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thefangirlofhp · 1 year

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it's good to be alive (crying into cereal at midnight)

“A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.” –Nelson Mandela

[Companion piece to for years or for hours, one year after.]

It’s some consequence of attending a school in Scotland during the cooler seasons that one’s extracurricular activities are to be sponsored by miserable grey weather mostly accentuated with cold rains and storms. It leaves some magnificent greenery to be witnessed when the sun occasionally peeks her head up the way a tantrum-throwing toddler would, and for those summer-flowers of students, then the school year is a mostly miserable experience combated only by toasty activities within the walls of the ancient castle and fun charms found in columns of magazines.

For a soul like his, Azriel is one of those people who relish in whatever the weather happens to be—as long as he gets to experience it. To be cooped up inside while the world happens outside is a nightmare he is not eager to return to at all. It’s one of those things about him that he knows for a fact; he dislikes the indoors, prefers not to speak up in large gatherings, and he is definitely on a blacklist in the Aurors’ books thanks to his family name and shadows.

That, and his best-friend is one of those stubborn, loyal people he wouldn’t trade for all the gems in the world. Having come to value said person so much, Azriel’s ready to curse the weather for upsetting her, even if the cold droplets on his face during practice feel like kisses from the sky herself.

The sky’s not to blame entirely—still, the fact that it is the catalyst for the sullen expression on Elain’s bleak face leaves little mercy to be found. He would urge her to find refuge inside while his house’s Quidditch practice takes place, as there’s no point in spending two hours in the stadium while the cold February air sinks its teeth in her skin, but he knows better than anyone Elain’s only going back into the castle with him at her side.

She’s waiting by the entrance to the stadium when he’s finished and showered, arms crossed over her middle and shoulders hunched while she leans against the wood of the tower, house flags flapping violently above their head. Azriel makes his way over to her quickly, taking note of her pale complexion and pink nose.

“Fuck’s sake, ‘Lain, I told you—”

She rolls her eyes and shrugs her shoulders. Sometimes he gets the irresistible urge to strangle his own neck when she gets this stubborn. “Can we get in now, please?” she croaks, voice faded and hoarse in a way that immediately lights flames beneath his skin.

“Definitely. Straight to the infirmary.”

“No,” she protests at once, dropping her arms and pushing back her shoulders as he drops his bag to his feet. “No. No. No.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” he coos sarcastically in return, unwinding the long blue and bronze scarf from his neck and shoulders. There’s a small sigh of relief in him when the air finds his neck again that’s contrasted by Elain’s groan. “You’re an adult now, stop acting like a baby.”

Said actor delivers a kick to his shins that misses its mark and unbalances her enough for him to quickly sling the scarf around her, hold her firmly by the shoulders and piles it up to her ears and over her unbound hair. Wide doe-eyes glare at him before he raises a sharp eyebrow.

“C’mon, let’s catch lunch,” he mutters, after a staring match of few seconds that bleary-eyed Elain loses. “Get any work done?”

“No,” comes her faint answer as she follows him towards the castle. “Think it’s an all-nighter again.”

He sucks in his cheeks as his hand tightens on the strap of his bag. The offer to help her with her homework appears, at it is always prone to, on the tip of his tongue and disappears in offered grace and the gesture of caring. It’s why, when she adds in a whisper: “Think I’ll have to use your help”, that he abruptly pauses halfway up the hill towards the castle and turns to her, mouth parted faintly in surprise.

Then he feels his chest sink with sympathy. “That bad?”

Red rimmed eyes inked with exhaustion look away briefly, and the bleak colours of the outdoors do little good for the puffed skin beneath her eyes and the discoloration that highlights the blue veins in her eyelids. Elain presses her pale lips together, and cannot meet his imploring gaze.

Then, at the bright tears gathering in her waterline, a gentle “Hey” escapes him.

“I don’t wanna go,” her voice thickens with tears, telling of a lump swelling in her throat. “Sh-She keeps as-asking and she always knows.”

“Hey,” in the years he’s lived, longer than hers, Azriel’s had few reasons to hear his own voice (excluding the cries of pain and obligatory whisper-like one-worded responses) and even fewer reasons to let anyone hear him but her eyes shed tears and there’s no other valid reason to speak up other than to make them go away, to erase that pain and exhaustion that follows her like a bad smell. There’s never been an occasion such as this, where a single word is like that of a hug, soft as if handling fragile glassware and as needed as oxygen is to the fire.

Elain turns her head away, as if he’ll think less of her for her pain, but there’s the mistake because then her gaze lands on the Auror in the far distance patrolling the gates to the school and he can hear the sharp hiss of pain at the reminder why they’re stationed there in the first place. His shadows buzz in his head like shock does to numb a person’s senses; they’ve never been at peace with a distraught Elain. If he’s to go so far as to assign sentience to them, he’d say they get distraught in return.

Safe to say he’s never been at ease when Elain isn’t, either.

“Hey, ‘Lain,” he tries again, reaches out and clasps his hand over her elbow with barriers of sweaters and robe sleeves between them. “Look at me, it’s not your fault.”

It prompts a sob, that break his heart.

“I saw her die,” her admission is soft.

“Lain,” his mouth goes dry. He tugs on her arm. “Look at me. Please.”

She pauses, collects herself and faces him once more, sniffing faintly.

“It’s not your fault,” the reminder makes him feel numb all over, that it’s necessary and vital as an antidote to poison. He takes her gloved hands in his, squeezes them tightly. “You didn’t do it. You didn’t cause it.”

“I saw it,” her lower lip wobbles. “I should have said something.”

At that, he cannot simply utter anything that comes to mind owed to the magnanimity of such seriousness related to that particular line of thought. All he can do is look back gently, free of judgement, of opinion, in a stare that is silent as it is caring and safe. I am here, it says. I’ve not turned away, the hands over her gloves remind gently. I understand.

It is because he understands that Azriel is generous and honest when he does not refute Elain’s possible choices, or do her the disservice of convincing her she is at no fault for a lack of choices.

Which is why he squeezes her hands gently, ducks his head a little to bring back their eyes’ meeting. “You know what I’d say.”

Elain’s eyebrows furrow together, eyes brightening with a devastating sheen of tears. “Is it awful of me to want to hear it?”

“We don’t have a strong understanding of your talent because it’s unprecedented,” he is careful to keep his tone softer than a breeze, low and private for their ears only. “And exposing its true reach subjects you to the kind of scrutiny that’s barbaric at best, because we’ve inferred the nature of treatment you’d receive from what I am experiencing from the world beyond the scope of the school. Fear makes people do irrational things, Elain. Until we find a rational person who can help us, we’ve agreed it’s best to keep it under wraps.”

Her mouth twitches. “But I’m tired,” she whispers tightly.

His heart truly cries out for her, really it does. It makes him consider irrational choices beyond breaking into the Restricted Section of the school’s library and pursuing the dark arts sections of bookstores further fueling the stigma that follows him around. It truly tests the limits of his self-preservation, because his best-friend is suffering. Insomnia and exhaustion and hallucinations and a misplaced perception of reality, physical manifestations of an untamed power bringing on severe headaches that have more often than not sent her falling off high places, dropping unconscious in the most inconvenient and random of times and it’s only the tip of the iceberg. He can only make her voice her ailments to the school nurse to an extent.

So he can only try erasing that gloom off her face with a small teasing smile. “You’re a N.E.W.T student, Archeron. What else can you be?”

The reminder of her burden only zaps anxiety into the boiling cauldron of unfortunate feelings. “Oh God, my essays.”

“Yeah,” he nods slowly with a fabricated grimace. “You’re worried about the wrong futures, Archeron. Head in your what-ifs and I-coulds, when right now you’re sorta ignoring an atomic bomb in the corner. This is your future, and you’re ignoring it over a girl that, quite frankly, not many are missing if I’m honest.”

Her eyes widen. “Oi…”

“So,” he grabs her shoulders. Rain drops splatter sporadically against his bare hands and he has to reel in a bust of refreshed energy coursing through his chest. Flying has always had the effect on him that he imagines illicit potions and muggle-drugs do on others. “You gonna finally worry about the possibility of having to sit through another year of Slughorn? This time, well, made creepier by his confusing mixture of disappointment and thrill that his favorite student has failed his subject?”

Elain’s head reels back at the horror.

Azriel leans in closer, preaching his grim expectations in a deranged softness that fuels the darkness of his words. “Imagine it, Elain. An entire year of Slughorn over you, breathing down your neck. Disappointed in you, and determined to push you into the arms of success by any means necessary, Miss Archeron…”

Elain tears her hands out of his grasp and jams her index into his chest. “I swear he’s not as creepy as you make him out to be!” she cries out.

Azriel spreads a hand over his chest. “Really?” he continues his theatre-worthy monologue. “You should listen to Cassian about Slughorn’s incessant harassment. I mean I thought he only had it special for me but hearing Cass, well—“

“Cassian can’t put together three coherent words together in an essay to save his life and somehow he’s adamant on being an Auror,” Elain deadpans.

Azriel shrugs. “I’m just saying. You’re prepared for—God forbid—remedial Potions with Slughorn?”

Elain looks over his shoulder, face twisted in a grimace, and Azriel has to hold in a sigh of relief. His friend’s by no means the top student of their year, but what Elain lacks in academic intelligence she makes up for by sheer pigheadedness and unyielding determination. Material to understand and memorize and essays to write are a challenge she cannot back down from, are a welcome substitute object of her mind’s obsessive thinking and pulling all-nighters to catch up on schoolwork is easier to handle than staying up all-night for fear of your own dreams bringing about doomsday on God’s good people—it’s normal. Moreover, Azriel easily knows how to help her through them.

“Come on,” he slings an arm around her shoulders over the scarf he’s wrapped around her, turning their backs on the patrolling Auror and the grim reality that’s stationed him here, towards the giant castle and it’s mediocre bubble of normalcy. “I’ll keep you company. I’ve got that Charms essay to write.”

“I thought you finished it?” Elain’s voice comes muffled through his scarf, having hidden the lower half of her face in it.

He has but he’d need a reasonable excuse for plunging the depths of the library books and Restricted Section; Elain has the uncanny ability to see right through most his blunders and telling her he’s furthering his research into her problem while he’s only managed to convince her to put her head to her schoolwork serves a contradictory purpose to his efforts.

“I wrote about the use of Norwegian dragon eggs in protective charms instead of the use of Norwegian protective charms on dragon eggs.”

Elain snorts. “What cloud was your head in?”

“Cassian kept talking to me during. It’s practically his fault.”

“You’re right. He’s also responsible for global warming.”

“You know, with the way he walks around thinking he’s the world’s hottest man alive, I might just be damned to say so.”

____

@tswaney17 @julesherondalex @mis-lil-red @gorl-power @thesirenwashere @stars-falling @trying-to-read @dreamerforever-5 @hail-doodles @eloeloeheheh @i-am-lost-in-my-world @abraxos-is-toothless @queen-of-glass @elrielllll @negativenesta @b00kworm @harmonyindark245 @ducksmurf135 @empress-ofbloodshed @sleeping-and-books @thewayshedreamed @agem10 @superspiritfestival @maybekindasortaace @maastrash @courtofjurdan @ireallyshouldsleeprn @gracie-rosee @bookstaninthesoul @elriel4life @fawnandshadows-main @123moiaussi @impossiblescissorspeachpaper

Sorry @casuallivi I read the first few lines and my head ran with it. More to come with elaborate schemes!

#hogwarts au #elriel fic #elain archeron #azriel #missed me?#livi this one's for you luv #elriel hogwarts au #slow burn friends to lovers name something better i dare you

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