Chapter Text
William Schofield, Seventh Year prefect of Ravenclaw, was beautiful.
Thomas Blake, Fifth Year prefect of Gryffindor, had known this since his first year at Hogwarts.
Those first few weeks were an overwhelming blur of excitement and anxiousness. Navigating the staircase was as much of a challenge as scrambling to make friends of his housemates. Tom quickly found that he was best suited to make friends through his storytelling. Him and Joe had gotten up to some great mischief back in Essex, and his dormmates didn’t need to know if he embellished a few details, so long as he kept them laughing.
Tom had eventually settled into the rhythms of Hogwarts. He told increasingly entertaining stories as he got to know his fellow Gryffindors’ preferred humor; he excelled at Astronomy and struggled in Herbology; and his voice went hoarse after contrasting a nasty cold watching the first quidditch match of the year.
(Dementors flooded the pitch, but Tom suspected he could eventually forget that blood-curdling fear and use it as a punchline in a story years from now.)
Tom was happy at Hogwarts. Happy with his new bed, with his new friends, with the limitless Ribena at breakfast, lunch and supper. But he still considered Joe his best friend and spent every meal tucked next to his big brother, laughing amongst the friends Joe wrote home about so often that Tom couldn’t help but admire them as storybook heroes.
They took to him well, always commenting how Tom looked like Joe, but younger. Slowly, the knot in Tom’s chest loosened. He didn’t always have to be a storyteller filling awkward silences with friendly chatter. He could comfortably assume the role of Joe’s younger brother and happily watch well-choreographed banter fill the inevitable silences of mealtime, just as he’d always had, and he was glad.
Tom learned to hate Hogsmeade weekends.
When Joe and his mates were off for their first Hogsmeade visit of the year, Tom came to the icy realization that his peers had started pairing off into their own groups without him. He hopped from group to group with warm reception, despite their newly minted friendships, telling stories all the way.
He stuck especially close to Joe that night in the Common Room and soaked in the stories of Butterbeer and ghosts and felt an awful pang of loneliness, even as Joe intermittently ruffled his hair from his perch on the armchair.
The weekend came to an end, classes resumed, and Tom fell back into the familiar rhythm of being Joe Blake’s younger brother and wrote a happy letter to their mother.
Then, the next Hogsmeade visit came.
Tom made his rounds. He laughed and talked and smiled with each group of Gryffindor First Years. He even found a good-humored Second Year Gryffindor on a study break. But none of these Gryffindors were Joe or his mates, so that loneliness in Tom’s chest knocked his next story off-kilter and he sulked out to the grounds.
It wasn’t until he released a ragged breath that he realized he was scanning the edge of the Forbidden Forest for a familiar cluster of cherry trees.
Tom planted his heel in the dewy grass and went to turn smartly back to the doors when he spotted him. Slumped casually beneath a hearty birch tree a judicious ten meters from the lake’s edge, a boy in a Ravenclaw scarf had a parchment paper pressed to his thigh as he scribbled onto it with a ragged quill, occasionally referencing an open textbook splayed out on the grass beside him.
As the boy reached out to flip to a new page in his textbook, Tom watched in fascination as the breeze suddenly stole the parchment from his leg.
Magic wasn’t instinctive for Tom, not like it was for Joe. So he stumbled after it, arms outstretched and wand forgotten in his pocket.
The parchment wavered dangerously over the lake’s edge, and Tom grabbed a handful of cattails to steady him as he leaned out over the water. His fingers brushed the corner of the parchment, and he went to snag it neatly from its watery grave.
As his index and middle fingers caught the parchment in his hand, the cattails became uprooted. Tom hissed as his calf was submerged in the icy chill, and he screwed his eyes shut as he prepared to fall forward completely.
A hand suddenly gripped his forearm and yanked him back to the muddy embankment.
Tom whipped around, parchment held high overhead, and his victorious whoop stuttered as he came face-to-face with the Ravenclaw boy.
“Thanks,” he grumbled sheepishly, reaching up to carefully disentangle Tom’s clenched fist from his dry, wrinkled parchment paper.
Tom couldn’t help but gawk at the boy’s eyes. They were the kind of blue one of Myrtle’s puppies had had when they sold it off to his muggle cousin’s father-in-law. Something about above-average risk of blindness swirled idly in his head as he distractedly took in the rest of his handsome face.
Automatically, pant leg dripping wet, he answered, “No problem! Name’s Tom Blake.”
Tom reached out his hand.
“Aren’t you Joe Blake’s younger brother?”
Suddenly, the comfortable weight of being Joe Blake’s shadow tightened around his neck.
“No! I’m Tom, just Tom.”
The boy’s face went slack, and uneven blotches of pink stretched from his pale cheeks to his ears. His mouth opened wordlessly, and Tom watched delightedly as he rushed to compose himself.
“Oh, sorry. It’s just that you look so much like him—”
“But younger. Yeah, I know,” Tom said quickly. “He is my older brother, actually. I don’t know why I said that.”
The boy’s face was scrunched, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips. With a huff of laughter, he reached out to shake Tom’s hand.
“William Schofield.”
A decent enough name, Tom supposed.
With a smile, Tom asked, “Well, what’re you doin’ working so close to the water, Scho?”
Sheepishly, he answered, “Didn’t give myself enough time to write my essay for Trelawney earlier this week, so I didn’t have time to go to Hogsmeade. Figured sitting outside was a decent enough trade.”
The boys steadily traipsed back to the birch tree, where Will resumed his slumped position. Tom fell backwards with a sigh, laying on his back and looking up into the tree’s yellowing leaves.
“Merlin,” he breathed out, a smile pinching his cheeks. “I sacrificed my dry sock for a Divination essay? Wish you would’ve mentioned it while it was flying around like it was hexed.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Will straighten up like he’d been bitten by a pixie from hell.
“Oh, shit!” he laughed. “You’re right. Should’ve let the wind take it.”
Tom couldn’t help but giggle as Will dug in his pockets, parchment paper and quill safely tucked under the weight of his textbook. Tom shifted his elbows so he could prop himself up and better watch Schofield. A small smile still lit up his face, and his hair was decidedly more tousled than it was before the parchment incident.
Will apparently found what he was looking for. He produced a sleek wand from his breast pocket and asked, “May I?”
Tom nodded dumbly. Will could have been asking to jinx his ears to turn inside-out, and he realized he’d say yes. Anything to keep his attention fixed squarely on him.
Will waved his wand and muttered incoherently, and Tom nearly melted into the burst of warmth his pants gave off as they dried in a flash of steam.
“Better?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“My older sister taught that one to me over the summer. Hadn’t practiced it yet.”
“You could’ve burned my leg off, Scho.”
“Better you than me, Tom.”
As Will’s eyes skittered from the lake to find Tom’s gaze, time seemed to stop. And Tom found he couldn’t help himself but laugh along with Will and his strange humor.
The bleached bark of the birch tree might not match his cherry trees’ petals exactly, but it was close enough for Tom to forget that growing ache of loneliness.
Will Schofield was beautiful, and he looked like home.