Disclaimer: If you recognize it, I probably don't own it.

So! New Charlie Bone project! I love reading AU stories, so I've decided to go to town with a bunch of Paton/Julia AUs. These will ALL be oneshots, and will be set in a lovely assortment of fictional, historical, mythological, and real-life AU settings. I will not take requests (as in, "You have to do [insert fandom here], but suggestions are welcome and may or may not find themselves with a chapter of their own. Also, any oneshot that receives a particularly positive response may or may not get a spinoff fic...who knows!

So, for round number one: Harry Potter. This practically screamed to be written, and I could honestly go on for weeks with this one. Their story just begs to be written, and could very well merit a fic of its own.

As with all of my stuff, if you read it, favorite it, follow it, or even hate it, please review! It's the best way for me to know your thoughts and opinions! And, as always, enjoy!


He was the new History of Magic professor, she the cute seventh year Ravenclaw prefect.

It was only his first year teaching, but he had already earned the label of being one of those professors who could hold a class in thrall. Some said it was his dark features and intimidating height, while others insisted it was his soft, rich voice; it was a voice which could sweep through the class as if borne by a wind, warm and inviting students into the adventure of learning or just as easily cool and full of derision for their blatant stupidity.

It had only taken him a few weeks in the job to be labeled as odd, too. The students whispered about him as they strode from class to class throughout the day, swapping rumors of the limitless library he supposedly had in his office and the shady past he didn't hide, exactly, but never actually spoke about. The Yewbeams were an old family of the purist blood, and had numerous ties to these Death Eaters that were beginning to appear throughout the countryside. Gryffindors watched him distrustfully, Slytherins scorned him for shunning his heritage, Hufflepuffs didn't care one way or another; only the Ravenclaws offered him any modicum of acceptance.

Students and staff alike surmised he fell from similar stock as his strange family, this oddly reserved history professor whom they had taken on board the Hogwarts payroll. Many remembered him from his own Hogwarts days, that shy Gryffindor who "had his nose stuck in a book from day one and very seldom emerged hence." He refused to play Quidditch, raised an eyebrow at Care of Magical Creatures, and dismissed Divination as a frivolous fancy without ever setting foot in the classroom. In all other subjects, he excelled. Potions was a game, a competition with himself (and that surly Severus kid) to see how close to perfect his draught could be. He threw himself into Charms, Arithmancy, and Transfiguration quite enthusiastically, devouring the course content at a rapid pace and seeking out more advanced material on his own when he inevitably surpassed the textbooks. History was his passion, and the scholarly majority of his mind (that had almost prompted his placement into Ravenclaw) devoured text after text of obscure magical times. Defense garnered the most of his determination, and he used his studies there to erect an all but impermeable shield about himself; no one knew why, exactly, and he never consented to say.

Muggle Studies was the one class on his transcript that took people aback, for why would a pureblood wizard of his caliber even care to think about muggle technology and trends? But, learn he did, and quite curiously, too.

Other than his immediate family, no one was familiar with his home life. He came from a home of four sisters, all Slytherin, and a surprisingly Hufflepuff father. Grizelda, Lucretia, Eustacia, and Venetia were four names well remembered within Hogwarts's walls—with proud fondness by Slytherin house, and with abject horror by everyone else. His generation of Yewbeams had darkened the school's doors for a streak of nearly twenty consecutive years, and it was alleged that the three younger ones had…unusual abilities.

As a rule, Paton did his best to stay well out of his sisters' shadows, denying any association unless forced to acknowledge them, and skirting Venetia—the only one young enough to have her later Hogwarts years coincide with his earlier ones—in the hallways whenever possible. In fact, he quickly became intimately acquainted with the school's hidden passages and corridors, dancing away from her and her horrid flock of groupies whenever their paths threatened to cross.

He was an odd lad with few friends, preferring instead the company of the library and the silent (and not so silent) books it held.

Even now, as an adult in his own right and with nearly ten years of independent research and academia between him and his school years, he held the stigma of loner, burying himself amid the tomes held in the Hogwarts library and seldom interacting with his peers.

Julia Ingledew, for her part, was a good student—brilliant without being a prodigy, gifted without being odd. She was a Ravenclaw and muggleborn, her parents a stockbroker and amateur artist, and had a younger sister Nancy who, as a striking fifth year, was the talk of Gryffindor house.

Nothing ill was ever said of Julia throughout her Hogwarts tenure; she never got detention, she always met assignment dates, and her exemplary marks were only surpassed by the records established by a certain History of Magic professor. Julia found something to like about every subject, about every lesson: Arithmancy was a puzzle to be solved, Charms a demonstration in practical magics, Transfiguration and Potions and Defense all fascinating cogs in the machinations of daily wizarding life.

Every week, though, the class she most looked forward to was History of Magic.

Perhaps it was because of her Muggle heritage, but Julia loved magical history—history of all sorts, really, but magical in particular. Past events were lessons to be learned, messages prom one time to the next. The topic was a source of endless fascination from the moment she first opened A History of Magic and realized what a plethora of information the magical world had to offer.

From first year on, she was hooked, tracing magical lineages and talents throughout the ages, marking non-magical but "endowed" muggles, trying to forge connections and relationships between the magical and muggle worlds.

She had survived the tedium that defined her first six years of the course, essentially ignoring professor Binns and his goblin fixation and pursuing her own interests. But Professor Yewbeam—he was something else entirely. Stoic and reserved as she usually held herself, she could not repress the thrill of excitement that shot through her when he strode into the classroom that first day of term. Incredibly tall and dark-featured and brilliant, he was like no one she had ever met before-an intimidating enigma, and one who had an eerie resemblance to the vampires she had been reading about just the week before.

Then he had launched into the lesson, and all her first impressions had been swept aside and discarded in a rush of rapidly growing respect, fascination, and (she had to confess) attraction.

It was silly, she knew, to find him so appealing; he had to be at least ten or fifteen years her senior and a professor to boot, but the way he taught, the way he spoke—she had finally found a kindred spirit, someone who held history in the same esteem as she.

His sable eyes burned with passion as he lectured, his keen interest and burning curiosity evident as he spoke. It was as though the events he covered in class had happened mere days before rather than hundreds of years, his warm voice wrapping around the words in a sensuous manner, drawing the life from the leather-bound text and breathing it out into the room. None of this meant anything to Julia's classmates, of course. To them, History of Magic was just another NEWT to be taken, another class to sit through on their way to the "real world" beyond Hogwart's doors.

Julia sat through a few lessons on pins and needles, wanting to ask for more but terrified to actually take the step to make her wish reality. Finally, though, she could take it no longer. She mustered all of her courage, all of her resolve and fortitude and the bravery that she knew was hidden in the recesses of her being (the Sorting Hat had threatened quite convincingly to place her in Gryffindor), and approached him one day following class, setting her books aside on the desk directly before his as her classmates filed out of the room.

"Professor Yewbeam?" Her voice was soft and hesitant, and she shifted back and forth from foot to foot as she waited for him to acknowledge her.

His dark head was bowed over a book, nose nearly brushing the cracked pages as he scanned the worn words. Finally he looked up, rearing back like a startled horse as his brain filtered her words and registered that he was not alone as he had initially assumed.

"What?" Oh, Miss Ingledew!" He stuttered slightly, eyes sweeping up and down her body in a gaze that seemed to read the entirety of her being in a single pass. His hands fluttered absently in the air above his desk as though he couldn't quite decide where to place them. Eventually they grounded themselves on the desk, fingers twining together and stilling on the mahogany finish. "What can I do for you?"

Biting her lip—and inadvertently drawing his gaze—Julia reached a hand behind her neck in a gesture that made her seem quite a lot more uncertain than she usually appeared. "Well," she began, "I was wondering if you might be willing to tutor me…"

His brows drew together. "Tutor you? My dear girl, you have the highest marks in your year—for every class. What could I possibly teach you that you don't already know?"

Julia blushed at the praise. Such a simple complement from him shouldn't mean so much, but it did; it set her heart fluttering and blood rushing to her face. Still, she didn't lose sight of her objective. "You really have no idea, do you?" she asked, raising her eyebrows. "You…when you talk, you make the history real. It stops being just some words in a book and is transformed into reality—you bring it to life, in a way no other person seems to be able to do."

He watched her with an awestruck gaze. Listening to this young woman speak, he was swept up in a tide of emotions. Here was another person who loved knowledge, loved truth and books and fact and history, as much as he, who was expressing desire to step above and beyond the work already required of her in the simple drive for comprehension.

In this moment, Paton Yewbeam fully appreciated why he had become a professor—to find that gem of a student who shared his passions, to impress his legacy on to someone else. He also had to struggle to squash the appreciation that the person so interested in his subject was a beautiful, intelligent young woman who was also, currently, his student.

Academia first. He smiled a shy smile, teeth flashing white in the gradually-darkening classroom. "Miss Ingledew," he declared, "I'd be delighted."

There was no stopping them from then on out. The pair held research sessions whenever they could coordinate their free time, Julia filling her time in between classes, the occasional club meeting, homework, and general student life with extended trips to the library and Professor Yewbeam's study, while he struggled to reconcile teaching, grading, and supervising with his protégé's erratic schedule.

Many meetings saw them sitting together late into the night, hunched over tomes with text nearly too tiny to see, Professor Yewbeam translating forgotten tongues softly as Julia hastened to put them to paper. They never had any set pattern to their lessons, jumping from topic to topic as they struck their fancy. They spent weeks researching the origin of lycanthropy in South America, then turned the next day and immediately seized upon the subject of the Chrono Wars fought by a long-forgotten tribe of hedge witches from lower Wales.

They continued on in this manner for the months leading up to Julia's NEWTs, trading theories and exchanging volumes of obscure history in the way Julia's classmates swapped Chocolate Frog cards. The other professors noticed, of course, some lending a favorable opinion ("I think it's wonderful that young woman has finally pulled you out of your shell, Paton") and others sneering derisively ("Really, Yewbeam, history lessons? I sincerely doubt it"), but the headmaster turned a relatively blind eye (and a rather suggestive wink and a nudge) to the whole arrangement so that was that.

They became best friends, Julia telling Paton about her muggle family and well-loved younger sister, describing a childhood of standing out, of being the oddball standing on the wrong side of the fence and having to look on as the "normal" kids moved on without her. Paton revealed less about his past, but slowly Julia pried from him details of his horrible sisters, his mother's death, and his astonishingly Slytherin family. They learned each other's likes and dislikes, fears, dreams, and quirks.

She knew that he had over one hundred library cards (a neat mix of magical and muggle) and that his favorite color was a deep burgundy. He knew she had a strong affinity for classic muggle literature (Jane Eyre and The Fountainhead were her favorites) and always wore mismatched socks when she knew no one would be seeing them. He had a collection of medieval swords in his sitting room and exceptional taste in wine; she had an owl named Athena, hated pumpkin juice, and was scared of flying (broomsticks, that is; she'd flown on muggle planes multiple times with her parents, a fact which had Paton scratching his head and frowning in disagreement all at the same time).

On nights when she inevitable nodded off over a book in the library or his office, Julia would awaken with his cloak draped over her shoulders or a pillow under her head. When he let his guard down enough to doze in her presence, more often than not he would wake up to find her nestled into his side, having dropped off not long after him.

It was a strange relationship, one defined more by what it wasn't rather than what it actually was.

It was them, though, and they were happy.

All too soon, though, NEWTs came and they went, and Julia and her professor were faced with the unfortunate truth that constituted the end of term and Julia's final days as a Hogwarts student. Her last night in the school found her curled up on Paton's couch, a steaming mug of tea cradled in her hands as she faced the professor who had come to mean so much to her over the past year.

"I don't want to go," she confessed, staring down at the dark liquid between her palms. "Hogwarts has become my home, with its magical bearing and library and history and books."

Smiling gently, Paton reached fowrad and caught her hands in his, tracing his thumbs along her knuckles. "There is so much more out there for you to see and do, my dear," he chided. "You have so much to offer the world—your beauty and brilliance, your persistence and historical prowess. Far too much to keep locked away in this musty old castle."

"But I love Hogwarts," she protested, jerking her hands out of his and setting the mug down on table. "Where do I go after this, anyway? A job at the ministry?" She scoffed. "Hardly my cup of tea, if you'll pardon the pun" She looked down at the amber liquid before her. "Besides, where would my research be then, hmmm?"

He looked at her fro mover steepled fingers. "You could travel," he suggested. "See the world, research in different libraries, see what it is you want to see, learn what you want to learn. The world it your oyster, dear Julia—don't let it get away from you. Not now, when you have so much yet to learn."

Ever practical, Julia frowned, despite the appeal the suggestion held for her. "And where would I get the money for that?" she queried. "I'm not so young as to be naïve in the ways of the world. Travelling takes funding, and Mum and Dad have little enough as it is without my freelancing about the world."

This is where it got tricky. Paton bit his lip, hesitating. "I…you know I have a substantial fortune at my disposal…" he began, shooting her a sideways glance. "Inheritance from that odd aunt, you know." The words came out slowly, as though pulled from his lips. He didn't want to frighten her away with his offer, irrevocably wound her pride with his proposal.

"That is your money, Paton Yewbeam!" she protested hotly (the 'Professor' in his moniker had been discarded months ago at his insistence). "You will not waste it on the likes of me."

Even as she said the words she flushed, for the thought that he could care so much, that he would be willing to invest so heavily in her dreams and future…

"But what if I want to?" he persisted. "Julia, this past year with you…you have taught me so much, about history and human nature and the world itself. We are kindred spirits, you and I, caught up in a world that can never see things the way we do. You are a diamond in the rough, a gem among coals—you are everything bright and good within this world. I want you to have every opportunity available to you."

If Julia was blushing before, now she was beet red. "Professor," she stammered, flushing even darker when he frowned at the return to his professional title. "Paton," she stressed, "I cannot accept this. I…you…it's too much."

He sighed and passed a hand across his brow. "I thought you might say as much," he admitted, tracing an abstract symbol on the tabletop with one long, white finger. "What would you say if I were to, say, take a vacation, travel the world and do some heavy research of my own? I'd need a partner, someone who's proven that they could hold their own with me intellectually and emotionally, someone to stand by me and challenge me all at the same time." He cocked an eyebrow at her. "How does that sound, my dear Julia?"

It took her a moment to process the information, and when she did, her mouth curled into the makings of a smile. "That…might be acceptable," she admitted. Then she frowned and looked at him, forcing her to meet her gaze. "But…in what context would I be accompanying you?" she queried. "A student? A researcher? An aide?"

That gave Paton pause; he had not expected her to be so direct. "Well," he fudged, "I hoped 'friend' would feature a lot more prominently, as well as…"

"As well as?" she asked pointedly. She was having no more of this dancing around like a nervous horse. They'd been doing that for months and the time for that had long since passed.

He gave a light cough and looked away as if embarrassed. "Well, Julia, you have to know I—that is, I mean to say…I've become very fond of you, and…" His normally pale face was streaked bright pink as he choked on the words, floundering around worse than a fish stranded out of water.

A bright smile spreading across her face, Julia finally took pity on him. "Yes," she said, placing a finger on his lips before he dug himself even deeper into his hole. "I will come with you. And," she leaned forward, honeyed eyes gleaming, lacing their fingers together and bringing her mouth to hover just in front of his, "I love you too, you silly man."

He blushed and stuttered and flexed his fingers beneath hers, but he never denied it, and as he finally (finally) closed the distance between them, his lips responded and his hands rose to wrap around the back of her neck and cup her chin in a manner that left no room for argument. Yes, they would make a very good pair indeed.