"By the way, have you talked to Harry about the Tournament yet?"
Ordinarily, someone appearing out of thin air, in a locked room, and smoothly talking as though this weren't entirely unprompted and out of nowhere, would have startled Harry to say the least. He might have jumped for his wand, demanded to know how the hell they got in here or what they thought they were doing, barging in on a private conversation. But he did none of those, just let out a thin sigh.
After all, Lyra just did things like this. Interrogating her over it wouldn't do any good.
Though, he did wonder how she pulled this shite off. It wasn't apparation — it was completely silent, for one, and went through wards like they weren't even there. She said it was shadow-walking, but it couldn't possibly be...could it? He meant, shadow magic was really dark. Not dark in the evil, blood sacrifice, truly harmful sense, just, magically dark. Harry had asked Hermione about it, and she'd said shadow magic was very obscure, one of those things humans simply couldn't do, or at least not very well. It was mostly just seen from vampires and demons. Which...well, Harry wasn't as confident Lyra was a normal human being as he'd once been, but he was positive she wasn't a vampire. Demons, he didn't know enough about demons to say one way or the other, but...
Hermione had been entirely unsurprised when Harry had told her Lyra was apparently practising shadow magic, which meant she'd probably known that already. Either she knew Lyra was a demon or something — she did seem the most likely person to know, since she and Lyra were officially a thing as of about a week ago, apparently (and yes, he still found that thought vaguely concerning) — or she simply accepted Lyra doing insane, impossible things because it was Lyra doing them, which...
Well, to be honest, Harry could understand how someone might just give up eventually. Lyra seemed to have very little respect for what was or was not impossible or reasonable.
Blaise, of course, being about as accustomed to Lyra being Lyra as Hermione was by now, answered her just as smoothly and casually. "Everybody knows it's happening, obviously, but I really don't know how much you know about it." He turned to Harry then, a single questioning eyebrow ticking up.
Harry was only slightly mollified by Blaise choosing to not talk about him like he wasn't here. "We were in the middle of something, you know."
While Blaise's mind had retreated the instant they'd been interrupted, he was still open enough for Harry to pick up his...affectionate exasperation, he guessed he'd put it — and yes, Harry knew there was really no point in calling out Lyra for being a crazy, intrusive bitch, but he was still going to do it anyway. "Yes, Lyra, what did we say about locked doors?"
"I can't very well be expected to respect the implicit message if I don't know it's locked — there's no way to tell from shadows, you know." Lyra frowned. "At least, I can't, there might be a way to feel out that sort of thing, but I'm not quite good enough to pick it up yet if there is." The implication that she certainly would be good enough eventually was obvious on her voice. "Anyway, I've already interrupted your mind-fucking session, so you may as well answer the bloody question."
Harry managed to control his reaction to that particular way to refer to Blaise's continued mind magic lessons. At least, he was pretty sure he did — that low-simmering amusement from Blaise suggested he'd picked up on it, but Lyra hadn't broken into that smug grin of hers, so it probably wasn't on his face, legilimency was just fucking cheating.
Since he was a bit preoccupied mastering himself, Blaise spoke first. "I suppose so. What about the Tournament is so urgent, anyway? It's still months away, and it's not like any of us will be participating."
A sly little smirk crossed Lyra's face at that last bit, but she didn't voice whatever it was she was thinking. (Harry still got a bad feeling anyway.) "Meda reminded me that the Yule Ball is a thing, and Harry wasn't likely taught how to dance properly. Or was she wrong?" she asked, turning to him.
Which, as trivial as it was, that she was actually asking him had Harry's Lyra-induced annoyance (a very familiar feeling by now) tick down a few notches. "No, I never learned how to dance. Why would I have?" He didn't quite manage to keep the scorn off his own voice, but he wasn't really trying either — honestly, dancing was so far away from his own priorities it hadn't even been on the list. "And why does it matter now?"
Lyra gave him that flat, uncomprehending look of hers, the same one he got every time he said something she thought was unbelievably stupid. "Because of the Yule Ball? You are the only Potter left, I figured it wasn't in your best interests to give everyone the impression Lord Potter is a thoughtless, boorish arse, but, that's your business, I guess."
Before Harry could ask what the hell that was supposed to mean, Blaise was saying, "It's a Triwizard Tournament tradition, Harry. The Yule Ball is basically one of those high society parties Sirius was complaining about the other day — not quite the same, since it's open to all the students, but most of the same expectations apply." At the same time, Blaise reached a finger into Harry's head, tugged at a specific memory. One of the first extended conversations he and Blaise had ever had, where he'd asked for help with occlumency, and things had quickly grown very uncomfortable.
At some point, Harry had asked why the hell Lyra was so obsessed with teaching him all this...proper noble shite, whatever — as a distraction from the topic of life at the Dursleys and how it'd sort of fucked him up a little bit, a transparently obvious one, which was slightly embarrassing in retrospect. But anyway, Blaise had explained how properly playing the stupid society game led to wealth and influence, which led to power, which directly translated to the ability to live his life however he damn well pleased. (Which, that was also embarrassing in retrospect, that should have been pretty fucking obvious.) Since Harry hadn't had any interest in proper manners or politics or whatnot, Lyra had gotten the message that he didn't want control over his own life which was, admittedly, completely incomprehensible.
Blaise didn't spell it out, but that was more than enough to get across what he was trying to say.
Forcing out a heavy sigh, Harry's eyes tipped up to the ceiling. He still thought all this shite was bloody stupid, he couldn't possibly understand why people cared about this nonsense, but he did get it. As tedious as playing along with the nobility's expectations would be, it did benefit him in the long run — sort of like studying mind magic, or dueling, or learning to do a patronus, just with things that had no immediately obvious use of their own. "Alright, fine. I guess I have some more horribly boring lessons about manners and stuff to look forward to, don't I?"
Lyra let out a high giggle. Falling into an empty armchair — bonelessly flopping sideways across it, of course, because Lyra couldn't possibly use furniture as it was intended — she said, "Yes, that you do. It could be worse, the person I learned this shite from was such a bitch, you don't even know. You're getting off easy with me and the Zabinis for tutors, really."
Harry didn't even try to hold in a scoff.
"Anyway, of all the things we could be going over, dancing really isn't that bad. It can even be kind of fun sometimes, if you do it right. There is some formal comportment stuff, I guess, but we should probably wait for Sirius for that — I was obviously taught feminine manners, and you'd probably get some weird looks if you went around acting like a proper young lady."
Blaise chuckled, because he was a hypocritical berk like that — Harry wasn't an idiot, he didn't have to know a load of noble society arsehole stuff to notice Blaise's own mannerisms were actually rather feminine, especially when he bothered to be all formal and proper. (Of course, he also knew from mind magic lessons that this was because Blaise had mostly picked up this stuff imitating Mira and Daphne; neither of them had bothered to correct him, Mira because she'd hardly noticed, and Daphne just thought it was hilarious.) "Maybe a good idea. Sirius is a bit...flamboyant, but I think that's just a Black thing, I'm sure he learned the rules before deciding to break them all the time."
"Well, you do need to know what the rules are before you can break them properly," Lyra said, as though this should be obvious.
Which, it sort of was. Blaise had explained before how Lyra carefully walked the line just on the edge of seriously offensive, taunting people without giving them an actual good excuse to call her out on it. Though, if Harry did the same thing, he'd probably get into trouble she wouldn't. Lyra was a huge fucking cheater, but it also helped that she was a Black — the Ancient Houses could get away with things other nobles couldn't, just by virtue of the prestige associated with being one of the Seventeen Founders of the Wizengamot. The Blacks were rather infamous for using this license to do whatever they bloody well felt like, and telling the other noble families to go fuck themselves if they didn't like it.
(It was very possible the rest of the nobility had been relieved when they'd thought the House of Black had died forever.)
"But anyway, it'd help if you had any idea who you'd be going with. If nothing else, you can practice this shite with them, just so it'll be more natural when the actual event comes around."
"Oh, well..." In another situation, Harry imagined he would find the need to get a date to a bloody ball rather...terrifying? That didn't seem the right word, since it wasn't nearly on the level of things like Dark Lords and basilisks, but something in the same category, anyway. But, well, it was just ridiculous social obligation stuff, and he did actually know more people now than he had a year ago, that did smooth things over a bit. In fact, he hardly hesitated a second before turning to Blaise. "Do you want to, um..." He didn't quite finish the sentence, because he abruptly realised he was asking Blaise on a date, and what the fuck was he doing...
He might have expected that damn smirk, for Blaise to say something about that being very smooth, Potter, he set new standards for articulate...ness... Whatever, something snide and Slytherin-ish. (Harry didn't really mind the teasing Blaise and his friends did all the time, not nearly as much as he pretended to, it was funny.) But instead he winced, his eyes ducking away from Harry's. "I, ah, can't."
Well, that wasn't an answer Harry had expected. "What? Why not?"
Blaise actually hesitated, looking more uncomfortable than Harry thought he'd ever seen him — which was just bloody strange — so Lyra answered first. "He's going with Daphne, obviously."
"What?" For maybe two seconds Harry thought Blaise and Daphne were dating and he'd somehow never noticed, and Blaise had somehow never thought to tell him, but he quickly realised a serious problem with that, and he was just very confused. "But, er, isn't Daphne...you know, gay? I thought she and Tracey were dating now..."
"Oh, she is, and they are. Which is kind of funny, actually, the rumour is Daphne's mum exclusively prefers women too — apparently it's hereditary."
That was a funny thing for Lyra to say, when he thought about it. There was Lyra herself, of course, with her thing with Hermione, and Sirius obviously didn't give a single shite which sex his partners were, Lestrange had been rather (in)famously involved with Mira, most people assumed Sirius's brother Regulus had been very gay... Harry had even heard a few rumours about Narcissa Malfoy, and if he didn't know about the wanking to a picture of his mum thing, he'd've said that Draco Malfoy's picture was in the dictionary next to homosexual. Clearly if any family had the gene, it was the Blacks.
Hell, Harry was pretty sure he wasn't exactly...normal, when it came to this stuff either. Maybe it was just because he wasn't quite fourteen, so didn't know what he was talking about, and he hadn't even kissed anyone yet (except Lyra that one time, which shouldn't count), and still didn't really know what he was doing. But, when he thought about it, he didn't...get it? He meant, he didn't entirely understand why which sex someone was should matter. It hardly even clicked to him, to be honest. Sure, he noticed that pretty people were pretty, and he did get, er, sexy thoughts, but it was never really...he didn't...
Oh, he didn't know what he was trying to say, this shite was confusing.
But anyway, they were supposed to be having an uncomfortable conversation. "But, then, why are you and Daphne going together?" He might have said, well, not wanting people to know, but in the last couple months at school Daphne and Tracey had made no effort to hide it, and they were far from the only gay couple around — as far as Harry could tell, mages just didn't make nearly as big of a deal of this stuff as muggles did.
Lyra, again, jumped in before Blaise could answer. "Because they're betrothed? I mean, they could go with other people, but if they did it would be politically problematic, to say the least."
"They're what?"
Wincing again, Blaise said, "Thank you, Lyra, that certainly wasn't news I might have wanted to break carefully, or anything."
Lyra blinked at him for a second, before turning back to Harry. "Did you not already know that? Um. Oops?"
"But, wait, if Daphne doesn't even like blokes and they're not, you know, together, then why the hell are they getting married?"
If anything, that perfectly reasonable question just seemed to make Lyra confused. "Er... I could have sworn we already talked about this. At Zee's wedding?"
"Er...no?"
"I distinctly remember talking about Zee and the Future Late Mr. Zabini not even living together."
"Yeah, and I still think that's weird, but what the hell does that have to do with Blaise and Daphne?"
"What do you mean, what the hell does it have to do— I mean, you do know what marriage is, right?"
"Ignore Lyra, Harry," Blaise said, sounding oddly tired and exasperated, "she's simply not going to understand the question. To put it very simply, magical Britain has a much more...traditional mindset when it comes to family and marriage. Certainly among the nobility, and most of the commons too, arranged marriages are still the norm. To many mages, the idea of marrying for love is completely foreign."
"Marrying for— People do that? As in, in real life, not just in stories?"
"Yes, Lyra, people do that." Blaise rolled his eyes, lifted a shoulder in a lazy shrug. "See what I mean, completely foreign."
"How does that even work, though?"
"You could ask Tonks — she did run away from an Ancient House to marry a muggleborn, she's sort of the expert."
"Is that what that was? I mean, I always thought there was more to it than that. I'm pretty sure Meda really just wanted to get away from the Family, and Menelaus Parkinson is criminally dull. Plus she and Tonks do make a very good team, I assumed she had some good reasons for doing things the way she did. Just, making a critically important decision that will permanently alter the course of the rest of your life because feelings, that's just...mind-numbingly stupid."
An odd look crossed Blaise's face, something in Harry's sense of him tense but amused, but he didn't really care about that right now. Raising his voice a bit to cut through whatever one of them might be about to say, Harry said, "Wait, so, you've been engaged to Daphne this whole time, and you never told me?"
"It's not really your business, is it?"
Blaise shot Lyra a glare. "Could you shut up for five minutes? You're not helping."
"Fine, fine, I'll be good."
Somehow, Harry didn't believe it.
Slowly, almost painfully, Blaise turned back to Harry, an awkward little smile twitching at his lips. "She's saying it in the most bitchy way possible, but she's not...entirely wrong. Technically, Daphne and I aren't betrothed yet, but our parents have already come to an agreement on it — it is going to happen, it just isn't official yet. And, the culture around this sort of thing among the nobility, it isn't appropriate to go blabbing about it before it's official. You can imply it, sure. You might have noticed Daphne and her parents were seated with the family at Mira's last wedding, we've been invited to a few Greengrass things, just, that's sort of telling people without telling people, if you get what I mean.
"Honestly," Blaise said, wincing a little, "it, er, sort of slipped my mind that you wouldn't know about these things already. How marriage is done here, I mean. It's the default assumption to most British mages, not something that needs to be explained, and I just...forgot. Sorry."
If he couldn't feel Blaise's frustration with himself, his general discomfort with this whole topic, Harry might have been rather more annoyed than he was. He was annoyed — he really felt being engaged was the sort of thing that should come up (and, everyone getting engaged at fifteen, honestly, purebloods sometimes) — but he just... No matter how irritating it was, the explanation of why it'd never come up was understandable. Stupid, but understandable.
And, it wasn't like it had really been a secret: Harry had already known Blaise and Daphne were close. He'd just thought they were...really, really close friends. More like siblings than anything...which did make sense, since they'd met when they were, like, four. In fact, it'd been quite intimidating, when he'd learned a bit more about their relationship early in their mind magic lessons, that... Well, Blaise could be very intense when it came to the (few) people he cared about. Harry had observed at the time that Blaise would do pretty much anything for Daphne, if he thought it was necessary, with very little thought.
He distinctly recalled feeling certain Blaise would kill for her and not even blink.
Which was sort of scary, yes, but it wasn't even that...unique, he guessed. Because Blaise was very intense sometimes — Harry thought it would be more difficult to come up with any friend of his he wouldn't go to extreme lengths for in the proper situation. And it wasn't just Blaise, Harry had recently become quite aware of just how...unnerving, the people around him could be. Sirius had attempted to kill someone in revenge for betraying Harry's parents, and he didn't doubt he must have killed people in the war (which he'd mostly just joined for James in the first place). Lyra had not-so-subtly offered to kill the Dursleys for him. Hell, even Hermione, she'd set a professor on fire for him way back in first year — Harry could easily imagine her doing very extreme things if she thought the situation called for it (and he didn't entirely trust her to judge whether or not it did).
Honestly, when it came down to it...Harry thought he might be the same. He was used to not having or needing things, but... The very few people that he did care about, if push came to shove, if his hand was forced, Harry was absolutely certain he'd do what he had to for his friends. Even acquaintances, honestly — back in second year, he'd gone into the Chamber fully willing to do whatever he had to to get Ginny out of there alive, and he'd hardly known her at all at the time. (Not that they were all that close now either, but certainly more than a year ago.) All this occlumency stuff, it was making it far more difficult to lie to himself, and he knew, he couldn't really judge Blaise and the others much for their...ruthlessness. He was much the same, just quieter about it.
He couldn't ignore the fact that, when Lyra had offered to kill the Dursleys for him, his biggest objection was that he didn't want her to get in trouble for it. That said a lot about himself, when he thought about it.
Sometimes he remembered, how a few people had commented that he looked a lot like his father, but his personality was more like his mother's. By this point he knew most of what people had told him about Lily had been complete shite, but he wondered if they hadn't nailed it anyway.
So, in a way, Blaise apparently being engaged to Daphne didn't actually change anything. Not really. He meant, it wasn't like... He didn't know, in a way Harry had already known they were close, and Daphne was still very gay, it didn't make a real difference.
And besides, it wasn't like Blaise didn't still go around snogging people in broom cupboards anyway.
(No, Harry, bad, stop thinking about Blaise and snogging...)
"Um, so..." Harry desperately tried to wrench around back to the original topic of conversation, ignore all those weird, confusing, conflicted thoughts for a moment. (Though occlumency made just not thinking about things much harder too.) "I have to find a date for this stupid thing, is what you're saying. Since you're going with Daphne." Harry noticed the suggestion in what he'd just said, but he decided to pretend he hadn't just implied that, obviously, if he was looking to date someone Blaise came to mind first, come on, that wasn't a thing that was happening in his head at all right now.
Thankfully, the other two ignored it themselves — more likely, Lyra simply hadn't noticed, but Blaise decided to not tease him this time, at least. "I'm sorry, yeah. It doesn't have to be a date in the sense of dating date, you know. It's perfectly ordinary for people to go to these sorts of events with friends, or cousins or whatever. With some society events it'd be peculiar — the Festa Morgana, for example, is tied to a much older tradition that, well, generally couples there are married or courting, long story short — but for something like the Yule Ball it's fine."
Going with a cousin wasn't really an option for Harry, since the only one he had available was Lyra, and she would presumably go with Hermione (assuming they hadn't violently imploded by then). He guessed...maybe Justin, but he could still be rather...muggle-ish, sometimes, Harry honestly had absolutely no idea if he'd be at all comfortable going to a dance with a bloke, so asking would just be...uncomfortable. Not to mention, he had a suspicion that Justin fancied Gin. "Oh, wait, if Daphne's going with you, would Tracey work, then? I mean, if I really have to go, she'd be fine..." Tracey could be a bit...much, but she wasn't awful company or anything.
One of Blaise's eyebrows ticked up, looking far too Snape-ish. "Sure, maybe, you could ask. I wouldn't put it quite that way when you do, though."
"Why does it matter how I put it? I mean, it's not like she cares, she knows what it'll be about and she's with Daphne anyway."
"If a friend walked up to you and invited you to something, saying they didn't really want to but they had to go with somebody, and you might as well do, how would you feel about that?"
...Good point. "Er...right. So, um...was that it, then?" He meant, if he was supposed to be practicing this high society nonsense with his date, it stood to reason that he should wait until he'd asked someone, at least. Which meant that this wasn't nearly as urgent as Lyra had made it out to be when she'd first interrupted. He glared at her.
"Oh, no." She gave him a smile which he couldn't help but feel looked a bit sadistic. "Tracey already knows how to dance. In fact, pretty much anyone you could reasonably ask probably already knows how to do a waltz at least. So, unless you want whoever you ask to rescind their acceptance when they realise that yes means they have to go through the awkward, stepping-on-toes part of teaching you to dance, you need to at least learn the basics. And the sooner you start practicing, the better. You didn't have plans today, did you?"
It'll be faster and easier to just go along with it, Blaise thought at him. Compared to arguing with her about the necessity of starting lessons today, or whether spending the afternoon practicing legilimency really counted as plans, Harry presumed.
He sighed, putting as much exasperation and annoyance into the exhalation as he could. "What do I have to do, then?"
Lyra grinned. "Come on, Blaise, get up, he should see what it's supposed to look like first."
"Why do I have a suspicion that you're one of those obnoxious girls who insists on leading?" he asked, hauling himself to his feet. Probably rhetorically, since Lyra just smirked at him and flicked her wand, quiet classical music suddenly filling the air around them.
"Right, so, the first step in pretty much every dance you really need to know is you stepping forward with your left foot, while your partner steps back with her right foot — this is a waltz, by the way—"
Blaise cut her off, sniggering. "You're terrible at this. Harry, ignore Lyra — the first thing you do, after asking her for the dance, which is one of those things you should ask Sirius about, is get into position..."
Harry sighed again. This was going to be a long afternoon, he could already tell.
