Work Text:
Hogwarts AU
Natalia Romanova glanced at the sign reading “Platform 9 3/4” in the middle of King’s Cross at London, hesitant to step through the brick walls and start her new life.
She’d only arrive from St. Petersburg three days prior where the mentor in charge of her studies brought her to a place called Diagon Alley to purchase her wands, cloaks, etc. because the British would not appreciate the belongings she had brought with her from Russia. It was a work and a half for Ivan to get Natalia into the exchange program, and even worse as the headmaster was highly skeptical of a girl raised in the Red Room.
The Red Room was - is - a program notorious for breeding witches who prefer dark magic. Ivan kept the program under the guise that they trained ballerinas for the Russian Witches Ballet, a revered program within the magical community. The Red Room is feared for the witches who leave and cause havoc in the world.
In any case, Natalia — whose name Ivan decided would be altered to Natasha Romanoff due to the limitations of proper understanding of her heritage — would spend the next two years in the dreadful place like Hogwarts to learn about themselves. She graduated at the top of her class in the Red Room and was specifically chosen to infiltrate one of the greatest wizarding schools in wizard history. So, she took a deep breath, pushed the trolly into the wall and waited for a magical sensation to pop out on the other side where the busy platform would have parents and students running around. She pushed her trolly until she came to a conductor who looked at her with pity.
“Can I help you, young lady?” he asked her eyeing her trolly of books. It was books of assortment years as Hogwarts honored that she was a fifth year student, but did not honor many of the classes she took while under the Red Room. She understood, most of her time was spent doing curses and things that they in Hogwarts would not approve of.
“Is there somewhere I can load these?” she said motioning to her books, trying her best not to sound too British, but not too Russian either.
“Ah,” the man said nodding his head. “If you’d like I can load your items for you. They are properly labeled?”
“Yes.”
“Then it should not be a problem, welcome to Hogwarts.”
She paused fighting the frown on her face. “Thank you.”
Natalia — Natasha - boarded the train and sat down in the first empty seats she could find. She had to steal herself and prepare for this mission. Ivan left her to figure it out on her own with regular check ins through the Owl Post. She felt awkward watching through the glass while people her age wore clothes that bore their houses, the did not belong to a house, she would have to get sorted in a small ceremony before the first years were sorted. She wore all black, although from what she’s read in Hogwarts they would assume she’s dressed as a Slytherin, the house of dark magic. She would not be at all surprised to find herself sorted into that house. In fact, she remember Ivan suggesting adamantly for her to be sorted into Slytherin in order to build connections with the dark wizards in Britain.
She met the stormy eyes of a man right outside her pod, and he broke his stride and started walking towards her, a particularly angry look on his face. She wondered what he wanted, and straightened up in her seat; certainly this boy would not try anything in a magical train, but stranger things have happened to her.
He opened the door to her compartment, she sighed looking at him expectantly.
“Uh hey, I’m Clint,” he introduced himself. Natasha noted the American accent with which he spoke to her. She raised an eyebrow at him. “I uh, giant man named Hagrid, he said there’d be another girl, red hair, who needed to be sorted before the ceremony.”
She nodded.
“I have to be sorted too, mind if I sit with you? Doesn’t feel welcoming out there without knowing, you know?”
She shrugged.
“Alright then,” he muttered, trying to sound confident as he took a seat next to her and peered out the window into the lush countryside.
Clint Barton came to England through the circus. He was in a small traveling circus from the middle-of-nowhere-Iowa and was good enough an act to get himself traded by a British circus. Yet, a couple of months with his assigned circus family, he received a letter — to Mr Clinton Barton, Trailer Park of the Traveling Circus, the bed next to the lion’s den — oddly specific of an address, he thought before he tore it open. He ran away from the circus that night through instinct and ended up at the Leaky Cauldron after a double decker picked him up, services paid for by Hogwarts, as they told him. A man named Hagrid came to help him become a wizard, he said his task of helping orphans begun when some evil dude killed the parents of a man who he’s never heard of. Anyway, it’s the same man who he has to thank because he set up a fund, for orphans going into Hogwarts. Clint Barton was a lot older than the first years, a special case, Hagrid told them. He’d be starting his fifth year in order to keep up with the age, Hogwarts was only allowed to keep young wizards and witches in school until they turned eighteen, and by then they have a choice.
He thought he would finally belong somewhere after years of wandering from one foster home to another, and the circus. He was bizarre, strange things happened around him when he felt particularly emotional. But, there he was, in an awkward train ride with a gorgeous girl. She probably felt that he was below her, probably will get put into the Slytherin house he’s heard all about. He daydreamed about what house he could possibly get into, until he felt a tap on his shoulder.
“We have to change into robes,” the redhead muttered to him.
“Uh?” he didn’t expect her voice to sound so raspy with traces of what he recognized as Russian.
“Do you have robes?”
“Yeah,” he said grabbing his bag pack and following her out of their cart to the restrooms at the end of the cart.
—
When they were ushered aside and whisked into a room in the castle with a hat sitting on a chair (can a hat sit on a chair?) he and the redhead met a professor who explained to them the history and the purpose of the sorting hat. These houses will be like your family, she said, and Clint couldn’t help but feel the hope that her words set in him.
He glanced at the still nameless redhead before his name was called up by the woman and he was instructed to sit down.
The hat barely touched his head before it exclaimed “Gryffindor!”
Clint grinned and jumped off. He wanted to be a Gryffindor if he had a choice and the hat seemed to want him there. Awesome.
“Natalia Romanova,” the woman called out looking at the redhead.
The girl cleared her throat. “Actually, miss. I would prefer to be called Natasha Romanoff.”
The woman nodded, taking out a feather and writing something on the side of the parchment (things that Clint have not seen outside of movies.)
Natasha sat graceful on the stool, her back straight, as the professor dropped the hat on her head.
“Ah, difficult. Yes.”
She tried to keep her expression neutral. She anticipated that the hat would simply exclaim Slytherin and call it a day. It was the easiest and most obvious answer.
“Hmmm, “ the Sorting Hat muttered shifting uncomfortably on her head. “Where shall I put you?”
There was a pause, the older woman looked interestingly at the Hat then at the girl.
“Right, I will have to say….”
Clint watched the interaction with anticipation.
“Gryffindor!”
Natasha frowned as if confused. “There must be …”
“No mistake,” the professor stated. “The hat chooses where you will stay for your two years here. Both of you, welcome to Hogwarts.”