Henry sat at the centre of the Slytherin table, his characteristic breakfast spread laid out before him as usual. He held a silver spoon in one hand and, in the other, a freshly delivered copy of the Daily Prophet.
The headline concerned the Ministry of Magic's raid on a suspicious shop in Knockturn Alley, accompanied by a photograph of several tight-faced wizards being led away.
Henry read with quiet attention, his brow slightly furrowed, a marked contrast to the noise and laughter surrounding him.
Two figures approached the edge of the Slytherin table with visible hesitation.
It was Justin and Hannah—two Hufflepuff first-years, and the first classmates Henry had met on the train. Justin wore a smile that mixed excitement with nerves, while Hannah followed a half-step behind him, peering curiously forward.
"Good morning, Mr. Welsh?" Justin attempted to keep his voice natural, though it wavered slightly.
Approaching the Slytherin table, with so much of the Great Hall looking on, required a certain amount of courage.
Henry looked up from his newspaper, his assessing gaze softening at once into a warm smile.
"Good morning, Mr. Finch-Fletchley, Miss Abbott. How are you settling into Hufflepuff?"
His tone was easy and friendly, as though he were greeting two perfectly familiar acquaintances.
"Oh, very well, very well! The common room is right next to the kitchens—it's wonderfully warm, and—"
Justin's words were cut off by another voice: rapid, bright, and slightly breathless with excitement.
"Oh! My goodness! It really is you!"
Hermione Granger had marched over from the Gryffindor table, her thick brown hair even more dishevelled than usual, her eyes wide and fixed on Henry with an expression of barely contained disbelief.
Entirely unbothered by the unspoken boundaries between House tables, she stared at him with shining eyes.
"I thought you looked familiar on the train, but I wasn't certain—until last night, when I realised... you're Prince Henry! Prince Henry of Wales! The son of Prince Charles and Princess Diana!"
Her voice was clear and carrying, and it reached the nearby tables without any difficulty.
Several students stopped eating to look over. At the Gryffindor table, Ron's fork hovered frozen in the air, the sausage in his mouth forgotten; Harry turned his head in bafflement.
Hermione pressed on, flushed and rapid, as though reciting from an encyclopedia: "I've read every biography of the royal family! I know you're eleven and should be at prep school—but I never imagined... you received a letter from Hogwarts? That's extraordinary! Does this mean the royal family has always known about the wizarding world? Does the International Statute of Secrecy have special provisions for the monarchy? And—"
Her torrent of questions left Justin and Hannah visibly stunned. Around the Slytherin table, the air seemed to crystallise—curious glances, cold scrutiny, barely concealed amusement, and outright displeasure all converging on the same spot.
Draco, who had just finished reading his father's carefully worded reply and was in the process of cutting a piece of smoked fish, went completely still. He looked up first at Hermione, then quickly across to Henry.
A Gryffindor—and a Muggle-born at that—daring to stride up to the Slytherin table and speak at that volume, in front of everyone.
He had no intention of interfering, but he did want very much to see how Henry would handle it.
Beside him, Pansy wrinkled her nose and leaned toward the girl next to her, murmuring, "Look at that mud—that Gryffindor. No manners whatsoever." She was watching Henry just as closely as Draco was.
Even Theodore, usually absorbed entirely in whatever he was reading, had lifted his eyes from his Potions textbook, his gaze calm and unhurried as it moved across the scene.
Faced with Hermione's volley of questions and the attention of what felt like half the Great Hall, Henry set down his newspaper and spoon without any evident hurry.
There was no embarrassment on his face, and no irritation, only a quiet, measured expression, the sort an older brother might wear when confronted with a younger sibling's excessive enthusiasm: patient, faintly tolerant, and entirely composed.
"Miss Granger," he said, his voice steady and unhurried, carrying a quality that cut gently through Hermione's rapid-fire energy, "your knowledge is impressive. Even so, I think questions of that nature would be better suited to a private conversation with one of the professors, or perhaps to the more specialised resources available in the library's restricted section—rather than to the breakfast table. Don't you think?"
He neither confirmed nor denied a single thing, but redirected the matter entirely and made plain, without any sharpness, that this was not the time or the place.
Then, turning back to Justin and Hannah with the same easy warmth as before, he said, "It was a pleasure to see you both, Mr. Finch-Fletchley, Miss Abbott. Have a good day."
It was simultaneously a polite farewell to the Hufflepuffs and an unmistakable cue for Hermione to go.
Her face, already pink from rushing over, turned a deeper shade—this time from embarrassment. She seemed to register only then just how abrupt she had been, and precisely where she had come to do it.
"Oh, right, I'm... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—Your Highness—"
She stammered, seized her bag, nodded to Henry almost frantically, shot a quick glance at Justin and Hannah, and then turned and walked briskly back toward the Gryffindor table, leaving a trail of stifled laughter and whispered commentary in her wake.
Justin and Hannah made their own hurried farewells and departed. The noise of the Slytherin table gradually resumed, though more than a few pairs of eyes still lingered on Henry.
He picked up his newspaper again, his posture entirely unchanged, as though the whole affair had been little more than a passing draught.
Draco exhaled slowly and returned to his smoked fish, though his knife moved at a considerably more thoughtful pace than before. His feelings on the matter were complicated.
Henry's handling of it, that composed, faintly lordly patience with which he had dispatched the over-eager Gryffindor, gave Draco a quiet, involuntary sense of satisfaction. That was how one managed such a situation.
At the same time, Hermione's outburst had made something unmistakably plain to him and to every Slytherin at the table: Henry Wales's standing among Muggles was extraordinarily high, and it drew an intensity of curiosity from the other Houses—particularly among students of Muggle background—that was not going to go away quietly.
Pansy said nothing more, but her expression of distaste remained.
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