lomonaaeren

“Are you going to the Yule Ball?”

Harry blinked and looked up from the spellbook that Nott had brought him, which had a lot of charms and hexes and jinxes he wanted to learn. “Oh,” he said, when he heard what Nott had said. “No.”

He tried to delve back into the book, but Nott sat down on the grass in front of him and made Harry look at him. “Why not?”

“For the same reason I didn’t participate in the First Task? There’s nothing to make me do it now, so why should I?”

“A lot of people think differently about a Ball than they do about facing dragons, Potter.”

Oh. Nott was going all ironic and unreadable on him. Harry hated when he did that. “Well, I don’t know who would want to date me because I’m the Boy-Who-Lived and who wouldn’t,” he said. “Besides, I’m going to the Malfoys’ for Christmas.”

That was a partial truth. He was going to meet up with Sirius the day before Christmas, because Sirius had said there were things they couldn’t explain in a letter and he really needed to talk to Harry. But then he would be going to Malfoy Manor.

“I thought Draco was staying for the Ball?”

“Apparently he is. But I’m going to the Malfoys’.”

“So there’s no way that you would consider going to the Ball, then.”

Harry eyed Nott and the way he was tearing at the grass with both hands. He never seemed to tear it loose, only pull at it and release it so that it stayed in place. “What’s on your mind, Nott?”

Nott stared off into the darkness of the Forbidden Forest. They had come to sit right on the edge of it a lot, after that first time when Nott had found him sulking there and taught Harry the spells to compel the Goblet of Fire. “I—thought that someone might consider the boy he was loyal to as a dancing partner.”

Oh.

Harry was adrift on a sea he hadn’t even known existed, suddenly. It was so beyond him that someone would willingly want to come to the Ball with him, and dance with him. At least, not someone who wasn’t after his fame. A lot of people just avoided Harry now, as if they were upset that they’d been wrong about him cheating to get into the Tournament.

And a boy?

Harry remembered some rants from Uncle Vernon about boys dating boys. But nothing very concrete. Apparently it was a thing freaks did and a thing that Uncle Vernon hated for some reason.

Which is probably a recommendation, honestly.

“I—I could stay.”

Nott turned and looked at him. “You would?” He swallowed several times and probably would have said something else, but it seemed that words were stuck in his mouth the same way they were for Harry.

“I could. I mean, if you wanted. Or someone who wanted me to go with them to the Yule Ball wanted.”

Harry was unsure that Nott was going to actually ask him, when it seemed as though he couldn’t even say that he wanted to go with Harry to the Ball. But now, Nott’s eyes glinted, and he tilted his head and swept a bow from where he was sitting.

“Harry Potter, godson of Lucius Malfoy and Sirius Black, son of James Potter and Lily Evans, would you go with me to the Yule Ball?”

Harry felt his cheeks heat up. Part of him thought that was probably a pureblood way of asking someone on a date and part of him thought that Nott was just pretending it was. He made shit up like that all the time.

But Nott was waiting for an answer, and he was growing tenser and tenser as the moments passed, although someone who didn’t know him the way Harry did (why did he?) probably wouldn’t have noticed.

“I’ll—come with you, Theodore Nott, son of parents he never told me the names of.”

That startled a laugh out of Nott, and he smiled. Harry caught his breath. He had thought Nott was pretty nice-looking—as in, he was nice to Harry—when he smirked and made fun of some of the stuck-up purebloods in Slytherin, but he was great¬-looking like this.

“My parents’ names are Theobald and Eveline,” he murmured. “But I hope that you want to date me for me and not for them.”

“Your dad’s too old for me,” Harry said.

Another laugh, and Nott reached out. Harry clasped his hand and felt the wiry strength in it, as if Nott could actually throw Harry to the ground if he wanted.

“You can call me Theo,” Nott said, with the air of granting Harry a gift.

And he was. Harry smiled. “Harry.”

*

“You’re going to see—Snuffles?”

Harry nodded to Ron as he draped his Invisibility Cloak around his shoulders. “Yeah. He gave me directions to the cave by Hogsmeade where he’s hiding now.” He tilted his hood forwards over his head.

“And you won’t tell me who you’re taking to the Yule Ball.”

Harry just snorted without answering and tiptoed towards the door of their bedroom. Seamus and Dean and Neville were all asleep, and Ron just fell back on his bed with a sigh, probably knowing that making too much noise would wake the others up.

And besides. Harry didn’t want to tell anybody until he and Theo showed up at the Yule Ball on each other’s arms.

He smiled as he slipped down and out through the common room and past the Fat Lady, thinking of that. He walked confidently across the grounds, ignoring the sensation of a chill on the night air. It was nothing compared to what he would have felt from the Dementors last year.

Out through the gates, down the path to Hogsmeade, and beyond. About halfway through the journey, Harry wished that he knew how to Apparate, but it didn’t really matter. He kept walking.

He would always keep walking, for Sirius, and to try and reunite the complicated halves of his life.

He reached the cave at what must have been almost midnight, guiding himself with the light of the nearly-full moon and a Lumos on his wand. He had been a little worried that someone might spot the light floating around underneath the Cloak, but if someone had looked out their window in Hogsmeade and seen it going by, they’d decided it was the better part of valor to stay inside.

“The better part of valor” is something Theo would say. Or Draco.

Harry shrugged as he slipped inside the cave. So he was influenced by his godbrother and the boy he was taking to the Yule Ball. So what.

“Harry?”

Sirius’s voice was ragged and wary, on the edge of a growl, as if he was about to turn into a dog any minute. Harry shook off the Invisibility Cloak and smiled at him. “Yeah, it’s me, Sirius.”

His godfather—one of his godfathers—rushed over and hugged him. Harry patted Sirius’s shoulder and let Sirius hug him as long as he wanted. He could understand why Sirius had been afraid, after everything Mr. Malfoy had done during the war.

“This is so ridiculous,” Sirius said, breaking free with a gasp and a shake of his head. “How could James have made Lucius your godfather?”

“I really don’t know. Except that Mr. Malfoy said something about Dad’s mum being related to people on Mr. Malfoy’s mum’s side of the family? Or something?’

Sirius opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. “My mother made me learn all these useless pureblood genealogies when I was a kid,” he muttered, and held up a hand. “Let me try to think and see if I remember it from before Azkaban.”

Harry nodded and busied himself taking out the picnic basket Dobby had packed for him (amid loud exclamations of how Harry shouldn’t have to eat anything from the nasty Malfoys) and arranging plates of chicken sandwiches and biscuits and steaming bowls of soup charmed not to spill while Sirius sat there with his eyes shut. After a few minutes, Sirius’s nose twitched, and he sighed and reached out to grab the nearest plate.

“Yeah, all right. I remember. James’s maternal grandmother was—something like Malfoy’s mum’s second cousin once removed. Or something.”

Harry just nodded. He sat down and ate part of a meal, while Sirius devoured the rest. Harry had eaten pretty well at dinner.

“So you don’t think Mr. Malfoy is lying?” Harry asked, once Sirius looked like he could pay attention to something besides food.

“No, we wouldn’t be that lucky.” Sirius leaned back against the cave wall and patted his full stomach with one hand. “But, Harry, we should talk about the spell you cast on the Goblet. And—well, no, you aren’t part of the Tournament anymore. Thought I was going to have a heart attack when the Prophet came out after the First Task and I saw it was dragons.”

Harry nodded. Krum had got the highest score at the Task, although he thought that was partially because Karkaroff was just really biased. Other than that, Harry hadn’t paid much attention, and he hadn’t even gone, because he didn’t think that watching teenagers go up against dragons was a good time.

“Where did you get that spell?”

“A friend.”

“Going to tell me who?”

“Someday.”

Sirius sighed and grabbed a last sandwich crust to eat with a thoughtful look. “Are you afraid this friend might get in trouble? It is Dark Arts, to force a magical artifact to obey your will the way that spell did. But I’m not as worried about that as Dumbledore is.”

“I thought you hated the Dark Arts.”

“The kind my family flung around, yeah. None of them were ever as harmless as making an artifact tell the truth.”

From the way Sirius was staring at his hand, he was going to get lost in memories again, and maybe ones that were worse than the ones brought on by Dementors. Harry hastily intervened. “Well, I think that this one is brilliant. It told me the truth and gave me somewhere to go other than the Dursleys’.”

“I would give you somewhere to go other than the Dursleys’.”

“I know, Sirius.” Harry reached out and hugged his godfather. Sirius grabbed him back with desperate strength. “But you’re hunted through no fault of your own and you can’t. Mr. Malfoy can.”

“Even though he was a Death Eater?”

“Yeah, I hate that. But anywhere is better than Privet Drive.”

“What did they do to you, Harry?”

Harry had never told anybody the whole thing before, never put more than a few things in words. He had really only talked to Ron and the twins about the bars on his window, and that was because they’d seen them and he couldn’t lie. His tongue got tangled behind his teeth now, and Sirius watched him with longing eyes until Harry could whisper a few words, about the cupboard and being called a freak and kept without meals.

That was enough to make Sirius look both heartbroken and furious. He reached out and hugged Harry again. Harry hugged back, and Sirius rubbed his back with long circles for a few times before letting go.

“Yeah,” he said. “I can see why you would think the Malfoys were better than that. Unless he actually hands you over to You-Know-Who…”

“I don’t think he will.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“Well, for one thing, everyone’s going to know that I was over at their house, and I don’t think Mr. Malfoy really believes I could disappear and everyone would believe him about me mysteriously going missing,” Harry said dryly, and Sirius nodded. “But for another, Malfoy—I mean Draco—has been nicer than he was.”

“Define nicer.”

“He’s hexing people for using the word Mudblood, when he called Hermione that once. And he’s not taunting my friends. He just ignores them now.”

“You have a weak definition of nice, Harry,” Sirius said, shaking his head in what looked like resignation.

“Yeah I know, but…at least it’s better than it was before. And if he hadn’t changed at all, then I would never have believed that the Malfoys wanted to change. Or that Mr. Malfoy took being my godfather seriously.”

“I can say that he does probably do that. And I can’t believe that I’m saying this about a Death Eater, but fine, you can go stay at his house for Christmas.” Sirius leaned a little closer, his face lonely. “But I’m still your favorite godfather in this cave, right?”

“My favorite godfather, period.”

Sirius beamed, and nearly crushed Harry in his hug.

*

“Come on, Harry, tell us who you’re going with.”

“You’ll see just like everyone else in a few minutes.”

Ron pouted at him, but Harry ignored the temptation to give in and tell him. The closer he got to the Yule Ball, in fact, the more nervous he was feeling—not about whether he was going to disappoint Theo, but how people would react to seeing both of them together. Was it safe for Theo to reveal himself when Dumbledore would probably know that he was the one who’d taught Harry the spell to use on the Goblet of Fire?

Theo was the one who wanted me to go with him to the Yule Ball, Harry reminded himself sternly. I don’t think that he would have done that if he was worried about Dumbledore figuring out the truth. Maybe he even wants it to come out.

He checked the hang of his dress robes one more time in the bathroom mirror. A package that he hadn’t opened at the table had arrived with breakfast post in the Great Hall a week ago. It had contained much nicer blue dress robes than the green pair he’d been planning to wear.

From the way Theo’s eyes had glimmered at him, Harry knew who was responsible for them.

“Please, Harry?”

“I’ll tell you now if you tell me why you didn’t ask Hermione to the Ball before Krum could.”

Ron’s face turned so bright red that Harry could have put a brick beside it and not seen any difference. “I sort of wanted to,” Ron muttered, and kicked at the floor. “Sometimes it’s just hard to remember that she’s a girl, you know? She doesn’t care about makeup or fancy robes the way Lavender and Parvati do…”

“Well, you’re going with Parvati. Problem of dating a girl solved.”

“I wanted to go with Hermione.”

Harry didn’t respond to that, because he was pretty sure that he would just get the same kind of excuse-not-really-explanation. He patted Ron on the shoulder with some real sympathy and then headed towards the portrait hole.

The corridor was full of Gryffindor boys jostling each other and whispering nervously. Some were actually whimpering. Harry shook his head. He was nervous, sure, but if this was part of asking girls to things, he was just as glad that he was going with a bloke.

“Hermione!”

Hermione had left early enough that Harry had been sure that she would already be down at the Great Hall with Krum, but she turned around now and smiled at them. She looked particularly pretty in robes of a periwinkle blue, a few shades lighter than Harry’s own, and she’d spent some time on straightening her hair.

“Harry! You look wonderful! Those are the robes that you got the other day?”

“Yes. You look pretty, Hermione.’

Hermione smiled at him, but then caught sight of Ron and put her nose up in the air, rapidly walking in the direction of the Great Hall. Harry shook his head. It seemed there was always some kind of drama going on with his friends. They’d had, what, three weeks after Ron had accepted that Harry hadn’t put his name in the Goblet? And then this had happened.

Oh, well.

They got to the crowd of people shifting and eddying outside the Great Hall, and Hermione went to join Krum. Ron held out his arm to Parvati with an unenthusiastic expression, which Parvati returned. Harry wondered idly who she’d wanted to go with as he scanned the crowd for Theo.

It was like a dramatic moment in a Muggle movie: people stepped aside at exactly the right time, and Theo turned around and locked eyes with Harry. He smiled widely and began to walk in his direction.

Harry found it hard to catch his breath. Theo was wearing blue robes, too, but they were a lighter, icier blue than the ones Harry had on, and they made his green eyes shine as if lit from within. He held out his arm as he came closer, and Harry turned and tucked his own arm in, feeling like he’d swallowed a firework.

“Harry?”

Ron was goggling at him. Draco was doing the same thing from across the crowd. Harry laughed a little and turned towards the doors of the Great Hall just as they opened and Professor McGonagall stood framed there.

Theo was a warm presence beside him. Harry thought he could get very used to that.

*

“Seriously, mate, you and Nott?”

Harry sipped his glass of water and smiled. Theo had gone to get him a glass of butterbeer, which someone had brought and which Harry wasn’t sure the professors knew about. They’d danced twice, eaten a good meal, and sat talking quietly about the spells they were learning and the Abraxans Theo’s father owned and some of the paintings in various parts of the Slytherin common room and—

Nothing at all. Everything at once.

“Why not?” Harry asked casually, and looked at Ron, who was standing in front of him gawking. There was no sign of Parvati. Harry hoped that she had found someone she really wanted to dance with. “Are you upset about me dating a boy?”

“What? Why would I be?”

Harry blinked. “Sorry. Some Muggles get upset about it.”

“Ridiculous,” Ron said, and then plopped down on the bench next to Harry and reached past his shoulder to steal what looked like small fried cheese sandwiches from a bowl. He ate two of them and then shook his head. “I just didn’t know that you would date someone I didn’t think you’d spoken two words to.”

“We meet up to study sometimes.”

It didn’t say as much as Harry wanted to, but he also didn’t want to share that much. Frankly, Theo was part of his life that wasn’t that complex right now, the way his relationship with the Malfoys or his friends were. Harry wanted to just keep it separate and gentle for as long as he could.

“Huh. What started that?”

“He thought I looked sorry for myself during the time when everyone thought I put my own name in the Goblet and told me to stop moping.”

“Um.”

Ron was flushed bright red. Harry just nodded. He didn’t want to talk about the time right after the Goblet right now, either. “Where’s Parvati?”

“Oh, she said she was going to dance with Seamus.” Ron slumped backwards on the bench next to Harry and stared off in what was probably the direction Hermione and Krum had last danced, although Harry couldn’t see them. “I made a right mess of things, didn’t I?”

“I think Hermione thought she was a last resort instead of someone you really wanted to date, yeah.”

“Yeah,” Ron repeated, and sighed. Then he nudged Harry with an elbow. “Although if I’d known you were open to dating blokes, then I could have asked you.”

Harry hoped he hid his shudder. He and Ron were best friends, and Harry wanted to continue being best friends despite the confusing way that everything had happened, but he couldn’t imagine feeling about Ron the way he did about Theo.

“Harry, here—oh. Weasley.”

Harry rolled his eyes at Theo as he accepted the glass of butterbeer from him. “Thanks, Theo,” he said, and then drank several large gulps from it while Theo and Ron eyed each other. Then he put the glass down and held out his hand. “Are you ready to dance again, Theo?”

“Yes,” Theo said, and smiled at him, and glared at Ron one more time, before pulling Harry to his feet.

As they swept back out onto the dance floor, Harry murmured, “He’s doing his best. You don’t need to look at him like that.”

“He’s looking at me like he wants to set me on fire.”

“That is the best, for him. But do you have to sink to that level?”

Theo spent a moment thinking about that while they swayed back and forth to the music. Theo was an amazing dancer. Even though Harry had been sure he would trip over his partner’s feet and generally make a fool of himself because he’d never had dancing lessons, Theo had a way of moving that was easy, even instinctive, for Harry to follow.

“Yes,” Theo said finally. “I think I do.”

Harry sighed, but the sigh couldn’t stay on his face in the middle of a ball filled with shining lights and people gaping at him and Theo and Theo’s brilliant pale eyes fastened on him as if no one else existed.

And if Theo did lean forwards at the end of the night and kiss him, it was done in a way that was fleeting, and wonderful, and which didn’t make sixty people descend on Harry clamoring to know why he was dating a Slytherin, so Harry totally approved.

*

“Happy Christmas, Harry!”

“Harry Christmas, Draco.”

Even having seen the Malfoys’ Christmas tree lit up the night before, Harry still blinked as he stepped into the Diamond Sitting Room. The walls shone like they really were inside of a huge gem, and the glowing glass globes on the tree and the fairy lights strung above the windows and the magical hovering spheres like self-aware Lumos Charms filled the entire space with a dazzling light that bounced back and forth and made Harry wave at glittering reflections in front of his eyes.

Another thing that hadn’t changed was the huge pile of presents under the tree. Harry sat down hesitantly on one of the comfortable cushioned chairs in front of the fireplace. He’d bought a cashmere scarf for Draco and a mechanical singing bird for Mrs. Malfoy that Sirius had suggested, because he’d said it was like one that had been in Mrs. Malfoy’s home when she was a child. For Mr. Malfoy’s, he’d gone with a new silver serpent head for his cane.

But that was only one gift each, and it looked like they’d got him a lot more. Harry worried at his lip with his teeth.

“At least half those presents are potions that Healer Asharan is having you take to strengthen your bones and the like,” Draco said in a loud whisper, leaning towards Harry. “So don’t worry that it’s all expensive things you can’t match.”

“Draco!”

“What?”

Maybe Draco had really said that to make Harry more comfortable, but he argued with his mother as if he didn’t see why she might object. Harry gave a tiny laugh and turned to look at Mr. Malfoy, who was settling into a chair behind him.

Mr. Malfoy gave him a narrow smile. Harry smiled back, but it felt false and brittle on his face. He was grateful to have a place to go for Christmas that wasn’t the Dursleys’, and he felt uneasy with the Malfoys. Both things were true.

“We will not eat you, Harry.”

“I—just—it wasn’t so long ago that—”

Mr. Malfoy nodded. His pale hair seemed to catch some of the swimming, shimmering reflections that lit up the fairy lights above the nearest window. “I know. It’s complex, and you haven’t had a chance to settle fully into it yet.”

“Do you think I will?”

Harry had meant the question to have a quick answer, but Mr. Malfoy settled back in his chair and looked at Harry for a long time. Then he said at last, softly, “I think you will unless you try to willfully disregard what our family has shown you and also what your boyfriend has shown you.”

Harry’s face heated up. It made sense that Draco would have told his parents Harry had gone to the Yule Ball with Theo, of course. He coughed. “I—I’m grateful for what your family did for me. I just—I can’t forget what else you did.”

He spoke the words softly. He still thought there was a lapse in noise from the other side of the tree where Mrs. Malfoy and Draco were opening presents.

“I know. I am sorrowful that I committed such injustices to you, my beloved friend’s son.”

At least Mr. Malfoy wasn’t claiming to love him yet. Harry just nodded. “I—you said that you knew for sure what had happened with Crouch putting my name in the Goblet?” He had known there was an investigation of some kind into it, but he hadn’t learned the end result. And really, he was just so relieved when he’d heard that he didn’t have to participate in the Tournament anymore that he’d sort of forgotten about it.

Mr. Malfoy’s mouth tightened, and his eyes flickered. “Yes. The real Alastor Moody was discovered in his trunk a week ago. He had been captured and rendered unconscious. Bartemius’s son was Polyjuiced as the man.”

Harry gasped. Of course he had noticed that Moody was getting more and more paranoid in class, but, well, everyone said that he had always been like that. And he hadn’t noticed that much difference when Moody vanished from the professors’ table a week ago. For all he knew, Moody had gone home to barricade himself behind wards and aim his wand at the door for weeks in case any Dark wizards broke in to steal his Christmas tree.

“So Crouch’s son really is alive?”

“Yes. Crouch Senior broke him out of prison a decade ago and kept him under Imperius in his house. His wife was Polyjuiced as the boy, was terminally ill, and died and was buried as Crouch Junior.” Mr. Malfoy inhaled and exhaled, carefully. “You have my word that I shall find him and punish him for what he has done, Harry.”

“Even if—even if—”

“Yes?”

“He’s a Death Eater. What if he goes straight back to Vol—the Dark Lord?” Harry had decided that he could at least avoid using Voldemort’s name around the Malfoys. It was a condition of living there, like getting worse marks than Dudley was a condition of living with the Dursleys, and at least the Malfoys were loads better than the Dursleys.

“You and my family come first.”

“I thought—he could compel you with the Mark, or something?”

“Or something.” Mr. Malfoy looked grim and amused at the same time. “But I have found a way to break free. It is theoretical at the moment, and it requires the precise application of a potion, but Healer Asharan is working on it for me.”

Maybe Snape is, too, Harry thought. Since Snape had been a Death Eater, maybe he wanted to have a way to break free of the Mark, too.

But Harry didn’t think that was the kind of thing he could ask about. He nodded. “All right.”

“And you have nothing else to say to me?” Mr. Malfoy asked, his eyes on Harry. “Nothing else to ask me?”

“Er—Happy Christmas?”

Mr. Malfoy gave him a smile that was grimmer than before. “I meant about the prophecy that was spoken of in the spell that you used on the Goblet of Fire.”

Harry closed his eyes. He had allowed himself to forget about the investigation into Crouch. The prophecy was something he had wanted to forget. He just didn’t see how it could possibly be anything good.

“I don’t know if anyone will tell me anything,” he whispered. “I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if I want to know.”

“It is always better to have knowledge than not to have it, Harry James.”

Harry shuddered and opened his eyes a little. No one had ever called him that before, not even Sirius. “I—suppose that I could try to find out. I just don’t know where I would even begin to research it.”

“Ask Dumbledore.”

“He hasn’t really spoken to me since that scene in his office.”

“He would know, if anyone would. He makes it his mission to pick up obscure knowledge of all kinds.” Mr. Malfoy’s eyes glittered. “And your parents went into hiding before you were born. They were under a Fidelius for a reason. Perhaps your other godfather would not know—although you could ask him—but Albus Dumbledore? Oh, I believe he would know.”

“And you think he’d tell me?”

“If you ask him long and often enough. If you play on his guilt. If you look at him with huge eyes and tell him that you don’t want to be tempted by the horrible pulls of Dark Arts and the Dark Malfoy family, but it seems that’s the only way you can find out about the prophecy.”

Harry laughed abruptly. “You’re pretty sneaky, Mr. Malfoy.”

“I have had to be.”

Harry stood there and thought about it, while Draco made obvious efforts to keep talking to his mum instead of asking Harry to come over and sit beside the tree. Then Harry finally nodded. “All right. I’ll—write and ask him. But you know that I might not tell you what the prophecy says?”

“In time, I hope that you can trust me.”

But he didn’t say Harry had to tell him right now, and Harry finally turned and let himself join Draco and his obvious impatience for presents.

(That was one way Draco reminded Harry of Dudley. Not that Harry would ever tell Draco that).

*

Dear Theo,

I hope you’re having a great holiday. Mr. Malfoy said that you could come over a few days after Christmas if you want. I hope you will. I want to talk to you. I want to kiss you again.

Harry hesitated, staring at the words he had just written. He wondered if he should strike them out. But he lifted his chin and wrote a little more.

If he couldn’t talk to his boyfriend about wanting to kiss him, who could he talk to about it?

I got a truly mad amount of gifts. More books than I could probably read in a year and robes in every color of the rainbow—I think Mrs. Malfoy is trying to make herself forget about the old Muggle clothes of my cousin’s I used to wear—and the most expensive beeswax polish for my Firebolt, and…

The fire in his huge hearth crackled gently as Harry wrote. He finished the letter before it reached the length of one of Snape’s essays, but just barely. Then he sat up and called for Hedwig.

She was asleep on a perch in a corner of the room, but she awoke at once. She billed at him eagerly when she saw the letter, and Harry smiled as he tied it to her leg.

“To Theo, girl. You can find him, can’t you?”

Hedwig hit him on the head with a gentle, indignant wing, and soared towards one of the windows, which created an owl-sized hole automatically. Out she swooped into the gentle snow.

Harry watched her go, and closed his eyes, and hoped he would be able to see Sirius tomorrow, as both Sirius and Mr. Malfoy had said he could.

Then he sighed and reached for another piece of parchment.

There really was no use in putting it off any longer.

Dear Headmaster,

I wanted to talk to you about the prophecy…

The End.