Twinkle Twinkle

Toby was feeling a little boxed-in. It was ridiculous, really. The castle was hardly small. Toby still got lost in it, occasionally, whenever he wasn't paying attention to where his feet were taking him. Tonight was especially bad. Toby had been so busy with homework that he hadn't had the time to go running for days. Four, to be exact, which had to be some sort of record for the teenager.

Running was almost as much a part of Toby's life as air, as far as the werewolf was concerned. If Toby was stressed, he'd go for a run. If he was upset, he'd go for a run. If he was angry, he'd go for a run. If he was missing his old Pack, he'd go for a run. If he was bored, he'd go for a run. If he was feeling claustrophobic, he'd go for a run. Really, a good few kilometers could solve most of Toby's problems. If he had the time.

The Gryffindor was finally caught up on all his assignments, even the damned Potions essay that had been causing Toby grief for the better part of a week. Finally finding himself with enough time, the teenager had thrown on a pair of track pants and headed for the great outdoors. His attempts to get outside had been thwarted, however, by the caretaker patrolling the main entrance. Toby had ducked back around the corned quickly enough that he wasn't spotted, but pouted all the way back up to the seventh floor.

Knowing that if he went back to the dorms he wouldn't fall asleep for hours, Toby headed to the most open place in the building. The blond had jogged up the steps to the Astronomy Tower, reaching the top far too fast. He was probably the only student in the history of the school to wish that the tower had even more stairs, but Toby had never been considered normal by anyone's standards.

Upon stepping onto the landing, it immediately became obvious that Toby wasn't alone. He recognized the Tower's other occupant immediately, having spent the last few moths sleeping in the same room as the other Gryffindor. The two had never spoken, not beyond your typical grunt of "morning" and the occasional "could you lend me a quill?".

Toby's housemate was sitting, with legs swinging freely, staring up at the stars. The werewolf could see the appeal, he'd always liked the sky, but something told Toby he would be more appreciative if it was dirt beneath his feet. The most noticeable thing about Frank was, most certainly, his trousers. They appeared to be pajamas, or at least Toby hoped they were, and a shade of blue that reminded Toby of the colour the sky had been a few Mondays back. Not to mention the giraffes.

"Don't mean to interrupt," Toby said, striding toward the tower's edge.

During Quidditch practise, Frank had taken a nasty fall. He didn’t know what that meant, mind you. What did that mean: a nasty fall? He could remember a bit of it, he supposed. He’d been clipped by a Bludger and he’d managed to control his broomstick as he’d brought it down but another one had got the end and he’d been sent across the grass. He could remember the blood, too. It’d been all down his arm from a deep graze in his shoulder. No one had been in the Hospital Wing at the time, though, so the Quidditch team had done it for him in this crude sort of fashion that basically consisted of some healing salve and a big, Gryffindor scarlet bandage. It looked alright, Frank figured – and it was only one his upper arm and he promised himself he’d go back tomorrow.

It was night now, though, and the graze was beginning to itch a bit. He tried not to but it didn’t help that it was that side he liked to sleep on best. He often woke up on his back but falling asleep on it just wasn’t going to happen, he didn’t think. So the best thing he could do was get up and try to tire himself out. He’d gone for a jog in the early evening, circling the lake before stopping to talk to a Hufflepuff girl in his Herbology class unsure about what she needed to do for the homework. They’d gone to the greenhouses then to clear some things up and Frank had left once it had gotten a bit later so that he could get his homework done. When he actually went to go to bed, though, there was no chance of it – even after all the effort he’d put in to trying to go to sleep. So, simply, he had to get up again.

That was what brought him to the Astronomy Tower, really. He felt a bit sore, not having really landed right at all, and his pride was wounded a bit given just how he’d landed. It wasn’t his finest moment, to say the least. So, up towards the stars was where he’d wanted to go and was where he’d decided to go, dreading every step but knowing it would be worth it in the end. Then, after removing one of the books from the subject lockers he sat down and tried to make sense of the constellations with the little telescope he’d also taken out. It was fairly warm, too, despite the month and he felt content there, swinging his legs to and fro whilst he plotted on a bit of stray parchment with a pencil, both of which he’d also gotten from the cupboard, Andromeda as she waned across the sky.

A voice shocked Frank out of his work and he looked up, surprised to see his housemate approaching. He felt his cheeks heat up a little and he scribbled down the name of one of the stars nearby he’d seen before turning properly, collapsing the telescope and reaching to put the pencil behind his ear. He offered a smile for Toby Cooper, wanting to ask so much of him in that moment. He supposed the other boy was a bit of an insomniac, too. Frank hoped it wasn’t for the same reason he was up and awake at such a time. He wanted to offer that, too, but his words weren’t really there and he forced himself to look away, wondering why he was so dreadful at talking to people unless they were his teammates or family. Friends, too, he often struggled with. Well, family as well were a nightmare.

“Hi,” he got out finally. “Um, no you’re—um, you’re fine. You’re err, not interrupting anything, actually I was just…” Frank closed the book awkwardly, hiding his drawing inside as he put the book to the side. “Nothing, actually. Doing nothing. Uh. What are you doing?”

"Right, nothing," Toby repeated wryly, eyeing the newly collapsed telescope and hastily shut book. The teenager didn't really mind that his classmate was clearly trying to cover up whatever he was doing, it wasn't like they were close enough for Frank to owe him any honesty. Hell, the other Gryffindor could have been writing love letters to the Astronomy Professor for all Toby cared. Although he wasn't going to lie, those would be an amusing read.

Toby, himself, wasn't taking the subject this year. It wasn't that the werewolf was bad at astronomy, just that he didn't really see the point. If anything, the study of space had been one of his better subjects, he'd even gotten an E on his OWL. Still, it wasn't as though Toby would ever have a job where knowledge of the stars was necessary. The young man was very capable of navigating by the stars without any sort of NEWT class, and as far he he was concerned, that was all the stars were good for.

"I was planning on going for a run," Toby answered honestly, tugging lightly on the left drawstring of his hoodie, "but they're patrolling the front entrance." Still, Toby had to admit to himself, this was far better than nothing. Already he could feel small amounts of tension melting from his shoulders and upper back. It was a good thing, too. The teenager had a terrible tendency to injure the muscle in the back of his right shoulder when he allowed it to get too tense. It had last happened only a little over six months ago, and Toby had spent every moment of recovery time utterly miserable.

Finally looking away from the open grounds, Toby turned fully toward his housemate and frowned lightly at the crude bandage covering his upper arm. "What happened?" he asked simply, gesturing towards the injury with his chin, "And why'd you let a two year old wrap it?"

Toby might not have been a genius. Really, he was pretty far from it. His lack of formal education for the first four years of magical schooling probably had something to do with his current marks, but Toby was sure that it was only a piece of the puzzle. The teenager was okay knowing that he would never be as smart as his sister. Really, he'd accepted it as a fact of life years ago. It was frustrating, sure, that he had to put in so much more effort than his classmates in order to produce the same caliber of work. Sometimes Toby wanted nothing more than to get up and just walk out of the classroom. He was glad to be at Hogwarts though, so very glad, no matter how challenging the lessons could get.

There was one field of magic Toby knew lots about, however, and that was healing. It hadn't been a conscious decision, just something that Toby had picked up when he had still been with the Pack. Everyone knew a little, one had to when living in a forest, but Toby's obsession with keeping those he cared well led him to pay a little more attention than most. Which, of course, caused the younger packmates to come to Toby whenever they got harmed doing something they weren't supposed to be. This reliance only made Toby even more determined to become proficient. Everyone had said that Toby was clearly destined to become Pack healer when he was older, despite his love of hunting. But really, that bandage was a complete travesty.

Colour flooded into the cheeks of the Longbottom youth, placing his embarrassment on exhibition for Toby Cooper to see in the fluttering amber lamplight of the Astronomy Tower. Added shame pricked at his cheeks as he looked up at the other man, wishing inside that he hadn’t happened upon him quite like he had.

Frank suddenly felt so provincial. From afar he perceived Toby as someone who knew the world a bit better than Frank did – well, a lot better, actually. For that reason, he always felt a little unsettled around him. Intimidated, actually. Intimidated was the word Frank would use. That didn’t give Toby any especial characteristics, though. Everyone intimidated Frank. If they didn’t, it was only a matter of time before they did. He didn’t know why.

The only time he ever felt as though he was on a level footing was when he was on a broomstick, playing the game he knew inside out and no one could fault him for. Only, when he got off the broom, the congratulations of his parents for another good game only came with reminders that he really should spend more time studying and that Quidditch wasn’t a viable career choice for the son of war heroes. They didn’t say that last bit, mind you, but sometimes Frank thought they may as well have done, it would not have made a blind bit of difference if they had.

“I went earlier,” Frank chipped in jauntily with a little smile barely curling the side of his mouth before it dropped and he looked down, glancing out across the grounds that rustled in the night’s breeze, the stars the boy had so diligently been recording on parchment twinkling down over it. He took a breath as the air licked up into the tower and inhaled deeply the smell of spring on the back of the soft gust. It was coming, of that he was sure. “It was, um. Yeah, nice.”

Glancing down, Frank winced as he remembered his arm. He rolled his lips together thoughtfully and picked at the bandage, unfurling it carefully so he could look at it. He pouted and winced a bit, lifting his arm across his body as he teased the bandage off of the sticky healing salve his teammates had been far too liberal with. He puffed out a frustrated breath and bit the inside of his cheek before ripping it off, letting air get to the cut-cum-graze that the pitch had seen fit to gift him with.

“It’s … wow,” Frank blinked and set the bandage to the side as he pulled his arm round to look at the skin carefully. It wasn’t the best sight in the world. In fact, his stomach turned a little bit at the sight of it and he wished he hadn’t taken the bandage off. Swallowing heavily, Frank took his wand out of his pyjama bottom pocket and turned it over in his hand, glancing between it and his arm. This was a good place to start, he knew, but no spells came to mind. Sometimes he wondered if he was a wizard.

“I’m, um. I was practising … with the team and a Bludger clipped my broomstick and I … well, I fell,” he admitted, prodding a cooling charm against the inflamed skin. “There wasn’t anyone about in the Hospital Wing at the time so the guys did it … kind of a mess, huh?”

Toby had never paid all that much attention to his housemate before. The werewolf was a lot of things, but observant certainly wasn't one of them. Toby only ever focused his attention on what he considered important or particularly curious. Before this moment, Frank Longbottom hadn't seemed to fall into either of the two categories. He wouldn't be making that mistake again.

Toby felt his lips curl slightly, watching his dorm mate talk. The other teenager was far less confident than the average Gryffindor. They were almost opposites in that way, Toby completely unafraid to say whatever came to mind, while Frank stumbled through sharing how he'd gotten hurt. The werewolf wasn't completely stupid, he knew that his bluntness was often more of a hindrance than anything else. Most people got along with Toby, certainly, but he was rarely taken seriously. The Gyffindor had gaggles of friendly acquaintances, but very few actual friends. Toby figured he had no room to complain, not really.

Watching with clinical eyes as Frank grimaced down at his wound, Toby was unexpectedly struck by a pang of emotion deep in his chest. It took him a moment to register what the feeling was, having been over a year since he'd last felt it. Barely suppressing the urge to press the heels of his hands against his eyes until he saw stars, Toby clenched his teeth together until they hurt.

Protect, help, protect, his instincts sung, venerable, hurt, protect.

Toby's eyes trailed over the figure of his housemate once more, this time taking in a very different picture from what he had previously. Frank with his slightly ruffled hair, giraffe pajamas, wounded arm, and legs hanging off the edge of his seat, looked for all the world like a lost little boy. Only he totally didn't, not a little boy. Not with his angular cheekbones and ebony eyes and muscular arms. Merlin damn it all to hell, the last thing Toby needed to deal with right now was an inappropriate attraction to his housemate.

Toby had no problem with his own sexuality, he really didn't. The teenager was gay and happy and not at all ashamed of himself. If any one of the classmates he was friendly with ever asked, which they hadn't, Toby would have admitted his sexuality in a heartbeat. But this was different. Toby knew a lot of guys weren't exactly comfortable around other males who might be attracted to them, his old Pack being a perfect and heartbreaking example of this. Frank was his dormmate, however, they slept in the same bloody room every night. Things could get very awkward, to say the least, if Toby wasn't careful. Toby had never been good at careful.

"Did you even clean this?" Toby asked, striding over to Frank and batting his wand away without a thought. The werewolf normally wasn't the best at remembering to carry his wand with him at all times, even now, but since Toby had been intending to take a jog through the forest, he'd pocketed it before leaving his dorm. One never knew when one was going to run into something that liked eating human flesh in the Forbidden Forest.

Drawing his own wand, Toby held the tip just an inch or so away from the wound. "Tergeo," he cast, words rolling of his tongue easier than any words had all day. It was a charm, a simple enough spell, and charms had always been by far Toby's best field of magic.

It would have been mortifying for the aspirant Quidditch player to admit he didn’t really remember much about the fall. He’d hit his head, he knew that much, but his teammates had enough common sense to raid the potions cabinet for a concussion draught so that was dealt with fairly quickly. Lingering nausea still remained, mind you, but he’d long since shaken off the headache. The graze, however, he’d left to the discretion of his teammates, unsure about what was really going on let alone how to do it himself.

When Toby’s clipped question beat against him, Frank lowered his gaze and shook his head ashamedly, wanting to explain he’d barely had an opportunity to do anything. He flushed brightly when Toby batted his wand away and Frank gently lowered it into his lap as he watched his roommate fiddle with his own wand and splash a spell over the skin. Frank felt better immediately, actually, and he wanted to thank Toby but the words didn’t come. It was clean, which was something. Healed, not yet so much.

“My teammates put some healing salve on it,” Frank offered in faint explanation, reaching up with his other hand to rub at the back of his neck. “It probably wasn’t healing salve,” he admitted testily, looking down into his lap. He screwed his face up as shame lapped scarlet at his skin and he sighed, bringing his hand around to rub across his brows. He had thought they respected him now and he’d been so thankful for their help. They’d been genuine about the potion because that was no laughing matter but the idea that it was all a big joke with the salve scared him a bit – not least because it meant that they weren’t his mates at all.

There was a nice Hufflepuff girl who sat with Frank in the library sometimes. He shared his parchment with her once. Another time, she gave him some ink when he’d run out. They were the closest to friends Frank felt he’d come the whole time he’d been at Hogwarts. He’d masked his tinges of loneliness with Quidditch and with helping out in the Herbology greenhouses. He’d mostly kept his head down. She was his friend, though. Matilda. Her name was Matilda. He’d learned through their occasional, brief discussions that she enjoyed working in the library, particularly when he was there to give her some company. She was his friend, depressing as it was to know she was probably the only one he had.

“It’s fine,” Frank uttered suddenly. “Don’t trouble yourself with me. I’ll live, eh?” He offered a weak smile. “It’s okay, really. I’ll, um… I’ll … I don’t … I don’t know what I’ll do yet but I’ll do something so you’re okay. You can leave it. T-thank you, though.”

Toby grinned slightly, feeling terribly satisfied by the slight look of relief on the other boy's face. It would seem that Toby's spell hadn't caused any undue discomfort, then. The wound looked far better than it had before, in Toby's completely unbiased opinion. The little specs of dirt driven into the skin had vanished completely, along with the congealed blood that Frank had been frowning down at. Toby was far prouder of himself than he should be, considering that the spell wasn't all the difficult, but the knowledge that he was responsible for helping the teenager before him was overwhelming the very small part of Toy's brain that was responsible for logic.

Toby had pocketed his wand and was reaching towards Frank's arm with the intention of examining the salve when the pajama-clad boy spoke again. The werewolf could do nothing but stand there, blinking against the words that Toby wanted to steal right from Frank's mouth and crush into an unrecognizable pulp.

"Don't be stupid," Toby snapped, words a tad harsher than he had intended for them to be. "It's no trouble, and I'm real good at healing charms." The Cooper male wondered, for a moment, if Frank would question his proficiency. After all, Toby had more than his fair share of scars.

Strong hands reaching out to grasp Frank's forearm, Toby maneuvered the limb until the graze was better lit by the flickering lamps. Leaning in slightly, Toby examined the remnants of potion crusted on the outside of the wound, traces that his cleaning spell had not quite reached.

"Yeah, that's burn paste," Toby admitted, recognizing the colour almost immediately. The paste would not having any negative effects on an open wound, but nor would it do anything to help the healing process. "Either your teammates are idiots who don't know sh!t about healing, or they're idiots who- well, I'll just use a spell, shall I?"

“I’m not stupid,” Frank retorted, his voice parting his lips with a hiss. He jerked to pull his arm out of the way but as he did so, Toby’s hands enclosed about his forearm and Frank was stuck. The remnants of a retort died in the back of his throat with a faint, curling sound and he sighed blusteringly, turning his head away as shame and upset lit up his skin from his shoulders before licking up his neck and across his jawline. He furrowed his brows and turned his head a bit more, hoping that if he refused to look at Toby he could somehow worm away from him.

The other Gryffindor glanced out of the corner of his eye at Toby once more as the tone softened but he still stayed defensive and resilient, studiously electing to ignore Toby to display that he wasn’t very happy. He bit the inside of his cheek and sighed gently, turning his head properly. He glanced down at his arm when Toby analysed what was actually in his skin and he inhaled sharply through his nose, shame colouring his cheeks again. His lower lip trembled and he swallowed heavily, wanting to steel himself against the threat of tears.

“I dunno,” Frank admitted softly, reaching up with his other hand to rub at his eyes. “If you want, yeah.” He shrugged, tugging absently on his arm to register his discomfort with the other boy. Embarrassment didn’t begin to cover what he felt in that moment. It was a trick, of that he was almost certain. Knowing that, though, it made his position beside Toby, letting him tend to his arm all the more ridiculous.

“I’d … um… I’d rather you didn’t, actually,” he breathed, blinking away the tears that were demanding exit from his eyes. He could only stave them off for so long. Taking shallow breaths, he pulled again and sent a begging look at Toby. “Please,” he muttered quickly, his voice growing thick with the impinging tears. “Please…I can go to the Hospital Wing in the morning I … just leave it.”

Toby had no idea how the hell to respond. Frank had admitting, blinking back droplets of water all the while, that he didn't want Toby healing his graze. Normally, if someone had said they'd rather not be healed, Toby would slap them on the shoulder, tell them that acting tough wasn't gonna accomplish anything, and heal them anyway. This though, this was different. Frank didn't seem to want any help from Toby at all. The older Gryffindor would have figured that a fair enough call, as Frank didn't know Toby well enough to trust his healing skills. However, Toby knew that wasn't the other boy's problem.

The werewolf wasn't sure if it was the look on Frank's face, the unsteady breathing, or perhaps the tears welling up in his eyes, but if Toby hadn't known better he almost would have said that his dormmate was afraid of him. Then again, did he know better?

"Alright, fine, totally fine," Toby said almost soothingly, letting go of the arm in his grasp and taking a small step back. It wasn't until then that Toby realized just how close he'd been to the other teenager. He could have cursed himself. He was doing that thing again, that thing where he forgot that other people had things like boundaries and personal space and totally didn't grab the arms of people they barely knew. If Toby was smart, he would have left right then. It was a good thing that Toby wasn't.

"I won't heal it, not if you don't want me to," Toby stated, even though he wanted little more in that moment than to fix the pain of the pajama-clad boy before him. "I won't even numb it, if you're that dead set on it, but you've gotta let me re-wrap it. I'll never forgive myself if your arm gets infected."

Toby's jaw clenched and relaxed once, and then twice. Taking another small step backwards, he lowered his wand to show he was serious. The Gryffindor had never dealt with someone like this before, someone upset in this way. It almost reminded him of a wounded deer, of the way the creature's eyes would widen as a human approached, desperate and yet resigned that the next minute would be it's last. Toby didn't like that. Frank should be laughing, or smiling, or anything else. As long as it wasn't this.

“Why?”

The word escaped Frank’s mouth before he could really stop himself and he tried to hide his face, letting the question hang limply in the air. He looked up at Toby again, wondering what it was that the blonde teenager had to gain from helping the brunette one. Frank could do the binding himself and he’d clean it once he went back to have a proper shower in the dorm but crucially all of it he could do on his own and he would do. The offer puzzled him, truly. He didn’t know why anyone would want to help him.

Clearing his throat, Frank lowered his gaze and muttered his apology, shaking his arm absently. He flicked his wand, whispering a spell that drew out fresh bandage and he dropped the wand back in his lap before picking up the bandages, handing them to Toby awkwardly as a sort of olive branch. Swallowing, Frank glanced down at his work and opened up his book before lifting his head back up to the stairs, his eyes searching for his constellation amongst the clouds that had drifted across the inky sky.

“It will be a nice day to fly tomorrow,” Frank mentioned wistfully. “It will be clear and crisp.” He picked at his trousers absently before lifting his book into his lap, watching Toby out of the corner of his eye. “Andromeda’s gone now,” he pouted a bit, bringing his head up once more. “She was especially beautiful tonight,” he pushed the paper off of his knee and handed it over to Toby as best he could, laying it down beside the other boy.

“As thanks,” Frank explained.