Chapter Text
The number of students that put their names down to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas is unprecedented. Harry always did, of course, because the alternative was going back to Privet Drive, but he was always in the minority. This year almost all fourth years and above signed up to stay.
Everyone is obsessed with the prospect of the Yule Ball – or, at least, all the girls are. It’s amazing how many Hogwarts suddenly seems to house. He’s never noticed before. Everywhere he goes, there’s girls giggling and whispering. Some even shriek with laughter any time he accidentally makes eye contact. It’s unsettling.
“Why do they move in packs?” Harry asks Ron as a dozen or so girls stare blatantly at them as they pass by.
“For safety?” Ron jokes, adjusting the strap of his messenger bag, “Got any idea who you’re going to try?”
Harry makes a face and doesn’t answer. He knows perfectly well who he’d like to ask, but working up the nerve is something else entirely. He and Cedric haven’t discussed the matter. In fact, they haven’t discussed much of anything since the night of the First Task. They’ve been rather preoccupied with snogging every chance they get.
Ron takes Harry’s silence for apprehension. “Look, you’re not going to have any trouble. You’re a Champion. You practically beat Viktor Krum in a duel! I bet girls will be queueing up to go with you.”
Trelawney would be proud of his prediction.
Just an hour later, the moment Flitwick lets them out of Charms, a curly-haired Hufflepuff asked him. Harry’s never spoken to her in his life. She scurried off in tears once he remembered how to form words and say no. Then, a third-year Ravenclaw asked him before lunch and a fifth-year Slytherin (to his horror) asked after lunch.
“She was quite good looking,” Ron laughs.
Harry scowls. “She was taller than me. Imagine what I’d look like trying to dance with her.”
Ron stands on his toes and pretends to waltz down the corridor with an invisible giant. He, Dean, and Seamus taunt Harry about it all through History of Magic. Harry ignores them, imagining what it would be like to dance with Cedric instead.
Despite the looming embarrassment of opening the Ball, life has definitely improved since the First Task. He’s not attracting nearly as much negative attention. He suspects it has everything to do with Cedric. He overheard Ernie MacMillan and Justin Finch-Fletchley gossiping that Cedric called a Hufflepuff House meeting and demanded they leave Harry alone. The volume of Potter Stinks badges halved seemingly overnight.
He’s not surprised to feel his pocket heat up at dinner. He reaches in and pulls out the silver coin from the First Task. Cedric used the Protean Charm on it so they could communicate more inconspicuously than sending notes. The embossed number “2” on its face has been replaced with the number “11.”
Harry closes his palm around it and hides a smile.
--
“Evil, Snape is,” Ron complains from his spot next to the fireplace in the Gryffindor Common Room.
To no one’s surprise, they’d all miserably failed yesterday’s surprise exam on poison antidotes. Their revisions are due by the end of the week, the last day before the Christmas holidays begin.
“You’re not exactly straining yourself, though, are you?” Hermione says, hunched over her potions notes.
Ron adds two more Exploding Snap cards to his castle with surgical precision. “I’m a lost cause.”
Hermione snorts and redirects her attention to Harry. “I’d have thought you’d be doing something constructive, Harry, even if you don’t want to learn your antidotes.”
He rolls his eyes and flips to the next page of Flying with the Cannons. “Like what?”
“The book!”
“I’ve got ‘til March twenty-first.”
He’d stashed Merlin’s grimoire upstairs in his trunk and hasn’t bothered opening it since before the First Task.
“But it might take you that long to learn alchemy!” she hisses, “You’ll look like a real idiot if everyone else knows what they’re doing and you don’t. The other Champions have studied it for at least a year.”
“Oh, leave him alone, Hermione. He’s earned a bit of a break,” Ron admonishes, creating the last turret on his castle.
It explodes in his face.
--
Harry barely makes it inside the Room of Requirement before Cedric pulls him into a kiss, murmuring hullo against his lips. “How was your day?”
Harry grunts something that resembles fine. He tries to deepen the kiss but Cedric pulls back, leading him by the hand to their couch in front of the fireplace.
“I heard you broke poor Eleanor’s heart.”
“Who?”
Cedric barks out a laugh. “Younger sister of Susan Bones.”
Harry slumps against the older boy’s chest, tucking his feet beneath his legs. He really doesn’t care who she is.
“We should probably talk about it,” Cedric says after a while. His thumb traces over Harry’s knuckles where their fingers are still interlaced.
Harry’s throat clenches unpleasantly. “What if I don’t want to?”
“We do it anyway.”
Harry knew this conversation was inevitable, but he’d hoped to avoid it for as long as possible. He doesn’t want to hear what he suspects Cedric will say. Swallowing thickly, he cranes his neck to look up. “Can’t we just go to the ball together?”
“No.” Cedric presses a kiss to Harry’s forehead over his scar. “That’ll look like collusion.”
Harry’s brow furrows. “Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
“Well, yeah. No need to rub their noses in it.”
“I don’t want to go with anyone else,” Harry grumbles mulishly.
Cedric squeezes their fingers. “It won’t be a date. I have a friend in Ravenclaw, Cho. I’m fairly certain I could ask her and she wouldn’t think anything of it. You should go with Hermione.”
Harry sighs, repositioning his head until he can listen to Cedric’s heartbeat. “Alright. I’ll ask her.”