Chapter 1
TITLE: But when you look in his eyes
Do you think of mine?
I slowly awaken as I feel the cold that always fills the dungeons. I curl up to conserve the warmth that still provides my sleepy body as I open my eyes.
The first thing I see are the viridian curtains that adorn the Slytherins' dorm. The dark green in front of me reminds me of the forests in my dreams. Forests full of moving trees, talking animals, centaurs and all kinds of magical creatures. I’ve been having these recurring dreams since the first year I started at Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft And Wizardry, but this year they’ve increased and got stranger somehow. At first they just showed snowy and cold forests that turned into beautiful greenish woods full of life, magic and adventure, but lately a person, a guy that roughly resembles Caspian Black has popped up in my mind.
Caspian Black is a Griffindor two years older than me. He’s friends with my brother, which kinda pisses me off, and he's also friends with Harry Potter, which pisses off Draco. He has silky looking hair that reaches his shoulders and beautiful chocolate-coloured eyes that match his locks. And he looks so much like the knight from my dreams.
The thing is I can't get his face out of my mind and I can't survive another school year with these distractions. I’ll have to find a solution.
I sit up and reach for my wand to cast a tempus, which is how I find out that we should be waking up soon. I draw the curtains of my bed and observe the room noticing that Blaise has already left and that Draco is still sleeping. I call out his name, hoping that he wakes up on his own, as I prepare myself for the day. But, as every year, he hasn’t moved at all and I’m already prepared. Tired of always the same pattern, I throw an aguamenti at him, making him come out of his sleep.
“Edmund Keitan Patterson!! How dare you wake me up like this, now I’m drenched and…” He’s so dramatic that sometimes I question how he is my best friend.
“You know I always have to do this because it’s the only way to get you out of your dreams.”
“I was not dreaming!!” I wonder what was he dreaming that made him get so red.
“Come on, we’re already late for breakfast and you always take too much time to get ready.”
“Perfection takes time, Edmund!!” He shouts at me as he rapidly starts to get ready.
I chuckle at his words and move to finish preparing the bags for today’s classes.
After Draco combs his hair too many times to count and we pass by the Great Hall to get some breakfast, we are on our way to the first class of the day when a shadow appears from the corner and crashes into us.
It’s Caspian Black, the Gryffindor that looks too much like the man of my dreams. His hair is ruffled, his tie undone and he’s looking at the floor where his books have fallen.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry” He starts apologising without looking up.
He quickly gathers his books and looks up at me for the first time. As we lock eyes he raises his eyebrows in surprise and I think I see blushing in his cheeks. He starts moving his eyes over me, as if analysing my appearance, which is so much better than his, but it also is starting to make me uncomfortable.
“You are…” He starts to say before a set of footsteps interrupts him.
“Well, if it isn't the princes of Slytherin” it’s Peter, my idiot older brother who always manages to get on my nerves and hasn’t said a nice thing to me since I started first year at Hogwarts. And this time is no different. I don’t understand why, but the fact that he just referred to me as a prince makes my blood boil.
“I am not a prince, I’m a KING.”
All three of them stare at me with a shocked look, just as shocked as I am for my words.
“Yeah, whatever” Peter is the one who speaks first with disinterest. “Caspian let’s go.”
“Ed, come on. We’ve to go to class” Draco whispers as we watch the two Griffindors go. “What in Merlin’s name was that?”
I don’t know if he’s talking about my outburst or Caspian and whatever he was about to say, but I can’t respond either way. I don’t know what any of those things were either. The only explanation I can think of is my soul fighting off being called a prince and not a king, which sounds kinda like what a seer would say… and that sounds so stupid.
_______________________________________________________________
Draco is still looking at me like I suddenly become a stranger after all the morning classes, it’s starting to piss me off.
I understand where his worries are coming from. The situation was strange at best and the fact that it was my older brother who made me act like that, it doesn’t help. My roommate knows of the strange relationship I have with my brother. When we were little, before entering Hogwarts, we were always competing, for one thing or another, and as the younger brother I always lost. Which made me want to compete more. And now that we are at Hogwarts, at different houses, at RIVAL houses, it hasn’t helped the situation at all. Maybe it’s just something that siblings do, compete and fight, but it seems like we took it to the next level and it made our relationship rougher and colder.
And then there’s the fact that I proclaimed myself a king. Who says that? What was going through my head when I said that? I just remember a burning rage inside me when being called a prince, but it’s not the first time that Draco and I have been called “the princes of Slytherin” and it’s the first time that I felt that.
A set of silvery eyes are STILL burning into my skull and it seems that Blaise noticed it too.
“Okay, what is going on?” Finally caving in, after the entire morning of this.
“Ed here thinks he’s a king,” Draco answers, finally taking his eyes off me.
“That’s not what happened! You aren’t explaining the whole thing” I yell, trying to defend myself. After a sigh I look up at Blaise and say “Look, we encountered my brother when we were on our way to class, he said some things and I retaliated by saying something stupid. I still don't know why I responded that.”
Blaise looks at me with an understandable look in his dark eyes. Living in the same dorm, Draco and he have always been there after the shouting matches with my brother. Which, now that I notice, have lessened this year.
“You forgot about the part where Black was making heart eyes at you” the blonde remarks with a smirk on his face, the strange reaction I had fully forgotten.
“WHAT?”
“Oh no, no no no. That is so not what happened. He probably looked shocked or confused, or maybe he recognized me because he knows Peter or something.” Some part of my soul seems hurt by my words but I’m more focused on the cheeky grins both of my friends are spotting.
“Black has a crush on little Eddie” my dark skinned friend whispers.
“And Draco has dreams of Potter” I throw an accusation I just invented.
“How do you know that?” Draco’s blushing face says everything.
“It’s true?” I whisper while Blaise is laughing his ass off in the background.
That's how Pansy finds us. Three friends. One confused. One blushing. And one dying of laughter. The simple life.
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The first thing I see as I open my eyes is a grand chamber and the light that fills it. I look around me, not recognizing the place.
The room is mostly made of wood and decorated with blueish and greenish colours. There’s a four-poster bed with indigo curtains next to a floor-to-ceiling
window where the light comes from. I approach it to figure out where exactly I am and I discover that I’ve been here before.
At the back, I see an accumulation of broad and tall trunks of trees intertwined like holding each other, the spring colours dancing through the air and the youngest members of the fauna swaying. Just in front of it, there’s an open space with some people and centaurs that seem to be preparing for a celebration.
I’ve seen this kind of scenery before. I’ve been dreaming about this land since the first night I spent at Hogwarts. It’s magical. Which is kind of strange that I say this when I’m learning magic in a castle full of ghosts, but what I’m seeing now looks so magical.
“Edmund” someone is calling to me from outside the room. “King Edmund” they yell again, now with a royal title that I certainly do not have.
“Coming, coming” I respond, except it’s not me, it’s King Edmund. He’s a kid with old muggle royalty clothes and a silver crown adorning his light brown curls.
He looks different but, at the same time, so much like me. It’s uncanny…
There’s a warmth inside of me, like a voice trying to tell me something, but I don’t understand it, But then, something clicks and I find myself staring at the green curtains of my four-poster bed.
There’s only one thing in my mind. I am King Edmund.