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Part Five

"Who are you taking to the Yule Ball?"

"No one."

Harry peered over his shoulder, blinking. Adrian had sounded pretty sulky when he'd answered, which wasn't like him.

Adrian turned around from tucking the Bludgers they'd been using for practice into their box, and shrugged expansively when he saw Harry watching him. "No one I want to date, no one who would ask me for reasons other than ulterior motives. What about you?"

Harry sighed. "I asked Cho Chang, but she's already going with Cedric Diggory."

"More fool her."

"Oh, I didn't know you disliked Diggory." At least, not more than any other member of a different Quidditch team, Harry thought. Harry was Adrian's only exception to the inter-House Quidditch rivalry as far as he could tell.

Adrian muttered something under his breath, then just shook his head when Harry looked at him. "Nothing. You have to have a date, don't you?"

"Yeah. The Champions have to open the Ball with a dance. It's tradition."

"Why the sneer?"

"I don't know how to dance, and I don't care to learn, and I can't think of anyone I want to take to the Ball if Cho won't come with me."

Adrian paused. "Really? No one?"

"I just—no? It would be one thing if I had a crush on someone besides Cho," which made Adrian frown mightily, and Harry wondered if he disliked Cho, too, for some reason. "But everyone else who might want to come with me would just do it for Boy-Who-Lived reasons, and I don't—I don't know, is something wrong with me if I don't want to kiss any pretty witch I see?"

"No," Adrian said, and now he was giving the kind of superior little smirk that he did when he managed to hit Harry with a Bludger in practice. "It just means that maybe you need to grow up some more and think more about your preferences."

There was a heavy weight on that last word that Harry didn't understand. He ignored it in favor of kicking his legs in front of him. "So you don't think there's anything wrong with only asking a girl so that I'll have a date?"

"Absolutely not. In fact, it would probably be better if she didn't mean anything to you."

"Really?"

"Yes. Because if you don't want to dance, and don't want to learn how, and don't want everyone to be gaping at you for your fame and your pretty partner, then she's probably not going to have a very good time."

Harry sighed and leaned back so that he was watching the sky. "Yeah, you're right," he muttered. "It's more important that I have a partner than that it be anyone I know and really like. And they probably won't have a good time with me stepping on their toes."

"If you really knew someone you wanted to ask…"

"But I don't. I said."

"Anyone at all…"

"Are you hinting at someone in particular, Adrian?"

For a second, Adrian flushed and opened his mouth. Harry leaned forwards. He more than half expected Adrian to say that he had heard a Slytherin girl talking about wanting to go with Harry or something, but the rest of him was poised and waiting for—

Something else.

"Er," Adrian said. "No."

Harry sighed and nodded. "Then I'll just ask one of the Gryffindor girls and go with her. I wish I could go by myself the way you are."

"At least I'll see you there."

It turned out that Adrian's presence pretty much was the only redeeming feature of the Yule Ball (well, all right, it was sort of fun to see some of the nastier Slytherins gaping at Hermione like they'd thought she would never be pretty). Harry couldn't dance even after lessons with McGonagall, Parvati abandoned him as soon as she could, and Ron and Hermione had a big fight after the Ball.

But Harry did get to go up to Adrian, when Harry was pretending to get a glass of the butterbeer and Adrian just happened to be standing near the table, and Harry got to say, "Did anyone give you any problems about coming by yourself?"

Adrian turned a sly smile on him that Harry had never seen before. He found his breath catching. Maybe he would have seen it if he was usually close enough to the Chasers during a Quidditch match and if they hadn't canceled Quidditch, but he hadn't.

Harry shook off the effect a moment later, with vague thoughts that Adrian ought to smile that way more often, because his friend was answering. "No. Someone did ask me if I was trying to make some sort of statement, but I asked them if they thought I was, and they couldn't answer me."

"Er. Were you?"

"Just that I couldn't go with anyone in particular this time."

"Er," Harry said again, since he had thought Adrian wanted to attend alone, but he let it go. "The gold robes do look nice on you."

Adrian's smile turned into the calmer, funnier sort that Harry usually expected from him. "Thanks. The green robes bring out your eyes."

Harry's stomach did a flip, which was odd, because he wasn't on a broom right now. He opened his mouth to say something else, but then Adrian looked over Harry's shoulder, and his face slammed shut.

"Sorry, someone I have to talk to," he growled, and stalked through the crowd.

Harry followed him with his eyes, and thought it was Malfoy. That sort of bothered him, when Adrian could probably talk to Malfoy any time in the Slytherin common room, but he put up with it.

Especially since Adrian might have lit Malfoy's robes on fire. Not that anyone could prove it. It was pretty spontaneous.

"It was a stupid Task."

"Yeah. You couldn't even see what was going on beneath the water, could you?"

Adrian shook his head and leaned back on the sands, exhaling slowly. He had seemed oddly tense since Harry had caught up with him on the pitch that day, although some of it had faded during their practice. And it wasn't like Harry had got hurt during the Task.

Adrian still seemed tense anyway.

"Why was Weasley the thing you would miss most?"

Harry blinked at Adrian. He had leaned forwards again, his hands dangling between his knees, and he didn't seem intent on waxing his broom, even though most of the time he did it right away after the practice. He kept staring at Harry, though, one foot tapping.

"Er. Because he's my best friend?"

"You don't sound too sure of that yourself."

"He is. He was stupid until the First Task, but that woke him up, seeing me face dragons."

"I just wonder why it wasn't—Granger. Or…"

Adrian kept his head turned away, staring out over the pitch, but this time, Harry felt as if he had woken from a dream. Maybe what he was about to say was stupid, but he thought he was right.

"Do you wish it had been you?" he asked quietly.

Adrian started and turned to look at him. "Don't be ridiculous," he said, but his grimace was half-hearted.

"I kind of wish it had been you," Harry said. "But Ron is my best friend, and people know he's my best friend. We've worked pretty hard to keep our practices secret. Would you have wanted people to know like this? To start thinking about why I valued you?"

Adrian hesitated. Then he said, almost inaudibly, "I'll finish Hogwarts a year before you."

"I know." And there was a void in Harry's chest when he thought about it, which he never really had before. Adrian would be gone. No more secret Quidditch practices. No more spontaneous combustion. No more yelling at him in the hospital wing.

"I want—I want—" Adrian looked at him. "I want people to know about it, but not right now. But I also want them to know about it right now. I don't know how to say what I want. I don't know that there are words for it."

Harry's mind made another leap, one that was sort of inconvenient, and he found himself flushing brightly. "Did you—did you want to come with me to the Yule Ball? As my date?"

Adrian sucked in his breath. But he had always been brave and blunt, for a Slytherin, and he stared Harry in the eye instead of trying to turn away.

"Yes. But you said that you only had a crush on one girl, so I didn't think you would want to date a bloke."

"I just didn't think it was even an option," Harry said, a little dazedly. His mind was trotting back and forth. He felt a bit like he'd fallen off his broom. "But if I was going to date a bloke, it would be you."

Then he slapped his hand across his mouth and wondered if he should have said that.

But Adrian was looking at him with fervent thanks, and his mouth bent into a gentle smile as he said, "And if I were going to date a bloke, it would be you."

"Do you—I mean, do you want to date blokes at all?" And this so wasn't what Harry had thought they would be discussing after their Quidditch practice today.

"I've thought about it for a little while. Wasn't sure, until I thought of you going to the Yule Ball with someone else and it made me sick to my stomach." Adrian leaned forwards, eyes on, Harry's mouth, that was it. "I didn't want you going with anyone else, girl or boy. Just wanted you to myself."

Harry swallowed. No one had ever said something like that to him before. The way that Colin and Lockhart had acted towards him had nothing to do with it.

Adrian edged towards him along the stands, until he was quite close. Harry stared up at him. Of course Adrian had been closer than this some of the times that they'd flown, but it was still—it was still—

"Can I kiss you, Harry?"

"Yeah," Harry breathed. And this wasn't the way he'd pictured his first kiss happening, either, but who cared? Adrian was all about the unexpected.

Spontaneous, Harry thought, and he was smiling as he leaned forwards to press his lips against Adrian's.

It was warm, and dry, and clingy, with Adrian's hands settling heavily on Harry's shoulders. But there was nothing bad about that. Harry shifted closer so that he could get more of it, and Adrian made a soft little wondering sound against his lips.

Harry pulled back then and ducked his head, flushing. Adrian reached out and hooked his fingers under Harry's chin, though, and pulled his face up.

Harry looked, wondering if it was going to be something terrible—

But it was just Adrian, his friend and Quidditch partner, grinning at him as if Harry had not only dodged a Bludger but managed to turn it back on him.

"Want to try again?" he asked. "I hear that it gets even better with practice."

And Harry wanted to try again, and he and Adrian tried again, and it turns out that, yes, kisses were just like Quidditch, and better the more often you did them.

"I'm sorry. They wouldn't let me through earlier."

Harry blinked his eyes open. He felt—not drowsy, precisely. Not after everything that had happened that night, Fake Moody and Cedric and Voldemort and all. He rolled over in his hospital bed and looked at Adrian, who was standing beside his bed with an expression of anguish.

"I'm sorry," Adrian repeated. "I wanted to be there for you."

"I know," Harry whispered.

And then suddenly he was in a long collapse, and he was crying, and Adrian was saying something helpless and holding him, and Harry rolled to the side so that his face was resting against Adrian's robes and cried it out.

Sometimes words emerged, and he told Adrian about Cedric dying and Voldemort coming back and being tortured with the Imperius and the Cruciatus. Adrian held him and rocked him and talked in a low, terrible voice about how much he wanted to punish them.

Harry lay there, still, after he'd cried out the tears. Adrian touched his hair with a shaking hand.

"And now they've left you alone."

"They—probably thought I was going to sleep."

"They shouldn't have left you alone."

Adrian's tone of voice said there was no use arguing with him, and honestly, Harry didn't want to try. He closed his eyes and laid his head on Adrian's shoulder.

"What can I do to help?"

"I don't know," Harry breathed. "They're going to—they're going to send me back to the Muggle world, I know it, and I'll have nightmares of Cedric dying and Voldemort coming back every time I go to sleep, and I won't be able to see anyone unless they decide to take me to Ron's house or something during the summer—"

"That won't be happening."

"Yeah, you're probably right, Ron's parents probably won't want me in their house if Death Eaters come after me—"

"That's not what I meant. I mean you won't be stuck in the Muggle world by yourself all summer."

Harry's throat closed with hope. He tried to swallow it, tried not to feel it. There were so many times that he had hoped that would come true, and it never had. Not with Sirius, not with his friends after first year, not when Aunt Marge was coming.

But he whispered, "How?" anyway, and Adrian held him close and told him.

When he kissed Harry before he left the hospital wing, his kiss tasted like steel, like sheer determination. Harry clung to it, and closed his eyes.