It sometimes happens that you know someone for quite a while, and never think of them as anything more than a friend, or acquaintance, or that guy in the hall, until one day you suddenly see them in a different light. Attraction hits you like a flash of inspiration and after that, you can’t go back to seeing them in the same way as before. So it was with Yamamoto, who after having been classmates with Gokudera Hayato for a little over two years, looked over at him in the Great Hall one morning and couldn’t stop staring.
He was seated at the Ravenclaw table, engrossed in a book as usual, a single cup of coffee by his left arm. One thing Yamamoto did know about Gokudera was that he was really smart and studious – even by Ravenclaw standards – and always seemed to be reading a book of some sort. But everything else was pretty much unknown. Next to him, a Ravenclaw girl called I-Pin was chattering away, though Gokudera barely appeared to be listening.
Yamamoto gazed at Gokudera, trying to figure out what it was that had suddenly struck him a second ago and made his heart skip a beat. Maybe it was the way the light from the partly cloudy enchanted ceiling glinted off his silver hair, giving him a sort of mystical glow. It really was an unusual and beautiful hair colour. Maybe it was the little ponytail that his hair was tied back in, which happened to suit him really well, or the incredibly sexy black-framed glasses that sat on his nose. Maybe it was his pale skin and the long, elegant fingers that slowly turned each page, or the slightly sullen look of concentration on his face as he read. Or the contrast between his impeccably neat school uniform and the heavy necklaces, studded bracelets and copious rings he accessorised it with, never mind that it was against school rules to wear so much jewellery.
Whichever of these had first caught his attention, Yamamoto couldn’t stop noticing more and more things about Gokudera, and then wondering why none of these amazing attributes had ever occurred to him before. He was visited by a strong urge to walk over to the Ravenclaw table, plonk himself down in front of Gokudera and say hi. Just to see what would happen.
Meanwhile, Yamamoto’s best friend Tsuna had realised that Yamamoto was no longer paying attention to the conversation they’d been having, and was looking around to see what he was so focused on. “Takeshi? Who are you looking at?”
Yamamoto started slightly and smiled brightly to try and cover up the fact that he’d just been ogling some guy across the room. “Oh, I was just thinking… That guy with the silver hair, he’s in our Charms class, right?”
“Who, Gokudera?” Tsuna looked over at the boy in question, who was now taking a sip of coffee, eyes never moving from the page he was reading. “Yeah, he is. He’s also pretty much the top student in our year. Actually, he helped me out a lot before our exams last summer by tutoring me in Charms. I don’t think I would’ve passed if it hadn’t been for him.”
Yamamoto stared at Tsuna with surprise and a little envy. “Really, he tutored you?”
“You don’t remember? We were in the library together all the time.”
Yamamoto grinned sheepishly and scratched the back of his head. “Aha, I never really set foot in the library last year. Too busy with Quidditch practice I guess.” As it happened, Yamamoto could have done with a tutor himself in last year’s exams; his marks had been quite low as a result of spending all his spare time on the Quidditch pitch. Academics were not his strong point.
“Well, thanks to Gokudera I didn’t do too badly in Charms, and he gave me some tips for Transfiguration and History of Magic as well. We still talk from time to time; he’s not very social, though.”
“Are you talking about Hayato Gokudera?” a voice asked loudly. Ryohei Sasagawa, a large, well-built fifth-year, sat down opposite them. “I hear that guy’s EXTREMELY dangerous!”
“Well, he does have a bit of a knack for explosive spells,” Tsuna admitted. “Takeshi, do you remember that time he scorched a desk in one of our first ever Charms lessons?”
“Really, that was him?” said Yamamoto with a grin. He vaguely remembered an explosion of some sort, which had resulted in the culprit being the first in their year to receive detention, only weeks after they all arrived at Hogwarts.
“Yeah, he’s done loads of stuff like that since, but his marks are so good that he’s never been suspended or expelled… the teachers don’t really like him, though.”
Yamamoto smiled to himself and looked back over at Gokudera. He was still reading with the same slight scowl as before, though I-Pin had now left. The seats around him were all empty, though there were absolutely none left vacant further down the table. For some reason, the information that Gokudera was a ‘bad boy’ only made Yamamoto want to get to know him more. He seemed like a really interesting guy!
Just then, Gokudera looked up, and his eyes locked with Yamamoto’s, almost as if he’d known the whole time that Yamamoto was staring at him. He had a piercing glare which seemed to reach right into Yamamoto’s soul. Yamamoto shivered, but grinned at Gokudera cheerily. Gokudera’s eyes narrowed and he got up, slotting the book into a black shoulder-bag and slinging it over his shoulder as he left the Great Hall. People moved out of his way as he stalked past.
“Quidditch practice tonight, Yamamoto!” said Ryohei loudly through a mouthful of bacon and eggs. “It’s gonna be EXTREME!” Ryohei was the Gryffindor Quidditch captain, as well as possibly the most over-enthusiastic Beater to have ever played for the team. If you saw a Bludger hit by Ryohei coming towards you, you dodged or you ended up with broken bones. He applied the same passionate, steamroller attitude towards training the team, making them practice in all weather conditions and as frequently as he could book the pitch, especially in the run-up to a match. Yamamoto didn’t mind though, since he loved Quidditch as much as Ryohei did, though perhaps without the same fervour.
“I look forward to it!” he told Ryohei. “Tsuna, you coming to watch?”
Tsuna looked gloomy. “I wish I could, but I really need to finish off our Astronomy essay…”
“Oh yeah! I haven’t even started that, haha! I guess I’ll get down to it after dinner.” Yamamoto knew that it would probably take him until the early hours of the morning to finish the essay, which was due in for the next day, but he didn’t let the thought deter him. Instead, he focused on a much more enjoyable thought: today he was going to ask Gokudera to tutor him in Charms.
During their Charms lesson later that day, Yamamoto kept his eyes on Gokudera. They were learning the Engorgio charm, which caused objects to grow in size, practicing first on buttons and pins, which were easier to charm than insects or animals. Yamamoto was amazed to see Gokudera master the charm on his first try, whereupon he spent the rest of the lesson producing large quantities of sparks from the end of his wand. It looked like he was trying to do another explosive spell again, and Yamamoto watched him nervously, but nothing adverse happened. That was more than he could say for his own attempts at the charm, which broke his first button, in two, and then shattered the remaining halves when he tried the charm on them instead. Next to him, Tsuna was also having limited success with his pin, which kept alternately growing and shrinking every time he tried the charm.
He seized his chance to talk to the surly Ravenclaw as they left the classroom. Gokudera strode ahead, stowing his wand inside his robes, and Yamamoto hurried to catch up with him.
"Hey, uh, Gokudera!"
Gokudera stopped in his tracks and wheeled around to glare at him. He said nothing, and Yamamoto scratched the back of his head nervously.
"Um... hi."
Gokudera looked at him impassively and then said, "You're that Quidditch-obsessed idiot. Tsuna's friend."
Yamamoto blinked in surprise and then laughed. "Haha, I guess I do like Quidditch a lot. But um, anyway, I kind of wanted to-"
"Yamamoto! Oh, hi, Gokudera. How's it going?"
Yamamoto's heart sank as Tsuna came over to them. Having an audience kind of made it harder for him to ask what he wanted to, and it didn't help that Gokudera's face immediately brightened upon seeing Tsuna. Yamamoto covered up his slight surge of jealousy with a smile, and reminded himself that having Gokudera in a good mood would probably help his case.
"Tsuna! How are you? Do you need any more help with your essays?"
Tsuna smiled. "I'm okay for the moment, thanks to the tips you gave me at the end of last year."
"Well, if you need any more, just ask!" Gokudera's attitude was the complete opposite of how it had been when talking to Yamamoto. He wondered what was so special about Tsuna that could have caused this about-turn.
"Hey, y’know, I could really do with some academic help," said Yamamoto casually, as if the idea had just occurred to him. “Like a tutor or something. For Charms.”
Gokudera's eyes narrowed as he looked at Yamamoto. "I don't teach idiots. Find some other moron to help you out." He turned and strode away down the corridor.
"Hey, that's not very nice!" Yamamoto laughed, running after him. "Come on, you're the smartest guy in our year, right?"
"Yes, and there's no clause in that which says I have to waste my time on brainless Quidditch idiots like you," Gokudera snapped.
"What if I paid you?" Yamamoto offered. His Gringotts account wasn't exactly overflowing, but he had some pocket money saved for Hogsmeade trips and the like, and getting to know Gokudera aside, investing in a tutor was sounding more and more like a good idea. He really hadn’t done well in his exams last year.
Gokudera stopped again and appraised him with a slightly suspicious expression. "How much?" he asked abruptly.
"Ten Sickles an hour?" Yamamoto offered. Gokudera said nothing. "Twelve Sickles?"
“…Fine,” said Gokudera unexpectedly, and Yamamoto beamed. “But I’m busy for the next few nights.”
“Haha, that’s okay, I’ve got Quidditch practice my-” But Gokudera was already walking away without waiting for Yamamoto to finish.
“Hey- so- when do you want to meet?” he called after Gokudera’s retreating figure.
“I’ll find you,” came the reply before his moody classmate disappeared from sight.
Yamamoto shook his head, smiling in a bemused fashion. He’d never met anyone who seemed to dislike people quite so much as Gokudera. Maybe that was why he always buried his head in a book – to avoid having to interact with them. But what was it that made Tsuna the exception to that rule? Yamamoto frowned slightly as he ducked behind a tapestry-covered secret passageway and went to find his friend.
It was almost a week before he spoke to Gokudera again. Yamamoto would look over at him hopefully in their ensuing Charms lessons, but Gokudera steadfastly ignored him, taking off the minute that the lesson was over and evading Yamamoto’s attempts to catch up with and talk to him. Yamamoto found it odd, but he shrugged it off; Gokudera had agreed to tutor him, and if he wanted Yamamoto’s money then he would have to seek him out at some point.
It finally happened when he and Tsuna were leaving the Great Hall after dinner one evening, accompanied by Ryohei and Lambo, a fourth-year Gryffindor. Gokudera happened to be just ahead of them, sending a group of first-year Hufflepuffs scuttling in his wake with a furious glare. As they drew level with him, Yamamoto expected Gokudera to blank him as usual and stride off towards the library or the Ravenclaw common-room, but to his surprise Gokudera stopped and looked over at him. Yamamoto stopped as well, letting his friends continue on ahead without noticing that he was no longer with them.
“Are you free tonight, or do you have Quidditch practice yet again?” Gokudera asked with a heavy amount of disdain in his voice.
Yamamoto thought for a minute. There was no Quidditch practice that evening, but he’d been planning to take advantage of the free time to catch up on some work. He had a Herbology diagram he really needed to finish, plus some Transfiguration spell-work from that day’s lesson… but he also had a feeling that if he told Gokudera he was busy, the offer wouldn’t come again for some time.
“I’m free,” he said, and smiled, though this only caused Gokudera’s scowl to deepen.
“Let’s go then,” he said, and walked off towards the nearest staircase.
Confused, Yamamoto followed him up to the first floor and along a corridor, whereupon Gokudera chose an empty classroom apparently at random and stalked inside. He waved his wand, and the enchanted lamps affixed to the walls glowed into life.
“So,” said Gokudera, seating himself on top of a desk. Yamamoto followed suit on a desk opposite, facing Gokudera and smiling. “I’ve got a limited amount of time, so don’t waste it by pissing about.”
“I’m paying you by the hour, though,” Yamamoto reminded him.
Gokudera ignored this and carried on, “Also, if you’re a lost cause, I’m giving up on you. Sometimes idiocy is just incurable; that’s not my fault. Don’t whine about my teaching methods either. You’re the one who came to me begging to be tutored.”
“Haha, Gokudera, you’re so hostile!” said Yamamoto. He had quickly worked out that the best way to deal with Gokudera’s constant insults was to see the humour in them. There was no point wasting energy on being offended, and in any case, it was funny to see surprise and annoyance flash in Gokudera’s green eyes every time Yamamoto was unaffected by one of his jibes.
Sure enough, Gokudera looked briefly annoyed – well, more annoyed than usual – before continuing,
“I’ve seen your pitiful attempts at the Engorgio charm in our last few lessons, so we may as well start with that.” Despite the fact that he was being insulted yet again, Yamamoto couldn’t help but smile at the knowledge that Gokudera had noticed him in Charms.
Gokudera pulled out a button from inside his robes. “Here, you can practice on this,” he said, flipping it towards Yamamoto, who caught it.
“Uh, okay.” Yamamoto held the button in the palm of one hand, pointed his wand at it, and said, “Engorgio!”
The button cracked in two. Yamamoto had actually managed in recent lessons to perform the charm more successfully than this, but his nerves from Gokudera watching him caused him to mess up the spell as if he’d never performed it before.
Gokudera slapped a hand over his face and groaned. “What are you doing, idiot? You can’t just point your wand at it and expect that to work. There’s a wand movement involved, it’s like this…” He pulled out his own wand and demonstrated.
“Haha, oh yeah.” Yamamoto practiced moving his wand in the correct fashion. “Okay, I think I have it…” He pointed his wand at the broken button.
“Aren’t you going to repair that first?” Gokudera asked impatiently.
“Um…” Yamamoto didn’t want to admit he’d never successfully repaired an object in his life. “Okay, uh, Reparo.”
The halves of the broken button vibrated a little but did not repair themselves. Gokudera groaned again.
“You can’t even manage Reparo? That’s a second-year spell!” Yamamoto grinned sheepishly. “What else can’t you do?”
“Um, well… Quite a lot of things, actually…” Yamamoto admitted, hunching his shoulders. “That’s sort of why I need a tutor.”
Gokudera sighed in exasperation. “I knew you were awful at Charms, but not this awful. Did you even pass last year’s exam?”
“…Barely.”
“Yeah, well no wonder. God, why did I even agree to take you on? This is going to be such a waste of my time.” Gokudera hopped up from the desk and began pacing back and forth. Yamamoto watched him, admiring the way he ran those long, elegant fingers through his hair. Gokudera was a drama queen all right, but he was beautiful when he was angry, and so much more alive than when he was slumped, bored, behind a desk during lesson-time. It felt sort of cool to have been the one to bring that about.
Eventually, Gokudera stopped pacing and turned to face Yamamoto. “Fine. Let’s start with the basics.” Yamamoto nodded obediently. “Can you do Wingardium Leviosa?”
“Yeah.”
“Show me.”
Yamamoto performed the swish-and-flick wand motion on the two halves of the button still in his hand, and uttered the incantation. They rose about a foot into the air.
“Passable,” said Gokudera, eyeing the floating button pieces critically. “What about…”
He proceeded to test Yamamoto systematically on every single charm they’d learnt in class since the beginning of first year, half of which Yamamoto didn’t even remember learning. At times he wondered whether Gokudera might be making some of them up, or at least testing him on charms they hadn’t covered; but he attempted the spells without complaint anyway. ‘Attempted’ being the operative word. His charm-work became progressively more erratic as the spells got harder and harder, and Gokudera called a stop to the proceedings halfway through the second-year syllabus.
“Quidditch freak, how the hell did you manage to even scrape a pass in last year’s exam?” Gokudera asked in exasperation. “I wouldn’t have given you a T.”
“A what?”
“It’s an O.W.L. grade, idiot, and the kind you need to not get if you want to stay in education.”
“Haha, isn’t it a bit early to be thinking about O.W.L.s?” laughed Yamamoto. “We’ve only just started third year!”
“Moron, that’s exactly the kind of attitude that’ll earn you a fail in every subject,” said Gokudera. “Any of this stuff could come up in O.W.L., to say nothing of life outside school. Where the hell will you be if you can’t even repair a broken bowl or unlock a locked door? Being able to throw a stupid red ball through a hoop means nothing if you’re a failure as a wizard!”
Yamamoto smiled brightly into Gokudera’s angry face. In spite of all his remonstrations against Quidditch, Gokudera knew what position he played on the Gryffindor team, and the knowledge warmed him from the inside. Maybe Gokudera had secretly been watching him in his matches? He knew it was unlikely, but he couldn’t help his mind constructing a vivid daydream in which he scored dozens of spectacular goals against the opposing team, whilst Gokudera looked on from the stands, wearing an annoyed expression only to cover up the fact that he was really rooting for Yamamoto-
“OI!” Yamamoto felt a slight sting to the top of his head as Gokudera brought his wand down on top of it, red sparks shooting out the end. “What’s with that vacant expression? Have you even been listening for the past ten minutes?”
“Yep, you said that my attitude will earn me a fail in every subject and that all this stuff could come up in O.W.L. as well as everyday life, especially things like Reparo and Alohomora, and you also know that I play Chaser for the Gryffindor Quidditch team,” Yamamoto reeled off cheerfully, swinging his legs. “So, are you looking forward to the first match of the year? We’re playing your house!”
Gokudera blinked, momentarily dumbfounded by Yamamoto’s recitation, and then flushed bright red. “I only said you throw a stupid red ball around! I didn’t know what the stupid position was called! And why would I even be interested in such a stupid sport?!” He folded his arms and turned his back on Yamamoto like a little kid having a sulking fit.
Yamamoto only grinned wider. Gokudera was even more adorable when he was blushing and flustered, while his discomfiture had apparently reduced his vocabulary of insults down to one adjective. “Whatever you say, Gokudera. There’s really nothing wrong with liking Quidditch, you know.”
Gokudera heard the teasing humour in his voice and whirled back around, incensed. “Obviously, in your case, there is. You’re so busy obsessing over that stupid sport, you can’t even perform second-year charms – or were you just born this brainless?”
“Hey, hey, I can learn,” said Yamamoto. “Maybe I just need a really good teacher to show me how.”
Gokudera scowled at him. “I doubt even Merlin himself could have rectified a sorry case like yours, but I’ll give it my best shot.”
“Was Merlin even a teacher?”
Gokudera ignored this, snatching the broken button back from Yamamoto and mending it easily. “Right. We’re not leaving this classroom until you turn this,” he held it back out to Yamamoto, “red.”
It took a long time for Yamamoto to master the Colour Change charm. He couldn’t decide whether having Gokudera as a teacher was helping him or not. On the one hand, he liked looking at and listening to Gokudera (maybe a little too much, since he’d often be concentrating on the sound of Gokudera’s voice rather than taking in what he was actually saying) and he wanted to get better at Charms in order to earn his approval. On the other hand, Gokudera was not a positive or encouraging teacher, and while he was extremely good at performing spells himself, he was less adept at explaining them. “It’s like this, Quidditch freak,” he would say impatiently, performing the charm perfectly but leaving Yamamoto none the wiser as to how he’d done it.
Finally, Yamamoto succeeded in turning the button red. Gokudera picked it up and inspected it for remaining spots of black (on his previous twelve attempts at the charm, Yamamoto had only succeeded in turning it partially red) and finally nodded his approval. Yamamoto stretched and leaned back on the desk.
“Whew, that was hard work!” he said. Gokudera glared at him. “Hey, what time is it anyway?” He checked his watch and paled. “Gokudera, it’s past nine o’clock! We’ll be in trouble if we don’t make it back to our common rooms quickly!” Their lesson had taken up nearly two and a half hours.
“Fine. See you later, Quidditch idiot.” Gokudera strode towards the door. Yamamoto followed him, pulling out his purse to pay him for the lesson.
“How much do I owe-”
“Give me the money another time,” Gokudera said dismissively, walking off in the direction of the Ravenclaw common room.
Yamamoto scratched his head as he watched Gokudera go, thinking about the blush on his face when he was caught out knowing Yamamoto’s position on the Quidditch team. Gokudera was a puzzle all right, but one he was determined to figure out.