Tainted Saints and Velvet Vices

Chapter 1: Incendiary Intimacy

"At least bring some of the clothes Auntie Karen knitted for you, darling. Liam will notice if you don't wear any of those jumpers and I don't want to upset her. You remember last Christmas, don't you?"

Louis glanced up from where his head had been hanging over the overflowing trunk sprawled across his bed. "I seriously doubt that Liam cares whether or not I wear those jumpers, Mum," he said, levitating a tall, toppling stack of shirts into his trunk. He traced his finger along the embroidered Hogwarts crest and smiled to himself. "I don't understand why she doesn't just use magic to make them."

"You know very well that it's the sentiment that counts," his mother said. She peered into the trunk and plucked out a Weasley's Wizard Wheezes Skiving Snackbox Louis had hidden beneath his new school robes, eyeing it with distaste. "Besides, I hear that Muggle knitting is very tedious. She probably spent weeks making them for you just in time for September the first."

Louis sighed, stuffing of the two woolen, mushroom jumpers into his trunk to placate her. He watched his black cat, Abrax—named after his corporeal Patronus, an Abraxan Winged Horse—curl up on one of the hideous jumpers. He knew that his mother's pestering was her way of channelling her anxiety about him attending Hogwarts for the first time. Louis had dreamt about attending for years. He had spent his summers prying details about the school from his friends and had watched them climb aboard the Hogwarts Express every year with a heavy heart.

His parents, both retired Hogwarts professors and who had lost some of their closest friends and family members during the Second Wizarding War, were fiercely protective of Louis, which he reckoned was because he was their only son. All Louis could remember from that time was their whispering of Voldemort's return, his reign of terror and tragic stories of the needless blood that was spilled—magical and Muggle. Even though the War had ended seven years before, Louis knew that his parents had remained reluctant to allow him to go to Hogwarts for a long time afterwards. In the back of his mind, Louis knew that they tried to put his safety first but he couldn't help but feel envious of his friends when they returned every summer with tales of adventures in the castle, midnight feasts with the house-elves and jinxing each other in the hallways, much to the chagrin of Argus Filch, the Hogwarts caretaker.

His parents had schooled him from their quaint house in east Doncaster. He loved the place: the thin walls and mismatched furniture, the fumes from his mother's Arithmancy Study and the smells of his father's cooking wafting through the air and the Wizarding Wireless playing vintage record repeats long into the night. Venturing outside of the house was always a treat, and finding other kids his age in the neighbourhood was always a challenge, but he kept in near permanent contact with his cousin Liam.

His father taught him the Ancient Runes syllabus from the confines of their basement, while his mother specialised in Potions and Arithmancy, brewing and concocting potions from her small laboratory in the attic where there was a permanent purple hue to the walls from a Sleeping Draught gone wrong years ago. They used practical spells around the house (Scourgify being one of Louis' favourites) and his parents taught him both Charms and Transfiguration as well so that he 'received an education that could parallel that taught at Hogwarts'—his mother's words, not his own. Louis knew, deep down, that despite their best efforts, his home-schooling could never quite compare with the experience that the other witches and wizards his age had at Hogwarts.

On his seventeenth birthday he had sanguinely asked whether he could attend Hogwarts the following year. After spending all his time at home (and under his father's watchful eye), Louis had learned to appreciate their concern and dedication but he couldn't help but hope for a reply for once, even if he didn't actually expect one. So, when their response finally came, needless to say it was entirely unexpected. Even looking back now, almost a year later, the memory made Louis' heart soar.