Work Text:
An excerpt from:
“A Practical Guide to The Revealing: Ritual Structure and Known Emotional Collateral”
Compiled by the Slytherin Chronicler, 1928 Edition
Reprinted in 1971, 1983, and 1996
- Introduction
The Revealing is a ceremonial rite unique to Slytherin House, observed to mark the seventeenth birthday of each member. Its purpose is threefold: elevate the celebrant through public acknowledgement; to bind the House in collective observation; and to provide structured psychological discomfort in a formal setting.
First recorded in 1724 and codified in 1791 following the Pritchard Incident (see Appendix VII), the ritual has endured nearly uninterrupted. It is widely regarded as a cornerstone of Slytherin identity, and a safeguard against unchecked self-delusion.
- General Order of Events
The Revealing shall take place on the evening of the celebrant’s seventeenth birthday, or as near to it as is calendrically feasible. The celebrant shall arrive last.
The table shall be laid in Slytherin colours, adorned with a floral centerpiece, and laid handsomely with porcelain and silver. Lighting must be flattering.
A portrait of the celebrant, privately commissioned to a distinguished Slytherin artist, shall be unveiled during the meal. It will speak. It must not be interrupted. The subject may not rise, weep audibly, or attempt to hex the painting. Any duels must be delayed until morning and registered with the prefects.
3. Purpose and Interpretive Guidance
The Revealing is not intended to honour the celebrant’s accomplishments, but to hold a mirror to their essence.
Completion of the ritual without tantrum, arson or bribery is regarded as a mark of maturity.
The Celebrant may not speak until the conclusion of the ritual.
The portrait shall be hung in the House Archive, turned to face the wall, until such time the celebrant leaves Hogwarts and it becomes the property of said celebrant.
The Celebrant
Odds on Malfoy: not applicable.
The unused Transfiguration classroom on the third floor had not hosted anything transfigurative in at least a decade, but that night, it gleamed.
The room was old in the way only Hogwarts could boast: ancient and smug about it. The carved wooden ceiling loomed, and heavy tapestries depicted lush, enchanted forests. Three crystal chandeliers hung low, glittering viciously.
The room had been requisitioned weeks in advance, and the decorative result was something between a minor aristocratic summit and a séance.
The table had been transfigured from walnut and polished to a high shine. Silver cutlery flanked china of the thinnest white porcelain with a silver rim. Black velvet swagged every available surface, including the rafters, which no one would notice unless they were dramatically shoved backward in horror or lust. That had, according to Tracey, absolutely happened before .
It was, in short, entirely too much, and therefore just right.
The last Revealing had taken place nearly two years ago, and the empty stretch that followed had been noted with increasingly tense silence. No one had said “because of the war,” because that would have been gauche. But when no portrait was commissioned for Millicent’s birthday, and Theo refused to submit a guest list, the message had been clear.
Survival comes first, even for Slytherins.
But now it was Eighth Year, and Draco had volunteered.
“Volunteered” was generous. He had said, over toast, “If I’m not Revealed, even though it’s late, I’ll host a private one and charge admission.” Pansy had choked on her coffee. By lunch, the planning committee had been formed.
Draco entered precisely six minutes late. He was wearing deep green with black trim, his hair freshly tousled, and a smug look when he caught sight of his own handsome face reflected in his portrait.
He gave a single, shallow bow to the painting. It bowed back. The scribe noted it.
He seated himself without flourish at the head of the table. His glass was already full, the wine charmed to taste like the first time he saw tits .
The Last Kissed
Odds on Pansy: 3:1
Course I: Amuse-Bouche / First Course
Violet essence consommé with shaved radish spirals and ginger crème chantilly
The scribe cleared his throat with the gravity of a Ministry undersecretary and intoned:
“As is traditional with the first course, the seat of The Last Kissed shall be acknowledged. This role, like all others, has been confirmed by magically binding spellwork and is not subject to appeal.”
He paused, just long enough to let the words not subject to appeal ripple.
The room, already humming with anticipation, broke into full buzz. Goblets shifted. Necks craned. Someone knocked over a place card.
Hermione sat very still.
It was just—there had been that moment. Behind the Quidditch pitch, after he’d lost a match to Hufflepuff and had a bruised ego. He’d been windblown and furious and trying to be stoic. He’d opened his mouth to spit insults, she was sure of it, but then he’d just closed it again. Then he’d leaned in and brushed his mouth against hers. Barely perceptible, barely lasting a second, and walked away, and she’d gone to dinner and tried very hard not to spiral about it. But now…
Now she was eating a dish designed to awaken the mouth, and Harry was staring at her.
“Don’t say anything,” she muttered, without turning her head.
“I wasn’t going to,” Harry hissed back.
Across the table, Draco lifted his spoon, flicked it once against the rim of his bowl, and said nothing. Pansy smirked, self-satisfied and remembering their last assignation, then turned her head slightly to say something to Blaise, which made him snort. Tracey clapped once, delighted.
Everyone thought they understood what had just happened.
Except Theo grinned a little and tilted his bowl, and examined the spirals of radish with great interest.
Because, of course, it wasn’t Hermione. Or Pansy.
It was Theo .
Three weeks ago, in the back of the common room. Candlelight flickering, both of them buzzed on late-night laughter and smuggled sherry. Theo had been charmingly loose-limbed, grinning at something Draco had said about cauldron polish, and then, Theo’d kissed him.
Not sloppy. Soft.
Draco had kissed back.
Obviously .
Then they’d never spoken of it again.
Now Theo was sitting four seats down, spooning up violet consommé like he hadn’t rearranged Draco’s sexuality.
Draco hoped, absurdly, that it would happen again.
Portrait Draco twitched. Or maybe that was the candlelight.
The Portrait's Guest
Odds on Blaise: 6:1
Course II: Salad Course
Thinly-sliced pear and watercress with rose petals and pomegranate vinaigrette
The scribe stood again, wobbling slightly as he pushed back his chair and adjusted his tie with a sort of terrified dignity. The room, still half-laughing from the last round of speculation, turned obligingly.
“As is customary with the second course,” he began, “we now observe the identification of The Portrait’s Guest . This individual is selected not by the celebrant, nor the House, but by the portrait itself.”
Portrait Draco turned his gaze: slowly, deliberately.
Blaise had been the frontrunner from the start—he was the prettiest, the most expensively bored, and the sort of person portraits tended to favor out of aesthetic principle.
The gaze finally settled on her.
Hermione.
She went very still. Her back was straight, her hands composed, her face schooled into neutrality. But the color in her cheeks was hot.
She did not look up.
Blaise tilted his head. “Oh,” he said softly, sipping his wine like it was none of his business, which it absolutely wasn’t. “Interesting.”
“Unlucky,” Pansy muttered as she began picking the rose petals off her plate.
Draco didn’t move an inch. Theo set down his fork. Luna, halfway through a bite, made a small humming noise like she agreed.
The rest of the table watched the painting watch Hermione.
The Family Member
Odds on Luna: 4:1
Course III: Main Course
Butter-roasted duck with cherry-port sauce, with quinoa and wild roots
The scribe stood again, doing their best to sound ceremonial rather than overwhelmed. “At the main course, we recognize the guest seated as Family, by blood, bond, or declaration. As is custom, The Family Member shall offer a toast.”
A few murmured their speculations, of course. Luna and Draco were distant cousins through some Black-related offshoot no one could trace cleanly. Luna would’ve made sense: all that blonde.
Which is why no one noticed that the place card beside Draco read:
H. Potter, Cousin
Millicent looked amused. Tracey said, “Oh,” very softly. Blaise gave a low whistle.
Harry reached for his wine, looking like a condemned man, and stood for the toast. Draco didn’t look at him.
He cleared his throat. “Right, then.”
Pause.
“I suppose—” Another pause— longer. “I suppose family’s what you make of it.”
Greg choked on his wine. The scribe wrote furiously. Draco blinked.
Harry raised his glass. No one joined him.
Then he sat, and Draco glared at his plate.The duck was thick with sauce, the rice dyed deep purple from the port. Someone whispered that the wild roots were a statement. Someone else whispered that Draco hated cherries, which made it all even more pointed.
The One Who Knows The Secret
Odds on Theo: 2:1
Course IV: Cheese Course
A trio of organic cheeses, served under an enchanted glass dome
The scribe rose slowly, as if even he weren’t sure he wanted to be part of this course. He cleared his throat once, then again, and read directly from the official card with forced neutrality:
“As is traditional with the cheese course, we now acknowledge the role of The One Who Knows the Secret . The celebrant does not confirm. The guest is not asked to explain. The secret is not identified. The rest is interpretation.”
He paused, then added, more faintly: “For archival clarity: the cheeses are a Fennish ash-matured sigher, a soft-glow Wiltshire bloom, and the crumbly is… classified.”
A moment later, the card appeared, glowing, before Luna, and the table remembered how to go silent all over again, and turn to stare at Theo.
Theo was Draco’s best friend, after all. They had the kind of closeness that made people ask questions. He was observant, well-dressed, loyal, and had definitely buried a few things for Draco already. He had the confidence of someone who might know a secret and the charm of someone who didn’t need to prove it.
But the card had not appeared in front of Theo.
Theo looked down at his plate with a polite shrug. “That’s fair,” he said.
Daphne reached for more wine. Pansy had gone still in the way she did when she was mentally rewriting a social map.
Luna dabbed her mouth.
Draco, to his credit, did not react at all.
Theo, to his credit, didn’t stop watching him.
The scribe drew a little skull in the margin, just in case.
The Enemy
Odds on Harry: guaranteed
Course V: Dessert
Individual spun-sugar cages filled with bittersweet chocolate mousse and firewhiskey-soaked currants
A frisson of excitement followed the confection.
Each plate held a delicate cage of golden sugar, shimmering under the candlelight like it might hum if you touched it. Inside: rich mousse and sharp currants. The combination was unapologetically excessive.
The scribe stood one last time. He clearly had not expected to survive this evening.
“As tradition dictates,” he said, “the final course recognizes the seat of The Enemy . As a reminder to all assembled: to name one’s enemy is not a grievance. It is a truth.”
And then, just as the last syllable settled into the velvet-thick air, the portrait moved.
Draco’s image moved with all the finality of a guillotine dropping.
It turned its gaze—not to Harry, or to Hermione.
To Draco.
It spoke. “You always thought you could outrun yourself, didn’t you?”
The room didn’t breathe.
Pansy said “oh, fuck” in a whisper so reverent it almost passed for prayer. Someone’s fork slipped and hit the plate with a sound like a closing door.
Harry stared at the portrait. Hermione pressed her lips together like she might cry or laugh—either would’ve been appropriate. Luna tilted her head in something like sympathy.
Theo didn’t look surprised at all.
Draco, still seated, locked eyes with himself for a long time.
Eventually, Greg cleared his throat and said, “Is there more wine?”
And just like that, the spell broke. There were rules about The Revealing: about the courses, about the portrait, but no rules about what came after.
By the time dessert plates vanished, the chandelier throbbed to the bassline of a bootleg Celestina remix, and Blaise was pouring firewhiskey into the communal teapot “for symbolism.”
Greg had opened a closet of forgotten Transfiguration props and was wearing them as party hats. Tracey was barefoot and threatening a duel using only spellwork and an antique letter opener.
And Theo had found the good chocolate— the emergency stash Draco kept in a temperature-controlled pocket of his outer robes.
“Explain this,” Theo said, waving the bar like a wand.
“It’s for Mondays,” Draco muttered, sipping whatever someone had poured in his glass.
“Oh. Are we calling tonight Monday now?”
“No,” Draco said, too quickly. “We’re calling it forgetting.”
Theo didn’t answer. He handed Draco a piece and brushed his wrist and Draco’s skin exploded with the contact. Which would’ve been nothing, except Draco’s heart did that thing again.
Blaise danced with everyone. Luna tried to teach Millicent how to waltz to something that was categorically not a waltz. Daphne had braided roses into her hair and was drinking wine from the bottle, claiming it was “ancestral.”
Pansy climbed on a table and gave a toast involving six slurred insults, three veiled threats, and a declaration that she was “rebranding as unkillable.” She then tried to slide off gracefully and fell into Tracy, who caught her by the sleeve and muttered something about bad decisions and reinforced heels.
They clinked glasses.
Across the room, Harry watched from a corner chair with the expression of someone who’d stumbled into the wrong room. He looked semi-traumatized, which to be fair, he probably was.
Hermione handed him a drink without speaking. He took it and didn’t ask what was in it. They sat in dumbfounded silence— It was easier that way.
The scribe had wedged himself under the main table with the ledger and the leftover dessert. Occasionally, guests dropped commentary under the table flap:
“This didn’t happen.”
“Millicent kissed the painting. That’s off the record.”
“If you quote me, I swear to god.”
“Tracey is dueling a sculpture. She’s losing.”
The scribe recorded everything— this was for posterity .
At some point, Draco and Theo ended up outside, leaning against the stone wall, watching the mist rise on the lake. The air was damp and quiet, threaded with the echo of laughter.
“You don’t want to talk about it,” Theo said. Not a question.
“No,” Draco said.
They stood there for a while, shoulder to shoulder, almost touching.
Then Theo said, “I have more chocolate,” and Draco kissed him, and it definitely counted.
Behind them, the party kept burning—wild, golden, and mostly unhinged.