Chapter Text
Bakugou Katsuki was a goddamn wizarding prodigy.
There was no way he wasn’t -- he’d known he was special since he was 4, when one day he had found himself on the same shelf as the cookies he'd been stretching up to reach only moments earlier. After that, weird things began happening, and he knew exactly what they were.
They were magic.
He was a wizard.
And he was a fucking good one, at that. Within a year he was able to pop into different places of his house just by thinking about it. He was able to make small object float off of shelves if he really, really concentrated hard enough, scrunching his face up and starting at whatever it was that he wanted until he was nearly blue in the face. He could even blow stuff up, if he was mad enough.
(And he was always mad enough.)
On his fifth birthday, Bakugou had decided that he was going to be the greatest auror the wizarding world had ever seen, and no one was going to stop him.
He’d run down the halls of his house, waving his make-shift wand and vanquishing villains, protecting his mom from any werewolves that may have crossed her path on the way to the laundry room.
If he had accidentally blown up their washer in his excitement, then it really wasn’t his fault.
Bakugou was determined to be the best. He told everyone he knew all about his plan to become the greatest auror of all time, surpassing even All Might. No one was going to beat him.
Or at least that’s what he’d thought up until he’d met Deku.
Bakugou met him at the stupid daycare run by their neighbor next door; it was some in-home thing that was filled to the brim with way too many magical children to possibly be legal. His parents had enrolled him “to better his social development”, apparently hoping that Bakugou might make friends. Midoriya had been enrolled with him, along with a handful of other kids that Bakugou never bothered remembering.
It's not as though Bakugou had really bothered remembering Midoriya, though, either, since the boy had never shown any promise of magical powers. While Bakugou could set things on fire from a distance, make small objects around the room move, and even turn his teacher’s hair bright orange, Midoriya hadn’t been able to do a thing. But he followed Bakugou like a lost puppy, marveling at his power and practically worshipping the ground he walked on, so it was impossible to ignore him for long.
Sometimes Bakugou felt sorry for MIdoriya. It must have been hard to go through life without any magic, and with everyone watching you so heavily, waiting for the first sign that your magic would appear at all. But there were no signs with him, no matter how much he tried -- and no matter how much Bakugou pushed him. He prodded and he poked, making fun of the younger boy and chasing him around, even going as far as to blow up some of his lunches just to see if any spark of anger or resentment might set him off, a fireworks display of magic just waiting to explode.
It never came.
By the time they turned 8, Bakugou had dubbed Midoriya a squib.
“It’s not an insult or anything, it’s just a fact,” he said, shrugging as he blew up a soda can he’d set a few hundred feet away from them. “You have no magic, Deku. You’re probably just a squib.”
“Well if it’s not an insult, then,” Midoriya looked up at him, wringing his shirt nervously, “then why do you call me Deku?”
“Hah?” Bakugou turned, laughing. “Because you can’t do anything right! Even if you did have magic, you’d still be a nerd that’d find some way to be useless.”
Midoriya didn't argue, instead watching with awe as Bakugou blew up another can.
By the time they were 10 Bakugou could control his magic nearly perfectly. He was even able to sway the minds of small animals and creatures, if he really tried. He was the most powerful kid in his class - maybe even his whole city - with no one to rival him in the least.
Until Midoriya’s powers showed up.
They were playing in the woods behind Bakugou’s house, climbing trees and catching cicadas in the early summer. He’d climbed onto the top branches of one of the tallest trees, with Midoriya calling out to him from the base of the trunk.
“Kacchan!” He called, cupping his hands around his mouth to use as a megaphone, “Be careful! Those branches don’t look very strong!”
“Shut up, Deku!” Bakugou barked back, scooting out farther onto the branch just to spite the boy below him. The further out the branch grew the thinner it became, but Bakugou paid it no mind as he pulled himself to the very edge. “Hey! See, I told you I could make it this fa-”
He was cut off mid sentence by the branch snapping in half, breaking beneath his weight as he began free falling to the ground.
He had no real time to react, could only squeeze his eyes shut as the sound of Midoriya’s panicked screams of “Kacchan!” rang out in his ears. He waited for the inevitable, wondering if maybe a fall from this height could kill him-
But nothing came.
Instead he found himself on solid ground, cracking open an eye to find Midoriya half an inch from his face, tears streaming down his cheeks. He looked around himself quickly, realizing that he was sitting on the grass at the base of the tree.
Had he apparated here?
“Oh my God! Kacchan, are you okay?!” The panic in his voice was evident, and it made Bakugou want to punch him.
“I’m fine,” he spat, pushing Midoriya away from him and standing. He brushed off his pants, frowning. “Can’t you tell that I just apparated myself? Geeze. Of course I was going to get out of that okay.”
“O-oh! Yeah, of course!” Midoriya chirped from the ground below him, and Bakugou nodded as he turned to walk away.
His legs wobbled, and he felt a bit like throwing up.
Things began to get weird from there.
Cats would flock the streets outside of his house, following him and Midoriya to school every morning.
Flowers would bloom when they passed, and sometimes the petals would float through the air after them.
Bakugou had managed to accidentally sear off a good chunk of Midoriya’s hair, only to have it grow back by the next day.
Things were happening that even Bakugou was classifying as weird, and he wasn’t sure where it was all coming from. He had assumed it was his own magic growing and expanding, but cats? Flowers? That wasn’t like him or his magic at all.
It wasn’t until Midoriya had shown up on his door with a Hogwarts acceptance letter to match Bakugou’s own that it all began to make sense.
“Kacchan! You got one too, right?” His eyes had nearly sparkled as he looked up at Bakugou, a hopeful kind of admiration written all over his face.
“What the fuck?”
He couldn’t really think of anything else to say as he stared at Midoriya, his anger building up inside of him until it nearly flowed out of his ears.
“What. The. Fuck.”
“Kacchan?”
“How the fuck did you get accepted?” He asked, his grip on the door hardening until his knuckles were nearly white. “You’re a fucking squib!”
“Actually,” Midoriya said, shuffling his feet a bit and looking at the ground as he spoke, “turns out I’m just a late-bloomer. I’m actually fine! So I got in, just like you!”
Bakugou could hear his mother cry out behind him as the coffee maker exploded in the kitchen.