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1. How to Make a Friend
Natasha Romanoff hated doing anything wrong. No, that wasn’t right. She hated doing anything incorrectly. She was happiest when she excelled, and anything less than that would not. do.
The problem was Herbology. More specifically mandrake root. It was her third week with the damn plant and she had yet to get a seed to take. And Professor Cardenas had given her a soft pat on the shoulder and said, “Your effort is showing, Miss Romanoff, and that is enough,” which made Natasha’s skin crawl with displeasure.
So here she was, in the Green House, alone, when she could be celebrating the recent Gryffindor win back in the Common Room with Peggy and Angie.
She stared at the little bean (which looked way too much like an embryo for her tastes, Mandrakes were freaking gross) and then back to her book. The day that the class had originally planted their beans had been overcast, and Professor Cardenas had cast a spell to make it even darker, so Natasha guessed she might have an upper hand in planting it in the actual night time.
Casting a whispered, “Lumos,” she bent over her book. “The mandrake in its infancy prefers dark, cold…blah, blah, blah…important that the potting soil has a healthy dose of compost and dragon dung…gross…and covered with a blanket of soft moss.” Natasha sighed and got the required items she would need to make the blasted plant grow.
Once she was back to her table, she pulled on her gloves and got to work.
Natasha had just started scooping compost for a bed for the seed when she heard movement in the dark. She dropped the shovel and pulled her wand out of her robes. She shifted to stand behind a large ficus-looking plant, and peeked around a large leaf.
The boy coming around the corner was wearing a Hufflepuff tie, loose around his neck, his blond hair ruffled, shirt untucked. He was waving goodbye over his shoulder to someone Natasha couldn’t see, but heard him shout “See ya,’ Clint,” and recognized him as a third year from her house, Phil Coulson.
“What are you doing all rumpled with Phil Coulson?” she asked, popping out from her hiding place.
Clint jumped about three feet in the air. “Sweet Jesus, girl!” He looked at her in the dark, then to her table. His eyes landed on the mandrake bean. “What are you doing trying to plant a mandrake at ten p.m.? Aren’t little Gryffindors supposed be partying right now?”
“I asked first,” she said, rather petulantly, grabbing the bean from his view.
“And I asked second, what’s your point?” He looked in her pot, then down to her book. “I’m guessing Cardenas doesn’t know about this little endeavor?”
Natasha grunted and looked down to the bean in her hand. “She considers my effort enough.”
Clint hmm’d and looked into her pot. “You must be trying pretty hard, Cardenas doesn’t usually take the ‘A for effort’ kind of route.”
“A?” Natasha asked.
“Muggle thing.” He looked at the dragon dung she had grabbed, frowning and stuck his bare pinky finger right in the middle. Natasha barely held back the groan of disgust. “Have you always used this dung for your fertilizer?”
“Yeah, why?”
Clint tutted and grabbed the bag, going back to the supply closet at the front of the room. He came back with a similar bag and plopped it on the table. “Mandrake root doesn’t take to the warm dung, Cardenas charms this to stay cool and damp, it’ll work better.”
She took a scoop of it and spread it over the soil, then going for the compost, but Clint stopped her with a gentle hand to the wrist. “No. You want the compost loose. Mandrakes like to wiggle a bit. Use a water spell to break it up a bit in a second pot, then pour it onto the dung.”
Natasha did as she was told. “Now the bean?”
Clint huffed out a laugh. “It’s a root…you know I don’t actually know your name.”
“And I still don’t know why you’re all rumpled in the dark with Phil Coulson.”
The laugh was more of bark this time. “We…let’s just say we were up to a little bit of mischief. Something a little firstie like you doesn’t need the details of.”
Natasha rolled her eyes. “Isn’t it a little cold to be making out behind the Green Houses?”
His blush covered his face and went down his neck and Natasha smirked. “All right, smart mouth, so what’s you’re name?”
“Natasha Romanoff.”
“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Natasha Romanoff, I’m Clint Barton.”
2. How to Be Okay With a Break Up
Clint didn’t care about the Triwizard Tournament. He honestly didn’t. The Champion for Hogwarts was some seventh year Ravenclaw that he didn’t know or care about and the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang Champions were no more interesting.
The problem was that everyone else did. Well, not Natasha, but all of his other friends seemed to.
His biggest problem was Phil. While they had ended their, well, Clint would call it a relationship, whereas Phil…didn’t see it as such. And since they had broken up, stopped fooling around, whatever, Clint didn’t have a date to this stupid dance that all of his other friends were pressuring him to go to.
The damn Yule Ball. At the request of the Hogwarts Champion – Elliot something or other – the Ball was opened to the third years now, something about a relative needing to be there for him, or whatever.
Because it was open for third years, that allowed half of their friends to go, and the other half would be able to, too, if they paired up correctly, and for some reason all of them wanted to go.
And were pressuring everyone to go.
But Clint didn’t want to go. Because no matter how done with Phil Clint was, he didn’t want to watch Phil and Audrey dance. He didn’t want to watch Phil and Audrey flirt. He didn’t want to watch Phil and Audrey kiss under mistletoe.
No way, no how.
But Pepper and Jane and Peggy had all been picking at people for months, ever since the first night of school, when the tournament was announced. They had all said ‘no dates’ but that was only because they had to match up between years and houses to get everyone there, and besides Bruce taking Betty and Thor taking Jane, no one was really interested in who they were bringing.
Rhodey and Sam had taken one look at each other and fist bumped. Sousa had very timidly asked Sif after she loudly declared that she wasn’t going with anyone on a rival house team, despite the fact that Quidditch was suspended for the year. In comparison Tony’s loud ‘dibs’ on ‘Stevie’ was crass, especially since he then made taunting faces at Bucky for the rest of the day, which made Pepper sidle up to the despondent Hufflepuff and claim him for her own. Fandral had laid the charm on thick with Angie, making her blush and giggle very uncharacteristically.
The only moment that had caused a genuine moment of ‘aw, damn, that’s cute’ for Clint was when Happy blushingly asked Peggy, hand scratching the back of his neck. She’s smiled wide and made him promise to dance with her.
Which left Clint either asking Natasha or going stag. Don’t get him wrong, he love Nat, she was his best friend, but that may actually be why he was doubting whether he should ask her or not. Because Clint was kind of hesitantly crushing on her, which made him feel weird. Like, super weird. Because she may be an old second year, and he was a young fourth year, and one year might not be a lot, but the difference between thirteen and fourteen felt very large.
And it didn’t help that he was pretty sure Nat was crushing back.
-
“Clint Barton, why haven’t you asked me to the Yule Ball, yet?”
Clint flinched and looked up from his Potions textbook. Professor Erskine was probably the nicest Professor at Hogwarts, but he was also the most strict. He genuinely believed that all his students could achieve greatness and that made Clint actually try in his class. Try like reading about the potions they were covering the next day the night before.
But Nat was standing in front of him, her hands on her hips, red hair cascading down her back, and a glare on her face that could haunt Fury’s worse nightmares.
“Do you honestly expect me to go with one of Thor’s cronies? What do I have in common with them? I hate Quidditch, and that’s all Volstagg talks about. That and food. And Hogun doesn’t talk at all! How am I supposed to shit on everyone’s outfits without someone to reply to my catty comments, Clinton Francis!”
Clint stared at her for a moment before blinking rapidly and looking down at his book again. “Nat, would you like to go to the Yule Ball with me?”
“Yes, thank you, Clint.” She proceeded to throw her bag onto the table and sit in her seat, all grace and ballet softness.
-
Alright, so the Yule Ball wasn’t so bad. Hell, it was actually downright entertaining.
After all the waltzing was over with, the band had actually started playing some danceable music, and what seemed like the entire school was throwing their partners around the Great Hall (literally in Steve and Tony’s case, let’s just say that while Professor Stark had made sure that Tony could Waltz and Tango and everything else, he wasn’t the most…graceful when it came to dancing like a young person).
And as long as Clint avoided making eye contact with Phil and paid attention to Nat’s whispered gossip, he was smooth sailing.
But just because Clint was avoiding Phil, didn’t mean Phil was avoiding him.
“Hey, guys!” Clint made himself look up at Phil. He gave a smile in return, because if nothing, a Barton can fake a smile. “Haven’t seen you two out on the dance floor.” At ‘dance floor’ Phil gave a dorky little shoulder bop thing that almost got Clint to laugh. At him, of course. Because he was still bitter – no, reasonably angry – about Phil’s denial of their…relationship.
“Clint has two left feet. You’d think you’d know what, Coulson,” Natasha snarked at him, which made Phil flinch and give a hurried glance at Audrey. “Though I was thinking of dragging him out soon. Just because he can’t dance doesn’t mean I shouldn’t show off my stuff.”
“If Clint doesn’t want to dance, you could totally dance with Phil! He’s great!” Audrey said, patting Phil’s bicep with gentle fingers. (Nothing between Clint and Phil was ever gentle.)
A giant grin took over Phil’s face as he offered a hand to Natasha. “What do you say? May I have this dance?”
Natasha looked over to Clint, who gave a small smile in return, so she nodded to Phil and took his hand, raising to her feet. “Alright, but only one dance, I don’t want Clint to get jealous.” She leaned down and kissed Clint’s cheek.
Clint could feel his face turned hot and watched as his current (maybe requited?) crush be led to the dance floor by his ex-whatever.
3. How to Break Up with Someone You Love
Natasha Romanoff hated messes. In particular, she hated messy personal entanglements, especially romantic ones. And worse than watching them from the outside (seriously, the weird little love polygon between Steve, Bucky, Peggy, Angie, Tony, and Pepper was so boring and monogamy-normative and boring) was being trapped in one.
Because honestly? She loves Clint. Platonically, and she thinks if they give it a bit more time, she can love him romantically, and as it is, cares about him a lot. But she thinks that if they continue the path they’re going, she’s going to end up hating him.
It would be easy to blame it on the age difference, but it’s not really that. That would be too simplistic and inaccurate. The problem is that Clint is so passionate, about everything. Friendships and quidditch and school work and spells and causes and relationships. And Natasha? Just isn’t. She doesn’t consider it a detriment or a benefit to her personality, it just is. She cares deeply, but calmly. And that’s not to say that she’s not passionate about things, those things just aren’t people.
And she knows that Clint needs verbal affirmation of her feelings, learned that through witnessing his relationship with Coulson collapse into itself. Clint is still convinced that Coulson didn’t view their relationship as a relationship because of Coulson’s communication issues, and Coulson doesn’t understand why it took so long for their friendship to rebuild after what he saw as an amicable break up.
The problem is that she…can’t communicate her feelings the way that Clint wants. In a perfect world, they could get by with her showing him her feelings, the touches and questions about his day or a test he studied hard for would be enough, and to be fair it’s not like Clint has used the L word or anything like that, but he frequently says things like, “I care deeply for you” and “You’re my favorite girl in the world, Natasha Romanoff.”
Natasha doesn’t blush, but she gets the closest to it in those moments.
-
“Nat?”
Natasha lifted her head and saw Peggy standing at the foot of her bed. Angie was by the doorway, clearly waiting for them both. Natasha had been in her own head, reading the same three lines of her Defense book over and over as she thought.
“Yeah, Pegs?”
“Angie and I are going down for dinner, did you wish to join?” Natasha smiled and nodded, closing her book and getting off her bed.
They made small talk about classes on their way down to the Great Hall, Peggy asking how Natasha’s Muggle Studies class was going, and Nat asking them both about Care of Magical Creatures.
“And how’s Clint doing?” Angie asked as they moved from the last staircase to the ground floor.
Natasha hmm’d and replied, “He’s finally started studying for his OWLs, and with that on top of quidditch, I don’t get to see him a lot.” Peggy and Angie shared a look. Merlin, Natasha thought, so we are the gossip of the group. “I mean, we spend time together, but with his NEWT requirements coming up, he’s worrying a lot about passing his OWLs. He says I distract him.”
Clint had said no such thing, had in fact said the opposite, but it appeased the other girls and with Angie as the biggest gossip in their group, the ‘cuteness’ would no doubt spread like Fiendfyre.
They spent the rest of the short walk talking about when Steve and Bucky would get their act together (Natasha silently remarked to herself that would only happen when Steve got over Peggy) and how Tony really needed to do something about his feelings about Pepper that wasn’t flirting with all of their friends in front of her (she also kept to herself that his crush on Steve wasn’t helping anything there).
-
Once they arrived at the Great Hall, they spotted Steve, Clint, and Bucky at the Hufflepuff table and joined them. Clint was sitting by himself on one side and Peggy all but forced her to sit next to him by hip-checking her, not that she wouldn’t have sat there anyway.
He greeted her with a smile and a simple hand swept down her back to rest on her hip, all the while listening to Steve talk about something Phillips had said in Defense that morning. Having been there to witness it, Natasha began making herself a plate. She separated the carrots from her mixed vegetables and spooned them onto Clint’s plate, in turn, he gave her the broccoli from his.
She stared down at his hands, one holding his fork in the air around his face and the other tucked against his ribs.
God, she didn’t want to hurt him.
-
They had decided at dinner to spend the evening in the library. Natasha needed help on a Herbology paper and Clint needed someone to keep him focused on his Astronomy mapping. The others had disappeared with very fake excuses about group projects and practical homework that was obviously forced by Peggy’s elbows joining Steve and Bucky’s ribs after they had started to say they were also going to the library. It didn’t help that Natasha was in the same house and mostly in the same classes as Peggy and Angie.
But here they were, alone in the library, and had been for almost three hours. Besides the pointed tapping on the table from Natasha or an answered question from Clint, they got by in silence.
Finally, Clint yawned. “Alright. I can’t focus on this any more. I am done for the night.”
Natasha blinked at him twice and made a decision. “Walk me to the common room?”
Rightly confused, Clint nodded. Natasha never had him walk her to the Gryffindor common room, she usually argued that it was excessive and demeaning, especially because Clint’s own dorm was on the opposite side of the school.
They quickly make work of packing their bags and headed out of the library.
Their entire way up to the Gryffindor common room from the third floor, Clint keeps shooting Natasha looks, a mixture of confused and amused, but Natasha barely notices, trying to focus on the way she wants to word what she’s going to say.
They’re about twenty feet from the Fat Lady’s portrait when she pulls Clint into an alcove.
Clint stares at her for a moment before letting out a deep sigh.
They never did need words, but sometimes they really needed to say them. Clint was the most important person in her life and she didn’t want them to end up like how Clint was with Coulson for almost an entire year.
“Clint–”
“I know, Nat. We’re not working.”
“Clinton Francis, don’t you interrupt me,” she said, staring him in the eye. “It’s not as simple as that.”
“What’s more simple, Nat? What is there to say? We tried it out and it didn’t work.” He sounded resigned, more so than Natasha had ever heard from him. She needed to make sure this went well.
“Clint. I-I need you to understand.” Natasha took a deep breath, “This isn’t because I don’t…feel deeply for you. That I don’t think I can love you or that you’re unloveable, or whatever you’ve convinced yourself of in the two seconds since you realized what was happening. Because I love you so much.”
“And I love you, Nat.” He gently brushed a few strands of hair out of her face before settling his hand on her shoulder.
Natasha felt like she was going to hyperventilate and took another deep breath. “That’s why this needs to happen, Clint. Because we love each other. Because I don’t want us to loose what we had before this. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, Clint Barton, and that is more important to me than something that could happen between us.
“And, honestly, Clint, I-I can’t be what you need. I can’t be the person who reaffirms my feelings for you with words whenever you need it. It’s not in me. It’s just not who I am. And I can’t handle how much you express. How everything is so important, all the time.” She smiled up at him. “We’re so good for each other, Clint, just not in a relationship.”
Clint smiled back at her, touched her hand and brought her knuckles to his mouth. “You’re my favorite girl in the whole world, Natasha Romanoff, don’t you ever forget that.”
Natasha raised an eyebrow. “I’m not going anywhere, Clint, and neither are you. We’re in this together, you can’t get rid of me just because we’re not gonna make out behind the green houses anymore.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, Nat, but if I get a girl- or boyfriend I can’t exactly say that around them, even if it is the truth. And you trust me, it’ll be the truth until I’m old and grey and can’t remember where I put my wand.”
Natasha laughed and shoved him out of the alcove. “Merlin. Get down to the Hufflepuff dorms, you dork.”
4. How to Be a Dad
Clint didn’t care about dumb little first years. Okay, no, that’s not true. Despite what Natasha said, Clint didn’t care about one particular dumb little first year. The kid was fucking annoying.
“He’s your son. Your tiny little son and he has adopted you like a duckling imprinting on its mother,” Natasha all but yelled, cackling all the while.
Clint would probably be less angry if it wasn’t true. Clint would probably also be less angry if the little shit didn’t show his…affection? appreciation? whatever, through being an utter asshole to Clint.
-
Pietro Maximoff was the best flyer that Clint had ever seen. That’s not to say he was the best quidditch player he’d ever seen, or even the best chaser, but even on a shitty little Clean Sweep 7, the kid had zoomed around faster than any of the other kids on Nimbus 2000s or Firebolts. Pietro had a way with the broom that went beyond anything Clint had seen his entire six years at Hogwarts.
So with Clint as team captain, he had to accept the kid onto the team, despite him being a first year. And the way he worked with that Jarvis kid, Vision, Tony had called him, was definitely beyond the potential of the previous year’s team, especially with Skye rounding off the Chasers.
None of that changed the fact that Clint was getting sick of the kid following him around, playing pranks on him. Honestly, Clint didn’t know where the kid got the balls to speed past him trip him on his way into the Great Hall, shouting, “Bet you didn’t see that coming,” over his shoulder as he went to join his sister at the Gryffindor table.
Natasha said that his sister, Wanda, was quiet, a little withdrawn and didn’t hang out with anyone but her brother and the Vision kid.
Clint groaned as he sat down next to Tony, joining the nerd squad at the Ravenclaw table. Bruce smiled timidly at him, obviously trying to hide the fact that they had all seen the firstie trip him and proceed to laugh.
“I thought you said that Vision kid was a nice guy, Tony?” Clint said, picking up his knee with his hands to get it over the bench.
Tony let out a squawk of protest. “Vision is the nicest kid on earth, also one of the smartest, not saying that’s all me, but, y’know. It is. Anyway, why do you think otherwise?”
“I mean, no accounting for taste, but he’s hanging with that Maximoff kid. Who is a little shit.” Clint took a large bit out of the burger he’d just assembled on his plate.
Tony shrugs, “No, Vis said that Pietro is a pretty nice little dude. He’s just got a crush on you.”
Clint started choking violently, burger half way down his throat. He felt arms wrap his sides and jerk upward, suddenly able to breath, he turned to face his savior.
“Bet you didn’t see that coming.”
And of course it was Pietro, which made him start to cough violently.
-
Tony had invited Pietro, Wanda, and Vision to sit with them after Pietro had saved ‘his favorite idiot,’ and the first years had taken him up on the offer, which disallowed Clint from asking Tony what the hell he meant by ‘crush.’
And he didn’t get a chance, at least not yet, and it was a game day. The first game of the year, against Slytherin.
Slytherin had a solid team (Steve wouldn’t allow anything but a fantastic team), but Clint also knew that their seeker had graduated last year, and Steve had no real prospects to fill the position, and there was no way Steve was going to pull some miraculous first year as his seeker.
And it turns out, he hadn’t.
It wasn’t until they were out on the field that Clint found out that Steve had managed to get Thor’s little brother, Loki, as their seventh member and seeker.
Clint wasn’t as tight with Thor as maybe Steve or Bruce, but for the two years he was at Hogwarts without his little brother he had done nothing but rant and rave about Loki, everything from his innate magical ability to his charming wit to, of course, his ability on a broom. According to Thor, though, Loki had no desire to do anything quidditch related.
Well, apparently Loki’s mind had been changed.
-
The game was going very quickly, but also quite evenly. Neither team pulled more than twenty points ahead of the other, so it was clear it would be up to Clint to win.
Clint saw movement out of the corner of his eyes and slowly turned, pretending he was watching a Slytherin beater on the side of the field (at the distance, Clint couldn’t tell if it was Thompson or Blonsky), and yes, it was the snitch! He pushed his broom forward, suddenly speeding forward.
That’s when he noticed the bludger heading straight for his face. He was about to drop out from in front of it, when a white and yellow blur darted forward, taking the bludger straight to the chest, and then another, right at his hip, knocking him from his broom.
Clint watched, almost in slow motion, as Pietro fell to the earth, unable to do anything about it due to his lack of wand.
When Pietro was about to hit the ground, Clint dropped, into the fastest and smoothest Wronski Feint he had ever managed, catching the first year at the last possible moment.
And a horn sounded, Loki had caught the snitch.
-
After taking Pietro straight to the Hospital Wing, Clint didn’t know what to do with himself.
For Christ’s sake, he’d just saved someone’s life.
He half listened as the Head Matron told him that Pietro would be fine and not to worry, he’d wake up in a bit. As soon as she finished speaking, he nodded and left, not knowing his own destination.
He met Natasha in the hallway outside of the Hospital Wing. He immediately fell into her, head on his shoulder, her arms around his middle.
“I just-” It came out a mumble into her shoulder, but Clint didn’t move. “He’s just a kid, and he almost died for some stupid sport.”
“You’re such a dad.”
Clint groaned.
5. How to Accept Yourself
Natasha Romanoff hated gossip. Okay, no, that’s a lie. She loved to gossip, but she hated gossip about her. Hypocritical, yes, but this sort of hypocrisy was not uncommon.
And Natasha never claimed to not be a hypocrite.
“Nat, it’s nothing to worry about,” Clint said around a mouth of tuna salad. They were sitting at the Hufflepuff table, just the two of them. Usually Phil would join them, or Stark, Banner, Steve, and Thor, but with the Quidditch Cup coming up, the house lines were getting a little tense. And as Natasha did not care about Quidditch, she decided to remove herself from anyone who did.
Well, except Clint. Clint, being the seeker for the Hufflepuff team, kind of had to care about Quidditch, but he knew better than to try and talk Natasha’s ear off about it.
And this morning she had more pressing matters.
“You’re not the one everyone is talking about, Clint!”
Clint rolled his eyes. “Nat, since when do you care about what people think about you?”
“This is different, Clint. Love is for children, and for everyone to think that–that–”
“That you like-like Bucky Barnes?”
She slammed her hand over his mouth. “Merlin, Clint, why don’t you shout it with a Sonorus to the entire Great Hall?” He promptly licked her hand, causing her to grimace and cuff his head.
“Jeeze, Nat. And it’s not like it’s true…Right?” She rolled her eyes and he quickly tried to recover. “See, you don’t like him. I just don’t get why it matters so much.”
“Because it’s pathetic. If everyone thinks I like-like Barnes – classy terminology, by the way – then they’ll all think I’m pathetic because Barnes is blatantly in love with Steve. And they’ll think I’m the stupid girl that fell for the guy I could never have and then they’ll pity me and I will loose my reputation I have painstakingly crafted.”
Clint rolled his eyes again. “Well. Do you like anyone else? Romantically? Or even just have the hots for someone?”
“No.” But Natasha’s eyes must have betrayed her, because Clint followed them to the Ravenclaw table.
Clint grunted. “Seriously? Banner is such a dweeb. I mean, I love the guy, but he’s totally a dweeb.”
“I don’t have feelings for Banner, okay. He is a dweeb. And besides, he’s dating Betty–”
“No, he’s not, they broke up.”
“Clint, what have I said about interrupting me? And it doesn’t even matter if they broke up, because I’m not a child, I don’t get crushes.”
Natasha swore if Clint kept rolling his eyes at her, she was going to cut them out of his skull with a rusty spoon. “Nat, don’t say ‘crush’ like it’s a terminal disease. And you’re fifteen! You can like someone. Especially someone who is single and definitely likes you back.”
Her eyes must have given her away again, because Clint smirked. Make that his eyes and his mouth.