A/N:

six chapters total with daily updates :) also i changed the name of the story to better fit the theme

Chapter 2: Names

The ride up to the castle was even shorter than the ride to the inn. Harry hardly had time to be nervous before they were being guided out of the carriage and into the castle. Myrtle cooed over the interior of the castle, complimenting the stonework and colourful banners as they went along. Harry walked by her side, lost in a daze, the warmth of candlelight washing over him like a hot summer breeze.

The faint sound of music floated up to greet them as they approached the royal ballroom. Harry's legs felt stiff and wooden as Myrtle took him by the arm and dragged him forward. All too soon, Harry found himself at the top of the staircase that led down to the ballroom floor.

A man in uniform announced his and Myrtle's arrival to the crowd, but the words were distant, drowned out by a curious roar of wind. Harry shivered, blinking rapidly. The ballroom was so bright he could barely see anything ahead of him.

"Let's go," Myrtle hissed through her close-mouthed smile. Her grip on his arm was so tight that he worried it might fall off at the joint.

Harry led Myrtle down the steps, praying that he would not fall flat on his face in front of this entire room of people. Thankfully, they made it to the bottom without incident. Harry expected Myrtle to run off in search of a partner, but she did not. In fact, her grip on him constricted further, signalling her reluctance to leave.

"You're holding on too tight," Harry told her tersely. "Loosen up."

"Sorry," Myrtle said, sounding flustered. Her eyes darted over the crowd, searching without seeing.

Harry had the decency to feel some sympathy for her. "Anyone you want to dance with?"

"I don't know."

"Come on," Harry said, hoping to encourage her, "there's got to be someone…" He cast his gaze about to find a suitable dance partner for Myrtle. It was difficult to tell who was friendly when everyone was wearing masks.

A rainbow was on display tonight; there were masks in ruby red, shimmering gold, forest green, and royal blue... colours as far as the eye could see. The ceiling high above was filled with dazzling crystal lights, all of them twinkling like stars, and in the background, the orchestra was settled into its soundtrack, their music swelling gracefully to fill all corners of the room.

Everywhere Harry turned, there was something new to see: an ice sculpture, a gorgeous wall accent, a vibrant mask or ball gown. No one had yet to approach them, but thousands of eyes seemed to watch his every movement, their gazes like tiny pinpricks on his skin. Harry's breathing went funny, his inhales and exhales running away from each other, the expansion of his lungs irregular and uncomfortable.

"Harry, Harry, oh, can I?"

Myrtle's plea was accompanied by a sharp tug to Harry's robe sleeve. He whirled to look and saw that she had found herself a dance partner after all.

"Sure," Harry said, staring at the girl by Myrtle's side. He was fairly sure that this girl, blonde-haired and wearing a mask decorated with Hufflepuff colours, was Hannah Abbott.

Myrtle's grin split wide as she squealed her delight and seized him by the front of his robes so she could place a loud, wet kiss to his cheek. Driven by an instinct that could have been more aptly described as 'panic', Harry shoved her off and wiped his face with the back of his hand.

"I'll meet you at the entrance at midnight," Myrtle promised. "You'd best not be late or I will leave without you!"

That was as sure of a way as any to ensure he was on time. Harry wouldn't dare miss the carriage; he wanted to see his mother again more than anything. "I will be there," he promised. "Go have fun."

Myrtle giggled, waving farewell as she took Hannah Abbott by the arm and made her way towards the ballroom floor, her gown swishing around her heels as she went. Soon enough, Harry lost sight of both girls as they faded into the ebb and flow of ballroom dancers.

Hopefully the night would be over soon. Harry did not plan to go anywhere near the center of the room lest he be accosted by requests to dance. He maneuvered his way to the open bar and asked for a glass of Butterbeer. The bartender offered him a funny look, but obligingly filled and slid a drink in his direction, leaving Harry to wonder if he'd committed some faux pas.

Was he of age in this dream? Did that even matter in a dream? Harry supposed he could have tried to order Firewhiskey, but he'd prefer to have his wits about him—even if they were dream-addled wits—in case something was to happen.

Harry sat down on a bar stool, careful to avoid creasing his robes, and raised his glass to his mouth. As soon as he'd taken a sip, a man wearing a deep navy mask stepped into view and swept into a deep bow.

"Would you like to dance?"

Harry nearly spat his Butterbeer out. He managed to swallow the mouthful he'd taken and attempted to maintain his dignity as he said, with as much politeness as he could muster, "No, thanks."

The man shrugged and wandered off. Harry thought that was the end of it, but no, several more people—men and women alike—came up to him, asking to dance. Harry refused them all, growing more uneasy by the minute. Where was the clock? He should have thought to bring a watch with him; how else would he know when it was midnight other than by the chime of the clock tower?

Harry drained his glass and began to look for an exit. He would go outside and hang around somewhere in view of the clock tower. He would stay there until it was time to leave. People would be less likely to ask him to dance if he was outside.

After dodging yet another dance request, Harry stumbled his way into the courtyard, inhaling the cool night air mixed with the faint scent of roses. He had never liked roses; Aunt Petunia's garden had a bush of them that Harry had been made to tend to over the years. Harry associated the smell of them with the aches and pains of yard work, sweat dripping off his forehead in rivulets, and stabbing his finger on the thorns because he'd not been provided proper gardening gloves.

Still, roses were preferable to people heckling him for dances. Harry exhaled, a sigh of relief, and lifted his gaze to the skies, looking for the clock tower.

The clock tower was to his right, and the large, ivory face of the clock was as luminous as the moon peeking out from behind it. It was a very beautiful clock, unlike any other clock that Harry had ever seen. The hour and minute hands were carved from obsidian, dark black stone that gleamed mysteriously in the moonlight.

Harry noted, quite miserably, that there were nearly two more hours to go.

At least the music was audible here. The distant sound of the orchestra played on, providing a soundtrack to Harry's silent musings.

After some deliberation, Harry decided to locate a garden bench. If this castle was like Hogwarts, then there would be somewhere to sit, hopefully within view of the clock tower.

Harry had hardly taken a step, however, when another man came rapidly striding out into the courtyard that led to the garden. His robes were charcoal, darker than Harry's cloak, and his mask was plain, a creamy shade of ivory. This man had no cloak, but something about the way he held himself lent an impression of wealth and nobility.

The man glanced over his shoulder as he passed into the garden, the set of his mouth pressed into a grim line. That was, until he resumed facing forward and caught sight of Harry staring at him.

Before this stranger could say anything, Harry decided to prevent the inevitable question by speaking first.

"Sorry, I'm not interested in dancing."

The man visibly gaped at him for a moment, clearly thrown by Harry's sudden declaration, and that was when Harry remembered that, yes, this was a dream, but no, that did not lessen the severe impact of the embarrassment he felt at having stuck his foot in his mouth in front of... this rather handsome man.

Handsome from the half of the face that could be seen, anyway, though the styled sweep of hair that curled over the top of the stranger's ivory mask looked very well done.

"You... don't want to dance."

It was unfair, Harry thought as his face reddened, that if voices could be described as handsome, this man's voice would have been labelled as such.

"Yes, you heard me," Harry said, unwilling to take back his words now that he'd said them. "I don't like dancing. I'm only here to wait for my—" Here, Harry had to stop and unscramble his brain so he could locate the correct word. "My sister, Myrtle, and take her home at midnight."

The stranger appraised him for a moment, dark eyes scanning Harry up and down, then said, "Good. I don't want to dance either. Why don't we sit and wait for your sister together?"

It would be rude to say no, and this stranger seemed nice enough. "Er, alright. I was just about to look for a bench, actually."

"The nearest one is this way."

They walked on, and Harry was gratified when the bench had a lovely view of the giant clock. He sat down and waited for his companion to do the same. At this distance, he could examine the man more closely: stiff, high-collared shirt, deep red waistcoat, and dark, dark eyes framed by the smooth ivory of his mask.

"Do you have a name?" Harry asked. Then, realizing he might have once again come off as rude, as added on, "Mine is Harry."

"Hmm." The stranger drummed the fingers of his left hand on his knee. "I believe that your question discounts the purpose of a masquerade, does it not?" He tapped an index finger against his temple, a brief tap-tap. "We wear these masks to hide ourselves and instead reveal who we are in the eyes of others."

Harry scoffed and resumed looking at the clock tower. "You could have just made something up, you know. Or said no. Both of those are perfectly acceptable answers."

"Well then, Harry," said the stranger, voice tinged with amusement, "my answer is no."

"Excellent," Harry said as he watched the slow progress of the clock tower's second hand. "That wasn't very hard, was it? Now I've just got to think of what I'm going to call you in my head. There are only so many times I can refer to you as 'garden bench bloke' before it starts to sound stupid, and we've got almost two hours to kill."

"Two hours? I think you mean one."

"No, I mean two," Harry said irritably, turning to glare at Garden Bench Bloke, who was raising a lofty brow at him. "Did you forget how to read clocks in addition to forgetting your name?"

"I would be more offended if I wasn't so concerned," said Garden Bench—ugh, it was already starting to sound stupid—Bloke.

Incensed, Harry looked back at the clock and saw that—that there was less than an hour to go until midnight. His jaw slackened involuntarily. How had that happened? Was he losing time out here, like he had in the carriage?

The stranger's hand settled on his leg, a gentle pressure that served to catch Harry's attention and prevent his burgeoning panic. "Are you alright, Harry?"

This was a dream, Harry reminded himself. Nothing but a dream. Time did not make sense in dreams.

"I'm fine, thanks," he said. "Sorry for snapping at you, I must have misread the time..." Harry stared at the large, luminous clock face. Or was that the moon? The moon with ornate black clock hands attached to it.

"I understand. You're anxious to get your sister home," the stranger said kindly. "Did you want to go back inside and look for her?"

Harry shook his head. The last thing he wanted was for people to once again besiege him with requests to dance.

"I could locate her for you," continued the man "Straight away. And no one would bother you if you were with me, I promise."

Harry struggled to picture the scenario that was being described. With this man by his side as his presumed dance partner, he would be left alone.

Were this any other dream, Harry might have said yes. He would have agreed to go back into the ballroom. He might have even agreed to a dance if it were asked of him by this handsome stranger.

But this was not just any dream, and so Harry could only provide one answer.

"I appreciate the offer, but I'm alright, thanks."

If the man took offense to Harry's rebuff, he did a fine job of hiding it. The second hand of the clock made several full revolutions before the hand on Harry's leg—which had never left, it seemed—pressed down again, warm and overly familiar.

"Did you have a question?" Harry asked warily. He wanted to shift sideways and move his leg away, but the bench was too... was too small to do so, though Harry was sure it had been longer when they'd originally sat upon it.

"Less of a question," said the man. The melodic hum of music emanating from the ballroom was increasing in volume, the tempo picking up speed. "More of a request, actually, though I suspect I know your answer."

"Oh?" Harry asked, now interested, but his curiosity was not to be sated because the man's potential response—request—was interrupted by the deafening chime of the clock tower bell.

Midnight.

"Shit," Harry said, decorum forgotten as he shot to his feet and gawked, horrified, at the clock, which indeed had just struck the twelfth and final hour. "Shit, I've got to go or she's going to leave without me—"

Harry did not doubt, for one moment, that Myrtle would abandon him here without a second thought. If he lost her, if he lost that thread of the dream, who knew what would happen? If he would get to see his mother again, or ever see his father?

The man was calling his name, but Harry was running, running as fast as he could reasonably manage with his fancy robes and fancy corset on. None of what he was wearing was meant for running, he thought furiously as he sprinted into the ballroom and shoved his way through the crowd as quickly as he could without hurting anyone.

The length of the ballroom stretched on and on beneath his feet while the clock droned loudly and ominously in the background, chiming until Harry lost count of the number. When he reached the opposite end, panting and clutching his sides, he scanned the area for Myrtle.

"Myrtle?" he asked breathlessly, spinning around. Why were there so many people, damn it! "Myrtle? Where are you?"

He was about to give up looking and run for the castle entrance when Myrtle appeared out of nowhere and latched onto his arm.

"You are so loud! And embarrassing!" she admonished in a low whisper. "What if Hannah had heard you? Do you even think before you do anything at all?" Then Myrtle tried to flick his forehead with her finger, but Harry smacked her hand away before she could do so.

"We're leaving," he said to her. "We promised Mum we'd be back before one."

"I know that," Myrtle said irritably, plucking at her skirts as they ascended the stairs. "Aren't you going to apologize for being rude to me?"

"No," Harry said, still breathless from his sprint through the ballroom, "I'm not."

"I'm telling on you."

"Go ahead," Harry told her as they reached an intersection. He tried to remember which way they had taken to come in, but he couldn't for the life of him recall the direction.

"This way, you idiot," Myrtle said, taking him by the arm and steering him to the left. "And I will! I'll tell on you and Mum will make you come back with me tomorrow night."

"Tomorrow?"

"Honestly," Myrtle said, and this time she succeeded in rapping her knuckles on his head. "Are you even using your brain? They're hosting for three nights. Tonight was the first one, which means we still have two nights to go!"

Harry had previously assumed the return trip was too long for them to undertake on the same day, and that this was why Lily had taken the trouble of renting them rooms. However, this explanation also made an unfortunate amount of sense.

Outside the castle, their carriage was waiting. Harry helped Myrtle inside and climbed in after her. Once they were both seated, the Thestrals set off, galloping into the night.