Twelve Days of Christmas
Author's Note: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!
If anyone has read The Edge of Perfect, the blue dress makes a reappearance.
On the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
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Ten lords a dancing
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The Yule ball is in full swing. The Great Hall is decorated like a winter wonderland. Glittering snow is falling from the enchanted ceiling, white birch trees linger around the edges of the hall, and other wonderful charms float along making the entire place pure magic.
Hermione can see Slughorn in the back, chatting to an unfortunate student caught in the web of uncontrollable yapping, looking like they much rather be swimming in the punch bowl with Peeves than to listen to another sound out of the Potion Professor's mouth. She cannot say that she blames them, seeing as she too was swept into his fond, yet awful chattering too many times to count in the first few months as a professor.
Many of her students greet her as they pass by; mostly Slytherin, sadly. However she does gather a few nods in acknowledgement from the other houses, and pleasingly so from Gryffindor. She idly wonders if it's her impassive face, channeling to her late Professor Snape that keeps some students away. She suppose that's the case when she catches herself sneering at a few students lingering in the birch trees, snogging. With her wand strapped on her calf because of the impossibility of the form fitting robes, she wandlessly cast a very mild stinging hex their way, wickedly smirking as they yelp. When the students, a Gryffindor and a Hufflepuff, turn around and make eye contact, she makes a 'shooing' gesture and watches with a pleased grin as they quickly scamper off with red faces.
Turning away, her whisky colored eyes catches something. Someone.
She is glad that she's wearing sensible wizarding robes. If she closes her eyes, sometimes she can still feel the satin sheen on the periwinkle dress and still smell the sillage of her perfume that she borrowed from Lavender Brown in a future she is not sure is in existence anymore. When she opens her eyes again, she smirks.
Why is she glad that she wore robes?
Tom Riddle is standing off the left, surrounded by his Slytherin classmates, staring at her. They are all stitched in the most finest robes, looking in her general direction and the stench of irritation tickles her nostrils. The young Dark Lord looks as if that he wished that she, too, was draped in fine silks with bits of forbidden flesh—as forbidden as this time period could get—peeking from finely tailored garments like the other girls from all houses twirls around.
Instead, she is wearing a midnight, long sleeve, crewneck robe that shimmers just enough as she moves. The color compliments her pale skin, especially the slope of her neck. It is fastened in the back with a row of tiny, glistening, beads sitting in the perfect arch of her spine. When she had reluctantly bought such a piece, of course the madam of the boutique would not let her step one toe out of the shop until it was fitted to perfection.
She watches as his face turns into the impassive polite mask. His lips move, and then so do his fellow knights—fellow lords. They're moving in measured steps and as the seasoned soldier that she is, she is poised just right, her magic crackling around her in aid, as if in a warning, ready to strike at any moment.
She watches them stiffen.
Riddle's nostrils flare.
But then his classmates begin to dance; a waltz what have been bred into them.
It takes her a moment to realized that she isn't in a war zone, and the school boys are not Death Eaters. . . not yet. She shuts her eyes, trying to shut out the echoes of screaming, the copper odor of blood, the sight of glassy lifeless eyes.
She steels herself and forces her eyes to open. That war was a long time ago. The silence is far behind her. Now she is here, for some reason or another, forced to live her life though the past.
She does not miss the fact that each boy, each paired with a female Slytherin classmate, moving to surround her inconspicuously is from a family of the Sacred Twenty Eight. There is Avery, Nott, Malfoy and his pompous robes, Flint, Black and his silver gaze, Rosier, Lestrange, Crouch, Rowel, Travers, and Yaxley. Anxiety claws through her system and she forces herself and breathe.
Riddle is like a panther, and she like a rabbit. He stalks closer to her, the smile on his face is as fake as Headmaster Dippet's sincerity. Suddenly his frown is back and his eyes snap over to a Ravenclaw boy who was staring at Hermione unabashedly. Riddle's face turns colder and colder until the boy shivers, glances over at the Head Boy, pales, and then flees.
It take hers a moment to realize that Tom Riddle is not angry at her choice of wardrobe, but at any male attention she apparently is gaining.
She almost rolls her eyes.
He looks satisfied as he stands before her, holding out his hand to take her own. His lips are scorching against her knuckles in a tender greeting. "Professor," he murmurs. "You look absolutely divine."
She desperately suppresses the shivers threatening to take over a moment or two of her charade of indifference. In the corner of her eye, she notices the swaying of the other lords, moving in a haphazard circle to cut them off from the rest of the population, to give them privacy.
Or to keep the other male students from gawking at Hermione's lovely figure.
She has yet to rip her hand away from his. When she moves in the slightest, his fingers tightens around her skin.
"Would you care to dance?" The question is a beckoning fly trap. It is wide, posing the essence that calls only to her. Perhaps it is his magic that she feels sparking against her skin.
His eyes tells her she's right.
Alight and pure, raw power simmer in his midnight blues eyes.
She suddenly realizes her dress matches.
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.
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