DON'T TAKE NO SORCERY, pt 2
back to part one
-xxx-
So, a couple hours later, Harry felt confident that he had sufficient information to declare that Muggle school sucked.
Maybe he wasn't being fair. Blaine had chemistry second period, which was kind of like Potions but with way more theoretical Muggle science BS, so that was pretty lame, but third period he had history, and that was actually kind of interesting - learning about the world the way the Muggles had always seen it, beyond what he'd gotten from grade school before Hogwarts, without all the goblins and alliterative names and other magic crap that made the history Binns taught so damn boring. And now he had a free period, which Harry always appreciated. So maybe Muggle school had the potential to be kind of cool, if done correctly.
But Harry was definitely sure that Dalton was doing it totally ass-backwards wrong.
The whole no-girls thing was bad enough. (Harry thought just sharing a dorm room with five other dudes was lame. How did any of these guys even deal?) But it wasn't just that all Blaine's classmates were boys - it was that all Blaine's classmates were hoity-toity, put-together, preppy boys just like Blaine was trying to be, their uniforms arranged just as carefully and their attitudes just as prim and annoying. There had been one or two exceptions, people like that blond Jeff guy or his friend Nick who were practically bright spots on the gloomy Dalton horizon, but even they seemed to keep a pretty heavy lid on it most of the time - just like Blaine was doing. It was really freaking disconcerting to go through the day with this guy that looked just like him and watch that guy speak and smile and act in a way Harry wouldn't be caught dead acting. If he didn't bust this guy out soon, the damage was going to be irreversible, and even when Harry went home he was going to take with him the knowledge that in some weird other world was his miserable suited-up doppelganger, suffering through the bullshit of high school in ways that no one should have to endure.
Tackling it straight on clearly hadn't worked, though, and Blaine had just thrown his defenses back up. He was going to have to be a little less Gryffindor about it from now on.
"So the Warbly thing is a music thing, right?" he said, as they went back to the same room they'd been in that morning, which was remarkably empty this time of day. "I mean, there's a piano in here, so I just figured - "
"Yes," Blaine said, cutting him off with a chuckle. "We're a singing group. A cappella. I actually get to front the group a lot, I've had several solos, that kind of thing."
"Awesome," said Harry. He crossed to the piano and tugged the cover back on it before sitting down on the bench. Blaine dumped his stuff beside Harry, then moved to push open some of the windows - it was still August, and the room was getting really stuffy midday. He was on the other side of the room when something in his messenger bag started buzzing and beeping at the same time.
"What the - " Harry mumbled, and reached in to find whatever it was and make it shut up - it turned out to be Blaine's...cell phone, which was tiny and weird-shaped and still looked nothing like any phone Harry was familiar with from his days with the Dursleys, but he supposed this could kind of be construed as ringing.
"Your tiny phone thing is going off at me," Harry called to him. He looked down at the display. "Someone named Kurt?"
Blaine started back toward him, smiling - a real smile this time, truer than anything Harry had seen so far, which was kind of awesome. "My boyfriend," he said.
"Ha!" cried Harry. "Yes. Totally knew it. Didn't even need the stupid scarf."
"What?"
"Never mind. So uh. Boyfriend. That's great."
"Yeah, he's pretty amazing," Blaine said, and it was so sincere Harry kind of wanted to puke. He checked the message on his weird phone-thing. "Look out for me calling you at first lunch, you'll never believe what's going on today. Hah! Bet I win that story-telling contest."
Harry laughed a little, too. "So you haven't seen him today to talk all that over? He's not a Warblet?"
Blaine's smile turned a little sad. "No, no, Kurt doesn't go to Dalton any more. He didn't for very long to begin with, really. He's at a public school, McKinley, it's in the next town over."
"Man, that must be hard. Why'd he leave?" Then Harry thought about it. "Wait, why'd he even come here in the first place?"
Blaine sat down on the other end of the piano bench with a small sigh, and looked at Harry in earnest. "Dalton is very serious about its no-tolerance anti-bullying policy. Things here are...regimented," he said. "Kurt's school isn't like that. It's hard, for him, considering how - " he paused, head tilting, choosing a word carefully - it was so surreal, Harry could read just about every slight subtle expression on his near-identical face - "outspoken Kurt is about his life and his sexuality - "
"Ohhh, so he's totally flaming. Like way gayer than you," said Harry.
Blaine arched one eyebrow. "You do know that's not how it works, right?"
"I know, I know, you either like dudes or you don't. Keep going?"
"Kurt came to Dalton at a time when he was struggling the most at his own school, before we got together, as an alternative to having his life threatened on a regular basis," said Blaine. "Some things got settled, issues were resolved - not completely, but to a degree where it was safe enough - and then he went back when his time here was up."
"Sounds to me like he got out when the getting was good," said Harry. "Someone threatens your life, you punch 'em in the face and threaten 'em right back. Someone stifles your soul, that's when you need to get out of there and back to a place that's letting you be who you're supposed to be."
"It's more complicated than that, you're oversimplifying - "
"I know I am," said Harry, rolling his eyes and knocking Blaine on the side of the head a little. "It seems like breaking it down into basic terms is the only way I'm gonna get through that thick skull of yours, geez. Look, listen to me." He swung so he was straddling the piano bench, and he could look at Blaine head-on, directly into those eerily-identical eyes. (Bastard had contacts, Harry was still kind of jealous.) "I know all about what it's like to be in a place where you're stuck, and stifled, and where you literally get punished for trying to be who you are. I get that."
"The Dursleys," Blaine murmured faintly.
"Still don't understand how you guys know everything about my life, but yes." Harry shook himself a little, trying to stay focused. "I get that. I get Kurt's thing. But you know what else I get? This whole private school, uniform, small group of people you spend every waking moment of your life with thing. I get your thing, too. And the way you are doing it is totally ass-backwards wrong."
Blaine lifted his hands but then dropped them again, like he didn't know what to do with them. "It's - it's just - "
-xxx-
" - hard to go through every day knowing they all still think the worst of me," said Rachel, idly tracing out the patterns of a tune on the keys of Brad's piano without actually playing any notes. "Still! They've known me for years, Hermione, they know who I am and how I function and that this is just - me - and yet they're horrible to me. They're only nice when Finn makes them and he only does that because he wants to get to second base with me."
"I know," Hermione said simply - and something about that struck Rachel much harder than she was expecting. Not "I'm so sorry," the honest pity of someone who didn't quite know how things worked but knew Rachel shouldn't suffer through them; not the chipper "it'll all work out someday!" of someone who had no idea how things worked at all, the one that reeked of condescension and lies and the utter lack of surprise that someone like Rachel would have a life this miserable. Hermione didn't pity her. Hermione just knew. "I know what it's like, for even the people you consider your closest friends to still think you're kind of - terrible. And for there to be days when the only thing that keeps you hanging on is you."
"Oh, that's just it!" Rachel wailed. "If I didn't want all of this so badly, if I didn't know the only way to get there was to be me, just - uncompromisingly and - "
"Rachel," said Hermione softly, "sometimes you have to compromise."
"What?" Now Rachel wasn't certain that Hermione understood at all.
"You have to approach things - rationally," she said, her finger tracing circles on the glossy surface of the piano, hesitant. "Being contrary just for contrariness's sake, yeah, it sets you apart, it hardens you for the real world - whatever that's supposed to mean - but it alienates you, too. You can't keep trying so hard to stand out and still expect to fit in."
"So what, I'm just supposed to cave in and be just like all of them?"
"Of course not," said Hermione. "Never on the inside. Never where it counts. But if you let them think you've got a little give to you, they'll warm up, they'll accept you as one of their own, like - okay, so, here's me, there was this time where there was this dance, right?"
"What, like the Yule Ball?"
"That's it exactly. And I - I'm not the gussied-up sparkling eyeshadow pretty dress type, that makes me so antsy. Books have done way better by me than a push-up bra ever did. But in that moment, all I wanted was for things to be wonderful, and to feel like I was someone that somebody cared about. And I couldn't do that and keep doing my all-Hermione-and-books-all-the-time sort of act at the same time. I had to give a little one way or the other. I had to compromise."
"Did it...did it work?" said Rachel. She found suddenly that she was leaning in toward Hermione, hanging on her every word.
Hermione's eyes went kind of distant and she let out a small sigh. "It definitely worked. It wasn't my favorite thing I've ever done, and it - it never will be - but I...and then he..."
-xxx-
"...won't even let me say anything!" Mercedes threw up her arms and huffed out a long, angry exhale, and Ginny fidgeted with her hands a little where she sat by the piano. "Sometimes I just kind of want to scream."
"So do it," said Ginny.
Mercedes turned back upstage to her, eyebrows raised. "Really?"
"Yeah," said Ginny. "I mean, the auditorium is empty except for you and me, and if you need to let something out, I think you definitely should. The whole situation sounds terrible."
"You know what," said Mercedes, "you're right!" She rushed out onto the proscenium, rocked her arms back and her head forward, and let out a loud, long shout, carrying on until her lungs gave out. When she finished it bounced hard off the auditorium walls for a few moments and then left nothing but a ringing silence. She rocked heel-toe back and forth a couple of times, and then turned and crossed back to Ginny, arms swinging. "Wow, that did kind of help," she said, giggling a little. "I don't know, Ginny, what should I do?"
"I don't know either," said Ginny, frowning and shrugging a little. "I wish I could help, but that's the super-frustrating thing about when you like a boy. Sometimes the Quaffle's totally in his court, you know?"
"I mean, I guess so."
"And he knows how you feel about the whole thing, right?"
She nodded. "We had this big discussion about it last week and then I brought it up again on the phone last night. But he really wants this to be a thing that's just between him and me, and to not tell everybody."
"That's pretty stupid."
"Tell me about it."
"And then you just get backed up in this big dumb dead-end that you're in right now, where you can't do anything, because it's all on him. And that's just awful!" Ginny slumped, and poked idly at one of the keys on the auditorium piano, which made a high and piercing sound. "It's like...this one time, it was the first time Harry and I kissed..."
"Oooh, juicy," said Mercedes, sitting down next to her.
"And it was so amazing and he was so nice and I'd had a crush on him basically forever, but we just kissed this one time and then he just dropped it like a screaming mandrake," said Ginny. "I tried to talk to him about it but he wouldn't make a single move! And it just got to the point where I'd done everything it was possible for me to do, and it still wasn't going anywhere. And it was only going to go somewhere if he did something."
"But he did do something, right?" said Mercedes. "'Cause like, you two are together now."
"He did," said Ginny. "But it kind of took like, three or four near-death experiences and saving the entire wizarding world first."
"Uuuggghh!" said Mercedes, dropping her head back and then rocking it forward again in time to slamming both hands on the piano, a jumbled dissonance bursting out from it. "This is so stupid! I'm never gonna get anywhere at this rate." She stood back up and stepped away from the piano a little. "Gimme a sec, I think I need to scream again."
"Hang on," said Ginny. "If you're willing to try it, I think I've got a better idea."
-xxx-
"Here," said Hermione, and she waved her wand at some blank paper until it swirled with bars and notes of music, complete with lyrics. "Maybe we could try this. If you just stay solid on the inside..."
-xxx-
"Why don't you hang tight for a second, okay, blazer-boy?" said Harry. "Let me do the Warbling."
-xxx-
"There's this song I know."
-xxx-
Rachel watched, amazed, as the piano played the right notes all on its own, and she just tried to keep up with the lyrics on the page. Her sightreading had clearly gotten a little rusty over the summer.
"I take a grain of salt,
A stiff upper lip,
It's not their fault I'm not as hip - "
"Wake up kid," sang Hermione, "you know you're more than this..."
"I'm the smartest person that I've ever met," Rachel continued, a smile growing on her face.
"So why do I allow myself to possibly forget?
There's so much I know how to do,
So much more than all of you.
The only thing I wish I knew was how to make them see
The girl that I can be..."
-xxx-
"I'm laughing," sang Harry, plinking it out as he went.
"It's hard to hide a smile.
My god, it's been a while since I have had a reason to." He raised one eyebrow at Blaine.
"To think, it's been here all along,
Somewhere to belong, and a reason,
A something to believe in -
I've finally found it, a place where I'm wanted..."
Blaine found himself suddenly picking up the next line. "This must be how it feels, to have a home."
-xxx-
"Sa-a-am-myyy," sang Mercedes, finally getting into it, with Ginny fumbling miserably through the notes on the piano.
"Sa-a-am-myyy,
Why can't you see
What you're doing to me?"
She'd found a microphone somewhere and she leaned heavy into it on the stand, building up.
"I've seen you singin' on that stage,
You look just like an angel, and all I do is pray
That maybe someday you'll let me be
The one to say 'hey, he's with me,'
And there won't ever be no other way -
Hey!
When I say - "
-xxx-
"I am done with losing, on with choosing!
The coolest girl on the face of the planet - "
"The coolest bitch on earth, goddamnit!" cried Hermione.
"The coolest chick you've ever seen or heard!
So you can try to bring me down,
But sorry, guys, I'm sticking around
I've thought about it and I've found..."
-xxx-
"...to have - a - home!" finished Harry, more softly than he'd been planning, as the edge kind of seeped out of him. He was always totally down for a big loud show-stopping showoff moment, but this...this wasn't about him. This was about Blaine.
"Wow," Blaine murmured, as Harry played through the outro and then the music room fell silent. "And you - you wrote that?"
"Yeah, I guess," said Harry. "I mean, it just kind of...happened. I think magic and music really have this like connection, you know?" He paused. "Which in hindsight could totally explain how I was so awesome at playing guitar when I was only eleven."
"I never knew," said Blaine. "I mean, obviously, I didn't, since we just met this morning and all, but through the books there's never any mention of - "
"I'm starting to think that whatever weird books are out there about my life have gotten a bunch of things kinda goofed up," said Harry.
Blaine smiled, and leaned around to put his own fingers on the piano, just his right hand, flitting almost instantly to the exact keys Harry had just been playing - running through chords of the song like he'd already learned them. "Not - not just the music thing, though," he said, dropping his hand back to his lap just as suddenly. "I mean, just - that was intense."
"Yeah, kinda."
"And reading the - the book version, you couldn't quite get the sense of exactly what it was like - I mean you were obviously upset in our world and much happier and more at home at Hogwarts and stuff but just - the rawness of it. The total transformation, such a huge shift."
"It's hard," said Harry, realizing suddenly how close Blaine's movements had put them. "It's the worst thing I ever have to do, to go back to them when I'm not at school. It's like I leave a part of me behind every time I leave - "
" - him," Blaine whispered. "Every time I have to leave Kurt."
"It's not just him, you know," said Harry. "If you were leaving him to come back to something that you liked, it wouldn't be nearly as bad. It's when you leave something amazing for something that's totally shitty, that's when you feel like this. Like someone's kicked your insides." He could see it, deep in Blaine's way-too-close eyes, that he knew. He could read this face, his face, like a book, like a slip of sheet music.
"Maybe you're right," said Blaine, voice soft. "Maybe there is something bad for me in this place. It's just been so good for me, too, that I can't see how - I just don't think - "
"Shhh," said Harry. "Don't think. Do." They were so close their noses were practically touching. Harry felt his words in Blaine's identical lips. "Be a Gryffindor," he said. "Have some courage."
Blaine kissed him. Harry hummed softly, a little confused, but it only took about two seconds from it to go from weird to just weirdly hot. Blaine was a really good kisser, his hand sliding up to cup around Harry's jaw, and there was something about the solid forcefulness of a guy, pressing insistent against his lips with another coarse slightly-open mouth, that was new and bright and exciting no matter how much Harry loved the soft eager sweetness of kissing Ginny. He opened his mouth to it, too, and let their tongues meet, sucking hard at Blaine and letting his fingers fan out against Blaine's leg just above his knee where they still sat on the piano bench. A bell was chiming somewhere, had started chiming some time ago it seemed, but Harry was lost in the weird parallel same-but-different taste of Blaine's mouth, the faint desperate noises he was making against him and the way his body kept shifting forward and back, hungry but conflicted, the muscles of his neck shifting under Harry's hand where it had come to rest just above his shoulder.
"Mmmh," said Harry between the hot, thick kisses, "oh man."
"No, I - " said Blaine, protesting even as he kept going - "I have a boyfriend - "
"I have a girlfriend," Harry pointed out, before slipping back in for more.
His lips were getting raw and tingly from it but neither of them really seemed like they were going to quit anytime soon when suddenly, Blaine's phone resting on top of the piano started to ring/buzz again, a different sound than before, rattling against the hard surface. Blaine groaned into Harry's mouth and then pulled away, a little bit of saliva dangling between them before Harry had the sense to wipe it clean as Blaine answered the phone and mouthed 'Kurt' at him. "Hey, Kurt, what's up?" There was some high-pitched chattering from the other end that Harry couldn't understand beyond it being full of overwhelmed excitement, and a few sentences in, Blaine's eyes shot open wide. "Are you serious right now? - No, I definitely do believe you, is the thing." He shook his head a little in amazement. "Yeah, I do. - Well, because Harry Potter is here at Dalton. - Yes." He rolled his eyes. "Of course I would have told you. Soon! Especially if I'd known - yes. No, I can - I'll ditch last period, the drive shouldn't be that bad if I beat traffic." Kurt said something else, and Blaine paused, letting the silence hang, before giving Harry an enormous grin. "No, I don't think it'll matter if I miss Warblers practice. - No, I am, I just...I won't be. For much longer anyway. I'll explain when we get there. - When we get there, Kurt. Have lunch, get ahold of the rest of them, I'll see you in a couple of hours. - Okay. - I love you too. Bye."
Harry grinned. "You're ditching the Warblers?"
Blaine shrugged. "It won't matter in a couple of weeks, considering I'm probably leaving Dalton altogether."
He leapt up from the piano bench and threw his arms around Blaine in a bro-hug, completely as if they hadn't just been making out five minutes ago. "Yes," he cried, "yes! My doppelganger is saved! You gotta get out of here, man!"
"I figure I probably do," said Blaine, smiling madly too - a real smile.
"And Kurt's found my friends?"
"Seems so! He said all four of them are at McKinley and they were just looking for you before they tried to figure out how to get home."
"Wait, four?" said Harry. "Who all's there?"
"Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and I guess he said Draco Malfoy."
"Oh god," Harry groaned, slumping back onto the bench. "How does he always end up involved in our freaking business? You'd think after a while he'd realize that we're not worth it and to just leave it alone!"
Blaine laughed a little, and shook his head. "You would think, wouldn't you? But you would be surprised." He stood up suddenly, gathering his bag and his phone and taking a couple of steps toward the door. "Come on. We're making one more stop before we hit the dining hall for lunch."
"Oh yeah?" said Harry, rising and following after. "Where to?"
"The Edward J. Dalton Memorial Library."
-xxx-
Kurt waited until nearly the end of lunch before announcing it to everyone. It was fun to have the little secret to himself, and he sat and ate his tomato sandwich and smiled, engaging vaguely in the conversation Ginny and Mercedes were having to his right - oh, they were getting along so well, he'd hate to rain on their parade with the news that Ginny was going to have to leave soon. Mercedes had been kind of down and out lately, for reasons Kurt had yet to suss out, and seeing how happy she'd been with Ginny all afternoon had been a lovely change of pace from the last couple weeks of the summer.
So he finished his sandwich, ate his grapes and his giant white chocolate macadamia soft cookie, and waited until his bag was firm on his shoulder and he was heading out of the cafeteria altogether before pulling up the group labeled New Directions from his contacts and shooting a mass text: We found Harry Potter! He's with Blaine at Dalton. They'll be here towards the end of the day. xo K
He got several responses quite quickly -
From: Sam E
THANK GOD get this twerp away from me, he wont calm down & when he found out i live in a hotel it just got worse
From: Tina CC
yay!! but we have to take pixx before they leave!! it's been so much fun gin is the best :( we're putting a feather in her hair in schu's 5th LOL
From: Rachelphaba
NOOO THEY CAN'T LEAVE!! Can't she just stay forever? frownface ETERNALLY :(
Kurt rolled his eyes at that one, as he sank into his seat in the back row of his government class, and actually bothered to respond.
To: Rachelphaba
Rachel, sweetie, we talked about this. You can't take in every stray you see because sooner or later its real owners come for it and by then you've gotten too attached.
From: Rachelphaba
Oooooh you're not funny! Don't call her an it! She's my FRIEND and her NAME is Hermione Granger!!
To: Rachelphaba
I don't care if her name is Stefani Hermanotta, she doesn't belong here and they're really going to need to find a way back to where they came from.
He sighed and set his phone to silent, not looking to get it confiscated for texting in class, and was just worming it back into his impossibly snug pockets when it lit up one more time.
From: Quinn
what the hell are you talking about?
Oh, right. Quinn was missing the first few days of school since she was still in Los Angeles on vacation with her mother - Kurt had taken notes for her in French and everything. That was...hm. Maybe he shouldn't even bother trying to explain.
To: Quinn
No big deal. I'll tell you later, we're just having a weird day.
From: Quinn
every day at mckinley is a weird day.
Kurt supposed she had a point.
(The day got even weirder when he finally got a response from Puck, a full class period later, and it read yo cool hp im there hang on wait my hair......WHOP, followed immediately by another text that was just a string of random punctuation symbols. Kurt decided he did not want to know.)
When the bell finally rang to let Kurt out of English and free them all from regular classes for the day, he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. He took the long way around through the hallways to the student parking lot to make sure he'd walk past at least a handful of the others.
"Mike," he said, "will you be a dear and run down and tell Mr. Schue what we're doing and not to expect us for glee practice until a little bit later? While we deal with the wizard gang, and whatnot. And, uh, check on that bruise of his?"
"Um, deal," said Mike, "as long as you don't ever call me 'dear' again." He shot Kurt a lopsided smile and split off from the slowly-growing pack, heading down to the choir room right as they picked up Brittany and Santana ducking out of seventh period gym.
"How do you still look so good after sweating so much?" griped Tina.
"Hotness is natural just like sweat," said Santana, tucking her bangs back out of her face.
"I'm getting really good at using the hand dryer," said Brittany.
They finally folded Finn, Rachel and Hermione, Ginny and Mercedes, and Sam and Draco into the group. Draco was clinging to Sam's shoulders like some kind of demented backpack.
"Wheee!" he cried. Kurt shot Sam a look.
"I did a Liam Neeson impression in sixth period and now he keeps calling me Rumbleroar," said Sam, looking miserable. He shook his bangs out of his eyes and hiked Draco up higher on his back. "This was sooo not in the books."
"Don't worry, we'll be dislodging the monkey on your back soon enough." Mike had rejoined them with Artie and they were nearly at the broad back doors when Kurt paused. "Wait, where's Ron and Puckerman?"
"Um," said Ginny. "Your scary friend Lauren left about half an hour ago to go get them...I guess they were at his house? She said something about pots." Mercedes shrugged apologetically at him and Artie snickered.
"Oh brother," sighed Kurt, but nevertheless they all filed out past the auditorium and down to where students were milling around their cars, eager to get home. Even in the mess of all of them Kurt's eyes found him instantly.
Blaine.
Good lord was he beautiful. There was something about him, even at this distance, that looked shockingly good - something looser about his smile, something different about his hair - Kurt couldn't place it. It kind of made him want to kiss Blaine senseless, even in the middle of all these people, even as one corner of his mind was on constant peripheral alert for cups of blue raspberry misery. He stepped out toward the foot of his shiny silver car and Kurt got a good, full look at him -
And his heart plummeted.
That uniform.
It was a wholly unexpected feeling, washing over him, seizing him up, making his heart thud harder. Just a week ago they'd been able to lounge around with each other all day and do nothing, the summer season mostly over with at Six Flags, Kurt's father usually out during the long daylight hours; they could lay on the couch and do nothing but taste each other, no other cares in the world. They were both excited to be seniors, having the run of the school, and Kurt was confident he'd finally get a competition solo with New Directions this year, and Blaine thought he could really do well for the Warblers serving on the senior council. They were still so in love and they were going to be wonderful.
But something about that damn blazer just struck him. This wasn't going to be wonderful. This was going to be nine more long, miserable months where they couldn't spend all day together, where they'd be lucky to even get weekends together and even luckier to find time alone, where Kurt was going to get all excited about new fall trends and planning outfits for key days at school and Blaine was going to scratch his head and chuckle self-deprecatingly about his three wonderful options of blazer/cardigan/sweatervest. And Kurt suddenly didn't care about making sure all the Harry Potter kids got home. Kurt cared about making sure Blaine came home. Right into his arms.
He wrapped him in a tight hug and didn't even try to justify it to anyone, hearing Blaine's cute "whoa, okay, hi to you too" and steadfastly ignoring it. He breathed in the scent at Blaine's neck where his collar and tie hung surprisingly loose and sloppy, and didn't pull away until Santana tapped him on the shoulder and reminded him that she was only one Bullywhip in a sea of hundreds of slushie-bombs waiting to happen.
"I like to get my gay on as much as the next freak, but seriously, come on."
Kurt fixed her with a frustrated stare. "You are somehow even more annoying now that you've come out."
She was about to respond when Ginny burst past her, nearly knocking her over, and latched herself onto the other boy who'd just climbed out of Blaine's car in a similar manner. "Harry!" Her red hair went flying absolutely everywhere as she plowed her full weight into him, but he took it surprisingly easily and wrapped his arms almost inappropriately low around her waist, holding her close.
"I'm so glad you're okay," Harry murmured against her, and then she pulled back and kissed him soundly before they finally pulled apart.
"Hey everyone, this is my boyfriend, Harry Potter!" said Ginny, grinning a mile wide and spreading her arms out between him and the rest of them.
Oh.
Oh.
"You've gotta be joking," said Tina, and Kurt was inclined to agree. He was aware that he was probably staring but he couldn't even be bothered to try to be polite. He couldn't help it. Behind the glasses and the mess of hair, standing there in a passable polo shirt but absolutely atrocious jeans, was the disheveled spitting image of the boy whose hand Kurt was still holding. He flicked a glance to Blaine, who just shrugged and shook his head, but then immediately turned back to Harry, who was now getting hugged by Hermione. This was - well not that anything today had really escaped this label - but this was unreal.
Brittany stepped over to him and leaned into his ear as if she were sharing a secret, even though she was still speaking at regular Brittany-volume. "Kurt, is your boyfriend Harry Potter?"
"Kind of looks that way, doesn't it?" said Blaine, laughing.
Beyond that, there were introductions all around, and things almost seemed kind of...normal. Artie pulled his high-end digital camera out of the bag hooked onto his chair and they took approximately a million pictures, showing off the new bright purple feather hooked into Ginny's already vibrant hair, laughing as Harry waved his wand and gave a passing Azimio Adams the most intense wedgie of his life. Lauren showed up with Puck and Ron in tow not too long afterward, both of them still a little red around the eyes and Puck's mohawk now a crest of bright green tree leaves, and they took about a million more. Kurt held the camera and shot video as Ginny, Brittany, Tina and Mike tapped and clapped out a cute little dance routine to some song Harry and Hermione were humming about summer. There was a particularly great one of Draco posing on Finn's shoulders as if they were about to charge into battle, and a breathtakingly stunning candid of Harry and Blaine leaning on each other and just laughing, laughing, like they were all having the best day of their lives. (Kurt couldn't help but call that one back onto the viewfinder a couple of times and just stare. Blaine was already the most beautiful person Kurt had ever seen - the concept of two of him, even if one of them was Harry freaking Potter, made Kurt feel feelings he didn't think he was quite prepared to feel. Just - damn.)
"Group shot!" yelled Lauren. "We've gotta have one of everyone so I can stick it on Facebook and know for eternity that I met the real Harry Potter and all my internet friends didn't."
"You want an autograph?" said Harry. "I don't usually like giving them out, it's kind of tacky, but I figure - "
"Yes," said Lauren, completely straightfaced and genuine in a way that Kurt had literally never seen from her before - no sarcasm, no derision, no nothing. "Just...yes."
They propped the camera on the top of Puck's car and then shuffled into position, squeezing in as snug as possible. Kurt was standing between Blaine and Mercedes with Hermione and Rachel right in front of him and somehow everything felt incredible, with the faint and painful exception of the texture of Blaine's blazer under the smooth palm of his hand.
"Okay, don't move!" said Ginny, worming out of the dogpile. "I want to do mine too!" She swapped Artie's camera out for hers, a decidedly larger and more complicated contraption that she'd pulled out of a purse way too tiny to hold it. She slipped back in, waved her wand, and the flash went off with a shower of magenta sparks, cascading all over Puck's trunk.
"My baby!" he cried, bolting toward it to make sure it didn't catch on fire. The group fell back apart again, splitting into smaller groups for more hugs and more laughter and more total insanity. It seemed so shockingly normal that Kurt honestly had to remind himself that these five wizard kids hadn't been friends with them for years.
"Well, but they kind of have," he realized aloud, thinking about the number of times he alone had read the books and seen the films.
"What?" said Blaine.
"Oh, nothing," said Kurt. "But I was just wondering, this all seems so...conclusive. Have you already figured out how you're getting home?"
"The same way we got here in the first place," said Ginny. "Floo powder. I was worried because we were all out, and we had no way of contacting Mom to come get us with some extra - I think I, uh, spilled most of it anyway - "
"But I totally had some," said Brittany. "It's no big deal." She reached into the front pocket of her backpack and pulled out a ziplock bag full of a pale green powder - it could easily have been ground up sidewalk chalk. But when she tilted it in the light, parts of it glinted gold in a way that no Muggle substance ever had.
"Wait, what?" Sam said.
"You mean to say you've had actual Floo powder this whole time and you never thought to tell any of us?" demanded Lauren.
"Well no," said Brittany, "it's totally useless to us, we're all Muggles, duh." She shook her head as if they were idiots. "I had to get it from Lord Tubbington. He and Professor McGonagall are like, really close. I see them Skyping sometimes...it's disgusting."
"As soon as we found out, we were just waiting to get Harry back before we left," said Hermione. "We'll just have to use that boiler we came in through in the basement of your school. Kind of a tight squeeze, but I guess we'll manage."
"Maybe if you'd ease up on the snackage just a little," Ron muttered.
"Hey, don't hate on a girl who likes to eat," said Puck. "Besides, you're kind of the king of the munchies over there, if the last four hours have been anything to go on."
"This sucks," said Tina. "I've been having so much fun with you guys, and you're all such great singers and dancers too! I never knew! I wish you didn't have to leave."
"Yeah, me too," said Mercedes. "But just think, man, we'll always know that we got to meet the Harry Potter. And not even Daniel Radcliffe but actually Harry Potter, and Ron and Hermione and everything. Who else can say that?"
"Gee whiz, Harry, I can't believe you're even famous in the Muggle world," said Hermione, rolling her eyes.
"I can," said Ron and Harry at once, and everyone but Draco laughed.
Eventually they decided that it would be best if the five of them headed back down to the boiler room on their own. It was already too small of a room for the whole lot of them to fit into, and they didn't want to look too suspicious and too much weirder than they already did. "Plus," added Hermione, "the most magic we've done for you so far has just been sort of beginner-level, parlor-trick stuff. I think using Floo powder right in front of Muggles would probably be a way more serious offense." Kurt watched as they walked back up into the school, Harry stalling and looking back longest of all, and waving specifically at Blaine. Blaine squinted into the bright August sun and waved back, looking about as upset as Kurt felt.
"Goodbyes are terrible," he said. "I've never been good at them."
"You're telling me," said Kurt, pouting. "I have to send them back to Hogwarts and then turn right around and send you back to Dalton."
Blaine's expression shifted. "Yeah, about that. Remember when I said on the phone that I had a decent explanation for skipping Warblers rehearsal on my first day as a council member?"
Kurt's heart skipped a beat in his desperation to not get ahead of himself. "Um. Yes?"
Blaine stepped around to face Kurt directly, walking them a couple steps away from the rest of the New Directions. "Kurt, Harry...helped me with some things. Taught me something, I think, in person, that I never could have learned from those books. He opened my eyes to how - terrible things have gotten, at Dalton, for me."
"G...go on." He was staring straight into Blaine's newly-brightened eyes and loving every second of it.
"And that all those things I said it was doing for you - stifling you, trying to make you fit in - it's doing that to me, too. I like being safe, I like feeling important, and I'm so bad at stepping outside of my comfort zone when it comes to stuff like this. But I'm never going to get anywhere if I'm not - challenged, if I just sit there and play the part and keep living a dream that isn't really mine. This guy I am, the guy they want, that guy could be anybody. I'm just a body filling a blazer. I've got to get to a place that feels like it's mine...like home, and not just a little bubble I live in. And I feel that...when I'm with you."
"Blaine - "
"I'm transferring here. To McKinley."
"YES!" Kurt screamed, flinging his arms around Blaine and gripping him so tightly that he could practically feel his ribs against his own through the blazer. It was as if Blaine had gotten down on one knee and proposed. All his feelings about stupid distance and stupid uniforms and stupid Dalton went whooshing out of him, and the other kids were staring and he didn't care, and the parking lot had emptied out around them and he didn't care. Kurt was finally, finally - short of that discontinued Dior jacket that he really just had to give up on at this rate - going to have everything he ever wanted.
"I love you," he said fiercely, and then pulled back and kissed Blaine square on the mouth, long and wet and deep, his hands tangling into Blaine's gel-free hair. Mercedes and Rachel catcalled and Finn groaned from somewhere far, far away, and he was pretty sure Lauren had grabbed Artie's camera back up for a few more pictures, but Kurt honestly didn't care what ended up on Facebook at this point, because Blaine was so, so delicious.
But Kurt noticed something, and mentioned it when they pulled apart. "That's new."
Blaine blinked stupidly but Kurt saw right through it. "Uh, what's new?"
"That tonguey...twisty...thing. You've totally never done that before. Where'd you learn that?"
"Uhh - "
Kurt gasped dramatically. "You totally made out with Harry Potter!"
"Wizard wanky," said Santana.
"Kurt, I just - we both knew this would be the only - and he was - " He stopped, tugged on his loose tie a little, hung his head. He knew that looking-up-through-his-eyelashes-because-I'm-slightly-shorter thing was Kurt's total Achilles heel but Kurt didn't even think he was doing it on purpose this time, he was so pitiful. "You're not mad, are you?"
And Kurt just sighed, because he'd forgive this boy for anything. "Are you kidding? I'm just mad that I didn't get to watch."
-xxx-
As the whole group headed back inside, trudging through the halls to the choir room, Mercedes spotted Sam near the back and slowed down to fall in step with him. With no one looking, she knocked her shoulder into his arm and he knocked back.
"Watch it," he said softly, nodding at Tina, who was the closest to them in the mob.
Mercedes frowned and took a deep breath - better just to get it out. "Sam, I still hate this secrecy thing," she whispered to him. "And I like you a lot, and I'll keep doing it if you really want to, but that Ginny Weasley, she...helped me with some stuff. Taught me something, which is that it's okay to be really frustrated when the Qua-- uh, when the ball is in someone else's court, you know? But that if you're not even gonna put the ball in play, I'm gonna do everything in my power to try to take it back. I don't need you to give me the go-ahead to spill the beans, Sam. I just wish you'd tell me why you won't."
"It's better this way," he said.
"How? How is me getting slushied all over my brand new weave better than my hottie football player busting Azimio's balls and making him play fair? How is lying to all of our friends for no reason better than telling the truth and letting them all be happy for us? Well, except Santana, she's never happy for anyo--"
"Because I'm just going to have to leave," Sam blurted out.
Mercedes's steps slowed and she looked up at him. "What?"
"Shit. Okay, well, there it is," said Sam. "My dad finally got a new job, and it's a really good one, but he had to move to Iowa to take it. He's living with my aunt Josie right now, and once he's worked long enough to get us some money for a good apartment, we're all following after." He sighed, and ran a frustrated hand through his bangs. "I'll probably be gone by Halloween."
"Why didn't you just tell me?" said Mercedes, shaking her head.
"Because I didn't want you to put an expiration date on this," he said. The others were far ahead of them by now, nearly to the choir room. They'd stopped by the trophy case. "I just thought - if you knew, that I was going to have to leave, you wouldn't put your all into us. You'd just be thinking about how it was only going to last until October, and making plans to, y'know, deal accordingly."
Mercedes reached up and grabbed both sides of his face. "Hey. You listen to me, Samson Robert Evans. You clearly don't know me very well if you think Mercedes Renee Jones doesn't put her all into absolutely everything. I wanna be with you like I wanna steal that sectionals solo from Rachel, even if both of those points become moot by November, is that clear?"
His hand shifted up to rest on her shoulder, and she let her hands trail down his chest, and stop there. "I just wanted to have this," he whispered, "these memories, of us. Without - without everyone else's drama smeared all over it, if they knew. Just you and me, awesome together, forever."
"Everyone else's drama can expecto my patronum," said Mercedes, grabbing his hand and heading toward the choir room, tugging him with her and knocking their hips together once they were parallel. "Now come on. There's a duet I wanna do."
Sam grinned, and squeezed her hand tighter. "Cool."
-xxx-
Having dropped Malfoy back off at his stupid pretentious mansion, Ron, Harry, Hermione and Ginny finally stumbled back through to the Burrow, with only one Floo network accidental re-route to a shop in Hogsmeade called "Perky Preston's Prurient Potion Party!" that Ron never, ever wanted to set foot in again. He fell out first, staggering over to the sofa before turning around to catch Hermione as she flew through afterward. Ginny, meanwhile, fell straight onto the floor, with Harry landing on top of her.
"Oh, sorry there," Ron said, shrugging. He could only catch so many chicks and his girlfriend definitely had top priority over his stupid sister.
"Ronald, there you are!" cried his mother from the kitchen. "What took you so long with the freaking chicken?"
All four of them froze, shooting panicked glances at each other. Shit.
"Um," Ron called back, "we just - "
"Maaaaa!" interrupted a voice from just outside the front door. "Percy, Ron, somebody? You guys in there?"
Ginny ran to the door and opened it to reveal Bill, standing there almost taller than the doorframe, a stack of - oh sweet jesus, beautiful flat boxes piled on the palm of his left hand. "Hey sis," he said, ruffling her hair with his free hand before ducking inside. "Ma, it's me, Bill! I was in the area, stopping through on business and I figured I'd bring dinner. I got pizza!"
Their mom came in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. "Oooh, you know I hate surprises," she said, but her face softened instantly when she saw him. "Unless they're so totally sweet like you. C'mere and give your ma a kiss, come on." Bill thrust the boxes into Ron's hands and bent nearly double to hug her, and he quickly found a place to put them before the four of them slunk downstairs and closed the door behind them, escaping the most immediate repercussions of not following her grocery list.
"Geez, Ginny, what are you gonna tell her?"
"Me?" she said. "I'm not the one she sent out there for all that stuff! What are you going to tell her?"
"I don't know!" said Ron. "C'mon, Hermione, think of something."
"Well, we have to tell her the truth, obviously," she said. "I'm not lying to your mother."
"Get serious, Hermione," said Harry, "do you think she'd actually believe us? Do you think anyone will believe us?"
They all kind of fell silent. Ron scratched at the back of his head, up underneath where his headband sat, and thought about his day with Puck - the purple cloud animals they'd made, how hilarious it had been to watch a Muggle trying to do magic with his wand, that awkward thing they'd accidentally shown his little sister - and, even more amazing, the great afternoon he'd spent with all those cool Muggle kids, laughing and singing and dancing as if they'd known them for so much longer than just a day. Before he knew it, Ginny had tugged her giant camera out of her tiny purse and was poking at it, and it spat out two photos, the normal one and the silly one they'd taken, with them and their awesome Ohio friends shoving at each other and goofing off and clutching their stomachs in laughter. They were two amazing pictures, and Ron knew his would probably end up stuck to his bedpost when they went back to Hogwarts, to remind him of this stupid, crazy day for the rest of his life.
"No," he said, tracing his finger over his own arm slung across Puck's shoulders in the photo. "I guess not."
"At least we got a couple of these on my camera," said Ginny. "Not that I - not that I ever think I'll forget this, but it's nice, to have something to remember them by."
"Wait!" said Harry. "That's not all!"
"What do you mean?" said Ron.
From his back pocket, Harry took out a tiny book, which swelled back up to regular size once it was free. It was a thick hardcover, with an elaborate dust jacket - a children's book, by the look of the illustrations, and bearing a glossy golden title of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
"I don't believe it," whispered Hermione.
"Yeah," said Harry. "Neither did I."
-xxx-
~fin. ♥
....
...Fondue for Two!
Fondue for Two!
It's some hot dish --
Fondue for Two!
Draco swung his feet against the baseboard of the sofa while Brittany adjusted the camera and sat back down in her chair. "And you say this will be posted to the FlooTube universe at large?"
"Totally," said Brittany. "We have a lot of fictional character crossover in the discussion forums so I try to make it as accessible as possible." She turned back to the camera. "Hi, this is Brittany S. Pierce and you're watching Fondue for Two with me and my special guest today, Draco Malloy."
"It's Malfoy."
"Please don't correct me."
When she didn't immediately say anything, Draco reached out for a cube of melon, skewered it, and dunked it into the pot of chocolate, trying to find some way to occupy the awkward silence. (Why wasn't she saying anything?) He made sure to blow on it so it didn't burn his mouth and then bit into it - wow, it was actually pretty good. Naturally she asked a question precisely when his mouth was full, though.
"So how long have you been in love with that girl Herman?"
He nearly spit it all out, and barely managed to swallow it instead. "I don't know what you're talking about. Hermione Granger is a miserable Mudblood and I - I never want to speak to her again in my life, no matter how blissfully melodic her voice is." There, that sounded convincing, right?
"Are you sure? Because I have it on hot authority that you totally want to get with her."
"And whose authority is that?"
"Answer me this, though," said Brittany. "Did you or did you not...sing a song about her at the Yule Ball."
"Who told you that!" he gasped.
"Everyone knows that, duh, it's like common knowledge." She tossed a wave of her hair back over her shoulder. "Don't act like I'm stupid, please, it really hurts my feelings."
Draco stirred his fondue skewer through the chocolate, fidgeting. "I...may have...expressed some feelings at that time, possibly through song," he admitted. "However that was well over a year ago and any infatuation I may have thought I had has absolutely - "
"Do you wanna make out?"
" - what?"
"I'm sorry, you just - that melon-chocolate combo is like my favorite fondue we've ever done on the show and when people eat it like that it really makes me want to kiss them. You don't have to say yes. I just figured I'd ask."
"Uh, n - no thanks," said Draco.
"So you are in love with Herman." Brittany nodded soundly. "Good one, Lord Tubbington, thanks for helping me clear that up. Okay, so my next question is, do you prefer Huggies or Pampers for your personal diaper use."
Draco nearly burst into tears.
He was never going to get to that video exposee he'd written up about Pigfarts at this rate.
-xxx-
So, a couple hours later, Harry felt confident that he had sufficient information to declare that Muggle school sucked.
Maybe he wasn't being fair. Blaine had chemistry second period, which was kind of like Potions but with way more theoretical Muggle science BS, so that was pretty lame, but third period he had history, and that was actually kind of interesting - learning about the world the way the Muggles had always seen it, beyond what he'd gotten from grade school before Hogwarts, without all the goblins and alliterative names and other magic crap that made the history Binns taught so damn boring. And now he had a free period, which Harry always appreciated. So maybe Muggle school had the potential to be kind of cool, if done correctly.
But Harry was definitely sure that Dalton was doing it totally ass-backwards wrong.
The whole no-girls thing was bad enough. (Harry thought just sharing a dorm room with five other dudes was lame. How did any of these guys even deal?) But it wasn't just that all Blaine's classmates were boys - it was that all Blaine's classmates were hoity-toity, put-together, preppy boys just like Blaine was trying to be, their uniforms arranged just as carefully and their attitudes just as prim and annoying. There had been one or two exceptions, people like that blond Jeff guy or his friend Nick who were practically bright spots on the gloomy Dalton horizon, but even they seemed to keep a pretty heavy lid on it most of the time - just like Blaine was doing. It was really freaking disconcerting to go through the day with this guy that looked just like him and watch that guy speak and smile and act in a way Harry wouldn't be caught dead acting. If he didn't bust this guy out soon, the damage was going to be irreversible, and even when Harry went home he was going to take with him the knowledge that in some weird other world was his miserable suited-up doppelganger, suffering through the bullshit of high school in ways that no one should have to endure.
Tackling it straight on clearly hadn't worked, though, and Blaine had just thrown his defenses back up. He was going to have to be a little less Gryffindor about it from now on.
"So the Warbly thing is a music thing, right?" he said, as they went back to the same room they'd been in that morning, which was remarkably empty this time of day. "I mean, there's a piano in here, so I just figured - "
"Yes," Blaine said, cutting him off with a chuckle. "We're a singing group. A cappella. I actually get to front the group a lot, I've had several solos, that kind of thing."
"Awesome," said Harry. He crossed to the piano and tugged the cover back on it before sitting down on the bench. Blaine dumped his stuff beside Harry, then moved to push open some of the windows - it was still August, and the room was getting really stuffy midday. He was on the other side of the room when something in his messenger bag started buzzing and beeping at the same time.
"What the - " Harry mumbled, and reached in to find whatever it was and make it shut up - it turned out to be Blaine's...cell phone, which was tiny and weird-shaped and still looked nothing like any phone Harry was familiar with from his days with the Dursleys, but he supposed this could kind of be construed as ringing.
"Your tiny phone thing is going off at me," Harry called to him. He looked down at the display. "Someone named Kurt?"
Blaine started back toward him, smiling - a real smile this time, truer than anything Harry had seen so far, which was kind of awesome. "My boyfriend," he said.
"Ha!" cried Harry. "Yes. Totally knew it. Didn't even need the stupid scarf."
"What?"
"Never mind. So uh. Boyfriend. That's great."
"Yeah, he's pretty amazing," Blaine said, and it was so sincere Harry kind of wanted to puke. He checked the message on his weird phone-thing. "Look out for me calling you at first lunch, you'll never believe what's going on today. Hah! Bet I win that story-telling contest."
Harry laughed a little, too. "So you haven't seen him today to talk all that over? He's not a Warblet?"
Blaine's smile turned a little sad. "No, no, Kurt doesn't go to Dalton any more. He didn't for very long to begin with, really. He's at a public school, McKinley, it's in the next town over."
"Man, that must be hard. Why'd he leave?" Then Harry thought about it. "Wait, why'd he even come here in the first place?"
Blaine sat down on the other end of the piano bench with a small sigh, and looked at Harry in earnest. "Dalton is very serious about its no-tolerance anti-bullying policy. Things here are...regimented," he said. "Kurt's school isn't like that. It's hard, for him, considering how - " he paused, head tilting, choosing a word carefully - it was so surreal, Harry could read just about every slight subtle expression on his near-identical face - "outspoken Kurt is about his life and his sexuality - "
"Ohhh, so he's totally flaming. Like way gayer than you," said Harry.
Blaine arched one eyebrow. "You do know that's not how it works, right?"
"I know, I know, you either like dudes or you don't. Keep going?"
"Kurt came to Dalton at a time when he was struggling the most at his own school, before we got together, as an alternative to having his life threatened on a regular basis," said Blaine. "Some things got settled, issues were resolved - not completely, but to a degree where it was safe enough - and then he went back when his time here was up."
"Sounds to me like he got out when the getting was good," said Harry. "Someone threatens your life, you punch 'em in the face and threaten 'em right back. Someone stifles your soul, that's when you need to get out of there and back to a place that's letting you be who you're supposed to be."
"It's more complicated than that, you're oversimplifying - "
"I know I am," said Harry, rolling his eyes and knocking Blaine on the side of the head a little. "It seems like breaking it down into basic terms is the only way I'm gonna get through that thick skull of yours, geez. Look, listen to me." He swung so he was straddling the piano bench, and he could look at Blaine head-on, directly into those eerily-identical eyes. (Bastard had contacts, Harry was still kind of jealous.) "I know all about what it's like to be in a place where you're stuck, and stifled, and where you literally get punished for trying to be who you are. I get that."
"The Dursleys," Blaine murmured faintly.
"Still don't understand how you guys know everything about my life, but yes." Harry shook himself a little, trying to stay focused. "I get that. I get Kurt's thing. But you know what else I get? This whole private school, uniform, small group of people you spend every waking moment of your life with thing. I get your thing, too. And the way you are doing it is totally ass-backwards wrong."
Blaine lifted his hands but then dropped them again, like he didn't know what to do with them. "It's - it's just - "
-xxx-
" - hard to go through every day knowing they all still think the worst of me," said Rachel, idly tracing out the patterns of a tune on the keys of Brad's piano without actually playing any notes. "Still! They've known me for years, Hermione, they know who I am and how I function and that this is just - me - and yet they're horrible to me. They're only nice when Finn makes them and he only does that because he wants to get to second base with me."
"I know," Hermione said simply - and something about that struck Rachel much harder than she was expecting. Not "I'm so sorry," the honest pity of someone who didn't quite know how things worked but knew Rachel shouldn't suffer through them; not the chipper "it'll all work out someday!" of someone who had no idea how things worked at all, the one that reeked of condescension and lies and the utter lack of surprise that someone like Rachel would have a life this miserable. Hermione didn't pity her. Hermione just knew. "I know what it's like, for even the people you consider your closest friends to still think you're kind of - terrible. And for there to be days when the only thing that keeps you hanging on is you."
"Oh, that's just it!" Rachel wailed. "If I didn't want all of this so badly, if I didn't know the only way to get there was to be me, just - uncompromisingly and - "
"Rachel," said Hermione softly, "sometimes you have to compromise."
"What?" Now Rachel wasn't certain that Hermione understood at all.
"You have to approach things - rationally," she said, her finger tracing circles on the glossy surface of the piano, hesitant. "Being contrary just for contrariness's sake, yeah, it sets you apart, it hardens you for the real world - whatever that's supposed to mean - but it alienates you, too. You can't keep trying so hard to stand out and still expect to fit in."
"So what, I'm just supposed to cave in and be just like all of them?"
"Of course not," said Hermione. "Never on the inside. Never where it counts. But if you let them think you've got a little give to you, they'll warm up, they'll accept you as one of their own, like - okay, so, here's me, there was this time where there was this dance, right?"
"What, like the Yule Ball?"
"That's it exactly. And I - I'm not the gussied-up sparkling eyeshadow pretty dress type, that makes me so antsy. Books have done way better by me than a push-up bra ever did. But in that moment, all I wanted was for things to be wonderful, and to feel like I was someone that somebody cared about. And I couldn't do that and keep doing my all-Hermione-and-books-all-the-time sort of act at the same time. I had to give a little one way or the other. I had to compromise."
"Did it...did it work?" said Rachel. She found suddenly that she was leaning in toward Hermione, hanging on her every word.
Hermione's eyes went kind of distant and she let out a small sigh. "It definitely worked. It wasn't my favorite thing I've ever done, and it - it never will be - but I...and then he..."
-xxx-
"...won't even let me say anything!" Mercedes threw up her arms and huffed out a long, angry exhale, and Ginny fidgeted with her hands a little where she sat by the piano. "Sometimes I just kind of want to scream."
"So do it," said Ginny.
Mercedes turned back upstage to her, eyebrows raised. "Really?"
"Yeah," said Ginny. "I mean, the auditorium is empty except for you and me, and if you need to let something out, I think you definitely should. The whole situation sounds terrible."
"You know what," said Mercedes, "you're right!" She rushed out onto the proscenium, rocked her arms back and her head forward, and let out a loud, long shout, carrying on until her lungs gave out. When she finished it bounced hard off the auditorium walls for a few moments and then left nothing but a ringing silence. She rocked heel-toe back and forth a couple of times, and then turned and crossed back to Ginny, arms swinging. "Wow, that did kind of help," she said, giggling a little. "I don't know, Ginny, what should I do?"
"I don't know either," said Ginny, frowning and shrugging a little. "I wish I could help, but that's the super-frustrating thing about when you like a boy. Sometimes the Quaffle's totally in his court, you know?"
"I mean, I guess so."
"And he knows how you feel about the whole thing, right?"
She nodded. "We had this big discussion about it last week and then I brought it up again on the phone last night. But he really wants this to be a thing that's just between him and me, and to not tell everybody."
"That's pretty stupid."
"Tell me about it."
"And then you just get backed up in this big dumb dead-end that you're in right now, where you can't do anything, because it's all on him. And that's just awful!" Ginny slumped, and poked idly at one of the keys on the auditorium piano, which made a high and piercing sound. "It's like...this one time, it was the first time Harry and I kissed..."
"Oooh, juicy," said Mercedes, sitting down next to her.
"And it was so amazing and he was so nice and I'd had a crush on him basically forever, but we just kissed this one time and then he just dropped it like a screaming mandrake," said Ginny. "I tried to talk to him about it but he wouldn't make a single move! And it just got to the point where I'd done everything it was possible for me to do, and it still wasn't going anywhere. And it was only going to go somewhere if he did something."
"But he did do something, right?" said Mercedes. "'Cause like, you two are together now."
"He did," said Ginny. "But it kind of took like, three or four near-death experiences and saving the entire wizarding world first."
"Uuuggghh!" said Mercedes, dropping her head back and then rocking it forward again in time to slamming both hands on the piano, a jumbled dissonance bursting out from it. "This is so stupid! I'm never gonna get anywhere at this rate." She stood back up and stepped away from the piano a little. "Gimme a sec, I think I need to scream again."
"Hang on," said Ginny. "If you're willing to try it, I think I've got a better idea."
-xxx-
"Here," said Hermione, and she waved her wand at some blank paper until it swirled with bars and notes of music, complete with lyrics. "Maybe we could try this. If you just stay solid on the inside..."
-xxx-
"Why don't you hang tight for a second, okay, blazer-boy?" said Harry. "Let me do the Warbling."
-xxx-
"There's this song I know."
-xxx-
Rachel watched, amazed, as the piano played the right notes all on its own, and she just tried to keep up with the lyrics on the page. Her sightreading had clearly gotten a little rusty over the summer.
"I take a grain of salt,
A stiff upper lip,
It's not their fault I'm not as hip - "
"Wake up kid," sang Hermione, "you know you're more than this..."
"I'm the smartest person that I've ever met," Rachel continued, a smile growing on her face.
"So why do I allow myself to possibly forget?
There's so much I know how to do,
So much more than all of you.
The only thing I wish I knew was how to make them see
The girl that I can be..."
-xxx-
"I'm laughing," sang Harry, plinking it out as he went.
"It's hard to hide a smile.
My god, it's been a while since I have had a reason to." He raised one eyebrow at Blaine.
"To think, it's been here all along,
Somewhere to belong, and a reason,
A something to believe in -
I've finally found it, a place where I'm wanted..."
Blaine found himself suddenly picking up the next line. "This must be how it feels, to have a home."
-xxx-
"Sa-a-am-myyy," sang Mercedes, finally getting into it, with Ginny fumbling miserably through the notes on the piano.
"Sa-a-am-myyy,
Why can't you see
What you're doing to me?"
She'd found a microphone somewhere and she leaned heavy into it on the stand, building up.
"I've seen you singin' on that stage,
You look just like an angel, and all I do is pray
That maybe someday you'll let me be
The one to say 'hey, he's with me,'
And there won't ever be no other way -
Hey!
When I say - "
-xxx-
"I am done with losing, on with choosing!
The coolest girl on the face of the planet - "
"The coolest bitch on earth, goddamnit!" cried Hermione.
"The coolest chick you've ever seen or heard!
So you can try to bring me down,
But sorry, guys, I'm sticking around
I've thought about it and I've found..."
-xxx-
"...to have - a - home!" finished Harry, more softly than he'd been planning, as the edge kind of seeped out of him. He was always totally down for a big loud show-stopping showoff moment, but this...this wasn't about him. This was about Blaine.
"Wow," Blaine murmured, as Harry played through the outro and then the music room fell silent. "And you - you wrote that?"
"Yeah, I guess," said Harry. "I mean, it just kind of...happened. I think magic and music really have this like connection, you know?" He paused. "Which in hindsight could totally explain how I was so awesome at playing guitar when I was only eleven."
"I never knew," said Blaine. "I mean, obviously, I didn't, since we just met this morning and all, but through the books there's never any mention of - "
"I'm starting to think that whatever weird books are out there about my life have gotten a bunch of things kinda goofed up," said Harry.
Blaine smiled, and leaned around to put his own fingers on the piano, just his right hand, flitting almost instantly to the exact keys Harry had just been playing - running through chords of the song like he'd already learned them. "Not - not just the music thing, though," he said, dropping his hand back to his lap just as suddenly. "I mean, just - that was intense."
"Yeah, kinda."
"And reading the - the book version, you couldn't quite get the sense of exactly what it was like - I mean you were obviously upset in our world and much happier and more at home at Hogwarts and stuff but just - the rawness of it. The total transformation, such a huge shift."
"It's hard," said Harry, realizing suddenly how close Blaine's movements had put them. "It's the worst thing I ever have to do, to go back to them when I'm not at school. It's like I leave a part of me behind every time I leave - "
" - him," Blaine whispered. "Every time I have to leave Kurt."
"It's not just him, you know," said Harry. "If you were leaving him to come back to something that you liked, it wouldn't be nearly as bad. It's when you leave something amazing for something that's totally shitty, that's when you feel like this. Like someone's kicked your insides." He could see it, deep in Blaine's way-too-close eyes, that he knew. He could read this face, his face, like a book, like a slip of sheet music.
"Maybe you're right," said Blaine, voice soft. "Maybe there is something bad for me in this place. It's just been so good for me, too, that I can't see how - I just don't think - "
"Shhh," said Harry. "Don't think. Do." They were so close their noses were practically touching. Harry felt his words in Blaine's identical lips. "Be a Gryffindor," he said. "Have some courage."
Blaine kissed him. Harry hummed softly, a little confused, but it only took about two seconds from it to go from weird to just weirdly hot. Blaine was a really good kisser, his hand sliding up to cup around Harry's jaw, and there was something about the solid forcefulness of a guy, pressing insistent against his lips with another coarse slightly-open mouth, that was new and bright and exciting no matter how much Harry loved the soft eager sweetness of kissing Ginny. He opened his mouth to it, too, and let their tongues meet, sucking hard at Blaine and letting his fingers fan out against Blaine's leg just above his knee where they still sat on the piano bench. A bell was chiming somewhere, had started chiming some time ago it seemed, but Harry was lost in the weird parallel same-but-different taste of Blaine's mouth, the faint desperate noises he was making against him and the way his body kept shifting forward and back, hungry but conflicted, the muscles of his neck shifting under Harry's hand where it had come to rest just above his shoulder.
"Mmmh," said Harry between the hot, thick kisses, "oh man."
"No, I - " said Blaine, protesting even as he kept going - "I have a boyfriend - "
"I have a girlfriend," Harry pointed out, before slipping back in for more.
His lips were getting raw and tingly from it but neither of them really seemed like they were going to quit anytime soon when suddenly, Blaine's phone resting on top of the piano started to ring/buzz again, a different sound than before, rattling against the hard surface. Blaine groaned into Harry's mouth and then pulled away, a little bit of saliva dangling between them before Harry had the sense to wipe it clean as Blaine answered the phone and mouthed 'Kurt' at him. "Hey, Kurt, what's up?" There was some high-pitched chattering from the other end that Harry couldn't understand beyond it being full of overwhelmed excitement, and a few sentences in, Blaine's eyes shot open wide. "Are you serious right now? - No, I definitely do believe you, is the thing." He shook his head a little in amazement. "Yeah, I do. - Well, because Harry Potter is here at Dalton. - Yes." He rolled his eyes. "Of course I would have told you. Soon! Especially if I'd known - yes. No, I can - I'll ditch last period, the drive shouldn't be that bad if I beat traffic." Kurt said something else, and Blaine paused, letting the silence hang, before giving Harry an enormous grin. "No, I don't think it'll matter if I miss Warblers practice. - No, I am, I just...I won't be. For much longer anyway. I'll explain when we get there. - When we get there, Kurt. Have lunch, get ahold of the rest of them, I'll see you in a couple of hours. - Okay. - I love you too. Bye."
Harry grinned. "You're ditching the Warblers?"
Blaine shrugged. "It won't matter in a couple of weeks, considering I'm probably leaving Dalton altogether."
He leapt up from the piano bench and threw his arms around Blaine in a bro-hug, completely as if they hadn't just been making out five minutes ago. "Yes," he cried, "yes! My doppelganger is saved! You gotta get out of here, man!"
"I figure I probably do," said Blaine, smiling madly too - a real smile.
"And Kurt's found my friends?"
"Seems so! He said all four of them are at McKinley and they were just looking for you before they tried to figure out how to get home."
"Wait, four?" said Harry. "Who all's there?"
"Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and I guess he said Draco Malfoy."
"Oh god," Harry groaned, slumping back onto the bench. "How does he always end up involved in our freaking business? You'd think after a while he'd realize that we're not worth it and to just leave it alone!"
Blaine laughed a little, and shook his head. "You would think, wouldn't you? But you would be surprised." He stood up suddenly, gathering his bag and his phone and taking a couple of steps toward the door. "Come on. We're making one more stop before we hit the dining hall for lunch."
"Oh yeah?" said Harry, rising and following after. "Where to?"
"The Edward J. Dalton Memorial Library."
-xxx-
Kurt waited until nearly the end of lunch before announcing it to everyone. It was fun to have the little secret to himself, and he sat and ate his tomato sandwich and smiled, engaging vaguely in the conversation Ginny and Mercedes were having to his right - oh, they were getting along so well, he'd hate to rain on their parade with the news that Ginny was going to have to leave soon. Mercedes had been kind of down and out lately, for reasons Kurt had yet to suss out, and seeing how happy she'd been with Ginny all afternoon had been a lovely change of pace from the last couple weeks of the summer.
So he finished his sandwich, ate his grapes and his giant white chocolate macadamia soft cookie, and waited until his bag was firm on his shoulder and he was heading out of the cafeteria altogether before pulling up the group labeled New Directions from his contacts and shooting a mass text: We found Harry Potter! He's with Blaine at Dalton. They'll be here towards the end of the day. xo K
He got several responses quite quickly -
From: Sam E
THANK GOD get this twerp away from me, he wont calm down & when he found out i live in a hotel it just got worse
From: Tina CC
yay!! but we have to take pixx before they leave!! it's been so much fun gin is the best :( we're putting a feather in her hair in schu's 5th LOL
From: Rachelphaba
NOOO THEY CAN'T LEAVE!! Can't she just stay forever? frownface ETERNALLY :(
Kurt rolled his eyes at that one, as he sank into his seat in the back row of his government class, and actually bothered to respond.
To: Rachelphaba
Rachel, sweetie, we talked about this. You can't take in every stray you see because sooner or later its real owners come for it and by then you've gotten too attached.
From: Rachelphaba
Oooooh you're not funny! Don't call her an it! She's my FRIEND and her NAME is Hermione Granger!!
To: Rachelphaba
I don't care if her name is Stefani Hermanotta, she doesn't belong here and they're really going to need to find a way back to where they came from.
He sighed and set his phone to silent, not looking to get it confiscated for texting in class, and was just worming it back into his impossibly snug pockets when it lit up one more time.
From: Quinn
what the hell are you talking about?
Oh, right. Quinn was missing the first few days of school since she was still in Los Angeles on vacation with her mother - Kurt had taken notes for her in French and everything. That was...hm. Maybe he shouldn't even bother trying to explain.
To: Quinn
No big deal. I'll tell you later, we're just having a weird day.
From: Quinn
every day at mckinley is a weird day.
Kurt supposed she had a point.
(The day got even weirder when he finally got a response from Puck, a full class period later, and it read yo cool hp im there hang on wait my hair......WHOP, followed immediately by another text that was just a string of random punctuation symbols. Kurt decided he did not want to know.)
When the bell finally rang to let Kurt out of English and free them all from regular classes for the day, he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. He took the long way around through the hallways to the student parking lot to make sure he'd walk past at least a handful of the others.
"Mike," he said, "will you be a dear and run down and tell Mr. Schue what we're doing and not to expect us for glee practice until a little bit later? While we deal with the wizard gang, and whatnot. And, uh, check on that bruise of his?"
"Um, deal," said Mike, "as long as you don't ever call me 'dear' again." He shot Kurt a lopsided smile and split off from the slowly-growing pack, heading down to the choir room right as they picked up Brittany and Santana ducking out of seventh period gym.
"How do you still look so good after sweating so much?" griped Tina.
"Hotness is natural just like sweat," said Santana, tucking her bangs back out of her face.
"I'm getting really good at using the hand dryer," said Brittany.
They finally folded Finn, Rachel and Hermione, Ginny and Mercedes, and Sam and Draco into the group. Draco was clinging to Sam's shoulders like some kind of demented backpack.
"Wheee!" he cried. Kurt shot Sam a look.
"I did a Liam Neeson impression in sixth period and now he keeps calling me Rumbleroar," said Sam, looking miserable. He shook his bangs out of his eyes and hiked Draco up higher on his back. "This was sooo not in the books."
"Don't worry, we'll be dislodging the monkey on your back soon enough." Mike had rejoined them with Artie and they were nearly at the broad back doors when Kurt paused. "Wait, where's Ron and Puckerman?"
"Um," said Ginny. "Your scary friend Lauren left about half an hour ago to go get them...I guess they were at his house? She said something about pots." Mercedes shrugged apologetically at him and Artie snickered.
"Oh brother," sighed Kurt, but nevertheless they all filed out past the auditorium and down to where students were milling around their cars, eager to get home. Even in the mess of all of them Kurt's eyes found him instantly.
Blaine.
Good lord was he beautiful. There was something about him, even at this distance, that looked shockingly good - something looser about his smile, something different about his hair - Kurt couldn't place it. It kind of made him want to kiss Blaine senseless, even in the middle of all these people, even as one corner of his mind was on constant peripheral alert for cups of blue raspberry misery. He stepped out toward the foot of his shiny silver car and Kurt got a good, full look at him -
And his heart plummeted.
That uniform.
It was a wholly unexpected feeling, washing over him, seizing him up, making his heart thud harder. Just a week ago they'd been able to lounge around with each other all day and do nothing, the summer season mostly over with at Six Flags, Kurt's father usually out during the long daylight hours; they could lay on the couch and do nothing but taste each other, no other cares in the world. They were both excited to be seniors, having the run of the school, and Kurt was confident he'd finally get a competition solo with New Directions this year, and Blaine thought he could really do well for the Warblers serving on the senior council. They were still so in love and they were going to be wonderful.
But something about that damn blazer just struck him. This wasn't going to be wonderful. This was going to be nine more long, miserable months where they couldn't spend all day together, where they'd be lucky to even get weekends together and even luckier to find time alone, where Kurt was going to get all excited about new fall trends and planning outfits for key days at school and Blaine was going to scratch his head and chuckle self-deprecatingly about his three wonderful options of blazer/cardigan/sweatervest. And Kurt suddenly didn't care about making sure all the Harry Potter kids got home. Kurt cared about making sure Blaine came home. Right into his arms.
He wrapped him in a tight hug and didn't even try to justify it to anyone, hearing Blaine's cute "whoa, okay, hi to you too" and steadfastly ignoring it. He breathed in the scent at Blaine's neck where his collar and tie hung surprisingly loose and sloppy, and didn't pull away until Santana tapped him on the shoulder and reminded him that she was only one Bullywhip in a sea of hundreds of slushie-bombs waiting to happen.
"I like to get my gay on as much as the next freak, but seriously, come on."
Kurt fixed her with a frustrated stare. "You are somehow even more annoying now that you've come out."
She was about to respond when Ginny burst past her, nearly knocking her over, and latched herself onto the other boy who'd just climbed out of Blaine's car in a similar manner. "Harry!" Her red hair went flying absolutely everywhere as she plowed her full weight into him, but he took it surprisingly easily and wrapped his arms almost inappropriately low around her waist, holding her close.
"I'm so glad you're okay," Harry murmured against her, and then she pulled back and kissed him soundly before they finally pulled apart.
"Hey everyone, this is my boyfriend, Harry Potter!" said Ginny, grinning a mile wide and spreading her arms out between him and the rest of them.
Oh.
Oh.
"You've gotta be joking," said Tina, and Kurt was inclined to agree. He was aware that he was probably staring but he couldn't even be bothered to try to be polite. He couldn't help it. Behind the glasses and the mess of hair, standing there in a passable polo shirt but absolutely atrocious jeans, was the disheveled spitting image of the boy whose hand Kurt was still holding. He flicked a glance to Blaine, who just shrugged and shook his head, but then immediately turned back to Harry, who was now getting hugged by Hermione. This was - well not that anything today had really escaped this label - but this was unreal.
Brittany stepped over to him and leaned into his ear as if she were sharing a secret, even though she was still speaking at regular Brittany-volume. "Kurt, is your boyfriend Harry Potter?"
"Kind of looks that way, doesn't it?" said Blaine, laughing.
Beyond that, there were introductions all around, and things almost seemed kind of...normal. Artie pulled his high-end digital camera out of the bag hooked onto his chair and they took approximately a million pictures, showing off the new bright purple feather hooked into Ginny's already vibrant hair, laughing as Harry waved his wand and gave a passing Azimio Adams the most intense wedgie of his life. Lauren showed up with Puck and Ron in tow not too long afterward, both of them still a little red around the eyes and Puck's mohawk now a crest of bright green tree leaves, and they took about a million more. Kurt held the camera and shot video as Ginny, Brittany, Tina and Mike tapped and clapped out a cute little dance routine to some song Harry and Hermione were humming about summer. There was a particularly great one of Draco posing on Finn's shoulders as if they were about to charge into battle, and a breathtakingly stunning candid of Harry and Blaine leaning on each other and just laughing, laughing, like they were all having the best day of their lives. (Kurt couldn't help but call that one back onto the viewfinder a couple of times and just stare. Blaine was already the most beautiful person Kurt had ever seen - the concept of two of him, even if one of them was Harry freaking Potter, made Kurt feel feelings he didn't think he was quite prepared to feel. Just - damn.)
"Group shot!" yelled Lauren. "We've gotta have one of everyone so I can stick it on Facebook and know for eternity that I met the real Harry Potter and all my internet friends didn't."
"You want an autograph?" said Harry. "I don't usually like giving them out, it's kind of tacky, but I figure - "
"Yes," said Lauren, completely straightfaced and genuine in a way that Kurt had literally never seen from her before - no sarcasm, no derision, no nothing. "Just...yes."
They propped the camera on the top of Puck's car and then shuffled into position, squeezing in as snug as possible. Kurt was standing between Blaine and Mercedes with Hermione and Rachel right in front of him and somehow everything felt incredible, with the faint and painful exception of the texture of Blaine's blazer under the smooth palm of his hand.
"Okay, don't move!" said Ginny, worming out of the dogpile. "I want to do mine too!" She swapped Artie's camera out for hers, a decidedly larger and more complicated contraption that she'd pulled out of a purse way too tiny to hold it. She slipped back in, waved her wand, and the flash went off with a shower of magenta sparks, cascading all over Puck's trunk.
"My baby!" he cried, bolting toward it to make sure it didn't catch on fire. The group fell back apart again, splitting into smaller groups for more hugs and more laughter and more total insanity. It seemed so shockingly normal that Kurt honestly had to remind himself that these five wizard kids hadn't been friends with them for years.
"Well, but they kind of have," he realized aloud, thinking about the number of times he alone had read the books and seen the films.
"What?" said Blaine.
"Oh, nothing," said Kurt. "But I was just wondering, this all seems so...conclusive. Have you already figured out how you're getting home?"
"The same way we got here in the first place," said Ginny. "Floo powder. I was worried because we were all out, and we had no way of contacting Mom to come get us with some extra - I think I, uh, spilled most of it anyway - "
"But I totally had some," said Brittany. "It's no big deal." She reached into the front pocket of her backpack and pulled out a ziplock bag full of a pale green powder - it could easily have been ground up sidewalk chalk. But when she tilted it in the light, parts of it glinted gold in a way that no Muggle substance ever had.
"Wait, what?" Sam said.
"You mean to say you've had actual Floo powder this whole time and you never thought to tell any of us?" demanded Lauren.
"Well no," said Brittany, "it's totally useless to us, we're all Muggles, duh." She shook her head as if they were idiots. "I had to get it from Lord Tubbington. He and Professor McGonagall are like, really close. I see them Skyping sometimes...it's disgusting."
"As soon as we found out, we were just waiting to get Harry back before we left," said Hermione. "We'll just have to use that boiler we came in through in the basement of your school. Kind of a tight squeeze, but I guess we'll manage."
"Maybe if you'd ease up on the snackage just a little," Ron muttered.
"Hey, don't hate on a girl who likes to eat," said Puck. "Besides, you're kind of the king of the munchies over there, if the last four hours have been anything to go on."
"This sucks," said Tina. "I've been having so much fun with you guys, and you're all such great singers and dancers too! I never knew! I wish you didn't have to leave."
"Yeah, me too," said Mercedes. "But just think, man, we'll always know that we got to meet the Harry Potter. And not even Daniel Radcliffe but actually Harry Potter, and Ron and Hermione and everything. Who else can say that?"
"Gee whiz, Harry, I can't believe you're even famous in the Muggle world," said Hermione, rolling her eyes.
"I can," said Ron and Harry at once, and everyone but Draco laughed.
Eventually they decided that it would be best if the five of them headed back down to the boiler room on their own. It was already too small of a room for the whole lot of them to fit into, and they didn't want to look too suspicious and too much weirder than they already did. "Plus," added Hermione, "the most magic we've done for you so far has just been sort of beginner-level, parlor-trick stuff. I think using Floo powder right in front of Muggles would probably be a way more serious offense." Kurt watched as they walked back up into the school, Harry stalling and looking back longest of all, and waving specifically at Blaine. Blaine squinted into the bright August sun and waved back, looking about as upset as Kurt felt.
"Goodbyes are terrible," he said. "I've never been good at them."
"You're telling me," said Kurt, pouting. "I have to send them back to Hogwarts and then turn right around and send you back to Dalton."
Blaine's expression shifted. "Yeah, about that. Remember when I said on the phone that I had a decent explanation for skipping Warblers rehearsal on my first day as a council member?"
Kurt's heart skipped a beat in his desperation to not get ahead of himself. "Um. Yes?"
Blaine stepped around to face Kurt directly, walking them a couple steps away from the rest of the New Directions. "Kurt, Harry...helped me with some things. Taught me something, I think, in person, that I never could have learned from those books. He opened my eyes to how - terrible things have gotten, at Dalton, for me."
"G...go on." He was staring straight into Blaine's newly-brightened eyes and loving every second of it.
"And that all those things I said it was doing for you - stifling you, trying to make you fit in - it's doing that to me, too. I like being safe, I like feeling important, and I'm so bad at stepping outside of my comfort zone when it comes to stuff like this. But I'm never going to get anywhere if I'm not - challenged, if I just sit there and play the part and keep living a dream that isn't really mine. This guy I am, the guy they want, that guy could be anybody. I'm just a body filling a blazer. I've got to get to a place that feels like it's mine...like home, and not just a little bubble I live in. And I feel that...when I'm with you."
"Blaine - "
"I'm transferring here. To McKinley."
"YES!" Kurt screamed, flinging his arms around Blaine and gripping him so tightly that he could practically feel his ribs against his own through the blazer. It was as if Blaine had gotten down on one knee and proposed. All his feelings about stupid distance and stupid uniforms and stupid Dalton went whooshing out of him, and the other kids were staring and he didn't care, and the parking lot had emptied out around them and he didn't care. Kurt was finally, finally - short of that discontinued Dior jacket that he really just had to give up on at this rate - going to have everything he ever wanted.
"I love you," he said fiercely, and then pulled back and kissed Blaine square on the mouth, long and wet and deep, his hands tangling into Blaine's gel-free hair. Mercedes and Rachel catcalled and Finn groaned from somewhere far, far away, and he was pretty sure Lauren had grabbed Artie's camera back up for a few more pictures, but Kurt honestly didn't care what ended up on Facebook at this point, because Blaine was so, so delicious.
But Kurt noticed something, and mentioned it when they pulled apart. "That's new."
Blaine blinked stupidly but Kurt saw right through it. "Uh, what's new?"
"That tonguey...twisty...thing. You've totally never done that before. Where'd you learn that?"
"Uhh - "
Kurt gasped dramatically. "You totally made out with Harry Potter!"
"Wizard wanky," said Santana.
"Kurt, I just - we both knew this would be the only - and he was - " He stopped, tugged on his loose tie a little, hung his head. He knew that looking-up-through-his-eyelashes-because-I'm-slightly-shorter thing was Kurt's total Achilles heel but Kurt didn't even think he was doing it on purpose this time, he was so pitiful. "You're not mad, are you?"
And Kurt just sighed, because he'd forgive this boy for anything. "Are you kidding? I'm just mad that I didn't get to watch."
-xxx-
As the whole group headed back inside, trudging through the halls to the choir room, Mercedes spotted Sam near the back and slowed down to fall in step with him. With no one looking, she knocked her shoulder into his arm and he knocked back.
"Watch it," he said softly, nodding at Tina, who was the closest to them in the mob.
Mercedes frowned and took a deep breath - better just to get it out. "Sam, I still hate this secrecy thing," she whispered to him. "And I like you a lot, and I'll keep doing it if you really want to, but that Ginny Weasley, she...helped me with some stuff. Taught me something, which is that it's okay to be really frustrated when the Qua-- uh, when the ball is in someone else's court, you know? But that if you're not even gonna put the ball in play, I'm gonna do everything in my power to try to take it back. I don't need you to give me the go-ahead to spill the beans, Sam. I just wish you'd tell me why you won't."
"It's better this way," he said.
"How? How is me getting slushied all over my brand new weave better than my hottie football player busting Azimio's balls and making him play fair? How is lying to all of our friends for no reason better than telling the truth and letting them all be happy for us? Well, except Santana, she's never happy for anyo--"
"Because I'm just going to have to leave," Sam blurted out.
Mercedes's steps slowed and she looked up at him. "What?"
"Shit. Okay, well, there it is," said Sam. "My dad finally got a new job, and it's a really good one, but he had to move to Iowa to take it. He's living with my aunt Josie right now, and once he's worked long enough to get us some money for a good apartment, we're all following after." He sighed, and ran a frustrated hand through his bangs. "I'll probably be gone by Halloween."
"Why didn't you just tell me?" said Mercedes, shaking her head.
"Because I didn't want you to put an expiration date on this," he said. The others were far ahead of them by now, nearly to the choir room. They'd stopped by the trophy case. "I just thought - if you knew, that I was going to have to leave, you wouldn't put your all into us. You'd just be thinking about how it was only going to last until October, and making plans to, y'know, deal accordingly."
Mercedes reached up and grabbed both sides of his face. "Hey. You listen to me, Samson Robert Evans. You clearly don't know me very well if you think Mercedes Renee Jones doesn't put her all into absolutely everything. I wanna be with you like I wanna steal that sectionals solo from Rachel, even if both of those points become moot by November, is that clear?"
His hand shifted up to rest on her shoulder, and she let her hands trail down his chest, and stop there. "I just wanted to have this," he whispered, "these memories, of us. Without - without everyone else's drama smeared all over it, if they knew. Just you and me, awesome together, forever."
"Everyone else's drama can expecto my patronum," said Mercedes, grabbing his hand and heading toward the choir room, tugging him with her and knocking their hips together once they were parallel. "Now come on. There's a duet I wanna do."
Sam grinned, and squeezed her hand tighter. "Cool."
-xxx-
Having dropped Malfoy back off at his stupid pretentious mansion, Ron, Harry, Hermione and Ginny finally stumbled back through to the Burrow, with only one Floo network accidental re-route to a shop in Hogsmeade called "Perky Preston's Prurient Potion Party!" that Ron never, ever wanted to set foot in again. He fell out first, staggering over to the sofa before turning around to catch Hermione as she flew through afterward. Ginny, meanwhile, fell straight onto the floor, with Harry landing on top of her.
"Oh, sorry there," Ron said, shrugging. He could only catch so many chicks and his girlfriend definitely had top priority over his stupid sister.
"Ronald, there you are!" cried his mother from the kitchen. "What took you so long with the freaking chicken?"
All four of them froze, shooting panicked glances at each other. Shit.
"Um," Ron called back, "we just - "
"Maaaaa!" interrupted a voice from just outside the front door. "Percy, Ron, somebody? You guys in there?"
Ginny ran to the door and opened it to reveal Bill, standing there almost taller than the doorframe, a stack of - oh sweet jesus, beautiful flat boxes piled on the palm of his left hand. "Hey sis," he said, ruffling her hair with his free hand before ducking inside. "Ma, it's me, Bill! I was in the area, stopping through on business and I figured I'd bring dinner. I got pizza!"
Their mom came in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. "Oooh, you know I hate surprises," she said, but her face softened instantly when she saw him. "Unless they're so totally sweet like you. C'mere and give your ma a kiss, come on." Bill thrust the boxes into Ron's hands and bent nearly double to hug her, and he quickly found a place to put them before the four of them slunk downstairs and closed the door behind them, escaping the most immediate repercussions of not following her grocery list.
"Geez, Ginny, what are you gonna tell her?"
"Me?" she said. "I'm not the one she sent out there for all that stuff! What are you going to tell her?"
"I don't know!" said Ron. "C'mon, Hermione, think of something."
"Well, we have to tell her the truth, obviously," she said. "I'm not lying to your mother."
"Get serious, Hermione," said Harry, "do you think she'd actually believe us? Do you think anyone will believe us?"
They all kind of fell silent. Ron scratched at the back of his head, up underneath where his headband sat, and thought about his day with Puck - the purple cloud animals they'd made, how hilarious it had been to watch a Muggle trying to do magic with his wand, that awkward thing they'd accidentally shown his little sister - and, even more amazing, the great afternoon he'd spent with all those cool Muggle kids, laughing and singing and dancing as if they'd known them for so much longer than just a day. Before he knew it, Ginny had tugged her giant camera out of her tiny purse and was poking at it, and it spat out two photos, the normal one and the silly one they'd taken, with them and their awesome Ohio friends shoving at each other and goofing off and clutching their stomachs in laughter. They were two amazing pictures, and Ron knew his would probably end up stuck to his bedpost when they went back to Hogwarts, to remind him of this stupid, crazy day for the rest of his life.
"No," he said, tracing his finger over his own arm slung across Puck's shoulders in the photo. "I guess not."
"At least we got a couple of these on my camera," said Ginny. "Not that I - not that I ever think I'll forget this, but it's nice, to have something to remember them by."
"Wait!" said Harry. "That's not all!"
"What do you mean?" said Ron.
From his back pocket, Harry took out a tiny book, which swelled back up to regular size once it was free. It was a thick hardcover, with an elaborate dust jacket - a children's book, by the look of the illustrations, and bearing a glossy golden title of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
"I don't believe it," whispered Hermione.
"Yeah," said Harry. "Neither did I."
-xxx-
~fin. ♥
....
...Fondue for Two!
Fondue for Two!
It's some hot dish --
Fondue for Two!
Draco swung his feet against the baseboard of the sofa while Brittany adjusted the camera and sat back down in her chair. "And you say this will be posted to the FlooTube universe at large?"
"Totally," said Brittany. "We have a lot of fictional character crossover in the discussion forums so I try to make it as accessible as possible." She turned back to the camera. "Hi, this is Brittany S. Pierce and you're watching Fondue for Two with me and my special guest today, Draco Malloy."
"It's Malfoy."
"Please don't correct me."
When she didn't immediately say anything, Draco reached out for a cube of melon, skewered it, and dunked it into the pot of chocolate, trying to find some way to occupy the awkward silence. (Why wasn't she saying anything?) He made sure to blow on it so it didn't burn his mouth and then bit into it - wow, it was actually pretty good. Naturally she asked a question precisely when his mouth was full, though.
"So how long have you been in love with that girl Herman?"
He nearly spit it all out, and barely managed to swallow it instead. "I don't know what you're talking about. Hermione Granger is a miserable Mudblood and I - I never want to speak to her again in my life, no matter how blissfully melodic her voice is." There, that sounded convincing, right?
"Are you sure? Because I have it on hot authority that you totally want to get with her."
"And whose authority is that?"
"Answer me this, though," said Brittany. "Did you or did you not...sing a song about her at the Yule Ball."
"Who told you that!" he gasped.
"Everyone knows that, duh, it's like common knowledge." She tossed a wave of her hair back over her shoulder. "Don't act like I'm stupid, please, it really hurts my feelings."
Draco stirred his fondue skewer through the chocolate, fidgeting. "I...may have...expressed some feelings at that time, possibly through song," he admitted. "However that was well over a year ago and any infatuation I may have thought I had has absolutely - "
"Do you wanna make out?"
" - what?"
"I'm sorry, you just - that melon-chocolate combo is like my favorite fondue we've ever done on the show and when people eat it like that it really makes me want to kiss them. You don't have to say yes. I just figured I'd ask."
"Uh, n - no thanks," said Draco.
"So you are in love with Herman." Brittany nodded soundly. "Good one, Lord Tubbington, thanks for helping me clear that up. Okay, so my next question is, do you prefer Huggies or Pampers for your personal diaper use."
Draco nearly burst into tears.
He was never going to get to that video exposee he'd written up about Pigfarts at this rate.