A/N: The Yule Ball is an utter indulgence on my part - what a teenage girl might do with magic at her fingertips and no sense of restraint. If you do not want to read it, skip 542-545.


The next day dawned cold but bright, with a soft, drifting snow lighting up the sky with the sun. Hermione felt unexpectedly light-hearted, considering what she'd done the night before.

"Remember, everyone," Pansy said, as they all got dressed to go to breakfast. "Nothing happened last night. It was all a bad dream. Act as normal as possible."

'Normal' to Hermione meant sitting next to Viktor at breakfast, greeting him with a smile, flirting with him lightly as she asked him how he slept. Viktor's eyes scanned Hermione for any indication something had gone wrong, that Hermione had changed somehow, before relaxing at her side and asking her to pass the toast.

Hermione was flirting lightly with Viktor about the challenge of making his dress robes because he was so tall, Viktor laughing and teasing her back about it being her decision to undertake all of it in the first place, when Cassius Warrington entered the hall. Hermione didn't see it, but she saw both Pansy and Daphne instinctively tense, before they deliberately relaxed, casual.

Cassius seemed confused – he took the long way around the Slytherin table, walking past all the younger years up towards his year. He paused behind Daphne, uncertain, and Daphne looked up at him with a smile.

"We were just talking about the Yule ball," she told him. "You got a green ascot to match my dress, right?"

"I—yeah," Cassius said. His eyes were scanning over them all, confused, before he abruptly straightened. "Good morning, you all."

"Good morning," a few of them chorused back, as Cassius went up to sit down next to his year mates, wearing a partially relieved, partially concerned expression on his face. Theo watched him go, quizzically.

"Is he alright?" he asked the table. "What was that?"

"Bad dream?" Daphne said, shrugging. "Who knows?"

No one else seemed interested in Warrington being weird, so the topic was dropped as conversation moved on to the discussion of Durmstrang attending the Yule Ball. Blackwell had declined their invitation to the Yule Ball, which freed Dumbledore of his panic over an international situation and allowed Karkaroff to appear very gracious by re-agreeing to allow his students to attend. The Slytherins were all very relieved to hear it, but the Durmstrang students didn't seem phased.

"Vould cause vorse scandal for Karkaroff if he refused," Alexei said, smirking. "Vas empty threat."

With classes over, Hermione was wonderfully free to hyper-focus on her robe-making project. She made a detour to the library, searching for books about gemstones, before finally finding what she needed in a chemistry textbook her parents had sent along with her. She made a list of what she would need, her lips quirking as she considered her odd sort of 'shopping list', before she went to Blaise to ask for help.

"I'm free," he said cautiously. "I'm not much of a fashion designer, though, if it's an issue with your robes."

Hermione laughed.

"I don't need that kind of help," she told him, smiling. "I need the kind of help you're very good at."

She handed Blaise her scrap of parchment, and Blaise's brow furrowed.

"Aluminum, boron, titanium, iron, and carbon?" he read aloud.

"I don't know what kind of quantities you can get graphite in," Hermione said, frowning slightly as she considered. "But I could make do with coal, I think."

Blaise gave her an incredulous look, but he took the list from her. "I'll see what I can do."

With Blaise out of the way and helping her, Hermione worked on finishing the silken base of her own dress and cape the rest of the morning, before catching Fleur before lunch, asking her about alchemy. Fleur listened, blinking.

"It would halt the process, surely," she said. "But I do not think it would undo what has already been done. Once you return the Stone, it would resume." She paused. "Though you may need to ask it kindly."

Hermione laughed, smiling at Fleur's teasing look. "Thanks, Fleur."

After lunch, Hermione caught up with Professor Snape as he stalked from the Great Hall.

"Professor," she said, hurrying to keep up. "If I want to practice drawing runic circles, where is a good place to do that?"

"Don't you usually do that anyway?" Snape's voice was snide. "Don't pretend like you and your coven haven't been doing rituals all over the place without telling your official coven sponsor."

"It's not the ritual kind, sir," Hermione said. "It's the alchemical kind."

Snape stopped dead in his tracks.

"I'm sorry, I must have misheard you," Snape said, his voice uncharacteristically pleasant. "What type of runic circles, Miss Granger?"

Hermione bit her lip.

"Just a couple basic ones of alchemy, sir," she hedged.

Snape pinched the bridge of his nose very tightly. "Alchemy."

"Very basic circles," Hermione reassured him. "I just want to practice—"

"For what?" Snape snarled.

"Err—mostly carbon, with a bit of boron," Hermione said hastily, fighting the urge to cower from Snape's sharp gaze. "Umm. Some aluminum and oxygen, too, with very trace amounts of iron and titanium…"

Snape scowled at her. He resumed storming his way to his office, Hermione hurrying to catch up. Once he arrived, he slammed open the door, ushering Hermione through before firmly dragging it shut.

"The last time I had a student ask where they could practice alchemy, Miss Granger," Snape said dangerously, "he produced thermite."

Hermione gave him an anxious smile.

"I'm not entirely sure what that is," she admitted.

"It is a pyrotechnic composition of metal powder and metal oxide," Snape informed her. "It's usually used for welding. A thermite reaction can get up to 2500 degrees centigrade."

"Oh!" Hermione said. "That's interesting."

"Interesting?" Snape scoffed. "Interesting was handling it, after the fool lit it outside, showering the ground in sparks. It was a scramble to keep the grass from catching fire, and next to impossible to put the damn thing out. Thermite can't be put out with water, Miss Granger – the composition has its own oxygen source. It just keeps burning and burning."

Hermione's eyes went wide. "That's—err—" she faltered, trying again. "How did it eventually go out, sir?"

Snape snorted. "The Headmaster spent an hour making an alchemic rune circle around the cursed lump, before all the air in the center of the circle abruptly turned to liquid nitrogen, which chilled the thermite enough to effectively put it out." He gave Hermione a sharp look. "Some of the sand from ground beneath where it had burned had been turned to glass, Miss Granger. So forgive me if I am hesitant to just give you blanket permission to start fooling around with alchemy."

Hermione folded her arms, annoyed.

"I'm asking for help, Professor, not permission," she told him. "This way, you're free to give me a stable environment with safety precautions built in. If you refuse to help, I will just do it anyway – just secretly and in less than ideal conditions."

Snape pinched the bridge of his nose very tightly and sighed.

"What do you need to do alchemy for?" he asked. He sounded very tired. "Do you not have enough going on already?"

"Umm," Hermione said. Her cheeks flushed, embarrassed to admit her motivation. "For the Yule Ball, sir."

Snape looked up sharply. "For the Yule Ball?"

"I'm going with Viktor Krum," Hermione confessed, a bit anxiously. "If I don't have something that really makes me stand out, that's gorgeous, I'll be ripped to shreds in the media. So—err—I was going to fancy my robes up a bit…"

Snape paused. He looked thoughtful, considering.

"Name your elements again, Miss Granger?" he bid her.

"Carbon. Then aluminum and oxygen. Trace amounts of boron, titanium, and iron," Hermione said, biting her lip.

A slow smirk came over Snape's face.

"Alchemy is vastly complicated, you realize?" he told her. "What you will be attempting – it will be very difficult."

Hermione gave him a look.

"I wouldn't attempt it if I didn't think I stood a chance of success, sir," she told him, standing up straight and meeting his gaze with a note of defiance. "And I think that chance is very high."

Snape stood.

"There is an old alchemy room on the fifth floor," he said. He unhooked a large iron ring of old-fashioned keys from a hook hidden behind his shelves. "It will have the safety precautions built in and many of the incidental supplies you may need."

"Really?" Hermione was shocked, before she grinned, nearly bouncing with excitement as she followed him to the door. "Oh, excellent! Thank you so much, sir! Thank you!"

"I will lead you there now," Snape said silkily, his eyes gleaming, "but afterwards, I shall just leave you with the keys."

Hermione couldn't believe it, hurrying to keep up. "Really?"

"Of course, Miss Granger." Snape was practically purring now. "You will be seen in public, in a very visible sense. You must represent Slytherin well. And if that means making yourself a diamond or whatever other jewels you deem necessary, I am happy to provide."

Hermione beamed at him, and Snape's eyes held a glint of pride that warmed Hermione's heart. The fact that Snape had figured out she was going to be making jewels and approved of it made her happy, and he was even helping her out, finding her the ideal place to work on her project instead of drawing in the muck of the Chamber of Secrets' floor. The fact that he seemed to think she was just making herself one large diamond or just a few jewels didn't seem like an assumption she needed to correct.

If Snape was okay with her making one, surely he'd be okay if she made more than one, too.


Hermione spent all her free time up until Christmas working on her and Viktor's robes, emerging only to gulp down meals. Viktor seemed highly amused by this, while Blaise was slightly concerned.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Blaise asked her for the fourth time. "I thought the House Elves had the robes now."

Hermione swallowed her large bite of chicken, washing it down with pumpkin juice. "They're just helping me with dyeing them. You need a special type of dye for silk like this, and they have vats to do it in."

"Yet you are still working?" Viktor asked, amused. "But with no robes?"

"I'm getting ready for the next step," Hermione informed him, booping him in the nose. "And it is taking a lot of prep work, I'll have you know."

Viktor laughed delightedly at her boop, and he caught her hand as she pulled it away, pressing a kiss to the back of it as his eyes danced.

"I am excited to see it, Hermione," he told her, his crooked smile warm. "I look forward to seeing them."

It helped that Hermione could cheat. Doing alchemy the long way would take an eternity, she was sure – she remembered Fleur's elaborate multi-tiered circle on the floor at Beauxbatons. For Hermione, it was a matter of sketching out a molecular structure from her Chemistry book, weighing out the appropriate amount of material, and asking the Philosopher's Stone nicely to do what she wanted.

It didn't work the first time – the Stone had turned everything into one large stone, instead of several small ones with the designated structure and mass. It took some finagling, but finally, she was able to get the Stone to understand, and soon the graphite Blaise had given her was slowly turning into a small pile of faceted diamonds, sparkling in the candlelight. She revised her structure after that, adding small amounts of boron as impurities, and she was delighted to see the resulting diamonds emerge with a blue color but still with the fire and sparkle of a normal diamond.

Sapphires were harder. Hermione had made her own robes a beautiful periwinkle shade, but Viktor's were royal blue, and diamonds were too bright for what she had in mind for him. For Viktor, she had to try for sapphires, which were significantly more difficult. Instead of just using elements on the ground inside a circle, she had to convince the Stone to pull oxygen molecules from the air to combine with the aluminum, and then after that, she had to fool around with the amounts of iron and titanium to include to get the hue she wanted.

It was exhausting, honestly. Talking to the Stone was always draining, and even with her magical regeneration speed, Hermione ended up drained after only an hour or two of work, unable to go on.

Luckily, the Room of Requirement was more than obliging to provide her with a bed where she could safely Time-Turn back and then sleep for six hours until she rearrived at her previous chronological point, whereupon she would immediately resume her work in the alchemy room.

Hermione worked constantly, squeezing 72 full hours of work into three days, using her Time Turner ruthlessly. The only thing other than meals that Hermione paused for was to address an egregious oversight she'd made – one that concerned Daphne.

"If he thinks it's all a dream," Daphne hissed to Hermione, "he's going to still expect me to go to the Ball with him."

It was a valid point, and Hermione reassured her that it would be dealt with immediately. She met with her official pranksters on retainer as soon as possible, explaining to them what she needed.

"Wait, you want us to what?" Fred asked, astonished.

"You just want us to break his bloody legs?" George asked, horrified. "What kind of prank is that?"

"Not his legs. His kneecaps," Hermione said, her voice even. "And a rather mean one, but a fair one. Cassius Warrington hurt my friend. He should hurt in return."

Fred and George exchanged uneasy looks.

"Hurting someone that much—" George said, uncomfortable.

"That's really Dark magic, Hermione," Fred explained, his face serious. "If we got caught doing that—"

"Don't use magic, you ninnies," Hermione snapped, impatiently. "Use your Beaters' Bats, you buffoons."

Fred and George paused.

"Indoor Quidditch could feasibly be a prank," Fred said slowly.

"Not our fault if some Slytherin lug can't dodge a Bludger or a Beater's bat in time," George said, his tone cautious.

"I'll give you 100 galleons," Hermione said.

"Done!" Fred said promptly, holding out his hand to shake Hermione's.

"Pleasure doing business with you," agreed George, smirking and shaking her hand next. "I expect you'll hear rumor of an unfortunate accident by supper."

At dinner, Hermione heard from Tracey that Cassius Warrington had shattered his kneecaps by playing Quidditch indoors. Madam Pomfrey had confined him to the Hospital Wing for at least three days, huffing over how complicated kneecaps were to regrow and reattach, and Daphne's smile at hearing the tragic news was everything Hermione had hoped.

Hermione had just one more detour to make before everything would be ready for the Yule Ball – one that involved convincing Harry to let her into the Gryffindor Common Room on Christmas Eve. Harry didn't exactly require much convincing, though – he just grinned and followed after her, curious to see what she was up to now.

Hermione recognized her target by his friends, first – Geoffrey Hooper with his werewolf scars was easier to find. Of the three around him at the table playing Gobstones, only one was Arab, and Hermione approached him.

"Zakir Akram?" she asked, hesitating.

The sixth-year boy turned, surprised. Up close, Hermione could see just how striking his eyes really were. He was rather dashing.

"Yes?" he said. "Do I know you?"

"You do not," Hermione said hastily. "But—the rumor mill has it that you're no longer seeing Angelina—"

Zakir laughed.

"One of the Weasley Twins stole her away from me," he said, shaking his head. "What a shame."

"If you don't have a date for the Yule Ball," Hermione hazarded, "would you be willing to go with Daphne Greengrass?"

Zakir straightened, surprised.

"Daphne?" he said. "Isn't she in some antiquated arrangement with Warrington?"

"Cassius Warrington just tragically had his kneecaps broken, and he won't be able to make it to the dance tomorrow," Hermione said, folding her arms. "And as far as Daphne's 'arrangement' – let's just say that's under review, and unlikely to survive."

Zakir grinned, revealing perfect, gleaming white teeth that Hermione's parents would be envious of.

"I would be honored to escort Miss Greengrass to the Ball," he told her. "Do you know where she might be?"

"Hey! It's your turn," one of his friends objected.

"I'll finish it out for him," Harry said, grinning and sliding into the seat. "Go for it, Akram!"

"Get your cloak," Hermine instructed the older boy. "I'll make sure you encounter Daphne near the Entrance Hall."

It was a simple thing to get Pansy to take Daphne to the Entrance Hall under some silly guise, and when Daphne returned an hour later, her cheeks red with the cold and her eyes bright, Hermione felt her heart lift.

"Thank you, Hermione," Daphne told her earnestly, her eyes dazzled. "This is—this is everything to me, you realize? He's even going to sneak out to get something to match my dress—"

Hermione laughed, then gave Daphne a warm smile.

"I'm glad you're happy," she said, and then to Hermione's surprise, Daphne threw herself at Hermione, engulfing her in a heartfelt hug.

"I am," she said, her voice choked up. "I am. Oh, Hermione, you've done more for me than I can ever repay—how can I even begin to thank you—"

"You can begin by having a blast at the ball," Hermione told her, pulling back and smiling at Daphne fondly. "We can discuss anything else afterward in the New Year."

Daphne couldn't help but beam. "That would be perfect."