A City Visible But Unseen

Chapter Ten: STOP CRYING YOUR HEART OUT

Lights go out and I can't be saved

Tides that I tried to swim against

Have brought me down upon my knees

Oh I beg I'm begging please

Hermione sat in determined silence, her hands flying as furiously as Draco's as they cut, stuck, twined, twisted and twirled the piles of stiff coloured card, luxurious bobbins of ribbon, string, wire and fat pots of glitter, paint and tiny shiny stars, moons, circles and snowflakes that lay heaped around them. Binns was almost motionless save for when his thumb was required to hold something, or he was curtly asked to cut more Sellotape. He also found himself in the position of being the most voluble in a group of people - a unique situation for him. Both Hermione and Draco, after their initial spate of words, now worked in mutinous silence.

'How's the study going, Hermione?' Binns tried.

'Fine, thank you. Could you pass me the stars, please?'

'I'm using them,' Draco snarled. Hermione tossed her head and reached for the pot of stars at the same time as he did. Their hands grasped it and their fingers touched. The electric jolt started both of them, causing them to release the pot at the same instant. Stars spewed supernova-like all over the floor and cascaded into their laps like a miniature meteor shower.

'Now look what you did!' Hermione exclaimed in exasperation.

'What I did?' Draco shouted, indignant. 'That was your fault!'

Hermione harrumphed and attempted, with little success, to gather the stars around her into a pile. Draco stood up and a shower of stars flew out from his jeans, utterly destroying Hermione's clean-up attempt and covering her hair with them.

'Hey!' she yelled, reaching up to bat them out - a mistake, as her fingers were sticky with glue, which she managed to spread all over her hair. She jumped up herself, looking murderous. Draco caught her glare with a hundred-watt one of his own.

'You two!' Binns interjected. 'Don't move before you create any more chaos. I'll go get a sweeping brush. Please try not to commit homicide while I'm gone.'

Neither of them said anything, but Hermione grudgingly sat down again, followed, a few moments later, by Draco. With a sigh of relief, Binns evacuated.

Scowling in frustration, her hair now dotted with stars like a wannabe angel, Hermione held up the mobile she'd been working on. It consisted of a mixture of silver and green swirls of thick ribbon, hung from a four-pronged wire base. Deciding to keep design to a minimum, she had cut out pale green card in the shape of half-moons, doused them generously with glitter, and attached them to a string so that, eventually, four columns of twinkling moons dangled from the wire. It was nearly three feet long, from the top to the last twirl of ribbon. Four more lay beside her, all of the same general idea in varying colours.

''s nice, Granger,' she heard Black grunt, and whirled around.

'Did you say something?' she demanded.

'Oh, sorry, forgot you can't take a compliment,' he sneered.

'From you, Liar of the Month winner? Hardly,' she retorted, and was surprised to see him looking uncomfortable, if rebellious.

'Look who's talking,' he muttered.

'What's that supposed to mean?' she asked, and added haughtily, 'I never lie.'

'But if you did, that would mean that if you said you never lie, it's actually a lie,' he reminded her. Hermione just looked at him.

'Whatever,' she said, shrugging, and laid down her mobile next to the others.

'You lied to me,' he said, apparently not about to let it die. For his own part, he couldn't believe what he was saying, but his brain seemed to have lost motor co-ordination with his mouth.

'I stand by what I said,' Hermione said. 'I'm sorry, but chocolate will ruin your teeth if you keep eating it for lunch.'

'What?' Draco said, astonished.

'I know it's difficult to face,' Hermione continued, putting on a face of false sympathy, 'but there it is. All that sweet stuff rots the enamel after a while.'

'I know that,' Draco said, shifting up onto his elbow from where he'd been lying on the floor, painting, and trying to keep a hold on his sanity. 'I wasn't talking about that, as you very well know.'

'Well, care to inform me what it is you are talking about, Mr Liar Man?' Hermione said, with an uncharacteristic curl of her lip.

'Watch who you're calling a liar here,' he said hotly.

'I am - it's you,' she said, waving her scissors at him. 'And you're very good at it. I bet you're utterly delighted that you had me completely fooled, you bastard. Congratulations - I really thought you liked me.' She set her face in a glower to hide her trembling mouth.

'Aren't you the brilliant little actress,' he snorted. 'You had me convinced of the very same thing.'

'That wasn't an act!' she hissed, her eyes blazing.

The abrasive sincerity of her voice gave him pause, and to cover his discomfiture he said, in a throw-away tone, 'Well, we'd have made an awful couple - the Oxford student and her dupe.'

Hermione stared at him, her face working, and finally said, 'I didn't get in.'

'What?'

'They didn't offer me a place, all right? Gloat if you want!'

The pain of a wound she'd thought long-since healed welled up once more. Draco stared at her in horrified amazement. At that moment, Pansy's shrill voice rent the air.

'Black? I need your help!'

They both looked over at her at the same instant; she was grappling with the machine, but her position didn't prevent her from shooting Black a lascivious wink, and a deliberate view of her jacked-up cleavage. Hermione turned away in disgust, but was almost grateful to Pansy for distracting her from her impending emotional breakdown.

As Draco got to his feet and made his way over to Pansy, her fragile gratitude vanished like mist in the sun.

She was gripping a scissors in a meaningful way, wearing a twisted expression of scorn, when Binns finally returned with a dustpan and broom. He proceeded to sweep up the scattered stars, humming 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' tunelessly.

'Where'd Draco get off to?' he asked, when he'd finished.

'Over there, with his girlfriend,' she replied, jerking her head in Pansy's direction and vengefully ripping off a piece of Sellotape.

Binns followed her gaze, which had become stuck like a jarring record needle on the two half-intertwined figures. Draco was submitting to Pansy's fondlings with a preoccupied expression.

'Oh, they got back together, did they?' Binns inquired, his tone, for the first time in Hermione's recall, showing a tiny inflection of surprise. Gosh, even teachers thought they'd broken up. Draco should be due his Bafta any day now.

'They never broke up,' she explained, not sure why she was telling him this - except, perhaps, that he would call Black 'Draco'.

Binns raised his eyebrows at her. 'That's not the impression I got. From him, his father or his mother. I was quite sure he'd broken things off with her.'

'You know them?' Hermione asked, flabbergasted.

'Quite intimately,' Binns replied, with a small, secret smile - another first.

Hermione glanced back at the couple in question. It was quite evident that Pansy had her hand up under Draco's t-shirt.

'Well, he probably wanted more easy sex,' she said bitterly, forgetting to whom she was addressing the words until it was too late.

Binns was very nearly grinning now. 'More? Miss Granger, he never had any to begin with.'

'How do you know?' Hermione asked, torn between horror and voyeuristic curiosity.

Binns' lips twitched. 'I was as good as told. If you want concrete proof you'll have to look outside of me. Oh, and Miss Granger?'

She looked up at him, her brain thrumming like an abused violin.

'Like I said, I know Mr Black and his family quite well. I told you this for a reason. I hope you understand why. Now, I must put these away...'

He wandered off, still whistling. Hermione stared after him in a daze, and didn't notice Pansy's approach.

Pansy pushed past her, making her way to the door. 'Bye, Black darling!' she simpered over her shoulder. 'Oh, Mr Lupin, I have to go home now...'

Hermione stood, staring at the floor, until Draco, sounding quite piqued, asked her if she was planning to help him suspend the mobiles at any point in the near future?

~

Blaise and Harry stood back to admire their handiwork. Rows of twinkling lights looped around the basketball back-boards, across the walls and among the slowly revolving mobiles. Lupin had switched on the light machine, which threw eerie, slowly-rotating luminous shapes around the white walls, lending them an almost supernatural glow. The flame machine stood by the door, puffing gently and drawing the eye to admire it. It wasn't Blenheim Palace, but it was kitsch enough to be cool.

Along with his coat, Harry had brought two sports bags with him, for tonight was the night; he was finally going to take up an extended residence as a free lodger chez Zabini. It was not without disapprobation that he had finally caved; but now, as they stood with their arms around each other's waists, for all the world like something out of a dinky seaside postcard, all doubts seemed miraculously far-fetched.

Seeing as half the party was already in situ at Blaise's house, Hermione and Ron had agreed to meet there before heading to the dance the following night. Hermione was, in fact, getting ready there, much like she had the night Blaise had coerced her into going to the pub. It seemed a long time ago, and Blaise marvelled at how much things had changed.

As she heard Hermione and Black vociferously bickering over the placing of one of the mobiles, her face dropped a little. Not everything had changed for the better. Her eyes narrowed in frustration. She had been so sure about Black...

'What's wrong? You look like you swallowed a hairball,' Harry said, reaching up to smooth her brow with the pad of his thumb.

'Your honesty is so refreshing,' she said, and shivered a little at his touch. They still hadn't had much of a chance to be alone. Up until now, Harry had had to leave school early every day, or suffer his uncle's wrath for his tardiness; and the school corridors were always so annoyingly crowded at break times.

Well, at least one of those problems was on its way to resolution...

Harry shifted so that they were facing each other rather than side by side, and leaned in to kiss her gently on the lips. Blaise squirmed pleasurably in his arms and kissed him back with more force. He broke off for a moment, startled, then smiled and kissed her again, parting her lips with his own. Blaise abandoned herself to the delectation of the moment. She couldn't wait until she got him on his own long enough to see how much more passionate his delicate, questing kisses could become...

~

Over at the other side of the hall, Hermione teetered at the top of the stepladder, affixing, with considerable difficulty, the hooked part of one of Black's red and gold mobiles to the thick string that crossed the hall.

'Is this right or what?' she hollered, reminding herself not to grab onto the string for support as it swung temptingly into reach, and finally twisting the wire around it.

'That's disgusting,' he said, in tones of deepest revulsion.

'What!' she screeched. 'After all that effort, I'll flaming garrotte you, you little -'

'Not the mobile, that's fine,' he snapped, and she stomped down the steps of the ladder, brushing off her trousers.

'What are you blathering on about?'

'That,' he said, pointing at Blaise and Harry. Hermione looked too, and smiled a little at the heart-warming picture they made. She assumed an aggressive stance as she turned to back to Draco.

'Well? No worse than you were doing with that Pansy creature,' she accused. He merely scowled at her.

'Are you finished, Hermione?' Blaise called over.

'No,' Hermione called back ruefully. 'Still got two more to do - although we would be done if someone hadn't had to change every single one I hung.' She treated Black to a fierce glare.

'It's not my fault you have no sense of balance,' he sniffed.

'Which explains why I'm the one up the ladder,' she said, stuffing down the urge to strangle him with one of his godforsaken mobiles. They glowered at each other until Blaise, who had approached without either of them noticing, interrupted.

'Well, me and Harry are...we were going to go home. Will you be long? We'll wait.'

'Oh no, don't bother,' Hermione said, not in the least wanting the guilt for having derailed the train that was bearing Harry and Blaise to an unspecified, but unequivocally interesting, destination.

'Well, if you're sure...' Blaise trailed off, not sounding like she was.

'Oh, I am. This tool will keep us here all night, no doubt.' Hermione quirked her thumb in Draco's direction. He was hovering in the background, his arms crossed defensively and one foot tapping the floor in impatience.

Blaise opened her eyes wide in sympathy. She leaned in closer to Hermione and whispered, 'Hermione...you do realise that you're wearing a black bra?'

Hermione hadn't, and she blushed. She whipped her head around, but Draco was squinting critically at the mobile she had just hung.

Once Blaise and Harry had departed, holding hands, Hermione turned around and realised that she and Draco were the only two of the squad left in the hall. She heaved a great sigh, and let herself be abysmally jealous of her friend.

'Let's get this over with, Black,' she said, feeling tired. To her great surprise, he made no snarky rejoinder. They finished their task in record time and, more remarkably, in complete silence.

Hermione went to fetch her jacket, and tossed Draco's to him. He caught it in surprise.

'Thanks,' he said. Hermione made no indication that she'd heard, instead heading for the door.

'Hermione.'

It was the first time he'd said her name in a long while; the word was enough to stop her dead in her tracks, and reluctantly wheel around to face him.

'What?'

'Come here and I'll get the stupid stars out of your hair,' he sighed. 'I shouldn't have tipped them on you in the first place.'

'If you think I want you touching my head, then you are quite seriously mistaken,' she said coldly.

'Really?' he returned with equal glaciosity. 'Well, if you thought I had some romantic intent in offering to make up for my fit of - of spite, then you need your head examined. And de-starred.'

Hermione stared at him for a few moments. He looked back with unshakeable poise, his eyes shining like molten mercury under the plethora of whirring lights.

'Fine,' she agreed at last. 'Only because I don't relish the thought of walking down the street like this.'

'I would have thought you even more unhinged than I already do, if you had,' he informed her. She bared her teeth. 'Oh, sit down.'

With bad grace, Hermione plonked herself back on the floor, feeling her muscles protesting at their forcible return to the position they'd held, immobile, for hours already. Draco knelt behind her; his knees brushed her back. Immediately she stiffened, so that they wouldn't come into contact again.

His fingers dipped into her hair, and began tugging mercilessly.

'Ow,' she complained.

'The little blighters don't - want - to come out,' Draco said, through teeth gritted with effort, accompanying each word with a sharp tug. 'The fact that you clearly haven't brushed your hair in a good while isn't helping matters, either.'

'Bugger off, Black,' she snapped. 'Just because I don't carry a comb in my pocket, like you do -'

Hermione felt an almighty weight on the side of her head as Black used a fistful of her hair as a pivot to swing his face around in front of hers. She started, but the expression on his pale, pointed face was relatively benign.

'Do you not think, Granger,' he said pointedly, 'that if I had a comb I would use it to remove these goddammned stars?'

Hermione scowled at him, but as his face was so close to hers it merely seemed like she was angling to kiss him, and she desisted with undue speed. In a moment, Draco was behind her again - disconcerting thought though that was - and was once more jerking her head painfully as he yanked out a growing number of metallic stars.

After a time, the motion of his hands became almost soothing, and Hermione's head drooped forwards to her knees. She could almost imagine his hands were raking through her hair, not gently, but not with the intention of causing undue pain...on the contrary, with the aim of creating pleasurable, soothing shivers that even now were trickling down her spine...

'Last one.'

Hermione jerked awake. His fingers were no longer tangled in her hair, but hanging clenched by his sides as he stood before her.

'Thanks,' she said, her voice quiet from weariness. She stumbled to her feet; Binns and Lupin had emerged from who knew where, the back rooms perhaps, and were approaching them.

'C'mon Draco, Hermione, I'll give you a lift,' Binns said, in a tone that brooked no disagreement. Hermione opened her mouth to say that she could walk home, but a huge yawn swamped her words.

Lupin was saying something about closing up.

She was walking through a door.

Someone's hand was on her back, guiding her as Binns walked ahead, jingling his keys.

The feel of cool seat-cover leather on her cheek.

The touch of cool night air.

And, finally, the warmth of her pillow.

Hermione slept.

~

Sev found that Remus' threat to place him on beverage patrol had not, alas, been an empty one. He was expected to turn up at about six to help set up, and turf out anyone looking for trouble - the dance was due to start at seven-thirty. He refused point-blank to wear any sort of silly costume, however. He donned his trusty leather trousers and a white shirt - respectable, but hardly 'dressed up'.

He arrived to find Binns walking around looking smug (or it could just have been his usual unreadable expression), Remus dancing around looking harried, Dumbledore stumping around looking approving, and Marie pacing around looking thoroughly pissed off.

'There you are!' she cried on spotting Sev, who blinked and wondered what he'd done.

'Remus was threatening to put me watching the drink table if you didn't arrive,' she said in an undertone when she got nearer. 'Good thing you did arrive, sonny, or the police'd have a job of finding your body.'

'Not so feverishly keen to help now, are we?' Sev said, feeling somewhat vindicated.

Marie blinked owlishly.

'What? No, I wanted to be the DJ's assistant!' She waved up at the dark-haired man with a handlebar moustache, who was standing on the DJ platform. He looked more like a bank manager than a DJ, in Sev's opinion, and more like a dead ringer for Hitler than either of these.

'Who is he?' Sev wanted to know.

'Bart Crouch is his name, but he calls himself Dark Catcher.' She rolled her eyes and giggled throatily. 'Don't ask why. I just want a go at spinning disks!'

Dumbledore was dressed as a magician, in long moon-spangled robes, a purple cloak, buckled boots and a pointy silver hat. Binns looked oddly at home in a traditional Amish outfit. Sev took stock - surely none of the students would look this silly? And if Remus had so many volunteers, why did he need to be here?

Then his gaze fell on Remus, caught for a second under a strobe light, bathed in white like a Greek-replica statue. He was dressed in a costume that could have come out of Mr Darcy's wardrobe; a ruffled white shirt, open at the neck to reveal an inch or two of smooth skin, long leather boots and - Sev gulped - extremely tight breeches. They were hardly decent.

Sev grinned. Things were looking up.

And when Remus spotted him, smiled, and started in his direction, Sev's eyes, fixed on his breeches, told his mind that Remus agreed with his assessment wholeheartedly.

'Good, Sev, you're here. You can help me take out the bottles.'

As Sev trotted obediently after him, Remus added, over his shoulder, 'So who are you dressed as, Sev? - oh, Michael Jackson, is it?'

~

Unlike Blaise, Hermione had not put much thought into her costume until it was almost too late.

Blaise and Harry, going the whole hog, had decided on matching outfits - Frankenstein and Bride of. Harry still looked very fetching with a green face, his scar gone over in black eyeliner and several more added to his face and neck. His hands had been dyed too, but he refused point-blank to wear the nuts-and-bolts headband, claiming it kept getting tangled in the earpieces of his glasses. Black jeans and a tunic cut from sacking completed the ensemble.

Blaise had piled on her favourite white pan stick with liberal dollops of black eye shadow and lipstick. The overall affect was one of two squashed flies in a bowl of flour. It wasn't much different from how she usually looked, except for the dress. Apart from a few atmospheric rips, it was a glorious confection of yellowed taffeta and ragged lace, fitted tightly around the bodice and swirling to the floor, with long, dagged sleeves.

Hermione had called Blaise early Saturday morning, having come to the shocking realisation, over her notes on covalent bonding, that she had nothing to wear.

'Short of putting on one of my dad's shirts and going as a scarecrow!' she'd wailed. Blaise, the original Fix-It woman, had had a brainwave in the shape of her mother.

'Just come round the time you were planning to,' she'd decided, 'and you'll be sorted.'

So at half-past four Hermione shut her books, picked up her overnight bag, bid her parents farewell and set off for Blaise's house, half-fearful of what exactly Blaise would force her to wear.

She felt guilty for her doubts when she laid eyes on the garb Mrs Zabini had dredged up from the attics of the house that had been in her husband's family for generations.

'This is incredible!' she gasped.

'And genuine, too,' Mrs Zabini said, pleased. 'This house was built in about 1879, and no one's bothered to clear out the attics since. Blaise's had the run of them, played in most of those old dresses - she's using a wedding dress for her costume. I think we even have corsets and shoes - I'll send her up to check.'

Hermione fingered the authentic twenties evening gown with awe. She held it up to herself in the mirror. The soft, smoky grey silk accentuated her hazel colouring; the hand-embroidered jet beads spun and clicked as she moved. It fell to just above her knees, with a handkerchief hemline. The bodice dipped to a daringly deep V in both front and back.

Blaise entered the room with difficulty, holding her skirt bunched in one hand, her other arm curved around a wicked-looking corset and high-heeled, toeless sandals in silver leather.

'I can't wear this, Blaise!' Hermione exclaimed. 'It must be priceless!'

Blaise dropped her load on the bed with an 'Oomph!' and rolled her eyes.

'So I trust you not to spill Fanta on it,' she said. 'Go on - it'll never be worn again otherwise. A dress like that is made to be worn. What size shoe do you take?'

'Six.'

'Don't know why I asked that, they probably had their shoes hand-made back then,' Blaise giggled, tossing Hermione a shoe. 'Here, try that on.'

Hermione stuck her foot inside the wiggly straps, and her toes emerged out the other end. 'They're a bit big.'

'That's all right - at least they're not too small. Get undressed, and I'll send Mum in to help you with the corset.'

Being dressed by Mrs Zabini was only as embarrassing as being trussed up by her mother, and her nimble fingers had fastened all the fiddly ties in no time. Hermione was doing up her shoes when Blaise returned.

'You do realise that I'm going to be taller than most of the boys there, now,' she pointed out. 'But, do you know, I don't care! This dress is amazing!' She gave a twirl for effect, and nearly fell off her heels. Blaise split a seam in her dress laughing, then had to rip it further so it looked deliberate.

'I came in to give you this,' she said at last. 'I found it in the chest with the dress.'

'This' turned out to be a silk hair ornament.

'It'd probably go better with short hair, though. So, can I cut yours?'

'No!' Hermione was fairly sure that Blaise was joking, but there was a disturbing gleam of eagerness in her eyes. Instead, Blaise brushed up one side of her freshly washed-and-straightened hair, and twirled it haphazardly before sticking the pin of the silk flower into it. Bits of hair fountained out in all directions, like a baby mohawk. They regarded it in the dressing-table mirror.

'Well, leave it out or not?' Blaise asked. 'We've got to go soon.'

'Leave it there,' Hermione decided. 'I like it.'

Blaise shrugged. 'So...ready to go to the ball?'

'Sure thing,' Hermione grinned, linking Blaise's arm. They made it to the stairwell without major incident, although Hermione wobbled dangerously in her heels and the fact that they both had their noses stuck in the air would not appear to have helped matters any.

Harry and Ron were waiting at the foot of the stairs. Harry had eyes only for Blaise, and he was grinning stupidly - a look that suited his costume down to the ground. Ron was standing beside him. He was dressed as a farmer, in gumboots, tatty jeans, a red plaid shirt and a fraying straw hat.

'Maybe I should have gone with the scarecrow idea, after all,' Hermione muttered. 'Then we'd have matched.'

Gripping the banister, she made it down the stairs behind Blaise, and with an inaudible sigh, took her place beside Ron. She wondered what Black was wearing. For some reason, she was pretty sure it wasn't something that could have done as well for mucking out a pigsty.

~

There was a considerable queue outside the PE hall when Hermione and Ron arrived, trailed by Blaise and Harry, who'd stopped every five minutes to kiss. Hermione reflected that it was like taking an incontinent dog out for a walk. She shoved a fiver into Dumbledore's hand, and in return had a gaudy halogen pink band snapped around her wrist by Lupin.

She paused, staring around in satisfaction at her handiwork and at that of everyone else. Within moments, she was joined by the others.

'This looks amazing!' Ron yelled over the blaring music. 'Did you lot do all this?'

'Yep!' Hermione said, pleased by his approbation.

'Let's dance!' Blaise screamed, grabbing Hermione with one hand and holding tightly to Harry's with the other. Hermione laughed, and snatched Ron's hand before she was whirled away. They were sucked into the pulsating organism that was the wildly dancing crowd.

Friends joined their group, and drifted away again, like plankton. She saw Lavender shimmying with Seamus; she was decked out in a princess ball gown, deep crimson with filigree embroidery, and a tiny jewelled crown. Seamus seemed to be dressed as Aragorn; his clothes were nondescript, but a huge long sword with a gaudy gilt handle clanked by his side and hit people in the knees as he danced.

Dean and Ginny whirled by, locked in an embrace; a West Ham footballer, complete with shorts, jersey, knobbly socks and football boots, with his arms twined around an angel in a tinsel halo and a dress that was altogether too tight for an avatar. Pam, in a Fifties flared skirt and a cardigan, was looking glum next to a shaking Neville in a frog costume. A butterfly-Parvati was dancing with Terry with such exuberance and abandon that a space had cleared around their flailing limbs.

Hermione even spotted, for a second, Pansy, bursting out of a tight nylon cat suit, and adjusting her furry pink ears. No Draco.

She laughed herself hoarse, calling remarks to Blaise and everyone else; the colours started blending in front of her eyes, and at last she called time out.

'Need air!' she mouthed to Blaise, who nodded in reply. Using her elbows as leverage, Hermione fought her way through the packed crowd to the relative peace of the backrooms.

Here it was quieter, and cooler. The walls were lined with kissing couples; Hermione stepped carefully around a particularly enthusiastic pair, who had slid to the floor in their ecstasy.

Snape was standing behind a trestle table lined with mineral cans and deep bowls filled with dusky pink liquid, doling them out with a morose expression. Binns was marching up and down before it, daring anyone to test the slamming power of his stiff, inordinately wide-brimmed hat. Hermione smiled at him, and made her way past them to the back door, which was significantly less crowded.

She stepped outside and the coolness of the night enveloped her like a silk cloak, whispering under the hem of her dress and trailing icy fingertips up her arms, leaving a pebbled path of goose bumps in their wake. She made her way, wobbling, to a low wall the overlooked the slight knoll leading down the PE grounds and, eventually, to the housing estate beyond. From her elevated position she gazed down and across at the expanse of twinkling lights, imagining she could see the movement of people in their kitchens and living rooms, just behind the pulled blinds, over the yellow squares of electric light.

The snap of a ring-pull being peeled back alerted her to the fact that she was no longer alone. She whirled, but her shoes didn't quite follow her, forcing her to perform an awkward two-step shuffle to retain her balance - precarious at the best of times. Her fountain of hair bobbed in sympathy, waving like feathers in a fan.

Black was standing silhouetted against the spill of brightness from the door behind him. Not sure if he had noticed her or not, Hermione stood absolutely still, and observed him.

His head was tilted back to swig his drink, and his Adam's apple bobbed against the lambent skin of his throat as he swallowed. He was dressed as a cowboy, in fringed leather chaps, pointy boots with gleaming spurs and a sombrero hat perched on his pale gold head. A black shirt with silver stitching clung to his spare frame, untucked at one side and revealing an expanse of pale flesh. Embarrassed to be caught looking, but unable to tear her gaze away, Hermione almost jumped in shock when his hat fell off and rolled in the breeze, coming to rest at her feet.

It was like a sign. She stared down at it. It was black - to match the shirt, she presumed - with a thin silver band around the rim. She looked back at him, and their eyes locked; fearful brown merged with diamond-bright grey as the air between them sang and shivered.

Slowly, Hermione bent her knees and grasped the hat by the crown. Her skirt whispered against her skin as the material slithered down, revealing bony knees and the tops of her thighs. Her eyes on his face, she saw him follow the movement of the silk, blinking rapidly with eyelashes dancing like spider's legs.

She stood; the dress fluttered down again, trembling in the wind, as if she was still twirling madly, inside on the dance floor. She watch him watch her as she had watched him, moments before, and held out his hat, feeling stupid and sad and angry. Angry that whatever powers were there, up there, down there, could be so disorganised as to make her fall in love with someone and not know it until she picked up his hat.

Draco took it but did not put it on; it dangled loosely from his fingertips. Neither of them spoke. The thumping music seemed stilled, the loud chatter dimmed to the faintest susurration. The wind picked up in intensity, making a faint howling noise as it battered against the sides of the building.

Hermione was cold, but she didn't move, not even to clench her hands together for warmth. Draco looked faintly ridiculous, standing there in his Wild West outfit, one hand gripping his Coke can, ready to spray brown foam at his opponent in place of bullets. The wind's playful fingers ruffled his hair, as if the fine strands were waves on a pale gold sea. His face was faintly puzzled. She fancied him so much she could hardly breathe.

Her feet sliding around in her over-large shoes, she walked past him, back into the warmth and the light and the buzz of sound, leaving her heart behind, in his hat where he'd caught it.

~

Pam stood against the cool of the wall, staring at her fingernails. They were a pale, seashell pink. They matched the colour of her sweater perfectly. And the colour of her socks. And her hair ribbon. Everything should be right with the world.

It wasn't, though.

She glanced over the dance floor, wondering where Neville had got off to. He had mumbled something about fetching drinks. She had a funny feeling that she terrified him.

Lavender was waltzing with Seamus, wincing every so often as his sword whacked against her legs. Her blonde-streaked brown hair was piled on top of her head in fussy ringlets and finished off with the ridiculous tiara. She had always wanted to wear a tiara. She'd told Pam so. When she got married, she was going to have a huge diamond one. No one could say anything about it, not on her wedding day.

The song ended, and Lavender glided over, her hands lifting her skirts. She should have lived in the time the dress recalled. Lavender was made for sweeping trains, dashing partners and being treated as a fainting, delicate female. Jeans and feminism always sat rather incongruously on her.

'Seen Black anywhere?' she said in Pam's ear, more to prevent eavesdropping than a need to be heard - the song playing was a soft ballad.

'Yeah, he came in with Pansy,' Pam replied, making a face, and ignoring the proximity of Lavender's body to her own.

'Great.' Lavender's tone conveyed the exact opposite meaning to her words. 'I suppose there's no way we can fix this, is there?'

'I think we have to let them figure it out on their own,' Pam mumbled. 'There's no way we could tell them the truth, unless we want Pansy to...'

Her voice trailed off, a sudden image jumping to the forefront of her brain. Holding her hand out to Lavender, asking her to dance. Kissing her on the lips, just once, in front of all these people. Nothing terrible, nothing awful, no thunderclap or showers of cherubs and hearts. No American ending. It was the twenty-first century. People would stare for a moment, and then move on with their lives.

Lavender was shaking her head vehemently, a look of abject horror on her face.

'God, anything but that...if that got out...'

She didn't elaborate, but clearly she felt the consequences would be dire. Pam looked out over her head, bright visions fading into a dull reality of writhing, heterosexual bodies on a sweaty dance floor.

~

The last song was played at 2:15 am. People were reluctant to leave, but many were also having difficulty in staying vertical. Only one fight had broken out, and had been easily quelled by Binns. He'd forced his way onto the dance floor and head-butted the premier assailant with his hat, knocking him out cold for three hours. Whether out of a genuine desire to avoid trouble or a more specific fear of Binns' hat, the end result was that peace had prevailed for the remainder of the night.

'If you can call watching hundreds of horny teenagers get off right in front of you 'peaceful',' Sev grumbled, rinsing out punch bowls with bad grace at three am. 'Which I don't. Honestly, they have no shame.'

'Perhaps they believe in making love, not war,' Remus suggested, with the merest hint of a grin, flicking a tea-towel lethargically over Marie's vine-printed basin.

'Hey, dry that properly!' Sev objected, frowning at him.

'I'm too tired,' Remus sighed, slumping against the counter and letting his eyes droop closed. He started when a warm weight pressed against his stomach. A second later, the teat towel was whipped from his hands.

'I'll do it then,' Sev said sourly. 'You owe me one.'

'Then you can take my pound of flesh,' Remus yawned, sliding to the floor and ignoring the cold cupboard handle poking into his back. He dozed off as Sev finished drying the bowls and ran a cloth over the counters. Only moments later, or so it seemed to him, Sev's warm hands were under his arms, hoisting him upright.

'Time to g-g-go?' he asked, through a huge yawn.

'Yep,' Sev said. His hands were resting on Remus' hips now. He sounded as awake - if still as sullen - as he had nine hours before. 'I'll be wanting that pound of flesh, then.'

Remus' eyes snapped open as Sev tilted his head and pressed his lips to the side of Remus' neck. Remus swallowed, not feeling in the least tired any more. Before Sev could disappear again, he slid his arms around Sev's waist and pressed him close against his own body. Sev sighed against his neck, blowing cool air onto the damp patch he'd left. One hand fumbled at Remus' waist, tugging his shirt out from his breeches and coming to rest, a hot hand-shaped hole in the universe, on Remus' hard stomach.

His face twisted into a smile as Sev raised his eyebrows and breathed, his hand sliding upwards, 'Your place or mine?'

~

It was difficult to walk when a human leech was swinging off you, lips attached like suckers to your neck or face and hands clamped firmly on your belt buckle, but Draco managed it somehow. He kept up an impassive expression on his face, even when Pansy pushed him up against a convenient wall and slid her thigh between his legs.

As she filled his mouth with her tongue, he closed his eyes and saw the image of Hermione, crouched on the ground like a startled gazelle. It was burned into the back of his eyelids. Even though Pansy's technique - a lot of shoving was involved - was hardly on a par with Hermione's (but how could he judge? He'd never got the time), it was easy to pretend it was her kissing him, not Pansy. Hermione's hands slithering across his chest and pushing at his groin. Unfastening his belt buckle, pulling down his zipper. Her mouth -

'No!' Draco yelled, jolting her away from him with both hands and fumbling at his trousers.

'What's wrong, Black?' Her voice was uncertain and, at the base, derisory. 'Don't you want this?'

Draco closed his eyes. Of course he wanted it. He'd be a worse than a fool if he didn't; he'd be a monk, for crying out loud. It was just - it was just. Not from her. Duckface. Not from someone who didn't even know his name. Not for his first time, or for any time. Abjectly foolish he knew it to be, but if it wasn't going to Hermione, it wasn't going to be anyone. He could taste Pansy in his mouth, and abruptly wished he could spit. That would be rude.

'Does this have anything to do with that Granger bitch?' Pansy demanded. 'What's she been saying to you?'

'Absolutely nothing,' Draco said, with perfect truth.

'Then what is it? Why are you getting all pissy, just because she was dared -'

'What do you know about that?'

'What?' Pansy looked distinctly wrong-footed.

'It was Lavender and Padma who dared her, it was nothing to do with you,' Draco said, with a faint, but growing, realisation.

'So they told me. Big deal.' Pansy wiped her hands against her nylon sides.

But Draco was looking closely at her face, at the way her heavily kohled eyes avoided his own searching ones and how the side of her lip was being chewed into blubbery folds. He remembered the shattered look on Hermione's face and how much he'd wanted to believe her. Hermione's words resonated in his mind. I never lie. I never lie.

'I don't think so, Pansy.'

He wasn't just refuting her claim of innocence, but the offer of carnal knowledge of her, presented to him with as little finesse as an undressed carcass. Pansy, dim as she was, could read on his face what he didn't say with his mouth. She, too, was recalling words spoken in anger.

He'll never look at you the way he looks at her.

Stupid bitch.

'Fuck you!' Pansy cried, both to Black and those pompous, self-congratulatory voices in her head. And punched him in the face.

Draco sank to his knees as Pansy stormed off, creaking in her slowly-stiffening cat suit like a ship's timbers. Blood poured from his nose. He tasted it metallic on his tongue, and gratefully licked it from his lips as its tang eradicated Pansy from his mouth forever. His nose felt tender, and oddly distended. He didn't think it was broken, though; he sincerely hoped it wasn't.

Tired suddenly, he rested his head against the concrete and closed his eyes.

~

Seamus had planned to spend Sunday in bed, recuperating. His strategy was truncated by the arrival of Dean on his doorstep, swaying and with hugely dilated pupils.

Seamus hadn't drunk a great deal of spiked punch the night before, but it was enough to make his eyes prickle as though microscopic hedgehogs were squatting on his corneas. He was not disposed to entertain Dean dressed only in jockey shorts and a U2 t-shirt, no matter how cool Seamus thought Bono was.

But Dean was clearly snookered and, from the looks of it, stoned to boot. Peering closer, Seamus could see a bottle or Brian Boru, along with several badly rolled joints, dangling from Dean's limp fingers. He couldn't leave him wandering the streets in this state. He was likely to trip over the first crack in the pavement, and lie there, a danger to himself and all passing pedestrians.

Dean started singing Queen as Seamus ushered him up the stairs. At the top of his lungs, in a very clear and pure, but utterly unmusical, voice. When they reached his room, Seamus shoved him down onto his rumpled bed and rubbed his hedgehog eyes in irritation.

Dean had started swigging out of the vodka bottle and Seamus rushed forward to prise it out of his fingers. Dean pouted like a small child. Seamus rolled his eyes and took a slug of his own, to fortify himself, before resolutely tucking it away behind his bedside locker.

'What's wrong with you, Dean?' he asked. A reasonable question, to his own mind, but Dean seemed to find it irresistibly funny. He started laughing in great, gasping guffaws, holding his stomach and flopping backwards against the bed. He didn't even seem to notice that he'd slammed his head off the headboard with a dull crack. Seamus winced in sympathy, as Dean seemed unwilling to do it for himself. He crawled onto the counterpane and stretched himself lengthways next to Dean.

Dean shuffled himself around so that he was facing Seamus, looking into his face with huge, lost-puppy eyes. Seamus was startled to see that he was crying. Assuming it was down to the pain of almost fracturing his skull, he clapped him on the shoulder and said, 'Hey, it'll be fine.'

'How will it?' Dean sniffled.

'The pain will go away in a bit.' Dean looked at him in drunken bafflement, as Seamus cast about for something to distract Dean from his aching head. His gaze lit on the joints, still clutched in Dean's hand.

Seamus had never smoked hash before. He'd never kissed a boy, either. For some inexplicable reason, the two things were suddenly closely linked - if he didn't do one now, the other would never happen.

'Have you got a lighter, Dean?'

'In me pocket,' Dean said, scrubbing his face with one hand and appearing mildly astonished when it came away damp.

Half an hour later they were both rolling around on Seamus' rapidly-becoming-tossed bed, laughing hysterically at nothing at all. Dean pointed at Seamus' mouth and dissolved into silent giggles. Annoyed, Seamus pretended to bite off Dean's outstretched finger, but ended up licking it instead.

Dean looked at his wet finger, and settled for the tried and trusted response of snorting with laughter. After a second, Seamus joined in, rolling onto his back and covering his face as he convulsed in a fit of chuckling. The movement of his chest, the muscles of which were pulled taut by his reclining position, fascinated him, and for a while he didn't even realise that Dean had stopped laughing. Or that his body was pressed up alongside Seamus', and that his hands were stroking that very same chest that had been the subject of such absorption on Seamus' part a moment before. First Dean's hand, and the his head, slid down Seamus' side, coming to rest at the top of his legs.

For a while, Seamus forgot to breathe.

~

Sev couldn't remember having held a sleeping Marv in his arms. Sev had always fallen asleep first, and woken last. It seemed a terrible waste, as he lay now in Remus' neat, two-toned bedroom, full of furniture and their twisted, dropped-there clothes. The sleeve of his shirt lay cast across Remus' wrinkled breeches, so that a potential hand rested were certain of Remus' unruly anatomy would be. It was a prophecy; a warning; a destiny. And Sev had always hated fortune-telling, and didn't believe in fate.

He breathed in strands of Remus' short silky hair with each breath. Remus made quiet, snuffling sounds when he slept. His damp mouth was pressed against the dip of Sev's collarbone. Sev wondered if Marv's arm had ever gone dead with the weight of Sev's body against it, like his own was now. He'd fallen asleep so often with his nose full of Marv's scent. The last thing he saw was one of his tattoos, or the strangely vulnerable underside of his chin. Remus' eyebrow bar was scratching against his tender skin.

Sev wondered why Marv had never complained. Sev was finding it bloody annoying.

He contemplated shaking Remus awake. No doubt they could indulge in another bout of slow, contented love-making, as they had the first time. But Sev couldn't bring himself to. Remus would want to talk, after that. He was a word person, and Sev hadn't got much to say. Besides, he'd had a late night. Let him rest.

Remus shifted in his sleep, muttering something unintelligible. Even when slumbering, he didn't let up. Always talking. Never just feeling. No, it had to be analysed into its constituent parts. Its constituent words. If you didn't have the right words, then you couldn't possibly be feeling the right things.

But seduction should never have anything to do with words.

~

Seamus blinked. From the sudden change of the light patterns on his ceiling, he deduced that he'd fallen asleep. Sober and conscious now, he remembered the outline of Dean's visit. His stomach squirmed, half in guilty pleasure and half in fear. He wasn't entirely sure that it hadn't just been a dream, some semi-waking fantasy of the sort he indulged in with moderate frequency.

As a hunched figure resolved itself from the dusky shadows, seated on the edge of his bed, Seamus realised that he was naked, and that the room was very cold.

Dragging his sheet around him, he shuffled forward on his knees to where Dean was sitting, and touched a hand to his shoulder. Dean's abrupt flinch at the contact told Seamus all he needed to know.

'Dean,' he said, with a sinking heart, but his voice had no strength and the word came out as the barest of whispers.

Dean turned his face to Seamus, his face ravaged. Runnels had formed on his cheeks from a near-constant flow of tears. Some part of Seamus registered that he could not be responsible for this depth of agony; that something had happened to Dean that had cause him to come, drunken and singing, to his best friend's house in the first place. The mistake of sleeping with that same friend was an effect, not a cause.

This part forced him to ask, in a hollow voice, 'What is it?'

'Ginny.' The word was raw, knife-edged. Dean took a deep, shuddering breath. 'She - oh god. She's pregnant.'

At that word - even as Dean formed it - even as it fell, half-formed, from his lips, Seamus knew. His eyesight momentarily blackened as his head, reeling, tried to take in the enormity of what he'd just been told. Of the magnitude of the misdemeanour that was he and Dean together.

Through a red haze of suffering that could only be pale in comparison to that one that must be obscuring Dean's sight, he heard Dean mumble some class of farewell, shuffle from the room and close the door. Not loudly, or angrily, but half-heartedly. Letting the handle spring up of its own accord, not caring whether the lock was engaged or not.

The next few hours were empty to Seamus. He lay crouched in a foetal position, shivering as if from a raging fever. His hands felt clammy and cold, the guilt smeared on them.

Not entirely cognisant of his actions, Seamus (up there, in the corner of the ceiling, with cold clammy guilt-smeared hands) watched Seamus (down there, moving like a robot, all jerks and sudden stops) mechanically dress himself. Pull on shoes and walk down the stairs, out the door. Down the street, marching. A kamikaze pilot towards his plane. Left, right, cross the road, thundering lorry, squealing brakes, sorry mister, stupid fucking kid, continue down a leafy tree-lined avenue.

Seamus pressed the bell and leaned his head against the brick façade. The hedgehogs were having a race over his eyeballs, rolling on their spiny backs. Each quill jolted another tear out of the fleshy corner of his eyes.

Cedric opened the door, looking surprised and like he'd just come from tea. He was wearing socks and had ketchup on his chin. Seamus reached up and rubbed it off, tears dripping neatly into the hollow of his collarbone.

Seamus found his voice, as miles away the invisible cord of torment that linked him with Dean suddenly snapped and the thorns in his eyes flowed out with the rest of his tears. He shrugged one shoulder, and smiled. Cedric was looking at him as one would an escaped tiger - warily.

'Well,' said Seamus, 'I'm ready now.'