FICLET: The Perfect Date ~ Harry Potter ~ Harry/Salazar ~ General

[batsutousai]

Title: The Perfect Date
Fandom: Harry Potter
Author: Batsutousai
Rating: General
Pairing: Harry Potter/Salazar Slytherin
Warnings: AU, Harry is a mess, age difference
Summary: Harry wants his first official date with Salazar to be perfect.

A/N: Every winter season, I send out cards to anyone willing to give me their address, and I decided three winters ago to start adding fic to the cards. This year's prompt was coffeeshop.

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Harry knew it shouldn't have taken him two weeks to figure out where he was taking Salazar for their first official date. And yet.

They'd been together for almost a year, by then. But, with cleaning up after Voldemort, dealing with the fall-out of breaking up with Ginny because he realised he actually wanted to spend the rest of his life with Salazar, and then Salazar taking the History of Magic position at Hogwarts, having an actual date hadn't been a priority. And it really shouldn't have been a big issue, not when they'd already done the first kiss – and plenty more, besides – and the awkward back-and-forth of whether they would buy a home or if Harry would be staying with Salazar in his professor quarters. But it had become an issue, and Harry knew it was his own fault, that he was too focussed on their first date being perfect.

Hermione had finally stepped in – almost certainly by Ron's request, because Harry suspected he'd been driving his best mate spare – and handed him a folded piece of muggle lined paper with the address of what turned out to be a little muggle coffee shop in the heart of London, saying, "Here's your itinerary. Head out either shortly after breakfast or lunch, start at this shop, and don't peek at this until after you've got your drinks."

Harry had a lot more faith in Hermione's planning than he had in his own – not to mention fear of her retribution, should she ever find out he'd peeked in advance – so he picked a day, asked Salazar in the morning when he'd prefer to go out, and they settled on heading out after lunch.

The coffee shop was relatively cosy in a small sort of way, but not too crowded, and their chilled drinks selection, while slightly overwhelming, had something for both of them on it, despite their slightly different tastes and Salazar's continued struggles with acclimating to the present.

"And what," Salazar asked with amusement when Harry pulled out the little folded bit of paper after picking up his drink order, "have you got there?"

Harry cleared his throat, a little embarrassed, and admitted, "Hermione wrote me notes?"

Salazar chuckled, low and warm, and caught an arm around Harry's shoulders to lead him out to the little cluster of tables just outside the shop; somehow, Harry had managed to pick the perfect day, where it was neither raining, nor too hot. "I'm sure she did," he said.

Harry cast him a suspicious frown, then unfolded the paper.

In large, blocky letters, Hermione had written, 'You're a complete moron. Just wing it and have fun!'

"...oh no," Harry whispered, strongly suspecting he might be about to cry.

Salazar sighed and took the paper from him. "Harry," he said quietly, "I don't begin to understand why this is such a hard thing for you, spending the day with me."

"It's–" Harry flailed a hand at him, not completely certain how to explain his own messy emotions and his need to make the day perfect.

Salazar reached out and tapped a finger on the top of his plastic to-go cup. "Drink," he said, voice pitched in that same gentle, calming tone he used on his students when they were struggling with the true history of their world.

Harry wanted to be upset – he wasn't a kid – but he'd learnt early on, before they'd even begun dating, that Salazar being both a decade older than him and having made education his life's focus, meant he was going to get treated like a student. A lot. (Or, at the least, until he was old enough that he no longer looked like he could be a Hogwarts student.)

So he hunched forward a bit and obediently took a sip. The drink was good – a little sweeter than he'd been expecting, but not it a bad way; he wondered if the stand inside the ministry could make something similar – and he took a moment to enjoy it, settle himself the same way he'd had to do before setting a tough case before the Wizengamot for the first time.

"It's..." He sighed and shook his head, unable to bring himself to watch Salazar's face as he admitted, "Cho. It's because of Cho. It's dumb."

Salazar hummed. "I do like these...what do they call them? Straws?"

Harry blinked, thrown, and glanced up to find Salazar watching him with that quiet, fond smile that showed more in his eyes than around his mouth; it had taken Harry months to learn to watch his eyes. "What?" he heard himself say.

"Straws," Salazar repeated, tapping one finger against the straw sticking out of his own drink. "They're so simple, yet so ingenious; a truly muggle creation."

Harry shook his head, finally cottoning on to what Salazar was doing; distracting him from his less-than-positive thoughts. "You're an arse."

Salazar tilted his head to one side, his eyes bright with amusement. "Am I?" He tapped a finger against the top of his straw again. "You've told me before that your first – and, I believe, only? – date with Miss Chang ended in utter failure, and heralded the end of your brief relationship. You feared something similar would occur between us?"

Harry sighed, letting his shoulders slump; Salazar had hit the nail on the head, as he was prone to doing. "I told you it was dumb."

"Emotions are complicated," Salazar murmured, and there was an almost self-deprecating note to the words that had Harry frowning across at him. "I have never been on a date before," he said.

"Yeah, I know." Dating hadn't actually existed back in Salazar's time, which had been most of the reason that Harry had been left in charge of planning their first date.

Salazar folded his hands around his cup in that careful way he had that Harry had learnt meant he was uncomfortable. "I had feared that, perhaps, you thought I would do it wrong."

"What? There's no way–!"

Harry stopped, realising what he'd been about to say: There's no way you can screw this up.

He let out a quiet snort and shook his head. "Hermione's right; we're both morons."

Salazar cleared his throat, but didn't, Harry noted, try arguing. "What now?" he asked instead.

Harry looked up at the clear blue of the sky, then around at the afternoon crowds moving briskly through the heart of muggle London. "Wing it?" he guessed, and Salazar let out an indelicate snort. Harry flashed him a grin, knowing exactly what his rather particular partner wasn't saying in response. "We'll just walk around, show off modern London a bit. See what catches our attention. Okay?"

"Sounds...interesting," Salazar decided, then stood with his drink.

Harry followed suit, grabbing his drink with one hand and stealing one of Salazar's hands with his other.

Salazar huffed, and then squeezed his hand, and Harry led them into the crowds with a grin.

.