Chapter Text
Kurt Hummel boards the train in September of his sixth year with the requisite amount of boredom. He is a Slytherin, after all, and even though he has a good group of friends he generally feels comfortable enough around to laugh with, there are expectations and appearances to keep up.
Expectations are a good part of what allow Hogwarts continue to function.
“Listen, kiddo,” his dad says, and most of the time Kurt doesn’t mind that his father is a Muggle and American, but the way Jesse St. James is snickering at them sets his teeth on edge. After five years, he knows that St. James is a harmless—although ambitious—fool, but it still makes him mad. “Look after your brother for me. I know you two don’t get always get along -–”
“It wasn’t my fault that I dropped my trunk on his foot – his feet are larger than a giant’s.” Kurt feels a bit like a complaining child, but it’s true.
“This isn’t about that. You know as well as I do that Puckerman and your brother have been vying for team captain of their houses since they set foot on the Quidditch pitch. And with Finn captain and Puckerman not? They’re going to go crazy. Your headmistress is a little out of her mind, if you ask me.”
“No one did.”
Burt rolls his eyes; he’s never been one to suffer fools. “Keep an eye on him for me and Carole, yeah?”
He nods, and his dad pulls him into a hug. Even after almost two decades of living in England, Burt still looks like a walking American stereotype of baseball caps and flannel shirts, his Midwestern accent as comforting to Kurt as the memory of his mother’s Yorkshire one. “I expect a letter every week, kid.”
“We’ll see about that,” Kurt teases, but he’s already writing one in his head. “I’ll miss you.”
His dad grins. “You, too, kiddo. It’s too quiet without you around.” He doesn’t say he loves Kurt, because they’ve never been people who go around proclaiming their love loudly or often, but it’s implied and there, settling around him like a warm blanket.
“Hummel!” comes a shout from the train. “You’re missing all the good gossip! Get your arse on the train!”
Burt raises his eyebrows. “That girl’s a character.”
“Truer facts have yet to be stated,” Kurt says, and gives his dad one last hug. “I’ll see you at in November.”
“Write me,” his father says, and he waves and boards the train, trunk already stored safely in the compartment he’s headed to.
Rachel is waiting for him as he steps into the narrow corridor, and attacks him with a hug. “Kurt! Oh, I’ve missed you so much. Why couldn’t you come to visit me this summer? I thought you were going to hook up your Floo connection!”
Rachel’s voice continues from somewhere behind him, but Kurt forges on and slips into the compartment. Santana and Sebastian are already there, embroiled in one of their great battles of ‘who can ignore each other more.’ Santana gives a gracious nod towards Kurt and returns to painting her nails before he can reprimand her about her earlier shouting on the platform.
“Hummel,” Sebastian says, and gives him a grin that—if he hadn’t made it clear a long time ago that he wasn’t interested in sleeping with someone in his own dorm—could linger on predatory. He sends a couple sparks toward Santana when Kurt rolls his eyes, unimpressed.
“I have eyes, idiot,” Santana says, not even looking at him. “You want to mess with me? I spent the whole summer perfecting a perfect Tongue-Tying Jinx—”
“But the Statute of Underage Magic,” Rachel says hurriedly, eyes fixated on Finn, who is still standing on the platform saying goodbye to his mother and Kurt’s dad, “specifically prohibits the use of—”
“Don’t even start with me, elf,” Santana says. The previously insulting term is one left over from their childhood, before the House Elf Rights act went through the Wizengamot. Kurt isn’t sure when it turned into a term of endearment for his lovely but bone-headed best friend, but at some point it must have, because all she does is huff.
“Hey,” Sebastian says, and oh god, he’s leering again. That’s never a good sign. “Look at that fine piece of arse.”
“Don’t be so crude,” Rachel says, but she’s craning her neck to see who it is through the compartment window, the view partially obscured by steam. “Although ooh, he’s handsome—wait. That’s Blaine Anderson.”
Kurt turns so fast he’s afraid of whiplash. “Anderson’s back?”
Sebastian whistles lowly. “Seems like it. He grew into himself.”
“And grew a backbone, hopefully,” Santana mutters.
Blaine Anderson’s a Hufflepuff in his year, and Kurt doesn’t know him that well, but everyone knows what happened to him a year and a half ago. It was their fourth year, and the Triwizard Tournament – the first one since it went so wrong when Harry Potter was in his fourth year.
Kurt had gone alone to the traditional Yule Ball, dancing with all of his girlfriends and sniping at Sebastian when things got dull. Anderson had gone as the date of a Beauxbatons boy.
Some thugs—a few Slytherins and Gryffindors, as well as some boys from Durmstrang—had beat them up.
The Beauxbatons boy was sent home for his injuries. Anderson had been in the hospital wing for no more than a day before he was whisked away from Hogwarts and hadn’t come back to school.
“He’s got a backbone, Lopez,” Kurt says shortly, giving one last wave towards his father and Carole. Santana glares at him, but then the whistle is blowing, and all the last-minute students are coming aboard, and Rachel starts telling them all about her holiday in New York City as the train pulls away from King’s Cross.
“Oh, Merlin, I’m so sorry!”
The weather is surprisingly warm, even for early September, and Kurt is taking advantage of being able to walk across the courtyard instead of having to push through crowds of first-years in the corridors on his way to Potions. But then there was a push, and a shove, and Kurt tensed up because there had been problems with other students before, students who didn’t like his methods of self-expression—
But it’s Anderson who’s handing him his books, giving a shy smile that reaches his eyes. “I’m terribly sorry,” he says again. “I should have been watching where I’m going, but the weather’s so lovely—”
There’s a feathery little feeling that Kurt tamps down in his chest, something floaty that causes his head to lecture his heart, Anderson’s a Hufflepuff. And all those horrible things happened to him. Don’t even think about it. But he does say, “Don’t worry. I’m early for lessons, anyway.”
Anderson’s small grin widens until it crinkles his cheek. That feathery thing is going on again. “Kurt Hummel, yeah? We were Runes partners—”
“Third year, I remember,” Kurt says. The blush that inevitably follows is mortifying. “Are you back for good, then?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Anderson says. He’s still smiling but the happiness has left his eyes and he’s on the defensive. Kurt regrets asking the question at all. “Are you heading to Potions?”
Kurt nods, and gives a half-smile. “I’m waiting for Slughorn to make his speech.”
Anderson laughs, and it almost makes Kurt wish he was wearing a hooded cloak so he could hide a grin. Professor Slughorn has given the same speech every year since Kurt started at Hogwarts, announcing that this is his last year and he will be retiring come June. And for five years, June has come and Professor Slughorn returns in the fall, jovial and as set on retirement as ever. “It’s good to know some things haven’t changed around Hogwarts.”
The two of them walk the winding corridors and twisting stairs into the dungeon in a mostly comfortable silence, although Kurt spends a good deal of the time trying not to dwell on how attractive Anderson has become. When they enter, they go their separate ways, Anderson towards the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, all chatting eagerly with each other, and Kurt to his group of sullen Slytherins.
Well, sullen except for Rachel, who perches on her stool next to Kurt and whispers, “Anderson? Kurt, you can’t. He’s a Hufflepuff!”
She’s scandalized, staring intently at him. He’s not sure why; Rachel and his stepbrother have been dating on and off for years now, and Finn is a Hufflepuff if Kurt’s a day. He shrugs it off with a roll of his eyes, but as Rachel sets about sorting her new ingredients for the year, he sneaks a look at the group of badgers. Blaine is talking animatedly with the rest of them, and although he doesn’t glance in Kurt’s direction there seems to be a brightness to him that wasn’t there five minutes ago.
“Ah, my N.E.W.T. students!” Professor Slughorn’s voice booms out from the front of the room. “It’s good to see you all. I hope you all had wonderful holidays, but it’s autumn and nose to the grindstone again. Now, as you may have heard—”
From who? Kurt mouths incredulously to Rachel and Santana, who giggle and roll their eyes respectively.
“—I will be retiring at the end of the spring term. I don’t yet know who will be my replacement, but I expect I will find an excellent former student of mine to take the position! I will miss all of you, of course, but hopefully my wisdom with this field shall live on in your young minds.”
Santana barely muffles a laugh.
“Excellent! Now, you may not have heard that your partners are assigned a little differently in N.E.W.T.–level potions.” Slughorn surveys the room with a sharp eye. “A member of another House.” And then, as Thad Harwood makes a move towards Lydia Dalison, “And off the same sex, Mr Harwood.”
It’s not the first time a professor has assigned partners like this. Usually Kurt makes a beeline for Finn, because he’s made multiple promises to his father to not let his stepbrother fail lessons. But Finn scraped by with an ‘A’ in Potions last year, and wasn’t able (not to mention didn’t want) to take it at a N.E.W.T.–level.
Kurt has six options in this situation, but his eyes go to Anderson, who’s watching his friends scramble around, simultaneously mildly amused and confused. And then their eyes connect. Kurt lifts his shoulder and eyebrows, try to express in some sort of universal body language to ask if he wants to partner up.
Instead of responding, Anderson walks over and sits down in the empty seat next to Kurt with a ready smile.