Author's Note: Yay, several things in this chapter that set us up for the long term and the short term. Almost everything that McGonagall says in this chapter is lifted directly from Goblet of Fire. Enjoy!
"The Yule Ball is fast approaching. It is a traditional part of the Triwizard Tournament and an opportunity for us to socialize proper with our guests. The ball will be open only to fourth years and above - though you may invite a younger student if you so wish. The ball will start at eight o'clock sharp on Christmas Day, finishing at midnight in the Great Hall."
Magnus notices the not-so-subtle glance that Hannah throws his way. Several moments later, Susan follows up with an identical look. His cheeks flush a deep pink; they stay that way for the rest of class.
Professor McGonagall affixes them all with a firm look, her lips pursed and her jaw set. "Now, this ball is a fine way of allowing ourselves to relax after exams. That does not mean that we will be relaxing the behavioural standards that we expect from Hogwarts students. I will be most seriously displeased and disappointed if a Hufflepuff student embarrasses the school in any way."
He can't imagine a Hufflepuff embarrassing Hogwarts. If it'll be any house to do that, it's likely to be Gryffindor. Half a school year in, and he's well aware of how obnoxious they are. And so far detached from the rest of them, too - he's fairly certain Potter couldn't name any Hufflepuff in his year.
"Professor," says Merritt, "What are we to wear?"
"Dress robes, of course, Miss Honeycutt," says McGonagall. "Should you find yourself in need of them, there will be a special trip to Hogsmeade to ensure everyone will be dressed appropriately. Those who do not have the Galleons are encouraged to sign up to receive a small stipend on behalf of the Ministry of Magic…"
His mind goes elsewhere whilst their professor goes through the ins and outs of applying for said stipend. He's had a pair of new dress robes every year since he was four. They've always been green and silver - until he was sorted into Silen, after which they were brilliantly deep shades of ochre and navy blue. Will his parents be so amenable now? Should he even bother sending an owl their way?
McGonagall dismisses them shortly thereafter. Magnus' mind is filled with images of ballgowns and dress robes coloured yellow and pretty girls smelling of citrus and sunshine.
"You're doing well," Draco says cheerily.
This is a bold lie. In the past fifty minutes, Regina has managed to shatter a mirror and cause a pile of books to collapse around them. The classroom, otherwise unused, has become subject to disarray in spite of them moving most of the desks and chairs to the outer perimeter. Somewhere inside her, her magic seems frazzled. She's not sure why.
All this from a simple Locomotion Charm.
She steadies her breathing. It almost feels as if her wand is too hot to handle, like she's putting her hands too close to a fire. Perhaps she's simply over-exhausted her magical energy with all the extra assignments and studying she's put in.
He's been having her go over charm after charm after charm, pushing her to the very brink of her magical energy. None of the spells he's showing her, she notices, are ones they've covered over the term.
"No, I'm not," Regina huffs out, dropping her wand onto a desk. The very tip of it glows a dull reddish-orange.
Draco's sitting in a chair. His arms are folded across his chest and his legs are stretched out underneath a desk. He's looking at her with a curious sort of expression. "That's a spell one year above us, you know. And you're doing it."
"Not very well," she says. "I'm just - making things levitate. For perhaps two seconds."
"That's the point of the spell," he drawls. "To make things levitate, even if it's for two seconds."
Regina rolls her eyes. "I don't see the point of you teaching me this. We're supposed to be reviewing spells that we'll go over in our exams-"
"I wanted to see what you were capable of." His expression stays, infuriatingly, neutral. "If you can perform a fifth-year spell, then you can successfully cast anything from our year, given enough practice."
"Then teach me something related to our current courses rather than Locomotor." Learning spells they'll be dealing with in the coming years is interesting, sure, but this is valuable time that could be spent studying for exams. They're in less than two weeks.
A smile twitches lopsidedly across his face. "I suppose I can do that."
"You suppose?"
"I do." Draco stands up. "Now, funnily enough, Locomotor has a similar flourish to Cistem Aperio, but you want to go counterclockwise rather than clockwise…"
Regina picks her wand back up, gripping the base of it tightly. She flicks her wrist counterclockwise, reciting the incantation. The tip feebly burns a dim glow for a few moments, then goes back out.
"Your wandwork is too harsh. Here. Let me show you."
He holds his wand up, his wrist swirling around languidly. "Cistem Aperio!"
At the front of the room, a small chest unlocks itself. With a quick cincinno, he's got it locked again.
"Cistem Aperio." She tries to mimic Draco. This time, purple sparks fly from her wand.
"No, no," he says, not unkindly. "Here, let me-"
Draco moves to grab her, but stops. Their eyes meet.
"May I?"
She hesitates, then: "You may."
His touch is gentle as he wraps his hand around hers. "You have too tight of a grip. Loosen it up; that'll help your wrist."
His thumb brushes across her pulse before his fingers quickly, deftly, unfurl her own, loosening up her grip. Regina suddenly wonders how it would look if, say, Pansy or Daphne were to show up.
She then decides she doesn't care.
"And say it more...enthusiastically," Draco continues, quickly pulling his hand away. "I feel like your magic listens to how you enunciate it."
Her nose twitches. This is the opposite of what Durmstrang told her to do. But -
"Cistem Aperio!"
The chest does what it did a few minutes before, but much more…uncontrollably. As it unlocks, it jumps into the air, spinning around nearly a dozen times before roughly landing back down with a loud, dull thud. The lid flaps wildly about in the air for several moments before finally staying put, fully opened, revealing its' empty contents.
"...Was that okay?" Regina asks.
"More than okay," says Draco, staring at the still-open chest. "That was - powerful."
She stares at the chest for a long, long time. Something bubbles inside of her -
And then a vase suddenly shatters behind them. The noise pierces the air as fragments of glass expel all over the floor and nearby desks.
Draco stares for a long moment. "You're still performing accidental magic."
"I didn't know I was."
She's telling the truth. The last time Regina remembers losing control of her magic was during her second year at Durmstrang, at a Quidditch match…
Suddenly, she feels very, very small.
The thought of asking a girl to the Yule Ball is enough to bring any young wizard into a state of panic. That, combined with his recent pro-Muggleborn readings and the upcoming exams (which seem more and more frightening the closer they loom), has ensured Magnus walks around in a state of perpetual anxiety until after the holidays.
"Careful," Macmillan says gruffly.
Magnus looks up; his head's been downwards, thinking of the dress robes that Mother is sending him and the best way to ask Hannah out, as he walks up the Grand Staircase. "I beg your pardon?"
The blonde cocks his head towards the ground, at a step. "That one always disappears on you. You were about to step right on it. You would've lost your footing."
"...Thanks," he says, squinting a bit.
"You helped me in Potions. I helped you here. We're even, now."
As Macmillan walks away, Magnus thinks: I didn't realize we were bargaining.
"What on earth are you doing to her hair?" Tracey says, aghast.
Spread across Daphne's bed are a variety of hair accessories: bows, scrunchies, clips, and headbands. She has at least three different types of hairbrushes and a comb out. Her face is twisted in determination: a puckered mouth, a set jaw, a fixed stare at the nearby reflection.
"Trying to figure out what'll look best on her for the ball," she says, undoing the braid she'd put in not even a few minutes before.
"It's not for almost two weeks," groans Regina. "Do we have to do this now?"
Daphne pulls out a bottle of Sleakeazy. "Better we do this now than a few hours before and somehow ruin your hair. Has your mother sent you your dress robes yet? I need to know the colours - you'd look good in green, but I don't know if I have a shade of eyeshadow that'd match…"
"I haven't even told her." She curls up, setting her chin on top of her knees, and wrapping her arms around her legs. Daphne flicked her wand an hour earlier to bring a mirror in front of them, at the end of the four-poster bed.
"You haven't even told her?"
"I am kind of hoping I don't have to go."
"Quash those hopes immediately. You're going. You're going to have fun, you hear me?"
"Fun," Daphne says this in a very grim sort of tone, putting her hands on Regina's shoulders. "Lift your head up. I can't make it look halfway decent when you're hunched over like some old crone. Do you even own a hairbrush?"
"You see me use it every bloody morning!"
"Look at these split ends," Daphne bemoans, lifting up the end of Regina's hair. "What am I supposed to do with these?"
"I suspect the same thing you do with the rest of the hair," says Regina in a monotone.
The blonde squeezes a thick gob of Sleekeazy into the palm of her hand. "Merlin, you're hopeless. Didn't you have etiquette classes growing up?"
"Awfully presumptuous of you to think I ever paid attention in those."
That's a bold-faced lie. Once upon a time, Regina did want to be the perfect pureblood daughter. She was proud of her heritage, at some point - especially when being able to properly recite what she had learned in class would lead to her mother praising her.
Mother is always at her most attentive when her children want to learn more of the ways of being pureblooded. A lifetime ago, Lyanna Hexberg was Lyanna Avery, one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, brought up like all pureblooded girls are. When she was sixteen, she was engaged to Father, and the rest is history.
Mother is a good pureblood wife. Sometimes, Regina wonders if she ever felt like she does: unsure, afraid, angry, resigned.
"You're a horrendous liar," Tracey says perkily.
"Truly terrible," Daphne agrees. "Now, lift your head up a bit more. I'd hate to get Sleekeazy into your eyes and blind you."
"Merlin's beard!" Susan yelps as Magnus drops a thick stack of books onto the table. Her quill skitters off onto the ornate floor of the library, settling underneath a chair. Somewhere in the vast depths of the library, Madam Pince shushes her aggressively.
Magnus picks it up, then sits adjacent to her. "Stilletakk." With a flick of his wrist and wand, their conversation is muffled to those who may wander too close to them.
"Did you know that studies have proven that muggleborns are not likelier to produce Squibs?"
She blinks. "I never believed they were."
"Well," he continues, "My father always told me that they were."
Susan peers at the books that he's put oh-so-gracefully on the table. Pureblood Fragility, The Muggleborn Pretense, So You Want to Learn About Magical Blood…
The corners of her eyes crinkle as she smiles. "Looks like you've been doing some heavy reading."
"I don't understand." His voice sounds like it's not coming from himself, like a twisted out of body experience. "I have - I've read so much, and nothing in here - Susan. May I be completely honest with you?"
She laughs quietly. "I would so hope you'd be honest."
"I..." His mouth puckers for a moment, trying to find the words. "I'm torn. Nearly everyone in my life has always believed in the sanctity of being pureblood. But then I get to Hogwarts, and…"
"And?"
"And...I am beginning to suspect that most people in my life are...biased."
"Biased." She cocks her head slightly, frowning.
He nods. What else is there to say?
"You're right," Susan says after a bought of awkward silence, a bit blunter than she tends to be. "Your family believes in despicable things. But the fact that you're starting to challenge that is…really good. Really, really good."
Challenge. That's a very strong word to describe what he's doing.
He thinks of Father learning of all that he's been reading, of the look on his face upon hearing all the things he's been thinking. If anyone from Slytherin saw the books on the table, the fact that he was the one to put them there in the first place…
"You look rather pale," she says, her face twisting into worry. "Are you alright?"
"Quite," Magnus says, more tersely than he intends. He glances around. There's no one nearby that he recognizes, and even better, no one wearing telltale green-lined robes.
He still quickly shoves the books into a nearby shelf, regardless. Susan squints but doesn't say anything.
They spend the rest of their time studying for their Astronomy exam.
Exams come and go. Both of the twins would agree that the one for Transfiguration is positively brutal. Magnus finds History of Magic a breeze. Regina struggles with Charms, but the look on Flitwick's face when she successfully performs Cistem Aperio makes her believe that her marks might be better than she originally hoped for.
She's still fairly certain that she failed Astronomy, though.
It seems that most of the younger years have left Hogwarts for the winter holidays. Erik most certainly has - he's leaping at a chance to get some semblance of attention from their parents without having to contend with his older siblings.
Everyone eligible for the Yule Ball, however, is staying. There's a few more inches of wriggle room on the benches of the Great Hall, but not much. When one walks among the drafty hallways - bitingly cold, as a great winter storm has descended upon Hogwarts the closer they get to Christmas - you see about the same amount of students as you would during term, more or less.
But no one frequents the library unless they have to, not with the threat of exams looming behind every student. It's the perfect place to meet up with friends if you don't want to deal with the burden of other people.
Or, if you're Magnus and Regina Hexberg, the perfect place to meet up when you haven't spoken to one another in weeks. He'd asked the most neutral Slytherin student - Millicent, who seems rather uninterested in any drama that procures between anyone - to tell Regina to meet him there the day after exams ended.
"I'm sorry," Magnus says as soon as she sits down across from him.
Regina stares. She doesn't think he's ever began a conversation with an apology. A sincere one, at that.
"For what? Ignoring our brother for the majority of term? Erik's been under the assumption you want to treat him like Father does."
Ouch.
His throat closes up at that. It seems as if Regina's out for blood, today. Someone must have upset her earlier in the day.
He doesn't want to ignore his younger brother. Not in the slightest. It's just…it's difficult to find time to see him. Their schedules are often flipped. When Magnus isn't in class, Erik is, and vice versa.
"I - I am beginning to suspect that most people in our life have been...incorrect in regards to their beliefs." He holds up Breaking the Boundaries. "So - I am reading this. I hope it will...clear up my confusion."
There's silence, then, and he wonders if he should have brought this up sooner.
Regina's response is icy. Her features harden, making her look unnaturally sharp. For a moment, she considers hexing him off the school rooftops. "Confusion. Right. I don't appreciate you making fun of my beliefs, brother dearest."
"I am not making fun of you," he says, eyes widening. "I've done a lot of research on this, you wouldn't believe…I've been wrong, I think. For a very long time."
She stares once more, an indecipherable expression on her features. Sometimes, it's frightening to look at her; to Magnus, it's like staring into a mirror and seeing a long-haired version of himself stare right back.
"You've been wrong," she repeats.
He nods morosely.
"Quite. Don't tell Father," he says quickly. "Or Mother, for that matter."
Regina wrinkles her nose. "No need to worry. I won't ruin your chance at becoming Lord. Your future is more important than ensuring others have equality, right?"
Ouch. That stings.
He ducks his head bashfully, then stuffs the book back into his messenger bag.
"I am trying," he says evenly, "to consider your perspective, sister dearest. Your immediate disbelief and mockery will alienate others from your cause."
Regina's eyes soften considerably at that. Her favourite pastime may be to tease her brother, but, Merlin's beard, he's perfected the downtrodden, puppy dog-eyed look over the years. That, combined with the wounded tone of his voice, makes her regret being snippy.
Almost.
"I'm just saying - still wanting to become a lord is hypocritical when you believe what I believe."
Over the years, she's looked into all the old English and Norwegian pureblood families. Most of those who followed a pro-muggleborn ideology either paid little attention to their lord or ladyship duties or gave up their chair altogether. The Weasleys, for example, had long since relinquished their place on the Wizengamot. The same could be said for the Ildpusts, a well-established Norwegian pureblood family who had, notably, given up their spot on the Norwegian Wizengamot five years ago, citing irreconcilable differences between their beliefs and the beliefs of those around them.
"I will change it," he says, sounding quite certain even though he is anything but. Magnus isn't even sure how he could change it; the words merely slip out of his mouth before he has a chance to consider them.
"Hmm." She sits back in her chair. "I see - you're playing the long game?"
"Yes. Yes, I am playing the long game."
"Good luck with that." It sounds like she's still suspicious of something - whether it's him, his potential beliefs, or his future lordship, he can't say.
But Magnus knows his sister and knows that trying to press on that subject will only serve to close herself off even more. "How has your Yule Ball planning gone? Everyone in Hufflepuff's gone mad about it. I haven't even thought about who I ought to ask, I bet you are the same way…"
There's palpable relief in her eyes that he's decided to change topics. The awkwardness that had long settled between them quickly dissipates.
"I don't know if I care," says Regina. "Does it even matter?"
Magnus blinks, then furrows his brow. "Of course it matters. Why - did the guy you wanted to go with reject you? I'll duel him."
She smiles. "No one's rejected me. I haven't asked."
"No one? No Zabini? No Nott?" It hurts him to call them by their surnames, but, well - they haven't talked to him in what feels like forever. They aren't friends anymore.
Probably.
Regina's smile dissipates, instead being replaced by an eye roll. "What about you? I bet all the Hufflepuff ladies are all over you."
"I - I haven't asked, either."
It's not that he hasn't wanted to ask one out. It's just - it's a very daunting task. The last girl he fancied had to wait almost an entire school year before he worked up the nerve to ask her out. And even then, that had only lasted a blissful month and a half before Magnus learned he would be attending Hogwarts. Dipping back into the dating realm in any capacity makes his anxiety flare up like a forest fire.
"Hypocrite." She snorts. "Well, if you want to - you'd better make your move sooner rather than later. All the eligible ladies are about to be snapped up. Most of them already are, I reckon."
"And who is taken?"
Regina didn't answer him in the library, instead finding an excuse to quickly leave, but Magnus quickly finds out anyways.
He spends most of the weekend trying to figure out who he wants to ask. He's much too late when it comes to attempting to court the ones from Slytherin, the most desirable ones, the ones that Father would want him to ask out. Daphne is going with Theo. Tracey and Millicent are going with upper-year Slytherins whose names Magnus doesn't recognize. They're all pretty enough, but they all seem so detached from one another now. Even if he had made it in time to ask one of them, they likely would have laughed at him for doing something so…foolish. He may be a future Lord, but right now, he is a Hufflepuff, and that lowers his social strata among the Dark purebloods by several castes.
Quietly, secretly, he wonders if he'd really want to ask them out, or whether it'd be nothing more than obligatory to him. But that wondering quickly stops when he turns his attention toward the rest of the girls at Hogwarts.
Magnus may be desperate for a date, but he still has some semblance of standards, so any girl from Gryffindor is out of the question. The thought of taking out the likes of Granger or Brown or any of their lot makes him want to vomit. And, frankly, he thinks he's said a total of twenty words to the entire Ravenclaw populace since the beginning of the term. Asking one of them to go doesn't sound particularly appealing for either side.
That leaves the Hufflepuffs.
His mouth goes dry at the thought of asking any of them out, but he tries regardless. Especially because - well, when he thinks of asking a Hufflepuff, his mind immediately strays toward Hannah. Honestly, when he thinks of asking any girl, she's the first one that comes to mind.
Which is why, four days before the Yule Ball, he's with her in the trophy room, trying very desperately to get the words to come out of his mouth.
"Why are we even here?" Magnus says, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his coat.
"It's the best place to see the snowfall," replies Hannah, staring out one of the giant windows with wide, curious eyes. "There are others, too, but y'know how the castle's absolutely littered with students…It's quiet here."
That it is. In the ten minutes or so that they've been here, no one has even popped their head into the room. Perhaps it's because of the walk it takes to get up here. It's in the highest pillar of the South Wing, requiring a decent enough trek up the Grand Staircase. No one would bother to go up here unless they had a reason to.
Magnus doesn't particularly care to see the snowfall. He's been surrounded by snow his entire life. To him, all winter storms look the same.
He's not exactly keen on the trophy room, either. Not that there's anything wrong with the room's concept. But at some point, he'd seen a silver plaque inscribed:
THORSTEN HEXBERG
AWARDED THE TOP DUELER AWARD
by one PROFESSOR CORIANDER HAWTHORN
for the 1967-1968 iteration of the DUELERS CLUB
Above it, a moving picture of his father shakes hands with a woman whose silver hair falls in waves past the small of her back. He looks quite a bit younger than Magnus is accustomed to, his dark hair not peppered with grey, the wrinkles around his eyes gone. Eyes that follow the two students around the room.
It disturbs him to see how much he resembles his father.
Magnus tries to steer his attention away from his fathers' award and towards Hannah. He can't quite seem to make eye contact with her; it unnerves him, to look at her while asking such a question. Instead, he focuses on a plaque awarded in 1974 to Diane MacDougal for her contributions to the Potions Club. And then he focuses on the myriad of pictures of past students and faculty that litter the room, placed above the various plaques, cups, medals, and other trophies that have been won in the last five hundred or so years.
"Are you excited for Christmas?" Hannah asks after a bought of silence.
Magnus shrugs. Christmas is not eventful at the Hexberg home. It's a tradition that Mother insisted upon, only for Father to ruin it. No, Father puts all his efforts into celebrating the winter solstice, a long-practiced tradition in magical Scandinavia. In fact, if he were staying at home for the holiday right now, he would be spending it with Father. They would practice snow magic and stay up all night to welcome the sun's imminent return.
"Not particularly," he says.
She frowns. "You don't like the holidays? I wouldn't either, with your prat of a dad…"
"You could say that."
Hannah looks at him for a moment before returning her gaze to the window. The snow is falling down quicker than ever. The castle's been coated in a white blanket for days; soon, it'll be thick enough that the snow will come up to Magnus's ankles. It's a dense type that made Merritt and Finch-Fletchley declare an imminent snowball fight in the coming days. It doesn't sound appealing to Magnus, but he'd rather deal with a hundred snowball fights than bumping into Tremblay again. He swore they would talk after the end of the term; if Magnus is lucky, then he won't have to deal with that conversation until after the holidays.
He chews on the inside of his cheek, forcing his thoughts away from that and towards the Yule Ball. "Hey."
"Yeah?"
"I was wondering - whether -"
Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Hannah's lips pursing. "Whether…?"
"...Would you like to…" His mouth feels like it's filled with peanut butter. The words come out mumbled and mashed together, 'wouldyaliketew' rather than 'would you like to'.
She blinks. "Pardon?"
Magnus takes a deep breath, then looks over at her. "Do you have a date for the Yule Ball?"
She blinks again, her expression changing into…something else. There's a half-hearted smile on her face; her brow is wrinkled.
"Oh - oh," Hannah says, shaking her head slightly. "I - y'know, when you didn't…You haven't…I just assumed, when you didn't try anything at Hogsmeade or the common room, that you weren't…"
It hits him like a Bludger to the chest. "You were - oh. Oh."
"I thought you liked me." Her voice is soft. "But then you seemed - I dunno. I thought you didn't - fancy me."
"I am…I fancy you," he says, trying to smile, hoping she smiles back -
But her frown only deepens. "I'm sorry, Magnus, but Michael Corner asked me to go and, well, if I'd known you were going to ask, I would've turned him down, but…Well…I didn't know."
Michael Corner. Is he supposed to know who Michael bloody Corner is? Ravenclaw, maybe?
Magnus bites his tongue for a moment, disappointment settling in his bones.
"I'm sorry," she says again.
He shakes his head quickly. "Don't be. This is my fault."
Regina was right. Biding your time doesn't bode well in events such as these.
The air between them has become thick, like the muggiest of summer days. Magnus coughs into his elbow; Hannah looks down towards the floor. It's an awkward song and dance, one that neither of them is sure of how to navigate. Magnus wishes desperately that he could just stuff the initial question back into his brain - and then he wishes, even more desperately, that he had decided to ask her the day that McGonagall announced the bloody affair in the first place.
"...Maybe ask Susan?" she squeaks out.
Magnus blinks rapidly. "Susan?"
"I don't think she fancies you," Hannah says quickly. "I just - y'know, she doesn't have anyone who's asked her, and she doesn't want to go alone, so…Yeah. That might be a good idea."
"Maybe," he mumble-murmurs in response.
"Maybe," she agrees. "Well - I ought to see if Mum sent me my outfit for the ball yet."
His throat closes up. "Yes, I suppose that you ought to."
"I'm still sorry," Hannah says. Before she turns around to leave, Magnus can see her face stained a very deep, dusky shade of pink. Her gait is a bit quicker than he remembers.
When she walks away, his heart sinks into his stomach, and he swallows.
So much for that.