The game started as a joke.
A harmless little joke, really—born out of boredom, an unseasonably long Potions lecture, and the very real, very exhausting phenomenon that was Draco Malfoy’s Harry Potter fixation.
It was Blaise Zabini who first floated the idea.
“You lot realize he hasn’t shut up about Potter in three days,” Blaise muttered, resting his head on the table in the Slytherin common room while Draco held court in the corner, going off on some tirade about how Potter clearly cheated in their last duel and couldn’t possibly have brewed that antidote on his own.
“Three days?” Daphne Greengrass asked dryly. “Try since first year.”
“Honestly, he should marry him and be done with it,” drawled Theo Nott, sipping butterbeer and lazily flipping a page of Hogwarts: A History, which he only read when he wanted to annoy Hermione Granger.
“So what if we make a game out of it?” Blaise said, sitting up. “A shot every time Malfoy says ‘Potter.’” He smirked. “We’d be out cold in an hour.”
Pansy Parkinson laughed, slapping the arm of the couch. “That is evil. I’m in.”
And just like that, the Slytherin Drinking Game was born.
**
It began the next evening.
Draco walked into the common room, pale and scowling. “You will not believe what Potter did today,” he spat.
Twenty hands reached for their hidden flasks and downed a shot.
By the end of the evening, five students had passed out, one was dancing with the Black Lake squid (how did they even get there?!), and Theo had charmed a rat to wear glasses and pretend to be “Potter’s Animagus form.”
It only escalated from there.
Draco talked about Harry at meals. Shot.
In the corridors. Shot.
During class, to no one in particular. Shot, shot, shot.
By the third day, Slytherin house was in shambles. People were slurring essays in Transfiguration. Goyle fell asleep in his cauldron. Daphne tried to hex herself out of Herbology because she couldn’t hear the word “Potter” without gagging—or giggling.
On the fourth day, the hospital wing filled up like it was hosting a school-wide flu outbreak.
Madam Pomfrey was Not Amused.
She stomped through the rows of green-robed students sprawled across beds, a few groaning, some muttering “Potter…” with a dramatic sneer like it physically pained them, and others—Merlin help her—giggling.
“Look at them!” she snapped, eyes wild, dragging Albus Dumbledore by the sleeve into the ward. “Look at what your precious tolerance of youthful experimentation has done!”
Dumbledore, ever serene, surveyed the scene like a man appreciating abstract art. “Ah. Yes. Well, that one appears to be drooling,” he observed, pointing at Montague, who had a half-empty bottle of firewhiskey clutched to his chest like a teddy bear. “Quite the devotion.”
“A drinking game, Albus!” Pomfrey shrieked. “Because one boy can’t stop talking about another! Look at them! They’re all destroyed!”
In the far corner, a fifth-year mumbled, “Potter…” in the most disdainful tone imaginable. A soft chorus of giggles rippled across the ward.
Madam Pomfrey inhaled like she was about to Hex the entire school.
**
Classes for Slytherin were cancelled that day. The hospital wing resembled a battlefield after a particularly aggressive bout of magical warfare—with green-robed casualties mumbling, giggling, and occasionally pointing at each other and hissing “Potter” like it was both a curse and a compliment.
The other houses, of course, found it hilarious.
Gryffindors took to shouting “POTTER!” in crowded hallways just to see if any lingering Slytherin would twitch.
Ravenclaws placed bets on how long it would take before Malfoy said the name again.
Hufflepuffs, bless them, tried to stage an intervention. It didn’t go well.
And that evening, at dinner, Dumbledore stood.
The Great Hall fell silent.
“As a result of an... unfortunate trend that has impacted the health and academic progress of nearly an entire house,” he said, eyes twinkling in that way, “I am hereby instituting a ban on what has been dubbed ‘The Potter Drinking Game.’”
Every eye turned toward the Slytherin table.
Only one student sat there.
Draco Malfoy, prim and proper as ever, clutching his fork with white knuckles and turning a shade of red not even the Gryffindor banners could rival.
He stood slowly. Cleared his throat. “Well, obviously, this is Potter’s fault.”
The Gryffindor table howled.
Snape took a long, deep breath. The kind a man takes before walking into traffic.
He stood from the staff table, muttered something about "tarry Potter nonsense" under his breath, and left.
**
Afterward, no one quite admitted who ratted out the drinking game to Pomfrey (though most suspected Millicent, who claimed she was just very ill and very concerned about her friends' wellbeing).
Malfoy tried to go a full day without saying Harry’s name. He lasted four hours. When he finally cracked, it was over breakfast: “Honestly, if Potter had HALF a brain—”
The whole table flinched instinctively before realizing they no longer had to drink.
The silence that followed was tragic.
“Now what do we do?” Blaise whined. “He’s still going on about Potter, but we don’t even get to be drunk for it anymore.”
“You could just ignore him,” suggested a dry voice.
Everyone stared at the very brave Ravenclaw who dared to speak such nonsense.
Draco continued, undeterred: “I’m just saying, if I had a hippogriff and a broomstick—”
“STOP,” Daphne cried. “I can feel the ghost of firewhiskey clawing up my throat.”
**
The incident became legend.
Future generations of Slytherins were warned: “Do not mock the Potter Obsession. It fights back.”
A faded poster still hangs behind the common room tapestry: a rat in glasses holding a tiny cup. “Take a shot for Potter. At your own risk.”
Some say Malfoy still talks about Harry Potter in his sleep.
Others say he never stopped.
One thing is for sure: if you sneak into the Slytherin dorms late at night, sometimes, just sometimes, you’ll hear it—faint and echoing.
A dry, disdainful whisper: “Potter.”
Followed by giggles.
Always.