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Chapter Sixty-Five—The Yule Ball

“Look at how everyone’s staring at us.”

Weasley sounds gleeful, even vicious, instead of upset, so Theo loops his arm around her waist and laughs softly. “Yes, it’s great, isn’t it?”

“Did you plan this?”

“To have everyone staring?” Theo sees her nodding out of the corner of his eye, and shakes his head as he turns around, guiding her towards the dance floor. “Not specifically. I thought they probably would, but I also thought that maybe your brothers would simply hex me instead.”

“If they do that, I’ll fight them.”

Theo smiles down at her, enthralled. Weasley tosses her head back and eyes him as though she’s about to march off to battle right then. Or at least a duel.

“Asking you to the Yule Ball was the right choice.”

“So was going. Look at Ron!”

Theo manages to turn Weasley a little so that he can peer past the side of her head without making it obvious where he’s looking. Ron Weasley is indeed staring at them, and turning so red that his face is funnier to look at than his outdated dress robes. Theo laughs aloud, and watches Weasley stomp over to complain to his twin brothers.

“The twins won’t take offense?”

“They might listen to Ron. But they’ll ask me first. They’re the only ones who’ve really listened to me in the past year.”

Theo nods and swirls Weasley in a circle as the dance music begins to pick up. She leans her head back and smiles at him, a strong smile that looks like it belongs on the face of a wolf who’s decided to be friendly right now.

Honestly, even if her brothers target him, Theo is having too much fun to care.

*

“Weasley looks like he’s going to explode.”

Harry laughs into his sleeve as he and Blaise finish their dance and head over to a corner amidst polite applause. “Good. Maybe that will teach him not to act like a prat.”

“I don’t think anything will teach him that.”

Harry has to concede that. Weasley has only grown more annoying in the years since Hogwarts began, and Harry’s heard rumors that he isn’t even as close to Longbottom as he used to be, or that his brothers also find him annoying. He’ll probably never grow up and realize that he could have a different future.

“Having fun?”

Harry raises his eyes to Blaise’s face, and smiles. Blaise looks as though he would tear apart the entire Yule Ball if Harry isn’t having fun. “Of course,” Harry says softly. “I’m with you.”

“You say the most charming things,” Blaise murmurs, but tension drains out of him, and he reaches for a glass of butterbeer with a smile.

Harry leans against his side and looks around the room. They’re still getting some glances, which he thinks is weird. Doesn’t the whole school know that he and Blaise are together? It’s not that they get an unusual level of attention most of the time; it’s just that they weren’t subtle last year, and now people tend to look at Harry because he’s a Champion.

Padma and Fleur are getting more looks, though. Harry watches closely in case he has to intervene, but Padma is carrying the level of attention well, her head high. And Fleur is watching her more closely than she did at first, a half-smile on her face.

Probably as good as someone’s going to get out of a haughty half-Veela the first time around, Harry has to concede.

He turns away and smiles at Theo one more time, then leads Blaise towards a table covered with delicate sweets. “I’m hungry.”

“You know the main meal will start soon.”

“I don’t care. I’m still hungry.”

Blaise drapes an arm over his shoulder and moves with him, humming under his breath. Harry snuggles against him harder. He knows that he isn’t the best dancer here, that Blaise made him look better than he really is, but right now, that doesn’t matter. What does is that he has Blaise by his side and everyone who really matters, except Aradia, within a short distance of him. Even Artemis is curled up in his pocket and hissing her pleasure, and Anthony is nearby, escorting Luna Lovegood.

This is such a pleasant evening.
*

Aradia slips quietly through the gap in the wards that Harry and Blaise told her about years ago, and starts up the main staircase of Hogwarts. Right now, the vast majority of professors and students will be at the Yule Ball, and the students who are too young to attend confined in their dormitories. She’ll never have a better chance to venture into the school for the mission she wants to undertake.

The one she came to see will probably find her. In fact, they might be directed to her. That’s fine. Aradia would have it no other way.

She conceals herself under a Disillusionment Charm from portraits, and once from a prefect who looks as though they lost a bet. Aradia goes silently on her way shortly after that. What matters is that she can find the right room.

And, in fact, she arrives at the classroom she seeks to find the door open and sconces lit.

“Mrs. Zabini. Please come in.”

Aradia steps in and pins her gaze to Cynthia Fawley, or the being who’s decided to go by that name. Fawley inclines her head. Her hair and skin seem to shimmer in the firelight, as if she’s on the verge of dissolving into it.

“Why did you do it?” Aradia asks softly.

“I think you know. Harry would have told you. The clashing of the reality bubbles that you set up could have destabilized a great deal of magic, let alone the fate of other beings. It had to be stabilized.”

“Why did the stabilization require Harry’s name to be entered in the Goblet of Fire?”

Fawley tilts her head. “You haven’t figured it out? To require you to act.”

Aradia stares at her. And stares. Fawley stands there and seems to shimmer, utterly unbothered, until Aradia finally loses her temper. “Explain what you mean by that,” she snaps.

“Certainly. You were the one who set up the second reality bubble and made the situation complicated enough to manifest me in the first place. You are the only one who could have the power to wield that would change the situation.”

“You could have gone to Augusta Longbottom.”

Fawley smiles. It looks like a void had opened in the center of her face. “Augusta Longbottom will be dealt with in due time,” she says softly. “Her punishment is different than your own. Just as your situation is. Can you explain what makes your situation different?”

“The lack of necromancy?” Aradia asks, forcing herself not to bristle at the condescending, teacher-like tone.

“No. Try again. What power do you wield that no one else does?”

“The Suns.”

Fawley gives a tiny nod, one that Aradia would have missed if she weren’t looking directly at the other woman—or being, or whatever she really is. “The powers of fate and time and magic and others you would not know to give names to have made their decision. It is time for the gap to close and the Suns to cease touching our world.”

“And what will happen to our magic then?”

“It must be stabilized. But that cannot happen with the kind of reality bubbles currently in existence. Or, for that matter, with the Dark Lord’s Horcruxes in play. All of them must be eliminated, and at the same time.”

“And that means…”

“That the bubbles will close in on your house, and there end,” Fawley says softly. “At the gap in reality that the Suns inhabit. And there, the last Horcrux will be destroyed.” She pauses. “Not the last created, but the last to be found.”

“You won’t tell me what it is.”

Fawley’s smile seems slightly human this time. “Alas, I was created for a few tasks only. To stabilize the immediate situation, which was becoming especially unstable at Hogwarts due to the focuses of both reality bubbles being here, and to pass along this information to you. I cannot see into the future, only the present.”

“It sounded as if you were doing a good job of seeing into the future a moment ago,” Aradia retorts.

“I was only giving you the possible consequences of what could happen. Rather as anyone could tell you that a book that falls to the floor will make a noise.”

“And if the floor is carpeted?”

Fawley tilts her smile until it’s halfway between human and not. “Perhaps the one who makes that comparison is in for an interesting time.”

“I want to know if there’s anything I can do to cushion the effect of the bubbles.”

“No.” Fawley leans forwards. “Other than helping your foster son in the Tasks, of course. I do not, personally, want him to die. This human body gives me human emotions, and interacting with him is pleasant enough.” She waves her hand in front of her face. “But you ought to know that he is the focus of more than one wave of magic. You have made him that by introducing him to the Suns.”

Aradia narrows her eyes. “How?”

“That I cannot describe.”

Perhaps Aradia could make her describe it, but she doesn’t want to rely on that surety. She steps back instead. “I wanted to make sure that you wouldn’t personally hurt Harry or hold him back in the Tasks. If I have your reassurance that you won’t…”

“I will not. My only active interference was putting his name in the Goblet, and that’s done. I’ll remain here, quietly teaching the children, and then succumb to the curse on the Defense post. It’s why I was created.”

Aradia barely hides a shudder. She can hardly envision knowing that one was born for a purpose, or created, and that one will die at the end of it.

“You don’t like to hear me say that.”

“I don’t like you, in general.”

“Fair enough.”

And Fawley turns and sits down at her desk again, as if that’s the end of their conversation. Perhaps it is. Aradia walks towards the doorway of the office, and turns in it to study the other woman. She keeps her head bowed, the firelight gleaming off her hair as she works.

Aradia shakes her head and walks down the stairs, steps firm and unyielding.

She does make her way to the Great Hall and search with her eyes until she sees Blaise and Harry dancing. Her sons are smiling at each other, a light moving with them that isn’t just torches or candles, and definitely isn’t the uncanny shimmer that surrounds Fawley. They look like ordinary children blessed beyond measure.

I will make sure they stay that way, Aradia thinks, and slips back to the gap in the wards.

*

“May I have this dance?”

Harry blinks and turns around. Fleur Delacour is standing behind him when her hand extended. When he meets her eyes, she gives him a half-bow.

“May I?” she repeats, her English better than he’s heard the other times she speaks.

Harry instinctively turns his head to seek out Blaise’s eyes. Blaise has one eyebrow up until it almost goes off his face, but he nods. Then Harry glances at Padma. His friend bites her lip, but nods.

Harry can almost read the question in her mind. I’ll get her back when you’re done?

Harry smiles and nods at Padma, then turns to Fleur. “All right. But you should know that I don’t know how to dance very well.”

Fleur’s eyes widen a little. Harry thinks it’s not so much what he admitted as that he admitted it. Fleur has probably never announced a lack of competence at anything in her life.

But she still holds out her hand and turns the bow into a curtsey. “That is well,” she says, a trace of the French accent creeping back into her voice. “You are to follow my lead, yes? And we will do well.”

Harry just nods and smiles and lets her sweep him into the dance.

They get at least as many stares as he and Blaise did, and more laughter. Harry shrugs it off. He supposes it does look pretty funny, someone as short as he is and as scruffy as he is dancing with a beautiful, tall girl. Even the dress robes that he’s wearing and the efforts he made to tame his hair don’t really get rid of the scruffiness.

“How did it happen?”

“Well, Blaise and I decided to date last year—”

“Not that thing.” Fleur scowls down at him as they sweep through a turn and back into a main part of the dance, or at least what Harry thinks is a main part of the dance. She’s leading him as though they’ve been dancing together all their lives, which is fine, but Harry is going to dance with Blaise again after this just to erase it. “How did you put your name in the Goblet?”

“Our Defense professor did it.”

Fleur pauses for a second, which means Harry nearly steps on her feet. Fleur lets out an irritated little hiss that makes her sound like a goose and resumes the dance. “Why would she be doing that? What would she have to gain?”

“You could ask her.”

“I am not speaking to an English professor.”

“Why not?”

“They are being very far beneath the professor at Beauxbatons. You do not know what Madam Maxime has accomplished.”

Harry shrugs. “I don’t.”

“And you are not interested in learning.” Fleur sneers down at him as they turn through another circle.

“Not really.” Harry leans a little to the side so that he can balance as Fleur nearly throws him to the floor. He doesn’t think she means to, it’s just the difference in their heights. “So you won’t speak to the professor.”

“No, I will not.”

“Then you don’t have any reason to believe me. But that’s what happened.”

“Why would she wish to do such a thing? Does she hate you?”

Harry chuckles a little at the thought of anyone hating him. Well, he supposes that Lupin and Black might have a reason to if they ever find out about Aradia’s reality bubble, and maybe Longbottom would say the same thing if he finds out about some of Harry’s and Aradia’s machinations. “No. I don’t think I have any enemies.”

Fleur gives him an extremely skeptical look and maneuvers him through another turn. “I heard that you were the friend of Neville Longbottom. The good friend?”

“At one time, sure.”

“And then he grew angry at you?”

Harry laughs again, but lets a little of the harder edge that Aradia’s taught him emerge in the sound. He sees the way that fire sparks for a second around Fleur. That’s right, Veela are creatures of fire. “If you’d like to put it that way, sure.”

“I would like.”

“Okay.”

“Why did he grow angry at you?” Fleur asks, after another few turns about the dance floor, and her eyes searching his face.

Harry smiles at her, and ignores the way that she scowls back at him. “He found out that I was keeping secrets from him. Being friends with Slytherins was one of them, but not the only one.” That’s not entirely true, since Neville knew about Blaise, but Harry really doubts that Fleur’s going to question Neville about it. “He got angry that I hadn’t told him, and he also thought that my secrets proved I was evil.”

“But that is—stupid.”

Harry laughs and manages to spin Fleur the way that he sees some of the men dancing with women spinning their partners. She goes with him, although she has another scowl as she comes out of the spin. Maybe he shouldn’t have done it. “I know. I don’t think anyone in the world is pure evil or pure good.”

“Not even the Dark Lord?”

“I’ve never met him. I’d hardly know.”

Fleur’s eyes narrow at him. Then she says. “What about this professor who put your name in the Goblet? Is she evil?”

“No.” Harry can’t think of her that way. Either Fawley is just a creation of the reality bubbles, and hating her would be like hating the weather, or she’s a deluded fanatic who thought she was doing the right thing. Neither thing makes her evil. She would be stupid if the second thing were true, though.

But Harry doesn’t think it is.

“Hmm.”

Fleur eyes him as they continue to spin around the floor, and after the song ends. Harry bows to her politely. “Thank you for an exquisite dance.”

“Hmm.”

Harry goes back to Blaise, shaking his head. Whatever Fleur meant to learn from him, he doesn’t think she’s learned it. Maybe she was trying to get an estimate of how strong and dangerous he is, in hopes that it would let her know more about one of the people she’s competing against.

But either way, he doesn’t think he gave her much. It’s not like the Second Task will be Fleur grabbing Neville and waving him above her head to taunt Harry.

“It was all right?”

“Sure, but not a patch on dancing with you,” Harry says, leaning up to kiss Blaise. His boyfriend laughs softly and leans down to kiss him in return, stirring some gagging noises from Padma and Anthony.

“You do not need to kiss all the time.”

“We can,” Harry hisses down to Artemis, since the only people nearby are ones who know about her and the Parseltongue. Fleur is already leading Padma back onto the dance floor, and Padma is going with dreamy eyes and blushes. Harry wishes he could be sure that Fleur won’t break her heart.

“But you do not need to.”

“And you don’t need to bite people or plot revenge on Dumbledore or have different kinds of venom, but you’re thinking about it.”

Artemis hisses herself into a sulk, and Harry laughs and holds out an arm for Blaise to put his hand on. “Come on, we probably have time for a walk in the gardens before we go back to our respective common rooms.”

“I don’t want this to end.”

Harry smiles up into Blaise’s eyes as they exit the Great Hall and wander around the hedges and rosebushes and stylized benches and everything else that’s glittering with fairy lights, and apparently fairy dust. “Because you enjoy spending time with me? But we get to do that every day.”

“Not like this.” Blaise’s voice is low, and he reaches out to wipe what might be a smudge of fairy dust from beneath Harry’s right eye. “Not when everything around us is shining with romance and people don’t get to scowl at us for snogging in the corridors.”

Harry feels his heart beating to the point that it’s painful. He leans up and kisses Blaise again, and Blaise immediately bends down to kiss him back, clenching his hands on Harry’s shoulders as if he can keep him from moving.

“Oi!”

Harry springs apart, feeling Blaise’s hands close down harshly for a second before Blaise spins and shoves Harry behind him. Harry leans forwards and scowls over Blaise’s shoulder at Weasley—the annoying one. Weasley is staring at them with a red face and his hands frozen in the air like he’s trying to decide if he wants to wave them.

“What?” Harry snaps.

“You can’t just kiss in the middle of the path like that! You’re blocking the way!”

“Just because you’re upset that you don’t have a date to the Yule Ball doesn’t mean you get to take it out on other people,” Harry tells him.

He wonders if he should have, then, because Weasley is so red that he might pop a blood vessel and die at their feet. And Harry would be the number one suspect if that happened. Dumbledore would never believe it was an accident.

But instead, Weasley just snaps, “Whatever!” and turns around so fast that he nearly collides with a hedge. He stomps back into the castle.

In the meantime, Harry pokes Blaise. “You don’t need to put me behind you if someone confronts us, you know. I’m just as dangerous in a battle as you are.”

“Not without revealing your magic.”

Harry considers that, then sighs. It’s true that either attacking Weasley with living creatures or cracking his soul would reveal his magic. And Weasley doesn’t deserve that, honestly. He’s an annoying little git, but not on the level of Black or Lupin, who might have killed Harry or taken him away from Aradia. “True.”

Blaise turns around and puts his hands back on Harry’s shoulders, eyes bright and warm once more. “It seems to me that we were interrupted,” he murmurs, “and we shouldn’t let Weasley take away from our grand moment.”

Harry smiles, and stands on his tiptoes to kiss Blaise again.

*

Severus takes a slow step back from the cauldron, staring intently. Of course, releasing it from his gaze won’t affect the brew inside it one way or the other—he’s never heard of a potion that would be affected that way—but at the moment, he’ll follow his instincts.

Nothing happens.

Severus slowly takes a bracelet from his pocket without removing his eyes from the cauldron. It’s a cheap thing that he found in Knockturn Alley, but he bought it because it’s made of ivory, which takes protective enchantments well. Severus enchanted it until it’s all but glowing with defensive charms. Some of the Death Eaters, if they ever came to Severus again in that guise, would be proud to wear it.

Nothing happens.

Severus nods once, then strides forwards and throws the bracelet into the potion.

There’s a long, bubbling hiss, as though the Dark Lord were speaking Parseltongue through a broken mouth. Then Severus watches as the green liquid foams almost to the lip of the cauldron, and the bracelet bobs along with it, turning and tumbling back and forth.

He continues watching, carefully, not missing a thing, as the protective enchantments get stripped one by one. He leans forwards when the draught reaches the curse that he placed under the protective enchantments. “Ordinary” precious artifacts often have curses like this one, which prevent anyone save the owner from touching it.

The potion cuts straight through the curse like it isn’t there and continues dissolving the ivory. There’s a long, faint, pained cry, as though some spirit is fading away, and then Severus takes a step back and shields his eyes from the burp that the potion gives.

However, nothing foams out to hit his face or cover his feet. Instead, the potion settles back in the cauldron, and the bracelet sags. Severus uses a silver ladle that Lucius once gave him to scoop the bracelet out of the potion.

The silver grows pitted and discolored for the few seconds it’s in the potion, but Severus doesn’t care about that. Lucius gave him a mostly useless gift anyway. The potions silver doesn’t react to are few and far between.

Instead, Severus lays the bracelet down in the middle of a stone table—which bubbles but doesn’t pit—and then uses a small quartz hammer to test its structural integrity.

It breaks into pieces on the first tap. Severus sits back and takes a deep breath, glancing between the cauldron and the table. The cauldron is lined on the inside with all the boomslang skin he had in his stores, but that’s easily replaced by telling Poppy—as he already did—that flittermice got into the cupboard and they’ll need to order more.

It worked.

He invented a variation of basilisk venom, held harmless in the cauldron by the nearest equivalent to basilisk skin, snake scales that he enchanted before he put them in, and it works.

Severus stands slowly. Of course, the real test will be seeing if the potion can destroy a Horcrux. He’ll have to take it slowly and make sure that he’s stripped all the protective enchantments and compulsions from the ring before he tries. Even if the potion could handle them, he doesn’t want to chance that it would snag on, say, a spell Voldemort invented and spend all its strength on that.

But he doesn’t think that will happen.

It works.