patreon.com/palevolt100 _Read early chapters of up to chapter 104
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Henry did not go over to ask. Any reasonably attentive observer could have worked out that the trio had just gone to Hagrid to ask about Fluffy, the three-headed dog.
His recollection of the story was imprecise in places, but he remembered enough: Harry was supposed to stumble into the fourth-floor restricted corridor around Halloween, driven there by Draco's provocation, discover the Cerberus, and from that starting point begin to unravel the secrets surrounding the Philosopher's Stone.
Henry had cut that particular thread from the very beginning no provocation, no challenge, no midnight wandering through the trophy room.
And yet the trio had still found their way to the fourth floor.
Fate, it seemed, had its own corrective instinct.
Without Draco's interference, some other path had opened: coincidence, or the old Headmaster's guidance, deliberate or otherwise, or simply the particular gravity that Harry Potter seemed to exert on events.
Henry was not sure which, and did not intend to spend energy determining it.
What he did intend to think about was the question of his own role.
Doing nothing was the safe choice.
Cerberus, the Philosopher's Stone, Voldemort's plans, all of it had its own trajectory, and Harry, as the Chosen One, had his own destiny to move through.
Henry had no obligation to interfere and no compelling reason to. He was a first-year Slytherin reserve Seeker, a newcomer who had recently begun to find his footing on the Quidditch pitch, an outsider still in the early stages of building something worth calling influence.
Not intervening was the most rational course.
He set his teacup back on the tray with a quiet clink.
But that left other questions entirely open.
"You want to invite Fred and George to tea?"
Ron's voice came out at a pitch that caused him to nearly drop the piece of rock cake he was holding.
He fumbled, caught it, and stared at Henry with the expression of someone who has just heard something genuinely difficult to process.
"Yes," Henry said, dipping his rock cake into the milk bowl with complete composure. "The Weasley brothers seem very familiar with Hogsmeade and with the specialties of the wizarding world. I need some advice about Christmas shopping."
He looked up at Ron.
"Specifically, what to give as gifts to family."
Harry and Ron looked at one another.
Ron's face was still working through several distinct reactions at once.
This Slytherin had invited him to tea, had invited Harry to tea, had invited Hermione to tea, and was now proposing to extend the same invitation to Fred and George.
Was the next step to invite the entire Gryffindor common room to that classroom for a series of increasingly improbable cross-House discussions?
He stopped.
Christmas shopping advice. From his twin brothers.
Ron scratched his head slowly, genuinely uncertain whether that was ridiculous or whether it actually made a kind of sense he hadn't considered before.
Harry, meanwhile, had noticed something in the way Henry spoke when he mentioned his family. There was no performance in it, no carefully placed humility, no polished courtesy.
It was simply the tone of someone raising something that mattered to them.
"Fred and George do know Hogsmeade well," Harry offered. "They're very good at finding the interesting shops."
"Last term they smuggled a full box of Dungbombs from Zonko's," Ron added, with the flat delivery of a man accustomed to being collateral damage. "They deployed them across three stalls in the fifth-floor men's bathroom. Almost nobody used that corridor for weeks. Filch spent a fortnight trying to catch them."
"They sound exactly like the experts I need," Henry said, with a slight smile.
Ron had no response to this.
Fine. It's got nothing to do with me. If he wants to ask Fred and George for gift advice, that's entirely his own decision.
That afternoon, in the empty classroom on the second floor, Fred and George appeared at the door exactly on time, wearing identical expressions of cheerful wariness, the look of people who have agreed to something entertaining and want to see how it develops before committing to an opinion.
Fred went in first and did a quick visual sweep of the room.
Plain tablecloth, standard Hogwarts white porcelain, butter biscuits, jam tarts, frosted cake. No silverware, no three-tiered pastry stand, no bone china.
His eyebrows rose slightly. Not what he had expected. But the simplicity of it was also, if he was honest, somewhat reassuring.
"Please sit down," Henry said, rising. "Ceylon black tea, freshly brewed, with a little milk. Sugar is in the centre of the table."
George sat and exchanged a brief glance with Fred as he picked up his cup.
The tea was at a very good temperature. The pastries were arranged with a neatness that didn't match their humble origin, even the butter biscuits had been set out without a crumb out of place.
Fred took a bite of the jam tart and squinted thoughtfully.
"So," he said, once he had finished it, his tone light and speculative, "what exactly does His Highness the Slytherin Prince want with a pair of Gryffindor troublemakers? Surely not purely for the pleasure of our company."
"Not purely," Henry agreed pleasantly.
Fred blinked. Clearly he had been expecting a more diplomatic evasion.
"I need Christmas shopping advice," Henry said, setting down his cup and looking at them directly. "Gifts for my family. But with specific requirements."
George rested his chin on his hand and tapped a finger against the edge of the table. "What sort of requirements?"
Henry paused for exactly two seconds.
"They need to be cheap. The cheaper the better. And if they happen to look a little unusual, that would be ideal."
Fred set down his teacup.
George sat up straight.
Two sets of identical eyes lit up at precisely the same moment.
"Hold on," Fred said, giving each word its full weight. "You, the eldest son of the Prince of Wales, second in line to the British throne, Seeker for the Slytherin Quidditch team, are asking for Christmas gift recommendations, and your criteria are cheap and unusual?"
"Yes," Henry said, without any trace of self-consciousness. "It's a family tradition."
He was not joking. His mother, in her first year of marriage into the royal family, had made the mistake of giving expensive cashmere sweaters and fine scarves as Christmas gifts and had been looked at as though she had done something deeply eccentric.
The following year she had presented a cheap leopard-print rug and been considered charming.
Fred and George looked at each other.
Then they looked back at Henry.
Then they whistled, in perfect unison.
"Merlin's mustache," they said together. "We're starting to genuinely like your family."