Chapter Fifteen:
Harry goes about his next few days in basic and boring fashion. He sleeps in until well after midday, listens to the constant bickering of Nimmy and Verde with a fond smile and somehow obtains an increasing amount of foolishly hand drawn images of Voldemort. They're all unique in their own way, portraying one thing or another about him in an amusing way. Harry has scribbled hearts all around them along with his signature on the corner of the parchment. He has them safely tucked away in the bottom of his trunk -- a secret to be kept from anyone else.
Along with that, Harry has been spending a suspicious amount of time holding a certain velvet box in his hands. He gazes at the red shard of the philosopher's stone inside it for hours on end, holds the box up between his fingers and lets the light hit it at a precise angle. The way the stone lights up and glints the same shade of red as Voldemort's eyes has his chest painfully aching.
And yet, he can't bring himself to stop doing it.
"Master, you're doing it again." Nimmy makes the snake equivalent sound to a sigh, as if she's disappointed. She drops her head down into Harry's duvet, her tongue flickering out to taste the air.
Harry hums, lost in the way the Philosopher's shard changes colour depending on the way that he tilts it. Eventually, he asks, "Doing what?"
"Looking at the stone." Nimmy huffs. "Avoiding eating food."
"Not paying enough attention to us," Verde chimes in, slithering up to his sister. "The owl also brought you another letter. You haven't even spared it a glance yet."
Blinking, Harry snaps the velvet box closed. He pockets it and turns around in his chair to look at them. "Hedwig brought me a letter and I didn't even realise?"
"Well," Nimmy pauses as she makes herself more comfortable, "She did nip at you a few times, you just didn't react."
"Too enamored by the stone," Verde mutters in disdain.
"I'm not enamored," Harry is quick to deny.
If Nimmy could roll her eyes, Harry is certain that she would. "Fine. Infatuated then. Whatever."
Ignoring them, Harry turns away from his snakes and uses a tiny bit of his magic to beckon an innocent looking letter towards him from his bedside table. The moment he grasps it, he raises a single brow in silent question. The Malfoy crest sits over the middle of the envelope, silvery and perfect. Harry ruins it by snapping it open. The letter turns out to be an invitation to the Malfoy's annual Yule Ball.
Harry supposes he should go.
Since he's apparently allowed a plus one.
"So," Harry turns his attention back to his snakes, a grin spreading across his lips, "I suppose you'd both like to see Draco and Ron?"
At once, both Nimmy and Verde start apologising for getting in the way of his time with the stone. Saying how normal it is. And how very proud of him they are. And how they could never hate him for who he is--
Harry smothers them with nuzzles before they can say anything else.
"Sometimes," he murmurs, "it feels like I have two annoying children. But then I remember that I'm too young to have kids and everything's okay."
The Malfoy's ball is in less than two days. Harry sends Hermione a letter asking if she'd like to be his plus one. He also sends a letter to Draco saying that if he wants Ron to be at the ball then he's going to have to get him there himself.
The next day, Harry is awoken by Verde and forced to get breakfast by Nimmy. He trudges into the great hall, hair messy and clothes rumpled. There are a handful of other students sat at their representative tables, five Ravenclaws, four Hufflepuffs, three Gryffindors. Other than himself at the Slytherin table, there are two others. The Head Boy and the Head Girl. Harry thinks their names might be Amycus and Alecto. The Carrow twins, if he's not mistaken. Harry hasn't been paying much attention to them, if any at all. They seem--
"Master, the food." Nimmy pokes her snout into his hand and Harry jumps, forced from out of his thoughts.
"Right," he says, "food."
He forces himself to eat a bit of scrambled eggs. He's half way into his small portion when his stomach starts cramping from being full. Ah. Maybe Nimmy was right after all. He hadn't been eating properly since the hols had started. Perhaps he was too used to having his friends with him? They usually physically dragged him into the great hall and pushed food filled plates under his nose. No wonder Nimmy and Verde kept nagging at him.
Harry rests his utensils across the table and starts slowly petting Nimmy's red scales. He uses his index finger to gently run across the bottom of her chin and she leans right into the touch, letting out a content little sigh. "Thank you," he says, "for looking out for me."
Across the table, Verde raises his head from being buried in a bowl of grapes with a loud gasp. He quickly slithers towards Harry, preening when his Master starts petting him too.
A few minutes later, Hedwig swoops down from many of the windows and lands on the edge of the table, letters attached to her leg. She sticks her leg out with a quiet hoot and Harry detaches the letters with ease. He feeds Hediwg a sausage or two and apologizes for ignoring her yesterday. She affectionately nips at his fingers before flying away.
One of the letters turns out to be from Hermione. It's short -- telling him off for such a short notice on such an important occasion. Harry reads the words in Hermione's sarcastic voice and can't help but laugh. Another letter is from Draco. It's a long paragraph about how unfair Harry is acting by not taking Ron to the Malfoy's Yule Ball and isn't that funny? Harry thinks it is. There's also a short note at the end of the parchment saying that Mrs Malfoy will come bright and early to pick him and his plus one up. Harry makes a mental note to relay the information to Hermione.
With a smile, Harry settles Nimmy and Verde onto his shoulders and heads back to his dorm. He mulls between his thoughts and ends up resting against the backboard of his bed, knees pulled up to his chest, chin nestled on top of them while he fiddles with his velvet box. He turns it this way and that way, examining it even though he's already seen every nook and cranny.
"Perhaps it's a courting gift?" Nimmy voices quietly from the other end of the bed where she's lazing. The tone of her voice is oddly sour.
Verde's hiss is scandalous. "But, Master's too young for that!" He angrily moves around in a circle several times. "Once I find out who gave that weird box to him I'll wrap myself around their neck and choke them!"
Nimmy raises her little head and curls the tail end of her body around herself. "You're too small for that." She points out.
Pausing, Verde levels his sister with a glare. "S-shut up!" He shouts and then tackles Nimmy with a body slam.
"Ah! Get off! You're fat."
"You're fat!"
"Well you're fat AND stupid."
"Master! She's bullying me again!"
Snorting, Harry holds the velvet box closer to himself. "A courting gift, huh?" He feels the corners of his lips lift up into a wide smile. No, he thinks, Voldemort would never.
Courting gifts are usually necklaces and bracelets, brooches and bouquet flowers and the likes. Not whatever remained of the Philosopher's stone once it was used to restore someone's body.
Then again, Harry internalises as he runs a thumb across the soft structure of the red stone, Voldemort isn't like everyone else. So the same rules don't necessarily apply.
His wide smile softens into something smaller and his stomach flutters. Harry supposes he could make the shard into a simple necklace. Just so that it doesn't sit in its box in waste. Unbeknownst to him, his dark hair changes into the lightest shade of pink. So light, in fact, that it almost looks white.
Harry spends the rest of the day crafting the shard to hold onto a thin piece of leathery string, making it look as presentable as possible - he's not quite satisfied with the outcome, but it will have to do for the time being.
When the awaited day comes, Harry stands in front of the full length mirror in the dorm bathroom and fixes his robes. They're a dark green colour, sort of forest-y with silver linings. The robes aren't too long or too short, they stop perfectly at his ankles. Harry goes through the pockets of his black slacks and pulls out a hairpin, the one that Tracey had gifted to him, and pins it onto the side of his messy and dark hair. The necklace that he had made hangs loosely around his neck, falls right just above the knot of his plain black tie. It glints whenever Harry so much as moves a step. Weirdly enough, that alone makes him feel light, like he's floating.
"Master, what about the shoes?" Nimmy asks directly into his ear from where she's sprawled across his shoulder.
Harry glances down at his converse. "What about them?"
He doesn't get an immediate answer. Verde snickers from his other shoulder and Nimmy relents with a quiet "nevermind."
With a shrug, Harry glances at himself one more time and deems himself respectable. He then sets off towards his pre-discussed meeting place, head held high and energy buzzing at his fingertips.
He can't help but grin, wide and wolfish as he imagines all the chaos that he can undoubtedly do at the ball.
Maybe he'll even embarrass Draco a bit, but that'll depend on his mood once he gets there.
He just hopes his hair doesn't change colour.
1692//unedited.
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harry: *receives a gift from voldy*
harry: whats this?? whats this??? there's FEELINGS everywhere
verde: bUT YOURE TOO YOUNG
nimmy: *sighs*