Titolo: It's a kind of magic | AO3
Fandom: Free!
Personaggi: Rei Ryuugazaki/Nagisa Hazuki
Genere: romantico, fluff, fantasy
Avvertimenti: HP!AU, in inglese, pwp (plot? what plot?), shounen-ai
Parole: 2571
Note: per il prompt 2 "AU" e il 7 "freestyle/redo" della reigisa week.

Nagisa still remembers the moment he was talked to by a strange talking hat, and still remembers the odd voice that seemed to echo in his head while everyone else appeared to be only waiting, not hearing. The Sorting Hat had merely asked him a few questions, which Nagisa could not help answering to out loud the first time (“I don’t like being lonely!”), making everyone else giggle or coo.
“You have a lot of qualities in here, my child. But you seem to not want others to see it, isn’t it?” The bizarre voice had asked him in his head.
“It’s not true, I just don’t like flaunting or being in the spotlight…”
“So you’re modest. I see.”
“No, it’s that I was at the center of attention in school and, but… now I prefer to highlight others than myself.”
“Not seeking for glory. So that rules out Slytherin. And Gryffindor,” the Hat mused, outwardly showing a pensive grimace. “You are very smart, but not oriented to studying or working very hard, are you?”
“I can work hard if I’m motivated to,” Nagisa thought, biting a little on his lip. “I don’t like studying if I don’t have a good reason for it.”
“Mmmmh. I would put you in Ravenclaw, but you seem to be very friendly and extroverted. Loud as well. And loyal.”
Nagisa didn’t really see himself in all those qualities, but he pressed his lips together anxiously. He didn’t mind any House, he just thought it would be great to be in good company and in a warm community. His skills, he thought, were secondary.
“Well, let’s see how this goes then,” the Hat decided after a few seconds, and then yelled out loud, “Ravenclaw!”

Nagisa took a deep breath, smiling to the long table corresponding to his House, and trotted happily among other clapping kids.
“Your name is Hazuki? Where are you from?” One of the British kids asked.
“Ah, uhm… I’m from Japan, my name is Nagisa, my family name is Hazuki,” Nagisa corrected him, blushing, but then grinned. “I only moved… two years ago, sorry for the English,” he apologized, looking embarrassed.
“Hey, your English is good! Don’t worry, and if someone makes fun of you for it I’ll smash their heads in,” the boy replied, grinning, and Nagisa believed that wholeheartedly, given how wide that boy was. “Welcome to Ravenclaw. I’m Alexander, but my friends call me Al. So you should definitely call me that,” he added, winking. Nagisa smiled, thinking that maybe he would be okay in this school. Maybe it would be even better than Muggles’ school where the kids would make fun of him for his name and shun him for all the weird things that happened to him without explanation. Objects rattling whenever he was nervous, lights turning on by themselves whenever he would feel particularly happy, and once he had been able to go outside in the rain without getting wet, since he had forgotten his umbrella home, so he got weirdly shielded by humidity or rain.
While calming down from his inner agitation, and watching other kids his age get sorted, another Japanese name got called: “Ryuugazaki!”
A first year with dark hair and a very precise, stiff posture walked up the steps solemnly, until he sat down on the stool and the same talking hat was leaned on his head. Nagisa looked at him intently as he gazed on the sea of young, unknown faces. He wore glasses, and his robe was already embellished by small embroidered flowers that had some of the teachers squint at.

“Very interesting. You are a smart kid, aren’t you?” The hat asked, in a satisfied tone.
“I seek knowledge and I value reason,” Rei responded, keeping his expression unchanged. “And beauty.”
“Well then, you seem to have made up your mind no matter what I say, haven’t you?” The Hat asked, but then immediately shouted, “Ravenclaw!”
Another wave of claps came from the table Nagisa was sitting at, and he saw that boy walk closer to it, scanning for an empty spot. He eventually found one, a bit too far for Nagisa to talk to him. Well, he would have time.

In the next months, Nagisa seemed to develop an unusual interest in Ryuugazaki, and while he made efforts to be friendly with everybody he ended up ‘accidentally’ bumping into him, or asking him for help doing homework out of all the people he could ask to.
That really began after they introduced each other. Ryuugazaki’s name was Rei, and Nagisa almost started bouncing around the circular Common Room once he found someone else with a girly name just like him. Rei just looked at him with an irritated look as the small blond began chirping and asking questions about Rei, and then looking at him in awe as the other showed off a rather impressive amount of knowledge. He seemed to know everything about all of their courses, so much that Nagisa wondered why Rei had bothered to enter the school in the first place.
“I need practice. I have a lot of theory down, but for example I cannot really do spells,” Rei had explained to him, with an ashamed blush rising to his cheeks.
Nagisa thought he was amazing, and impressive. So he had basked in that glory following Rei like a puppy the whole year, through lessons and homework and in the free time, until the other became accustomed to him. Fond of him, even.
So fond of the other that he began considering him a sort of limb, an extension of himself. He became used to having this loud, friendly chatterbox near him all the time, slowly opening him up to the point when, one day, someone commented, “you smile a lot more, Rei.”
He thought maybe someone had played a prank on him and enchanted his face to make it twist into a smile without him realizing, but… then he looked at what had changed about himself with time, since entering Hogwarts, and of all the things that he usually dealt with the biggest change was Nagisa.

Nagisa with his happy laughter and goofiness when charming cauldrons during Potions so that they would end up splattering everyone with who knows what kind of deadly mixture.
Nagisa who is now flashing in front of everybody, on his broomstick, chasing a golden flicker in the air. And he is beautiful, even though Rei had never considered Quidditch as something pleasant in any way, since “humans evolved to have their feet firmly planted on the ground, they don’t have wings, so why should we be in the air where we don’t belong? It doesn’t make any sense!” But Nagisa seems to be so at ease on his broomstick, stubbornly speeding after the Golden Snitch, that it looks natural. He looks like he’s in his element. Beautiful.
And the moment his fingers wrap around the small sphere, many things happen.
Nagisa becomes even more beautiful, with his wide grin shining bright as the sunlight hits him as if the universe had decided to glorify him even more, put him under the spotlight.
And the stadium blows up with three Houses’ cheers, while the Slytherins clap politely even though the disappointment is clear on their faces. But nobody could blame them anyway. Nagisa quietly lowers himself to the ground, with a blush so evident that Rei can see the change from his position, but he smiles too. Looking straight at Rei, with a peace sign directed right at him. He smiles back, with a little giggle when the other team members celebrate their victory, and the Slytherin captain steps down on the ground to stretch his arm and honorably congratulates himself. The other Seeker goes straight for Nagisa, with a marching step, and the Ravenclaw almost steps back, afraid, but gets wrapped up in a hug and then the Slytherin Seeker, even smaller than he is, shakes his hand with both his, beaming with admiration.
Rei can see Nagisa’s confusion from his seat, but also his swift recovery and big smile directed at the other.
And then it’s a blur with the Ravenclaw’s Keeper raising Nagisa on his shoulders and the latter turning even redder among deafening claps and happy howls. It’s as if they had won the World Cup, but in a way it’s even better.

“I’m happy I got placed in Ravenclaw,” Nagisa hums later, after a loud and cheery - and abundant - dinner when the two of them really could not even talk, given that each Quidditch team was surrounded by people from their House and others as well, for congratulations or encouragements.Was this how it’s always been? Rei wonders, in awe at the joy surrounding the aftermath of this event. He knows that in the past there was so much tension about Quidditch (which he never understood the point of anyway) and yet now nobody is fighting or gloating.
“I’m happy you got placed here too!” Al replies, grabbing a chicken thigh, which seems to be replaced immediately in the big plate in the middle of the table. “You’re good at flying, you know?”
“Ah, most of it was luck anyway,” Nagisa says flushing again, and throws a small embarrassed look in Rei’s direction.
“No need to be modest! You’re our hero today,” Al continues, patting his back.
A hero? Nagisa wonders. No, no, they’re wrong. He’s no hero. He was the last of his class in middle school. And he was the weird guy who could piss everyone off by just existing. But he smiles, quiet, while fidgeting.
“Ah… thanks,” he replies plastering a big grin on his face. “I’ll do even better next year!”
“We’re counting on it,” Al retorts, winking and pointing a finger at him, which makes him giggle.
After dinner, at the least expected moment, Rei can distinctly sense fingers slide into his hand and then clench around it securely, and then Nagisa’s small voice whispering, “can I kiss you, Rei-chan?”
Rei’s breath cuts for a few seconds, to the point where his first thought is: ‘I need to perform an Anapneo spell’. But when air comes back, his head whips around to look into Nagisa’s odd magenta eyes, meeting a smile that shines all over his face. No shadows or fear, just relief seems to radiate from him.
“Nagisa-kun?”

The other does not reply, he just stands up quick, trotting out of the Great Hall and then pulling Rei up the stairs with just a few excited giggles. As the stairs rotate to take them who-knows-where, Rei stares at him still baffled. There are just a few students going up and down the stairs, but he sees none of them. The only thing he sees are Nagisa’s light locks messy from the air that whipped backwards while he flew. And Rei cannot help combing them back to their original place, but Nagisa picks that hand into his own, before kissing his cheek. And Rei flushes completely, his chest echoing with his own heartbeats, feeling empty and yet bubbling up fast like a pint of butterbeer that he once drank in one go and felt sick over for a whole night. His cheek warm up considerably then, as his eyes fly open wide and he looks at Nagisa.
“I like you, Rei-chan,” he chirps freely with the biggest grin Rei’s ever seen. “I realized that when I got the Snitch. I didn’t think of the hundred and fifty points I’d just gotten… I thought of you and wondered what you were thinking,” he confesses, and only then bites nervously on his lip. “Is… that okay?”
Rei blinks even harder at that, all red and looking like he had just seen Nearly-Headless Nick and Peeves kiss passionately at the bottom of those moving stairs.
“I-I… Nagisa-kun…” He attempts at replying with something intelligible, yet fails miserably the moment he wonders, do I feel the same way? And yet he is not given any time to think, when Nagisa snatches his hand again and pulls him on top of the steps, then drags him through the fourth floor’s corridor. He whispers, “Nox”, so that all the lights turn off, leaving only a dimmed one at the end of the corridor, which only echoes with the voices coming from the Great Hall, fading from the last chatters and cheers of dinner and celebrations. Somewhere, someone is singing too, yet they seem to have all forgotten the reason why they were partying in the first place.
“Nagisa-kun, I don’t understand…” He begins, with a cracking, confused voice.
“That’s impossible, you always understand everything, Rei-chan!” Nagisa scolds him with a small giggle, before going on his toes and pressing another kiss, this time blindly reaching for his chin. “Ah, oops,” he cackles, and then successfully centers Rei’s lips. Who seems to be petrified, and yet in that small contact the bubbling resumes, feeling like bile is rising up his throat, but then it dissolves into warmth so intense it leaves him with a couple of tears hanging at the corners of his eyes. For the intense warmth that rose to his cheeks, so strong that now the butterbeer must have left him drunk in the almost-deserted hallway.
“What is this?” He asks, slightly out of his own control.
“Do you like me too?” Nagisa asks back, with his fingers sliding into the other’s hands again.
“I don’t know,” Rei finally replies, with his head so light that it seems to be filled with air.
Nagisa keeps quiet for a few seconds, but then Rei can sense his smile in the dim light.
“That’s okay. I can wait for you to figure that out… I just wanted to kiss you so much!” Nagisa chirps in a light tone, which seems to make everything so simple, and so easy. Which it probably is…

As he lays in his bed, in their dormitory’s silence, Rei touches his lips where the feel of Nagisa’s lingers, and he wonders if that kiss could be considered a hex, because the reason he values so much is hugging with chaos and his lips are tingling. His body, restlessly, rolls in the blankets, until he figures it out.
“Lumos,” he whispers very low, with a feeble light appearing on the tip of his wand, and his feet touch the cold marble floor, taking him to Nagisa’s bed.
Lit by the small ray of magical light, his friend’s face seems so invitingly soft…
He leans over, bending on him and softly, very softly, placing a kiss on Nagisa’s slightly parted lips.
And then arms wrap around him all of a sudden tearing a squeal from him, and Nagisa is there under him, in his ridiculous pajamas, whispering to him to come and sleep together. And well, Rei now seems to have been hexed for sure, because while a day before he would have said no, now he only hesitates a few seconds looking around the dormitory, before sighing and slipping into Nagisa’s bed and under his soft, warm blanket, only to hug him silently. Nagisa doesn’t ask whether that means Rei likes him back. He just snuggles against him, closing his eyes assured that his arms are wrapped tightly around his friend’s body.
Maybe it’s not a hex, but Nagisa must have charmed him. There is no other rational explanation, after all.