“And now there’s word going around that you caused Anderson’s injury? Oh I’m gonna find whoever decided to mess with my boy like this.”

Kurt was a little taken aback by her words. He knew that she had the loving, caring, excessively protective friend in her, but with what she said and the genuinely concerned looking expression on her face, he could see just how much she cared for him. Kurt simultaneously wanted to thank and endlessly make fun of her for that.

“Who was it, though? Like, do you think Sebastian is behind this?”

Santana walked in circles and turned on her heels a couple of times before shaking her head.

“No. He can be quite the smart ass, but he’s not capable of that kind of thinking. And that’s not important – I’m sorry, it’s not. You said yourself you need to get to Blaine asap.”

The boy nodded in agreement. “I did. And I do.” He looked at the clock on the wall. They would start serving dinner in twenty minutes.

“I have repeated myself way too much today, but you should probably go change before we go to dinner.” Kurt said, gesturing to Santana’s dress.

The day they’d first met, when they came to Hogwarts and were eleven years old, she had told him she would never wear her uniform when she didn’t need to and Kurt had agreed and surprisingly, that had started their friendship. Now though, over five years later, Kurt often preferred the uniform even on weekends. His perfectly styled hair could only take so much of pulling shirts and robes over his head.

“Yeah. Two minutes.” She said, patting Kurt’s shoulder before leaving for the stairs that led to the girls’ dormitory.

Tens of Slytherins were shuffling and chatting in the common room now, whereas an hour ago there had only been a few second year students around. They all had the same priorities, he guessed.

Food.

-

They walked towards the Great Hall in a crowd of other Slytherins, and Kurt felt incredibly uneasy.

“I can’t believe there was a time when I despised this skirt.” Santana said right next to him, smoothing her hand over the front of the light grey skirt that stopped at mid-thigh because of the alterations she had or hadn’t got done to in on their last break.

When they finally arrived at the doors of the hall, he spotted Blaine with Sam Evans - the Hufflepuff keeper, and two girls she could see were from Gryffindor and his heart jumped right up to his throat.

He couldn’t tell by the looks of him if he knew about the rumor at all. I mean, of course he couldn’t.

Blaine was laughing wholeheartedly at something the blonde one of the two girls said, while the brunette, shorter girl seemed a bit offended, with her arms crossed against her chest.

Through the massive crowd of pupils he also couldn’t see if Blaine was having trouble with his foot or not.

I shouldn’t be so worked up about this, Kurt told himself and shook his head, though hardly so.

Santana turned to look at him and caught her right on staring Blaine’s way, so she linked their arms and nudged him gently with her elbow. “Come on."

“What will I do?” Kurt asked in a hushed, a tiny bit panicked tone.

They zigzagged their way through the pupils to their table and sat on their typical place, next to each other.

“I get why you’re sweating it, but don’t. The oblivious prince badger probably doesn’t even know. He’s such goody two shoes he’s immune to the rumor mill.”

Kurt hardly paid any attention to Santana’s words, eyes fixated on Blaine and Sam letting by the smaller Hufflepuffs before sitting down near to the end of the table.

“See, you eat in sync with him and after you’re done, you catch him right outside the Great Hall when everyone’s full and sleepy and heading back to their common rooms and simply don’t care. If someone isn’t, though, you can simply start by talking loudly about Quidditch and that way avoid causing any scene - cause hey, Quidditch."

Kurt turned to look at her, pursing his lips together. “Only you’re neglecting to include in your plan the fact that half of this school probably thinks that I am the reason he’s limping.”

Santana’s near perfect eyebrows shot up and she smirked ever so slightly. “Wanky.”

Kurt almost choked on his water, which Santana ignored.

“Okay fine. You just go talk to him, ask about his knee, do some charming shit, whatever. I’ll have your back. Easy as that.”

Kurt could only hope it was going to be easy like that.

-

When Blaine got up from the table about forty five minutes later - seemingly having some trouble with his leg, Kurt was so nervous it was, yet again, completely ridiculous.

Kurt and Santana got up in sync, luckily having many other people leave just at the same time so they didn’t gain much attention – or really, any at all.

Kurt saw Sam sprint up the stairs, clearly not bothering to help Blaine, who was still kind of wobbling his way out of the Great Hall. He stopped by the greyish brick wall right next to the entrance of the hall and rolled his eyes, seemingly at Sam, who had disappeared from view.

Santana pushed Kurt’s back in his direction. “Go.”

Kurt swallowed, walked through the people streaming out of the doors and recovered his shuddering breath just before Blaine turned to look in his direction and locked eyes with him.

Blaine’s golden eyes lit up – or maybe Kurt was making that up, and a smile appeared on his face.

The Hufflepuff shifted a little, trying to feel more comfortable with the crotches Sam had borrowed him before really looking at Kurt.

“Hi.” Kurt said, turning to look at Santana way over the other side of the main hall briefly before smiling at Blaine.

“Hi.” Blaine said, smiling right back at Kurt. He was really happy to see him again. Maybe happier than he cared to admit.

“So, how’s the knee? What did Ms. Pillsbury say?” Kurt asked, ducking his head in the direction of Blaine’s left knee.

“Uh.” Blaine looked down to his feet, feeling his face heat up ever so slightly because of what he was sure was the amount of people in the same space. “It’s going to be fine. The fracture’s gone, she handled that, but the tear in the muscle is still there. It shouldn’t be right in time for the game though, so all is good.” He smiled. Not as widely as moments ago, but he was still smiling, and that made Kurt feel horrible and great at the same time. 

Wait, now. He was feeling horrible because of a thing that was made up.

“And really, I know I said thank you a hundred times, but I could’ve really been in a lot of trouble if it wasn’t for you.” Blaine said, his eyes a pool of golden specks and sparkles and voice full of nothing but sincere, genuine gratitude.

That made the Slytherin completely toss the rumor aside, as well as the assumption that Blaine knew about it, because clearly he didn’t. Kurt was quite sure his knees had turned into jelly, but he tried his absolute best to keep himself together. Or not.

He blushed, shaking his head. “Uh, yeah. You really could’ve.”

They both laughed, kind of awkward but yet so comfortable, which completely went over the both of their heads because they were so enamored by the other.

“Well, Sam ran up to the common room about ten minutes ago to read comic books, so I’ll follow him now and do both mine and his readings for tomorrow’s first class.” Blaine chuckled, taking a few steps forward.

“Yeah, okay.”

“See you, Kurt.”

Kurt smiled and waved at him, clearing his throat and turning on his heels to go to Santana when he received some interesting looks from a few fifth year Hufflepuffs.

Once he got to Santana, she gave him a thumbs up.

“I’m telling you, if you are wondering if he likes you back, don’t. Did you see his smile? Anderson’s head over heels for you, Hummel.”