Chapter Text
He's sitting in the library, reading for the Transfiguration quiz in two days.
The light is soft in here, filtered through the high stained-glass windows that paint strange colours on the tables. The only real sound is the occasional flipping of pages, the scratching of quills, the distant hum of some enchanted shelving.
He flips the page in his textbook, lets his eyes trail the sentences, even though he already knows them.
He's memorised most of it by now. Still, repetition helps. That’s what his father says. Discipline, effort, obedience. All that.
But then—he hears a sniffle.
He looks up.
It’s another first year, the unusual one. Lando Norris. The mud- muggleborn Slytherin.
Max watches, quietly, over the rim of his book. Norris is hunched over a parchment, his hand barely gripping the quill, face blotchy and eyes red.
He looked miserable.
Truly miserable. Max is almost certain he’s never seen the boy smile. Or laugh.
It isn’t surprising.
The other houses hated Slytherins. That much was tradition.
The older Slytherins usually had to step up, show the younger ones how to carry the house's reputation on their backs like a badge and a weapon all at once.
But Norris? Norris got nothing. Not even from within the house.
He was a mudblood.
Max thinks the word automatically, without weight or malice. It’s just... fact.
The way he was taught to think. The way it was drilled in.
But lately, the term is starting to taste different on his tongue.
Not wrong, necessarily. Just... old.
Outdated.
Like a word that doesn't sit the same once you've started asking questions no one wants to answer.
Still, facts are facts.
Norris wasn’t supposed to be in Slytherin.
His sorting had been the biggest scandal of the term. Whispers swept through the Great Hall like a flood.
Max remembers the way Norris had sat on that stool, Sorting Hat atop his curly head, looking like he might vomit.
And how right he’d been to look terrified.
The upper years targeted him immediately, of course. The first years excluded him like his very presence was contagious. Max included. He saw no reason why he should care.
Self-preservation was also a trait of Slytherin. Of max.
The other houses weren’t any better—maybe worse, because it gave them another reason to sneer at Slytherin altogether.
Max watches him now, and something turns in his chest. He shouldn’t be bothered.
This wasn’t his concern.
But he is.
Bothered, that is.
For some reason, Max feels pity—and he shouldn’t.
He really shouldn’t.
But Max had been reading Muggle books. Secretly, of course.
He'd brought a few to school, hidden carefully between his standard texts. Books on science and electricity. Things that fascinated him, confused him.
Things he couldn't stop thinking about.
He had questions. So many questions. Norris could answer them.
And if anyone asked, well—Norris was a Slytherin. Slytherins helped their own. That’s what he’d say.
It wasn’t about curiosity. It was about house unity. Tradition. That sounded better.
If it reaches his father, then maybe he can say he'd need a loyal lapdog after he takes his father's place in the business. Yes. That will make much sense.
Though he wouldn't actively work to be seen with Norris. No, he will tell the boy to not do so. The boy can slip up. Max will then handle the unfortunate aftermath of it.
Max himself wasn’t teased by his housemates. They knew who his father was. Respected him, feared him—it didn’t really matter which.
But the rest of the school? They hated him. Or ignored him.
He was smarter than most of his year. Better, in nearly every subject.
His raw power in charms and DADA was undeniable; the professors had him attending second-year classes in charms instead of wasting time in first-year ones.
He hadn't expected much from anyone.
That expectation had only been confirmed when he’d asked a second year Ravenclaw to explain something during his first week in charms and they'd laughed in his face.
Not cruelly, but amused, dismissive.
He hadn’t forgotten it.
The Slytherins mostly left him alone, more out of wariness than kinship. That suited him just fine.
So he stopped expecting anything. He didn’t need anyone. Instead, he focused.
Topped the class every quiz. Let his marks speak for him.
Revenge enough.
But his thoughts kept drifting. Back to Norris.
He looked again.
The boy was sitting at a corner table, talking softly to two others who had showed up.
One of them was from their house—a blood traitor named George Russell, a stickler for rules and regulations. He always looked like he was one quill away from regurgitating school rules to unexpecting students.
Max thought he should’ve been a Ravenclaw.
The other was a tall Hufflepuff boy—soft-spoken, Max vaguely remembered. Both of them towered over Norris.
Max imagined the three of them standing together. Norris would look like a dwarf.
They were trying to cheer him up. He could see it. A pat on the back here, a soft murmur there. Useless.
It wasn’t working.
Norris still looked like he was trying not to cry. And Max wasn’t sure why that irritated him so much. Or why he cared at all.
But he did.
He wanted to talk to him. Alone.
Max realised, calculating already, that if he wanted a moment with him without these hangers-on, he'd have to find him after Defence Against the Dark Arts.
Norris always left class slowly, probably because he hated the hallway jostling.
That would be the time.
After all, Max reasoned—
The mudblood should know what this electricity is.
Muggleborn, he corrected himself.
What the hell was he doing?
Max thinks as he follows Norris discretely, he had been trying to catch the boy but he had been sneaking around the school.
He knew of course, why Norris was sneaking around. He had a fresh set of bruises.
His eyes widened when the boy went towards the forbidden forest.
No first year was allowed that close. Not unless they wanted to lose house points and gain a week’s worth of detention.
But Norris kept going, glancing once over his shoulder like he could feel someone behind him, then stepping out into the little clearing near the edge of the trees.
And then—he raised his wand.
Max’s eyes narrow. His hand itches toward his own wand, just in case.
“Confringo!”
The blast explodes against a rotted tree trunk, a sharp, brilliant burst of orange light and bark.
Max freezes.
That was a fifth year spell. Imperfect, sure. A little wild around the edges. But undeniably powerful.
Well.
Interesting.
The boy screams it again—louder this time, almost like he’s screaming something else entirely, something far deeper than just the incantation—and fires again.
Another splintering burst, this time sending rocks skidding across the clearing.
But it’s a mess. His wandwork’s all over the place. His breathing is wrecked.
He’s not directing the magic, he’s just shoving it out of himself with every ounce of emotion he can summon.
Max frowns, stepping forward before the idiot blasts off his own fingers.
“Planning on setting the entire forest on fire, or just emotionally attached to that one tree?”
Norris jumps like he’s been hexed, spinning around with his wand raised.
“I—It wasn’t—” He fumbles. Clumsy. Sweaty-palmed.
Caught red-handed and still trying to lie.
Max stares. “ Um, actually you know that spell can cause internal rupture if it rebounds, right?”
“I knew what I was doing,” Norris mutters, scowling. “Don’t need a lecture.”
“Clearly you do,” Max says dryly, stepping closer, eyeing the scorched wood. “That’s not how it’s supposed to hit. You’re bleeding magic all over the place. You could’ve packed twice the power if you weren’t flinging it around like a tantrum.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You were.”
Norris huffs. “Why do you even care?”
“I don’t,” Max lies. “Just didn’t want you to embarrass the house. Again.”
“Of course.” Norris turns away. “Because reputation is all that matters, right?”
Max watches him. Closely now. The set of his shoulders, the shake of his hands.
The boy was sneaky. Even now, trying to control the scene—change the subject, steer it away from vulnerability. Deflecting.
Max exhales. “You’ve got potential. You just need to control it.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“Actually, you clearly do. I can help you.”
Norris spins back toward him, wand clenched tight, eyes wild. “Why do you care?! You think you know what it’s been like for me here? What's it been like being me in this house? In this school?”
Max raises a brow. “I’ve never done anything to you.”
“You never stopped them either!” Norris snaps.
That lands.
Max goes still. Something stirs low in his chest, unpleasant and unfamiliar.
Because he hadn’t. He just... hadn’t thought about it.
He looks at the boy again. Really looks.
And then, without venom, without cruelty—just absentminded habit—he mutters, “You’re a mudblood. They were always going to come after you.”
Norris goes rigid.
And then lunges.
Wand first, teeth bared, something between a growl and a yell leaving his throat.
Max catches him by the wrist, sidesteps quickly, shoves his hand down and holds it firm.
“Calm down,” Max snaps. “You’re not helping your case. Fighting like muggles do.”
Norris tries to wriggle free. “Don’t tell me to calm down! Don't fucking call me a muggle!”
“You’re not going to win a duel when you’re this emotional.”
“Oh, fuck off!” Norris yells, voice cracking. “You don’t get to say that! You don’t get to walk around and act like this place isn’t fucking hell when you’ve never had to live like I do!”
Max blinks.
“You don’t get spat on in the halls! You don’t get laughed at every time you open your mouth! They’re scared of you! They think if they say one thing, you’ll curse their eyebrows off or hex their tongue into a knot or—something!”
Max says nothing.
“And your parents—” Norris breathes out, broken and bitter,
“—they probably wrote to you the first week. Probably told you they were so proud. Sent you nice robes and your own wand and didn’t make you feel like a mistake every time you got something wrong.”
Max’s jaw twitches.
“They get this world. My parents—they don’t. No matter how hard they try, how much they wantt to, they never will. I’ll never be—” His voice breaks.
“I’ll never be good enough for here.”
Still, Max stays silent.
Because he knows what that feels like too.
But he doesn’t say it.
Doesn’t say his mother didn’t write. That she left. Doesn’t say his father only notices him when he’s furious.
Doesn’t say he’s been hit more times than he can count.
He just says, voice low and even, “I’m sorry.”
Norris blinks, eyes darting to him with disbelief.
Max nods. “For what I said. For not stopping them.”
A beat. Then another.
“…Fine,” Norris mutters. “I’ll listen.”
Max raises an eyebrow. “So, is that a yes?”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
Max allows the faintest smile to tug at his mouth. “Alright then.”
He pauses. Then tilts his head. “So. Electricity.”
Norris stares. “What?”
“I’ve been reading muggle books. I don’t understand how you have light without fire or lumos. Light bulbs. Explain.”
The panic in Norris’s eyes is immediate. “You—what—you can’t just say electricity like that! You’re a pureblood!”
“And you’re being dramatic,” Max replies smugly. “Start explaining. Or I’ll tell everyone you cried.”
Norris gasps. “You wouldn’t.”
Max smirks. “Try me.”
And for the first time, the boy laughs—quiet, almost against his will.
But it’s a laugh.
And Max feels, strangely, like he’s just won something important.
Now he just needs to make sure no one sees them together.
That is… until Norris slips up. And he's sure the boy will.