# Chapter 65
"I feel like an older brother who somehow ended up at his younger sisters' prom," I murmured, nearly soundlessly but with undisguised amusement, laughing quietly at my own expense.
I was waiting patiently for Daphna and the girls in the company of Draco, his squires, and a handful of other acquaintances from various houses, and I simply couldn't help enjoying the atmosphere of flustered, guileless celebration all around me. The younger students were nervous, anxious, desperately afraid of embarrassing themselves in front of a crowd of peers and their dance partners — but they were holding it together, even anticipating the evening with a kind of restless impatience.
It was, at least to me, absolutely hilarious. Unlike Draco and the other boys, I wasn't the least bit nervous, standing as a small island of calm, confident cheer in an ocean of frantic anxiety. And there was something deeply peaceful about that feeling.
I had long since grown accustomed to adolescent company — my friends, to their credit, had never been badly brought up or particularly unreasonable — but in moments like this, I still felt rather like a university student who'd wandered into a school dance to keep an eye on three younger sisters.
"Ladies," I said, as Daphna and the girls appeared. "It's a pleasure. You're more lovely tonight than ever."
Well — "younger sisters" was pushing it quite a bit. I'd long since trained myself to look at Daphna with the calm, clear-eyed certainty of someone looking at a future partner. I could feel, with complete confidence, that this girl wasn't going anywhere — not as long as I didn't do something spectacularly foolish in the foreseeable future.
And the possible addition of a fiery red-haired menace with a cheerful temperament and a sweet, homely platinum blonde was hardly going to be a compelling reason to part ways with my companion for the evening.
"Harry… you could have come up with something a little more original," Heiress Greengrass said, gently reproaching me, easily noting that my compliment had extended to Ginny and Luna as well, walking a step behind my fiancée.
And yes — those two third-years had been invited to the ball by Malfoy's squires, which had my full and complete approval. I had practically engineered those pairings myself.
The boys had something of a problem attracting attention from the opposite sex. Crabbe and Goyle were too ungainly, too dim, too thoroughly thick for anyone to understand what on earth they were doing in the serpent house at all. No ambition, no intelligence, no particular cunning had ever been observed in either of them — I could say that with perfect certainty now, given how far my empathy had come. And they regarded the female half of the student body with a gaze that was just… a gaze. Blank and helpless, not even beginning to imagine what one was supposed to *do* with girls — how to behave around them, what to talk about, any of it. Typical boys, in other words. Trained by their parents into decent enough manners, but not gifted with any notable wit or initiative.
Which, in my case, was enormously convenient. Ginny and Luna had, after all, been wanting to dance with me at the upcoming ball. They hadn't said so aloud, but I could feel it all the same. And I also knew about Malfoy's squires and their predicament, and so — one thing fit neatly into another.
Though Crabbe hadn't exactly been enthusiastic about going with Ginny, given that she was a Gryffindor, and a Weasley at that. But Draco applied a little pressure, and I promised, without making a fuss about it, to return the favor to both Slytherins who agreed to escort my friends. In principle, any student could attend — but only from fourth year upward.
Ginny and Luna were only third-years, which was precisely why they needed partners to get through the door at all. Though they would, in any case, share at least one obligatory dance with the Slytherins. Snubbing Draco's squires with outright ignorance would have been awkward, and the girls themselves wouldn't find a single dance any hardship.
Luna couldn't have cared less about such trivialities — given the chance, she'd waltz Dumbledore himself around the room if he happened to be within arm's reach. Ginny, meanwhile, could sometimes be quiet and shy, but that was a side of her reserved exclusively for me and our little circle.
In every other context, the youngest Weasley was quite the tomboy, the undisputed authority among the girls of her year in Gryffindor — and to some extent in Ravenclaw as well. She'd long since learned to weather Malfoy's barbs by firing back without a trace of embarrassment, sharp and unhesitating. Six older brothers who were all disasters in their own right tended to leave a mark.
So a slightly pudgy Slytherin yes-man was hardly going to make this girl feel even remotely out of her depth. If anything, she'd be the one flustering and pestering him, purely for sport and to maintain her reputation on the scarlet-and-gold side of things.
Yes, the Yule Ball promised to be genuinely interesting — but I had no intention of getting distracted by minor details and quiet back-and-forth within our group. I'd decided to give Daphna my full attention.
This was her moment, after all. This particular debut in society mattered to her more than almost anything else, and I wasn't about to spoil her evening just because I wanted to keep an eye on the younger girls. They were already within the range of my awareness. But Heiress Greengrass was another matter.
"Relax a little," I said quietly, close enough that only she could hear, feeling her tension through the side she pressed against me — stiff, nervous, wound tight. "You're too anxious for someone who could leave ninety-nine percent of Hogwarts in the dust the moment the music starts."
"Easy for you to say," the blonde murmured back, almost soundlessly, gripping my arm a little tighter. "Homegrown charmer. How do you manage to take things like this so calmly? Don't you feel anything at all?"
"Oh, believe me, deep down I'm not calm in the slightest," I said, leaning close enough that my words were almost at her ear, feeding her exactly the kind of warmth she needed. "But the nerves feel too pleasant to waste on worrying about little things. This is our first ball together, Daphna. A memory for life. And I want it to be as good as it possibly can be — which is why I'm not going to give any thought to whatever might go wrong. Everything will be perfectly fine, as long as we ourselves decide it's perfectly fine."
"Was that one of your mental self-suggestion techniques from nonverbal practice?" she asked, and despite herself, a softer and more natural smile broke through.
"I don't need anything like that for this," I said, shaking my head, letting my own smile turn a little wicked. "I'm going to the ball with the illustrious princess of Slytherin. My evening is already a success no matter what happens."
"Scoundrel," she huffed — but this time the word came with something close to a purr underneath it.
And just like that, she was a little more relaxed. We entered the grandly decorated Great Hall in considerably better spirits, with something almost like impatience — and then there were dances, and small round tables with food, and punch and warm mulled wine.
The alcohol content in the latter was kept to a minimum, but the mood remained high regardless. After the first dances with Daphna, I was shamelessly stolen away by one red-haired bandit — and by a white-haired cloud of blithe spontaneity. Then the Patil twins. Then Cho Chang and her friends, a few familiar faces from Hufflepuff, a hijacked Pansy Parkinson borrowed from Draco, and a beaming Astoria Greengrass, who had slipped into the ball on the arm of some fifth-year Slytherin but hadn't seen fit to give the poor boy even his obligatory dance.
At some point people started laughing at my expense, because I was genuinely in demand from every direction. Not that it particularly bothered me, but my friends clearly wanted more. The time for slow, traditional dances was limited, and we had never practiced dancing to anything faster or more contemporary.
So before long, we'd all gathered around one of the food tables and made a collective decision — to slip away from the ball and continue with the kind of dancing we actually knew. Our usual practice room ought to be empty at this hour, and we were perfectly capable of providing our own music.
It was, without question, the right call.
I didn't entirely understand when the Patil twins had attached themselves to our usual group of four, nor quite why they'd thrown their support behind the idea of our collective escape so enthusiastically — but Daphna and the girls had clearly coordinated all of that well before the evening began. As for Astoria, leaving the younger Greengrass alone at the ball hadn't even been a consideration for anyone.
So we carried the festivities onward to one of the disused classrooms without the slightest difficulty. And I'd be lying if I said I was opposed to dancing with yet another delicate, prettily fragile blonde and a pair of exotic, striking, thoroughly magnetic Indian girls. And it wasn't only dancing and closeness, either. Daphna, Ginny, and Luna had considerably more interesting and significant plans for the evening.
I'd known that from the very beginning. I could feel the mood, sense the intent — it wasn't hidden from me in the slightest. But when Greengrass made her move first, and then the younger Weasley and Lovegood followed suit, kissing me without the slightest embarrassment in front of the laughing twins, a mildly sulking Astoria, and the whole absurd situation in general, I…
No. I didn't freeze. I didn't get flustered, and I certainly didn't play dumb. It was far too late for any of that — and the hormones in this body were doing their own thing regardless of how hard I tried to manage them.
But somewhere in the back of my mind, a quiet thought rang out — that all of this was a little premature. That I'd have preferred to wait at least another year and a half before any of this. But fine. Kisses were only kisses. Pleasant, yes, stirring the blood more than any wine could manage, the degree of flustered, happy awkwardness getting even to me — let alone the girls — but in the grand scheme of things…
It was good. It was right. It was entirely logical.
Even the fact that each new kiss was with a different girl, happening under the burning, intent gazes of the others watching — that didn't particularly trouble or embarrass me. It was all genuinely new to me, yes. And the interested, encouraging looks from the Patil twins — who had only recently begun joining our practices — made something in the back of my mind creak and groan at the seams.
But only that.
After the Veela charm attack at the Quidditch World Cup, I'd experienced something of an awakening, making serious progress in my own mental magic and beginning to sense the emotions of those around me at a completely new level. Because of that, the feelings of Daphna, Luna, and Ginny held no particular secrets for me.
I was only slightly surprised by their readiness to share something so personal with Padma and Parvati present, and by the general degree of tolerance they showed for one another. My fiancée surprised me most in that regard. The marriage contract between us didn't exactly sanction this kind of arrangement — but Daphna had given me her blessing herself, practically pressed me into Luna's arms with her own hands, and that was where any possible resistance on my part had been thoroughly and permanently buried.
Though how any of this fit together in my head was still somewhat beyond me.
If my empathy hadn't sharpened the way it had, the sheer weight of impressions and everything that came with them might have knocked me clean off my feet. As it was, things were — manageable. I was able, for the most part, to simply enjoy the situation as it was, noting in the back of my mind that I even understood, more or less, how it had all arrived at this point and why it worked.
Wizards. Their mindset, their outlook on life, their society.
Yes. Simply — yes.
But being a powerful and talented wizard suited me very well.
More than I could say.
If You Like The Story Drop a Review
~Read Advanced Chapters on: p@treon/Amiii_
~Every 150 PS = Bonus Chapter!
~Push the Story forward with your [Power Stones]