A lazy afternoon like any other. In which Dan embarks on a journey he doesn't yet know exists.
~
Light seeped through the gap in the curtains and stretched out in a line across the floor, dust particles dancing in the sunbeam. The rest of the dormitory was shadowed mahogany. The heavy tapestries were silent, their occupants having long since vacated the gilt frames to traverse the castle with social visits and aimless wanders. The beds were all empty save one, the hangings fluttering in the breeze from an open window at the southern end of the long room.
Phil lay across Dan's chest, white sheets tangled around his knees and cascading onto the floor. One hand was twisted in Dan's hair, the other squashed under his right cheek. His own dark hair brushed Dan's chin. Soft breaths of hot air lifted the loose tendrils and let them fall again.
Dan's brown hair was tightly curled and sticking to his face. His eyelashes fanned out in a perfect dark arc and his lips moved ever so slightly as he dreamt.
From outside, the gleeful shrieks of a violent quidditch game drifted lazily in through the window with the humid air. A mosquito hummed near Phil's calf, but decided not to disturb the slumbering lovers. The sun blinked as a wisp of cloud scurried past, and Phil scratched his right ankle with his left big toe.
The doors burst open with a crash. A mop of brown hair was followed by curls and a loud whoop. Abruptly, the slumbering lovers were sprawled across the wooden floor and slumbering no more.
"Good morning!" Chris exclaimed cheerfully.
"Morning?!" PJ pulled Dan to his feet and patted his back briskly. "It's two-thirty in the afternoon. You boys should be ashamed of yourself."
"We were up til four playing gobstones with you." Dan said sulkily, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.
"Which by rights means you should have been up at the very least by twelve, which would have given you a healthy eight hours sleep." PJ held out a shirt and Dan took it without looking and pulled it on backwards over his head.
"We're having a picnic." Chris announced. "Down by the lake so we can throw grass at all the fifth years bricking it for their OWLs."
Phil yawned, scratching his head. "Did you make us a packed lunch, Peej?" He asked.
PJ held up a large wicker hamper with a grin and Phil shook his head, turning to fumble through his underwear drawer.
~
"It's quite terrifying, really," PJ mused, munching on a peanut butter sandwich. "That we only have one year left."
"Well that's nice for you." Dan reached for a carrot stick with a frown.
"You're our excuse to come back and visit, so please don't get expelled or anything." PJ transformed Dan's carrot into an actual stick and Dan spat out the chewed bark with a grunt of frustration.
"Yeah, try not to fail all of your OWLs." Phil nudged his sandwich another inch from Dan's spit ball.
"Dan'll be fine, he's not trying to make it as an experimental Herbologist when he leaves." Chris teased.
Phil shrugged, floating a grape into his mouth and sending another shooting towards PJ. "At least I'll have some nice flowers to send you in St Mungo's."
Chris's grin stretched across his face. "You could probably send me something more terrifying than the vampires I'll be vanquishing. I learnt long ago not to mess with magical plants."
"Yeah, I think that was in third year when a Tentacula bit your bum and you cried."
Chris threw a punch at PJ which PJ avoided deftly, pulling Chris into a headlock and tussling on the grass.
"So what about you, Dan?" PJ said breathlessly as he emerged triumphantly a brief moment later. "Do you have a life plan yet?"
"Jesus. I haven't even done my OWLs." Dan shuddered.
"Yeah, but you need to think about it when you're picking your NEWTs and stuff."
Dan shook his head slowly. "I really have no idea. I'm not particularly good at anything."
"You're good at Quidditch," Chris offered.
Dan snorted. "Not professional level good. I'm not athletic enough."
"That's true," Phil was plucking strands of grass and weaving them mid-air into a braid, ignoring PJ and Chris's antics. "You're a weedy scrap of a boy."
Dan rolled his eyes fondly, laying back to nestle his head in Phil's lap. "Anyway, if Umbridge is still here I probably will fail. She'll have snaked her way into all the other subjects by then. Well, maybe not Transfiguration. I'd love to see her take on McGonagall."
"Everyone would, there'd be nothing left of her." Chris beamed at the thought, taking a chocolate biscuit from PJ's plate.
Phil tutted as he tried to find a position whereby he could still reach his sketchbook without disturbing Dan's heavy head, before settling on resting the cool pages on Dan's face.
Dan faked a sneeze and earned a sharp rap on the nose. He rolled over so that Phil could lean against his head and continue his drawing of some sort of horned plant with worrying looking spiky tendrils. The pencil grating over the paper against his ear made Dan wince, but he was too warm and lethargic to move. The June sun beat down with a heat that made his skin tingle, but there was just enough breeze to prevent it from being truly hot. He yawned and received another clout from Phil.
Dan had avoided PJ's question, but not because he hadn't thought about it. The future stretched out long and daunting in Dan's mind. The three sixth years were planning their careers, while Dan was just getting to grips with school-life. The thought of two more years on his own terrified Dan. All of his closest friends were sixth years, it would be like his first two years all over again. Despite the heat, Dan shivered. He hadn't told anyone yet, but somehow he didn't think he'd be staying for NEWTs.
But what would he do? Without those qualifications his job prospects were bleak. He wasn't naturally talented enough to do anything impressive with just five years of study, and despite Chris's suggestion he really didn't see himself playing Quidditch full time.
Most terrifying of all, though Dan was loathe to admit it, was the thought of being without Phil.
Phil had nurtured Dan like one of his plants, watering him with love and encouragement, and Dan had blossomed. Phil wasn't just his boyfriend, he was his emotional backbone, and Dan wouldn't truly know how reliant he was on that until it was gone. He traced flower petals on Phil's knee and Phil cringed at the tickle.
He was his own person, Dan argued. Phil hadn't changed who he was, just helped him come blinking out into the open. Now he was there, there was no reason he'd go back into that shell of insecurity and self-loathing just because Phil had gone. He'd manage on his own. He'd make new friends. Because even if he left school at the same time as Phil, he wouldn't necessarily be following him. Phil's career would take him all around the world. Dan would probably end up working in a shop.
Opposite, PJ had transfigured strawberries into fleshy aeroplanes and was flying them into Chris's mouth. No one had talked about the imminent split of the fantastic foursome, but it hung over them like a gathering raincloud.
PJ was going to create. Art or music or what, no one was quite sure, least of all PJ. But no one had any doubt that he would find success in whatever he did. He was fascinating just to watch or to talk to. His mind could set your own alight. With his strange assortment of muggle clothes and eccentric manner, he would have no trouble finding his place in the world – it was anywhere and everywhere.
Chris, ever the Gryffindor stereotype, was in search of adventure. He wanted vampires and dragons and a healthy dose of fame. And if that failed, he had Quidditch to fall back on.
The three were the picture of success; talented, smart, well-liked by all. They had prospects, Dan had a mobile phone that wouldn't work on school grounds and seven pairs of black skinny jeans. He stared gloomily at the cupcakes, not even noticing when one turned into a very small lizard and scuttled off into the bushes.
"When I'm famous," Chris posed to PJ. "Will you write the book about my dastardly deeds? I'd do it myself only that seems like a lot of effort."
"I'll write a play, then you can play yourself."
"Even better."
"Hopefully your head will expand so much it explodes, then I don't have to look at it ever again."
"You say the sweetest things, Peejy. My unchecked ego could probably do some serious damage. I'm glad to have you around." As he spoke, Chris fired his entire plate of sandwich crusts at PJ as if from a machine gun.
PJ shook the crumbs from his shirt and surveyed the bready mess. "Right. I'll just leave you two to clear this up then, me and this melon head are going to get inked."
"Oh yeah," Phil said, surprised. "I'd completely forgotten you were doing that today."
"PJ just wants an excuse to see Seb again." Chris got reluctantly to his feet, packing up the hamper with a vague wave of his wand. Dan watched enviously.
"Well are you losers coming or what?" Chris asked, gesturing with his hands.
With a sigh, Phil snapped his sketchbook shut and stowed it in his bag, rolling Dan off his lap and onto the grass.
"Come on then. Let's go watch you get stupid things drawn on you that you'll regret for the rest of your lives."
~
Butterflies dipped languidly in and out of the grass and bees thrummed in the hedgerows. The walk to Hogsmeade was a lazy one. They sniggered at the fifth years sweating over textbooks and sighed enviously at the first years screaming as they splashed in the shallows of the lake hoping to attract the giant squid.
Dan wasn't really supposed to be leaving the grounds outside of scheduled weekends, but he got the impression most of the teachers were so used to seeing him with the three sixth years that they assumed he was in their year.
The village was quiet, as everyone had exams of some sort, even if they weren't as stressful as OWLs and NEWTs. The boys' pace quickened as they neared the shabby shopfront. Dan allowed himself a moment to take in his favourite features; the bronze talons, the carved sign... They'd been inside Talons' Tattoos a grand total of three times now, but the experience still warranted a certain reverence.
"My homies," Seb's voice was warm as he caught them all with fist bumps. The piercings in his ears jangled faintly as he moved. "You ready to make your mothers hate me?"
"I'm pretty sure my mother would fancy you," Chris shook his head sadly. "How do you feel about cougars?"
"I'm a fan, for sure. And I'm glad you think I'm relatively youthful. I had a couple of girls earlier who thought I was forty. They were getting matching friendship cats. It was gross."
"How old are you?" Dan asked curiously.
"Now, isn't that a question." Seb smiled wryly. "I'm twenty-four. And you'll be sixteen soon, right?"
Dan nodded, not asking how Seb knew.
"So, little over a year before I'm doing your full sleeve, right?"
Dan smiled from one corner of his mouth and followed Seb down the narrow stairs.
~
Seb had been burning incense. The basement was smoky and heavy with a sweet yet earthy scent, like woodland flowers, but it wasn't choking.
PJ was getting music notes that, with the right spell, he could rearrange to his heart's content creating little melodies that would sing themselves out to the world if he desired. It wasn't something Seb had done before, and they had worked together to refine the enchantment. PJ had been itching to finally get it done after working on it for so long.
Chris went first. Seb's face was creased with concentration as he drew out the worryingly lifelike shark on Chris's left thigh. Its teeth were stretched into a leering grin and its gills shivered as it swam slowly and ominously in and out of the dips in Chris's skin.
PJ got seven notes and a treble clef on the inside of his wrist. Tentatively yet excitedly he began to talk to them under his breath, changing their octave and making them grow sweeping tails or hollow out entirely as he changed their length. Soon, he would be able to dance them between his fingers like running water.
Twinkle twinkle little star drifted softly and a little disjointedly from PJ's hand, and then again with more gusto. A huge smile was fixed across his face, and the other boys knew they wouldn't be able to get much conversation out of him for at least a few days.
"Next we'll put some guitar strings running up your arm, yeah?" Seb suggested with a fond smile, and PJ nodded eagerly.
"Do you think," he paused a little uncertainly. "Do you think it would be possible to make like, a chalk board? So you could draw with your wand and rub it out?"
Seb frowned. "Honestly I've no idea. It would be complicated. But I don't see why we couldn't do some research."
PJ beamed and Dan marvelled at a brain that could so easily spout such a fountain of ideas and creativity.
"It'll make a change from putting a thousand snakes and eagles and badgers and lions on spotty teens." Seb continued, already turning to his bookshelf.
"I think Dan should get a Slytherin tattoo. He's very proud of his house." Chris quipped.
Dan scowled at him. "I don't hate it. I wouldn't play Quidditch for them if I hated them. But I would have probably had a better Hogwarts experience in another house. Literally, any other."
Seb paused his search, turning to look at Dan, a curious expression in his eyes. "You're muggleborn, yeah?" He asked. "Slytherin won't accept muggleborns easily. It was Salazar's big thing. I assumed you'd chosen."
Dan nodded. "I know, I must have done by accident. You've no idea how many times I've tried to figure it out. I don't really know what I was thinking. I was scared. I didn't know anything about the houses. I just tried to clear my head so that the sorting hat could do it properly. Maybe I thought the word Slytherin at just the wrong moment."
Seb shook his head slowly. "The sorting hat is a very powerful magical object. It doesn't make mistakes. Maybe one of your parents has some magic in them, or a squib, perhaps?"
"No, neither of them knew magic existed at all. If my dad had ever accidentally turned a kettle into a dog or something he'd have probably brought it up by now. Asked me to teach him or something." Dan had considered this already, even asked his parents a few times. He was sure they weren't lying.
Seb surveyed him, and Dan wondered if he was using his leglimency and listening to his thoughts. "Have you spoken to a teacher? I think you should. I've never heard of anything like that before. Sally loved blood purity almost as much as he loved himself."
The cauldron on the hearth over boiled suddenly, hissing as the liquid fell down onto the fire and spewing pink bubbles into the room. Seb cursed as he caught it with his wand and lifted it high into the air away from the flames until the froth had calmed down.
"Don't get yourself down though. Slytherin's not so bad. I was one, and look how cool I am." Seb winked, and for some reason Dan was filled with a warmth of reassurance.
Seb was right. He was cool, and Dan looked up to him. Knowing that they were in the same house filled Dan with just a touch of pride, and he glanced smugly at the other boys. They may have their heroes and scholars and philanthropists, but Dan had Seb – the mysterious, beautiful, charming tattooist with magic and creativity and talent to his toes.
The huge orange sun was just starting to eclipse the mountains on the horizon. They had been in the shop all afternoon, and the walk home was buzzing with excited chatter as they flaunted their new tattoos, except for Dan, who was quiet with contemplation and lagging just behind the other three.
As they reached the castle gates, Phil dropped back a few paces.
"Anything up?" He asked.
"Nah." Dan offered Phil a reassuring smile. "Just thinking about what Seb said. I think I will ask a teacher. I just want to know why, you know? It's been so long that I stopped asking myself, but it's all come back now."
In the bush beside them a tiny mouse darted out of the branches and back under cover, for what purpose Dan couldn't say.
"You're in Slytherin because you belong there, for whatever reason." Phil said quietly, not that the other two were paying any attention to them. "For all the stick we give you, the character traits aren't bad ones. It's just the stigma. No one takes it seriously."
"But what I said in the shop – about being happier in another house – I keep thinking how true it is. The hat's supposed to put you in the house that will help you thrive. Slytherin nearly broke me."
Phil slipped his hand into Dan's, rubbing his thumb over the smooth skin on the back of Dan's hand. "You're only fourth year. Who knows what will happen. Maybe it knew you'd find some cool cats to get you through the first bit," Phil stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth and Dan rolled his eyes. "You're on the Quidditch team, after all. I mean, you wouldn't have made it onto any of the other teams. We're all too good." He continued, avoiding a swat from Dan. "You're a late bloomer. Now that you've found your feet you'll be able to climb the mountain."
Dan smiled gratefully at his boyfriend. It wasn't that he felt he didn't fit in, just that if he'd known anything about the house before arriving at Hogwarts he would never have chosen it. And, although it was four years ago now, he was pretty sure he hadn't.
The tall spires of the castle were silhouetted against the setting sun. An owl hooted sleepily somewhere to their right and two second years nearly ran into Dan as they chased each other across the grounds. He was in Slytherin, although he didn't know why, and for now, at least, he was happy.