Hermione was confused and a little frightened. A moment before she and Steven had been dancing and now he was gone and she...they were different.
She'd always held herself tightly and in control; tonight, for the first time she'd just let go and started to enjoy herself without thinking. She'd never felt so close to Steven as she had during that last dance, and now...
Looking down, she gasped. Her hands were not her own.
They were alone in the center of a group of horrified students, with teachers rushing toward them, and all Hermione could wonder was where Steven was.
A moment later she knew. He was all around her, and she felt his presence as a warmth, reassuring her that everything would be all right.
This was fusion; he'd told her about it, but she'd never really understood how two people could fuse into one person. The gems had told him their personalities completely disappeared into the new person, but Steven admitted that that had never happened to him. There had always been a little bit of a separation, whether it was because the human half couldn't completely join, or simply because they'd never remained fused long enough.
"What's the meaning of this?" Professor McGonagall demanded.
"I'm sorry to cause all this trouble," Hermione was surprised to find herself saying. "This happened accidentally."
Amethyst was flying down from the rafters.
"Finally! I thought you two were never going to do it!"
"It's a gem thing," Hermione said, looking down. It took her a moment to realize that although the words were coming from her mouth, they weren't really her words.
She towered over Professor McGonagall, who looked down at her for a moment, then sniffed. "If you are going to insist on doing...whatever this is, you should see to your appearance."
They looked down and realized that their knees were showing. The dress that had been a full length dress on Hermione was scandalously short on her. Steven's robes were draped around her like a cloak.
"I'll help you," Amethyst said, pulling them toward the direction of the bathroom.
They absentmindedly send a command to Steven's robes which were enchanted, and they stretched to reach the floor.
"How do I look?" they asked Amethyst, as she rushed them past groups of staring students.
"Different, but still great," Amethyst admitted. "You're taller."
They could tell that; Steven's memories of being Stevonnie were vague to Hermione, but she could tell that they were looking down on people a lot more. They weren't nearly as tall as Hagrid, or the Headmistress of Beuxbatons, but they had to be taller than Garnet.
It astonished Hermione that she could now visualize Garnet even though she'd never really seen her.
Amethyst rushed them past the usual girl's bathroom toward Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Whether it was to spare any embarrassment Steven would have about being in the girls' bathroom (which was none, Hermione could now feel) or to spare them any comments from the girls they weren't sure.
Myrtle stared at them as they entered the bathroom.
A moment later, Hermione found herself staring at her new body.
They had to be more than seven feet tall, with hair that was a deep brown, darker than her own hair, but lighter than Steven's. It was miraculously long; longer than she'd ever considered having her hair. Given Steven's hair, which was permanently unkempt, and her own, bushy hair, it should have been a hideous mess.
Instead it was long and lustrous. It made them look a little like a rock star.
They felt a moment of sadness as a flash of Steven's memory showed a vision of his father when he was young. He'd had long hair like this.
Their eyes were as black as Steven's. Somehow, impossibly, they seemed even more beautiful together than she'd felt earlier during the ball.
Steven had made her feel beautiful.
"You guys gonna stay like that?" Amethyst asked. "It's cool with me...don't know how the squares are gonna take it."
A question from Steven's side of their mind; Hermione hesitated. All her life she'd been unable to stop and enjoy herself. Her entire life before Steven had been about control, and it had never really brought her happiness.
It wasn't until she'd met Steven and Harry and Ron that she'd learned to relax, even a little. It was hard to learn to live in the moment, to simply be.
She'd always admired that about Steven, and even Ron. This was perhaps the best chance she was ever going to get to see what it was like to be Steven.
"It might be fun."
She felt a moment of hesitation. If the Purebloods had problems with a half-human like Steven, what were they going to make of the both of them?
Steven's voiceless reply was amused. Either they were three quarters human, which was actually more human than he was, or they were half-mudblood, one quarter muggle and one quarter gem, in which case they'd be considered even more of an abomination.
Every slur Draco had ever given Hermione over the past four years suddenly went through her mind. She'd had enough from stuck up Purebloods, and if she had to rub their noses in it, all the better.
Nobody had the right to tell them what to do with their relationship.
They looked at themselves in the mirror, and then pulled out Hermione's wand. She'd studied domestic magics just in case she tore her dress.
She could feel Steven's astonishment at just how easy the magic came to her. It was probably never going to be his first resort, because he had all sorts of other things he could resort to. He didn't love magic the way Hermione did, although she could feel that he was feeling it now.
Their robes merged; it helped that Steven's had already been enchanted to change size and shape. It became something between their two outfits. Fortunately, it looked great.
"What was that?" Ron asked.
For once Padma didn't seem put out by Ron's paying attention to another girl, as she and Cho were talking animatedly about the same thing. Her twin sister, who had gone out with Cedric Diggory was approaching as well.
"I heard him talk about it once," Harry said. "Something about fusing together."
"Into one person?" Ron asked, outraged. "You mean Steven's a girl now?"
"Are you a girl if you drink polyjuice potion?" Harry asked distractedly. He wondered how Hermione was taking the whole thing. Was she scared?
Steven had been through it before, and he'd undoubtedly be keeping her calm.
Even the teachers seemed to be talking animatedly. Nobody was dancing at all, so astonished was everyone.
Snape looked positively ill.
The only professor who didn't seem taken aback was the Headmaster, who beamed.
Harry wondered if he really understood what was going on, or if he just insisted on looking like he did so that everyone wouldn't panic. Steven had once told him that the gems had tried something similar, shortly before the gem war had begun. They'd tried to act as though nothing was wrong, even though he knew things were.
Everybody was going to have questions, and Hermione had always worked so hard at being respected. Being like this...there was going to be fallout, and not just from the Purebloods or the Slytherins.
Amethyst emerged, and this time she was alone. She flew over the heads of everyone in the form of an owl and she landed on the shoulder of the lead singer of the Weird Sisters. Contrary to their name, the entire group was male. They'd stopped playing in the middle of the confusion, and they all looked a little flummoxed.
He seemed to argue with the Gem on his shoulder for a moment before finally turning to the rest of the band. A short discussion, and they all seemed to agree.
"I heard they were going to ask Steven to play a little," Ron said. "After all, he did save the lives of a couple of their nephews somewhere down the line..."
Steven was popular enough with Hufflepuff parents that there might have been some pressure from relatives. The Wizarding world was small enough that everyone knew someone who knew someone.
The murmur of the crowd stopped again, voices dropping off as heads turned. Harry found himself following the crowd, and like everyone else, he found himself staring.
The fusion looked...good. It was beautiful like a statue and it's outfit was somehow strangely androgynous without lacking style. Given that Harry had thought wizards all wore funny dresses when he'd first seen them, it wasn't all that difficult.
The crowd parted in front of the fusion, who walked directly toward the stage. Instead of turning toward the stairs, it simply leaped and a moment later it was on the stage standing in front of Kirley Duke, the lead guitarist.
He handed it his guitar and stepped back.
The fusion said something to the band, then turned toward the magical megaphone. It strummed the guitar, a few notes that none of them had ever heard before.
"Tonight's about being together with the one you...like," it said.
A moment later, it began to play. At first the music was slow and tentative. The crowd looked at each other in confusion, but the Weird Sisters somehow caught the melody and started playing behind it.
The music sped up quickly, though, turning from something that was almost a little sad into something else, something joyous. Harry felt his foot tapping, and he saw that Cho and Ron and Padma were responding the same way.
A moment later, the fusion began to sing. It's voice was better than Steven's. It had that clear, perfect tone that made the listener instantly respond.
The song was something about hearts and souls and being one. Harry couldn't remember the lyrics afterward, but the tune was stuck in his head for days.
The fusion began to play faster and faster, until even the Weird Sisters were having trouble keeping up.
It was the kind of music that grabbed at everyone who listened and drew them in.
The crowd was dancing now, and without even being aware he'd decided to do so, Harry found himself joining in. Cho was dancing beside him, closer than he would have thought comfortable, but right now it was all right. He was surrounded by people on every side and somehow he felt he was part of something greater than himself.
Cho grinned at him as they danced, and while normally he would have worried about every awkward move he made, right now he didn't care. This wasn't about what moved he made; it was about how moving made him feel.
The fusion jumped at the end of the song, straight up inhumanly high before coming down to land on the stage lithely, even though it should have crashed.
The music finally ended, and as it did, the fusion handed the guitar back to Kirley Duke and then it split apart into a grinning Steven and Hermione.
After a moment of stunned silence, the crowd burst into applause.
Hermione's face looked radiant as she looked out into the crowd, with Kirley holding her hand up into the air and everybody cheering her name.
She was going to be fine. Harry cheered for the both of them as loudly as anyone.
Tonight was a good night.