the eagle sprung to life.
The knocker then asked, “What has one eye, but cannot see?”
Castiel pursed his lips and stared down at the floor, deep in thought.
“Uh, Cas?”
“Eyes,” Castiel just pondered aloud, then looked at Dean. “What has one eye, but can’t see?”
“Uh,” Dean uttered again. “A blind guy that lost an eye?”
“That is incorrect,” replied the knocker.
Dean scowled.
“Eyes,” Castiel kept repeating to himself. “Eyes… potatoes have eyes, but can’t see... But they have multiple eyes.”
“What the hell?” Dean’s eyebrows went up. He could barely think of that first dumb answer, and Castiel was already thinking about eyes on a potato?
Castiel snapped his fingers and looked to the door knocker, “A needle!”
… what?
But that was obviously what the door had been looking for, as it swung open without any resistance whatsoever. Dean couldn’t even imagine having been put in Ravenclaw now--not that he’d thought he would ever end up there, but knowing that that’s how they got into their common room? Dean was pretty sure he’d just end up spending every night in the hallway.
“Come on,” Castiel urged him forward. When Dean refused to move, Castiel reached down and grabbed his hand, pulling him inside.
The Ravenclaw common room was everything Dean’s wasn’t. Burrowed into the earth, warm and homey, Hufflepuff’s common room was not unlike how Dean imagined a Hobbit hole might be. Ravenclaw’s common room was round, done up in white marble and airy blues. Bookcases lined the walls, a library that rivaled Hogwarts’ own. The high vaulted ceilings reflected the celestial bodies in the night sky, and when Dean caught a glimpse out of the nearest window, he could see how truly small everything looked from so far up.
“This is crazy,” Dean breathed.
“I know,” Castiel agreed. “I couldn’t even sleep the first night I was here.”
Still hanging onto Dean’s hand, Castiel tugged him along, up a staircase (how could they get any higher?) until they reached Castiel’s dorm room.
Where Dean’s dorm room was all big quilts and copper light on yellow walls, Castiel’s was blue and draped in silk, filled with crisp air. It smelled clean, maybe even how Dean would expect it to smell inside a cloud.
Castiel’s roommates, Chuck and Ash, had yet to return to their dorm, so when Castiel invited Dean to lie on his bed with him, it didn’t feel so strange to accept. Out of his trunk, Castiel pulls a stack of comic books.
“I know Batman is your favorite,” said Castiel. “But my sister has an extensive collection of wizard comic books. I don’t really read them, but when I do I like Salem Mysteries. It’s about a twelve-year-old witch who solves murder mysteries in Salem.”
“No way!” Dean grabbed the comic from Castiel’s hand. He’d never seen a wizard comic before. Dad never let him have any, and it wasn’t as though Dean could find them on his own. They didn’t live anywhere near a wizarding community. At least, they hadn’t since mom died. Dad always said it was no use for them to live near wizards if he himself wasn’t a wizard; Dean always thought maybe it was because dad didn’t want to be reminded of mom after she was gone.
And still he found himself wondering if his dad or mom had ever read Salem Mysteries when they were kids.
The characters moved--they friggin’ moved--as Dean’s eyes tracked back and forth across the page. He was completely entranced. He forgot everything from today, from the last few weeks, and allowed himself to sink into the story.
“Anna said you can borrow them,” said Castiel, pulling Dean back into reality. Castiel settled in against him while he was reading, deciding he would read too. Except Castiel was reading a book, with words and everything, and not even one of their schoolbooks.
Dean shifted so he was on his side, facing Castiel.
“What are you reading?” he asked. Castiel turned too, and suddenly Dean felt his stomach get tight.
This was dangerous. Dean knew he had some weird feelings about boys that he wasn’t supposed to have--the same kinds of feelings he got when he saw Cassie Robinson, or Lisa Braeden.
And there Castiel was, mirroring Dean’s movements, looking just as happy about their situation as Dean was. It was good that they were alone still; Dean didn’t know that he would have had the guts to be so close to another boy if there were other people around.
Even if those other people were only Chuck and Ash.
“I’ve been making my way through a muggle fantasy series, actually,” Castiel finally said, his eyes not leaving Dean’s. “It’s called Lord of the Rings.”
“Dude!” Dean shot up then, startling Castiel.
“You’ve heard of it?” Castiel cocked his head.
“No duh!” Dean flailed, the arms of his sweater pulling tight. Insistently he tore out of his confines and checked the front of Castiel’s book.
“Oh, man,” he said. “Okay, as soon as you’re done reading them, we have to watch the movies.”
Then he realized, “We can’t watch movies here.”
Castiel squinted back at him and Dean sighed.
No matter how many times Dean explained movies over the following five minutes, Castiel still didn’t get it.
“But no two people read a book exactly alike,” said Castiel. “I don’t want someone else’s way of seeing the story, I want mine.”
It was Dean’s turn to frown, and so Castiel sat up with him, until they were sitting knee cap against kneecap.
“If you close your eyes and I tell you to picture a chair, the chair you picture will likely be different from the chair I picture,” Castiel explained. “They’re both chairs, both serve the same purpose, but they’re different because we’re different. It’s the same with stories.”
Dean didn’t know what he was supposed to say. He had never met anyone who put so much thought into something that didn’t matter. Books and stories were interesting and everything, but Dean wasn’t sure that they required such fastidious and careful consumption.
Though, if there was anyone out there who heard his silent plea for a change of subject, they were unnecessarily cruel in abiding.
“What happened to your arms?”
Dean looked down, then folded his arms close in against him.
“Nothing,” he supplied quickly, though he knew Castiel wasn’t dumb enough to buy that. “They’re just… they’re not anything, okay?”
“Okay,” Castiel frowned. “They look like they hurt, though.”
As though listening, each and every bruise throbbed.
“We could go see Miss Moseley up in the Hospital Wing tomorrow before class,” Castiel offered, but Dean quickly shot him down. He didn’t want to go get them healed, for god’s sake. Then Miss Moseley would ask how he got them and she would not let him brush it off like Castiel did.
“No, it’s fine,” Dean swallowed. “They don’t hurt too bad anymore.”
Though Castiel didn’t seem to believe this one bit, he nodded.
“Can I hug you again?” he asked.
It was too sweet a request for Dean to deny, and soon he ended up back flat on Castiel’s bed, with Castiel’s arms closed firmly around him. This was definitely inappropriate.
Dean should have said something, at the very least so Castiel didn’t think everyone hugged like this. He really ought to have told Castiel that hugging someone like this wasn’t really hugging, but was in fact cuddling, and cuddling had implications.
Romantical-type implications.
“I’m sorry you got hurt, Dean,” Castiel muttered, his voice sounding not too far from sleep.
“Ain’t your fault,” Dean shrugged. With Castiel’s head pillowed against his chest, his arms holding onto him like he was an oversized teddy bear, everything in Dean’s conditioning warned him to get up and run.
But it was the safest he could ever remember feeling.
So he stayed.