Septem - Sidemen/Harry Potter fan fiction

But

"Mind if I sit here?" A voice cut across Josh's musing as he sat on a bench alone in the courtyard. He raised his eyes to see Tobi, barely identifiable through the thick woollen scarf that he had bundled around his neck. Josh shook his head politely, shifting his bag of books to the floor and resting them against his feet. His eyes trailed away again to the dainty patterns of frost that littered the stone walls around the sheltered square of grass. It was surrounded by the walls of the castle on all four sides and had often sheltered the three Ravenclaw first years from the biting winter air.

It was the Christmas holidays, meaning most people had left on the Hogwarts Express for a couple of weeks of peace and quiet in their homes. This by no means meant Hogwarts was lacking in decoration. The staircases were adorned with tinsel and a tree as tall as any Josh had seen before cast a dark shadow across the Great Hall as it stood in the corner, festooned with ribbons, baubles and strings of lights, glowing like the stars. Outside, a thick frost lined the walls and benches each morning with icicles hanging from the window sills and ice spreading across the glass.

In the first year, only Josh, Ethan, Tobi and a girl none of them recognised had chosen to stay at school for the holidays, preferring the gently burning fires of the common rooms to the cold reception each expected to receive if they returned home. The darker skinned Hufflepuff student had watched Josh from his own house's table for a couple of days, avoiding the boy who seemed to be permanently followed by a stormy, raging cloud.

"How about we exchange stories?" he asked after the silence had spread as thickly as the permanent fog that covered the castle, shrouding it in an opaque, claustrophobic mist. Slowly and unexpectedly, Josh nodded, further pressing his mouth and nose beneath the zip of his coat which he had exchanged for his usual robes.

"I haven't sent a message to my mum since the start of the year," he admitted quietly, the clouds of air that emerged from behind his coat's collar the only sign that he had spoken. Tobi nodded slowly in sympathy before turning to gaze at the lacking horizon.

"My dad got divorced from my mum a few months before I got a place here," he replied, "We've been living in a tiny place far from Diagon Alley ever since but my mum; she's bad around muggles but we're also so isolated from all of the wizards that I didn't have anyone to talk to except for my brother."

"Doesn't he want you at home?" Josh asked, unable to hide the envy in his voice at the thought of having a sibling to confide in. Tobi shrugged his shoulders, remaining hunched as a blast of wind tore through the archway from the courtyard opposite them. Josh rubbed his hands together, feeling his gloves give up against the winter's chill as his fingers went numb.

"We should go inside," Tobi eventually suggested, leading the way without need of hearing a reply. Inside, except for the rattling of the window panes, there was very little to suggest that the snow and wind continued to attack the castle. The two boys found a corner on the fourth floor, sitting on the floor beneath a slowly burning candle whose holder had been wrapped festively with holly.

"You seem to be good at making friends," Josh commented out of the blue, his eyes never leaving the opposite wall as they traced the cracks between the stones with a false sense of interest. Tobi's followed for lack of anything better to do, risking a sidewards glance towards his companion and seeing a slight look of embarrassment cross his face in the flickering light.

"I don't think you're too bad yourself," he reassured lightly, remembering the hushed excitement of their conversation in the library fondly and the several weeks of silence that followed less happily.

"But I could count my friends on a single hand," he said with a short, melancholy laugh, "Vikk, Stephen-"

"Me," Tobi interjected in the long gap between names, "Even if we've only talked a couple of times." Josh smiled gratefully noting the relieved look on his new friend's face when he didn't dispute the fact. Soon this turned contemplative again and Tobi seemed to be thinking for a long time before he spoke again.