#madam pomfrey is in the background being exhausted (she loves them)

[birlwrites]

my brain says you have enough wips my heart says lily-centric gen megafic in which she kills voldemort with the help of marlene, dorcas, and professor mcgonagall

[pennyisalesbian]

Barnaben Headcanons

Ben first saw Barnaby during their second year. It was his laugh that caught his attention – how it was loud and big, how it made Professor Flitwick smile even as he shushed the class. It was infectious, and even over the clamor of the great hall, Ben still sometimes heard that laugh drifting from the Slytherin table.

Barnaby first noticed Ben during their third year. He’d undoubtedly passed him in hallways or shared a class with him, of course, but he’d had never had any reason to really notice him, until the day they came face to face. 

It was because of Merula, naturally. She stuck out her foot to trip Ben, which was a trick he really should have been wiser to, but he’d been distracted. He skinned his knees on the floor, his books spilling everywhere, and he scrambled to pick them up while Merula and Ismelda laughed.

“Aw, poor clumsy mudblood,” Merula sneered. “Do you need help picking those up?” 

He didn’t answer, of course; he blinked back stinging tears and hurried to gather everything before they decided to do something worse.

And then someone set the last of his books into his hands, and Ben looked up to meet Barnaby’s eyes.

He ran down the hall a split second later, and he just barely overheard Barnaby’s protests of “But you said he needed help! I was helping!”

After that, nothing changes much for Ben; Barnaby is still his loud self, still in the background during meals and shared classes. The only difference now is that Barnaby is also there when Merula casts a stinging hex on him, or whispers slurs just loud enough for him to hear, or does any of the hundred tiny things that Ben is starting to get used to.

But things change for Barnaby. He starts to see Ben, sitting by himself at the end of the Gryffindor table, in the back of their shared classes, tucked into the shadows whenever Merula passes by—and whenever Barnaby passes by. Nothing changes, exactly. But Ben isn’t invisible anymore.

They officially meet after Barnaby joins their friend group, finally ditching Merula. Ben introduces himself, trying to act as though he doesn’t know him, hasn’t heard his laugh so often he has it memorized. To Barnaby, it’s as though he doesn’t remember all the times Barnaby has stood by while Merula bullies him, so he takes the fresh start, and he introduces himself as a stranger too.

Their friendship is rocky at first. They have few common interests, so there’s no reason for them to spend time together. Occasionally they happen to be in the same place at the same time, and they say hello when they pass each other in the hallways, but it never goes past that.

Until Barnaby nearly trips over a panicking Ben in the hall between classes.

He has never seen anything like this before, and he’s terrified. Ben shakes and shudders, barely breathing and whimpering fragmented pleas that Barnaby can’t make sense of. He doesn’t know what to do, or how to help, but he sits next to Ben anyway. He talks quietly and softly to reassure him, he holds his hands towards Ben without touching him to make sure he knows that he is here, and he waits until he knows that Ben is okay.

Eventually, Ben’s breathing slows. He’s still shaking badly, and he slumps against Barnaby in exhaustion. Barnaby waits longer still, talking gently all the while, until Ben starts to explain.

“It just happens sometimes; I’ll get too worried and it’ll all build up, and then it comes out like this. I already told Madam Pomfrey, and there’s nothing she can do about it except administer one of those draughts of peace to stop an attack once it’s started. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. I try not to rely on that.”

Ben shows Barnaby the artefact room where he hides whenever the panic attacks happen. They skip their next class, Ben dozing against Barnaby’s shoulder while he hums softly.

After that, their interests suddenly start to align. Barnaby asks Ben to tutor him in charms, and Ben requests some extra help in care of magical creatures. Ben walks beside Barnaby whenever he gets the chance – because he’s not going to pass up on that level of protection from Merula’s threats – and Barnaby checks in on him as often as possible, making sure he’s doing all right and finding an excuse to give him a break if he isn’t.

Whenever Ben isn’t doing all right, Barnaby sits with him in the artefact room. They talk, or they sit in silence, or whatever will help Ben most until things are okay again.

Barnaby does his best to catch Ben before he slips too far into his anxiety, but sometimes he can’t get there fast enough. Sometimes there isn’t anything he can do, like when someone drops a jar in potions class and the shattering sound immediately sends Ben into a panic attack, and all that’s left is to get him somewhere quiet as quickly as possible and wait it out.

He waits, as long as he has to, every time. Sometimes it’s a few minutes, and he’s all right afterwards. Sometimes they skip classes for the rest of the day while an exhausted Ben sleeps curled up next to Barnaby, tear tracks still staining his cheeks.

Barnaby doesn’t know how to describe the feelings inside of him when he looks at Ben. They are too big, too complex to name, so he doesn’t. He tucks them away inside of himself to study more, and he runs his fingers through Ben’s hair while he sleeps.

Ben is the first to notice how difficult reading is for Barnaby. Barnaby is not stupid, of that Ben is convinced, and so he doesn’t accept Barnaby’s “I’m too dumb to read” excuses. He enlists Rowan’s help with research, and together they present Barnaby with the possibility that he could be dyslexic.

It’s not a diagnosis, of course. They’d need a doctor for that, and since wizards don’t seem to know anything about dyslexia, it’s pretty much out of the question. But Barnaby, who had never before considered that his trouble with reading could be anything other than innate stupidity, is overjoyed all the same.

(It’s a good excuse to have Ben read to him.)

Ben works up the nerve to talk to Professor McGonagall about it, and she agrees to talk to Dumbledore and Snape about making some changes in Barnaby’s schoolwork assignments and requirements – including more verbal reports and hands-on study with less written essays, while he continues to practice his reading with Ben.

It’s a good start, Ben thinks, and Barnaby rewards him with a crushing hug that drives all the breath from his lungs. When Barnaby steps back, he’s beaming, face flushed with excitement, green eyes sparkling in the sunlight, and he laughs that big, full laugh.

And for some reason, Ben still can’t get any air into his lungs.

They’re not aware of the exact moment they go from being friends to inseparable, but it’s somewhere between Christmas and Easter during their fourth year. At the end of the year, they plan which classes they’ll be taking in the fall, marking out which they’ll be sharing and when their free study periods are to work together in the library.

At the same time, they start talking about their future plans, because O.W.L.s are next year, which means they need to start thinking about it. Barnaby knows he wants to do something with creatures, and Ben agrees of course. A magizoologist, maybe. Charlie wants to work with dragons, Ben tells Barnaby, but Barnaby shakes his head. He likes all of the animals. He can’t pick just one.

Then it’s Ben’s turn, and he freezes up. He’s never thought about the future before, and he doesn’t know what to say. He’s good at charms, okay at arithmancy and history, and not absolutely horrible at care of magical creatures, although that’s mostly thanks to Barnaby. But where does that leave him? Even though it’s been four years since he learned what he was, Ben is still overwhelmed by the wizarding world. There is so much he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t even know what his skills mean.

“It’s okay,” Barnaby promises. “We’ll figure it out.”

That’s how he says it. We. Barnaby and Ben, together. And Ben sits there in the middle of the library, trying to process, trying to unravel the tangle of thoughts and emotions inside of him. Barnaby works on, completely unaware, humming softly to himself, and something shifts inside of Ben.

He blurts it out, all in one breath. “Barnaby-I-think-I’m-in-love-with-you.”

Silence follows, and he rushes to fill it. Maybe not in love, he corrects, in like? He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know what he’s saying, he just knows that Barnaby is his best friends, his favorite person in the world, and he makes him feel safe and wanted and what he wants more than any job is just what he’d said, we’ll figure it out, Barnaby and Ben together to work out whatever went wrong.

The words keep tumbling out – he loves his smile, and the time he spends on his hair, and the way he slings an arm over Ben’s shoulder or taps his hand or touches his knee for emphasis in his regular conversations, the way his eyes unfocus when he’s listening to Ben read and Ben can see that he’s completely lost himself in the words, and his laugh, god, he loves his laugh –

 – and Barnaby listens, watches, until the words run out and Ben stops, shaking slightly, waiting for his reaction.

“You like me,” Barnaby clarifies. Ben nods, breathless. Barnaby feels a hundred things run through him all at once, and he doesn’t quite know what to say.

But then he does, because even after this, nothing has really changed. Ben is still the same Ben, and Barnaby still feels the same way towards him as he had an hour earlier. Now, he just knows it for sure.

“Ben,” Barnaby says, and there’s so many other things he should say first – that he likes him too; he loves his sense of humor, his stubborn loyalty, how even when he’s completely terrified he still puts himself on the line for his friends; he loves his freckles and his reading voice and the way he cuddles against the nearest person whenever he gets drowsy, but doesn’t seem to remember it again after he wakes; how he wishes he could take away everything that has ever hurt him and protect him from the panic attacks that won’t leave him alone – he should say all those things first. But he’s waited too long, and he says this instead.  

“Ben, can I kiss you?”