No One
“I swear, Em, I can’t be late to class on my first day,” Evan grumbled at his phone. It was on speaker as he debated between two sweaters that were almost identical. But see, the key word was almost.
”Seems a bit hypocritical if you took a century to do your skincare, innit?” Emmeline did a tongue click. “Ah, look at that, just got a grey hair from waiting for you to pick an outfit, too. It’s almost time for your class, and you took the latest one possible. Think about it, Ev.”
”First of all, you’d look amazing with grey hair, so you’re welcome. Second of all, I’m a psychology major. I need to look like someone who could be some police officer’s therapist. Or whatever psych majors do.”
”Like Hannibal?”
”Have you watched Hannibal?”
A silence followed, and Evan was about to ask if Emmeline had lost her voice from all the karaoke singing she did. But no, she’d hung up. Evan chuckled to himself. They had so much in common, really.
Evan put on the forest green sweater instead of the olive green one, because his twin, Pandora had told him to choose between clothes based on the things they matched colours with. Evan hated olives, and forests seemed comforting to him, despite him never really spending much time in one. Forest green really was the only right option. He made sure his curls looked okay, grabbed his wallet and phone, and dashed out of his dorm as quickly as possible.
Barty had already decided that if he was going to pick a major neither of his parents approved of, he may as well pay attention to it. That was only for his mother’s sake. And Regulus’s. The poor boy had to spend his first date with his current boyfriend, James, sending Barty all the work he’d missed. That was why Regulus was Barty’s best friend. He would write school notes for you, fold them up into paper airplanes with a sweet smile, and make sure they landed directly in your eyes. It was a mystery how Barty wasn’t blind just yet. But all of that was in high school. Barty was willing to try a little harder this time. Not that he needed to. He passed all his classes in high school with flying colours, despite the fact that he barely even studied. The main thing Barty struggled with was the will to do things. It was all his father ever complained about. One time, the night before Barty left to stay with the Potters with Regulus, his father said, You have all this talent, all this intelligence, and you waste it, because you were always too weak to fail. A Crouch doesn’t float in the clouds just so they won’t fall on the ground.
He hated his father. He hated his father to a point he felt no one could understand. And yet, those words stuck with him. He didn’t want to do this for his father, necessarily. He didn’t really want to prove his father wrong (at least, not all the time). It was the pure sense his father had made, and how frustrating it felt. So, Barty had two choices; float in the clouds or walk, even with the fear of falling. He had chosen the latter. But the professor kept droning on about the frontal part of the brain and Barty started to feel that this was a waste of his time, which stressed him out to the point of no return. What if something bad was happening while he was here? What if he had to attend another funeral? So, he chose the former when he walked out of his lecture to tell Regulus about how boring Hogwarts University was and bumped into an angel.