Three hours later, Harry was resting on his bed reading the piece of parchment over and over. It was singed slightly on one corner from McGonagall's fire.
Ron and Seamus crashed through the doors, making him start, both cackling with laughter, struggling to breathe and fell onto their beds.
"What's going on?" Harry asked.
It took Ron a few seconds to be able to speak. Gasping he cleared his throat, "It's George," he gasped, "he's just come back from wherever with whoever his date is with a massive-"
"Like MASSIVE." Seamus interjected.
"- Love-bite!" Ron finished, indicating on his own throat. "It's like he's stoned or something."
"How do you mean?" Harry asked, remembering the previous night and earlier that day – the raw glory, the sunlight that had been poured in his veins while in Pansy's arms.
"It's like he's drunk," Seamus said, "he came back about half-an-hour ago all loved up. Won't say who he's been with but that we'll see her at the Ball."
Harry smiled. "Good for him."
It took Ron and Seamus a few minutes to get themselves together.
"Are you sorted with a date yet, Seamus?" Ron asked as he fussed with his own hair in a mirror.
Seamus nodded. "I am, yeah."
"Who is it?"
Seamus looked incredibly uncomfortable for a while, like he was trying to make a decision. "I guess you'll have to wait and see." He eventually said, looking at them with hard, challenging eyes.
"Everything okay, Seamus?" Harry asked, looking over at him.
Seamus nodded. "Yeah grand, just… don't want to go into it all yet."
"Fair enough." Harry replied, catching Ron's eye and shaking his head.
They sat in silence for a while, Seamus tidying his living space, Ron inspecting his hideous dress robes and Harry reading over the letter again.
Ron threw the robes to one side with an exclamation of disgust and threw him onto his bed.
"What's that?" He asked Harry, spying the paper.
Harry paused, rolling the slip up and handing it to Ron, who opened it and read, his eyes growing wider.
"Bloody hell Harry." He said, handing the paper back.
"What is it?" asked Seamus.
Harry sighed. "I'm buying Pansy her dress for the Ball."
Seamus laughed, "That's brave, buying a dress for the Queen Bee."
"Don't call her that." Harry said, not unkindly. "She's really cool, actually."
Seamus and Ron stared at him in silence for a few seconds.
"What?" Harry asked.
The other two looked at each other then back to Harry.
Ron scratched his nose, looking for the right words. "Harry, there are some people saying they've seen you together, holding hands and… stuff."
"Yeah, we were holding hands, so what?" Harry replied, feeling a flush creep into his cheeks.
"Well… well it's Pansy Parkinson, isn't it?" Seamus said. "It's all a bit…"
"A bit what?" Harry asked, trying to hold himself in check, a kind of indignant rage building in him.
"Well, she's always been pretty awful to us all in the past." Ron finished for Seamus.
Seamus made a kind of affirming grunt, avoiding Harry's eye.
"Well, let's face it: we've all been pretty shit to each other, haven't we? It's like… we came here and…" Harry paused, struggling to articulate something that had been going through his head since lunch with the Slytherin girls. "… it's like we inherited this Gryffindor versus Slytherin thing."
"What do you mean?" Asked Ron.
Harry rolled his legs off the bed and stood. "Well, when I got here, all anyone could say was about this long, bloody history of Gryffindor against Slytherin, but from everything I've read, they were best mates until they disagreed on how to run the place and that was decades after opening. Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw aren't at each other's throats, are they? I don't see why we can't just… bloody well get on with it, you know?
Ron and Seamus were quiet for a few seconds before Seamus cleared his throat.
"You're really into this girl, aren't you Harry?" He asked.
Harry paused, feeling the flush turning into a raging blush. "I don't know."
"Bloody hell, you are." Ron said, sitting up, amazed.
"I don't know. Maybe." Harry said, confused. "Look, I only really met her properly yesterday and when we met up after dinner it was… electric. She's amazing. She can do a bloody Patronus!"
"Just tell me one thing." Ron said after almost a minute of tense, stunned silence. "Luna said that… she saw you two snogging in one of the dance studios earlier."
"You've got people spying on me?" Harry shouted, stunned.
"No, no, nothing like that!" Ron said, holding his hands out. "She was going to her transfiguration club and she heard the music."
"Well you can tell her to mind her own bloody business, can't you!" Harry said, glaring at Ron.
"So you were snogging?" Seamus said, matter-of-factly.
"Yeah, okay. Yes we were snogging." Harry grumbled, sitting on his bed.
"Well," Ron said, after another long, tense silence, "how was it?"
Harry smiled, reminiscing. "It was amazing."
It felt like years waiting for dinner. He fantasised about what Pansy's reaction would be to his news and reached the degree of pacing around his room that he actually decided to try to make some progress with his potions homework.
He made disappointing progress – but progress nonetheless - on his analysis of the effectiveness of his antidotes during Snape's last lesson.
He was struggling how to put into words that he had on reflection, not fully grasped the importance of having the appropriate charge held in his silver knife before starting the process.
Feeling too distracted, he gave up on trying to explain himself and set about making a long bullet point list of what he was trying to put across. Extremely glad for booking an hours' flying with the Gryffindor quidditch team the following day, he decided on a walk and headed down to the common room where Ron was demolishing Seamus at wizard chess and Hermione knitting relentlessly.
"Anyone fancy a walk?" He asked the room at large.
"Too cold." Ron said, without looking up.
There was a chorus of other excuses and he rolled his eyes, heading alone for the portrait hole, wondering if he might be able to take his firebolt out by himself.
"I'll come." Said Ginny, appearing by his side, shrugging into a jacket. "There's something I could do with your help on."
"Oh?" He said, letting her clamber through the portrait hole first.
"Well, Moody has been talking about all these battle spells, like the one where you can see all around you…" She tried to find the name, momentarily lost.
"Epignosi charm. Yeah, he went through that with us right after the unforgivable, what about it?" He asked as they started down the corridor.
"I just can't get it right, it's really making me crazy. I keep getting things messed up, like seeing smells and tasting things I should see – I threw up when we were practicing." She said, grimacing at the memory. "It was so embarrassing. Hermione was really pissed off that you got it before she did, so can you help me with it?"
Harry laughed, "Yeah, sure. I kept getting it messed up before, if you're doing the same thing as me, it's because I wasn't taking into account enough senses, if that makes sense?" He imagined Hermione admitting to having come second at something had been particularly galling.
"Thanks Harry," she said, twirling her wand around her fingers as she always did when excited, "how're things with you and Pansy?"
She asked it casually enough, but Harry thought she sounded nervous.
"Good, she's teaching me to dance and I'm buying her a dress for the ball," He said, "it's weird that I only asked her yesterday."
"You're buying her a dress?" Ginny asked, curious, "Neville said he would do the same for me, like it's an old tradition."
"Yeah, apparently. After dancing, I went to McGonagall and she helped me make an appointment with a dressmaker in London, she's going to get it sorted."
"I don't know what Neville has planned." Ginny laughed nervously.
"It'll be good, either way. Neville might be shy, but he's actually pretty good – as long as he's not around Snape."
She looked like she was going to say something but paused, went to speak again and stopped.
Filling the strange silence, he thought of something. "Why do you want me to show you this stuff? I'm sure Moody will help you out if you ask."
She pulled a disgruntled face. "We have Defence with the Ravenclaws on a Monday – it'll be the first lesson back from Christmas and I really want to shove it in Bruce Hickman's stupid face."
"Bruce Hickman?"
A couple of purple sparks flew out of her wand at the mention of him. "Yeah, he's… just an arsehole. In fairness, he's really, really good; he just gets DADA, you know? I was top of the class last year, but now, here he comes from some other little school in Cornwall – I've never even heard of it – and just… trashes me."
"We could jinx him." Harry said, trying for levity, but afraid he sounded a bit too sincere.
"Nah, he's a good guy, really. I just want to be top of the class again. I'll keep it in mind though." She replied, grinning.
"Tell you what, there's a dance studio open on the second floor – we can go in there." He said, trying not to cast his mind too fondly back to stolen hours in there.
"Let's do it."
They arrived in the great hall for dinner, Ginny having gained an almost perfect grasp of Epignosi to the degree that she had come down from the dance hall blindfold. Pansy hadn't arrived there yet.
"Well done, you definitely got that." Harry said, holding out a hand.
She slapped him five and smiled, blushing slightly. "Thanks Harry, see you soon." And they parted, going to separate tables.
She looked back twice as he walked along the opposite side of the table. The first time she looked excited, the second, irreparably sad, but Harry didn't see her.
Pansy had entered the room, arm-in-arm with Daphne Greengrass and Sophia Andersen.
