Harry Potter and The Boy Who Had No Choice

Guessing Games

Chapter Thirty

    "So, she's a Slytherin?" Harry peered up from his Charms book. They were in Flitwick's class, reviewing common charms as part of their N.E.W.T preparation. Normally, Hermione would be working diligently, most likely creating charts and extensive notes to study from, but instead, she had apparently chosen to focus her energies on bothering Harry.

"Hermione," he whispered. Other students in the class were talking, of course, but Harry didn't want to risk having his conversation overheard if Hermione was going to insist on asking about his 'secret girlfriend.'

"-and I'm assuming she's either in our year or is a year below us?" Hermione continued, not lowering her voice at all. Harry sighed.

"You can assume all you'd like, I'm not saying anything," he eventually said, and tried to return to his textbook. He had only read one sentence when Hermione piped up again.

"You have to give me something to work with!" she protested, pulling the book away from him. He reached for it, but didn't make much of an effort to get it back. After all, he wasn't actually all that eager to study Charms; he was just eager to end this conversation.

"No, actually, I don't," Harry said, leaning back in his seat.

"Is she in any of our classes?" she asked, glancing around the room as if she'd be able to find Harry's 'girlfriend' amongst the students.

"I told you, I'm not saying anything," Harry repeated, holding out his hand for the book. Hermione rolled her eyes, but handed the textbook back. She huffed, annoyed, and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Fine."

The rest of class passed uneventfully, and afterwards, Harry headed up to the dormitory. Ron and Hermione went off to study, and though they offered for Harry to come along, he had a sneaking suspicion they were looking forward to some alone time, so he excused himself.

At first, he tried to work on his Charms essay, hoping that maybe he'd finish it before even Hermione did, but it only took a few minutes before that got dull. He considered going out to the Quidditch Pitch and flying, but when he checked out the window, he saw that the Hufflepuff team was already down practicing.

So, with nothing else to do, Harry pulled old Sirius' worn diary and began to read.

December 25th, 1976

Dear Future Sirius,

First of all, to the future me reading this, I apologize in advance for the massive hangover you'll have tomorrow. To be fair, it wasn't entirely my fault. Wormtail somehow managed to sneak in an entire bottle of Firewhiskey to the Yule Ball. Honestly, I'm impressed and quite proud of the boy. Our little Petey is finally growing up.

The Ball was a disaster, which was what made it so good. Half the students were drunk off their tits, and the other half were attempting to dance by awkwardly looping their arms around each other and swaying. James managed to keep it together though. It was a close call, I thought he might pass out when he first saw Evans come down in her dress.

They seemed to have a good time. I wouldn't be surprised if we'll be seeing a lot more of her in the future. Evans isn't so bad, really. Sure, she's still a goody two shoes who's too smart for her own good, but she's not all bad...

The room spun out of focus until Harry landed on the floor of the Great Hall, which he hardly recognized at first. The starry night sky was still there, but the rest of the hall had been decorated with silver and gold streamers that sparkled in the light of the floating candles. Someone, presumably Dumbledore, had also charmed the ceiling so miniscule snowflakes were falling. The tables were pushed to the side, and were littered with food and drinks. Harry looked around, wondering where Peter had hidden the Firewhiskey.