Archive of Our Own

“Christmas was coming. One morning in mid-December, Hogwarts woke to find itself covered in several feet of snow.”

~ Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

“I still don’t see why we had to come outside for this,” Bruce complained. He blew on his hands – quite theatrically, in Tony’s opinion, since the first thing Bruce had done upon leaving the castle was cast a Warming Charm on himself. But five hours ago, Bruce had been flatly refusing to come at all, so Tony was willing to grade his level of dramatic whining on a curve.

“Do you want to explain to McGonagall why Ravenclaw Tower has a hole blasted through the side?”

“You said this wouldn’t be dangerous!” Bruce hunched even deeper into his winter cloak and scowled down at the foot of snow they’d been trudging through. But he didn’t make any move to turn back, which was practically the same as wholehearted approval. A solid B+ on the Bruce Banner Rubric.

“It isn’t dangerous!” Tony insisted. “…Especially now that we’re outside.”

Tony squinted through the flurries of snow that had been falling steadily since lunchtime, trying to judge the distance to Hagrid’s hut. He didn’t want to accidentally stumble upon it in the snow and risk being caught outside after curfew, even if the worst Hagrid was likely to do was feed them rock cakes before sending them back to bed.

Hagrid had always been strangely indulgent of Tony – one of the few adults who was – ever since Tony had managed to break the charm on the boat transporting him across the Great Lake before his very first day at Hogwarts. Accidentally, despite what Rhodey had always claimed. Seven years of friendship and Rhodey can’t even forgive Tony for a mere fifteen minutes spent bobbing in a tiny rowboat, waiting for rescue from an irate McGonagall.

McGonagall had not been amused either. Hagrid, however, had been extremely amused.

Later, Tony would learn about Hagrid’s instant and unwavering affection for half-feral creatures.

“I can’t feel my legs,” Bruce’s grumpy voice cut into Tony’s thoughts. “Or my nose. Or my –“

“It’s been five minutes, your Warming Charm can’t have worn off yet.”

Bruce grumbled something about “the effects of precipitation on charmwork,” but otherwise subsided.

They were approaching the edge of the Forbidden Forest now. Tony glanced behind him, back toward Hogwarts. At this time of night, only a few windows shone with candlelight, but the familiar shape of the castle rising through the snow was still a comfort at his back.

He may not have been entirely forthcoming about the risks of this magical experiment with Bruce, but if he had been, Bruce never would have agreed to come. And Tony was sure it would work, he could feel it. He’d been researching and testing and double-checking for weeks now. At a certain point, it was time to take a leap of faith.

The forest thickened around them, and soon Hogwarts slipped out of view around a bend in their path.

“D’you think there are still Acromantulas in here?” Bruce asked, peering around nervously at the surrounding trees.

“Aw, they’re not so bad,” Tony said cheerfully, and Bruce stared at him in such shock that he tripped over an exposed tree root and went sprawling into a snowdrift. And then proceeded to just lie there.

“This is the worst thing you’ve ever made me do.” Bruce’s voice was muffled by the snow.

“Really? Winter is the worst thing I’ve ever made you do? Just on balance of probability, I feel like that can’t be true. What about that time we tried to dye the Fat Friar’s ectoplasm? What about that time we snuck into McGonagall’s office and found her dancing to a song on the Wireless? What about that time in fifth year-“

Bruce’s red, ice-dappled face popped up from the snow bank.

“You said you’d forgotten that! You said the potion caused amnesia!”

“Well that was obviously absurd, even with the hellebore, it would never have caused amnesia. I was clearly lying to spare you the humiliation because I’m a good friend, just like I’m a good friend for creating this spell. For you and your, y’know...” Tony made a pair of fangs with his fingers. “…murder friend.”

He grinned at Bruce. Bruce rolled his eyes.

“You can say ‘werewolf,’” he said tiredly. “Everyone else does.”

“I’m a Stark, Bruce. We don’t say anything directly – I’ve gone a full year speaking with my mother in nothing but euphemisms. She once saw my Ravenclaw tie and said, ‘what a curious dark green color.’ After seven years, I still couldn’t swear that she knows I didn’t Sort Slytherin. She might genuinely be colorblind. It’s never been confirmed.”

“You have such a strange home life,” Bruce sighed, but his mouth was twitching at the corners and his face had lost its haunted look.

Their path opened suddenly into a small clearing about twenty feet across, ringed by pine trees. Moonlight reflected off the snow that blanketed the ground, giving it a silvery glow. It would be a big enough space for the wards that Tony and Bruce needed to set. And it might be superstitious of him (not to mention a foolish feeling to indulge in the middle of the Forbidden Forest), but Tony felt oddly safe here, surrounded by the same kind of tree that had produced his own wand.

Pines liked new magic. He and Bruce couldn’t have picked a better place to try an experimental spell for the first time.

Tony put out a hand to stop Bruce from stomping through the clearing. Bruce blinked, glanced around them, and then nodded back.

And this was why Tony kept dragging Bruce on adventures, no matter how much Bruce complained or worried beforehand. When the fun started, Bruce matched Tony’s own reckless thirst for knowledge step-for-step.

They didn’t need to say a word now. Together, like partners in a familiar dance, they both pulled out their wands and began circling the clearing, casting a standard safety ward that would contain any magical accidents from spreading past the clearing. It shimmered in the shape of a blue net crisscrossing the space before fading from their view.

“Okay,” Tony started, once he’d confirmed that the ward was holding. He felt restless, jittery in the way he always did before trying out a spell he’d invented. He found himself pacing around the clearing, double-checking the ward again. “So this is a tricky bit of Transfiguration, but in theory, the spell will replace Polyjuice without its uncomfortable interactions with werewolf physiology. If it works, you should be able to use it on the night of the full moon to transfigure into someone who isn’t a werewolf.”

Bruce frowned and peered through the moonlight at Tony’s face, as though some incriminating evidence would be written there. “Tony, I know all this already – are you having second thoughts or something? Because we can always wait…”

“No! It’ll work, I know it will, it’s just…maybe you should be the one to cast it on me.”

Tony’s journey around the perimeter of the clearing had brought him right back to Bruce, who’d nearly dropped his wand in shock.

“What? Are you joking? You wouldn’t even have designed this if it weren’t for me! There’s no way!”

“It makes sense,” Tony insisted, starting another circuit so as to avoid having to argue face-to-face. “I’m like…a baseline test. We can see if it works on a non-werewolf, and then try it on you next.”

“You said it yourself: it’s tricky, and I don’t know it as well as you. I’m more likely to screw it up.”

“You’ve been double-checking my notes every step of the way, and anyway, you’re better at this kind of transfiguration. Bodies and living things. I’d probably mix up the spleen with the scapula, and get us both sent to Azkaban for misuse of human subjects.”

“I dunno, Tony, this wasn’t what we agreed.” But Tony could hear Bruce wavering.

“Just.” Tony stopped his obsessive trajectory and whirled around to face Bruce. Bruce took a step back at whatever look he found on Tony’s face. “Let me. It’s my spell. It should be me.”

“I will never forgive you if you’ve fucked this up,” said Bruce, even as he drew his wand and prepared to cast the spell that, by this point, they both knew by heart.

Tony closed his eyes and forced himself to stand very still, poised on the balls of his feet like a runner suspended in the breath before the starting gun.

Tony exhaled, and suddenly several things were happening in rapid succession.

First: Bruce started the incantation, his usually quiet voice strong and sure as he pronounced the Latin syllables.

Second: there was a rustling from just outside the clearing.

Third: Tony’s eyes snapped open to see the worst possible person (except perhaps for McGonagall herself) stepping through the wards and into the clearing.

Fourth: Steve Rogers – Head Boy and general bane of Tony’s rule-breaking existence – said, “What are you two doing out here?” as he marched toward Tony…

…Just as, fifth: Bruce finished the incantation.

There was a loud bang and a flash of golden light. It illuminated everything in the clearing, including their three, identical, comically shocked faces, before everything went dark.

***

One hour earlier, Steve Rogers had been nowhere near the Forbidden Forest, with no idea that a miscast and highly illegal spell was about to change his life.

Instead, he’d been doing what he usually did on Monday and Thursday nights: removing either snogging couples from empty classrooms, or mischievous first-years from the Trophy Room (and, on one horrific and loud occasion, surprising a snogging couple in the Trophy Room, which had led to a cascade of falling shelves, bouncing metalware, and half-fastened robes that Steve still sometimes hears in his nightmares).

In fact, at the precise moment that Tony Stark was dragging Bruce Banner out of Ravenclaw Tower, Steve was running an exasperated hand through his hair and reminding a pair of sixth-years – who had been inhabiting a shadowy corner with far fewer shadows than they seemed to think – “You both have beds. With curtains.”

This may not have been the most responsible thing the Head Boy could possibly say in this situation, but he’d already taken House Points, so his official duty was technically done.

“We’re in different Houses, though,” said Ellen Cartwright – a fellow Gryffindor, who still looked a little mournful about the interruption to her evening. “Come on, Steve…”

“You’re telling me you can’t sneak one person into the Tower? Or into Hufflepuff, for that matter? I know you did Disillusionment in Charms last week.” Steve raised his eyebrows at Ellen and her girlfriend, who averted her eyes, looking mortified to be addressed directly.

And yeah, Steve probably really should not have said that. But it was much harder to be a beacon of Hogwarts discipline when the person he was meant to be disciplining was approximately four months younger than him, and had shouted at him last week during Quidditch practice to stop sending the Quaffle into the ground or she’d aim the next one at his head. It was one thing to drag second-years out of the kitchens, and quite another thing to judge – well, maybe not a friend, but at least someone he liked. Sometimes Steve just wanted to be a seventeen-year-old who was tired of haunting these cold, dark corridors.

Ellen, meanwhile, had brightened considerably at his suggestion. “Oh! Right. Thanks, Steve, you’re the best.” She shot him a sunny grin and began dragging her pink-faced Hufflepuff in the direction of Gryffindor Tower.

“I didn’t mean tonight!” Steve yelped. “Give me some plausible deniability. Merlin.”

Ellen made a small scoffing noise but obligingly halted her mad dash down the corridor. She turned in her girlfriend’s hold, angling her body close as she said something that Steve couldn’t catch. Her girlfriend smiled, small and private, as she murmured her reply.

Steve really should have known her name by now. Ellen’s Hufflepuff girlfriend. He’d been trying to memorize students ever since he became Head Boy, and every time he thought he knew everyone, he’d be caught out by another new face.

Everyone else’d had years to get to know each other, years that Steve had spent across an ocean, being tutored in magic by his mother.

It shouldn’t have mattered to him. He was here now. He had been since the middle of fourth year. And clearly McGonagall thought he fit in well enough, since she’d chosen him to be one of the Gryffindor Prefects just a half-year after he’d arrived, and then Head Boy after that.

Steve watched the easy familiarity with which Ellen hugged an unfamiliar girl, and decided abruptly that they didn’t need him here to supervise. They’d find their way back to their own Common Rooms. Or maybe they wouldn’t, but regardless, Steve didn’t have to stay here and find out for sure. He backed out of the corridor and veered instead toward the moving staircase that would deposit him directly beside the main doors (eventually, and with a little coaxing, but it would get there in the end). There were fifteen minutes left on his patrol, and he was struck by a sudden need to spend them outside these castle walls.

Who knew what havoc the younger students could be wreaking at night in the pumpkin patch? Or on the Quidditch pitch. Or any number of places where he’d be able to feel the cold sting of winter air on his face. Steve was only being thorough!

Even so, he hadn’t expected to slip through the doors and be immediately confronted by two sets of tracks, filling fast with new snow but still clearly visible. They started at Steve’s own feet and led off in the direction of the Forbidden Forest.

Steve took a moment to close his eyes and listen to the sound of the wild Scottish wind.

He could have gone to Ilvermorny when his mother died. But he’d had his heart set on Hogwarts. It was where both his parents had gone to school. It was where his mother had taught, briefly, before Voldemort’s first rise to power had driven her to America. She’d met his father there, another member of the small, traumatized community of magical British ex-pats who’d fled to New York. But Britain was where his father had died. He couldn’t bear to watch another war from the sidelines, he’d said, and had returned to fight Voldemort, “like he should have the first time.” 

When Steve had written Headmistress McGonagall to ask if his place at Hogwarts – inherited from his parents – was still available, he’d had some strange idea that it would bring him closer to them. New York hadn’t felt like home without his mother in it, and he’d thought Hogwarts might.

But maybe he should have gone to Ilvermorny after all.

Steve opened his eyes. The two sets of footprints were still there. One had a short, neat stride – indentations sunk at precise intervals into the snow – while the other was more like two jagged lines, as though their creator had been dragging their feet the whole way. Steve sighed, cast a Warming Charm on himself to forestall the shiver he could already feel at being outside in just his school robes, and followed them.

***

The first thing Tony saw when he regained consciousness was himself.

Tony was used to waking up to strange things. It was one of the more common side-effects of his inventions, along with minor injuries to his hands, his friends refusing to eat anything he handed them, and slime.

But seeing himself from outside himself was maybe one of the more disorienting sights he’d ever woken up to. Disorienting enough that Tony decided to shut his eyes and try this whole “waking up” thing again. But when he did, the scene was still the same. Snow was still seeping into his back from the cold ground of the Forbidden Forest, moonlight was still bathing the pine trees in silvery shadows, and his own face was still peering down anxiously at him.

“Merlin, I’ve split my consciousness again,” Tony mumbled, and struggled his way into a sitting position.

“What?” said his evil twin. Tony was just assuming that he wasn’t the evil twin of the two, although how could anyone really be sure of something like that? Maybe there was a way to design a test to…

“Um, are you…okay?” continued his evil twin (and oh fuck, that probably meant that Tony was the evil one after all), his eyes and mouth widening into circles of confusion.

Ah. So that probably meant that this couldn’t be an alternative version of himself. Even split in half and spell-damaged, no part of Tony’s consciousness would ever forget the Great Duplication Debacle of fourth year. Not to mention, that befuddled look paired with Tony’s features? Made him look like Bambi had just hit a sliding glass door. And Tony refused to believe that he’d ever let his own face look like that, if he was still in charge of it.

The second thing Tony saw was Evil Twin Tony’s school tie, swinging out of his collar as he leaned over Tony (How was he even supposed to refer to himself in this context? Neutral Twin Tony, maybe? At best). The red and gold of Gryffindor flashed across his field of view, and Tony was forced to come to several unfortunate realizations.

“Oh God, why couldn’t I have split my consciousness again!”

Evil twins, Tony felt equipped to handle. Good twins – twins who were not twins, but were, in fact, Steve Rogers inhabiting his body – were a whole different matter.

“Do you think the spell did something to his brain?” Good Twin Tony (ugh, fine, Steve Rogers) asked worriedly, speaking to someone over Tony’s head. Who turned out to be Bruce wringing his hands and looking like he was either about to, or just had, vomited.

“No, I’d be more worried if he’d been making sense,” Bruce said in a shaky attempt at his usual wry tone.

“You’re Rogers,” Tony confirmed. “And I’m—“

He suddenly began attending to the signals of his own body, which had been practically shouting that it was painfully trapped in robes that were several sizes too small for it. Tony had at first attributed that sense of tight discomfort to the residual effects of the spell, but no –-

“You’re also Rogers, yeah. Sorry.” A strange expression flashed across Rogers’ face, but Tony was too busy working himself into a panic to parse it.

Tony’d had several run-ins with Rogers over the years, and was very familiar with Rogers’ brand of uncompromising, no-excuses punishment. And Rogers had always made it perfectly clear that he thought Tony was not only arrogant and destructive (which, to be fair, he was), but a liar to boot. Which happened to be one of the few things that Tony actually wasn’t.

The upshot being that in trying to protect Bruce by forcing him to cast the spell first, Tony had practically ensured Bruce would be expelled. And possibly arrested. Once Rogers told McGonagall who’d cast an experimental, unregistered spell on him, it would all be over. And even though there was probably nothing Tony could say to change Rogers mind – been there tried that – he had to do something.

He tried to stand up, pushing away Rogers’ concerned hands as they moved to steady him, toppled back into the snow again, and resigned himself to staying there at least until he got more comfortable in this new body.

“Look, I know it might seem like Bruce did this – what with the casting and the light and the – “ Tony made a boom gesture with his hands. “But it was me. He was actually trying to stop me!”

“What?” said Rogers.

“What,” said Bruce.

But Tony was on a roll now. “…So what you saw was actually a very complicated, very obscure – but definitely not illegal! – shield charm at work, and so I think we can all agree—“

“Stark,” Rogers interrupted, and sat down heavily next to him in the snow. It was so strange to see Tony’s own face looking back at him without a mirror, and even stranger to see it being so still. He couldn’t read his own face at all. Rogers’ face. Whatever.

“It’s fine, just. Is it dangerous?”

“No,” Tony said, perhaps too promptly, judging by Rogers’ raised eyebrow. And that was certainly an expression his own face knew how to make.

“Really,” he insisted. “The theory behind the transfiguration is grounded in the same theory as Polyjuice; it’s just the form of magic that’s changed. So if it’s worked at all, and neither of us are in excruciating pain from a missing organ or something—”

Rogers turned horribly pale and looked like he was about to interject, so Tony added hurriedly: “It should wear off on its own.”

And then paused with a frown. “Although it was only meant to affect one person. Nothing in my research suggested that it would switch anyone, so who really knows what’ll happen next…Oh! I’ll have to check whether our magic’s been entangled—“

“Tony!” Bruce interrupted, and Tony shut up, even as his brain continued to race ahead, considering and discarding theories as to what had gone wrong. Bruce gave him another quelling look for good measure as he came to sit down beside them.

“So, short-term, what should we do?” Bruce asked. “While we wait for this to wear off. Unless Tony decides to just fix it himself,“ Bruce added sharply, and Tony winced. Apparently Bruce was still annoyed about the “claim all responsibility” plan.

“I’ll go to McGonagall quietly,” Tony said morosely, before Rogers had the opportunity to demand it like the Auror he would probably one day become.

“Are you joking?” Rogers blurted out, and both Tony and Bruce turned to stare at him. He flushed – which was another thing Tony could have lived his whole life without seeing on his own face – and fixed his eyes on the snowy ground. “I just mean…you wouldn’t just get detention. She’d probably expel you or something.”

“I know that. So?” Tony said slowly, wishing desperately that he’d spent more time studying his expressions in a mirror, just so he’d have some clue what Rogers was thinking.

“So?” Rogers’ head shot up and he gave Tony an incredulous look. “So, is that what you want?”

“I didn’t exactly think I had a choice, Head Boy.”

Rogers flushed again and bit his lip, and Tony resisted the urge to tell him to stop doing things in his body.

“Well. You do,” he mumbled finally. “Why couldn’t we just…pretend? Until the spell wears off. If it’s anything like even the strongest Polyjuice, it’ll only be a few hours. So I’ll go up to Ravenclaw Tower, and you can sleep in Gryffindor, and at breakfast, we’ll reassess.”

“It could be longer,” Bruce saw fit to interject. Tony glared at him, but in truth he would’ve felt duty-bound to give Rogers the same warning. “You and Tony might have to pretend to be each other for days. At lessons. With friends. Steve, are you sure?”

Ugh, there were probably more important things to worry about at the moment, aside from the fact that Tony’s best friend was apparently on a first name basis with Steve Rogers. And yet.

Tony and Rogers hadn’t always disliked each other. In fact, when Rogers had first appeared without a word after Christmas of their fourth year, with an American accent and an air of tragic mystery about him that had driven every other Hogwarts student wild with a combination of curiosity and lust, Tony had been deep into his ill-fated duplication experiment and had barely noticed he’d arrived at all.

They’d had several run-ins in fifth year, once Rogers became a prefect, but nothing serious until sixth year, when Rogers had caught Tony sneaking into the Gryffindor girls’ dormitories (well, to be fair, the bloody staircase had caught him, Rogers had just happened to be in the common room at the time). What Tony had found particularly galling about that whole fiasco was that he’d genuinely been trying to do a nice thing. Pepper had been ill. Tony hadn’t seen her in lessons or at meals for days, and he knew she’d be worried about her Arithmancy essay, and probably hungry for more than the Madame Pomfrey-approved foods that the House Elves had been instructed to bring her. But when Tony had tried to explain this all to Rogers, he’d been incredulous.

“You couldn’t have given your Arithmancy notes to another Gryffindor girl to bring up?” he’d pointed out, and Tony had insisted that he would have, if he’d thought of it, and Rogers had rolled his eyes like he thought Tony was an idiot. But not the charming kind of idiot who did impulsive things like decide on a whim to bring his friend biscuits and library books, and more like the kind of idiot who was making up an unbelievable story about bringing his friend biscuits and books in order to cover for some nefarious sexual escapade.

Rogers had taken him to McGonagall, who’d written to his parents, who’d spent the entire summer vacation on the verge of sending him to Durmstrang to “stop him messing about with girls instead of taking his education seriously.” As if there weren’t girls at Durmstrang (…is what Tony had not retorted, even though he’d wanted to).

And then Rogers became Head Boy, and it was like he was everywhere, dogging Tony’s every step with docked house points and detentions. Case in point being this little adventure.

Sometimes Tony did deserve it, and sometimes he really didn’t, but Rogers never seemed to care about the difference. He just looked through everyone who didn’t fit into his rule-following boxes. He always turned in homework on time, and always paid attention in lessons. He never voluntarily spoke in class, but if a professor asked him a direct question, he always gave the correct answer in a quiet, even tone.

He seemed to fit in well at Gryffindor. He immediately made the House Quidditch team as a Keeper, and became team captain by his sixth year. He always seemed to be talking to someone at mealtimes.

Not that Tony noticed, or anything.

But he was just so boring! A perfect student, never a crease in his school tie (and God forbid that he ever lose one). He always seemed to just do what he was told. It was no wonder that McGonagall had made him Head Boy. It was like someone had built the perfect Hogwarts student but had left off all non-essential features, like, perhaps, a personality.

Which was why it was so baffling that Rogers was willing to make any kind of effort to protect him now.

But when Bruce asked Rogers if he was sure he wanted to lie for them, Rogers just lifted his head and stared directly at Tony’s stupidly gaping face, and said with the kind of stubborn determination that had probably gotten him sorted Gryffindor: “Perfectly sure.”

***

It wasn’t that Steve was surprised, exactly, to discover that Tony Stark and Bruce Banner had decided that after curfew, in December, during a snowstorm, was the perfect time to sneak into the Forbidden Forest for some casual spell-casting.

And it wasn’t that he was surprised, necessarily, to get caught up in the – literal – blast. Tony Stark was like Bombarda in human form. Chaos surrounded him like one of Professor Trelawney’s auras, an invisible force of destruction that even Stark himself seemed only half-conscious of. So honestly, Steve finds this whole situation significantly less surprising than if he’d learned that Stark had spent the whole night up in Ravenclaw Tower where he was ostensibly supposed to be.

All right. Maybe it was a little surprising to suddenly be in a different body than the one you were used to, but Steve remembered puberty, so the feeling wasn’t completely without precedent. By the time he’d tried to stand up and nearly fallen over again, and taken a few tentative steps, and then had fallen over again, he’d been mostly fine with it. Stranger magical accidents had happened at Hogwarts. Steve had heard whispered rumors of a misbrewed Aging Potion that had exploded and turned the entire class into infants, and there was at least one classroom in the Charms corridor that had been locked up until an Unspeakable could come have a look at it.

Ultimately, the thing that Steve found most surprising was how instantly and wholeheartedly Stark had lied to protect Banner. Not effectively, to be clear, but with a certain doomed gusto that Steve couldn’t help but admire. As Steve was agreeing to help cover up their magical accident, he told himself it was because of Stark’s truly, embarrassingly terrible lying. It felt oddly unsportsmanlike to get Stark in trouble for something he wanted to get into trouble for. Or like feeding a baby too many sweets when you knew they’d only make it sick later. Steve wasn’t gonna torture a baby, he wasn’t a monster.

The secret reason that Steve agreed to help Stark, however, was simple curiosity. Stark’s immediate instinct to protect Banner seemed to defy everything else Steve knew about him – namely, his casual disregard for the safety and wellbeing of others, and the way he’d always seemed to prioritize his own entertainment above anything else. So Steve had wondered if maybe there was more to Stark than met the eye.

The even more secret reason that Steve agreed to help Stark – secret enough that he could barely admit it to himself, and then, only after he’d let Banner guide him back to Ravenclaw Tower and had pulled Tony Stark’s deep blue bedcurtains tightly around himself, with only the darkness and the snuffling sounds of Tony Stark’s sleeping friends as witnesses – the most secret reason was that Steve liked the idea of being someone else. Just for a day or two. Almost like a vacation.

***

The next afternoon, Tony sat in NEWT-level Potions and concluded that this whole body-swap situation was proving to be a lot more complicated than he’d realized.

The morning had not started out auspiciously.

The night before, Tony has asked Rogers to point him in the direction of Gryffindor Tower and give him the password, before Bruce had accompanied Rogers back to Ravenclaw. But this morning, he’d woken up late enough that the other boys in his dormitory had already gone down to breakfast, and somehow, despite living in this sodding castle for seven full years, he had managed to get lost three times between Gryffindor and the Great Hall, get trapped on two temperamental staircases, and get doused in water by one poltergeist.

So he’d burst into the Great Hall late, a bit windblown from a hasty Drying Charm, and still knotting up his red and gold tie. Everyone had turned to look at him, including the professors at the Head Table, and a sudden burst of self-consciousness had caused Tony to stumble. He had managed to get comfortable moving in this new, taller body as long as he didn’t think about it, but the moment his attention was drawn back to it, he had a tendency to walk into things. Or trip and fall in front of the entire school.

So then he’d slunk over to the Ravenclaw table, and had only been stopped at the last minute by Bruce frantically shaking his head at him, while Tony’s new Good Twin stared back at him with wide eyes. And not for nothing, but Steve-as-Tony (Steve-in-Tony? Oh god, definitely don’t think about that) looked nothing like the real Tony! He was fully in-uniform, for Merlin’s sake! It was like Rogers was trying to get them both caught.

“Alright, Stark?” Tony had been forced to throw out casually, as though that brilliant conversational salvo had been his reason for approaching Ravenclaw table all along. If any student in the Great Hall hadn’t been paying attention to Tony’s ignominious entrance, they were certainly paying attention now. Tony and Rogers’ mutual dislike was well-known, and everyone was clearly hoping for a bit of gossip to brighten up the morning.

Tony grinned dangerously at a group of fourth-year Hufflepuffs who were leaning across the aisle so dramatically that they were practically falling off the bench. They turned back around looking alarmed and a little unsettled, and Tony realized belatedly that Steve Rogers would never have made a face like that.

He slid into a free seat at the end of Gryffindor table, feeling like surely that terrible ordeal merited some bacon, and the whole situation had somehow managed to get so much worse.

“Steve,” Rhodey said from across the table, giving him a polite but vague smile. Pepper glanced up briefly before returning to the orange she was splitting into neat sections.

“R-!“ Tony began, startled, before having the sense to shut up. Once he could trust himself to say something sensible, he cautiously tried: “Hello” before shoving several pieces of toast into his mouth at once. He hadn’t even had a chance to butter them, but clearly speed was of the essence here.

He considered the problem as he crunched, and Pepper winced, and Rhodey went back to his eggs. What did Rhodey, Pepper, and Steve Rogers possibly have to say to each other in the mornings? They must talk – they’d shared a common room for several years. Then again, Rhodey had always participated cheerfully enough in Tony’s various rants about Rogers, so maybe they really weren’t friends.

But the silence was lengthening – Tony couldn’t just say nothing, and there was only so much toast he could eat.

“Have you started that Defense essay yet? Three feet, what a nightmare,” Tony tried. Everyone liked complaining about homework, so it seemed like a safe bet. But to his horror, Rhodey gave him a baffled look and even Pepper had stopped eating her orange long enough to listen in.

“Er, you know I did. You were helping me with it last night. You said you’d finished yours over the weekend…” Rhodey said slowly, and Tony tried to hide his wince of panic. Of course Rogers The Overachiever wouldn’t complain about homework. And yes, Tony might also have written that essay already, and fine, it had been rather easy, but he’d only wanted to get it out of the way so he could finish his Polyjuice variant! Clearly a completely different situation! It’s not like he went around boasting about it or anything!

“Steve, are you alright?” Pepper interjected suddenly, which was a terrible turn of events, because Tony had never in his life managed to lie successfully to Pepper, and her slightly concerned expression was giving him the Pavlovian urge to start spilling secrets.

“Great!” Tony blurted out cheerfully. He shot up from the bench and stuffed three more pieces of toast, a sausage, and the remnants of a jar of marmalade into his satchel. “I’m really, really great!” He gave them both a slightly manic grin and made for the doors to the Great Hall, marmalade squelching the whole way.

He was halfway to Charms before he remembered that Gryffindors had Herbology first thing, so then of course he’d been late to that as well.

Now, safely ensconced in the Potions dungeon that afternoon – with Bruce and Rogers sat behind him, and Natasha Romanoff (Rogers’ Potions partner) serenely stirring their Elixir to Induce Euphoria – Tony felt like it might finally be safe to breathe a bit.

At least until he felt Romanoff go still next to him.

“Why are you adding the porcupine quills now?” she asked curiously. “The book says we’re meant to do the Sopophorous beans next.”

Tony froze. In truth, he’d been brewing without really thinking about it. He’d taught himself to brew this potion in third year as part of a prank, and then he’d gotten curious enough to start tweaking the recipe. When Tony looked down at their cauldron with a growing sense of dread, it was to find that their potion was a perfect shade of sunshine yellow. He shot a quick, panicked glance over at Bruce and Rogers’ bench. Their potion was more of a bright lemon, which was much more plausible for someone’s first try at brewing it.

“I—erm—“ Tony stuttered, glancing from Romanoff, who raised her eyebrows in barely concealed impatience; to Bruce and Rogers, who’d caught on that something was wrong but were giving him no clues as to how to proceed; back to the unrealistically well-brewed potion in front of him.

So Tony did the only thing he could think to do. He shrugged at Romanoff in exaggerated puzzlement, said “uhh, what are Sopophorous beans?” and dumped his entire handful of powdered porcupine quills into the cauldron.

The potion went up in a blaze of fire.

Tony himself was only saved serious injury by Romanoff’s quick reflexes. She pulled him away from the cauldron and practically hauled him, coughing, into the corridor. And then she rather ruined the gesture by shoving him into a wall and saying, in a perfectly even tone of voice that nevertheless promised murder, “I don’t know what’s going on with you, Steve, but you’d better figure it out before you destroy both our chances to pass our NEWTs.”

That was all she managed to say before the rest of the class had poured out of the classroom after them, as the toxic smoke produced by their potion had proven itself remarkably resilient.

“Merlin, Stark, I may not be a genius like you but I’m not incompetent,” Rogers had taken the opportunity to hiss at him, in the confusion of the mass evacuation.

“You think I’m a genius?” Tony asked blankly, but by then Rogers had already stomped away.

***

Steve wasn’t sure what he’d expected pretending to be Tony Stark would be like, but “skiving off lessons to work in the library instead” was definitely not part of it.

And yet here they were, two days after the swap, hidden from Madam Pince’s suspicious glare by a bookshelf, a bust of Bridget Wenlock the Arithmancer, and nine books on cleaning spells stacked precariously in front of their table. They were looking over Stark’s Transfiguration notes for the five hundredth time, trying to figure out why his “temporary” spell hadn’t already worn off.

Well. Steve was looking over Stark’s Transfiguration notes and trying to decipher his shorthand. Stark was flipping through reference books on the Animagus transformation and mumbling to himself.

Steve had waylaid him just before lunch, dragging him behind a suit of armor to have a whispered argument about what to do about the spell next. Stark had promised to work on it during the gap in Steve’s afternoon schedule (Stark had been a model student, if a bit subdued, ever since the debacle in Potions the day before).

“You don’t have to come. Really. I’ll get more done on my own,” Stark had said flippantly, when Steve had offered to join him.

“It’s not fair for you to do all the work, not when the spell’s affecting both of us,” Steve had insisted. “You’ll just have to wait until I’m done pretending I know anything about Ancient Runes.”

“Oh, that,” Stark had brushed the entire subject aside with a laughing flourish of his hand. “I meant to tell you – you don’t even have to bother going, if you don’t want. I’m sure you have better things to do anyway.” He gave Steve a quick, uncertain smile, as though checking to see whether he’d gotten an answer wrong on some secret test.

“At least one thing. In the library,” Steve had retorted. “But you really don’t care that I’d be missing one of your classes? Won’t Babbling be angry?”

“Relived, rather.” Stark grinned, and Steve frowned back at him.

Even in all the confusion and excitement of that first night, when their scheme to impersonate each other had seemed like a simple trick, Steve had been most worried about how he was going to make it through Stark’s lessons without giving the whole game away. Surely, Steve would say or do something so staggeringly ordinary that every professor within a five-mile radius of Hogwarts would know that he wasn’t Tony Stark. Nobody could fake his kind of talent.

Steve was shocked to find that lessons were, in many ways, the easy part. The professors didn’t bother calling on him. They also seemed utterly unfazed that he’d forgotten Stark’s schedule and appeared twenty minutes into a class period. On the rare occasions when he was expected to do something, the professors seemed to expect something nonsensical, and Steve was left alone to do whatever he liked. After spending one single day as Tony Stark, Steve had felt more invisible than he’d ever felt as himself.

It had made Steve even more determined not to let Stark slip away to the library and handle this all alone, no matter how useless Steve would surely be at the magical theory. And Stark had given in, finally, with a groan that Steve had serenely pretended not to hear.

Now, hours later, Tony was flipping through a tome larger than his head as he scratched idly at the back of his neck with his wand. Without looking up from his own reading, Steve gently reached over to lower it before Tony could set his own hair on fire. This had already happened once before, although Tony had paid it as little notice then as he did now. He also had a tendency to conjure glittery bubbles from the tip of his wand when he was thinking particularly hard. Steve had been surreptitiously popping them all afternoon before Pince could spot them floating above the wall of books.

Tony brushed a stubborn lock of blond hair out of his eyes – one that had always irritated Steve as well - and frowned down at the passage he’d been skimming.

“Wait. This isn’t the right book, where’s the one—“ he mumbled.

Without a word, Steve slid a thin volume across the desk, and Tony’s eyes lit up.

“Yes! The conclusion might be rubbish, but there’s some footnotes in Chapter Three that propose an underlying link between Animagi and Metamorphmagi, which…” Stark trailed off, already flipping through the book. Steve grinned and leaned back in his chair.

Tony was a bit mad, Steve reflected happily. He was likely to do himself permanent damage, flinging his wand about as thought it were an extension of himself. He was also impatient, forgetful, and liable to ignore Steve right up until he needed something from him.

It was the most fun he’d had at Hogwarts since he’d arrived.

“Maybe it was in Chapter Two,” Tony murmured. He prodded absently at the pages with his wand, biting his teeth with his tongue, and Steve had just enough time to cast Impervius over the whole table before a jet of water shot from Tony’s wand, bounced off the charm, and hit Tony straight in the face.

He yelped and fell out of his chair with a crash.

Madam Pince appeared as though Summoned by the noise. She pointed one trembling hand at the water still dripping from Tony’s hair, the other clasped over her mouth as though she were starring in a Muggle film. The horror of it all was apparently too much for her, because she couldn’t even bring herself to shout as she tossed them unceremoniously out of the library with a flick of her wand that sent them tumbling out the door.

Steve glanced over at Tony, sprawled out on the floor of the corridor with all the sodden, offended dignity of a Kneazle who’d fallen into a bathtub. He couldn’t help it – he started to laugh. Alarm flashed across Tony’s face, and then he seemed to relax, grinning up at the ceiling as all their belongings clattered around them courtesy of one of Madam Pince’s Banishing Charms.

“She’ll never forgive me for that.” Steve shook his head ruefully. Pince liked him about as well as she liked any student, which is to say that she sometimes trusted him to check out a book without delivering several dire warnings about damaging it. Now, Steve would be lucky if she ever let him near a book again.

“Oh, she’ll get over it.” Tony smiled at him, a quick, nervous expression that looked strange on Steve’s face. “It’s not as though she saw what happened. Just tell her it was my fault. She’ll believe that, at least.”

It technically had been Tony’s fault, but Steve shook his head anyway. “I can handle a few lectures.”

“Oh.” Tony sat up and rested his chin on his knees, a ball of angular awkwardness. Steve wondered if he’d ever blushed that obviously when it was his body.

“Anyway, you like the library,” Steve continued. “You’d hate to be banned from it.”

Tony had been resting his chin in his hands, but at that pronouncement, he twisted just enough to regard Steve with one suspicious blue eye.

“How’d you know that?”

Steve rolled his eyes, and could hear the exasperated fondness that colored his voice when he said: “Let’s go down to dinner, and you can explain the thing you were reading about Metamorphmagi, and then maybe I’ll tell you.”

Tony brightened instantly. “It’s actually an interesting bit of magical theory…”

Tony started to wander down the corridor, chattering incomprehensibly about Gamp’s Law, without seeming to notice that he’d left the contents of his school satchel scattered across the ground. Steve gathered up their things with a flick of his wand and caught up to Tony easily.

“…So if Trevelyan had actually bothered to work through the implications…” Tony waved his wand in a loose gesture of frustration with the idiocy of some dead Transfiguration theorist or another. Steve plucked the wand neatly from Tony’s hand and pocketed it before Tony accidentally decapitated any of the wood nymphs frolicking through a nearby painting.

“Trevelyan’s a wanker,” Steve agreed cheerfully.

“He’s a wannabe Paracelsus who wouldn’t know a Philosopher’s Stone if someone chucked it at his head,” Tony corrected viciously, and Steve assumed this would have been a very cutting insult if he’d known what any of those things were. “Ooh, look Steve, it’s steak and kidney pie for dinner!”

Grinning to himself, Steve followed Tony into the Great Hall. He wondered when Tony would notice the disappearance of his wand. He found himself rather looking forward to finding out.

***

The Gryffindor common room was alright, Tony allowed, if you liked loud games of Exploding Snap and a bust of Harry Potter with a Santa hat draped over its head, whom some enterprising student had charmed to drop peppermints out of its mouth and onto the heads of anyone who walked beneath it. It was much more boisterous than the Ravenclaw common room usually was on a school night, where the person making the most noise was usually Tony himself.

Tonight, Tony sat in a squashy scarlet armchair by the fire, reading one of the Metamorphmagus theory books he’d made Bruce check out of the library for him (Tony and Steve were both still too afraid to face Madam Pince’s wrath themselves). He’d been worried at first that Steve’s friends would notice the book and ask questions, but so far, the only people who’d spoken to him had been a steady stream of younger students asking for homework help, to the point where Tony wondered if it was another Head Boy duty that Steve had forgotten to warn him about. All the other Seventh Year Gryffindors seemed happily grouped around the common room, but nobody was catching his eye to invite him to join them. Tony told himself that he should be thankful, since it was much easier to pretend to be Steve if Steve didn’t have any close friends who would pick up on his strange behavior. But mainly, Tony just felt unsettled, and rather indignant on Steve’s behalf.

Despite the warmth and comfort of the Gryffindor common room, then, Tony was almost relieved that Steve’s assigned nighttime patrol shift gave him an excuse to leave. He ducked out of the portrait hole and almost immediately ran into a very familiar figure in Ravenclaw robes.

“Student out of bed!” Tony gasped, pointing at Steve dramatically. “Never in all my hours as a Head Boy have I seen such behavior.”

Steve didn’t seem bothered enough by the accusation to stir from his casual slouch against the corridor wall.

“Awful,” he agreed. “Ravenclaw should definitely lose points for this.”

“On the other hand, I’m feeling merciful, spirit of the holidays and all that.” Tony made a gesture somewhere between a bow and the sign of the cross. “I hereby grant you clemency.”

“Thanks,” Steve said drily. He pushed off the wall and fell into step beside Tony.

“What’re you doing here, anyway?” Tony asked. “Did you need to get into Gryffindor?”

“I was waiting for you.” Steve gave him a look, like he was incredibly dense for asking, but it’s not as though it had been obvious. “Thought you might like some company. These patrols can get pretty boring. But I can leave you alone if you—”

Steve looked suddenly unsure, and Tony blurted out: “No, stay! I was just, uh, surprised to hear that you’re encouraging more flagrant rule-breaking by Tony Stark.”

“Oh no, I suppose I’ll just have to give myself detention,” Steve retorted in a monotone. “I’m sure a nighttime patrol with the Head Boy will teach me a valuable lesson.”

“I am a fantastic influence on the youth of today,” Tony allowed.

It was shockingly un-terrible to patrol the castle with Steve.

For one thing, Steve had apparently stopped by the kitchens before heading to Gryffindor Tower, because he pulled out a thermos of hot chocolate with the defensive explanation that “your body gets cold easily. I’ve been drinking gallons of tea at every meal,” and they were soon swapping it comfortably back and forth as they walked.

Tony had known from their afternoon in the library that Steve was a good study partner (an honor previously reserved only for Bruce). He had an oddly calming presence, and he listened intently to everything Tony said, no matter how esoteric or disjointed.

Now, as they wandered through the dark and silent corridors of the sleeping castle, sipping their chocolate, Tony learned that Steve could be quite talkative if given a chance. Tony had asked Steve about his plans for Christmas, and he’d launched into an animated story about his Muggle neighbor and best friend Bucky, with whom he usually spent vacations. Bucky was apparently convinced that Hogwarts was some oppressive institution straight out of a Victorian novel, after Steve had explained that students couldn’t use cell phones or access email during the term. Steve also told stories about his mother – haltingly at first, and then more eagerly – stories about the Christmas decorations that used to fill their small Brooklyn flat to bursting, and how his mother would charm the Nativity figures to each sing different Christmas carols in wildly different keys, while she stood in front of the manger directing the ensuing cacophony with her wand.

As the night went on, Tony found himself reciprocating, telling Steve about sneaking out of his parents’ holiday parties to light a menorah with Jarvis and his wife Ana, who would smuggle him treats that his parents had forbidden while he was in his nice holiday dress robes. He told Steve that since Hogwarts, he’d been spending most of his holiday breaks with his godmother Peggy, who lived in London and worked for the Ministry (Tony was almost certain she was an Unspeakable), and took him ice skating on the weekends. Rather than ask the question Tony had been dreading about why he didn’t spend Christmas with his parents, Steve told Tony about the time he’d gone skating at Rockefeller Center with Bucky.

By the time patrol ended and they separated to return to Gryffindor and Ravenclaw Towers, Tony realized he’d entirely forgotten to look for any students out of bed.

***

Steve was spending Saturday lunch in mutual awkwardness with Bruce at the Ravenclaw table when Tony sidled up to him and glanced around like they were in a Muggle spy film.

“Can I talk to you? Er, alone?” Tony mumbled.

A group of Third Years immediately started giggling, and Tony sent them a very un-Steve-like glower.

“Uh, sure,” Steve replied, trying not to blush. “Bye, um, Bruce. See you later. In Ravenclaw Tower. Where we have…Friend Things planned.”

“Yes,” Bruce echoed, intently stirring more sugar into his tea like it was the most complicated potion he’d ever brewed. “Looking forward to it, ah, Tony. My…pal?”

“Nailed it,” Tony murmured under his breath as he dragged Steve away by the arm. The Third Years meanwhile had gone suspiciously silent behind them. “Who knows what rumors those little monsters will start spreading now.”

Once they’d gotten far enough away from the Great Hall to talk privately, Tony whirled around to face Steve, opened his mouth, shut it again, and then very unsubtly checked around them for quick exits. He was rocking a bit on the balls of his feet and was refusing to meet Steve’s eye. So, overall, he was doing a great job of instilling confidence that everything was totally fine.

“Tony? Are you alright?”

“ I really didn’t think it would take this long,” Tony blurted out almost before Steve had finished asking the question, as though the words had been building behind his tongue, just waiting for the right spell to release them.

“What?”

“The Polyjuice Spell. Everything in my research…by all rights it should’ve worn off by now, and I can’t figure out why it hasn’t.”

“Well, that’s alright,” Steve said slowly. “It’s not like I blame you for getting it wrong, you told me from the start that you weren’t sure.”

Tony’s confession didn’t really seem worth the amount of miserable fidgeting it was being given, and Steve felt like he was missing something.

“No, Steve, you don’t get it,” Tony snapped, inadvertently echoing Steve’s thoughts. And Steve felt almost relieved to hear the annoyance in Tony’s voice – whatever it was that Tony was feeling guilty about, at least it wasn’t serious enough to teach him patience.

Tony continued, “The Christmas holiday starts in a few days, and I was thinking about what you said the other night. That you usually spent it with your friend in New York, but Steve…” He trailed off miserably, and Steve finally caught up.

“I can’t go. Or, rather, you can’t go.”

“I’ll confess to McGonagall,” Tony said abruptly, tugging at the sleeve of his robe and staring at Steve’s shoes. “She might even be able to fix it—“

“Tony.”

“…Because I’m clearly doing a rubbish job—“

“Tony.”

“…And really she should be furious, Bruce tried to warn me—“

“Tony!”

Steve had to physically grab Tony by both arms to stop him pacing, but at least it finally managed to catch his attention.

“It’s okay! Bucky will understand. And the holiday will give us plenty of time to research without having to worry about lessons, or about other people catching on.”

“But it’s Christmas, Steve,” Tony said, staring down at him earnestly like he thought the entire subject of this conversation might have somehow escaped Steve’s attention.

“Well, what about you? Were you planning to spend Christmas with your Aunt Peggy?”

“She’s in Portugal for the next several weeks, very hush-hush, absolutely not Unspeakable business, just can’t confirm or deny her precise location, you know how it is. So no, I was going to stay here anyway, and don’t change the subject!”

“That was the subject!”

“No-o,” Tony drawled, like he thought Steve was being obtuse on purpose. “The subject was you spending Christmas with your friend.”

“I want to spend it with you,” Steve insisted loudly, and Tony faltered. He blinked several times in rapid succession and clearly forgot whatever vaguely condescending thing he’d been about to yell at Steve. “I mean,” Steve rushed to clarify, “I don’t want to give up on the spell. Because I’m, uh, invested now. You know, in the process of discovery.”

“Right,” Tony said faintly, still blinking too quickly.

“And, look, if we don’t solve it before the start of term, I agree that we should probably go to McGonagall, together, and tell her about it.”

Tony held eye contact for a few long seconds, until he finally sighed and dropped his gaze. Steve tried not to gloat too visibly about winning this argument, but from the way Tony narrowed his eyes at him, he was pretty sure he’d failed.

“I don’t know why you’re the one trying to persuade me to stay out of trouble,” Tony grumbled. Feels wrong somehow.”

Steve’s only reply was to grin. It didn’t surprise him in the slightest.

“Ugh, fine, I’ll agree to this under one condition,” Tony said, like it was the biggest imposition in the world.

“Pretty sure you already agreed.”

“What are you, the Wizengamot? I didn’t make an Unbreakable Vow, I can do what I want, and what I want is one condition.”

“Alright,” Steve made a great show of sighing. “What’s your condition?”

Tony smirked. “Follow me.”

Tony led him to a little-used third-floor corridor, where he stopped in front of a newer tapestry depicting a scene from the Battle of Hogwarts. Steve was interested to notice that the fight represented in the tapestry was taking place in what looked like this exact corridor, except where the tapestry was now hanging, there was a door instead.

Tony rapped a brisk knock against the door in the tapestry with his wand, and the entire tapestry vanished to reveal a door identical to its woven counterpart.

“What’s this?”

“My condition,” Tony said cryptically. “Come on.”

The door swung open easily to reveal a low, stone passageway extending into the darkness.

They both lit their wands and started down it. Tony cursed several times along the way as he hit his head on a low-hanging bit of the ceiling, because apparently, “I’m usually shorter when I’m walking down here.”

The passage went on for about fifteen minutes, first sloping gradually downwards and then leveling off, until finally the passageway was blocked by a large slab of stone. Tony murmured a spell to shift the stone to the side, and Steve emerged, blinking in the daylight, to find himself looking down at the roofs of Hogsmeade. They were standing at the top of a small hill that Steve recognized as being a few yards from the path connecting Hogwarts to the village. He turned to Tony, who was waiting for Steve to catch up with an extremely self-satisfied expression on his face.

“I didn’t know there were still secret passages at Hogwarts! I thought they’d been filled in after the war, and the renovations.”

“Wouldn’t be Hogwarts without a secret or two,” Tony replied. His smug look transformed into something warmer. “And now you know it too. Come on.” And he took off down the path to Hogsmeade so quickly that Steve had to scramble to catch up.

Hogsmeade was already decorated for the holiday. The entire High Street was covered in garlands and colored lights that stood out brilliantly against the snow still covering the ground. Some of them looked almost identical to Muggle fairy lights, although some of them…Steve did a double-take. A glittering illusion of a dragon wearing reindeer antlers was slithering sinuously across the roof of Scrivenshaft’s Quill Shop. Well, that was one interpretation of the legend, Steve supposed.

Tony walked straight past the Three Broomsticks and only slowed down as they approached the Owl Post Office, with Honeydukes across the street.

Tony presented the Post Office to Steve with a dramatic flourish like he’d built it himself, and then bounced on his feet, clearly waiting for Steve’s approval.

“Um,” Steve said helplessly.

“They do Muggle post here. So you could write to your friend, if you wanted. We could send him some chocolate from Honeydukes, and just say it’s a common British brand. Americans will accept a lot of weird stuff as long as you tell them it’s British.”

“And how do you know so much about gullible Americans?” Steve asked, his mouth twitching with the effort not to smile.

Steve caught a flash of Tony’s horror at having forgotten that Steve himself was American, before Tony instantly covered it up with another teasing grin.

“Oh loads,” he said confidently. “For instance, they’ll barely question you when you lead them down a dark and creepy passage. Not a second of hesitation. Zero survival instincts.”

Steve’s mouth popped open in outrage. “You asked me to!”

“Exactly,” Tony said grandly. “So let’s go buy some Chocolate Cauldrons that you can tell Bucky are really made by Cadburys.”

They spent almost the entire rest of the afternoon in Honeydukes, arguing about whether they could ever pass Fizzing Whizbees off as a Muggle candy (no), and whether it was horrible or funny to send someone Cockroach Clusters without revealing that they were made of cockroaches (yes on all counts). By the time they made their way across the street to the Post Office, laughing and laden with sweets, they’d managed to curate a selection that Steve thought would make it past the post inspectors.

Tony hovered off to the side while Steve composed his letter. He was studying the owls on their shelves behind the desk with an intensity that made it clear he was trying awkwardly to give Steve some privacy.

The sun had gone down by the time they emerged from the Post Office, and the glow of the Christmas lights was even lovelier in the half-dark. With the snow muffling voices and footsteps alike, the entire village felt soft and quiet. Steve and Tony still had a little while before they had to be back at the castle for dinner, and Steve found himself reluctant to allow this afternoon to end. Even though they still had another week remaining in the term, this today had felt like a true holiday – held apart from his regular life, like a day outside time.

“Buy you a Butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks?” he suggested, and hoped he didn’t sound as desperate as he felt for Tony to agree.

“Oh! Really?” Tony glanced at him, surprised and pleased in equal measure. “Alright.”

They didn’t make it back to Hogwarts in time for dinner.

But Tony even turned that into an adventure. He led Steve on a ridiculously convoluted route to the kitchens, all the while spouting nonsense about having done “Arithmantic calculations to prove that they’d never get caught this way” as Steve laughed at him. Even getting caught by Professor Sinistra – because of course they got caught – was made better by Tony’s very funny (if rather unflattering) impression of Steve. He explained with exaggerated earnestness that “he was seeing Mr Stark back to Ravenclaw Tower personally, to make sure he didn’t cause any more trouble,” then moved seamlessly into what Steve was pretty sure was a quote from Winston Churchill’s “finest hour” speech, before ending with a stirring pronouncement that “no good deed is too small.”

And once Professor Sinistra had been stunned into silence by this oratorical bombardment, Tony had grabbed Steve by the hand and walked serenely in the complete opposite direction of Ravenclaw Tower.

***

Several days after his and Steve’s Hogsmeade trip, and a few days before the end of term, Tony was forced once again to endure Potions with his terrifying Slytherin partner. He’d become more careful since that first day about paying attention in lessons he would usually ignore. He learned to calibrate his own work to just exceed the professor’s expectations, but not rise too far above them. It took a constant and exhausting amount of focus, but Tony was determined to manage it for the sake of Steve’s marks.

He was just congratulating himself on remembering to use sneezewort in his Befuddlement Draught, as their textbook advised, instead of the trickier but more potent arrowroot, when Romanoff leaned over and said in a low undertone: “So, Steve, how long have you been Tony Stark?”

Tony yelped and dropped an entire handful of sneezewort into the potion, which hissed before turning an alarming sickly yellow.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Tony hissed in exactly the same tone as the potion.

“Please. Even in this body, you move like Stark.”

“Been spending a lot of time watching Tony Stark move, Natasha?” Tony wiggled his eyebrows. Romanoff looked deeply unimpressed.

 “I’m observant. Stark also moves like Steve, by the way.”

They both turn to regard Steve and Bruce on the bench behind them. Steve had a slight frown of concentration on his face as he patiently chopped his lovage into tiny, identical pieces. Tony had to give it to Romanoff – literally none of that was anything that Tony would do.

“Maybe he’s finally taking his education seriously,” Tony tried. “Seventh year can do that to you, you know. It’s like an existential crisis where you wake up one day and realize you’re—“

“—in the wrong body?” Romanoff finished wryly. “Also? You talk like Stark, too.”

“Um.” Tony decided that, under the circumstances, silence was probably his best bet.

“Are you waiting for people to catch on?” Romanoff continued, sounding, at best, only vaguely curious about the highly shocking and highly illegal magical fraud that they’d been perpetrating for weeks. “Because I don’t think they will.”

“You did,” Tony couldn’t help but point out, before remembering that he’d meant to shut up and not incriminate himself.

Romanoff did not deign to dignify that with a response. “Is it like a murder pact thing? Where you go to his house for Christmas, and he goes to yours, and then…” Romanoff trailed off meaningfully.

“What? No! How would that even work? We still look like ourselves! For a true murder pact, you’d have to—no, you know what, I’m not getting into this with you!”

“Well, maybe your goal isn’t murder. But you could still be swapping places for the holidays – it is easier to endure someone else’s family than your own.”

“We’re both staying at Hogwarts for Christmas,” Tony hissed back, vaguely irked that he hadn’t thought of the body-swap option long ago as a solution for horrible holidays with his parents. “And it was an accident, alright? I’m trying to fix it, so if you don’t mind keeping whatever you think you know to yourself…”

“Why should I?”

“Because then I won’t tell everyone why you’re also staying at Hogwarts for Christmas,” Tony murmured, leaning closer under the cover of stirring his now-ruined potion. Romanoff went pale with shock, swiftly followed by murderous fury.

“You think you’re the only observant person at Hogwarts?” Tony continued. “And as you’ve so astutely pointed out, I do know what it’s like to dread going home.”

Romanoff took a few deep, even breaths, and then nodded sharply to herself. “Clint and I can help swap you back. He’s staying for Christmas, too.”

“Clint? Who the hell is—“

“Barton. Seventh-year Slytherin. I know you know him. He’s on the Slytherin Quidditch team. You once got a penalty for unsportsmanlike behavior that time he managed to hit the Snitch with a Bludger.”

“I still say there must be something in the rules about that not being allowed…”

“Whatever, Stark. Barely anyone else is here for Christmas, and if I’m helping you, Clint won’t have anything to do.”

“We’re not running a social club, here, Romanoff,” Tony said crossly. “Keep your tea and sympathy in Slytherin where it belongs.”

“Clint helps, or I’m out.”

“I never asked you to be in!”

Romanoff shrugged. She’d gone very quickly from threats to offers of help, Tony reflected. Maybe to Slytherins, mutually assured blackmail was some sort of declaration of undying friendship.

“Clint knows how to steal books from the Restricted Section, but whatever, it’s not my problem if you want to stay stuck in Steve’s body forever.”

“…Fine!”

Tony didn’t know how to confess to Steve and Bruce that their little cabal had just grown to nearly double its original size, so naturally, he decided to put it off indefinitely. Instead, he spent the evening ensconced in Gryffindor Tower with another book about Metamorphmagus magic. He was convinced the answer had to be in one of them (and he would never tell Bruce this, but he probably should have read them more carefully in the first place, before declaring his spell finished).

“Oh no, not that one,” a deep voice interrupted him. It was coming from closer than Tony thought any voices should be. He glanced up to find another Gryffindor Seventh Year that he recognized vaguely – Thor Odinson – looming over him as he frowned down at Tony’s book.

“Are you looking for…” Tony searched his memory for the classes he and Odinson shared. “…Charms help?” he finally tried.

“There is no need,” Odinson said, and Tony wondered how Odinson managed to make that assertion sound tranquil rather than arrogant. “It is I who I believe can help you.” He spoke with an odd cadence, as though he’d learnt English from books rather than by ear. Tony tried to remember if he’d ever spoken to Odinson for long enough to have noticed it before.

“That book,” Odinson continued, “is highly inaccurate. I do not believe the author spoke to any real Metaporphmagi at all. If he had, he would have known immediately that what he writes is impossible.”

“Well, I mean, it’s an interesting theory…” Tony tried weakly, but Odinson acted as though he hadn’t even spoken.

“My brother is a Metamorphmagus.” Odinson emphasized each word like it was a royal pronouncement.

“Um. You have a brother?” was all Tony could think to ask.

“He attends Beauxbatons, and he has been researching his identity since he was a child. He discovered much about Metamorphmagi that you will not find in your books. Perhaps, armed with this knowledge, you will be able to reverse the spell that has trapped you and Steve Rogers in the wrong forms.”

“You…know about that?”

“Oh.” For the first time in this entire strange conversation, Odinson looked mildly discomposed. “Was it meant to be a secret?”

***

“I hereby call this meeting of the Brazenly Unauthorized Transfiguration Testing Society to order.” Bruce tapped his wand against his desk like a gavel. It emitted an attention-grabbing jet of silver sparks.

“Okay, can I just say—“

“Uh, Tony, you’re supposed to petition the chairman if you have a motion,” Steve said seriously.

“Fine, Mister Chairman.” Tony saluted Bruce with his wand. “I petition to change that ridiculous name.”

“Petition denied,” said Bruce. “Next order of business—“

“Wait, what do you mean, ‘denied?’”

“It means ‘to refuse to agree to,’” Natasha explained. She was perched on one of the desks in the empty Transfiguration classroom they’d all commandeered for what Tony was calling an “inter-house strategy meeting” and what Clint had dubbed the “Brazenly Unauthorized Transfiguration Testing Society.”

“I know what ‘denied’ means, thanks, but I do feel strongly that the name needs a second pass.”

“It is a noble name,” said Thor, seated cross-legged on the floor.

“…It spells BUTTS.”

“Oh really?” said Clint. “I hadn’t noticed.” He winked at Tony from where he was sprawled across three desks, which he’d pushed together to make a kind of scholastic chaise longue.

“Why are you even here!”

“Tony, if you want to pose a question to another member of the Society, you need to request the floor first,” Steve interjected.

Tony whirled on him. “Seriously?”

Steve shrugged. “I mean, it’s in the rules.”

“What rules?”

“The BUTTS bylaws.” Steve took great pleasure in unrolling a lengthy scroll of parchment with a flourish and presenting it to Tony, who stared at it like it was a Howler about to go off. “We’ve all agreed to abide by them, like a contract.”

“Okay, except I’m certain that I never agreed to anything called the ‘BUTTS bylaws.’”

“How strange,” Natasha said sweetly. “Isn’t that your signature at the bottom of this parchment? And if we performed a notary charm, I’m certain it would reveal that it was signed by Tony Stark’s own hand.”

Tony blinked at Natasha. Then his gaze swung to Steve, who was staring evenly back at him.

“You—“

“…Established a set of clear and comprehensive guidelines to help our collaboration run smoothly, yes,” Steve said.

“And you don’t feel like forging my signature on a document called The BUTTS Bylaws violates any sort of…I dunno…ethical guidelines of any kind?”

“Interestingly, that circumstance is not covered in the BUTTS Bylaws. And if you’d like to make an amendment, first you have to petition the chairman.”

Tony opened his mouth.

“Petition denied,” said Bruce.

“Hear, hear!” said Thor.

"Ah, the wheels of justice," sighed Clint as he wiped an imaginary tear from his eye.

“Still not calling it BUTTS,” grumbled Tony.

“Rules are rules,” said Steve. “I didn’t write ‘em.”

“No,” agreed Natasha. “But I think you’ll find that Tony did.”

***

Christmas morning dawned crisp and cold, with slivers of pale winter sunlight filtering through the gaps in Tony’s scarlet bed curtains.

There was a small pile of gifts at the foot of his bed. They were actually his gifts – Tony Stark’s, that is – and Tony briefly wondered how the House Elves had known to bring them to Gryffindor, before his entire mind was consumed by the task of tearing into his presents. There was a set of elegant new dress robes from his parents (which Tony made a face at); some new books from Jarvis and Ana (along with a letter scolding him for not writing more often); and two elegant gold Secrecy Sensors from his Aunt Peggy (“one for taking apart, and one to keep”). He’d also gotten a sack of new Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes products from Rhodey and Pepper, which made Tony feel a spike of guilt at having forgotten them so thoroughly in his distraction over the Polyjuice Spell (especially now that practically every other Seventh Year at Hogwarts knew the secret).

And lastly, wrapped neatly in newsprint from the Daily Prophet, there was a selection of Honeydukes chocolate, accompanied by a note in Steve’s now-familiar handwriting: “Weird British chocolate for my weird British friend. Thank you for letting me stay for Christmas.”

Tony smiled faintly and traced his finger over the  “C” in “Christmas” before re-folding the parchment and sliding it into his pocket.

Twenty minutes later, he was bounding through the doors of the Great Hall, where the four House tables had disappeared to make way for one smaller table, just big enough for all the students staying at Hogwarts over the holidays to gather. Tony shoved his way between Bruce and Thor and immediately started piling his plate high with breakfast. A few moments later, Steve appeared as well, looking pink and uncomfortable and determined as he marched toward their end of the table. He squeezed in between Tony and Bruce, who made an annoyed sound at being displaced a second time, but Thor didn’t miss a beat before continuing their conversation, just more loudly and over Steve and Tony’s heads.

“Tony,” Steve murmured, barely audible over what sounded like an argument about the proper care of nifflers. “You shouldn’t have—“

Tony winced and shoveled a heaping forkful of scrambled eggs into his mouth.

“How did you even have time— and do you realize how expensive–“ Steve continued, still pink-cheeked but now looking some combination of pleased and distressed, which Tony decided to consider a step in the right direction.

“It wasn’t as difficult as it sounds. Hogwarts: A History makes the Muggle technology situation at Hogwarts seem very dire, but actually, the wards have been updated since then. When the new edition comes out next year, there’ll be a whole revised section on—“

“Tony,” Steve repeated, frowning down at the cup of tea that Tony had inadvertently fixed for him while he’d been rambling. “That’s not exactly the point I was trying to make.”

“Well what is the point?” Tony asked somewhat desperately, now fixing himself a cup of tea just for something else to do with his hands. “You said you wanted a mobile phone to call your friend, but you didn’t think it was possible to have one at Hogwarts. And I happened to know that it is possible, because I’ve been pen-pals with a man named Arthur Weasley ever since I saw his editorial in the Quibbler about modifying spells to work with electricity, and I was curious about—“

“I just!” Steve interrupted loudly, and then didn’t seem to know how to finish that sentence, because he took a large gulp of tea instead.

“If you don’t like it…” Tony said, before taking a sip of his own tea. He nearly spit it out when he realized he’d somehow managed to pour pumpkin juice into it instead of milk. He Vanished the tea with an absent wave of his wand, instantly forgot he’d done so, and tried to drink from the empty cup before frowning down at it in confusion. All while looking anywhere but at Steve’s face.

“Oh,” Steve said softly, and damn it, now Tony had to look. The complicated and not-entirely-complimentary mix of emotions on Steve’s face had shifted into something a bit happier, and Tony sighed in relief.

“I do like it,” continued Steve.

“Well. Good,” Tony retorted, slightly annoyed that he’d been forced to experience so many feelings for no reason, and all before 9am.

 “I’m sorry. And to think, I just got you some rubbish from Hogsmeade…”

“It wasn’t,” Tony said awkwardly. He pressed against his pocket to feel the crinkle of parchment safely stowed there.

Steve did not look convinced, but before he could say anything else, Natasha and Clint invaded the stretch of bench across from them, talking loudly and cheerfully about tonight’s “Meeting of the BUTTS,” while several nearby Second Years listened in open-mouthed fascination, and from the Head Table, McGonagall looked like she was weighing which choice she’d ultimately regret more: intervening or feigning ignorance.

“Happy Christmas,” Steve whispered to Tony as he slid a new, perfectly made cup of tea over to him. And while it might technically have been Tony’s own face that was smiling at him now, the warmth of it was 100% Steve Rogers.

***

“I hereby call—“ started Bruce. Tony flicked his wand lazily to send a Cauldron Cake rocketing into Bruce’s open mouth. Bruce made a “mff!” of surprise, his eyes crossing as he attempted to look down at his own mouth. But once he’d registered the projectile as chocolate, he seemed content enough to finish eating it.

The six of them had retired to their abandoned Transfiguration classroom after Christmas dinner in the Great Hall, where they’d already devoured a shocking amount of food, and now, judging by the cairn of smuggled sweets currently being constructed on the classroom floor, they seemed set to consume half as much again.

“So. Do we have any new ideas?” Tony asked, instead of whatever procedural monologue Bruce had prepared. “New ideas, Clint.”

Clint scowled from his spot on the floor, where he was building a surprisingly accurate scale model of Hogwarts out of Chocolate Frogs. “I still don’t see why you want to change back. You’ve barely scraped the surface of the potential mayhem we could cause...”

“Steve disapproves of mayhem,” Tony explained primly, although his eyes held a teasing glint when they slid over to meet Steve’s next to him.

“Huh,” said Natasha. She popped a Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Bean into her mouth, and then leaned back on her hands as though settling in.

“Maybe you just haven’t achieved the sort of mayhem that meets my standards,” Steve retorted, shoving lightly at Tony’s shoulder.

“Hmm,” said Clint, glancing between the two of them before filching a bean from Natasha. “Gross,” he added feelingly, and Steve could only assume that he was talking about the jellybean.

“I’m quite capable of exceeding even the highest standards, thanks.” Tony grinned and shoved Steve’s shoulder in return.

Bruce flushed and stuffed another Cauldron Cake into his mouth.

“I’m not so easily impressed, Stark.” Steve raised an eyebrow, and Tony huffed.

 “Oh!” said Thor, eyes flickering between the two of them. Natasha, Clint, and Bruce each made sudden hushing gestures, but Thor had already barreled onward. “I would not advise having sex until you are returned to your proper bodies,” he said gravely.

Steve said “what” while Tony made a sound like a dying chinchilla, and both of them sprang at least a foot apart from each other. Natasha sighed, Clint snickered, and Bruce ate another Cauldron Cake with fervent determination.

“I fear it would make for a very confusing experience,” Thor added earnestly.

“You think,” Tony whispered, blushing furiously and now refusing to look in Steve’s direction at all. Steve felt equally unsettled. He hadn’t noticed how easily he’d acclimated to this body over the past several weeks, until that growing sense of familiarity abruptly vanished. He hadn’t been this uncomfortable about Tony’s body since that first night, but suddenly everything once again felt subtly wrong, like his skin was too tight, or his hands not quite the right shape. He felt self-conscious about doing anything with Tony’s body that might be misconstrued, and he only wished he knew what had inspired Thor’s comment, so he could stop doing that as well.

Steve had thought he’d been doing a great job of ignoring the fact that he was in the body of someone that he…alright, someone that he maybe liked. A little. Possibly.

Not in a weird way! And it’s not as though he’d wanted to take advantage of this curse, and he hadn’t. He’d barely even looked in a mirror this whole time, worried that he would be inadvertently disrespectful to Tony’s body in some way.

But maybe it was still obvious in some way. Maybe there was some glaring tell in the way that he moved, or sat, or…inhabited space. Maybe everyone had immediately seen how Steve felt. Oh God, maybe Tony had seen.

“Thanks for the advice, Thor,” Steve finally managed weakly. “But we’re not—um. And we definitely wouldn’t. Uh.” Oh great, and now he couldn’t make himself look at Tony at all. Maybe neither of them would ever look at each other again, and they’d just spend their entire last term of Hogwarts pretending the other was invisible.

“You are welcome. Luckily, I have written to my brother. He suggests re-casting the spell under the same conditions.”

“Well, what are we waiting for!” Tony said brightly. His face was bright red and he was staring intently at an empty corner of the classroom. “To the Forbidden Forest we go!”

“That,” said a sharp voice from the doorway, “would be unwise.”

They all froze, then turned as one to see Headmistress McGonagall looming with fury.

She snapped out an unfamiliar spell and flicked her wand, and Steve was slammed back into his own body with the force of a Bludger. He’d been uncomfortable before, but it was nothing compared to the odd stretched-out feeling of returning to a body that no longer seemed to fit him. Steve knew his body couldn’t have changed that much in the past few weeks, which meant that it must’ve been Steve himself who’d changed. It was momentarily strange, but Steve thought he could get used to it.

When he’d finished his internal inventory and was able to notice anything outside of himself, it was to find McGonagall in as much of a temper as he’d ever seen her. Tony, meanwhile, was rolling his shoulders as though his robes itched, and looking cowed by whatever McGonagall has said while Steve wasn’t paying attention.

“Do you think you’re the first students to accidentally switch bodies?” McGonagall was in the middle of demanding. Tony frowned.

“Well…yes?”

“The arrogance of youth,” McGonagall retorted, but her anger seemed to dissipate slightly at whatever she saw on Tony’s face. Steve found that he couldn’t read Tony’s expressions half as well, now they were back on his own face. That thought made him feel rather lonely and miserable, and then annoyed with himself for feeling either. It wasn’t as though it had been sustainable for them to just…stay that way, no matter what Clint might’ve claimed.

“Professor, are we in trouble?” Bruce asked, clutching a Cauldron Cake as though ready to launch it and make a quick getaway. McGonagall paused, her sharp gaze sweeping over them, and Steve didn’t think any of them were fully immune to its power. He found himself holding his breath, even as he also found himself uncaring about the specifics of whatever punishment she would assign. He looked around at the six of them, newly united by pilfered chocolate and by guilt, and decided that whatever McGonagall did to them now, it had been worth it.

“No, Mr Banner,” McGonagall said finally, and the entire room seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. “Consider this your Christmas miracle,” she added wryly. “And a warning not to play with magic you don’t yet understand.”

“Yes, Professor,” Tony said in a low voice. Steve frowned and tried to get his attention with a gentle nudge, but Tony didn’t look up.

McGonagall shooed them all off to bed, and Steve didn’t try to catch Tony’s attention as they left. He felt too awkward about talking to Tony under the headmistress’ watchful eye. He reckoned they could at least walk together, until they reached the split in the corridor that led off to Gryffindor and Ravenclaw Towers, respectively. Steve opened his mouth to suggest it, but Tony had already disappeared.

***

The last half of Christmas vacation was not nearly so fun as the first half. Thor, of course, was a newly friendly presence in Gryffindor Tower. He could always be relied upon to challenge Steve to a game of Exploding Snap or suggest that they go outside to throw snowballs. And Clint and Natasha still sat with him at mealtimes – which Steve would have thought could go without saying, since there was still only one table in the Great Hall and it was very difficult to avoid anyone, but somehow Tony managed it quite adroitly. In fact, Tony avoided Steve so successfully that the first time Steve saw more than a glimpse of his unruly curls hurrying the other way down a corridor, it was their first Potions lesson of the new year.

Steve had spent a week planning this moment, and so it was with some satisfaction that he watched Bruce (bribed with more Cauldron Cakes and a solemn promise not to tell him any details) suddenly veer off to sit with Natasha, which gave Steve the opportunity to slide onto the lab bench next to Tony.

Tony’s head shot up, startled, and before he looked away again, Steve caught a glimpse of a pale face with dark circles under its eyes. Steve watched Tony search the room before coming to the conclusion that Steve already knew: there were no other available partners, and their professor was just about to launch into the lesson.

“Are you alright?” Steve asked lowly, under cover of checking something in his textbook. “Did something go wrong, with what McGonagall did?”

“I’m fine,” Tony retorted, before he continued taking notes on the ingredients for Wound Cleaning Potion with uncharacteristic studiousness.

Steve had spent a full week doing nothing but losing to Thor at Exploding Snap and thinking about why Tony was avoiding him. He decided there was nothing for it but to run through the whole list.

“Are you…angry with me then?“

“No!” Tony said, so loudly that the professor paused her lecture to shoot them a quelling look. “Why would I be angry with you?”

“Well, I promised you that I wouldn’t let you get caught by McGonagall. I didn’t exactly keep that promise, did I?” Steve had worked this explanation out on Day Three, and he was rather proud of the reasoning behind it.

“That’s ridiculous,” Tony snapped, and Steve wilted. Every other option was significantly more horrible than this one. “None of this was your fault,” Tony continued darkly.

“Oh.” For several minutes, Steve pretended to take notes on the exact shade of purple smoke that their potions should emit, while actually gathering his courage for what he knew he had to say next. Up Gryffindor, he thought miserably, before finally saying: “Look, about what Thor said…”

Tony startled and knocked over his cauldron (luckily empty), but Steve pushed through the ensuing chaos – now that he’d started, he didn’t think he could stop. “I just want to say that you don’t have to worry about what I might’ve...because I didn’t…And also, I don’t expect—“

“What?” Tony hissed, one eye on their professor, who was now frowning over at them near-continuously.

“I just mean, I understand that you had to work with me to fix the spell. I know you don’t like me really, and I would never—”

“What!” Tony yelped, at which point their professor asked them in exasperation to please share their insights on Wound Cleaning with the whole class.

“Steve was just explaining that it was the Shrivelfigs that give the Wound Cleaning Potion its distinctive color,” Tony lied smoothly. “I was very surprised; I always thought it had more to do with the purple dead-nettle.”

“Hm.” Their professor gave them both a hard stare, and then seemed to decide that the argument wasn’t worth continuing to interrupt class over. “Mr Rogers is correct…”

The moment her attention had turned back to the lecture, Tony ducked closer to Steve and whispered: “I was the one giving you an out!”

“I don’t understand?”

“I dragged you into this, and once you were out of it, it’s not like I was going to keep imposing…”

“I wanted you to!”

“Oh.”

If Steve hadn’t been so relieved to discover that Tony did not, in fact, hate him, he would have laughed at the expression on Tony’s face. It looked rather like his cauldron had exploded again, but like…in an emotional sense.

“I thought we were friends,” Steve continued, and couldn’t quite keep the note of hurt out of his voice.

“Oh,” Tony said again. He seemed to deflate slightly, and he began attacking his Potions notes with renewed determination. “Yeah. Friends.”

Steve glanced sidelong at him; Tony was refusing to meet his eye.

“Um.” Courage! Lions! Swords in hats! “So…about what Thor said,” Steve repeated slowly. “He also wasn’t completely wrong. About me. At least. Even if the details were…ambitious.”

Tony’s quill stopped scribbling abruptly, and Steve watched as a large splotch of ink spread across the page. The ink, at least, was safe enough to look at right now. Steve could feel his face burning.

“He wasn’t completely wrong about me either,” Tony finally mumbled, after perhaps the longest silence of Steve’s life.

“Really?” Steve burst out, finally lifting his eyes to Tony’s face. Tony was blushing but grinning widely back at him. “Tony, that’s—!“

There was a pointed cough from the front of the room.

“…a fascinating application of Golpalott’s First Law!” Steve finished brightly.

“Learning: what a thrill,” Tony said, before winking at Steve and interlacing their hands under the table.

“An endless wonder,” Steve agreed. He squeezed Tony’s hand in return.

They never did learn how to brew a proper Wound Cleaning Potion.