Hogwarts: 12:00 in the morning on Friday, November Twentieth
Sometimes Arthur Kirkland regretted accepting the position of Head Boy. Really, really, really regretted it. One of those times was now, when he'd just started his rounds, and he hadn't had a drink in a little over a month, and he'd left his portable wizarding radio back at the dorm, and the people he was having to reprimand happened to be members of his own house. And he was very, very, very tempted to accept their offer of a glass of firewhiskey. So it was with a heavy heart that he pulled out his wand, confiscated their alcohol and magicked it off to the contraband closet in the headmaster's room, and sent them back to bed amid much grumbling. As he turned around to catch the staircase down to the next floor he had to patrol, footsteps caught up with him and he was mildly dismayed to find the bane of his existence keeping in step. His best friend, Alfred F. Jones, had annoyed the ever-loving sanity out of Arthur since the day they'd met a little bit more than seven years ago. Though at first the puppy-like exchange student had brought out the absolute worst in Arthur's remarkably mature (read: senior citizen-esque) personality, it had become apparent to the general public of Hogwarts over the course of their first year together that Arthur cared deeply about Alfred's wellbeing and was actually rather sweet to him underneath his generally grumpy demeanor.
"So, Artie, howsabout a game of chess when we get back?" the perpetually bouncy boy beside Arthur asked with a stupidly wide grin on his face. Arthur merely massaged the bridge of his nose in an attempt to control himself.
"Alfred, it's midnight, you're supposed to be in bed with the rest of the school, and I'm supposed to be on my solo rounds. Solo. Are you aware that solo means alone? And, therefore, solo rounds mean rounds that you do alone. Without other people. So no, I do not think that a round of chess would be an appropriate activity for when we return, especially given that the two of us are not going back to the same place." Arthur told him patiently, walking quicker in an attempt to show the other boy that he was not, in fact, wanted. "You are going back to the dorms right now, and I am going to finish my rounds and then return to the Head tower, on the other side of the school from you. There will be no meet up, no game of chess, no illicit activities, no adventures, and no more roughhousing. Instead, you will go back where you belong."
"Aw, Artie, that's pretty cold of you," whined Alfred, pouting down at the shorter boy who shook off the false emotion with a quirk of the (large) eyebrow. Arthur turned the corner with a huff, readjusting his shirt and doing a quick charm to discern whether there were any canoodling teenagers in the vicinity. Honestly, he'd learned early on in his years of being a Prefect that it just wasn't worth the saved energy to walk in on his peers in various states of undress. Unless they were two certain someones and there was a place for him in the middle, but that was a whole 'nother bucket of things Arthur didn't want to get into this late at night, especially since Alfred was still persisting in following him.
"Right, well, you've got about ten seconds to retreat around that corner and get your ass up to the dorms before I curse it off," and there was more pouting happening, but at least that blonde head of hair was facing away from him and obeying his commands. For once. With a heavy sigh, he turned another corner and cast another charm, resigning himself to another night of patrolling the corridors alone. He would have asked the Head Girl, Madeline Williams, to come along with him, but she had been utterly exhausted earlier by a harsh Quidditch practice in which that Arthur and Madeline's dolt of a lover, one aforementioned Alfred Jones, had misjudged a turn and collided straight into the poor girl, knocking her right off of her broom and through one of the hoops she'd been guarding. Luckily, the team captain Mathias had managed to catch her, but it had still been a nasty fall and an even nastier fright. When Arthur had slipped out the door, the blonde girl had been fast asleep on their common room couch in the Head's Tower, her magicked stuffed polar bear held tightly against her bruised chest. He'd be having a word with the team at tomorrow's practice about that.
He'd always been wary of Madeline playing Quidditch, especially since he'd seen firsthand every injury his older brothers had gotten while playing the sport. However, when the shy, quite girl with the curly blonde hair had tried out, something had changed right then and there on the field. She had become a vicious, rough, skilled player, twelve years old but still intimidating Arthur's seventh year brother in her one on one Keeper's tryout. And after his brother and the captain of the team, Scotty, had seen the way Madeline fiercely defended the hoops, there was no keeping her off the team. And with the way Alfred flew like he had wings, like the broom was nothing but an accessory to his true speed, there was not a chance he wouldn't be on there too. So Arthur had spent the last six years watching his two most beloved people in the world put themselves in crippling danger every weeknight and most Saturdays of the year.
It wasn't that he didn't like Quidditch: he did, he just wasn't very good at it. Books were more his thing. It was just that he'd never quite recovered full use of his heart after watching Alfred as he collided with the Slytherin keeper, Gilbert, straight into the side of the pitch, and fell twenty feet to the ground below. And he rather liked his two significant others in all one piece and wholly undamaged.
That was kind of an odd thing to say, come to think of it. His two significant others. But he was an odd boy and it was an odd situation and it had come about in an odd way. He'd met Alfred and Madeline on the first day of school, seven years and two months ago. Alfred had annoyed the ever-loving hell out of him, and was, unfortunately, in almost every single class with Arthur, besides sharing a dorm with him. Madeline, however, had been sweet and loving and had magicked Arthur's bookbag back together after Alfred's bumbling attempt at taking a chocolate milk stain out had ripped it to shreds. For some unknown reason, Alfred had attached himself to Arthur and Arthur's bookish ways, coaxing out the wild boy who had spent his summers running amuck about the woods and grasslands behind his family's large countryside home. The boy who had helped him prank their least favorite professor, and the boy who had tugged him behind the Herbology greenhouse number three to show him a fairy that had visited him at the owlery the other day. It was that side of Arthur that Alfred had brought out of its shell and displayed to the world.
Meanwhile, Madeline had been watching the two of them, joining them for lunches and hiding them behind curtains when they were on the run from a professor, fixing their torn clothes and helping Alfred with his Potions homework. And slowly, slowly, Arthur and Arthur began to fall in love with her. They had almost had a huge falling out in fifth year, when the both of them wanted to ask her to the winter ball, and neither of them wanted to concede to the other that it was really more fair if neither of them took her. Both of them wanted her, and both of them thought they deserved her, and neither of them really noticed that she was standing behind them until it was too late and they'd exposed themselves clearly for her to see.
"Perhaps you should both take me?" she suggested, her voice quiet and her books held tight against her voluminous red sweater clad chest. They had looked at each other, and then back at her, and had each held out a hand.
"Madeline Williams," Alfred began.
"Would you do the honor of accompanying us to the Winter Ball?" Arthur finished, and she'd took both their hands, and she'd never let go. Later that night, all three of them on a bench in the fairy maze, Madeline between them, Alfred had looked over and thought to himself that Arthur was really very beautiful in the blue, twinkling lights, and they kissed softly over Madeline's head, unaware of her smile beneath them until she tugged their ties apart and brought their arms around her so she could kiss the both of them and show them that this was how they were meant to be.
And that was how they had been ever since.
The beginning of a Harry Potter Universe Hetalia crossover fic.