Remarkable Things

“I’m not going,” Sascha huffs from where he’s sprawled on the sofa. Andrey barely suppresses the itch to throw some kind of a jinx at him, or maybe even a light curse.

“Yes, you are,” he says patiently, checking his reflection in the mirror.

“You’re looking way too nervous, darling,” it comments, “you’re paler than a troll. And maybe you should do something about those horrible red pigmentation marks on your face.”

Sascha snorts, and Andrey rounds on him.

“Get the fuck up and get dressed!” he snarls, and Sascha’s smirk dies. “And while we’re at it, shave that monstrosity off your face, Sasch. You look like an Orthodox priest.”

Sascha narrows his eyes at him. “Why do I have to go, when even you don’t want to?” He says shrewdly.

“Because!” Andrey snaps and turns away to give himself time to come up with a reason. “We should see the guys we played with. We’ll need them when we come back to Quidditch! We must keep in touch!”

Sascha’s face is grave and dark now. He fixes his dead eyes on Andrey and blinks slowly.

“Must we?” He says listlessly.

Andrey glares. “Of course! Wed don’t plan on decomposing on a sofa forever, do we!”

He regrets it immediately as he says it, but there’s no taking it back. Sascha’s face is blank as he stares at Andrey over the sofa’s back.

“Andrey,” he says in a tone that leaves Andrey slightly apprehensive, because Sascha likes to use that tone to drill some particularly unpleasant truths into Andrey. “You realise that no one is forcing you to get back into Quidditch?”

No matter how unpleasant, it actually feels better to hear it. Andrey’s shoulders relax a bit, and he turns back to the mirror to hide his relief from Sascha.

“Just get dressed,” he says, meeting Sascha’s gaze in the mirror.

“I’m not going!”

“You are!”

“Why?” Sascha demands angrily, boring him with a glare. “I’m not stopping you from going, but why do I have to?”

“Because I can’t go alone!” Andrey explodes and feels like a child. The silence following this exclamation is ringing in his ears. “I need you there with me, alright?”

Sascha’s anger seems to have deflated, leaving him watching Andrey with a sorrowful expression on his face. Andrey thinks he might actually prefer the anger.

“You’re coming with me, even if have to drag your Imperioed arse there by force!” Andrey adds with fake indignation just to cover for the moment of his pathetic vulnerability and try to save face.

“Fine, Mum!” Sascha whines, but it’s just as fake. If he is pitying Andrey right this moment, he is at least tactful enough to not let it show, for which Andrey is pathetically grateful. He watches Sascha get his stupid long body off the sofa, which Andrey considers no small victory.

When Sascha emerges from the loo almost half an hour later, Andrey has to stifle a gasp. Sascha’s finally shaved off his ridiculous beard and his hair is all combed and tied back in a ponytail. Andrey has yet to decide how he feels about that, except that this new hairstyle makes him think of Draco Malfoy of all people.

“What?” Sascha barks at him, but Andrey sees the self-consciousness beneath the clean-shaven veneer.

“You look like an Heir of Slytherin,” Andrey smirks at him, unsure if he meant it as a compliment or not. Sascha takes it as one, anyway.

Sighing, Andrey grabs his arm and Apparates them both to Casper Ruud’s manor.

+++

“This feels unfair,” Dania says after they’ve emerged from yet another memory. He feels like he has just finished a marathon, his breathing erratic, how forehead disgustingly sweaty.

Annoyingly by contrast, Stefanos looks fresh as a daisy.

“We’ve gotta watch some of yours, too, to even it out,” Dania finishes.

Stefanos arches an eyebrow. “We will as soon as my magic goes out of control.”

Which, fine. Good point.

“Is this why you have always been so shifty around Aurors?” Stefanos asks and it takes Dania a moment to realise he’s referring to the memory they’ve just seen.

“Well, the police — Muggle Aurors,” he clarifies when he sees Stefanos frown, “took my father’s business because they simply could. Because there were no repercussions for them abusing their power. And I realise that I’m in Britain now,” he feels like he needs to point out, “but the feeling stayed, you know. As if any of them — Aurors, Muggle police, what have you, can walk up to me at any moment and decide to ruin my life. Just because they’ve got the power to.”

“I’m sorry,” Stefanos says very seriously. “I suppose I’ll never understand what it was like for you, growing up there. But I hope, if it’s not already, England can become a true home for you.”

What the fuck even is home these days? Even before the war, Dania was traveling with the Cannons eight months out of the year, and he didn’t quite have a home back then either, not in the sense most people do — something solid and grounding, waiting for him, somewhere he could always be himself.

And it certainly doesn’t feel better now, in this shitty flat that Dania tends to lock himself up in for days on end, wallowing in self-pity and regret.

It doesn’t matter, Dania thinks, where his home is, not in the geographical sense. Russia, France, England, bloody Zimbabwe.

Wherever he goes, there he is.

He should fix himself before he can think about settling somewhere permanent.

“Now,” Stefanos says with a look of unabashed excitement on his face. “Can you show me that telly-vision again? I really want to know how it works?”

Dania laughs and gets up. Stefanos’ merry eyes follow his every move.

He turns the telly on, watching, oddly proud, Stefanos gasp and jump to his feet.

“Funny thing is,” Dania says, smiling, “if we played a Muggle sport instead, they’d show us on this thing, too.”

“Fascinating,” Stefanos says, deadly serious. “So how does that work? Is it like a Pensieve?”

“No, more like a photo-camera, but with a longer effect,” Dania sighs and then launches into a particularly long explanation on the mechanics of Muggle television, which then leads to a discussion of Muggle live broadcasting and then to Muggle logistics and Muggle vehicles.

Stefanos is sitting cross-legged on Dania’s raggedy wooden chair, looking like a proper lord that got lost in a peasant house, but then, Dania reckons, he’d look perfectly Pureblood at a common junkyard. He’s perfectly balanced, his Muggle jeans pulling taut over the lean muscles of his thighs, and Dania feels a burst of want deep in the pit of his stomach, instinctive and irrational. It’s nothing serious, just the sort of dumb animal lust that tends to flare up when he sees a beautiful woman sprawled naked in his bed or a fit bloke with a cock down his throat — or Stefanos, apparently, drinking tea from his polka-dotted cup with his sleeves rolled to his elbows and a smudge of ink on the corner of his jaw.

“Casper is throwing a party next week,” Stefanos says suddenly out of nowhere. Dania flails a bit, because weren’t they just talking about Muggle grocery stores?

“I know,” Dania frowns. “He wrote to me.”

“Are you going?”

“I’m not in the best state of mind for parties these days, let’s be honest,” Dania tries for nonchalant, but it comes out plainly said instead.

“Perhaps the wounds that you’ve bandaged with solitude and bitterness would be better healed through the connection that comes with taking an active interest in other people’s wellbeing,” Stefanos says smartly.

Dania rolls his eyes at that. He’s mostly forgotten how much Stefanos loves spewing motivational bollocks like this, or maybe it’s just Stefanos loves the sound of his own voice.

“I’m taking an interest in your wellbeing,” he smiles. “I think that’s enough for the time-being.”

Stefanos smiles and fidgets in his chair. The urge to touch him is so strong that Dania’s fingers burn and twitch uselessly.

“I wouldn’t call that active, per say,” he murmurs a bit shyly. “Even in your interest-taking you’re as passive as you are playing Quidditch.”

“Thanks,” Dania drawls. He reaches across the table for his own cup just to get his fingers to brush across Stefanos’ and there he feels it again, Stefanos’ magic, darker and so much more desperate than it used to be. Dania freezes with the teacup half-way to his mouth. “Why did your magic change?”

Stefanos blinks at him owlishly. “What did you say?”

“You magic,” Dania frowns. “It’s different.”

“You can feel my magic?” Stefanos repeats dumbly.

Dania feels himself flushing at the incredulity. “Well, yes. It’s not unusual, is it?”

Stefanos’ stare is an answer in itself. For the first time since their reunion, Dania watches his blush.

“What do you mean, it’s different?” Stefanos mutters, now engaging in examining his nails.

“Well, it’s…” he hesitates, “darker, I suppose? Sadder, maybe? I don’t know, I’m not an expert!”

Stefanos lets out a shaky trembling breath. His blush is gone, replaced by a deadly paleness that makes his eyes look so much darker. He hugs himself, as if suddenly cold, or perhaps, just trying to make himself smaller.

“We all change with age, don’t we?” He says morosely. “So does our magic. I’m not the same stupid naïve kid I used to be in Hogwarts, Dania.”

Dania gets up. He rounds the table separating them, as if pulled by invisible magnet or maybe an Imperius curse, as if Stefanos was somehow controlling both his mind and body. As he approaches, Stefanos looks up at him with wide scared eyes, and whatever he says, for a moment, he looks exactly like the kind, shy soul Dania remembers from school.

“I rather liked the stupid naïve kid in Hogwarts,” he says and places a hand on Stefanos’ shoulder. Stefanos flinches and immediately freezes in place, as if not daring to move. His shoulder is warm and not nearly as bony as it looks.

Stefanos is staring at him like he’s never seen him before. “You did?”

Dania lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Of course I did. Stefanos, come on. Why do you think it was ‘such a tragedy’ in that DADA class? Don’t you remember what my Patronus turned out to be?”

“But— but—“ Stefanos flails. “You said— I thought— I thought it was an accident! You were so mad afterwards, you never even spoke to me again!”

“Because unlike you, I actually was a stupid kid,” Dania admits. His hand is still resting on Stefanos’ shoulder, sending waves of warmth rolling up through his arm, and Dania has no intention of moving it away. “I really, really liked you,” he says, and then, because it feels like he’s cheating this open, fragile moment of honesty, he adds: “I was in love with you, Stef.”

Stefanos gasps, and with the admission, Dania feverishly contemplates cutting off all contact immediately. Maybe he should just opt for the time-honoured strategy of (cowardly) avoidance — keep his head down and his door closed, let owls go unanswered, and then, if pressed, claim he’s never gotten the letters. My owl left and never came back, I really should get a new one. Stef wouldn’t believe him, but so what?

It’s the exact strategy he used with Andrey, who after months and months of radio silence finally got the message.

The thought makes his mouth turn bitter. He chases it forcefully away and makes himself meet Stefanos’ eyes.

There’s something wild and scared in his eyes. Unexpectedly, seeing that makes Dania feel calm and almost serene by contrast.

It is as though the more scared Stefanos was, the less scared Dania felt; as if there were a set amount of fear in Dania’s body, not the infinite sprawling growth that he's thought it, and all of it was easily redistributable.

Besides, Dania tells himself, it’s not nearly as horrifying to say these things now, years later, when the whole ordeal is nothing but a thing of the past that doesn’t affect him anymore.

“When I said I was sorry, I meant it, Stef,” he says without having to trip over himself to force the words out. “Not only did I make a complete arse of myself, I blew all chances I had with you— if I’d had any in the first place,” he finishes awkwardly.

“You are right,” Stefanos mutters, breaking eye contact. “You were stupid.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you,” Dania snorts and goes back to his chair.

“You,” Stefanos shakes his head. “Are a ridiculous human being.”

“Thanks.”

Stefanos releases a long breath. “I’m sorry, too. For calling you a ‘daft Muggleborn.”

“Wow, I’ve actually forgotten that,” Dania laughs and Stefanos’ eye regain their twinkle. “Don’t worry, I never took it to heart — insulting my intelligence is not the way to go with me. I’m the smartest person I know.”

Stefanos snorts so loudly it’s actually offensive.

“Your humility is inspiring,” he says with quirked lips, though his eyes are warm and shiny.

He tears his gaze away from Stefanos’ not-quite-smiling mouth and says, loftily, “False modesty would be beneath me, Stef,” dialling up the smugness of his tone for maximum effect.

Stefanos rolls his eyes, but he’s trying hard not to laugh.

“And on that note, I really must bid goodbyes,” he says and gets up.

Dania tries hard not to dwell on his disappointment. He walks Stefanos to the door.

“Think about the party,” Stefanos says, pulling out his wand, ready to Apparate. “Everyone would really like to see you.”

“How would you know?” Dania snaps. “It’s not like you talk to any of those people, yourself.”

Stefanos winces. “I’m working on that.”

They stand awkwardly in woollen silence for a long beat.

“Dania,” Stefanos says, looking both panicked and flushed. He’s staring resolutely at the floor. “You, um. You didn’t.”

He blinks. “I didn’t what?”

Stefanos finally looks him in the eye.

“You didn’t blow your chances with me,” Stefanos says in a rush.

And on that dramatic note, before Dania can as much as unfreeze his brain from the insinuation, Stefanos turns on his heel, nearly toppling over in his haste, and Apparated away.

+++

It’s so loud and obnoxious inside, it dumbfounds Andrey for a long moment, as he tries to gather his bearings. After months and months of mostly solitary confinement to his own cottage and a rather quiet Weasley shop, Casper’s manor with its dozens and dozens of guests is a shock to his system.

Flabbergasted, he risks a glance at Sascha by his side, who looks worse than Andrey feels, his jaw clenched, the skin tight around his eyes. He looks in pain.

Andrey sympathises.

He grips Sascha’s forearm. They will just have to bear this together, then, and come stronger on the other side. They have faced fucking Death Eaters — what’s a bunch of Quidditch players compared to that?

“Andrey!” Yells a voice, and Andrey flinches. “Sascha! It’s so cool you guys came!”

Aryna Sabalenka comes up to them, holding what seems to be a glass of punch. Andrey is momentarily surprised to see her here, before he remembers that she’s been just awarded Beater of the Year for the Magpies. Of course, she’d be here.

Andrey’s not short by any means, yet he still feels small next to her impressive size. She gives him a strong one-armed hug, bending him to her side with easy power of an experienced Beater.

“Sascha,” she smiles at his companion, and Andrey sees Sascha give her a tight smile in return. “How have you guys been doing? I haven’t seen you in ages!”

“Fine, fine,” Andrey smiles awkwardly. In small groups all around them, he can spot Jannik with Carlos neatly by his side, Holger Rune and his obnoxious Pureblood mother both wearing some ridiculously fashioned emerald robes, Nick Kyrgios in a funny hat, Alex DeMinaur (who Andrey only ever saw in the Daily Prophet), Dasha Kasatkina together with her girlfriend, Iga Swiatek (world no. 1 Keeper three years in a row), Novak Djokovic, who’s gone back to play for the Serbian National team after Hogwarts and wasted no time becoming world’s best seeker and, of course, Roger Federer, the second-best seeker, respectively, though, naturally, the most gracious one.

And this is only the first of the large amount of rooms occupied by numerous guests.

For a moment, Andrey has trouble breathing.

“Congrats on the award,” Sascha says to his left, while Andrey struggles getting oxygen into his lungs. He shoots Sascha a grateful look for taking over the conversation and diverting attention from his oncoming panic attack. Additionally, he’s had no idea Sascha has even been following Quidditch still.

“Thanks,” Aryna grins a toothy smile, displaying all of her famous charm. “I’m just getting started. Can’t wait till you’re back and I can beat you personally, too.” Sascha swallows audibly and looks down to his feet. “When’s your ban coming up, anyway?”

“Um. August,” Sascha says in a weird throaty voice.

“Just a few more weeks, then,” Aryna claps him on the shoulder so hard, Sascha sways a little. “Hope you’ve been keeping up your form in the meantime!”

“Of course,” Sascha lies smoothly. Ever since his ban, he’s flown exactly once. “I’d get my arse kicked the moment it touches the broom, otherwise.”

“Exactly,” Aryna says smugly. “Look at all the competition, keeping our lives interesting.”

Sascha hums noncommittally.

Aryna walks past them and jumps right back into mingling. Andrey’s heart is thrumming in his chest, and Sascha’s laboured breathing by his side is not making the whole thing easier.

“Well, well, look at our Quidditch Dark Lord,” says a voice in a heavy Australian accent, and Andrey sighs.

“Oh wonderful,” Sascha mutters under his breath. “Nick is here.”

A whole group of people is making their way towards them now, and Andrey braces himself.

“The infamous mouth-vanquisher!” Nick smirks, clapping them both on the shoulders.

“Nick,” Jannik sighs with an anxious frown on his face. “Give it a rest.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Nick grins, but there’s a sharp edge to his mouth. “I’ve just been telling these blokes that if it were me using that curse, I’d be banned fucking indefinitely. You got real fucking lucky with just a year, mate!”

“Yes, I feel very lucky,” Sascha says drily, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his robes.

“As you should,” Nick goes on, “being the AQP’s golden boy, especially after the war—”

“Nick!” Jannik says with more force this time, and Nick thankfully shuts up. Andrey could wager his right hand that Sascha’s gripping his wand inside his pocket right this moment, ready for a fight. He brushes his own shoulder against Sascha’s and feels it relax ever so slightly. “Never mind Nick,” Jannik is saying long-sufferingly, “he’s just lost a tough match.”

“Which one do you mean?” Sascha says with saccharine sweetness. “The Irish Cup? The Premier League? Or the Harpies match? I can’t keep up.”

“Tosser,” Nick grinds out before walking away, while Jannik looks like he’s fighting off a smile.

“How’s the party going?” Sascha asks conversationally as soon as Nick’s out of earshot.

“It’s nice,” Carlos says brightly. He’s twirling his wand lazily with his fingers. “Everyone’s getting drunk too fast. Holger’s mum keeps asking about everyone’s family tree,” he sighs.

“She’s claiming they’re distant relatives to Malfoys,” Jannik adds with a frown. “Not that it’s something to brag about these days, mind you.”

“And Patrick Mouratoglou said he’s a descendant of House Black,” Carlos quips, chuckling. “And he’s not even British.”

“He’ll claim he’s a descendant of Salazar Slytherin himself if it gets him the Puddlemere coaching job he’s been angling for,” Sascha says wisely, seemingly more relaxed now that they are discussing someone else. “But to be fair, he’s as Slytherin as they come. He’d have felt right at home.”

“Nah, he went to Taronja School with my parents,” Carlos says. “I was supposed to go too — it’s in Ibiza — but they decided to send me to Hogwarts. But they don’t have houses there, like Slytherin and Gryffindor. Just one big class for every year.”

“Kamba-fucking-ya,” Sascha says, and everyone, including Andrey, stares at him. “Never mind, just a Muggle expression.”

“Is that where you’ve been?” asks Novak, swiftly joining the conversation. “Living in the Muggle world?”

“No, no,” Andrey hastens to say — the first thing he’s said in what feels like an hour. “We’ve been staying over at my place. Sascha’s worked in the Ministry for some time.”

“Huh,” Novak says with narrowed eyes, and Andrey suddenly feels like a sample under a microscope. “And what have you been doing?”

“I’m over at Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes,” Andrey says, his palms sweating. “I work with George Weasley.”

“As what?” Novak asks.

“As a shop assistant,” Andrey says. When he is met with uncomfortable silence, he hurries to explain, “I help him manage the shop and sometimes we come up with stuff, like, new product, you know? It’s not all just shopkeeping,” he can’t keep the pleading note out of his voice, like he’s begging for them to understand. He feels like he’s making excuses for having committed a crime.

“And you… enjoy it?” Says Holger, who Andrey hasn’t even noticed come to them. It’s suddenly a quite large group of people surrounding him, and he feels like a criminal before a panel of judges.

“It can be really fun,” Andrey shrugs, feeling absolutely miserable. “And I get to talk to lots of people and most of them are kids, so…” he trails off, desperately hoping for a change of topic that doesn’t come. Now Federer himself is standing next to him, looking at Andrey like at a poor lost soul.

“But when are you planning on coming back to Quidditch?” he asks plainly — the question that is surely on everyone’s mind.

“I— I don’t—”

“When he’s done inventing fun stuff that becomes a bestseller every month,” Sascha suddenly says and Andrey gapes at him. He’s said it politely enough, but Andrey can still hear the underlying aggression tingling his every word, and he discreetly grabs Sascha’s elbow to keep him quiet. Least of all he wants a scene not even half an hour after they’ve walked into this party, and with Roger Federer of all people.

“George does sing praises to you every night, Andrey,” says a new voice, and Andrey whips around.

Ginny Weasley — Ginny Potter — is standing next to Novak, her fiery red hair only rivalling Jannik’s in its vivid brightness. For a moment, Andrey flails, thinking he’s back at some ministry function before he remembers that Ginny was — is — a Holyhead Harpy Seeker, even though she’s currently off the game, expecting her first child. It makes perfect sense for her to be here.

“Oh, um. Thanks,” he smiles, as Ginny steps closer to him.

“I don’t think we’ve been officially introduced,” she smiles warmly at him, and Andrey is momentarily smitten, “Ginny Potter.”

Andrey shakes her hand as they both step aside. He shoots an inquisitive glance at Sascha, making sure it’s okay for him to leave him alone for a bit, and Sascha gives him a tiny nod, already engaged in a conversation with Holger.

“Vultures, huh?” Ginny smiles sadly. “I haven’t even had my baby yet, and everyone’s already on my back about when I’m getting back on the team. Unbelievable.”

Andrey sighs in relief. “Exactly. Worry about your own Cups, people!”

“It’s off-season,” Ginny snorts. “They need all the drama they can get to last them til Premier League starts.”

Andrey chuckles. “Does George really do that?” He asks her, surprising himself with how earnestly the question comes out. “He really, uh, enjoys working with me?”

Ginny smiles at him even brighter. “Of course, Andrey. I know George isn’t the most open— or talkative after…” she winces and swallows hard, before she recuperates. “But he really does appreciate you. At least, more than he did Ron when he was was working with him, helping out with the shop wight after— after, you know…”

“Yeah,” Andrey whispers, feeling strangely elated. “Well. I really like it, too. Working with him, I mean. It’s been really fun.”

“Good,” she smiles, though the corners of her mouth are turned down. “‘Fun’ is not a word I thought I’d hear in relation to George ever again. So thank you.”

“No, no, thank you,” Andrey says awkwardly, though he feels marginally better. He glances back at Sascha to make sure there’s no drama stirring up over there, but everything looks alright for the time being.

“Actually, I gotta confess,” Ginny says quietly, following his gaze. She’s looking at Sascha like she’s trying to crack a code, and Andrey tenses. “I’ve really wanted to talk to you for a while. You are his friend, right? Alexander, I mean.”

“Yeah,” Andrey says warily. “Why?”

Ginny takes a deep breath. “I want to know—“ she closes her eyes, “do you know what he is doing with my husband? I know they’ve got into some shady stuff, and he’s not telling me anything— apparently, as his wife, I’m not important enough to be told about another one of his adventures, or at least not as important as Hermione—”

She halts to a stop, shutting her mouth with a snap and looking embarrassed about her outburst.

Any other time, Andrey would probably be embarrassed as well. He’d probably make awkward excuses and try to shuffle away, leaving her to her messy emotions that have nothing to do with him, and let her sort herself out — a virtual stranger coming to him with something so incredibly personal. As it is, Andrey relates to her more than he has to anyone in months.

“I have no bloody idea!” He hisses to her, feeling an instant connection grow between them.

Funny, isn’t it, that Ginny is a famous elite Quidditch player, and yet Andrey most relates to her troubles of being a wife left in the dark?

“The four of them go into the library and lock themselves there for ours!” Ginny says to him in a low angry voice, apparently immediately over her initial embarrassment. “And I don’t even get to ask what the hell they are doing there!”

“In the library?” Andrey asks stupidly.

“Yes, in our house!” Ginny purses her lips. “At Grimmauld Place.”

“Sascha goes to your house?” Andrey gapes at her, shocked. What the fuck? He steals another glance at Sascha, now holding a glass of something undoubtedly alcoholic in his hand and having a conversation with Francis Tiafoe. Why on earth didn’t Sascha even once mention he’s been going to Potter’s house?!

“Yes, and I have no idea what they are planning! But I can bet you it’s something bloody illegal!” Ginny exclaims.

“Oh no need to bet,” Andrey says darkly. “I know for a fact that it is.”

“Splendid,” Ginny mutters, glaring at Sascha with passion. “Just fucking wonderful!”

“Listen,” Andrey turns to her, softening his tone. No matter how angry he is at Sascha, there’s no need to stress out a pregnant lady. “Whatever it is, Sascha’s promised me that it’s not dangerous. So at least there’s that.”

“And you trust him?”

“Yes,” Andrey answers immediately without having to think about it for a moment. “I do.”

Ginny sighs. “Thank Merlin for small mercies, I suppose.”

He wants to ask her more about those sessions in the library, but there’s suddenly a commotion behind him. He turns to look and immediately spots the source — Stefanos has appeared in the room, and everybody is staring at him.

“Stef!” He calls, leaving Ginny behind. Most of the people, divided into small fractions, are whispering among themselves; others are plainly staring at Stefanos in shock. Andrey finds Sascha’s gaze.

“Hey, mate,” Sascha says, his voice ringing in the suddenly silent room. “Good to see you.”

Stefanos is frozen on the spot, undoubtedly catching everyone’s reaction to his presence. His face turns deadly pale, and he reminds Andrey suddenly, of that day in their DADA class, when Stefanos was the first one to cast a Patronus.

“Casper invited me,” Stefanos says quietly to no one in particular, as if he was accused of a crime.

“I did, indeed!” Casper says, emerging from another room. To his credit, he ignores the stares and the whispers and goes ahead to clap Stefanos on the shoulder. The hushed talking subdues. “It’s been ages! How are you, man?”

Everyone goes back to their conversations, though Andrey sees the occasional glances thrown Stefanos’ way. He makes his way to the man.

“You’ve got balls coming here, I’ll give you that,” Sascha tells Stefanos, sounding impressed. “I wouldn’t. I nearly didn’t, in fact.”

“Yet here you are,” Stefanos snaps, like he was trying to make himself annoyed with him. No one is fooled, though: relief and embarrassment bleeds through the clamps of his tension, and he spares Sascha an apologetic smile straight after. He turns to Casper. “So… everybody knows?”

Casper looks apologetic. “I’m sorry, Stef. It wasn’t in the Prophet or anything, but word still got out… and you know how people in this profession are…”

“Gossiping bastards,” Andrey finishes for him. “Still though. There’s no way everyone here is thinks—”

“No, no, of course not,” Casper says seriously. “I wouldn’t have invited you, otherwise.”

“Thanks,” Stefanos says hollowly. His eyes sweep over the large room, jumping from one person to the next. “This is why I wanted Dania to come with me.”

Sascha harrumphs. “Speaking of — where is he? I thought surely he’d be coming, the recent Cup champion and all.”

Stefanos looks away. “He’s working through some issues.”

“What issues?” Andrey demands hungrily, not even ashamed of talking about Dania behind his back. He’d gladly talk to Dania to his face, if the man deigned to show it, but oh well.

“It’s not for me to tell,” Stefanos says seriously. Sascha snorts.

“How convenient.”

Stefanos glares at him. “There’s nothing convenient about what he’s going through,” he says sharply. Sascha sniffs. “Besides,” he adds thoughtfully, “I can’t help but notice that the three of us are the only ones here who were there at the Battle,” Andrey tenses and Sascha stares. “Coincidentally, the three of us are also the only ones who do not play professional Quidditch anymore. I can’t imagine we are the most comfortable guests to talk to, in this room.”

“Um,” Casper says awkwardly. “Well. I suppose, we… I should probably—” he takes a noticeable step aside, “Oh, there’s Roger, I need to talk to him about something! You guys have fun, yeah?”

And he flees and it’s just the three of them.

“Thanks for that,” Sascha says with heavy sarcasm. “Really makes one wonder why anybody would not want you at their party.”

“Hey!” Andrey snaps at him, “Leave him alone!”

Sascha has the decency to look chagrined. “Sorry,” he murmurs to Stefanos, as the three of them stand there awkwardly, a small island in an ocean of people who used to be their friends. “I suppose we should attempt to mingle? All three of us. The “most comfortables guests”.”

“But it’s true, isn’t it?” Stefanos says with distinct sadness. “It’s like Andrey said — they all moved on with their lives and their careers, and we are stuck. And I’m— well, I don’t even belong here anymore.”

“Don’t say that,” Andrey tells him firmly, though for the life of him, he can’t find it in himself to genuinely disagree with Stefanos. It is the truth and there’s no point denying it. Somewhere to his left, he hears Nick Kyrgios mutter a bunch of words that sound like “shouldn’t have invited the likes of him” as he stares at Stefanos.

He is already tired. His thoughts are loose threads, tangled and blurry, and he finds himself jumping from one to the next seemingly without effort.

“Let’s go talk to—” Sascha scans the crowd diligently, “Gaston! He’s an outcast, right?”

“That’s because he’s an arsehole,” Andrey says.

“Not enough of one if he was still invited,” Sascha says. “Or, hey, there’s Bublik. He’s alright, isn’t he?”

“I suppose,” Andrey says.

He should be happy that Sascha is trying. He should be happy they are all out in the real world and trying. But that unwavering disappointment, this, surely Andrey can’t quit, it almost means that Andrey isn’t Andrey anymore when he quits. Like now. Maybe they don’t know the real Andrey, he wonders distantly. The Andrey they know wouldn't have stumbled over his words talking to the guys he knew his entire life. The Andrey they know would have left George’s shop already and got his old position on the team back and been set for the next few with a shiny new contract, and never wondered if he even wanted to be playing Quidditch in the first place.

As minutes pass, painfully slowly, Andrey finds himself in the middle of a conversation with Sasha Bublik and Hugo Gaston, the Slytherins from his year and currently the Chasers of the Wimbourne Wasps. He blinks himself awake.

“...you’re mad, and I mean you’re barking mad,” Gaston is saying to Sascha, “if you think Sampras could have taken McEnroe. In his prime? In his prime?"

“This is what Wasps fans don’t understand,” Sascha tells him. “You’re delusional about this. You actually are. You’re delusional if you think McEnroe was anywhere near Sampras, when he was playing two decades later, and the broom technology was miles and miles better. It’d be like pitting a dragon against a hippogriff…”

Sascha seems so… normal, Andrey marvels, watching him discuss ex-Quidditch stars with an air of a pundit. Coming here, putting himself together for the sake of Andrey and looking like a normal, cheerful human being for a change. Because Andrey asked him to.

He thinks back to their fourth year in Hogwarts, a lowly torturous period in which Snape was out to get Andrey and, in an attempt to humiliate him in front of the entire class, made Andrey sit at the front desk. He thinks of Sascha loyally sticking to his side, sharing the front desk right along with Andrey and inventing Snape’s wrath upon himself, too.

He thinks of the memory he has seen in the Pensieve. Sascha wasn’t going to go to the Battle. Until he found out that Andrey was going.

Sascha wasn’t going to come, tonight, either, until Andrey asked him to. No matter his faults, no matter his distaste for his own House, but there was a reason Sascha was sorted into Hufflepuff, a reason that Sascha’s Animagus form is a dog. No matter the circumstances, Sascha has always been loyal to a fault.

As he looks at him, Andrey doesn’t think it is at all normal to be so in love with someone. It is giving him heart disease. Stupid ponytail or not, it hurts to look at Sascha when he talks.

“It’s been hard to switch to Dragonfibre,” Bublik is saying, his words breaking through the wall of Andrey’s love-induced fog. “But I swear, it’s worth it, broom technology’s so much better in France these days.”

“I’ve been to their factory in Lille,” Stefanos says, transparently glad to be able to contribute to the conversation. “They actually use Dragon heartstring for the shaft core. Really innovative.”

“If only they applied the same innovation to fucking Quaffles, too,” Bublik complains. “I hate that they switched to Ministry-produced ones this year, they fly like shit, all fucking dead inside after ten minutes of play.”

“They’re trying to slow down the game,” Sascha says wisely, and Gaston nods in agreement. “I hear Arab investors demanded that every League switch to those shitty Snitches and Quaffles this year so matches would last longer.”

“You hear?” Andrey snorts, looking up at him. “Where on earth did you hear that? I wasn’t aware they held AQP press conferences on the couch in our sitting room.”

“They don’t, but I am able to use my eyes to read articles in the Quidditch Weekly. You remember reading, mate?” He grins at Andrey, all shiny and confident, the sight Andrey hasn’t witnessed in eternity. “It’s an activity when you put letters together and make words and sentences appear.”

“Hey, I do read!”

“Looking through the heating charm instructions on the Lonely Wizard dinner package does not amount to reading, Andrey,” Sascha snorts, and his eyes are laughing. Andrey can’t look away.

“Come on, you know he’s not into Academia,” Stefanos teases, smiling lopsidedly. Sascha snickers and Andrey follows in, until they are all cracking up suddenly, in the middle of Casper’s enormous sitting room.

“I read Potions titles, too, when I’m a in the Apothecary,” Andrey chuckles. He is feeling superficially giggly, because Sascha and Stefanos are actually giggly and it isn’t hard to tune in; but also as though he's missed out on some moment of catharsis.

Later, when both Sasha and Gaston have gone on to talk to the others, Stefanos fixes Andrey with a long stare.

“You know, Dania actually thought about coming,” he says, mentioning Dania apropos of nothing. Andrey feels a jolt of something strong at the name, though he isn’t sure what, exactly. “Because he knew you were coming.”

“So why hasn’t he, then?”

Stefanos ignores the question. “He really wants to see you.”

Andrey lets out a snort that sounds ugly. “I don’t see what’s been stopping him for, you know, more than a year.”

Stefanos sighs. “It’s complicated.”

Suddenly, Andrey doesn’t feel giggly at all. He feels slammed back into his body, hard, knocking all of his goodwill out of it in the process, and he is furious.

“Please, tell me how complicated it is that my oldest friend has decided I’m not worth it to send an owl to once every blue moon!”

“Andrey,” Sascha calls, tugging on the sleeve of Andrey’s robes, and Andrey realises he’s gotten disproportionately loud. People are starting to stare.

Andrey lets out a long breath, calming himself. “I’m living at the same house I’ve been in for years, Stef. He knows where I am. He knows how to find me. If he wanted to see me, he would. He could fucking Apparate to my front door if he wanted to, but he hasn’t. So Dania can go fuck himself.”

He doesn’t mean the last part, although, maybe he does. Maybe it’s good to finally let this out, even though, given a chance, he’d gladly see Dania again. Maybe the problem is — he hasn’t been given a chance.

A void caves suddenly in his stomach, the feeling of nostalgia cresting until it isn’t nostalgia anymore, but a deep yearning: he wants it again, that oneness that came with living in Hogwarts, all together, that coexistence, the identity shared and certain.

Just the day before, he sat by the fire and drawn a dubious likeness of Dania into his copy of the Prophet, and Sascha asked him acerbically whether he’d decided to switch careers once again and turn to the life of arts, never mind that what Andrey sketched barely resembled a human being, just a long stick-figure with a giant forehead. Andrey thought the comment blindingly hypocritical, since he knew Sascha had been trying various jobs like changing gloves, and him mentioning it at all was only because the drawing was of DaniilMedvedev in the first place, and Sascha knew he knew, and Andrey knew that Sascha knew he knew. But this was just one on the long list of things they didn’t talk about, so he couldn’t even call him out on it.

He tries to avoid looking at the heartbreak on Stefanos’ face.

“Let’s go home,” is what he says.

“Are we gonna say goodbyes?” Sascha asks him with a weird mix of resignation and hesitation.

“You go ahead.”

He might have imagined it, but he thinks he sees a flash of disappointment in Sascha’s eyes, there and gone, before Andrey sets off to the Apparition border without waiting for him.

+++

“Can I look at your wand?” Stefanos asks him out of nowhere, sending Dania spiralling down the memory lane into their final year, when Stefanos asked him the exact same question.

Just like he did then, Dania hands over his wand, his fingers tingling where they brush Stefanos’.

“Haven’t you already seen it?” He says and is pleased to find his voice perfectly level.

“Kikimora heartstring, right?” Stefanos smiles, small and private, like it was an inside joke. It sends Dania’s heart into overdrive. “Made by Borovskiy?”

“Some memory you’ve got,” Dania mutters with an arched eyebrow. He watches Stefanos’ long fingers run over his wand delicately. He can’t believe Stefanos remembers all this detail after almost a decade.

“I’m a wand maker now,” Stefanos smiles, his eyes never leaving the wand. “Or, well — I will be a wand maker some day, hopefully. I’ve got to remember such things.”

“Hmm,” Dania says, unexpectedly disappointed.

“But I also remember things much more clearly if they relate to you,” Stefanos adds with a piercing stare deep into Dania’s soul. Dania flails.

“So what, then, anything new you hadn’t noticed?” He asks brusquely, as if he were in a business meeting.

He is suddenly convinced that if there was, indeed a wand-related problem, it would be Stefanos who solves it. Stefanos is far and away the most detail-oriented person Dania has ever met. It’s what made him such a formidable student back in Hogwarts and such an amazing Seeker, exploding on the Quidditch scene at barely seventeen. He’s sharp-eyed and meticulous, verging occasionally on fastidious, though even Dania knows better than to let that particular assessment cross his lips. If anyone was to figure it out, it’d surely be Setefanos.

“I am not sure,” Stefanos stares at the wand like he has x-ray vision. “Could you describe the process of acquiring it?”

“There wasn’t much of a process,” Dania shrugs. “I went into his bureau and he handed me the wand. I paid — or rather, my parents paid, you know, since I was ten.”

Stefanos is staring at him now. “How many wands did you try before this one?”

“Um, two? Or three, maybe?”

“And this one felt like the best?”

“It didn’t feel like anything,” Dania grumbles, uncomfortable under the scrutiny. “It shot sparks, just like all the other wands I tried. But Borovskiy has a policy of ‘not more than fifteen minutes per customer’ so I had to choose quickly and I chose this one.”

Stefanos doesn’t say anything, but the downward turn of his mouth is all the reaction he needs to convey his vast disappointment.

“Are all wand makers in Russia like this?”

He inquires politely, tone perfectly civil, but Dania can’t help noting the contempt beneath the layers of his voice, and he sounds like one of those wealthy Pureblood wizards that give speeches in the Ministry for special occasions.

Dania has spent so much time trying to copy that for himself, this confidence, this unwavering belonging, but it turns out it doesn’t matter, because Stefanos is still every inch a wizard bred so purely that Dania feels next to him like a mistake, a magical accident; like he has no real reason to be here.

“I don’t know,” Dania says with a surge of irritation that he tries to stomp. “There’s Borovskiy — he’s the most popular and mainstream wand maker, there’re the Karavaev brothers who are based in St. Petersburg, and then there’s Vishnevskiy but nobody—” respectable “—that I know goes to him, because he lets in all sorts of… clientele.”

“What do you mean?”

“Vampires, goblins, werewolves, Veela — that lot,” Dania explains.

Stefanos’ expression doesn’t change one bit, yet Dania sees his throat work silently, his Adam’s apple bob. “I see.”

“Do you think there’s something wrong with my wand?” He says to get Stefanos talking again.

“Yes,” he nods, handing Dania his wand back. “It’s not yours.”

“Huh?”

“It belongs to you,” Stefanos relents. “But it’s not your wand, not in the sense that matters in wand lore. It was given to you, it did not choose you.”

“Okay,” Dania says slowly. He feels absurdly small and helpless and he tries to chase the feeling away. “So… what do I do?”

“I’d recommend getting a new wand,” Stefanos says with an arched eyebrow, as if the answer was obvious. “And this time, do it properly.”

“Do you think that’s why I…” he stumbles, unwilling to form the words, but forces himself to push through, “that’s why my magic acts up?”

Stefanos looks away. It might be Dania’s imagination, but he seems colder and more distant than he was five minutes ago.

“It could be. But I don’t think it is. Do you mind?” He lifts his wand and wordlessly summons himself the kettle without waiting for Dania’s permission and pours himself some tea. “I do have a theory, but you’re not going to like it.”

“Tell me anyway,” Dania says a bit desperately. He needs to know what’s been causing all these horrid bursts of accidental magic so he can make it stop. Every time it happens, he feels absolutely embarrassed and out of control, two things Dania does his best to never feel.

“I think it has everything to do with what we have seen in the Pensieve. You have never learnt to deal with your feelings properly,” Stefanos says carefully. “You have instead learnt to repress every negative emotion like shame and anger and disappointment, and you have repressed it well. You had no choice but to repress them if you wanted to feel normal and go about your life. You needed to repress them when you were trying out for Quidditch, too.”

Dania nods curtly.

“What we have been doing over the past weeks is now forcing you to process what you have been repressing your entire adult life, because you’re in a… a less hostile environment,” Stefanos continues haltingly. His eyebrows are furrowed in concentration. “Part of this is closely linked to your magic. Since you used to suppress it as a teenager out of a shame or fear, you didn’t learn how to control your magic as it links to your emotions at the appropriate age. Now that we’re digging into your mental state, you’re beginning to go through the motions of magical regulation now, at a later age.”

Dania isn’t sure if he should be mortified or embarrassed or, possibly, a combination of both.

“So what… what do I do, then?”

“Exactly what we are already doing,” Stefanos says softly. “Keep processing your emotions. Stop repressing everything you feel uncomfortable thinking about. Talk to the people you love,” he shoots Dania a meaningful look that he can’t quite decipher. “Stop pretending you are fine when you are not. Ask for help when you need it.”

“Excellent,” Dania mutters darkly. “Turn into a cry-baby, is what you mean.”

“Well, the tragic repression of your very masculine pain and regret has obviously been working out so well for you,” Stefanos says with uncharacteristic sarcasm, then takes a sip of his tea to cover his smirk behind the cup.

It is possible that Dania hasn’t realised just how intricately those emotions are tied to nearly every thought, memory, or decision that passes through his mind. Longing for what he has never had is so natural to him, like breathing, that he forgets he is doing it most of the time. And now that Stefanos is — what, offering to monitor him, he could finally take his life back under control?

And he will need monitoring, lest he fall into the traps of guilt and self-condemnation that he is particularly susceptible to. Dania looks away from Stefanos as a familiar wave of self-loathing rolls over him. Yes, he supposes he now knows better than most the bitterness that results when such emotions are left unchecked.

“Why are you doing this?” He asks suddenly, forgetting all about not rushing head-first into the abyss. “Why are you helping me?”

Stefanos puts his cup down. “Because I want all of us to get better.”

“All of us?”

“Yes. You. Me. Sascha and Andrey,” he winces, as if the words hurt him. “Everyone has been a little fragile since the war ended, only I got over my fragility months ago, and every day I have to quench this miserable frustration with the rest of you!” He says feverishly, like the he had the whole spiel ready and waiting to be let out of him, “Don’t tell Sascha to come out of the house and do something useful, Stefanos. Don't ask Andrey when he intends to get out of bed, Stefanos. Don't interrogate Sascha on what happened during the Battle, or talk to Andrey about possibly flying again or doing something with himself beyond moseying around his cottage like an old ghoul, and don’t ask Daniil when he thinks he should finally talk about the Battle or what happened in seventh year or why—”

He cuts himself off, his eyes burning wildly. The harsh words of his tirade ring hollowly long after he’s finished speaking.

“I’m sorry,” Dania whispers, appropriately guilty, because he thinks this might have been the first time he bothered to see Stefanos’ side of it all. “I’m sorry, Stef. I didn’t think— I realise it’s been hard for you, too.”

Stefanos drinks his tea and resolutely says nothing. Dania scrambles for something else to say.

“Do you still see Andrey, then?”

“I do. In fact I only saw him at Casper’s party last week.”

“Oh,” Dania deflates. “You went?”

“I did. Can’t say it was a lot of fun, though.” He sighs with a heavy expression that has layers to it. “He really misses you, you know.”

“He does?” Dania blurts out and hates how hopeful and vulnerable he sounds. He covers it up with a cough. “Well, he’s never let me know that, if that’s the case. I bet he’s doing all nice and snuggly with Zverev over at their little cottage.”

And now he’s gone way overboard with the bitterness. Stefanos is looking at him like he would at a whiny child.

“Why don’t you just talk to him?” He says with an irritated edge to his tone. “You obviously still care very much for each other. You know,” he folds his hands under his chin and looks about ready to spew some more philosophic motivational spiel that will be way too personal for Dania’s taste. He'll still sit through it, because it seems Stefanos has the idea of friendship skewed by this co-dependent trio he has with Andrey and Zverev, and assumes everything in Dania’s life is his to become involved in. “If you are going to go through this, you’ll need all the people in your life that you can have. If you haven’t noticed, Dania, loved ones is a scarce resource these days.”

“I suppose,” Dania relents. “It’s good to have somebody to love.”

“Oh, love doesn’t even come into it,” Stefanos says unexpectedly, and when Dania stares at him, adds with a lopsided smile. “Don’t get me wrong, loving someone is, naturally, great. But I’m not talking about love — we can’t survive on love alone. What we need is a purpose.”

Dania was right; this is entirely too personal. It doesn’t mean that he disagrees, though.

He is not so low yet as to not have people in his life whom he loves — there’s Karen and Dasha and Andrey, no matter how much he must hate Dania at the moment, and he’d even tentatively include Stefanos in this list, if he were to be honest with himself.

There are people to love. Maybe, Dania just needs to figure out the best way of loving them.

Maybe, this could be his purpose.

+++

Andrey’s only been back home for a few minutes, sucking on a Slippery Nipple as he writes down his idea for the Truth or Dare potion he’d like to present to George sometime this week, when he hears the scratching against the glass doors.

Sascha’s whining outside, asking to be let in. Andrey puts his parchment aside and briefly closes his eyes.

“Bloody hell,” he says, sliding the door open. “Why the fuck are you—”

He stops when he sees blood on Sascha’s front paw, the words dying out before they can reach his throat. He kneels down. Blood is dripping down the tiled floor as Sascha holds his paw up.

“What happened?” Andrey asks him, grabbing the furry limb. “Sasch, I can’t do anything until you turn back. I can’t do animal transfiguration.”

The next moment, Sascha’s sitting on the floor before him, holding his right arm up. There’s a gross cut on his forearm, deep enough that Andrey thinks he sees muscle tissue. He feels momentarily ill.

“Merlin, Sasch,” he gasps, trying not to look, but he can’t help looking. Sascha’s face is white as a sheet. “How did you—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sascha hisses. He looks more angry than miserable. “Can you just heal it, please?”

“I— Sasch, come on, this isn’t just a cut,” he says, holding Sascha’s arm gently. The blood is gushing down to the floor in a scary crimson pool. “I’ll see if I have the Blood Repelling potion, but if not, we’ll have to go to St. Mungos.”

“Just do it, Andrey,” Sascha snaps with no small amount of irritation. Andrey lets it slide because he must be in considerable amount of pain.

“Wait here, I’ll get the potion,” Andrey tells him firmly and runs to get the first-aid kit, hearing Sascha curse under his breath. He grabs the box and digs around until he finds Essence of Dittany and decides it will do. Sascha is on the floor just as he left him, and Andrey pours a few drops of Dittany on the cut.

Sascha hisses, his face screwing up in pain. “I know, I know,” Andrey winces, holding his arm and watching the skin gradually repair itself. “I’m sorry, Saniochek.”

Sascha looks at him sharply but doesn’t say anything. Andrey caresses the skin around the cut with his thumb and grabs his wand.

“Episkey,” he says pointing his wand where the skin can’t stitch itself together on Dittany alone. It’s a relief to see the spell work perfectly, the cut on Sascha’s arm finally closing.

“Cheers,” Sascha mutters, his eyes downcast. He resolutely won’t look Andrey in the eyes, and with an unpleasant jolt of fear, Andrey suddenly has an idea of how Sascha injured himself.

“You didn’t— how did you get that?”

“Cut myself while running,” Sascha grumbles. He still won’t look up, only solidifying the block of ice forming in Andrey’s chest.

“Cut yourself on what?”

“On a piece of—” Sascha’s eyes fleet in momentary panic, and Andrey jumps to his feet, fucking furious.

“You fucking— you did that to yourself!” Andrey yells, and the accusing finger he is pointing at Sascha trembles with emotion. Sascha closes his eyes in resignation. “What the fuck, Sascha?! You were— you were better last week, you know you were better, so why the fuck—”

“Yeah, well, maybe I wasn’t that much better,” Sascha snaps and gets to his feet, too, looking shaken. He rubs at the spot where the cut was a moment ago, the skin still covered in crimson blood. Then he starts walking away.

Andrey blocks his way before he realises what he’s doing. “No way in hell. We are talking about this. Now.”

“Leave me the fuck alone, Andrey!” Sascha snarls, though he doesn’t make another move to leave, just hovers there awkwardly, like a kid about to be punished.

“Why the hell did you do this?” Andrey demands again and barely restrains himself from shaking him. Then he wonders why he should and grabs Sascha’s shoulders with force. “When I finally thought you were doing better!”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be thinking that, then!” Sascha yells. “Maybe you should stop trying to fix me as if I was some pet project—”

“Oh, you’re a pet, alright—”

“Fine, yes, I enjoy being a dog!” Sascha snaps, his eyes wild and a little mad. “What does that say about me, huh?”

“That you’re a coward!” Andrey yells back, shaking him for good measure. “That you can’t deal with your pain, can’t process it!”

“Of course,” Sascha sneers, narrowing his eyes. “You actually think you can cure my pain!”

“You think you can avoid pain!”

“I can! That’s what my Animagus form is for!”

“You’re a fucking idiot!” Andrey yells and shakes him again. Sascha doesn’t even attempt to break free from him, though, just stands there like a ragdoll, like his every ligament has been cut. “You can’t hide from being human! You can’t lock yourself away just because it hurts, just because you’re scared!” The image of Sascha’s boggart flashes before his eyes, and in a desperate bid to appeal to his senses, Andrey adds, “What are you even scared of, huh? That I’m gonna kick you out? That I’m gonna stop being your friend? What?”

Sascha looks horrified. “Don’t you dare bring up that boggart right now—”

“But was it wrong?” Andrey snaps, his hands still squeezing Sascha’s shoulders.

“No it wasn’t!” Sascha screams and finally battles out of Andrey’s grip. He takes a few shaky steps back. “It wasn’t wrong, alright! You remember what it said, Andrey? That I was fucked in the head! Well, here you are, enjoy the fucking confirmation!”

Horrifyingly, Sascha’s eyes are wet. Andrey halts in his tracks, unable to look away, the sight completely paralysing him. He doesn’t think in all the years they’ve known each other, he has ever seen Sascha cry.

“I remember when I was about five,” Sascha starts saying in hoarse voice as a tear rolls down his cheek, then another one and another, “Mum took me to St. Mungo for the Dragon Pox shot. And I saw—” he sniffs wetly, and Andrey’s heart hurts, “I saw a kid my age bang his knee against the chair — he didn’t wanna get his shot, was probably scared shitless, I don’t know — but he hit his knee and his Dad hugged him. He fucking hugged him, imagine that?” He pauses to take a breath and wipe the wetness from his face, but his eyes keep generating more and more of it. “So we went home later, and guess what bright idea I had? I went and smashed my knee, like, really fucking hard, I made sure it was bleeding all over my leg. And I went to my Dad. And he, he—” his voice trembles and he screws his eyes shut, “— and he hugged me. He hugged me, Andrey, just like that kid in St. Mungo, and he didn’t yell at me and didn’t curse me for being a clumsy Squib. He healed my knee and he hugged me.”

Whatever horrible thing Andrey was expecting at the end of that speech, what he actually hears is somehow worse by a mile than some grotesque punishment he’s imagined.

He keeps his silence, almost sacred, afraid to move a muscle lest he spook Sascha into stopping. This is more than Sascha has mentioned about his personal life or his childhood in a decade.

“So, so,” Sascha sniffs wetly and wipes his face with a trembling hand, “I guess I haven’t changed much since I was five years old, huh?” He lets out a mirthless chuckle and for the first time since he came in, he stares Andrey in the eye. He looks hysterical. “Happy now? Happy to see just how fucked exactly I am in the head, Andrey? Still wanna be my friend now?”

Andrey lets outs a long, long breath. His hands are shaking just as much as Sascha’s are. He throws his wand to the coffee table and takes a step.

“Thanks for telling me this,” he says softy, coming up to Sascha. “But next time, will you please just tell me that you want a hug?”

His body closes in around Sascha’s, and as soon as his arms meet all the way around Sascha’s back, Sascha goes into full on sobs. Andrey’s body shakes with the force of them, each exhale a stroke of thunder.

They’ve been sleeping together for weeks, yet this is the first time in years they have hugged in broad daylight.

“You idiot,” Andrey whispers softly into Sascha’s overgrown hair. “You don’t have to hurt yourself to get affection. Not from me, and not from anyone. You should’ve known that.”

Sascha sobs even harder. Yet, Andrey feels somehow lighter, liberated, as if a heavy burden has been lifted from his shoulders. This is progress. No matter how painful, this is them actually moving forward. No matter how sordid and grotesque, healing doesn’t necessarily go in straight line, better than yesterday and worse than tomorrow. No, sometimes a step back is as vital as three steps forward.

He almost laughs at how absurd and backwards it all seems. It halts halfway up his throat and snags on some other emotion he doesn’t care to examine. It is one thing not to have laughed in months; another to ponder on what that said about you.

He squeezes Sascha harder, still, until he feels Sascha’s heart vibrating against his chest, Sascha’s wet nose pressing into his neck, Sascha’s magic surging up and brushing against his own, hesitant and dejected at once.

“I’m not gonna leave you,” he says into Sascha’s ear and feels him convulse. “So stop doubting me and get on with your life. Because I’m gonna be right there along with you, every step of the way.”

He feels Sascha squeeze him even harder in return, and that’s all the reply Andrey needs from him right now, the secret little language of speaking without words. It is no surprise that Sascha is good at it. Most of the things they tell each other they never say out loud, anyway.

The doorbell suddenly rings, disrupting the tender moment.

Slowly, Sascha draws back and extracts himself from the hug.

“Well, this is new,” Andrey smiles, gesturing between the two of them.

Sascha’s eyes are red and swollen. “And now you ruined it,” he snorts.

“How did I ruin it?” He protests.

“You called attention to it.” Sascha wipes the snot off his face.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Andrey grins. The doorbell rings again, but he ignores it. “I didn’t realise it was a Schrödinger’s hug, my bad.”

“And I didn’t realise you knew what Schrödinger meant,” Sascha smirks, but it has no biting effect paired with his pale face and puffy eyes. “You observed it, and now it’s dead.”

“I’ll be sure not to do it again.” The doorbell rings for the third time, and Sascha harrumphs.

“Someone really wants to see you,” he tells Andrey, glancing at the hallway. “And whoever they are, they obviously can’t take a hint.”

Andrey sighs, the moment dead and buried now. “I’ll go see who it is.”

He thinks about Hogwarts and Quidditch as he walks to the door, feeling warm and content and a little sad for the way things used to be, but in a way that only tingles pleasantly on the back of his neck. I want to be happy again, he thinks to himself. The statement rings in his head, over and over: he has forgotten it, he realises, or maybe he's been afraid that the want would be gone the moment he tried looking for it. But it is still there.

Sascha will get better. Andrey will get better. They will both go through this, together, and come the other side broad new and better people, entirely different in some aspects and wholly the same in the others.

He opens the door, and the thoughts flee from his head.

Dania is standing on his doorway, looking uneasy and miserable and holding a broomstick in his hand.

“Hi,” he says and gives Andrey a frail little smile. “I thought we could fly?”

+++

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Jesus Christ. He shouldn’t have come here.

Andrey is staring at him, unmoving, as if Dania has Stupefied him. His mouth hangs open as he looks Dania over, head to toe, and continues to say nothing.

“Um,” he breathes out, feeling stupider than ever, “I hoped you were home, so I thought maybe I could— swing by, if you were— well.”

Andrey closes his mouth and blinks at him very slowly.

“Why are you here?”

Dania’s stupid heart goes into overdrive, right along with his even stupider brain. Damn Stefanos and his motivational speeches. He shouldn’t have fucking come here.

“I thought… it’s been a long time. I just, I really wanted to see you, Andrey.”

Andrey swallows audibly. His hand is still gripping the door handle, as if afraid to let go.

“Can I come in?” Dania says pathetically.

Wordlessly, Andrey steps aside. Dania shifts uncomfortably, because with the way Andrey is staring at him, you would have thought Dania has just confessed to murder.

He steps in, briefly noting how the place is largely unchanged since the last time he was here, almost two years ago, back when they both flew brooms for a career, had Butterbeers at the pub after a long match and when life was altogether a much simpler ordeal.

“Oh,” he hears, and when he glances up, he finds himself face to face with Zverev, whose face is contrastingly white compared to the redness of his eyes. Dania is mortified to realise he must have just been crying. Jesus, what has he walked in on? “It’s you.”

“Hey,” he says breathily. Zverev’s eyes on Dania feel odd; they make him realise Dania has heard and thought of him often over the past year, but hardly ever seen him.

“How have you been?” Zverev says with fake politeness, wiping furiously at his face so hard that his hand leaves biting red marks on his skin.

“Fine,” Dania says curtly. “Can you give us a moment?”

“Whatever you wanted to say,” says Andrey, who’s apparently recovered from his initial shock and is now leaning against the doorway with his arms crossed at his chest, “you can say it with Sascha in the room.”

Dania makes himself breathe. In and out, like at the numerous sessions Stefanos has held with him.

Zverev looks painfully uncomfortable. He starts backing away from the room, “Andrey, it’s not a problem, I can go—”

“Stay!” Andrey barks at him, in the same authoritative tone he might have used to command a dog to ‘heel.’ Surprisingly enough, it works, because Zverev drops right into the armchair and folds his arms, too. Some sort of silent telepathic conversation appears to pass between the two of them, then Zverev grunts and seemingly admits his defeat.

“I’d really rather talk to you alone,” Dania says. He squeezes his broom to feel its comforting warmth, but it’s not nearly enough in the face of Andrey’s wrath.

“I don’t care,” Andrey declares, unexpectedly harshly. Dania flinches. He really doesn’t fancy having this conversation in front of Zverev. “What are you doing here, Dania?”

A stroke of thunder trembles outside. It has begun to rain, and there goes Dania’s easy escape. I'd better get going before the skies break open, no flying in the rain, huh, he's been supposed to say, and they would both know it for an excuse, but silently agree to pretend.

“I missed you, alright?” Dania says, not really a fan of Andrey’s accusing tones. It makes him feel guiltier than he should be; after all, he hasn’t committed any crimes or harmed anyone in any way. Andrey’s definitely overreacting.

“You missed me?” Andrey repeats with narrowed eyes. “And what, you didn’t miss me on my birthday when you didn’t even bother to reply to my invitation? You didn’t miss me on New Year’s? Any time last year, when I sent you dozens of fucking letters — you didn’t miss me any of those times?”

Okay, fine, maybe Andrey is reacting just the right amount. Dania takes a deep breath.

“I’m sorry,” he says, the words coming easier now than they used to. He figures they should, since he’s been practicing using them so much more in front of Stefanos these days. Another couple of months and he’ll be a proper apology expert, the words slipping out of him as easy as breathing. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, I swear. I was just going through some stuff.”

“If you haven’t noticed, we have all been going through stuff,” Andrey says viciously. Over at the armchair, Zverev lets out a loud snort. “Yet none of us here have been abandoning our childhood friends.”

“Well you haven’t exactly tried very hard to see me either!” Dania blurts out, before he can stop himself.

Zverev whistles. “How typical. You still haven’t learnt to lose gracefully, I see.”

Dania rounds on him, “I don’t remember including you in this conversation!”

 “And I don’t remember anyone inviting you over here,” Zverev bristles. “Yet, here you are.”

He almost loses control enough to snap something along the lines of ‘Hold your fucking dog, Andrey,’ but stops just in time. He realises perfectly well that no matter how much of an arsehole, insulting Zverev is certainly not the right way to go about acquiring Andrey’s goodwill back. With gargantuan effort, he holds his tongue.

“I guess I,” he starts instead, turning away so he doesn’t have to see Zverev’s shitty white face, “I felt that I wasn’t… welcome. You know, after the Battle.”

If only Andrey knew how much of a Herculean effort it took him to say that. Dania risks a glance at him and sees that, maybe, Andrey does. Finally, finally, his self-righteous expression softens and gives way to confusion.

“I don’t get it,” He says in a much gentler tone. “Why would you feel that way?”

“Because I felt bad, Andrey,” Dania admits with a sigh. If he’s going down, he might as well go down telling the absolute ugly truth. “I felt like I didn’t belong with you, with any of you,” he makes a motion towards Zverev, but aborts it midway. “Because I wasn’t there with you. So I didn’t feel like— I guess I felt that I didn’t deserve to be… around you.”

The silence in the room is downright painful. Dania feels like he was outside his body, watching from above. Like the air was water, filling his ears and his lungs.

‘Wow,” of course, it’s damn Zverev to speak first. “What an insightful day it’s turning out to be.”

Thankfully, there’s no malice in his voice. He and Andrey exchange another one of those long stares that annoyed Dania even back when they were at Hogwarts.

Zverev is still seated obediently in his armchair, scruffy and red-eyed; Andrey still standing by the door, with his hair fiery red and up for a fight. They look nothing alike, yet they are somehow identically poised, like they were one model painted for distinction.

Deep inside, where it’s not shameful to admit, Dania wishes he could have that for himself. He wonders if he and Stefanos could one day look like that and feel like that — like a team, a proper unit.

He hopes Stefanos was right, and Dania hasn’t been too late. Sure, the first few minutes are overwhelming and utterly humiliating, but it’ll be worth it when Dania suffers through it, right? Because it has to be. Isn’t that what life is, suffering through painful ordeals in order to feel better once they’re behind you? It has to be worth it, because he keeps being struck suddenly by memories of his friends — Karen pulling a book about love potions from the library shelf and waggling his eyebrows, babbling about Veronika, Karen shrieking and covering himself as Moaning Myrtle emerges suddenly from the toilet. Andrey, whose image he has long tried to bar from his mind, is more present to Dania than he has been in years; Andrey in the corridors, Andrey in the Great Hall, Andrey grinning up at him from the grassy lawn, red hair falling with infuriating grace across his freckly forehead. And he cannot shake the suspicion that all his Quidditch colleagues who remember him from him back then are watching him now with curious sympathy, wondering if it’s going to be too much for him to stay in the sport when most of the friends he used to play are not even talking to him.

“You’re an idiot, Dania,” Andrey says softly and shakes his head. “You are both fucking idiots, and I can’t believe I’ve turned out to be the smart one here. Merlin’s balls.”

Dania isn’t particularly sure about how to respond to that, though Andrey’s exasperated tone makes a flicker of hope surge up in his chest.

“I’m surrounded by idiots,” Andrey goes on, and Zverev snorts again, so Dania takes it Andrey must be referring to something that happened between the two of them before his arrival. “Dania, did you actually think I’d stop talking to you because you weren’t there shitting yourself at the Battle with the rest of us? Here’s a news flash for you: I was glad you weren’t there in the end! I was glad because you got to stay alive and well and un-fucking-traumatised. And I thought I’d get to keep at least one of my friends safe and sound!”

“And I thought I didn’t deserve to be there, hanging out with all of you war heroes, when I was too chikenshit to even show up!” Dania tells him in a bout of painful candour. “The three of you hanging with the likes of Harry Potter and his equally heroic friends.”

“Three of us?”

“Stefanos, too,” Dania sighs.

“Is he the one who talked you into coming here?” Andrey says shrewdly, and Dania shrugs like it’s not a big deal.

“You should’ve come to Casper’s party last week,” Zverev says drily. “If only to see how willing everyone is to hang out with your so-called ‘war heroes.’”

“It wasn’t so bad,” Andrey says stubbornly, and Dania guesses it’s a tired argument between them. “If you need reminding, I had to actually drag you away from there, Sasch.”

“Yeah, right,” Zverev grunts and looks Dania in the eye. “Well. You have just made me realise that you might actually be just as fucked in the head as I am. Thanks. I feel loads better now.”

Dania summons the typical anger, but it’s slow to come. “Dream on. You wish you were as fucked as me.”

Zverev actually laughs. A new sort of silence befalls them, but this time it’s almost serene.

“Is that the new Dragonfibre broom you have there?” Andrey finally says, and Dania is surprised to realise he’s forgotten all about the broomstick in his hand. “I thought they haven’t hit the stores yet, how did you get one?”

“Easy. Helps that they sponsor me,” Dania says smugly with no small amount of pride.

“Relax, they also sponsor the likes of Gaston,” Zverev immediately says, but it doesn’t sound like a vicious insult aimed at humiliating him, and more like teasing. Dania lets it slide.

“And who’s sponsoring you these days — Ogden’s Firewhiskey?” he shoots back, and Zverev surprises him yet again by laughing.

“I prefer Buliver’s Bloodgin, but thanks,” he says and looks at Andrey. He turns immediately serious, something wary in his gaze. “So are we flying or not?”

As if on cue, forced by some higher magical entity, the rain stops.

Dania looks at Andrey who seems to be going through some sort of internal fight, and wishes uselessly that things were different. He was supposed to know stuff like what exactly got Andrey’s knickers in a twist over a friendly match on his own Quidditch pitch, he was supposed to navigate Andrey’s responses as easily as reading a book. At least it used to be this way, this easy camaraderie, the hard-earned friendship that Dania so stupidly almost let slip away.

He’ll fix this, he vows to himself, as Andrey finally nods and goes to fetch them all brooms from his shed. He’ll fix this, because it’s not too late and because Dania still has people he loves and who love him.

He will fix this, and that could be his purpose, too.

+++

For the first time in what feels like years and years, Andrey wakes up and doesn’t feel like crying.

He contemplates it lazily in the dusty haze of the morning, Sascha’s warm human body pressed against his side, snoring lightly into his shoulder. The house awes empty and silent around them, and Andrey can hear every beat of its heart. It doesn’t feel oppressive this time — the quiet soothing yet thrumming with opportunity, every corner a tucked-away secret to be unravelled and every thought a possible seedling of a dispute to be waged.

He could turn on his side and run his fingers through Sascha’s hair, gently, gently, like he’s been yearning to do for years. He could lean over, just the tiniest amount since they are so close already, and kiss Sascha awake, tasting his morning breath on his tongue.

It might be his imagination, but he thinks Sascha has stopped hiding so much. When they go out, now, he stands up a little straighter, looks more people in the eye. He's not sure what will come of it, doesn't really want to think about why, but Sascha has started to let people notice him. 

And they do notice. Women's eyes are drawn to him, as the tallest person in the room, and Andrey sees them appraising Sascha’s shoulders, his hands, Sascha’s self-awareness of every inch of himself that follows from using his body every day as a tool, as a weapon, counting on it to keep him and his team one step ahead.

But kissing Sascha is a tired old want, and Andrey has a lifetime experience of wanting things he cannot have. But even this longing feels different today somehow, not a lead-lined jacket bringing him down but another obstacle to overcome on his way to a higher state of being.

He sits up properly and stretches, shaking off muscle stiffness and the haze of inappropriate desire with the ease of many years of practice.

There’s an owl sitting on the outer windowsill, tapping its beak against the glass. Andrey doesn’t recognise it.

Carefully so as not to wake Sascha, he uncurls from his steely embrace and gets up to let the owl in. It holds out its talon to him with a piece of parchment tied to it, and Andrey regrets failing to buy a new pack of owl treats.

Letter in hand, he lays down back on the bed. Self-restriction or not, he’s not about to pass up an opportunity of cuddling Sascha for another few minutes of this quiet peaceful morning, and right on cue, Sascha immediately wraps his long arms around him in his sleep. Andrey lets out a content sigh.

The letter is, curiously, from Carlos Alcaraz.

Hey Andrey, he reads in Carlos’ loopy scrawl normally associated with children.

Hope you do are doing fine! I was sorry that we did not talk much at Casper’s party. I wanted to hang out and ask you more about your George Weasley’s shop! It sounds so awesome! I really liked the stuff when we visited, and Jannik liked it, too. I’m sorry the party was a bit of a drowningdowning downer.

I wanted to ask you if you want to fly together sometime? You and me and Jannik, maybe Sascha, too, it he wants? You can ask anyone you want too, it will be so fun! Jannik says you have your own Quidditch pitch at your house, that’s so cool! I’m going to get one too, I can afford it now (Carlos has actually drawn a smiley face and a dollar sign here, and Andrey cracks up). Just think about it and let me know if you want to play. We all miss you, you know. And Hufflepuffs should play together, it will be like Hogwarts again!

P.S. Also, if you want to fly at your pitch, send Jannik the Apparition coordinates, because I haven’t got my Apparition license yet (a sad face drawn there). Juan Carlos always annoys bugs me but I never have time to take the exam…

P.P.S. Sorry about all the mistakes, Jannik spellchecked this letter for me (smiley face)

It’s not until he’s read the letter five times over and run his hands over the thick yellowish parchment that he convinces himself he hasn’t imagined Carlos reaching out to him on his own accord, not because he needed anything from Andrey, but precisely the opposite. Because all Carlos wants is to see Andrey and spend time with him.

He runs his hand over his treacherously wet eyes. Why couldn’t I be in love with Carlos instead, he thinks uselessly and allows himself a moment of fantasising about what that would be like. Surely much easier on his nerves.

“Are you reading?” Sascha mumbles sleepily from his side, his eyes puffy slits, barely awake, yet his tone still manages to convey his incredulous suspicion, and Andrey immediately remembers that he can’t possibly love anyone more than he does this ridiculous man laying beside him.

He snorts. “Relax, it’s not a book.”

Sascha closes his eyes again. “Okay. Thought I was having a bizarre dream for a moment with you voluntarily reading something.”

“Haha,” Andrey snorts and waits for Sascha to draw back and move away from him like he always does when he wakes. They cuddle while they sleep, sure, but the activity always fades on the precipice of the waking world — the two of them getting up and never ever mentioning it once.

Sascha doesn’t. He stays blissfully put, his head falling back onto Andrey’s shoulder. Andrey freezes and barely remembers to breathe lest he spook Sascha into realising what they are actually doing.

Which is cuddling. In bed. Like an actual couple.

“Is that from Medvedev?” Sascha mumbles without opening his eyes.

“No,” Andrey swallows. “It’s from Carlos. He wants us to play.”

Sascha lazily opens one eye, the translucent blue orb observing Andrey’s face with uncanny attention.

“That’s nice,” he says simply. “Can I play, too?”

It’s such an open vulnerable question that Andrey’s heart swells a bit. “Sure, you could be the referee.”

“Sod off,” Sascha sniffs. “I’m confident I can still beat your arse if we both play Seekers.”

“Which would be a surprise to no one, because I was a Beater,” Andrey reminds him. “Try handling a Quaffle, you blond tosser, and we’ll see who beats who.”

“Whom,” Sascha’s eyes are closed again, but if they were open, he’d surely be rolling them. “Jannik coming too, then?”

“Yeah,” Andrey caresses the parchment again. “I’ll ask Dania, too.”

If Sascha has any objections to that, he is smart enough to keep them to himself. Andrey holds back a grin.

“Ask Stef, too, while you’re at it, if we’re getting the old gang back together,” Sascha says and turns to lay on his back. “He’s probably forgotten what a Snitch looks like at this rate. But do get them all to play before Sunday, cause he’s not gonna be making it afterwards.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Andrey says and brushes the familiar nausea aside. “I’ll write Carlos a reply.”

Sascha has abandoned all pretence of trying to get back to sleep. He is looking at Andrey with a soft look, now, the one that makes Andrey’s knees go weak.

“Are you gonna be alright? Flying?”

“I think so,” Andrey says honestly. “It’s just a friendly match, and I’ve already flown, what, four times this year?”

“Yes, you’re a right Djokovic,” Sascha snorts and they fall silent for a while. Sascha looks up to the ceiling and Andrey busies himself with rereading Carlos’ letter yet again, chasing that warm tingly feeling he got when he first looked at the loopy letters.

“Can you believe that Carlos never took the Apparition test?” He cracks up, sharing this wonderful piece of gossip. “He apparently uses Jannik as his personal means of transportation.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me,” Sascha mutters and finally breaks eye contact with the ceiling. “Andrey.”

Andrey calms his rapidly increasing heart beat. Not that tone, again, Merlin.

Sascha’s body is a heater next to him, making Andrey sweat in all the wrong places. Sascha pierces him with his blue-eyed stare. “You are not going back to Quidditch, are you?”

Andrey bristles. “I literally just said I was gonna play!”

“You understood me,” Sascha says. “You’re not going back to your career.”

It’s not a question, but Andrey wouldn’t know what to say even if it was one. As it is, he takes over Sascha’s staring contest with the ceiling and resolutely does not look at his friend.

“You really like the shop, don’t you?” Sascha says in a strangely awed voice, and he winces. “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing!” Sascha exclaims, leaning up on his elbows to stare at Andrey full-on. “Merlin, Andrey, more power to you! Congratulations, you’ve found something to enjoy outside of the sport, which is more than I can say about most of those guys!”

Andrey looks away. He feels rather like a fraud. Even more horrifying, he suddenly feels like crying.

“I’m not supposed to be a quitter,” he says through the lump in his throat. “You are not quitting Quidditch, are you?”

“And since when am I an example for anyone to follow?” Sascha purses his lips. “What does it matter if I quit or not? You do you. If working at Weasley’s shop gets you all hot and bothered, fuck Quidditch!”

“Fuck Quidditch?” Andrey repeats in a weak attempt at a joke, “This is blasphemy.”

“Andrey,” Sascha says, stubbornly refusing to be distracted from the topic at hand. “You don’t owe anyone anything. The only person you owe is you.”

“Why are you being so… rational?” Andrey sighs. “And why can’t you be this rational in regards to your own life?”

Sascha throws the blanket off and makes to get up. “It’s different.”

“How?” Andrey leaps across the mattress and grabs his arm. Sascha freezes. “What is different?”

“I’m not you,” Sascha says with a note of irritation, signalling for Andrey to drop it. “The same rules don’t apply.”

“Why?” Andrey demands, squeezing his arm even harder. “What idiotic reason do you have to not follow your own fucking advice? Because you’re so different to me? Because you don’t deserve to be happy?”

“I don’t even know what happy means, Andrey!” Sascha bellows.

“Well neither do I!” Andrey yells. It seems to him absolutely vital to get his point through Sascha’s thick scull, like it was suddenly a life or death situation. “So I suppose we’ll have to figure it out together! And we’re gonna start doing that by playing the stupid match with Carlos, alright?”

Sascha stares at him with huge eyes, apparently shocked by the sudden yelling.

“I’ll make you fucking happy if it is the last thing I do, you absolute twat!” Andrey vows in a ringing tone. “Just you fucking see.”

The corner of Sascha’s mouth twitches. Just like that, the tension is gone between them.

“Aren’t you supposed to get down on one knee when you give out promises like that?” Sascha says in a voice that is surprisingly soft. His eyes are soft, too, and Andrey has to momentarily look away.

“Haha,” he sniffs and finally lets go of Sascha’s arm. He gets up. “It’s your turn to make the bed, by the way.”

“Ah, I see,” Sascha says with an amused snort and with those same damn soft eyes, “We’re already married.”

+++

“Nice coffee,” says Stefanos.

They’re sharing a table at a small, crowded pavement café just off Tottenham Court Road. It’s the sort of neat and polished environment in which Dania imagines Stefanos would feel most comfortable if he were a Muggle, peopled with impeccably well-groomed and hopelessly tranquille customers: tidy clean-shaven men sipping espresso and checking their mobiles, sleek businesswomen click-clacking down the pavement in sky-high designer pumps.

“I thought you’d like it here,” Dania snorts.

“You thought wrong,” Stefanos announces with a smirk. “I said I liked the coffee, not the place. Of all coffee houses in London, this is where you take me?”

“Hey!” Dania protests, gaping. “This is about the most high-end place I could find, a Pureblood like you should—”

Stefanos clicks his tongue. “What did I tell you about making assumptions?”

Dania shuts his mouth with a snap. He both hates it and craves the instances where Stefanos brings up their last year of Hogwarts.

“Fine,” he sighs. “You choose the bloody café next time, since I apparently can’t find a place up to your impossible standards.”

The worst thing is, Dania hasn’t even decided to take Stefanos out on a whim. No, it’s been a carefully thought through decision, a couple weeks in the making. Stefanos has helped him in more ways than Dania could possibly count, but he’s just grown so tired of this constant neediness of Stefanos’ help, of always being the one in need of fixing. For weeks now, it’s been all about Dania’s failing magic, Dania’s shitty memories, Dania’s mental issues, Dania’s failed relationships, Dania, Dania, Dania.

And all he wants is to just spend some time with Stefanos and not talk about himself once.

“I only really wanted some fish and chips,” Stefanos says placatingly. “You know a good place that would have it?”

“Sure,” Dania says morosely. “Only any London pub ever.”

“Good,” Stefanos gets up. “Take me to any London pub, then.”

They go outside where starts Stefanos fumbling with his Muggle money and trying to make conversion into how many Galleons he owns Dania for the coffee.

“Believe it or not, I can actually afford to buy you a coffee,” Dania scowls, “besides, are you serious? Galleons? It’d be a few Knuts at most.”

Stefanos glances up at him with a surprised look, as if he never expected Dania to have the common decency of taking a friend out for a bloody coffee. Dania’s scowl deepens.

“Thanks! Fish and chips will be on me, then!”

“No,” Dania says patiently as they turn to Tottenham Street and Stefanos stares at the very first pub they come across. “It will be on me, because I invited you. Pureblood or not, have you never heard of etiquette?”

Stefanos rolls his eyes, but his mouth is smiling. He stuffs his Muggle Pounds into his jean pocket.

“Learning etiquette is more of a Slytherin thing, don’t you agree?”

“I don’t,” Dania snorts. “Because it’s a basic decency thing.”

“I like this one,” Stefanos points to some fancy-looking pub, called appropriately ‘The Prestige.’ “Let’s go there.”

“Sure, if you’d rather have a shitty overpriced meal aimed at clueless tourists.”

Stefanos gives him an amused glance. “I had no idea you were such a snob.”

He sounds impressed, so Dania tries to not take offence. “I know a right place, but it’s quite a distance. Can you Apparate with me?”

“No,” Stefanos arches an eyebrow and looks at Dania like he was a right idiot. “I’ve never been there before, how could I Apparate there?”

“Right,” Dania mumbles and feels embarrassed. He thinks about catching a taxi instead, when Stefanos adds:

“Why don’t you Apparate us both?”

He winces. Not even half an hour into this sunny afternoon outing, and they’re already back to Dania’s issues.

“I haven’t Apparated in…” he counts in his head and the calculation shocks him like a defibrillator. “Jesus. In more than half a year.”

“Jesus,” Stefanos repeats with a brilliant smile. For a moment, Dania forgets all about his Apparition-related woes, looking at the brightness of Stefanos’ teeth. “Good to see you’re back to your original jargon.”

Dania’s been particularly ashamed of growing up Muggle for so many years now, and yet his distaste for Muggle language has taken on a life of its own, becoming an entity separate from causation, a thing that simply is. Many things in his life are of that nature, he has realised on one pained, sleepless night a few weeks back. There were ample reasons for them in the first place, but those reasons have grown detached and distant, and yet the habits persist.

But Stefanos is smiling at him with such unabashed joy that Dania would gladly use Muggle jargon exclusively for the rest of his life, if it were to keep Stefanos smiling at him like that.

His own mouth curls up, unable to stop in the face of Stefanos’ cheer, in the same way a mirror cannot help reflecting the sunlight.

“Aren’t you afraid I’m gonna splinch us?”

“I’m not,” Stefanos keeps smiling. He takes a step and grabs Dania’s hand, his fingers warm. “There’s a suitable back alley over there, no one should notice us.”

He drags Dania sideways and Dania goes after him pliantly, like he had no will of his own. Stefanos stops at a dark dead-end behind another restaurant and turns to look at him expectantly. His fingers are still squeezing Dania’s hand.

“Come on, you can do it,” Stefanos says reassuringly. “This is exactly what we’ve been working for.”

Dania tries to collect himself. This is something he could do without even thinking, he reminds himself, an activity as basic as washing his hands or brushing his teeth.

“Don’t overthink it,” Stefanos chides him, watching Dania’s face closely. “Just do it.”

Dania closes his eyes and turns on his heel.

The world snaps and convulses and comes down on him from all sides.

The next moment, he’s falling to his knees, feeling about ready to puke the overpriced coffee he’s just had.

“Merlin, Dania, you did it!” He hears Stefanos exclaim though brown noise in his ears. Stefanos is holding him up straight with all of his might, seeing as Dania has completely collapsed against him, unused to the sensations Apparition involves. “I knew you would!”

It might be the rush of triumph to his head or the way Stefanos is grinning at him with pure joy, like Dania’s success was his own, or the way the rare London sunlight paints his eyes golden-green.

Dania kisses him.

It lasts but a moment. Stefanos stands there with his smile frozen on his face as Dania’s lips press briefly against his before Dania’s brain comes back online and he stumbles away.

“Christ,” the horrible embarrassment is akin to that of the DADA class, upon seeing his first ever Patronus. His heart is hammering away in his ribcage, ready to explode out of him, and Stefanos just stares.

There’s a loud clinking noise, and Dania belatedly realises his magic is surging up again, uncontrollable, making the rubbish bins around them shake and jiggle. Stefanos finally comes back to his senses.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he says quietly but urgently and reaches a hand to grab Dania’s shoulder. “You haven’t done anything wrong, don’t panic, please!”

Dania closes his eyes and makes an effort to clear his mind. His lips are burning where they touched Stefanos’ a moment ago.

“Good, good,” Stefanos breathes out. “It’s okay, you are okay.”

Gradually, the noise stops. Dania makes himself open his eyes and drag them over to Stefanos.

“Right,” he says, his hands still shaking with residue magic. “Okay. Well. I’m going to go throw myself into traffic now.”

Stefanos squeezes his shoulder even more. He is smiling, but his eyes are sad.

“Dania, I need to te—”

“Let’s go get those fish and chips, yeah?” Dania cuts in, because the idea of hearing Stefanos reject him is about to send him spiralling again. He is sure Stefanos would be very, very gentle about it, let him down softly and apologetically, like it was all his and not Dania’s fault. Which is even worse.

Dania would much rather Stefanos yell and scream and get offended. Maybe insult him and throw a punch to his face for good measure. Anything but this patronising niceness.

And fuck Stefanos anyway for his stupid false insinuations, you didn’t blow your chances, Dania, what-the-fuck-ever. Fuck Stefanos and his fucking mixed signals, Dania is not a bloody mind reader! And either way, it was just a moment of bloody hormones shooting to his head that resulted in poor impulse control.

“Okay,” Stefanos says quietly. He sounds both resigned and relieved, and Dania is seething.

And that’s Dania’s good mood effectively zapped. He turns and makes his way resolutely out of the darkish alley he’s Apparated them to, without waiting for Stefanos to follow.

+++

The noise from Andrey’s sitting room is momentarily overwhelming. It’s been a minute since Dania had so many people around him simultaneously, and he’s only expected a couple of guys. But it seems that Andrey’s friendly Quidditch match has grown way out of proportion.

There’s Carlos yapping away happily to Jannik on the sofa, Casper Ruud by the coffee table, holding warily a Slippery Nipple like it was at risk of exploding, Karen laughing loudly at something Zverev is saying to him over by the glass doors, Frances Tiafoe clinking his bottle of Butterbeer with Sasha Bublik. Stefanos conversing in low animated tones with Andrey in the corner.

Dania grips his broom tightly and calms himself. He has been invited here, he tells himself again and again. Andrey wants him here. Dania deserves to be here.

“Hey, man!” Carlos is the first to spot him. His wand erupts a fountain of sparkles seemingly from his over-excitement, and Jannik carefully leans away. “Oh, shit, sorry!” He puts his wand away and hurries to shake Dania’s hand.

“Hey, man,” Dania smiles at him. “How’s that Apparition exam going?”

Carlos flushes a tiny bit. “How do you even— never mind. Next Sunday. Wish me luck.”

“You don’t need it,” Jannik says evenly, getting up after him. “You’ll probably Apparate straight to Cincinnati on your first try.”

“You were executing a perfect Wronski feint at twelve years of age, Carlos,” Dania tells him with a smirk. “Frankly, it’s a shock you haven’t gotten your license for something so much simpler yet.”

“Ah, thanks, guys,” Carlos says modestly, as if he was some common mediocre wizard and not the youngest ever international Quidditch superstar. “I’ll try my best.”

“Daniil,” Jannik smiles, shaking his hand as well. “You coming back to the League soon?”

“Yep,” Dania says curtly, though he has no clue as to when his prolonged sabbatical is supposed to end, or rather, when Dania is going to be ready to end it. He is not about to say any of that, though.

“Med!” Frances spots him and almost spits out his Butterbeer like they do in American movies. “Ready to even our score yet?”

“You wish,” Dania smirks, “Last time I checked I was 5-0 against you. No amount of playing today is gonna fix that.”

“Asshole,” Frances says cheerfully, as if ‘asshole’ was a compliment. “Yeah, I’ve been losing to some fucking Squibs all year—”

“Foe!” Casper looks up from his careful Slippery Nipple examination, scandalised. “Stop calling people Squibs, Merlin’s balls! Besides, it’s not even like anyone needs to possess any magic in order to beat you.”

Frances flips him off, and Sasha laughs.

“Am I included in your Squib count, then?” Zverev says with an obnoxious smirk. “7-0 against you, Foe, and I haven’t even made a comeback yet.”

“Fuck off,” Frances downs the rest of his bottle. “Come on, motherfuckers, stop yapping and let’s go fly like real wizards do.”

“As opposed to what, Muggles?” Dania snorts, and everyone laughs. Distantly, Dania catches Stefanos’ eyes watching him from his corner, his face inscrutable. Dania stubbornly doesn’t catch his eye.

“Honestly, mate, I won’t be surprised if a Muggle beats you,” Sasha tells him lightly. “You haven’t exactly been the force to be reconned with this season.”

“Excuse me, I’ve won the National Cup!” Dania sputters.

“Yeah, maybe,” Sasha says carelessly, as if that wasn’t a big deal in his books. “You only show up for huge tournaments. In the smaller ones, you’ve been meek and tame, letting the likes of Gaston get to the Snitch before you.”

Dania is pleasantly surprised to find that all this trash talk is positively firing him up, getting straight to his head. He feels a rush of fierce competitiveness, the likes of which used to make him train for hours on end and vow to get to the very top of the sport. He enjoys the feeling.

“Save it for the Quidditch pitch, you guys,” Andrey grins. He makes his way over to Dania and hugs him just like he used to. For a second, Dania feels like none of it matters, not Quidditch and not anyone here riling each other up, but for his oldest friend giving him a bout of physical affection. Andrey draws back after the hug, but his arm stays wrapped loosely around Dania’s midsection, burning pleasantly. “Alright, lads, wands over here!”

“Ah come on, now!” Sasha whines as everyone else expresses their displeasure. “We are not fucking five, Andrey!”

“My pitch, my rules,” Andrey declares and folds his arms against his chest. “As if I don’t know what you guys are like. I’m not gonna risk a trip to St. Mungo’s because one of you infantile tossers couldn’t take a loss like an adult.”

“Says the most adult wizard here,” Frances says with heavy sarcasm. “Remind me, how many brooms have you smashed in your career?”

“This is why I’m also giving up my wand,” Andrey declares.

“Too bad you can’t give up your broom, too,” Zverev says, handing Andrey his wand. “You know, for the broom’s sake.”

“Like you’re one to talk!”

“I haven’t broken a broom in two years!”

“Not exactly the achievement you want to brag about,” Andrey tells him, “Considering you haven’t played in a year.”

Reluctantly, the rest of the guys hand over their wands to Andrey, who puts them in a charmed box for safekeeping. Stefanos is the last one to do so, giving up his wand with the look of defeat on his face, as if signing himself up for a gun fight with only a knife at his disposal.

“Are you alright?” Dania asks him awkwardly, hanging back as everyone else makes their way outside.

Stefanos blinks at him, seemingly distracted. He looks ill at ease — or maybe just ill, now that Dania’s really looking at him up close. His eyes have an unhealthy shine to them and he seems to have lost some weight, again.

“Yes, yes,” Stefanos says blankly. “I’m fine.”

Which is strange, because Stefanos has never been the strong, masculine type that treats blood-gushing wounds like paper-cuts or stoically suffers through an illness. No, Stefanos has always been the whiny, hypochondriac type, throwing a fit when the seventh year in Hogwarts got an outbreak of Dragon Pox and treating each of his small bruises after a game of Quidditch like they would be the end of him. It is odd now, watching Stefanos brush whatever his malady is aside like it’s nothing, not when it’s obviously a recurring thing. He was just like this last month, too, right before Dania said all those monstrous things to him.

“Listen, about what happened last time—” Stefanos starts, but Dania will not hear it.

“Let’s just play, yeah?” He says, rushing ahead so he doesn’t have to feel Stefanos’ warmth seeping through the layers of Dania’s Quidditch form. “Please? We can talk about it later.”

“I won’t be… available later,” Stefanos winces, catching up to him.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll be gone for a few days, starting tomorrow,” Stefanos says vaguely. “I have some things to take care of.”

“What things?”

Stefanos sighs. “I’d have told you if you let me speak the last time,” he says with a distinct note of irritation. “Now is not the time or place for this conversation, though.”

“Fine, then, we’ll talk when you are back,” Dania says, feeling awkward and disappointed, not an unfamiliar combination for him these days.

Stefanos is tired because he is a hard worker, Dania thinks, which is nothing out of the ordinary. Stefanos has always worked ludicrous hours, taking some sort of grim pride in being the first to arrive to class and the last to leave the library every night. Dania would assume that he catches up on sleep between his job at Olivander’s and his Dania-sessions, though it’s not inconceivable that he has trained himself out of the need for rest entirely and survives solely on willpower and stubbornness.

What is out of the ordinary is the look on Stefanos’ face as he squints down at the brooms in Andrey’s shed laid open in front of him.

And Dania knows that, for all of his neatly-pressed robes and carefully styled curls, Stefanos is not immune to the wear and tear of everyday life, particularly when that everyday life includes the occasional dealing with so many people. Over the course of their acquaintance, Dania has seen Stefanos in varying states of disarray: rumpled and dirty after a grinding Quidditch match, exhausted and angry after a screaming session with his overbearing father, half-dead and covered in arterial blood in the photos of Hogwarts’ hospital wing right after the Battle. He also remembers the dull horror in Stefanos’ eyes the first time Dania saw him after the Battle, his drawn face and hair-trigger temper in the weeks after the Quidditch Leagues resumed, but he has never seen anything that compares to the pinched, miserable exhaustion that seems to have settled heavily over Stefanos’ whole body, slumping his shoulders and carving stark lines in his face.

“I’m sorry,” Dania feels the need to say, and Stefanos looks up at him drowsily. “I promise we’ll talk whenever you are comfortable. Let’s just try and have a good time, now, alright?”

He puts a hand on Stefanos’ shoulder for good measure, and Stefanos seems oddly grateful for the gesture. Instantly, his face clears, smoothes out into an expression of such naked relief that Dania feels almost embarrassed, as though he’s walked in on something unspeakably private. Stefanos doesn’t say anything back, only picks a broomstick seemingly at random, and together, they walk to Andrey’s Quidditch pitch in a much more comfortable silence.

+++

“So I heard you kissed Stefanos,” says Andrey in a worryingly cheerful voice the minute they are out of anyone’s earshot. “Was it everything you’d dreamed of?”

“I didn’t – how did you even hear this?” Dania demands.

“I have my ways,” Andrey dismisses, with a calculated nonchalance he has almost certainly picked up from Zverev, the cheeky shit. “Let’s focus on the part where you made out with Stef.”

“I did not make out with Stef,” Dania says. “I kissed him when we were in Muggle London. Once. Full stop.”

Around them, the guys are hurrying to get their wands back, sweaty and rumpled and happy with the match. By the window, Zverev is monitoring the two of them, like he was Andrey’s personal bodyguard.

“And?” Andrey demands, his eyes shining with excitement. It’s a been a long while since he saw Andrey this cheerful, but then, it’s been a long time since he say Andrey, period. “Did you enjoy it? Did you talk about it? Are you guys together now? Tell me!”

“I’m not gonna discuss this in a room full of fifteen players, Andrey,” Dania says and gratefully takes the Butterbeer Frances passes out to him.

“Well then,” Andrey says, all toothy white grin, “how about you come by on Monday? You can tell me all about it then!”

“I’m not gonna discuss this in the same house with Zverev, either,” Dania scowls.

“Oh Sascha’s not gonna be here. He won’t be available til Tuesday,” Andrey says, and Dania almost drops his Butterbeer. The turn of phrase Andrey’s used is almost identical to that of Stefanos’ earlier. Which leads to the conclusion that—

“Is Zverev going somewhere with Stefanos?” Dania demands.

Andrey has that deer-in-headlights expression on his face that used to annoy Dania so much. “Um. Why do you ask?”

“Because Stefanos told me he’d also be ‘unavailable’ for a few days,” Dania says grimly. “So what is it? Where are they going? What’s going on?”

Andrey’s eyes turn sad. “Dania, it’s not for me to tell. You should really talk to Stefanos.”

“Well, he’s gone now, hasn’t he?” Dania snaps, bitter. Stefanos has barely hung around for a second after the match was over, bidding quick goodbyes to everyone and Disapparating away, looking ready to collapse from exhaustion. “What is he doing with Zverev and not—” me, he is about to say, but stops himself in time.

Unfortunately, Andrey seems to have heard it just fine either way. He gives Dania a sympathising look.

“Listen, I really don’t wanna gossip—”

“You don’t wanna gossip?” Dania snaps. “But gossip has been your bread and butter since bloody Hogwarts!”

“Fine, I don’t wanna gossip about this in particular,” Andrey amends with a roll of his eyes. “Merlin knows, there’s enough of it in the Quidditch circle, and if Stefanos hasn’t told you by now, I’m sure he’s had his reasons.”

“You talking about Tsitsipas?” Karen asks, inserting himself into the conversation. He turns to Andrey. “Good on you for inviting him. After what Kyrgios said at the party—”

“What did Kyrgios say?” Dania demands at the same time as Andrey hisses, “Not now!”

Karen looks lost. “Uh, I’m sorry, are we not supposed to talk about his—”

“Merlin, Karen, will you ever learn to shut up?” Andrey shakes his head, looking disproportionately distressed. “Please, mate. Let Dania talk to Stefanos himself first, yeah?”

“What is it that everybody apparently knows but me?” Dania demands with a hint of desperation that he fails to mask away from his tone. The both of them exchange a hesitant glance, and Zverev by the window makes a motion, as if waiting for a moment to attack. “And Jesus Christ, get Zverev off my back, what is he — your guard dog?”

For some inexplicable reason, Andrey finds this very funny. “Don’t mind Sascha.” He shoots Zverev a look full of mysterious meaning, and after a moment Zverev sniffs and moves to the opposite side of the room. “And you would know more, Dania, if you bothered to show up at parties and Ministry galas. You can hardly be surprised to be out of the loop on the most recent gossip if you never indulge in it.”

“Fine,” Dania relents, stomping the bitter jealousy that has fired up at the thought of Stefanos and Zverev fucking off together to god knows where. Over to his right, there’s suddenly a large puff of smoke, accompanied by a sound of a mild explosion. Everyone turns to stare.

“Andrey!” Yells a suddenly materialised Zverev with his wand ready, looking Andrey over as if scanning for hidden injuries. Andrey looks disproportionately shaken.

“I’m fine,” Andrey mutters hoarsely, frowning at the smoke. “What the fuck?”

“Sorry!” Says Casper, emerging from the cloud. He seems appropriately embarrassed. “I tried a new spell, and I should’ve known better. It seems nothing is damaged, though. I’m really sorry, Andrey!”

“What spell?” Zverev demands with an obvious note of rage. There’s something wild and feral in his eyes.

“He tried turning water into rum,” Frances says with a barely concealed smirk.

“Are you serious?” Andrey says with a grin, and he no longer looks like a PTSD soldier about to have a fit. “Casper, mate, that’s like a first-year dummy spell. Surely you didn’t fall for it!”

Just like that, Zverev relaxes. Dania glares at him; he’s been hoping Zverev would snap and throw a tantrum, or maybe even attack someone thus making Stefanos immediately reconsider going anywhere with him. “I wasn’t the best at Transfiguration, as I’m sure most of you remember,” Casper says self-deprecatingly.

“How you can be top of the class in Charms and yet fail at the most basic transfiguration spells is beyond me,” says Sasha. “Same with Quidditch, mate — how on earth can you be a top Chaser yet can barely catch a Quaffle?”

“I’m a true paradox,” Casper smiles, while Jannik spells the smoke away with ruthless efficiency. Carlos watches him do it with a disproportionately awed expression on his face.

“I’m very bad at household spells,” his eyes follow Jannik’s wand movements. “But you are so brilliant!”

“It’s a simple vanishing spell, Carlos,” Jannik says modestly.

“Can you, like, do magic at all besides playing Quidditch?” Sasha laughs, and Carlos flushes. “It’s a third-year spell, Carlitos. Surely you’d manage?”

“I was good at Herbology,” he offers with a face bright red. “I got an A or T for all the rest of my OWLs.”

“Thank Merlin you’re this good at Quidditch, then,” says Zverev. “I’d be murdered on the spot if I showed up home with anything less than an Outstanding for all of my OWLs.”

“You obviously survived getting a Troll for Potions, though,” Dania reminds him, and Zverev scowls at him.

“Still did loads better than you in Transfiguration,” Zverev recovers quickly enough to smirk at him.

“And you wondered why I wanted everyone’s wands,” Andrey says to Sasha Bublik, shaking his head like a disappointed parent. “Five minutes after the match, and it’s already a dick measuring contest.”

“Well, I personally have no clue what any of these grades even mean,” says Frances good-humouredly, “because over at the US we have a far superior grading system.”

And that starts a proper debate on the merits of Hogwarts’ educational system and how well Quidditch has been integrated in it. Gradually, Dania relaxes listening to them argue about grading and exams and care for magical creatures.

He catches Andrey’s eye. “Thank you for inviting me here,” he says honestly and is pleased to see Andrey smile up at him. “I mean it, Andrey.”

“No problem. But you do owe me all the glorious Stef-kissing details for it, mate.”

“Sure,” Dania drawls, resigned. “As soon as I make even a little bit of sense of it myself.”

+++

Andrey watches Sascha through the glass doors as he drinks his coffee. He sees Sascha sniff the little bush of wild flowers under the old oak tree, then raise his hind leg.

“Are you fucking serious?” He demands when Sascha steps back inside in his human body. “Did you seriously just take a piss on the tree?”

“What’s wrong with pissing on a tree?” Sascha wonders, unperturbed. “It was a long way to the loo upstairs.”

“You’re fucking disgusting,” Andrey proclaims and he can’t decide whether he is more amused or outraged on behalf of the tree.

“It’s a simple joy in the life of a dog,” Sascha declares with a brilliant grin shot in Andrey’s direction. “To lick your own balls, to get scratched behind the ears and to mark a tree, among other things.”

“Mark a tree,” Andrey repeats, and okay, he is definitely more amused. “As in, is that your tree now? Have you claimed ownership against, I don’t know, the garden gnomes?”

“The gnomes know better than to approach my tree,” Sascha says very seriously, but his hand is shaking ever so slightly.

Andrey stares at him. “I’m glad to see you spend your time on truly important things.”

Sascha grins and shakes his head like a wet dog.

“Merlin, you really are turning into a dog,” Andrey comments, snorting. “Will I have to put a leash on you soon when you’re being a bad boy?”

He’s expecting some witty comeback to that, but Sascha shoots him an incredulous wide-eyed look instead and turns immediately red in the face.

Andrey reexamines what he’s just said and nearly spits his coffee. Merlin, he really does need to keep his perverted mind in check. Sascha is fussing around with his wand, his neck and face flushing a bright shade of red, and Andrey wants to Disapparate on the spot from embarrassment alone.

“Uh, I’ve made coffee,” he says just to divert the topic to anything at all but the sexual innuendo he’s inadvertently made. “Have some.”

Sascha flips his wand, presumably to summon the coffee pot, but instead sends it flying to the floor, spilling coffee, ugh, everywhere.

“Sorry, sorry,” he tries to spell it away, but the coffee’s not going anywhere. In fact, it now looks positively cemented on the tiled floor now. “Uh, any help, Andrey, please?”

“Have you turned into Carlos?” Andrey grumbles and spells the coffee away with one flick of his wand.

He is increasingly distracted by a nagging sense of wrongness in the way Sascha is behaving. There is nothing he can pin down, nothing he can point to as concrete evidence of something amiss. On the surface, Sascha is as perfectly composed as he typically is in the mornings after his doggy runs, from the carefully straight back to the blonde hair combed neatly in a little ponytail. But there’s something off in his steady gaze, in the familiar self-deprecating tilt of his lips — some nearly imperceptible quirk skittering along the edges of Andrey’s awareness, like the dissonance of a Polyjuice gone wrong.

“Sascha,” he says firmly, “What the hell is up with you?”

He expects Sascha to claim ignorance, lie his way out to get Andrey off his back, but is disconcertingly proven wrong.

“It’s tonight,” he says flatly, and his voice has a barely-there tremble at the base of it.

“What’s tonight?”

Sascha swallows audibly. “The thing I’ve been trying to do. With Harry and Hermione,” he shoots Andrey a fleeting look. “We are doing it tonight.”

“Doing what?” Andrey demands, immediately agitated, even more than Sascha seems to be.

“I’ll tell you tonight,” Sascha promises with unexpected earnestness. Andrey might have lost all dignity, what with crying in Sascha’s shoulder at nights and begging him for cuddles, but at least he's reached the lowest of lows and it can only go up from here, he decides, and at least they both seem to have made some progress. “When I’m back. If everything goes well, I’ll tell you all about it.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

Sascha gives him a transparently vulnerable look. “I’ll tell you anyway.”

Andrey deflates. He takes a moment to compose himself, then says, “We’re going for lunch.”

Sascha looks up, plainly startled. The skin under his eyes is dark and swollen, like he’s taken a punch or ten. “What? Why?”

“Because that is what humans do, or have you spent too much time indulging in the “simple joys in the life of dog?”” Andrey says sarcastically. “They eat, sometimes multiple times a day. I’m sure you’ve observed this peculiar human behaviour.”

Sascha’s eyes narrow in exasperation. For a moment, he looks like himself, amused and mildly annoyed; Andrey is oddly cheered by the sight. “I’m not hungry.”

“Tough luck,” Andrey says. “I am. So we’re going. Besides, you still haven’t told me all the latest on the Stefanos-Dania affair.”

“There is no affair,” Sascha huffs, “and I haven’t got the latest. We have been otherwise occupied as I’m sure you can imagine, but I’ll make sure to ask Stef all about his personal drama for the sake of your entertainment the next time he’s going through indescribable pain.”

“Please do,” Andrey smirks. He grabs his muggle jacket because he feels like going to Muggle London this afternoon. He’s heard of a café that has dogs inside for the customers to pet, and he’s been meaning to take Sascha there just to see how they’d react.

Before they step outside, he stops Sascha with a hand on his arm.

“Can you at least promise me,” he says, “that whatever it is you’re planning tonight, you won’t do anything stupid?”

“Of course I’m not,” Sascha snorts. “I’m not you.”

+++

It’s cold and damp outside, smog almost visible in the air — exactly the sort of shit weather Dania always forces himself to remember when he’s struck by the odd pang of nostalgia for the country of his birth.

Thankfully, Stefanos’ place turns out to be a short walk from his own flat, pretty much just around the corner.

“Is this the best you could find after more than a month of searching?” Dania whistles, looking the place over. It’s dark and damp and smelly and uncompromisingly shitty, and not a place deserving of Stefanos by no stretch of the imagination, no matter how much money he’s allegedly wasted.

“It’s alright, I don’t need a huge flat,” Stefanos says with a small smile. He looks better than he did at the Quidditch match over at Andrey’s but the exhaustion is still visible in the tired lines at his mouth and the tight skin around his eyes. “Stay clear of the wardrobe, though, there’s a nasty Boggart there.”

“Jesus, Stef,” Dania looks around uneasily. There are some sort of weird paintings lining the murky walls and a Wizarding lunar calendar stuck to the lavatory door. “Surely you could afford better than some Boggart-infested shithole that barely has any sunlight!”

“I’ve been saving up,” Stefanos tells him, “So I had to cut down on my rent spendings. But it’s gonna be alright, Ollivander’s paying me well enough.”

“Saving up on what?”

“A really expensive Potion I’ve been meaning to try,” Stefanos says with a suddenly anxious glance at Dania. “Anyway. Let’s go, I’ve told Garrick to expect us before lunch.”

“We going by Floo?”

“Oh no, there is no Floo here,” Stefanos says regretfully. “Flats with a fireplace go by twice as much. It’s okay, though!” He insists when he sees Dania about to protest. “I am a wizard, I can Apparate perfectly well.”

“Fine, Apparate us away, then,” Dania says and grabs his hand. Stefanos flinches, looking up at him with a dazed, awed expression that makes Dania uncomfortable because Stefanos has no business looking like this, not after he’s been awkward and distant to Dania ever since that damned kiss.

Stefanos blinks, clearing his expression, and takes Dania across London.

“Welcome, welcome,” the shrivelled old man — presumably Ollivander — says, when they arrive neatly by his shop. Dania has passed it numerous times in the course of his life in Britain — it’s virtually impossible to miss Ollivander’s if you ever visit Diagon Alley, same as trying to ignore Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, but Dania has never actually been inside. He’s never thought he had a reason to.

“Mr Medvedev, I presume?” Ollivander confirms, and when Dania smiles stiffly, nods and heads to the back of the shop. “Stefanos, if you please?”

Stefanos hurries after him, leaving Dania alone among endless rows of wand boxes, stretching out as far as his eye can see.

For a moment, he feels a lurching sense of anxiety. What if this doesn’t work? What if they can never find him a suitable wand? What if it’s all too late and Dania is destined to be stuck with a wand that doesn’t work for him? Worse yet, what if it they do find a wand but nothing still changes? What then? Will Dania just have to accept he simply is a subpar wizard at best, never mind his school grades? Will Stefanos be ashamed of him in that case? Will Dania?

He imagines an hours-long process of trying different wands, losing hope with each unsuccessful one, and the thought gives him an unpleasant jolt of dread. To busy himself, he takes his current wand out and carefully examines it, though this proves boring very fast. He has no idea what he is supposed to be looking at besides a basic piece of wood with a carved handle. He is not Stefanos.

“Alright, let’s start with these,” Stefanos says, coming back after only five minutes, when Dania has already resigned himself to waiting for much longer. He hands Dania the first narrow box, and Dania opens it carefully.

The wand inside is black and long, much longer and slimmer than his. The handle carving is exquisite, a work of art on its own. Dania almost feels too plain and undeserving to even hold such a wand.

“Wine wood and Dragon heartstring,” Stefanos tells him so excitedly it’s like they are picking out a new wand for him. “I chose this one specifically, because Dragon heartstring should really fit your character well, and the wine wood should ground your magical aura a bit.”

“Okay,” Dania says slowly and takes the wand.

He halts in his tracks, causing Stefanos to run into him with an oomph. He should probably apologise but he can’t even speak. The immediate sensation is mind blowing. It is just… the world is so beautiful. He feels connected to it in a way he’s never noticed before. It’s subtle, so subtle that the awareness will probably fade to the background after a while, but it is real, that feeling that the tree leaves and the grass and the clouds in the sky are all somehow connected to him. He feels as if he only has to reach out with his magic and they will respond, as much an equal part of him as his heart and his lungs.

He wants to immediately test this heightened awareness by touching the blades of grass under his fingertips. In this moment, he knows intuitively that he can wield magic in ways he has never been able to before, even if he has no rational understanding of how. He feels powerful. And oddly enough, it feels nice, like he is covered by a warm blanket, like a hot steaming tea on a Christmas evening, like coming home.

“Jesus,” he lets out, watching the wand erupt a fountain of golden sparkles that linger in the air like tiny magical entities. He feels drunk, dizzy. He feels so in love.

“Really?” Stefanos wonders, mouth agape. If anything, he looks a tiny bit disappointed. “I picked so many wands out for you! I can’t believe it’s the first one we tried!”

“Protego!” Dania casts, and the shield that comes up is so powerful it shimmers. Stefanos reaches a hand up and touches it with slack fingers. “Lumos!” And the light that erupts out of the tip of his wand is blinding, like a projector flashing down on them. “Confringo!” A whole flock of birds fly up and circle under the high ceiling.

“It seems that we can safely put these back, Stefanos,” Ollivander says, nodding at the rest of the boxes in Stefanos’ hands. “You have done a wonderful job, picking this wand for Mr. Medvedev.”

“Thank you,” Stefanos says distractedly, his eyes never leaving Dania.

Over these past few months, standing next to Stefanos Tsitsipas, Dania has felt acutely that his own personality was an arid, static, unexciting thing, a land of treasure chests that had been robbed of all treasure. Once, the glint from it had shown through his carefully constructed sentences and a collection of Quidditch trophies on his shelf, and he'd believed that it made him different somehow from his friends, that it was the sort of thing that glimmered off reflective surfaces and hinted at an ill-defined more, that it was a new sort of special unique to Dania, that he would one day harness its power.

But the treasure had gone, if it had even been there in the first place, and without it, Dania was flat and uninteresting; a mere cliché, his face a murky copy off an old print.

Now, for the first time in years, he feels like himself. Like more that the sum of everything that he’s lost, of everything that has never been given to him.

He feels, stupidly, a surge of power he’s never experienced before.

“Thank you,” he laughs and feels the world around him tilt off its axis, laughing right along with him. “Thank you.”

Stefanos looks at him like Dania is the most remarkable thing he’s ever laid his eyes upon.

“That will be twelve Galleon,” Ollivander says, breaking the spell.

“That went way faster than I thought it would,” Stefanos comments as they step outside, Dania’s new wand clutched firmly in his hand. “I can’t believe you had to live with an unsuitable wand for more than a decade, Merlin.”

“It’s fine,” Dania smiles, still feeling drunk on his newfound magical power. “All that matters is that we’ve found each other in the end.”

He meets Stefanos’ eye and isn’t sure if he is even talking about the wand still.

Stefanos points to Fortescue’s across the street. “Ice cream, then? To celebrate?”

“Sure!” Dania grins and barely suppresses the urge to Apparate the few meters separating them from the shop. He feels like a teen who’s just turned seventeen and got allowed to use magic outside Hogwarts for the first time. “On me!”

“Okay,” Stefanos agrees magnanimously. “I want the Pumpkin & Cream one.”

“Pervert,” Dania shoots, but gets him his ice cream, ordering a simple but classic Tiramisu one for himself. They sit down, eating their ice cream unhurriedly in the late August breeze, as wizards and witches go around their day along the Diagon Alley, some of them stopping to stare, some brave —or annoying— enough to come up and ask Dania for an autograph.

“This part is what I don’t miss about being a Quidditch star,” Stefanos grins after the fifth kid has run off with a piece of parchment signed by Dania. When Dania only shrugs in response, he takes a deep breath and turns very somber.

His face is so open these days, when he’s not careful, every emotion spelled out with such undisguised intensity that Dania sometimes wants to throw a towel over him, or perhaps spell some common sense into him. He tenses.

“Can we talk about what happened in London the other day?” Stefanos finally says.

Dania puts his unfinished ice cream away. Suddenly he’s not that hungry anymore.

“What is there to talk about?” He sighs, wishing for a moment that they could go back to the way things were between them a couple of months ago, an arrangement that was both reasonably productive and tolerably civil. But then he watches the desperate vulnerability on Stefanos’ face and realises he’d never settle for less, even if it meant being humiliated daily by Stefanos rejecting him. “I kissed you, you weren’t that into it. My apologies.”

“Dania,” Stefanos says, and his name cracks on Stefanos’ lips. Stefanos leans closer, sending a paranoid look around as if what he was about to say was some MI6-level of secret intelligence. He takes a deep breath, like a diver about to go under. “I’m—“ his voice lowers to a croaky whisper. “I’m a werewolf.”

For a moment, Dania is sure he’s misheard.

“You’re a what?”

“You heard me,” Stefanos says very quietly, staring into his soul.

Dania’s brain freezes. “That’s not possible.”

“It is, I’m afraid,” Stefanos whispers. He looks painfully uncomfortable and more than a little scared. “The night of the Battle was the full moon. I was bitten by Fenrir Greyback.”

In all the time they’ve spent together in the last months, Dania has learnt lots of things about Stefanos. He knows how Stefanos takes his coffee and tea; knows that Stefanos likes Celestina Warbeck’s dreadful songs and loathes Twisted Sisters; that he still loves flying more than anything even after he quit professional Quidditch; that he used to wear glasses as a child but opted for the Occular Correction spell after losing them mid-Quidditch match.

They’ve talked about lots of things, like Stefanos travels and the crazy sights he’s seen in Mombasa and Taiwan, the way they hold their wands with the tip of their fingers in China and sit on the brooms differently in Philippines, the way his younger brother has never forgiven him from missing his wedding.

But never once has Stefanos mentioned this. That he has been turned into—

“Andrey told me how Russian society views werewolves,” Stefanos says in a desperately nervous voice. “So I can give you a minute to think about it, okay? It’s alright if you are— if you…”

He trails off uncertainly, obviously waiting for Dania to say something, but the only word that comes to his mind and refuses to leave is abomination.

His brain doesn’t seem to be working properly; he feels dazed, almost numb, like he’s been drugged or wrapped up in cotton wool – but unstable as well, thrumming with repressed energy. One false move and he might fly apart.

“So you’ve been this— this— thing,” Dania says with incredulous anger, “for two years now and you never told anybody?”

“Everybody knows, Dania,” Stefanos says in a frail little voice. “It’s why I couldn’t play Quidditch anymore. The AQP doesn’t allow players with lycanthropy to play, so I had to quit. And you know how these things travel, so most of the guys on tour know, too. But yes, I’m on the Ministry registry, so it’s not exactly a secret for those who know where to look.”

“Not a secret?” Dania repeats, fighting the rise of nausea to his throat. “So everybody else knows about this? Does Andrey? Does Zverev?”

“Sascha helps me through the full moon every month,” Stefanos explains softly. “Because I still can’t afford Wolfsbane at the moment, and he’s there to keep me… somewhat grounded.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dania breathes out, and can’t decide if he’s more angry at himself, at Stefanos or even at Zverev. It all neatly comes together now — Stefanos’ monthly illnesses, his irritability and fickle moods approaching each full moon, him saving up for some Potion, the dark feel of his magic, the fact that animals shy away from him, him and Zverev disappearing somewhere together—

“How can Zverev possibly keep you company?” he demands, his fists clenched. “What, is he not affected? You can’t bite him because he tastes like an arsehole — how?”

“He’s an Animagus,” Stefanos says. He turns progressively paler with each sentence. “When I spoke to Harry Potter about it,” he swallows loudly, “he told me about Lupin — you know, the former professor? He died at the Battle — and he was a werewolf, too, and his Animagi friends could spend the nights of the transformation with him in their animal forms. And Sascha got his license after Hogwarts, so…”

“So he was that dog I saw you with at a Quidditch pitch in Barcelona?”

“Yes,” Stefanos whispers. “And as soon as I can afford to buy monthly Wolfsbane, I can stop asking him to come with, because it’s still dangerous—”

“Yes,” Dania says distantly. He feels like he is watching the conversation from outside, a disinterested third party. “Yes. It is dangerous. You are a dangerous creature.”

“I…” Stefanos’ eyes search his face for something, but Dania has no idea what his face must look like at the moment. In retrospect, he’s been so fucking stupid, missing all these obvious clues. “Well, yes, I suppose you can say that. But—“ he looks at Dania with transparent hope. “Do you— I mean, how do you feel about my… my condition?”

Dania has no idea what he feels, beside stupid. He thinks back to Magical Moscow, the parts of Arbat where the shops had signs on the doors, prohibiting vampires and werewolves and the rest of the dangerous non-human lot from entering; he thinks of the fairy tales he grew up with in a Muggle world, warning children to sleep tight or else a big scary wolf would come and bite them; thinks of a ten-year-old Andrey and him fantasising about their future careers and wishing they would grow up to be Aurors, hunting trolls and werewolves and the likes.

He thinks of being younger and wishing, more than anything, to be respected. A well-respected member of the magical community. And he’s almost achieved it, too.

He will never be respectable if he hangs out with werewolves, though.

“I… I need to think about this,” he says finally and gets up. Stefanos looks so hurt and dejected that it almost makes him stop, but in a moment, he remembers to also feel betrayed by having been told last, almost like an afterthought.

He deliberately does not examine the way that Stefanos’ face has changed, his earlier easy expression shifting into something harder, both desperate and frail. Dania could dissect that face effortlessly, if he wanted to. With his newfound wand and the power that accompanies it, he feels he could take Stefanos apart, could read emotions and motivations into every fine line and twitch of muscle. He doesn’t, though. He walks away, without sparing Stefanos another glance as he goes, and he doesn’t think about that scared, miserable look on Stefanos’ face at all.

“I— I’ll see you,” he throws over his shoulder, drunk on his anger.

And then Dania does what Dania does best — he runs away.