Chapter 4
The first week of classes limped by. Erik managed to refrain from maiming even his stupidest students. He recovered an overjoyed Scorpius Malfoy's scarf from the King's Cross lost and found (earning an entirely unnecessary and embarrassing hug), and put the fear of God and Erik Lehnsherr into the hearts of his three punch-happy students from the first night. Young Imogen Cox continued to be an attitude problem at every turn, with fat little Dolly Dursley flittering ineffectually in her shadow, but it was nothing Erik couldn't handle.
"Bullying the child isn't handling it," Charles muttered at dinner. He no longer flinched when Erik took the chair next to his, though he also made no attempt to stop Raven from snagging it whenever she could.
"I count as a victory anything that keeps her foul mouth closed long enough for some knowledge to seep through her ears," Erik said. "I can tell she's not an idiot. She could learn if she wasn't too busy making life difficult for her teachers."
Moira glared. "She's had a hard life, Lehnsherr."
"Of course she has, she's in Hufflepuff, that's hardship enough right there."
Professor Shaw barked a laugh at the head of the table, startling them all. He seldom joined them for meals, even more rarely participated in conversation.
"A difficult childhood doesn't excuse disrespectful behavior," Shaw said, "Hufflepuff or not. Our own Professor Lehnsherr had an extremely difficult childhood. Nevertheless, he was ever a well-mannered and quick-learning boy."
"Yeah," Raven muttered under her breath. "Didn't he turn out great?"
"A student who won't listen to her betters is worthless," Shaw said. "Worse than worthless, because she sets a poor example for the easily led."
"I'll work with her, sir," Moira said.
"See that you do, MacTaggert, or she'll face the consequences."
---
Erik had no luck figuring out what had become of the missing supplies from the back cabinet. According to inventory, the stolen items were scurvy grass, ginger root, scarab beetles, and possibly some half-catalogued skinkroot. It might be ingredients for a basic Wit-Sharpening Potion of Power-Boosting Potion, popular choices for getting through exam week. Well, if a student was trying to get a jump on his studies -- Erik would still eviscerate him for stealing, but it was considerably less alarming than it might have been. Though too much messing around with Power-Boosting Potions could be alarming for the student's health. He might need to alert Madam Pomfrey in the infirmary to the possibility of someone dragging in with severe exhaustion and magical burn-out…
He spent his evenings, after preparing for the next day's classes, exploring the rediscovered memories of his childhood. As Charles had promised, they came easily now, as long as he was calm and focused. He remembered baking with his mother, singing with his father, remembered snow outside his bedroom window and the tabby kitten his father brought in from the rain. He remembered watching his parents at work in the wand shop, the dozen phases of careful carving and assembling and layered spellwork that went into every wand. They had, in fact, taught him quite a bit of their craft, though his childish mind had retained fairly little and understood less.
Unlike the mainstream wand shops, like Ollivander's, the Lehnsherrs had mostly made wands on commission, each tailored to a particular user and often to a particular purpose--heavy-duty wands for Aurors; quick, responsive wands for duelists; delicate, precise wands for physicians. They started work on Erik's wand the day after his magic manifested, involving him at every step. In the end it was longer and sturdier than most wands, especially a child's first wand, but it fit Erik's hand like he was born holding it -- a 14-inch length of dark-shining blackthorn wood around a dragon-heartstring core. A strong wand, his father said, for strong magic, for a strong wizard.
The wand in Erik's hand now was nearly identical -- blackthorn, dragon heartstring, fourteen inches -- and it had been almost like finding an old friend, when Mr. Ollivander placed it in his hand. But it still hurt that the wand his parents had made for him was gone, lost to the icy darkness of the lake.
"I know what this means to you, but you're going to drown. You've got to let it go."
Speaking of Charles, Erik saw little of him except at meals, and he wondered if that was how things were going to be -- polite conversation, or more often polite arguments, once or twice a day, for the rest of their lives. In some ways it was worse than never seeing him at all.
He should be angrier at Charles, he knew. The way he had stormed off with no warning or explanation, and no contact for ten years-- Erik had a right to be angry, and he'd exercised it, for years, stewing in his rage. He was still angry, he could feel the burn of it in his veins sometimes--but it was so quiet, under the other things burning there, that he could convince himself it didn't matter, it could wait, all he wanted was to have things the way they used to be.
Because he wasn't kidding himself anymore about why he was here. Shaw could have argued about prestige and privilege and wasted potential until he was blue-faced and Erik would have been unmoved, but once he'd mentioned that Charles Xavier was teaching there, it had taken him less than a minute to accept the position.
There would be time for anger, time to demand explanations and exchange whatever apologies were necessary, once Charles was back in his arms where he belonged.
The anger came boiling out, though, midway through the second week.
When Madam Salvador, the flying instructor, reported to the hospital wing with a stomach bug, Professor Shaw, perhaps remembering Erik's Quidditch days, casually put him in charge of her classes for the day. He had the Ravenclaws first.
"It was my job to teach them to fly a broomstick," he told Charles at dinner, "not to coddle their nerves."
"Erik," Charles said between his teeth, "you pushed a frightened child off the top of a building."
"And he flew!"
"That's not the point!"
"I think it is, actually."
"What if he hadn't flown?"
The argument increased in volume and volatility as they debated the odds of "Accio dunderhead" saving the incompetent flyer from a messy death, and the other teachers were listening in thinly-veiled amusement -- until Erik, spurred by a sudden flash of rage even he couldn't explain, leaped to his feet, slamming a fist onto the table.
"Curse you, Charles, you've no right." He was breathing quite a bit harder than the argument warranted, and it was making him strangely light-headed. "You gave up any right to judge my actions ten years ago when you left me to figure things out for myself. If you wanted a vote in the kind of man I turned out to be, well, you had it and you -- you bloody well abstained."
He turned and left the Hall, refusing the feel the dozens -- if not hundreds -- of pairs of eyes on his back.
He made it maybe halfway to his rooms before he had to stop, leaning a hand against the wall, trying to breathe through the anger and strange dizzy fear singing under his skin.
Footsteps sounded behind him, and he just had time to smooth back his hair and straighten his robes before Raven rounded the corner.
"Charles sent me," she said, crossing her arms as she came to a stop several steps away. "Not out loud, you understand…"
He did understand. Charles and Raven didn't need words anymore. Erik had been jealous, once upon a time, of the bond between Charles and the girl he befriended on his very first train to Hogwarts, the girl he'd convinced his wealthy parents to take in when she was orphaned near the end of fifth year. They'd made a peculiar triangle, he and Raven competing for Charles's attention -- Erik wasn't sure if Charles had ever been aware of Raven's crush on him, but by the time they graduated, it had settled into sisterly affection. With a dash of Mama Bear.
"We were friends, too, weren't we?" Erik heard himself saying. He couldn't say she'd ever been a priority in his life the way Charles was, but he'd missed her all the same. More than he expected.
"Yes," Raven admitted painfully. "We were friends. Until you hurt Charles."
"I never meant to. I never would."
"You did it anyway."
He let out a long breath, tipping his head back against the wall. Silence reigned.
"I don't know if I ever thanked you," Raven said. "You saved my -- not my life, not even my sanity, really, but you saved something of me. With that kiss. Charles… Charles just didn't understand. He just kept assuring me they'd find some way to reverse it."
'It' being the experimental transfiguration spell that blew up in Raven's face, disabling her Metamorphmagus ability and turning her skin scaly blue for the better part of a term. This was not, of course, nearly the social disaster at Hogwarts that it would have been at a Muggle school, but that didn't mean no one laughed, or mocked, or flinched away. Including the boy Raven had been crushing on that year. And for months, they'd been unsure whether it could ever be undone.
Erik had been the one to find her crying in a study carrel at the library, and do the only thing he could think of to show her she was still beautiful. She was beautiful, and the kiss had been very pleasant in its way. Remembering that gave Erik the courage for Magda, after… after Charles. Of course that had worked out so bloody well…
"You're welcome," Erik said.
Raven bit her lip. "It won't keep me from using that impotence hex I've been researching. If you hurt Charles again."
"Duly noted," Erik said drily.
They nodded to each other, like duelists saluting, and she walked away.
---
Erik paced his rooms for several minutes, trying to settle himself, finally resorted to a drink and the comfort of his memory routine. But the required state of calm focus proved difficult to achieve, and the only memories that would come were not from his childhood in Dusseldorf, but from Hogwarts, ten years before.
The day before graduation, the Slytherin team captain, Parkinson, had called one last Quidditch practice, just for fun. Charles hadn't wanted him to go, which led to an almost shorthand version of their too-familiar argument--
"Stop clinging, Charles, I'm allowed to have friends, I can't spend every waking moment with you!"
"That's not what -- you never -- but fine, never mind, do as you like!"
So he'd gone, and had a great time swooping around the Quidditch pitch one last time, batting a Bludger back and forth with the other Beater, Higgs -- also graduating -- until they were both tired and breathless with laughter. The harsh words with Charles left an uneasy knot in his stomach, but he'd make it up to Charles later, he always did.
As they walked off the pitch in the waning light, Parkinson flung his arms over Erik and Higgs's shoulders and bemoaned their impending graduation in an uncharacteristic show of sentimentality. "I don't know how I'll replace you boys, I just don't," he said. "You've been the best Beaters anyone could ask for, excellent representatives of the House!"
Erik couldn't help smiling, warmed by the unexpected compliment. "I've certainly tried my best, Cap."
"Oh? Hanging about with Mudbloods, that's trying your best?" Higgs poked him with his broom, laughing. "You and that puppy Xavier."
Erik tried not to let his cheeks heat. "Yeah, well, someone has to do my homework. Xavier's pretty smart for a Mudblood."
"Doesn't hurt that the pup's desperately in love with you," Parkinson snickered.
"Ha, I wondered about that!" Higgs said triumphantly. "He's a pretty one, you know. Fess up, Lehnsherr, you been letting all that desperate pretty go to waste?"
"Come on, does that sound like the kind of thing I'd do?" And what he meant was that taking advantage of a younger boy's crush wasn't the kind of thing he'd do, but it came out wrong, and he didn't try to correct himself because Higgs and Parkinson were hooting with laughter, cat-calling and congratulating him, and Erik realized how much he was looking forward to not having conversations like these. Which made him wonder why he was having them now, why he was friends with these people at all, but it was practically graduation. Why rock the boat, soon it wouldn't matter.
Suddenly he desperately wanted to be with Charles, to apologize for snapping at him earlier, to spend their last night at Hogwarts playing chess at their secret spot on the roof or just curled up somewhere together. But he couldn't find him, or Raven either, and when he finally persuaded a Ravenclaw to look for them in the dormitories, the kid said they weren't there.
He didn't see Charles until the graduation ceremony in the morning, and he looked terrible, pale and sleepless and shaky.
"Are you all right?" Erik tried to discreetly take his hand, hidden in the folds of his dress robes, but Charles -- perhaps not noticing? -- shifted away.
"I'm fine," he said curtly, without looking at him.
All through the ceremony, and their last boat ride back across the lake, and their last trip on the Hogwarts Express back to King's Cross Station, Charles was quiet and distant. Was he that sad about leaving Hogwarts? Was he still angry about their tiff the night before? Surely he wouldn't let such a minor exchange of words ruin today...
They arrived at King's Cross with twenty minutes to spare before they caught their next train, the first of many in the long, tangled route they had planned with such excitement, their whirlwind celebration tour of landmarks of the wizarding world -- Godric's Hollow, Little Hangleton, Grimmauld Place. Erik honestly didn't care where they went, he just wanted to travel with Charles, to have this, this almost-like-a-honeymoon trip, just the two of them, no more judgmental eyes watching, no more hiding. Charles had been in transports over the whole idea.
And now he was just standing there on the platform, not looking at anything.
Somewhat desperately, Erik stepped up behind Charles and wrapped his arms around his waist -- probably the most open display of affection he'd ever allowed himself -- and murmured in Charles's ear, "You're beautiful, you know."
In a harder, colder voice than Erik had ever heard from him before, Charles replied, "So I've been told. And you're not one to let desperate pretty go to waste, are you? After all, someone has to do your homework, and I'm pretty smart for a Mudblood."
And in that moment of freefalling terror, Erik made the worst mistake of his life. In a situation where his only hope would have been abject, belly-up surrender, he got angry instead, angry enough to be stupid, to make counter-accusations, to attempt a defense of the indefensible. And it ended with Charles, bright-eyed with fury and tears, cursing him out in the most precise, controlled, and grammatically-complex manner imaginable, before turning to leave.
Erik grabbed his arm, and Charles turned on him with a snarl.
"Let me go, Erik."
And Erik knew he had to be eight kinds of a fool to actually do it, but his hand opened, and Charles disappeared into the crowd.
And now, ten silent miserable years later, Erik finally had a chance to fix that mistake. If he could just figure out how.
Sick to death of the inside his own head, Erik flung himself out of his chair and into the bathroom to get ready for bed.