Disclaimer: The only thing I own is the story idea and only some of the witty remarks. I own so little; so please don't steal.
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[=]
Hogwarts was founded between the years of the ninth century and the tenth century by four esteemed figures in the wizarding community: the wizards Godric Gryffindor and Salazar Slytherin and witches Helena Hufflepuff and Rowena Ravenclaw. The four were the namesakes for the four houses that the Hogwarts student population is divided into, according to certain personality traits that each house was founded upon. Each house has its own dormitory and common area accessible only to members of that house. Other notable parts of Hogwarts includes the Great Hall, that has its ceiling enchanted to look like the outside sky.
"Honestly," Aomine grumbled, not so subtly, and shifted the lantern light so that the boy's book was cast back into the darkness around them. "Shut up already."
The reader, a serious-looking boy who had insisted on bringing his books with him instead of keeping them in his trunks like everyone else, cleared his throat irritably and adjusted his glasses. "I thought it would interest you," he sniffed, closing the tome, Hogwarts: a History. "Since we are to be sorted once we reach the castle."
"I never thought I'd agree with him," said Kagami, speaking up from next to him, "but seriously, shut up." Aomine glared at him, a look that Kagami returned in kind. He had been hoping to find an empty compartment on the Hogwarts Express so he could escape Satsuki's frantic contemplations about finally attending Hogwarts and had stumbled upon Kagami, sitting alone and reading Muggle magazines that didn't move. Excitedly, Kagami had told Aomine, who had been raised in a primarily magical environment, about the fascinating points of the Muggle sport known as 'basketball' and they had gotten into a heated argument for the entire ride about basketball and Quidditch. Muggle-borns were so annoying. He hated the idea of being on the same side as Kagami, but at least they were on agreement about the bookworm sharing the boat with them.
"Muscle heads such as yourselves will probably do well in Hufflepuff then," the bespeckled boy decided, opening his book again and reading in the moonlight. The dismissal and finality of his statement made Aomine stand, shaking the boat slightly.
"Stop!" Momoi shrieked, pulling at his robes. "You'll get in trouble! Sit down, for goodness sakes, you're being such an idiot!" After much persuasion, Aomine finally allowed Momoi to pull him down again, although he kept pulling the lantern light away from the now-frustrated boy.
"How exactly are we sorted?" Kagami asked as they stood in the hallway outside the Great Hall, his voice adding to the nervous chattering of their fellow first years. While he and Aomine were not on particularly good terms, he had stuck with them as he had no one else to talk to. He fiddled with the wand in his pocket. "Should I have started reading some of my books?" There was a snort somewhere to their left and the boy with Hogwarts, a History turned away and adjusted his glasses again.
"It'll be alright," Momoi chirped, before Aomine could make up a story about unleashing dormant magical powers, which would probably scare any Muggle-born. "One of my cousins said they just put the Sorting Hat on you and it picks for you."
"A hat picks your house for you?" Kagami asked, confused. Aomine sighed dramatically as if they were dealing with a mentally incapable child and Kagami scowled at him again. Before Momoi could explain, they were whisked into the Great Hall and led down the center between the four House tables. As the upperclassmen scrambled to get a better look at the fresh blood, a first year from somewhere behind them began shouting excitedly.
"You can see the sky from the ceiling!" he was calling loudly. Being part of the taller members of the first years, Kagami and Aomine turned to see an excitable blonde practically squealing to anyone who would listen. "This is so exciting!"
"Typical Muggle-born," Aomine muttered under his breath. Momoi elbowed him hard in the ribs, but Kagami, though less vocal, was too intrigued by the room to hear. The Sorting Hat was sitting on a stool at the front of the hall, in front of the staff table. The tear along the seam rippled, cleared its throat, and began to sing. Aomine snuck a glance at Kagami, who stared at the hat in appreciative awe, and smiled smugly to himself; the idiot wasn't going to survive if such things like a talking hat were enough to amaze him. The noisy blonde in the back led the first years in applause after the song was done.
Aomine was one of the first ones to be sorted; the hat was placed on his head and the hat laughed before proclaiming Gryffindor! He couldn't imagine what was so hilarious about his head, when the hat had spoken at length quietly to a first year before him, a redhead who landed in Slytherin. It laughed again at Kagami, who took a seat next to him at the house table despite Aomine's intense look of no, please. Momoi sobbed audibly when the hat made her a Slytherin. He kicked Kagami hard in the leg when the noisy blonde was sorted into Hufflepuff; Kagami kicked him back in the shin when the boy – Midorima Shintarou - clutching Hogwarts, a History was made a Ravenclaw. Aomine grabbed his knife and jabbed Kagami hard in the back and they had a little scuffle when someone else was led to the Ravenclaw table. An upperclassman moved and sat between them when the tallest member of their year was made a Slytherin.
"Password?" the Fat Lady asked.
"You think you're going to end up looking like that broad if you keep eating like that?" Aomine asked loudly before the prefect leading them could give an answer, elbowing Kagami and pointing meanly. The painting slammed shut before Aomine could enter the common room and lectured him soundly before he could finally leave the hallway. Kagami's face had become extremely red from holding in his laughter.
"You're a jerk," Aomine said into the darkness of the Gryffindor first year boys' dormitory. Kagami grunted somewhere to his right.
"We'll never be friends," he added.
"Shut up," someone grumbled sleepily.
[=]
"So you're Muggle-born," Aomine started without preamble to the skittish first year next to him in Charms. "What is 'basketball'?"
"Huh?" The boy, trembling since class started, turned to him in surprise and a stray movement of his wand made the rock that they were supposed to turn soft and pliable shoot across the room and hit Hanamiya in the face. Aomine didn't consider himself friends with Sakurai, but the boy was useful in gathering information since he was so eager to give it up without trouble. "B-basketball?"
"Yeah," Aomine said, flicking his wand. The rock sat steadfast and hard in front of him. "What is it?"
"Why do you want to know?" Sakurai asked, before apologizing.
"I just do." The rock was looking back at him in its stubborn, gray glory and was staying as hard as ever. "I mean, what is it even? How can anyone find it fun?"
There was a snort behind him and Aomine turned. Akashi, the Slytherin that had had a serious discussion with the Sorting Hat, was smiling pityingly at him. The rock in front of him had already been given passing marks by the professor and he was sitting and waiting for the rest of the class to catch up. "You don't know anything about Muggles, do you," he said.
"Why would you care?" Aomine scoffed, pointing his wand threateningly at Akashi. Sparks emitted weakly from the tip and Sakurai apologized despite not participating in the conversation. "Families like yours wouldn't have anything to do with Muggles, right? Look where you're at right now." He gestured rudely at Akashi's green and silver tie.
Akashi laughed condescendingly. "You belong in Gryffindor," he sniffed, crossing his arms. "For your information, only backwards wizards would completely disregard Muggles. While I do not believe that Muggles are as capable in ability as wizards, I do not discriminate because we cohabit the planet with Muggles so there is no need to antagonize them, am I right?" He shook his head. "You are so simple minded, Daiki. You should focus on charming that rock if you want to talk to me."
Aomine turned, gritting his teeth. He'd already lost points for Gryffindor in the morning after another fight with Kagami outside the common room after he'd forgotten his books and Kagami had refused to lend him his. If he fought again in class, the professor would not be as lenient. He grumbled and shouted Spongify at the rock. The rock promptly deflated.
Later, Sakurai ran up to him clutching some magazines and detailed descriptions of the Muggle game 'basketball' and began sputtering out explanations as Aomine paged through them slightly stupefied. He hadn't expected Sakurai to produce any sort of results and said so.
"I'm sorry," Sakurai apologized for nothing at all. It was appropriate he was placed in Hufflepuff. Aomine accepted the basketball material. Sakurai apologized again for unknown reasons.
[=]
Flying was child's play for Aomine; he'd broken into his parents' broom closet at five and by the time they'd figured it out when he was ten, he was already a relatively skilled – self-described – handler of the broom. He thought it was a good idea to try and impress the professor during their first flying lesson as first years, as a good word would go far in the Quidditch team tryouts. First years were rare on teams, but not unheard of since the instances years back, but he was confident in his raw talent and ability.
It troubled him that Kagami could summon his broom just as easily as he could, but he supposed there was no reason to get bent out of shape over beginner's luck.
They were only supposed to hover before landing but Aomine found no problem with hovering a little higher than the others and maybe flying around a bit, but the professor had other ideas and deducted twenty points despite his insistences that he'd flown before, and numerous times at that. He was grounded after that and had to settle for watching sulkily as the rest of the class practiced careful takeoffs and dismounts. Kagami was unsteady at first, but by the end of the lesson, his eyes were glittering.
"Wow, that was cool!" he said as they walked back toward the castle. They weren't friends, of course, but Aomine had to go the same way and he was man enough to handle talking to Kagami even for a few minutes. "Flying on a broom was something I'd always thought was part of fantasy but to do it for real…wow!"
"You didn't even get to fly around," Aomine reminded.
Kagami turned to him with even more spark in his eyes. "You have?" he asked excitedly, almost reminding Aomine of the obnoxious boy from the Sorting who couldn't stop squealing about everything. "Wow! Can you teach me? I mean, flying classes are good too, but…you know how to fly already?"
"Been flying since I was five," Aomine bragged, tossing his head. "I guess you have an excuse. But there's nothing like it. When you fly, you've got to play Quidditch. Why else would you learn to fly, right?"
"Wow," Kagami echoed, still impressed. "I read up on Quidditch," he added, reminding Aomine that he himself had browsed Sakurai's 'basketball' magazines earlier. "It looks really neat. I don't know how it levels up with basketball, but I guess you might have had a point."
"Of course," Aomine said, scratching his cheek.
"Can you teach me?" Kagami asked, grabbing and tugging at Aomine's robes. "I want to learn how to fly really soon so I can try Quidditch too!"
"Okay," Aomine agreed, thinking about how it would be like playing Quidditch with Kagami. The fervor the Muggle-born had about basketball looked like it would transfer easily to Quidditch. Anyway, the other first years in their house looked like wimps when it came to dodging Bludgers and things. "But it doesn't mean we're friends," he reminded as they reached the steps. "I just want to show you how superior Quidditch is to your basketball."
Kagami blinked, confused for a moment. "Oh yeah," he said, nodding. "You probably suck at flying anyway. And Quidditch."
"I'm great!" Aomine yelled. "The only one who can beat me at flying is me!"
[=]
The first Quidditch match of the season was against Gryffindor and Slytherin. Momoi made her way through the throngs of scarlet and gold in her green and silver uniform and was shoved only once. "Hey!" she called, stumbling onto the seat next to Aomine. "Oh!" She grinned and waved at Kagami. "I'm glad to see you two!"
"We're not friends," Aomine insisted.
"He's been teaching me how to fly," Kagami said instead, looking eager about the match. "He said it would be best for me to see how it's really done."
"Aren't first years not allowed to fly without professor supervision?" Momoi asked. She settled in the midst of the Gryffindor side without much trouble.
"Well, yeah," Kagami admitted, slightly sheepish.
"When has that ever stopped me?" Aomine asked loudly.
The match began without further ado. The commentary was fun and lively, but the cheers from both sides were enough to add color to Kagami's cheeks. He cheered indiscriminately even after Aomine reminded him that Slytherin had just scored. "Leave him alone," Momoi chastised as Kagami cheered with the crowd. She was one of the few that were not already on their feet; she had watched the game with a mild smile, interested more in observing Aomine and Kagami. "He's just having fun too."
"There's a right way to have fun," Aomine scoffed. Gryffindor won at the end of the match. Kagami decided as they were heading back to the castle that he would become a chaser for the team for certain. "That's impossible," Aomine declared. "I'm going to be a chaser for Gryffindor."
"There's three chasers," Momoi and Kagami said at the same time. Aomine stormed off and let them laugh at him behind his back. He had better things to do than talk to his annoying childhood friend and Muggle-born classmate (not friend).
[=]
Kagami was good at potions.
"It's like cooking," he said. "You have to be careful not to add too much, or too little, and you've got to do it just a certain way in order not to mess up the dish." He received full marks on all his potions in class, and wasn't doing too shabbily despite his essays being subpar.
"I don't cook," Aomine grumbled, staring on at Kagami's Hair-Raising potion, which had turned the desired slime green color. His was still a dull copper. He gave it a rueful stir and it turned purple.
Surprisingly, Momoi was equally as terrible in potions. "I add things like how it says," she complained, poking at the fire under her cauldron with her wand. "But it just turns out terrible all the time." Her potion was in worse shape than Aomine's, which was still liquid. Momoi's Hair-Raising potion had turned into a solid, messy black blog and was steaming.
"She's also a terrible cook," Aomine muttered when she went to the professor to ask for help. Kagami laughed.
[=]
Aomine did not go back home for Christmas, although Momoi and Kagami did. While he did have other friends – lots too! – he felt a little lonely. Both were the noisiest parts of his life and when he woke up, it was different not to have Momoi nag at him about doing his homework (although she had cried that they were in different houses at first, she was now acting as if nothing had changed) and to have Kagami talk about basketball. Not that they were friends or anything, of course, but pests were pests.
He received a care package of sweets from Momoi, which he knew she ordered with her owl. They were his favorite kinds, from chocolate frogs to sugar quills – he had perfected the art of not crunching them during class. Since he'd practically lived next to her his entire life, he knew about her meager allowance and was touched she spent so much on him.
After exploring his parents' gifts and trinkets from family members, he was surprised to find a badly wrapped gift from Kagami. Inside were, predictably, basketball magazines. They were brand new, since Kagami's own had worn spines and tears on the covers. They were also Muggle magazines, since the players did not run around. He knew Kagami had had trouble using the barn owl he'd brought with him, as he had to have an upperclassman show him how ("Now you'll respect your upperclassmen, right?"), and the magazines couldn't have come from anywhere else. For a split second, Aomine felt bad he did not think of Kagami when he bought his gifts, but they weren't friends anyway.
Aomine was reading the magazines at breakfast at the mostly deserted house table, wondering about different terms he kept coming across, when the bookish Midorima walked past and happened to glance at him. Thankfully he did not have his Hogwarts, a History with him, but he did not need it to sound irritating. "You like basketball?" he asked.
Aomine looked up, crumbs from his toast falling from his mouth. Midorima made a face. He was still wearing his Ravenclaw-colored uniform despite the holiday. "Not really," Aomine shrugged. "Just curious. Why? Do you?"
"I'd rather study," Midorima huffed, and strode off. Aomine stuck his tongue out at his receding back. Afterwards, he dug into his trunk and found the least beaten up Quidditch magazine he owned and borrowed a school owl to mail it.
[=]
Kagami was strangely excited about final exams.
"I didn't do too good in school," he said in the common room. "But Hogwarts is different than school…Muggle school, I mean."
Inaptitude for studying carried over across to the magical world, apparently, because a few hours after this declaration, Kagami was lying facedown at the table, smearing ink all over his face.
"Your idiot face is getting uglier," Aomine said, prodding Kagami with a quill.
"It's just as hard," Kagami muttered into the parchment.
Aomine grimaced. "How about this," he said. "I'm meeting up with Momoi in the library to review for History of Magic and Transfiguration, if you'd like to tag along. Don't say I never offered."
"Could I?" Kagami yelled, gathering his books and rushing after Aomine with what is magic written backwards across his forehead.
Momoi was not surprised to see Kagami. "Kagamin," she greeted with a smile. Aomine wondered if she had expected this, since she had gotten them a small table in the corner of the library. The library was respectably packed with students in little nooks and crannies, with books splayed before them. "You've got ink on your face." She waved it away with a wave of her wand.
"Do we need to know how to do that?" Kagami asked, a little shell-shocked already.
Momoi made a face at him. "It was something we learned at the beginning of the semester, Kagamin…"
Momoi's notes were neat and it was clear indication by her good scores on returned tests and papers that she was a good student. Kagami took solace in the fact that Aomine struggled just as much as he did. In the midst of writing out a draft of his Transfiguration paper, he discovered he had somehow misplaced his textbook. He knew he brought it with him since it had been digging into his side on the way to the library. Aomine had forgotten his so he was borrowing Momoi's, and Kagami didn't think it was possible for three heads to use one book.
"I lost my Transfiguration book," he said.
Momoi and Aomine looked up from the passage they were trying to deconstruct together. "Did you have it?"
"I did!" Kagami frowned as he rummaged through the table, invaded by their books and parchment. Momoi began to pick at the mess in front of them too, but to no avail. "Where could it be, I'm on a roll right now…!"
"It was on the floor," a voice said, and Kagami felt and heard a thump somewhere near his elbow. He turned quickly and found his Transfiguration book curiously placed near his arm, but there was no one around. He snuck a peek down a nearby aisle but it was deserted and the closest student was too far to have retrieved his books and none of them looked as if they had left their studying posts. Kagami picked up his book carefully.
"Did you hear that?" he asked.
Aomine and Momoi nodded.
"Is the library haunted?"
At this, Aomine snickered. "Idiot, you've seen the ghosts that wander around the place, and you're still using the Muggle conception of 'hauntings'? You know as well as we do now that ghosts can't touch solid objects." Kagami looked around again. "Just let it go. There was a nice person who helped you out. Weren't you on a roll?"
"Oh yeah," Kagami remembered, cracking open the book and returning to his parchment.
[=]
My pure wonder and luck, both Aomine and Kagami managed to pass their exams and proceeded to the next year. They spent the night before the end of the academic year having another heated debate about Quidditch and basketball. That said, they got nothing packed and were frantically shoving their belongings in their trunks and were the last ones on the platform. "Typical," Momoi said, rolling her eyes and going off to sit with her girl friends as the two resumed their argument in a compartment by themselves.
When Momoi found them again on Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters, they were still griping at each other. "Basketball is better because there's an emphasis on ball handling! You have to perfect dribbling! What's the point of a sport where you have control of the ball all the time! There's no skill involved!"
"You're wrong," Aomine shouted. "There's flying! You've got to be good at flying!"
Momoi finally separated them once they passed through the barrier. "Come on, Dai-chan," she grumbled, pulling at Aomine. "We've got to go. Bicker with Kagamin later."
"I'll send you an owl," Kagami promised heatedly. "With a whole list of reasons why you're wrong!"
"I'll send your stupid owl back with a hex," Aomine vowed.
"Can't you two just admit you're friends yet?"
"No!"
