(no subject)
i'm like 90% finished with a halloween fic, plus i have so much that actually needs to get done, so obviously it's TIME TO JUST POST SNIPPETS THAT I ADMIT ARE NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Idk, I just got really attached to the idea of like, what houses various members of this boyband would be in (Louis & Zayn, Slytherin; Niall, Hufflepuff; Liam, Gryffindor; Harry, SURPRISINGLY DIFFICULT, is there such a thing as Huffleclawff? probably Gryffindor tho tbh.) Like, you know. Louis is the intensely popular Slytherin who ends up being head boy, and Zayn is this snooty Pureblood who's secretly really goofy and fun but his shyness manifests as Eternal ~~Mysterious~~ Bitchface, and Liam is tragic about it because he has feelings. Anyway, I don't know. Fuck it. I'm posting this.
“Hello, hello, hello,” Louis sang, shoving into Liam’s compartment with his usual pile of suitcases. Every year Liam expected him to go off with Slytherin as expected, and every year he showed up in Liam’s compartment instead, with his outrageous stories and horrible clothes and weirdly delicious snacks.
“Hiya,” Liam said. He put Archimedes’ cage on the floor to make room. “Good summer?”
“Niall’s coming in a minute. It’ll be a right menagerie in here,” Louis said, kicking one of his band-boxes under the seat. On his shoulder was perched a plump, sleek-feathered rook, regarding Liam with clever beady black eyes. Archimedes shifted uneasily from foot to foot, lifting his pinfeathers, and Liam slipped a finger through the bars to soothe him.
“This is Mobster,” Louis said, indicating the bird. “Or Yobbo. I’m going to teach him to recite erotica in Potions.”
“Please don’t,” Liam said.
“Don’t fence me in,” Louis said, and tossed something into Liam’s lap. “Orange ices; they never melt. You’re welcome.”
Behind him Zayn Malik had appeared almost soundlessly at the open door. He glanced at Liam without interest, then said to Louis, “Are we sitting in here?”
“What’s it look like?” Louis said.
Zayn gave a tiny, elegant half-shrug. He pushed his trunk into the overhead compartment and took the window seat across from Liam.
“Hi,” Liam said after a second, when it became clear Zayn just meant to sit there in silence. Dark eyes flicked sideways to his for an instant, but Zayn didn’t say anything.
“I had a lovely summer, thanks for asking,” Liam said. Zayn’s brows pulled together.
“Oi,” Louis said, looming abruptly over Zayn. “That’s my seat.”
“Oi yourself; you didn’t dibs it.”
“I did, you weren’t here.”
“No you didn’t,” said Liam. You couldn’t be anything less than scrupulous about dibs, otherwise it was anarchy, especially with Louis. “He didn’t dibs anything,” he added, and the corner of Zayn’s mouth lifted almost imperceptibly.
“Thanks, Li,” he said, and Liam flushed at the sarcastic familiarity.
“Traitor!” Louis said to Liam.
“There’s got to be rules,” Liam said defensively.
There was a commotion at the door, and then a cherubic boy with dark, rumpled curls was there. He was dragging a rolling suitcase, and when he saw Louis he dropped the handle, his whole face lighting up. “Tommo!”
“Duckling,” Louis said, clapping a hand to his heart, and swept the boy up into a twirling hug. The kid screeched a protest into his shoulder, plainly delighted, and Niall pushed past them waving at Liam.
“Lads,” he said, thumping down next to Zayn, “you’ll not believe the day I’ve had.” A small whiskered head poked out of his shirt pocket, then, seeing nothing interesting, vanished again.
“Don’t tell me,” Zayn said, bumping Niall’s knee with his. “No, I mean literally don’t, I don’t care.”
“Who on earth’s that?” Liam asked Niall in an undertone, nodding at the new boy.
“Oh, it’s wee Styles,” Niall said fondly. “Harry’s his name. Gemma Styles’s little brother. She and Louis were neighbors, they’ve known each other ages.”
“Is it his first year, then?”
From across the aisle Zayn said lazily, “D’you think, Payne?” and Liam felt himself blush hotly behind the ears.
“Yes,” Niall said kindly. “He’s a first year.”
“Why’s everyone got pets?” the Styles boy asked, emerging from Louis’s clutches with his hair sticking up on one side.
“They’re not pets, Pet, they’re familiars,” Louis said, biting Harry’s ear. “You’re far too young to be trusted with one. When a third-year and his curriculum love each other very much, sometimes they --”
“They help you do spells or something?”
“Unclear,” Louis said, waving a hand. “Who knows. Got to have one in third year, always have. Point is, we’ve got them and you haven’t.”
“I’ll get you,” Styles said, and tackled Louis into the hallway. The rook Yobbo flapped off, disgruntled, to hunch on the coat-rack.
“Where’s your familiar? Did you decide not to get one?” Liam asked Zayn. It came out a little pointed, like, normal rules don’t apply to you?, and Zayn glanced up at him.
“She’s not a people person,” he said.
“Come back here, you little toad, and show some respect to your betters,” Louis was saying, bundling Harry Styles back into the compartment. “Harry, this is everyone. Everyone, this is Harry. He’s under my sworn protection so you’re not to let anything embarrassing happen to him, like being sorted into Gryffindor.”
“Shudder to think,” Niall said piously.
“I’m Liam,” Liam said, and reached out a hand for Harry to shake. He was bright-eyed and round-cheeked and impossibly sweet-looking, and if Louis were the only person keeping an eye on him he wouldn’t last a week. “Watch out for Tomlinson.”
“I will,” Harry said, dimpling.
“Tell us about your day, Nialler,” Louis ordered. “Harry, ignore Liam forever.”
“I was eating cake and I got lost in the bookshop,” Niall said.
“Excellent start,” Louis said.
*
*
It was a sweet, sunny day, and the rattling sway of the train was soothing. Harry was napping on Louis’s shoulder, his mouth hanging open; Niall and Liam were playing draughts on Niall’s traveling board.
Niall had been surveying his next move for a long time when Liam felt the measuring gaze from across the compartment. He glanced up, a retort instantly on his tongue, but it wasn’t Zayn, who was staring out the window. A pair of cool, contemplative green eyes were resting on him, though, and when Liam blinked he saw that it was a little black cat, curled at the top of Zayn’s thigh. It seemed to have emerged from somewhere in the lining of Zayn’s expensive-looking peacoat.
“Oh, hi,” Liam said, disconcerted. “Where’d you come from?” The cat yawned, showing a ribbed pink mouth, and licked her jaws fastidiously.
“She’s called Shadow,” Zayn said without looking at him.
“Shadow,” Liam repeated. “For a black cat.” Zayn glanced at him, then back out the window. The sunlight curved over his sharp cheekbones, flickering behind the trees that flashed by.
“No imagination, our Zayn,” Louis said in a fond stage whisper, patting Zayn’s knee. “It’s one of his most endearing traits. If that owl of yours were his, Payne, he’d have called it Snowy or Flap-Flap. What are you calling it, by the way? Galahad? Churchill? It’ll be something like that,” he added to Zayn, who was still staring out the window, clearly not interested. “Sweet Payne, bless his pert West Midlands arse and his virtuous little heart. Niall’s dormouse,” he added, “is called ‘Dormouse.’”
“Because that’s what he is,” Niall said sensibly. “Come here, you,” and the mouse crawled obediently out of his sleeve, ran lightly up his arm and curled up in the crook of his neck. Niall skritched under its ear. “And he doesn’t care what you think about his name any more than I do -- do you, Dommie.”
***
Liam thought later that everything would have been fine, everything could have just kept ticking along as it had been, except for the way Harry came back.
It had been Liam who saw him first. He was on the platform, trying to push through the crush, when someone called -- “Liam! Oi, Liam!” and he looked up and saw.
“Good Lord,” Liam said involuntarily. He ought to have seen it coming: Harry’d been all gangly limbs since he was eleven, and last year his voice had been all over the place, but --
“Hiya,” Harry said, skidding breathlessly up to him, and enveloped him in a hug.
“What’s happened to you?” Liam said, grinning at him. “You always looked like a Renaissance painting, but it used to be one of those fat babies.”
“Yes, I’ve become a man,” Harry said solemnly. “A man with a face like a fat baby.” His voice had that same curious halting quality it had always had; now it was low, a little rough.
“Bloody hell, who’s this?” Niall said, banging his cart into Liam’s heels.
Zayn was just behind him, hands in his pockets. He smiled at Harry with real warmth; on Liam he bestowed a distant nod, like the Queen doing a processional.
“Harry’s become a man over the summer, apparently,” Liam said. “Unlike some.” It wasn’t quite true; Niall’s arms were dusted with gold hairs and there was a new sharpness to his jaw that hadn’t always been there, but until he lost the apple cheeks and big blue eyes Liam was going to keep teasing him.
Anyway, teasing Niall meant Liam didn’t have to look at Zayn. It was obvious he’d only gotten worse.
“Piss off, Payne,” Niall said cheerfully. “Look at you! Jaysus, Haz, I wouldn’t have known you.”
“You’re too tall,” Zayn said, glaring at him. “Come back down here.”
“Don’t worry,” Niall said comfortingly. “He’s not in our year, so you’re still the fairest of them all by default.”
Zayn gave a disparaging little snort. “How’s your summer, Styles?” he said.
“Louis,” Niall said in an undertone, at Liam’s ear, “is going to have feelings about this.”
“Good,” Liam said ruthlessly. “About time he had some.”
“Hello, hello, hello,” came the familiar call and then Louis was among them, sucking up all the air on the platform in a whirl of too-tight hugs and jabber. “My little Payne in the Arse, have you got new beauty marks? Zaynie, already saw you, don’t care. Niall, is it possible you’ve actually gotten younger? You look positively --” and then he saw Harry, and stopped.
“Hi, Tommo,” Harry said. On that lean, strange, familiar face his dimpled smile was new and disquieting.
“Hi,” Louis said, blinking. He looked like he’d been smacked.
It lasted only a half-second: then he was all vaudeville again, pinching Harry’s cheeks with both hands and saying in a horrified-old-aunt shriek, “Sasquatch! What’ve you done with my wee Duckling?”
“Ate him,” Harry said. His eyes were a brighter green than Liam remembered, or maybe it was just that his hair was longer and set them off more.
***
“I don’t think -- you ought to act like that, with Harry,” Liam said after a moment. Louis arched an eyebrow at him in the mirror.
“Like what?” he inquired.
“You know very well like what,” Liam said shortly, because he was out of patience with Louis. “You behave like -- you flirt with him, and you make him think things, when you know how he feels about you and you’re never going to do anything about it. It isn’t fair.”
“I suppose you know all about what’s fair,” Louis said, brushing his hair into place with his fingernails. His tone was light.
“I don’t pretend to,” Liam said. His face felt hot, but he kept going. “But I know about what’s cruel, and you’re cruel to him. You hardly even let him talk to anyone else. You -- you act like -- it’s all right for you to go off and have real relationships with other people, but he can’t. He’s not your property. It isn’t your business.”
“Of course,” Louis said. His gaze in the mirror was cool and hard. “Yet somehow it’s yours.”
“I’m looking out for him,” Liam said. “If you’re really his friend, you’ll do the same.”
Louis didn’t say anything. Liam left.
“Hello, hello, hello,” Louis sang, shoving into Liam’s compartment with his usual pile of suitcases. Every year Liam expected him to go off with Slytherin as expected, and every year he showed up in Liam’s compartment instead, with his outrageous stories and horrible clothes and weirdly delicious snacks.
“Hiya,” Liam said. He put Archimedes’ cage on the floor to make room. “Good summer?”
“Niall’s coming in a minute. It’ll be a right menagerie in here,” Louis said, kicking one of his band-boxes under the seat. On his shoulder was perched a plump, sleek-feathered rook, regarding Liam with clever beady black eyes. Archimedes shifted uneasily from foot to foot, lifting his pinfeathers, and Liam slipped a finger through the bars to soothe him.
“This is Mobster,” Louis said, indicating the bird. “Or Yobbo. I’m going to teach him to recite erotica in Potions.”
“Please don’t,” Liam said.
“Don’t fence me in,” Louis said, and tossed something into Liam’s lap. “Orange ices; they never melt. You’re welcome.”
Behind him Zayn Malik had appeared almost soundlessly at the open door. He glanced at Liam without interest, then said to Louis, “Are we sitting in here?”
“What’s it look like?” Louis said.
Zayn gave a tiny, elegant half-shrug. He pushed his trunk into the overhead compartment and took the window seat across from Liam.
“Hi,” Liam said after a second, when it became clear Zayn just meant to sit there in silence. Dark eyes flicked sideways to his for an instant, but Zayn didn’t say anything.
“I had a lovely summer, thanks for asking,” Liam said. Zayn’s brows pulled together.
“Oi,” Louis said, looming abruptly over Zayn. “That’s my seat.”
“Oi yourself; you didn’t dibs it.”
“I did, you weren’t here.”
“No you didn’t,” said Liam. You couldn’t be anything less than scrupulous about dibs, otherwise it was anarchy, especially with Louis. “He didn’t dibs anything,” he added, and the corner of Zayn’s mouth lifted almost imperceptibly.
“Thanks, Li,” he said, and Liam flushed at the sarcastic familiarity.
“Traitor!” Louis said to Liam.
“There’s got to be rules,” Liam said defensively.
There was a commotion at the door, and then a cherubic boy with dark, rumpled curls was there. He was dragging a rolling suitcase, and when he saw Louis he dropped the handle, his whole face lighting up. “Tommo!”
“Duckling,” Louis said, clapping a hand to his heart, and swept the boy up into a twirling hug. The kid screeched a protest into his shoulder, plainly delighted, and Niall pushed past them waving at Liam.
“Lads,” he said, thumping down next to Zayn, “you’ll not believe the day I’ve had.” A small whiskered head poked out of his shirt pocket, then, seeing nothing interesting, vanished again.
“Don’t tell me,” Zayn said, bumping Niall’s knee with his. “No, I mean literally don’t, I don’t care.”
“Who on earth’s that?” Liam asked Niall in an undertone, nodding at the new boy.
“Oh, it’s wee Styles,” Niall said fondly. “Harry’s his name. Gemma Styles’s little brother. She and Louis were neighbors, they’ve known each other ages.”
“Is it his first year, then?”
From across the aisle Zayn said lazily, “D’you think, Payne?” and Liam felt himself blush hotly behind the ears.
“Yes,” Niall said kindly. “He’s a first year.”
“Why’s everyone got pets?” the Styles boy asked, emerging from Louis’s clutches with his hair sticking up on one side.
“They’re not pets, Pet, they’re familiars,” Louis said, biting Harry’s ear. “You’re far too young to be trusted with one. When a third-year and his curriculum love each other very much, sometimes they --”
“They help you do spells or something?”
“Unclear,” Louis said, waving a hand. “Who knows. Got to have one in third year, always have. Point is, we’ve got them and you haven’t.”
“I’ll get you,” Styles said, and tackled Louis into the hallway. The rook Yobbo flapped off, disgruntled, to hunch on the coat-rack.
“Where’s your familiar? Did you decide not to get one?” Liam asked Zayn. It came out a little pointed, like, normal rules don’t apply to you?, and Zayn glanced up at him.
“She’s not a people person,” he said.
“Come back here, you little toad, and show some respect to your betters,” Louis was saying, bundling Harry Styles back into the compartment. “Harry, this is everyone. Everyone, this is Harry. He’s under my sworn protection so you’re not to let anything embarrassing happen to him, like being sorted into Gryffindor.”
“Shudder to think,” Niall said piously.
“I’m Liam,” Liam said, and reached out a hand for Harry to shake. He was bright-eyed and round-cheeked and impossibly sweet-looking, and if Louis were the only person keeping an eye on him he wouldn’t last a week. “Watch out for Tomlinson.”
“I will,” Harry said, dimpling.
“Tell us about your day, Nialler,” Louis ordered. “Harry, ignore Liam forever.”
“I was eating cake and I got lost in the bookshop,” Niall said.
“Excellent start,” Louis said.
*
*
It was a sweet, sunny day, and the rattling sway of the train was soothing. Harry was napping on Louis’s shoulder, his mouth hanging open; Niall and Liam were playing draughts on Niall’s traveling board.
Niall had been surveying his next move for a long time when Liam felt the measuring gaze from across the compartment. He glanced up, a retort instantly on his tongue, but it wasn’t Zayn, who was staring out the window. A pair of cool, contemplative green eyes were resting on him, though, and when Liam blinked he saw that it was a little black cat, curled at the top of Zayn’s thigh. It seemed to have emerged from somewhere in the lining of Zayn’s expensive-looking peacoat.
“Oh, hi,” Liam said, disconcerted. “Where’d you come from?” The cat yawned, showing a ribbed pink mouth, and licked her jaws fastidiously.
“She’s called Shadow,” Zayn said without looking at him.
“Shadow,” Liam repeated. “For a black cat.” Zayn glanced at him, then back out the window. The sunlight curved over his sharp cheekbones, flickering behind the trees that flashed by.
“No imagination, our Zayn,” Louis said in a fond stage whisper, patting Zayn’s knee. “It’s one of his most endearing traits. If that owl of yours were his, Payne, he’d have called it Snowy or Flap-Flap. What are you calling it, by the way? Galahad? Churchill? It’ll be something like that,” he added to Zayn, who was still staring out the window, clearly not interested. “Sweet Payne, bless his pert West Midlands arse and his virtuous little heart. Niall’s dormouse,” he added, “is called ‘Dormouse.’”
“Because that’s what he is,” Niall said sensibly. “Come here, you,” and the mouse crawled obediently out of his sleeve, ran lightly up his arm and curled up in the crook of his neck. Niall skritched under its ear. “And he doesn’t care what you think about his name any more than I do -- do you, Dommie.”
***
Liam thought later that everything would have been fine, everything could have just kept ticking along as it had been, except for the way Harry came back.
It had been Liam who saw him first. He was on the platform, trying to push through the crush, when someone called -- “Liam! Oi, Liam!” and he looked up and saw.
“Good Lord,” Liam said involuntarily. He ought to have seen it coming: Harry’d been all gangly limbs since he was eleven, and last year his voice had been all over the place, but --
“Hiya,” Harry said, skidding breathlessly up to him, and enveloped him in a hug.
“What’s happened to you?” Liam said, grinning at him. “You always looked like a Renaissance painting, but it used to be one of those fat babies.”
“Yes, I’ve become a man,” Harry said solemnly. “A man with a face like a fat baby.” His voice had that same curious halting quality it had always had; now it was low, a little rough.
“Bloody hell, who’s this?” Niall said, banging his cart into Liam’s heels.
Zayn was just behind him, hands in his pockets. He smiled at Harry with real warmth; on Liam he bestowed a distant nod, like the Queen doing a processional.
“Harry’s become a man over the summer, apparently,” Liam said. “Unlike some.” It wasn’t quite true; Niall’s arms were dusted with gold hairs and there was a new sharpness to his jaw that hadn’t always been there, but until he lost the apple cheeks and big blue eyes Liam was going to keep teasing him.
Anyway, teasing Niall meant Liam didn’t have to look at Zayn. It was obvious he’d only gotten worse.
“Piss off, Payne,” Niall said cheerfully. “Look at you! Jaysus, Haz, I wouldn’t have known you.”
“You’re too tall,” Zayn said, glaring at him. “Come back down here.”
“Don’t worry,” Niall said comfortingly. “He’s not in our year, so you’re still the fairest of them all by default.”
Zayn gave a disparaging little snort. “How’s your summer, Styles?” he said.
“Louis,” Niall said in an undertone, at Liam’s ear, “is going to have feelings about this.”
“Good,” Liam said ruthlessly. “About time he had some.”
“Hello, hello, hello,” came the familiar call and then Louis was among them, sucking up all the air on the platform in a whirl of too-tight hugs and jabber. “My little Payne in the Arse, have you got new beauty marks? Zaynie, already saw you, don’t care. Niall, is it possible you’ve actually gotten younger? You look positively --” and then he saw Harry, and stopped.
“Hi, Tommo,” Harry said. On that lean, strange, familiar face his dimpled smile was new and disquieting.
“Hi,” Louis said, blinking. He looked like he’d been smacked.
It lasted only a half-second: then he was all vaudeville again, pinching Harry’s cheeks with both hands and saying in a horrified-old-aunt shriek, “Sasquatch! What’ve you done with my wee Duckling?”
“Ate him,” Harry said. His eyes were a brighter green than Liam remembered, or maybe it was just that his hair was longer and set them off more.
***
“I don’t think -- you ought to act like that, with Harry,” Liam said after a moment. Louis arched an eyebrow at him in the mirror.
“Like what?” he inquired.
“You know very well like what,” Liam said shortly, because he was out of patience with Louis. “You behave like -- you flirt with him, and you make him think things, when you know how he feels about you and you’re never going to do anything about it. It isn’t fair.”
“I suppose you know all about what’s fair,” Louis said, brushing his hair into place with his fingernails. His tone was light.
“I don’t pretend to,” Liam said. His face felt hot, but he kept going. “But I know about what’s cruel, and you’re cruel to him. You hardly even let him talk to anyone else. You -- you act like -- it’s all right for you to go off and have real relationships with other people, but he can’t. He’s not your property. It isn’t your business.”
“Of course,” Louis said. His gaze in the mirror was cool and hard. “Yet somehow it’s yours.”
“I’m looking out for him,” Liam said. “If you’re really his friend, you’ll do the same.”
Louis didn’t say anything. Liam left.