Recommendation: This chapter's recommended fic is "A Long Journey Home" by Rakeesh. One of the best FemHarry fics out there, it probably influenced both my choice of the name "Jasmine" and some of my characterizations. Jasmine Potter, the Girl Who Won, has had a much longer and more interesting life than her best friends ever realized. At the very least, read chapters 1 and 8!
Chapter 11 - Love and Dancing
Tuesday, December 22, 1994, Late Evening.
Hermione stayed up all night reading Pureheart's The Power of Love: Love is Never Dangerous until late in the morning, then fell asleep with it on her chest and remained that way until nearly dinner. Fortunately she had spelled her bed curtains so only Jasmine could open them — this ensured that no one else caught her with the book, but allowed Jasmine to know where she was. It was a happy but especially frizzy Hermione who finally made her way down to dinner that evening.
"Hermione," Ginny started, a bit unsure about what she was going to ask, "I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but, uh, what happened to your hair?"
"I was wondering about that too," Neville added, "but I was worried about sounding like a prat for asking." Suddenly forced to duck as Ginny threw a crisp at him, Neville just grinned at her.
Sighing in annoyance, Hermione said, "I don't know. It happens sometimes that my hair gets even bushier and frizzier than normal. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with humidity — today, for example, it's not especially humid at all. Last night I didn't do anything different except for staying up late reading instead of practicing spell work as usual."
"It seems to happen more often when you get up from bed," Jasmine observed, "but I have seen it other times as well. I can't think of anything in common about it all, though."
Neville shrugged, not knowing anything about hair care except "wash, then dry." Ginny looked thoughtful and resolved to pay a bit more attention in the future. I wonder if mum has any books at home that deal with common or even uncommon hair care problems? she thought to herself.
At the end of dancing lessons that night, Hermione cautiously approached Jasmine and said, "Jas, I'd like to make a suggestion. But please don't freak out over it."
Jasmine was instantly on her guard, though she knew she shouldn't be. Consciously trying to relax, she replied, "OK, Hermione. I'll be calm. What is it?"
"Well," she continued, "I was thinking about how much you're benefiting from dancing here with Neville in the evenings, and it occurred to me... well... it's just... why don't we ask Viktor to join us for the last two evenings? I have to look good for the opening of the ball as well, and a little practice with Viktor would help me a lot. But I don't want to do it in secret. I want to do it here, with all of you, so he can meet you, too."
Jasmine looked into the face of her girlfriend, so obviously worried that her request would produce a bad reaction. She wished she could take the witch into her arms to reassure her, but she couldn't with Ginny standing right there, watching. Instead, she feigned indecision and looked over at Neville, who shrugged. She smiled, knowing that he was insisting that she make the decision, then turned to their ginger friend. "What do you think, Ginny?"
Ginny seemed to be surprised that her opinion was being asked for, but after only a moment's hesitation she said, "I don't have a problem with it. Might be nice to meet him, at least." She then added with a smirk, "It'll sure annoy Ron that he refused to practice dancing with us!"
Looking back at her girlfriend, Jasmine smiled and said, "I think it's a great idea. You're right, Hermione, you will be better off if you get in some practice with him. And it's also good for the rest of us to get to meet him. I know you two are only going to the ball as friends, but Neville, Ginny, and I ought to look him over to make sure he's worthy of that honor." Tapping her chin, she tried to look thoughtful and wise before adding, "I may have to brush up on my shovel speech, come to think of it."
Hermione's look of outrage was only half in jest as she proceeded to punch Jasmine in the arm. "You! Don't you dare! I'll have you know Viktor Krum is a perfect gentleman! I won't let you give him the wrong impression about us — this tournament is supposed to foster international understanding and cooperation, not give you an excuse to start an international incident!"
Laughing, Jasmine tried to hide behind Neville to escape Hermione's tirade. "C'mon, Neville, let's get your culture and tradition lesson going before Hermione ensures that I spend the Yule Ball in the hospital wing..."
Wednesday, December 23, 1994, Morning.
Jasmine prevented Hermione from staying up all night reading again, successfully arguing that flipping her wake/sleep schedule like that would only end up causing her trouble in the long run. Hermione hated being denied the chance to once again read in private for several hours, but she reluctantly had to agree that it was better to halt the slide toward a nocturnal schedule now — she'd never get to classes when they restarted in a few weeks if she allowed herself to start sleeping all day and working all night.
As a result, she was awake and present in the Great Hall for breakfast on Wednesday, keeping an eye out for Viktor Krum. As he walked in, she was able to catch his attention and call him over.
When Viktor arrived at the Gryffindor table, Hermione introduced him to her three friends and explained how they had been practicing dancing since shortly after the Yule Ball had been announced. "I'm sure you're already brilliant at dancing, Viktor, but I thought it would be good if the two of us had some time to practice with each other. Since you have to open the ball as a champion, all eyes will be on you — well, on us I guess — so we want to look our best. Also, I thought it might be a good chance for you to get to know my friends a bit, including a fellow champion."
Looking back and forth between the four Hogwarts students, Viktor's ever-present scowl slowly morphed into a halfway neutral expression which Jasmine assumed might count as happiness. "Ja," he said to Hermione, "Sounds like goot idea. You tell me ven and vere, and I be there, ja?"
"Oh, thanks Viktor! It'll be ever so much fun. It would be easiest, I think, for you to meet me outside the Gryffindor common room at 8PM, and I'll take you there."
"Would you like to join us for breakfast, Viktor," Neville asked, "since you're already over here anyway?"
Viktor's face almost cracked into a smile at that before he sat down next to Hermione and started dishing up a plate for himself. The five students spent the rest of breakfast talking, laughing, and getting to know each other. Jasmine noticed that as time passed, Viktor's problems with English seemed to disappear. It was curious, to say the least — she wondered if anyone else had noticed, but she decided to hold her tongue and ask later when they all had some privacy.
All the while, a blue-eyed, blonde part-Veela watched from the Ravenclaw table. It had become clear to all that whatever disagreement had separated Jasmine and Hermione had been patched up. What was clear only to Fleur was that the bond between the two witches had changed. It was now stronger and more harmonious than it had been even shortly before the fight. Something had changed to not only resolve their argument, but actually improve their relationship.
She still couldn't tell what was going on, though. She was definitely going to have to write that letter home. The problem was in figuring out what exactly to say and how to explain her impressions.
Wednesday, December 23, 1994, Late Afternoon.
Once again sequestered behind her bed curtains, Hermione started looking back over the notes she had taken from reading The Power of Love. There was still a lot to read, but she thought she had the gist of Pureheart's basic ideas. First, she argued that love is the most powerful force in the world and sex is a close second. Love unites on the emotional, psychological, and spiritual planes while sex merges the partners on the physical plane. When love and sex are brought together, their power is several orders of magnitude greater than either alone.
Worth remembering, Hermione thought, though I don't know about holding classes on "The Power of Sex" in Hogwarts!
Second, Pureheart argued that true love must be encouraged, even when it takes non-traditional forms. The more love there was in society, the better off everyone would be. Pureheart seemed to think that more sex would be good, too, because too many sexually repressed people walking around was a disaster waiting to happen. So long as the love and sex were consensual, she argued, they could only be constructive rather than destructive, regardless of what traditions or norms had to say.
Even muggles have recognized the positive benefits of a healthy sex life, observed Hermione as she checked her notes. This sounds an awful lot like the 1960s slogan "Make Love, Not War," and the book was written much, much earlier.
Pureheart's arguments against the purebloods' rejection of non-traditional relationships were also easy to follow. The purebloods' main concern was that sex should only be for procreation in order to produce heirs. If a relationship couldn't produce heirs, or if it produced children with uncertain lineage, then that relationship should be banned as contrary to the needs of pureblood society.
But Pureheart says there's magic that enables procreation without sex, Hermione noted. It's complicated and might take several attempts to succeed, but it is possible. It's just not widely known — perhaps because so many purebloods don't want it to be common knowledge? So smart witches could still have children with each other, and those children would truly be the offspring of both witches. Hermione turned slightly pink at the personal implications of that, not sure if she should be thinking too much about such things.
Perhaps more important were the hundreds of pages of examples in which Pureheart demonstrated that not just love, but sex, too, could play an important role in magic. Especially for witches, Hermione considered, because apparently there's a lot of ritual magic that is essentially "feminine" in nature without any need for a masculine component. Pureheart speculates that this might be why ritual magic has fallen out of favor and labeled "Dark" at times — male leaders of magical society have wanted to suppress and demonize magic which they can't participate in or control.
According to the introduction to this section of the book, ritual magic worked best when performed while being mindful of the ancient gods or goddesses. Opinion was divided on whether the ancient gods and goddesses were real individuals, impersonal forces of nature, or something else, but there was no denying that the power of ritual magic could be greatly increased by invoking or at least respecting the appropriate deities.
Some of the magic and rituals which Pureheart described were beyond Hermione's ability to understand. Some of them made her cheeks flush scarlet — especially the accompanying illustrations. Detailed, moving illustrations. She had once found an illustrated sex manual in her parent's bedroom (under the bed, in a box, buried under clothes — she had been incredibly nosey, even at a young age), but that book had nothing on this!
She found it fascinating... perhaps too fascinating, as a matter of fact, because it was starting to give her ideas, and those ideas were distracting her. Hermione always wanted to understand the theory and history behind spells before trying them out practically: she was convinced that the better she understood a spell, the more likely she would be to get it right and the more control she felt she had.
When it came to ritual magic, however, she was experiencing strong temptations to try things out well before she fully understood the theory. The logical part of her brain desired understanding and control, but the rest of her, especially her body, was starting to demand something else. It was... distracting. She wasn't sure how she was going to learn all this if her body and hormones kept getting in the way.
And right now, Hermione lamented, at this moment, my hormones seem to be winning...
Wednesday, December 23, 1994, Evening.
Still flushed from her earlier activity, Hermione stepped out of the Gryffindor portrait hole to wait for Viktor but found that he was already there. "Oh, Viktor! You're here. Am I late? I'm sorry! Were you waiting long? Did you have any trouble finding us?"
"No, I just arrived," he replied, amused by her nervous babbling, "And ve are both early."
"Good," Hermione said with a relieved smile. "Let's get going." Along the way they met Jasmine, who was waiting at a corner in the corridors. She pulled out the map, verified that they were alone, and led the others to the commandeered classroom where Ginny and Neville were already waiting. Along the way, she explained to Viktor that right after the drawing of the names from the Triwizard Cup, she and Hermione had chosen this classroom as a place where they could study and practice for the tournament. None of the staff had ever offered her anything, so they knew that they'd be on their own in their efforts to keep Jasmine alive. As usual.
Once in the classroom, everyone exchanged formal greetings. This surprised Viktor because he hadn't expected this sort of behavior from this group — it was more formal and refined than what he had seen even among the Slytherins, and they were deliberately putting on airs. He was especially surprised by the fact that Hermione, a muggleborn student, was both familiar and proficient with such customs.
"Really?" asked Jasmine when he told them this. "Sounds like we'll all be in good shape for the Yule Ball, then. The Slytherins shouldn't be able to complain that we lack the sort of culture and refinement that these types of events demand."
With that, Neville began organizing the dancing practice. The pairings were primarily Neville/Jasmine and Viktor/Hermione for obvious reasons, but since they had an odd number of people, Neville made sure there was plenty of switching to ensure that everyone got some time to practice. This also gave everyone experience with the customs surrounding switching off partners in the middle of a dance, and the boys got in practice with how to ask a girl if she would be willing to dance with them.
In a move worthy of a Slytherin, Neville at one point arranged to have Hermione paired off with Jasmine for some dancing. This thrilled the pair at first, because they sadly hadn't had any opportunity to dance together thus far; but it also worried them because there were two people present who didn't know their secret. They tried to laugh it off as a joke while still enjoying it while they could, but they weren't sure how successful they were.
Afterwards they invited Viktor to act as a sort of guest lecturer on magical customs and traditions. The Hogwarts students listed off the sorts of things they had already addressed and wondered what differences there were between Britain and Bulgaria. As it turned out, there weren't all that many — most were minor details that many people would scarcely notice, suggesting that magical communities in different nations had more in common than the students previously realized.
While they were getting ready to leave, Jasmine stepped up to address Viktor. "Say, Viktor, I hope you don't mind, but I have a question I'd like to ask you. It might be a bit personal, but I hope you'll answer it anyway." Hermione suddenly looked nervous, convinced that Jasmine was about to do something stupid and spark a war or something.
Before she could intervene, though, Viktor responded, "Ja, you can ask, and I'll answer if I can."
Smiling, Jasmine proceeded ahead, ignoring the plaintive looks and desperate arm waving from Hermione, who was standing behind Viktor. "All the time you've been here at Hogwarts, you've barely ever shifted your face out of a scowl, and you've struggled to express yourself in basic English. Tonight, though, your face has had dozens of expressions, most of them happy, and you've spoken English almost perfectly — just a bit of an accent, really. What gives?"
The others, including Hermione, stood there stunned at what Jasmine had said. Apparently none of them had given any thought to the differences in Viktor's behavior. The only ones not stunned were Jasmine, who stood there with crossed arms and a self-satisfied grin, and Viktor, who suddenly barked with laughter.
"Ha! Very gut! Ven did you first notice?"
Jasmine answered, "This morning at breakfast your English shifted a little during our conversation. I decided then that I wanted to ask you about it, but I thought it best to wait until tonight when we had some privacy."
Viktor smiled even more broadly before continuing, "Excellent! I vas vondering if anyone vould catch me. I vear a mask most of the time. I play what the Americans vould call a "dumb jock," a sports star with rocks in my head. Early on in school I found that many expected that of me. I tried to show them the truth, but my academic achievements were ignored, so I decided to play into their assumptions. I let people see vat they expect, and so people underestimate me. I still come in near the top of my class at Durmstrang, but hardly anyone notices. Over time, I have found that people tend to reveal more ven I'm around because of how little they regard my mind. I hide in plain sight and have a big advantage over opponents."
Neville, Ginny, and especially Hermione looked upon Viktor with far greater admiration and respect than they had previously. They hadn't exactly categorized him as a "dumb jock" before, but they also hadn't expected him to be an academic powerhouse — or to be such a sneaky observer of human nature.
"I'm extremely honored that you were willing to take off your mask for us," Jasmine said as she held out her hand. "I'm also honored to meet the real Viktor Krum."
He took her hand and shook it firmly, saying, "And the real Viktor Krum is honored to meet the real Jasmine Potter, not some fictional Girl Who Lived." Jasmine's smile got so wide that it threatened to break her face — she could count on two hands the number of people who treated her as "Just Jasmine" rather than as some mythical heroine. That Viktor could recognize the importance of this without having to be told was perhaps the most impressive thing he'd said or done, in her opinion.
Following Jasmine's lead, the others also stepped up to formally greet the "real" Viktor Krum, even Hermione. Viktor had already shown her more of the real him than he typically showed most people, but he still hadn't entirely taken off his mask for her before that evening.
When the group arrived at the portrait before the Gryffindor common room, Viktor bowed and kissed the hands of all three girls in turn. He then pivoted to address Neville, who made a great show of hurriedly putting both hands out of reach behind his back. With a quirk of a smile, the Bulgarian clicked his heels together and inclined his head; Neville grinned and made his own half-bow in return. "Thank you, all of you," Viktor said, "for a vonderful evening. I had more fun than any other time here at Hogwarts. I look forward to doing it again tomorrow."
Thursday, December 24, 1994, Morning.
During breakfast on the morning of Christmas Eve, Hedwig swooped into the Great Hall carrying a letter and a tiny package. Instead of landing in front of Jasmine, as was her usual practice, she landed in front of Hermione. "Oh, Hedwig, do you have a response from my parents?"
Preck! Preck!
Untying the letter and package, she offered a rasher of bacon to Jasmine's snowy owl. "Thanks, Hedwig, I really appreciate this."
Looking across at his friend, Neville was curious about what she had received. "I get that that's a letter from your parents, Hermione, but what's with the little box?"
"Oh, we found these in Diagon Alley the summer before my third year," she answered. "They're self-shrinking boxes. My parents can't do magic, obviously, so they can't shrink or enlarge packages like I can. That makes it hard to send back and forth bulky things or larger quantities. These magical boxes, though, are perfect — just fill them, seal the lid, and they automatically shrink! Their weight is reduced proportionally, too. On the other end, you only need to take the lid off, and they enlarge with all their contents."
"Neat," said Ginny. "I'll bet they're popular with squibs and muggleborn. Most wizards and witches probably wouldn't think twice to apply their own shrinking and enlargement charms. Those charms are basic enough that even weak wizards and witches can do them easily."
"You're probably right, Gin," Hermione said. "Come to think of it, that's probably why these boxes were so cheap — not enough demand. Oh, well, I'm just glad that we found them. They've made sending things back and forth with my parents ever so much easier."
While her friends continued with their breakfasts, Hermione opened the letter to see what her parents had to say. After a few minutes she smiled sadly, put it away, and stood up from the table. Jasmine looked at her quizzically, as if to say, Are you alright? Hermione shook her head. I'll be fine, don't worry about it.
Looking at the others, Hermione announced, "This package likely contains Christmas presents, so I'm going to take it up to my dorm now. I'll probably be studying for the rest of the day, so I may not see some of you until dancing practice this evening. Bye!"
Hermione didn't quite run out of the hall, but she walked quickly enough to elicit some surprise from her friends. Jasmine suspected that her behavior was related to whatever her parents had written in that letter, and she resolved to ask Hermione about it when she got the chance. She also repeated her promise to herself to do something to improve Hermione's relationship with her parents.
If there was anything she could do to ensure that Hermione didn't lose her family, Jasmine was determined to do it. She knew how lonely life was without family.
Thursday, December 24, 1994, Afternoon.
Once again, Hermione Granger attempted to learn from Pureheart's The Power of Love without becoming too distracted. This time, she had a plan: instead of reading about all the magic and rituals which were clearly playing havoc with her hormones, she would focus on the history of non-traditional relationships in the magical communities. She hadn't had trouble with the argument and explanation sections of the book, so she was optimistic that she could deal with the history portion without having to take personal breaks for tension relief.
If anything, the history of non-traditional, loving relationships — especially those involving witches — turned out to be more fascinating than the arguments about the propriety of such relationships. I had no idea that so many famous witches were involved with other witches! Hermione thought. Well, technically I should say "were probably involved" since we have no direct evidence. If the evidence ever existed, it surely would have been covered up to prevent those witches from becoming the wrong sorts of role models. But the circumstantial evidence is so clear and obvious if you just look at it! It's a shame that we don't learn any of this in Binns' class, but I can't imagine that any of it would go over too well anyway.
Sadly, it seemed that the preference of so many witches in the past for the company of other witches had played a role in the development of witch hunts and anti-magic activity among muggles. If those witches had settled down with wizards and conformed to what the muggles expected, they wouldn't have attracted so much attention to themselves or caused muggles to blame magic for their "indecency." It's sad that instead of celebrating and encouraging their differences when magicals separated from muggles, magical governments continued to ruthlessly enforce muggle standards of behavior.
Hermione stopped short when she realized the tragic irony of the situation. The purebloods who hate muggles and muggleborn are also promoting an anti-gay policy which has no basis in anything other than old muggle prejudices — prejudices which led to the witch hunts that the same purebloods cite as a reason to hate muggles!
She wasn't sure if she should laugh or cry at that. It made the persecution of gays and lesbians in the magical community even more stupid and senseless, but because of the tendency of wizards and witches to simply ignore whatever contradicts their preferred beliefs, she despaired at the possibility at getting any of them to even recognize the problem, much less change their opinions.
It all seemed so hopeless sometimes, but Hermione remembered that she wasn't alone in this. Doing the impossible is what Jasmine is known for, and we need to make changes if she and I are going to have a happy future together. I can't give up!
It didn't occur to her how odd it would seem to an observer that she kept thinking of having a long future with Jasmine despite the fact that they had been together barely two weeks. By now, though, such thoughts were becoming so natural and automatic that she tended to accept them without question.
Thursday, December 24, 1994, Evening.
The four Gryffindors and the Bulgarian champion couldn't be with their families on Christmas Eve, but they still had a good time dancing and enjoying one another's company. It wasn't as good as being home, but it was as close as they could reasonably make it.
Everyone felt like they had practiced enough for the Yule Ball, so the dancing they did was more for fun. Instead of the waltzes and other traditional music they expected to dance to at the ball, Neville tuned the Wizarding Wireless to a station playing Christmas music, and everyone danced to that. Hermione and Jasmine once again got pushed together as a dancing couple, trying to laugh it off as before while secretly relishing the opportunity.
Instead of the usual culture and etiquette lesson, Neville explained about magical holiday customs and traditions. Jasmine and Hermione were especially interested to learn how they compared to muggle holiday traditions, wondering how and when muggle and magical customs diverged. Viktor was able to contribute much more on this topic than he had been able to the previous evening — both Bulgaria and the region around Durmstrang had quite a few holiday traditions that differed from those in Britain. Ginny also contributed, describing a few traditions kept by the Weasley family which Neville wasn't familiar with.
All of those raised in the magical community wanted to hear about what muggles did, and Hermione was happy to oblige them. Jasmine was unable to offer much here — the Dursleys had forced her to work hard to make their own Christmas more enjoyable, for example by helping to prepare a large meal, but they never allowed her to participate in any way she might enjoy.
Sitting in a darkened cupboard, looking out through a small grate at other people having a good time, was no way to learn holiday traditions — or to appreciate the holiday at all, for that matter. This had caused Jasmine to approach the holidays with a degree of detachment and indifference which she had yet to entirely shed.
In the background, without anyone noticing, Dobby popped in with Christmas treats for refreshments: hot chocolate, gingerbread cookies, peppermint sticks, and more. Jasmine didn't know for sure that it was Dobby, but she had her suspicions. She kept those suspicions to herself, however, because she wasn't ready to have a conversation with Hermione about that — not yet, at any rate.
Much later, after everyone had gone to bed, Jasmine continued to toss and turn. Since she had never received any Christmas presents until recent years, anticipation for Christmas morning was still mostly a foreign concept to her. Here she was, though, unable to sleep because she was anxious and excited about the following day.
Not about the presents she might receive, however — she was excited about the gifts she had picked out for Hermione. She was also anxious for the same reason. Would Hermione like them? Would she accept them? These thoughts kept swirling around in her head, and it was late when Jasmine Potter finally succumbed to sleep, with visions of Hermione Granger dancing in her head.