2 | CONFESSIONS° HARRY POTTER

12 | NOTT

ACT TWO, the returned
CHAPTER TWELVE, nott

     At Hogwarts, it was tradition that everyone woke up late on Boxing Day.

The Slytherin Dungeons were much quieter than normal as Iris sat in one of the high-backed that were in the dungeons with Astoria. Astoria was doodling in her sketchbook while Iris tried to catch up on homework assignments that she had been putting off, but her mind was busy replaying the events of the Yule Ball--specifically what had happened that night. 

"Spill." Astoria said putting her sketchbook aside and startling Iris in the process. Iris's eyebrows pulled together as she looked at her friend while Astoria gave her an exasperated expression. "Oh, come on, Iris. You've been acting a bit weird since the ball. What happened?"

Iris sighed and set aside her Transfiguration homework, sliding forward in the chair to say to Astoria, "Theo and I kissed... the night of the Yule Ball."

While Astoria squealed in excitement, Iris replayed the events of the night in her head. 

"Do you think it'd be okay if I kissed you?" Theo asked. His hands were shaking as he asked her, briefly avoiding meeting her eyes in case she ended up rejecting him. Truth be told, Theo had had a crush on Iris for a while now and he didn't know if she'd ever thought of him as anything more than a friend before, but after having such a nice night together, he thought that he should just go for it and ask if he could kiss her.

For Iris, there had been a few instances in which she wondered what her first kiss would be like. She figured that, eventually, it'd happen but the who was always the question that plagued her mind. Before last year, she hadn't really met someone that she could imagine her first kiss being with and for a split second that Theo asked her the image of a boy with a lightning-shaped scar and green eyes flashed through her mind. But this was Theo--someone who had always been a great friend to her and that she hoped she could count on. Theo was attractive, there was no denying, with his brown hair and deep brown eyes. And even though she hadn't ever really thought of Theo as being more than a friend, there was a part of her that was telling her to go for it. 

"Yeah..." Iris said quietly, her cheeks flaming up. Theo's eyes widened at Iris's answer since he really had been expecting her to reject him.

"O-Okay." Theo said as he fought the urge for a bright smile to fall across his face.

Slowly, he moved closer to Iris to close the distance that was between them. Iris' stomach was in knots as she anxiously awaited for him to come closer. She waited until right before he was about to kiss her to close her eyes. Hesitantly, Theo kissed her. It was soft and slow and there was a small sense of awkwardness to it since it was both of their first times kissing another person. Theo slowly pulled away from Iris and looked at her face, thinking about how beautiful and vulnerable she looked before him as a flood of emotions passed over her face in seconds. She smiled bashfully at him and he didn't think he'd ever seen her as open and emotive as she was in that moment. 

"Goodnight, Iris." Theo said quietly. 

"Goodnight, Theo." She smiled and they parted ways.

"That's so cute!" Astoria said excitedly. "Does this mean that you guys are dating now?"

Iris kept her face passive, but she had wondered that too. Her and Theo hadn't had time to talk yet about what the kiss would mean for them. Did she want to date him? The kiss had been nice and Iris thought that she could grow to really like Theo, but she thought she needed a bit more time to figure out if she was ready to go into a relationship or if he even wanted to be in a relationship with her. This was new territory for her and Iris didn't know how to handle it.