Chapter Text
Adam Parrish's life had a couple of simple yet undeniably impactful truths. His mother is — was — a witch in nothing but name. His father is a squib. There was an accident when he was ten. He can't have friends. He must have secrets.
Adam Parrish's life has been centred around the moon's cycle since he was ten.
Gansey doesn't change that. Gansey complicates that.
The circle of people who know about Adam's furry little problem — as Professor Potter calls it — is slim. It's Headmaster McGonagall, Professor Potter, Professor Longbottom, Professor Malfoy, Teddy Lupin and Robert and Alicia Parrish. Adam does everything he can actually do so that Gansey doesn't join the circle.
He meets Gansey by accident at the end of the fifth year in Muggle studies. Adam takes the class for two reasons — easy O and recognizing what's strictly considered muggle in the wizarding world so he can avoid it. Gansey, however, has a genuine interest in muggle technology and traditions, one that is more like cultural appreciation rather than a fascination. Last five years Adam recognized him as a sheltered boy from a purely magical family who grew surrounded by money and who grew into money, one always with countless people hanging onto his every word and one who surrounded himself with equally rich and sheltered boys of privilege.
Adam wasn't far off. Gansey was all that but also much more. He is sheltered, has no idea what value money has in real life, considers muggles to be almost a different species, and most of his acquaintances are rich, sheltered boys of purely magical families. But he's also undeniable kind and curious, highly educated and knowledgeable, knows more about the muggle world than any of his acquaintances, and his one and only friend, although rich, sheltered boy, is by no means like the rest of them.
Ronan Lynch and Gansey is a package deal, Adam learns quickly.
When at the end of the fifth year Gansey and Adam are forced to work on a project for Muggle Studies, Lynch is always there. The Muggle Studies class Adam and Gansey are attending is strictly Ravenclaw and Slytherin one. Gryffindor and Hufflepuff have their own one but it doesn't matter — Lynch has never had an actual interest in Muggle Studies, not to mention signing up for a full year of extra classes. As far as Adam knew, his two interests were Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures, subjects Gryffindors and Slytherins shared.
Adam and Gansey met in the library at least twice a week for two months and Ronan Lynch was always there, sitting at the edge of the table, usually with his boots on the counter or another chair, sending Adam a death glare.
"Don't mind him, it's his thing," Gansey's told Adam at the beginning.
So while Gansey was tolerable, Adam could not stand Lynch. Gansey may have been protected from unpleasant experiences his whole life but Lynch was simply a pretentious prick.
"What is your problem?" Adam asks him one day when Lynch keeps on kicking his chair.
"I don't have a problem."
"Really," he says, unimpressed.
Gansey looks between them like he wants to intervene but knows it's not going to end well.
"I don't lie," Lynch adds, staring Adam down. If he was a lesser man, he would be scared — but he wasn't, he had a lifetime experience with people looking at him with hatred. "Unlike you and every Slytherin bastard."
Adam knows what people still think about Slytherins. During the war, most of them were on the dark side, hidden between Death Eaters, or fled the country, not taking part in the war at all. That's why Slytherin house is still the least in numbers — no one wants to be in it, no one wants to be on the dark side of things. It doesn't really count outside of Hogwarts, it's just a school, but here, in the castle, when every year, during the final battle anniversary, the Slytherin table is always separated from the celebration and the memorial.
Declan Lynch is a Slytherin and a Head Boy. Of all things, Adam would have never expected Lynch to hate him for being a Slytherin. Lynch family had a history of being sorted into Slytherin — Niall Lynch, over two decades ago, was a Slytherin Prefect, Declan Lynch was this year's Head Boy but for the past three, he was a Slytherin Prefect and Matthew Lynch had just started his training for next year's Slytherin Seeker.
If anything, Ronan Lynch, a Gryffindor, is the outsider.
Adam had been hated for many reasons but out of all of them, he never expected a Lynch to judge him for being ambitious and cunning. For wearing a green tie because it's what Adam thinks the house sorting is — choosing a colour chart you will wear for the next seven years.
Adam doesn't want to argue in the library, of all places. It's not like he can change Lynch's prejudice. "What are you doing here, Lynch?"
"What are you doing here, Parrish?" Lynch counters, like he hasn't realized for the last two weeks, while he creeped on Adam and Gansey, that they have a Muggle Studies project to do. "Slytherin in a muggle class, learning what you can torment mudbloods for? What's so pathetic about them?"
"Ronan—" Gansey starts, fidgeting. He's been useless the whole conversation, probably knowing Lynch couldn't be stopped.
Adam doesn't back from a challenge and looks Lynch dead in the eyes while he says, "I'm a muggleborn, you toff."
It's not a complete truth but a simplified one — his mother, after all, attended Hogwarts, but when she met his father, she never used magic again, not wanting to anger him with what he couldn't have. His father, a squib and family's black sheep, hates magic enough that they lived like muggles, up until Adam's letter arrived when he turned eleven.
It's not common knowledge outside of his house — Slytherin students and professors were the ones who had to explain how the magical world works to Adam — but it's not a secret. He may be trash from Newham and may have lived in the attic of a one-bedroom semi-detached house but he isn't going to hide it. In these times, being muggleborn wasn't something he has ever felt ashamed of — it's still harder, to find some jobs, but with a muggleborn Minister Granger rebuilding the wizarding world from scratch, no one seems to care.
No one but Lynch, apparently.
It gives Adam some sick satisfaction, seeing Lynch freeze, still leaning over the table, a bit wide-eyed and suddenly so tense.
Gansey looks like he's about to jump out of the chair and hide behind one of the heavy bookcases. "Back to the project, please."
Adam pulls the book closer to his chest, raising an eyebrow at Lynch, daring him to add something. Lynch licks his lips, leans down on the chair — backs off.
He doesn't stop staring at Adam.
Most students don't like Professor Malfoy and Adam can understand why. His teaching methods are a bit unorthodox, in the way that he allows his students to make mistakes that can potentially kill them and in the way he lacks the usual warmth Hogwarts teachers possess.
But he also volunteered to prepare a wolfsbane potion for local werewolves and as soon as Adam will be eligible to take the wolfsbane potion, he will do a portion big enough for Adam too.
The whole potion thing is a bit more complex than one would think. The ingredients are too expensive for an average wizard — and can't be funded by the Ministery, like many other medications — not to mention a poor muggleborn like Adam. The potion itself was too complex for many to do and even potion masters, like Professor Malfoy, had trouble brewing it.
And not everyone could take it — werewolf women, despite the general rumours, could conceive but then, pregnant, couldn't take wolfsbane and almost always lose their pregnancies by the first full moon; elders weren't strong enough, people with serious long-term illnesses couldn't.
Underweight teenagers couldn't either.
It's been explained to Adam like that: wolfsbane — or aconite — is actually poison. Although during brewing the potion its toxicity lowers, it's still too much for children, elders, people with serious health conditions. And underweight teens.
Adam's height is a little below average for his age, but his weight is around a hundred pounds — or less, after a full moon — which disqualifies him from taking the potion, even though he could technically be taking it since the fourth year. With Adam's messed up metabolism, lack of food at home and regular full moons, gaining the needed thirty pounds that could be ideal for taking poisonous potions proves impossible.
However, Professor Malfoy still teaches Adam how to actually brew it. Although Professor Malfoy doesn't say it outright, Adam is his best student so far — Professor Malfoy might not say it but Professor Potter retells him everything Professor Malfoy admits to him in the teaching quarters — so, oftentimes, it's Adam as his assistant, not a sixth or seventh year, but a fifth-year muggleborn who basically crashed everyone academically since his second year at Hogwarts.
So Adam is cutting the ingredients when Professor Malfoy looks at the half-open door and snorts in that disapproving way he always does whenever he sees students that hate Potions. Which means ninety per cent of Hogwarts.
"Stray Griffons are obnoxiously hard to drive away," he says. "Take my word for that."
Adam looks at his cold face — because his face always looks like a statue, dead and unmovable — and glances to the half-open door and stares at it for a couple of minutes. A figure swooshes through the visible space and Adam sees a blink of red and black curls flopping over dishevelled robes.
He puts the knife away for a second.
Professor Malfoy moves around the cauldron, heating it with a silent incendio. He's not wearing his robes, as isn't Adam — he allows his students to take them off during lessons too, since it's harder to mess up something without the flared sleeves — wears Slytherin green cardigan and dress trousers, with a tie that must be spelt to be this straight.
He gives Adam a meaningful stare and whispers, "He's been pacing there for an hour now."
Adam doesn't answer to that, stares at the door so strongly that if he could cast wandlessly, they would definitely close. He can almost see Lynch's stupid perfect hair sticking from around the doorframe.
"He did it last week too. And a week before that, as a matter of fact."
This time, Professor Malfoy has an amused spark in his eye, glancing at Adam with what Professor Potter refers as his Slytherin prick smile. He knows why he refers to it as such.
Looking up, he notices sharp steel-blue eyes, partially hidden behind dark hair and a red tie peeking out from around the door. He glances up to Professor Malfoy, expecting him to give Lynch detention or take points from Gryffindor but he's staring back at Adam, like it's his choice to make.
Adam sighs and swipes his wand from the countertop, stepping around the table.
One nonverbal colloportus and the door closes on Lynch's face.
Professor Malfoy doesn't laugh became he's too dignified to laugh, but he snorts as if Adam being stalked by stupid Gryffindor boys is a source of great entertainment.
The Muggle Studies continues for almost three months, during which Adam regularly sees Gansey — and Lynch — twice a week.
And then seeing Gansey doesn't stop
Even when Adam disappears for two days to visit his sick mother.
Muggle Studies project is supposed to last up until the Easter holidays and they get an O on it and Adam, while they do a presentation together, thinks it's the last time they are talking together.
It isn't.
Just the day after the presentation, Gansey tracks him down in the library, where Adam spends the majority of his time between Divination workshops with Persephone, apprenticeship with Professor Malfoy, greenhouse lessons with Professor Longbottom, and extra classes with Professor Potter.
As one might conclude, Adam doesn't have many friends his age. It's a euphemism, really.
His house is, despite the rumours, never treated him differently because he's a muggleborn. There are, of course, some purists but they don't open their mouth in public and make their own groups. Slytherin house is lacking members — there are only six boys in Adam's year — so everyone supports each other but it doesn't mean friendship. Two people closest to being his friends are actually from outside of his house — a Gryffindor and a Hufflepuff.
Blue is Persephone's daughter/niece — it's kind of vague — so Adam often sees her in the North Tower, that's how they met.
Adam met Blue during their third year — third years started their Divination lessons and the first day, Adam and Blue were the only ones without a pair. She sat next to him when Persephone told her to and introduced herself.
"Blue?" he asked. "Like the colour?"
"No, like the spell," she said, and she managed to sound almost as sarcastic as Professor Malfoy.
He liked her instantly.
She was different from anyone he knew. She knew so much about Divination and was absolutely crappy at it — which made them a perfect pair because he knew only the basics but had talent, they complemented one another.
She didn't care that Adam was studying most of the time, that she had to explain to him some basic wizard politics, that Adam asked her why some symbols meant that and not something else, almost every lesson. She was the first, and only, Gryffindor Adam got along with.
She sat at the Slytherin table, ignoring curious glances from everyone, she just didn't care — Adam would give everything to not care to the extend she did.
She asked him to come to her Quidditch team tryouts.
"Am I even allowed to? I'm from a different house."
Blue just made a face. "Do I look like I care?"
It took some convincing Weasley that Adam wasn't going to spy for Slytherins — Adam not knowing what Blue even had to do for the seeker position helped — but Adam finally sat down on the bleachers.
Blue showed up ten minutes later, wearing Gryffindor gear. She flew up and looked up to Adam, yelling, "Cheer me on!" like that was something Adam's Slytherin reputation allowed.
He didn't know what to do so he cast a periculum, and red sparks left his wand, resembling fireworks.
Blue facepalmed on her broom.
"This is what happens when you get a discounted Slytherin instead of full price Hufflepuff," she told him when she got the trainee seeker position and they were going back to the library.
They hanged out more, usually sitting in the North Tower. Persephone asked Adam to help her more than any other student and he doesn't mind, not really, but it sometimes got lonely. Blue sitting next to him when he did a tarot reading after tarot reading, whispering tips when drinks tea from the Cup of Destiny for tassoemancy, or helping him crystal balls — it was weirdly reassuring.
Adam's house thought Divination is a joke — the majority of wizards did, really — so there was no one to talk about it, but Blue's mum and her aunts/step-mums were Seers so she actually believed in what Adam saw or read. She also promised she will help him look for centaurs in the Forbidden Forest, once the weather was better, since Adam wanted to ask them to teach him whatever they could teach wizards.
Then, in late November, the ravens began to show. They were made of paper, like a complex origami, but charmed to act like real birds — it seemed absolutely amazing, this kind of display of magic and skill.
The first raven, one who slipped into Slytherin common room, soared around Adam's head twice and landed on his knee, flapping its wing before turning completely still.
It had a tiny, open me, written on its beak.
"Someone has a crush on you, Parrish," Nick, one of his upperclassmen, teased.
There was a single sentence inside. Your eyes look like the winter sky. Whoever wrote that, probably meant some different winter sky because the Scottish one looked like murky, dirty water for most of the time.
His cheeks turned red and the next thing he knew, the paper travelled in the hands of every boy in the common room.
The ravens didn't stop. He got another one in the library — Your skin is more golden than pure gold — another one in the Great Hall — I'd like to hold your hands. Each of them was embarrassing because his whole house knew what was inside.
Finally, another one arrived when he was with Professor Potter and Teddy, in the DADA classroom, learning how to neutralize boggarts.
Adam wasn't allowed to try it in the classroom.
"Do they always look like a full moon?" he asked before Professor Potter opened the chest.
"From what I know, yes," he admitted. "Usually, it's what people with furry little problem fear most."
Usually.
Adam hated being a werewolf, knowing he could hurt someone if he wasn't careful enough, knowing that it will get into the way of getting a permanent, well-paying job, knowing it's another choice that was taken away from him. But he could get used to that. He did. It was just another feature that made him unknowable, something that guaranteed him a solitary future, something that made Adam cower into himself. Every full moon hurt — bones breaking and healing all over again, cuts, bruises and grazings scarring his skin — but he could take it. And yet, every summer spent with his parents in Newham felt worse, like the last one Adam could take on.
Adam didn't want to see his father instead. Didn't want Professor Potter or Teddy to see his father. To know.
"Is there anything else you're afraid of?" Teddy asked when Adam didn't speak up for a long time. He was sitting on one of the desks, his feet swinging impatiently.
Professor Potter locked the chest again, frowning.
"Adam, is something—" he trailed off, looking somehow behind Adam. "What's that?"
Teddy groaned. "Oh, come on, another one?" He, too, previously saw Adam getting the notes.
A paper raven flew around the room in circles before landing on Adam's shoulder, preening its wings and then freezing.
Adam's cheeks turned red.
"What does this one say?" Teddy asked, walking up to him.
Adam took the raven and tried to hold it away but Teddy, half a head taller and long-limbed didn't have a problem reaching for it.
"Stupefy," Adam tried before Teddy opened it.
Of course, Teddy had his wand in his hand and cast a protego just in time, with a smug grin.
"Boys," Professor Potter said, his wand making a silent expelliarmus. Both their wands landed in his hands. "What's this all about?"
"Adam is getting love notes."
"Those aren't love notes," he protested. Both Teddy and Professor Potter raised their eyebrows. "They aren't."
Teddy opened the raven. "Let's see what your secret admirer says this time." Teddy's hair turned red, matching his darkening cheeks. "Your freckles look like stars. I've found Virgo on your cheek — I wish it was my zodiac sign."
Professor Potter snickered and tried to cover it up with a fumbling cough.
"Uhm, Adam, how long have you been getting these—notes?"
"A few weeks now," he admitted. "I think—I think they are from Blue."
Adam wasn't exactly sure if they were, in fact, from Blue. But one of the boys from his year pointed out that Blue was the only person he spent most of his time, and the only girl Adam was actively friendly with. She was also absent whenever Adam received the ravens. It didn't sit with him right — Blue didn't seem like the type who would tiptoe around something she wanted to say — she was too direct to hide behind notes. But there wasn't anyone else.
"Blue Sargent? Are you sure it isn't—" Professor Potter started. "Nevermind that. What are you going to do about them?"
Adam didn't really plan that far ahead.
"I don't know, I think she expects me to ask her to Hogsmeade—"
Teddy rolled his eyes. "Every girl wants to go to Hogsmeade."
"—but I don't have permission to go," Adam continued.
Teddy and Professor Potter looked at each other, having a silent conversation for a minute.
"Uncle Harry," Teddy protested, crossing his arms. "This isn't fair, you don't even let me use it."
"You don't need it, do you?" Professor Potter countered. "And I'm sure Adam wouldn't mind sharing."
"Sharing what?"
Professor Potter and Teddy exchanged looks again.
Professor Potter cleared his throat. "I'm going to my office now and I'll definitely be disappointed if you were to look into the second drawer of my desk and steal my magical map of Hogwarts for your personal use."
And then he left to his office.
Teddy scattered to the desk, reaching into the second drawer. He took out an old piece of parchment, found his wand on the desktop — where Professor Potter left it — and said, "I solemnly swear I'm up to no good."
It didn't sound promising.
A blueprint of the castle appeared on the paper, slowly taking the shapes of the rooms, corridors, and towers.
"What's that?"
Teddy grinned. "It's Marauder's Map, it shows everything and everyone in Hogwarts," he said. "My dad and his friends made it while he was studying here, so they could sneak around the castle."
"Your dad?" he asked. Adam looked back from the map to his face. "I can't take it, Teddy."
Teddy didn't have many things left after his parents — his metamorphmagus ability, his Grandparents, his Godfather, a useless Order of Merlin. Adam was going to take even a small part of that tiny legacy he had.
"Don't be ridiculous, it's not like it won't use it too," he said. He was silent for a moment and then, added, "It's not really—Uncle Harry says my dad was different after Hogwarts, after the First War. The map isn't like him anymore."
Adam didn't feel reassured.
"Look, there's a passage to Honeydukes. You could go to the Shrieking Shack too, but it's quite far away from Hogsmeade and you probably don't want to go there outside of—you know."
He didn't even know the Shrieking Shack was near Hogsmeade.
Adam really didn't want to go to the Shrieking Shack.
He asked Blue to Hogsmeade. She said yes. They met next to Honeydukes.
"How's Richie Rich and the Assholey Asshole?"
"Blue," Adam reprimands. "You could do so much better. Assholey asshole has no creativity."
They both smile.
"Lychee Lynch doesn't really sound right, does it?" she asks, nudging Adam with her elbow.
He rolled his eyes, preparing a table for a reading. Persephone disappeared in her office, preparing something less safe — Adam was going to scry with her for the first time.
"If you haven't hung out with them so much, I wouldn't have run out of insults," Blue notices.
He hasn't planned on it but it happened — Gansey seems to be everywhere now, always rambles to Adam about something, sitting with him in class, asking for help with studying. And wherever Gansey was, there was Lynch.
It also meant that whenever Gansey, there wasn't Blue. Adam straight-up saw her turn around mid-step when she noticed Adam wasn't alone in the library.
"Why do you hate them so much anyway?"
"I don't hate them," she said, crossing her arms. "I just wish I could hex their mouths shut. Permanently."
Adam could relate to that. Gansey has no self-awareness or any kind of awareness about the world around him. And Lynch is simply an asshole that doesn't know when to shut up.
"I haven't seen you talking to them even once," he noticed. "And we've known each other for almost three years."
"We've been friends for three years, you can say the word, it won't kill you."
Sometimes it feels like it will.
He looks at Blue expectedly. She sighs, shrugging. "Dick compared me to a prostitute."
Adam waits for the rest of the joke. There's no rest of the joke because there's no joke.
He starts laughing. It doesn't really seem that impossible with Gansey.
"Sod off," Blue tells him. "He said that he wants to borrow me because I lived in Muggle town before and he will pay me for my time. Who does that?"
"Richard Campbell Gansey III," he says. "Well, at least he must have learnt something because—When did it happen?"
"Beginning of the fourth year."
Adam could imagine fourth year Blue, with new colourful braids and cut-off uniform skirt, approached by Gansey and his perfect clothes and politician smile. He regrets he hasn't seen that.
"Well, he must have learnt something because when he asked me to be his Muggle help—" Blue snorts at that. "—for Easter, he didn't offer to pay me for it."
It sounds like a confession — he knew Blue doesn't like Gansey and he—he might not have explicitly sought him out but he didn't tell him off either, not like he told Lynch off.
To be honest, he wants to go with Gansey. Adam spends most of his holidays in the castle with Professor Potter and Teddy, or in Grimmauld Place, if they decide to leave for holidays — Professor Potter basically became his uncle, too. His summers are filled with work in the garage, or waiting tables, or delivering food — whichever he can find some illegal work at — he's lived in London his whole life but he hasn't seen even the half of it, confined to the poorest part of Newham.
His magical world wasn't much broader — Diagon Alley, Leaky Cauldron, Grimmauld Place, Hogsmeade. Hogwarts used to feel like his safe haven but, over the years, it's slowly become another cage.
Adam wanted to see more of the world and sitting in Hogsmeade with Blue or eating the same badly done pudding with Professor Potter couldn't give him that.
"Did you accept?" Blue asks.
"I haven't decided yet," he lies, looking at the shuffled cards in his hands and putting them down on the table. "I have to visit my mum, at least for a couple of days."
The full moon was on Tuesday the second week of the holidays. He needed to get back to Hogwarts by then.
Blue flicks a card at him, the one from the top of the deck.
"We won't stop being friends just because your other friend is a prat, you know."
Ah, the word-that-should-not-be-said, again.
"I know," he says. "I think I will go for a week or so if anything. I could floo to London." Or Hogwarts.
Blue flicks another card at him. Adam picks both of them up.
The Fool. Hope. Change. Beginnings. Travel.
The Emperor. Respect. Father figure.
He takes another card from the pile.
Death. Big changes. Endings. Tragedy. Moving on.
It's not like it's accurate — Blue picked the two of the cards and she had no gift for prophecy. He doesn't know how to interpret beginning and ending together, the reading didn't make sense.
"You shuffled the deck, Adam," Persephone says when she leaves her office and joins them in the classroom. "You asked the question."
Adam doesn't ask what question — he knows Persephone won't answer.
When Ronan began his third year, he met Adam Parrish. Although met might be a generous word — Malfoy, pissed off by Gryffindors' bad grades, decided to mix houses into pairs. It lasted for one lesson, as Gryffindors and Slytherins hated each other and it only made all their grades work.
Ronan's pair was Adam Parrish. He, of course, heard about Adam Parrish before, as he was generally considered to be Malfoy's pet student — he always sat somewhere in the first row, on the opposite end of the room from Ronan and Ronan didn't really try to look for him when Malfoy praised him for one thing or another. He didn't like Potions and certainly wasn't going to like it more listening to a Slytherin prick praising another Slytherin prick.
Ronan tried to forget Slytherins even existed.
And then the most beautiful boy sat next to him, taking out his little cauldron.
When Ronan was ten and his dad took him and Declan to one of those enormous National Magical Farm Market, he let them roam free as long as they kept together
They were just buying caramel apples when Declan turned around, staring at one of the women who just left a tent, caring a booklet of silver wool.
Before Ronan realized it, almost everyone's turned to her and he nudged Declan so he would finally pay for the apples.
"Hey," he tried again, hitting his arm.
The women, with golden skin and light blond hair, might have been pretty but she didn't seem pretty enough to stare at her like that. In truth, their Ma was prettier.
The women smiled, frustrated, said a quick, "Sorry," and disappeared back into the tent.
When they asked later about it, Declan blushing, their dad said, "She was probably a half-veela, their beauty is magical enough to charm almost all men."
Ronan hadn't felt charmed.
But when the boy sat down next to him, he was sure he was a veela because he felt straight-up bewitched.
He had the same kind of golden, warm skin the woman at the market had, among with tiny freckles sprinkled on his cheeks and nose, and his eyes reminded Ronan of the winter sky at the Barns. There was a pale scar running down his neck and another one close to his ear but it was all dimmed by how prominent his cheekbones were and how sharp his eyes seemed.
His gaze pierced Ronan. He realized the boy had been saying something.
"I'll warm up the cauldron while you go for ingredients."
Ronan's brain shortcircuited. "Ingredients?"
The boy, Adam, sighed. Even this was a beautiful sound.
"I hate group work," he added, before turning around and going to the ingredients cupboard at the back of the classroom.
Ronan observed him the whole way there and back.
Adam raised an eyebrow looking at him, with his arms crossed.
He sighed again, and said, words pretty and perfectly shaped, "Incendio."
The cauldron's bottom burst into flames. The fire made Adam's face look even more golden warm.
Adam took a step towards him, his face suddenly close enough that Ronan could see ever freckle — they looked like a starry night, like the constellations his Ma taught him about on the nights they both couldn't sleep. He was sure there was Virgo spread on his left cheek, one arm of the constellation climbing up his nose.
"Listen," Adam said, his voice smooth like honey, making Ronan's heart spike. "My grades won't get worse because of some Gryffindor, I'll do everything alone. You can pretend you're helping or not. I don't care what Professor Malfoy says about it."
Ronan only then realized they were brewing a potion together. He was crap at Potions.
"I'll watch," he replied.
Adam gave him a look.
Ronan realized saying this was probably weird only when Malfoy was already calling them to bring their potions to his desk.
Before he could say that would make him less of a creep, Adam was gone, and Ronan finally regained the ability to speak.
He watched Adam, from that moment. In the Great Hall, in any of the classes they shared. He entered every Potions lesson five minutes late, so he could see Adam sitting in front of Malfoy's desk, just for the minute or two Malfoy used to take the points from his house.
People didn't react to Adam like to that woman at the market — but it might have been because he was a boy or maybe something less than half-veela, like quarter-veela.
"You're smart," he told Gansey one day, in the Great Hall. "What do veelas like?"
Gansey perked up — maybe at the compliment, maybe at the opportunity to ramble about a subject he liked.
"Veelas are interesting, aren't they? My aunt is a half-veela and my uncle says they are just like every girl but prettier and he says he wooed my aunt with fresh flowers, sweets and being a gentleman but I'm sure every girl would like that. Veelas just want to feel normal, despite the charm they have. My aunt—"
Ronan interrupted him before he said more, "But what about boy veelas? Do they—What do they like?"
Gansey looked at him, brows furrowed.
"They aren't any male veelas. Veelas are exclusively female."
"You're lying."
Gansey crossed his arms. "I'm not. Professor Potter taught us about veelas last year."
Maybe he had. Ronan didn't really pay attention.
"But—"
Maybe it was time to admit it — he had a crush. It's not like he didn't know that, he just thought it was Adam's charm. Maybe it was just time to do something about it, there was only one going out to Hogsmeade before Christmas break.
He approached Adam after Herbology, with a prepared speech. The prepared speech evaporated from his mind as soon as Adam put his gaze on him.
"Do you want to go to Hogsmeade, together?" he asked.
"I don't even know you," Adam said.
It was really sad, that Adam didn't remember him, but he tried not to get discouraged.
"But we could get to know each other," he replied and then, added. "We can go to Honeydukes."
It sounded like a smart thing to say — Adam liked chocolate enough that Ronan had seen him eating it instead of dinner sometimes. His favourites were caramel and mint.
"I can't," Adam said. "I don't have permission to go to Hogsmeade."
He perked up at that. "I can buy some chocolate for you and we can eat it together in the evening, on Saturday."
Adam's cheeks coloured, some of his freckles disappeared in the rosy shade.
"I don't want you to buy me anything."
"But—"
Adam turned around, still red-cheeked. "I have to go to class."
He didn't say anything when Ronan walked him the whole way to Potter's classroom. Adam was a couple of minutes late while, by the time Ronan entered Charms classroom, people were already packing their things.
Adam, whenever he saw him, avoided his gaze, his cheeks always red. Ronan felt like on cloud nine.
And then he went to Hogsmeade and, leaving Honeydukes with chocolate caramel squares and mint bubble chocolate and truffles and chocolate lollipops, saw Adam talking to Blue Sargent, Gryffindor's trainee seeker.
He bought all the sweets home, gave them all to Matty. He never talked to Adam again.
He still thinks Adam Parrish is part-veela. He's just too beautiful.
He stands there, in the middle of the field, with a perfect tie, perfect robes, perfect face. Rosy cheeks. Sharp blue eyes. He looks cold.
Care of Magical Creatures is Ronan's favourite subject, mostly because it's one of the subjects he can actually use in the future, and because this is something his Ma loved—she was a magizoologist herself, just like Newt Scamander, who was responsible for the practical part of the lessons.
"Today, we're going to meet Dorothy, a Demiguise." All the creatures Scamader shows them have crazy names.
Ronan's seen a Demiguise before, twice. They are rather calm creatures but not too trusting — when scared, they turn invisible.
"Who would like to introduce us to who demiguises are?"
The whole group silences out. Most of the students take Care of Magical Creatures as something easy so no one studies outside of exams. Ronan could raise his hand but it would ruin his reputation. He nudges Parrish instead.
He turns sideways to Ronan, glaring, and Ronan notices a fresh gash running down his jaw that he hasn't seen two days ago.
"Don't you want to win some points for the snakes, smartass?"
They are standing awfully close because Parrish really looks so cold that Ronan instinctively leans into his space. Parrish's cheeks are rosy pink, a shade that makes his freckles, faded by the winter, barely visible.
At the same moment, Scamander repeats, "Anyone?" He sounds as awkward as Ronan feels.
Parrish sighs, raising his hand.
"Mr Parrish," Scamander says, a tad bit less awkward. "Would you like to share what you know about demiguises?"
"They are very intelligent creatures," Adam begins, standing tall when all the eyes turn to him. "They have the ability to turn invisible so their fur is widely used by poachers to make temporary invisible cloaks. But, since demiguises can predict the future, a majority of them is caught early after birth. They do not have a strict inhabitation but they prefer jungles and forests."
"Perfect," Scamander says. "Would you like to hold her?"
Adam stands there, staring at Dorothy and her huge eyes. "I—"
Ronan nudges him again. "What? You afraid she'll bite?"
"Of course not, you idiot. I just said she's intelligent, she won't bite unless I intend to harm her."
Something warm and mushy blooms in Ronan's chest for a moment. There aren't many people who know at least something about magical creatures or who don't refer to them as it, and there's even fewer of them who trust magical creatures. Parrish is too perfect to be real.
Scamander calls him up again, still smiling warmly with Dorothy in his arms.
Parrish takes a few steps closer. When he's in front of Scamander, he looks Dorothy in the eyes and lightly bows — nothing but perfect etiquette, even with animals.
Then he shows an open hand, palm to Dorothy, close to his chest, and slowly extends it to the creature. It's a gesture Scamander taught them all at the beginning of the third year, as something that should be neutral with most creatures. Parrish waits for the demiguise's reaction.
Of course, there isn't a creature who isn't instantly taken with him so Dorothy puts her palm on his. Ronan hears someone coo.
Then Dorothy leans away from Scamander and wraps her long arms around Parrish's neck.
"Off you go," Scamander says, transferring her into Adam's hands.
Parrish, for a barely visible second, looks tense. Then, he manoeuvres Dorothy into a bit more comfortable position and holds out one hand to her.
"I'm Adam," he says to her.
Ronan doesn't know many people who genuinely talk to animals that aren't cats and dogs — who aren't cuddly and have the kind of eyes that seem to understand — but of course, Parrish is one of them.
Dorothy gently puts her palm on his hand and tucks her head under his chin. Ronan's cold dead heart is melting but he isn't going to coo like some people in the back are.
Scamander starts on his lecture and Ronan can't hear what Parrish is whispering to Dorothy. He moves closer to him, standing a few feet away, out of the demiguise's reach
"Are you alright up here?" Parrish is saying when Ronan steps into hearing range.
Dorothy leans back, watching Parrish's face with her huge eyes — for a moment, he thinks she looked at Ronan too. She licks her palm and smears it over Parrish's cheek. He doesn't even flinch, Ronan will give him that.
He still snorts.
Parrish looks up, an eyebrow raised with a silent I dare you to comment on this. Ronan never backs down from a dare.
"She giving you a bath, Parrish? You finally won't be stinking like the dungeons."
The demiguise's eyes flash — she's seeing the future — and she purrs.
Parrish turns his face so he's looking straight at Ronan. And, ah, yes, demiguise's drool has healing properties. The gush on Adam's face is now a pink, shiny scar.
Parrish holds out one of his arms and his wand slips out of his sleeve — it looks awfully elegant and Ronan wonders how he did it.
Adam casts a nonverbal spell in Ronan's direction, one he couldn't recognize. It would be impressive if it actually worked, that is, but nothing happens.
He rolls his eyes — those pretty eyes — at Ronan, adjust Dorothy in his arms and moves closer to Scamander.
Ronan wants to follow him but his feet catch, can't move away from each other, tagging, and before he knows, he's lying on the ground.
His shoelaces were tied a second ago but when he gets up, surrounded by snickering, they are back to normal.
Parrish is so fucking beautiful he sometimes forgets he's a Slytherin.