Archive of Our Own ^beta

He descends the stairs to the dungeons at a quick but steady pace. Part of him regrets not bringing his cloak. It’s late June and the skies outside are finally the warm, clear blue of summer, but it’s just as cold down here as ever, and he’s never been able to stomach the cold much.

Fortunately, it’s a long walk down. By the time he makes it all the way to the bottom of the staircase, he’s worked up a little bit of a sweat, and the chill of the dense, stone walls feels nice. He catches his breath, rounds the corner—then jumps back abruptly in order to avoid running into someone else who was coming his way.

“Watch where you’re going, ya damn idiot!”

“Ah…! S-Sorry, Iruma-san.”

Saihara bows his head apologetically, but she looks less angry than she sounded. If anything, she actually looks a little startled, her hands clasped up near her chest, her expression a little bewildered. She must’ve nearly lost her balance when they almost collided.

She swallows, then clicks her tongue. “G-Good. S’long as you’re sorry, there’s no problems, then.”  Brushing her hair back behind her, she then laughs in a way he’s grown all-but-accustomed to in the past seven years. “Hya-ha! It’s good that you know your place, cherry boy!”

She seems like she’s regained her composure just fine, he thinks wryly to himself, but he knows better than to voice that thought. Getting into arguments with Iruma Miu is a losing battle because the rules of common sense don’t apply right from the start, and honestly, he has more important things to be doing on this beautiful summer morning.

“Hey, you need to get your ass in there,” she says, interrupting his thoughts.

“Eh? Is this about—”

“Yeah, he’s a fuckin’ wreck, from what I’ve heard. Just go talk to him or he’s never gonna leave.”

“S-Sure, yeah. I came down here to see how he was doing, anyway.”

She waves brusquely to him then starts to walk off, toting a bag over her shoulder. Just before she can turn the corner, leaving by the way he came from, Saihara realizes he forgot to ask her something.

“Iruma-san! Um… About the password…”

He regrets asking as soon as the words leave his mouth, because she bursts out into another fit of those distinctive cackles. Asking her anything is a dangerous game, as he well knows, and he’s pretty sure that if they had more time for it, she’d tell him to get on his knees and beg if he really wanted to know that badly.

“It’s hard drive.” It doesn’t escape his notice that she puts way more emphasis on the first word than necessary. “Make sure you thank the beautiful genius inventor, Iruma Miu for this later, yeah? The hell would ya do without me?!”

As she walks off, he rubs at the back of his neck nervously. The password does sound vaguely familiar now that he’s heard it again—but it had slipped his mind entirely before this, given all the other information he’d been cramming last minute for their exams. Given Hogwarts’ aversion to electronic devices of any kind, he’s pretty sure it must be someone’s idea of a joke.

Without wasting any more time, he says the password to the blank stone wall before him and steps through the passage when it unveils itself. It’s still a little uncanny even after all these years (a lot less welcoming than the riddle-posing door to the Ravenclaw tower, that’s for sure), but he follows it to its end without any problems.

There’s almost no one inside the common room when he steps in, and what few people there are hardly pay him a glance. Even if they weren’t already used to seeing him here (which they are), they’re all far too busy today to pay much attention to whatever he does with his time. He ducks past the handful of 6th- and 7th-year students and heads directly up the left-hand staircase, to the boys’ dormitory.

But when he gets there, the room looks as though a minefield went off.

Books, clothing, wads of paper and several objects unidentifiable at a mere glance are strewn across the floor. There’s a trunk thrown open at the foot of one of the beds, the apparent source of the disarray, looking nothing short of a volcano smoking quietly in the wreckage after the eruption.

Amidst the chaos, there’s only one person in the room—lying face-down on the bed with the open trunk by it.

“O-Ouma-kun?!”

The boy on the bed raises one hand without looking up in an uncharacteristically half-hearted greeting, then flops it back down on the bed lethargically. Saihara sighs, relieved, and walks over to the other side of the bed, sitting down carefully. It’s a difficult task, considering the bed is just as disordered as the rest of the room, but he manages to find a spot not already occupied by robes, books, or his eccentric boyfriend currently face-planting there.

“So, uh… I take it packing isn’t going well.”

“I was packed. But I changed my mind,” comes the muffled response. “I’m not going. Gonna stay here instead.”

His voice makes it sound like he might be pouting, though it’s impossible to tell with his face blocked from view. Saihara is hit with the urge to smile, but he resists. Barely.

Nonetheless, the boy on the bed suddenly looks up, as though having read his mind. Sure enough, he’s pouting. He tries not to be too happy about that, and fails.

“Do you have something to say, Saihara-chan?” The other boy’s voice is pointed, sharp, and cold, but it’s very hard to take him seriously when his hair is sticking up in every direction and his bottom lip is sticking out like a child’s.

Instinctively, he reaches out a hand, gently pulling some of those mussed strands of hair out of the other boy’s face. It’s a reaction tempered by years of habit, too quick for him to rethink it, but he’s glad when Ouma-kun doesn’t move his hand away—although his pout does stick out a little more. “Not really,” he says amiably. “But McGonagall might have something to say about that. I don’t think she’s going to like the idea of you staying here very much when we’re supposed to board the train in a few hours.”

“Hmm.” Ouma-kun leans in against his hand a little, just like a cat being scratched behind the ears. “What McGonagall-chan doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

“Ouma-kun…”

The boy sighs, then readjusts himself. It’s a struggle, but somehow he manages to get himself into a cross-legged sitting position on the bed. “I know… I know.” He sniffles once, his eyes watering as though on cue. “But Saihara-chan, you’re so mean if you can’t understand my feelings. Let me dream a little.”

Saihara doesn’t fall for it, though he can feel his cheeks flush just a bit. “Nice try,” he says, and sure enough, Ouma-kun’s face splits into a grin, all signs of tears gone in an instant. “Besides, do you really want me to get on the train without you? I kind of thought we had other plans, but…”

The other boy grabs him around the waist so suddenly he nearly topples from the bed. “No way, no way! I’d never let you get lonely like that! You should stay here with me. They’ll never catch us both.”

He briefly entertains that suggestion, all the while trying to pretend that he isn’t. Theoretically, maybe if they stayed in the Room of Requirement… But no, there was no way McGonagall wouldn’t find out. …Probably.

“You’re considering now.”

“I am not,” he says, clearing his throat.

“Sure, okay. And everyone says I’m a liar.” But Ouma-kun nuzzles his face against his lower back as he says it, clearly in a better mood than before.

Saihara can’t hold his smile back anymore, despite his best efforts. “I’m pretty sure you say you’re a liar.”

His boyfriend hums agreeably, still nuzzling.

For a moment they stay like that, in comfortable silence. Then Saihara remembers the pressing issue of time, and comes back down to earth. “Um, so… Do you need help packing?” he asks, looking around the devastated room. It’s a good thing Ouma-kun seems to be the only one left up here; he’s pretty sure none of his other dormmates would appreciate being unable to get to their own beds.

“Re-packing. I told you, I already packed before.”

“Do you need help re-packing?” he repeats, with just a touch of exasperation.

The arms around his waist tighten. “Nu-uh.”

“Ouma-kun.”

“Come on, that just sounds so boring.”

“We can use magic. It’ll take all of five seconds.”

The other boy reluctantly pulls away and hops off the bed. When Saihara turns to face him, he throws his hands up behind his head and gives an indignant sniff. “Ahhh, my dear, naïve Saihara-chan. That’s the uninteresting solution, the easy way out. I do everything exclusively in hard mode.”

Saihara is just about to say yes, I know, but he stops when he sees the look on the other boy’s face. There’s an all-too-familiar smile stretching ear to ear in a way that can only mean that he’s faking it. This is something he’s learned only after seven years of trial-and-error, but he’s pretty sure he’s right, nonetheless.

Ouma-kun is certainly smiling—but every time his eyes flick towards the trunk at the foot of the bed, or the binders and objects covering the floor, he looks a little… uncertain.

The pieces click into place, a little belatedly. Hogwarts has been their home for the past seven years. Leaving that home for the last time is no easy task, not even for someone who takes so much pride in acting as though everything comes easily to him. Childish and stubborn though his boyfriend might be, it’s not as though he doesn’t understand the feeling of sentimentality.

Not, of course, that the other boy would ever admit to that sentimentality. Not around anyone else, anyway. That’s probably why he’s been up here this whole time, lying face-down on the bed, instead of feasting in the Great Hall, chatting with everyone happily and saying his goodbyes one last time.

If he can’t bring himself to pack his things alone, then Saihara will just have to help him. Today, they’re both allowed to indulge in sentimental nostalgia.

“Okay, well. Let’s do this in hard mode, then,” he says, standing up from the bed slowly, so as not to lose his balance and come toppling back down. “Let’s look through all the things you took out, reminisce a little, and if you still don’t feel like leaving after that… We’ll both stay.”

“Ehhh? How unexpectedly daring of you, Saihara-chan!” There’s a childish glint in Ouma-kun’s eyes as he spins to face him, unable to resist the notion of a game of any kind. That’s what he was counting on, of course. “Do you feel like betting it all on the line against me since today’s your last chance? That’s so bold, I think my heart skipped a beat!”

But beneath his flippant remarks, Saihara’s pretty sure he detects a note of genuine gratitude. He smiles at his boyfriend, picking his way over carefully until they’re both standing side by side, looking down at the wreckage. “You’re not the only one who likes to play games, Ouma-kun. So, where should we start?”

At the end of his first year and scared half to death, Saihara watched as the nurse in the infirmary doled out the Essence of Mandrake. Although he’d heard that it had been given to several other patients so far and worked just fine, part of him was still terrorized by thoughts like, what if it doesn’t work after all, what if I did this all for nothing, and what if I get in trouble? Unable to sit still, his clenched hands shook anxiously atop his knees as he waited to see what would happen.

But after the draught kicked in and a few minutes passed, all the boy on the infirmary bed did was sit up, take a confused look around, and then start laughing.

“Oh, hush,” the nurse told him, fixing him with a disapproving glare as she fussed all around him, trying to check his vitals.

But Ouma Kokichi just sat there and laughed, not even trying to make it easier for her. “I knew it! I knew you’d understand! As expected of Saihara-chan!”

“If you don’t sit still—”

“Oh, come on! Let me talk to Saihara-chan alone, just ten minutes!” the boy pleaded. “Then I’ll sit still all you want, and you can pour whatever potions you want down my throat.”

Unnerved at being singled out immediately like this, Saihara sat completely still as the nurse looked his way instead, apparently sizing him up as though trying to see if he was planning anything. But it seemed that she knew how to pick her battles, because a moment or two later, she sighed and moved away from the bed.

“Five minutes,” she said, crossing her arms with a scowl. “Don’t do anything to my patient that would tire him out, Saihara. Especially as he’s so set on tiring himself out first.” Rolling her eyes in exasperation, she walked to her office and left them alone.

Not even two seconds later, Ouma-kun stuck his tongue out at her receding back before the door was even fully shut. Saihara tensed, convinced that she’d catch sight of it somehow—but the other boy just turned to grin at him, apparently convinced that he was infallible again not even five minutes after being unpetrified. And he laughed again, a familiar, distinctive, and completely unrepentant sound.

Saihara swallowed nervously, his hands still refusing to unclench themselves from his knees. “Wh-What? What’s so funny?”

“Nishishi… You are, Saihara-chan!” The boy sat up a little straighter and crossed his legs, stretching his arms up over his head like someone waking up from a good night’s sleep. “I knew you’d make sense of the note I gave you—well, the fact that I’m awake right now proves that, doesn’t it?”

“So that was… your plan, after all.” He felt like he might actually faint. Even if he did, at least there was no shortage of infirmary beds around him. Small favors, he thought tiredly. “But why… why did you…?”

Ouma-kun’s grin widened a little. “What, do you think Akamatsu-chan or Momota-chan would’ve stood a better chance at figuring it out? Oh please, like a rag-tag bunch of Gryffindors sneaking around the school and solving mysteries hasn’t already been done before.” He briefly fluffed up his pillow before flopping back on it, a tiny, eleven-year-old king in an almost-empty infirmary. “They’ve had their time to shine, trust me. Someone else should get the spotlight for a change.”

That, Saihara thought, is probably the truest thing he’s said to me yet. He was pretty sure the spotlight wouldn’t be back on Gryffindor House for another six years at least, if only because this boy in front of him wouldn’t share it willingly even if his life depended on it.

Quietly, he took out a handheld mirror from his pocket, and a crumpled piece of paper on which was drawn an Italian plumber jumping up and down on a spring, about to slide down a pipe. Upon closer inspection, the plumber actually seemed to have his tongue sticking out, in a childish and entirely unnecessary gesture. It was surprisingly well-drawn, coming from an eleven year old, detailed enough that anyone from a non-wizarding background would recognize the game it was from immediately—but that wasn’t what had interested Saihara.

No, what had caught his interest were the words X marks the spot, scrawled in quick, barely legible letters, just above the pipe. Below the surface, the pipe spread off into an entire network of other, larger pipes, and at the bottom was a large, fanged snake.

Ouma-kun was staring at him with a great deal of interest, so he averted his eyes quickly, staring instead at a spot on the infirmary floor. “You knew that I’m half-blood,” he said.

“Oh-ho? What makes you say that?”

“That’s why you knew Akamatsu-san and Momota-kun wouldn’t understand that note. They’re both purebloods. They’ve never played that game before, so…”

“And Saihara-chan just keeps on detecting! Ding ding ding! Correct answer!” Ouma-kun actually gave him a round of applause. It was impossible to tell whether it was meant sincerely or not.

Saihara finally, reluctantly made eye contact. “Why did you let everyone think it was you? Going around, attacking people.”

There was no way a Muggle-born child could ever have been the next Heir of Slytherin, but the boy in front of him had certainly gone out of his way to make it look like he was. Up until he’d gotten himself petrified, that is, and only that tiny, handheld mirror by his bedside had made the difference between petrification and death.

Ouma-kun just shrugged, his amusement apparently unfazed by the serious nature of their discussion. Well, as serious as a conversation between two eleven-year-olds could ever be. “Even at a school like this, people believe what they want to believe. But you know that already, don’t you?”

It hadn’t escaped Saihara’s notice that there were no other visitors. All the other people who had been petrified had had tons of people around their bedside—friends and family both. But he was the only one here right now, suggesting that maybe even getting petrified hadn’t been enough to sway some people’s opinions.

“Well… I guess that’s true,” he admitted.

The other boy had only just opened his mouth to respond when the door to the office opened up again and the nurse came back. “It’s been more than five minutes,” she said. “Now, if you’ll kindly let me do my job.”

Saihara scrambled out of his chair obligingly. Just as he was about to grasp the handle of the exit, he paused, turned, and looked back to see Ouma-kun pouting, clearly unhappy that their conversation was being cut short. He bit his lip, considered for a moment, and then—

“Hey, Ouma-kun? If you’d like… let’s sit together tomorrow, at the feast.”

Ouma-kun just laughed.

He watches as Ouma-kun holds the mirror up, examining it fondly in the early-morning light. It’s a little dustier and there are a few more scratches now than there were all those years ago, but for the most part, his boyfriend has been taking good care of it. Probably just in case they ever needed to use it again.

“Good times,” the other boy says. He sounds annoyingly unrepentant, as though that smug eleven-year-old attitude of his has only fermented into downright egoism after seven years straight of being proven right.

“Good times?” Saihara repeats disbelievingly. “You almost died.”

Ouma-kun smiles broadly. “It would’ve been for a good cause. I saved Saihara-chan’s life, after all.” He taps the lid of the mirror for emphasis, waving it tauntingly just under his nose.

“No, I’m pretty sure I saved you from being petrified…”

“Yeah, and would you have gotten the chance to if you’d gone and died first? I don’t think so.”

Saihara pinches the bridge of his nose. As much as he loves him, his boyfriend can be infuriatingly persistent on this topic of conversation. “We were eleven,” he reminds him.

Ouma-kun smirks. “Which is why we were playing in the hardest mode of all. Besides, it’s not like anyone else was doing anything to help.”

“That’s…” It’s a fair point, actually. But he doesn’t want to admit it, so he fakes a cough and clears his throat disapprovingly. “It’s just a good thing I asked Akamatsu-san and Momota-kun to come with me, or else I don’t think I’d be standing here right now. That was a real live basilisk, you know.”

The other boy pats him on the shoulder affectionately. His disapproval couldn’t mean less, apparently. “Oh, I’d never have sent my beloved Saihara-chan into danger alone. I knew you were going to ask them for help. Just because no one else figured out what my note meant didn’t mean I expected you to go by yourself.”

“Oh really?”

“Of course! After all, you’ve always been a scaredy-cat. And besides, that was a baby basilisk. It wasn’t even like it was fully grown.”

Saihara has no retort for that. He’d like to say that his pride is hurt—but really, how can he argue back against the truth? But baby basilisk or not, that thing could’ve still turned him to stone, or ripped his throat out, or worse, so he just stands there in cold, reproachful silence.

Ouma-kun arches an eyebrow, apparently aware that he might, perhaps, have crossed the line just now. Immediately, his bottom lip sticks out again. “Saihara-chan, don’t be mad…” There’s a whiny edge to his voice.

He would love to say that pouting has no hold over him—but unfortunately, it does. He sighs, cursing his own weakness a bit, then shakes his head. “I’m not mad. You’re just infuriating.”

“Oh, well. If that’s all.” The boy grins back at him, relieved, then turns his gaze back on the mirror in his hands. “Still… It really is a shame we never found out who tried to set up that whole copycat crime. It had to be a student like us, but…” He trails off, looking suddenly unamused.

Saihara knows him well enough by now to understand just how frustrated he must be feeling. No one died in those incidents, back in their first year. But people could have. His boyfriend is many things, but he’s not someone who takes any pleasure in that sort of thing—no matter how much he might act otherwise sometimes.

Not only that, but the fact that the real culprit was never caught was, in his eyes, the same as losing a game. They got away with it scott-free, cleared the stage, so to speak. And Ouma-kun was not someone accustomed to losing any games. Ever.

He folds his hand around the other boy’s, taking the mirror from him gently before wrapping it in a spare robe and setting it in the trunk neatly. Ouma-kun just frowns at him, so he speaks up again, trying to get his mind off the sudden shift the mood had taken: “Come on, tell me what’s next.”

Second year, late Christmas morning. Saihara woke to a small pile of presents at the foot of his bed. It was surprising, but not entirely unexpected, as he already knew Christmas was a much bigger holiday here than it was in Japan. He planned on opening them—but later. Right now, he was in desperate need of caffeine.

Breakfast first, presents second was about as much of a thought as his tired brain could muster. Drinking coffee at age twelve was, perhaps, an unfortunate side effect of spending his time not at school living with an uncle who could barely cook and who had a job that required coffee to be brewing at all hours of the day.

What was entirely unexpected, however, was the sight that greeted him after he stumbled blearily down the stairs—of Ouma-kun lounging casually atop one of the sofas in an otherwise empty common room.

It wasn’t the fact that he was there in general that was surprising. The other boy had been sneaking his way into common rooms that weren’t his own ever since the year before, during the basilisk incident. It wasn’t as though inviting people from other houses into different common rooms was as frowned upon as it might have been a few years ago, either. But no one seemed to want him around in particular.

However, it turned out that there wasn’t a password or riddle in the world that could stop Ouma Kokichi from finding out what he wanted to know. And so, he was often frequently sighted in other houses’ common rooms, and particularly seemed to enjoy swinging up by Ravenclaw tower to come pester him about some adventure or scheme or game, as he liked to call them.

Usually these games involved exploring places they weren’t supposed to be. The more off-limits the better, and if there just happened to be dangerous creatures or other threats involved, well, that just meant they were “playing on a higher difficulty level.”

No, the reason it was surprising to see him this morning was only because they hadn’t been speaking to each other for two weeks.

“Yo, Saihara-chan. You’re up bright and early at the crack of just-before-noon, I see.” Ouma-kun broke the silence first, and Saihara didn’t miss the pointed sarcasm in his voice. All his sleepiness seemed to vanish immediately in light of the tense mood between them.

“Ouma-kun…? Why are…?”

“…Why am I here?” The other boy finished his question for him. “Well, you know me. I’m just full of festive cheer. Merry Christmas, happy holidays! …That sort of thing, right?” He leaned against the arm of the sofa, shooting him a mocking grin.

Ordinarily, Saihara would chalk it up to him being strange and incomprehensible as usual, then walk down to the Great Hall with him to get some breakfast. But his mood had turned sour all of a sudden, if not from this unexpected appearance, then because of this cheeky, nonchalant treatment.

Ouma-kun showing up as though there was absolutely nothing for them to talk about actually hurt worse than if he hadn’t come by at all. It didn’t sit well with him—at the very least, he didn’t want to act as though absolutely nothing had happened.

Anger lent him an uncharacteristic touch of bravery, so he began walking past the sofa without even sparing a glance. “I want to get some breakfast while they’re still serving it,” he said curtly. “If you’ll excuse me.”

He was almost to the door when he heard Ouma-kun leap up from the couch. “Oh, come on! Don’t just ignore me like that!”

Saihara wouldn’t have stopped at all, except that he was pretty sure he heard a real touch of panic in the other boy’s voice. Reluctantly, he turned around and waited to hear what the other boy had to say.

In the awkward silence between them, Ouma-kun seemed to struggle internally for a few moments. All traces of his usual grin were gone as he bit at his thumbnail absentmindedly. It was hard to tell, but he looked… somewhat nervous.

He grappled for what must have been a full five minutes, the words coming from him as slowly and painfully as pulling teeth. But finally, he did say it: “…I came to apologize.”

Saihara considered for a few moments. That was… a start, at least. He nodded slowly, indicating for him to go on.

“I’m sorry, okay? It’s not like I went and got myself bitten by a giant spider on purpose, but I’m sorry. I didn’t think that you’d—you’d—” He struggled, trying to find the right words. “—get all worried about me. That’s not...” He trailed off, gritting his teeth in frustration, apparently unaware that he was now biting at his nail more than he should.

Not normal. Saihara was pretty sure that was what he wanted to say.

Ordinarily, this wouldn’t count for much of an apology. However, the more he stood there, the more his anger seemed to simmer down a little. He remembered Ouma-kun’s words from their fight, there’s no one who’d miss me if I were gone anyway so what’s the big deal, delivered so matter-of-factly that it really did seem like he honestly, genuinely believed that. And he also remembered the reason why Ouma-kun was staying here for the holidays, rather than going back to an orphanage he scarcely seemed to want to set foot in.

“…I really can’t figure you out after all, Saihara-chan.” The other boy’s voice cut into his thoughts, and Saihara looked up again just in time to see him shaking his head. “You’re weird.”

“It was weird to say ‘we’re friends, take better care of yourself’?” Saihara asked dubiously.

“It is when it’s me you’re talking to,” Ouma-kun snapped, and the frustration in his voice sounded so completely, truly lost that he was sure in that moment that there was no way the boy was lying to him. Not right now.

“…Why did you come over now, exactly? You could’ve just waited until after the holidays.” It was something he genuinely wanted to know the answer to, the more he thought about this bizarre, late-morning greeting.

Ouma-kun actually balked at that, clearly wanting nothing more than for this conversation to be over. “…Because it’s Christmas.”

“Eh?”

“Because it’s Christmas!” he repeated, and this time it was harder to tell if the irritation in his voice was real—or just something he was faking to bury his own embarrassment. “That’s what friends do, right? They give each other Christmas presents. So I came to apologize today, specifically.”

To say that he felt completely bewildered would be an understatement. “An apology is a Christmas present?”

“I can count the number of times I’ve honestly apologized to anyone about anything on one hand. So yes, Saihara-chan, it’s a present.”

Saihara couldn’t help it—he burst out laughing.

Ouma-kun tapped his foot against the common room floor impatiently. “You know what? I think I’m done. You clearly want to eat breakfast by yourself again this morning, so I’ll just be going. Merry Christmas, Saihara-chan!”

“S-Stay! Stay, don’t go,” Saihara managed to say in between laughs. The indignant look on the other boy’s face was so funny that it really was hard to get his laughter back under control, but finally, he managed. “I have a present for you too,” he admitted, still biting back another chuckle that was trying to rise up in his throat.

“…Huh?”

“Wait here for a second.”

Saihara left him to run up to the dormitory, fetching what he needed out of his trunk. Then he came back downstairs and handed it to him: a small, square package, neatly wrapped in blue paper.

Ouma-kun took it from him without saying anything, unwrapped it, and stared uncomprehendingly at the brand-new wizard’s chess set in his hand. “…Why?” he asked blankly.

“Well, I mean… you mentioned that you wanted to learn how to play chess, so…”

“No, not that. Why did you get me a present even though you were mad at me?”

It was Saihara’s turn to be mildly embarrassed at the way this conversation was going. Suddenly self-conscious without his anger or his amusement to rely on, he looked away. “Um… w-we’re friends… It’s not like I wouldn’t get you a present just because I was mad at you.”

The other boy just looked at the chess set for a few more moments, his face completely unreadable. Then he sighed. “Ahhh… now I have to come clean about everything. Man, and it’s sooner than I wanted to…” He clicked his tongue. “I lied. The apology wasn’t really your only present.”

“Eh?” He couldn’t help the sudden flicker of curiosity he felt, upon hearing that. “What else is there?”

“Remember that mystery novel you told me you hadn’t read before? Well, I managed to get you a copy!”

He didn’t even have a chance to thank him before the boy interrupted him again, speaking over him suddenly.

“And I wrote the name of the culprit on a random page!”

“…Th-That’s a lie too, right?”

Ouma-kun gave him a wicked grin. “Nishishi. Well, who knows? I guess you’ll just have to read it to find out.”

“Fancy a match, Saihara-chan?” His boyfriend runs a hand over the chess set as though to brush it off, but unlike the mirror, there’s almost no dust on it whatsoever. At a glance, one might think that it was fifteen or twenty years old, rather than a measly six. That was a testament to how many times he’d used it, challenging just about anyone who walked or talked or breathed to a match at one point or another.

“And get stuck in perpetual check with you until after the train leaves? So then you can beat me in about five seconds? No thanks, I’m good.”

Ouma-kun clasps a hand to his chest in exaggerated shock. “H-How did you see through my plan!? Was I that easy to read!?”

“‘Easy to read’ and ‘Ouma-kun’ hardly belong in the same sentence,” he says. “I just know you by now, that’s all.”

“Hmm, well. Maybe later, then.” The other boy places the chess set into his trunk, though his hand lingers fondly for a moment before he lets go. “You really do get me, huh Saihara-chan? That’s amazing. I’m so happy to have met the person who understands my true self!”

“Don’t look so pleased with yourself. I really didn’t want to remember about that novel you gave me…”

“Aww, why not? It’s not like I actually wrote the culprit’s name in it.”

Saihara gives him a flat, unimpressed stare. “No, you wrote the name of an entirely different character halfway through the book and let me think they were the culprit instead.”

The corners of Ouma-kun’s mouth turn up, completely unrepentant. “And if you stopped trying to solve the mystery at that point, then whose fault is that? It’s not like the story would’ve even made sense if they had been the culprit instead. Shouldn’t you have tried harder to prove me wrong?”

Again, he doesn’t have a retort for that. He scratches the back of his head in frustration and looks away.

“Teasing Saihara-chan really is the best!” His spirits considerably lifted, he starts going through the piles of books on the bed a little more enthusiastically, flipping through each one in search of anything exciting before throwing them into the trunk once they fail to catch his interest. “I need to see that cute pout at least three times a day before I’m fully satisfied, yep!”

Saihara is tempted to point out that he was the one pouting and looking cute only a few minutes earlier, but he bites his tongue. His boyfriend can’t handle getting a taste of his own medicine, usually—if he gives into his provocation it’s going to end with the other boy either fuming mad, or face-down on the bed again, acting melodramatic and dejected.

Unfortunately, ignoring him still doesn’t make the teasing stop. “Do you want me to start writing names halfway through all your books? I can, you know! Maybe I’ll even include the real culprit sometimes, just to throw you off!” He waves the textbook in his hand for emphasis.

Saihara is just about to respond when the title on the book cover suddenly catches his attention. He freezes suddenly, like a rabbit caught in the glare of a snake, the color draining out of his cheeks. Oh no, he thinks. Oh no, no, no.

He hopes for one fleeting instant that his dismayed reaction might have escaped the other boy’s notice—to no avail. As usual, his boyfriend is much too perceptive for his own good.

Ouma-kun glances from his face, to the book in his hands. Back to his face, then back to the book again. To him, that textbook probably seems completely unassuming, a like-new copy of a History of Magic, dating all the way back to their first year at Hogwarts. Like-new, of course, because Ouma-kun had absolutely never cracked that book open or stayed awake for longer than five minutes in that course. It was too boring, he always said.

He had never opened it—but Saihara had. Once. When he forgot to bring his own book to class, this one time in particular.

“Hey, Saihara-chan,” his boyfriend says, and the gleeful curiosity in his voice is so obvious that now Saihara feels like face-planting on the bed himself. He considers making a grab for the book… but even though he’s taller, he knows the other boy will have thought of five different ways to counter him before he even manages to snatch it out of his hands.

“Saihara-chan,” Ouma-kun repeats, leaning in and grinning broadly. “What’s in the book?”

Saihara groans, and accepts defeat.

Third year, one month after his first-ever break-up, Saihara came to terms with the fact that Akamatsu Kaede may have been… right.

“Sorry Saihara-kun, I just think this is for the best,” she had said at the time of the break-up, as they sat uncomfortably at a corner table in Madam Puddifoot’s tea shop in Hogsmeade. If Ouma-kun had been there with them, he probably would’ve cracked some joke to ease the tension. But he wasn’t there, so the atmosphere just stayed stiff and awkward, so thick that you could cut it with a knife. “This doesn’t really seem like it’s working, so… I think we’d be better off as friends.”

He’d been pretty sure he was messing up this whole “dating” thing from the moment they started, so the break-up hadn’t come as a surprise. A bit of a disappointment, perhaps, but not a surprise. What would’ve been more surprising was if he had actually managed to get it right.

So he had just pulled the brim of his hat low over his eyes, nodded nervously, and said, “U-Uh-huh. Okay. That’s fine.”

“Really? You think so too?” She’d clasped his hand gratefully with hers as she leaned in across the table, her eyes wide and her voice relieved.

He actually hadn’t been very sure what he thought at all. He still liked Akamatsu-san—quite a lot, in fact. But it was true that they had only been dating for six weeks, and that after they had gotten over the initial stage of puppy love, they had both been… rather unenthusiastic about their outings. Or at least, his stomach had always been too busy churning itself into knots for him to feel very enthusiastic about them. Whenever he had brought this up with Ouma-kun, the other boy always laughed and called him a worrywart.

There really hadn’t been anything to say. So he had nodded nervously again, his eyes flicking to a spot on the foggy window pane behind her. “I-If that’s what you think we should do… I’m fine with it… I mean, I’d like to keep being friends too, if that’s okay, so…”

Unexpectedly, she had frowned. “Saihara-kun, you’re doing the self-deprecating thing again, aren’t you?”

“Eh?”

“Of course I want to still be friends with you. I said so, didn’t I?”

He hadn’t really been sure if she was just saying that to be polite or not, so he kept quiet.

Akamatsu-san had sighed—then suddenly lifted the brim of his hat up, not enough to snatch it off his head but just enough so that he was forced to make eye contact with her. “You’re a good guy, Saihara-kun. I want to keep being friends with you, so don’t beat yourself up, okay?”

Saihara had reluctantly looked her way, his cheeks burning slightly from embarrassment. He gave her a very slight nod, thinking vaguely that if Ouma-kun were here right now he’d be elbowing him, prompting him to at least say something instead of just gaping like a fish.

“Besides…” The sudden sound of her voice startled him out of his thoughts. He’d almost expected that they would just finish their last date in silence, drinking their tea awkwardly before going their separate ways. So he was rather caught off guard when she grinned at him. “I think this’ll actually be good for both of us, don’t you? I kind of have someone else I’m interested in, and… I think you’re pretty much the same, aren’t you?”

He had stared at her blankly, not comprehending what she was getting at in the least. “E-Eh? I’m not sure what you mean, Akamatsu-san…”

It had been her turn to look surprised. “Huh, was I wrong? But I mean, you talked about him all the time, even on some of our dates. That Ouma-kun kid you hang out with...”

At the time, he had thought there was absolutely no way that could be true.

Maybe he did bring up Ouma-kun around some of his other friends a little more often than was entirely necessary. But was that really so unusual? He’d only tried to bring him up whenever he had done something particularly weird or interesting. The other boy was smart, so his insight could (and often did) shed a lot of light whenever any of the rest of them were dealing with a problem. And more than anything else, it was impossible to ever figure out what he was really thinking.

He talked about him more often than not because he was a mystery that he was still trying to puzzle out. And because for the past three years, the boy had made such a point of sticking by his side and spending time with him whenever possible that it was impossible to shake him off. They were friends. It was normal to talk about friends with other friends, wasn’t it? That didn’t necessarily mean he was interested in him, did it?

That was… what he had thought.

But now, one month later, he was maybe… perhaps… willing to admit that Akamatsu-san might have had a point.

Halfway into Professor Binns’ History of Magic lesson, he stared down at the pages of Ouma-kun’s textbook, mortified to find that he’d been scribbling all over them. No, maybe “scribbling” wasn’t the right word. He’d been doodling on them. The margins of several pages were crammed with doodles of the most embarrassing, thirteen-year-old variety.

Ordinarily, just the fact that he’d been writing in someone else’s textbook alone would be horrifying enough. He didn’t approve of damaging books (a fact Ouma-kun often laughed at him for, usually before dog-earing a page of one of his own books just to prove a point), let alone when he was just borrowing them from someone else.

He had come to class late today. A meeting with Professor Flitwick after his Charms lesson had gone on longer than he expected, and that meant he hadn’t had any time to hike all the way back up to Ravenclaw tower and get his books for his next few classes. He’d decided to just go to class directly, rather than risk showing up late, but when Ouma-kun had seen that he had come unprepared and book-less, he’d tossed his copy at him.

“You can make it up to me later, Saihara-chan!” he’d said cheerfully, when Saihara had tried to protest. “That book makes for a really comfortable pillow, so you’ll have to pay me back somehow, okay?” And sure enough, when Professor Binns had walked in the room and started lecturing, he’d looked over to see his friend with his head down on his desk, his snores loud and uncaring.

Normally, Saihara would have at least tried to pay attention himself. He was always exhausted, trying to convince the other boy that History of Magic was worth staying awake for, but Ouma-kun’s unbeatable exam scores meant that his advice always fell on deaf ears. As long as nothing could ever objectively prove him wrong, he was, unfortunately, the type of person who just kept doing whatever he wanted to do.

But today’s lecture had been… even more mindlessly boring than usual. Try as he might, Saihara just hadn’t been able to stay focused. Binns’ voice was so completely, utterly monotone as he talked without stopping that not even five minutes in, he couldn’t help but wonder if the other boy’s plan to nap through the lesson might not actually be such a bad idea.

Rather than napping, though, he had simply picked up his quill and… spaced off. And when he came back to himself and saw the doodles he’d made, only then did he realize just where his thoughts had been wandering off to.

The margins were cramped. A list of pros and cons took up the better half of an entire page. The cons weren’t too bad, since they were all recognizably true things like “annoying” or “arrogant” or “impossible to figure out.” But the pros made him want to shrivel up and disappear on the spot, as he looked at words like “interesting” or “fun” or “cute” in his own handwriting. Needless to say, the list of pros outweighed the list of cons. By a lot.

There were also drawings where he was pretty sure he’d tried to imitate Ouma-kun’s own style of doodles, usually reserved for his homework or binders. Saihara lacked any artistic talent whatsoever, so it was hard for even him to tell what he’d been trying to draw… but the tongue sticking out and the eye winking back at him gave it away, in the end.

Upon closer inspection, he could also make out one or two things which… yes, much to his dismay, he was pretty sure those were hearts.

Logically, he knew where all the signs were pointing, where all the evidence led. All his experience with mystery novels had taught him perfectly well how to infer where the conclusion was headed from all the clues presented. Part of him realized that, of course, but the other part of him simply wanted to deny it.

This is so bad, he thought. This is bad, bad, bad. Crushing like this… This is just embarrassing…

Embarrassing. Mortifying. Humiliating. It was all of those things and more, but that still couldn’t account for the slightly elated feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He put his quill away, closed Ouma-kun’s textbook, and spent the remainder of the lesson staring out the window instead, thankful for the first time in his life that his friend was such an annoying know-it-all that he refused to ever crack his books open.

“Saihara-chan, that’s adorable.”

“Stop.”

“That’s the cutest thing.”

“Please, stop.”

Saihara holds his head in his hands, trying desperately to drown out the sound of Ouma-kun’s highly amused commentary. Every so often, he can hear one of the pages being turned as his boyfriend peruses the textbook from cover to cover for the first time in his seven years at Hogwarts.

He groans. “It was only a few pages. You don’t have to look through the whole thing…”

“But if I flip through it too fast, I might miss something! I want to treasure every single thing my beloved Saihara-chan wrote about me.”

Reluctantly, he looks up and fixes him with a flat stare, feeling as though he’s been completely hollowed from the inside out. It’s not as though he hasn’t had other embarrassing secrets, but this was one that he wanted to take with him to his grave. “Seven years,” he says. “You went seven years without opening that thing. You didn’t even open it to study for your exams. And you had to pick now of all times?”

Ouma-kun notices the way he’s eyeing the book and snaps it shut, folding his arms over it protectively. He’s still grinning, but his body language is clear: you’ll pry this book from my cold, dead body. “I would’ve opened it a lot sooner if I’d known.”

“Whatever happened to your grand plan to burn all your textbooks as soon as we graduated from here? So that they’d ‘never see the light of day again,’ wasn’t that what you said?”

“We only graduated yesterday, technically. And there’s no way I’m going to burn any of them now! For all I know, any of them might have signs of Saihara-chan’s puppy-love crush!”

“I didn’t draw on any others!” Saihara says, the embarrassment welling up like a solid clump at the back of his throat. “Look, I was thirteen. I had a crush, yeah, but I thought I was just… kind of exaggerating about my feelings. I didn’t want to make our friendship get all weird by confessing, so I kept quiet, and then it seemed like I kind of… calmed down, at some point.”

Ouma-kun keeps quiet for a minute or two, apparently taking that information in. Finally, he runs a hand gently down the spine of the book and says, “Well, I still think it’s cute.” He doesn’t seem to be teasing, this time. Rather, his face is oddly blank—something he’s come to learn after all this time is usually a clear sign that he’s telling the truth.

Rubbing his eyes tiredly, he just nods. He’s sure that the other boy means what he’s saying, but the mortification is still nearly unbearable. Four years later and his secrets were dragged out like this, all because his boyfriend is too sentimental to pack up his things properly.

His boyfriend wraps the textbook carefully with another robe, then sets it down in the trunk, clearly ready to make a move just in case he tries to grab it and dispose of the evidence anyway. But Saihara is far too defeated to make any such attempts. He slumps down on the bed and puts his head back in his hands.

“You know, the funny thing is, if you had told me how you felt back then, I would’ve said yes in like half a second,” Ouma-kun says, the teasing tone creeping back into his voice now. He can hear him rummaging through some of the other piles of objects on the floor. “So really, we could’ve avoided… what, was it, two years? Two more years of dancing around the issue.”

“You mean we could’ve avoided it if you’d ever opened your books.”

“Ehhh?” He pretends to whine. “But those are such unrealistic expectations, Saihara-chan!”

Saihara can’t help but feel just slightly amused, despite the lingering embarrassment. He finally lowers his hands—then arches an eyebrow when he sees what the other boy is holding. “…Uh, I thought we were packing, not cleaning. Is that from one of the graduation parties last week?”

His boyfriend takes a step back, as though shocked. “You mean you don’t remember?” he asks, his eyes wide.

“Um… Remember what? It’s just a bottle of firewhiskey. An empty bottle of firewhiskey.”

Ouma-kun’s face splits into a wide, knowing grin. “This isn’t just any empty bottle of firewhiskey, Saihara-chan. This is one of my most important, treasured belongings.”

Realization dawns slowly on him. “You don’t mean…?”

“Oh, yes. I’m talking about that.”

Fourth year, the first night of their winter break. A couple of hours ago, Saihara had thought of plenty of good reasons why the four of them shouldn’t be drinking a bottle of firewhiskey in the Ravenclaw common room, but he couldn’t seem to remember any of them anymore.

“McGonagall is going to kill us if she finds out about this,” he said. “I mean, she’ll really, really kill us.” But even as he said it, he took another swig from the bottle before passing it around. The whiskey still burned all the way down, but the burning sensation had long since gone from “painful” to “enjoyable.” At the very least, he wasn’t coughing anymore.

“I doubt it,” said Amami-kun, tipping back the bottle for a few seconds before setting it down. “The headmaster’s gotta want to start her vacation more than anyone else, right? We’re pretty much the only ones staying here for the break anyway.” Given how lighthearted and casual he sounded almost all the time, it was hard to tell, but Saihara was pretty sure even he was slurring a lot more than usual.

Momota-kun snatched the bottle up next, swigging it down like someone with something to prove. He nearly choked in the process, coughing for several seconds while Amami-kun patted him on the back patiently. “W-Well said!” After finally catching his breath, he hit his fist against his chest. “Besides, half the fun of doin’ this sort of thing is knowing there’s a chance we could get caught, right?”

“Nishishi. Maybe you drinking wasn’t such a good idea after all, Momota-chan. Alcohol might not be the best combination with your bad gambling habit.”

“What’s that?! What did you just say?!”

Momota-kun made a halfhearted lunge, only to stop abruptly, looking vaguely nauseated. Ouma-kun didn’t budge in the slightest, but continued to sit there cross-legged and looking remarkably pleased with himself. Every now and then he knocked back a draft from the bottle himself, though he never coughed or choked. If it hadn’t been for the slightly pink tinge to his cheeks, it would’ve been impossible to tell if he was even affected at all.

Smuggling back the bottle from Hogsmeade had, of course, been his idea. Butterbeer was too boring, he had claimed, and they all deserved something that would “liven up the holidays.”

Saihara wouldn’t even doubt that this probably wasn’t the first time he had done something like this, either. Given how nosy his friend was about absolutely everything, he would bet money that the other boy had probably snooped around Hogsmeade until he found someplace that would serve it to him. The Hog’s Head, probably, he thought hazily to himself. They’re not choosy about the clientele, and I bet they serve whatever you ask them to.

“Shuuichi…? Shuuichi!”

“E-Eh?”

It took him a few moments to realize that Momota-kun was waving the bottle towards him, nearly unbalancing himself as he did so. Under other circumstances, he would’ve been embarrassed to realize that he had been spacing out, but it seemed like such a small, stupid thing to worry about right now. He grabbed the bottle, tipped it back, and took another swig.

Like that, they sat in a circle on the floor of the common room, talking and drinking comfortably. A single bottle of firewhiskey wouldn’t normally be considered a lot when split between four people—but then again, they were only fourteen years old.

“Ah—it’s empty.” Ouma-kun shook the bottle a little, frowning when he couldn’t hear the sound of its contents being swished around any longer.

“Man. Well, at least it was fun while it lasted, right?” The grin on Amami-kun’s face was truly content, as though nothing in the world could wipe it away. Everything had started seeming incredibly funny around the time they had knocked off half the bottle, so it wasn’t surprising that even the news that it was empty now couldn’t faze them.

“I-It wasn’t just fun. It was great,” said Momota-kun, still looking more than a little green around the gills. He had, surprisingly enough, been the one the most onboard with Ouma-kun’s plan, but it seemed that he was actually the biggest lightweight out of all of them. “We oughta do this sort of thing again…”

Ouma-kun’s eyes lit up in an instant. Ordinarily, that enthusiasm on his face would be enough to make Saihara feel apprehensive and worried. Too many times in the last four years, he’d seen it just before some over-the-top game was put into motion. But right now, he couldn’t help but feel that it wasn’t worth worrying about. If anything, it was… pretty cute, actually.

“To tell the truth,” Ouma-kun said, “that wasn’t the only bottle. I thought we might be up late, so I stashed another one in my trunk. Let me go down and get it! I’ll be back in a flash.”

None of them saw anything particularly wrong with that suggestion, so they simply nodded as the other boy headed towards the common room exit.

Suddenly struck with the urge to stretch his legs for a bit too, Saihara climbed to his feet, a little more wobbly than before but somehow able to keep his balance. “I’ll go with you,” he said, rushing to catch up with him—

He and Ouma-kun both stopped in their tracks when they suddenly heard Momota-kun yell incomprehensibly from behind them.

For a few seconds, he didn’t say anything, but simply made an indistinguishable noise as he waved a finger through the air unsteadily. Finally, after a great deal of effort, they could make out one word: “Up!”

“…Up?” Saihara repeated. “Um… Are you going to throw up?”

“Maybe Momota-chan shouldn’t touch that second bottle, now that I think about it.”

“Up!” Momota-kun said again. “Look up!”

Both of them did as they were told—and froze when they realized there was a clump of mistletoe strung directly above them. Someone’s great idea of a joke, right before the holidays, probably.

Amami-kun let out a low whistle. “Would ya look at that? Guess this means you two better kiss before you can get outta here.”

“What?!”

That interjection didn’t come from either of them, but from Momota-kun once again. He seemed, if possible, even paler than before, as though Amami-kun had just proposed something entirely unheard of.

“Th-They can’t—I mean, they’re both—that would just be kind of…”

Amami-kun raised an eyebrow. “But it’s like a challenge, right? Where’s the fun in backing down?” he asked.

Momota-kun didn’t seem to have a good response for that. He sputtered for a few seconds, apparently struggling with the idea of them kissing, as well as with the humiliation of backing down from a challenge. But manly pride must have won out in the end, because at last, he hung his head. “It’s… a man’s duty… not to back down from a challenge…”

“Hey, that’s the spirit!” Amami-kun patted him on the back again. “Besides, it’s not like it’s a big deal. It’s just a kiss, right?” The words were delivered so lightly, but they carried a heavy weight with them. His ability to take any situation at all with that same, easygoing attitude was... terrifying, in its own way.

Saihara turned slowly to look at Ouma-kun. He expected to be met with a taunting, ear-to-ear grin—so he was surprised to see that the boy was simply staring at him with a blank, unreadable expression. Maybe it was just his imagination, but he was sure he saw him blush a little. Of course, if he were to ask, he was pretty sure the other boy would just say it was all because of the firewhiskey. But still, he couldn’t help but blush a little, too.

“I-I mean… I don’t mind, so…” His heart sped up a little as he remembered that brief, fleeting crush from last year. It had lasted all of a few weeks, then simmered back down as quickly as it had come. He had thought it was gone for good, that he just saw Ouma-kun as a friend—but apparently not. Strangely, that realization didn’t scare him nearly as much as it should’ve.

Saihara felt like he was beginning to understand why all the hardboiled detectives in the books he read always called this sort of thing, “liquid courage.”

“…Well, if that’s what Saihara-chan wants, I guess I can’t really object, huh?” Ouma-kun said the words with so much amusement, yet there was still absolutely no visible emotion on his face. It was as though he really, honestly had no idea how to react to this situation.

Belatedly, he realized that maybe this was his friend’s way of showing his shock, calculating quickly and frantically through all his possible options. What had seemed like such a hard-to-figure-out expression only moments before now seemed… almost endearing.

Saihara considered all the things that were on his mind. He thought about those feelings he’d realized he had last year, about all the things that he wanted to say. It wasn’t that he lacked the courage to say them right now—if anything, he was feeling braver than he had in a long time. Rather, it was just too hard to know where to start. Trying to express those feelings in words felt like it was going to be a long and tiring process, not at all something he wanted to deal with at the moment.

So without saying anything else at all, he leaned forward and kissed Ouma-kun on the lips.

They pulled away after only a second, but it felt like much longer than that. The sound of Amami-kun’s one-man-applause and Momota-kun’s astonished, “Jesus, I thought he was just gonna kiss him on the cheek or somethin’!” did reach his ears, but only dimly. A little unsteady on their feet, either from that kiss, the firewhiskey, or both, they just stood there for a moment or two, not looking at each other.

Then Ouma-kun’s face split into his usual grin. “So… about that other bottle.” He pushed the common room door open, beckoning him to follow through.

“Ah… yeah. We… really should go get it, huh?”

It was a long way down to the Slytherin dungeons from the top of Ravenclaw tower. As they walked down the dark, cold passageways, they held hands, and if that seemed unusual or out of the ordinary at all, well, they didn’t comment on it.

Tomorrow, Saihara thought to himself as he waited in the Slytherin common room for Ouma-kun to fetch the other bottle from his trunk. Tomorrow, I think I should tell him. Maybe.

It sounded like a good idea to him, at least.

“You were going to tell me back then? Lies. You never told me anything,” says Ouma-kun indignantly. “Saihara-chan, we didn’t wind up taking care of that big old elephant in the room until a whole year later.”

“Yeah, I know. But I just didn’t account for…”

“...Ah. Right. The hangover.”

“Yep.”

The two of them both grimace in unison as they remember that particular experience. As fun as it had been to start their holiday break off with a night full of drinking, the pounding headache and stomach-churning nausea the following morning had been considerably less fun.

The other boy wrinkles his nose. “You know, you would think that as smart as wizards like to make themselves out to be, at least one of them would’ve invented a magical hangover cure by now...”

Saihara already knows it’s no use pointing out to his boyfriend that he’s a wizard too. Perhaps it’s because of his Muggle-born background, but ever since he’s known him, he’s never been shy about sharing his opinion: that the whole wizarding community was a bunch of “haughty idiots too overly-reliant on magic to find their way out of a paper bag.”

He’s pretty sure this rather disdainful opinion stemmed largely from the other boy’s preference to “play games in hard-mode,” but… it’s true that he might have had something of a point. His time back home, living with his Muggle uncle, had lent him plenty of insight into just how differently wizards and Muggles really saw things.

He had never seen much sense in the wizarding community’s aversion to electronics himself. If anything, Iruma-san’s endeavors into magical technology with her NEWTs this year were more than proof that they should be trying to catch up with the twenty-first century, not asking if the internet was a “rare Muggle delicacy.”

“Saihara-chan, you’re ignoring me.”

“H-Huh?”

Ouma-kun’s words call him out of his train of thought, and by the time he comes back to his senses, his boyfriend is leaning in towards his face, just centimeters away from touching the tip of his nose. His creased eyebrows and turned-down lips make it quite clear that he’s not pleased.

“Sorry!” Saihara apologizes on the spot. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to tune you out like that. I-I just started thinking about something else, and…” His boyfriend fixes him with a look so obviously unimpressed that he can’t help but hang his head. “Sorry,” he says again.

“Hmph… Well, it’s fine. You wouldn’t make for much of a Ravenclaw if you didn’t get lost in your own thoughts every once in a while, would you?” He closes the distance between them; their noses bump together as their lips brush against each other lightly. Then he steps back and pouts. “What I still can’t forgive though is that you were going to tell me an entire year earlier, and then you didn’t.”

“W-Well, you know, the hangover was so horrible, and then… after we finished dealing with that, it kind of felt like it would be awkward to mention it, so…”

“We woke up in the same bed, Saihara-chan. How is that not already awkward?”

Saihara flushes just at the memory of it. Two bottles of firewhiskey and several butterbeers, combined with the cold, wintry drafts in the Ravenclaw tower that night had led to them somehow thinking that sleeping in the same bed in the dorm room was a wonderful idea.

Nothing had actually happened—just cuddling. But the whole experience had still been mortifying. If they hadn’t been so sluggish and nauseated when they woke up the next morning, he’s pretty sure both of them would’ve fallen out of the bed from shock.

And, more than anything else, the fact that they had managed not to bring that particular incident up or talk about what had happened under the mistletoe that night for another year was… embarrassing in every sense of the word.

“That’s… Okay, that’s fair,” he finally admits.

“Yeah, I know.”

Ouma-kun seems content with his admission though, because he keeps rummaging through the piles on his bed. This time he works mostly in silence—only the slight intake of breath lets Saihara know that he’s found something again. And when he realizes just what it is that’s in his hands, he freezes too.

For some time, they both just stand there, looking long and hard at the green-emblazoned prefect badge in the other boy’s hand. 

One day fifth year, so nervous that he felt like he was about to pass out. Saihara walked through the streets of Hogsmeade side by side with his best friend, unable to say a single word along the way.

Today, he was resigned. He wanted to get it all over with, once and for all.

It was too bad he’d probably have to do something about the lump in his throat first, though. He’d rehearsed this plan at least a hundred times with Akamatsu-san, maybe more, but right now, it was very hard to remember even a single piece of advice she’d given him.

They stopped walking only when they reached the snow-covered hill outside the Shrieking Shack, a lonesome, dilapidated building completely free of other students or tourists, unlike the bustling shop-lined streets back in town.

“Well, here we are,” Ouma-kun said, spreading his arms wide towards the creaky, wooden building. He cupped a hand to his ear as though listening for something, then straightened up with a shrug. “Doesn’t seem like the ghosts and ghouls are at it today. What a pity.”

That was just an act, of course. They both knew the history of the Shrieking Shack quite well, having investigated everything they could dig up on it in the library after the place caught his friend’s interest—and finding that information, as it turned out, wasn’t nearly as hard as it used to be, thanks to all the books that had been published about the famous Harry Potter and his adventures in the last twenty years or so.

More than that, though, they’d both gone and seen for themselves just how “haunted” the place was some time during their third year. Ouma-kun had snuck into Ravenclaw tower and upstairs into the boys’ dormitory some time after midnight, and had proceeded to half-scare him to death by waking him up, standing over his bed in the dark, smiling down at him manically while trails of blood dripped down his forehead.

The blood, as it turned out, had come from a mild concussion, courtesy of the Whomping Willow outside on the grounds. That hadn’t stopped the other boy from using it as an excellent opportunity to pull a prank, however (something Saihara had reamed him out incessantly for after his heart stopped beating all the way in his throat). Thanks to that little venture, Ouma-kun had found a way to make it past the tree and discovered where it led.

He had come rushing back, insisting Saihara needed to see it with him. Saihara had, of course, told him no… but in the end, he inevitably gave in to his curiosity. The whole exploration had been surprisingly fun, actually—up until McGonagall had caught him sneaking back into the school at six in the morning, with a half-unconscious Ouma-kun leaning on his shoulder. They’d both been lectured for hours on end, and given detentions that had lasted them through an entire month.

Both of them knew perfectly well that there were no ghosts or ghouls in the Shrieking Shack. So it made sense when Ouma-kun dropped the act a few seconds later, spinning on his heels in the snow and asking, “So, what did you bring me here to talk about, Saihara-chan?”

“I-I, uh… I…” There really wasn’t any prolonging that question. He swallowed hard.

As it turned out, they hadn’t been doing a whole lot of talking for… well, for most of this term. The situation between them was more awkward and strained than it had ever been.

Back when they hadn’t been speaking to each other for those two weeks during their second year, at least he had been able to rest assured knowing that the fight was mostly Ouma-kun’s fault. But this time around, he was the one who had messed up, plain and simple.

The trouble had all begun at the start of the term, when Ouma-kun had shown up wearing a silver-and-green Slytherin prefect badge—and no such Ravenclaw badge had ever come for himself in the mail. The other boy had assured him that it must have been a mistake (“Me, take on responsibility? You must be joking, Saihara-chan!”) and had told him cheerfully that he was going to talk to McGonagall to tell her what was what and refuse the job point-blank.

About half an hour later, he’d stormed back out of the headmaster’s office, looking unusually irritated. He’d refused to talk much about what had happened, except that she apparently wouldn’t take no for an answer, but the fact that he had lost that round had obviously soured his mood.

“She kept talking about how I’m ‘clearly the best fit for the job’ and ‘need to stop lying and deluding myself otherwise’! Can you believe that? She didn’t even care that I already have OWLs on my plate or anything!”

At the time, Saihara had given a very noncommittal, “Hmm.”

He had known before the year started that he probably wouldn’t be selected as a prefect. Despite the improvements he’d made in the past five years, it wasn’t as though he had ever exhibited what one might call “exemplary leadership skills.” Amami-kun being chosen as the male prefect from their year made perfect sense, really.

...So perhaps the reason that he had felt so discontent with this turn of events was simply because he hadn’t been expecting Ouma-kun to be given a prefect badge, either.

No one broke more rules than Ouma-kun, and no one worked more poorly with others. How did those qualify as “leadership skills,” exactly? What was more, clearly the other boy didn’t even want to do the job.

He kept complaining about their upcoming OWLs and how even he needed to buckle down and study for once given their current course load, but that was obviously just an excuse. If he didn’t want to do it that badly, Saihara couldn’t fathom why McGonagall would still insist that he was the best one for the job.

Every time that Ouma-kun had come back from running his rounds or complained about the amount of paperwork involved, he had bitten his tongue, trying to keep his thoughts to himself—up to a point.

But after it happened one too many times for his liking, he hadn’t been able to stop himself any longer, and the words had come forward coldly and quietly: “Hey Ouma-kun? Could you… maybe stop complaining about your prefect duties so much?”

The other boy’s face had gone blank like a slate wiped clean. He had blinked once or twice, but otherwise gave no response.

Saihara had pressed on to fill that awkward silence himself. “I mean… It’s not like I can help you with any of those, so… I don’t really know what good complaining about it to me would do.”

Ouma-kun seemed to think it over. He had half-expected him to grin or laugh it off, the way he did just about everything, but the longer they stood there, the more the other boy’s mouth seemed to twist in something like… boredom, perhaps. Or disappointment. It was the same expression he always made whenever Saihara made a move too quickly in wizard’s chess, inadvertently opening himself up to a huge loss.

“Alright then, Saihara-chan. If that’s what you want, then sure, I’ll stop talking about it.” He had paused, then picked his bag up from its place atop the coffee table in the Ravenclaw common room where they were studying, throwing it carelessly over one shoulder. “Actually, you know, if that’s the sort of friendship that we’re supposed to have, I’d hate to get in the way of your other plans, so… I’m going to go, I think.”

“Eh? Ah, you don’t really have to leave or anything…”

“No, I really think I should. After all, I’m clearly not wanted here. So, see you around, Saihara-chan.”

With the atmosphere clearly ruined, Ouma-kun had left the room, just like that. And the next month or so had passed in a more miserable fashion than ever, with both of them going out of their way to avoid each other.

There had been… a resolution of sorts, after that. A resolution that he was currently trying very hard not to think about. He had delayed apologizing for as long as possible—it wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to, but the thought of confronting the other boy directly and admitting that yes, he had been the bigger jerk for once, had tied his stomach into knots.

He had done so in the end, but it had been… messy, so to speak. They had patched their friendship up, but in the course of his apology, he had admitted a few things that he had rather wanted to keep to himself, and the unnatural distance between them had remained ever since. Every time it seemed that things were back to normal, that they were talking or laughing about things like usual, one of them would inevitably trail off, and things always lapsed back into the same, awkward silence.

It had been going on for months already. The term was almost at its end, with winter break approaching fast. He wanted to put an end to it already.

For that reason, he’d recruited Akamatsu-san. This wasn’t the sort of task he could accomplish on his own, and when he thought back to what she had said to him two years ago, he realized that maybe her insight would be… necessary. So every free moment that he’d had in the last few weeks, he had spent discussing his plan with her in empty classrooms.

Now was finally the time to put that plan into action. And yet, when Ouma-kun asked him what it was he wanted to talk about, his only reaction was to freeze on the spot.

Surprisingly, his friend didn’t seem irritated or put off by his lack of response. He just snapped his fingers, looking suddenly inspired. “So that’s how it is, huh? You know, I think I’ve figured out why you invited me to talk.”

“Y-You did?” Saihara tried hard not to let his reaction betray him, but the shock leaked out in his voice nonetheless.

“Of course I did. You should know by now that you can’t keep any secrets from me, Saihara-chan!”

“I—I wasn’t trying to keep it a… a secret, really.” He felt lightheaded. “That’s why I w-wanted to talk about it today—”

“About your crush, right?”

Saihara’s throat went completely dry. He opened his mouth, trying several times to make any kind of response, only to fail each time. He wasn’t sure if he should settle for how long have you known, or what gave it away, when Ouma-kun suddenly interrupted again—

“Nishishi… I see, I see! So Saihara-chan finally wants to talk to me about his crush on Akamatsu-chan.”

“My… what?”

“Your crush. I always did figure the two of you jumped the gun a little in third year, but I’m glad you’re willing to give it another shot. If you want to ask me for advice before trying to confess to her, I’m all ears! Today’s a good day for it, since it’s our last Hogsmeade visit before the break and all.”

Saihara just stared at him, wondering how someone so smart could possibly be so… well, stupid. He had never felt more bewildered in his life.

“Don’t just stand there, Saihara-chan! We need to start practicing lines now if you still want time to make it back into town and ask her out—”

“I don’t… have a crush on Akamatsu-san,” he said, cutting his friend off gently. “I-I mean, I used to. Once.”

“That can’t be right, though. After all, I’ve seen you spending so much time with her lately…?”

”W-We spent time together because I was asking for her advice. She offered to help me out, so that I could confess to… um. Someone else.”

He had hoped that might get the point across sufficiently. He waited to see what the other boy’s reaction might be, holding his breath with anticipation, but—

“Hmm? Who is it, then?”

His brain stuttered to a halt. It felt like there was a real, genuine disconnect between his body and his consciousness for about five seconds. Then, before he could stop himself, he blurted it all out. “You. Ouma-kun, I’m talking about you.”

He couldn’t have looked any more stunned than if he had hit him over the head with the nearest blunt object. As the two of them stood there in shocked, stunned silence, Saihara almost wished something in the Shrieking Shack would scream, if only to distract them from the mood at hand.

Ouma-kun just kept staring at him, his face blank, but in his eyes he was sure he almost caught sight of something like fear for the very first time. So he took a deep breath, reminded himself that he had already resigned himself to this fate, and… confessed.

By the time Saihara finished, he felt as exhausted as if he had just finished running a marathon. He stared intently at a point just past Ouma-kun’s left shoulder, off towards the Shrieking Shack, too embarrassed to make eye contact.

“It’s okay if the answer is no… I mean, I k-kind of… expected as much. With the way that I acted, before...” He exhaled a shaky breath. “I know it’s no excuse, but part of that was because I was… jealous. Th-That we weren’t spending as much time together. You started doing all these other things, and having all these other responsibilities, and I freaked out when I realized I couldn’t just keep things between us the same forever.”

He paused, waiting to hear the other boy’s thoughts, response—anything. But Ouma-kun’s eyes darted behind him for a moment, then back again, as though he was considering making a run for it. That… wasn’t exactly the best sign.

Nervous and now feeling pressed for time, he continued. “Wh-Whatever your answer is, it’s okay, but… It took me a lot of courage to confess like this, s-so I’d like an actual yes-or-no answer… if possible.”

At that, Ouma-kun rolled back on the heels of his feet slightly, as though readjusting his weight. Yes, Saihara realized, he’d definitely been thinking about just making a run for it.

The minutes passed by slowly. At some point, the snow started falling around them a little harder, but the other boy still just stood there, staring at him uncertainly, clasping his arms around himself and shivering only occasionally, as though he’d even forgotten that he was cold. Every time he opened his mouth like he was about to try and give him an answer, he snapped it shut only a moment later, clearly evaluating his every option.

Saihara waited for what he guessed were at least ten full minutes. Ten minutes without any response is… kind of a response in its own way, he thought tiredly. Then he sighed. “Actually, it’s okay. You don’t have to answer.”

There was no response.

“I’ll just… go. We can go back to acting like this never happened tomorrow, if that’s what you want, so…” Trailing off awkwardly, he turned on his heel to leave.

He had only taken about two steps forward when he felt a sudden tug on his sleeve.

But just as he turned to look back, surprised, he missed his step. He set his foot down, expecting solid ground where there was only a patch of ice—and he tumbled to the snow-covered ground, taking the other boy with him.

As he lay sprawled on his back, dizzy from the fall, it took several moments for the fact that Ouma-kun was now on top of him to sink in.

They stared at each other without saying anything at all, their noses almost touching. His back was ice-cold, soaked with muddy snow, but his face was warm where he could feel the other boy’s breath.

There were snowflakes in Ouma-kun’s hair, he realized dimly, and faint patches of ice where his breath had condensed on his scarf while they were standing here. In that moment, he looked unbearably cute.

Ouma-kun closed the gap between them, kissing him.

The kiss was longer than the one they had shared last year, sweeter somehow. For a moment, he forgot all about his soaking wet clothes or the throbbing where he’d hit his head on the way down, and focused instead on the feeling of Ouma-kun’s lips, soft and warm. Instinctively, he reached a hand up, running his fingers through the other boy’s hair while they kissed.

Only the need for fresh air was enough to make them pull away a few moments later. The tips of Ouma-kun’s ears and nose were red for reasons he suspected had very little to do with the cold. Saihara could understand that—he still felt dizzy, but it certainly wasn’t because of the fall he had taken anymore.

“So, um… Is that a yes?” he asked curiously, after a few more moments had passed.

Ouma-kun gave him that same, blank stare as before. Then he grabbed a handful of snow, stuck it down the back of Saihara’s coat, and seemed to give up on the spot, face-planting on his chest. 

At some point, standing while they talked had seemed too tedious, so they’d taken a seat instead—on the floor, for some reason, since the bed was still overrun with all kinds of items. And of course, the moment he’d sat down to rest his legs, the other boy had sprawled across his lap comfortably, like an overgrown cat.

Saihara examines the prefect badge in one hand as his boyfriend squints up at him. It looks somehow smaller than it did two years ago. Less shiny, maybe. It’s almost hard to believe that such a small thing caused so much trouble between them.

“Are you telling me,” Ouma-kun says slowly, “that if it weren’t for this stupid prefect badge, we might never have actually hooked up? How devious of McGonagall-chan.”

“No, I really don’t think that’s why she made you a prefect…”

“Well, it’s not like any of her other underlying motives about teaching me responsibility or making me act more mature worked, so too bad for her, then.” His boyfriend fakes a yawn, nuzzling against his lap as though bored.

But it’s such an obvious lie that Saihara can’t help but smile. For all that the other boy still insisted he had hated every moment of his prefect duties in the last two years, he still remembered just how pleased he looked every time he set some “welcoming prank” or other for the Slytherin first years—right after which he always taught them the best secret passageways and tricks for getting into trouble on their own. He could claim all he wanted that the job had been boring and dull, but Saihara was still pretty sure that McGonagall had won that round, too.

“I notice you’re not denying the part about not hooking up,” Ouma-kun says after a little while, cracking one eye open to stare up at him.

“Uh, well…” It was true. Probably. That’s why he couldn’t exactly deny it. “If it weren’t for me acting like a jerk—”

“Like a huge jerk.” His boyfriend corrects him.

“—like a huge jerk,” he agrees, “then I probably wouldn’t have come by to apologize that day. And if I hadn’t done that, then—”

“Well, you’d never have known that I wear reading glasses, for one thing,” he interjects again.

“…True.” Finding out that little tidbit of information had almost made the whole awkward period between them worth it. The glasses had looked very cute, as it turned out, and even cuter was the fact that Ouma-kun had gone through lengths for five years to try and make sure he didn’t find out about them. He shakes his head, dispelling the thought, and continues. “But I also wouldn’t have blurted out… some of those other things, when I came to apologize.”

Ouma-kun smiles up at him lazily. “Oh, you mean like… how you blurted out that you wanted to get to know me better?” he says, his tone sly.

Saihara’s face reddens, though he tries to play it off calmly. “Yeah. Among other things. Which you proceeded to ignore like it never happened until I blurted out all that other stuff in Hogsmeade.”

His boyfriend’s smile freezes in place slightly, the way it always does whenever he catches him at something he’s not supposed to be doing. Predictably, the pout comes back. “I was surprised.”

“And here I thought nothing ever surprised you, Ouma-kun.”

“Well, maybe if you weren’t so weird, I could figure you out a little better, Saihara-chan. What was I supposed to think, that you had a crush on me? It didn’t make any sense. Two years later and it still doesn’t make any sense, in my opinion.” But even as he says it, he still makes no effort to get up off his lap, lying there as though genuinely content.

“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think? After all…” He grasps one of his boyfriend’s hands gently, running his thumb back and forth along the smooth metal band resting on his ring finger. “You already made up your mind, right?”

It’s not an object to pack, nor is it particularly old or worn, but there’s nothing else in the room with more sentimental value than the two metal bands that they’re wearing right now.

Ouma-kun doesn’t say anything, but Saihara is quite pleased to see the tips of his ears redden ever-so-slightly.

Sixth year, on a clear summer morning in late June. The day was June 21st—an important date, one that he had committed to memory by now.

Or rather, he would’ve had it committed to memory if it weren’t so early. When he felt someone’s weight on top of him and heard a gentle, “Wake up, Saihara-chan,” in his ear, his first instinct was to roll over in his bed and try to go back to sleep.

“Saihara-chan,” the voice said again, and this time it didn’t sound nearly so gentle. Just impatient. “Get up.”

“Sure… I’m up. I’m up, just… give me a few more minutes…” Mornings were still not his forte, even after all these years. On a day like today, with no lessons and no exams, he saw no reason to be up any earlier than he had to be.

As it turned out, his boyfriend was merciless. “I take no requests!” he said, his voice rising several notches. Saihara’s first instinct was to reach blindly for the nearest pillow, to cover his ears with it, but he was about two steps behind; by the time his hand reached, there was only empty space where the pillow used to be.

Its location wasn’t left a mystery for long, though. Only a moment later, the missing pillow made a sudden reappearance, smacking him in the face. “Ouma-kun…” It was more of a plea than a statement. He was too tired to even move the pillow off of him, so he just left it lying where it was.

“No requests,” Ouma-kun repeated. “As you know, today’s my birthday, so if I just let you sleep in past noon and waste the day away, how exactly are you going to give me your full and undivided attention?”

“I promise, I’ll give you as much attention as you want.” Saihara made another attempt to turn over. “Later. Just let me sleep…”

His boyfriend snatched the pillow off of his face, then sidled up beside him. When Saihara opened his eyes just a crack, he could see his face only centimeters away, frowning at him intently. “Attention” was certainly the key word here.

He’s just like a cat, he thought groggily to himself. Try and show him affection when he’s nearby and he slips just out of reach. But ignore him for five seconds…

“Birthday, Saihara-chan! It’s my birthday!”

“I heard you the first time…”

“And as we agreed, that means I get to do whatever I want today.”

“Implying you don’t already the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year…”

“Oh-ho, I see Saihara-chan is feeling particularly snippy this morning.” His boyfriend actually sounded faintly amused. “But no, see, I’m actually quite magnanimous. I tone it down the rest of the time, believe it or not.”

Too tired to form any actual response this time, he just managed an incoherent groan instead.

Ouma-kun lifted a hand, letting his fingers trace circles along the base of Saihara’s collarbone and the hollow of his throat. Under other circumstances, this might actually have been a very convincing incentive to wake up—but he was just too tired today.

“Today, I can especially do whatever I want, because I’m seventeen now.”

Saihara is tempted to point out the fact that he’s been seventeen, and therefore technically a legal adult by wizarding standards, for a good nine months longer than the other boy. With Hogwarts’ mandatory entry age of eleven and the cut-off date for admissions at the end of July, he hadn’t gotten his letter of invitation until just shortly before his twelfth birthday.

“I could drink if I want. Legally this time, I mean.” His boyfriend’s trailing fingers wound up at the back of his neck this time, drawing patterns against his skin. “What do you say to a night on the town, Saihara-chan? We could sneak out to Hogsmeade, no one’s gonna miss us now that exams are over.”

“Sure… Sounds good…”

“I could apparate once we were there, too! We could go wherever we wanted, then come back before the sun comes up. What do you think about that?”

“Yeah… I don’t mind…”

“Hmm, hmm. I see.” He didn’t have his eyes open to check, but he was pretty sure Ouma-kun made a motion like a nod before continuing. “And you know, I could even get engaged, if I wanted to. Don’t you think that’s interesting, too?”

“Mm-hmm…”

“Okay, well! I’m going downstairs now. I’m dying for some coffee.” Ouma-kun leaned in suddenly and kissed the base of his neck before pulling away, hopping off the bed lightly. “Oh, and I changed my mind, by the way. You can sleep in if you want to, Saihara-chan!” Just as quickly as he snuck here in the first place, he left.

Saihara laid there for several disgruntled moments, uncomfortably cold where his boyfriend had been lying next to him before. He sighed heavily, turned onto his other side, and tried to go back to sleep—

And then, his eyes shot open.

He threw back the sheets, struggling to pull on his clothes as he brushed through his hair with a franticness typically reserved for mornings in which he was late to class. As his mind kept spinning, he half-stumbled, half-fell down the stairs to the common room, only to be greeted by the sight of Ouma-kun smiling pleasantly at him, a fresh cup of coffee in hand.

“Oh, so you decided to join me after all! Care for a cup of coffee, Saihara-chan?” His boyfriend waved the mug at him genially. “It’d be a shame to let it go to waste, after I went through all the trouble to have Iruma-chan get this espresso machine up and functioning last year so that you poor Ravenclaws didn’t have to go down seven flights of stairs just to get some caffeine.”

That was, of course, the crafty way of saying he’d pressured her into it—though every Ravenclaw from the meekest first years to the most experienced seventh years would admit that the closer source of coffee had been a godsend. None of them knew how she managed it, but Iruma-san had a knack for getting electronic devices to work just about anywhere, even the Hogwarts grounds. During exam week, those tactics saved lives.

But none of that concerned him at the moment. He ignored the coffee completely, instead pointing an accusing finger the other boy’s way as he struggled to catch his breath. “You.”

“Me?” Ouma-kun said innocently.

“You… what you said just now… upstairs…” He wasn’t sure if his current winded state was more because of tripping down the stairs, or because of sheer panic. “Did you mean what you said just now? Were you serious about that?”

“Why, Saihara-chan, I’m absolutely serious about everything I say.”

“Now’s not the time for jokes!” he said, unable to keep the edge out of his voice. “Listen, Ouma-kun… Birthday or not, if that was just another one of your pranks just now, I’ll be mad. That isn’t something you should joke about, so—“

“I just told you, I wasn’t joking.”

“Eh?”

Saihara stopped and stared at his boyfriend dumbly. It felt as though the ability to properly grasp words and sentences was completely lost to him right now, let alone form them himself. The smile had fallen from Ouma-kun’s face, and all that remained was that same, blank stare. If there were any traces of sarcasm or amusement, he wasn’t finding them.

“You’re really serious about this?” he asked, amazed. “You want to get engaged...?”

It wasn’t that the idea was… unpleasant. Quite the opposite, actually. But this kind of suggestion, coming from someone with so many walls between his behavior and his emotions, from someone with the biggest fear of commitment he’d ever seen… It was rather difficult to take it all in.

Ouma-kun looked away and examined the back of one hand as though bored, but he knew him well enough now to suspect that it was probably just a ploy to avoid making eye contact. “Listen, Saihara-chan,” he said. “Before I came here, I didn’t know what to expect. I thought maybe things would be livelier than they were at the orphanage, that maybe there would be more games to play in a world I knew nothing about—but I definitely didn’t expect to meet someone like you.”

Saihara stayed silent, waiting to hear the rest of what he had to say.

“I didn’t have friends. Didn’t think I needed them. Well, it’s not a secret that I can kind of figure most people out pretty easily. They don’t tend to like that much,” he said, smiling sardonically.

Yes, he could certainly imagine. Part of the other boy’s exasperatingly bratty behavior had always struck him as a lot more calculated than he liked to let on.

“Then you came along, and you were fun. Interesting. From the moment you picked up on those clues I left in first year, I couldn’t figure you out at all. When you called me your friend, the year after that… I couldn’t understand it.” He set the mug down on the table in front of the sofa, absentmindedly stirring the spoon and looking down blankly at the ripples it created. “I couldn’t understand it, but I wanted to.”

Saihara’s breathing was much calmer now, but his heartbeat only seemed to be speeding up more as he listened. He couldn’t speak even if he wanted to right now; his voice seemed to be caught in his throat somewhere.

“I thought if we could just keep that friendship going, that I’d be fine with that. Wouldn’t it have been boring if we’d tried to mess it up with something else and then stopped talking to each other altogether?” He stopped stirring and paused for a moment. Saihara could just make out a motion in his throat, as though he had swallowed nervously. “And then you just kept on surprising me.”

There was no noise in the common room at all as they stood there, the late-morning sunshine slanting through the windows. Somewhere far, far below, other students were probably out having fun on the grounds, making the most of their peaceful, exam-free days before they had to get back on the train in a few days.

“I didn’t think I was going to say yes, when you confessed over a year ago. I didn’t plan to, that’s for sure.” Ouma-kun snickered quietly to himself, shaking his head before continuing to stare at the coffee mug just like before. “And then I did anyway. That would be your fault, Saihara-chan.”

“My fault…?”

“Yeah, see. I realized back then that I’d do just about anything if my beloved Saihara-chan wanted me to. Do you have any idea how terrifying that realization was? You’re willing to be with me, to try to get to know me, even though…” He gestured vaguely to himself. “Well, I’m not sure there’s much to know, once you scratch the surface. That’s how lies work, you know. The magic goes away when you know the trick behind it.”

“Ouma-kun…”

“And that’s exactly why I’d do anything you wanted. Whatever you asked, I wouldn’t care.” He seemed to consider. “…Okay, well maybe I’d care a little, if Saihara-chan turned out to be a complete weirdo. But I’d still want to be with you anyway, and that’s not something I’m used to, you see.”

Saihara wanted nothing more than to close the distance between them. It felt as though if he stretched out his arm right now, he might almost reach—but he was afraid that doing so would only prompt the other boy to cut their conversation short. If he bolted from the common room only to act like they’d never had this discussion later, he wasn’t sure he could take it. So he stayed where he was.

“Most importantly,” Ouma-kun said, drawing back his attention, “I realized how boring things would be if I wasn’t with you after this, Saihara-chan. I think that if I stay with you from now on… I’ll never be bored again.”

For the first time in his entire speech, his blank-faced façade seemed to slip a little. His cheeks flushed as he stopped and caught his breath, looking suddenly exhausted, as though saying all of that had truly drained the energy right out of him.

Saihara tentatively crossed over to the other side of the common room, closing the distance between them. Ouma-kun didn’t pull away, but simply let himself be pulled into a hug. As their chests touched, he realized his heart wasn’t the only one beating way too fast right now.

“I think I have an idea... about what to do for your birthday,” Saihara said after a moment or two. He didn’t pull away, but simply stood there, hugging his boyfriend tight. “But it’s your birthday, so you get to make the final decision.”

Ouma-kun made a muffled noise, apparently unwilling to quit burying his face against his chest. If he had to guess, he probably liked their current position because it at least kept his expression out of sight.

Saihara assumed the noise meant that it was okay for him to continue, so he took a deep breath and proposed the plan he had in mind: “What would you say to shopping in town later tonight? For rings, I mean.”

“Cheating. Bringing up the rings was cheating, Saihara-chan.”

“I seem to recall you’re the one who always likes to talk about how ‘anything goes if it’s in order to win’ and ‘the ends justify the means’…”

“Yeah, and ask anyone else in my house and they’ll say the exact same thing. Weren’t you Ravenclaws supposed to be all by-the-book?”

“Well, you’d be surprised sometimes…”

The two of them gaze down at their packed luggage, stacked nice and neatly on the platform as they wait for the Hogwarts Express to arrive for one last time. They had finished putting everything in Ouma-kun’s room away pretty quickly as they discussed their future plans together, of which they had no shortage.

In particular, they’d had fun trying to determine when to actually make the whole engagement official. It had come up so suddenly at the end of last year that they’d decided to leave things as they were until they finished their seventh year together. But as a result, they hadn’t told anyone else about it at all.

“We don’t need to tell anyone else,” Ouma-kun had insisted. “Let’s just walk down to the Ministry of Magic, fill out all the paperwork, and then fill everyone else in after the fact. I’d like to see the look on Momota-chan’s face, anyway.”

“No, no way. They’ll never let me hear the end of it if we do something this big without them at least hearing about it first… Besides, wouldn’t it be kind of strange for a couple who’s starting work at the Ministry in about two weeks to just go waltzing in first like, ‘hello, by the way, could you give us the quickest and most informal wedding you have’?”

“Tch. Saihara-chan says that as if the first impression I make will matter at all when I’m ruling the Wizengamot with an iron fist in a few years.”

“You certainly do like the spotlight, don’t you, Ouma-kun…”

And so, they had bickered back and forth, the hours flying by as they packed and talked and reminisced. Every so often, Ouma-kun’s eyes had seemed just a little red as he had put things back into the trunk one by one, and when they finally left through the wide front doors in the main hall, he had erupted into a fit of overdramatic “crocodile tears” which Saihara wasn’t entirely sure were nearly as fake as he wanted people to believe. But he’d had the tact not to say anything, so he kept quiet at the time.

That sentimental streak wasn’t something the other boy wanted to hear any snide comments about, as he knows quite well by now. Well, if it were something he wanted out in the open then he wouldn’t have tried to bury it behind about forty different façades, give or take.

They wait for the train patiently in the afternoon sunshine. Or rather, he waits patiently and Ouma-kun sits on his trunk and whines.

“It’s too hot,” he says.

“It is June,” Saihara points out. “You could always take off your scarf…”

“Ehhh? But what if it’s too cold on the train? The Slytherin dungeons were always freezing, I’ll have you know, so this scarf is practically a part of me by now.”

“Well then, you could take it off for now and put it back on later.”

“…Too much work,” the other boy says, looking bored already.

Saihara shakes his head, half-amused, half-exasperated. Then he looks over curiously as an idea occurs to him. “So… if we do announce the engagement to everyone else soon… We’re probably going to need to get used to calling each other ‘fiancés’ instead of ‘boyfriends,’ huh?”

Generally speaking, Ouma-kun is the liar between the two of them. But he’d be lying himself if he said that the dumbstruck look on the other boy’s face wasn’t a delight to see.

Unfortunately, he’s always quick to recover himself. He hops off the trunk and launches himself at him, throwing his arms around Saihara’s waist. “Why are you so mean to me Saihara-chan? Are you enjoying this? Do you hate me? Is bullying me that fun?”

He looks up at him with wide, round eyes, his pout calculated and devious and still annoyingly cute despite all that.

Saihara already has an idea of how to respond, though. “I don’t think I could ever hate you,” he says honestly. “Be mad at you? Sure. But I couldn’t hate you if I tried, Ouma-kun.”

Ouma-kun stares at him for a few more seconds, blinking slowly. Then he frowns. “Oh, you’re definitely just doing this to be mean now.”

“…Maybe a little.”

As they talk, the Hogwarts Express finally pulls into the station, its red paint and churning smokestacks familiar after these last seven years. When he looks at it, Saihara can still remember what it was like when he came down those steps for the first time only to be herded into the boats reserved for first years. He’d been an eleven-year-old mess of fear, hesitation, and anxiety.

Some of those feelings are still there even now. The fear of entering the labyrinth-like school with its magic and mysteries had been replaced at some point with a fear of leaving it behind. But it was… a manageable sort of fear.

More unexpected than any of the spells, the potions, or the charms that he had learned about in the last seven years was finding that there was this: a person to stand by his side. Someone whose side he wanted to stand by.

He smiles, feeling a little dazed with happiness as Ouma-kun sticks his tongue out at him playfully before grabbing their luggage and beginning to hoist them up onto the train.

“You coming or what, Saihara-chan?” The other boy calls down from the steps of the train car, arching an eyebrow at him.

“…Yeah. Yeah, I’m coming. Let’s go together.”