Chapter Text
"Hey, Mido," Hatsume greeted him, dropping her bag on his library table.
He flinched. He couldn't really help it. The library was usually quiet, and Hatsume didn't know the meaning of the word.
Besides, Hatsume approaching him usually meant he was about to be in some sort of trouble.
He breathed a sigh of relief when she pulled a box out of her bag and set it in front of him. "Your potions for the month. If you miss a dose, come see me."
Izuku Midoriya was a werewolf. Thankfully, some of the stigma around lycanthropy had died down, but he was still monitored closely, and a lot of his classmates treated him as persona-non-grata.
He didn't mind. He had a good group of friends, and he didn't need anyone else.
Well. He didn't need anyone else, but he definitely wanted someone.
But that was a problem for another day.
"Did you do anything to this batch?" he asked, fond yet suspicious. Hatsume's potions tampering had gotten him into quite a few tight spots.
She was one of his best friends, but that didn't mean he appreciated having an extra arm for a whole week. Even if had been handy during quidditch.
"Nope. Same old, same old," she sighed. "I've been forbidden from tampering with wolfsbane. Even though my tampering is what made this version so successful."
It was true. The crappy old version made by Damocles Belby was a thing of the past because of Hatsume. Now, he had a daily dose potion that didn't taste like sewer water and didn't have god-awful side effects.
Last he checked, she'd been attempting to improve it further by making him more 'human' during his transformation, but that hadn't taken.
They didn't want to risk the potion being completely ineffective, so they'd stopped Hatsume's live-experimentation.
"Okay," he smiled up at her. "Wanna stay and study?"
She pulled an apologetic face. "I have to go," she replied. "I have three other projects brewing that I need to check up on. And I promised Madam Chiyo that I'd top up her potions stores this week."
His smile only fell a fraction. "No worries! I'll catch up with you at dinner. Or after dinner. You need to catch me up on what you're working on!"
She gave him a fond smile. "If you want you can come sit with me and Yaomomo at dinner," she offered. Most of the Ravenclaw table treated him like a threat, but not those two.
Still, the suspicious stares could be...awful. "I'll think about it," he smiled thinly. And he would. The Gryffindor table was only slightly better, but most of them gave him varying levels of cold-shoulder, too, even though they were his housemates.
He was a werewolf who was friends with Slytherins, after all.
Only a few, but enough to make the Gryffindors suspicious of him.
That was probably the biggest reason he'd been a hat-stall. He didn't really fit in anywhere, but he also fit in everywhere.
He had the ambition for Slytherin, but the bravery and recklessness of a Gryffindor. He was kind and loyal like a Hufflepuff, and he was analytical and enthusiastic about knowledge like a Ravenclaw.
On the flip side, he was a muggleborn, which counted him out of Slytherin; he was comfortable with the morally grey which made him a sore spot in Gryffindor, and he had a competitive brutality that just didn't fly in Hufflepuff.
Honestly, he should have been a Ravenclaw. He would have fit in pretty well there. But his reckless streak—the one that got him to abandon all sense of self preservation in a crisis—had landed him in Gryffindor.
And to top that all off, he was a potential danger to his peers.
So yeah, he didn't exactly fit in very well.
But he didn't mind. He had a couple good friends in every house, and he mostly kept to himself except for Quidditch.
Honestly, he was pretty blessed.
"If you're not gonna study then get the fuck out," a gruff voice snapped. Izuku smiled on instinct.
It had taken years, but he and Katsuki were friends again. The volatile Slytherin had been furious when Izuku had showed up to Hogwarts convinced that Izuku had been making a fool out of him by pretending to not know about magic.
Then, after he'd established that he was muggleborn, Katsuki had been infuriated that Izuku was so utterly adept at magic. That it came to him like second nature.
It had only gotten worse when Izuku had made his quidditch team at the same time that Katsuki made Slytherin's—both of them forward Chasers.
And then, for some reason, Katsuki had absolutely hated him for standing up for him when some of Izuku's Gryffindor housemates had been talking shit.
Well, standing up for him was a mild word. Izuku had basically bitched them out in the Great Hall for being closed-minded assholes. Apparently, that had been humiliating for Katsuki. A nearly unforgivable offense.
It had taken a month-long detention stint where they were both required to clean out the potions labs together for them to finally sort their shit out. That had been in their fourth year.
Now, in their sixth year, they were rivals but they were definitely friends. And that was definitely enough for Izuku.
100%.
It definitely didn't matter that his Amortentia smelled like burnt caramel, old books, and broom polish. It only mattered that Katsuki—the childhood friend who had spun wild stories about mermaids and dragons and magic—was finally by his side again.
"Hey Kacchan," Izuku smiled.
He was unaware of how Hatsume watched his smile blossom, delighted that something brought him joy when he seemed so hard-wired for struggle.
"Nerd. Ready to get your ass kicked in Arithmancy?" he asked, grinning back—sharp and combative.
"Please," Izuku scoffed, playfully confident. "When's the last time you beat me in Arithmancy? In utero?"
He felt so at home in his skin with Katsuki. Katsuki was the only person who could match him. He was sure of it.
"Cruising for a brusing, GryffinDork," Katuski warned, pulling his books out of his bag. "I'm gonna destroy you this time."
"Promises, promises," Izuku sighed, leaning back in his chair as though he were bored.
He wasn't bored. His blood was singing with the promise of challenge.
"I'll leave you two alone," Hatsume said. "Remember to come see me if you have any dosage issues, Mido!"
Izuku didn't even watch her go—opting to watch Katsuki leaf through his parchment with long, dextrous fingers.
"Your shitty potions giving you problems, Deku?" he asked, still crisp with irritation but a little quieter than before so that Mister Sasaki wouldn't kick them out of the library.
"No, just starting a new cycle," he replied. "But since the new potion is still technically experimental, Hatsume has to keep an eye on me."
"Of all the shitty, idiotic things to do," Katsuki grumbled. "Taking experimental potions from that psycho—"
"She's not a psycho, she's brilliant," Izuku insisted. "She's just...overenthusiastic."
Katsuki looked up with an unimpressed glare.
"She tried to carry seventeen kilos of undiluted bubotuber pus through the middle of the Great Hall with a compression spell as her containment method. Not even a fucking jar, Deku."
Izuku shrugged. "Sometimes she doesn't think things through."
Katsuki scoffed.
"No wonder you two get along so well," he griped.
"Hey! I think things through!" Izuku huffed.
The look Katsuki gave him for that was still unimpressed, but 100 times more incredulous. "Right. So canonballing the giant squid instead of just using a tickling charm on it was thought through?"
"That's different, he was trying to drown a first year! And that was like...two years ago. You can't hold that against me!"
"That first year was throwing rocks at him, so serves him right. But still, he's a giant squid. What good did the canonball do?"
"He knows me," Izuku huffed. "We play together during full moons. I was hoping he'd decide to hang out with me and let the first year go."
Katsuki closed his eyes and inhaled through his nose—the universal sign that he was trying his fucking best to not explode.
Getting Katsuki to use his words was Izuku's greatest accomplishment in life. And he'd once pantsed the entire Slytherin Quidditch team at once.
"You play with the giant squid? As a turned werewolf?" he demanded quietly.
Ah. Maybe he shouldn't have mentioned that. "Um. Yes?"
"What if he drowns your wolfy ass?" Katsuki hissed.
Izuku shrugged. "Cool story to tell at my funeral?" he joked. It was not received well.
"When you die, the only story I'll tell at your funeral is how you pissed yourself when Maggie Marsden's dog chased you when we were seven," Katsuki snapped.
Izuku pouted. "Mean, Kacchan."
"You deserve it for swimming with a giant squid as a fucking wolf!"
"He's nice! He's just a little testy," Izuku defended. He wanted to laugh when Katsuki grit his teeth in frustration.
Sometimes it surprised him how much Katsuki cared. "If he's a little testy, you're a little testicle!" he snapped. "You're gonna give me a fucking heart attack one of these days you shitty Lion Turd."
"Hmmm," Izuku tapped his chin. "Pretty sure I'm not a testicle. And don't you need a heart to have a heart attack?"
"Fuck. You."
Izuku grinned, heart warm. "It's okay, Kacchan. Your soft gooey center can be our little secret."
"I'm gonna tie you up and leave you in the forest," Katsuki warned, his furious glare doing its best to char Izuku's skin.
His eyes were so beautiful when they burned. His guilty pleasure was riling Katsuki up so that he could see them spark and blaze.
It was kinda pathetic.
"Eh," he shrugged. "It's been a while since I've visited the Acromantula. Might be nice."
Another deep breath. "The acromantula?"
Izuku grimaced. He definitely shouldn't have mentioned that.
Their "study session" was pretty much blown after that.
They'd spent the entire time bickering about what was and wasn't safe to do on Hogwarts grounds, with or without werewolf teeth.
He was touched by Katsuki's concern, especially since he thought he'd never get it.
That night, he dutifully swallowed the potion that Hatsume had given him, appreciating the gentle warmth that draped over his bones. With Belby's Wolfsbane, he'd felt like his body was a cage and the beast within was rattling the bars.
With Hatsume's, he and his furry little problem were at peace with each other, and the potion felt like a blanket. A comfort for the beast that made it less restless.
He was so grateful for the people who looked out for him. He barely deserved them.
With that thought in mind, he drifted off—the potion seeping into his body as the night fell quiet.