Compartment 451

Part 9

All of them are pouring over books in the Gryffindor Common Room the next night, something that the Fat Lady admonishes as she watches Liam lead the way for his four usual non-Gryffindor visitors.

'I should have known that even as Head Boy, you're still letting your gaggle of friends in here Payne.'

Zayn knows that she can't be all that surprised about him, since he's in there just as much as his own common room each school year.

After starting their second week of classes that morning, they all came to a general consensus that they should probably figure out what sort of spell to create for their Charms projects sooner rather than later. With Liam needing to be around to tend to his Head Boy duties should they be required, the group ended up picking his common room as the place to brainstorm in. So far only Harry had come up with an idea: a spell that changes the colour of the soil a plant's potted in based on its needs. Louis' pretty peeved.

"What about a charm for keeping your clothes clean so you never have to wash them?" Louis writes down his idea on the parchment in front of him.

"Just because it won't have any stains on it doesn't mean that it's going to literally be clean," Zayn points out, flipping through a wizarding dictionary to try and get some inspiration ever since he had found out that a spell for bonding wires like steel already existed. "You'd have to make it appear clean and able to actually wash itself. It'd be double the work." He gives Louis a knowing look. There's no way he'd ever subject himself to that.

Louis crinkles up the paper and throws it at Niall.

"It's just as much effort having to create the spell as it is having to look up an idea to make sure that it's not already been done," the blonde complains from his spot on the nearby armchair. "Why can't we just have a book tell us if it exists or not."

It takes a couple seconds before it clicks and Niall's shouting "dibs!"

"Fuck!" Louis tosses his paper and quill to the ground, the ink nearly going down with it. "That was brilliant."

Niall's noting his idea, obviously chuffed with himself, which only causes Louis' frustration to rise.

"Great things take time," Harry soothes from his side.

"What about just clothes that are waterproof?" Louis tries desperately, reaching down to pick up his supplies.

Niall sticks his quill behind his ear, an action that Zayn would advise against with the fresh ink on the tip, but stays quiet about. "Your head would still get wet, so what's the point?"

"Damn it Niall, go work on your encyclopedia spell," the older Slytherin growls.

Zayn tunes out the small bickering that's ensued from Louis' dig, turning his eyes to Liam who's sat against the wall next to him. The boy's got his eyes closed, but Zayn can't tell if he's trying to focus or will himself away from the arguing, since the small swaying of his head tells the Ravenclaw that he's not sleeping. What he does know is that he was more than happy that morning when Liam had forgotten about Zayn's promise to point out the person he was interested in.

Gently Zayn nudges Liam's foot with his own, watching the male's eyes snap open. "You alright?" Zayn asks softly, the two now in their own world.

Once his eyes have adjusted, Liam stares back at the boy, face scrunched up in determination. "What was the name of that song that we listened to a lot this summer?"

Zayn chuckles at the question and how utterly vague it was. "Which one? We listened to just about a hundred albums this summer."

Their first summer together he had done his best to try and give Liam a masterclass on everything muggle related, but as the wizard got a better grasp of it all over time, Zayn started to get more specific. There was a summer where they practically lived at the local game store to see what new installments had come out and to quench Liam's thirst for more superhero knowledge. One year they traveled a bunch using muggle transport, Liam confident in his ability to blend in enough to venture out of Wolverhampton and to other local muggle cities. But this summer the Gryffindor wanted to delve into non-magical music beyond the usual roundup of what they'd missed while at school, and it had resulted in hours upon hours of headphone sharing as they walked the streets of their town.