Ron cheered, his shouting in stark contrast to the silent, traumatized crowd. Harry could pinpoint where his family watched due to their noise, and he saw his friends bundled together in a desperate huddle, wide-eyed and in shock. Mama and Sirius were clapping absently and speaking to the Weasleys and Grangers, probably assuring them that he was fine. Although they both looked peaky themselves.
Harry hoped that the trauma bonding of watching him murder the dragon might convince his adoptive parents to stop pretending the other didn't exist.
"Well, how many points did I get?" he shouted at the judge's stand.
The crowd eyed the dragon corpse, its chest a mottled mess of bone and tissue and organ, spewing blood like a geyser as the body twitched with after-death shocks.
"Guys? My score?"
While Harry had thought the dragon takedown was very cool indeed, especially when he'd watched mama's memory, (from that distance, the panic on his face couldn't be seen, and he looked confident in his mad dashes away from the dragon fire) but nobody else, besides Ron, agreed with him. It had been the goal, sure, for people to take him seriously, but it had also left his fellow students to stare at him as he passed, everyone turning toward him in the halls like he had been painted neon orange from one of the twin's pranks. It was better than the snide comments and the rumors, no one was questioning his position as the Hogwarts contestant anymore, but it made things very awkward with the simple fact that he was now obligated to talk to some of them.
"All I did was ask for help getting a date for the Yule Ball, this is really unnecessary," Harry complained, his ears stained red as he stared at his glass of butterbeer in anguish.
"Nonsense, you're getting to that age," Sirius, with no concern for Harry's turmoil, finished the sketch he'd done on a napkin and passed it across the table to the horrified teen. "Alright, so you've got the testicles here which hold sperm. The sperm travels through this bit here called the vas deferens - did you know there's a muggle thing where they cut through them as a form of birth control? Terrifying. Lily told me all about it once when she was pregnant with you and I'd fetched her the wrong fish and chips. She said she'd have me neutered like a proper dog. Anyway - the sperm -"
"Sirius please, I'm begging you. Did we have to do this in public?" The thought of someone overhearing this - what if Skeeter wrote another article about it? It would be just his luck. SAD ORPHAN HARRY POTTER GETS THE SEX TALK - PLEASE MOCK AND BULLY HIM MORE!
"We haven't even gotten to the embarrassing part yet, kiddo! Wait until we reach the other set of human anatomy."
Sirius went on for a good forty minutes or so. He was incredibly thorough and a talented artist. Harry shoved the napkins covered in vaginas and penises into his pockets before anyone could see them.
"Any questions?"
"Are you done?"
"Almost," Sirius laughed. "There's a variety of magical and muggle contraceptive methods and STDs to go over -"
"Oh, I know about that already! I was tutored in Charms by a bloke who died of wizard syphilis and he went into gory detail, I assure you."
"Really? But I've got a whole section about HIV. Did you know muggles will give each other blood as medicine? Bloody insane!" Sirius said this all very matter-of-factly. "By the way, if you wanted to ask a bloke to the ball, that would be fine too, you know kiddo."
Harry groaned. "Please, please! Shut up!"
"Alright, alright. I'll give you a book about contraceptives and we'll call it a day then. Now - about how to ask someone out to a ball, that should be much less terrifying after all that, yeah?"
"I hate you."
"You're welcome, you ungrateful brat. Honestly, though, it's nothing to worry about. Do you have anyone you'd like to ask?"
Harry wrinkled his nose. Him, dating? He hadn't even considered the notion! Harry mostly thought about Quidditch and murder. Normal things for a teenage boy.
"I haven't thought about it, no." He thought about it. The details of sexual reproduction bounced through his mind. Girls were very much not pretty, when the thought of a screaming baby popping out of them was something that could happen. It was best to avoid girls altogether, he decided.
"Well then ask someone to go with you just as friends. That's what I'm doing." Sirius said.
"You're going?"
"Yup, your -" he paused and frowned, an uncomfortable grimace crossed over his face before he shook it away. "Well, your mum and I agreed a while ago that I should be there. It's set on the solstice, that's a very dangerous night for a potential Voldemort body-gaining necromancy ritual, isn't it? I assumed I was taking her, but maybe I'll go with Remus, or Minerva. She'll love that, no doubt. The ball is strictly a closed event, so I can only go if I'm invited by a professor."
Harry watched as Sirius became the one who felt awkward with the conversation. He did not understand adults at all. Both of them were sad and missed the other person, it was obvious, even if they were refusing to talk about it. Why couldn't Sirius just get over his dumb moral hangup?
"Why are you mad at mama?" Harry asked with hesitance. It worried him with how cross either got at the mention of the other. He'd thought Ron and Hermione's quarrels were one thing, but they had nothing on these two.
.....
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