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Before the Miya twins became known for what they were – a foul-mouthed, rambunctious force whose loud bickering you’d clock three hallways before they even got to you, alerting everyone to make room lest their aggression make you a victim of its gravity – they were Atsumu and Osamu. Two boys under the glittering lights of the Great Hall, standing frozen in wide-eyed shock opposite each other, with the weight of the world crumbling down around them.
“’Samu, look!” An eight-year old Atsumu nudged his brother, pointing at the Seeker who’d just expertly dodged a bludger. “He’s so cool!”
“He’s so cool,” Osamu echoed, awe in his voice and gaze starry-eyed.
Atsumu whipped his head towards his brother at break-neck speed. “That could be you,” he yelled, eyes going wide with the new relevation he’d just thought up. He spread his arms wide, leaning so close their noses bumped against each other. Osamu winced, but didn’t move away – his twin was just another him, so it didn’t matter how close they got. Atsumu continued, “That could be us!”
“That could be us!” Osamu exclaimed as Atsumu’s enthusiasm finally flowed through him through their telepathic link. “Wait – we can’t both be seekers?”
Atsumu huffed. “Who said?”
“If we were both seekers, we wouldn’ be on the same team.”
Devastation immediately crossed Atsumu’s features. “Okay, you be the seeker,” he assigned, jabbing a finger in his brother’s chest. “I’ll be –” He deflated as he looked around the arena, evidently finding every other position uninteresting. “A keeper, I suppose.”
Osamu bristled at his assigned role. “What if I wanted to be a keeper?”
“Stop tryin’ to be me!”
“Yer literally just another me!”
“Boys,” their mother interrupted, shutting them both up as she placed one hand on each head. She looked them both over slowly, her expression grave. “One team can’t have two of the same person.”
“We ain’t the same person –”
“We’d need two teams –”
The two boys turned back to each other, their eyes betraying the same thought: Traitor. “Take that back!” They yelled at the same time, grabbing at each other’s shoulders as they erupted into a scuffle. Their mother sighed, resigned, and pulled them both apart again. For a soft-spoken, mild-mannered woman blessed with twins, she was lucky to also be blessed with two people’s worth of patience and the surprising strength to tear them apart when a fight erupted. And in her household, erupt they did – constantly, and throughout the day. She squatted so she was eye-level to them both, giving them each a long stare. “What are we mad about?”
Osamu looked away. Atsumu would always speak up first – and he did, predictably. “’Samu and I needta be on the same team.”
“Okay,” their mother said, turning toward Osamu now. “But you think ya need two teams?”
Osamu pouted. “No,” he said petulantly. He didn’t even know what they were fighting about. Atsumu was just so annoying that he wanted to disagree with anything he said. “Two of us would make one person in a team,” he conceded. From the corner of his eye, he saw Atsumu perk up, easily placated, anger quickly forgotten and gone with the wind.
Their poor mother was shaking her head in confusion. “I don’t know what this is about. But listen, the Quidditch World Cup only happens once every four years. Ya won’t see this again until yer twelve,” she said severely, and horror dawned on both boys at once. “By then, you’ll be so old. Make up now, while you can enjoy it.”
Osamu bumped his shoulder against his brother’s. He was still pouting, but this fight didn’t even matter. They never really did. “Let’s be on the same team, ‘Tsumu.”
Atsumu’s eyes were bright as he nodded. “I just want to play Quidditch with you, ‘Samu!”
“I hope yer both in Slytherin,” their father tells them for what must be the six-thousandth time since the twins received their acceptance letters to Hogwarts. That’s when they learned about the four houses, and how their father had been a Slytherin. “God knows yer both naughty enough for it.”
“Oh, ’Tsumu’d fit right in fer sure,” Osamu quips, and Atsumu elbows him in the side.
“They’d take ya too if I told the Sorting Hat what you were doin’ in the bathroom two nights ago –”
“Shut it,” Osamu whispers, feeling his ears warm. He makes his way down the platform faster, knowing Atsumu would stop running his mouth as soon as his target was out of earshot.
With their luggage stowed away, their mother kisses them both as the train signals its warning. “You both be good now, okay? Try not to fight so much. I won’t be there to tear ya apart anymore.”
“Can’t make any promises,” Osamu says as he gives her one last hug. “Not when it’s ’Tsumu’s face I have to look at every day.”
“Hey, it’s yer face too, dummy!” Atsumu whined as he went in for a punch, but Osamu easily sidestepped him and made his way down the train car, leaving Atsumu alone with his Ma and his Pa, who looked on from a distance.
Their mother gives him a smile, the kind that feels like they’re sharing a secret. “You take care of yer brother, okay?”
He wants to smile back, but truthfully the request makes him nervous. He doesn’t often get reminded that he’s the older twin between him and Osamu, but when he does it feels like a big responsibility. She pulls him in for a hug. “Don’t forget yer poor mother now. Write me letters.”
“’Samu and I’ll write ya letters fer sure.”
“No, not just with ‘Samu,” she says as she pulls away. “You write me yer own letters. Yer gonna have a grand adventure in there, with yer bother and with yerself. Whenever ya need to talk to yer ma, okay?”
He isn’t sure what she means, but the last warning sounds and he quickly makes her a promise, running down the hall to catch up to Osamu.
Osamu is quiet, looking out the window pensively when Atsumu finally finds which section he’s in. They have the coach to themselves, but the sound of chatter from other sections wafts into the space. “Hey, ‘Samu,” he starts. He turns his gaze to the window, too, but it’s nothing but rolling hills in the grey countryside. “What house do ya think we’ll be in?”
Osamu responds immediately. “I haven’t thought ‘bout it much. Don’t really matter. Slytherin, I suppose.”
Atsumu huffs, crossing his arms against his chest. “You only say that ‘cause Pa put it in yer head.”
“Well, the houses seem stupid. No way you can only be one out of four kinds of people?”
Atsumu makes a show of massaging his temples, so his brother knows he thinks he’s stupid. “That’s not the point, ‘Samu. If you know so much better, why don’t ya build yer own school, then, maybe with 12 houses and you’d split ‘em by the zodiacs.”
“Just to put us in the pig house? That’s stupid too,” Osamu argues. “Twelve ain’t enough.”
“Well then yer school’d just be a disorganized mess, loser.”
Osamu gives him an unimpressed look at the weak comeback. “Ya know, figures Hogwarts’ system would work for someone like you,” Osamu says. “The kind of hare-brained, simple-minded –”
Atsumu tries not to let his brother rile him up, god he really does, but Osamu succeeds at least twenty times a day anyway. “Wow, like yer so smart? What, like we’d be in Ravenclaw?”
“Ugh, it wouldn’t work,” Osamu sighs dejectedly. “They’d never take ya.”
Atsumu lunges forward – it’s instinct at this point – his original question forgotten. It didn’t really matter. As long as he was with Osamu, they could be in any house or no house at all, for all he cared.
Hogwarts is as big and beautiful and old as their parents made it out to be. As the adults shepherd the first-years off the train and into large hallways with endless ceilings, the non-stop flurry of activity could almost be overwhelming, if it wasn’t for the excitement that reverberates through Atsumu’s body. Beside him, Osamu gapes at all the new sights and sounds, looking silly in his new robes. They’d been instructed to don them on for the Sorting Ceremony.
“In a moment, the doors will open and you shall all step in to find your place at Hogwarts,” a lean and wrinkly woman with a tall witch’s hat announces. “Good luck.”
Atsumu grabs for his brother’s hand, giving it a squeeze. When he looks up, Osamu is already looking at him. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” Osamu says, and the doors open to reveal the Great Hall.
It’s a whirlwind of light and sound and smells from there. The upper years are clapping, and the ceilings are so high, and strict-looking people sit up ahead at a larger table – presumably the professors. Food is nowhere to be found, but the smell of fresh cooking wafts through the room from somewhere, and Osamu leans in to whisper about how he plans to devour three bowls of rice, he’s been hungry all day. Their hands are still interlocked. In such a big group, with students pressed shuffling forward shoulder-to-shoulder, no one would notice anyway. The weight of Osamu’s hand makes him feel steady, and he hopes Osamu can feel it in their bond. He thinks he hears the same sentiment echoed back.
One by one, the first-years sit under a large, snarky hat that makes the occasional remark as it decides which house they belong to. Atsumu feels excited, and nervous, and worried all at once, not that he exactly knows what about. Osamu doesn’t show it on his face, but Atsumu knows the same feelings are stirring through him.
“Miya Atsumu.”
Osamu drops his hand and nudges him forward. “Moment of truth.”
Atsumu gives him a big grin before he turns back, walking up to the large chair. The Sorting Hat is placed on his head – it’s heavier than it looks and smells of an old storage closet. Everyone in the room is staring at him, and he bites at his lip to keep the grin off his face. His gaze locks with Osamu’s, who looks like he’s holding his breath.
One beat, and then another –
“Gryffindor!”
He barely even processes it, the recollections of what his father had said about Gryffindor going right out the window as he gets swept up in the flurry of cheering and clapping and being ushered to one side of the room. Someone leads him to an empty spot on the bench and there’s claps on his back and congratulations thrown his way and nothing really feels real. Until –
“Miya Osamu.”
He turns around quickly, watching as Osamu makes his way to the large chair and settles in. Osamu gives him a glance from the corner of his eye and then quickly looks forward again as the hat is put on his head.
“Hmm,” the Sorting Hat remarks, and the room goes silent. “Interesting.”
The Sorting Hat contemplates for another second, and then announces, “Easy. Hufflepuff!”
Cheering erupts from the other side of the room, but Atsumu hears none of it. His ears feel like they’ve been plugged with water, and every thought he’d had and sensation he’d felt all came to a screeching halt.
Osamu… wasn’t in his house?
It hits him like a train – the realization that there was always a chance they’d get sorted into different houses. The idea of it had never even crossed his mind – it was never something he’d even had to consider.
Not until today.
When he blinks to focus his eyes, Osamu is still sitting in the chair, frozen. His wide eyes are already trained on Atsumu.
“That ain’t right,” Atsumu yells. He was standing now – when had he done that? He doesn’t feel connected his body at all. The cheering stops abruptly as heads turn in his direction. “We’re in the same house.”
He’s met with absolute silence. Atsumu feels like his heart is coming up his throat.
The Sorting Hat breaks the silence with a laugh. It’s still on Osamu’s head. “Ohoho, and which one is that?”
“Gryffindor,” he says, and his voice is shaking. “With me.”
The Sorting Hat turns his eyes down to Osamu, who’s frozen in his seat and looks terrified out of his mind. “But you don’t feel like a Gryffindor, do you?”
“I –” Osamu starts. His expression is conflicted. “I’m –”
“So you want to be with your brother, but now that you know what he is, that doesn’t feel right for you. Right?”
The words hit Atsumu like a punch to the gut. Was it true? Did they really feel that differently?
Embarrassment colours Osamu’s cheeks now as all eyes around the room move between him and Atsumu. He tears his eyes away from his brother’s, moving his gaze to the floor, and gives a miniscule nod.
Atsumu feels like he’s been punched in the gut. Everything he knew about the world around him was crumbling right before his eyes.
“Well, then. You’re a Hufflepuff!”
The cheers start up again, hesitant at first, and then louder than they ever were. His eyes track Osamu until he loses him in a flurry of black robes and yellow ties. There are hands on him now, pulling him down, and quiet murmurs meant to be comforting make its way in one ear and out the other. For the rest of the night he only looks forward, and doesn’t turn once to the other side of the room.
Atsumu avoids Osamu at all costs. Not that it was a difficult feat to begin with – from that first night, they were led to their house’s respective dorms, and class schedules came out and there was just a lot to do at the beginning of the school year. Add to that that he was in a new and extremely overwhelming environment, and all the people around him all the time, and new roommates, and – it was a lot. Much as he’d like to wallow the day away, there was no time or space for that, so he just throws himself into it headfirst.
Atsumu doesn’t even talk to anyone. He doesn’t make friends in Gryffindor, pointedly avoiding any attempts at socializing from others in the common room, and mutters only a short “I’m fine,” to the house prefect when he checks in on Atsumu.
Some kids stop him in the common room to tell him that Osamu had been looking for him that first night and the day after, but that also stops.
Truthfully, Osamu’s absence feels like a phantom limb. There’s a space to his right that’s cold and empty, where it used to be warm and full. It feels strange to not get his shoulder nudged, to not have Osamu’s voice in his ear at all times. Sometimes he witnesses something cool that leaves him awestruck, or overhears something funny in the halls, and he immediately turns to make a quip only to find empty space. He feels stupid each time he has to click his mouth shut. He can keep his thoughts to himself, but it’s just no fun.
He'd wedged a wall between them, and that was his fault too. Even if he did want to find Osamu, “accidentally” run into him to force a conversation, he wouldn’t even know where to look. He didn’t know where the Hufflepuff dorms were. He’d know if he talked to his brother that night, if he could’ve put on a semblance of a smile on his face and pretended it didn’t feel like his life was tearing apart, but – he hadn’t. So instead he pouts around the halls as he gets his stuff in order, and hopes that in two days’ time when classes start that he never has to see his brother again.
Whatever god is up there hates him, of course, because as he walks out onto a lush green field for his first magical class ever, broom in hand, he immediately locks eyes with Osamu.
Osamu meets his surprised look with anger.
Atsumu’s caught so off-guard by Osamu’s anger directed at him after their three days apart that he almost trips over his own feet. Osamu quickly turns away from him, jabbing his broom down into soft earth, and pointedly avoids Atsumu’s direction.
They own the same broom – the White Kitsune. They’d picked it out together.
“Ah, the twins,” the flying instructor exclaims as she walks into the field. She’s a small woman, wearing what looks like sports glasses smushed against her face. “Which one’s which?”
After the scene Atsumu had caused during the Sorting Ceremony, they’d somewhat become recognizable figures around the school. Atsumu heard the kids whisper in the halls as he walked past, too quiet to really hear what they were saying, and for that he was thankful. He didn’t want to know if they thought he was some stupid loser who couldn’t handle being apart from his brother.
“Atsumu.”
“Osamu,” they say at the same time.
Each with one hand mid-raise, they glower at each other in annoyance. The other students look between them anxiously as they both refuse to look away first, silently daring the other to.
“You two do look terribly alike,” their instructor states, unphased by the palpable tension bleeding into everyone else’s energy. Suddenly flying didn’t sound so fun. “Thankfully the houses got you wearing different colours.”
The reminder of their newfound separation is like a lance to the heart, and Atsumu reluctantly looks away first. There’s a nervous thrumming under his skin now at the thought of having to share space with Osamu, one he’d never felt before. He’d never been uncomfortable around his brother. Then again, that was before, when he thought he knew who Osamu was. This person across the field from him was a new Osamu, a Hufflepuff, someone Atsumu didn’t know at all.
Their instructor walks them through the movements before telling them to just hop on and give it a try. Atsumu’s so keyed-up and itching to do something that he immediately forgets what she’d said about the mental headspace they should be in as he slings one leg over his floating broom.
Once he’s straddled the broom, it takes a few seconds to find his balance. Unprompted, his broom begins to levitate a few feet upwards, and euphoria fills him – is he really flying?! – before the broom promptly flies out from under him and leaves him hanging in mid-air.
He falls face-first into the ground.
The impact knocks the breath out of him, and he can only groan in embarrassment as he hears the sound of laughter above him. He doesn’t even attempt to get up. He could roll around in the dirt to die for all he cared.
“Come on now, up you go,” the instructor’s voice soothes as she rolls him onto his back and helps him sit back up. She moves on to the other students as Atsumu sits there, face pink and speckled with soil. When he looks up, he’s met with the image of Osamu flying in circles high up in the air.
One of the girls exclaims from below, “Osamu, you’re a natural!”
Osamu smiles. When he catches Atsumu’s eye, his grin turns smug.
If they were on speaking terms right now, he’d punch him in the face.
The day after Atsumu publicly humiliates himself by being unable to fly and by being a dumbass compared to his brother, he starts to get antsy. Life had been all good and easy when he could pretend Osamu didn’t exist and go about his merry way, but now that they’d had a full day of shared classes together and pointedly kept their distance from opposite sides of every space they were in, he was itching to do something with Osamu. Talk to him, yell at him, tackle him onto the floor – or all of the above. So many emotions were swirling within him, anger and confusion and embarrassment but also something soft and sad and missing, and if he doesn’t get a hold on them or find a way to let them out he might just run across the Great Hall over to the Hufflepuff table and lunge at his brother, sending him sprawling over the breakfast spread.
Atsumu snorts at the image it conjures up, his brother pillowed by croissants. Osamu’d love that.
He chances a look over at the Hufflepuff table, failing to spot a familiar head of tufty brown hair. He’s about to dig into his plate, full of steaming tamagoyaki, when an owl swoops into the room – his, he notes in quick surprise – and drops a red envelope on the table.
“A Howler,” the boy to his left gapes. “Oh no.”
He picks up the envelope. It’s addressed to him, his mother’s beautiful cursive on the page. As he flips it over to unseal it, he’s oblivious to the people around him hurriedly plugging their ears.
The envelope jumps out of his hands, and Atsumu watches in horror as it takes the shape of a mouth and inhales before –
“Miya Atsumu!”
Atsumu winces at the volume, his name ringing loud and clear through the high ceilings. That is not his mother’s voice. This was a grotesque, screechy imitation of it, but her tone is unmistakable.
“Ya better make up with yer brother right now! What was the last thing I told ya, huh?”
You take care of yer brother, okay?
Wait. How did she know?
“You know how I know. Yer brother’s always been better at listening to his ma than you. He sent me a letter.”
Guilt colours his cheeks at the admonishment. He thanks every god and spirit and deity above that Osamu wasn’t here, or he’d never live it down.
With every word the Howler’s voice rises in pitch, shrill and burning his eardrums. “I could never raise my voice at ya, so I wish I could see what this Howler is doing right now. If ya weren’t so dang stubborn, I woulda asked ‘Samu to get this on video. Dang, maybe I should’ve sent y’all in there with phones. Anyway, write yer mother a letter and let it out. Do the right thing. Yer brother’s waiting.”
The voice reaches its peak, and at this point it’s just high-pitched noise. “Talk to ‘Samu!”
The letter tears into ribbons in front of his eyes, falling like confetti onto his omelet. Everyone around the table is shocked into silence for a few more seconds, but soon there’s laughs, and pity claps on his back, and Atsumu groans and buries his head into his arms. His face is burning, but it’s dark in this little space he’d carved for himself, and he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to face the rest of the world after that. His first few days at Hogwarts, and all he can seem to manage is embarrass himself in front of the whole school to see. He wants the ground to swallow him whole. There’s probably a spell for that.
A hand falls heavy onto his shoulder. Atsumu reluctantly looks up, groaning at the interruption to his safe space, and is met with the sight of a boy in green robes, eyes green and cat-like and absolutely gleaming with mirth.
“Put in your mom’s number,” is all he says by way of greeting as he passes Atsumu his phone. “I got the full video.”
Atsumu grumbles as he put her number in and presses send.
Atsumu pouts all the way through his Potions class. Nonetheless, he knows he does occasionally need to get some sense knocked into him, and the Howler incident almost makes him feel better. He’s starting to gain some clarity in his thoughts, the cloud of emotion blocking his judgement beginning to pass. He’ll confront his brother, sure, he was always going to do that (is what he tells himself to preserve his pride). He’s making his way back to the Gryffindor dorms when someone falls into step with him, and when he turns he’s surprised to see a familiar pair of cat-like eyes trained on him. Atsumu raises a brow at him as they keep walking, and the boy hands his phone over.
“Message from your mom.”
He feels his brow twitch. He can’t take any more humiliation today, god please –
He looks down at the screen and sees a still image from the Howler incident video, no preamble or greeting, just under it a short message: I got the video ma’am
And a response from his mother: Atsumu, my Gryffindor, my brave boy. Ur ma loves ya, and so do ur pa and Samu. Don’t forget that.
He stops in his tracks. It’s such a sharp contrast from the screaming lecture he’d received that morning, and much closer to his mother’s soothing nature that he feels his eyes start to burn. He quickly brings a fist to his eyes to wipe the tears away, shame forgotten. He hadn’t realized the boy had stopped with him, observing him from the corner of his eye.
Atsumu looks back down. Under his mother’s message, the boy had replied. This isn’t your boy, sorry ma’am.
This boy is ridiculous. He snorts and passes the phone back, and the boy wordlessly takes it back. He doesn’t speak, but he keeps standing there awkwardly, eyes surveying Atsumu warily.
Atsumu sighs. “What’s yer name? Since ya seem to always be in my business and all that.”
The boy’s eyes narrow further. “Rin.”
“Alright Rin, thanks for that,” he says, giving him a short nod. “See ya around.”
Rin turns quickly, walking off in the opposite direction they’d been walking, a muttered “I guess,” under his breath.
When Atsumu finally reaches his room, he’s exhausted. The emotional rollercoaster he’d undergone this morning alone was too much for a thirteen-year boy. He wants nothing more than to crawl into bed and nap his feelings away, but he knows he can’t put things off any longer. Settling into his chair, he takes out a piece of parchment paper and reaches for his quill. He pulls out a small bottle of ink he’d tucked away into his desk, the colour of blood red – his mother’s favourite. He’d bought it for this exact purpose.
Ma,
The Howler spoke like ya, but it didn’t sound like ya. I think my ears are still ringing.
Here’s your first letter. I guess ya knew I’d have to write ya my own letters one day too, huh? I don’t know what Osamu told ya, but it’s probably nothing good. We haven’t talked in four days. I see him in my classes though, and it’s real weird not standing next to him.
I just don’t understand, he starts, then gives it a second thought and scratches at the words. He’s never been the best at voicing his emotions. Sure, he’ll say whatever’s on his mind at any given moment, but they’d never been about things that hurt. He isn’t sure how to even begin unravelling the knot of contradictory feelings in his chest. At the core of it, he’s just confused, a lot blindsided, because the one thing he’d believed with full certainty was that he knew his twin brother – the other half of him – better than anything.
Osamu being his other half meant that they made one whole – shared the same thoughts, the same wants, and stuck by each other’s side forever.
But now all of those assumptions had been tipped on their head. No, Osamu was never just one-half of Atsumu. He was his own person too, and apparently he was too different from Atsumu. The thought of his brother leaving him behind brings a fresh wave of tears to his eyes, and this time he doesn’t bother to wipe them away, letting them fall onto the page.
This is all just confusing and a lot for me, Ma. ‘Samu and I’ve always been together. I never thought we’d have to be apart. And now I have to think of him as a Hufflepuff (nice and hardworking? I don’t know about that) and me as a Gryffindor (brave, definitely, ya said it yourself) and how those things make us different.
Sorry I haven’t been acting like a proper big brother (7 minutes really shouldn’t be enough to make me suffer like this) but I promise I’ll talk to him soon. Can’t avoid someone who looks like ya forever. He was flying real cool on his broom in class, you’d be proud of him.
^ Don’t tell him I said that
Love you. I promise I’ll write more letters.
Mwah,
Tsumu
Atsumu sits on the stone steps that lead to the field. He’d overheard the other kids gossiping about how Osamu spent his free time out here when he wasn’t in class, playing with his broom and flying through the air. He was a natural, those girls in class had said. Osamu was blazing his way through life, and Atsumu felt a pang in his chest at the thought of being left behind.
It’s only a couple of minutes before he hears footsteps behind him. Osamu plops himself down next to him with a heavy sigh, followed by a clattering sound Atsumu presumes is his broom. They both look out toward the field, watching the morning sunlight chase the remnants of last night’s shadows away.
“Heard mom chewed ya out.”
Defensiveness creeps up on him by instinct, always ready to refute his brother’s snark. He wants to argue for argument’s sake, say “Ya heard wrong,” wants to accuse him of snitching, but that would only earn him more shame because really, he’d deserved it. So instead, he exhales a heavy sigh of his own, dragging his hand down his face. “Yeah, she did.”
“Saw the video, too.”
He curses silently under his breath. “That stupid Rin.”
“That his name? Boy with eyes all cat-like?”
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t know ya had friends.”
“He’s not my friend,” Atsumu grits through his teeth. “He just keeps showin’ up at the scene of the crime.”
“I like ’im,” Osamu says. “If only to get updates on when you embarrass yourself.”
“Shut up.”
It’s silent for a few moments. Atsumu is keenly aware of all his sensations – he listens to the wind move through the grass, hears the soft sound of his brother’s breathing, feels a familiar warm presence to his right. It’s a beautiful day, Osamu is next to him, and it’s like nothing had happened at all. But it’s not true – things have changed, and they’ll keep changing, but they’ll always come back to this.
Atsumu can’t bring himself to look his brother straight in the eye, so he settles on glancing at him from the side. “Sorry, ‘Samu.”
“I know. We can’t do everything together, ‘Tsumu.”
Atsumu pouts in response, petulant. He can’t help it. “I know that.”
Osamu’s voice is neutral when he asks, “Do ya?”
“Just thought we were gonna be on the same team,” Atsumu grumbles. He’s hit with childhood memories of the Quidditch World Cup together at eight and an argument he can barely recall, but the image of Osamu’s eyes gleaming as he followed the Seeker fly around the arena remains vivid in his mind.
At that, Osamu snorts. “If ya even make the team, with the way ya faceplanted into the ground.”
“Hey!” Atsumu starts, nudging at his shoulder. “You were sending me bad juju in class.”
“No I wasn’t,” Osamu counters immediately. “Don’t blame me fer yer stupidity.”
Atsumu can’t argue with that, and they fall into silence again.
This time, Osamu is the one to break the silence. “’It’s been four days. We haven’t changed, ‘Tsumu. Houses or not, yer always gonna be my twin, first and foremost.”
Relief washes over Atsumu, the feeling of it so palpable that he feels his body relax for the first time in days. The words bring a prickling sensation to his eyes – his whole situation has really made him such a crybaby, not that he wanted Osamu to know that. So instead he teases, “Who made you the older brother?”
If Osamu hears the tremble in his voice, he doesn’t mention it. “Someone’s gotta do it. And yer supposed to be the one that’s brave.”
“Shut up. I’ll probably grow into it.” Atsumu fully turns to his brother then, shooting him an unimpressed look. “As if you’re supposed to be nice?”
Osamu looks unphased by the accusation, crossing his arms across his chest. “Hey, I’m a joy to be around. But hey, see? Told ya the houses were stupid.”
Atsumu nods. “Yeah. We’d’ve been better off as pigs.”
The wind picks up then, stirring up their robes. Osamu blows hair out of his eyes. “Listen, if you do make the team, we’ll still play together. Only difference is I’ll be on the opposite team, blocking you every which way so you don’t score.”
The words conjure an image of them both out on the Quidditch pitch, matching brooms in hand, one dressed in red and the other in gold. In his vision they’re smiling, and he thinks he’d be happiest just getting to play, knowing his twin was out there on the pitch with him. He thinks that’d make his ma happy, too.
“That a challenge?” Atsumu asks as he raises an eyebrow, but he can feel the beginnings of a grin on his face. “Yer on.”
Osamu grins back as he stands, extending a hand out to Atsumu. “Wanna go practice?”
Atsumu picks up his broom from where it lay next to his feet, taking his brother’s hand to get to his feet. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
He has a lot of catching up to do.