Chapter 1
Will had fucked up. No. Scratch that. Will had majorly and royally fucked up. He had been a total of 3 weeks into the new school year at Hogwarts and he had already fucked up. Of course he had, he had the brilliant idea of mixing alcohol with his ever-growing feelings; paired that with his hormones, it had been a recipe for disaster.
***
THE NIGHT BEFORE
Will had every intention of staying at the library trying to learn everything he could about the creatures living in the forbidden forest, he really had. But everything changed when his best friend and prefect of Gryffindor, Beverly Katz, bribed him into going to, by her own description, a “gathering of attractive bachelors of Hogwarts”. Now, Will wouldn’t consider himself an attractive person and a ‘gathering’ of people sounded a lot like a party which didn’t appeal to him in the slightest. What, however, did appeal to him was the words “I’ve heard Hannibal Lecter is going to be there”. That was enough convincing to make him jump out of the chair he had been sitting on for the past god knows how long and sprint to get ready.
“Gotcha,” Beverly said with an all-knowing smirk, “I knew I could turn mister grumpy face into a party animal. If I had known all I needed was a foreign man with scarily sharp cheekbones to do it, I’d have brought Lecter from Durmstrang a long time ago.”
“Oh shut up, Bev. Isn’t it possible I’m just a great friend who’s been stuck in this library for hours and who desperately needs a distraction?”
With that, Beverly burst out laughing, stopping only to study Will’s expression for a second and pausing when she found him unamused to say “ oh you were being serious, that’s even funnier!” she said while laughing some more and playfully hitting Will on the chest, “Graham, you do crack me up sometimes”.
Getting a roll of eyes her way, she added “come on Will, you’re telling me if I hadn’t mentioned that he is going to be there that you’d willingly come with me instead of…” she took a look at all the books that were piled up on the table he had been sitting a couple of moments ago, “reading whatever it is that grabbed your attention?”
“Uh-huh…” the second he heard it he knew he couldn’t have sounded more unconvincing if he tried.
Doing a satisfied nod with her head, Beverly continued, “you either need to get over your absolutely obsessive crush on Lecter and stop pining over him or get the guts to actually go and talk to him. I’ve told you a billion times, there’s no way he’s fully straight, besides he always seems to be flirting with everyone…” she said getting a bit out of track, ”… my point is; what’s the worst that could happen?”
“First of all, I don’t have an obsessive crus—“ he said mocking her voice, “you know what? That doesn’t matter,” he said in a definitive tone before going back to it, “I don’t—“ he paused and took a deep breath, defeated, and cleared his mind “secondly, ‘the worst that could happen’ ” he said doing air quotations, “he could, you know, HEAR me?!” he said walking away to prove his point of indignation as he collected the books he had been reading to return them to the correct shelves, “and the fact that he flirts with everyone could mean he’s just overly polite?! I don’t know. Either way, what if by talking to me he just thinks I’m disgusting and not worthy of his politeness and time?! No. I much rather admire from afar, thank you very much. Expectation comes with disappointment, and since I have none, I’m good,” he said pausing as he placed the books on the shelves they belonged before panicking adding, “and before you say anything, no I don’t have an obsessive crush on him.”
“Come on, Will, stop being paranoid. Have you ever seen Lecter being anything but respectful and appropriate to anyone before? I mean come on, he acts like a proper gentleman and he is still a teenager, that shows character,” she said trying to cheer him up, “look… you know that new kid Heinrich?”
“Yeah actually, I heard about the incident in Hagrid’s class, what about him? Didn’t he disappear a couple of weeks ago?”
“He didn’t disappear, apparently his parents wanted him to go back to Durmstrang. Anyways, going back to the story, I heard that when he opened that book in class before Professor Hagrid showed the correct way to open it, after it attacked him it fell on the floor and ate a good portion of Lecter’s cloak and instead of shouting at him and causing a fuss, he helped him pick the book up and made sure Heinrich was okay. Apparently, when Heinrich was starting to be escorted to Madam Poppy’s, he even asked him which room he was living in and offered to assist him on the contents he would miss during the class.”
“So what? He was just being polite I doubt he actually went to his room…” he said trying his best not to sound jealous, his best apparently, was terrible because it earned him Beverly’s elbow getting shoved into his ribcage, “Ouch?!”.
“Ugh you dumbass, stop being a pining jealous brat for a second, will you? You’re missing the whole point. He could never be rude to you, it’s not in his nature. Even if you are a jackass and probably deserved some rudeness being shoved back your way, he wouldn’t do it. The worst that could happen is him not being interested in you in that way, but at least you would know it and you would be able to actually start moving on,” she said now gentler to him while putting an arm around his body as they walked out of the library, “you deserve someone who loves and treats you with respect, and if it’s not him, I know you will be disappointed, hell, so will I! I’m all for team LecterGraham, HannibalWill, Hannigram! But you would know at last, you have been pining over him since he got to Hogwarts last year, do you really want to do another year of this?”
Will knew she was right. God, he hated when she was right. Which, well… she was right most of the time, and god did that annoy him.
“I guess you’re right…” he said under his breath and quickly, hoping she would count that as a victory, but of course she didn’t.
“Sorry, Graham-Cracker, I didn’t quite hear you there,” she said smirking, “you have to speak up”.
“I said…” he said harshly but with no real heat behind his words, “that I guess you are right”.
“Atta boy!” she said smiling while playfully hitting him in the back and walking a bit in front of him, “I’m always right. Now, the Weasley twins found this hidden place and they have given Flinch a sleeping draft so that we could sneak out, I will send my owl to your room with the instructions on how to get there. Don’t forget to look nice for your man! I will see you at 9, Graham,” she said walking away.
When she left, Will realised what he had just agreed to and mentally cursed himself for being so stupid. Instead of pondering on it, and beating himself over, he walked back to Hufflepuff’s chambers and went to his room where he sat patiently waiting for Bev’s owl while stressing over how he should dress.
In the end, the choice was easy enough given that he only had his uniforms and a couple of sweaters he had packed prior to coming back to Hogwarts. However, he stared at 6 identical white buttons downs, convinced they differed in shades of white. He ended up choosing the less wrinkled one, moving on to the 3 ties laid on his bed, he stared at the yellow Hufflepuff’s design and before he convinced himself the lines were not straight enough on them, he chose one at random. Before he could start overthinking about which pants he would wear, he heard something tapping on his window and when he turned to look it was Beverly’s owl. Opening the window, Will went in to pet Isosceles on the head and took Bev’s little note that was attached to his neck off. He opened it, and her note said:
‘Okay Graham, you have to walk till the Greenhouses, then turn left, if you reach the Whomping Willow you walked too much, go back and you will know where it is when you see it. See you soon, and dress NICELY’
Will rolled his eyes at that, and said “great, she couldn’t have been more enigmatic if she tried…” hoping he would actually find the place and that it didn’t turn out to be some elaborate joke Bev was playing on him, getting him to dress up, baiting him with Hannibal just for it to have no ‘gathering’.
He shook that thought away from his mind and started getting ready, he wanted to leave when there still was some light outside to up his chances of actually finding the location. He quickly undressed, changing his underwear for a clean one telling himself ‘you never know’ , and put on some black trousers with the button down he had picked. Will tucked and untucked his shirt four times before deciding to leave it untucked because he didn’t want to look like he was trying too hard. Double checking about the choice me had with the untucked shirt, he started overthinking about its size, he wouldn’t say the shirt was oversized on him, but for it to look tailored it definitely would have to be a size smaller. Not that he cared, but he was getting overly aware of how he looked now, especially as he tied his tie, he didn’t want to look like a nerd going to their first party, so he left it a bit undone. He rolled his sleeves up, ruffled his curls, put his glasses on and looked at himself in the mirror for just a second before he could talk himself out of this, and started making his way out of the chambers, being cautious not to get caught.
Will walked and walked and… walked and nothing . He had been very close to giving up and going back to his chambers when he suddenly started paying attention to his surrounding and noticed some people appearing out of nowhere and disappearing just as fast near a small cabin in the distance. At first, he thought his eyes were betraying him but when the people disappeared inside of it and opened the cabin’s door, loud music followed, when the door closed it was as if no noise had ever been there, like magic . So Will followed them.
He tried opening the door and when it wouldn’t budge he tried harder and when it finally opened, it wasn’t because he had managed to open it, it was because the Slytherin’s prefect, Draco Malfoy, had opened it.
“And you are?” he said in an arrogant tone while eyeing Will from head to toe, as music blasted in the background “oh a Hufflepuff I see, shouldn’t you be singing kumbaya with the house elves?”
“Hm…” before Will could have a chance to reply to that, Beverly miraculously appeared and saved his life.
“Oi, ghost-looking boy drop it! He’s with me,” she said stepping closer to the door.
Will suddenly felt like a thousand eyes were staring him down, he instantly didn’t want to be there, he clearly wasn’t welcomed. He was ready to turn his back and leave when he caught one of the many eyes looking at him, and they belonged to no one other than Hannibal Lecter himself. Mortification suddenly hit him, he looked at Beverly and said, “this was a stupid idea, I shouldn’t have come, thanks for the invite though… I’m going to go bac–”, before he could finish that sentence he saw Draco starting to close the door on his face.
“Good!” Draco started saying it as he moved to fully shut the door before a hand appeared and prevented the door from closing a centimetre further.
The hand, it turned out to belong to Hannibal, who was suddenly standing way too close to Will’s personal space, “stay” was all he said and Will didn’t automatically register it had been addressed to him until he turned to look at Hannibal’s face and found the man intensely staring at him.
Nothing could have prepared Will for the overwhelming flood of feelings that would follow that; Hannibal not only acknowledging his existence, but actually talking to him, not only just talking, asking, no not asking, demanding , Will’s presence there. He felt like his knees were ready to give out, he didn’t trust his voice to actually speak back so he nodded towards Hannibal’s direction without looking the man in the eye. He knew if he did look that he would make an absolute fool of himself.
Hannibal for his part, held the door wide open, using his body as a shield between Will and Draco so Will could enter the cabin without having to have any further interactions with Draco.
Will had been expecting Hannibal to just walk away after saying that, what he wasn’t expecting was to have him stood so close to him as he walked inside the cabin. Will purposefully put both of his hands on his front so he wouldn’t accidentally touch Hannibal’s front but he felt like his attempts were for nought as he suddenly felt a hot breath of air against his neck, unconsciously having a full body shiver as his face quickly redned.
He could not have been more thankful when he felt a hand on his arm, pulling him away from the door, and realised it belonged to Bev. She pulled him deep into the magical cabin that turned out to be extremely large on the inside until they reached a somewhat quiet and private corner.
“I know I told you to make a move on Lecter, but damn Graham, I didn’t expect you to be that fast, I’m impressed,” Beverly said, eyeing him down with a knowing glance.
Will was so confused that he couldn’t help but shout out loud, “What?”
“Come on Will, you’re telling me you didn’t just get banged by Lecter?” she said while gesturing to his entire body.
“What are you talking about?!” he said following her gestures down his body, even more confused.
“So you’re telling me that that sex-messy hair, the untucked shirt, undone tie, rolled up sleeves and not to mention, hello , Lecter’s total possessive Alpha behaviour back there was just a coincidence?” she said, raising an eyebrow and crossing her arms, challenging.
Will was speechless, “I–” he started but didn’t know how to continue, too confused, too flustered to continue, “my hair—” he attempted, “I didn’t–” he took a deep breath to gather his thoughts, and tried again, “my hair does not look like sex-hair, I just wanted to look cool, like I wasn’t trying too much, same goes for my clothes…” he said defensively, getting a bit too self-aware of his choice of attire thinking he made the wrong choice by dressing like that, “and Hannibal wasn’t being ‘a possessive Alpha’ he was just being… uhm…you know, polite.”
“Will, there’s a very big difference between being polite and territorial, if he was being polite he could have just told Draco to piss off and let you in, or something less crude than that. If that was the case, he wouldn’t have stepped over Draco, demanding you to stay while shielding you with his body,” she said plainly, trying to get Will to realise what had just transpired.
“Okay…”, he started, trying to process everything, trying to come up with a logical explanation… he found none , “now that you put it like that… I guess it was unusual…”
“Unusual? Will, that was unprecedented! Like did you see how close he was to you?? I really thought he was going to grab you and kiss you right there and then. What the hell did you tell him? Give me the tea Graham!” she said, squeaking excitedly.
“Absolutely nothing, we didn’t talk, nothing happened,” Will said nervously rambling. He tried to think if he had forgotten anything, anything that he did or said that could explain this, but there was nothing.
“Bullshit! How do you explain him going from not knowing about your existence to throwing that little possessive act in front of everyone?” she asked, unconvinced.
“I don’t know!” he said more panicking inwardly than anything else, “I swear, Bev, nothing happened. I’m as confused as you are, after you left me I went straight to my room, got changed and came here,” he said rethinking his steps, reassuring himself that he and Hannibal had no interactions that could explain this.
Bev took a moment to gather her thoughts, looking at her surroundings before locking eyes with Hannibal, who was intently staring in their direction from afar, “okay, please don’t freak out but Lecter has been eyeing you down for a solid minute now.”
Will involuntarily turned, only to find Hannibal standing somewhat far away smirking at him, “why would you tell me that?! Now I’m obviously going to freak out!” he said trying his best to keep his voice down, not that that would be a problem given the volume of the music and how loud everyone else was being.
“Why would you turn to look?!” she said punching him on the chest, chastising him before suddenly changing her entire body language, “ oh …”
At that, Will froze. His eyes opened wide as his heart accelerated, “what? what do you mean ‘oh’?! Oh good or oh bad?!” he saw the exact moment Bev’s eyes looked away from him to somewhere behind him, and somehow he knew. Beverly looked back at him with a gaze that said ‘good luck’, and predicting what was about to happen, Will said “Beverly don’t you fucking dare–” before she slowly and smoothly walked away, leaving him wanting to kill her for not dragging him with her.
A second after she left he left a presence to his right, he didn’t need to look to know who it was, but when the voice spoke it confirmed any inner doubts he had about it being real or not, “Hi, I’m Hannibal Lecter” came with the sexiest accent Will had ever heard from the taller boy making Will look at him, shamelessly blushing.
When Will didn’t respond with his name back, Hannibal took it upon himself to introduce the boy to himself, “and you are William Graham” he said with a subtle smile, showing his fangs to Will.
All Will could think about was how perfectly imperfect the boy’s fangs were and how badly he wanted to kiss him, but instead of giving that thought further attention he shook his head, reassembling himself, and speaking “shit, right…” he said mumbling and extending his hand to Hannibal, who immediately took it into a handshake, “and it’s just Will.. how do you know my name?” he said, and realised how accusatory that had sounded, so he tried it again, “fuck… sorry, I meant like, why do you know who I am? Okay that sounded even worse…” he started spirlling, shaking his hand, still connected to Hannibal’s, into a nonending handshake, “I just didn’t expect you to know who I am, you are you know… you and I’m me .” when he finished saying it, he realised how long their handshake was so he dropped Hannibal’s hand, “shit, I’m sorry I didn’t realise how long that was. Also sorry for cursing so much, I don’t normally do that,” he impulsively said, “actually that’s a lie, I curse all the time, I just think that cursing next to you is wrong somehow, I feel like you’d disprove it…” he was down on the rabbit hole, digging himself into a hole, “okay, I’ll shut up now…” before he gave Hannibal any time to process any of what he had just word-vomit, Will started sliding himself away “are you thirsty? God, it’s so hot in here I’m–” he thought of an excuse before getting away, “going to get some butterbeer,” he said and basically ran away, further into the cabin.
He was speedwalking, not knowing where to go or what to do next he accidentally bumped into someone, he went to apologise before realising who he had bumped into and what had happened when did bumped into them.
In front of him was a very pissed Draco Malfoy with a spilled drink, that the boy had been holding, all over his white button-down. Will knew he was a dead man walking as soon as it happened, he prepared for the blow. But instead of getting shouted at or punched or depulso-ed away, he was met with a surprising amount of nothing from Draco, which let him disturbingly confused, “wait.. you are not going to yell at me or throw the rest of that drink or me…?”
Draco’s jaw locked in place, furious, but he grunted out “you’re lucky you’re Lecter’s pet. But watch your back, Graham, Lecter won’t always be there to save his little pet,” he said while walking into Will, almost dropping the boy on the floor.
Will’s confusion only grew by the second, and the imaginary excuse he gave Hannibal soon became a necessary measure. So that’s what he did. He strolled throught the cabin until he found the drinks table, pouring himself a generous cup of butterbeer, then a second one, then a third… it didn’t take long until he lost count. Only when he felt the room around him begin to spin, did he stop. That, and Beverly coming next to him, and taking the gallon away from him.
“Will, what the hell happened after I left? Is everything okay?” she said, clearly concerned with the image in front of her.
“I’m–” he started, suddenly feeling self-conscious about his tongue, “I am..” he attempted again, overly pronouncing the words, “Lecter’s bitch now,” he said before realising he provided no context then added, “apparently”, thinking that would solve the issue.
“What?!” she said, taking her inebriated friend in front of her she would have to have patience if she wanted to extract any coherent information from him, so she started again, “go back from the beginning, walk me through it”
“Where do I begin?” he said partially for the dramatic effect, partially to himself as he tried to gather his train of thought, “I made a complete fool of myself in front of Hannibal, I word-vomited and dipped; then I bumped into Malfoy making his drink to pour on his shirt, and then instead of hitting me he just said and I quote ‘you’re lucky you’re Lecter’s pet’ , whatever that means,” he said, noticing someone with a full butterbeer passing by him making him snatch the drink and downing it in one big gulp. Getting him a very angry ‘Oi!’ but Beverly was quick to react and gave the person the gallon of beer she had been holding.
“Oh Will…”, Will wasn’t looking at Bev’s face so he interpreted that as a sympathetic ‘ you poor thing ’ but when the giggles emerged from her throat, he looked up and realised it was, in fact, a ‘are you stupid ’ sympathetic tone.
“W-what?” he asked, confused.
“Don’t you see the opportunity right in front of you? Come on Graham I thought you had a very vivid imagination,” to which she was rewarded with a very slow eye-roll, when she noted he was waiting for her to elaborate, she continued “if everyone already thinks you two are together, or at the very least are doing it, you can use that to your advantage,” the silence prevailed so she broke it by adding, “for fucks sake, Will go get your man!”
That seemed to snap him back to the conversion, “and say what?! ‘Hi I’m sorry I made a fool of myself back there, but hey everyone thinks I’m your bitch so let’s make out?!’ I can’t do that!”
“Will, just go talk to him, he clearly is somehow interested in you,” she said, realising how that sounded, “you know I mean no offence, I think you’re amazing and hot but until yesterday we didn’t think he knew you existed and right now he’s throwing possessive tantrums?” she paused before continuing, “I mean it, Will, that’s your chance go talk to him,” she said softer.
Beverly studied Will’s body posture and how suddenly his body and mind started shying away, uncertain. So she did what any friend would, she bullied him out of that state of mind, “I knew it, you’re too much of a wuss.” Beverly said in a challenging tone, she knew Will would never turn his back on a challenge.
That seemed to do the trick because it prompted the boy to jump into action, grabbing the nearest shot glass and downing the unknown drink for extra courage. Bev didn’t actually believe that he would jump into action, much less this quickly, so she was taken aback when she saw Will storming out with his goal in mind.
Will was suddenly overwhelmed by a gigantic strike of confidence and he knew if he didn’t act now, he would never do it. So he went for it, he started pacing around the cabin looking for the familiar shape he had been studying for over a year now, broad shoulders; combed and always gorgeous hair; impeccable posture; simply a god-sent of a man.
When he found what he was looking for, or better, who he was looking for, he didn’t hesitate. He tapped Hannibal on the shoulder, making the boy turn to look at him visibly relaxing his posture when he saw the familiar face, and before he allowed Hannibal to say anything Will grabbed the older boy by the tie and fearlessly brought their lips together. Will was surprised when Hannibal didn’t immediately pull away or push him off of him; he assumed he was taken by surprise and didn’t know how to react, either way, Will took that as permission to continue the kiss, deepening it. What drove Will from surprised to extremely confused, was not only Hannibal not pulling away, but starting to slip in the tongue and pulling Will closer and closer to him. Will for his part enjoyed the moment for a couple of seconds before entirely pulling away, incredibly flustered and breathless, immediately noting all the eyes on them. His next decision was easy, the courage he had felt was nowhere to be found, and when he realised, his body had been unconsciously sprinting out of the cabin, into the woods, heading back towards the castle.
***
So yeah, Will knew he had fucked up, massively so. That’s how he found himself back in the library deep diving into ancient books, trying to find some spell he could do to revert back on time, or erase everyone’s memories from the party, or to turn himself into a completely different person. He looked into Polyjuice Potion, but that was a temporary measure, he needed something permanent. He scratched that possibility off. He read a book that talked about a magical device called Time-Turner which allows limited time travel, going one hour back in time, but that was quickly scratched off as a possibility for two reasons:
- As the book noted, time travel is an extremely dangerous magical effect for it possesses the potential for catastrophe should history be altered.
- Will knew that wouldn’t actually fix anything and he hadn’t actually considered that as a viable alternative
The last one he looked into from his pre-existing list of options was the Obliviate spell, which is a memory charm that allows the erasure or modification of memory. Will considered himself a somewhat good wizard but when reading more about the spell, he realised that if it was performed improperly it could erase not only the desired memory but also significant portions of an individual’s memory and cause brain damage. So the thought of performing a spell he never attempted on casting before on not just one person, but rather, a number close to 100 with such an elevated risk was an automatic removal in itself.
Frustrated, Will sat reading through more books for the next couple of hours, thinking that the only safe option that he was left with was running away from Hogwarts. To pack his things, give up on his dream to work for the Ministry of Magic, and go back home as a failure, disappointing his dad. At the moment, all of the above felt justifiable in the face of being ridiculed by all his peers, but most importantly, by the only person he cared about – Hannibal. Will knew he would not survive facing Hannibal later in the day, because he knew very well he would not be sleeping, and have him humiliate and degrade him or worse, regret having ever talked to him and ignore Will entirely. He knew he would not survive that.
Consequently, the idea of simply running away was feeling more and more like the only possible outcome of his conundrum. That is, until hours later when he stumbled across a chapter labelled ‘Love Potions’ so he made the only logical decision – he was going to pretend to be under a love potion spell.