The New Trio and the Chamber of Secrets

Chapter 14: Valentine's Madness

Note: If you're here for Drarry, which I'm quite sure is most of you, enjoy!

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Time passed, and as January turned into February, Harry despaired over the possibility that they might not figure out the Chamber of Secrets mystery before another person was Petrified. However, in early February, another matter suddenly burst its way into Harry's awareness. It was only about a week before Valentine's Day, and Harry had become rather sure that the small crush he'd had on his best friend over Christmas had turned into a huge one. He'd known that he liked boys for about a year, but he'd never actually had any feelings for anyone beyond a few blush-inducing thoughts about what it might be like to kiss someone.

Harry wasn't sure what to do in regards to Draco. Should he just tell him? Give him a card? What about asking him out? Where would they even go? They weren't able to go to Hogsmeade until next year! He couldn't talk to Hermione, since she had very different ideas to him of what romance was; Fred and George were out of the question since he'd rather be sappy and romantic than humiliated due to a prank gone wrong. Enya wasn't much help either, since she'd just told him to give his prospective mate some dead rats and that was so... ewww... So, Harry had decided to do something crazy: talk to Sirius.

That night, when he was sure Draco and his other dorm mates were asleep, he cast a Silencing Charm on his curtains, so no one would be able to hear anything that happened within their confines. He got out the communication mirror Sirius had given him ages ago, and whispered, "Padfoot!"

Sirius picked up almost immediately, and he appeared to be sitting in front of the fire at hime. "Hey, pup. What brings you to call at such a late hour?"

"I... I need your help. I like Draco, a lot, and I want to give him something on Valentine's Day, but I have no idea what."

Sirius' questioning expression slowly morphed into one of surprised happiness. "Aww, that's great, Harry! Wow, old enough to be asking your godfather about boys," he said, wiping a fake tear away, "I'm so proud of you!"

Harry rolled his eyes. He was definitely not blushing. At all. "Sirius, please! I need your help, you can brag about how much I've grown to Remus when I'm not there. What do I do about Draco?"

Sirius sighed, as if put upon, but his twinkling eyes gave him away. "Okay. So. With Valentine's Day, you can never go wrong with a nice card. You're lucky that you're such a good artist-you won't have to settle for getting a generic card owl-ordered to him. If you'd like, I can send you an owl-order catalogue for cards, so you can get some idea of what they look like and contain."

Harry sighed in relief. "That would be great, Sirius! I'll send you Hedwig tomorrow morning, so can you have it sent so that it'll arrive by tomorrow night around seven? That way, Draco will be studying, and I can just slip away to get it off her from my dorm room."

Sirius nodded happily. "Of course! Now, onto accompaniments. Does Draco generally prefer chocolates, or flowers?"

Harry had to think about that for a moment. "Er... Chocolates, I think. He's always begging us to sneak into Honeydukes with him so he can get some more."

"And what's his favourite type?"

"Hazelnut," Harry replied instantly, "although he doesn't mind dark chocolate too much."

"Then sneak into Honeydukes and buy some hazelnut chocolate, perhaps some chocolate-dipped strawberries too, since they're absolutely delicious. Keep them in the stasis bags they come in, then once it's breakfast, take a little picnic in the Room of Requirement with the chocolate and strawberries. You'll need to organise the time with your other friends, since they might want to have little dates in there as well."