A/N: For prompt-a-thon over on Tumblr! The prompt was: Sam/Steve, Harry Potter AU. This spawned a whole lot of speculation on my part and not very much actual plot. I liked this though, and I might come back to it eventually. Hope you all like it!

The best thing about being a seventh year, Steve thinks, staring at his parchment, is how most classes are now small enough for all four houses to take them together.

Natasha sits next to him, bored out of her mind. She's chewing the Muggle gum she smuggled in, her feet on the back of Clint Barton's chair. Clint, a scruffy looking Hufflepuff who is always late to class, is sitting next to Bucky, who is clearly struggling to not fall asleep. Tony Stark, on Steve's other side, a Ravenclaw who is trying to grow a goatee, proving that he still has the maturity of a five year old, is poking Pepper Potts, the Slytherin headgirl extraordinaire, while his best friend, Rhodey rolls his eyes. Pepper ignores him, carefully taking notes. Next to her sits Sam Wilson, who flips through the textbook, eyes occasionally glancing up at the teacher. Thor Odinson, Gryffindor, and Jane Foster, Ravenclaw, are also in the front row, playing hang-man.

Natasha notices Steve looking at Sam and raises her eyebrows, smirking. Steve flushes and ducks his head, focusing intently on his doodling.

Behind him, he hears Betty Ross and Sharon laugh softly. Steve's blush intensifies—Sharon and Nat are close friends, so of course Sharon knows.

"Everybody knows, Rogers," Bucky says, tilting his chair back to whisper. "Seriously, just ask him out."

Steve stares at Bucky, mortified. Nat reaches over and pulls out a sheet of parchment from beneath the others. She points at a doodle of Sam that Steve had done a few weeks ago. Then she fishes out a different piece, with another sketch of Sam.

"Everybody knows," Nat said with a nod.

"Freaking Slytherins, sticking their noses where they don't belong," Steve muttered, his ears incredibly red.

Nat and Bucky snorted in perfect unison. And Clint—the traitor—also chuckled.

Class ended, and Steve stuffed his parchment into his bag, still red as a cherry.

Someone had once dubbed their small group the Avengers a few years ago, and it stuck. It wasn't a particularly cohesive group, but they still tended to flock together.

"Barton!" Kate Bishop, a small Slytherin first year who had taken to shadowing Clint, frowns at him, a small ball of tabby in her arms.

"Katie-Kate, didn't you just have Transfiguration on the other side of the castle?"

"Yes," Kate says. She reaches out and dumps Lucky, Clint's one eyed cat into his arms. "Your cat was in my dorm again," she says, disapproving.

"How is that my fault?" Clint demands.

"Everything is your fault, Barton," Natasha says dryly, and Kate nods emphatically.

"Traitor," Clint groans. Kate giggles.

"Hey Steve," Sam says, walking up to him and Nat, Rhodey following him.

"Hey Sam," Steve says, resolutely not looking at Bucky or Natasha.

"We still on for Hogsmede tomorrow?" Sam asks, oblivious to their Slytherin friends' shenanigans.

"Sure," Steve shrugs.

"Ooh, Rogers, you sly fox," Natasha whispers in his ear. Steve shoots her a glare and then turns his attention back to Sam.

"Back to the Gryffindor dorm for you?" Steve asks.

"Sadly," Sam says. "Remind me—is it your turn or my turn tonight?"

"Mine," Steve replies, ignoring Nat and Bucky's curious looks. "Eli did it last night—have you talked to him?"

"Yeah," Sam says with a nod. "Well, I better get going."

"Wilson, wait!" Sharon Carter, the one of two other Gryffindors in the Avengers (Thor, the other one, has already snuck off with Jane), runs forward, and loops her arm through Sam's. "Let's go," she says, glancing over her shoulder to shoot Steve a look.

Steve can't help it—he blushes again.

"What was that about?" Bucky asks, crossing his arms.

"Well, you know that second year girl, America Chavez?"

"The one who Clint thinks is actually from Durmstrang?" Natasha says, raising her eyebrows, a knowing smirk on her face.

"The one who kicked Tony yesterday?" Bucky asks, looking fond as he thinks about it.

"Yeah, her. Well, she's living in the Room of Requirement—"

"What?!" Bucky yelped. Everyone else turned to stare at them.

"So she needs help getting food, and David—"

"That skinny Ravenclaw kid with glasses?"

"The Mutant-Wizard ambassador?" Bucky and Nat, respectively, ask at the same time.

"Yes. David asked Sam and I to help."

"Why didn't he ask a Ravenclaw?" Natasha asks. "Bruce is a softie, he'd have done it."

"Thanks, Natasha," Bruce say sardonically, rolling his eyes, revealing once and for all that the entire group is indeed eavesdropping in on the conversation.

Steve shrugs. "He just did. Anyways, so we've been feeding her for a while, and it's my turn today. So I've got to go to the kitchens."

"Wait," Lucky is now on Clint's shoulder, draped around his neck like a living, one eyed scarf. "She's in the Room of Requirement."

"Yes?" Steve says, squinting at his fellow Hufflepuff, unsure of where Clint is going with this.

"Aha!" Clint spins and points at Kate. "That's how you're getting around, aren't you? You're getting Miss America or whatever her name is to use the Room to transport you around?"

"You're ridiculous, Barton," Kate says.

"But I'm right, aren't I?"

"Off topic!" Tony yells, cutting off what would doubtlessly be a very extended argument. "The real topic is how we get Steve here to actually ask Sam out."

"Tony!" Pepper shoots him a reprimanding look, but Rhodey just laughs and nods, which mean Tony will just keep going. Tony Stark operates under a "majority rule" system—if Pepper and Rhodey disapprove, he'll consider stopping. Maybe.

Steve flushes and began considering if he could make a break for it—the Hufflepuff common room wasn't too far away.

That evening, Steve goes down to the Room of Requirement to check on America. Scowling, twelve years old, and incredibly powerful, America Chavez had shown up at Hogwarts over the summer, recently orphaned and bruised, and Professor Fury had let her stay for her own safety. She refused to be sorted, and had taken up residence in the Room. Fury had rolled his eyes and told Sam and Steve to keep an eye on her. He would have asked Natasha, but Nat was already busy making sure that the Maximoff twins didn't destroy the building, and, to quote Fury, "Nobody needs that many first years in their lives."

The Maximoff twins were a logistical nightmare. The sons of Wanda Maximoff, Mugwump Supreme of the International Wizards Council and considered to be the most powerful witch of the century, they had been separated at birth and adopted into different families for their own safety. Billy Kaplan, Gryffindor, had apparently inherited a good part of his mother's magic, and had been adopted by an adoring wizard family. Tommy Shepard, however, had not been quite so fortunate. The albino Hufflepuff had been adopted by a Muggle family who were far less loving (and also far worse parents in general), and had been quite surprised when their son began to show magical abilities (even if they were far more subdued than Billy's.) Tommy was scowling, bitter, and strongly resented his mother for letting him be adopted by the Shepards, who, according to Natasha, weren't responding to Tommy's letters home, and had even sent an official letter of inquiry about Tommy spending the summers at Hogwarts in addition to Christmas and Easter.

Wanda Maximoff, who was doing Fury a favor and was teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts for a year, hadn't known about Tommy's situation, and, according to Natasha, was trying to make amends with him, but Tommy was unresponsive.

In short, no wonder Fury had already dubbed the first years the Young Avengers, a twitch developing in his temple. "At least you lot had the decency to wait until third year before you began to have issues," Fury had snapped at Steve, waving a piece of paper describing Cassie Lang's (Hufflepuff) heart condition.

Steve shakes his head, pulling himself out of his thoughts, and pushed open the door to the Room. America and Sam were already there, Sam with his transfiguration textbook (Sam was studying to be an animagus) and America with a novel propped up on her lap.

"Hey Steve!" Sam says, not looking up from his wing diagram, which he was carefully annotating with help from the book.

"Hey Cap," America says, sounding bored.

"You going to visit Eli tonight?" Steve asks her, setting down his bag and sitting down next to Sam.

America's nose wrinkles as she thinks—Eli Bradley, Hufflepuff, grandson of Isaiah Bradley, the famous Auror, was a good friend of hers. "Maybe," she says, shrugging. "Loki wants everybody to hang out tomorrow night, so I might just wait till then."

"Loki? Thor's brother?" Sam says, looking up. "Why's he hanging out with first years?"

The Odinsons were a disaster. Thor had originally gone to Asgard Academy, a school in Norway, before he visited Hogwarts to see the Triwizard Tournament, had become enamored with the school, made friends with Jane Foster (who he would later end up dating), and enrolled for his fourht year, bringing along with him his sulking first year brother, who was furious about not getting to go to Asgard. Loki, sorted into Slytherin, was greatly resentful that his brother's education choices influenced his own, (which Steve couldn't exactly blame him for) but also had a gigantic grudge against the Avengers in general for reasons that Steve had never quite figured out. The grudge was mostly harmless, so Steve let it go.

"He thinks he can boss us around," America says, tossing her thick curly hair over her shoulder.

"Have you punched him yet?" Steve asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Not very hard," America says, shrugging. "Besides, Kate says he's funny." She sighs the sigh of a long suffering girl and rolls her eyes.

"So," Sam says, leaning against Steve. "How long until the rest of the Avengers figure it out, you think?"

Steve cups Sam's face with his hands and kisses him, short and sweet because of America's presence. "I give Nat a week. Bucky ten days. Tony probably won't figure it out until Christmas."

"Good benchmarks," Sam says, grinning.

"You guys are gross, America informs them, not looking up from her book.

"You keep that up, you see if I let you come home with me for Christmas," Sam says, mock glaring at her.