Work Text:
When Harry had first learned about the new, shared dorms for all 8th year students, he had predicted chaos – and not of the good kind. How could he not? They had just come out of a war. They were a mix of people who actively fought with or against Voldemort, and people who had just tried to survive and got drawn into the violence anyway. And sure, he understood why Headmistress McGonagall had needed to figure out alternate sleeping arrangements for them (“There are seven dorms for seven years of student per house, Mr. Potter. Would you like to sleep on the floor of the Gryffindor common room?”), but why couldn’t they be separated by House still? There’d still be more than enough potential for conflict, but at least they’d have lived with those people for years already and probably knew each other rather well. Which, on second thought, may not be any better.
When the school year started, it seemed like Harry had been right: Life was a mix of shouting matches, icy silences, and resentment all around. Two weeks into term however, Lavender of all people had snapped – apparently her personal approach to handling her trauma was a summer spent learning about mindhealing and muggle therapy methods. (Harry, who could admit that his own strategy was ‘pretend to be fine so no one talks to you about it’, considered this very Gryffindor of her.) With Lavender forcing people to actually talk, to say what they meant instead of screaming out their pain and anger and fear, they had gotten better. She had started with her friends, but quickly moved on to bigger projects, culminating in a memorable evening where the Slytherin (and presumed Death Eater) students not only apologized for the parts they had in what Hogwarts had become the year before, but also talked about what it had been like on their side of the war: Just as trapped, just as scared; even if their situations seemed safer, even if they pretended to enjoy their power. As one of them had pointed out: everyone who had actually thrived in that environment had not been welcomed back.
Since then, their dorms felt less like an active war zone. (Something they all, depressingly, had more than enough experience with.) They still struggled and argued, but they also hung out or helped each other with homework. And with them relaxing, the school followed – fewer fights in the hallways, fewer insults being thrown around in the great hall. (Though that might also have been due to the professors losing the last bit of patience they’d started the year with. The amount of points taken and detentions given this year would have made even Snape proud.)
But even with all the change, some things were reliable: Even a more confident Neville Longbottom preferred to spend his free time surrounded by plants rather than people. Even Slytherins who wore nice muggle clothes instead of more formal robes to sit in the common room could act superior about their fashion choices. Even a Harry Potter who was more tolerant of his Slytherin classmates would not voluntarily spend any time with Draco Malfoy.
(One of those was a lie.)
~~~
Harry tried to seem relaxed and natural as he left his friends behind by the library, even though the urge to check that no one was following him or looking after him with suspicion was strong. It helped that he’d gotten a lot of practice recently. And more-or-less constructive criticism. (“You call that sneaking, Potter? It’s a wonder you got away with any of your antics at this school!”) Shortly after he was out of sight, he ducked into a hidden corridor that would take him close to the charms classroom. From there, it was only up a flight of stairs and down a corridor before he arrived at the unused classroom that had become a sanctuary in a school filled with too many painful memories and too much hero worship. Not even Hermione and Ron felt like a safety net anymore, not the way they used to when they were kids. Harry still didn’t know how he’d survive without them, but all three of them were carrying grief these days, and they hadn’t fully figured out how to live in peacetime quite yet.
“Are you coming in, or do you enjoy standing in doorways? I only ask because open doors are rather detrimental if you do not want to be seen.” Draco was grinning at him from his place lounging on the couch they had, ah, liberated from the teachers’ lounge when the room had finally gotten its turn to be renovated after what people had started calling The Final Battle. (Really, their professors should have been thankful when they’d been rivals, even with all the chaos they’d caused. They made a terrific team when they worked together.) Harry couldn’t help but return the smile, throwing a quick locking spell at the door before letting himself fall on top of Draco. Sadly, Draco did not appreciate this way of showing affection (as always) and retaliated with pointy elbows and tickling fingers until he had moved Harry into a position he deemed acceptable (also as always). Harry’s complaints about this treatment were just as rehearsed as the rest of this dance – how could he be truly annoyed if by the end of it, he would be in his boyfriend’s arms and be greeted with a kiss?
They spent the next minutes quietly – cuddling, recharging, enjoying each other’s presence. Finally, Draco nudged Harry to sit up. “Remember talking about how we would like to tell our friends that we were dating? Because I may have an idea, and I think we are settled enough now to handle any way they could react.”
Harry grinned. He knew his boyfriend, and if Draco said that he might have an idea, the chances were good that something absolutely hilarious was in their near future. “An idea, huh? Tell me more; who are we messing with?”
“If all goes well, everybody who is doing 8th year at least. You see, I overheard an interesting conversation today. Apparently, it has been noticed that both of us have a tendency to disappear at the same time, making vague excuses and refusing to explain ourselves to our respective friends. This has led to a betting pool being set up, on how and when we will reveal what it is that we are hiding. Of course, a relationship is the general assumption, but a few people seem to be in denial so the exact secret has been excluded from the bet. My idea is the following: If we can access the list of all bets that were placed, we can find a set of conditions for our reveal that will lead to no one’s bet being correct.”
“Messing with that many people at once does sound tempting”, Harry agreed. “But are you sure that we can get all of them? In my experience, most betting pools include conditions like ‘I think it will happen before this date’ and ‘I think it will happen after that’, so there is always at least one person guaranteed to win.”
Draco’s smile turned devious. “No, there won’t be anything like that. I know that Daphne is involved, which means that they are playing by Slytherin rules. Any system where you can guarantee a win if multiple people work together is too easily exploited – in your example, you would just need two friends who each choose one of those options and share their winnings, that way they will never lose. In Slytherin betting pools, everyone has to choose a specific win condition that does not lead to such a situation with any number of other bets that were placed earlier. All we need is to find the list and do some thinking.”
~~~
’I hear your friend Granger is in charge of looking after the list of bets. Apparently she deemed the entire endeavour “a childish distraction”, which of course saw her elected as a neutral and trustworthy guardian of fairness.’ Draco’s note landed on Harry’s desk at the beginning of a charms lesson, folded into a tiny dragon. Harry absentmindedly tapped his quill on the textbook, immediately distracted from classwork. He should be able to work with this – Hermione was organized and meticulous enough to carry the list with her at all times, but not invested enough to pay it much attention. All he needed was the right moment.
~~~
Two days later, Harry casually walked up to the table Hermione had claimed in the common room, surrounded by (meticulously organized, if only you understood her system) stacks of parchment and multiple open textbooks. (The NEWTs looming on the horizon stressed her out almost as badly as her workload in third year had, in Harry’s opinion. He would have to team up with Ron to get her to take a break sometime soon.) He had to try three times to get her attention, and even when she did look up her mind was clearly still on the essay she was working on. “I just wanted to ask if I can have a look at your transfiguration notes from last week? Mine don’t quite make sense, I think I missed a step somewhere in the argument about-“
Hermione had already stopped listening and continued writing, gesturing towards her parchment towers with her free hand and making a vaguely positive noise. Harry started rifling through the chaos (carefully leaving everything perfectly in order; nothing was worth the wrath of a stressed out Hermione), ostensibly looking for transfiguration. Finally, he found a stack of non-academic material – schedules, a few letters, a brochure for a research institute. And, at the very bottom: A list titled “Malfoy/Potter Mystery Bet”, with an impressive number of names and associated bets. A small bit of spellwork later Harry had a duplicate in his bag, the original neatly back in its place, and a satisfied smile on his face. “Thanks ‘mione, you’re the best!”
~~~
That same evening, Harry and Draco were back in their hideout, bent over a desk, the list cut up into individual bets and sorted by category. “Okay, let’s start with restrictions on the date.” Draco spread out the paper strips of one of their groups. “We have… Three people betting that we will only reveal our plot after graduation, two saying that it will happen after classes one evening, two going with ‘during mealtime in the great hall’, and someone who thinks it will happen during class. We also have a few people who think that the reveal will happen on a significant date: There’s Christmas – too late for that one anyway –, the last day before a holiday, the day when students leave for holiday, and the first day back from holiday. I’ve got a feeling that these three were added shortly after each other.”
Harry laughed and looked at the papers Draco was holding. “Nah mate, no clue why you’d think Ron, Dean, and Seamus would make stupid bets directly influenced by each other. Jokes aside, that leaves us most of the weekends, and the time before and between classes.” Harry grabbed another small group of paper strips. “In the category of ‘audience’ we have just two bets: one person thinks we will organise something where most of the school can see us, and two think we’ll slip up in front of one or two people because we thought we were in private.”
Draco hummed, considering their options. “That doesn’t limit us much more than the time-based ones. Both the common room on weekends and walking between classes with a group of other students still work for our purposes.” He tapped one bet from the last group, which they’d termed ‘miscellaneous’. “This one is tricky – Daphne bet that the event would involve ‘a speech’, and she has argued successfully before that this phrasing can include any situation where some amount talking was done, since all talking involves speech. Ideally, we should do something where we don’t say anything, or two or three words at most.”
“Damn,” Harry said. “I knew that she’s planning to go into law, but I didn’t think that she was this scary already.” The look Draco gave him in response was thoroughly unimpressed. “Yes, yes, I know, I shouldn’t underestimate Slytherins, leave me alone and concentrate on scheming!” Harry tried (unsuccessfully) to bodily force Draco to look at the desk again, getting dragged into a kiss instead. Mollified, he turned to sort through the remaining paper strips himself. “This one says it’ll be on accident, so we just need to not slip up before putting our plan in action. Someone thinks brooms will be involved – are we not more than our Quidditch talent to these people? – and the last one says that there will be spells. What does this guy think, that we routinely disappear to duel because we despise each other so strongly that we cannot think of a better way of spending our time than with each other, in private, practicing our duelling without ever getting hurt?”
“Unhurt?” Draco joked, “tell that to my neck you brute, I keep having to cover up hickeys!” In response, Harry pushed his boyfriend off his chair, followed by a brief scuffle (“I’ll show you hickeys!”), the two laughing boys rolling around on the floor. When they calmed down, they were lying entangled in front of the couch. “Was that the last bet?” Draco asked. Harry nodded, the movement mostly hidden with his face pressed into Draco’s sweater and Draco’s hand in his hair. “How about this Sunday afternoon?” Draco proposed. “The common room is usually pretty full then, and I don’t want to wait much longer before telling the world about us.” His voice turned quiet in the end, insecurity showing.
Harry sat up, smiling at Draco. “I don’t want to wait anymore either. Sunday sounds perfect.” He traced a line down Draco’s arm, taking his hand. The smile turned mischievous. “I could just go over to you and kiss you in front of everyone. Can’t talk and let Daphne win if our tongues are busy.”
“See, that’s what I like about you. Creative, solution-oriented thinking.”
“I think you read too many of Lavender’s muggle self-help books. You’re starting to sound like them in normal conversations!”
~~~
On Sunday, Harry was sitting in the 8th year common room with Ron and Hermione. They were debating about… Something, Harry couldn’t have named the topic if held at wandpoint. He had been ‘working on an essay’ (the parchment was covered in ink blots and not much else) for the past half hour, and kept looking towards the entrance every few seconds.
Until, finally: The door opened for a group of students, Draco among them. He was laughing at something, and Harry was once again struck by his beauty. By the way the light reflected in his hair, by how soft he looked in his light blue sweater instead of the severe black robes of their school uniforms, by the way his laughter always made Harry want to laugh with him. Draco’s eyes found Harry’s, winking at him from across the room. Harry felt spellbound, like he was sleep walking towards his boyfriend. His hands lifted without his input, buried themselves in Draco’s hair, pulled them even closer together. Lips met lips in fireworks made of Harry’s pulse racing in his ears, drowning out the hollering of their classmates. Finally out of hiding, finally where everyone could see, finally known.
~~~
“Seriously?” someone asked, “no one won their bet? Not a single one of us?!”
Hermione held up the list of bets, every single line crossed out after having been determined to be a loss. “I don’t know what to tell you other than yes, everyone was wrong, so no there will not be a winner.”
Laughter drowned out the grumbling of the gathered students. Heads swivelled around to look at Harry and Draco, sharing an armchair and wearing matching self-satisfied grins. “Maybe the two of us weren’t very discreet about disappearing together, but really: that should have told you to do better with your own secrets.”