Sometimes, if they were lucky, they could catch each other's eye from across the Great Hall. On those days when it seemed like even the universe was rooting for them, they could have one lucky moment where their eyes locked onto each other through the crowds of bustling students and teachers and they were allowed to know definitively, for even so much as a second, that they were there for each other.
And they could make it happen more often than sometimes with a bit of strategic planning, so that was what they usually went with, instead of depending on the rather unreliable universe to make anything happen. What they had to do was sit on opposite sides of their respective tables, which were already on opposite sides of the Great Hall, within each other's line of sight, make sure that no one older or taller than themselves sat across from them, and make sure to sit on the ends of their tables so there would be a smaller chance of anyone at the Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff tables blocking their view. There was also the matter of getting to their meals early enough to help make all of this happen, which was hardly the easiest thing for two fifteen year olds who both enjoyed sleeping in and were constantly bogged down with prep for their OWLs. Still, it was all worth it in the end, because it was even more difficult for Xiang the Gryffindor and Emil the Slytherin to see each other in public in almost any other way.
At least, not without having their families throw a royal fit.
Both Xiang and Emil had siblings at Hogwarts. Xiang had Yao, a seventh year in Hufflepuff, and Emil had Lukas, a seventh year in Slytherin. Both of their siblings were very proud, stubborn people who were very loyal to their houses and remained true to their colors. As such, they hated each other with a passion. A smart, slick Slytherin like Lukas couldn't help but look down on a simple Hufflepuff like Yao, and a humble, helpful Hufflepuff like Yao couldn't help but scorn a haughty Slytherin like Lukas.
The fact that Xiang was in a different house from his brother didn't help his case in the slightest. In fact, it just made him worse, in Lukas's eyes. Gryffindors and Slytherins had always been the worst of enemies and that message had been pounded into Emil and Xiang by their families and housemates for years.
"You should never trust a Slytherin," Arthur, Xiang's fellow Gryffindor, had told him once. "They're only loyal to themselves and they'll stab you in the back at the first chance to get ahead."
"You should never befriend a Gryffindor," Lukas had told Emil at least once a year since he was nine and Lukas had begun at Hogwarts. "They're egotistical maniacs who think the world revolves around them. They'll never have you in their thoughts for more than a second."
All of them had tried their best to instill in Emil and Xiang a hatred for the opposing house and its members that would last their entire lives, and they thought they'd done a fairly good job of it so far. To Yao, the thought of his little brother and that silver haired Slytherin snake ever being able to get along was laughable. Lukas wouldn't even take a second to consider the possibility that his little brother and that troublemaking Gryffindor moron could ever be friends.
To know that the two had actually been going out since third year might cause a full scale riot.
That was the truth of the matter, though. Despite the rivalry their houses had shared for centuries, Emil and Xiang were boyfriends, secretly seeing each other behind their brothers' backs for two years already. It was the little things that kept them going. They snuck glances at each other at breakfast. They sat beside each other when their houses had classes together. They even stayed at the castle during Hogsmeade visits sometimes because it was easier to meet in private then.
They also went for more elaborate schemes sometimes, like sneaking out of their dorms in the middle of the night, in order to meet up and make out. If anyone caught them, they just said they were going out for a midnight duel. Not all of the professors would punish them for that, after all, and it was a believable enough excuse, especially when someone found the pair of them alone in the trophy room, out of breath with their hair and clothes messed up. Even if they did get a detention for their trouble, it was still better than the alternative of others finding out about them. They had learned from five years' experience what kind of trouble crossing the invisible lines between houses caused.
All of this began before Emil and Xiang were even sorted and pulled behind those lines, on their first ride to school on the Hogwarts Express. That was when they met. The ride had been a different experience for the two of them at first. Eleven year-old Xiang had been a nosy, adventures little thing and, being on the mystical Hogwarts Express he'd heard so much about for the first time, he'd been very eager to go off on his own and see what trouble he could into. He considered slipping away from his older brother his proudest achievement from that day.
Emil, on the other hand, had been accidentally separated from his older brother and was very anxious about it. He'd always had Lukas and Mathias, their family friend and another Slytherin at Hogwarts, there to look out for him, and had been expecting his brother to hold his hand through the whole sorting process. Losing track of his older brother had been very upsetting.
They found each other after an hour of wandering alone, in front of a conveniently empty compartment in the middle of the train. Around that time, Xiang was starting to get really annoyed with all the upperclassmen ignoring him and pushing him around and Emil was on the verge of tears from his anxiety over being lost. It wasn't the best first meeting when they bumped into each other. Xiang, being in a bad mood, began to pick on watery eyed Emil, glad for someone to look down on.
"Hey, what're you doing crying?" was the first thing Xiang said to him. "Don't you know that only big babies cry?"
Emil, barely able to defend himself, just said, "I'm not crying," before asking Xiang if he'd seen his brother, a sort of scary looking boy with blond hair and a gold cross pin.
Now, this was something Xiang had yet to admit to Emil, even in their fifth year, but he actually had seen Lukas before meeting Emil on the train. He'd been hanging around the back of the train with Mathias, looking for his little brother in all the wrong places. However, Xiang hadn't wanted to lose the first other first year he'd met so soon, so he hadn't mentioned him. He'd just gone on talking the only way he knew. "Yeah, you're definitely a giant baby," Xiang went on. "Only giant babies cry for their big brothers. If you were a grown up, you'd be happy on your own, like me, but you're not."
Upset enough already, Emil couldn't stand up to any more of even his weak insults, and started tearing up with soft, hiccupy sobs on the spot. It really wasn't a good day for him. He hadn't been allowed to bring his dear pet puffin to school just because he wasn't a stupid owl, he'd lost his brother because Lukas couldn't even wait until the feast to go look for Mathias, and the first person he'd ever met at Hogwarts was bullying him. Already, he wanted to go home.
At that point, Xiang had a couple more biting remarks like, "What's up with your hair? It is enchanted or something?" saved up to further torment the boy, but he held them back. He really hadn't meant to make Emil cry; just look upon Xiang and he crazy good insulting skills with reverence. Yao was always insulting his friends, after all, and they got along well enough. When he saw Emil cry though, he rethought the idea that his was the best way to make friends and took responsibility for his actions, like a proper gentleman. He'd learned all about that from Yao's friend Arthur. That was when Xiang grabbed Emil's hand, pulled him into that free compartment, and introduced himself formally. He even bought Emil a licorice wand as an apology when the trolley went by. Somehow, he'd managed to guess Emil's favorite candy on the first try.
Emil and Xiang sat together in that compartment for hours, getting to know each other. What they found out, they really liked. Emil was from a wizarding family and Xiang was a half-blood but they both had a great love of little muggle gadgets, especially video games. They both had a bothersome brother two years older than them, who was always telling them what to do. They were both secretly hoping to get into Ravenclaw, despite the advice of their brothers. Emil liked them best because they had a cool bird for their symbol and Xiang liked the idea of becoming smart enough to invent a firework you could disguise as anything.
Altogether, they had a small pile of things in common and, over the years, it would turn out that that pile was smaller and smaller in comparison to their differences, but the threshold for friendship between two eleven year olds in a strange, new place is much lower than it is for most others. It didn't take either one even fifteen minutes to forget about their troublesome beginning and decide that the other boy was their new best friend.
Near the end of the train ride, Lukas and Yao finally managed to find their little brothers, arriving in front of their compartment, rather inconveniently, at the same time. Upon seeing whose brother their own brother had befriended, they both dragged their respective sibling away, muttering insults about dark, creepy Slytherins and empty headed Hufflepuffs as they did.
Of course, none of that stopped Xiang and Emil from going back to each other for the boat ride to school, shepherded along by a big, hairy Turkish man. They stayed together, in fact, up until the point when they were sorted into opposing houses, and even that wasn't enough to keep them apart for long. Although they avoided each other for the first few weeks of school on the advice of their brothers and housemates, Emil and Xiang soon began hanging out again. Despite all warnings of the evilness and the stupidity of the other houses, they didn't see each other like that at all. Emil was just a boy who liked licorice wands and was good at writing compositions – which Xiang had a tendency to neglect until the last minute – and Xiang was just a boy who liked setting off fireworks in odd places and learned new spells easily – which Emil could have trouble with at times. They didn't see any reason why they couldn't be friends.
So, their first year at Hogwarts was spent with them doing first year things like learning to brew shrinking potions and turn needles invisible, being friends with each other, and being dragged apart time and time again by their older brothers, who never once gave their approval of the relationship. Despite how many times they were dragged apart, Emil and Xiang always found their way back to each other. They'd found a best friend in the other boy and overall, it was a good year for both of them.
Less so for their brothers.
And at the end of the year, when Lukas listened in on Emil promising Xiang that he'd send him a letter by puffin as often as he could, and Xiang making the same promise in return, he decided that he was going to have to handle this situation over the summer a little differently if he was going to put a stop to it. After all, Slytherins and Gryffindors just weren't meant to mix.