"They're finally dating? How utterly shocking."
Ron replied with complete indifference. Harry wore an expression of absolute seriousness.
"That's how it is. Of course, the fact that I'm dating Carina is a secret. We're going to pretend to everyone else that there's nothing between us."
"Pretend? You might as well try to convince people that Professor Trelawney is a genuine prophet. At least idiots like Parvati would believe that."
Ron snorted as if the whole thing were absurd. Harry scratched his chin, looking sheepish.
"...Is it that obvious?"
"Would you mind taking off the ring before you say that? I thought you two were going public."
"I'd rather not take the ring off. Is there another way?"
"You never had any intention of hiding it in the first place. Just go ahead and take out an advertisement."
That was what he said, but inwardly Ron thought that you truly never could predict people. Who at Hogwarts could have anticipated that Harry Potter would be carrying on a secret romance with Carina Malfoy?
No—setting everyone else aside, if you'd told Ron just one year ago that Harry and Carina were together, he would have believed it only halfway.
Two years ago, Ron would have looked around for Fred and George, certain it was one of their pranks.
Because as recently as first year, Harry Potter and Carina Malfoy had been enemies without equal.
************************
After the day Malfoy had nearly fallen from her broomstick.
Professor McGonagall, having recognized Harry's talent, had approached him with an offer to become Gryffindor's Seeker.
Quidditch.
The sport of wizards.
Players rode broomsticks through the air, scoring points by sending a ball through hoops. An ordinary game conducted by extraordinary means—that description fit it perfectly.
Players called Chasers flew through the sky carrying a large red ball called the Quaffle. They drove through every obstacle toward the goal posts, then hurled the ball past the opposing Keeper to score. It was a position demanding agility, speed, judgment, and concentration in equal measure.
With four directions to defend—up, down, left, and right—it was difficult for a Keeper to stop every shot. But Quidditch had its own countermeasure: the Bludger. Bludgers hurtled through the air with the sole purpose of knocking players off their brooms—a form of airborne assault.
The players who batted Bludgers away with clubs were called Beaters—the midfielders of the game, protecting their teammates' scoring runs while disrupting the opposition's. The position required a broad field of vision, physical strength, and above all, a genuine enthusiasm for making the other side miserable.
The Keeper was the goalkeeper—the last line of defense protecting the score from the rear, and the tactical commander of the team.
"But there's one position that makes all of that look trivial. The Seeker."
Oliver Wood, Gryffindor's Quidditch captain, held up the Golden Snitch for Harry to see.
A winged golden ball. It rotated freely through three hundred and sixty degrees, darting away from human hands—a one-hundred-and-fifty-point prize in flight.
Wood showed it to Harry.
"If the Seeker catches the Snitch, you earn a hundred and fifty points and the game ends. The Seeker is essentially the protagonist of any Quidditch match. Unless the skill gap between teams is enormous, it's nearly impossible to build a hundred-and-fifty-point lead on Quaffle goals alone—so whoever catches the Snitch almost always wins."
Wood kept emphasizing that the position demanded someone of exceptional ability, adding that he had every confidence Harry was that person.
"Right, then—catch it!"
Wood released the Snitch, and Harry launched himself off the ground. He shot through the air and closed his fist around the Snitch in under five minutes.
Oliver Wood stared, murmuring faintly.
"...The timing is perfect. We're going to win the Cup this year."
Harry looked at the fluttering ball in his palm and felt a swell of pride.
Flying on a broomstick was exhilarating. The chase—hunting down the darting Snitch and seizing it—was thrilling in a way nothing else was.
But apart from all that.
Becoming the centerpiece of a Quidditch match while everyone looked up at him. Making Carina Malfoy see him differently.
Both of those things seemed like they would be more than satisfying.
In the Quidditch match that followed, there was a minor incident when his broom suddenly went haywire—but Harry endured it all and caught the Snitch regardless.
Gryffindor claimed a crucial victory over Slytherin, drawing one step closer to the Quidditch Cup.
Even students from other houses were deeply moved by Harry's desperate struggle to hold on above the pitch. He received cheers from nearly everyone.
Only the Slytherin students were left seething.
Immediately afterward, Harry and Ron together brought down a troll that had escaped into the dungeons. Luck had played its part, but the incident made them overnight celebrities within Gryffindor.
Alongside the weight of his name as the Boy Who Lived, Harry's fame continued to grow—and that, in turn, grated on Carina Malfoy.
Carina, who had always carried herself as though the world revolved around her, resented every scrap of attention directed at Harry and made her displeasure known through a steady campaign of petty cruelty.
It was just before the Christmas holidays, while Harry and Ron were talking with Hagrid.
"Are you doing this for the money, Weasley? Gamekeeper would suit you perfectly after you leave Hogwarts. Hagrid's hut is a palace compared to wherever your family lives."
Malfoy's cold, spiteful voice came from behind them.
Still furious over Slytherin's defeat, Malfoy had been picking fights with Harry and Ron at every opportunity.
Today was no different. Malfoy looked down at them with undisguised contempt and insulted Ron's family.
"Wouldn't your lot actually prefer having one less mouth to feed? Wouldn't they?"
When Ron bristled and lunged forward, Harry grabbed him quickly.
"Ignore her, Ron. If you react, she'll only get worse."
"But she—my family—"
"Getting angry is exactly what Malfoy wants."
As Harry held Ron back, Malfoy clicked her tongue and turned her attention to Harry.
"Still, Weasley, at least you have somewhere to go back to. Some people have no one to call them home for Christmas and have to stay behind at Hogwarts."
It was a jab at Harry's lack of family. Ron's face cycled through shades of red and purple at the insult aimed at his friend.
But Harry patted Ron on the shoulder and walked straight toward Malfoy with long, deliberate strides.
Malfoy stood there with an air of triumph, clearly delighted that her provocation had landed. There was something almost childlike about her smile—pure and contemptuous at once.
Harry stopped in front of her and, to everyone's surprise, smiled pleasantly.
"Nothing to be done about it. My parents died stopping Voldemort."
Voldemort.
The moment that name—the name that must not be spoken—left his lips, Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle all flinched and stepped back, visibly shaken.
In a world where wizards believed names held power, speaking the name of the most evil and powerful dark wizard who had ever lived was taboo.
Harry, raised among Muggles, felt no such fear. But for Malfoy, born into a pureblood family, it was a word that made her skin crawl.
Harry didn't stop there.
"But because of my parents' sacrifice, Voldemort was destroyed—isn't that right? So everyone ought to be grateful to them. Including you, Malfoy."
The momentum had already shifted. Harry spoke of Voldemort and his parents' deaths with perfect composure. Malfoy could not match that composure.
Harry held his smile and drove the point home.
"Or perhaps you're angry with me? For getting rid of Voldemort?"
Malfoy spun on her heel and retreated as if fleeing. Crabbe and Goyle scrambled after her in a flustered rush.
It was a flawless victory on points. Ron, as if he'd already forgotten his anger, came bounding over in high spirits.
"Harry, that was incredible! You left Malfoy completely speechless!"
"It was nothing."
Harry watched Malfoy's retreating back and murmured quietly.
"All you have to do is answer with confidence. Show them a smile first, and you've already won."
"That's exactly what makes it incredible. How do you smile when someone's saying things that infuriating?"
"Hmm. You get used to it."
Back in the Gryffindor common room, Ron enthusiastically recounted how Harry had defeated Malfoy.
Many of the students had suffered under Malfoy's cruelty, so they listened with rapt attention.
Neville, who had been tormented worst of all, looked at Harry with something close to reverence.
But Harry couldn't quite bring himself to feel pleased.
Having everyone despise something he cared for was not as enjoyable as he'd imagined.
Even if it made him a hero.
***********
"Harry Potter... how dare he..."
It had been a complete defeat.
She hadn't expected him to casually invoke the Dark Lord's name like that.
In the end, Carina hadn't managed a single word in reply and had fled like a dog with its tail between its legs.
The mere fact of having fled was, for Carina—whose entire identity was built on a sense of superiority—a profound wound to her pride.
"Insufferable. An orphan who runs around with a blood traitor, and he thinks he can—I'll make him pay for this..."
Carina swore it to herself, but Goyle was skeptical.
"But how? If he says... that name again..."
Voldemort's name was a kind of prohibition.
For Carina, Crabbe, and Goyle—all of them with Death Eater parents—it was a name that was simply too much to bear.
They held both terror and a vague, instinctive reverence for Voldemort, which meant that even hearing Harry Potter say the name was enough to make them shrink. With Voldemort gone, they couldn't use his power to intimidate anyone, but they couldn't bring themselves to say the name the way Harry did either—their instinctive revulsion was too deeply rooted to overcome.
It was, in effect, an unblockable technique.
The kind of killing blow only a child who knew nothing could throw—on par with an Unforgivable Curse.
"He'd be completely silent if the true Dark Lord were actually here, and yet he struts around on Dumbledore's authority... Oh."
Carina trailed off mid-mutter, and a slow smile spread across her face as a solution came to her.
"I have a way."
"A way?"
"It's simple. Only Harry Potter—who knows nothing—can say that name. So we don't attack him directly. We attack everything around him."
Voldemort wasn't a taboo only for Carina. Children from other wizarding families feared the name just as much.
If anything, they feared it more than she did, not less.
Gryffindor had nothing worth worrying about besides Harry Potter. A half-wit like Longbottom would burst into tears the moment Carina so much as looked at him sideways.
"A penniless blood traitor, an insufferable half-blood, and that dim-witted Longbottom... more than enough to work with. Let's show them what happens when they earn our contempt. Let them learn what it means to make us angry."
"Oh, right! They're nothing special! Brilliant, Malfoy!"
Goyle clapped her hands and cheered.
Carina's chin lifted with satisfaction as she waited for more—then frowned when she noticed Crabbe standing there in a daze, missing her cue entirely.
"Crabbe? What are you standing there gaping at?"
"...Hm? Oh, um."
Crabbe, who had always been the most enthusiastic in her admiration of Carina, was uncharacteristically silent.
Carina let a flicker of irritation show and pressed her.
"Do you have a better idea?"
"Oh, no, it's not that."
"Then what? Say it."
When Carina pushed, Crabbe's face went faintly pink.
"...It's just—he said his parents are dead, so... isn't that a little sad?"
"Who?"
"Harry Potter."
Carina's expression curdled. She'd wondered what Crabbe was thinking, and it turned out she was feeling sorry for the enemy.
How dare she take Harry Potter's side in front of Carina?
She'd heard somewhere that a companion who'd been swayed by the enemy was the most dangerous kind. She ought to cut this off immediately—but given their history, she decided to try persuasion first.
"You're being ridiculous, Crabbe. Why should we care about that?"
"But... he talks about not having parents like it's nothing, so it just seems... sad."
"Hmph. Don't say such absurd things. What's so significant about not having parents?"
Carina had been sleeping alone in her bed for three years now. She was used to waking up alone, used to falling asleep alone.
It had been difficult at first, but once you got used to it, it was nothing.
Carina Malfoy had already overcome what it meant to be alone. Not that it had ever been truly alone, of course...
'I've spent time without my parents too!'
It had been when both of them had been called away on urgent business at the same time.
She'd come down to breakfast in the morning to find only the house-elves' cooking waiting for her at the long table.
That day, the table had seemed impossibly far away. The chair was colder than usual, and the food tasted off for no reason she could name.
She'd eaten in irritable, listless bites, then read in the library, then flown her broomstick alone.
She'd summoned a house-elf to bother, and poked at the Ashwinder in the fireplace with a stick.
The family portraits only ever said tiresome things, but that day she'd somehow ended up talking to one of them for a full hour. It had been, quietly, rather interesting.
She'd played chess against herself, bathed, and gone to bed earlier than usual—but her eyes had stayed wide open.
This was a secret she would never tell anyone.
She had nearly cried at the thought of what would happen if her parents didn't come back the next day. She'd held it back, as a Malfoy should—but it had been close.
Fortunately, her parents had arrived in the early hours of the following morning, and they'd brought her an armful of sweets from Honeydukes. That had been enough to sweep away every trace of that wretched day.
'But what if... that day came every single day?'
A chill ran through her.
The mere thought of it made her skin crawl, and Carina shook her head sharply.
'That's ridiculous. If you don't have parents, you have house-elves, or relatives. Stop being dramatic!'
Carina shook the thought away and banished the unpleasant image. What mattered right now was making Harry Potter submit.
Until then, not a single weak thought was permitted. Absolutely none.
"Just wait until Christmas is over, Potter. I'm going to make you regret it."
Carina made her vow and withdrew.
Revenge. The arrow aimed at the insufferable Harry Potter and Gryffindor had already left her hand.