I was quickly glad-handed out the door and into the ballroom so my godmother could get down to whatever terrifying politicking she was up to. The Thomas guy reminded me that I still hadn't followed up on the Malfoy cousins thing, which Mavra had also mentioned.

"Harry!" Mathilda said, catching me as I walked in the door to the ballroom. She was wearing a little black dress with red accents and gold jewelry that momentarily made me forget all my other problems. One of the worst parts of school robes was that they left so little opportunity to appreciate how much growing up my girlfriend had been doing over the last year or two. "You look nice!" she said, taking in my own formal clothes with a bit of a leer, so I guess she felt the same way. "They said you beat me here?"

"One of my teachers was here, having a private meeting," I explained. "I think there might be a lot of guests tonight that are here for that kind of thing." She got it and did the mental calculation of what aurors were in the room. The Longbottoms hadn't made it this year, so they were few on the ground, especially ones we knew were allies. "She actually helped a bit, though," I shrugged, taking her arm and pulling her over to a side of the enormous ballroom covered in winter-themed decorations that didn't seem to be immediately covered in eavesdroppers. "Rita cornered me for an interview and asked me about my grandmother. Who's Professor McGonagall. I wasn't really doing okay."

"Oh? Oh! And she's never told you! Why?"

"I don't know. Apparently she really screwed up with my mom. Seems like 'cowardly' is the wrong choice for the head of Gryffindor, but I can't think of a better reason. I'm just hoping I can just try to have a nice time and figure out what to do about it later? You look amazing, by the way."

She smiled, doing a little twirl so I could see the whole dress, "So, dancing?"

"Let's," I said, escorting Mathilda to the dance floor.

We made it through two songs before the first problem presented itself. As we moved by a table with the Minister, Cornelius Fudge, I noticed that the portly little man was turning on the charm for an extremely thin woman in an aggressively-colorful dress that included a wide-brimmed hat with a veil. But the little skin that was visible was a pallid gray, and I couldn't help but hear her grit something at Fudge like a long-term smoker. His reply was much more clear, "Oh? Are you perhaps involved in Eldred Worple's study? I've had the opportunity to read some of his early notes for Blood Brothers, and it's fascinating stuff."

"I'm afraid not," the woman grated. "I spend most of my time on the continent. Though I'd be very interested if wizards wanted to spend more time with my family." Perfectly in time with her emphasis, she rotated her head just slightly further than a living human could, and I could make out Mavra's rheumy eyes through her veil giving me a close-lipped smirk. "If you'll excuse me, though, Minister, I have a meeting to get to."

"Mavra. The vampire from Egypt," I whispered to Mathilda. I guessed she hadn't been properly identified, or at least the British Ministry not informed, after her attack in Abu Simbel.

"What is going on, Harry?" she asked. "This is usually just British socialites. There are a lot of faces I don't recognize! And some I do! That's Mr. Ferro," she said, indicating a distinguished and imposing man whose age I couldn't quite place, holding court with several purebloods while smoking a pipe. "He owns more dragon breeding grounds than anyone else on the continent! But he usually hates parties. Dad's been trying to meet him for years."

"Did you want to go introduce yourself," I asked.

"Merlin, no! He's supposed to be terrifying. I'd rather he didn't know about me!"

A few dances later, while we were taking a break near the punch table, we noticed that Mr. Ferro excused himself to leave the room shortly after Mavra returned. "They're making alliances right under the Minister's nose," I explained, half-surprised the geas didn't try to stop me. I must have worked enough of it out from non-secrets for it not to count.

"Can we tell him? Can we tell anyone?" Mathilda asked, looking around.

"He's sitting with Umbridge, who probably isn't my biggest fan after last year," I explained, guiltily. "And I'm sure they have everything set up for deniability. It is Malfoy's house."

"It is," announced Maeve, sneaking up while I was tracking the dragon-breeder and Mavra. I glanced over and wasn't surprised to see her in a white-and-blue gown that was just slightly on the risque side for the rest of the gathering, low cut showing off too much skin and high skirt displaying long socks with Captain Planet characters on them. "And someone didn't read his invitation," she taunted. I didn't immediately try to pull out the invitation and figure out what she was talking about, so she huffed and explained, "No 'plus one' this year, Harry. You must have taken that for granted. If your girlfriend isn't here on someone else's invitation, then she's crashing."

"What's your point?" Mathilda asked. The Welsh-language insult was left off, but implied.

"Just that none of our guests would be breaking our hospitality should they… get a bit out of hand with you."

"Hell's bells, Maeve, can't you let it rest for one night?" I asked.

She shrugged, "We could have been friends, Harry. But since the two of you seem inclined to try to be my enemy, then all's fair."

"So can Malfoys invite people to the party, or just people imposing on their hospitality full-time?" I asked, catching Draco's eye and giving him a head tilt that I wanted him to come over.

He walked over escorting Pansy Parkinson, his ostensible betrothed, a pug-faced, dark-haired girl from Slytherin who was apparently the mean girl for her year. Well, that description was probably colored by how Hermione and even Millicent described her; she wasn't a traditional beauty by any estimation, but she would look perfectly fine if she didn't constantly look down her (admittedly small) nose at people. I figured Draco was looking for any distraction. "Can I be of service?" he asked.

"My invitation seems to have accidentally left off the plus one," I told him, actually checking the card in my pocket, not that Maeve could lie. "We were hoping you could tell Maeve here that Mathilda is welcome."

"You will not," Maeve instructed the kid who she'd driven out of his own house all summer.

Draco gave me a long-suffering look that I'd pulled him into my problems, then regarded Maeve with a look that I read as more tired of her shit than he was of his date's. "If Ms. Grimblehawk wasn't invited, she should have been turned away at the receiving room," he explained. "I'm not sure that it would reflect well on the Malfoy reputation if we allowed people to believe they were guests only to accuse them of trespassing later."

"And yet, technicalities," Maeve said, smugly, as if she had the upper hand.

"Yes, but I think there's a technical way to solve the problem," he drawled, giving me a look that was almost as mad as his two aunts. Before anyone could stop him, he announced to the room, "If I could have everyone's attention!"

As the music stopped and the dancers and rest of the guests turned to regard our little cluster by the refreshments, I hissed, "Draco, what are you–"

"Solving your problems," he whispered back, then announced, "We have a disagreement between my aunt Maeve and Mathilda of the Grimblehawk family. Both of them are sixth-years at Hogwarts. I suggest they solve it in the traditional way, and give us all a demonstration of the practical instruction they've been receiving."

"Honor duel!" I heard being whispered through the crowd.

Lucius Malfoy strode over, eyes half-lidded and trying to work out what was going on from Maeve looking like Draco had let the air out of her sails, Mathilda still looking pissed, and me probably looking at Draco like he was crazy. "What is the disagreement?"

"Dresden received an invitation with no plus one, which he believes is an accidental omission. My dear aunt insists that Grimblehawk is, therefore, party crashing and does not want a retroactive invitation to be extended," Draco summed up.

The older Malfoy got the same look on his face that Draco had on hearing the problem. I wondered if Maeve and Bellatrix were just playing these stupid games of trivial technicalities to be awful all the time. Like, "I'm sorry, Draco, it is precisely 8:01 and you were told that breakfast was at 8:00 therefore I have taken all the scones!" The head of the house looked to Maeve, "And you won't relent?" She shook her head. "Very well." He turned to the party and announced, "Clear a space! Dobby!" To the house elf who popped in, he ordered, "Bring out the dueling platform and set it up in the middle of the room."

The elf bowed his agreement and soon enough the ballroom floor had a long platform seven feet wide and thirty long, made of rune-etched seven-inch-high wooden sections.

"Are you each familiar with the rules?" Malfoy asked. Both nodded and I squeezed Mathilda's hand as she took her end of the platform. We'd had a whispered conversation in the little time it took to set up, and were hoping that Maeve couldn't really show off her true powers without tipping her hand to the Ministry. "Standard rules for an honor duel: no illegal spells; unconsciousness, leaving the platform, or verbal submission to decide the loser. If Ms. Grimblehawk wins, she is confirmed as a guest, if she loses, she will head home."

"That's quite odd," I realized that Fudge and Umbridge were a few feet away, and he had directed his statement to me. Umbridge was actually wearing something understated for her, which was a dark pink robelike gown.

"Maeve got touchy that they forgot to put a plus one on my invitation," I explained, shrugging.

"Hmph. Hopefully her breeding will out eventually," Umbridge frowned. I suspected that the plump, conservative witch only tolerated Maeve at all because she was ostensibly a Malfoy, and would hate her with the power of a million suns if she just met her on the street.

Proving that there were several areas where my girlfriend's command over magic was way better than mine, Mathilda quickly transfigured her fairly tight skirt into something looser and conjured and put on a simple red tunic to prevent any wardrobe malfunctions from her bodice. For her part, Maeve's skirt was already aggressively slit so she could move in it, and she didn't seem worried about her top. They both took dueling stances. Mathilda favored a simple side-on stance with her wand held up and forward, almost like a fencing starting guard. Maeve leaned forward, a leg back, and her wand held behind her, hidden.

"Wards active," Lucius Malfoy announced, gesturing with his wand, and the runes on the platform lit as the air bounding the platform shimmered, containing any spells from hitting the bystanders or room. "Ready? Bow." They did, very slightly. "Begin!"

I wasn't surprised that Maeve led off quickly with a "Glacius!" to generate a blast of frost. In fact, many of her "spells" seemed to use ice or blasts of cold wind. All her other spells seemed to be mostly to try to herd Mathilda rather than hit, and they dissolved oddly at the dueling wards, making me suspect they were glamor that wouldn't do much if they landed. However some crunched at the edge, probably concealing very real shards of ice. She didn't bother to shield, simply dodging everything and "counterspelling" jinxes that hit (I suspected she was somewhat magic resistant, and just choosing to be hit by the weaker spells to pretend to undo them quickly).

Meanwhile, Mathilda had stepped up her combat spells. She didn't have my deep well of magical stamina, so she couldn't just throw out her best spells over and over like I could. Instead, she still mixed in a bunch of first-year and second-year jinxes but broke out stunners and bolts of fire when she had the opportunity. I'd drilled hard with her over the past few months so her shields were fast and solid to both objects and magic. I saw Maeve frown the first time she realized her hidden ice darts weren't going to slide through.

Overall, it was a fairly even fight. Mathilda had been in multiple fights against magical beasts and dark wizards and had been taking her defense training seriously. She spent a lot of time dodging, shielded when she had to, and lobbed a bunch of pretty colors downrange with decent accuracy. The crowd seemed to enjoy it, probably much more than they'd have liked my own style of turtling behind a powerful shield and throwing out little but stunners or gouts of fire.

But if it was even, it was only because Maeve was very constrained by the role she was playing. She was dodging spells just short of preternaturally fast, couldn't use that speed to just run up and take the fight physical, and probably couldn't use most of her magical arsenal because she wouldn't be able to disguise it as wizard magic in front of the crowd. There were a couple of moments where she seemed to get frustrated at that fact and barely held back from doing something inexplicable.

And the temperature was dropping even out in the room, and subtle frost patterns were spreading from Maeve's side of the platform. I noticed Mathilda looking a little confused, and I realized that Maeve must be amping up her aura to affect her mind. Well, if she was cheating… I waited for it to look like Mathilda was mostly out of it, and Maeve was winding up a big hit, clenched my hand around my magic ring, and whispered, "Libero."

The flashlight spell was nice, the secret messages were cool, but the real selling point of the rings I'd made was that the wearers could cast soulfire spells on each other through them. Voldemort and his jolly band were way too free with the imperius and possession, and it was nice to be able to clear that without even having to land a spell at range. And because it used protean charms, it skipped right past the dueling wards through the link.

Fortunately, whatever aura Maeve was pouring out was well within the power of the libertas to clear, and Mathilda suddenly snapped from seemingly-drunk to perfectly alert, sidestepped the ultra-cold blast of ice (which might have actually cut her up or given her frostbite, because Maeve was the worst), and yelled, "Flipendo!"

Already assuming she was the winner, Maeve couldn't quite dodge the knockback jinx. I actually noticed a moment of hesitation before she flung herself off the platform, as if she took a moment to realize that everyone would notice if she just no-sold the spell with no explanation.

I hated magic-resistant targets so much. I decided if I ever had to fight Maeve for real (and it seemed more and more likely every day), I wasn't going to mess around with spells. I was coming with iron.

"An excellent showing from both of our young witches!" the senior Malfoy announced. "Clearly, our NEWT examiners have a lot to look forward to next year. Ms. Grimblehawk, thank you for being a guest of the Malfoy household and putting on such an excellent demonstration. Thank you as well to my half-sister, Maeve, for her own demonstration of dueling skills."

There was a great deal of applause as Mathilda stepped down and leaned against me exhausted and freezing, but still brimming with the confidence of the libertas, or maybe just her own irrepressibility. "Who's next? That vampire? Is Nott here? I'll fight 'em all!"

"You did great, baby," I told her. "But maybe punch and something to eat before your next fight?"

"Oh! Yeah. That sounds nice," she leaned against me, grinning. "Right in her pretty gob! I said I would!" She just shook her head and looked across the room at Maeve who was creating a little patch of frost on the floor staring daggers at us. "Barmy ferret."