Summary/excerpt: "It is gray outside, but the dorm room is full of colors that I love—the smell of the fire and the crimson and gold curtains, rich and satisfying. I'm told Hogwarts is beautiful, and I know it is. I can appreciate it in my own way." Karezi; Hammertime; Hogwarts AU
Rating: T for language, slash, and possible mature themes later on
Main pairings: Karkat x Terezi; John x Dave
Terezi's P.O.V.
It's the time of year when the air of my dorm room is cold enough that I wake up with a frozen nose, but it still seems too early in the season to leave a fire going all night. I stretch under my covers, shivering as my feet hit the cold, untouched area of the bed around me.
I sit up and wrap my arms around myself as I draw the curtains and slide onto the floor. My feet cry out in shocked discomfort as they hit the icy stone floor. It doesn't seem like anyone else is up yet. Drawing in a deep breath, I rub my arms and pick up the wand sitting on my bedside table, then flick it in the direction of the fireplace. Instantly, the room feels ten degrees warmer.
I walk to the window from which I can smell the slowly brightening sky and the wet ozone from the rain. It is gray outside, but the dorm room is full of colors that I love—the smell of the fire and the crimson and gold curtains, rich and satisfying. I'm told Hogwarts is beautiful, and I know it is. I can appreciate it in my own way.
My stomach growls and I dress quickly and hurry down the stairs to the Gryffindor common room, where I find Dave and John sitting in silence on the couch in front of the fire. Dave smells sleepy, but nods at me. I sit down between them so that all of our legs are touching. John frowns.
"Good morning," I say, sleep apparent in my voice.
"Morning," Dave groans.
"We were just about to head to breakfast," says John, standing. I follow his lead and pull Dave up with me, and the three of us walk together to the Great Hall.
John doesn't like me much, but I'll admit that I haven't been the nicest to him. Last year I caused a pretty major accident on a broomstick that landed him in the infirmary for a week. To be completely honest, it wasn't really an accident, either. Dave and I were dating at that time.
Dave and I are really good friends despite our breakup five months ago. Our relationship never really made it all the way from platonic to romantic, and we'd eventually decided to give the idea up. It ended up being for the best. I like our dynamic now.
The Great Hall is one of my favorite places at Hogwarts. There are so many wonderful scents and flavors. At this time, there aren't very many students around as it's pretty early. Most of them will show up within the next fifteen minutes, but we like to come early for breakfast before it gets too noisy. We sit at the end of the Gryffindor table, Dave and John across from me, and students soon begin trickling into the room. The food has already appeared on the table when I feel a presence plunk down in the seat next to me, close enough that I can just barely feel the warmth coming from his body. He lets out a frustrated sigh. Karkat. I'd know the smell of him anywhere. He is one of my best and oldest friends.
"Good morning, Karkat," I greet him.
"Yep, it's a f-ing lovely morning. Just look at that beautiful rainy sky." He gestures to the ceiling with his middle finger, and I frown. He is unusually grumpy today.
"Your panties too tight?" Dave asks.
Karkat flips him off, then quickly glances around to make sure that none of the teachers are watching. John snorts into his mug of hot chocolate and spills some on the table, quickly moving to sop it up with his napkin. Dave takes out his wand and finishes the job, and it ends up much neater than it would have otherwise.
"What's wrong, Karkat?" John asks.
"Nothings wrong, nooksniffer," he says, and then mumbles something about Ravenclaws. I pop a strawberry into my mouth and chew it slowly—red food is the best for thinking. I think about his Ravenclaw friends. It couldn't be Kanaya, so it had to be Sollux, which was my first guess anyway.
"Is it Sollux?" I say quietly, so that the boys across the table can't hear.
He clenches his jaw and shakes his head forcefully. I decide not to press the issue because I don't want to deal with an even angrier Karkat.
"What's your first class today?" John asks no one in particular.
"Potions," I say.
"Charms," Karkat grumbles.
"I'm sure you do great in that class," I grin.
"Yeah, Karkat's a real charmer," says Dave, face as straight as always. I know he's being sarcastic, but it's true. Karkat may be thoroughly unpleasant most of the time, but he has some sort of strange ability to make everyone like him. Even now, he smelled adorable.
"I have Defense Against the Dark Arts first," John says. He looks like he's about to continue, but his words are drowned out by the sudden arrival of the owls and the sound of a plethora of wings as they swoop over our heads and drop envelopes and parcels on the tables in front of us.
I have a letter today, and I tuck it away to read later. The rest of breakfast flies by in a flash and soon I'm sitting down in potion's class next to a messy-haired Hufflepuff named Gamzee. I like potion's class because there are lots of interesting smells. On the other hand, I always find it hard to resist tasting some of the potions that seem potentially delicious. The only thing that stops me is the consequences of whatever the potion does. That doesn't stop me from sampling the ingredients, though. No one else seems to have the problem of wanting to consume the potions except for the boy sitting next to me. Somehow, his potions always manage to turn into a bright, sickly green slime, no matter what he was originally supposed to be making. It's not nearly as appetizing as the successful potions, and I'm surprised he's even passing this class.
We set about creating the Drought of the Living Dead, one of the teacher's favorite potions to assign. I'm doing alright at first, but Gamzee keeps adding things to the potion at random until it turns the usual color and consistency. He sticks his finger in it, pulls it out, and licks the green slime off. Then he tries to convince me to try it.
In History of Magic, I sit with Karkat and Sollux in the back of the classroom, near the fireplace, and doodle pictures of dragons in a courtroom in my notebook. This is by far the most boring class—several of the students asleep, some are passing notes, others are doodling or daydreaming, and a blonde Gryffindor girl in front of me is writing a story complete with illustrations.
I hear paper wrinkling next to me and turn to find Karkat clenching a note in his fist. He shoves it into his pocket and scribbles something down too quickly and messily for me to smell what it says. He folds it in half and slides it forcefully towards Sollux. I can tell they're fighting—they're always fighting—but there's something different about this.
I write at the bottom of the page I'm drawing on and tilt it so Karkat can see.
H3Y K4RK4T WH4TR3 YOU P4SS1NG N0T3S 4BOUT?
He snarls and writes on his own page.
NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS.
:[ F1N3 1LL 4SK SOLLUX
I tear out a piece of paper and reach across Karkat towards our Ravenclaw friend, but Karkat snatches it out of my hand before Sollux can touch it. He crumples it up and puts it in his pocket with the other note. Then he folds his arms on the table and buries his face in themand stays like that for the rest of the lecture.
After classes, I don't see Karkat in the common room where he usually is this time of day. Instead, it's just Dave and a seventh-year girl, each going about their own business. Dave looks like he is working on Transfiguration homework, but I know that isn't likely.
"Hey Dave," I say, and when he doesn't respond I wave my hand in front of his face. He turns slowly to look at me and I can tell that he has some sort of silencing charm around his head. He is probably listening to music. He turns the music off, though, and hands me a drawing.
I cackle as I read through the comic. I swear this boy is one of the wittiest people I know. I shuffle around in my book back and pull out a scrap I tore from a poster. I've drawn a pair of sunglasses onto the wizard in the moving picture, cleverly missing his face by just a smidgeon. Dave cracks a grin and folds the picture into the pages of his transfiguration book.
"Have you seen Karkat?" I ask.
"Nope. Sorry. We were gonna watch the quidditch team practice, too. I guess he's blowing me off."
I frown. "He's been acting kind of weird today."
"Nah, not Karkat. He's always like that."
Dave is wrong. I know that he and Karkat are good friends, but I've known Karkat longer and I can tell when something is up.
"Well, I'm gonna go to quidditch practice," I say, and walk up the stairs to put my books away and change before walking through the drizzling rain and the squishy wet grass toward the quidditch field.
I had to try out for the quidditch team three years in a row before they finally let me on. They tried to be sensitive and came up with all sorts of reasons that I didn't make the cut, but I knew that it came down to the fact that I'm blind. But this year, I finally convinced them that I'm good enough. I'm one of the three chasers. Our team is good, but it's not great. We beat Hufflepuff already, but our upcoming game against the Ravenclaw team has been making everyone nervous.
The quidditch field is soggy and the team stands around in wet silence as we listen to our captain, Jake English. He goes on and on and I start to tune him out. It's really too cold to be standing in the rain like this. My nose is starting to run and I sniffle.
We mount our brooms and begin our regular practice. Jake lets the snitch and the bludgers loose, and they begin zooming around the field. I'm flying back and forth at full speed, and my ability to "see" is dimming with my sense of smell as the cold make my nose run. I try to wipe my face with my sleeve, but it's wet and it doesn't really help. I'm loosing my surroundings as I'm forced to breath through my mouth, and suddenly I can't tell where I'm going. I've lost the quaffle and my teammates and the goals.
"Watch out!" someone yells. Except I can't see. And if I had time, I would make some sort of sarcastic remark to express such. However, before I can say anything, something collides with my head, and I'm tumbling to the ground.
A/N: Hello, lovelies! I'm estimating that this story will be 15-20 chapters long. I already have the first four written, so I hope to update regularly (about once a week.)
A big thanks to my sister for beta-reading.
Please leave a review on your way out.