Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?
Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?
Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,
But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

D.H. Lawrence

They’re one month into sixth year when Akira wakes up with a snake on his chest.

Hogwarts had been going downhill for a solid while now, so he can’t say he’s too dumbfounded by the revelation. They’d had a penchant for unfortunate sudden deaths since the midway point of fourth year. It had started small—just one at first, followed by three casualties in the year that followed. Truly, their numbers were dwindling.

All of them had died under mysterious circumstances. First went the Arithmancy teacher, gutted and trampled in the Forbidden Forest. The Kishimoto twins were next, beaten to death by the Weeping Willow. Finally, Yamada the third year Ravenclaw Keeper, hanged from the centre Quidditch goal post outside. And those were just the on-campus deaths. Plenty more were found bloated and rotting just outside of school grounds. Others kicked the bucket during the summer holidays, their faces strangely absent from the hordes of pupils segregating around the castle the following year.

Still, though. The snake is new. A cobra, if his limited amount of snake trivia is anything to go by.

It’s not like Akira is scared of snakes. He isn’t an animal lover by any stretch of the imagination, but he has always been persuasive: he finds it easy to read a dog’s body language and respond accordingly, knows when the crows in his neighbourhood like to be fed and what they’ll gift him in return. As it turned out, this ability wasn’t limited to non-verbal communication—he first became cognizant of his Parseltongue ability at Ueno Zoo age eight, when he’d walked past a python and heard a small, feminine voice tell him he was in a dire need of a haircut. In any case, it was hard to fear something he could weasel his way into an agreement with.

His parents hadn’t believed him. The letter sent to his house three years thereafter proved someone out there did.

“Hello,” Akira whispers to the snake in the quietude of his bedroom, racking his brain for serpent-like things to say.

The snake remains unmoving, leeching the warmth from Akira’s sheets. Akira wonders if his Parseltongue is rusty, or if his accent is decidedly hickish to the point where the cobra has deemed Akira unworthy of its time. Its flat scales are coloured inky-black, hard to distinguish from the murky darkness of the Slytherin dormitory.

“What do you want from me,” he tries again, more persistent. Its eyes bore right through Akira as if hypnotized, tuning him out to focus on something out of sight.

Suddenly: a sharp hissing noise from outside. Akira can hear it through the walls. Whatever else he is about to ask disintegrates in his mouth as the cobra flares out its hood and catapults itself towards Akira’s throat.

Akira manages to narrowly dodge being struck by jerking up the covers to shield himself, tumbling onto the floor in a less-than-graceful fashion. The room is spinning, and all he can hear is the pulse ringing in his ears like rapids through a narrow river. He is distantly aware of his cat Morgana stirring at the foot of his bed, and an unbearable sensation of terror screams at his body to move, move, move, get your wand!—someone to his left mumbles lumos, voice heavy with sleep, and he staggers his way up towards the source—a growl from somewhere behind him, rumbling and baleful; Morgana is awake, can’t let the snake get to Morgana—the putrid smell of stale smoke enters his nostrils and he thinks the stove!—there’s a stick clenched tight in his fist blinding the fuck out of him and someone is roaring, irate: “that’s mine, asshole!”—

“Incendio!” Akira yells, dimming the bloom of light and igniting the tip of the wand into a burst of fire.

Morgana kicks the cobra off the bed as if on cue, sending it sailing through the air in a rounded arc. Incendio’s flames leap up excitedly as if to greet their dinner. They lick at its scales, crackling and dancing, chewing on its head and swallowing it whole. The snake lashes around in a frenzied whip-like movement, its fangs bared in an everlasting threat display.

What remains of it descends onto the carpet in a small pile of ash. Its twisting figure casts smears of red-black-red glow onto Akira’s face like a nauseatingly realistic shadow puppet.

Another lumos spell is cast from somewhere beyond the ring of beds, alighting every oil lamp hanging from the ceiling. Goro Akechi, seventh year and Head Boy and still wearing his cashmere-cotton blend pyjamas, comes trotting towards Akira in a hurry.

“Aguamenti,” he calls out with a swish of his own wand, jolting Akira out of his daze with a spray of water that douses the remainders of the fire. By the time he draws back, Akira’s robe is equally soaked through.

“Um,” says Akira, as Goro checks his body for what Akira assumes to be burn wounds.

“My apologies,” comes the reply, immediate and earnest. The dogwood wand is gently pried from Akira’s still balled-up fist and handed back to Akira’s bed neighbour, who mutters something that sounds an awful lot like a swear.

“Come with me,” Goro says. Then, without waiting for a response, he steers Akira out into the common room, pulling the bedroom door shut behind him. His idle chatter guides Akira forward, almost as if he’s rehearsed this. It's dark in here, watch your step! Careful, careful... Ah, look, here’s a nice velvet chair. Why don’t you take a seat, Akira?

Yes, thinks Akira dully, that sounds like a good idea. He collapses into the chair as soon as he feels his shins brush up against the fabric.

“Thanks,” he manages, just about. His ears are ringing.

“Don't mention it. Are you hurt?” Goro asks.

He's crouched low, as if he's trying to blend in with the ottoman. Akira struggles to redirect his gaze to him, then averts it upon identifying the scrunched-up concern visible on Goro’s face.

Goro Akechi had never struck him as remarkable in any sense of the word. To Akira, he wasn’t much more than a disembodied voice floating sternly from somewhere down the corridors: no running, stop Jinxing the first years, respect the flow of traffic please, and so on. Everyone knew what he sounded like but no one knew what to make of him, despite the impressive number of accolades and titles he bore. He seemed a poor choice for Slytherin, embodying qualities more typical of the other houses: the diligence of Hufflepuff, the wisdom of Ravenclaw, the chivalry of Gryffindor.

And yet here he was, petting Akira’s wrist with his right hand and swaying his wand around in his left, thorough and methodological in his work. A hot-air charm to dry off Akira’s shirt, and a cheering charm to soothe his mood.

“I’m okay,” admits Akira eventually, sounding less shaken than he’d expected. Goro retreats, visibly relieved, and slips his ivory-white wand back up his sleeve. 

The cold draft of the Slytherin dungeon nips at Akira's heels with a vengeance. He wishes the hot-air charm had lasted longer. It's only fair, he muses, distractedly reaching for Goro’s outstretched hand, that I’ll try to behave around the Head Boy from now on—cutting back on needless mischief, less setting off illicit fireworks behind the Quidditch shed with Ryuji, that sort of thing. He could even try scoring some points for his House.

Then Goro inquires, in a very incidental sort of manner, “So who were you talking to in there?”, and Akira wants to sink through the floor.

Rumours rip through breakfast assembly like wildfire the next day, some more truthful in describing the matter than others. Akira flips over in bed, listening to the ambient hustle and bustle of classmates entering and exiting the dormitory. He hasn’t slept and he feels terrible. Morgana purrs away curled in his arms under the duvet, paws hooked around Akira’s hand as if to console him.

When Mishima dispatches an owl begging for an early morning exposé, Akira agrees, only because it’s him. Mishima is a duffer—sometimes an annoying one at that—but he's his duffer. He also amasses an endless amount of intel on practically everyone at Hogwarts, thanks to his work on the school newspaper that Akira’s housemate Ohya bullied him into.

They meet at the top of one of the spires, where it's coldest. Mishima shudders vigorously into his oversized Hufflepuff scarf and sneezes twice. “What happened?”

“Almost died, I’m sure you’ve heard the news. Listen,” Akira says, as Mishima pins him with a plaintive look that screams Ohya will kill me if I don’t bring her more than that, “I have a hunch Goro Akechi might have something to do with the snake.”

“Goro Akechi?!” Mishima squeaks.

Akira claps a hand over Mishima's mouth. “I need you to run some pulpy, low-effort articles until this blows over. Win me some time to investigate.” He rolls his eyes back and stares up at the layered tile roof, thinking. “Someone said this morning that I ripped the cobra apart with my teeth. I think that sounds fake enough for people to lose interest.”

“Wait, you didn’t?” Mishima’s voice is muffled behind Akira’s palm.

Akira smiles at him, hoping the onset of sleep deprivation isn’t making him look as deranged as he feels. “Just keep me updated on anything suspicious. Can you do that for me?”

Mishima bobs his head up and down, expression grave. Akira releases his hand. Old faithful.

“Thank you,” he tells him, and absconds down the stairs.

After morning period, Akira joins his friends for lunch. They eat outside to avoid anyone overhearing them. The picnic tables are dew-covered and cool to the touch, even in the early days of October, but Futaba has modified the Molliare cushioning charm to bring forth literal cushions. They’ve spread them out over the benches before he arrives. Ryuji pats the space to the left of him invitingly, Ann flanking him on the other side.

Everyone has pilfered food, plates and cutlery from the dining hall, digging into turkey legs and fruit. Yusuke has both his hands full: one holding a bowl of pumpkin soup, the other a baguette, both of which he sips and nibbles alternating amounts from. It doesn’t stop him from casting sidelong glances into the castle window, rubbernecking to watch the juice pitcher on the Slytherin table refill itself.

He looks downright mournful. Akira flicks a pea at him.

“I think it’s fucked up,” Ryuji is saying. The spat him and Ann were in the toil of last week seems to have dissipated into something more agreeable, which is good, because Ann is downright terrifying when enraged. She’s slicking back his venomously yellow hair as he talks, slipping several of her bobby pins into it. His now-bigger-than-usual forehead makes him look younger, as if he’s about to have his middle school yearbook photo taken. “A snake attacked you in your sleep, and now what!? Igor’s actin’ like nothin’ ever happened!”

“Well,” says Akira.

Igor seemed to follow a certain tradition set by previous Headmasters: demand a lot, say very little. Akira had been summoned to his office plenty of times—littered with mysterious artefacts, cramped and overwhelmingly blue in colour—but wasn’t sure what he’d gained from it. Perhaps their Headmaster was experimenting with an obscure, throw-them-in-the-deep-end teaching method of his own making. He imagines Igor speaking riddles in his slow, articulate voice, the spitting image of an old mantis hunched over his desk.

Akira follows himself up with a neutral-sounding “Yeah, I guess he isn’t”, because he can't exactly defend the negligence of Hogwarts having a yearly death toll.

Ryuji explodes. “This school’s gone to shit,” he growls, kicking his feet moodily under the table and accidentally striking Futaba on the knee, who lunges at him.

“I agree with Ryuji, Akira. You’re in danger,” says Makoto from the opposite side of the table, straining to be heard over the screaming. “When are we going to visit the Room of Requirement?”

They’d discovered the Room of Requirement in fourth year, around the same time of the first murder. Rather, it was more apt to say Akira had been led there after Igor’s phoenix Lavenza woke up him up at three in the morning by almost pecking his eye out. They’d made use of it intensively the past two years for a vast array of reasons: spell practice, duelling tournaments, study sessions, mess hall when it got too cold outside. Ryuji had christened them the Thieves, making them sound like a real ragtag gang of misfits, despite them never having stolen anything except canteen food. Akira hadn’t felt the need to call a meeting yet this year, but he supposes an assassination attempt would prompt that sort of thing normally.

“Soon,” he says, trying not to sound overly cheerless about it. Makoto studies him, quizzical, before going back to arranging her double-decker bus of a sandwich.

“Anyway, we’re all so glad you’re safe,” Ann gushes from next to Ryuji, reaching behind her on-and-off boyfriend to clasp Akira’s hands in hers. She’s wearing her robes tied around her waist today, despite the bitter chill. He wonders if quarter-Veela girls like her were more resistant to the cold, or whether she simply found her appearance in the robes unappealing. “Do you want to talk about it? I mean, getting woken up by a snake on your chest sounds pretty scary.”

Akira puts his fork down, swallowing. He thinks about lying—ducking out from under the six worried pairs of eyes staring at him—but doesn’t.

“It was scary. The worst part was that it wouldn’t listen to me.” He scratches his nose. “I wasn’t mispronouncing anything, I just… wasn’t reaching it. If Morgana hadn’t kept it occupied long enough for me to grab a wand, I would’ve been a goner.”

“This again?” retorts Futaba from the far end of the table, waving her spoon around with some curry still left on it. Yusuke’s expression contorts into something foul as he’s hit by a rogue droplet. “Why do you keep talking about Mona like he's human? He probably twitched in his sleep and kicked the snake your way with his jacked-up hind paws.”

“Sure,” says Akira conspiratorially. And then, because he can feel the conversation about to fizzle out in favour of stuffing face, “also, I think Goro Akechi might have understood my Parseltongue.”

Everyone is quiet for a moment before all hell breaks loose.

“He mind-controlled the cobra!” Ryuji bellows, just as Yusuke emphatically exclaims “That’s impossible.” Ann looks shell-shocked while Futaba frowns, leaning over to whisper something into Makoto’s ear—what’s Parseltongue? “It’s snake language,” Makoto tells her, to which she replies Oh, of course that’s a thing.

“Isn’t that suspicious?” Haru pipes up.

All of them simultaneously turn their heads to look at her. She continues, quietly chuffed with the enraptured audience. “If you’re the only known Parselmouth at Hogwarts and you think he understood you, then that rules out all other suspects, doesn’t it? He was trying to kill you.”

“Huh,” Akira says, and is pleasantly surprised with the knife-twist of excitement in his gut that follows.

Makoto seems to recognize the look on his face as her cue to step in, leaning over the table and gripping his shoulders. Ryuji yelps, dropping his chicken drumstick in the grass. She digs her fingernails into Akira’s robes so vehemently he can feel it hurting through several layers of fabric.

“Akira,” she warns, in the same low, reproachful timbre she always uses when he’s about to do something stupid. She does her best to keep him safe, but it doesn’t stop him from identifying with children who reach for scorching hot surfaces even after their parents have confined them to a playpen. “Just because you are a Parselmouth and Goro is a snake does not mean you have to talk to him.”

“Au contraire,” says Akira, which is French for that’s exactly what it means.

Three weeks later he finds Goro smack dab in the middle of the dining hall, playing Wizard’s Chess by himself. There are other people dotted around the area—Akira counts at least two other chess players—but everyone seems to have left a wide berth around him in favour of sitting crammed up against the walls.

Goro is concentrating deeply when Akira approaches, rubbing his chin as he purveys the board. There are only a few pieces left in the game. Akira assumes he is about to win, judging by how the black pieces skitter across the squares to avoid his queen.

“Hi,” says Akira.

It takes Goro a few seconds to heave his head, and another couple more to recognise him. His face breaks out into a big smile.

Don’t do that, thinks Akira hysterically.

“Hello Akira,” Goro replies warmly, chess set abandoned. He lifts a long leg up and over the bench, swivelling around so he can get a proper look at Akira. “You’re looking better. Have you been sleeping well?”

“Yes.” It’s a bold-faced lie.

“That’s good. I was wondering whether to advise you on a visit to the infirmary—I imagine Professor Takemi would have something for burns or snake bites if necessary—but it seems my charms did the trick, then. Did you need something from me?”

“Chess,” utters Akira. He feels like a caveman. “Can I join?”

“I’d be more than happy to play with you. Let me wrap this game up,” Goro says. A snap of his fingers sends all the pieces scrambling to reaffirm their original positions.

Unlike other chess sets Akira has played with, Goro’s pieces don’t move smoothly in single-file lines. Instead they dive criss-cross through one another to reach the other side, clawing at their fellow pieces like they’re stuck in a spectacularly violent Black Friday sale. Akira observes one of the black knights target a bishop struggling to cram itself through the pile-up of pawns. It steels itself then charges straight ahead, gutting the bishop square in the chest. The bishop fractures into a million tiny pieces that scatter across the table beyond the checkered surface.

Goro picks up one of the shards and dangles it in front what's left of the bishop, who snatches it back with a bewildering amount of resentment. The white queen yawns theatrically from her side of the board. Goro smiles down at her, a sweet thing.

“I’ve never seen this type of set before,” Akira says, plopping down onto the bench opposite. It’s ambiguous as to whether he says so as a statement of awe, or as a means of distancing himself from the Armageddon unfolding between them.

“It’s vintage,” Goro beams, undeterred by Akira’s scepticism. “It belonged to my father.”

“A kind and well-adjusted man, no doubt.”

“Why don’t you help yourself to some fruit,” Goro says serenely. “It might take a bit of time for them to regroup.”

With nothing else to do, Akira slides his arm out to the left and reaches into the ceramic bowl beside him, retrieving a plump-looking grape and popping it in his mouth. Goro is cradling his chin in the palm of his hand, fixated on the chessboard. They sit by as the black king tries to get the rogue knight to settle and is promptly decapitated. The knight is subsequently swarmed by the black pawns for the treason, until it and its horse are nothing more than a spear in a writhing black mass.

Akira goes for a cherry this time, rolling the pit around behind his teeth. “Hey, why are the black ones fighting among themselves?”

His housemate gives him a curious look. “They’re relieving tensions for underperforming in the last round, I suppose. It’s how the enchantment works—they’re spelled to hate losing.”

“What’s the point of that?” Akira asks, narrowly dodging a miniature sword that goes whistling past his ear.

Goro smiles as though he’s just said something funny. “It pressures the player to think more carefully. You don’t want to play with pieces that despise you.”

“Oh,” says Akira, aiming for non-committal.

Every bone in his body is telling him to get up and leave. Unfortunately for them, though, Akira is a notoriously bad listener.

“Are you playing white again?” he asks instead.

“Please, be my guest. First-move advantage and all,” says Goro, and spins the board fast enough for the pieces to topple.

Akira liked chess well enough up until the end of third year, when Hifumi broke up with him by driving his face into the dirt with the most brutal chess match he’s ever played. So maybe he’s a little out of practice. Maybe his grasp on basic theory isn’t as solid as it had once been.

Goro eases up on him after the third turn, an unfortunate witness to his experimental fumbling. Akira tries not to get offended.

Using Goro’s highly temperamental, grudge-bearing chess set turns out to be ten times more nerve-wracking than regular Wizard’s Chess. Goro spends the first few turns waltzing circles around him, nothing particularly offensive, so Akira decides he’ll take the lead. He orders one of his pawns to B5 and realizes he’s done something wrong when he spots it fold its arms a little tighter. It shudders into action anyway as if to prove a point, inching just the slightest bit beyond its square border. Goro’s knight hops one-two and viciously impales it.

You don’t want to play with pieces that despise you, he remembers, and whispers a barely audible ‘sorry’ that makes Goro laugh.

Goro’s playing style is less aggressive than Hifumi’s, more tactical. He takes longer to think and allows Akira more wiggle room to get away from his ambushes, though the squares of respite Akira escapes to mostly turn out to be traps. They don’t talk much—when they do the conversation is light, airy. Are you heading home for the holidays, Akira? Probably not. I don’t think my parents care either way. Ah, my apologies. Perhaps we could take a trip to Hogsmaede together then. And so on and so forth.

Akira’s moves turn more wildcard as the game progresses and Hifumi’s teachings come back to him, muscle memory of countering and blocking. Goro is vocal in his appraisal of Akira’s strategies, more so in sounds than words. He hums when Akira commands one of his bishops forward, contemplative, then inhales sharply as it cuts across the board and hacks Goro’s knight clean in two.

“Very interesting,” says Goro, and his black queen trembles to life.

Goro is a different creature playing with the queen. Akira’s pieces seem to pick up on the atmosphere shift as well, becoming finicky and nervous. He spends half his time being chased and the other half lashing out at the shadows tailing him. He manages to clear Goro’s army of the last of his pawns, though he loses his rook to Goro’s second knight shortly after. The white queen sacrifices herself for the sake of cancelling out a checkmate. Then there’s only two white pieces left, Akira’s king cowering behind his remaining bishop. On Goro’s side: the black king, queen, a rook and a solitary knight.

“D4,” Akira says, in Parseltongue. He’s made sure to pick a square name that doesn’t contain any s’es, in case they get drawn out.

Nothing happens.

“You might have to address the piece,” Goro says reasonably.

Akira’s heart skips a beat. “King to D4,” he says, again in Parseltongue, to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. After all, anyone could mistake a short hiss for a specific letter and number. It was an entirely normal thing to mess up.

The pieces remain still. The white king turns its head slightly towards Akira, as if perplexed. The bishop’s grip tightens on its spear.

“King to D4.”

Nothing. Goro, rather than asking Akira why he is making hissing noises at the board, drums his fingers on the table. Akira is about to repeat himself a third time when Goro reaches out to Akira’s king and manoeuvres it forward by hand, a little brusquely.

The move seems to disillusion him. He leans back and peers at Akira through long lashes as though he is re-evaluating Akira’s worth as good company. Akira is near overcome by guilt about throwing away the game until he recalls why he sought Goro out in the first place.

“Maybe my pieces don’t trust me to make the right choice,” Akira says, trying for a disarming sense of self-deprecation.

“Maybe,” Goro agrees softly.

The rest of the game hardly takes any effort at all: the rook is very close to taking him out. Goro follows Akira’s king across the board for a while, seeming distracted, before Akira’s bishop swallows up Goro’s rook and Goro’s queen pins Akira’s king in between her and his knight. It quivers and glowers up at Akira, immobilized by fear.

“Checkmate,” announces Goro, just as Akira thinks the same.

It isn’t exactly kosher, wanting to get to know a boy who is undoubtedly trying to put an end to your life, but. But.

‘Thrill of the hunt’ was a saying for a reason. He just never pictured himself being the prey.

Akira makes a game out of tallying his sightings, tracking him down obsessively. Makoto is quick to catch on to him, rolling her eyes as he slips past her into her classroom and immediately starts scanning for clues.

“You shouldn’t even be here,” she hisses at him, unceremoniously dumping her books on the desk with a deafening thump. “This class is for final years!”

“Tae'll let me sit in. She turned my hand green last week,” Akira says, rolling his fingers in an aborted little half-wave and showing off his spinach-coloured fingernails. Makoto, savvy to Takemi’s medical experimentation on Akira, makes a noise that lodges at the back of her throat. “I can do whatever I want.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” she sighs, but says nothing more on the matter.

He fills the seat next to Goro in Potions class, slotting in neatly between him and some Hufflepuff girl he recognises as having tried and (publicly!) failed to win Goro’s affection in fifth year. He looks taken aback to see Akira, as if the latter only conveniently sprung into existence for Goro to play chess with. That, or he couldn’t imagine Akira actively taking part in the classes a fine educational institution such as Hogwarts has to offer.

Akira might be a slacker, but he is hardly a delinquent. He only skips on Tuesdays.

“You’re having trouble,” says Goro towards the end of the lesson, muted over the dissonant screeching of chairs being pushed back and a cacophony of students discussing lunch options.

“Frequently,” says Akira. “What do you mean, though?”

Goro taps Akira’s notebook, spread open and left untouched throughout the entire hour. Akira blinks. Evidently he’d had better things to think about than the dangers of overdosing on Occamy eggshell.

His embarrassment appears to remind Goro of something. With a 'hold on' and nod of his head, he procures a thick stack of parchments from his satchel, held together by a single enchanted paperclip. The paperclip is undone and removed from top layer, the stack handed over to Akira.

PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF POTIONS IN HEALTHCARE sem. 1 2021, reads the top of the first page. Goro’s handwriting spans the entirety of the page, tight and slanted. The loops of his l’s and y’s stare back at Akira like eyes. There are formulas scribbled out in the margins, freestyled ideas and adjustments.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you—I had trouble with the chapter on adverse health effects as well,” Goro adds, scrambling to rectify his perceived discourtesy. Akira hadn’t said anything. “You’re taking this class for extra credit, aren’t you? I already summarized this semester’s textbook, and I won’t be studying those until I get History of Magic out of the way, so. They’re yours to keep for now.”

He looks almost sheepish, as if he’d presented Akira with a bouquet instead of a dog-eared pile of notes. Akira presses them to his chest, privately knowing he’ll never give them a second glance. The gesture is kind enough, though. “Thanks.”

“You’re very welcome,” says Goro, slipping back into rehearsed sobriety with ease.

They bump into each other constantly. Some of their run-ins aren’t even a result of Akira’s meddling.

Akira joins Goro not only for Potions, but also Defence Against the Dark Arts (after doing Professor Iwai a favour, which involved advising him on which video game console to get for his squib son’s birthday). He’d built up an image of Goro in his head, perhaps unfairly, of someone who would flounder at DADA. It was not the most popular class among Slytherins, especially given the Gryffindors were constantly proffering them for target practice. The snake-in-bed debacle certainly didn’t help either.

His thoughts are dashed when Goro flicks his wand and sends a Boggart hurtling back into the closet before it even gets a chance to form. He stands up straight and self-assured in this class, angelic in his crisp white shirt. The other Slytherin boys cower huddled in the background. They're never happy with him.

Akira understands Goro is exaggerating, trying to teach them a lesson. He hadn’t expected him to look so good doing it.

“He’s a know-it-all,” Makoto tells him waspishly, later when they’re in the library. She injects an impressive amount of venom into her voice for someone who is also clearly trying to abide by the imposed volume limit. They’re pouring over Divination texts in preparation for mock finals next month, which would have been nice if it weren't a complete waste of effort on Makoto’s part. “Don’t fall for it, Akira. He’s trying to manipulate you.”

“Mm-hm,” says Akira.

Goro is spying on him (and doing an abysmal job pretending he’s not). Akira spots him sitting three tables away, erratically peeking over the desk dividers. His hair is curled in wisps around his chin as if he’s slept on it wrong, framing his face like a portrait.

Makoto growls as Akira grabs his belongings to join him.

So it goes. They become acquaintances, if not good friends.

One day towards the end of November, Akira collides into Goro while walking through one of the bridgeways that threads together two sections of the castle. The entire Quidditch team hovers some steps behind him, all of them tired and dishevelled like they’d just been put through a good bout of practice. Goro is in full gear, a thick malachite green robe pulled taut with a drawstring that snakes up his chest. Tough leather arm guards clasped up to his elbows give a wooden appearance to his typically smooth body language, Pinocchio-esque in the way he steadies Akira.

“We’re hitting the showers,” says a Slytherin from behind Goro, leading a line of them down the bridge like the pied piper. “Enjoy chatting up your boyfriend, Akechi.”

Coming from anyone else, it could have been playful. A jab at Goro’s excessively cordial nature, or how he’d been approached by girls of various houses asking why he’d been spending so much time with Akira lately. As it is, it comes across as a clunky insult from a teenage coming-of-age movie, something whispered harshly in the bowels of the boys locker room. Akira spares them a glance at they pass, not missing how the others jostle the pack leader around. They all seem to be in good spirits, a stark contrast from how morose they were before.

Akira turns his attention back to Goro, who appears unaffected by the exchange. His fringe sticks in thick streaks to his forehead, slick with sweat. It’s not altogether unattractive. They’re the same height, but the sleek-looking broomstick Goro is holding gives the impression that he towers over Akira, stacking an additional three or four inches onto his silhouette.

“You play Quidditch?“ Akira asks, and cringes internally. No shit, Sherlock—and besides, of course Goro plays Quidditch! Even a total outsider to the sport knew that he’d been won most games in Slytherin’s favour, a detail Ryuji never stopped complaining about.

All I’m sayin’ is that the system needs a revamp, he’d told Akira, while the latter sat crouched on the ground by the bleachers prodding a very pregnant ant hill with a stick. 150 points just for catching the Snitch? It’s crazy! It’s rigged! And I’m so goddamn sick of that Akechi guy blue-ballsing us out of a proper game, every-fuckin’-time!

Goro the Seeker. Goro the team captain.

If Goro is at all offended by Akira’s severe lack of knowledge, he doesn’t let it show. One corner of his mouth is quipped up in the slightest of smiles. “Oh, only for the entirety of my academic career so far,” he teases, and it’s still too saccharine sweet around the edges. But there’s a little more bite to him than there had been in October—a little more personality—that Akira finds moreish.

“Glory hound,” Akira tells him, just to test the waters.

Goro’s eyebrows furrow.

They stand there for a moment, each sizing each other up, when then the tension suddenly vanishes. Goro is beaming at Akira as usual. Akira feels like he has just been struck by a speeding vehicle with the whiplash of it.

“If you want to see me play,” Goro says, having already taken two steps past Akira in a show of catching up to his teammates, “you’re always welcome to come and cheer me on.”

Akira watches him go, jogging lightly until he reaches the inside of the castle and disappears around a corner.

“I think I like him,” Akira mumbles into Morgana’s fur that same evening. His cat pulls a truly impressive grimace, pointedly gets up, and struts out of the dormitory.

Christmas surprises everyone in how fast it creeps up on them that year. There is a whirlwind of activity among the Thieves when exam results are released—Makoto scores top of her house, while Akira scrapes by with mostly passes. Not all of them are happy with the outcome, but the blow is softened, as always, by the promise of Christmas holidays it brings.

“Sojiro got bullied into volunteering as Santa at one of the local schools,” Futaba is cackling. She’s wearing a long red hat adorned with a fluffy white pompom on the end of it. It delights Haru, as she has only the vaguest notion of what Muggle Christmas entails. “God, I wish I had my phone so I could show you guys. He’s like, the skinniest Santa ever. He looks like The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

“You’re a nightmare before Christmas,” says Yusuke placidly, who averages a joke a minute around Futaba and flatlines once she’s out of reach. His suitcase is comically huge, no doubt filled to the brim with magical inks and other wizardly art supplies.

Yusuke had no real family to go home to during the holidays, having been whisked away by Igor at the age of twelve from a Dark wizard who had apparently been profiteering off his artistic abilities. Second-year Futaba had found him gazing up at one of the plein-air paintings on the fifth floor, Stillness of Winter, cocking his head just so at the snowflakes meandering down against the lavender grey sky.

You could just leave the castle, you know, she’d mumbled, scuffing the floor with her shoes. There's a perfectly good sky out there too.

Yusuke had regarded her levelly as if it was the first time he’d heard her say something worth considering.

Yes, I suppose there is, he’d answered.

They’d headed to Sojiro’s house together ever since, spending Christmas there as well as the long summer months. A bi-annual tradition. But Yusuke wasn’t the only one playing make-believe; one way or another, the Thieves had all drawn the short end of the conventional parenting stick, drifting to whatever spare relatives or friends they had over the breaks.

Ann is first to leave as she has the furthest to travel, what with her parents being stationed out all the way in Scandinavia. She promises to bring them back something called salmiakki, to which Ryuji lets out an indignant ‘hell no!’. He disappears next, returning to his witch mother who lives by the coast. They’d fled her abusive husband together, and Akira knows Ryuji has always felt bad about ‘abandoning’ her for Hogwarts—Ryuji’s own words. The hardest part about leavin’ school is knowin’ I gotta come back, he’d confided once, his raspy voice stirring up something fierce inside Akira.

Then go Yusuke and Futaba. In the end, Haru and Makoto are the only ones left. This is not a bad thing. In fact, Akira has been anticipating some alone time with Haru, gentle and quiet and wholly disapproving of his shenanigans as she is.

She smiles apologetically at him when he brings it up, pawing at his hand and scooping it up between hers. “I’m sorry, Akira, but I’ll be celebrating Christmas with Makoto and her sister this year. I’ll be sure to dedicate some evenings to you when I get back, if you’d like?”

“Looks like it’s just you and me,” he tells Morgana later, completely and utterly devoid of any other company in the Slytherin dormitory. Morgana jumps off his lap in a flurry of fur, settling in front of the stove like a loaf of bread waiting to be baked.

The monotony of Christmas break alone doesn’t last long. It hasn’t even been three days when Mishima’s pygmy owl comes careening into view where Akira is sitting on one of the crumbled-to-bits ledges near the Great Lake outside, having just depleted his pyramid of skipping stones. Akira grabs the owl by the scruff before it can go skidding across the water, prying the envelope from its tiny talons and earning a rough nip in return. He shakes his hand free of the bird, turning his back on it pettishly so he can read the letter in peace.

Hey best friend, (Oh brother, thinks Akira.)

How have you been holding up? Christmas is much the same as it is every year here. My mum still doesn’t quite get magic, and she was horrified to hear about all the deaths that have been happening at Hogwarts. I was like, mum, that’s just what it is nowadays. It isn’t Hogwarts if somebody isn’t brutally murdered once a fortnight! Obviously joking, but she didn’t take it too well. 

Speaking of which: there’s been a murder here too! I don’t know if it has anything to do with the ones at Hogwarts, but our next-door neighbour just died in his sleep. Poisoned, they think. They found traces of something in his room, something black and sticky, but none of the coppers here can make heads nor tails of it. He was a wizard. Of course, no one knew except me, and I only found out after I was practicing Wingardium Leviosa in my garden and he chewed me out for it. He was nice otherwise, your average old guy. I’m really sad he died the way he did. We have to catch whoever did this!

How are things on your end? Any news on Goro? I don’t think he ever goes home, not even during the summer. Him and Igor might have some kind of arrangement. Probably asks for extra assignments to do while everyone else is having fun outside, the sick freak. Anyway, please write back soon! 

Love Deuces,

Mishima

Akira traces the fold in the paper, thoughts ricocheting noisily around the cramped space inside his mind reserved solely for Goro Akechi.

In the end, Goro finds him first. “About that trip to Hogsmaede,” he says, rounding the corner on Akira as he’s about to go help the house elves prepare dinner for lack of something better to do.

“Uh,” says Akira sagely, which is how he finds himself wandering down the High Street side by side with Goro.

Hogsmaede is buzzing. The path is already buckling under the stampede of leftover students when they arrive, and it only seems to only grow exponentially from then on. They track icy sludge in and out of the shops, making the floors slippery.

Goro and Akira try to make the best of it, darting into establishments and ducking out again when the crush of people gets too much. They pop into Dogweed and Deathcap, if only because it seems the most desolate, but the smell of thyme wafting in and out through the ever-revolving door piques interest from passerbys and it’s not long before they leave. Tomes and Scrolls is next, where Goro lingers for nearly an hour. Then Spiritwitches Sporting Needs.

Akira digs up the last of his Galleons to buy Goro a new pair of Quidditch arm guards, black and intimidating. They advertise themselves as being made of Hungarian Horntail hide, more pliable than the run-of-the-mill brown ones he’d been wearing before. Goro gasps when Akira presents them to him outside, turning them over in his hands and admiring the craftsmanship like a gleeful child.

They get about as far as the Three Broomsticks when Goro faces him and says, “Do you want to go somewhere else?”

“Thought you’d never ask,” Akira replies, smiling toothily.

‘Somewhere else’ turns out to be a hill overlooking the Shrieking Shack, which isn’t the most romantic of spots. The snow is fresh, untarnished by the incessant stomping of first-year feet. Akira dives head-first into it without thinking. It evokes a peal of laughter from Goro behind him, who is shrugging off his winter cloak after the intensive pilgrimage it took to reach their destination. He blends in with the snow in his white school shirt, like an Arctic hare.

Akira wants to kiss him. So he does.

He’s done this sort of thing with girls before, so it’s not like he’s totally inexperienced. Still: it's not the most graceful of come-ons. Goro teeters trying to remain standing before succumbing to the weight of him, toppling over in the snow. Their teeth clack together as Akira moves his mouth against his, discordant, and Goro submits to Akira’s whims with a compliance that isn’t his. Akira feels his face redden.

Did I misread the situation?, he screams internally, making himself feverish with the guilt of it.

“Don’t stop,” sighs Goro from somewhere beneath him, and Akira’s mind jumps into overdrive.

They spend some time making out, shifting around in the snow, until Akira senses with a start the cold that has started to seep its way bone-deep into his skin. Goro peers up at him, maddeningly beautiful through half-lidded eyes. Calm and collected. As though the soaked-through state of his clothes isn’t making his entire body vibrate.

Akira brackets his legs tighter against him, pinning him in place as he undoes the buttons of Goro's shirt. It seems to bring Goro back to Earth, though it doesn’t elicit the response Akira was hoping for.

“What are you doing,” he snaps at Akira, irritable. He bucks his hips in an attempt to get Akira off.

Akira pushes down the wave of arousal that washes over him and continues, nudging Goro’s collar open. He is as pale as the cotton it’s made of.

“Shirt transplant,” Akira tells him, shucking off Goro’s shirt past the shoulder. He’s really giving Akira hell now, urgently kicking out behind them and blasting clumps of snow into the evening air. “I don’t care how magical you are, you’re going to catch pneumonia like this. I wear your shirt and you wear mine, at least until we get back to the dungeon.”

He hooks his thumb under Goro’s sleeve, moves it down incrementally. Stops.

There is an enormous tattoo of a snake covering the face of Goro’s left forearm, perpetually in motion. It twists lazily through the bare-toothed grin of a human skull, looping in on itself in a figure-eight.

“Stupefy!” yells Goro, infuriated and wandless.

When Akira comes to, he is nowhere to be seen.

“Oh no,” is the first thing Maruki says when Akira tells him about the mysterious tattoo coiling around Goro Akechi’s arm. And then: “That’s not good.” Ever the reassuring presence of a competent adult.

Maruki is their Groundskeeper, Muggle-born like Akira is. No one knows where he cropped up from or why Igor chose him to fill the position of all people, since he refuses to ever step foot into the Forbidden Forest. Rumours speak of Maruki being a former counsellor at a regular school, helping students with regular issues such as relationship drama and severe mental health decline. Apparently he’d unconsciously used his innate magical ability to fix their problems, rather than doing what his degree had trained him for. Igor had him fired for the misconduct, and now here they were. Privately, Akira presumes Maruki’s tendency to fail at every single job handed to him is just as inherent as his magic.

A bowl of snacks sits on the table. Akira helps himself to a few and then some, stashing them away in his pockets for later. Maruki looks like there are thoughts stewing in his head; never a promising sign.

I should just tell him to drop it. It could have been a poorly chosen statement piece, or a marker drawing. Akira wonders if the wizarding world has caught on to the fake tattoo industry yet.

There’s real, genuine concern in Maruki’s voice when he asks, “Are you sure it was a Dark Mark?”

Akira, feeling exposed and suddenly remembering why he doesn’t adhere to the sharing-is-caring rule of therapy—certainly not for someone who couldn’t counsel his way out of a paper bag—balks. He points at what looks like a self-made baby sling winding round Maruki’s shoulder and chest, hoping it is good enough to redirect Maruki away from his friend possibly being Satan reincarnate. “I didn’t get a proper look at it. Whatcha got there?”

A suspicious-looking shape squirms violently under the soft cotton. There’s a burping noise from somewhere inside, and a square inch of fabric catches fire. Maruki dabs at it with a wet cloth ready in hand.

“Oh, I knew you’d notice, Akira! You’re so observant.” Akira squints at him. “It’s a hatchling dragon, a Chinese Fireball. One of my new wizard friends sent me an owl last week telling me they’d found it in the woods by their house, possibly abandoned by its mother, and could I take it in?”

He pulls down the edge of the sling, revealing a tiny red snout and two bulging white eyes. Akira recoils in his seat. It’s not even the slightest bit cute.

Maruki carries on, unbothered. “Of course, none of the other Professors were awfully impressed. Munehisa told me I should send it back to where it came from! It’s not like I plan on keeping it forever, that’d be cruel—just long enough for it to get its bearings, and then I’ll see if I can reintroduce it to the wild. I could let it go by the Lake.”

Akira blanches. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to release a dragon on school property.”

Maruki’s eyes widen as he mulls over the nugget of advice. He doesn’t seem to notice the dragon leering at his fingers like they’re a five-course meal. “Ah. You might be right.”

The subject of ravenous baby dragon orphans seems to trigger another one of Maruki’s epiphanies. He grabs a pre-heated bottle of what looks to be liquified meat of some sort, sticks it into the sling, and examines Akira as if he has brought to his attention the most interesting problem in the universe. Which was probably true, considering the rest of the students were probably heckling him about Christmas exam woes.

“You know, I’m not certain Akechi’s particularly close with his parents,” says the Groundskeeper.

You shouldn’t be telling me this, Akira thinks. Then again, it’s not like Maruki was still licensed or operated under the title of therapist. Plus, he was on the hunt for dirt on Goro, and Mishima wasn’t giving him anything.

“What makes you say that?”

Maruki leans back in his chair, rocking the dragon from side to side. “I was a complete mess when I first arrived here. I had no idea about anything magic or Hogwarts-related. My colleagues, kind as they are, simply couldn’t relate. A lot of them had gone to school here, so they knew about the talking paintings and house elves already.” He laughs good-naturedly.

“Anyway, it was my second day and I was on my way to deliver some documents to Igor, when all of a sudden the stairs moved with me still on them, and they led to a totally different passageway.” He makes a frantic sweeping movement with his bottle-free arm, imitating the swinging staircase. Akira smirks at him, amused. “I was so flustered—I was already late in getting there, because Hogwarts is enormous and a poltergeist had accidentally provided me with the wrong directions, and I just figured, if I ask the stairs politely… but nothing seemed to work. That’s when Akechi stepped in.”

Akira raises his eyebrows.

Maruki looks at him, chewing his lip. “I am rambling, aren’t I. Sorry. Long story short, he was on his way to class, but took the time to walk me to Igor’s office. He was a fifth year then, a prefect, but struck me as someone older—someone burdened with a lot of responsibility, maybe. He came round once or twice, just to see if I was getting on okay, and I made the mistake of saying—I said his parents raised him well. He looked sad, like what I was telling him was hard to believe. He never visited me again after that.”

Something about Maruki’s solemn delivery jogs a stray thought loose in Akira’s memory. A too-violent chess set, war tactics scaled down to a game.

“You think his family situation has something to do with him being a Death Eater?” Akira asks.

Maruki shrugs his shoulders, disturbing the baby. A plume of smoke rises out of the sling.

“I don’t know. People stray from the path for many, many reasons. Sometimes it doesn’t take much more than one.”

Goro avoids him after Christmas break. He migrates to another seat across the classroom in Potions, and when Akira asks him what he’s missed in Defense Against the Dark Arts, Goro tells him in an icy, clipped tone he shouldn’t be playing hooky.

“Good riddance,” says Makoto through a mouthful of stew at lunch. She swallows and affixes him with a searching look. “You’re not sad about it, are you?”

“No,” Akira lies.

At night he sits in the safety of his tented covers, hovering a lumos-activated wand over the hastily penned-out remarks in the margins of Goro’s notes.

Haru locates Akira before Akira can locate her the following week after Muggle Studies. He is strolling through the corridors aimlessly with a bag of ‘culturally relevant’ objects bundled up in his arms (they’d had a show-and-tell. Akira had brought a fidget spinner to class, the first time he’d ever been congratulated for doing so) when she catches up with him, curls bouncing with every hop, skip and jump.

He turns to her, eyeing the mulch streaking her honey mustard sweater. She’s holding one of those screaming baby plants. Akira considers himself perfectly decent, if not kind on occasion, but he’d had trouble stifling the urge to smack them upside the table when they’d handled Mandrakes in second year. He’d been glad to drop the class last autumn.

Haru, blissfully ignorant of Akira’s less-than-positive feelings towards Herbology, loops her arm through his and forcibly propels him into an empty clearing. Morgana sticks his nose out of Akira’s satchel, miffed at being jiggled around.

“I strangled a python this morning,” she says conversationally, as soon as they’re out of sight.

It takes the rodent in Akira’s head about three maniacal spins around the hamster wheel to fully grasp what she is telling him. He supposes the detail of attempted murder is important, but all he can manage is: “You strangled a python?”

“Yes,” says Haru brightly, as if it were the normal course of action to do so. “I was asleep when it attacked me, and I couldn’t reach my wand. So I strangled it. I just thought I’d bring it to your attention since we have shared experience now.”

Akira remembers his own run-in with the cobra, which was considerably less badass and more setting an animal on fire and hoping it would do the trick.

“Of course,” he says, rubbing at the nape of his neck.

“How are you and Goro?” she asks, in the same tone one might say when was the last time you cleaned out Mona's litter tray?. They’re walking to the Great Hall now, Akira still bound to her as if she’d superglued them together.

“We’re, um. Not talking as of late.”

“That’s unwise,” she warns, striking a perfect harmony between tolerant and cautionary. “I tried stopping the python too, you know. I didn’t want to kill it, but even when I pushed it off me it came right back. I think it was bewitched.”

Akira shivers. “Seems he’s branching out.”

“It might be a good idea to find out what he’s up to.” She gives him a perfunctory double pat on the arm, having spotted Makoto and Yusuke over his shoulder, who were probably a lot less troublesome and twice as honest. “Or I can always strangle him for you!”

It’s a joke, Akira thinks. It had to be a joke.

March brings with it a welcome change of scenery. The skies are a bright shade of blue, hugging the sullen grey of the castle tightly from both sides. Akira takes Morgana for walks, the former snap of snow crunching underfoot being swapped out for blades of grass rustling busily in the morning breeze. It’s still cold, but pleasantly so.

There is a white dot on the horizon by the rim of the Lake. He concludes it to be Maruki, judging by the fact no other person would get that close.

The blob dips its toes into the surface of water. Akira manages to yank him back just as three mermaids are about to rip his leg off.

“Thanks Akira,” he says cheerily, deaf to the outraged splashing that follows. “Isn’t it nice out today?”

Ann makes plans with him he can’t escape from, because admittedly he hadn’t been spending as much time with her as he should be. He agrees to accompany her to the Quidditch match despite hating Quidditch with a passion. Akira could not see the point of watching little dots zip around a field for what usually lasted at least a few hours, especially when there was more than one ball to keep track of. At least Muggle football was kinder to the chronically distracted.

Ann rounds on him before they enter the stadium, louring at him with her hands on her hips.

“We are here to cheer for Ryuji,” she informs him, very slowly so the message really gets to him, really sinks into his lizard brain. Then she grabs his hand and pulls him into the Gryffindor crowd, a black-green smudge amidst a field of red-gold. He sticks out like a sore thumb, and not everyone is pleased to see him there.

The teams meet in the middle. Goro steps forward to shake the Gryffindor captain’s hand, to any casual observer polite and relaxed, even though Akira bets he is a sore loser. He can spot Ryuji’s exasperation from miles away, glowering at Goro from behind his teammates. Goro doesn’t even recognise him.

The referee releases the balls, and all the players disperse.

It becomes very apparent very quickly that this was not meant as a life-or-death game. There are bald patches scattered around the tribunals, with a few of the spectator towers being entirely cordoned off. Gryffindor scores ten points in the first five minutes, then nothing else much happens. Ryuji flies past them several times, grinning big and bashful at Ann and directing a surprised wave at Akira. Ann lifts her support banner high, obscuring the view of someone behind her. She’d proudly told Akira she’d made it herself before the game. Yusuke might have given her a fighting chance with the graphic design.

Ryuji bludgeons a Slytherin with the heavy-looking ball. Akira feels himself warm up to the sport.

“Woohoo! Yeah, babe! End those fools!” Ann hoots, to which Akira lets out a shaky laugh.

Goro is so fast on his special boy broom Akira can hardly make him out. He flits from one end of the field to the other, sometimes disappearing into the cloud-speckled sky for minutes at a time, only to divebomb back down and graze past an unsuspecting Slytherin audience. His eyes are concealed behind thick tinted goggles, but Akira can tell his jaw is set. Taking a casual practice match too seriously, Akira thinks, tickled. No wonder his team had looked so put out after training, that one time at the bridge.

The Gryffindor Seeker girl is good, but she can’t keep up with him. Not when he’s been doing this for so many years. She mirrors his speed, vying for the same target with a ferociousness typical of their house, all at once a perfect match and yet overeager in her bid to shake him off. They slip and slide around the centre of the field like they’re being sucked into a whirlpool, making everyone dizzy. “Seems like they’re getting close,” says one of the commentators, and cuts himself off.

The girl has taken a tumble. She lands awkwardly, face-planting into the wet grass with her arm bent at an impossible angle. The blood-curdling scream tears through the stadium. As if summoned the entire tribunal Akira is sitting in rises to meet it. They clamber over one another to get a better view, shouting at the medics that dribble in from opposite sides of the field. Only Akira remains seated, a front row spectator to Slytherin’s second victory that year.

Goro is fisting the Golden Snitch so tightly his frame trembles with the exertion of it. He is wearing his new Hungarian Horntail arm guards. He is looking straight at Akira.

Akira enters the Room of Requirement one day, just for a breather. He does not expect to find Goro standing there.

“Do you know what a Patronus is,” he asks Akira.

Akira thinks of something impressive to say. “Heard of it.”

Goro pushes himself off the corner of a desk. It hadn’t been there before, but then again, the Room moulded itself to whatever its inhabitants needed at the time. Akira supposes Goro might have bewitched it into existence just for the dramatic effect of having something to lean on.

“I need you to think of a happy memory,” Goro says, seeming a lot more comfortable in his demandingness than he had been being polite. He sidles up behind Akira almost soundlessly, pulling back one of Akira’s long, black sleeves like Akira had done to him some months before. Akira’s ebony wand peeks out from behind his elbow.

“Happy,” repeats Akira, testing the weight of it in his mouth.

“The happier, the better,” drawls Goro.

He lifts Akira’s wand-bearing arm straight in front of them, pointing at their reflections in the mirror. His other hand comes to rest just above Akira’s hip.

I’m flying, Jack!, Akira wants to say. Goro probably wouldn’t get the reference.

“Let it fill every inch of you, until you can’t bear to think of anything else,” comes the instruction. “Then, enunciating clearly, say expecto patronum.”

“Expecto patronum,” parrots Akira.

“Fantastic,” says Goro sardonically. “Now work on the memory.”

Nothing immediately comes to mind. He tries for receiving his Hogwarts letter, which he supposes is a cliché, because it does absolutely nothing to lighten Goro’s mood when Akira tells him. Then he swishes his wand to the thought of meeting Ryuji in the Entrance Hall for the first time, and is a little upset with himself when nothing happens. He imagines Ann, Yusuke, Makoto, Futaba and Haru individually. Then all together. He calls forth the image of Morgana on his pillow, flopped belly-side up after a can of fancy tuna, basking in the afterglow of it. Blue-silver liquid sputters from the end of his wand, whisking around him like mist and covering the floor in failed attempts.

“You’re not trying,” snaps Goro an hour later. “It needs to be powerful.”

It descends on Akira like a lightning bolt. That feeling of raw, unfettered potential he’d gotten when he’d picked up Ryuji’s wand for the first time, and it’d listened to him putty-like in his hand. When he’d sat down in front of the Mirror of Erised in fourth year after Maruki had led him there, and all he saw staring back at him was himself.

He thinks of waking up to the cobra in his bed. He thinks of being meant for something more.

A shape bursts forth from his wand, unfurling its wings with a flourish. Goro makes a curious noise from beside him, reaching up as if to touch it.

“A Eurasian magpie,” he says, sounding like an Animal Planet host. He pulls out a small notebook from one of his pockets and jots down something—registering the shape of his very soul, maybe. Akira feels self-conscious, as if he’d just stripped down to nothing in front of Goro and instead of ravishing him, he’d taken note of his dick size and moved on.

“Don’t you have one too?” he asks.

“Oh,” says Goro, like he’d only just remembered Akira was standing there. “Yes.”

He moves his own wand around in an ovular pattern, not even needing to incant the spell. A slinkier, less airborne creature forms from the blue mist. It encircles Akira’s Patronus in leaps and bounds, excited about having a playmate.

“A weasel?” wonders Akira out loud, as the Patronus whips its head around and abandons Akira’s bird in favour of Akira’s shoe.

“A mongoose,” Goro corrects him, eyes cast downwards towards the animal in question. He doesn’t seem to find it as humorous. “Pass the spell on to your friends, Kurusu. You wouldn’t want anyone to be caught unawares.”

Goro seeks him out on the regular. He’s still well-behaved, mostly, though he drops the façade of caring about Akira’s feelings. He also has serious concerns about the unnamed threat endangering Hogwarts, which is more than Akira can say for the faculty.

At night they slip out of the Slytherin dungeons together, two unidentifiable shapes in the dark, and creep around the grounds. Goro tells him what to look for: cracked chips in the castle’s foundation leading to secret passageways, holes burrowed underground on the outskirts of campus. They don’t necessarily signify a break-in, but they imply something has been trying. Which is almost definitely worse.

After the first patrol ends with Maruki shining a lamp on them as they exit the Forbidden Forest, bewildered by their unexpected appearance (but promising not to report them), Goro brings an invisibility cloak with them. Akira hadn’t known him to own one.

In the meantime, they train. Goro pushes him more than any professor he’s ever had, short-tempered and back-breaking. He teaches Akira how to parry, then breaks down his new line of defence just as quickly. “Stay focused,” urges Goro, when his partner is pooled into a broken pile of bruises on the Room floor. He prods at Akira with his toe.

Goro never explains the Dark Mark brandishing his arm. Akira never brings it up. He spots it sometimes out of the corner of his eye, twisting around Goro’s skin like a bandage.

March bleeds into April. Akira’s magic improves. Another student is killed in her sleep, a Ravenclaw this time. A viper is found tangled up in the sheets.

Akira allows a certain snake of his own to slip into his bed at the weekends, by his own volition yet no less dangerous.

“Man,” says Ryuji, after an especially lengthy gathering in the Room of Requirement.

The Thieves were all slowly but surely getting used to summoning their Patronuses: a dog, a panther, a fox, a honey badger, a ram. Only Futaba is left Patronus-less, conjuring every joyful memory she can muster and coming up short.

Ryuji stretches. “I can’t wait for summer holidays.”

With the amount of people dropping dead, Akira should agree with him. He finds it hard to.

Towards the tail-end of May, the private lessons accumulate into an impromptu duel when Goro unsheathes his wand after Patronus practice and says, “Now show me what you can do, Mudblood.”

It throws Akira off, the way he wields the slur so heedlessly. Goro takes advantage of the diversion, skipping two steps forward into Akira’s bubble of personal space. He duels as though he’s dancing, like he has the choreography of it mapped out in his head.

“Sectumsempra,” Goro says, and it takes Akira all his willpower to evade it. He’s never heard of sectumsempra. He doesn’t want to know what it does.

“Flipendo,” Akira parries. Goro immediately switches to defence, countering with a backfiring jinx that knocks Akira off-balance.

Akira loses track of time and most other things. He is being guided around the room by Goro, he realizes belatedly, a slight turn of Goro's wrist unleashing a ventus jinx that suggests he moves to his left. Then they spin. Akira missteps and at once feels himself rise under the influence of levicorpus, plopped far too close to Goro for his liking. Goro curls and elongates around Akira, a reflection in a funhouse mirror.

“Don’t get careless,” he tells Akira, and Akira is flung to the opposite side of the room. Tarantallegra sends Akira’s feet into a frenzy.

They’re playing Wizard’s Chess again. He is the white king grovelling in the corner, and the black queen isn’t letting him go.

Suddenly exhausted with it all, Akira shouts, “Impendimenta!”

It’s a simple jinx, one the curriculum had taught him in fourth year. The only reason Goro is ensnared by it is because he isn’t expecting retaliation. His limbs spasm for an awful second before they are frozen in place, jutting this way and that like he’s a butterfly mounted in a picture frame. His eyes are over-wide; he looks fearful. Akira has never seen him like this.

He darts forward, desperate to close the distance between them. Pauses. Goro’s fingers are starting to twitch again, indicating the thawing of the spell.

“Expelliarmus,” Akira says.

It ejects Goro’s wand up high into the air. He makes a show of dropping his own as well, because it seems like the right thing to do.

He expects Goro to be dispirited. Angry, perhaps, that Akira called an end to the duel before they could get truly fired up. Instead the other boy is surveying him with what Akira thinks is admiration. He cups Akira’s cheek, oddly tender, then removes his hand. Akira tries to hide the fact he’s shaking.

“Thank you, Akira,” Goro says, leaning close enough for Akira to feel hot breath fan against his skin. There is ghost of a smile on his face. “I won’t let you down next time.”

Goro lets him down. It was written as such from the very start.

It goes like this:

They are all rudely awoken by a violent shaking of the ground, rattling the castle. Akira’s fellow Slytherins droop out of bed, dreary with sleep, as Hogwarts’ giant squid bolts past the window in an absolute panic and leaves a trail of bubbles in its wake. All years come together in the common room, rounded up by the prefects. Their Head Boy is missing.

There’s another explosion of noise from outside. Then the sound of petrified screaming from elsewhere in the building.

They flee outside to find the place on fire.

It looks… atrocious. There’s no other way to describe it. The ground is littered with ruins from where one of the fountains has been crudely wrenched and tossed several feet away. Akira stubs his toe on one of the bricks and he kicks it, resentful. The glitter of the flames makes his vision go blurry.

Masayoshi Shido, whispers one of the seventh years from beside him—whether in amazement or dismay, Akira doesn't know. The name rings a bell, very faintly. Engraved on the oakwood case of a chess set.

Somewhere along the line he finds the Thieves, his home away from home. Futaba crashes into him and almost bowls him over. She sobs into his chest, digging her fingers into his cloak. It makes Akira feel very small.

“We need to end this,” says Yusuke, unwavering in his resolve.

A sheet of rain pulls in from overhead, flooding the area with remnants of arson. Akira slogs through plumes of dust kicked up by their loafers, mouth ashy with the taste of it. There is a body strewn over one of the newly formed hills like a speed bump. Akira gingerly steps over the wreckage.

They find Goro by the bridge that connects Hogwarts to the outer grounds. He gives them a great speech that Akira only listens to half of, drowned out by the bump-bump-bump of his heart wedged between his ears. Something about being used by Shido to find chinks in the school’s armour, methods of invading unnoticed by the magical guard Igor had put up. He looks berserk and hate-fuelled and his spine twists in a way it shouldn’t, as if someone is wringing the worst of his thoughts out of him.

The air thrums with words left unspoken. “Why did you kill all those people,” Ann cries, after a beat.

“I always do my homework,” says Goro, mocking and cruel atop of his throne of soot.

He’s about to say something else when a white-hot flash of magic whizzes past him, narrowly missing his head. It fills their surroundings with the stench of death.

There is Shido, looking like a mountain in his robes. In his hand sits the Elder Wand, smoke curling away into the bleak backdrop of battle. Akira shifts his attention to Goro and can see his mind racing a mile a minute, hesitation reflected clear as day in his crouched posture.

“Shido,” Goro says, a question. Shido hits him with another Killing Curse and Goro’s mongoose Patronus bursts out to deflect it without him having to move a muscle. His wand hangs limply at his side, forgotten about.

“Don’t be pathetic,” Shido says. He is looking at Goro like Goro is no different from the dirt under his heel. “I won’t need you once I’ve overthrown Igor. Best I dispose of you now.”

It seems to shock Goro into action. He raises his left arm slowly over his head like an antenna and jams the tip of his wand into the fold of his elbow with his non-dominant hand, turning his already pale skin even paler with the force of it. His gaze lolls from Shido to Akira and remains transfixed on him as he presses his lips together into a thin defiant line. Akira’s stomach lurches when he realizes what Goro is about to do.

“Diffindo,” Goro chokes out.

There is a sickly crunch of bone being cleaved in half, the impossibly hushed grunt of Goro struggling to repress any hint of discomfort marring his expression. Then the dull thud of his forearm hitting the ground. The snake tattoo thrashes about violently as the cobra in his bed had done months prior, and stills, jaws unhinged in an open-mouthed scream.

“Avada Kedavra,” roars Shido for the umpteenth time, aiming another Killing Curse at his son once he’s processed the magnitude of his betrayal. Akira’s Patronus dives in front, its wingspan blanketing Goro from harm.

When it draws back Goro is gone, like the world’s most disappointing magic trick.

It’s an ambush, and an incredibly challenging one to boot, but Shido doesn’t even make it to the Headmaster’s office in the end. His leftover lackies scatter once it becomes clear they’ve been outnumbered. Shido alone proves no match for seven Thieves, plus an entire horde of angry pupils in the middle of exam crunch. Their Patronuses surround him as he falls to his knees in the corridor.

After a few moments, the faint silver outline of a crow swoops in through one of the arched windows and circles them slowly overhead. It never lands beside them and the other Thieves never notice, preoccupied as they are with keeping Shido contained. Only Akira is left to peer up at it, its translucent wings dappling a rotating kaleidoscope of moonlight across the stone floor.

Igor descends the stairs to meet them, arms spread out wide as if he’s conducting a grand orchestra only he can hear. He parts Hogwarts’ protective outer layer of magic without so much as a whisper. Shido’s jailers take their time floating in, drawn close by the sound of animalistic wailing. The Thieves shuffle away to make room. Akira swivels his head around in search of the crow.

There is no sign of it. The Dementors bring with them a darkness that clings to the walls like core-rotting grief, a black pit of despair, a death in the family.

Shido is removed as swiftly as he arrived, and then there is nothing left of him beyond the tarnish.

Goro Akechi is not dead, just miserable and semi-armless. Akira decides to pay him a visit in the hospital wing.

Takemi had performed an emergency operation on him after they’d found him buried and barely conscious under a pile of rubble, his wound too far gone to be cured by magic. A transhumeral amputation, she called it, flesh neatly tucked into a full stop that ends just above where his elbow had been. Goro doesn’t look at it—doesn’t even acknowledge it—and only moves the remaining part of his arm subconsciously when he’s trying to maintain his balance sitting up. His centre of gravity is off-kilter, making his movements clumsy and cloddish where they had been meticulously calculated just days prior. She tells him it’ll be a long time before he’s allowed back on a broomstick again.

His eyes are empty, a cold, abandoned house whose hearth has fizzled out a long time ago. Akira doesn’t think he hears her.

Igor also comes to see them, much to their astonishment. Goro braces himself as soon as he catches sight of Igor ambling into the infirmary, the old Headmaster's gaze sliding lackadaisically from torch-bearing walls to chandelier. He walks as though he's never bothered roaming the castle beyond the extent of his tower. Takemi drags over a chair for him to sit on and he does so, knees unnaturally jagged and sharp where they poke out at a bend. Lavenza glides in after him. She comes to settle on Akira’s thigh, burrowing her face in his sleeve. He gives her a soft scratch under the chin and marvels at the iridescent shimmer of her blue feathers.

“I killed them,” spits Goro, unprompted. His five remaining fingers claw at the sheets. “The students. My peers.” 

“That you did,” replies Igor.

“It was Shido giving me the orders, but it was by my hand that they died! Poisoning, the snakes, the Killing Curse—I did it all. They’re all dead because of me, and I did it just so I could be the one to end Shido. I didn’t even care that you’d die in the process. He’d be a sitting duck once he replaced you.”

It lands somewhere between a revilement and a confession, equally barbed as it is pleading. Akira waits with bated breath as Igor rearranges himself in the chair.

“I suppose you’re wondering what will become of you now that this is over, Goro Akechi.”

Goro avoids his gaze. “I hope my execution will be less drawn out and tortuous than the seven years I spent here,” he says wryly.

It fails to get a rise out of Igor, who studies him with interest—much like a cat would study a beetle flipped onto its back before batting it halfway across the kitchen floor. “I’m afraid you will not be permitted to return to the premises after your graduation. As for the rest of it, there is no conventional punishment planned. You will simply have to live beyond our walls and beyond the will of someone else.” A pause. “That is retribution enough.”

Goro’s mouth pops open and remains that way, slightly ajar.

Igor’s lips adjust itself into something resembling a smile, unpracticed yet not altogether unkind. After a moment, he excuses himself and Lavenza leaps up from Akira’s lap—and with her, the heat—rejoining Igor on his shoulder. She preens his hair busily, pulling at wisps of white like she's rearranging twigs in a bird's nest.

They watch Igor walk off, bowed head and stooped posture with his talon-like hands clasped lightly behind his back. He starts whistling a tune on his way out. It echoes off the high infirmary ceiling as he vanishes down the corridor.

“He's demented,” Goro mutters.

Akira laughs, even though it’s a mean thing to say.

Goro looks very tired. There is a box of Bertie’s Every Flavour Beans that Akira had gifted him upon arrival, unintentionally placed on the far end of the bedside table. Goro is unable to reach it with his right hand, even when he contorts his torso to give him extra leverage. He collapses back into supine position with a resigned grunt and glares.

“Accio Beans,” he says, firing the syllables from his mouth with dogged determination. The box shoots off the table and onto the floor.

They’d burned his wand alongside his severed forearm. A phoenix feather core, ten inches, polished to perfection and carved out of aspen wood (stylish and suited to strong-minded individuals, often accomplished duelists). It had been found lying several metres away in a ditch, covered in dirt. In any case, buying a new one post-infirmary discharge didn’t strike Akira as being a bad idea, what with the total demise of all Goro's personal motivations thus far. A wand that could promote a new sense of self, maybe.

“Accio Bertie’s Every Flavour Beans,” Goro barks, louder this time. The box on the floor writhes around sadly.

“Let me get that for you,” Akira says, bending over to snatch the box before it wriggles out of reach. He deposits it in the dip of the blanket between Goro’s legs. Goro shifts to pick it up, rotating the box in his hand, then tosses it wordlessly at the foot of his bed.

There’s a badly contained sense of frustration to the way he behaves now. Akira wonders if it’s due to the amputation, or the relief of no longer having to fake his way through interactions.

They’re both silent for a while. Goro turns away from Akira to look out of the ceiling-to-floor windows, basking his face in the sun.

“You failed to kill Shido,” he says.

Akira blinks owlishly. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Takemi glare daggers at him over her clipboard. There had been a warning before he stepped into the room: don’t cause him any unnecessary stress. He needs his rest.

“Yeah,” Akira says, after a pause. He deems it a relatively stress-free answer considering the circumstances. “He got sent to Azkaban. They’re never letting him go.”

An anguished hiss escapes Goro’s teeth. He rolls his head back into the pillow, arching his spine and digging his heels deep into the mattress for a terrible minute like there is something inside of him getting exorcised. Then he lets go just as suddenly, all the air being knocked out of him.

It’s a sorry sight, Akira thinks. He is at once struck with a rush of embarrassment remembering the countless instances he’s sulked about his own less-than-stellar childhood. Having his tenth birthday passed over in favour of celebrating a promotion paled in comparison—and indeed seemed rather pedestrian and unremarkable—to wanting to personally strangle the life out of your megalomaniacal father.

“Fuck,” says Goro, with feeling. And doesn’t that about sum it up.

“Why did you help me?” Akira asks at dusk, candlelight twirling across the dark on the walls. “Why did you teach me the Patronus spell?”

Goro doesn’t dignify him with a response.

Akira visits him every morning, much to the chagrin of Takemi. At times he stays for just ten minutes until Goro yells at him to leave. Other times they spend hours together tucked away in the corner of the infirmary.

Today he seems angrier than usual, picking at his stub with his fingernails. It’s still sewn up and puckered, and Akira wants to tell him to stop. “What’s wrong,” he says, a little desperately.

“You heard Igor,” Goro seethes, glaring at Akira. It’s been two weeks since Igor came by. “This is the last month I’ll ever get to spend at Hogwarts.”

Akira stares at him, perplexed. He wonders if Goro missed the part where Igor didn’t send him off to Azkaban. The world was his oyster, and he was bemoaning the end of school?

“But you hate Hogwarts,” he says.

“You wouldn’t understand. I’ve lived the last seven years of my life inside this castle, uninterrupted,” says Goro. And then, quieter: “I always dreamt of teaching here.”

The admission takes Akira by surprise. He couldn’t envision Goro as the teaching type, what with the disdain of the general public and the incredibly limited reservoir of patience that trickled out of him at the drop of a hat. He closes one eye and bisects Goro in half, casting the left chunk of him in full darkness. Now it’s just his right side, with the arm, and the brown curtains of hair that drape bedraggled past his chin.

He looks depressed, maybe, or defeated. He'd make an eccentric professor, Akira thinks. One who would let you get away with sleeping in class if you promised to meet his standards in a myriad of other ways.

“You could be an Auror,” Akira suggests. “Everyone always thought you’d become one eventually.”

“An Auror?” Goro says, incredulous. He laughs humourlessly, the tone of it making Akira jump. “You idiot. I’m a war criminal.”

“What about a Quidditch player. I bet you’ll still be good on a broom, even with your…” Akira gestures gracelessly. “Arm.”

“Forget it,” says Goro. He’s in one of his moods again, where he’ll talk to Akira without facing him. “I wasn’t made for anything beyond this. I’ve got nowhere to go.”

Akira shrugs. He can’t disprove the first part, not on his own, but he can have a go at the second. “Futaba’s dad runs a café with an empty attic above it. I’m sure if you ask her nicely and promise to pay rent, she might be able to convince him.” He hesitates before adding, “I could come visit you.”

Goro wrinkles his nose. “A Muggle café?”

“Yes. With Muggle coffee.”

“Hmm,” says Goro, sounding more thoughtful.

They meet each other at the train station.

After all that is said and done, the Thieves are left uneasy with Goro’s state of mind. They certainly don’t attack him—which Akira half-reckons they would, surprising him—but they stare at Goro from down the platform with the same restless apprehension one would approach a tiger with. Goro politely ignores them. He is gazing up at the very last carriage, admiring the crimson sheen of its outer shell.

Akira remembers Goro saying he’d cried the first time he’d boarded the train, in between hushed whispers in Potions class. There’d been a small model train on his dresser as well, well-loved and well-worn with its chipped lacquer paint. He supposes Goro hadn’t really gotten the chance to ride it since.

“Where is he going,” Futaba hisses. She’d rejected his request for the attic in a fit of nerves, hiding behind Yusuke’s gangly frame. Akira couldn’t blame her, but he felt remorseful giving Goro false hope like that.

“Don’t know,” Akira mumbles, not taking his eyes off Goro. “You guys go ahead, okay? I’ll see you on the train.”

They all mutter their okays and see yous, reluctantly climbing up the steps to their usual compartment. Akira hands Haru an overflowing duffel bag, containing an affronted-looking Morgana. “Wouldn’t want him eavesdropping,” he says, a little lamely.

“No, of course not,” says Haru. Winks at him.

Goro expects Akira. He is dressed in a simple shirt and slacks, inordinately beautiful in how they accentuate his dainty physique. His left sleeve is tied up in a knot, enveloping his stub. Akira’s gaze slides over to the wand in his pocket, an ever-so-slightly curved tawny brown thing with a couple of inches added onto the length for good measure. He tries not to feel hurt that Goro had paid Ollivander a visit without inviting him.

“Where are you going?” Akira asks, copying Futaba, because it’s as good of a question as any.

“I’ll let you know when I find out,” says Goro in turn.

They shake on it.