Fully illustrated! After his name came out of the Goblet of Fire, Harry woke to a disturbing reality. The wizarding world only saw him as an expendable pawn, his carefree attitude towards studying left him struggling to survive, and he had never tru...
Harry had thought that he knew everything about Hermione.
He knew that when she received an Outstanding on an assignment her eyes crinkled at the corners as she smiled widely. When she found a particular paragraph confusing she would lean in until her nose hit the page and her eyebrows were scrunched up like bushy caterpillars. When she fell asleep, she looked so carefree and innocent—finally free of the semi-permanent worried crease on her forehead. When she ate her food, it was cut into delicate portions beforehand and eaten absentmindedly as she perused a newspaper. When she was hurting, she would cross her arms defensively and blink rapidly as she maintained an iron expression.
When she comforted someone, she would embrace them with her arms wound tightly around them, her voice whispering soothing reassurances in their ear. When she walked, it was always with brisk, steady steps that showed she had a purpose and a destination to get to. When she laughed, she would do so deeply and loudly, holding nothing back.
Sometimes Harry thought he knew Hermione better than he knew even himself.
Why was it then that he had been standing still, gawking for who knows how long as she came down the stairs, as if he was seeing her for the first time today?
"Harry!" Hermione smiled. She always smiled at him like that, but why had he never noticed how radiant it was? And her teeth—had they always looked like that? "Those robes bring your eyes out quite nicely. You look very handsome."
Harry blushed furiously. "Thanks. So do you—look very pretty, I mean!"
Hermione didn't wait for him to hold out his hand and simply linked their arms directly. A strand of her silky hair fell out of her carefully coiled updo and Harry felt an irrational urge to put it back into place.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
As they entered the Great Hall, Harry tried to distract himself with how magnificently it had been transformed into a Winter Wonderland ballroom. It didn't work for long since his eyes kept travelling back to the way Hermione's periwinkle robes flowed down her form and the string of pearls she wore on her neck, and—
"The Yule Ball will begin with an opening dance from our Champions."
And before Harry knew it, he was leading Hermione onto the floor, praying that he wouldn't miss a step and desperately hoping she wouldn't notice his sweaty palms. He could do this. All he had to do was pretend they were in the Room of Requirement, practicing like usual, just her and him. The more he concentrated on Hermione—on the way she felt in his arms, the flowery scent when he pulled her close, the delighted little smile she sent his way whenever he twirled her around—the more he forgot about the audience and started to truly enjoy himself.
He barely noticed that the dance had ended until Hermione tugged his hand and led them off to the side. "You were brilliant, Harry!"
"It was actually sort of fun," Harry admitted. "I can't believe I only stumbled once!"
Hermione gave him a triumphant, 'See! I told you so!' expression and Harry couldn't help but chuckle. "What do you say about going for another round?"
"Already?" She sounded surprised. "I thought you might like to sit down. You know, you don't have to push yourself for my sake."
"Hermione, I asked you to come with me so we could have fun together, not so you could stand guard as I sulk in the shadows somewhere." Now he was really laughing. "Besides, if I don't make use of my newfound skills this evening, all that practice will have been for nothing!"
So they went to join their fellow students on the floor for another dance. And another. And another. At one point, Viktor Krum came forward and very politely asked if he could have Hermione for one dance. Hermione took the chance to dare Harry to ask another girl to be his partner during that time and Harry surprised both her and himself by approaching Fleur Delacour and was even more shocked when she said yes.
"I 'ad been zinking zat you are just a boy, but you faced ze dragons impressively," Fleur commented, sounding a bit put out.
Harry hid his smile and said that it was all luck at the end; he would never do it again, not for all the gold in the world. Fleur, no doubt thinking of her burns, heartily agreed. It had been a spur of the moment thing to ask her, but once the dance ended and they both wished the other luck in the second task, Harry was left with the impression that the Beauxbaton student was nothing like the simpering individual he had thought she would be.
Two dances later, Harry decided to get back at Hermione and dared her to ask someone, but immediately regretted it when she went to Cedric and he ended up with Cho as a partner. He still thought she was very pretty, but really, didn't she talk about anything besides Cedric?
Tired of switching partners, Harry decided he wanted Hermione to himself for the rest of the night and Hermione looked a little too ridiculously pleased when he told her so.
"Your ego is getting too large nowadays, Herm—ow! What was that for?"
Between the dances, they would talk about anything and everything: Hermione wondering about what spell was used to transform the ceiling ("I'm positive this was Dumbledore's handiwork, it's much too detailed and precise to be anyone else!"), Harry asking Hermione how she had ever learned to dance in the first place and Hermione telling him about all the extra-curricular lessons she had been obsessed with as a kid ("You did ballet?"), both of them 'people watching' with Harry making snarky comments and Hermione elbowing him to stop being such a gossip, but smiling all the while ("That poor boy just spilled pumpkin juice all over his date's robes and I think she's about to hex him—Harry! Don't laugh so loudly!").
Everything seemed to go by so fast in a swirl of colour, and warmth, and Hermione's soft laughter. They took a few breaks to sit down and find some refreshments—during which Harry noticed Ron slouching at a table as his partner glared at him—but Harry always found himself whisking her back to dancing.
As the last, slow dance of the night was coming to an end, Harry decided that he didn't regret coming. Hermione's face was buried in his chest, his chin rested on her forehead, their arms hung closely around each other, and even their breaths seemed to be in tandem.
There was something so right about having Hermione in his arms like this. It was, he mused, like she had always belonged there.
