Seven Drops and Asphodel Blooms
Summary: When Harry blows up his aunt during the summer, Dumbledore is much quicker to react. Snape finds him far before the Minister does, but his plan of dropping him off with a lecture and half a dozen additional summer assignments doesn't work out.
In which Harry spends the summer at Spinner's End.
Chapter 25
"Gotta be a Confundus charm. There's no other explanation."
"I'm still not convinced he hasn't been replaced by a boggart."
"Neville's boggart specifically? Please. It's obviously Polyjuice."
"Do you think he's dying?"
Their Potions classes had changed rapidly since Harry had refused to back down from Snape. Snape made no attempts to rein in his Slytherins any more than he had in the past—still unmistakably favoring them over the other houses—but even so, nobody could deny that something had fundamentally shifted.
One day, Snape mixed up their partners as he liked to do occasionally. They'd all learned to be wary, as he was especially fond of pairing up Slytherin with Gryffindor to hold the Gryffindors' alleged inadequacy against them in contrast to their Slytherin partners. He called on Neville and let his eyes roam across the dungeon ominously to find the worst possible match-up, his eyes lingering on Malfoy.
Harry noisily knocked over his basin of salt water.
"Five points from Gryffindor, and clean up after yourself before you start," Snape drawled. But the spell was broken. Eyes whipping back to a violently flinching Neville, he said, "Granger, you'll work with Longbottom. Do make sure he doesn't blow up the dungeon."
He moved on, leaving Neville to slump in relief.
By the end, Harry couldn't tell which part of the lesson he'd enjoyed the most. Maybe it was Malfoy's baffled expression at the missed opportunity of tormenting Neville. Maybe it was Snape wordlessly scowling at Neville's cutting board only to bite out a harmless, "More eel eyes, Mr. Longbottom,"—and receiving a wide-eyed "Y-Yes, Professor," from Neville in return.
Or maybe it was Hermione's startled look of pride when—instead of passing her over completely like he usually did—Snape eyed her flawless potion and gave a painful-sounding, "Passable," before moving on.
He might have given more points to Slytherin than ever to make up for those he didn't take from Gryffindor, but then again, Harry had never expected to work miracles.
Neville walked out of class that day looking puzzled instead of pale-faced and trembling while Harry followed his friends to lunch with a skip in his steps.
Rumors spread the way they always did at Hogwarts: at the speed of a spilled ink bottle and with decreasing believability the more students were involved. Harry soaked it all in gleefully, trying very hard not to lose it at the more ridiculous stories.
Snape on the other hand looked so irritated in the following days that nobody—not even the Slytherins—dared to step a foot out of line during his lessons.
"Somebody's saying that you're being blackmailed," Harry delightedly told him, conveniently forgetting to mention that it was Dean from his own dorm spreading the rumor.
Snape made an expression that greatly resembled that of a dragon whose eggs had been stolen during the first task of the tournament. "And who do I have to thank for that?"
"You're welcome." Harry grinned. "Really though. Neville's been doing much better."
Snape gave a nondescript grunt suggesting he cared very little about whose life he was improving.
"He wrote his last essay with us. He knows much more about those saltwater plants you wanted us to analyze than—"
"I seem to remember you being here for detention," Snape cut him off. "Do you intend to actually make yourself useful, or should I extend it to tomorrow?"
Harry rolled his eyes. "I didn't even deserve this one. You just needed an excuse to make me help you clean up those cauldrons the 3rd-year Ravenclaws ruined."
"Perhaps tomorrow and the day after?"
"I said that I would be delighted to help you clean those cauldrons the 3rd-year Ravenclaws ruined."
The Yule Ball neared, and since only the champions and students in year three or lower were required to bring dates in order to attend, Harry and Ron (after a tense week of eying every girl they came across with the wariness of encountering a wild animal) simply decided not to bother. They'd assumed they'd just go with Hermione as friends, but when it casually came up in a conversation, she got tight-lipped.
"What?" asked Ron. "Don't tell me you've got other plans."
Color shot into Hermione's cheeks. "Actually," she said with a forced sort of nonchalance, "Viktor asked me if I wanted to go with him."
Harry and Ron shared a baffled look. Sure, they'd hung out with the guy (or at least around him) a few times in the library (Hermione perhaps more so, seeing as she practically lived there), but Harry would have never guessed Krum would be interested in Hermione in that way.
Hermione was starting to look quite anxious, so Harry shook off his surprise and shrugged. "We'll see you at the dance, then."
Hermione beamed.
Harry heard Ron draw in a breath and kicked his shin, just as a precaution.
In other circumstances, Harry might have felt betrayed over Ron trying to ditch him at the last second. The situation was so ridiculous, Harry couldn't be annoyed about it if he tried.
"Of all the people you could have asked." Harry tried very hard to sound sympathetic and not the least bit amused.
"I don't know what happened," moaned Ron, utterly inconsolable.
"Fleur's probably been asked out by dozens of people," Harry said, trying to sound reassuring. "She won't even remember you."
"I didn't even wait for an answer," Ron whispered, still horror-struck. "I just ran for it. What was I thinking?"
"Look on the bright side," Harry suppressed a new wave of laughter, "You might get to talk to Krum if Hermione's bringing him to the dance. You still haven't asked him for that autograph."
"Great," Ron muttered. "Another champion I can embarrass myself in front of."
Hermione did indeed show up with Krum to the Ball, looking like a completely different person. She opened the dance with him and the other champions, but as others headed to the dance floor, Harry and Ron shared one look and wordlessly decided to leave the dancing to other people. They weren't the only ones who preferred to chat and watch, so luckily it didn't make them look out of place.
After a while Cedric took a break to say hello to them ("It took me three songs until I recognized Hermione!"), and just when he was about to head back to look for his date, Fleur swept towards their table as well. She seemed to have abandoned her own date—a Ravenclaw her age who'd ogled her with a dumb expression on his face all evening.
Harry craned his neck and spotted him on the other side of the hall, almost in tears in his search for Fleur. Maybe there was some truth to the theory of Fleur secretly being a Veela, or else he couldn't possibly be acting so ridiculous.
"This is nothing like our balls in Beauxbatons," Fleur said, sitting down next to them uninvited. Every word she spoke sounded pointed and carefully formed, except for the name of her school, which rolled off her tongue smoothly.
Ron scooted closer to Harry like he was hoping that would somehow hide him from sight.
"The decorations are dreary," Fleur said. "At home, we have ice sculptures that do not melt, and winter flowers on each table that never wilt."
Harry and Ron shared a look, though Cedric at least seemed unfazed. "It would be pretty boring to visit another country only to find everything is exactly like back home, wouldn't it?"
Fleur considered this. "I suppose that is true," she said slowly.
Cedric—maybe not wanting to be rude—stuck around while they watched the dancing. Fleur found more and more things to complain about: the decorations, the songs, the other schools' festive wear. After a while Harry began to suspect that she wasn't trying to be condescending. It was just her way of making conversation.
Still hiding behind Harry, Ron fidgeted like he couldn't decide whether to snap back at Fleur or keep pretending like he wasn't there.
A new song started to play, and Fleur tilted her head. Harry, expecting yet another complaint, was surprised to hear her say, "Hm. This one is quite nice."
Cedric's lips twitched. "Better head to the dance floor then, or you'll miss the opportunity."
"Perhaps." But Fleur didn't look anxious to hunt down her abandoned date for a dance.
In a spur-of-the-moment decision Harry said, "Ron hasn't had a chance to dance yet."
It was like he'd turned on a spotlight. Fleur—beautiful, popular, three-years-older-than-them Fleur—turned her head and gave Ron a once-over. Her eyes lingered on his horrific festive robes.
Ron's face turned the same shade as his hair. He sent Harry a look of pure horror, one that Harry returned wide-eyed. Terror surged through his chest at the thought of having set up his best friend to be thoroughly humiliated.
But Fleur didn't scoff or laugh at him. She huffed out a small breath of air, wrinkled her nose with a glance at Ron's frayed sleeves where he'd tried to cut off the lace from his robes, rose gracefully and held out a hand to a shell-shocked Ron. "Very well."
Ron gaped at her like a dying fish. "What?"
"You asked me to the dance yesterday in the hall." She pronounced 'hall' almost like 'owl'. "I accept. For one dance."
Harry thought that Ron had frozen up for good and couldn't blame him for it. Then, showing courage beyond all comprehension, he set his face, squared his shoulders and took Fleur's hand.
On the other side of the hall, Hermione was still happily dancing with Krum.
"I didn't think she'd go for it." Cedric watched Ron and Fleur make their way through the hall, sounding impressed.
"I can't believe I said that to her," Harry groaned. "That was so stupid."
"Maybe a little." Cedric sounded amused. He paused—spotting his date at the other end of the hall—and waved.
She was a pretty girl from Ravenclaw—a Quidditch player, just like Harry and Cedric. She beamed and waved back, seemingly mid-conversation with a small gaggle of friends. Cedric didn't seem to mind.
"You haven't danced either, have you?" he asked, making Harry jump.
"Er. No, not really."
"You know, since your friends are dancing with Krum and Delacour, we might as well complete the set."
He stood, forcing Harry to look up at him. Cedric gave him a cheerful look and offered his hand, wiggling his fingers comically.
Five minutes later they were making their way across the dance floor trying (and failing) to keep a straight face. Cedric had stepped on his feet almost as often as Harry had stomped on his; Harry had never danced before in his life, and neither of them seemed able to figure out which one of them was supposed to lead.
"No, you gotta put your hand higher than that. Yeah, exactly, that's better..."
"Ouch! How come you only ever stand on my left foot?"
"Sorry, sorry. Look, we just gotta follow the music. That's it… One, two, three, one, two, three..."
By the end of the song, both of them were sweaty, shaking with laughter and rubbing their feet—it was painfully obvious that both of them belonged on a Quidditch pitch, not a dance floor.
From what Harry had been able to see in passing, Ron had had more luck not stumbling over his or Fleur's feet (owing perhaps to the fact that Fleur had rather decisively taken the lead.)
He and Ron shared a glance, Harry still giddy, and Ron grinning in a dazed sort of way.
Feeling bold, Harry asked, "Wanna give it a go?" He held out his hand as the next song started to play.
Ron agreed with a snort, shaking off his dazed expression.
Over the course of the evening Harry danced with Hermione, Fleur, Ron again and, figuring his feet couldn't hurt much more, Neville—though not Krum, who didn't seem interested in dancing at all after the first few opening songs. He looked like he much preferred to watch and chat quietly with Hermione when she wasn't dancing with somebody else.
They were some of the last people to leave, and they saw off Fleur and Viktor (who stopped being 'Krum' to Harry roughly half-way through the evening) before stumbling—high on lingering excitement and creeping-in exhaustion—to the staircase leading to Gryffindor tower. Harry thought that it wouldn't be so bad to have a Yule Ball like this one every year.
"Admit it, though," he said to Ron, "Our dance was the best, right?"
Ron thrust his hand into Harry's face and gave him a shove. "Shut up," he said, snorting.
Harry grinned, ducked underneath Ron's arm and hurried after his friends.
The ice between them and the foreign champions had completely broken. Though it seemed at first that Viktor would be just fine with pretending they were still rivals and going their separate ways, Cedric was having none of it.
Now whenever they stumbled across each other in the library (roughly once or twice a week, as they all spent a lot of time there but their timetables didn't often match up), Cedric would invite Viktor to their table instead of leaving him to roam the bookshelves by himself.
While Viktor looked like he was being forced to sit with them, Fleur didn't need an invitation. More often than not she joined them unprompted and slipped into their conversation as seamlessly as if it had revolved around her from the start.
"—and we learn, what do you call it... Runes, we have Runes right from the beginning," she told them, gesturing lively with her hands. "As well as... what is the other one, with the numbers... ah, this language is so– so—"
"Do you mean Arithmancy?" Hermione asked.
"Yes!" Fleur sounded frustrated. "I should have remembered. It is almost the same in French."
"I actually started to learn French for my last summer vacation," Hermione said. "I went to France with my parents."
Fleur perked up. "You did?"
They started what sounded like a very basic conversation in French, and though it appeared to progress very slowly, Fleur seemed delighted in coaching Hermione through her first, tentative sentences.
Meanwhile, Viktor only ever talked about himself or his school when he was curtly answering their questions, preferring otherwise to sit quietly and listen. At first Harry wondered if he even wanted to be there, but eventually he stopped having to be invited to their table and joined them on his own terms.
He (in contrast to Fleur and, of course, Cedric) never hung out with students from his own school. Harry soon realized that he was nothing like the uber-popular, arrogant Quidditch star his fans or the media made him out to be.
Hermione's obsession with elf-rights slowly started to escalate. She asked everybody for their opinion and got angry if it didn't align with hers: various teachers, people in Hogsmeade, even Viktor and Fleur, wanting to hear their perspective as foreigners. She visited the kitchens more and more often, though from the sounds of it every elf other than Dobby had started to avoid her. She knit elf-sized clothes and hid them in the common room, hoping for them to be found by elves to free them.
As he had for weeks, Harry felt conflicted—not to mention incredibly uncomfortable—whenever she brought up the topic. A part of him wished she'd finally let it go. And as it had for weeks, that thought made him feel even worse.
"How can you not care that they're being exploited?" Hermione snapped, having once again lost her patience with the two.
While Ron had no problem snapping right back, Harry kept his mouth shut. He didn't want to walk around wearing pins that said "SPEW" on them any more than Ron, and (although the thought made him feel worse) he thought he had quite better things to do than spend his free time fighting for house-elf rights. And yet…
"Do you really think there's nothing wrong with it, only because it's been like this for decades?" Hermione said hotly.
"Hermione," Ron started, exasperation in his voice as usual.
Harry had never been able to forget the way Kreacher had been treated that day at Grimmauld Place.
"Do you think it doesn't matter, just because nobody has the guts to—"
"I think you're right," Harry said quietly.
Ron shot him an incredulous look, but Hermione fell silent.
"It's not okay," he said, "the way people like the Malfoys," or Snape and Sirius, "are treating them."
"That's what I've been saying for weeks," Hermione said, annoyed.
"But what can we do about it?" Hermione puffed up her chest indignantly, but Harry interrupted before she could fire herself up again. "No, really, Hermione. We're fourteen. We're still at school. Everybody born into a wizard family thinks this is how it's supposed to be."
"I'm not saying it's right," muttered Ron, now sounding uncomfortable.
Harry ignored him. "Do you really think we stand a chance of changing something like this?"
"Not with that attitude we won't." Hermione had a stubborn glint in her eyes.
Her expression told him that no matter what they said, Hermione wouldn't change her mind. Not about this. Not about something she felt passionate about. It was the same kind of determination that had carried her through an entire school year with a time turner, too many classes and too little sleep.
"This is so stupid," Ron muttered. Then, louder, he added, "I told you, you won't get anybody on your side by pressuring them into wearing some dumb badges. 'sides, other than Dobby, have you ever actually met an elf who wanted to be freed?"
Hermione scowled. "You come up with something better, then."
"Mom always says we gotta make compromises," Ron said, unimpressed by her glare. "You're not doing them any favors knitting clothes they don't want. They want to keep working here," he raised his voice, speaking over Hermione's protests, "and honestly? If you had the choice between working for somebody like Malfoy or somebody like Dumbledore, who would you pick?"
Hermione's frown deepened. "They shouldn't have to work for nothing in the first place."
"Good luck convincing them of that when it's been like this for hundreds of years, then," Ron said testily. "Oh, wait. You already tried. It didn't work."
They glared at each other.
Harry decided to interrupt before things could escalate. "So, compromises. What kind of compromises?"
"I dunno." Ron shrugged. "I guess if they don't wanna be freed right now, figure out what else they might want. Ask them if there's something that bothers them about working here. Ask Dobby, if none of the others want to complain. And if he can think of something, we can go to Dumbledore and tell him. 'Course the elves wouldn't want to tell him they're unhappy here, but it's not like he'd be cross with them. We could be the middleman."
Hermione stared at Ron like he'd just sprouted a dozen carnations from his hair. "That's... actually not a bad idea."
Ron's face turned pink. "No need to sound so surprised," he muttered.
Harry threw himself onto the olive branch. "We could ease them into it slowly, so they won't think we're trying to lose them their jobs or something," he suggested. "Maybe they want to change something else around here. Not the work itself, I mean. Maybe there's something other than clothes they might want."
"I could figure out how much off-time they get and ask Dumbledore to increase it," added Hermione, the old excited glint back in her eyes. "Slowly, so they won't balk at it. They can't be offended if Dumbledore insists."
"And if you really want to make changes in the long-term, you'll just have to get a high position at the Ministry," Ron said off-handedly. "Not like it'd be hard for you."
Hermione looked at both of them—but especially Ron—like she'd never seen them. She suddenly leaped forward and dragged both of them into a hug.
"'mione," Ron sputtered through a face full of bushy hair. "What's the big idea—"
"I knew you'd come around!"
Ron sent Harry a helpless look over her shoulder and patted her back awkwardly. "Yeah, yeah," he muttered. "Come on. Let's come up with something better than SPEW so we can actually wear those badges without wanting to sink through a staircase."
A/N:
Snape during Potions class, wrenching out a compliment from the depths of his shriveled soul: pain! torment! torture!
xxx
Years down the line, at Bill and Fleur's wedding:
Ron, having downed several glasses of champagne: And let it be known that it was I who danced with Fleur before she ever knew Bill existed
Fleur, remembering how he almost puked on her shoes from nerves:
xxx
Huge thanks to my wonderful betas To Mockingbird, Igornerd, flyingcat and ethirielalways!
~Gwen