A Year to Remember
By Izzy
Part 7:A Task for Twelve
"You have to do it now, Ron. Or you could very well lose your chance forever."
Ron listened to Harry speak. He was right. As school champion, Hermione'd probably been asked to the Yule Ball already. She only turn down so many offers, that he knew.
He wondered if Harry had felt anywhere near like this when he'd asked Cho three years ago. He doubted it. There was no way Harry could speak that calmly if he had felt like he was about to twist himself inside out, like Ron felt now.
It was the day after the first task. Harry had been pressuring Ron all day to ask Hermione, and now they were standing outside the bus, waiting for her to finish packing up.
And here came Hermione now. She said she already knew what the second task was, but was enchanted so that she couldn't reveal it. Whatever it was, she found it amusing and irritating. "Hi guys. Sorry for the delay, but I-"
"Hermione," started Ron. He wasn't sure she could hear him over the pounding of his heart. Harry had helped him prepare this speech earlier. "You know how you said, the last Yule Ball, I should ask you first?"
She considered. "I might have. I honestly don't remember. I remember you got angry because I'd gone with Krum."
"Well, I'd like you to go with me." Every word seemed an effort now. He was turning either red, green, or purple, he had no idea which. "Will you?"
Hermione's mind was racing. He is in love with me! There's no way I could think otherwise now. And I've never seen *anyone* in love this badly. If I say no, he may never recover. And what reason did she have to say no anyway? She wasn't interested in anyone, and if she was, it was him anyway. He was a close friend. It was probably him or Harry, and Harry was already going with Fleur. And she couldn't forget being in his arms just the previous day, or his hand on her shoulder, in fact, there were hundreds of things that she could think of. Everything pointed to one answer. "Yes. I will."
Ron looked like he was about to faint. He no longer seemed capable of speech. There were several seconds silence as he stood there, Hermione waited, and Harry began to smile. Then she said, "Well, lets get to dinner."
"You guys go ahead," replied Harry. "I'll be along shortly."
So as Ron and Hermione went off, Harry stepped back into the bus, where Dobby was cooking up his own dinner. "Dobby?"
Dobby leapt up. "Yes, Harry Potter?"
"Can you do robe measurements?"
"Oh yes, Harry Potter, yes! Dobby can do robe measurements! Does Harry Potter want Dobby to measure him?"
"In a bit, yes, but first, do you think you could measure Ron and Hermione without them knowing? I'm planning a bit of a surprise for them." Harry could only assume that was why Fleur wanted thier measurements.
"Yes, Harry Potter! Dobby will come to you tommorrow with measurements from his Wheezy and his Grainer!"
Several days later....
Lavender Brown caught a letter an owl that landed in front of her dropped. It flew on to Harry. She opened the parchement, and was not surprised to see it was a letter from Parvati:
My Dear Lavender,
I know I've been slacking not writing to you before, but there's been so much to do when you're the Quidditich captian. And it seems everyone left here at Hogwarts has gone fanatical. Maybe it's the nerves of waiting around to find out what happens so far away, I don't know. The Slytherins are none too pleased that one of the Gryffindors is champion, and they don't know who else to support, so they're trying to pretend it isn't taking place, or teasing the Hufflepuffs about Hannah Abbott's "unfaithfulness". But the Hufflepuffs know better then to believe them or the article last month that's thier source. Or maybe it's just their undying loyalty to each other.
Speaking of Hufflepuff, as Harry will no doubt tell you after reading my report, they massacred Ravenclaw today. Titus Leeford didn't know what hit him. I'm hoping Ravenclaw beats Slytherin, so they can beat Hufflepuff. I don't want to have to face Elizabeth Knatter again. And she's always hogging the pitch. I've got the normal team practices, plus seperate training for Kevin and Natalie, I'm using every second I can get, which is much less then I could wish.
Anyway, all my congratulations on Paul Gautier. You know, I think I'm falling for Dean. But how am I supposed to tell him that?
"Glad to see you're finally on," Lavender murmered to herself at this point.
And there's no time to think how, thanks to Quidditch. You know, I've stopped paying attention in Divination. Yep, me, one half of the Divine Duo, you can be angry at me if you want, but I can't see anything in the mist except broomsticks, and I can't forsee whether we'll win or not because you can't forsee how will happen if you want it to happen a certain way really badly.
Gotta go, time to train Kevin and Natalie.
Yours,
Parvati
Lavender smiled to herself and she refolded the letter and stuck it in her pocket. Briefly she wondered what could be keeping Paul. Then she spotted him entering.
"Sorry I'm late. Ze Yule Ball was announced yestairday, and sevairel girls weesh 'o go weeth me."
"I wouldn't mind," said Lavender. She already knew Paul's reponse. It was, "Good, we'll go togethair."
She and Paul communicated this way very smoothly. They had not actually "gotten together", but they were acting and treating each other like they had anyway. They had already known they would be going to the Yule Ball together, this was merely thier way of confirming it. They would officially take the plunge whenever they wanted to.
"Hey!" Pansy Parkinson turned as Romulus called after her. "Yule Ball! Want to come with me?"
She considered briefly. "Sure!"
"Wonderful!"
She continued on, pleased. Romulus did seem to take an interest in her, which was good. If he wanted marriage(and given the Metliks' reputation, he just might), that was even better. So what if he was American? A girl like her had to take what she could get. And the Metliks were a very good family. True, there was the chance they hadn't been under Imperius curse, but that was a calculable risk.
Of course, he couldn't give Pansy what she really wanted. But she had known well since she was young that she could never have that anyway.
Some days after that...
The other tried to ignored Pansy as she cursed for the 100th time. She also cast a glare at Morgana Nott, who did not look up from her own cauldron.
It was another day of lessons, and they were in Double Potions. From early on it had been unspoken agreement that Harry worked with Ron, Hermione worked with Lavender, Pansy worked with Millicent, and Morgana worked alone.
But the previous morning Millicent had had a family emergency, and she was en route back to England, and it was unlikely she would be returning to Beauxbatons. Now Pansy was without a partner and lacking Morgana's skill in the subject, was not doing too well. And Morgana prefered to laugh at Pansy then help her.
"So much for Intrahouse loyalty," commented Lavender to Sally-Anne as they broke for lunch.
"She's a mystery to me." said Sally-Anne. "You watch how she behaves, you'll see she's a Slytherin through and through-"
"That's quite a conclusion." noted Lavender.
"Why d'you think I'm a Ravenclaw?" Before Lavender could say anything to this, Sally-Anne continued, "But she hates everyone. I think she really was Death Eater against her will, but there's definitly more to the story then she says, or Snape said at the Trials."
At this point Ernie came up to them, looking very nervous. "Sally-Anne? Could I speak with you alone for a second?"
Lavender burst into giggles. It was painfully obvious just what Ernie wanted.
Hannah watched carefully as Ernie took Sally-Anne to the side. Early on, she had decided that she would wait until either Ernie or Justin got a date, then ask the other one. It was a simple way of getting a date without having to worry about romance, and might even squash the rumors about her and Alfred if she was lucky.
They parted ways, Ernie was grinning broadly. Hannah moved over to him. "What was that all about?"
"I got her to go with me to the Yule Ball." He didn't look over at Hannah; he was watching Sally- Anne go.
Settled, then. She'd go with Justin. She walk over to him right now and-
"Woohoo!" Justin came bolting up to her and Ernie. "I did it! I'm going with Sappho!"
She congratulated him, and she was happy for him. If both Ernie and Justin wanted to go with other people, well, who was she to stop them? She'd just have to find a date somewhere else.
They were halfway across the grounds when Madeline Claudel came running over. Morgana ran out to meet her. "Sal-loo!"
"Salut!" They rubbed thier cheeks together in greeting. "I've got us both dates. Yours will be a blind one."
So even Morgana had a date now. Lavender had Paul, Hermione had Ron, Pansy had her equivelent from New York State, Sally-Anne had Ernie, Millicent wasn't around and therefore wouldn't need one, and Lisa had confided to Lavender, Sally-Anne, and Hannah that she was intending to ask Terry. And with Harry going with Fleur, that left no prospective dates amoung her classmates.
Hannah dropped behind as they continued across the grounds, walking slowly to allow the New York State students to catch up with her. She knew well Max would almost certianly being going with Francisca, and Alfred probably also had a date already(this upset her, she didn't want Alfred going with someone he barely knew), but if she needed to find a date amoung foreign students, the Americans seemed the best place to start.
Within minutes, she was walking alongside Alfred. "Al, you know about the Yule Ball?"
"Yes."
"Any of you not have a date yet?"
Sappho answered. "Everyone has a date, except Alfred here. Why don't you go with him?"
"Well," started Hannah, "With the media going on about us, I thought we shouldn't-"
"Didn't you read the articles from last Tournament? That didn't help Potter and Granger any."
For a moment Hannah was about to protest again, but then she thought of Alfred having to go with some starstruck Beauxbatons girl. For reasons she couldn't quite fathom, she really didn't want that. "Okay, then."
Now if she could just get Sally-Anne off her case...
And still more days after that, after lessons...
"You guys go ahead." Terry told the others when they were about to head for dinner. "I'll join you later."
"This is your chance to ask him," Sally-Anne reminded Lisa, and Lisa nodded. "Just a second, I'll be along in a minute or so." Lavender began giggling, but Hermione shushed her.
Lisa watched as they exited. The minute the door swung shut after them, she went up the stairs, towards the third floor where the boys slept.
She emerged to see Terry leaning over a brass candlebra with nine holders. There was a single unlit candle on the end, and he was holding a lit candle. As she watched he used it to light the candle in the holder.
Lisa wasn't sure what to do. She had known that Terry was a practising Jew, of course. But she only knew the basics of what that meant from Muggle Studies. Should she leave?
Terry was reciting a prayer in some foreign language. She he looked up and saw her. He smiled. "Come in."
She entered and knelt down next to him. She opened her mouth the ask him to the Ball, but instead she asked, "What were you doing?"
"Today," he started to explain. "Is the first day of Hanukkah. It celebrates a thing that happen two- thousand years ago. We," and she knew by "we" he meant the Jewish people, "were recovering from extreme persecution, and we had no oil to light the Menorah, or perpetual light. We found a single flask of oil, only enough to last one day. But it burned eight days, long enough to make new oil."
"A wizard could have done that," Lisa couldn't help but point out.
"That might be true, but why would one? It could only have been God's work." He said this with so much certianty Lisa did not respond.
There was silence for several moments, he continued. "Today a Menorah is this." He gestured to the candlebra. "Tonight I lit a single candle. Tomorrow night I will light two candles, the night after that three, and so forth."
"I remember my father proposed to my mother on the first day of Hanukkah. And his father proposed to his mother on the first day of Hanukkah as well."
"And did his father?" asked Lisa.
Terry's reaction stunned her. His expression darkened, and he said with a strange bitterness, "He might have. I don't know that much about him, except the way he died."
"And how was that?" she wasn't sure she should ask, but she did anyway. She couldn't believe she knew this little about Terry.
He heaved a heavy sigh. "It's a long story."
"I've got time."
"So...you know about Grindelwald and the Muggle Holocaust, right?" She nodded. "The wizards knew about it, of course, long before the Muggles did. And that presented them with a dilemma. They couldn't just sit aside and do nothing, but nor could they do anything without risking exposing themselves. In the end the Ministries of the world were too busy debating to take any action, save one. They authorized the sending of over a hundred volunteers-I think Dumbledore was one of them- into Eastern Europe. They were to scout it up and down, and look for Jewish Muggle-born witches and wizards, and get them and thier families to safety."
"But they faced a problem when they found the Muggle-borns. Most of the families did not believe they were in any danger. Most of them accepted that thier children were witches and wizards, because, like all Muggle-born witches and wizards, they had made things happen without meaning to. And most of them allowed thier children to leave, to be trained in magic if nothing else. But most refused to leave themselves."
"The volunteers saved nearly two-hundred children in this manner. But most of them were without parents, and there was no place for them to go. They were spilt up, sent to schools around the globe. Ten of them were sent to Hogwarts. All four of my grandparents were amoung these ten."
"Just imagine it, Lisa. Seperated from their parents, in a land more alien then they could ever have imagined. And then the Holocaust came, and one by one, they got Ministry owls informing them thier parents had been taken off. We dread nothing worse then a Howler during breakfast. And not one of thier parents were alive when the war ended. They had noone but each other."
"The ten of them banded together. The first year, there were four of them, and two were in Gryffindor and the other two in Slytherin, they never cared. They married amoung each other, and so did thier children. My parents."
There was silence again, then he added, "But I don't think you came up here to hear about my family."
Lisa's mind was still reeling, but she managed, "I came up here to ask you to the Yule Ball."
She was relieved by his broad smile. "I don't usually get Hanukkah presents. It's a mark of respect for my great-grandparents. But you've just given me one worth all eight days. I accept."
That same evening, in Diagon Alley...
Fleur Delacour pulled the violet elvenfabric out of the tub of glowing-gel and scrutinized it very carefully, lowering the lighting to see the effects better. After a second or so, she shook her head and dropped it back in, making sure it was covered completely.
She looked up as Hedwig came flying into her bedroom, several pieces of parchment tied to her leg. Pulling them off, she was pleased to see three were robe measurements. Running through Hermione's, she cast a look at the soaking elvenfabric. Would it be enough? She thought it would. Coming apon Ron's measurements, she made several calculations on a piece of parchement and filled out a rush-delivery order for some crushed velvet. She cast a glance at the bottle-green satin, lying next to half-finished robes of blue-grey silk. They'd had a lot of it, and secretly, she had always thought Harry looked very cute in bottle-green.
The last was a letter from Harry. In it he confessed he had no idea what the measurements meant. This vexed her. They weren't that hard to understand, she'd gotten the hang of them in no time when she had began working for Madam Malkin.
That wasn't the only thing about Harry that had been vexing her lately. She'd known what it meant when she'd felt the attraction to him, she was quite used to that. But she'd never been attracted then anyone she was well acquainted with before. It'd been meet and make out with strangers-the ex-Beauxbatons student in Paris, the Quidditch captain at Hogwarts, the Flourish and Blotts clerk in Diagon Alley, and so on and so on. This was very pleasing to the Veela part of Fleur, but her human side did not enjoy it. And with each time she had kissed someone, her human part would fight back. She was still a virgin because of it;though she'd had close calls, she could never bring herself to go all the way with any man.
And that was another weird thing. Perhaps it was merely because she knew him, but when she contemplated the concept of kissing Harry, or of making love to him, the usual wave of revulsion that rose in her was completely absent. In it's place was...well, she could not describe the feeling, but it was one she'd never felt before.
When it came to that, with other men, it had been out of sight, out of mind. After all, they were all the same to the Veela part of her, and the human part of her hated them. But not a day passed without her thinking of Harry, and even his letter sent her heart pounding.
She placed the letter on the table next to the bolts of fabric, sent Talthybius off with the order and a plea to hurry, and headed down to the street for a walk.
It had become a nightly custom of hers, to take a stroll down Diagon Alley, watching as the stores closed. She passed the already dark Quality Quidditch Supplies, Flourish and Blotts as it chased the remaining customers out, the Apothecary, who had already closed and was tidying his shop up, and reached Ollivanders, which never closed.
She slipped between the buildings to the tiny area behind Ollivanders. Loose pieces of wood, pheonix feathers, unicorn hairs, and dragon heartstrings lay scattered about, inflaming her senses. She knelt down and picked up a broken pheonix feather. Her skin tingled as the magic entered her body.
She cleared her mind, concentrated on her grandmother. She thought about herself changing. She tried to imagine the sense of power her sister had wirrten to her about.
She lost all track of time, but it had grown dark before she finally gave up. Night after night since she had learned it was possible, she had attempted the transformation. She had never achieved it.