Prologue
At approximately four thirty one, on any given Thursday during the school year in which this story takes place, one would find the scene in the courtyard as such: a crowd of fifteen year olds pooled around in a wide circle shoving and laughing with each other as another two students stood in the middle toe to toe. Flutters of colors would be found all around, but a majority of them would be green and yellow, with dashes of red from the loudest of the peers and tickets of blue from those on the barest outskirts.
The boys in the center would be found to have a striking dichotomy between them: the one that was taller (by a few inches) would have a neatly tucked shirt, with his green and silver tie shining in the sunlight, a smug smirk on his lips and his robes finely pressed and trimmed to his perfect height; the other would be found with an untucked shirt of a faded cream color, a yellow tie that hadn’t been tied correctly in several years, along with dark eyeshadow and robes that were too short thrown haphazardly over a dark sweatshirt that was patched up in several places with plaid purple.
One would also find on any given Thursday, them snarling insults at each other, a hand in either pocket, squeezing wands made with Olivander’s finest craftmanship, and both a mere twitch of the wrist away from beginning an illegal duel on Hogwarts grounds.
None of this would be very new. It would seem as if every week the two would find something to argue about, to fight about, to risk expulsion from the esteemed magic school over. Throughout the years such things would have seemed to have costed their respective school houses a great deal of points, but no punishment would have had been fit enough to keep the boys from squabbling.
If one would have asked any member of the crowd what had happened between the boys which would have left them so hostile toward one another, they would receive many variations of the same answer: “That’s just how they’ve always been, mate.”
At the same time, should one have been skimming the courtyard while the boys engaged in their verbal sparring, they would have noticed Patton Hart sitting on the half wall just outside the edges of the crowd, watching with a nervous expression and wringing his blue and black tie through his fingers.
Patton Hart would not be a very intimidating person. In fact, he was most likely to be last on the list of people who were intimidating (should such a list be made). His glasses would be comically big and round, and his smattering of freckles would have been enough for him to seem harmless, but the boyish nature of his smile and the roundness of his face would cement the idea into any stranger’s mind. At fifteen years old, he would still appear to be just finishing middle school.
If one were to start a conversation with Patton at any point, they would be surprised to find that he was in the house of Ravenclaw, much less to find out that he was the nephew of the wand maker Jimmy Kidde,l himself, and had grown up surrounded by magic. There would be a certain excitement he would display at acts of magic, a certain wonderment that one would have expected him to have grown out of by now. But the facts would stand as such: Patton would be from a pureblood family and he would love magic the way that a drowning person would love the air.
To his left one would find Logan Ackroyd: a stiff, consistently irritated looking student who would also wear a blue tie, although his would appear to be his most treasured possession. Not a spec of dirt would be found near it nor frayed strand or awkward crease. His glasses would be sensibly square and black and professional, and his robes would be rolled up to his elbows. One would find two separate stacks of books keeping the distance between him and Patton, and a roll of parchment in the young man’s lap where he would be scribbling out an essay with a black fountain pen.
One would not be surprised to find that he was a Ravenclaw: he would rarely make time for others and would dread polite pleasantries the way children dreaded the process of de-gnoming the gardens. His tone would often suggest that he was the smartest person in any given room-- a compliment in a school of witchcraft and wizardry when he, himself, would be only half magical and would have had a late start learning the tricks of the magical world.
If one watched for long enough, they would even witness the form of Roman Prince barreling from the conjoining steps around the side of the castle, racing from the flying fields, robes scratched and dirty with holes in the hem, and his red and gold tie sticking out of his pocket. He would reportedly be a dashing sort of fellow: smooth skin and brown eyes that glittered with boldface bravery, his hair would always be mused and tussled and somehow that would leave his female peers swooning over him. Or perhaps that would be attributed to his flirtatious personality and his chivalrous upbringing, as he would have been taught from a young age that all ladies loved to feel like a princess at least once and that it was his duty to provide for them.
One might even watch as Roman flung himself over the stack of books between the other boys, dripping with sweat and out of breath, and uttering between gasps, “Did I miss anything?”
“Roman!” Logan would snap just before the book stacks would sway and nearly tumble over if it would not have been for Patton flinging an arm out hold them up. “Watch it!”
“Relax poindexter,” Roman would say and offer a smile at Patton, “Hey Padre, whats up with Ekans and Storm?”
Patton would nervously glance at the jarring crowd again, and he’d explain, “Dee spread a rumor that Virgil is scared of the ghosts, and so Virgil hit him with the dancing feet jinx and it took half an hour to undo.”
“Oh good,” Roman would respond, “I didn’t miss anything.”
Just as he always would have had.
Logan would, of course, then mutter about how childish the two in the center of the group were, prompting a hefty sigh from Roman and a curious glance from Patton.
“What do you mean?”
And Logan would tap the end of his pen on his parchment, followed by rolling up the scroll and would wave vaguely at the jostling crowd. “This! We are fifth years! Surely by now they should have grown out of their rivalry!”
“What, like you and Patton?” Roman would say with a teasing elbow at the other.
“Yes!” Logan would respond smacking his arm away. “It’s ridiculous at this point, a slandering on the great Hogwarts name! Imagine if this is allowed to continue after the OWLs? In the work force?”
Patton then would release his tie from his hands and flex his fingers in the air with a nervous little laugh, “It is kinda silly. But can you imagine what it would be like if they never bickered at all?”
“Of course!” Logan would start, “They’d--” He would then pause, slightly ruffled, and then he’d adjust his glasses, “Pardon me, I seemed to have forgotten what I was going to say. I supposed you are correct, Patton. It would likely be similar that one week a few months ago, when they managed four days without a confrontation and then got into a fistfist that cost both their houses a large quantity of points and put you in the hospital wing.”
And Patton would have a response to that, a dismissive, water under the bridge sort of comment, but he and the others would be distracted by the sound of a certain Hufflepuff’s voice raising above the rest and the cacophony of nasty laughter that would follow from the crowd.
If one was of the particularly curious type and continued watching the trio further, they might also note the way that Logan would seem to blink several more times, with a small frown, as if he were to be chasing after a thought that had gotten away from him at the worst of times.
One would also get a chance to see Patton stand up and brush off his robes carefully, before turning back to his friends. “We should break them up, before someone tells Professor Sanders and he takes points from both their houses.”
“Wouldn’t that be a good thing?” Logan would ask entirely not rhetorical but a near thing, with his eyes sparking as they always would do when someone brought up the point system he would have dedicated his entire school year to winning. “Objectively, as none of us are in Hufflepuff nor Slytherin.”
And Roman would pick up one of the stacks of books, and reply, “Thank god for that! Those Slytherin types are down right evil!”
“Roman!” Patton would reprimand, taking another two books from the other stack while Logan hefted the others, “Slytherins are not evil!”
And Roman would, of course, scoff as he always would have done, “uh, yeah they are! And Ekans is the worse of ‘em! He’s a Disney Villain in the making!”
“Disney?” Patton would repeat, confused, “Is that a muggle thing?”
And Roman would be absolutely offended, because even after five years of having been friends with the pureblood wizard, there would still be some things that didn’t crossover between their respective worlds and one of them would be Classic Animated Movies.
“Dee is not completely malicious,” Logan would say as a deterrent, “He’s most likely just fallen in with the wrong crowd, so to speak.”
“Wrong crowd, my ass! He’s just a terrible guy!” Roman would mention loudly for all to hear had they been listening in, (and ignoring the puff of "language!" from his friend), “He used Epoximise to glue me to my seat in second year!”
“Actually that was Virgil.” Logan would say.
“Was it?”
And Patton would give his Gryffindor friend that strange sort of look, “Yeah! It was before you two really saw eye to eye!"
Roman would mutter under his breath, “Weird.” Then he would raise his head again, “Doesn’t change the fact that he’s a bad guy. Whats the name of those evil wizard dudes from the great wizard war again?”
“What?”
“Those guys who are who-know-who’s followers?”
“You mean Death Eaters?”
And Patton would flinch slightly at the term, and cover it with a queasy smile, because there really wouldn’t be much to be afraid of anymore! The Ministry would have had said so themselves! The Order would just be being vigilant should that change!
“Just you watch!” Roman would say in a definite sort of voice that he always got when someone started badmouthing Divination rather than just the awful Divination Teacher, which would have then prompted Logan and Patton to share a look, “Dee Ekans is going to end up a some type of neo-Death Eater!”
And if one watched for several more years, and kept that sort of conversation in their mind as they did, they would see that Roman Prince had been right.
And if one did not know anything about the conflict between Virgil Storm and Dee Ekans, they would have been inclined to believe that Dee had always been a vile sort of fellow and that there would have been no other outcome for a boy like him born into a pureblood magic family that favored dark magic than for him to have joined the rest of his family in their attempts to promote the Dark Lady to power and that he and Virgil would have been destined to hate each other from the start.
And if one did not own or have access to a time turner, one would, of course, come to the perfectly reasonable conclusion that it had always been this way.