The rose garden was a labyrinth of frozen petals and silver light, a stark contrast to the stifling heat of the Great Hall. Harry leaned against a stone balustrade, the cold air biting at his lungs, a welcome relief from the suffocating pretense of the ball. He wasn't alone for long. The rhythmic crunch of snow announced Draco's arrival before he even stepped into the moonlight.
"Looking for a way to escape your fame, Potter?" Draco's voice was softer than usual, stripped of the jagged edge he used as a weapon in the corridors.
Before Harry could retort, a shadow loomed over them both. It was long, thin, and moved with a predatory grace that made the air turn ten degrees colder. Severus Snape emerged from the darkness of a stone archway, his black robes billowing like ink dropped into water. He was the self-appointed sentinel of the night, his dark eyes scanning the shadows for any student foolish enough to seek a private corner for a tryst.
With a flick of his wand, Snape sent a burst of silver light into a nearby thicket of enchanted roses. A pair of terrified Hufflepuffs scrambled out, faces flushed with shame as they fled back toward the castle under Snape's silent, terrifying glare. He didn't say a word to them; his presence alone was a death sentence for their dignity.
Snape turned his attention to the two boys. His gaze lingered on the way they stood, not quite touching, but positioned in a way that suggested a shared gravity. He had spent the last hour aggressively deducting points from any couple found loitering, but here, the tension was different. It wasn't the clumsy romance of teenagers; it was something far more volatile.
"The Great Hall is for celebration, gentlemen," Snape drawled, his voice a low, dangerous silk. "The gardens, however, are for those who wish to be found in places they... do not belong."
He looked at Draco, his eyes narrowing. There was a flicker of a warning there, a reminder of the Malfoy name, the identity as a Slytherin, and the expectations that came along. Then, he looked at Harry, his lip curling in a familiar expression of disdain.
"Ten points from Gryffindor for wandering in the dark, Potter. And ten from Slytherin," Snape added, his eyes flicking back to Draco. "I suggest you both return to your respective tables before I find a reason to make it fifty."
As Snape turned and swept away to terrorize another corner of the grounds, the silence he left behind felt even heavier. Draco stepped closer to Harry, the distance between them vanishing until Harry could feel the cold silk of Draco's sleeve.
"He's right about one thing," Draco whispered, his eyes searching Harry's face. "I am exactly where I don't belong."
Draco turned away abruptly, his boots clicking sharply against the stone as he retreated into the shadows of the castle. He couldn't stay; the proximity to Harry was a gravitational pull he wasn't yet strong enough to resist. He left Harry standing by the frozen fountain, the air still vibrating with the ghost of a touch that never quite landed.
Harry let out a jagged breath, his head spinning. He hadn't been alone for more than a minute when the rustle of silk alerted him to someone else's presence. Ginny Weasley stepped out from behind a large topiary, her face pale in the moonlight. She looked smaller in her dress robes, her eyes wide with a mixture of concern and a secret, crushing hope that Harry hadn't noticed.
"Harry? I saw you leave the Hall," she said softly, her voice trembling slightly. "Are you alright? You looked... overwhelmed."
"I'm fine, Ginny," Harry replied, his voice sounding hollow even to his own ears. He felt a pang of guilt; Ginny was kind and brave, but her presence felt like a distraction from the storm Draco had just stirred in his blood. "Just needed some air."
"It's a lot, isn't it?" Ginny stepped closer, her hand reaching out as if to offer a comfort she wasn't sure he wanted. "The tournament, the school watching... it's not fair to put that on you."
Before Harry could respond, the shadows seemed to congeal and rise. Severus Snape appeared from the darkness like a vengeful specter, his wand tip glowing with a faint, ominous light. He had looped back, his suspicions of Harry's 'loitering' proving too tempting to ignore. When he saw Ginny standing where Draco had been moments before, his expression shifted from cold calculation to a look of profound, sneering disgust.
"How touching," Snape whispered, the words dripping like acid. "The Boy Who Lived, unable to resist the allure of a midnight tryst in the roses. And with a Weasley, no less."
"It's not like that, Professor," Ginny said, her chin lifting with that characteristic Weasley fire. "We were just talking."
"Silence, Miss Weasley," Snape snapped, his eyes flashing with a dark, twisted satisfaction. To Snape, the scene was obvious, a Gryffindor hero and a girl from a family he despised, caught in a compromising location. It fed every prejudice he held. "The rules of this school apply even to the 'celebrated' champions and their sycophants. Your presence here is a blatant violation of decorum."
He stepped toward them, his black robes swallowing the light. "Fifty points from Gryffindor. Each," he added, his voice a low, lethal purr.
"Fifty?" Harry gasped, horrified. "Professor, that's a hundred points just for standing here!"
"Then I suggest you move, Potter," Snape hissed, leaning in so close Harry could see the reflected moonlight in his obsidian eyes. "Before I decide your expulsion is a more fitting punishment for such... illicit behavior. Get back to the Hall. Now."
As they hurried away, Harry felt the crushing weight of the lost points, but his mind was still back in the shadows with Draco. He realized with a jolt of terror that Snape's punishment was almost easier to handle than the silent, burning confusion Draco had left in his wake.
The Slytherin common room was a haze of green light and post-ball exhaustion, but the atmosphere was far from sleepy. Draco sat in a high-backed velvet chair, staring into the flickering embers of the hearth, his mind still trapped in the rose garden. The peace was shattered when a sixth-year slid onto the sofa nearby, a wicked grin stretching across his face.
"Did you hear?" the boy chuckled, leaning in toward a small group. "Snape caught Potter and the youngest Weasley in the gardens. Word is, they weren't exactly discussing Quidditch. Snape took a hundred points because he found them practically tangled together in the bushes. Guess the 'Chosen One' has chosen his ginger."
The words hit Draco like a physical blow to the chest. When they were younger, he had spent years taunting Harry about his 'fan club' and mocking the idea of him and Ginny, but back then, it had been a game, a way to hurt Harry's pride. Now, it felt like a serrated blade across his ribs.
He didn't think of it as a rumor. He didn't consider that Snape's bias might have colored the story. All he could see was the image of Harry, the same Harry who had looked at him with such raw intensity minutes before, holding someone else in the dark. A cold, suffocating jealousy, more bitter than any hate he had ever felt, washed over him. His hands curled into the fabric of his chair. He had risked everything to protect Harry, to warn him, to see him, and in Draco's mind, he had been replaced before the night was even over.
In the Gryffindor dormitory, Harry lay staring at the velvet canopy of his four-poster bed, the heavy silence of the room pressing down on him. His mind was a chaotic loop of the night's disasters. He wasn't thinking about the lost points or the tournament; he was thinking about Ron. If the rumors reached his best friend, if Ron believed for a second that Harry had been 'intimate' with his baby sister in the shadows, their friendship would be scorched earth.
The thought made his stomach churn with a sickening anxiety. Yet, beneath that fear lay a deeper, more confusing ache. Every time he closed his eyes, he didn't see Ginny's face; he felt the ghost of Draco's presence, the way the air had hummed between them before Snape's shadow ruined everything. He was terrified of what people would think of a lie, while secretly reeling from a truth he wasn't ready to name.
Across the castle, Draco was a pale ghost beneath his silk sheets, his eyes wide and burning in the dark. The rumor of Harry and the Weasley girl was a poison, a jagged shard of glass twisting in his gut. He was losing his mind, pacing the narrow confines of his own thoughts.
"How could he?" Draco wondered, his teeth gritted in a snarl of silent fury. "After everything? After the forest? After the way we looked at each other?" But as the clock chimed the early hours of the morning, his anger turned inward. He cursed himself, his hand clutching the cool pillow as he realized the pathetic reality of his situation. He was the Malfoy heir, yet he was falling apart over a boy who likely didn't give him a second thought once the lights went out. He hated Harry for the rumor, but he hated himself more for caring.