Valentine.
Gabriel had never cared much for the date. It wasn't as if he needed an excuse to ask his mother for chocolate - and the whole "bringing a Valentine home" thing had always seemed like an unnecessary complication. Truth be told, he'd spent most of his early teens deep in that "girls are icky" phase… at least until he arrived in Britain and met Professor Sinestra. That had been an awakening.
Still, his opinion on the holiday hadn't changed much. Last year, nothing particularly exciting had happened - aside from the usual drama of lovesick teenagers. Older students had run around trying to get dates for Hogsmeade, girls had prettied themselves up hoping their crushes would notice them (instead of, you know, just asking them out), and Snape had shut down at least two incidents involving love potions. Gabriel still couldn't understand how that wasn't considered attempted assault.
But this year - this February fourteenth - things were… different.
The Great Hall looked as though someone had detonated a heart-shaped explosion in it. The walls were draped in enormous, vivid pink blossoms. Heart-shaped confetti drifted lazily from the pale blue ceiling, and somewhere unseen, a string ensemble of charmed instruments played a dreamy, lilting tune.
Despite what the "boy code" said about cute, frilly things being gross, Gabriel actually found the sight… nice. Not his style, sure - but aesthetically pleasing. It had a softness to it.
Around him, the usual chaos of Hogwarts adolescence unfolded: girls giggling in clusters, their hair glossy with extra charms; a few boys looking utterly miserable, tugging at their collars as if the decorations were personally humiliating them; and others who looked far too excited for breakfast, already scanning the room for their crushes.
Ginny Weasley was practically vibrating in her seat, her eyes darting toward the entrance every few seconds. She looked brighter than she had in the past months without the Diary influencing her - and clearly, she was waiting for one green-eyed boy who had once again decided punctuality was for other people.
Hermione, meanwhile, was casting long, wistful looks toward Professor Lockhart, who stood near the staff table dressed in robes the exact same color as the flowers on the walls. Gabriel scowled, good humor evaporating in an instant.
And then there was Luna.
She was impossible to miss. Even amidst the sea of enchanted pink and lace, she stood out - a small, serene figure dressed in flowing robes of pale ivory and gold. A delicate band circled her forehead, and a faint, rosy blush marked her cheeks.
"Are you supposed to be Aphrodite?" Gabriel asked as he approached and sat by her side genuinely puzzled.
Luna turned her pale, silvery eyes toward him, calm as moonlight.
"If I were dressed as Goddess, it would be Venus, this is a stola, not a chiton" she said with a small, knowing smile. "And I'm not Venus either. I'm Julia - the daughter of Saint Valentine's jailer, and his love."
Gabriel blinked. "Saint Valentine had a lover?"
Luna nodded solemnly. "In the legend, yes. Julia was blind, the daughter of Asterius, the jailer who kept Valentine imprisoned on the orders of Emperor Claudius II. He gave her sight back with a miracle, and when he was about to die, Valentine wrote her a note and signed it 'Your Valentine.'"
Gabriel tilted his head, genuinely impressed. "Huh. That's actually… really cool." He looked down at himself - just his uniform, nothing festive. "Kinda wish I'd got a costume too."
"You should have," she said simply, tilting her head as if seeing something he couldn't.
They blinked at each other - Gabriel uncertain, Luna serene - until she broke the silence in her usual way, with something entirely unexpected.
"Did you know," she began, as if it were the most casual topic in the world, "that the blood and bones of Saint Valentine are kept in the Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church in Dublin? Daddy and Mummy took me there once to see them."
Gabriel stared for a beat too long before letting out a small laugh.
"Of course you did, Luna."
After sitting down and helping himself to breakfast, Gabriel noticed that even the food had been caught in the holiday madness.
The pumpkin juice was, somehow, even sweeter than usual. The scrambled eggs were heart-shaped. The bacon came twisted into little spirals forming arrows. The pancakes were stacked in pairs with whipped cream "clouds" and strawberry "cupids" perched on top, while the toast had jam in the vague shape of lips. Even the porridge shimmered faintly with a charm that made it sparkle whenever someone stirred it.
"Liquid diabetes," Gabriel muttered under his breath, glaring at the pink foam on his juice before taking another sip anyway.
He was in the middle of cutting into a heart-shaped scone - which, disturbingly, bled raspberry jam when pierced - when the peacock himself rose from his chair at the staff table. A single, rehearsed cough from Lockhart drew the attention of the entire hall.
"Happy Valentine's Day!" he boomed, his teeth practically glowing under the enchanted ceiling light.
Gabriel immediately noticed the faculty table. Dumbledore looked amused and utterly unbothered, watching with that patient smile of his. The others, however… not so much.
Professor Sprout's fork had bent in her hand.
Flitwick's left eye was twitching.
McGonagall had a vein pulsing dangerously in her forehead.
And Snape - dear Merlin - Snape's had the look of someone who just got out of a war after seeing the worst atrocities men can commit.
Gabriel froze mid-bite, a sudden and very rational fear blooming in his chest. The dungeon bat looked like he was contemplating a murder-suicide pact that involved everyone present.
"And may I thank," Lockhart continued, his voice sliding over the tension like butter on fire, "the forty-six people who have so far sent me cards!"
Gabriel glanced toward Hermione. She was blushing so hard it looked like her soul was trying to escape her body.
"Yes, I have taken the liberty of arranging this little surprise for you all - and it doesn't end here!"
Lockhart clapped his gloved hands. The double doors of the Entrance Hall burst open, and a dozen surly-looking dwarfs stomped in. Each was dressed in an ill-fitting white dress with golden wings and harps in hand.
Gabriel stared. "Oh, Merlin," he whispered. "What kind of blackmail does he have on those poor men? There's no amount of Galleons that could pay for this humiliation."
"My friendly, card-carrying cupids!" Lockhart declared proudly. "They'll be roving around the school all day, delivering your Valentines! And the fun doesn't stop here!"
He spread his arms theatrically toward the teachers' table.
"I'm sure my colleagues will want to enter into the spirit of the occasion! Why not ask Professor Snape to show you how to whip up a Love Potion? And while you're at it, Professor Flitwick knows more about Entrancing Enchantments than any wizard I've ever met — the sly old dog!"
A faint crack echoed through the Hall as Snape's glass shattered in his hand.
Gabriel turned just in time to see Professor Flitwick muttering under his breath, actual curses muffled behind his hands.
He leaned back in his seat, eyes glinting with unholy delight. He wasn't sure whether to be horrified by Lockhart's suicidal level of obliviousness… or ecstatic at the inevitable consequences.
Actually, no - definitely ecstatic.
"The payback for this," he murmured to himself, "is going to be glorious."
He took another sip of his aggressively pink juice, grinning into the rim.
The Defense Against the Dark Arts curse really couldn't come soon enough.
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Through most of the day, Gabriel had been subjected to the same humiliating scene over and over again.
One of the dwarfs - Lockhart's "friendly cupids" - would stop some poor soul in the corridors, the Great Hall, or even during class, and proceed to recite or sing a love message at them. Professors were getting more and more murderous by the hour, especially when it happened mid-lesson.
It was chaos. Glittery, mortifying chaos.
Gabriel, thankfully, had managed to avoid becoming the target of such a public spectacle. Still, as much as he told himself he didn't care, there was a tiny, completely irrational part of him that felt slightly… miffed. Not that he wanted a dwarf singing at him, but - well. I would have been nice getting a letter.
"Did you send a Valentine to someone?" Hermione asked as they walked together to Charms that afternoon, her bag full of parchment and inkpots as always.
"And willingly take part in something Lockhart organized?" Gabriel shot back instantly. "I'd rather die."
Hermione huffed, exasperated. "Honestly, I don't know what your problem with Professor Lockhart is."
"He's useless, a coward, and a fraud." Gabriel replied with the weary tone of someone who had recited this litany a hundred times already.
"He's not a fraud!" Hermione snapped.
"He's not a fraud," Gabriel mouthed under his breath at the same time, perfectly synchronized, as if he could predict her every defense by now.
"I've looked it up, you know?" she went on, cheeks pink from the cold - and probably from irritation. "Since you keep insisting so much on it. And everything he wrote about actually happened! There are records of it, news articles, and he even keeps them in his office for anyone who wants to see for themselves!"
Gabriel pinched the bridge of his nose, letting out a sigh.
"Hermione," he said tiredly, "can you explain to me how exactly someone who supposedly fought off a banshee can't handle a few pixies? Why does someone who claims to have wrestled a yeti wear padded robes to pretend to have muscles? Or how the same man who allegedly discovered a charm that reverts a werewolf's transformation hasn't been dragged to the Ministry to solve one of wizardkind's biggest problems?"
"Hear, hear!" Ron Weasley called out from behind them, followed by a chorus of agreement from a few of the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw boys walking nearby.
Hermione glared daggers at them all.
Whatever she was about to say next was mercifully interrupted by a bellowing voice echoing down the corridor:
"Oy, you! 'Arry Potter!"
Gabriel turned just in time to see one of the dwarfs elbowing his way through the crowd, harp clutched under one arm and a very determined scowl on his face. Students scrambled aside in terrified amusement.
Gabriel grinned. "Doesn't this guy ever get a break?"
Hermione crossed her arms. "This conversation isn't over, you know. You can't keep disrespecting one of our professors like that, Gabriel."
"Hermione," Gabriel said solemnly, "there's nothing I'd love more than to show your crush how much I respect him - namely, by crushing him."
Her lips pursed, but the pink on her cheeks deepened all the same. "Your jokes are still as bad as ever."
"Oh, shut up," he laughed, dodging the slap she aimed at his shoulder as the dwarf's loud voice continued to announce Harry's impending doom down the hallway.
The laughter died the moment Gabriel saw what was actually happening.
One of the dwarfs had tackled Harry Potter to the floor and was now sitting on his ankles to keep him from escaping. Harry's bag had split open, scattering books, quills, and a broken ink pot across the stone floor.
"Yeah, no," Gabriel muttered flatly.
He strode forward before anyone else could react - ignoring the Gryffindor prefect shouting something about "proper procedure" and the prancing blond Slytherin who seemed far too entertained by the scene. Gabriel wasn't even sure if that one was a boy or a girl, and frankly, it didn't matter right now.
He reached the dwarf just as the little man was drawing breath to begin his humiliating performance, grabbed him by the back of the head, and lifted him clean off a very relieved Harry Potter.
Harry scrambled up at once, hastily mending his bag with a spell and gathering his things, though most were now blotched with spilled ink.
"Oi, let me go!" the dwarf yelled, kicking in the air.
"Nah, mate," Gabriel said evenly. "You're a grown man who just threw a twelve-year-old on the floor and sat on him to stop him from running away from being humiliated. You don't get to complain."
"I'm just doin' me job!" the dwarf protested.
"Your 'job'," Gabriel replied dryly, "is humiliating yourself and others. How much is Gilderoy even paying you for this?"
The dwarf hesitated, then muttered, "A galleon."
Gabriel raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "I'll give you and your friends three galleons each to pack your things and get the hell out of this castle."
The dwarf blinked. "Deal!"
Gabriel snorted and set him down.
"Thanks, Gabe," Harry said, his voice a mix of relief and amusement as he slung his mended bag over his shoulder.
"You're welcome, mate," Gabriel replied, plucking a folded piece of pink parchment from the dwarf's small hands and holding it out. "But take the letter. Someone actually took the time to write it for you - it'd be awfully rude to throw it away."
'And Ginny would kill me in my sleep if you did,' he added silently.
Harry's eyes flicked from the parchment to the poorly hidden redhead peeking from behind a suit of armor. His expression softened, and he accepted it with a small, awkward smile.
"Wait- you're Gabe? Gabriel Moretti? Second year, Ravenclaw?" the dwarf asked, squinting up at him.
"Yeah?" Gabriel said, eyebrow raised.
"Huh. Though you were a fifth year, what with yer size. I've got a letter for you too - want me to recite it?"
Gabriel's expression turned flat. "Do you want to lose three galleons?"
The dwarf's eyes went wide. "...No."
"Then gimme that."
The little man handed it over without another word, and Gabriel pocketed the letter as if nothing unusual had happened - just another day at Hogwarts.