Chapter Text
Eddie Munson wakes up after the lights in the Byers’ Burrow go completely haywire.
He’s tangled up with Robin, who appears similarly disgruntled—pulling damp strands of hair out of her mouth from where she’s drooled and stuck it there. Sliding aching arms away from their disastrous battlefield of sleep-strayed limbs, Eddie groans, rolling out of the small bed they’d been sharing, collapsing on the scratchy carpet of the attic room.
“Jane?” Robin offers, voice a little croaky from sleep, swinging her legs away from the bed and hopping up to face him. Eddie stretches, arching his back and bending his fingers until a satisfying crack follows.
Scratching the skin above his navel, Eddie offers a nonchalant shrug. “Prob’ly. That, or this is Professor Byers way’a waking up the riffraff.”
The riffraff—Eddie and Robin, best friends since his second year and her first. Now they’re both in sixth year—Eddie having taken fifth year twice.
Then there’s the even more riffraffy riffraff—Dustin, Will, Mike, Max, Lucas and Jane. They’re all fourth years, beginning next week—and unfortunately for their Herbology professor, Joyce Byers, Will’s, (her son), ever-expanding group of friends seem to like the Burrow best as their place of gathering.
It makes Eddie feel less guilty about invading her home for the night, when he considers the little brats have been doing it for years.
Then again, he understands why. The Burrow doesn’t pretend to come from wealth—it’s a disaster, a collection of magic and muggle items, always ticking, shifting, laughing. It’s the only thing Eddie thinks he could ever apply the word ‘higgledypiggledy’ too without hesitation. Every part of it is miscellaneous and chaotic, some of it falling to bits. Despite the utter variety of catastrophic elements to it, Eddie has readily decided it’s probably one of his favorite places in the wizarding world.
It’s never empty. There’s always someone yelling, giggling, bubbling. He’s surrounded by cracks of magic and constant bickering and genuine displays of familial affection, and by the evening, everyone has found a small corner to curl up in for the night.
Which is why he almost trips over Jonathan Byer’s leg in the doorway to the kitchen, who then enacts the same wake-up routine Robin and Eddie had began just a couple minutes prior. He offers a weak nudge to his similarly strewn friend, Argyle, who rises from his slumber scarily quick, Frankenstein’s-creature like.
(Robin would be proud of that muggle reference, Eddie thinks. As a half-blood, she’s done her best to indoctrinate him in the ways of muggle culture, and Eddie willfully let her, just to make his pure-blood, elitist father roll a little in his prison bed over in Azkaban.)
With Robin at his elbow, the two of them clamber into the sitting room, finding the source of their sudden wake up. Ten points to them both—Jane sits in the center of the space, being a little disastrously comforted by the kids strewn all over the place around her.
“Give her space,” Firey redheaded Slytherin, Max Mayfield, readily barks at her male-companions, who are all currently guilty of doing the opposite.
Mike Wheeler, her fellow Slytherin and part of the original Golden Trio (Jane, Mike and Will, he vaguely recalls) seems just about ready to tussle with her, cradling Jane in his arms. “She doesn’t need space, she needs me.”
“Ew,” Will’s nose wrinkles, casting a glance to Eddie for some kind of support.
The thing is, Eddie had always been sort-of friends with Dustin Henderson, ever since the kid had taken a shine to him in his awkward first year. The rest of the kids were collateral damage—but not Will.
Will Byers spoke to his soul, a bit. A strange reflection of Eddie’s inner child. They were both what people liked to, kindly, call: Fake Gryffindors.
In other words, not brave, chivalrous—the like. Yet still sorted there, Godrick knows why. They’d found a kinship in one another when Will had been possessed by some dark force in his second year and had opened the Chamber of Secrets, whereas Eddie had been petrified the whole of his fifth year, courtesy of the creature said Chamber had released.
Suuuper lame. To make matters worse, he’d been having a bit of a moment of weakness in the closed off girls’ toilets (some Hufflepuffs had dunked all of his shit in the lake) when he’d caught the reflection of the thing in the mirrors.
So check one: being frozen all year in the first place. Very non-Gryffindor. Check two: being frozen all year in the same lame, cry-baby facial expression? Way off Gryffindor.
And then there was Will. Who’d been used to open a super evil super Salazar Slytherin hate that let super evil things run wild in Hawkins School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
So based on that loyalty alone, Eddie puts his hands on his hips and pipes up with as much older teen boy authority as he can muster.
“She’s right, Wheeler, back it up,” Siding with Max is always a good move, too, something her Hufflepuff boyfriend, Lucas, has begun to treat as advice to live by. Mike looks pissed, but does it in silence, sulking on a very broken sofa in the corner of the room instead.
He scans the room for Dustin—doesn’t find him at first, until he comes jogging back into the room with Joyce Byers in tow. “Are you okay, Jane, sweetheart?”
Jane wipes a little blood away from her nose. “Bad dream.” The lights have calmed down now, back to their dull warm glow.
“You little shits needed to be up soon anyhow, it’s a trek to the portkey,” Hopper—Jane’s father and Hawkin’s groundskeeper—says gruffly, one hand on a warm glass of morning butterbeer.
Dustin suddenly tucks himself into Eddie’s side, nearly barreling him over—resulting in a bit of a wrestle between the two, until Robin returns from her kitchen-raiding, smacking their heads together lightly. “You guys are such dorks,” She says around a mouthful of toast.
“Takes one to know one,” Eddie stands at full height again, patting down his plaid pajama pants and looping a firm arm around Dustin’s squirmy little shoulders.
“He’s right, y’know. All Ravenclaws are dorks,” Pipes up Lucas, a shit-eating grin on his face. He clearly enjoys the reaction that gets—Dustin, Robin and then Jonathan from the other room doing their best to defend the honor of their house.
Somewhere along the way, the Slytherins—Mike and Max—start an argument with the Hufflepuffs—Lucas, Argyle and even Joyce—about which house is better out of the two of them, to which the Gryffindors—Hopper, Jane, Will and Eddie concede that it’s absolutely them.
And it’s moments like these—chaos, lovingly wrapped in a blanket of family-like fondness—that encapsulate the Byers’ Burrow for what it is.
That doesn’t mean that Eddie enjoys walking around the forest at the crack ass of dawn, though. Especially not with his luggage strapped to him, and then Dustin’s luggage, too, because the kid was a whiner and Eddie was just certain if he made another peep that Hopper just might throttle him by his throat.
(Or Eddie. Eddie seems to just be considered Dustin’s keeper, these days, so any bad behavior is a slight on his character too.)
“Are you ready to be replaced, Ed?” Robin approaches, bumping him with her bony little hip. He glowers at her.
“Let’s not start this again,”
Lucas cackles from where he’s walking in tandem with Max nearby. “What? Dustin’s undying love for Steve Harrington?”
“Are you guys talking about Steve?” Dustin stops in his tracks over at the front of the group, disgruntling Mike, who walks straight into him as a result.
Eddie shoots Lucas a look of great despair.
“Here he goes again. Ohhh, Steve Harrington, you’re so amazing with your broom and your long, flowy hair. Ohh, Steve, how do you catch the snitch the way you do? It’s a marvel, honestly, can I have your autograph, Steve?” Max swoons into Lucas, who’s still laughing away. “Oh, Steve, please adopt me, maybe I’ll gain some of your Quidditch skill by osmosis,”
See, the thing is, Eddie would totally defend Dustin right now. That’s his bro, his best friend. But Eddie has spent the past sixth months (since Steve Harrington was recruited by the Bulgarians to be their Seeker at the ripe age of sixteen) hearing this exact mantra, word for word.
He gets it, to an extent. Dustin is a muggle-born—and though Mrs Henderson rocks, and is super supportive, the wizarding world still isn’t totally free of some prejudice about that.
Even in their group, Dustin is the only muggleborn wizard. Eddie, Mike, Will, and Lucas are all pure-bloods. Robin, Max and Jane are half-bloods.
Steve Harrington made shockwaves in the wizarding community (not just for his age and his frankly outrageously perfect hair) but for being the first muggle-born professional Quidditch seeker ever.
So Eddie gave Dustin room to have another guy to look up to a bit. Even if it stung, Dustin idolizing Steve Harrington filled a void that Eddie just couldn’t quite manage.
Eddie was from one of the oldest wizarding lineages—the Munsons dated back as far as Salazar Slytherin. He was as ‘pure’ as they come (though he hated that word. Blood was blood, usually messy.)
Then came the rise of Lord Vecna, and his subsequent fall at the hands of the Chosen One.
That being Jane, the only person to survive the killing curse, as a baby, no less.
Thus nearly all Munsons were arrested for their crimes against muggles and muggle-borns, and their association with Lord Vecna. Leaving Eddie to live in a flat above the Leaky Cauldron with his squib uncle.
He was ruthlessly rejected by kids with similar family situations when he wasn’t put in Slytherin, and then outcast by Gryffindor house for that aforementioned family situation.
So Eddie totally knew what it was like to have someone use his blood to question his right to be in Hawkin‘s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
But it still wasn’t the same way Dustin’s was used—and he wouldn’t ever suggest otherwise. It was totally different, and ten times more disgusting.
Which is why Steve Harrington, first muggle-born pro-seeker being Dustin’s new favorite guy alive was very understandable.
Just also really, really annoying.
“I think I could take an exam on the ins and outs of that guy, now,” Jonathan quips, dragging his feet a little while Argyle was off skipping around picking suspicious-looking mushrooms. “It’s all I ever heard in the common room last year.”
Robin scoffs, peeling back some of her sweaty fringe out of her eyes. “Yeah, no shit. How did Dustin describe his hair the other day, Ed?”
“Majestic,” Eddie supplies, jazz-hands included.
“You’re just jealous,” Comes Dustin’s voice from across the clearing, blatantly eavesdropping.
“Of what, his hair?” He raises an eyebrow.
Dustin folds his arms over his chest, stood with attitude by the Byers’ portkey that had finally come into view. “Jealous that I’m gonna have a new, older male friend.”
Mike scrunches his nose at that. Eddie wonders for a moment if his honor is about to be defended. “If anything, he should be jealous of his Quidditch skill. Last time Eddie got on a broom he broke his arm.” It was not.
“Cut him some slack, he was absolutely shitfaced on fire whiskey,” Robin doesn’t really help, because when Joyce Byers hears that— Professor Joyce Byers—she whips around so fast it’s almost awe-inducing that she doesn’t pull a muscle in her neck.
“ Edward, you told me you were unwell, and delirious,” She looks distinctly offended for someone who definitely got up to worse in her Hawkins years, but Eddie is not the one to contest a her right now. (Especially since she’s the one taking him to this blasted Quidditch World Cup, after all.)
Instead, he swallows. “Actually, Robin told you that,”
Robin squawks indignantly, elbowing him in the ribs—only for Hopper to seize them both. “ Enough. I don’t wanna hear it, I don’t wanna know. Gather around the damned portkey before I leave you behind to rot.”
They playfully wrestle with each other a little more before doing as told, joining the gaggle of kids already standing excitedly around what seems to be a battered old boot.
“But it is… a shoe?” Jane’s confusion is earnest and endearing—considering she was raised (poorly) by muggles herself up until Hopper had adopted her last year.
Max just grins at her. “It’s way cooler than that. It’s like… a mini teleporter, sort of.”
If anything, Jane just looks more baffled at that, so Dustin attempts to try and explain it himself, having read all about it in some book someplace some time ago—and only succeeds in making it worse.
“It’s best demonstrated,” Lucas ends up offering, rubbing her back in a sign of support.
Robin scoffs. “Is it? It’s not exactly pleasant—” And Eddie finds his hand clasped over her mouth.
“Only if you’re clumsy,” His eyes gleam, and he grins at the kids. “When I say let go, let go, okay?”
Despite the clear disapproval from Joyce and the eyebrow raise from Jonathan, nobody contests him—clearly a green light on messing with the kids a bit.
On three, they all seize the tattered footwear, spinning wildly and vomit-inducingly until Eddie began to spot the change of scenery twirling around them, a fire of mischief in his chest blazing.
“Let go, now, quickly!”
The more gullible of the bunch—Jane, Will, Dustin, Lucas, Mike and Argyle, for some reason, frantically do as told, and find themselves flung away onto the grass of the Quidditch World Cup camping grounds.
The rest of them happily float down with shit-eating grins on their faces.
“Asshole!” Dustin tries his best to tackle Eddie, who just laughs gallantly, scooping him up and dropping him to the floor again.
Jonathan bends over to give Argyle a hand, though looks incredibly confused. “You’ve used a portkey before.”
“I just wanted to live the journey, brochacho.”
Eddie doesn’t have the mind this early in the morning to question the wisdom or wits of Argyle—just helps Dustin up and rubs his knuckles into his scalp despite vehement protesting.
“Come on, lighten up Dusty-boy,” Eddie wrangles him until they’re faced with the wide array of tents, the sparks of colour; red or green, Bulgarian or Irish, and the beauty of the Quidditch World Cup. “Take it all in,”
After introducing Jane and Dustin to the wonders of a magical tent, they all pile up the stairs and squish into the scrappy seats they’d all tossed money in to buy—all glammed up in whichever team they were here to support. None of them were really die-hard fans (excluding Dustin’s bias), but pretending to be was part of the fun. Arguing over individual players and scores and such, cheering and whooping whenever it seemed like life was stirring in the stadium below.
It was a hilarious routine—some fans would think they’d see a glimpse of a player entering the arena and would whoop, sending the whole stadium into a mass-hysteria of cries and shrieks, most of them asking after Harrington. Honestly, Eddie found himself cheering for the guy to come out too, just to stop Dustin from having an aneurysm.
Crowd mentality always amused Eddie. (Until one of the little shits got so excited they elbowed Robin hard enough to spill her fizzy pumpkin juice everywhere, and as the only one over seventeen he had to spell it away—)
It was as he was grumbling about residual stickiness in his magic that he heard a roar, a real one this time, the waves of people rippling as they thundered with a tumultuous noise.
The screen flickered to life around them, curving to fit the structure of the audience, undulating and creasing under the magic it had been summoned with.
Eddie Munson would be damned for all eternity if he said he didn’t understand what the fuss was all about.
Because there, in the flesh, was Steve Harrington.
Anything the minister was shouting about over the loudspeaker he had made of his wand was distant, entirely white noise as Eddie marveled, feeling redundant in the jealous whites-and-greens he’d painted on himself out of spite as opposed to support for the Irish.
He was unlike anything Eddie had ever seen before. His face was sculpted, yet soft, and even in the glaring lights of the stadium that had his brow pinch a little, his every feature was warmed by an abject friendliness, an almost shy, yet cocky, pride.
Steve Harrington was basking in the wailing adoration of his fans, their full, loving devotion. He was an angel, a cherub—Eddie could practically picture a white Greek cloth curled around his form as he rose from a cockle-shell like Aphrodite.
He made a heart shape with his hands for the crowd, balancing on his broom by the sole strength of his thighs, something Eddie refused to think any further on for the sake of his sanity.
The crackle of the Irish fireworks did nothing to pull his attention away from Steve Harrington, not even close—he ignored the entrance of the team he was supposed to be supporting for the sake of just gawking.
It was just the picture of what the magazines Dustin had thrown himself over day and night had said, in the read extracts to Eddie.
His hair.
Eddie had never seen something so perfectly imperfect. Something so tousled, yet so smooth, fluid. Even in the rush of broom-riding, it was not disturbed, like the air resistance had taken one look and gone no, actually. Like the laws of physics had allowed him as their one, glorious exception.
He wasn’t just a pretty face, either. Eddie had never seen anyone fly like that; Harrington hardly looked as though he was using a broomstick at all; he moved through the air with such ease. He seemed entirely unsupported.
Eddie thought, just maybe, that he might be dying.
Flinging one of his hands out to smack Robin in the arm for some semblance of support, he’s met with no reaction. Reluctantly, he drags his eyes away from the marvel that is Harrington, and turns his head.
Curiously, he finds a similar expression on Robin. He short circuits for a second, because if Steve Harrington was somehow able to capture Robin’s attention, he was clearly not human. For obvious reasons, reasons that were disturbing Eddie right about now.
He followed her eyes instead—down to the very corner of the stadium, where floaty, wafty women were twirling around, butterflies shed from them like a second skin. Eddie scrunches his nose in confusion.
One laughs, then, fairy-like, and when he realizes he can hear it all the way from up here, and turns to find any member of their group even slightly female inclined was in a similar trance.
Meaning, out of everyone, the only familiar face that awkwardly met eyes with him was Will Byers.
Yeah. That checks out.
Veela.
Shooting Will the most awkward of smiles, Eddie turns back around and gives Robin a shake before she can out herself in front of a whole stadium of people she could know, and gets a sleepy glare for his troubles.
“Veela,” Eddie echoes as a whispered explanation, and that’s all it takes to wake Robin up, a cool horror rolling down her in laps like the tongue of a dog.
She links arms with him. “Thanks,”
Bumping their shoulders, Eddie turns his attention back to Steve Harrington, who’s nearly touched down to the grass, feet just hovering a couple inches off of it.
He decides not to plague Robin with the whole spiel he could get into about how he’s just discovered the guy he’s created a whole imaginary rivalry with in his head is probably the hottest man alive, actually.
Mostly because Dustin has shaken off the Veela trance to gawk back at the man of the hour again, and trying to have a subtle conversation about wanting to lick Steve Harrington’s dimples beside the biggest Steve Harrington fan in the universe would be a near-impossibility.
Jesus. Steve Harrington didn’t even feel like a real name anymore.
Not that it stopped Eddie from screaming it as the game raged on—abandoning his Irish scarf and hat and doing his best to smudge away the remnants of his face paint (to Dustin’s utter delight.) Because if Steve’s flying had been impressive when he’d been showing off to the crowd, Eddie didn’t have the words for this.
This— meaning the way he moved in a game. It made sense, now, a seventeen year old seeker playing in the world final. Steve wasn’t even Bulgarian, apparently, (Dustin had rounded that fact off a few times) but he’d been recruited from Durmstrang Institute as a dark horse when Bulgaria had annihilated all the other countries in their heat, whipping him out for the next round, where he caught the snitch after seven minutes against Finland.
Eddie could see that skill, now. And it wasn’t just skill, it was everything about him, like he was made for the sport, like it spoke to him—Steve dodged Beaters blundering bludgers in his direction, spun into new spaces to ensure the quaffle never found him as an obstacle, his smooth voice sending pure reverberations up and down the stadium, sounding like a plucked harp string or a piano note sustained by holding it down with a fingertip.
The warnings and well-dones he weaved like the silk of a spider’s web kept his team in one another’s orbit, circling each other like a solar system, Steve their sun, their seeker.
I mean, shit. The guy played so well he was turning Eddie into a poet.
The Bulgarians lost, in the end—not that it mattered. Because Steve ended the game, caught the snitch—and for just a moment, Eddie thought he’d been looking at him.
Dustin, as much as Eddie loved him, was getting a little insufferable. And this was coming from the guy who’d tried to swap team gear with Lucas mid-game just because Steve Harrington was absolutely all he’d been chalked up to be.
But now Dustin was trying to convince Joyce to let him go out and search for him so they could have their fateful meeting. She was having none of it.
“Yes, Dustin, I promise I understand how much you like the boy, but it’s not safe out there,” Her hands find her hips. “It’s all rowdy wizards and fire whiskey. As your teacher and your guardian for the night, I am saying no. Not unless you have an adult go with you.”
Max cackles from where she has her feet up on the table in the corner. “You should tell her all about his Wronski Feint again, Dustin, that’ll convince her,”
“Didn’t you see it, Joyce?!” Dustin’s hands clasp over the poor woman’s as he bounces up and down. “It was amazing. The Irish seeker had been tailing him the whole time, the bastard, playing dirty, trying to psyche him out, and then Steve, he just—he just, did it!”
Eddie remembers it too, to be fair. Out of all of them, only Lucas and Max played Quidditch, with Dustin determined to get strong enough to play too by fifth year. He’d had a firm hatred for the sport for every time they were all dragged out to watch the blasted circus act in the pouring rain or snow.
And then Steve did that, the Wrong-skin… feint, or whatever, and Eddie’s stomach did several different kinds of acrobatic tricks.
He’d basically pretended to spot the snitch way below about fifteen minutes into the game and had dove, like, full-on, and the thirty-something seeker for the Irish had flailed to catch up with him, enacting a high speed broom chase like nothing Eddie had ever seen before.
Steve had just kept going, hurtling towards the ground with the opponent hot on his heels, and then at the very last second he’d pulled up.
As sprightly as the Irish seeker was, he had nothing on Steve’s youth and supple, limber… instincts, and he’d wiped out so hard Eddie would’ve felt bad if it wasn’t for the triumphant grin on Steve’s face. It was a shared sentiment anyway—the crowd, no matter who they were supporting, roared with the beauty of the move.
Dustin was still roaring about it. Repeatedly.
“I’ll venture into the dangers with you, dear paladin,” So he swings a merciful arm around him, ready to spare the rest of the tent from the whining. “I’ll have him back in ten, Harrington met or otherwise, Professor Byers.”
When it looks like Joyce is gearing up to protest, again, Eddie gives Dustin a little wiggle. “Ain’t that right, Dusty? Steve or not. Say yes.”
Dustin nods obediently.
Ignoring the very baffled look Robin shoots him from across the room, Eddie wrangles Dustin out of the tent, keeping him close as they’re met with exactly what Joyce had predicted. (Probably because Hopper was also in here somewhere, as one of the rowdy, firewhiskey drinking men.)
Dustin stayed glued to his hip, thankfully, though he was shouting Steve at the top of his lungs like the guy was just going to be out and about like a moron in a crowd like this—
Steve Harrington was out and about like a moron in a crowd like this.
In fact, Steve Harrington was shotgunning firewhiskey surrounded by a cheering group of similarly inebriated wizards who were clearly having the time of their lives.
Eddie felt like he was about to pass out. He stood there, just watching him do it, the full extension of his throat—
Dustin tried to burst from his grip, but Eddie felt like maybe this wasn’t the best time for him to meet his idol, and thankfully, fate seemed to agree.
(Though in hindsight, thankfully didn’t seem like the right word.)
Because the outskirts of the crowd around Steve began screaming, and not the girly, love-drunk kind of screams that Steve Harrington was probably used to getting.
No, these were the very bad, not good screams.
All Eddie could make out was fire, a lot of it, and chanting, cult-like. He didn’t need to see any more, nor did he get a chance to—people started pushing, shoving, running, and he only had a handful of seconds to try and see where Dustin had got to—
But it was too little too late, Eddie was swept away by the panicked masses, trying to fight mass hysteria, gaining nothing but a heavy shove and then several boots to the ribs as he tripped and fell, gathering his arms around his head to try and protect himself.
It works, though only for a horrifying minute where he was tossed back and forth between a grueling machine of legs and bodies, merciless and uncaring in their panic.
Somewhere along that train of thought, Eddie must’ve blacked out, the throb of his head promising a similar conclusion. Because when he opened his eyes, it was cold, and the air was thick with smoke, the ground soot and charcoal.
Dustin, was Eddie’s first thought, and he scrambled upright to his hands and knees, then unsteady feet, and started shouting for him into the darkness.
Panic slicked up the lining of his throat with a honey-like sickly feeling, liquid stress, coasting through his veins in waves of hot and cold, fast and slow. His body was the victim of an oxymoronic distress—unsure what to even do with itself under the contention that Eddie had lost Dustin.
“Eddie!” And he could cry for relief when the kid comes stumbling out of the rubble of the campgrounds, all gangly limbs and baby-deer like clumsiness. He almost trips, and would’ve—if it weren’t for a firm hand that grips the back of his shirt like a vice.
It’s fucking Steve Harrington, because of course it is.
He’s covered in soot, and there’s an awful collection of blood around the bridge of his nose (broken, definitely) but he smiles and gives Eddie a mindless wave, slowly walking over as Dustin hurtles towards him.
Catching Dustin in a hug, Eddie almost stumbles backwards himself, but thankfully doesn’t, because he just might die of humiliation. Then again, Steve looks vaguely confused, even as he smiles—maybe he’s concussed?
“Steve and I got swept up in everything, and I fell over so he shielded me with his body, Eddie! Like a superhero, like Ironman.” Steve just smiles dopily. “Someone definitely kicked him in the head though. Maybe more than one person,”
“That checks out,” Eddie summons light with lumos, moving it around in front of Steve’s face. “He’s definitely a bit concussed. You good there, Harrington?”
“Yeah, man. Think my nose’s broken, though,” And then Eddie remembers that Steve was shotgunning a firewhiskey bottle when whatever happened, happened, so maybe he wasn’t concussed. He lets Dustin live in that idea for now, though.
Eddie jabs Steve in the ribs. As soon as he draws a breath of confusion into that very nice chest of his, he whips his wand out again and uses episkey to mend his nose, wincing as the crack sends the player stumbling backwards a step. “Oh— ow, dude, what,” And he’s significantly sobered up from the pain.
Dustin looks at Eddie incredulously. “Is that the first time you’ve used that to mend someone’s actual nose?”
With a pat to the kids back, he grins. “Lucky for you Harrington, I’m a master at fixing small bone breaks. You’ll be good as new in no time.”
Looking a little sheepish for his reaction now, Steve Harrington goes to probably apologize, but then his expression goes cold, and hard. Turning around at the sound of footsteps, Eddie suddenly stiffens as several ministry workers come storming their way, stopping in a star-like formation, wands drawn.
“Edward Munson, you are under arrest for the conjuring of the dark mark, give up your wand or suffer the consequences—” And Eddie doesn’t even get the chance to move, because they shoot on sight anyway, nasty looking jinxes bounding out of their wands—
Steve Harrington shoves him aside, deflecting several of them with a few swift, aggressive waves of his wand. “What the fuck are you talking about? I literally just picked him off of the floor, dead to the world—” He makes flamboyant gestures to where Eddie’s head is throbbing the most. “ Look at him. He’s been booted in the head, for the love of quaffle,”
Eddie can’t believe he’s attracted to a guy who just said for the love of quaffle.
But said guy is also sort of lying to the ministry for him, so he’s not going to complain.
Seemingly taken aback by being chewed out by the Steve Harrington, the officers lower their wands, just in time for Hopper to run into the clearing with another man hot on his heels.
The man in question is tall, sort of wispy, for a lack of better descriptions. His hair is as white as a sheet, and his limbs are spindly, almost spider like. “Steven, there you are,”
Once addressed, the Quidditch player looks up, lowering his wand at the ministry officials. “Professor Brenner. Hey,”
“What is the meaning of all of this ridiculousness? My student has been put through enough strain today.” This Brenner guy looks firm, calculated in his scolding—taking Steve by the shoulder and guiding him away from Eddie, Dustin, the line of fire.
“That,” Comes the curt response from one of the aurors who’d yelled at Eddie—pointing at the sky.
And there, in all its glory, it was.
The dark mark.
“Your student insists it wasn’t Munson, here, but it had to have been someone,”
Brenner’s expression is callous enough to send shivers rolling down Eddie’s spine. “If my student says that is the case, then it is. This young man seems to have been through enough,” The smile he offers to him is no less disconcerting. “We should settle this at a more appropriate time.”
Steve and Dustin are nodding along enthusiastically.
Hopper looks defensive, almost. “Eddie hasn’t done anything you’re accusin’ him of. And unless you’ve got proof, Callahan,” He levels a harsh, gruff glare in his direction. “We’ll be on our way.” The firm hand on Eddie’s shoulder is a greater comfort than he could ever know.
“Yeah, so fuck off,” Dustin pipes up. Hopper smacks him up the back of his head lightly.
“Gentlemen,” Brenner nods, before the hand he's leveled at Steve’s upper back becomes a guiding one, ushering him away from the Hawkins riffraff—and Eddie finally clocks him as the Durmstrang headmaster.
Steve casts a slightly tipsy smile over his shoulder back at them, at least.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Hopper grumbles, giving Eddie and Dustin a shove-start away from the stiffly-stood ministry men.
Eddie can’t say he’s ever heard a better idea come out of that wonder of a man.
It’s all anyone is talking about when they get back to Hawkins School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It’s exhausting, not only because it’s gossip, but because it’s Death Eater gossip.
Which makes Eddie public enemy number one.
Death Eaters torch up the Quidditch World Cup—boom. Eddie goes from being a bit of a freak to the son of a Death Eater and a lot of a freak.
Not that it’s anything shockingly different. Jason Carver and his Hufflepuff Quidditch team (excluding Lucas) had it out for him since they first joined the school. Even worse now that Eddie had flunked hard enough to put them all in the same year—it was like Professor Owens, the Headmaster, wanted him to suffer.
Like he couldn’t be excused for being petrified? Not that he was ever academically sparkling, but nonetheless.
Eddie was grumbling about this all to Robin, having once again foregone sitting at the Gryffindor table to be an honorary Ravenclaw instead. Dustin was squished against his other side, subjecting some poor victim to his speech about how he’d met Steve Harrington and he’d been awesome.
Which is what solidified to Eddie just how normal he needed this year to be.
No more being petrified, no more flunking class—to a reasonable degree, anyway. And definitely no more mooning after Steve Harrington. That guy was firmly back in Bulgaria—far enough that Eddie could get on with his life and find a similarly ridiculous crush later down the line.
Totally normal year.
And then Professor Owens stood up and announced that there would be no Quidditch this year.
Slightly less normal year. Okay. Eddie shot a glance at Robin, who looked similarly baffled. (Somewhere across the room, he swore he heard Lucas and Max cry out in anguish.)
“In its stead, for the first time in years, we will be hosting the Triwizard Tournament,”
When met with a sea of furious faces, Professor Sam Owens just smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling with a humor only seen at his old age. “The Triwizard Tournament was first established some seven hundred years ago as a friendly competition between the three largest European schools of wizardry: Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang. A champion was selected to represent each school, and the three champions competed in three magical tasks.”
Yeah, this year was gradually starting to slip away from Eddie’s set plans from five minutes ago.
“The schools took it in turns to host the tournament once every five years, and it was generally agreed to be a most excellent way of establishing ties between young witches and wizards of different nationalities — until, that is, the death toll mounted so high that the tournament was discontinued.” Professor Owens places a hand on the podium he speaks from. “Until now.”
“The tournament we shall host here within our walls comes with restrictions in place in an attempt to stop these… potential deaths. Thus, all applicants must be over the wizarding age of majority, seventeen.”
If Eddie had thought the reaction to Quidditch being cancelled was bad—this was much, much worse. Food was thrown, students were up in arms (Max, once again, included.)
To be honest, Eddie was just ready for bed. A glance to Robin confirmed similar sentiments, though Dustin looked about ready to explode with excitement—the reason for which hadn’t really reached Eddie just yet. (The mention of Durmstrang should’ve been a dead giveaway—but he was tired, to be fair.)
“Shut up!” Hopper bellows, standing from his place at the staff table.
Everyone does as told.
“Now that I’ve got that out of the way,” Owens was always a blunt guy. If he hadn’t flunked Eddie for a year, he’d probably respect his sarcastic take to life. “Would you please welcome me in joining the first of our guests, Beauxbatons,”
On cue, the Great Hall’s doors fling themselves open, revealing a large collection of pretty women (and men) dressed from head to toe in blue silks and little matching berets. Upon realizing that Robin has begun to rise from her seat, Eddie fastens a hand on her shoulder and shoves her back down firmly.
If that weren’t telling enough—the butterflies are. Veela. They flounce around, some twirling, some cartwheeling and pirouetting. Eddie can’t particularly find it in himself to think much past I want to go to bed, now, but when Dustin still seems to be buzzing with excitement instead of in the trance from the stadium, something in his gut tells him there’s something he’s missing.
And it’s not Nancy Wheeler—Mike’s older sister, who he had completely forgotten went to this fancy French place until now. Nor was it his mom, the headmistresses, Karen Wheeler—who got enough whoops already.
Eddie wonders if he was supposed to know Mike’s mom ran the school, but then reasons that there was probably a reason it was never spoken about. Ever.
A glance to Mike, who looked five seconds away from homicide at the Slytherin table, confirmed his suspicions.
Eddie was fully prepared to start poking fun at the sheer mortification on his face from across the room, when Professor Owens pipes up again, announcing Durmstrang—and when Dustin throws himself up onto the dining bench, practically breaking his own neck to try and get a better look, something clicks.
Fuck.
Broad-shouldered, solemn-faced young men of all ages march through the halls, some with staffs that twirl and stamp and do other masculine, vaguely threatening things.
They’re dressed up to their necks in deep, red cloaks, fur coiling around them like wolves, predators, fearsome fighters, all similarly shaven-heads and wide-set jaws.
For a moment, Eddie thinks he’s safe. The men reach the end of the hall and stand there, staffs stiffly placed in front of them in some kind of power-stance—but judging by the intake of breath from Robin, he’s spoken too soon.
The headmaster of Durmstrang, Professor Brenner strolls into the room, suit stiff and cold, face strained in a disturbing smile. He walks with the kind of pace that demands respect, and expects it.
And at his elbow, the total opposite of all of his peers with his stupid, beautiful head of hair and awkward, beaming grin is Steve Harrington.
Steve Harrington, who spots Eddie and Dustin clustered together, and offers an earnest wave in their direction.
Though he feels Robin’s stare pointedly burning into the side of his head, Eddie ignores it—ignores her. Because Steve Harrington just smiled and waved at him.
Because Steve Harrington is now a guest at Hawkins School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and Eddie can’t decide whether to faint, cry, throw up or laugh.
Normal school year his ass.