Chapter 57, everybody! Finally getting back to this—been working on my active fanfics this month and got updates for all of this month and next month for this fic, and the rest of book 4 written out, goal is to finish writing up updates for the rest of the year.

So one of my biggest peeves with the Yule Ball is the boys spending the whole time sulking, pretty much, Harry over being made to dance in front of everyone and Ron over Hermione. We are not doing that. Meanwhile the familiars are referencing The Rescuers Down Under (the "pea soup" scene) and Chicken Run. Sirius, meanwhile, is referencing a scene from Happy Days.

Gardengirl6, thanks for the review! Yes to all of these. :D

Missy96, thanks for the review! Me too. :D

Harry Potter © 1997 J.K. Rowling

The way the tables were done at the ball were interesting—smaller ones with menus, you read what you wanted from the menu and the house elves would magic it up. Harry wondered if it was a lot of work and how they had planned ahead for it.

The topic of interest after their moment of silence constantly ping-ponged between the Weasley quintuplet and Hermione dating Krum—Ron was indignant about the latter, to the point that Emily finally asked him "Are you upset that you didn't ask first?"

It was a question Harry had been debating on asking, and the way it had Ron so gobsmacked made Harry glad he wasn't the one who asked—if it were Harry, Ron would have been tempted to double-down and argue the point, but since it was a younger girl who they didn't know, the question stung a bit more and he had to actually address it.

"I don't know," Ron admitted finally. "I'm certainly peeved about it…but even if I had asked her—how did he ask her she must have asked him because there is no way he interrupted one of her study sessions and came out of it in one piece."

"I mean Madame Pomfrey can fix just about anything, we don't know that he didn't need patching up," Harry pointed out. "Besides, there's no point in getting worked up about it—he walks like a duck."

"But he plays really well."

"He also spends the majority of time on land—the duck thing outweighs the Quidditch thing."

"Is this what dating's going to be like?" Laura asked. "Because I was looking forward to it but now I'm not so sure."

"Boy I hope not," Harry told her honestly.


After dinner food was relegated to buffet tables along the walls and all the chairs and tables were swept back near them—a band Ron identified as the Weird Sisters got up on stage and struck up a tune, and Harry was once again immensely relieved that he had gotten out of being the fourth champion. He did not envy anyone who had to get up in front of the whole school and dance—yes they joined in after the first dance, but he was reasonably sure he didn't have the whole school's undivided attention.

"Hey Harry!" Fred called, dancing by with Angelina. "Doing all right?"

"Yeah," Harry called back. "Good to see you all in one place!"

"Well we couldn't miss this, now could we?"

Harry agreed that this was a point, and after a couple of dances he and Laura sat back down.

"So this is nice," Laura said. "I've been writing back to Mum and Da about the whole thing—I don't think they believe half of it."

"I mean from a regular standpoint all of it is pretty fantastic," Harry agreed. "We went to the Quidditch World Cup Final earlier this year and the tents we used looked like tents on the outside but were big as houses on the inside."

"Really? Do they put themselves up?"

"I'm pretty sure some do—I was thinking about looking for one next time I'm at Diagon Alley—"

By the time Ron and Emily came back Harry and Laura had gotten onto the topic of wizard means of travel and the pros and cons of each—Harry really only had something nice to say about broomsticks, magic cars and the Hogwarts Express.

"Okay," Ron said when they sat down. "I'm reasonably sure Percy is Donald and Bill is Fred."

"Fred isn't Fred?" Harry asked, baffled.

"No, too obvious," Ron said, shaking his head.

"How do they do that?" Emily asked. "Have one person be a different one."

"We are reasonably sure it's Polyjuice potion."

Which necessitated Harry and Ron explaining Polyjuice as best they could without implicating themselves and their second-year activities, by which time Hermione came over and sat down.

"You boys having fun?" she asked, grinning.

"You," Ron said, pointing at her. "I have a bone to pick with you."

"I wasn't going to tell you ahead of everyone else, there was too much of a chance of it getting out," Hermione said.

"We want to know who asked who," Harry said, heading Ron off before he could say something stupid.

"Krum asked me in the library—turns out he kept skulking around in there because he was working up the nerve to ask me out."

Harry noted how giddy Hermione was about it all, stomped on Ron's foot under the table and gave him a pointed look. Ron grimaced, apparently took a lot of effort to swallow everything down…did apparently have one question.

"But Krum, of all people?" Ron demanded.

"That reminds me," Hermione said, fishing in her purse before handing Ron a slip of parchment. "I told him I'd go to the ball with him if he'd do an autograph for you."

Ron took the slip and considered it for a long moment before putting it in an inside pocket. "This is acceptable."


Meantime, in the rafters above the Great Hall, the Secret Order of Familiars were having their own Yule Ball.

Snips had followed Mauve through a hole in the wall and up to the rafters, had to take several long beats to process all the familiars entertaining themselves—mostly cats and owls, although he did spot more than a few non-standard familiars here and there and Buckbeak in a cozy alcove. He wondered if house elves had magicked that up or if Hogwarts itself had done it (which, to be fair, was equally likely).

There were also a lot of house elves up here, some puttering around and serving the familiars but most of them cutting loose like the rest of them. Although one was questionable.

'What are you doing here?' Snips asked Kreacher.

"Kreacher was given the day off to do as he pleases," Kreacher told him. "This pleases Kreacher."

'That checks out,' Mauve agreed. 'Gotta go—I see Trevor and we had plans for some dancing.'

Snips tried very hard to avoid rolling his eyes, reminded himself that most everyone here had come to have a good time and being a stick in the mud was the opposite of that.

"May Kreacher serve you anything?" Kreacher asked him.

'Does that please you?' Snips asked him—when he nodded: 'Pea soup.'

Kreacher looked at another house elf that had been loitering near what looked like a miniature version of the buffet tables beneath them—the second elf nodded, tugged on a string that had a horn attached to it. "Pea soup!"

A few moments later Kreacher was handing Snips a thimble of pea soup, complete with a pea in it.

'Thank you,' Snips said, adding a bit of extra oomph to the give me strength part of his moment of silence, walked over to the edge of the beam to look down and monitor the dance, sipping at his soup as he did so. Thus far Harry seemed to be staying out of trouble, which was an absolute rarity on any given day and the fact that he was surrounded by people they knew did nothing to dissuade him from the belief that something would happen before it was all over with—looked up at some sniffling.

'What are you crying over?' Snips demanded of Kreacher, who had joined him on the beam and was currently dabbing at his eyes with a hanky.

"It's just—moments like this make the job all worthwhile," Kreacher sobbed, blowing his nose—Snips grimaced, resisted rolling his eyes, decided to focus on fishing his pea out of the thimble to eat it as Kreacher wound down.

"Want to dance?" Kreacher asked him.

Snips chewed on his pea, debating—drained his thimble before setting it aside. 'All right.'


They did a few more dances, Harry drifting back to the snack table as Ron and Krum agreed to swap partners, Ron dancing with Hermione and Emily looking dazzled at getting to dance with Krum.

"Well?" Harry asked Sirius, who was sampling the punch.

"Not yet," Sirius reported. "I'm getting disappointed here what quality of shenaniganizing teens are we raising?"

"I mean there are a lot of first and second years," Harry pointed out.

"Ah, that could be it—we're going to have to switch to stealing nips under the table."

Harry negotiated a couple of nip-free cups of punch before heading back to their table. "Cheers," he said, handing Laura hers.

"I don't recognize that guy by the punch," Laura said after thanking him. "Is he one of the other professors?"

"Uh, no, that's Sirius, he's my godfather." Took a moment to try and picture Sirius in a teaching position, resolved to spring that on him when he had one of the Creevy brothers handy with a camera. "Did you see the garden out front?"

Laura nodded. "It looked like there's other people out there—I think we can walk around in it."

"We should check it out."

Laura agreed, and after ducking by Remus to let him know ("Do not tell Sirius, he'll try to give you advice and it's all bad," Remus told him) they headed out the front doors.

"Ooh," Laura noised, as dazzled as Harry was by the snow and the fairy lights over the decorations.

"I love magic," Harry said, grinning.

"So it doesn't all get old after a while?" Laura asked him as they followed the path through the hedges.

"It hasn't for me yet," Harry told her. "I hope it doesn't. Not this way," he said, steering her away from where he spotted Fleur and her date in the bushes.

"So that's not any different," Laura observed.

"Er…come again?"

"I do watch TV."

"Ah," Harry said. "I just really don't want to get hexed."

Laura agreed that was fair, the two of them continuing on until they stumbled across Hagrid and Madame Olympe.

"You know what, I'd rather take the hexing," Harry decided after about five seconds. "Laura."

Laura tugged on his sleeve. "You're taking Care of Magical Creatures—what kind of bug is okay with cold weather?"

"Do what?"

She pointed at a beetle crawling along the back of one of the stone reindeer. "That bug should be under the leaves somewhere weathering out winter, not out here crawling—it's not that warm in this maze."

"Weird," Harry said, tugging his wand out—he had learned enough to know that he didn't want to just grab a strange bug—it flew off before he could do anything. Debate briefly on using accio on it, decided against—his luck it'd sting him right as he caught it.

"'OW DARE YOU!"

Harry and Laura both jumped at that, looked over at where Madame Olympe was hollering at Hagrid, watched blankly as she stomped off.

"What was that about?" Laura asked him.

"I don't know, but I don't think it's any of our business," Harry said, tugging her away. "Let's go back in."


They found Ron and Emily inspecting the snack bar, went over, Harry debating on whether he should tell Ron what just happened or wait until later, decided on the latter by the time they reached them. "Anything good?"

"The little sandwiches," Emily told him.

"Okay so near as I can figure, Bill is Fred, George is Edmund, Percy is Donald, Charlie is George, and Fred is Hubert," Ron told him.

"Actually Fergus is Hubert and Fred is Fergus," George said as he passed behind them.

"Ah, a complication I hadn't anticipated."

"How does anyone keep anyone straight around here?" Emily asked, looking concerned.

"Mostly we look at tie colors."

"So really, the Yule Ball has been pretty taxing as far as identifying people," Harry said.

"True," Ron said, pondering this—looked over as two more people came up. "Although some are easier to identify than others."

"Malfoy," Harry said, nodding.

"Hubert," Malfoy said, returning the nod.

"I—what?"

"At this point I'm assuming that no one is who they're supposed to be tonight," Malfoy said.

"So we don't know who this is and likely never will," Ron said, indicating Malfoy's date. "Hi, I'm pretty sure I was Ron Weasley last I checked."

"How recently was this?" Malfoy's date asked.

"Well I checked before I came down but that's been a couple hours ago," Ron admitted.

"This is Emily Dale, I'm reasonably sure she's still Emily Dale, she's a first year," Malfoy said. "We've been discussing Care of Magical Creatures and Hippogriff care."

"I was always fond of griffins growing up, but hippogriffs sound awesome," Emily said.

"Ah," Ron said knowingly.

"Yes—Draco's been telling me what it's like being a hippogriff owner. He's very lucky he has the space—Mum and I live in a townhouse, so even if I learned the Disillusionment charm we wouldn't have the space."

Harry and pretty much everyone else who recognized the wording immediately shot a look at Malfoy—this was Malfoy, purveyor of Pureblood superiority. Did he seriously go to the Yule Ball with a Muggleborn?

"So you put get a house in the country on your to-do list," Malfoy said. "Depending on what you're good at, I'm sure I can give you some connections."

Blaise Zabini faked a heart attack right as Harry pointed at Malfoy and announced him to be an imposter, Ron going down as well.

"Your friends are weird," Emily said.

"They are," Malfoy agreed. "They don't appreciate hippogriffs like some people."

"Also I'm reasonably sure griffins exist," Harry told her.

"Really?" she asked, brightening.

"Well Cerberus and pegasi and sphinx and mermaids and giant talking snakes do—"

"The last one doesn't count," Blaise said. "They only talk to you."

"They're very discerning."

"But now this bears asking the question of if griffins and hippogriffs get along," Emily said.

The four of them got ready to answer—paused, looked at each other. "You think anyone would notice if I accioed my copy of Fantastic Beasts?" Malfoy asked.

"I'll get my copy of The Monster Book of Monsters," Harry said.

Which then necessitated explaining that yes he had named his copy and resulted in Emily Dale stating that she was taking Care of Magical Creatures come third year.