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It’s early in the summer when Charlie Spring decides to run away. It’s a rash decision, the by-product of an unbalanced reaction, one part unsatisfactory living situation, two parts early onset puberty. Chemistry in its purest form, or at least so Charlie thinks. His father is a Potioneer after all, it can’t be all that different.
At age eleven, round-cheeked and rather short, magic sitting in the tips of his fingers like flower buds on the verge of blossoming, Charlie doesn’t think about consequences. He tightens the straps of his backpack around his narrow shoulders and crosses the threshold of the Spring household with fiery determination. His Gryffindor mother would’ve been proud of him for being brave, had she not read the note he left on the kitchen table in the neatest handwriting he could muster.
Dear mum, dad, Tori and Ollie,
I’m running away to become a muggle. Don’t come look for me. I took 20 Galleons from the saving pig. I’m sorry, I’ll be sure to pay you back. I love you.
Charlie x
What Charlie apparently also doesn’t think about is the following. One, muggles do not accept Galleons, which leaves Charlie stranded on the damp concrete steps of a Tesco Express with a growling stomach and a dire need for a change of plans, cherry cola and gummy bears left abandoned on the counter. Two, muggle convenience stores don’t sell Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans. Three, Tao Xu’s house, on the outskirts of town, one unpaid bus ride away, is, after careful deliberation, not a strategic refuge.
Tao’s sister opens the door, white pigtails swaying slightly when she turns into the house and yells for Tao to come down. He appears at the bottom of the stairs a whole two minutes later, long-legged and beautiful, a quarter Veela in all his glory, and hugs Charlie tightly.
They’ve been best friends for the better part of their eleven years, their mothers colleagues at the Ministry Department of International Magical Cooperation. His family moved down from Shanghai a good seven years ago, about two months after Charlie’s came from Madrid.
He eats dinner with the Xu family and grumbles inward as the rain ticks against the windows. Thus far his sleeping-in-the-park plan. He could ask Tao’s sister for a dry-keeping charm, but it’s in Charlie’s best interest not to reveal his plan to the pure-blood Slytherin family. They might call his father and have him stir up a quick potion because Charlie’s apparently gone absolutely batshit. A muggle? Who in their right mind would want to be a muggle?
Later that night, during a very intense game of Wizarding Chess that Charlie insists he was most definitely winning, his mother shows up at the door regardless. And that was the end of it. A compromise to take Charlie to see the Lion King at West End and allow him a muggle toy for his birthday, in exchange for him completing his magic studies. It seems like a fair deal to eleven-year-old Charlie, who never thinks about consequences.
Charlie calls the Ravenclaw common room one home of many. Despite standing out, he’s always easily fit in, shifting himself to the needs and wants of other people, his own desires overshadowed by laughter and material rewards. Instant gratification. Charlie’s a sucker for that one. His housemate Sahar jokingly calls him a metamorphmagus. When he tries dyeing his hair cobalt blue in the second year, after Ravenclaw wins the house cup, he almost looks like one too.
He’s got friends in all the houses, and they each see different sides of him. With Tao he’s the oldest version of himself, the one that’s been in him since Spain. Their friendship comes easily, like settling into a soft couch, but the Slytherin common room couches are leather and sturdy, and there’s things Charlie doesn’t tell.
Elle, on the other hand, knows his dreams, the flow of her words like early spring rain, her smiles yellow like the sun when they are together. They listen to muggle music and read muggle literature together. He plays piano and she draws, and in their fingers lives a different kind of magic.
Then there’s Isaac, on the shy side for a Gryffindor, but when he opens himself up, it’s like he was once torn away from Charlie but the rip never quite healed. They fit into each other perfectly, it’s not easy to describe, but Isaac knows Charlie better than he knows himself.
They are a well-known group amongst professors, generally liked because of Elle’s atoning character, and academically outstanding due to Charlie’s diligence and Isaac’s natural intelligence, and their WhizNet group chat, which consists of muggle memes (much to Tao’s dismay) and a bunch of shared homework.
They get into their fair share of trouble, but not to the extent that they’re known for it, unlike that one group of Gryffindors in their year that sneak off to Zonko’s every Thursday, and set fire to the Divination professor’s hair after a prank containing one too many pepper imps goes amiss.
The four of them end up walking to their Advanced Potions class (courtesy of Charlie and only a little bit more of his father’s help than a Ravenclaw is willing to admit), their hair still smelling like smoke.
“I swear I’m gonna kill Nick Nelson one day,” Tao complains, straightening out his robes from where they got messed up in the panic that arose out of seeing their professor nearly ablaze. “Spending the rest of my days in Azkaban doesn’t even sound so bad.”
Elle laughs and uses her wand to get little particles of ash out of Tao’s white hair.
“That’s what you get for always sitting in the front row, you teacher’s pet,” she says, and laughs when Tao glares.
“Not nice, Hufflepuff.”
“How do they even get to Zonko’s before the weekend?” Isaac pipes up. Even as fifth years they are only allowed off of school grounds on the weekends. “There's a rumour that goes around saying that Benjamin Hope apparated in his sixth year to go clubbing in London, and he got sent to Azkaban for three years.”
“Nah, that’s not true,” Elle confirms. “I talked to his sister on WandCall the other day. That guy’s never set foot in Azkaban, I can tell you that.”
Charlie laughs at how relieved Isaac looks.
Tao grumbles something under his breath, still busy trying to charm the smoke smell out of them. His preferred scent is an expensive muggle brand cologne Charlie can never remember the name of, but he settles for lavender instead.
“Come again?”
“You know I hate to admit it, but Nelson’s got some serious magic skills up his sleeve, getting to Zonko’s without getting caught like that.” Tao says, stuffing his wand back into his robes. “Especially for a muggle-born.”
“Wait, he’s muggle-born?” Charlie asks, pulled back into the conversation by the sheer impact the word has on him. It's almost embarrassing, and Charlie knows it, if the reddening of his cheeks in response to the look the other three send him is anything to go by.
His original obsession with muggles and their lives had subsided over the years at Hogwarts, but it never completely went away. There’s still a small, round-cheeked, eleven-year-old Charlie inside of him, exuberantly dancing through the streets of London after seeing his favourite musical, begging his parents to take the tube home instead of apparating. To this day he prefers pens over quills, and has a Muse poster tacked onto the wall above his bed.
Their year at Hogwarts has only a few muggle borns, all but one sorted into Gryffindor. Isaac shares a room with most of them, telling Charlie about the games they play or the stories they tell from home. He likes hearing them talk about their muggle lives, how warm they are, nothing like the objective theory of muggle studies, or the make-believe lives he watches on muggle reality tv sometimes when his parents aren’t home.
“Charlie,” Elle says, sending him a quizzical look. “Did you not know?”
He’s talked to Nick Nelson before. Gryffindor Quidditch Captain, could’ve been prefect if not for his stupid pranks, gets fairly average grades but takes the crown in Charms. He’s celebrated amongst muggle-borns for his WiFi-at-Hogwarts petition a couple of years ago. It happened, but the laws of muggle science get bent just slightly under the influence of magic. It was a great initiative nonetheless, and Charlie signed it because he wanted to see what the Internet was about, and definitely not because he liked the way Nick’s eyes twinkle when he smiles.
With Nick, people either want him or want to be him. Charlie’s heard stories about broom closets and the greenhouses, even the Room of Requirement for Merlin’s sake, how did he find it? Point is, a little above average height, still round-cheeked, masters magic but has a strange interest in muggle culture, sixteen year old Charlie does not stand a chance. He's made peace with it. Even if he sometimes gives up his front-row seat if it means he can make googly-eyes at Nick from the back of the class for a full period (Isaac’s words, of course. He would know).
“No, I mean,” Charlie shrugs, unsure of what to do with this new-found information. “I thought he was half, like Elle.”
And that’s that. The conversation slides into a discussion on the O.W.L. exams that all their professors keep bringing up despite it only being October, and the sun that Isaac found in Charlie’s tea leaves during Tessomancy class, where all Charlie saw was a formless black goo. There’s good fortune on your path, it means. Charlie doesn’t quite believe it. But if good fortune comes in the shape of a rowdy boy with stories of another world, then Charlie will take what he gets.
Isaac turns out to be right after all. Good fortune it is. Or, at least, if what Charlie wants is what Charlie gets, then he’ll start paying better attention in Divination from now on.
The group of fifth years crosses the Ravenclaw common room on a clear Wednesday night. When the doors to the Astronomy tower swing open the cold hits Charlie like a bludger. The air smells crisp, like Charlie could breathe it in and have it crunch up his lungs in the process. In the darkening Scottish Highlands, winter is at its cusp.
“Nicholas, close the door behind you, will you!” The Astrology professor asks. Nick does as he’s told and silence returns to the studying Ravenclaws once more. Charlie’s eyes linger on the closed doors in wonder, the smile Nick flashed him right before he turned away from the window burned into his retinas like it was magic. How ironic.
“Don’t you have work to do?” Darcy waves a confused hand in front of Charlie’s face, nimble fingers for a girl part centaur.
Charlie went away for the weekend to celebrate the muggle Sun Festival with Elle’s family, his homework for once forgotten under the piles of Knafeh Elle’s grandmother brought from Egypt. The downside of this is the pile of parchment that lies spread across the table between them.
He begrudgingly tears his gaze away from the door, of which the windows have turned opaque once again. A No Distractions charm by the Head Girl, who takes grades incredibly seriously. Like she isn’t busy drooling after the quidditch captain. Then again, so is Charlie.
“You’re one to talk,” Charlie retorts, gesturing to the small notebook Darcy is scrawling in. Poetry, or something. Darcy won’t let anyone read it.
Darcy throws him the finger, something she learned from her muggle-born Hufflepuff friend Tara. Charlie smiles back at her in response, the closest to a little sister he’s ever going to get, and ruffles her hair.
“Not nice, Darce,”
“I’m not a Hufflepuff, now am I?“ She says, trying to flatten her messy bright blue hair as much as it will allow her. It’s the horse genes, she jokes sometimes, you could make violin bow strings out of it.
Soon, Darcy starts scribbling away in her notebook again, the broken tip of her quill leaking ink across half the page. Charlie hands her a ballpoint pen, sighs and looks back at where the Astrology class had been. Nick’s twinkling eyes.
It’s inviting, to keep staring at the dark blue door, the bronze constellations on the star-enchanted ceiling, a slight twinkling in Virgo, the heads of concentrated Ravenclaw students hunched over their homework. Much more so than the three scrolls of parchment that lie in front of him on the table, still devoid of his missed assignments on the Benefits of Muggle-Wizard Cooperation, Centaur History and The Secret Lives of Muggle Teens.
Charlie thinks about Nick’s bright brown eyes and quidditch uniform and broom closet adventures, and then he thinks about consequences, and gets to work. He’s got standards to live up to after all.
“Is that the song from Moonlight?”
Charlie stops playing the piano and whips his head around so fast he feels a cramp creeping up the side of his neck. There Nick stands, in all his six feet, just turned seventeen, glory, dragging a freckled hand across the top of the buffet piano that the Head of Ravenclaw house found abandoned in a desolate muggle bar. Charlie is the only one in his house who knows how to play.
“Have you lost your tongue?”
Charlie blushes. He can tell from the way his temples start throbbing in time with the ticking of the large clock above the fireplace. He focuses on the freckles dotted across Nick’s nose and nods, at least five seconds too late. Nick smiles, lopsided and kind, nonetheless.
“Yes to the song, or to the tongue thing?”
“The song.”
“Obviously. I was just teasing you.”
It feels like a deviation from the familiar, an aberration in the system, to see Nick standing in the middle of the Ravenclaw common room, Astrology book clutched under his arm, a scarlet hoodie, golden letters. No uniform even though the rules clearly state that robes are required during every partaking in academic activities. Bright red socks on the cornflower carpet.
There’s something akin to confusion on his face, lips slightly pursed.
“Aren’t you pure-blood?” He asks, tentatively, as if not to offend. Charlie knows that he knows but he nods to confirm it anyways.
“Yes, but Tao really likes muggle movies, so he makes me watch them,” Charlie smiles. “Don’t tell him I told you that, though.”
Nick laughs, gentle and red-gold. The sound wraps itself around Charlie like a small animal. An Occamy breaking out of its egg.
“Oh, have you seen any of the Marvel movies?” He asks, clearly amused by the idea of Tao enjoying muggle entertainment. “Iron man is my favourite.”
Their conversation takes off with surprising ease. Charlie learns about superhero conventions, the first-past-the-post system, and vacuums all in the time-span of thirty minutes. There’s something magical about the way Nick talks about home, smoke curling out of his ears after eating the last of his pepper imps. Charlie asks him everything he's ever wanted to know. The world almost starts to feel like it was built just so Nick could explain it to him.
The stars on the ceiling are twinkling above their heads, constellations taking shape to match their conversations. Nick makes Charlie’s head spin in a way not unlike apparition does. In this case, he’ll gladly take the vertigo.
“Shit, I have to go,” Nick says eventually, when the digital watch around his wrist beeps twice at midnight, and the lions that he conjured up in the flames of the fire are slowly fizzling out. “I’ll see you in Charms class tomorrow.”
They part ways at the door, after another fifteen minutes spent pulling on shoes and laughing at stupid muggle jokes. Nick stands in the doorway and squeezes Charlie’s hand for a second too long.
“See you,” he says. There’s a tired crackle in his voice that makes Charlie go slightly weak in the knees.
“See you,” Charlie replies. “Try to avoid the paintings in the Hanging Hall, they tattle.”
Nick smiles and takes a step back, salutes him. Charlie laughs and pushes him even further out the door.
“Student out of bed!” Charlie shouts, when all that’s left is the echo of Nick’s footsteps against the cold limestone floors, the stairs creaking as they move to accommodate him. His answer comes in the dark, loud laughter and the ghost of Nick’s hand in his.
Charlie walks on sunshine for the next three days. Literally. Tao hexes him after Charlie drinks the rest of his pumpkin juice. Now Charlie has feet that leave a light-up trail everywhere he goes, and Tao has greasy skin. It’s only fair.
The four of them sit at the Gryffindor table at breakfast every Sunday morning. Their owls are so used to it that they take turns bringing the post. Charlie looks around for Nick but doesn’t spot him. Quidditch practice must’ve run late. He won’t admit to the slight disappointment that runs down his spine. It’s just cold. Charlie needs a new jacket.
Next to him sits Tao, furiously going through a book on forbidden spells he got in the restricted section to find anything that will get rid of the pimple that sits right between his eyebrows. In reality it isn’t noticeable at all but Charlie can only take so many I’m hideous, guys from the objectively most beautiful person he’s ever laid his eyes on before it starts to impact his own self-confidence for the worse.
“Tao, stop,” Elle says, which earns her a glare and a croissant stuffed into her mouth in favour of her shutting up.
Charlie sighs and sips his coffee. When he looks up, Nick is smiling at him from across the Hall, sitting at the Ravenclaw table with Darcy, of all people. It’s a small world. Charlie smiles back.
He vaguely remembers Nick mentioning how he spends every Sunday afternoon in Hogsmeade, asking Zonko for new prank materials, drinking double shot butterbeer, strolling through the cobblestone streets because “if you squint just right, it almost looks like home.” Although it is cold, and the grey clouds that hang low between the hills predict nothing but rainstorms and soaked shoes, Charlie decides to pay Hogsmeade a visit. Dry feet be damned.
“Anyone want to join me in the Three Broomsticks later?”
Isaac slurps the last bit of milk out of his bowl of Pixie Puffs and shakes his head. “Sorry, Char. Elle and I have a project for Herbology. Longbottom already gave us an extension so we have to finish this.”
“If this project is you two smoking weed without me again, I’m blocking you on WhizNet.”
Elle snorts into her tea and Isaac looks only slightly guilty. Here's to friendship.
“Whatever, I’ll just go by myself then.”
Charlie is standing in front of the window at Scrivencraft’s Quill shop, admiring the new set of paint brushes when he feels two fingers poking at his sides. He doesn’t know why his first instinct is to draw his wand, but it’s what he does, the oakwood tip pointed right below Nick’s left ear where the tufts of ginger hair curl upwards at the ends.
“Nick, you scared me.”
Nick grins and puts his hands up in defence. His freckled cheeks are bright red from the cold. “Clearly,” he says, and his voice turns into a cloud when it hits the air. It reminds Charlie somewhat of a patronus, if the hare without hind legs coming out of the tip of his wand for about two seconds before going up into a blue tinged smoke is anything to go by.
“How did you know I was here?”
Nick laughs into his scarlet scarf, eyes like the moon and the sun at the same time, and points at Charlie’s hexed feet, one bright pink and the other a glittering gold, and the colourful trail that meanders through the cobblestone street.
“Right,” Charlie sighs. “Remind me to kill Tao when I get back.”
“Well, if it’s of any consolation, he led me right to you.”
A consolation it is. A shudder runs down Charlie’s spine like he just got jinxed. He looks up from his horrendously kitschy coloured feet and up towards the gloomy skies above, and simultaneously curses and blesses Tao’s existence. Something warm is swirling around in the pit of his stomach, but he also really really needs that new jacket.
“Merlin, I’m freezing. Do you wanna go get a Butterbeer or something?”
Nick nods and begins to take off his scarf.
“No, no, that’s okay-” Charlie begins but Nick is already wrapping his scarf tightly around Charlie, the tips of his fingers glowing like matchsticks each time they brush against his neck.
Charlie should probably protest because he can and will not be seen wearing a Gryffindor’s scarf, much less that of the rival quidditch captain. Unfortunately for Charlie’s pride however, Nick’s scarf smells like washing powder and the coffee he had for breakfast, and the rain has been crumbling the foundations of his self-control for days now, so he ends up tucking the ends of the scarf into his hoodie and ignores Nick’s gloating.
The pub at the corner of town smells like smoke and peppermint tea. The old lady behind the counter grins teeth of gold when they sit down by the window. The candle that sits in the middle of the table bows politely to each of them before igniting itself, its flame warm enough to melt their frozen noses.
Nick pulls his grey sleeve over his hand and wipes at the fogged-up glass, the fabric going dark. Drops of water pool onto the wooden windowsill below, dead bottleneck flies and a wilting sansevieria. Charlie smiles.
“Are you coming to the game next Tuesday?”
Charlie has a tendency to skip quidditch games in favour of breaking into the music room on the fourth floor with Tara and Darcy, the latter of which taught him the art of lock-picking when Alohomora started failing them after weeks of nightly jam-sessions. However, the Ravenclaw-Gryffindor match is always one looked forward to, Tao chattering endlessly about Gryffindor’s new seeker, Isaac a loyal house-fanatic, and Elle with a new-found interest for professional high-level quidditch. Charlie will be dragged along regardless.
“I think so,” he replies and leans into his elbows across the table, a wand’s length separating their noses. “I’ll cheer for you if you want. Don't tell Sahar I said that, though.”
Nick laughs and bows his head slightly when the old lady puts their damping Butterbeers in front of them, ginger and cinnamon. Amongst the greys and browns the blush that dusts his cheeks cuts like fire in the dark. Charlie hopes Rowena Ravenclaw doesn’t curse him from beyond the grave when he prays for Gryffindor’s victory.
The evening sits like gold on the edge of the hills. The afternoon is pale blue, clear, and cold. Everything else is red, noses and cheeks and fingertips, the churning crowd Charlie is amidst. The players on the field are only trackable by the clouds of white they leave behind, both red and blue blending into the moorland and the sky.
The game is in full swing, Gryffindor in the lead by just ten points, the crowds on both sides of the field desperately trying to outsing one another.
Tao offers Charlie a handful of roasted mini dragon eggs as Isaac is trying to finger-paint a lion on his left cheek. Charlie can almost see Sahar and Darcy glaring at him from the opposite side of the stands. He’s already mentally preparing for a week’s worth of ranting about loyalty and kinship and collective identity. Darcy likes to call him a house traitor, as if she didn’t once lose Ravenclaw forty points for her Fire Whiskey incident.
Hypocrite.
The Gryffindor stand falters when Ravenclaw scores a double goal, heads hanging collectively like the crowd is one large moving beast. There’s an air of hope in the jingle that has been playing on loop for the better part of an hour but Charlie is sure he’s bound to lose his mind if he hears it one more time.
“This is so boring,” Tao pouts, when the Gryffindor seeker has disappeared from the field to chase the snitch.
Elle laughs and shushes him at the same time. “It is when you’re here just to drool over the new seeker.”
“Whatever, I’m over her anyways. I’m going down for some juice.” He pulls at Charlie’s wrist. “You coming?”
Part of Charlie doesn’t want to leave the stands. He’s made up some cheesy, muggle rom-com situation in his mind of Nick scoring the winning goal and flying up to the stands to kiss Charlie as a thank you for cheering for him. It’s incredibly embarrassing, and definitely not up to the standards Charlie likes to pretend he has, but one can dream. On the other hand, Charlie does not care much for quidditch, or any sport really, and in the dying light Nick is about as easy to spot as a Cornish pixie on the run. So, house traitor or not, Charlie is hungry and bored, and he can wait for Nick to kiss him another day.
They’re almost half-way down the creaky wooden stairs when the crowd starts screaming above them and then goes quiet. Very, eerily quiet, especially for Gryffindors with access to Butterbeer.
“Now what’s going on?” Tao turns to Charlie from the landing below, his voice sounds bored, but his worried expression betrays him.
When they reach the top of the stairs again, everyone is hanging over the edge of the stands, looking at something that is happening down on the field. The sun has sunk into the mountains, the lake a black hole where it was glittering gold just minutes before. The crowd is shrouded in obscurity.
“What happened?” Charlie asks Isaac, the red and yellow paint in streaks on his face. He looks at Elle with nervous eyes. Tension sits huddled in between them before the murmuring around them breaks it.
“Uh-”
If something bad has happened, Isaac won’t tell him. He’s too careful with hearts. Charlie turns to Elle instead.
“Nick fell,” she says. “Well, he was pushed by that one Ravenclaw beater, the one who looks like a rat, you know him.”
“I’ll kill him,” Charlie says, and for a split second he almost feels like he means it.
“Charlie, it’s part of the game.”
“Yeah, I know, but I’ll kill him.”
Elle takes his hand and drags him to the edge where they can see the entire field. A Lumos enchantment sits in the middle of a circle of teachers. Next to it Nick lies unmoving on the yellowed grass, his left arm in an angle that it most definitely shouldn’t be in.
They carry him away on a stretcher. Charlie’s only ever seen it happening in movies. Elle rests a gentle hand on his shoulder, a comfort that does near to nothing to take away from the heaviness that sits in his stomach.
“Hey, he’ll be fine,” Tao says as the crowd around them thins out, the match cancelled and postponed.
Charlie nods and looks back to where Nick was. Maybe he was cursed after all.
The hospital wing is considerably brighter than any other part of the castle, with large stained glass windows and light limestone walls, like the sun is trying to heal the sick. Only one of the beds is occupied. The sun has an easy job today.
Charlie treads in on socked feet, bright blue against the cold tiles. Nick’s bed stands in a patch of pale lavender sunlight, courtesy of the stained glass. He lies curled up like a cat in his white sheets, head bound with herbal dressing, left arm in a sling. He wakes up when Charlie touches the cool metal of his bedframe.
“Hi, how are you feeling?”
Nick smiles, his hair shimmering like rust in the sun.
“Better, now that you’re here.”
Charlie snorts and hits Nick’s blanket-covered foot. Maybe he wasn’t wrong to assume a rom-com type of situation. Charlie knows Nick loves cheesy romance movies, it’s all he talks about sometimes.
“But seriously, I’m fine. My wrist is broken and I probably have a concussion, so this bright room isn’t great, but Pomfrey didn’t want to hear about it. Something about magical healing powers,” Nick waves his unhurt hand around. “You know what she’s like.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear you’re not dying.”
Charlie sits down on the bed and puts the brownie mix he brought as a gift on the nightstand. Aside from his mum and his dog Nellie, baking is one of the things Nick misses of home the most. (“Why don’t wizards have normal things here? Can’t they do anything without magic?”) Charlie knows there is no oven, but a hot air charm might just do the trick.
There’s a lot of get well soon cards on the nightstand, one of them unmoving. Charlie takes it and studies the banana on the front, the Peel better soon! In pale blue font. He laughs, and Nick shakes his head in embarrassment and fondness all at once.
“It’s from my mum. After all these years she’s still not used to Hoot flying onto the kitchen table every morning.” A small smile sits at the corners of his lips. “At least Nellie has stopped barking at her every time she flies in.”
“She must’ve been shocked at the letter they got this morning, her dear son falling off a broom during a magical game. Don’t worry he’s fine, he’s just got a broken wrist and a head injury, but the Skele-Gro should set in and mend the bone within the next three days. Imagine that. We all know McGonagall isn’t the best at consoling muggles.”
“To be fair, even my mum would freak out,” Charlie says. “Although, more at the idea of me actually playing quidditch than falling.”
They laugh so loudly that Madame Pomfrey barges in with a platter full of a goopy brown syrup to shush them. Nick pulls a face at her when she turns around and Charlie cups a hand in front of his mouth and breathes loudly through his nose. Maybe she should examine the workings of his heart, considering its consistent irregularities as of late.
“I should get going then,” Charlie pipes up after a while, the shadows shifting steadily on the floor around them, a stray finger on Nick’s unwrapped wrist. “I’ve got DADA. Don’t wanna be late.”
He suddenly remembers the flowers he brought, thirteen pale pink primroses, each with a bright yellow centre, carefully plucked from the flower greenhouse, already wilting at the tips. He puts them in a jar of water he finds on an empty nightstand.
“Did you know,” Nick says then, when Charlie is already halfway out the door, his voice a hollow echo in the large room, “that muggles give meanings to flowers? Primroses are often connected to young love. You probably didn’t know.”
Charlie looks at him for a long time, the way the bridge of his nose colours red, the sun in his eyelashes. He knows.
Charlie goes home for the Holidays and misses Nick endlessly. He sits on the coarse rug in front of the fireplace at Tao’s house and watches as Tori conjures up the nativity scene in the flames. The lights in the tree flicker silver and gold, silver and gold, and Charlie can’t stop thinking of Nick’s eyes.
“Stop staring dramatically out the window. You’re not in a movie,” Tao lightly smacks the back of his head with the ancient spell book he got for Christmas.
Charlie snorts. “You’re one to talk.”
Tao and Tori drag him out to go ice skating on the frozen pond out by the forest. The scarf that wraps around Charlie’s neck is scarlet and yellow, still smelling vaguely of washing powder. The adults at the table send him vaguely quizzical looks, but don’t comment. Charlie has always felt at home in many places.
Two days after Christmas at Tao’s, the windows frosty and the morning sun golden on the fresh snow, an owl comes flying over the kitchen table and drops a small package right onto Charlie’s not quite yet finished plate of the cinnamon French toast he spent half an hour making, carefully following the recipe Nick scribbled onto the back page of Charlie’s Muggle Studies handbook right before the train pulled into King’s Cross.
Charlie immediately recognises Nick’s owl, her brown wingtips and cross-eyed yellow gaze. In the package are a set of brand-new paintbrushes and a deck of muggle playing cards, a packet of extra-sour gummy worms. Happy Holidays to my favourite muggle, the card reads in fountain pen, because Nick is sure it makes his handwriting look nicer. On the front is an unmoving picture of a lit Menorah, every one of its nine flames a different colour to make a rainbow. Charlie smiles.
“Thanks, Hoot,” he says, scratching the owl’s white head gently.
Later, he sends Hoot on her way home with a book on Wizard Culture, a packet of pepper imps and a small stuffed Iron Man doll, enchanted to sing Jingle Bells every so often just to annoy Nick. He attaches a little flashing bike-lamp to Hoot’s leg and wishes her a safe trip.
They meet again at King’s Cross station in the middle of a blizzard, the violent winter weather uncharacteristic for London. Nick’s hair hangs in damp waves across his forehead, red and yellow hat, dark blue scarf. The very moment he lays eyes on Charlie, he pulls him into a bone-crushing hug, warm and cold at once.
“Nice weather, huh?” Charlie laughs, his face still buried in the crook of Nick’s neck. He smells like washing powder.
“It’s because of global warming,” Nick replies matter-of-factly, as if Charlie has any idea what he’s talking about. And then. “I missed you.”
When Charlie replies, “I missed you too,” it is the understatement of the century.
There’s a game the two of them play. On quiet Sunday mornings, before Charlie is inevitably whisked away by Elle for their weekly communal breakfast, and Nick has quidditch practice, and on hushed Wednesday nights in the Ravenclaw common room after Astronomy class, and on lazy Saturdays on the edge of the lake, glittering in the afternoon sun, Nick will tell him a story about muggles and Charlie has to guess whether he’s telling the truth or not. He’s gotten quite good at figuring out muggle traditions. That and noticing the way Nick bites the inside of his cheeks when he’s lying.
(“Muggles think the Earth is a flat plain.” “Muggles have special doctors for when they want to change their faces.” “Muggles eat snails.” “Muggles hang unmoving paintings on the walls of large buildings and walk around to look at them, just because it makes them feel something.” “The muggle version of quidditch is running around after a ball in the mud.”)
Charlie wants to go to an art museum, a conveyor belt sushi restaurant, a school rugby game. “I’ll take you,” Nick says with a laugh but Charlie knows he means it. It’s in the gentle tilt of his head, the glinting of his eyes. Charlie will go anywhere with him.
The sun hangs low over the hills, the sky a brilliant blue, the lake its reflection. Nick holds onto Charlie’s hand and tells him about the origin of the Milky Way, the paintings he saw in the Musée d’Orsay when he visited his dad in Paris over the summer, the new Avengers movie he can’t wait to pirate when he finally gets a proper internet connection.
“I’ve got one,” Charlie pipes up, and Nick stares at him with his deep brown eyes. Charlie is so desperately in love with him it feels like he’s been stunned, cursed, Petrificus Totalus unsaid on his cold-split lips.
“Muggles think love is a chemical reaction.”
Nick laughs and shakes his head, auburn hair fluttering in the icy wind, eyes crescents of the moon, bright like the sun, flushed freckled face, his lips as red as his fingertips.
Charlie is, at just shy of seventeen, shorter than Elle and Tao but still taller than most kids in his year, round-cheeked, with above-average skills for his age, fairly certain that thinking of consequences brings him nowhere. So he thinks of nothing at all when he pulls Nick in by his own blue scarf and kisses him until they both can no longer breathe.
“You were wrong, by the way,” Nick says afterwards, the sun well on its way to informing them about their nearing duties for the day. He untangles and retangles their fingers in the pocket of his jacket, rubbing his thumb across Charlie’s knuckles in the process, the mountains and the lake. He kisses Charlie again.
“Muggles think love is magic.”