Chapter Text
Felix gets sorted into Gryffindor, and somehow, it isn't the worst part of Dorian's first night at Hogwarts.
The sorting hat barely touches him before it shouts out his fate to the whole hall.
"RAVENCLAW!"
There's a moment of stunned silence; a teacher has to guide him to his table. Dorian's knees are shaking so badly that he's surprised he makes it at all. Being separated from his best friend is bad, but being the first Pavus in a century not put in Slytherin is a nightmare.
All the clever things he'd planned to say at the feast desert him, and he only picks at his food. How long does he have before his father finds out? A day? Two?
He doesn't catch the names of his roommates during dinner. There are three of them-- a pureblood with a head of braids, a redhead with the wide-eyed wonder of a muggleborn, and a halfblooded boy who looks closer to eight than eleven and babbles about the library throughout the meal. Dorian doesn't talk to any of them until they've been ushered up to their bedrooms. He should be listening to the prefect who is answering questions, but he's too busy trying not to throw up what little dinner he ate. It's like a final nail in the coffin to see his trunk at the foot of one of the beds.
"Giles! Oh, baby, there you are!" Dorian's redheaded housemate squeals, scooping a black-and-white kitten off one of the beds. Dorian slips between the curtains surrounding his bed while the others are distracted.
The solitude doesn't help. He's homesick, he misses Felix and he's already regretting not eating dinner. He's preparing to spend the evening moping when redhead-with-a-cat pokes his head through the curtains.
"D'you want some of my chocolates?" He asks, grinning. He's still holding the kitten. Dorian strongly considers saying no, but the word 'chocolate' gives him another hunger pang.
"...What kind of chocolates?"
Redhead laughs.
"I knew you could talk! It's those little frogs that try to get away. Got 'em on the train. Come see, Finn is still trying to catch his!"
Redhead pulls back the curtain. The smallest of the boys is half under one of the beds, making little noises of distress. That must be Finn. On top of the bed is the boy with the braids, watching his housemate squirm with vague amusement.
"They aren't supposed to be this challenging," Braids says, prompting a snort of laughter from Redhead.
"Don't pick on him, Solas, come on."
Finn finally emerges from under Solas' bed, holding out his frog like a trophy.
"Got it! And thank you, Maxwell, not everyone has practice with-- oh. Hello. You've come out," Finn says, looking surprised to see Dorian.
"So I have," Dorian replies with a sigh. Maxwell smiles at him reassuringly.
"It's okay, it's my first night away from home too," He says, handing Dorian one of the frogs. "I'm sure it'll get easier."
"My parents aren't going to be happy with my house," The words come out of Dorian's mouth before he can consider them. His cheeks burn, and Solas snaps his fingers in recognition.
"I knew I'd heard your name somewhere. You're a Pavus, your father works for the ministry."
Maxwell and Finn respond to that statement very differently.
"Which branch?" Finn asks.
"The what?" Maxwell asks simultaneously.
Solas looks so offended that it actually makes Dorian laugh.
*
They stay up at least an hour later than they should have to teach Max about wizarding government. Finn passes out on Solas' bed and they end up leaving him there.
Dorian is feeling a little better about life as they head down to breakfast.
"Is Fudge a normal surname for wizarding families?" Maxwell asks, which makes Solas sigh.
"Why do we keep coming back to this?" Solas complains, and Dorian shrugs.
"Well, it's at least a little funny, isn't it?" Finn asks, smiling like he thinks it definitely is.
They're cut off as they enter the Great Hall.
"Max! Finn! Over here!" Someone is calling from the Ravenclaw table, waving her hands excitedly. Solas scowls, but the other boys don't seem to notice.
"Morning, Merrill," Max says as he sits down next to their housemate. "Oh! Did you introduce yourself last night, Dorian?"
"He didn't! Hello! I'm Merrill!" The girl is beaming at him. Dorian's feeling a bit sick again now that the threat of an owl from his father is back, but he manages a smile.
"Dorian Pavus. Charmed."
"Is that a pureblood thing? Talking like you're from Pride and Prejudice?" Maxwell asks, heaping food onto his plate. Finn snorts into his hand, and Merrill tilts her head questioningly.
"Like we're from what?" She asks.
"It's a movie," Max replies, and Solas sighs heavily.
"It's a book."
"It's both, I think," The girl on Merrill's other side offers. Dorian remembers her from the sorting; she'd been the next person sorted into Ravenclaw after he was. She must catch the way he's looking at her, struggling to remember her name, because she introduces herself.
"Neria Surana. You're feeling better today, then?"
Dorian nods, and nobody pushes the issue. The owls come and go without anything life changing for any of them. Maxwell and Neria are still trying to explain muggle films as they head to their first potions lesson.
Dorian is disappointed that they're with the Hufflepuffs instead of the Gryffindors; he hadn't managed to talk to Felix at all at breakfast. Professor Orsino seems benign if a bit boring, and he pairs them off briskly to start what is possibly the simplest potion Dorian has ever heard of.
Dorian gets Maxwell; to their right are Solas and Merrill, with Finn and a Ravenclaw girl who hadn't sat with them at breakfast on the left. If Dorian caught her name right, she's Velanna. Behind them, Neria is paired with a Hufflepuff boy named Daylen Amell.
Max is flipping pages almost before Orsino is done giving instructions.
"Doesn't elfroot have healing properties on its own?" He asks, running his finger down the ingredients list.
"You have to chew it, though. Tastes awful," Dorian tells him, sorting through their small pile to find the biggest roots to chop up. He wonders if Max read any of their books over the summer. He's a muggleborn, so it's doubtful he'd know that another way.
"Do you think I'd get in trouble if I tasted it?" Maxwell asks, holding up one of the smallest roots. Dorian makes a face.
"Either way, please don't."
Maxwell laughs.
"Okay, okay, no sampling the potion ingredients, got it," He concludes cheerfully, laying his tiny root down on the cutting board.
"You should use thicker ones for this," Dorian corrects, offering his partner one of the larger roots. Maxwell takes it.
"It doesn't mention that in the book, though?" He says, re-reading the instructions. Dorian shakes his head.
"My mother taught me to make this when I was six."
That was either the right or wrong thing to say, because Max's eyes take on a sparkle of sorts.
"Really? Why does it work that way?" He asks, bouncing a little in his seat from excitement. Quietly, Dorian thinks that this is what a Ravenclaw looks like.
"You lose less of the root when you peel the big ones."
"So the outside isn't useful? Or is that the part that tastes bad?"
"The whole thing tastes--"
Next to them, Merrill yelps in surprise. Both her potion and her partner are on fire.
*
Orsino doesn't take any points from Ravenclaw, but they do get a very firm lecture about the difference between regular and royal elfroot. He seems impressed that any of them even have that much of the royal kind.
The nurse cuts off Solas' half-destroyed braids, and he apparently has her take the whole thing off, because he's bald by dinner. Merrill apologizes profusely, which has no effect on Solas' sour mood. Maxwell brings a herbology book to dinner and asks Dorian endless questions about healing potions.
Felix visits their table just before dessert.
"We have Charms together!" He says, his tone somewhere between excited and apologetic. They'd both wanted to be in the same house.
"Did your parents teach you those too?" Maxwell asks excitedly, not bothered by the lack of introductions.
"Felix, this is Maxwell," Dorian provides, just before Merrill notices the newcomer.
"You're a Gryffindor!" She announces like a grand revelation. "Tell Hawke that Merrill says hi!"
There's an awkward beat of silence before she turns to her housemates to offer an explanation.
"We were train friends!"
*
Marian Hawke apparently takes 'train friends' to be some kind of commitment. Charms class hasn't even started yet and she's already claimed Merrill as her partner. At least it removes the possibility of another Solas-and-Merrill disaster-- and Dorian is just as quick to stake his claim on Felix.
"Didn't he have hair yesterday?" Felix asks in a whisper, pointing at Solas, who is sitting with Maxwell and Neria. Dorian doesn't even try to suppress his grin.
"You didn't notice at dinner? There was an accident in potions."
Felix looks alarmed.
"You lot were making healing draughts too, right?"
Dorian laughs and nods, which only ramps up the look of confusion on his friend's face.
"How did he even manage that?"
"Merrill."
Felix takes a moment to absorb this information, then nods.
"Oh. Well. She is friends with Marian."
In spite of having shown no interest in their hushed conversation previously, Hawke turns around in her seat to point at Felix accusingly.
"It's Hawke!" She protests, and Felix raises his hands in the universal signal of 'woah, sorry'. The birthmark across her nose makes her look oddly intimidating for an eleven year old with hair like a bird's been nesting in it. She huffs a little, but almost immediately shifts her attention to Dorian.
"Weren't you that kid who couldn't find Ravenclaw table on your own?"
Professor Irving arrives before Dorian has to come up with an explanation, thus marking the only time he'll ever be glad Charms class is starting.
*
Dorian,
Felix's parents passed along the information about your house assignment. I can't say I'm not disappointed--
Dorian has to take a break before he can keep reading the letter. Maxwell provides an excellent diversion, being overjoyed by the presence of Dorian's family owl. He's completely abandoned his toast.
"He's looking at me!" Max squeals, wiggling his fingers in the owl's face. Solas sighs, which is already a normal noise for their little group.
"Don't do that," He says, grabbing Max by the wrist to pull him away from the owl. Dorian watches them in silence, and wonders what they'd say if they knew what the owl had delivered. He'd probably get sympathy from Maxwell, at least. Finn isn't paying attention to any of them, talking animatedly with Merrill about their upcoming astronomy class; Velanna still doesn't sit with them and Neria is half-asleep.
"I asked my parents to get me an owl, but they said they didn't know where you got those, so I got Giles instead. But Giles is great, so that's okay!" Max babbles, not bothered by the fact that Solas still has a hold on his arm.
"Didn't he eat your shoelaces last night?" Dorian asks weakly, trying to put the letter out of mind. Maxwell laughs.
"Aw, that's okay, he was just being a cat."
Solas rolls his eyes but lets go of Max, who immediately starts trying to feed the owl his toast.
*
Dorian isn't disowned, but he's still feeling moody as his housemates start to head up to bed that night. He's only pretending to read, laying on his back on one of the couches.
He doesn't realize how long he's been staring at the stars painted onto the ceiling until Maxwell's face blocks them out. There's a symmetry to the before and after; Max's freckles are like stars themselves.
Wow, he really needs sleep if he's waxing poetic about his friends. Are they friends? Dorian realizes that he rather hopes that they are.
"Are you going to sleep down here?" Max asks. "Can I sleep here too? I like the stars."
Dorian notices that Max has blankets draped over one of his shoulders. He stops pretending to pay attention to his book and sets it down on the floor.
"I wasn't planning on it but-- it isn't a bad idea."
Maxwell lights up, bouncing on his heels.
"It'll be like a sleepover!"
Dorian accepts the blanket Max offers him, vaguely wondering if this is a Ravenclaw thing. His parents have never mentioned camping out in their common room. Max cuddles up into the armchair nearest to Dorian's couch, sighing happily as he looks up at the ceiling.
"I used to have glow-in-the-dark stars on my bedroom ceiling when I was little," Maxwell tells him, wiggling to get comfortable. Dorian watches him.
"You don't anymore?" He asks. Maxwell laughs.
"I kept rearranging them until they stopped sticking to things. I wanted them to look like the milky way."
Dorian thinks about that for a minute.
". . . You know, we could probably figure out how to charm your bed curtains so they'd look like the night sky."
Maxwell sits up so quickly he nearly falls out of the chair.
"Really? Really? We could do that?" He's too loud in the quiet common room, but his enthusiasm is catching.
"Absolutely."
Now Maxwell really does vault out of the chair, abandoning his blanket in the process.
"What books will we need? Should I get my star charts? I'll get my star charts."
Maxwell is off running before Dorian can even point out that it's the middle of the night and they have classes in the morning.
*
By the week before Christmas holiday, Dorian is starting to get used to waking up with Giles asleep on his chest. However, he still isn't used to Maxwell's scarf, which Max's mother knitted in Ravenclaw colors out of something far thicker than regular wool. It covers everything between his eyes and chest in a thick layer of fluff and it's half impossible to make out what he's saying when he's wearing it.
Neria calls him 'scarfzilla', which Finn and Max both find funny. Dorian is going to get one of them to explain to joke eventually.
Solas' hair still hasn't grown back, and Maxwell and Dorian have a running argument about whether he's shaving it or if he's just bald now. It's one of many debates they come back to when they're bored, although it is one of the least academic. Some nights they just lay on Max's bed under their home-made canopy of stars and compare magical and muggle astrology. Maxwell and Felix get along, and Merrill is surprisingly easy to talk to about just about anything. Even Finn has his moments.
They're sitting at dinner, Maxwell laughing so hard he's wheezing at something scathing Velanna has just said about deathroot extracts, when Dorian realizes that he's happy. He hasn't worried about what might be going on at the Slytherin table in weeks.
He doesn't say anything about it, just thumps his friend on the back when he starts choking on his own spit.
"Classy, Maxwell."
*
Dorian lies a great deal while he's home. He can't mention Max, or Finn, or Neria, so a lot of stories require heavy editing. His father is extremely interested in his relationship with Solas, whose family has a better social standing than Velanna or Merrill's. The fact that he's only on friendly terms with one Slytherin, a first year named Vivienne, doesn't go over well at all.
Something eases in his chest when he spots Maxwell's massive lump of a scarf across platform 9¾. The hug he gets from Merrill halfway through putting his trunk away nearly results in loss of life and limb, but he's still feeling better than he did the whole time he was home. Even Hawke's obnoxious laugh is comforting.
*
Maxwell cries for an hour after they're done packing their trunks for the summer.
"I'll send you loads of magic sweets," Dorian promises for the third time. Max sniffles into Dorian's shoulder, where he's had his head for the past twenty minutes.
"No magic outside school is a stupid rule," Max mumbles. "And I'm going to miss you guys so much."
"I'll-- We'll miss you too," Dorian says, trying not to focus on how true that is.
He's already considering enchanting his bedroom ceiling to look like the milky way.