The New Face of Failure
The New Face of Failure.
It’s a Sunday morning in late October - too warm to wear a jumper but too cold to go without - and the glacie-berry bushes behind greenhouse number five are finally fucking blooming. That off-colour shade of Cerulean that he would probably quite like if his parents hadn’t allowed him to paint his bedroom walls with it back when he was ten. He loves them though, the bushes that is. They’re not the kind of pretty that people fawn over on Magical Trust postcards or proudly display in their front gardens like some sort of trophy but, to him at least, they’re one of the first signs that winter is finally on its way.
Albus hates the summer. He doesn’t know why - maybe it’s the sweat and the sunburn and the godawful smell of factor fifty, or perhaps it’s just the idea of having to spend six entire weeks with his extended family. He loves them, he does, but they’re exhausting at the best of times. Either way, he hates the summer. He doesn’t care that he’s being dramatic.
“Those muggle things will kill you y’know,” a voice comes from behind him and it’s familiar enough to warrant an eye roll. There’s a flash of blonde in the corner of his eye; feels the pane of glass he’s leaning against shake as someone joins him on the grass.
“Good,” he inhales deeper than usual, proving a point. It’s bitter and bracing and it soothes his tension in a way that no calming draught ever succeeds in doing.
He doesn’t mean it, Dominique knows that too. Anyway, some crackpot wizard invented a potion to solve that issue decades ago. He’s pretty sure his Uncle Charlie has shares in it; or he should do at least because that man smokes like a damn chimney.
“Wow,” she says in a tone that’s more sarcasm than concern, “who pissed in your pumpkin juice this morning?”
“My bets would be on James or Louis - Freddie’s too nice,” he offers up one of his cigarettes and she takes it gladly, pressing it to the tip of her wand until she sees a flicker of amber, “wouldn’t put it past either of them.”
He chose not to wear a jumper in the end. Doesn’t regret it; even though he notices the swathes of goosebumps littering his arms each time he brings the cigarette to his mouth. Albus rarely smokes, even though he likes the way it feels on his tongue. He only reaches for a pack - Carlton because, while his Dad’s rich, he isn’t - when he’s stressed. And he feels like getting called for a meeting with McGonagall to tell him he’s failing half his classes is a good enough excuse.
“How is he anyway?” He asks, realising that the last time he saw the Gryffindor was nearly a fortnight ago when he caught him stealing bubotuber pus from the greenhouses at two in the morning, “haven’t seen him around in a while.”
“My darling brother?”
When he nods, Dom just releases a breath of a laugh and shakes her head fondly.
“Last I heard he and Hugo had detention with Neville on Thursday, something about Benedict Bulstrode and a balloon full of bubotuber pus, or was that the week before,” she shrugs, “I lose track.”
Ah, that explains the late-night larceny.
“So?”
“So…”
“You avoided my question.”
“You didn’t actually ask it,” Albus points out, not for any real reason. He’s just in the mood to be awkward about things and if his cousin really wants an answer from him, she’s going to have to put up with that.
“I implied it, surely that’s enough,” she sends her eyes skyward, tucking a flyaway strand of blonde hair behind her ear, careful not to catch it on any of the piercings, “but if you really want it spelling out, here: what the hells the matter with you? God knows you can be a moody git when you want to be but, even for you, this is impressive.”
“I’m fi-”
“Ah ah, no, don’t pull the whole I’m fine thing,” Dominique cuts him off, making quotation marks with her fingers, “you’ve been moping about the common room since yesterday morning, do you really think I wouldn’t notice.”
“I’ve barely been in the common room since then,” he says, which isn’t entirely true. He spent two hours in there yesterday evening, flicking through his grandad’s old dog-eared copy of Catch-22 and sipping at a mug of peppermint tea. He was in his usual haunt though, the small alcove behind the third bookshelf on the far wall that no one really knows about. Now that’s the kind of pretty that Albus does like - cast in a warm greenish glow from the light of an entire shawl of lightning fish that always seem to hover around the little window at that time of night.
“Technicalities,” she looks across to him and Albus just raises an eyebrow, “okay fine, I hounded Izzy about it because, at dinner, you looked like someone had taken one of your muggle books without asking or you’d been forced to spend more than five minutes with James - but she seemed just as clueless as me.”
“Because I was hoping you’d just leave it, but pigs might fly.”
“Are you going to tell me,” she sighs, but he can tell it’s exaggerated, “or am I going to have to force veritaserum down your throat?”
“That‘s illegal,” he pouts.
“I don’t care.” Dom flashes him one of those sickly-sweet smiles that lack any form of real sincerity. He’s seen her use them before - on professors, prefects and, most notably, their grandad every time she wants him to sneak her some cookies behind Grandma Molly’s back though that one usually results in them getting caught before he’s even made it to the biscuit tin. That smile works a charm on most people, except for her mum that is; Fleur Delacour-Weasley practically patented it. Albus is almost certain she’d have been in Slytherin had she gone to Hogwarts back in the day.
“I’m pretty sure you won’t make it onto the ministry’s curse-breaking program with a criminal record.”
“Only if I get caught,” she leans forward to breathe a lung-full of smoke into his face, “will you grass?”
“Depends,” Albus just shrugs, playing the part of indifference, “will you give me that bottle of firewhiskey I saw you sneaking out of the off-licence at Hogsmeade last weekend?”
“Dream on,” she scoffs.
“Heard Azkaban’s real cosy this time of year.”
She shoves him with a bark of laughter and he only just manages to hold onto his balance, digging the heels of his palm into the ground beside him. It’s half-covered in mud now, but he can’t be bothered to get his wand out of his pocket to do anything about it.
He loves Dominique. She’s a fucking force. The only other person in the whole Potter-Weasley clan that managed to get themselves sorted into Slytherin and, while it took Albus a few years to come to terms with it, she wears it like a goddamn crown. He likes the way she talks to him when he’s in a mood: ruthlessly and with an abundance of sharp-tongued wit. Doesn’t try to apply logic to every situation like Rose, or talk about their feelings like Freddie - even though Albus knows he means well.
“Are you going to make me guess? Yes? Okay. James put polyjuice potion in your drink again? A few hours of looking like him is enough to make anyone feel ill for a week.”
He snorts, but ultimately shakes his head.
“Detention with Pomfrey? They’re always the worst.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I quite like scrubbing the bedpans.”
“Sadist - wait, wait, I’ve got it,” she looks pleased with herself, letting silence reign for a few moments before the big reveal and he can certainly say his interest is piqued, “you’ve finally caved and murdered Adrian, now the guilt is setting in and you’re trying to figure out how to get rid of the body,” Dom smirks, “I vote dump it in the Lake, accidental drowning, you can blame it on the squid.”
Out of all of his friends - well, all three of them at least, Dom not included - Adrian is certainly the one most likely to succumb to an untimely demise. Whether a result of one of his own harebrained plans or a particularly risky quidditch move that he’s explicitly been told not to perform, Albus can’t be certain.
That one earns her a laugh at his expense, “tempting, but no.”
Then her voice drops to something more sincere, it’s soft and it’s rare enough that he sometimes forgets she has this side to her, “has something happened between you and Amelia?”
“Nope we’re good,” he replies honestly, though it’s a reminder that he probably should go and see her at lunch, given that he didn’t get the chance yesterday.
“Well,” she takes her woollen coat off and crosses her arms, pretending to get comfy as she leans back against the glass wall of the greenhouse, “I’ve got all day,” she pauses, “okay I’ve got about an hour but still - I can be incredibly annoying when the situation calls for it, so I’m sure you’ll crack before then.”
“Tell me about it,” he laughs, then finally releases a long-overdue sigh, letting the saturnine facade slip away and something more genuine take its place, “failing half my classes,” he looks back towards the glacie-berry bushes to his left, avoiding her gaze, “apparently McGonagall’s going to kick me off the quidditch team if I don’t sort it out - and that’s one of the only things I’m vaguely good at.”
When he finally looks at Dom again, there's no pity in her eyes, and he’s reminded again why she’s such a good friend to him. He hates being pitied, those condescending looks and half-hearted apologies that really say ‘I don’t particularly give a shit but I wouldn’t like to be in your position.’ He thinks he would rather have someone just laugh in his face instead.
“You're more than vaguely good,” she points out, which is true, but he doesn’t care for the distinction.
“Not as good as James.”
She chokes on a laugh, “James is a bloody nutter.”
Yeah, he is - if the Gryffindor practice schedule is anything to go by - but he’s a bloody nutter with a place on the Puddlemere United reserve team waiting for when he leaves school at the end of the year. He inhales again, let’s the smoke sit on his tongue for a moment. Thinks about what James would say if he saw him now, probably berate him. He’s into all that ‘body is a temple’ shit, except for when Gryffindor have won a match then it’s all a game of see who can succumb to alcohol poisoning first.
“Look, I’m happy to help where you need it,” she offers and Albus can’t help himself from feeling a little guilty. Her final-year exams are creeping up on her with surprising pace and yet she still offers to help him, “it’s all stuff I did last year - bar muggle studies, I’ll be no use there.”
“Nah don’t worry Dom,” he breathes, finally stubbing out the cigarette on the ground next to him, “thanks, I appreciate it, but you have your NEWTs to think about, Minnie said she’s going to sort me out a tutor or something, which is the last thing I want really, but she seemed pretty set on it.”
Albus glances over to Dominique, sitting with her back pressed against the outside of the greenhouse windows, and notices that she’s shivering without her coat, every time the Scottish air brushes against her skin. He thinks that all the summers she’s spent lazing around in the south of France have made her soft. He says that; she laughs.
“Well, I should probably be off and, not to pressure you,” she hauls herself off the ground, brushing her jeans down for a few seconds before charming away the grass with her wand, like she’d forgotten for a moment that she has magic, “but as your captain, I’ll leave you hanging from the goalposts by your ankles if you manage to get yourself thrown off the quidditch team, you’re the best seeker we have.”
⭒ ✵ ⭒
During that strange time of the evening - when Albus has finished dinner but no one else has started on dessert - he has to suppress a grin. Not a big one, but it’s noticeable enough that James sees fit to glare at him from his seat across the hall. It’s not a particularly menacing glare - partly because he finds his brother’s misfortune funny, but mostly because there’s an entire goblet of pumpkin running down his face. Roxie appears to be the only one with half decent reflexes - which is embarrassing really since they’re all quidditch players - because Freddie’s skin is coated in the same sticky sheen. He doesn’t look half as annoyed as James though, in fact he’s laughing about it. In a way, it serves his brother right for releasing a swarm of agitated Cornish pixies into the Slytherin common room last Tuesday; even if Albus did get a forewarning.
Tearing his attention away from his brother, he lets his gaze wander down the Slytherin table to where Stella Zabini and Aurelius Flint are exchanging self-satisfied glances over beef-wellington and a glass of gillywater. Come to mention it, Eleanora Nott looks pretty pleased with herself too. He never bothers engaging in the little feud between the seventh years - after all, he’s loyal to one side by house, and the other by blood - he’s just an observer, he enjoys that role.
“First time I’ve seen you smile all day,” Adrian Thomas-Finnegan says, pointing at him with a fork that’s dripping gravy all over the table, “you know, if all it took for you to stop brooding all the bloody time was a couple of goblets of exploding pumpkin juice, I would have started helping out Zabini and Flint a long time ago.”
“I don’t brood.”
“Oh yeah, and Elijah’s the greatest amateur quidditch player that Hogwarts had ever seen.”
A half-hearted, “fuck you,” arrives from two seats down where the boy in question doesn’t even bother to look up from the trashy romance novel that he’s shamelessly reading in public.
“At least take me out to dinner first,” Adrian leans across the table. Lets his head rest on the palms of his hands, “if it’s that fancy italian in Hogsmeade, I’ll make it worth your while.” He raises an eyebrow suggestively; Albus just thinks he looks a bit like he’s having a stroke and Elijah seems to regret giving him the time of day. Though, if the title ‘Enchantments of the Heart’ is anything to go by, it should have been a welcomed break from the book.
“Oh please,” Izzy decides it’s her turn to cut in, “you’d put out for two backdated quidditch annuals and a five-galleon gift card for Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes.”
That one earns a proper laugh from Albus, the kind that catches in his chest. For every cheap joke and even cheaper pick up line that Adrian throws around, Isabella Pucey can always do one better with her usual sardonic witticisms.
“Are you calling me easy?” He feigns offence.
“Do you have any other suggestions?”
“Time-efficient.”
The pair slip into their usual light-hearted bickering, a comfortable humdrum of sharp words and indignant noises that fade nicely into the background as Albus allows his mind to wander. Although he’s still brooding - Adrian wasn’t wrong - most of the morning’s frustrations have dwindled over the course of the day.
He takes a small spoonful of the rhubarb crumble, relishes in the bittersweet acidity of it. His frustration, he knows, isn’t borne out of any disdain for tutoring sessions and sporting threats, as far as he’s concerned they’re just inconveniences. It’s a vanity thing really, when he actually thinks about it.
James is set to be a global quidditch star, Freddie already has his own range of patented products at his dad’s shop, Albus will eat his left shoe if Rose doesn't end up as a high profile politician, and there’s no doubt that Dominique will make a damn fine curse-breaker like her father.
So what does that make Albus?
He can read the headlines now: Secondborn of the Chosen One, Fails Every NEWT - Greatest Disappointment Since Merlin’s Son Mistakes Tentacula Venom For Wiggenweld Potion. Rita Skeeter would have a fucking field day with that one. Although, over the last six months, she’s largely avoided the Potter family which Albus thinks has something to do with the time he saw his mother booting her up the arse at a ministry function last summer. The reporter had penned some mendacious gossip article about James for the July edition of Witch Weekly, earning herself front row tickets to witness the full wrath of Ginerva Molly Potter.
“ALBUS.”
He startles, “don’t call me that.”
“I wouldn’t have to if you bothered listening the first seven times,” Adrian rolls his eyes, using his fork to catapult a grape over to the Hufflepuff table where it hits his older sister on the back of the head, “I’ve seen you pay more attention to one of Binn’s lectures on the 14th century economic crash.”
“The purchasing power of the galleon really gets me going,” the way the sarcasm rolls off his tongue is as easy as it feels to breathe, “didn’t you know?”
They laugh - and Izzy makes some satirical comment - but Albus’ attention has been captured by a girl who’s leaning across the Ravenclaw table, pointing a finger accusingly at Jennifer Spinnet who seems to be cackling at something wildly funny. It’s as she’s turning to whisper something to Rose - probably charms or transfiguration related, knowing those two - that Amelia Liu catches Albus’ gaze. Whatever she was intending to say to his cousin is forgotten, so he hopes it wasn’t too important, and she beams at him in a way that warms his insides.
Rose, predictably, rolls her eyes which warrants a shove from Amelia who looks back over to him, gesturing towards the door. Albus flashes her all ten fingers, then points to an imaginary watch on his wrist - because the others deserve an explanation before he leaves - and her mouth contorts into another one of those glorious smiles as she nods.
“I’m failing four of my five NEWT classes, McGonagall said she’ll chuck me off the quidditch team if I don’t get my grades up, and she’s going to make me do tutoring sessions,” Albus releases one long jumble of words, thinking it might be better to just get it out all at once. He stares at them; they stare back. He stares some more. Maybe this was a bad idea.
Elijah’s the first to process what he said. Placing a bookmark between the pages of his novel before setting it down on the table. “Is that it?” He asks, with one of those expressions that Albus can’t quite read.
“Er, yes?”
“Okay, so, not a huge problem,” Elijah continues, offering him one of those warm smiles that tells him everything’s going to be alright. He’s good like that, always has been. If anyone in Slytherin - or the school as a whole for that matter - is upset, you can guarantee Elijah Goldstein isn’t far behind with a mug of hot chocolate and some wise words. “Al, you have a year and a half until your actual exams and we’re going to help you whenever you need it, your grades are going to improve, there'll be no need to kick you off the team - and therefore no need for Adrian launch a revolt,” he looks over at the boy pointedly, “and that's that, like I said, no problem.”
“Yeah, we’re always here if you need us,” Izzy affirms, speaking like it’s a given as she reaches across the table to squeeze his arm, “don’t go forgetting that.”
Al thinks that, really, he does have great friends; but then Adrian decides to start talking and puts that entire train of thought under scrutiny. “Speak for yourselves, Borges has already given me enough homewo- ouch,” he hisses in pain, but continues through slightly gritted teeth as Albus laughs into his drink, “yep I’d be happy to help, ecstatic even, completely of my own free will, no coercion involved - ow - whatsoever.”
The glare he sends Izzy is downright murderous but she isn’t phased in the slightest, just smiles back sweetly and attempts to wind him up some more, “you won’t be much use, you’re barely doing better than he is.”
Albus knows Adrian was joking, they all do, but Izzy clearly saw an opportunity to hit him and seized it with enthusiasm. Albus loves her for it.
“Hey,” Adrian pouts, “I’m near the top of the class in potions.”
“Yes,” she sends her eyes skyward while Albus takes a sip of his drink, watching on in amusement, “because you sit next to me, who does all your bloody work for you.”
Elijah leans over, pointing between the two of them. “It’s like George and Lennie,” he speaks softly enough so that Albus is the only one that hears. Not that either of the other two would have the first clue about muggle novellas, nor would they particularly care.
He uses their bickering as a chance to slip away, snaking through the students littering the hallways until he reaches the courtyard that lies beneath the main clocktower. It’s dark outside now - the sun has long since dipped below the horizon, taking the morning’s warmth along with it.
He plunges his hands into the pockets of his jeans and wishes he wore the jumper that his Aunt Hermione had given him last christmas, the eau-de-nil woollen one with the well cast warming charm. The sweater he’s wearing now is something he picked up in a muggle charity over the holidays. He loves it, but there’s not an ounce of magic in it and he can feel that in the way the wind cuts through the fabric.
There’s a figure at the far end of the courtyard, leaning back against one of the stone pillars at the base of the fountain. Her hand trails through the water in a way that makes Albus say, “careful, you’ll end up with frostbite,” when he finds himself close enough for her to hear.
Amelia Liu looks up at him, smiling, and gestures towards the steam rising from the water below, “charmed it,” she says, “it’s cold out.”
Albus winds an arm around her waist, breathing in the sweet scent of her perfume as he presses a chaste kiss to her temple, “you’ll have to keep me warm then.”
Amelia just laughs, letting her fingers run through the lengths of his wavy hair as Albus’ head falls to rest on her shoulder, “you don’t need me for that, you could just cast a warming charm yourself.”
He takes in a sharp breath, looking up at her through wide eyes as he feigns offence, “do you not want to spend time with me?”
She puts on a thoughtful expression, pretends to mull it over for a while before drawing a conclusion. “No, I think you’re a bit of a prick actually,” she concedes, “that’s why I’ve been with you for nearly a year and a half.”
“Oh, well in that case.” He plasters on the kind of smirk that screams trouble and he knows she’s going to regret saying that. Albus places both hands on her shoulders and pushes. Hard.
With that, she’s tumbling backwards but she still manages to shout, “you’re coming with me,” and grabs him by the neck of his sweater before she breaks the surface. They both crash into the water - a mess of fabric, limbs and a few rogue lily pads - and Albus is the first to resurface, spluttering and laughing but not nearly as much as Amelia whose head reappears a moment later. It’s warm like bathwater which, in the biting chill of the October air, is glorious in a way. If he were able to look past the smell of algae and try to forget about whatever the hell just touched his right ankle, that is.
“Good reflexes,” he says once he’s finally got all of the water out his mouth, “shame you didn’t use them in the quidditch match against us the other week.”
When she tries to smack him across the back of the head, he just laughs. Albus grabs her hands and pulls her in for a kiss, slow and deep and meaningful. For the first time that weekend - maybe even longer - everything feels right.
⭒ ✵ ⭒
By the time eight o’clock rolls around, Elijah’s two thirds of the way through his novel, Albus has regained a small amount of his will to live, and Adrian and Izzy have finally stopped arguing over their potions lessons - but only because they’ve moved onto bickering about Chudley Cannons signings instead.
When they walk through the dormitory door - after Izzy runs off to find Seina Sato, muttering something about an emergency, two miscast levitating charms and someone’s pet toad - Albus wastes no time in collapsing backwards onto his bed. He hums gently as he sinks into the mattress, only opening one eye when he feels a weight settle next to him.
“Hey Pip,” he whispers softly, reaching up to scratch the soft spot behind his left ear. He purrs, a wonderful comforting sound, and nestles his head into the crook of Albus’ neck. Pip must only be a few months old, his features are still too soft to be any older.
He and Lily found him over the summer, hiding behind a bin in the alley out back of Florian’s Ice Cream parlour with half of his fur wound into matts and a dreadful case of fleas. He also point-blank refused to leave the half-chewed rat he had clasped between his teeth so it’s safe to say their mum wasn’t best pleased when they turned up at the house with him.
“I paid ten galleons for my cat at the Magical Menagerie in Diagon Alley and she’s basically Satan reincarnate,” Adrian moans. Albus thinks he looks like he’s spent the last five minutes sucking on an acid pop - the green ones, they’ve always been the worst - but he doesn’t bother to point that out before Adrian starts complaining again, “you found yours in a bin -”
“- next to a bin -”
“- and he’s the sweetest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”
As if to prove some kind of point, Nova - short for Catsanova, because having two fathers evidently means twice the amount of dad jokes - hisses from her viewpoint on the top of Fionn Finch-Fletchy’s bed. Adrian idles over to Albus with some newfound purpose, scooping the kitten from his bed in an act that seems almost too gentle for someone as brash and burly as him. Pip mews softly, nuzzling into the fold of his arm.
Albus just raises an eyebrow as Adrian holds the kitten up towards Nova in a way that reminds him of that old muggle cartoon he and Lily used to love when they were kids. The one with the lions and that scene he always used to tease James about for crying over it.
“See this, this is what I’m going to replace you with if you tear up all my potions notes again,” he looks pointedly at the ginger tabby balancing on the bed frame, tail flicking languidly. “Capisce? Comprende? Understood?”
Nova yowls indignantly and Adrian points towards both his eyes with two fingers before turning his hand to jab them in the direction of the tabby, “you’re on thin ice sweetheart,” he says, his mancunian accent curling around each word.
As he puts Pip down, he mutters something about not understanding why his cat ended up being such a bitch - even though Albus knows he loves her really - and Elijah just chimes in with a anwer of, “they take after their owners,” doing well to avoid the pillow that Adrian sends hurtling his way. It sails past his left cheek, sending the already unstable pile of books he had balanced on his bedside table tumbling to the ground.
Adrian thrusts his hand into the air and yells, “STRIKE,” only to have Elijah turn and stare at him with an expression that’s somewhere between fond and murderous.
Albus thinks it leans a little to the latter if he’s honest so he adds, “spare actually,” and points towards the pristine copy of pride and prejudice that’s still resting on the dark mahogany of the table, “you missed one.”
Silence falls between them not long after that, broken intermittently by Pip’s gentle snores. It’s comforting, he thinks, feels like home. His head sinks back into the pillows and, not for the first time, he wishes he knew what charms the house elves place on them because it’s almost euphoric.
There are two other beds in the dormitory, currently unoccupied save for the empty chocolate frog packet, arithmancy textbook and rather discontented looking ginger cat on the first. The other, on the contrary, is pristine. Almost too clean if you ask Albus. The prior belongs to Fionn Finch-Fletchly - although to his endless frustration it might as well be Nova’s - and the other to Scorpius Malfoy. Albus isn’t particularly close to either of them, never has been. Fionn’s nice enough, the kind of guy he’d smile at in the corridor or make small talk with at the back of one of Borges’ potions lessons, which probably doesn’t help his dwindling grades. Most of the time though, he’s with the fifth year Ravenclaws.
Scorpius Malfoy, however, is something else entirely. Albus doesn’t like him. He doesn’t like the way he carries himself, he doesn’t like the way he ignores everyone around him and he certainly doesn’t like the way he always seems to look down on him and his friends. It’s rude, to be quite honest, and unnecessary. Albus had extended a hand in friendship on multiple occasions back in their first year, not wanting him to be lonely, and the boy had rebutted every single one of them. They’re not sworn enemies or anything, they don’t argue or hex each other in the corridors, Scorpius just keeps out of their way and that’s fine by him.
There’s a noise at the door - too soft to be a knock, but he thinks he heard something. The others don’t seem to hear it, Elijah continues reading and, well, he doesn’t know what Adrian’s doing if he’s honest but, if the pack of dungbombs lying next to him are anything to go by, Albus is sure he’ll have the misfortune of finding out soon enough. Maybe he imagined it, Albus tells himself because Pip is asleep on his stomach and he really can’t bring himself to move.
There it is again. It’s a little louder this time; a scratching sound almost.
It turns out that he’s not going mad, which is largely reassuring - though the time away from lessons would have been nice - because Elijah peers over the top of his book, looking at Albus for confirmation, before saying, “don’t worry I’ll get it.”
The door only needs to open about a foot wide before their dormitory is invaded by a papery intruder. Elijah ducks, blonde curls falling in front of his eyes, as the paper bird soars around their room. It nearly meets an untimely demise, having flown too close to Nova, but it managed to swerve to the left, eventually coming to rest on Albus’ bed.
At first he wants to ignore it, toss the parchment to the bottom of his bedside drawer and forget about it until the morning - he doesn’t have the energy now. Then he re-evaluates his decision because getting a message personally delivered at this time of the evening potentially means one of a handful things:
A) It’s urgent, and he should probably respond to said urgency with an appropriate amount of haste.
B) James and Freddie have planned some half-brained attack on the Slytherins and this is his pre-warning to vacate the premises in order to avoid any discomfort, loss of dignity, and/or accidental maiming.
C) Louis has managed to get himself locked in the fifth floor broom-cupboard trying to escape Mrs Norris II for the third time this term.
He tries to think if Freddie had warned him about any imminent pranks; can’t recall anything significant. There was the one involving the Cornish Pixies and two litres of gigglewater the other day, and then he remembers something about a portable swamp and a dozen of his uncles fireworks but he’s pretty certain that’s next Friday.
Turns out it's none of those things. It’s a letter from McGonagall and Albus is actually a little disappointed. He was sort of hoping for the latter, he and Hugo had a great laugh about it the first time it happened.
Albus,
I am writing to inform you that, following our meeting yesterday, I am in the process of arranging tutoring sessions for your sixth year NEWT classes. These will be mandatory and will take place at 9am each Sunday morning, commencing this coming weekend. I request both your cooperation and punctuality.
While I understand this is not something you want, and for that I apologise, your NEWT grades are of incredible importance and I know that you are a bright student. Similarly, when a place on the house Quidditch teams are so sought after, it would not be fair for me to hold you to a different academic standard than the rest of the student body.
I sincerely hope that you use these sessions to your advantage.
Regards,
M. McGonagall
Fucking fantastic, he thinks bitterly.
"Do we have to go and save that cousin of yours again?" Adrian asks, and when Albus shakes his head he just sighs and says, "shame, I wanted an excuse to take the piss out of the Gryffindors."