"Don't you think we should be best of friends by now?"

"Having best friends is for girls." Lionel scoffed. He was dragging a twig through the dirt and debating flicking some onto Aldous just to see how he'd react. Aldous had, objectively, not done anything to deserve this. He was even offering an olive branch of sorts, but Lionel considered it nonetheless.

It had been just under two weeks since Lionel and Aldous first met, and things remained cordial, if not a bit awkward. Because it was pleasant outside, the two boys were under a tree older than both of them put together, doing what they usually did; largely ignoring each other. The house master, Mrs. Wallace was minding them but not doing a particularly good job.

"Lionel, why do you act like being a girl is a bad thing?" Aldous did not look at Lionel when he said this. In fact, the way Lionel saw it, Aldous hated to look at anyone when he spoke to them. He much preferred the safety of books or whatever was going on in his head and, like most things about Aldous, Lionel found this peculiar. He thought about this question for a moment.

"Well, it kind of is, don't you think? Nobody particularly likes girls. Why do you think you have heaps of older sisters and no little sisters?" Lionel put the twig down and dusted his hands off, looking very pleased with himself.

"I don't like what you're implying." Aldous slammed whatever dusty hardcover he was reading shut and stared daggers at Lionel.

"Am I implying it if anyone with eyes can see it?" Lionel scoffed, then shook his head, "One day you'll understand. I mean, you're practically a little boy. You're not even thirteen yet. Maybe you could ask your father about it..if your family ever came to visit you."

In a rather surprising turn of events, Aldous shoved Lionel. Lionel quickly shoved him back and onto the ground. Before anyone could really understand what was happening, the two boys had become a blur rolling on the grass and doing a spectacularly poor job of fighting.

"FORTNIGHT! FROST! WHAT ON EARTH DO THE TWO OF YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!"

Mrs. Wallace's shouts as she ran over sliced through the chaos. A group of schoolmates that had gathered to watch fell silent. Lionel and Aldous froze, Lionel yanking on a fistful of copper hair and Aldous just about to shove a fistful of dirt into Lionel's face.

"For all that's holy, GET OFF OF HIM! BOTH OF YOU!" Mrs. Wallace yelled. She shook her head in disappointment, then turned to shush the chatter behind her.

Lionel pushed Aldous off of him and stood. Aldous sat up, frowning, and for a moment it looked as if he might cry. Lionel would have admittedly found this very funny, and was glad that he did not cry as he did not want to get into further trouble.

"He said that nobody likes girls! And he called me a little boy!" He said this as he pointed an accusatory finger, then stood up and dusted himself off. Lionel stuck his tongue out at him.

"Mr. Frost, that is no way to speak!" Mrs. Wallace looked very surprised by this. Lionel stood there for a moment. He wasn't quite used to being reprimanded, and he was quite frankly upset that this was seen as more important than Aldous starting the fight.

"Well…HE SHOVED ME!" Lionel crossed his arms and stamped his foot in a way that Aldous thought very petulant.

"HE STARTED IT! I wouldn't have pushed him if he didn't RUN HIS MOUTH-"

"That is enough! Both of you are in a world of trouble! This is not how young gentlemen behave!" Before either of them could say anything further, Mrs. Wallace grabbed their shoulders and began to walk away.

And so Lionel and Aldous ended up shut away in their room on a perfectly nice Sunday, hunched over paper and pens. Lionel looked up from lines upon lines of "I WILL NOT INSULT WOMEN AND GIRLS" and over at Aldous, who was too busy writing "I WILL NOT SHOVE MY ROOMMATE" for the fifteenth time to notice. He looked at him, then out the window, then back at him, expecting an apology. After a long while of this, he sighed.

"I'm sorry if what I said offended you." Lionel muttered. Aldous looked over at him. He fidgeted with his pen for a moment, then set it down.

"I'm sorry that I pushed you. Really, I am."

"If I had known saying that about your family would have upset you so much, I wouldn't have said it. I'm sure your father is a very respectable man who-"

"My father died. In June."

Lionel was speechless, his mouth agape. Whatever he was going to say had been wiped from his thoughts, watching Aldous stare at the wall.

"...What? Aldous, why didn't you say anything?" Lionel asked. There were a million thoughts running through his head; all of the things he didn't notice, the questions he didn't ask, how little he knew about this person he now lived with."

"I don't like to talk about it much. He fell ill, really ill, actually, a few weeks before Christmas, and it got worse and worse, and he died. He went here, too. So my mum still sent me off." Aldous elaborated. He continued to stare at the wall, clearly thinking very hard about something.

"I truly am so, so sorry to hear that. I guess I've been a really lousy mate." Lionel sighed. Aldous' eyes lit up at this.

"Do you really think so?

"Think what? That I'm sorry?" Lionel furrowed his brow in confusion, as he thought that he was being rather nice and was now wondering if he did something wrong.

"No, that we're friends!" A grin spread Aldous' face

"I…I guess so. I don't know, I'm not exactly used to having friends. People don't tend to get along with me." Lionel remarked, laughing awkwardly.

"So then why do people pick on you?" He meant this earnestly. His smile had faded, but he had the best of intentions.

"Who said I get picked on? Why do people pick on you?" Lionel snapped. He bristled at this.

"Because I have red hair, and I like to read books, and my sister is my best friend in the whole world, and I cry sometimes, but my mum says it's ok to be sad every now and again so there's a wee bit of mixed messages there-"

"I wasn't actually asking, you twit!" Lionel huffed. He leaned against the back of the chair, pondering for a moment. "Because I'm. Well, I'm different from other children, I suppose."

Aldous looked at Lionel, a glimmer of understanding in his eyes.

"I know how you feel."

Lionel was silent then.

"So, what's it like in London?" Aldous asked as he walked over to sit on his bed. The sentences had now been abandoned altogether. Though both boys knew full well that they would face more consequences for this, it had suddenly become hard to care.

"You've never been?" Lionel chuckled in amused disbelief, as if the world was only London and Windsor.

"Once, but I was just a bairn so I can't remember it at all. My mum said I had a cold. Don't know why they still took me with them." Aldous shrugged

"You know, sometimes it really is a bit hard to know what you're on about. I like it. It's different." Lionel remarked. He sat down next to Aldous, who burst out laughing. Lionel soon did too.

"You'd need a translator for my nan, then."

And they laughed for a very long time, blissfully unaware of the shadow of fate that hung above them.