Chapter 6

Harry eyed the jar of sparkling potion as it sat on top of his dresser. He'd been planning to give it to Nikolay when he came for their Dark Arts lesson in a few days' time so that he could then give it to Markos, or maybe even ask Dumbledore to pass it along, but for some reason he had been struck by the urge to do it himself. It was that same urge that had stopped him from writing to Markos about it straight after he'd brewed it. He wanted to see the look of pride on his tutor's face when he handed it over, he wanted to see Sirius's gleeful look when he showed him Snape's reaction in the pensieve. He didn't want to just read the words on a page.

And that confused him. It made him feel needy and weak. It shook the belief that he had always had in the back of his mind that, if worst came to worst, he and Tom would be able to go on by themselves quite happily. It was an uncomfortable feeling, but for the life of him he couldn't bring himself to wish he didn't feel it.

Tom had no such reservations.

'It's a weakness Harry. Needing people is a weakness. We went through hell for ten years without needing anybody but ourselves. We were strong, but we've allowed ourselves to become coddled like a child.'

'Are we not a child, though?' Harry thought, but he kept the words to himself. Tom would no doubt take offence were he to think them loud enough they could be heard. Children were weak, snivelling little things as far as Tom was concerned. They had lived through things that a child would not survive, through things even an adult could not bear, and so they were not a child. They were much more than that.

Light continued to swirl around inside the jar until, finally, Harry pushed himself from the edge of his bed and grabbed it, and he stubbornly ignored Tom's sigh of irritation as he did so. He was well used to such displays by now.

He paused at the door and glanced at his watch: a little after two thirty in the afternoon. Most everyone would be in class at this time, and those that had free periods wouldn't be spending it camped out in front of his room. Well, hopefully not anyway. There always seemed to be girls loitering outside his room since the Yule Ball was announced, and he'd only avoided their hungry advances thanks to disillusionment and notice-me-not charms. Not out of anything like cowardice or discomfort, obviously. He simply didn't want to waste time with teenage girls controlled by silly ideas of romance.

According to Daphne the Weasley twins had made quite a bit of gold by selling the location of his room to prospective dates. He suspected the map that Sirius had made was involved, not that he could do much about it now. The cat was very much out of the bag, as proven by the dark-haired girl that was leant against the wall a little way down the corridor, apparently chattering to her friends despite the way she was fluttering her eyelashes at him.

Harry walked the opposite way down the corridor, immediately deciding that going the long way round really wasn't such a hardship.

A few minutes later he found himself standing in front of the one-eyed witch statue, his jar of potion still tucked under his arm while he ignored Tom insisting that their time would be better served dissecting the runes they had found hidden in their egg.

'Are you suggesting we need the next three months to prepare for the task?' Harry asked.

'Of course not!'

'Well then we have ages don't we?'

He'd always had a little image of Tom in the back of his head. Not what he looked like, obviously, because obviously he looked like him, but the way he reacted, his expressions, his posture. He wasn't sure how accurate it was, but right now he could imagine Tom scowling with his arms crossed stubbornly across his chest. Harry smirked.

Quickly, he glanced quickly around the corridor to make sure no one was watching before he muttered, "Dissendium."

The witch's hump swung open to reveal a short slide and Harry cradled his jar more tightly to his stomach as he slid down it regardless of the fact the jar was already unbreakable. The walk itself was long and tedious, especially given that Tom was still stewing silently in the back of his mind, and by the time he felt himself leave the Hogwarts wards he was starting to wonder if maybe Tom had been right. What a waste of twenty minutes.

He took a few extra steps past the boundary before he stopped and extinguished his wand. This would be by far the furthest he'd ever apparated, so he closed his eyes and concentrated on appearing exactly as he was on the front step of Grimmauld Place.

He twisted, and with a thunderous crack he felt himself being squeezed through a tube. The dark of the passageway was replaced by pale sunlight, and after a second to catch his breath Harry pushed open the front door with a self-satisfied smile. This apparition business was just as easy as he'd thought. How some people splinched themselves he would never understand.

The door shut loudly behind him and a second later a pair of grey eyes peeked out from behind the kitchen door. They widened in surprise and the next second Harry heard a thump and the clattering of a chair falling over, immediately followed by a burst of laughter.

"Harry!" Sirius cried as he flung the door open, one hand rubbing the back of his head. "What are you doing here? Is everything alright at Hogwarts?"

"Everything's fine. Hogwarts is… bearable."

"The Yule Ball was announced the other day wasn't it?"

Harry scowled involuntarily, an action that Sirius seemed to find hilarious.

"Been eyeing you up have they?"

"While lurking outside my room. The Weasley twins apparently found out where I'm staying and decided to sell it to people. Unfortunately for them I'm not stupid enough to get ambushed by teenage girls."

Sirius barked out another laugh.

"Of course you're not, Harry," he said as he led the way back into the kitchen.

"Good afternoon Harry," Remus said from his place at the table, a steaming mug cupped between his hands.

"Hi Remus."

Harry was unsurprised to find Remus here. The man seemed to spend more time at Grimmauld Place than he did at his own home and was even on good terms with all of his tutors. More than once he had assisted in one of his lessons, usually defence, charms or, surprisingly for a such a quiet man, the dark arts. He was a rather competent teacher actually, which was rather surprising for someone who was best friends with Sirius Black. Harry could certainly see how he got the job at Hogwarts last year.

"What've you got there?" Remus asked, nodding towards the jar still clutched under Harry's arm. Harry had almost forgot it was there.

"Oh, this is my potions research project," he said with pride clear in his voice. "I've been researching it for years and finally brewed it with my modification."

"Really?" Remus asked, looking suitably impressed. "A potion I'd know?"

"Probably not."

Remus chuckled, well aware of his own failings as far as potions was concerned.

"Do you want me to floo Markos?" Sirius asked.

"Yes please. And ask him if he can bring a sample of the standardly brewed TME potion for comparison."

Sirius nodded and wandered towards the fireplace, got down on his knees and then stuck his head in the fire. No matter how many times he saw it Harry would never fail to find floo calling odd.

"Your performance in the first task was very impressive Harry," Remus said as Harry slid into a seat opposite him. "Even Dumbledore looked shocked. Sirius said you made the spell yourself? A modified form of fiendfyre was it?"

Harry nodded proudly and then started explaining some of the things he and Nikolay had done during development while Sirius retook his seat and contented himself with swilling the potion around, watching the way the light bounced off it like an easily contented child. Remus, on the other hand, listened avidly. He was much better at magical theory than Sirius could ever hope to be and made all the correct sounds when Harry mentioned something particularly complex.

"…Dumbledore asked me to teach it to him. He said that he'd found an appropriate spot at Hogwarts and was just layering all the protective and containment enchantments just in case. I told him it wasn't too difficult to control but he insisted." Harry shrugged, which for some reason made Remus need to stifle laughter. "Nikolay and I are going to test a direct conflict between our spell and fiendfyre once Dumbledore masters it; that way if they react in a way we don't expect Dumbledore can help us contain it."

"So you think your spell can be used to cancel out fiendfyre?" Remus asked with interest, but before Harry could jump into a no doubt technical explanation about possible spell interactions the floo flashed green and Markos stepped out.

"Busy were you, Markos?" Remus asked dryly, earning a glare from the newly arrived man.

In fairness, he did look like he'd been caught in the middle of something. He was slightly breathless, his robe askew and a pair of protective goggles still resting on top of his head, not that he seemed to notice as his gaze locked onto the jar of sparkling potion sat on the table.

"Researching a nutritional potion to increase shelf-life," he said as he swiped a hand through the air as if to push away such thoughts. "Boring! The gold the company is paying me is more than satisfactory but it's just so boring! But this! This is gorgeous. Absolutely beautiful."

He snatched the jar from Sirius's hands and peered at it, tilting it this way and that.

"You used the same procedure you showed me?" he asked as he looked at Harry, forcing his eyes away from the potion for the first time since he arrived.

Harry nodded.

Markos carefully lowered the jar back to the table and then pulled a thin test tube of seemingly identical potion from his pocket. He muttered a spell over it and the over the jar, and a second later a series of readings appeared over both.

"Identical," Markos breathed. "Absolutely identical. This is phenomenal. No one has ever conceived of such a thing. I had thought it would work from reading your notes but still, to see it done… to remove phoenix tears? It is a revolution, Harry. In my many years not even I have done something so… unbelievable."

His voice was quiet and reverent, jarringly different to the way he was bouncing on his feet with a beaming smile on his face. Harry was smiling as broadly as he ever had as he tried to ignore that annoyingly pleasant feeling in his stomach again as well as the sudden urge to punch the air or something equally dramatic. He wasn't sure if he ever would have done such a thing because before he could Markos was shaking his hand as if trying to pull his arm from its socket. He seemed even more excited than Harry was.

"I will contact the guild the moment I get back. Have you written it all up yet?"

"More or less. I can have it finished in a week."

"Do so. The guild will want to read the paper before they allow you to brew it under observation, and after that it can be published. I'm sure Albus will let you go regardless of when we can get it scheduled."

"Merlin, I would love to see the look on Snape's face when he sees a potions research paper with Harry Potter's name on it," Sirius said, looking a little dreamy at the thought.

"He said he was looking forward to reading it. He didn't quite look like he believed it, actually."

Harry did his best to keep the smugness out of his tone but it was ultimately a pointless endeavour. That more than anything seemed to tell Sirius just how impressive it all was.

"Can I please, please see his face?" Sirius pleaded.

"Sirius…" Remus said, but the smile on his face took most of the sting out of his half-hearted admonishment.

"Go get your pensieve then."

Sirius ran from the room and returned barely thirty seconds later with the black basin cradled in his arms. He didn't bother sitting back down once he'd plonked it on the table, and as Harry pulled the memory from his temple he wondered not for the first time whether Sirius had matured beyond the age of nine.

When they emerged Sirius looked like he'd gained a new patronus memory, and even Remus was having difficulty controlling his chuckles.

"Did you see his face?" Sirius asked breathlessly, before proceeding to do a comical but nonetheless accurate impression of Snape and then descended back into laughter.

"It rather reminded me of his face when he noticed James was at Slughorn's party, and that he was sitting next to Lily to boot," Remus said, which set Sirius right back off again.

"Who was the girl?" Sirius asked once he'd got his breath back.

"The girl?" Harry asked in reply, though he had a sinking feeling he knew exactly who Sirius was talking about.

"The one sat next to you. She spent more time staring at you than staring at your cauldron."

Sirius waggled in his eyebrows, and for some reason Harry found himself having to focus to stop himself from blushing.

"Probably because she didn't understand what I was doing."

He had hoped that the re-emergence of his pride would deter Sirius from that particular line of questioning, but he was to be disappointed.

"There were spare desks as well. Why didn't you sit at one of those?"

"Because I was there first and then she sat next to me."

"And why would she do that?"

Harry huffed out a breath, wondering why the hell Sirius was so interested.

"Because I'm better at potions."

If he was totally honest with himself Harry wasn't sure that was entirely accurate but still, he was the one he had just made a potions breakthrough so he'd allow it, especially as Tom was already winding up for a long rant on exactly why they were the better brewer.

Sirius let the matter drop but still looked far too suspicious for Harry's liking. Had he figured out he was doing experiments again? No, there was no way he could know just from that memory. He couldn't know Daphne was a healer, and even if he did he likely wouldn't put it together. Now that he looked more closely Sirius looked rather pleased too. Why would he look pleased and suspicious? That just didn't make any sense.

"You will be coming home for Christmas won't you Harry?" Markos asked. "I have a project that I'll need a capable set of hands for."

"I should be. I'm sure as hell not going to the ball."

Sirius looked about to say something but Remus cut in before he could.

"Oh I don't know Harry, I rather enjoyed the one we had during our fifth year. Or I did until Sirius and your father decided it was the perfect time for a prank, anyway."

Remus then descended into a wild tale involving Professor McGonagall, a lion costume, five pigs and copious amounts of paint that had Markos giggling hard enough that he struggled for breath. Harry was sure at least some of it was made up – there was no way they had managed to make McGonagall do that.

After a few more stories of their school days talk turned to what life had been like at Grimmauld Place without him around. Apparently they all saw each other almost as much as they normally would, even going so far as to have nights in or, in the case of the younger members of the group, nights out together. As he was told of the particularly colourful Monopoly game they had played – God did he hate that ridiculous game – Harry found himself feeling strangely pleased that they were still meeting up even in his absence.

Tom huffed in irritation.

Eventually conversation shifted to the remaining tasks as they asked him about the egg he had retrieved from the dragon. All three adults admonished him for not making it more of a priority, though his insistence that he had months to figure it out seemed to take the wind out of their sails. Clearly they had realised that this tournament really wasn't much of a problem and that they shouldn't worry about it.

Markos extracted another promise to send him his research article as soon as he could before he eventually left with the jar of potion held lovingly to his chest, and a few minutes later Harry stood from the table too. He had to make an appearance at dinner so no one knew he'd snuck out, he told them, though in truth no one would think him disappearing was at all out of the ordinary. He stubbornly refused to consider why he was so keen to get back to Hogwarts.

"How did you get here, anyway?" Sirius asked as he and Remus walked him out.

"The passageway behind the one-eyed witch statue that Dumbledore mentioned."

"And then what? The Knight Bus?"

Harry looked at him like he was crazy, which you'd have to be to subject yourself to that contraption.

"I apparated," he said as if it was obvious.

"You apparated from Hogwarts to here?" Sirius asked, frowning at him. "What was the furthest you'd apparated before?"

"Diagon Alley."

"From where?"

Harry weighed the pros and cons of lying before he decided it wasn't worth the effort to make up an imagined trip.

"Here."

Sirius's frown turned into a glare.

"That's barely two miles. You went from apparating two miles to apparating five hundred!"

"So? It's exactly the same thing, the distance just happens to be longer. I could probably apparate to China if I knew what it looked like well enough to visualise it."

"No Harry," Remus said, looking somewhere between exasperated and amused, "you couldn't."

Harry was struck by the sudden urge to try, and by the look on his face Sirius knew it.

"Don't even think about it Harry. Now, I'll see you in what… two weeks?"

"Eleven days, Padfoot, as if you don't know that already."

Sirius ignored Remus entirely as he squeezed Harry's shoulder and shut the door with a final goodbye. Harry frowned as he stood on the front step before he disappeared with a thunderous crack; leaving felt much more awkward than it had a few weeks ago.

~Scene Change~

'Finally,' Tom breathed.

It had taken longer than even Tom had thought it would, but Daphne could now consistently cast the blood-boiling curse. She had by no means mastered it, of course, but she didn't need to have mastered it to cast it at him under controlled circumstances.

Both he and Tom were keen to do the test as soon as possible but, annoyingly, Daphne refused to do so tonight. She wanted the full period from the time they met until curfew and, if necessary, beyond it. She was even talking about learning another monitoring charm. Harry didn't mind that too much – what was another spell when added to the fifteen that she already cast – but only if it didn't delay them too long. Tom found any delay at all unacceptable, but luckily for Daphne Tom wasn't the one who controlled their body.

There was another forty minutes or so until curfew – not really enough time to do anything, unfortunately – but instead of going their separate ways both he and Daphne decided to stay. It was strange; neither of them had spoken, and yet after she had cast the curse for the fourth time in a row and he had deemed her casting satisfactory neither had made so much as a move for their bags. Harry would have liked to convince himself that he had stayed purely out of politeness or even to avoid the girls that might still be lingering in the halls, but he could admit to himself that neither of those things were true.

Being a classroom, there were lots of chairs available for them to sit on. For some reason, though, Harry preferred this. Sitting on the stone floor with his back against the wall, one knee folded up against his chest and the other flat against the ground in front of him, a few inches separating his shoulder from Daphne's. By the look on her face she preferred it too. It was… nice.

They had had a brief conversation about Sirius and the similarities between his stories and the antics of the Weasley twins, which then led into speculation of how they did it. That part was quite interesting for Harry because the Weasley twins had gone through the Hogwarts curriculum and so obviously hadn't learnt as much advanced magic as he had. Finding ways to use otherwise simple spells to do creative things was an enjoyable thought experiment, and after listening to a few of his theories Daphne made him promise that he would help her exact revenge on Malfoy if he annoyed her again. From what he knew of Draco Malfoy that was an inevitability.

Sirius would be ecstatic at the prospect of him making mischief.

That was earlier though, and a comfortable silence had now replaced their low murmurs and Daphne's occasional laughter. Currently, he was bouncing a ball of conjured light absentmindedly off the wall while next to him Daphne had her copy of their results open in her lap. Her results book looked like an ancient runes textbook as opposed to his own herbology one but the charms on it were more or less the same: a blood lock and various other security charms, search features and nigh on unending parchment. He said 'more or less' because the only way he had been able to stop Tom from whinging about giving her a book of her own had been to add extra defences to it. The extra charms and the opportunity to cast some of their nastier spells had been enough to lessen his displeasure from ranting to the occasional snide remark.

But, of course, Tom was still Tom.

'Why are we still here?' Tom scowled. 'We're wasting time.'

'What could we be doing instead?'

'What could we be doing instead, he asks,' Tom scoffed in disbelief. 'What couldn't we be doing instead? Even learning bloody herbology would be more useful than this! I just can't believe you're enjoying it.'

'I'm not enjoying it,' Harry protested.

'Liar. If you weren't enjoying it you'd have left by now instead of sitting there like a simpleton whiling away the hours until you finally die.'

Ah, there was the Tom he knew. Caustic, derogatory and, when in a mood like this, about as subtle as a rampaging dragon.

'Leaving would be impolite. Daphne clearly wants me to stay, and upsetting her would be counterproductive to our-'

'Shut up. If you can't convince yourself that's the case you certainly can't convince me. You want to stay just as much as she wants you to.'

Harry frowned, causing him to miss the glowing white ball as it bounced back towards him. It hit the wall behind him and rolled back across the room before it seemed to dissolve, not that he really noticed.

He wanted to stay just as much as she wanted him to. That wasn't true, was it? And if it was, would that mean the converse was true as well? That he wanted her to stay? It sounded… strange, but not as preposterous as he thought it would.

He didn't like it.

"What do you do for fun?" She asked suddenly, looking up from her book. "I can't believe I've never asked that before."

Harry startled slightly before he answered.

"Magic."

"Just magic?"

He shrugged and turned his gaze back towards the wall.

"I like magic. Jiu Jitsu is fun too, but I can't do that while I'm here."

Well technically he could sneak out, but he didn't think that was what Dumbledore had intended when he told him about the passageway. And besides, his classes were between seven and eight four nights a week, and he met with Daphne at seven. He refused to acknowledge that sneaking out was an option when he wasn't sure he'd pick it, especially considering he wouldn't like to realise that he wouldn't. No, much better just not to consider it.

"Jiu Jitsu?"

"A muggle martial art. I was going to be assessed for my orange belt before I came here but couldn't get it scheduled in time, and as I can't practise here I'm going to have to work back up to it."

He scowled to himself, just as annoyed now as he had been when he first realised. Daphne looked at him in confusion and so he proceeded to explain the belt system and some of the various moves he could do. He even said, for some unfathomable reason, that he'd show her at some point.

"Why did you decide to do that?"

By her careful tone Harry didn't think she saw the point in learning jiu-jitsu when he had a wand. He agreed with her on principle, actually, but that didn't mean it wasn't fun.

"When I left Hogwarts it was decided that I had to socialise," he said, barely keeping the sneer out of his voice, "and as team sports didn't work out I chose that."

"And why didn't team sports work out?"

"Because they were all idiots."

She snorted. He may not know it but he was really very funny, especially when outraged by what he considered the many failings of the human race. The few times he had actually tried to be funny hadn't been quite as good in her opinion, especially as his humour seemed to be centred around making people squirm, which considering she was the only person he talked to always meant her.

"What do you do for fun?" he asked.

She hummed to herself.

"I read. Normally it's academics, mostly potions or healing, but sometimes I read the muggle novels my dad buys me. One thing the muggles do better than us is fiction."

"The only magical fiction I've ever read is Lockhart's books. The dates don't even line up for God's sake. Not unless he can recover from a vampire attack and get to Ghana in less than a day anyway."

She laughed, trying to hide her blush as she remembered the way she and the rest of the female population had fawned over the man during her second year.

"Tracey makes me read her gossipy magazines sometimes too," she said, forcing the red away from her cheeks by sheer force of will, "and they're so full of lies and stupid articles that it's actually quite funny. You've been in a few of them, actually."

"I have?"

She nodded and then blushed again, remembering one particular article that had described him as a "dashing young hero with smouldering emerald eyes" while speculating on when he would finally be "snatched up".

"What did they say?"

"Oh nothing," she said, cringing when she noticed her voice sounded slightly higher than usual and thanking God, Merlin and everyone else that Harry didn't notice, "just the usual Witch Weekly gossip. Your relationship status and what not."

Harry's nose crinkled in disgust.

"Apart from that though," she continued quickly, "I quite like playing chess with Blaise and watching Tracey paint. It's really quite relaxing just to watch, and it helps that she's quite good. I use the open potions labs quite a lot as well when I have time, though obviously I don't do much experimenting on my own in case it goes wrong."

Harry ignored this Blaise character – he wasn't sure he liked the sound of him, which for some reason amused and irritated Tom in equal measure – in favour of potions. Potions he understood.

"How is your modification to the liver regeneration potion going?"

"Quite well; I've got to complete the second to last stage tomorrow and then the last stage in a week. I haven't changed those parts at all and my potion looks right even after the modified steps, but I won't know if it actually works until it's completed. Besides," she said, shrugging with a very slight frown on her face, "it's only to improve the absorption rate – nothing ground-breaking. Not like yours."

"In fairness most fourteen year olds can't modify a potion at all. Most adults can't, actually."

"And yet you managed a modification that most potion masters thought impossible."

"Yeah, but it took me the best part of two years," he said, feeling a little smug at the praise but also quite confused as to why he was downplaying his achievement. "It's done now though. I finished writing it up last night and sent it to Markos, so all that's left now is brewing it under observation and then the paper will be released. I'll have to find something new to do. I haven't decided between doing another potion or trying to create a spell."

"I'd recommend you not start a new potion until after the Yule Ball," Daphne laughed.

Harry gave her a funny look; why should he not start a new potion until after a pointless event that had absolutely no bearing on brewing a potion? He hadn't missed something had he? Astronomy or some obscure facet of arithmancy perhaps?

For some reason, Daphne seemed to find his ignorance amusing.

"Girls have realised that the only class you turn up for now is potions. They don't even notice you leaving your room anymore."

Harry smiled in satisfaction. It was nice to know those notice-me-not, disillusionment, illusionary and silencing wards he'd put around his door and the surrounding corridor were working as well as he thought they were.

"I didn't think you could get any more reclusive but you've managed it," she continued with a grin on her face, "and to avoid teenage girls no less."

Her teasing tone lessened the sting, but he was still not at all pleased that people thought he was staying in his room to avoid girls. That was just preposterous.

"I'm not avoiding teenage girls, I'm studying. I've been writing up my potion paper, helping Nikolay write up the paper on modified fiendfyre, working on my egg, practising the things I'm being taught in Dark Arts and Alchemy. It would be a waste of time to go to a class that teaches things I already know."

"Uh huh," she agreed, and Harry decided that he must have misheard the amused scepticism he thought he heard in her voice.

"Anyway," she continued, "apparently there's a group of girls that are going to wait outside to ambush you after the next potions class, assuming you turn up that is. There's less than a week until the ball so some of them are probably getting desperate – I've even heard rumours that they might try a love potion or something."

She frowned while Harry felt a sneer twist onto his face. As if something as simple as a love potion could ever make him do something he didn't want to do.

"What are you going to do about the ball anyway?" she asked casually. "You and your date have to open the dance and you haven't asked anyone yet."

"I'm not going to ask anyone. It's not required by the contract so I'm not going."

She looked shocked and, for some reason, slightly disappointed.

"Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no reason. Just wondering."

Harry felt his lips purse in a frown. She was lying, though he couldn't conceive of a reason why she would lie about this. It was hardly important enough to lie about.

"Fine," she muttered, a small blush staining her cheeks, "Blaise is going with Tracey and all the other available boys are pretty loathsome. When Malfoy asked me I lied and said I had a date – that little ponce wouldn't have taken no for an answer otherwise – so I was going to ask if maybe you'd be willing to go with me, but as you're not going…"

She petered off and turned her attention determinedly back to her book. For his part, Harry was shocked. Why would she ask him? He was hardly one for large social gatherings so he doubted he would be much fun, assuming such a word could be applied to a ball in the first place. And surely she couldn't think he'd have wanted to go to a ball? Why would she think he'd be willing to subject himself to that?

'Pfft,' Tom snorted, 'why the hell would she think we would possibly say-'

"Yeah, okay. I'll go with you."

Her head snapped up so fast she was liable to get whiplash, her eyes suspiciously bright and a beaming smile rapidly forming on her face. Harry suddenly felt much more sure of his decision, even if he had yet to work out why he made it.

'…what the fuck are you doing? Harry?'

"You're sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. You'll owe me though, obviously," he added quickly. It wouldn't do to give her the impression he was keen.

"Count on you to turn it into a business transaction," she said, trying and failing to turn her grin into a frown.

Still smiling to herself, Daphne glanced at her watch let out a soft curse before she shoved herself from the floor.

"Damn it, Tracey is probably starting to get worried."

"Why?"

"Because it's well past curfew, Harry. We've just been sat here for nearly two hours."

Harry blinked as he looked at his own watch and saw that it read seven minutes to ten. Huh.

"Where does Tracey think you are anyway?" he asked. "How have you been explaining your nightly absences?"

"I tell them I'm doing research, which is technically true even if they don't believe me." She snorted softly to herself. "They think I'm sneaking off to see a boy."

"You are."

"Not like that."

She blushed lightly as she looked at him, seeming to find his confusion amusing judging by the way she rolled her eyes. Really though, he was a boy and she was sneaking off to see him, ergo her friends were right.

"Anyway," she said as she put her book in her bag and hefted it over her shoulder, "as you weren't planning on going to the ball I assume you don't have any dress robes?"

Harry shook his head.

"Right, well I'll be wearing blue," she said as if that would mean something to him and then sighed when it became clear he had no idea how that could possibly matter.

"Just tell the salesperson when you're being fitted. That way we'll match."

Harry nodded, pretending to understand how two people's clothes could match. Did she mean that he was going to have to wear blue as well? He didn't much like the sound of that.

"Goodnight then," she said, smiling a gentle smile that Harry immediately decided he rather liked. "See you tomorrow."

Almost the moment the door shut behind her Harry felt a sudden surge of manic energy that forced him to his feet. He'd just made a mistake hadn't he? He had just agreed to go to a ball that he would be opening when didn't have dress robes and, worse, he couldn't dance. He could only imagine the look on Sirius's face when he found out. He was going to be unbearable.

Fuck. What the hell had he just got himself into?