Leave Me Alone

"It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not."

André Gide

By the time the train finally reached Hogwarts, Lovino was pretty much certain that he was cursed, and not in the wave-your-wand-and-say-some-words way that most people were, but the you-are-doomed-to-forever-be-bullied way. Oh, and also, his stupid sister and her stupid friends kept checking up on him, and that made him frustrated, because he didn't need checking up on! He'd already healed his nose (mostly, but he still looked pretty beat up) and fixed most of the things that could be fixed (he still didn't have his uniform or his shoes, and that made him want to kill something) and he was perfectly fine, except for the fact that that stupid fucking bastard Antonio wouldn't fucking leave him alone!

...That was not to say he was really annoying Lovino in any way...

But... he had come to Lovino's compartment as soon as the sweets lady had alerted all the teachers. Why had he done that? He was always annoying Lovino at school. Wasn't that enough?

Lovino sighed and looked out the window. The sky had been slowly darkening for around half an hour now, and he could barely see through the window. It didn't help that it had started raining less than ten minutes before and was already coming down hard enough for Lovino to dread the walk towards the horseless carriages that would carry them to Hogwarts.

The train slowly came to a stop in Hogwarts station and Lovi got up, grabbing his suitcase, which had been resting on the bench in front of him for the majority of the trip, and then slid open the compartment door.

"I-I wasn't sitting here!" cried Antonio, jumping to his feet. "At all! And certainly not since you put up that force-field thingy! How did you do that, by the way? It was super cool!"

Lovino just stared and stared and stared at his fellow student. Had he seriously been sitting there this entire time? First he had run all the way through the train to reach Lovino first before anyone else, and then he had come inside and been thrown and, AND THEN, to top it all off, he had sat outside Lovino's train compartment for hours just to make sure he was okay?

Lovino slammed the compartment door shut and turned to fall face-first down on one of the bench-seats. He was so fucking done with Antonio and his fucking weird obsession with him! He wanted nothing more to do with it! Nothing! At all!

...Although Antonio had said that his spell was cool.

...And that level of dedication... it... it made Lovino at least want to get on speaking terms with him... because... well, no one else seemed to want to be around him, and if Antonio was willing to sit in the hallway of the Hogwarts Express just to wait for him... well... maybe the guy wasn't so bad after all...?

Nah, that was complete bullshit. Antonio was just too stupid to move. He probably forgot how to walk, actually. Probably Lovino needed to go back outside and make sure he remembered. Yeah, that would be the, um... respectful thing to do. Or something like that. Fuck you.

Lovino slowly, carefully opened the compartment door to find Antonio dozing- fucking dozing! -just outside of it. Lovino opened the door all the way, grabbed his trunk, then walked outside. He stopped in front of the Spaniard and gently nudged him with a foot.

"Oi, bastard," he said grumpily. "Get the fuck up, it's time to go." Antonio didn't respond, and that made Lovino more pissed off then usual. He bent down and was about to grab the boy by his hair and yell in his ear when the train whistle was blown, signaling that it was leaving from Hogsmeade.

"Shit!" Lovino yelled. He turned and was about to get off the train when he remembered- fuck -Antonio wouldn't fucking wake up! Lovino turned back with a slight growl and grabbed the Spaniard by his hand, jerking him suddenly to his feet. To his credit, Antonio didn't scream or anything, like Lovino secretly knew that he would have. No, he didn't scream, but he did fall right over and would have landed flat on his face if Lovino hadn't been having none of that.

In the end they made it off of the train on time. Lovino flipped shit when he realized that he had his trunk- full of a bunch of ripped up shit -but not Antonio's. Antonio finally managed to grab the worked-up Italian by the shoulders and tell him that his friends had gotten it off of the train when they left. Lovino punched him in the stomach and yelled at him for a solid two minutes before grabbing him by the hand and dragging him over to the last carriage going back to the castle. Fortunately for Antonio there were two fifth year girls in the carriage with them, which stopped Lovino from murdering/chewing Antonio out in the carriage.

When the carriage finally reached Hogwarts, the girls left as quickly as they could (probably because Lovino kept shooting Antonio murderous looks when he thought the two girls weren't looking) leaving Antonio and Lovino to walk from where the carriage stopped (almost in front of the castle but far enough away for them both to get soaked) up to Hogwarts castle, dragging Lovino's trunk. Once they had finally reached the castle, Antonio expected Lovino to drift off to his table (Slytherin) while Antonio went to his table (Gryffindor) but, surprisingly, after abandoning his trunk in the hall, where somebody would take it up to his dorm, Lovino stuck right by Antonio's side, shooting wary glances at everyone in the room, especially the Slytherins, where most of the Inquisitorial Squad were located. He stayed right next to Antonio as the Spaniard walked through the Great Hall, and he stayed right next to Antonio at the Gryffindor table, which was almost unheard of. There was some sort of unspoken rule amongst all the people of the school that pretty much stated that people didn't ever sit at a house table that wasn't their own, but since it wasn't an actual rule and says Lovino was the one breaking it, everyone let it be, although the Gryffindor's didn't really acknowledge that Lovino was there. That was okay, though. Lovino didn't want them to acknowledge him; he just wanted the Inquisitorial Squad to leave him alone.

After all the first-years had been sorted into their houses and everyone had eaten both dinner and dessert- or just desert, as some (cough cough Gilbert cough cough) were wont to do, the Headmaster stood up, said a few words ("I hope you all have a wonderful school year and learn lots of new things!") and then everyone traipsed out of the Great Hall and into the Entrance Hall, then to the moving staircases. As Lovino passed by the Inquisitorial Squad its members hissed at him while the rest of the Slytherins shot the Inquisitorial Squad scornful glances. Someone even tried to hex one of them before there were caught by a Prefect and given detention. Slytherins may not have seemed like the friendliest people but one thing was certain: they were very protective of each other, even if it was the first muggle-born Slytherin.

Antonio and Lovino stopped in front of the moving staircases. They had to split up here, since Lovino slept in the dungeon and Antonio slept in one of the Hogwarts towers, but Antonio didn't really want to leave Lovino. His Italian crush stayed within two inches of him at all times and kept reaching out to grab his sleeve lightly between his forefinger and thumb whenever they were at risk of becoming separated from the crowd, and though Antonio found this all incredibly cute that wasn't the only reason he wanted to stay by him; he didn't want to leave the poor boy alone in the Slytherin common room with a good portion of the Inquisitorial Squad, not after what had happened to him on the train. He still had a black eye and lots of small cuts and not-so-small bruises all over his body, and Antonio felt a strange tug in his chest that was telling him to grab Lovino by the hand and hold him and never let him go. And to also walk up the Inquisitorial Squad and use some Unforgivable Curses on them for the unforgivable things they'd done to the Italian in the past.

Antonio reached out and grabbed Lovino by the hand, a determined look on his face. "I'm not going to let you go back to your common room," he said, leaning in close to Lovino so that no one else could hear. Lovino blushed bright red and began stuttering immediately, but Antonio firmly clapped a hand over his mouth and leaned in further (and if he came any closer Lovino would faint because human contact oh god) and said "I'm going to ask the Headmaster if you can sleep in my dormitory tonight, okay?"

Lovino nodded, which was pretty much all he was able to do at this point, and Antonio removed his hand from his mouth and grabbed Lovino by the wrist, gently leading him through the crowds of people and back into the Great Hall, where the Headmaster and a couple other teachers were conversing about teacher stuff.

Antonio walked right up and stopped politely in front of the Headmaster and the other teachers, as if to wait for them to stop talking. Of course, he didn't need to wait, since they had stopped talking as soon as he had walked up to them. Usually on the first day of school the students were too sleepy and full of good food to do anything other than walk straight to their common rooms and, by extension, bed.

After a strangely long, awkward pause, the Headmaster said slowly "Antonio...?"

Antonio smiled sweetly at him. "Headmaster, this is Lovino Vargas. He's the one who was beat up on the train, as you can see from his injuries."

Lovino blushed and tried to stammer something like "U-um, n-no-" but Antonio didn't give him the chance.

"I was wondering if maybe he could sleep in my dormitory tonight." Antonio went on, right over Lovino's unintelligible mumbling. "I don't want him to be harrassed by the Inquisitorial Squad."

"I'm sure he won't be harassed by anyone-" the Headmaster started, but before he could finish Antonio leaned forward into the older man's face, a serious- almost angry, in fact -look on his face.

"Headmaster, I won't allow him to be hurt anymore. I'm mostly just here to inform you of what's going to be happening."

Lovino blanched. "A-Antonio-" he began, but Antonio squeezed his hand gently, silencing him.

Antonio leaned even closer and then spoke in a quiet whisper. "I'm sure I don't need to remind you who my parents are." he said lowly. The Headmaster's eyes widened in recognition. "Suffice to say they would not enjoy an owl from me right now,"

"Oh, um, yes, that's true..." the Headmaster said. "Um, I suppose it would be okay if Lovino stayed in your dormitory with you... I mean, considering, um, your circumstances..."

Antonio smiled happily at him. "Oh, thank you, Headmaster! I'll make sure to put in a good word with my parents!"

"You do that..."

Antonio turned with one last smile and then pulled Lovino out of the Great Hall, through the Entrance Hall and up seven sets of moving staircases before they arrived at the portrait of the Fat Lady. He leaned in close to Lovino and whispered in his ear not to tell anyone the password (Lovino was distracted from even paying attention to what the password was by a strange, roiling feeling in his stomach when Antonio got too close) and then dragged Lovino inside. A couple of sixth and seventh years were gathered around the fireplace, talking, laughing, and playing games like Gobstones, Wizard's Chess, and Whack-A-Death-Eater, but they all stopped what they were doing and looked up as Antonio and Lovino entered the room. Antonio shot them all friendly smiles and explained their situation while Lovino tried as hard as he could to melt into the wall behind him, clinging to Antonio's hand as if it held the key to salvation.

Francis and Gilbert- Antonio's BFFs OMG! :D -walked up the them, greeting Antonio like brothers (Gilbert with a friendly but hard slap on the back, Francis with a kiss to both of his cheeks) and then turning their eyes to Lovino.

"So, mon amie, why do you have this cute little Italian with you tonight?" Francis asked, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. Lovino shrunk even farther behind Antonio at Francis's words. He didn't want people to think that he and Antonio were planning on... on... on having sex. It was nothing like that. Antonio was just being overprotective because Lovino had gotten beaten up earlier, and he was just being a nice person, like always. It was nothing more than that. It would never be anything more than that. Lovino would make sure of that. He was never going to get close to someone, because what if they left him? What if they hurt him? It was better to not love.

But that didn't mean he would pass up this opportunity to get away from the stupid Inquisitorial Squad and Frost Animus, whom he shared a dorm with. He didn't understand it. Sure, he had been bullied in muggled school as well, but why was it that at Hogwarts, the best place in the world for most muggle-borns, he had to live with his bullies? It gave them so many more chances to hurt him. It wasn't a great situation. Well, it was for the bullies, but no one gives a fuck about their side of the story.

"Francis, leave Lovino alone, will you?" Antonio asked with a friendly smile. Francis actually stepped back in shock at the strangely unfriendly tone in his voice. He shared a look with Gilbert and then they both backed away.

"Well, see you later, Antonio..." Gilbert said warily. "I won't even bother you with the latest news about me and Francis and Matthew."

"Good~!" Antonio said. He turned away and dragged Lovino up the stairs to his dormitory, leaving his friends to stare at each other in confusion. What the hell had just happened?

A/N Okay so I'm posting this now and it might be complete shit but whatever I don't care anymore I'm going to die because I need sleep. XP ANYWAYS REVIEW IF YOU WANT and whatever you do don't commit suicide because if someone else tries that I'm going to hide under my bed and never come out.