Chapter Text
1994
There were about forty people trying to read the same notice at once, and Fred Weasley had his back to it. He was holding a brown paper parcel that had been opened and done up again by somebody in a hurry, and he was talking at Lee Jordan, who had a roll of parchment flat against the wall and was not listening.
"—because she doesn't buy them. That's the part nobody grasps. She has them already. There's a place in that house where they live, and every few years one comes out of it, and there's no telling who it belonged to first or what became of him."
"Two Sickles minimum," Lee said, over the top of him, to somebody further down the corridor. "No. Not a Knut and a promise. Go away, Dennis."
"Are you listening?"
"No." Lee licked the end of his quill. "Tell me after."
"It'll be too late by then. There's now and there's Christmas Day, and between them there's this." Fred shook the parcel. Something inside it rustled in a way that suggested a great deal of fabric. "George opened it at breakfast and made a noise. I've known him my entire life and I'd never heard it before."
Somebody behind them shrieked. There was a scattering of applause, and then a boy of about fourteen went past at a sprint with his arms above his head, and Lee wrote something down without looking up.
"You want to see the weight of it, is what I'm saying. There's a weight to it that a garment oughtn't to have."
"Hang on. Not you." Lee leaned round him. "Yes, you. What is it?"
A very small girl said something none of them could hear.
"Then he'll have to come and put it on himself, won't he, I'm not taking it secondhand off a first year, that's how the whole thing falls apart." Lee straightened up. "Sorry. Go on."
"I've finished."
"Have you? Good."
"That's Coote," he said. "That's four this morning. Four, and one of them was a fifth year, and I've had to shorten the odds twice."
Lilah came up the corridor from the direction of the stairs with her bag held against her chest, because the strap had gone in September and had been mended twice by people who could not mend things. She did not say hello to either of them.
"Lee. Has anybody put money on Fawcett?"
"Which Fawcett?"
"The seventh year. Ravenclaw."
"Everyone's in the book. That's the whole point of a book." Lee turned the parchment round so she could see it, which was generous of him, and then turned it back before she could. "He's at eleven to four. It was five to one on Tuesday and then he went and told people, which is the single stupidest thing a man can do, because now his own house are betting against him for a laugh."
"Told people what?"
"That he's asking you. Tonight, after supper, in the entrance hall." Lee frowned at his own handwriting. "He's given it a lot of thought, apparently. He's picked the spot. There's an argument he's made about the light."
"Take my name off it."
"Can't. Book's open."
"Lee."
"I'll shorten it," Lee said, and did not shorten it, and then took two Sickles off a girl who had appeared at his elbow, and wrote her name down, and asked her twice how to spell it.
Fred had gone back to his parcel. "Feel that."
Lilah went on watching Lee write.
"There's a hood on it," Fred said. "I hadn't accounted for a hood. And on the hood there's lace." He said the last word carefully, the way you'd hand somebody something breakable. "I've been trying to establish whether it's meant to come off. There's stitching all along the back of the neck and I can't tell if it's structural."
"Is that the maroon one?"
"It's a maroon that hasn't got a name yet. It's older than a name."
"Cut the hood off."
"That's my mother's stitching."
"Then cut it off carefully and sew it back on at New Year and don't tell her."
Fred looked at the parcel for a while as though this had genuinely not occurred to him, which it had not.
The crush by the notice broke up in stages, the way it had been doing all morning, everybody moving off in the same direction because everybody had the same free period and the same thing to discuss. Fred and Lilah went with it down two flights, Fred talking most of the way and Lilah not, which was unusual enough that he noticed it on the first landing and said nothing about it until the second.
"George has made a list," he said.
"What of?"
"Names. He's put them in order and he's written notes in the margin, and one of the notes just says tall, and when I asked him what he meant by that he said I'd know when I saw it. He's been at me since the announcement. He's been at me about it in Charms, which is a new low, because he had to write it down and pass it, and Flitwick saw him do it and thought he was being industrious." Fred shifted the parcel to his other arm. "And the worst of it is that he's not wrong. Somebody's got to be asked. That's the arrangement. You go up to a person in front of witnesses and you say a sentence you've composed, and then everybody in the vicinity finds out at once what the answer is, and there's no arrangement in the world I like less."
"Angelina's gone with Lee."
"I know. He told me twice." Fred said this without any particular weight, and then went straight on. "The other thing you have to remember about my brother is that he doesn't ask you anything. That's what people get wrong about him. He'll sit down next to you and start on some subject you've no interest in whatsoever, and about four minutes in he'll say one small thing that's slightly incorrect, and you'll correct him, and that's it, he's got it, and he hasn't asked you a single question in his life. Mum's never worked out how he does it and she's had seven goes at it."
They came out at the bend by the long window on the fourth floor, where the corridor was empty because there was nothing at that end but a cupboard and a suit of armour that had been repaired at the elbow. The noise dropped away all at once, the way it did in that castle when you turned a corner.
Lilah put her bag down on the window ledge and stood with both hands flat on the stone.
"Harry's been going round like a haunted house since Tuesday," she said.
"Has he asked her?"
"He hasn't asked anybody anything. He's been in a state about it since the announcement and he's fourteen, so he'll leave it until Christmas Eve and then do it very badly and I'll have to be nice to him about it afterwards." She turned round and sat up on the ledge. "I've told him twice. Ask early, ask somebody you actually like, and if she says no then eat your supper anyway, because the not eating is what people remember."
"That's what I'd have told him."
"It's useless. He's fourteen." She was quiet for a moment. "Fawcett's going to do it in the entrance hall."
"So Lee said. With the light."
"With about thirty people watching, because he's decided that a crowd makes it easier, and I've been trying since Wednesday to work out what he thinks it makes easier." She pushed her hair back off her face with both hands and left it there. "If he asks me in front of thirty people, there are two things I can do. I can say yes to somebody I don't want to go with, and spend four hours being pleasant to him, and let him walk me back up the stairs, and then it doesn't end at midnight, that's what nobody thinks about. It doesn't end at midnight. He'd write over the summer. He'd keep sitting at the end of my table in the library, which he already does, he's been doing it since September and I've never once seen him turn a page. And then in three months I'd have to say the exact same thing I'd say tonight, only by then I'd have been decent to him for three months, and he'd be entitled to be angry about it, and he'd be right. Or."
"Or you say it there and then, in front of the lot of them."
"And he has to walk back to his own table and sit down and finish his supper with everybody watching him do it." She stopped. "I'd rather be unkind now, while it's still cheap. It's cheaper for both of us. It's just that it doesn't look like the kind thing, and I'm not going to get any credit for it, and I don't much want any."
Fred did not say anything for a bit. Down at the other end of the corridor somebody had started singing and been stopped.
"I sat back down once," he said. "Third year. Hogsmeade, not this, obviously. And the thing about sitting back down is you can't do anything with your hands. You've got to pick something up. I picked up a jug." He set the parcel on the ledge next to her bag. "Dad gave me a Sickle afterwards and told me not to tell Mum, which I've always thought rather undercut the message."
"Which was what?"
"I've no idea. He never said." Fred put his hands in his pockets. "Have your supper in the kitchens. The elves are extremely fond of you since that business at Easter."
"That doesn't fix anything. He'd only ask me tomorrow, and tomorrow he'd do it on a staircase, and on a staircase there's nowhere to go and you can't even walk off properly, you've got to walk off downwards."
"Then be already going with somebody."
"With who?"
"That's the only thing that stops it," Fred said, going straight past the question. "It's not a no. It's a can't. Nobody's ever been furious with a person for being spoken for. He'd be furious with whoever's spoken for you, which is a different sort of furious and it burns out in a week, and then he goes and asks a girl in his own year and by February he's telling people he never really—"
"With who, Fred."
Fred picked the parcel up again, and put it down again.
"You've got two days," Lilah said. "And no plan."
"None."
"And you're not going to make one, because you'd have to stand in the entrance hall and mean something at somebody with Warrington watching, and you'd rather set fire to your own robes."
"I've thought about that seriously enough to have picked a spot."
"Then come with me."
Fred looked out of the window. There was nothing out there but the lawn and a great deal of grey sky and the edge of the lake, which had gone the colour of a dropped knife.
"It solves both of them," Lilah said, and she said it quickly, the way she said everything once she'd worked it out. "You don't have to ask anyone properly and I don't have to stand in the entrance hall being handed a choice by a boy who's never turned a page. It's true, as well, which is the useful bit, so neither of us has to be clever about it. And we'd have ended up together by nine o'clock anyway. You know we would. We'd have gone in separately and found each other by the drinks and stayed there, and then I'd have spent the evening apologising to somebody and so would you. This is the same evening with the apologising taken out of it."
"Right," said Fred.
Colin Creevey came round the corner at a trot with his camera swinging on its strap and pulled up short when he saw them, and wanted to know whether they'd heard about the champions opening the dancing, and whether it was true that the band had been booked since the summer, and whether Harry had asked anybody yet, and whether Lilah would find out for him. She said no to all four without troubling to work out which was which, and he went off down the stairs still talking.
Fred watched him go the whole way.
"You've gone a funny colour."
"There are drawbacks." He said it slowly, which was not how he said most things. "There are serious drawbacks you haven't thought through, because you've done the whole thing at a run, which is what you always do, and one of these days it's going to catch you out."
"Name one."
"You can't dance."
"Neither can you."
"I can't dance in a way people find endearing. You can't dance in a way that's caused injuries." He held up a hand before she could start. "Injuries. In the barn, at Easter. Ask my brother, he was on the floor for a quarter of an hour and Mum thought he'd been kicked by something."
"That was Ron."
"It was not Ron, Ron was in the house." Fred walked four paces up the corridor and came back, which was how he did most of his thinking. "Second drawback. Every single person in this castle will decide it's something."
"They'll do that anyway. They did it in October when we came out of the greenhouses at the same time and you were carrying my bag."
"I took your bag off you because the strap had gone and you'd have been picking quills up off the path for an hour, and Alicia saw, and I have never in my life been so comprehensively misunderstood." He came back to the ledge. "Fine. It's a sensible, ugly, unromantic plan, which is the only sort worth having. But there are terms."
"Obviously."
"You don't sound surprised."
"You did four terms about a biscuit tin at Christmas. Four, and one of them had a subsection."
"Three, and one was a clarification, and it was necessary." Fred leaned back against the wall with his arms folded. "Term the first. No slow songs."
"Agreed."
"That was too quick. I hadn't got to the argument."
"I don't need it. I've been to a wedding." Lilah counted it off on her fingers. "The band drops the tempo, everyone arranges themselves in pairs, and then there's forty minutes of shuffling in a circle looking over each other's shoulders working out how long is polite. No. When they start we go and get something to eat."
"When they do, we go and see what's in the side chamber," said Fred. "They've had to clear the Great Hall out. All those tables have got to be somewhere and it'll be through the door off the entrance hall, and where there's a store there's things nobody's laid eyes on in thirty years."
"That's better than mine."
"It's yours with an improvement on it. Second one's yours. You've had one ready since the tapestry, I could see you holding it."
"No photographs."
"Creevey."
"He's got that camera and he's got no fear at all, and if there's one picture of the two of us at that ball it doesn't stay at that ball. It goes in an envelope. And then it comes down at Christmas and it's in a frame, and Sirius will have had the frame in the house since before we knew about it, because he always does, I've never understood how—"
"He would, as well."
"—and he'll hang it where you can see it from the kitchen table. And then Marlene will look at it once and say nothing at all, which is worse. And Remus won't look at it. He'll just be in the room being aware of it for the rest of my life."
"That's a house full of terrible people and I've always been very fond of them."
"No photographs."
"Agreed. And if it comes to it I'll disarm him myself, and I'll enjoy it." Fred held up a third finger. "Which brings me to mine, and this one matters, so listen. You've got to dance with me at least once, badly enough that people turn round."
"That was your first drawback. You said I'd caused injuries."
"I've come round to it since. It's an asset." He was talking faster now. "If we walk in there and behave ourselves, they'll all be watching and deciding what it is, and there's nothing there to see, so they'll make something up and by Boxing Day it'll have a shape to it. But if you come in and you're appalling and I'm appalling and we're loudly appalling in front of everybody, then it's a joke. And once a thing's a joke, it's finished. Nobody writes home about a joke."
Lilah thought about that longer than she'd thought about anything else he'd said.
"That's actually good."
"I have my moments. They're rare and I try to spend them where they'll count." He picked up the parcel again. "Anything else, or are we—"
"You don't tell George it was my idea."
Fred laughed. Then he stopped.
"You're serious."
"Completely."
"From George." He turned round, all the way round, and came back. "You want a thing kept from George."
"I want you to say it was your idea. Which is different, and easier, and something you're perfectly capable of on any other subject in the world."
"You've no idea what you're asking. None. I've just this minute told you how he does it, I explained the whole method on the stairs and you weren't listening—"
"Then let him be wrong about something."
"That's the one thing I've never once managed. It's the only reflex I've got." Fred rubbed the back of his neck. "And what difference does it make? He'll know we're going together by supper. He knows everything by supper, it's a condition, Mum's had him looked at."
"If it's your idea then it's you being useful and he'll be bored of it inside a day. If it's mine, then it isn't a plan any more. It's me having asked you." She got down off the ledge. "And then he's got that. For as long as he lives. And he'll bring it out at every meal I ever eat in that house, and I eat a great many meals in that house."
"You do. You've had more of my mother's cooking this year than I have."
"So?"
Fred looked at her.
"Agreed," he said. "I'll lie to my own twin brother, at considerable personal cost, and I'd like that noted somewhere."
"Duly. And one more."
"You've had two."
"You've had two and one of yours was an improvement on mine, so I'm owed." She pointed at the parcel. "Not that."
"Now hold on."
"Not the maroon, Fred. I'll let Creevey have the lot. I'll stand in the middle of the entrance hall with my arm round you and smile at him for as long as he likes, if you turn up in that."
"You've just made a photograph into a punishment, and I want you to hear what that says about you as a person." He held the parcel out at arm's length and considered it. "Inside out?"
"The lining's plain. Nobody's looking at seams past nine o'clock, they'll all be looking at whoever's crying."
"Inside out and the hood off."
"Then that's the lot."
"Right." Fred tucked it under his arm. "Say them back. In a fortnight one of us is going to claim there were only three."
"No slow songs, and we go and see what's in the side chamber instead. No photographs, in any form, ever. One dance bad enough that people turn round. It was your idea and it was never mine. And nothing maroon comes within four feet of me on Christmas night."
"Five feet."
"Four. Don't push it."
"Done," said Fred, and put his hand out.
Lilah shook it. It was a brisk, businesslike shake and it was over quickly, and then neither of them let go for about a second longer than the business required, and then they did, and both of them turned and looked out of the window at the same time, where the lake was still the colour of a dropped knife and there was nothing whatever to see.
"Well," said Lilah. "That was easy."
"There are people down there who've been sobbing into that suit of armour since half eleven," Fred said, "and the two of us have settled the whole business standing up in a corridor in about four minutes, without either of us having to mean anything at anybody. We ought to be charging for it. I'd do it properly, as well. I'd have a desk."
"You could take it off Lee."
"Lee's got no head for it. He shortened the odds on Fawcett out of pity and he'll be ruined by Sunday." Fred picked her bag up off the ledge, handed it to her, took it back off her again and put it over his own shoulder, and said nothing at all about the strap. "Right. I'm off to find George and tell him about my brilliant idea."
"Which came to you in a flash."
"Unprompted. Entirely alone. Nobody else in the corridor." He was already walking. "Give me till supper. I'll want to have practised."
"Take it. I'm going to the library, and I'm sitting at my own table, and if he comes over I'll say it there and it'll be done and he can be furious in his own time." Lilah stopped at the top of the stairs. "Do I pass for somebody who's already spoken for?"
"You look like a woman who's just concluded a treaty."
"That'll do."
She went off down towards the library, and Fred watched her go for rather longer than there was any reason to, and then turned and went the other way, whistling, with her bag still over his shoulder, which he did not notice for two floors.
Behind the tapestry of the trolls being taught ballet, three feet from where they had been standing, George Weasley set down the crate he had been holding for the last eleven minutes and flexed his fingers.
He came out into the corridor and looked one way at the empty stairs and the other way at his brother's back going round the corner.
"Well," he said, to the suit of armour, which had no opinion, "that's Christmas sorted."
Lee came round the far corner with his stool under his arm and his parchment rolled up in his fist, and stopped.
"Have you been standing behind a tapestry?"
"For eleven minutes."
"With a crate."
"And I'd like that on the record, because it was heavy and nobody is ever going to thank me for it." George picked it up again and settled it against his hip. "Get the book out."
"It's been out all day."
"New line. Fred and Lilah, to go to the ball together."
Lee stared at him. "That's not a bet. You've just this second told me it's happened. There's nothing to bet on, it's a fact, and I'm not putting facts in my book—"
"Not that. That's nothing, that's arranged, there's terms and a handshake and everything, I've never in my life been so disappointed in two people." George started walking. "New line. Fred and Lilah, to come back from the ball together."
There was a pause while Lee worked out what he was being asked.
"What price?"
"You set it. You're the bookmaker." George did not slow down. "But I'll tell you what I'll do, Lee, because you've always been good to me. I'll have everything I've got on it, and I'll have it on before you've heard what I've just heard. And afterwards, when you have heard it, I want you to remember that I gave you the chance."
"That's not sporting."
"No," George agreed, "but it is Christmas."