Chapter Text
Steve was just about to sit down at the Hufflepuff table when he heard Bucky's voice calling his name. He sighed and turned around, looking at Bucky with a raised eyebrow.
“What do you want Bucky?” Steve said with a slightly annoyed voice.
“What do you want Bucky??” Bucky imitated with an even more annoying voice. His friends laughed and continued to walk with him towards the Gryffindor table. Steve sat down with the Hufflepuffs and met Bruce's glance and chuckled.
“What does he even want from you?” Bruce said as he began to eat his sandwich. Steve shrugged and thought back to all the times that they've been in a fight.They had never really liked each other. It started on the Hogwarts train when Bucky and Steve sat in the same coupé. Bucky kept on ranting about how purebloods are real wizards and how muggleborns shouldn't even be here, Steve got tired of him and snapped back with a rude comment, even though Steve never would want to be rude to anyone, but that guy needed to shut up. And then it had just been going on and on, every time they saw each other they began to complain and rant about each other. They had kept going and they never really stopped.
And now here Steve sat, in his fifth year at Hogwarts and still not friends with Bucky. As a Hufflepuff, Steve wouldn't want to give the house a bad reputation by being mean towards the Gryffindor house, but he didn't have anything against the Gryffindors. He only had something against Bucky. He knew that Bucky might have problems at home or that he might have been bullied as a kid, but that was still not an excuse for being so mean towards muggleborns. Steve was a pureblood too, but he didn't care about what the other students were. Blood does not define how someone is as a person, something that Bucky clearly doesn't understand, Steve thought for himself. He glanced over at the Gryffindor table and saw them all sit happily together, Tony with his arm around Pepper, Bucky laughing at something that Tony said while he shuffled bacon into his mouth.
“I really don't know, man” Steve answered Bruce and kept eating his breakfast.
Bucky made his way up the astronomy tower for his last class. The class was shared with the Gryffindors, so he had to endure another lesson with Steve. Ugh. Bucky held his telescope tight against him as he walked up all the exhausting stairs. He was already late, and he would probably get detention, everything was so dark and the torches against the walls didn't help a bit. He opened the door quietly to the classroom and saw to his relief that all the students were staring into their telescopes while they scribbled down notes on a piece of parchment. Professor Sinistra raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything about a detention, so he folded up his telescope and tried to focus on what they were supposed to do. Since he hadn't been there, he didn't know what to do, but those were the consequences of coming too late. He glanced over at Pepper's parchment and saw her notes written in a neat writing, "The star constellation Aries lays to the left of Pisces, it has five stars that connects with each other." And under that she had drawn a small drawing of the constellation.
Right, Bucky thought, every Wednesday they were supposed to study the night skies through their telescopes and learn the names of difficult stars and the movements of planets, and he really needed to get started by now if he at least would get an A or hopefully an E. He peeked through the telescope and looked at the beautiful dark sky with it's small details and galaxies that only could be seen through the telescope. He immediately found the star he was looking for and then found the three other stars that could be connected with it to create the right constellation. He grabbed his pen and began to write it down, while he drew a picture of the stars and tried to dig in his brain for everything he knew about the constellation before he went over to the next one. Bucky heard someone drop their pen and, as easily distracted as he was, he looked up and saw Steve clumsily bend down to get it.
“Idiot” Bucky whispered under his breath and catched Steve's eyes at that exact moment. Steve just chuckled and went back to his telescope. Did he just smile? Bucky couldn't believe it. Why would anyone.. smile because of that? Since when did Idiot become a compliment? And even though Bucky tried to deny it, Steve's smile was utterly adorable. He quickly stopped thinking about it and kept writing and studying the stars, waiting for the lesson to end.
Steve fiddled with his pen while he searched for the right word to use to describe the pattern that the constellation went in, Rectangular? Square..ish? He sighed and was almost about to drop his pen again. He decided to go with the word "Vertical" and looked up at the old clock at the wall, it had chimed midnight twenty minutes ago so there was only ten minutes left of the lesson, which Steve was very grateful for since he was exhausted from the long day.
"Eyes on the sky, Mr Rogers." Sinistra said as she saw Steve focusing on something else. Steve apologized and went back to his telescope as he heard Bucky let out a silent laugh, it was as quiet as a whisper. Steve glanced at the side and saw Bucky glancing right back at him too now and then while he pretended to peek through the telescope. Steve tried not to think about it even if it was quite distracting, and with some restraint to trying not to look back, he eventually made it through the last ten minutes as the clock chimed half past twelve.
“I want your papers done due Friday, at least one and a half feet long!” Professor Sinistra said as all the students already streamed out of the classroom. The voices grew louder and some people elbowed their way through just to get to the common rooms.
“Hey watch it, Rogers!” Bucky said as he pushed himself through the crowd of people. Steve simply stood pressed against the wall, waiting for the students to disappear so he could walk down to the Hufflepuff common room in peace.
That night Steve could barely sleep, even though it was past midnight and it was the middle of the term, so he would've been used to falling asleep immediately by now. He thought about Bucky, how he didn't like being mean towards him. But still, it's Bucky who's mean towards him, not the other way around, so why did Steve even bother to care so much? Maybe it wasn't something that he'd said, maybe it just was the way he acted around Bucky. Steve had been called Idiot before, and hearing it from Bucky wasn't anything new, so he decided to just chuckle at him when he said it earlier that day, but was that the right thing to do? Couldn't he just ignore Bucky instead? All this thinking was driving Steve crazy, but it also made him tired, so after a few moments of wrestling around with his thoughts he fell asleep. The next day Bucky sat in the Great Hall at the Gryffindor table, as usual, and ate his breakfast. He kept glancing over at Steve's table just to catch one of his stunning smiles again but tried to stop himself from staring.
“Bucky?” Tony said and waved with his hand in front of Bucky's face to get his attention. Bucky quickly returned his attention towards Tony and nodded.
“Yeah, sure.” he said, without knowing what he was supposed to answer. Tony grinned at Pepper and then turned around to see what Bucky was staring at.
“Ah, I see! Steve's hair really looks good today doesn't it?” Tony said and looked back at Bucky.
“What? Oh shut up, Stark.” Bucky sneered. Tony shrugged and continued eating.
But yes. Steve's hair really looks good today, Bucky thought and suddenly felt irritation build up inside him. He decided to leave the Great Hall and get his equipment for the next lesson, but when he was on his way out of the hall he bumped into someones shoulder.
“Damn, sorry” Bucky said quickly and kept walking out of the hall.
“No worries, I didn't look myself around” the other voice said. Only a few moments later he realized that he'd bumped into Steve's shoulder. He cursed silently for himself as he walked up the stairs to the Gryffindor tower.
Why does he always have to be so nice? Bucky wondered, as he said the password to the portrait of the Fat Lady.
And why does his hair always have to look so nice? Bucky rapidly gathered all his stuff and ended up arriving extra early at the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. He sat down at his ordinary seat and heard footsteps. Finally the other students were coming, but he could only hear footsteps from one person. They were low and gentle, and became louder and louder as they came closer. Maybe it was Pepper who was looking for him, or the professor, but in through the door came Steve.
Perfect, Bucky thought and tried to not let out an irritated sigh.
“Hi, you dropped your wand.” Steve said and stretched forward his arm with Bucky's long, dark wand in his hand. Bucky stared quietly at him as he groped in his pockets after the wand. He gave up and quietly said
“Thanks.” He took his wand and looked at Steve with a raised eyebrow. There was an embarrassing tension between them for a few moments. Suddenly Steve straightened his back and began to talk.
“Hey, I don't want to keep going like this. I don't even know what we're doing anymore and I don't know why we're doing it.” Bucky was surprised that Steve had said that, since that probably would've been the last thing that he expected him to say. He could hear more footsteps outside the room growing louder.
“Listen, I don't know what you're talking about, get out of here Rogers, other people are coming.” Bucky said because he still was irritated and didn't know how to react to what Steve had said. Steve turned around and walked out of the door with a sigh, and a moment later a whole crowd of students entered the room.