The morning after the Yule Ball started at approximately 11:45 for Harry, which was when Neville shoved his drapes aside and poked him hard in the shoulder. "Before the news gets up to you, I promise that I wasn't the one who said anything."
Harry groaned, blinking bleary-eyed at the boy sat on the edge of his mattress. "What?" Neville handed him his glasses, and the other Gryffindor's apologetic face came into sharper view. "The whole school is talking about how you snogged someone at the ball last night. No one knows who, but everyone knows it happened. I mean, you did come back looking a bit… ravished." Neville's cheeks were pink, and Harry let out another groan, burying his face in his pillow.
"Fuck," he muttered. Snape was going to have a field day. 'Discretion, Potter'. Ugh, he was the worst. Maybe Harry could persuade Remus to hex him. "How bad is it?"
"On a scale of one to thinking you're trying to kill all the muggleborns in the school, it's pretty minor," Neville told him. Harry hated that that was a legitimate scale of measuring the school's general opinion of him. "Everyone's just curious about who it was. A few girls are insisting it was them, but no one believes them. I think the top three are Hermione, Ginny, or Fleur."
"…There are people in this castle who think I could pull Fleur Delacour? Are they blind?"
Neville snorted, shaking his head. "They're just hoping for a scandal, I think. Other names floating around are of course Susan — but not many think it's her because she laughed pretty hard when someone asked her, and she was on the dance floor all night — and I've heard Padma Patil, Daphne Greengrass, Cho Chang, and George Weasley." Harry rolled the list of names over in his head. "Well. That's… varied." He reluctantly sat up, reaching for the water on his bedside table. He hadn't had more than a mouthful of alcohol, but he still felt hungover just from all the noise and dancing. "Just the one bloke on the list?"
"So far. I did hear someone suggest Blaise Zabini, but I'm pretty sure that was a joke." Neville shrugged. "If it helps, I think it'll all fade out in a few days. There's bound to be other drama from last night — you're just an easy target for gossip." He looked sorry as soon as he said it, but Harry shook his head; Neville was right.
"No one's suggesting… y'know?" He didn't dare say Draco's name, not without a ward up. Neville shook his head, and Harry's shoulders relaxed a little.
"No, I've not Neville assured.
heard
that
anywhere,"
With a sigh, Harry dragged his aching legs over the edge of the bed. "Well, nothing to be done about it, I suppose. Anything else to report?"
"Nothing major. I guess Lavender got caught giving Seamus a blowjob. By Snape." Neville shuddered, wide-eyed, and Harry burst out laughing.
"How many points did we lose for that?"
"Eighty, I think. But everyone's practically in the negative after last night, Snape was on a roll."
"That's not so bad, then." Harry yawned, rolling his shoulders back. "I'm gonna take a shower, then I'll meet you for lunch?" He was starving.
"Sounds good," Neville agreed, getting to his feet. "Oh, also Ron's in a bit of a mood, so you might want to avoid him a bit. Especially if he thinks you've been kissing Hermione."
Harry grimaced as he stood. "Fantastic." Well, Ron had been in a mood all term, it wasn't like that changed much.
.-.-. He felt much more human after a shower, and with his stomach rumbling Harry jogged down the stairs to the common room, where Neville was stood talking to Ginny and Hermione. "Hiya, Harry," Ginny greeted cheerfully. "Loads of people think we snogged, so I've been telling people you're crap at it."
"Thanks, Ginny. I appreciate replied flatly, and she giggled.
"Always happy to help!"
it," he
"I haven't said anything about the rumours," Hermione said primly. "Hopefully they'll go away soon once people realise it's all a load of rubbish."
"It's
not
though, is
it," Harry
said, stretching up with a yawn. Hermione gawked at him.
"You were snogging someone? I thought you were joking!"
"Yeah. I mean, it obviously wasn't you, or Ginny, or Fleur," he said with a roll of his eyes. "But the way I looked I don't think I can even bother denying what I was doing." Before he'd passed out, he'd forced himself to go brush his teeth, and one glance in the mirror made it pretty evident what he'd been up to. There was also a pretty large lovebite on his throat that he hadn't glamoured away, though the collar of his shirt had mostly hidden it. Draco was a possessive little bastard sometimes. "So who was it, then?" Hermione asked. Harry snorted.
"Like I said last night, none of your business. Can we go get food now or what?"
Hermione's lips pursed. "I don't like this, Harry. First you're off dancing with all those people last night, now you're kissing some mystery girl. It's not like you to keep so many secrets."
"How is dancing with people keeping secrets? They're my friends."
"Exactly! Since when were you friends with Daphne Greengrass? Or Cassius Warrington? For that matter, how long have you been friends with Susan Bones?"
"I'm sorry I've been branching out, Hermione, but with you and Ron ignoring me for half the year I've had to look elsewhere for social interaction. Or are you just pissed because they're not Gryffindors?" Harry glared at her, shaking his head. "I thought you were better than that."
"It's got nothing to do with what house they're in!" Hermione insisted, but the slightly screechy tone of her voice betrayed that she was lying. "It just seems awfully sudden that you're so chummy with all these people."
"I've been friends with most of them since last year," Harry told her. "You just haven't been paying attention. And I'm sorry you're jealous that I've got more friends than just you and Ron, but I like them, so you'll just have to suck it up and deal with it." He'd thought they were possibly fixing things, last night. With her on Viktor's arm and dancing with Harry and the others and having a great time, he'd thought there were scraps of their friendship he could salvage. Now he was starting to think he was wrong.
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