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I. Mikasa
The match lasted forty minutes, which was shorter than anyone expected.
Eren caught the Snitch just before the Slytherin Seeker got within arm's reach of it, pulling up hard out of a dive that made half the stands go silent before the roar came. Mikasa heard it from the goalposts, where she'd spent most of the match with her arms out and her eyes tracking the Quaffle, letting the noise wash over her. She'd blocked nine attempts. The final score was not close.
She landed with the rest of the team and let Sasha crash into her from the left and Connie from the right and stood in the middle of it while everyone shouted. Eren landed a few seconds later, Snitch still closed in his fist, grinning the wide unguarded kind he only got in moments like this, and he looked across the pitch and found her immediately the way he always did.
She looked back. Something had shifted between them since the Formal, quiet and unnamed. She was still finding the edges of it.
He started toward her and then Louise stepped into his path.
She was third year, Hufflepuff, blonde hair and a smile she'd clearly practiced. Mikasa had noticed her before the Formal, back in October, always in the same section of the stands, always when Gryffindor was playing. Seekers had followers. That was just how it was. She'd told herself it didn't matter.
That had been before the Formal. Before the dance, and the candles, and the kiss.
Louise put her hand on Eren's arm and said something that made him laugh, startled and a little pleased, and Mikasa was moving before she'd decided to.
She crossed the pitch, came up alongside Eren, and touched his shoulder. Just that. Her hand light on the back of his shoulder, her presence close enough to be felt. She looked at Louise without expression.
Louise looked back. Then she smiled, smaller this time, said something about congratulations on the match, and stepped away.
Eren turned to look at Mikasa. She had already dropped her hand.
"Good catch," she said, and walked toward the equipment shed.
The celebration moved to the common room the way it always did, someone having smuggled in enough Butterbeer to account for the whole of Gryffindor house and then some. The fire was high and the room was loud and Mikasa sat on the arm of a chair near the window with a bottle she wasn't really drinking and watched the room.
Eren was across from her, deep in a retelling of the catch, Connie and a handful of fourth years hanging on every word. He was still flushed from the match. His robes were half unlaced. She'd seen him like this a hundred times and it had never been a problem before.
She thought about the hand on his arm. The way he'd laughed.
Sasha appeared at her elbow, said nothing for a moment, just stood there following Mikasa's eyeline across the room.
"You alright?" she said finally.
"Fine."
Sasha looked at her the way she sometimes did, quiet and more perceptive than people gave her credit for.
II. Eren
He found her by the window eventually, once the retelling had run its course and Connie had taken over with his own version which was largely inaccurate but more entertaining.
She had a Butterbeer she hadn't touched. She was looking at the dark glass of the window, the reflection of the fire in it, and when he came to stand beside her she moved over without being asked, making room.
"Good match," he said.
"It was," she said. Simple, certain. Like she'd never doubted it.
He smiled. This was normal. This was them. He leaned against the wall beside her and felt the warmth of the room settle over him and thought that this was the best part of winning, not the noise of it but this, the quiet after, with the right person.
He'd been thinking that a lot lately. About the right person.
Since the Formal they hadn't talked about it. The kiss, the dancing, the way she'd said okay like it was an answer to a question he'd been asking for years without knowing it. They'd walked back to the common room together and gone to their separate dormitories and the next morning things were different. Closer. Small things. Nothing named.
He hadn't pushed it. He didn't know how.
"Are you my boyfriend," Mikasa said.
He blinked. She was still looking at the window, like she'd asked about the weather.
The common room carried on around them. Someone laughed too loudly near the fire. A group of third years pushed past without looking.
"I..." He turned to face her. "Yes. I mean. I want to be."
"Then you are." She picked up her Butterbeer and finally took a drink. "That's all."
He stared at her. "That's all."
"Yes."
"You're not going to... we're not going to talk about it?"
She looked at him with the particular expression that meant she found him genuinely baffling but had made her peace with it. "We just did."
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at her, at the slight curve at the corner of her mouth that she wasn't quite suppressing.
"Okay," he said. The same word as the Formal. It seemed to be the word they kept coming back to.
"Okay," she said.
Across the room Sasha caught his eye and gave him a look of such extravagant satisfaction that he had to turn away before he laughed.
III.
Three days later, after Thursday practice, Mikasa came off the pitch with her broom over her shoulder and mud on her boots and Eren at her side talking about a new approach to his dive that she was only half listening to.
Louise was standing at the entrance to the changing corridors.
She had her bag held in front of her with both hands and she straightened when she saw Eren, and the smile she put on was the practiced one, the same one from the pitch after the match.
Eren was still talking about the dive.
Mikasa reached over and took his hand.
She laced her fingers through his and kept walking at the same pace, not breaking stride, not looking at Louise for more than a second. Just took his hand like it was something she did every day. Like it was nothing.
Eren stopped talking mid-sentence.
She could feel it without looking, the tips of his ears going red, the slight tension moving through him before he settled. Then his hand tightened around hers, warm and certain, and he started talking again, something about the angle of approach, and she didn't hear a word of it.
She didn't look back.
fin.