Of Rhinos & Griffins

Now you’re just being cute. I can’t go to Pigfarts, it’s on Mars. You need a rocketship. Do you have a rocketship, Potter? I bet you do. You know, not all of us inherited enough money to buy out NASA when our parents died. Look at this. Rocketship Potter. Starkid Potter. Moonshoes Potter. Traversing the galaxy for intergalactic travels to Pigfarts!
-Draco Malfoy, A Very Potter Musical



Rhys is dreaming.

Rhys is pretty sure of this, because he’s almost one hundred per cent certain that honeymoons to Mars aren’t quite available to the general public yet. (If they are, he is so getting married in the morning.)

But even though Rhys is almost certain he’s dreaming, he decides not to care. Because not only is he in a space ship on his way to Mars, Mars, for the holiday of his life, the man sitting next to him is none other than David John McDonald, more commonly known to the general public as David Fucking Tennant.

So Rhys is pretty sure he can be forgiven for overlooking the tiny little detail that none of this is actually real because, hello, David Fucking Tennant is sitting next to him wearing a huge, puffy white wedding dress that shows off his rather wonderful arms and – admittedly flat – chest.

Rhys just sort of gawks at him wordlessly for a few moments and, inevitably, David’s head is pulled back to face him by the intensity of Rhys’s stare. The man smirks, drops him a casual wink that’s about a million times more effective than any jelly-legs jinx and leans over to kiss him, tongue sliding easily into Rhys’s mouth like he’s done it countless times before.

When David pulls away a little to rest their foreheads together, Rhys is on the verge of hyperventilating. He swallows, hard, straightens the bowtie that’s suddenly too tight around his neck and forces himself to breathe.

“I love you,” David whispers, gazing at Rhys with what can only be described as pure, unadulterated love.

(He’s seemingly oblivious to the fact that Rhys is about to die of oxygen deprivation if he doesn’t get air into his lungs in the next few seconds, and declarations of love from one of the primary objects of his obsessions do not exactly help matters.)

Sure enough, Rhys chokes at that and starts coughing violently, but mid-fit the entire space ship melts away from them and Rhys finds himself standing on hard, orange rock – Mars. He glances down, takes note of the authentic-looking white space suit he’s wearing and mentally congratulates his subconscious on paying attention to tiny, important details such as these. Mars looks like it has done in pretty much every photograph Rhys has ever seen – which is quite a lot, really, considering he used to want to be an astronaut for a significant chunk of his life.

He glances to his side, expecting to see David, but he’s nowhere to be seen. Rhys sighs, unable to help the feeling of disappointment that floods his stomach. Presumably he vanished along with the space ship, which is a pity. There was so much Rhys wanted to d- wanted to talk to him about, of course.

But then his mouth drops open because David hasn’t disappeared at all. He’s standing right in front of Rhys, though Rhys is not entirely sure standing is the right word for what the older man is doing.

David is- well, David is a lion, if the way he's crouching on his forepaws, still managing to tower over Rhys nonetheless, is any indication. But he’s not just any old lion, oh no; David is Rumbleroar, headmaster of Pigfarts, the greatest school of witchcraft and wizardry in the entire galaxy.

“Do you want a ride on my back?” Rumbleroar!David asks, in a voice that is loud and growly yet still has the burr of a Scottish accent and is therefore unmistakably his.

Rhys takes a few seconds to gape at the dark brown mane around David’s beautiful, beautiful face before he decides that, to hell with it, this is his dream and it can be wacky and insane and nonsensical if it wants to.

And that’s why Rhys just gives a helpless shrug and a smile before hopping on David’s – Rumbleroar’s – back. He has just about enough time to fist his hands in the creature’s fur before he’s leaping off the ground and around the massive, rocky planet.

Rumbleroar!David sets him down sometime later in front of a group of school children wearing similar space suits to Rhys’s, their house emblems stitched on the front. (Rhys glances quickly down at his, sighing with relief when he’s greeted with the familiar sight of the red and gold emblem of Griffyndor.)

There’s a small blonde boy rolling around the floor drawling about a potty, and a supermegafoxyawesomehot guy with dark, curly hair sitting in the middle of the group, plucking aimlessly at a guitar and filling the expanse of deep space with his illustrious voice. A quick glance around reveals yet more Starkids and Rhys has to sit down, quickly, on a conveniently placed bench that he could’ve sworn wasn’t there five seconds ago.

Even if he didn’t already know that this is just a dream, this has confirmed it. He’s at Pigfarts, which is on Mars. He’s married to David Tennant – who may or may not be Rumbleroar. This is- this is superbly awesome and the best dream ever, Rhys is sure of it. In fact, the only thing that could make it any more perfect is if-

“Hi,” comes a soft, familiar voice, and Rhys looks up to see his delighted grin mirrored on Benedict’s face. Rhys’s eyes flick down to his chest, just to be sure, and is not disappointed with the badger stitched on Benedict’s spacesuit. “Nice of you to join us.”

Rhys squeaks because apparently, apparently he is unable to make coherent noises that vaguely resemble speech in this dream.

But it doesn’t seem to matter much because Benedict’s smiling and leaning towards him and Rhys is on the verge of hyperventilating again because this is just so the best dream ever.

Of course, that’s when a shower of water appears out of nowhere – on Mars, in the middle of space – and crashes right over him. Rhys wakes with a start, dripping water from every part of his body, and curses his twin sister’s existence with every foul word he knows.

(Which, you know, is kind of a lot.)



“He is like fire, burning through time, as old as forever but fast in his prime,” Rhys sings, lathering the shampoo into his hair. “I saw his blue spaceship materialise; he looked out and said to me run for your life.” He reaches up for the shower gel and squirts some onto the loofah before rubbing it over his chest. “I don’t know why I never thought to ask him for his name. I really don’t think he’d have told me the truth anyway, but that’s okay.” Angling his head directly under the cool spray of water, he scrubs his fingers through his hair to wash out the shampoo. “It’s completely terrifying but it’s so, so exciting; he said I was brilliant and I could change the world. So many places I’ve been but there’s so much more to see, we’ve got galaxies and planets and moons... and an awful lot of running to do-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh...”

He steps out of the shower a few minutes later, grabbing a towel to dry first his body, then his hair. Yawning a little, he drops it into the washing basket and shrugs on his fluffy blue dressing gown before plodding back to his room.

Shedding the dressing gown, Rhys shimmies into his jeans and casts around for a t-shirt to wear. He picks out the Deathly Hallows t-shirt that Merryn got him for their last birthday and pulls it over his head, glancing down his chest as he does so.

He blinks. Then he looks up at the ceiling, counts to five and peeks down his shirt again.

“Merryn!” he screeches, still staring at his skin with a mingled mixture of shock and horror. “Merryn, get in here right the fuck now!”

Merryn skids into the room a few moments later, clutching the side of the door to steady herself. “What? What's happened? What's wrong?”

But then she gets a good look at him, at the way the exposed skin of his bare arms is sparkling when it catches the light streaming in from the window like someone’s dumped an entire vat of glitter on top of him. A giggle rises unbidden from her throat, and she bites down hard on her lower lip.

“What do I do, Rhyne?” Rhys pleads, his eyes wide with desperation, but by this point Merryn’s laughing too hard to say anything coherent. “Merryn, come on! I need your support here.”

“What did you do?” she wheezes between bouts of helpless laughter. “Tell me, so I can use it as a prank next April Fool’s Day.”

He glares at her, folding his arms across his chest. “Yeah, thanks for the support, sister of mine. Nice to know I can count on you when I’m having a life-threatening crisis. Yeah, it’s lovely.” He glares down at his skin, as if somehow the sheer force of his rage will magic away the glitter.

She rolls her eyes at his dramatics. “What did you do, though, seriously? Get bitten by any pale, vegetarian vampires recently?”

“I didn’t do anything!” Rhys protests. “Do you think I’d willingly inflict this upon myself? Really? I just came out of the shower and when I put my t-shirt on I noticed my skin pulling an Edward Cullen on me.”

Merryn looks curious for a moment. “You didn’t use the special sparkly shower gel Dad got me last Christmas that I swore I would never, ever use, did you?” she asks carefully.

“No, why would I use the special sparkly shower gel Dad got you last Christmas that you swore you would never, ever-” Rhys breaks off, his eyes widening with realisation. “I didn’t look. I just grabbed the first bottle. I must’ve- oh my God. Oh my God.”

She smirks at him, utterly unsympathetic to his situation. “Seems like you did bring it upon yourself after all.”

“I am going to get mauled by Twi-hards,” he moans, putting his head in his hands. “Please, just kill me now. Please.”

“I’ll get the stake ready,” Merryn chuckles, ducking out of the room when he lunges at her, a growl torn from his throat.



Rhys stumbles downstairs half an hour later, after spending a ridiculously long time in the bathroom trying to scrub the glitter off his skin. Suffice to say, it did not work; his skin is just as glittery as before, if a little redder and more raw where he rubbed it too hard. Not that you can really see his skin, since his arms are covered by the sleeves of a thick black cardigan, there’s one of Merryn’s many scarves wrapped around his neck and his hands are encased in stark black fingerless gloves. Rhys doesn’t want to take any chances.

“Don’t,” Rhys says, eyes dark and fierce, when Merryn opens her mouth to comment on his attire. “Just don’t.”

Chuckling to herself, Merryn pretends to go back to reading her book as Rhys sits down and buries his face in the toast waiting for him on the table. Tugging on his scarf to tighten it around his neck, he scowls at nothing.

When they grab Benedict and get out their bikes, he stops Rhys, frowns at him for a few seconds and asks, curious, “Are you wearing make-up? Your face is kind of... glittery.”

Rhys’s scowl intensifies, but he reaches up to dab at his cheek anyway. “No,” he says shortly. No more than his usual eyeliner, anyway. “Come on.”

Merryn starts laughing again and Rhys really, really hates her sometimes. He means that sincerely.



Rhys glances around the common room, tugging self-consciously at his collar. Merryn and Nikesh exchange amused looks – she delighted in telling him about Rhys’s predicament the minute he walked in, being the cold-hearted fiend that she is – and Benedict just looks confused. He doesn’t really get the Twilight thing; the whole phenomenon has kind of gone right over his head, really.

“Shut up,” Rhys mutters, shifting a little on the chair, even though Merryn and Nikesh technically haven’t said anything.

“I think it looks nice,” Benedict says, loyally. “The glitter, I mean. It makes your skin look all pretty and stuff.”

Rhys hides behind his hair to cover the flush rising in his cheeks. “Uh, thanks.”

Nikesh throws a questioning glance in Rhys’s direction, but Merryn gets up suddenly and throws out a hand that catches him in the chest, and he’s momentarily distracted by his sudden inability to breathe. “Is that- Have they- Is that a microwave I see two Year Thirteens carrying in?!”

Rhys and Benedict – Nikesh is still too busy coughing and wheezing to do anything right now – turn their heads simultaneously to the door where, sure enough, a girl and a boy in the year above are carrying a large cardboard box with a picture of a microwave on the side between them. There’s already a crowd accumulating around them, and as they reach the kitchen and set the microwave down on the counter, a cheer goes up all round the room, accompanied by fervent whoops and raucous applause.

“Oh, this is too good,” Merryn says, sounding almost delirious. “I can have hot meals at school without having to pay out of the nose to get them. I can eat them without having to leave the comfort of the block. I can have warm pasta.” There is a fifty-fifty chance that she is actually salivating right now, the irresistible image of steaming hot, freshly-cooked Italian dishes burned onto her retinas. “I have got to go and have a look. Benedict, fancy helping me fight my way through the crowd?”

Benedict pales, never one to participate in or even condone any form of physical violence, but Merryn just laughs and pats him on the shoulder. “Calm down, it was just a figure of speech. Do you want to come or not?”

“Oh, okay, yeah,” Benedict says, sounding relieved, and he gets up to follow her dutifully over to the kitchen.

“So,” Nikesh says once they’ve left, leaning over to Rhys with a smirk on his lips, “you and Benedict, huh.”

Rhys gives a start, not sure he’s heard the other boy properly. “I- what?” Nikesh waggles his eyebrows at him, and Rhys’s eyes widen as he realises the implications of the other boy’s words. “What? You think me and Ben- No, fuck no, that is so not happening, trust me.”

Nikesh looks confused for a few minutes. “Why? You’re not straight, are you?” he asks, with a bluntness Rhys is unfortunately familiar with after having to live with Merryn for the past sixteen or so years.

“Well, no,” Rhys mutters, his cheeks reddening as he wonders if Nikesh worked it out, or if someone else told him. He's not sure which one he'd prefer, really. “But that’s not the point.”

“What is the point, then?” Nikesh doesn’t look mocking, just curious. “’Cause from where I’m sitting, it looks like you want to take a ride on his light sabre, if you know what I mean.”

Rhys’s face flushes red, the warmth spreading right up to the tips of his ears. “Shut the fuck up,” he hisses, glancing around them feverishly. “He’s just over there.”

Nikesh looks smug again as he whacks Rhys on the arm with his rolled-up copy of the Metro. “It’s like that, is it? Don’t worry, I won’t tell him. Your secret is safe with me.”

“There isn’t a secret to keep safe,” Rhys insists, glaring back at the other boy. “Seriously.”

“Of course there isn’t, Rhys,” Nikesh says, in the tone of someone who’s humouring a delusional person. “Of course there isn’t.”

“There isn’t,” Rhys repeats, but he can tell from the look on the other boy’s face that he doesn’t believe him. Which is- which is just silly, really, because- well, because it just is. Nikesh is the delusional person here, not him, that much is obvious.

Rhys is thankfully saved from any further interrogation on Nikesh’s part by Merryn and Benedict’s return, Merryn looking altogether far too dazed and excited than is really necessary for a bloody microwave, of all things.

“I’m going to bring in some of Miri’s beef stew to heat up tomorrow.” Merryn sighs contentedly at the prospect, a deliriously happy smile on her face. “It’s going to be wonderful.”

Benedict wrinkles his nose a little as he sits down. “I’m sure the dead cow would beg to differ,” he mumbles, squirming around on the chair to get comfortable.

“Oh yeah, you’re a vegetarian too, right?” Nikesh says to Benedict, smiling. “Rhys mentioned it.”

Benedict nods, looking for the first time since Nikesh met him – which was only, to be fair, two days ago – enthusiastic. “Yeah, since I was eight. But I’ve never really liked eating meat.”

Nikesh gives Rhys a sideways look, his eyebrows hitching upwards. “So you wouldn’t like eating Rhys’s meat, then?”

Rhys groans, burying his head in his hands with a mumbled, “Fuck you, Nikesh,” but Benedict only looks vaguely puzzled.

“Um... no?” he says uncertainly, glancing between the two of them. “I wouldn’t like eating anyone’s meat.”

Nikesh lets out a howl of laughter at that, sides shaking more than is necessarily warranted by such a poor joke. Rhys is pretty sure every single part of his skin, exposed or otherwise, is bright, flaming red right now. (At least it hides the glitter, he supposes. That’s something.) Benedict still looks confused, and Merryn is too busy daydreaming – out loud – about all the food she is going to make herself in the brand new shiny microwave to pay any of them a shred of attention.

“Would it kill you to get your mind out of the gutter for five minutes?” Rhys pleads, when he’s sure he’s not about to die of embarrassment. “Seriously?”

“But it’s so comfortable here,” Nikesh replies, voice innocent and eyes wide.

Rhys sighs, shaking his head. It’s probably not a very wise move because at that exact moment, his scarf slips, baring his neck to the world, and a girl walking in front of him stops suddenly and pivots, turning to stare at him. Her eyes are wide with something akin to unbridled joy, and Rhys is suddenly acutely terrified.

“Holy-” Rhys scrambles up out of his chair and flees, just as the girl lunges towards him, with something that sounds somewhat like a cross between a battle cry and a fervent ‘EDWAAAAARD’, excessive vowels included.

The three of them burst out laughing and don’t stop for a very, very long time.



Rhys ducks furtively into assembly a few minutes late, taking a seat at the back beside Benedict and the others. When Merryn shoots him a questioning look, he mouths a single word: Twi-hards. Swallowing down a laugh, she turns to the front, focusing her attention back on the stage.

“Welcome, welcome, for another year at Highgate!” their headmaster, a cheerful, mild-mannered man, is saying. “My name is Mr Richter, and I am headmaster of Highgate.”

He plunges into a speech he has clearly spent ages preparing about the school’s values and their expectations of the students and how much everyone is just going to love it here this year, but Rhys doesn’t hear any of it because he’s grinning widely and is about a second away from bursting into song.

And then he does. (Burst into song, that is.)

“Welcome all of you to Highgate, I welcome all of you to school,” he sings, under his breath so his voice doesn’t carry. “Did you know that here at Highgate, we’ve got a hidden swimming pool? Welcome, welcome, welcome, Highgate, welcome hotties, nerds and tools, now that I’ve got you here at Highgate, I’d, uh, like to go over just a couple of rules...”

Merryn leans over, smacks him upside the head and whispers, “No singing in assembly. Fifty points from Griffyndor.”

After Mr. Richter’s finally finished giving them his positively scintillating speech that they absolutely do not snooze through, they all head to their respective lessons. Rhys has Computing first, and he finds himself glad that the class is relatively small compared to most of the rest of them, because this way there are only four other people, aside from Nikesh, who he could further humiliate himself in front of.

When he walks in, Nikesh at his side, Liam, Maeve, Ellie and Rudy are already sitting at their respective computers, but they look up and nod a vague greeting each as the boys sit down.

“Hey,” Maeve says curiously, peering at Rhys as he logs onto the computer next to hers, “is that- okay, this might sound stupid, but are you wearing body glitter?”

He groans, tugging his frankly useless scarf up to cover more of his neck. “It’s shower gel. Merryn’s, actually, but I used it by accident and it won’t come off.”

(Maeve’s in his form, and used to be in a lot more of his classes back in main school. They’re not friends exactly, but they’re the kind of friendly acquaintances who talk to each other in lessons and wave when they pass each other in the hallways but rarely extend their amiable relationship outside the reaches of the school grounds.

Rhys has got a lot of Maeves in his life, actually, who’ve never quite made the jump from friendly acquaintance to full-on friend. He strongly suspects it’s Merryn’s fault; full on friendship with Rhys means full on friendship with Merryn – and Benedict, of course – and, well, people aren’t exactly lining up for that opportunity.

And that’s their loss, Rhys always thinks defiantly, because once you get past the prickliness and the haughtiness and the tendency towards causing grievous bodily harm to those who cause her displeasure, Merryn is awesome. Really, truly awesome.)

“Ah,” Maeve says, with the kind of wisdom that can only come from experience. She pushes a clump of curly, carrot-coloured hair out of her face, fixes him with sympathetic grey eyes and a smile. “I see.”

Rhys smiles weakly back, glad she’s not making any jokes about sparkly vampires, because he thinks he’s had just about enough of those to last him an entire lifetime, thank you very much.

(Rhys really, really loves Maeve right now.)

“I give it half an hour before a Year Seven throws herself at you, wailing about you being her long-lost vampire love,” she continues matter-of-factly.

“Way ahead of you,” Rhys says glumly. “This girl in our year jumped me in the common room this morning. It was not pleasant.”

Maeve’s face contorts like she’s about to start laughing but is trying really, really hard not to, a hand up to cover her mouth in a feeble attempt at hiding it. “Sorry Rhys,” she says at the look on his face, biting down hard on her lower lip, “but you have to admit, that is kind of funny.”

(Okay, scratch that. Rhys really, really hates Maeve right now, dammit.)

“Hello!” Mr Forbes, their teacher, beams, thankfully saving Rhys from any more teasing. “Programming lesson today, isn’t it?” Half the class let out a groan. Mr Forbes just grins. “Come on, at least pretend to have some enthusiasm. Please?”

“Wooh, programming,” Nikesh says, voice dry.

Shaking his head at them ruefully, Mr Forbes perches on his desk at the front. “Give it time. By the end of the year, you will be completely and utterly enamoured with C#, I guarantee it. There are a couple of introductory exercises on the shared drive, if you can find them. Start working through them, and by all means, work together rather than by yourself. You know how I feel about collaborative learning; it’s a very valuable tool when used effectively.” Mr Forbes looks earnest as he says this and really, he is the only teacher in the entire school who could pull it off without sounding like a patronising git. “If you get really stuck, I’ll be wandering round the room so grab me and beg for assistance and I might just help you out a little. Everyone okay?”

There’s a vague murmur of assent from the six of them before they turn to their computers to locate the exercises that Mr Forbes specified. The first one looks ridiculously easy, a quick exercise on basic string manipulation, and Rhys makes a face but he decides to start working through it anyway in order to familiarise himself with the language. He’s never used C# before but the principles of programming apply across all the different languages, so it shouldn’t take him too long to get used to it.

Nikesh pokes him a minute or so later when Rhys is in the middle of working out how to concatenate strings and gestures to his screen. Rhys glances over at it, making a face as he reads the four lines Nikesh has just typed.

string reply = “”;
Console.WriteLine(“whats the deal with you and bennyboy siriusly”);
reply = Console.ReadLine();
Console.ReadLine();

When Rhys opens his mouth to speak, Nikesh holds up a hand, presses F5 and sits back a little to gesture at the console that has appeared on the screen, his meaning clear. Sighing, Rhys obliges him and types, He’s my best friend, you know that, hesitating only a moment before hitting enter to exit the console.

Smirking, Nikesh returns to his code and types:

while (reply != "i want to fuck his brains out")
______{
_________Console.WriteLine("LIES");
_________reply = Console.ReadLine();
______}

“That code is extremely inefficient,” Rhys informs Nikesh, shaking his hair into his face to hide the blush spreading on his cheeks. “You need to get the program to search for the phrase within the string rather than restricting the entry to be exactly what you’re looking for.”

Nikesh rolls his eyes at him. “Well I’m incredibly sorry it doesn’t meet your standards, oh high and mighty programming master. I’ll just edit it to your satisfaction, shall I?”

“You do that,” Rhys says, and pointedly returns to his own screen, ignoring the other boy when he pokes him in the arm repeatedly to check his “amazing code, come on Rhys, just look!”

“Working hard, boys?” comes the dry, amused voice of Mr Forbes as he sneaks up on them from behind with his ninja teacher skills.

“My code’s compiling, sir,” Nikesh says automatically, grin wolfish, and the teacher just laughs. He walks off, heading towards the others, and Rhys turns to scowl at Nikesh. “Wipe that look off your face, mate. It wouldn’t bother you so much if it weren’t at least a little bit true.”

And for a moment Rhys hates him for being so annoying and insistent and most of all wrong because he does not fancy Benedict, his best friend of nigh on ten years now, in the absolute slightest. He’s not even vaguely attractive. Okay, he’s not ugly, not by any means, but he’s too... cute. Cute like a little kid, all sweet and innocent-looking, with big blue eyes and an even wider smile. There’s no way Rhys fancies him. The mere idea is, quite frankly, ridiculous, and it’s only bothering Rhys so much because it’s not true and Nikesh refuses to accept this.

“It is not true, not even a little bit,” Rhys insists, hair flapping a little as he shakes his head firmly. “I don’t know where you even got this ridiculous idea from.”

“Thou doth protest too much,” Nikesh says, an exaggerated sigh tacked onto the end as if for dramatic effect.

And Rhys wants to stay angry with him, really he does, but the boy has just quoted Shakespeare, Shakespeare, even if it is a ridiculously famous and largely overused line, and Rhys can’t stay angry at anyone when they start quoting good literature.

“No more bad jokes about light sabres or I will actually kill you,” he warns Nikesh with a good-humoured glare. “With my bare hands. Or possibly Benedict’s spork.”

Nikesh holds his hands up in surrender. “No more bad jokes about light sabres,” he agrees with a defeated little nod of his head. “I promise.” But then he gets this sly little look on his face that Rhys instantly dreads. “But what say you of sonic screwdrivers?”