A/N: Written for the Kurtoberfest prompt "Harry Potter AU" and also for the wonderful lovejoybliss :)
"Non-verbal spell casting," Adam announces, walking between the aisles of students, some watching him intently, others reading the material in the books open in front of them, "requires extreme amounts of concentration to master. Like many of the more complex spell casting techniques, it will tax you emotionally" - He pauses to help a student turn their book to the right page, then moves along – "especially considering the fact that you will be called upon to use under duress, but if you can manage it, it will be one in a long list of skills that might give you the leg up. Ensure your victory." As he talks, strolling the room to give everyone the benefit of his attention, Adam searches the sea of faces for one special student. He shouldn't be that hard to find, but then again, there's about sixty kids attending this lecture. "You'll need to learn to focus. Clear your mind. Sharpen your mental acuity, all while fending off one or more attackers." Adam turns a full circle, looking at the anxious eyes staring at him, and smiles sympathetically. "Simple right?"
A general murmured groan travels around the room – one of self-doubt, hesitation, and fear. Adam feels for these students. It wasn't too long ago that he was sitting in those seats, staring blankly at an instructor who said the same thing to him. The only difference is that when Adam was a seventh year, two short years ago, rumors of the return of the Dark Lord were just that – rumors. These kids will have to deal with the probable reality of war closing in upon them.
Adam, who always had a preternatural knack for casting nonverbal spells, had been invited back to Hogwarts by special request of the headmaster himself. It was a tricky appointment, what with the way the Ministry had been behaving with regard to the happenings at Hogwarts. Adam could just as well have decided to stay at his cushy job with the Ministry. Many wizards and witches invited back to Hogwarts did. But Adam chose instead to return and be of service to his school.
Besides, he wanted to keep an eye on one student in particular.
One he has always been distinctly fond of.
As his thoughts drift, his eyes fall on a young man occupying the last seat in the farthest left corner of the room. The young Slytherin student's eyes lift and meet Adam's gaze. Adam's worried heart swells with relief.
Kurt.
Adam nods subtly, and Kurt nods back, but neither one speaks to the other.
"We'll start off with a spell that should be relatively simple for you guys."
Kurt watches Adam pass by, rounding the last desk and walking back to the front of the room. He stops at the desk of a young lady sitting right up front. She looks at him and smiles shyly, waiting to see what he'll do.
"Orchideous," Adam says, pointing his wand at her desk and moving it in a circle. A bed of shiny green leaves appears, sprouting from thin air, and with them, white roses spring to life, transforming before their eyes, from tight bud to blooming flower. The students ooo and aaah as the wreath of roses blossoms, scenting the air in the musty old classroom with the comforting aroma of spring.
Adam lifts the wreath up in both hands, showing it around the room. Then he presents it to the young lady in front of him, who hides her face behind it and giggles, joined by her friends on either side. But in the far corner of the room, Kurt runs a hand through his chestnut hair and rolls his eyes. He stares down at his parchment, lips moving, giving the impression that he's hard at work on his pronunciation when Adam knows he's actually cursing under his breath.
"Okay, class," Adam says, with a smile for the girls still giggling and Kurt still cursing, "let's try to cast it altogether now, but without words. On the count of three – one…two…three…"
A lot of dramatic wand waving takes place, which Adam had expected. It's a symptom of learning to cast spells in this fashion - take away the voice, and something else tends to overcompensate. A few students forget Adam's instructions and start to say the spell out loud, cutting themselves off in the middle. A student in the center of the room mispronounces the spell terribly when he stops it short, and succeeds in producing a tiny orc, about the size of a corgi, which Adam must then deal with.
But regardless of the numerous attempts and a few more mess ups, not a single student manages a flower.
"Alright," Adam says, waving his hands to put a stop to it. "I'm going to lend you guys a hand, one student at a time…" Adam feels Kurt's eyes snap up to his face, but doesn't have the chance to return the look. "But until I get to you, I want you to practice the circular hand movement, and visualize the flowers in your head, see if you can't make me a proper bouquet before I get to you." Adam winks when he says that and most of the girls in class either titter or sigh. A few of the boys do, too.
Kurt huddles further over his parchment, not amused by Adam's flirtatious behavior.
By the end of the lecture, most of the students have been able to produce a passable bunch of flowers, and those who don't have, at least, come up with a scraggly weed or a mess of dry leaves. But Kurt, in the back of the room, chewing his lower lip to pieces, has yet to even materialize a petal.
"Okay, class," Adam says, glancing at his pocket watch, "that's enough for today. Gather up your flowers, if you have any, and be off." A tight cluster of Hufflepuff and Gryffindor girls hand him a hodgepodge bouquet of their best creations before hurrying out the door. "Thank you, girls, thank you," he says, putting them to his nose and taking an obliging sniff. "And for those of you who didn't have much luck, keep trying. Kurt…" Adam calls over the heads of the students bustling to get to their next classes, "can you hang back a moment please? I'd like to speak to you."
The room doesn't empty as fast as Adam would like, but he patiently waits at the front of the room, answering questions and fielding compliments. Kurt stays in his seat, slowly packing his book bag, taking extra care with his quills, and using more precision than normal dusting his parchments to help the ink dry.
But before long, it's quiet, and in the big, empty classroom, surrounded by various magical artifacts and aging spell books, Adam and Kurt are alone for the first time in years.
And Adam doesn't quite know what to say.
"So" - Adam starts making his way back to Kurt's desk, glad that he stopped him before he had the chance to get lost in the crowd - "how's my favorite American transplant doing?"
"Beginning to think that attending a public school in Ohio and staying invisible would have been a better idea than coming all the way out here just to prove that I'm a loser," Kurt remarks.
"Don't talk like that," Adam says gently, stopping by Kurt's side and getting a glimpse of the parchment spread out on his desk. What he had originally thought was Kurt's homework assignment is a letter he's been writing home. Adam heaves a heavy sigh. He knows Kurt doesn't really mean what he said. There's more than personal esteem issues behind Kurt's inability to produce a bouquet of roses, surprisingly more than the looming fear of being drafted into a battle that he never expected to fight.
It must be torture being an entire world away when your father has his first heart attack.
Adam hated that he heard the news from the rumor mill when he arrived before he had the chance to hear it from Kurt.
That alone has taken a larger toll on Kurt than any army of Death Eaters ever could.
"You've gotten this far," Adam continues. "You're fitting in, you have impeccable grades. It would be a pity to stop now."
"I have good grades because the teachers don't want to call on the frightful American," Kurt jokes bitterly. "You know, I don't think they even check my homework."
"How do you figure?"
"I've been writing dirty jokes in Latin in the margins" – Kurt shrugs – "and nobody's called me on it yet."
Adam laughs, imagining the faces of some of their professors – Snape and McGonagall specifically – upon discovering a raunchy limerick within the lines of one of Kurt's transfiguration essays, or in his translation of an ancient hex.
"I don't think that's it," Adam says confidently, but Kurt doesn't seem too impressed. "Besides, if I recall correctly, weren't you the second year who cast a spell that changed the color of the walls and curtains in your dorm room?"
"Dior Grey," Kurt specifies. "I needed something to break up all the green. It was driving me bonkers."
"And weren't you the third year who enchanted the clocks to sing that obscure musical number every hour on the hour?"
Kurt clucks at Adam in offense.
"It's called Some People, and it's hardly obscure." Kurt crosses his arms and turns up his nose.
"The point is there's a reason why you're the only Yank here," Adam says, bumping shoulders. "You're a natural. If you could perform an effective cloaking spell to hide yourself from bullies long before you even knew you were a wizard, then I'm sure a little thing like a non-verbal spell will be no problem for you."
"I bet you say that to all the students," Kurt mutters, fussing with his parchment. "At least Camilla Luddington got a wreath of roses."
Adam smiles. That might be as close as Kurt's going to come to saying he missed Adam any time soon.
Kurt took it hard when Adam left. That's what Adam heard, anyway; Kurt has yet to confirm that rumor. But what Kurt doesn't know is how much Adam hated to go and leave him behind. Adam tried his best to push those feelings away. After all, they had their whole lives ahead of them, and considering the track Kurt was on, he was bound to end up at the Ministry himself soon enough.
But then this war started, and Adam realized that he had made a host of wrong decisions.
"I'll conjure you all the flowers you want" – Adam circles behind Kurt and whispers in his ear – "but first, try conjuring up some of your own." Adam puts his hands on Kurt's shoulders and squeezes. "Try to picture it," he says, his voice low and soft, a spell of its own. "Not the words, not the spell, but the outcome."
Kurt shakes his head, raising his wand to give the spell a try.
"Orchi-"
Adam clamps a hand over Kurt's mouth.
"Kurt," he says, "non-verbal spells are supposed to be performed in your head. That's why they're called non-verbal." Adam removes his hand from Kurt's mouth, noticing how splotches of pink have formed on Kurt's cheeks. "Now, we don't need another tiny orc running around here wreaking havoc, so concentrate."
Kurt nods, set to try again, his teeth clenched tightly but his lips fluttering around the words he's fighting not to speak.
"Now see, you're moving your lips," Adam points out.
"Well, maybe casting non-verbal spells is not my thing," Kurt replies grumpily.
"You're studying to become an Auror, aren't you?" Adam brings up. "Casting non-verbal spells will absolutely be essential for you. You can do it, Kurt. It just takes a hair more concentration than you're giving."
"I'm concentrating as hard as I can," Kurt says, speaking mostly between his clenched teeth. "It's not that simple."
"I know," Adam says. "I know. So forget about the words, and start by imagining what the spell will do when you cast it. Visualize it materializing from your wand. Picture the end result, and make it real."
Kurt lets Adam's words seep into his head, absorbing their meaning while simultaneously trying to ignore the fact that Adam is so close - after so much time apart, so close - his breath tickling Kurt's ear, the sweet smell of chamomile tea and peppermint lingering in the air around him. Adam standing next to Kurt is not something that Kurt can easily ignore. He knows he's going to mess up with Adam here, but he can't bear to ask him to leave. Kurt takes a few deep breaths, doing what Adam suggested, visualizing an outcome, imagining the spell casting, letting go of the words and focusing on the flowers. Without thinking, he opens his mouth to speak the spell.
Kurt feels a mouth on his – soft, familiar lips pressing against his, the flavor of tea and peppermint suddenly on his tongue. A hand to the back of his head joins it, pulling him close, urging him, begging him to kiss back.
And Kurt does. Even if he wanted to fight, he can't. He's missed this since Adam's been gone – stealing kisses in the vacant corridors of the castle, long nights up studying in the Slytherin or Ravenclaw common room, eating breakfast together in the morning and sharing dessert together at night. When Adam left Hogwarts with an invitation to work at the Ministry, Kurt was sure that what they had was over. That their time together was a fling to Adam. That he'd never see Adam again.
After that, Kurt spent days sitting on the banks of the Black Lake, covering the water flowers that float on its surface in frost and watching them sink to the bottom.
Kurt feels the wand in his hand move, or maybe it's his hand that's shaking, but Kurt kisses Adam deeper, and the air around them becomes overwhelmed by the fragrance of flowers. Kurt can't nail down one single scent, especially with the smell of Adam still prevalent in his mind. But when they part, Kurt's eyes dart down to his desk where a small garden of roses, carnations, peonies, lilies, and gardenias has sprung up on his parchment.
"See that?" Adam says, kissing Kurt one more time, lightly on his closed mouth. "You can do it. You are capable of incredible magic."
"Only because you kissed me." Kurt laughs wryly, raising a hand to touch his lips. "I think the magic belongs to you."
"No," Adam chuckles, running a thumb over Kurt's cheekbone, "it belongs to you, and only you. You are a fantastic wizard, Kurt, but you're also a remarkable person. Always remember that."
Kurt nods and in the process, leans his head forward and rests his forehead against Adam's.
"I'll try," Kurt says. "It's just a little harder than you make it sound."
"I know," Adam says. "But you're also such a cynic, and you really shouldn't be. I know things are rough right now, but there is still so much wonder in the world. And when you find it, you'll be amazed at how magical it can be. Just open yourself up to the possibilities."
Kurt pinches his lips together in a thin line. He should stop the conversation here, or kiss Adam again. There's nothing else past that kiss that Kurt needs to know. But so much was left unsaid when Adam left, and Kurt wants a little more assurance this time, in case Adam up and goes again.
Kurt takes in a breath that trembles.
"Can I ask you a question?" he asks, staring at the flowers on his desk.
"Sure," Adam says, keeping his close proximity to Kurt, reluctant to move even an inch away. "Anything."
"Is there a chance" – Kurt swallows, hoping for some courage to come along so he can finish his question – "that maybe you came back here, even a little tiny bit…for me?"
Kurt lifts a hopeful gaze to meet Adam's, and Adam kisses him again – a more tender kiss than the first, but this one's also possessive. He doesn't want Kurt to think that his reasons for leaving in any way outweigh his reasons for coming back. And now that he is back, he's here to stay.
When Adam leaves Kurt's lips, there are tears in his eyes, waiting for a chance to be shed.
"Kurt," he says, tracing the fine lines of Kurt's face with his fingers, setting them a hundredth time to memory, "I had a dozen reasons for coming back, but you, by far, are the one that matters the most."