⚡ Hogwarts AU - Patrolling with Steve

[prettysure]

Being a prefect had always seemed to Gwen like the proverbial double-edged sword: On the one hand, the additional responsibilities provided unique opportunities she might not otherwise have. She particularly liked, for instance, assisting the first years when she had been in fifth, and being in charge of the regular Ravenclaw study group. On the other, the position came with a less-than-ideal reputation, and some very tedious tasks. Her first year as a prefect, she'd absolutely loathed going on patrols, despite that Charles Xavier wasn't bad company; nobody wanted to be caught out of bounds, and when the halls were clear, all she could think of was how much time she was wasting.

Now, two years later and Head Girl, evening patrols were one of the favorite parts of her week. Over the last three years, she'd earned respect for being firm yet fair with her authority, and had learned that crime didn't always merit a punishment. She didn't dread finding someone doing something wrong, but had rather easily slipped into a leadership role as she'd gotten older, like a big sister to the entire school. And the boring parts? Those were a blissful break from an academic and social schedule that kept her hopping all week long.

The night was clear and crisp, fall beginning to give way to winter, and the halls had been mostly quiet. Hands tucked in her robe, she cast a sidelong glance to Steve beside her as they strolled through the halls, their footfalls softly echoing off the old stone.

"It's weird, isn't it, the way things change when you get older?" she asked with a curious cant of her head. "I used to hate this. Now it's the best part of my day."

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[captain_rogers]

Had not it not been for the friends he had made within the school and the many fascinating subjects he had been allowed to study in his six years and change at Hogwarts, Steve might have thought he might have chosen to remain in the Muggle school system. Not out of any particular love of its many faults and rampant neglect of its students, but as he had ridden the Hogwarts Express that very first year with the knowledge that he would be leaving behind the bullies of his old neighborhood and his old school only for the potential to meet a new crop of the breed.

He had thought, on the arrival of his Prefect badge by owl before his fifth year, that there must have been some mistake made. That some other Hufflepuff had been assigned the responsibility and he had received it either by some member of the staff having labeled the letter incorrectly or perhaps that the owl had become confused somewhere on its trip and delivered it to the wrong address.

Saying so aloud had only earned him a reproachful nip from the beak of the harried looking owl before it had turned in disgust and flown away to finish its own duties.

Steve had then commanded little respect in or out of the classroom, and when not overlooked entirely by those around him (particularly girls, despite Bucky's best efforts), he had been prone to being cornered on a fairly regular basis by one bully or another. When, that was, he did not provoke their anger by speaking up at what he believed to be some wrong being done. Two years and having grown into the role of Prefect, now named Head Boy, as well as through a growth spurt between his fifth and sixth years, Steve understood why he had been chosen for the role and embraced its many responsibilities in favor of curtailing the more mean-spirited or cruel behavior of his fellow students and attempting to keep the peace.

"It is," he agreed, turning his head enough to be able to look at her a moment as they walked along on their rounds. "As long as Peeves isn't involved, right?" Steve teased lightly, thinking of the last time they had had come across the poltergeist having exploded several of the pumpkins meant for the Halloween feast, each splattering seeds and pumpkin flesh all over the library.

[prettysure]

"Right," Gwen agreed on a laugh, and then shook her head at herself. "I really shouldn't laugh, though. Every time I go to look something up, I find pumpkin seeds that we missed." Despite this, she was still smiling. Steve, she'd found, was one the best people she'd met when it came to putting things into perspective.

"It'll be Christmas soon, here's to hoping it'll be a less messy holiday." She'd never been superstitious, didn't particularly care for more dubiously authentic studies like Divination, yet she felt like she ought to knock on wood. The threat of Peeves and his talent for chaos could do that to a person.

"You have any holiday plans yet?" she asked, genuinely curious yet choosing her words with care. It was well enough known that Steve didn't have a family to go home to, but sometimes people forgot. Gwen imagined the holidays had to be especially hard, although he'd never shown it.

[captain_rogers]

While he might have been one of the first ones to admit, then as in any other moment, that getting Gwen to smile, to laugh, to lighten up in all things not to do with her studies or rules being flouted with little excuse, Steve took that laugh as a victory all the same. It had a grin breaking out broad across his face, watching the blink and you'd miss it wrinkle of her nose at the thought of that explosion of orange flesh and likely the screeching sound of Madam Pince's voice in her shock and horror at the offense.

"I would say that it'd be difficult to make a mess of snow in the Great Hall and mistletoe, but I don't think I want to chance it," he told her, unknowingly echoing her thoughts. Even Peeves seemed to have a sort of cheer about him when it came to the holidays, it was just that a cheery Peeves tended to be a Peeves destroying property, flinging snowballs at the backs of students' heads and writing foul words all over the chalkboards in the many classrooms of the school.

He shook his head in answer, although the fact that he had only the home for kids like him and Bucky had assured that the two of them had every school break they had been able still at Hogwarts. "Staying here," he said, his grin having faded into a more thoughtful expression as they continued down the hallway, "But beyond that?"

Steve shrugged his shoulders and allowed her a small smile as he asked, "Think we're too old yet for snow forts and snow wars?"

[prettysure]

"Well," Gwen began, abruptly somber, her head tilted in thought, "snow wars are very serious business. I think the real question, Mr. Rogers, is whether you're old enough. Lot of responsibility there. Not everyone can be trusted to pack a snowball properly."

She spread her hands with a gesture Steve's way as if to say that only he could judge whether he was capable of taking on such a vaunted mantle. It was all a joke, of course, snow wars being anything but serious business, but Gwen's uncanny ability to pretend at solemnity was nearly legendary. More than one wayward underclassman had been scared straight by her solemn, and often ridiculous proclamations.

[captain_rogers]

Steve was not, himself, exactly fond of the cold. He had spent too many years growing up shivering through bitter winters, feeling his breath rattling around in his chest where he was even able to suck in a full breath without falling to coughing, for that. It had been worse before he had come to Hogwarts, when the orphanage he had been in hadn't known what to do with him or how to handle a boy who made strange things happen around him when he had an asthma attack.

Even at Hogwarts he had spent his first few Christmases in a bed in the infirmary or stuck in his bed down in the Hufflepuff cellar, huddled away from the cold and taking the foul-tasting potions Madam Pince had sent his way.

But he took up Gwen's playacted solemnity with a nod of his own, crossing his arms across his chest. "You are right," he told her, thinking of the tradition he'd been able to take part in for just the past few years of an all out snowball war during Christmas break. "Really, I have to go now. Someone has to be responsible."

[prettysure]

"I'll be honest, I don't think you're beginning your preparations early enough," Gwen was quick to reply with a shake of her head. "You may need some additional coaching to beat Gryffindor, I hear they've been doing drills since July. Lucky for you, I happen to be an expert at both fortification and ammunition-making in snow wars. But my time is valuable, I don't know if I'm willing to give it for free."

All of this was said with continued seriousness, Gwen's wide green eyes turned soberly up to Steve's amiable face. Despite his eagerness to take part in a harmless joke, she had to wonder if he was capable of a convincing lie. Everything she knew about him pointed to no, but in a school full of preening teenagers fumbling through false faces, it was refreshing to know someone so honest. Not to mention that it made her feints more fun.

[captain_rogers]

The seriousness with which Steve spoke of the snowball wars ahead was not wholly faked, although it was with some sense of humor that he discussed it then with Gwen. Given his friendship with Bucky and the amount of time they had spent together, in and out of the Gryffindor Tower (the Hufflepuff basement having been unseen by a single outsider since the school's founding), Steve was more than a little familiar with both the seriousness with which the Gryffindors approached any and all competitions, and their habit of underestimating their opponents. Particularly those less flashy and boastful than themselves.

It was what he had observed from the windows of the infirmary his first few years, and learned to take advantage of once he himself had been allowed to join the fray.

He smiled at her, losing some of that seriousness for dropping his arms from across his chest and spreading them in a gesture of good will. "Of course not," he joked, "You'd hate to see Charles or Erik lose to a group of Hufflepuffs."

[prettysure]

"Oh, wouldn't I," Gwen corrected, finally breaking the facade with a laugh and a wide smile. "Although it might be insult to injury, seeing as they both already lost to a Hufflepuff," she added, pointing a finger Steve's way with a smug little wink. "Salt in the wound and all that. Wouldn't be very sporting."

Gwen was pretty sure that when Steve was appointed Head Boy, Charles and Erik were the only two people in the school who were surprised. She'd tried to not be too amused by their disappointment, she really, really had.

"But seriously, though," she began again, turning toward him and reaching to touch his arm. "You ought to come out to London during the holiday. We're only up in Hampstead, so I wouldn't even have to floo. We could make a day of it."

Even if Bucky would be there with him, it made her sad to think of them knocking about the castle alone at Christmastime.

[captain_rogers]

The haughty, marble-smooth perfection of Gwen's expression when she played at a seriousness not actually felt was one that had found its way onto the pages of Steve's sketchbook more than once. As pretty as the girl was, his attention to the shift and play of her expressions had always been more aesthetic than romantic or sexual, and it was no less true then. He liked the way her smile lit up her face, as he did the triumph in making her break character.

His grin for her then had little to do with Charles or Erik, for his having netted the position of Head Boy (and she was wrong, he had still been surprised when he had discovered the badge in his packet - only for a moment, but all the same). No, it had all to do with the way her nose wrinkled when she laughed and his own joke having gone over well.

Her touch was nothing less than delicate, but he slowed in his step all the same to assure them both that she had his full attention as she spoke more soberly.

The Christmases at Hogwarts were beyond anything he had imagined as a small child, those early Christmases first painted in sickness and his mother's increasingly harsh coughing, and later with thin sheets and hastily made gifts at the orphanage. The celebrations the others went to with their families seemed more the stuff of fiction than real life, but distant enough that he no longer imagined taking part in them as he had so long before. But he could not say that a day in London with Gwen was unappealing, and he smiled. "We can always hike out to the edges of Hogwarts," he told her, immediately and unthinkingly including Bucky in the plan as there was no way in heaven or earth he'd leave his best mate behind at Christmas, "And apparate from there. Wouldn't have to rely on the train that way."

[prettysure]

Despite their over six years in school together, Gwen didn't know much about Bucky beyond his reputation, which tended to run toward being good on the Quidditch field and a skirt chaser. That he was Steve's best friend, however, said a lot for him in Gwen's estimation, and having him along had seemed rather like a foregone conclusion anyhow.

"I'll owl my mum and ask her to see if there's anything fun going on," she said, taking up their stroll again. "Diagon's always done up for the holidays, but the Muggles do all sorts of things, too. It's interesting to see how they get around needing magic- I can't imagine what's involved in all the decorating they do, it must be exhausting."

[captain_rogers]

His lips quirked up in his amusement, though he nodded in agreement. "You do remember I grew up with Muggles, right?" He asked her, his tone lifting into something light and teasing. Being a half-blood hadn't mattered much to any in his House, the topic one that was more likely to bring curiosity or increasingly outlandish questions on all things Muggle. Where the rest of the school could fall one way or another, from a few of the Slytherins at one extreme with vicious joy taken in humiliating him in his younger years to Ravenclaw classmates who thought to use him as a handy resource for their Muggle Studies classes, but the 'Puffs had never looked at him twice for it.

"Not that I've ever been part of any decorating committees, but you can't help but be in the thick of it when December rolls around." The months he spent away from Hogwarts had become ones he buried himself in short term jobs, saving up any and all money he could for his and Bucky's plan to find a place for themselves once they were out of school, but those had never included the winter months and so he could not claim to have worked wrapping gifts or working a retail job dealing with post-holiday returns. Still, he had been fascinated by the glitz and gaudiness of the holidays. Hard not to when the holiday had been presented up as the things dreams were made of, complete with images of full, happy families enjoying themselves.

All worlds away from the orphanage and surly nuns and cold Christmases.

[prettysure]

"Yes, I remember," Gwen replied, giving Steve a playful knock with her elbow in reprimand. "But you were little then. I mean, how much do kids really do when they're that young? You can't tell me you were climbing ladders to hang bunting in the rafters with… Oh, I don't know, rope? String? Chewing gum? What do Muggles use for things like that?" She laughed, easy but self-deprecating, with a shake of her head. "And to think, I was so proud that I got top marks in Muggle Studies."

She still remembered how small Steve had been when they'd first begun at Hogwarts—The smallest and most frail of all the boys, really, and many of the girls, too. It was ridiculous, but she felt a tiny flash of anxiety thinking of little Steve wobbling atop a towering ladder. Glancing sidelong, she reminded herself that an uncanny growth spurt had ensured he was plenty sturdy now.