The Gryffindors had divination the following day with the Slytherins and Professor Holmes, and it was the talk of the common room before breakfast. Lavender Brown was sitting anxiously on the couch with Parvati Patil, Seamus Finnegan leaning rather closer to her than was necessary.

"And then," Lavender complained animatedly, "He said that Parvati had a date with Dean Thomas!" She was referring to their current and poorly qualified divination teacher, the detective Sherlock Holmes. Harry walked into the room, yawned, and shuffled over to the couch.

"Morning." Lavender's eyes grew wide.

"We were just talking about that strange Professor! He shouldn't be allowed to teach." Seamus nodded without much conviction.

"If y'ask me, he's not too…" Parvati gave him a look. "Er, he's weird, yeah." Harry shrugged.

"Better than that old bat Trelawney."

Lavender drew herself up and spat, "She was my favourite teacher! She taught us about real divination." Harry sighed.

"Look, Lavender, no offence, but I'm not sure she was entirely, y'know…"

"Not sure she was entirely, y'know," Lavender mimicked. "Harry, what has Sherlock taught us that we can actually use in the wizarding world?"

"Loads of things!" Harry felt his face begin to get hot. "He's certainly not forcing us to drink scalding hot tea and then examine the leaves to see if we can predict the gruesome details of our inevitable early deaths, is he?" Lavender looked disgusted.

"It's not Trelawney's fault that you don't have an inner eye," She simpered, "Right, Seamus?"

"Yeah?" Seamus looked confused. "I mean, er-"

"That's right. You know what, Harry?" Lavender continued. "I think you like Sherlock so much because he's just like you."

"What do you mean by that?" Harry felt his voice go icily calm. He knew exactly what was coming as soon as Lavender opened her mouth.

"Because he's gay." The room stopped moving. It started swaying dangerously from side to side.

"Um, what?" Harry heard Ron's voice from the doorway. "Harry isn't gay. And neither is Sherlock."

"If Sherlock isn't gay, why does he spend so much time with John Watson? You know, that volunteer from the Hospital Wing?" Harry felt sick. Ron piped in angrily,

"You don't know that, you c-" But Lavender cut him off.

"And if Harry isn't gay, why was he kissing Draco Malfoy on our last Hogsmeade trip?" A collective gasp travelled across the common room. Harry recognized someone who looked vaguely like Hermione say angrily,

"What? Harry, that's not true! You hate Malfoy, don't you?" Harry opened his mouth to deny it, to say anything at all. But he couldn't.

"I… I, er…" was the only thing he could muster. Seamus looked disgusted.

"He's a f-"

"Shut up, Seamus!" Ron roared from the corner, stepping forward and grabbing him by the collar. "No matter who Harry wants to… be with, it's none of your business!"

"I saw them together!" Lavender squealed excitedly. "I swear, they were kissing!" It was Hermione's turn to snarl,

"Shut up!"

Lavender turned white. Hermione looked pleadingly at Harry.

"Harry, say something! You can't let these… these students… say this to you! Please, stand up for yourself! If it's true, just tell us. Ron and I don't care! Just… Harry?" Harry glanced at the couch, where Ron had Seamus by the throat and Parvati was frozen mid-step toward the door, to the corner where Hermione glared at Lavender, who looked sickeningly smug.

"It's… it's true. I was kissing Draco." No one in the room moved. "I'd prefer that you didn't tell anyone else… please. Please." It registered to Harry that he must sound pathetic, pleading for privacy like this. Pleading for mercy from people who would show him none. Suddenly, he felt angry. They had no right, no right, to act like this. They had no right to take away his freedom to tell his friends about Draco, and they had no right to take away his dignity in doing so.

"You know what?" Harry said matter-of-factly. "Seamus?" The wizard looked up. "You disgust me too. You spend half the day draped over Lavender, and the other half drooling. So telling me that I disgust you for reasons that I can't control and that don't even concern you is really ironic." He felt a rush of adrenaline. "And Lavender. I'm not going to ask why you find it amusing to hide yourself and watch other people kiss, but I really would like to ask what gives you the authority to tell other people about it."

There was silence.

"That's what I thought." Harry spat. "You don't have the authority. So yeah, I like Draco. And yeah, we were kissing. You can all deal with it. My love life? None of your business. And if you think for one second, for one second, that loving another wizard makes me lesser than you, I'd like to point out that Voldemort thought the same thing about muggle-borns." Harry noticed Hermione bow her head out of the corner of his eye. "And look what happened with that, okay? No one here is lesser than anyone else. We're all human."

Harry stared at the people seated on the couch. No one moved an inch. Suddenly, a loud whoop caught him off guard from the doorway. Harry looked up, straight into Neville's grinning face.

"That was brilliant, Harry!" As if on cue, a loud round of applause and cheering sounded as thirty or so Gryffindors who had obviously been listening to Harry's speech poured into the common room. Fred (or George) Weasley thumped Harry squarely on the back and yelled "Nice one, Harry!" Ginny looked slightly miffed for a moment, but quickly joined in, giving Harry a warm hug and a 'Good job'. It was nice, Harry supposed, to have so many caring people to call his friends. But for all it was worth, he had only wanted to tell Hermione and Ron. Not the entirety of Gryffindor House. Gathering his books, he pushed through the crowd and out of the common room. Somehow this felt very, very wrong. He was worried about what would happen if word got to Draco Malfoy that the whole of Gryffindor knew their secret, especially since the other boy might not find acceptance as easily. In fact, Harry was worried about everything. A murderer in Hogwarts, a thief in Hogwarts, an irritable detective in Hogwarts, Seamus Finnegan in Hogwarts… why was everything converging right now? It seemed as though things were coming to a close. No, not a close. A climax. Something big was about to happen. Harry could hear it in the fear behind Seamus's disgust, see it in the way Sherlock glanced over his shoulder, like he was being followed. He knew something was going to happen. It was just a matter of-

"WHEN?" Sherlock thundered at Parvati. "Not why, when! My God, how dense can you be?"

"I- I thought," Parvati stuttered.

"Clearly you didn't think! Now, you can see that this woman has pink hair. Correct?"

"Uh-"

"So it says on the Salon, where you clearly did not bother to read the sign, that they specialize in blonde hair dye! It says quite obviously that blonde is their shortest time to wait for the dye to set, and that it only takes twenty minutes! Any other dye is longer! So WHEN did the woman leave the salon?!"

"After-"

"AFTER FOUR THIRTY!" Sherlock was positively enraged at this point, his face flushed, his eyes wild. A thin sheen of sweat had formed on his forehead. "And then-!"

Harry turned away from Sherlock's furious insults to Parvati's intellect and glanced around the room. Ron met his gaze with a mirthful expression and a shared smirk at Parvati, who appeared flustered and ready to burst into tears. Hermione glanced at him with warmth from her adjacent table, and he noticed a few others do the same. The confrontation in the common room seemed to have made him a minor celebrity among his fellow Gryffindors. Letting his green eyes wander a little further back into the room, Harry casually surveyed the cluster of whispering Slytherin fifth years. He noticed a flash of blonde in the corner, head bent among the others, cackling at something. Harry blushed. Malfoy seemed brighter today than Harry had ever seen him before, laughing casually, the picture of health. Sometimes Draco had an air of illness about him (Harry suspected that it was usually after the holidays- after visits to his family), but today his eyes sparkled and his hair was neatly slicked back. Malfoy looked up and caught Harry's eye. He grinned and winked before looking back at his housemates, causing Harry to turn bright red and become strangely incoherent. Ron snickered.

"Oh, to be young and in love!" He whispered, clutching his hands to his heart and swooning.

"Shut it, Ron!" Harry snarled. The edges of a smile lit up his face. "You and Hermione are hardly any less nauseating." It was Ron's turn to look outraged.

"I…"

"SHUT UP!" The voice came from the front of the class abruptly, causing Lavender to shriek and jump out of her seat. Sherlock had pressed his fingertips to his temples, and was muttering under his breath. He straightened again and yelled aggressively, "DON'T MOVE! DON'T THINK! DON'T BREATHE!" He stayed in his odd position for so long that eventually the class was forced to dismiss themselves and depart for their next lesson.

"Blimey." Ron shook his head in disbelief. "He's a real nutter, eh?"

"Definitely. He's pants at teaching, but I'll bet he's a great detective."