Work Text:
"Hermione," Harriet groaned, flopping forward to lay her head on her half-finished Potions essay.
"Hmm?" Hermione closed the arithmancy text she was reading—for fun, Harriet was almost certain. She'd finished her homework at least an hour ago.
"I don't want to go to the Yule Ball," Harriet muttered against the parchment. "I didn't volunteer for this Tournament, so why should I have to go to a stupid dance? This is all a plot to kill me. They could strike there, when no one is watching… Ball is just tradition anyway, so they can't throw some ‘binding magical contract’ bullshit at me if I don't." Truth be told, she was very proud of this reasoning. It all made sense when she monologued at Hedwig for, like, fifteen minutes.
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Could you wake Ron? He's drooling on his textbook again." Harriet obligingly elbowed him hard in the ribs, and he woke with a confused snort.
"What'd I miss?" he asked, rubbing his eyes and gingerly peeling a page away from his cheek.
"Harriet's trying to get out of the Ball again," Hermione told him.
"Not trying," Harriet mumbled. "Succeeding."
Ron patted her shoulder sympathetically. "You don't show up, and McGonagall will probably track you down and drag you there, mate. It wouldn't be pretty. We'd lose, I dunno, fifty, a hundred points?"
"Don't care." Parchment smelled so nice… Reminded her of Hermione, or even… Never mind. She wasn't thinking about her that way, dammit.
"There's live music," Hermione wheedled. "You were telling me yesterday that you'd never actually heard Wizarding music, so this could be your best chance."
"Fine." Harriet lifted her head, rubbed a smudge of ink off her nose, and drooped again. "But I still have to open the dancing and shit." She couldn't dance. McGonagall was offering dance lessons, but Harriet didn't have a date yet, so why bother going and embarrassing herself?
Hermione sighed in exasperation. "Have you found a date yet?" Almost like she'd read Harriet's mind.
"No."
Ron stared incredulously. "Blimey! With all the blokes and, what, three girls that asked you?"
"Shut up, Ron," Hermione snapped.
"Four girls, Ron. Besides, Cho's going with Cedric," Harriet said. "I asked her yesterday. It was humiliating. I'm not going through that again, okay?"
"You sure she was who you wanted to go with?" Ron consoled. "Bit stuck up, if you ask me. Probably a Tornados fan, for all we know…" He shuddered delicately.
Harriet gave him the finger. "I'm not going. This entire conversation is a waste of time. I have to finish this essay for Snape." She gave her would-be pillow a loving kiss. Ron retched. Hermione gazed up at the ceiling, as if begging for help from on high.
"Please, mate? For us?" Ron put a hand over his heart in an eerily accurate impression of Fred and George.
"This is mostly about Cho rejecting you, isn't it?" Hermione asked kindly.
"No!" She'd only asked Cho because… never mind that. She was not having those thoughts about her. How many times did she need to remind herself?
(Actually, she'd always had those thoughts about her. No point in denying it.)
"I do not care who you go with," Hermione said. "Go with Ron, if you have to, but you have got to find someone."
"I'll try one more time," Harriet decided, privately certain she wouldn't. Gah, who was she kidding? She wanted to ask her. She wanted, she wanted— The point was moot, though. Riddle would never agree to go with her, anyway—even if she scraped the guts together.
"Why do I have so many doubts?" Hermione asked.
"Because Harriet doesn't like social interaction, which is, I dunno, the whole reason this conversation started," Ron answered helpfully.
"Ron, that was a rhetorical question!"
"How was I supposed to know that?" After this, they subsided into a row about social cues—or something along those lines. Harriet ditched her essay for her folded arms. She really, really hoped she wasn't there to witness Ron's reaction when he found out who Hermione was going with. Merlin!
The queue outside Potions the next day was loud as the Gryffindors and Slytherins taunted each other over dates and dress robes and dresses and—
"Ooh, I heard Weasley's wearing his mum's castoffs," Malfoy drawled.
Ron's ears went red. "Shut up, Malfoy!" he snapped, clenching his fists.
Harriet ignored the chatter, instead finding Riddle in the very center of a gaggle of Slytherin girls—the rest of the girls comprising the gaggle, while she was seemingly removed, looking on impassively. She caught Harriet's eye, an eyebrow raised.
This was madness. She was actually doing this? "Riddle," Harriet croaked. "Would you go to— Do you want to go to the ball with me?" Conversations quieted as everyone turned to stare. Ron looked horrified. Hermione smirked like she'd just won a bet with herself. God, she wanted to sink into the stone. Maybe that Devil's Snare from first year was still down there, somewhere…
Riddle's expression didn't change (it may have flickered weirdly, Harriet wasn't sure). "Would I like to go to the… Yule Ball… with you?" Her voice gave nothing away.
Parkinson tittered. Riddle shushed her with a poisonous glare.
"Well, yeah," Harriet said, somehow affecting a veneer of confidence. "That's what I said." In the stunned silence that had engulfed the formerly lively queue, Harriet thought she sounded like a complete idiot.
But just as Riddle opened her mouth to respond (in the negative, probably), the door to the dungeon sprang open, and Professor Snape stepped into the corridor, his beaklike nose preceding him like a banner-brandishing herald that definitely, definitely got jipped. "Inside," he intoned.
A chorus of disappointed moans greeted his pronouncement. They all slowly filed past him, a testament to their strange state of mind—no one moved past Snape slowly. Ever. "And what, pray tell, did I interrupt that has made you all exhibit your loathing for my subject so openly?"
"Potter asked Riddle to the Yule—" Malfoy began.
"Oh dear," Snape said over him. "Your insignificant, hormone-fueled love lives have taken precedence over Potions as they"—he pinned Harriet with a disdainful stare—"always do." He swept to the chalk board and tapped it with his wand. "Now, place your essays on your desks and please begin." He drew the s out to a ridiculous degree. If he were anyone else, this would have been laughable. Instead… If Harriet's hands hadn't been occupied with her cauldron and doing so risked serious injury, she would have facepalmed. Her essay was finished, at least. He couldn't bitch at her for that today…
As Harriet was laying out her ingredients, she felt an insistent tug on her sleeve. Startled (hopeful, afraid), she looked round. Riddle had set up her cauldron next to hers without her noticing. Ron was staring, open-mouthed. What was his problem? It wasn't like this was the first time they'd partnered… although it had been a year at least since the last—very memorable—time.
"Yes," she hissed into Harriet's ear.
Harriet's heart leapt into the back of her throat. "That's it? Just 'yes'?"
"What else does there need to be?" Riddle replied breezily. "Did you expect a serenade? A curtsy? A rejection accompanied by a choice selection of Shakespeare-inspired insults and adeptly-cast Jinxes?"
"I thought Jinxes were too tame for you lot," Harriet admitted.
Riddle snorted. "Never underestimate the power of a well-placed Jinx," she said seriously. "Curses have their purpose, too, of course."
"Yeah, I bet they do. Snape's looking over here," Harriet muttered, taking note of his viciously indifferent expression. God, he was creepy sometimes.
"Keep at that, then." Riddle nodded to where Harriet's paring knife sat abandoned on her board.
*
They met during their very first ride aboard the Hogwarts Express. They'd been two underfed dark-haired girls in hand-me-down T-shirts and jeans who knew no one. Ronald Weasley had barged in, asked if there was a place to sit, and they'd agreed—although without much in the way of enthusiasm. Harriet and Ronald hit it off easily, while Tommie determinedly reviewed a heavy tome on modern Wizarding history. She'd glowered at Hermione in disdain when she attempted to strike up a conversation over the book they had both read.
When the pointy-faced ferret, Draco Malfoy, came by to make the acquaintance of the Girl Who Lived and criticized the company she kept, Harriet refused his offer of assistance. "I can tell what the right sort is for myself, thanks." She felt an unfamiliar sort of lifting in her chest, then.
When they were Sorted, silence fell when Potter's name was called, and she went to Gryffindor after agonizing moments of waiting. No one cared when Tommie’s name was called (but they would know her one day, she vowed). She tried to follow Harriet. The Hat refused. "Oh no," it snapped. "I'm not caving to anyone else today." And to Slytherin she went. She wasn't particularly pleased or displeased by this—or so she assured herself.
When Potter ended up in the hospital wing after her ill-advised adventure to save the thing under the trapdoor of the third-floor corridor, she visited her when no one else was around. "Fancy seeing you here," Harriet groaned. "You're an idiot," she replied with unusual fondness.
When they were second years, nothing out of the ordinary happened. They met repeatedly and discreetly. They were something like friends, after all, for it was an odd sort of friendship with little in the way of warmth and emotional support. But neither of them found the same understanding with anyone else.
When Malfoy taunted Potter over going after Sirius Black in their third year, she glared at Potter and shook her head, then hexed Malfoy's toad spleens to jump out of his grip and into his cauldron, creating an almighty mess that had Snape in a conniption. A world without a Harriet Potter was not one she wanted to see.
When the rest of her House sported SUPPORT CEDRIC DIGGORY badges at Malfoy's behest, she simply said, "Potter didn't put her name in. Stop making fools of yourselves." Potter was a Gryffindor, true, but she wasn't brave for the sake of it. She simply was.
And when Harriet strode up to her before Potions with a confidence she clearly didn't feel and asked her to the Yule Ball, there was only one answer she could give. (Others asked her; she refused every one. She was many things, but never desperate.)
*
"Well, well, Potter. You came at last." Professor McGonagall directed her and Riddle to an empty spot of floor, looking utterly relieved. "You don't know how to dance either, Riddle?"
Riddle pursed her lips. "No, professor," she said. "I've never needed to before."
The other students—a smattering of Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws, and Neville—shifted away from her. Harriet gritted her teeth.
"None of that, now," McGonagall chided. "All Houses are welcome. If the rest of my House were as eager to give all the visiting dignitaries as good an impression of Hogwarts as you lot are, then I'd be ecstatic."
"But what about—" Roger Davies began. Whoever his date was, they hadn't bothered to come with him. He deserved it, Harriet thought savagely. He was always a complete asshole at Quidditch games.
"Slytherin students won't do anything to make themselves look any less than perfect," McGonagall replied severely. "Now then, to begin…"
"Most of them don't know how to dance, either," Riddle confided. "They'd rather not dance at all then admit their ignorance."
"That sounds about right. So, why did you agree to this?"
"Why did you?" Riddle parried.
"Hermione," Harriet said, as if that were the only explanation needed.
"Ah," Riddle said, rolling her eyes.
"Less talking, more dancing," McGonagall reprimanded, sailing by with a terrified-looking Neville. "Feel the rise and fall of the music in everything you do."
"But I thought it was just the beat—" Roger Davies protested.
"That, too, Davies, but that is only the beginning. Let every part of the music infuse your movements…"
Harriet inevitably stepped on Riddle's foot. Riddle hissed in pain. "There was no stumble in the music," she said with a long-suffering sigh.
"Sorry," Harriet gasped, trying not to laugh. "It's just… Look at Neville's face!"
"I'm too focused on you to bother watching anyone else. You are more interesting than they could ever hope to be."
Harriet closed her eyes in contentment and stumbled again, blushing. God, she had it bad.
*
Tommie went up to the Entrance Hall on Christmas Day in a stolen jacket and stolen trousers and a second-hand button-up and a borrowed scarf. There'd been no allotted funds for dress robes; she'd had to improvise. Bulstrode was only too eager to doll her up a bit. Said she looked the part she was meant to play, or some comparably cryptic rot.
(Humiliation would be a distant memory when the world was hers.)
There were Mudbloods dressed similarly: That burke Finch-Fletchley, for one. She cared nothing for them. The rest arrayed in all their finery were spoiled children pretending at more. Eyesores, every one of them.
Ah, but there was Harriet… above them all, and she didn't even know it.
Harriet, drinking her in, rather flushed…
Tommie joined her on the marble staircase. Harriet's tastefully plain green dress robes brought out her eyes spectacularly. Her hair had been moderately tamed, with stubborn bits sticking up here and there. The look suited her, however.
"You look…" Harriet croaked, her usual brand of rough eloquence absent. "Like, holy fuck?"
"Thank you," Tommie replied drily, pleased. "And you are lovely."
Harriet's responding smile was tremulous. "Lovely enough for these assholes?"
"They'll never deserve you… or me," she added, because she had an egotistical reputation to keep. Harriet laughed.
"Inside, all of you," McGonagall called, sweeping the champions and their partners ahead of her with typically terrifying efficiency. "You're seated at that first round table. You all clean up well, I have to say."
"It's like they picked everything I hate most out of my head," Harriet said, her grip on Tommie's hand verging on painful. She did not wish to pull away.
She didn't really remember the taste of the food or care for the inane conversations between the other Champions and their partners (Krum mispronounced Granger's name; Delacour's date, the inept Roger Davies, was drooling; and Diggory and Chang were giving each other looks of sickening sweetness). Dumbledore, Maxime, Karkaroff, and the unimportant Ministry officials were marginally more interesting, though no more enjoyable.
"You allowed this?" she heard Karkaroff hiss to Dumbledore as they all picked at their blandly delicious food, the "this" clear by his disgusted glower in their direction.
"What is there to forbid?" Dumbledore replied.
"That— Them!" Karkaroff spluttered.
(Harriet very deliberately put her hand atop Tommie's.)
Dumbledore's expression went cold—colder than Tommie had ever seen it. "We do not abide that kind of prejudice here, Igor." She hated him for his pretenses and his cloying speeches and his erroneous belief in humanity's innate goodness… but couldn't criticize him for this.
*
Harriet didn't like the ball much. Well, okay. The Weird Sisters were great; Hermione hadn't been wrong about that. And the never-melting ice sculptures of manticores and kelpies and a collection of birds were rather beautiful. The looks she and Tommie (and oh god Tommie's jacket was fucking perfection) got when they opened the dancing with the others—ranging from flabbergasted to impressed—were absolutely gratifying, too.
They danced for what felt like ages. Hermione and Krum went by, both grinning. Ron looked completely miserable. Bulstrode waved from where she sat ensconced at a table with a book. Harriet raised a questioning brow.
"She's responsible for this," Tommie admitted, touching her sapphire-colored scarf. "I'm a pet project, I suppose."
Five minutes later, the two of them made their escape outside. Harriet's feet ached. "Never again," she said.
"Oh? How about this?" Tommie nodded at an opening in the hedgerow, her lips twisting in a strange little smile.
"Lead the way."
They walked hand in hand through the rose garden's narrow paths. They stumbled across Davies and Delacour with their tongues down each other's throats. "Hey, at least we know why she asked him," Harriet quipped.
"What a shameless display," Tommie muttered. "They could have put up a Privacy Charm."
"Is that what we're going to do?" Harriet asked with a teasing smirk.
"Mmm, yes." Tommie steered them off the path into the space between a pair of bushes laden with pink flowers and cast a spell powerful enough to make Harriet's hair stand on end.
"Merlin, wasn't that a bit—?” But she didn't have a chance to finish her question, because Tommie's lips were on hers. There was nothing patient or tame about this kiss. Tommie's mouth was hot and insistent. Harriet tangled her fingers in her hair, drawing them even closer together…
"I've been wanting to do this for years," Tommie murmured.
"So have I," Harriet agreed with relish.
"I'm helping you with the Second Task," Tommie said as they pulled apart, adorably flushed. "Granger's good, but I know things she wouldn't touch. You are surviving this." Unspoken was the fear they both shared: that the threat on Harriet's life wouldn't be during the Tasks at all.
Harriet sighed in fond exasperation, tightening her arm where it now rested about Tommie's waist. "Of course I will. Surviving convoluted plots is the only thing I'm actually good at."
"Please," Tommie rejoined. "You are brilliant." They resumed their feverish snogging. Whatever Dark Lord-related horrors were yet to come, they had this moment to enjoy. Best make the most of it.