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In the week before Christmas, and after the days following the Yule Ball, Hogwarts transformed itself from a dreary, grey castle into a glittering, snowy landscape. Every inch of the school was covered in silver baubles and streamers; red and green ornaments decorated every suit of armor George came across, and even the poltergeist could be heard chanting old, off tune Christmas carols in the backgrounds of classrooms. In the Great Hall, one of the professors had magicked a dozen Christmas trees to be placed at intervals around the walls, and some bore a signature look; four of them were noticeably the Houses, in shades of red, green, yellow, and blue, and the rest were simply silver and gold.
Dream and George’s relationship, too, had changed with the winter. There was a noticeable difference in their conversations, whether it be working together during double Herbology classes on Wednesday afternoons or even seeing each other in the halls in passing. Where Dream would have once intentionally bothered George at his table in the library, purely to enjoy his discomfort, he now came to study with him. George kicked him under the table and demanded to know why he was there.
Dream had only responded with a smile, insouciant, and said, it’s not a crime to have a study partner, is it?
The word partner held many meanings. George’s cheeks burned and he looked back down at the essay he was attempting to finish. As he tried, he couldn’t write another word.
Dream, however, had no qualms about studying with him. He spread his Arithmancy charts across the entire table, pushing George’s inkpot and quill to the side, and meticulously completed his notes. Although George didn’t know the first thing about divination or Arithmancy, for he had never been one to like the craft of it, he could appreciate how much skill it took. Dream spent upwards of three hours studying without a break. George could never do that, no matter how much he liked Magical Theory.
The other thing about a shift from fall to winter was that students could be heard down every corner discussing their holiday plans, receiving letters from family members, talking about whether they would be returning home for the holiday or not. George himself was not planning on going home to celebrate with his family; he never had, back before he transferred from Beauxbatons. To his surprise, however, there were a large number of students who were leaving. As the days passed, and those who were staying put their names down, George realized that the potential of it being him and only twenty other students was fairly high.
The Ravenclaw common room had a new announcement pinned to the bulletin board when George returned. Wilbur took one look at it and smiled.
“Excellent,” he said approvingly, “The next Hogsmeade visit is right after my Transfiguration exam, we’ll have time to get Christmas gifts.”
“Are you staying here for Christmas?” George asked.
“No,” Wilbur said, as if it were obvious, “My brothers are leaving too.”
“All four of you?”
Wilbur clicked his tongue. “Yes. Phil might visit his friends for a few days, but we’re planning on taking the early train back. Besides, all of Tommy’s friends are leaving, so he’d rather not stay without them.”
“Ah.”
“You’re staying here, then?”
George nodded. Wilbur shrugged, and then the conversation ended.
Well, George thought privately, that was fifteen more words than any of his other conversations with Wilbur (at least the conversations which didn’t involve Wilbur attempting to gain something from him), which was progress, no matter how minute.
The other interesting thing about the week was that George woke up one morning to the announcement that all their Herbology classes were now confined to the greenhouses, due to the snowfall. It was sure to be uncomfortably hot in their winter robes. They had moved from venomous plants to poisonous ones, identifying certain markings of particular species. George racked up points for Ravenclaw every class by identifying the right plants and reciting, nearly word for word, their uses in magic. When he glanced at the House points the next week, where each House had their own cylinders full of gems, Ravenclaw was easily a hundred points in the lead.
“Keep it up,” Techno muttered to him one day, in between classes, “I’d love to have the Quidditch Cup and House Cup at the end of the year.”
“Sure,” George hummed, and smiled at the narrowed glance Dream gave him.
“What did he tell you?” Dream demanded, the second Techno moved out of earshot.
“Aw, are you jealous?”
The look Dream gave him was so virulent that George was surprised it didn’t scorch his eyebrows off. “Shut up.”
“He told me that we’re going to win the House Cup,” George said, and took a turn down a corridor towards his next class. “So I should keep up the good work. His words.”
Dream waved a hand. “House Cup means nothing. The Ravenclaws can keep it.”
“Of course,” George sighed, “You and your Quidditch.”
Dream cast his eyes to the sky. “Not this argument again.”
“Chasers are thrill seekers,” George said, a familiar argument Dream had heard many times before, “And Seekers are glory hounds.”
“Well, that’s just not true,” Dream argued. “I’m a Chaser, and I’m not a thrill seeker.”
“You’re the prime example of a thrill seeker.”
Dream smiled. “And what about Beaters?”
“Brutes.”
“Keepers?”
“I’m surprised they don’t fall asleep at the goalposts with how slow the game moves.”
Dream laughed. “You and the French. You’ve got no sense for what’s fun.”
“Yes I do,” George argued, “I—”
“Play Wizarding Chess for fun?”
“It’s more interesting than you would think,” George defended. “Better than flying at breakneck speeds a hundred feet above the ground.”
Dream hummed. “I suppose we’ll agree to disagree.”
Their feet hit cool pavement, a change from the cobbled path leading to the greenhouses. George glanced up towards the castle, looming overhead.
Curiously, he asked, “Are you going home for the winter?”
“Maybe,” Dream said, “I usually celebrate with Bad and Sapnap in London, but it’s my last year, and I don’t know if I want to miss my last Christmas at Hogwarts.”
“Hm.”
“Are you staying?”
“Of course.”
“Typical,” Dream said. “Planning to spend your time studying?”
George hummed. “You know me so well, don’t you?”
“I just think your holidays could be spent in better ways. You’re telling me you genuinely enjoy studying Alchemy and transmutation? Honestly, it’s a surprise they haven’t locked you up in St. Mungo’s for that.”
“Alchemy is a good skill to learn,” George repeated coolly, not for the first time, “It’s actually very helpful when considering modern applications of Herbology and theoretical applications for—”
“Oh, shut up,” Dream sighed, “You can be happy with your studying and I’ll be happy a thousand feet in the air defeating everyone who ever challenges me. They say opposites attract, don’t they?”
George wasn’t entirely sure of that. But obligingly he snapped his mouth shut; they had debated this many times before. At this point it was more of a tradition than anything else.
The castle made George wince when the two of them stepped inside. Faintly, George missed the subtle elegance that Beauxbatons carried. Hogwarts always seemed to be so heavy handed with things, over the top.
It was at times like this when George missed his old academy so terribly. His parents were both ambassadors from the French Magical Parliament for the Ministry of Magic, and he knew that when their job demanded him to move, he had to follow. As Beauxbatons didn’t accept any students who weren’t living in the immediate area, George had been forced to transfer.
He still owled his old friends nearly every day, and saved every letter that they sent him. He read them over when he missed them so terribly that his heart ached. It was cruel to be forced to transfer in his final year, but even though it was awful, George was appreciative of the friends he had made at Hogwarts. Most of them (with the exception of Dream) were decently nice to him. There was still the weird obsession with Quidditch that the entire school seemed to have, and the castle felt unbearably oppressive in its weight and size at times, but George was growing accustomed to it. He still had another semester to go, besides.
“Well,” Dream said, “I’m off to Defense Against the Dark Arts. Tell Sapnap I say hi.”
“Of course,” George sighed, knowing full well that he wasn’t heading to the Great Hall for lunch and instead to the library. Final exams were approaching in his classes, and he needed to get all of the studying that he could in before they occurred. He still wasn’t entirely certain on the Potions recipe, and he had a twelve-inch essay due on the theoretical applications of the Essence of Euphoria before the week was out.
Dream departed at the junction between staircases, and neatly hopped onto it as it was moving. George watched transfixed as the staircase connected to a third floor corridor, and Dream vanished. Hogwarts was strange and peculiar. It seemed that everyone knew all of its secrets already, while George had still gotten lost more than once.
After his final class in the day (Alchemy, with Professor Lyfelde up in the top of the Western Tower), George retreated to the Ravenclaw common room. To his dismay, however, it was filled with students. What happened to it being a quiet studying space?
George wrinkled his nose and shoved past someone, heading for his dormitory, but there were people in there, too.
He gritted his teeth, shouldered his bookbag, and left. No one seemed to notice his abrupt appearance and reappearance. He wasn’t sure where his feet were taking him, but he descended lower and lower, nearly into the bowels of the castle, before coming to a rest at a blank stretch of stone wall. Without meaning to, he had walked directly to the Slytherin common room.
Surely there were less people in here. It had to be quieter, right?
George reached out with his wand and abruptly realized that he didn’t know the password. Dream had told it to him a long time ago, but it had surely changed in that time. He stood there, lost as to what to do.
“George!”
The sound of his name from down the hallway startled him. He turned and saw, of all the people, Sapnap walking towards him.
“Hi,” George said. Technically, he had fulfilled Dream’s ask of him earlier in the day. “Can you let me in?”
“Dream didn’t give you the password?”
Awkwardly, George shrugged. “The Ravenclaw common room is busy right now.”
Sapnap nodded sagely. “Dream threatened to spy on Techno’s practices on the Quidditch pitch to steal their strategies. He moved them to the Ravenclaw common room for safety.”
George sighed. The lengths the two Quidditch captains went to ensure that the other was struggling was ridiculous.
“Alright,” he said, “So— can you let me in? I need a quiet place to study.”
“Fine,” Sapnap shrugged, and muttered the password underneath his breath. The wall shifted before vanishing completely, and Sapnap ducked under the overhang. Regretting his decision suddenly, George clutched his bookbag closer to his chest and followed him.
Just as George had hoped, the Slytherin common room was nearly empty, with only a few scattered students in green around. Sapnap took a seat at the same table as George, in high-backed chairs, and unloaded the contents of his bookbag onto the table.
“Doing anything interesting?” Sapnap asked. He peered over at George’s essay and read, upside down, “Energy… flow… in…”
“Defensive spells of the eighteenth century,” George finished tiredly. “I have twelve inches due by tomorrow.”
“Hm.”
Sapnap pulled out a similarly long scrap of parchment paper, though his handwriting was much larger than George’s. They sat in silence for another few moments before Sapnap fidgeted and broke it again.
“So,” he said, “Are you excited for the last Quidditch game of the season?”
George wrinkled his nose. Dream had been talking about it nonstop; it wasn’t against Ravenclaw, who was the team they needed to beat in order to secure the Quidditch Cup, but against Gryffindor. This meant that Sapnap was equally as excited about it— he was one of the Gryffindor Beaters, having been since his second year.
“No,” George sighed, “I really don’t care.”
“You should,” Sapnap bugged. “It’s an important one, the last of the year.”
“Sapnap,” George sighed, “I cannot possibly explain to you how little I care for Quidditch. I’m trying to study.”
Sapnap crossed his arms. “Dream was right about you.”
George’s quill stopped short in the instant before it touched the parchment. “What?”
Sapnap flicked his hand in apparent disinterest. “When you first got here, he told me you were going to be trouble.”
George frowned. “He said that?”
“He told me that you were interesting, ” Sapnap corrects, “Which is code for trouble. I just didn’t know how much.”
Incensed, George demanded, “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Sapnap shrugs. “Not unless you want it to.”
Back when George had first arrived at Hogwarts, at the beginning of his seventh year, he hadn’t any friends. Dream, for no reason in particular, had taken an immediate disliking to him. Whether it had to do with him being new, with Dream being Prefect and Quidditch captain, whether it was simply that the entire school, for a few days, was talking about George instead of anyone else, he didn’t know.
What he did know was that Dream’s immediate hostility had meant that George had heavily disliked him. And it had taken the entirety of the first semester of the year to realize that their petty rivalry had, without warning, transformed into something much different.
George wondered if Sapnap knew, if Dream had told him, or if he had simply cottoned on to their relationship on his own. Dream wasn’t the most trustworthy person in the world, but George knew that he had promised not to tell anyone about them sleeping together, and so far, he had held up his end of the bargain.
George stared down at his essay. Sapnap had completely distracted him. He forgot what he was even supposed to be writing.
“What else has Dream said about me?”
Sapnap leaned back. He crossed his arms, looked down at the quiz which he was supposed to be studying.
“Dream thinks that you’ll be rooting for Slytherin at the next match instead of Gryffindor,” Sapnap said. “That’s interesting, isn’t it?”
George already knew who he should root for, and it wasn’t Slytherin. Particularly because both Wilbur and Techno would be ragging on him to support Gryffindor, and everyone in Ravenclaw despised Slytherin regardless. It didn’t help that everyone knew he and Sapnap were friends as well.
“I’m not rooting for anyone. Consider me a neutral party.”
“Let me put it this way,” Sapnap said, “If you’re rooting for Gryffindor, I earn fifteen Galleons.”
“You’re all betting on me?”
“Not all of us,” Sapnap allowed. “Just me and Ponk and Alyssa. No big deal.”
“You’re lying.”
Grudgingly, Sapnap said, “Dream is betting on you too.”
George glared. “Of course he is.”
“He was right about you,” Sapnap said again. “At least, he’s gotten most things right so far.”
Hotly, George said, “Like what?”
“Like the fact that you’ll be rooting for Slytherin,” Sapnap said coolly, “Even though you don’t care a lick for Quidditch. I’m going to be forced to deplete my summer savings just because you can’t keep it in your pants for a certain blond haired Chaser.”
George spluttered. “That is not—”
“Am I wrong?”
George stared Sapnap down and refused to back away. “Of course you are.”
Sapnap hummed. Neither of them moved for a long moment, and eventually Sapnap glanced to the side. He picked up his quill, long forgotten, and moved to write the next half of a sentence. George got the message loud and clear. Let’s get back to studying.
“For the record,” George said, when night had fallen and the light filtering through the lake was dark and cool, “I don’t like Dream.”
Sapnap’s gaze was skeptical. He didn’t appear to believe him.
“Whatever you say,” he said, and exited into the corridor.
George watched him go. He wished he could turn back time a few hours and redo the entire conversation. He could barely put into words the frothing, hideous feeling that cowered inside of his chest. Why did everyone think they were entitled to his personal relationships? It was bad enough that he was on the verge of a love-hate relationship with Dream. He didn’t need to jeopardize his friendship with Sapnap as well, the only person he knew who wasn’t in Ravenclaw.
George was standing by the entrance to the Slytherin common room for far too long before he began moving again.
The final day before the Hogwarts Express was due to leave arrived suddenly and without warning.
Dream, giddy with the success of winning the final Quidditch match and free from the stress of winter exams (for he had finished the day before the game), had proclaimed that he was staying at Hogwarts for the holidays. George scowled, but inwardly there was a warm glow of happiness; at least he wouldn’t be alone for a few weeks with no other seventh years at his side.
“I’m just saying,” Dream argued, though George was barely listening, “If I hadn’t scored that final goal, before Tommy caught the Snitch, we would have lost—”
“That’s all fine and well,” George sighed, “Do we constantly have to keep talking about it?”
“It was incredible, though,” Dream protested.
“It was the same as always.”
“How can you say that?”
George gestured vaguely. “You threw a ball through a hoop. It gave you points. What else is there to discuss about it?”
“There’s strategy,” Dream huffed, “There’s technique, there’s timing, there’s—”
“Arrogance,” George said, filling in for whatever Dream was going to say. “Conceitedness.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“At least I don’t spend the entire conversation talking about myself.”
To his credit, Dream looked slightly abashed. He ducked his head and muttered, “We can talk about something else if you’d like.”
George considered that and strangely, frowned. The issue wasn’t that he didn’t like to talk about Quidditch. He was bored of the topic (it seemed to be all that Hogwarts could ever focus on) but what he really liked more was the look in Dream’s eyes, bright and gleaming. That was something that George thought he wouldn’t get tired of.
So he said, “I don’t particularly care that much.”
“Good,” Dream said, a touch of haughtiness, “I was going to keep talking anyway.”
George listened. The sun was going down steadily over the horizon; winter had lengthened the nights and shortened the day, and before long the entire sky would turn inky black with stars. They walked the length of the castle and back again before Dream stopped suddenly, up on the seventh floor. Even though he had been recounting every single move of the game, what he could have done better and what the entire team could have improved upon as well, he hadn’t tired himself out. His voice, it seemed, would never grow hoarse.
Dream paused at the intersection between two corridors.
“Come with me,” Dream said, and beckoned.
George, intrigued, followed.
Halfway down the hallway, Dream took George’s hand. It reminded him weirdly of that night of the Yule Ball, when they escaped the loud noise and music of the Great Hall to be on their own. When Dream had dragged him into an empty Transfiguration classroom and demanded to know whether their petty rivalry had any truth to it at all, or whether they were just lying to each other.
Now, Dream approached a large tapestry, with all its occupants sleeping, and passed directly through it to a cramped room on the other side. It was barely larger than a broomstick closet, with just enough room for the two of them to stand there together.
“So?” George said, voice hushed, as soon as the tapestry stopped swaying behind them. “Any reason you dragged me in here?”
“No reason,” Dream said. “Isn’t that strange? Look up. There’s mistletoe.”
Against his will, George found himself smiling.
“Did you really cast a spell for mistletoe? Just to ask me to kiss you?”
“I don’t know,” Dream said, low and smug, “Did I?”
George heaved a sigh. “You could just ask.”
“Fine,” Dream said, and flicked his wand invisibly at his side. The mistletoe that had been growing over them, reaching down with lacy green fingers, abruptly disappeared. Dream fixed his gaze on George and said, “Tell me something.”
That wasn’t at all what George had been expecting Dream to ask. He blinked. “What?”
“Tell me anything at all,” Dream clarified. “Say it in French.”
Ah. George wasn’t sure where the enjoyment with his native language had come from, but he saw the way Dream reacted to it, at the way the vowels and consonants formed. He knew what made Dream happy. George was more than happy to oblige.
“Okay,” he said, and cleared his throat, feeling self-conscious all of a sudden, “ C'est ce que tu veux? ”
Dream hummed. “What does that mean?”
George translated: “Is this what you want?”
“Yes,” Dream said. “Go on.”
“ La lune est belle ce soir, ” George said.
“What does that mean?”
George translated again, “The moon is beautiful tonight.”
Dream hummed. “Say something else.”
“Je pense que je veux que tu m'embrasse, ” George said.
“Keep talking.”
“ Je t'aime bien, ” George said, heart fluttering, “ J'aime ça. Je veux rester comme ça pour toujours.”
Dream’s voice was quiet, smooth. “And what does that mean?”
“It means you are an idiot,” George lied, “You’re an idiot and the worst person I’ve ever met.”
Dream hummed. A self-satisfied smile spread across his face. “And what did you really say?”
His breath was warm against George’s cheek, and a shiver ran down George’s spine. Goosebumps prickled over his skin.
“I said, I like you, ” George translated, and Dream’s lips pressed against his neck, at the soft line of his jaw, “I like this. I want to stay like this forever.”
“Good,” Dream murmured. “That’s what I thought you said.”
“Kiss me,” George demanded, and Dream obliged.
If George magicked the mistletoe so that it grew over them once more, neither of them said anything.