Chapter Text
There were quite a few speculations towards Nico di Angelo’s relationship status. The Slytherin boy was frequently seen holding hands in the halls with Hazel Levesque. Or having lunch with her under the shade of a tree. Or combing his hands through her hair as she read in the Hufflepuff common room he shouldn’t have access to. Hufflepuff of all places!
But others would swear back and forth that he’d always lean in a little closer whenever Percy Jackson spoke, that Nico’s eyes almost always flicked up when Percy walked into the Slytherin common room. They could see his face turning, not pink, but some shades warmer, as if he’d started glowing a bit internally.
Then there were the Gryffindors who saw him waiting outside their door. Usually he was there for Reyna Ramirez Arellano, with whom he was seen with almost as much as he was seen with Hazel, though less people had the courage to be around them when they were together. They were, simply put, completely terrifying. But every now and again they’d see him walking away with Jason Grace, arms gesturing wildly as he spoke.
Whenever he was with any of these people, the witnesses would swear that there was a certain glimmer in his eye, a fire he lacked when he was without them. They could see it when he’d sit in the library with Frank Zhang (another Hufflepuff, this boy really didn’t care about house prejudice), when he was being patched up by Will Solace in his black and yellow robes, or debating with Annabeth Chase over a book they’d been assigned in class, her blue and bronze tie pulled loose.
He had a patchwork of different inter-house relationships, most of them unprecedented, all of them shocking.
It would be an understatement to say that the students were interested. For one, Nico was good looking. If you were into that broody, dark, and mysterious thing, which, let’s be real, a great deal of people are. Another reason was his sister. Quidditch star Bianca di Angelo, who’d been killed by You-Know-Who in her fourth year. He’d gone off the rails for a bit afterwards, hiding in his room, going to Hogsmeade during class without staff permission (or so they thought), glaring at anyone who even thought in his direction. Eventually he’d gotten over it, though a lot of the students were still scared of him, which was completely understandable, when you ignored the fact that the poor boy was merely just an injured puppy who needed a little love.
Still, he was cute, mysterious, and powerful. He was pretty intelligent too! Half the school swooned at the sight of him, behind his back obviously, though anyone doubted he’d notice if they did it right in front of his face. They all wanted to be like the select few that actually got to hear more than ten words out of him per day. They wanted to light the flame behind his eyes, if only to see it there. They wanted to know the troubled, handsome, fourth year Slytherin boy.
Of course di Angelo was a little harder to get to than expected, a fact that Leo Valdez found unfortunate. They were friends by proxy, but that wasn’t much help to him. He wondered how all his other friends had broken through the boy’s shell. It was almost like he’d blinked, and suddenly they were all best friends, like they’d transformed overnight and Leo’d just been left out. Even Piper was kinda maybe friends with him! They were housemates, which may have helped, but still. It wasn’t that Leo was particularly interested in the boy (except he probably definitely was), he just didn’t understand him. Not knowing was one of the worst things imaginable for a mechanic such as himself.
When he’d first come to Hogwarts, he’d been reprimanded many a time for taking apart magical objects to find out “how they actually work.'' Time and time again, the teachers would say “Magic, Mr Valdez. They work with magic!”, and time and time again he’d say “But how ?”. He never got an answer. So instead, he tried to recreate all the magical objects without the use of magic. After all, machines were a special kind of magic, weren’t they? Making something move on its own would have been deemed sorcery in the past, so how different could they be.
Extremely different, is the answer. The same way that people aren’t machines, and understanding them is much, much, harder than he previously anticipated. Though his attempts to understand people were mostly futile, he did learn one thing: people love to laugh. And henceforth, Leo Valdez set out to become the most hilarious person in the world.
Predictably, that failed. But he did succeed in becoming a class clown, which was good enough for him. It also helped to make people underestimate him, both in intelligence and general mental aptitude. His tomfoolery landed him in many a detention. He didn’t particularly care, he’d honestly be bored if he didn’t have cauldrons to clean or blackboards to erase (but seriously, blackboards? It’s like this school was stuck in the 19th century). It was through his so-called clownery that he met and befriended Piper McLean, a beautiful Slytherin girl with a sharp tongue and the most effortlessly charming personality of anyone he’d ever met. And Leo had met, or tried to meet, a great number of people he deemed charming. Everyone wanted to be her, or be around her, or be with her. She had so many people clamouring to be her friend that Leo was almost touched that she chose him. Keyword: Almost. He wasn’t to that level of desperation, yet . It didn’t hurt that Piper’s dad was a rich muggle, who also happened to be Tristan McLean, the biggest Hollywood star of like ever. And her mom was a super gorgeous, super famous model-slash-entrepreneur who also happened to belong to one of the most powerful wizard families of like, ever. And that they let him stay at their estate over the summer when he had nowhere else to go.
Of course any of his friends would let him stay with them over the summer, but Piper was without question his closest friend, and with that closeness came a bond that wasn’t easily formed with others. Piper was also the only one, besides Hazel, who knew what had happened to his mom. He wasn’t keen on telling others. The class clown was a secretive one after all.