Invitation to the Waltz

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Invitation to the Waltz

The Weird Sisters were strumming up a mournful Waltz. Su-gar-quill, su-gar-quill. The words ran through my head before I glanced up at Ginny Weasley. She was staring up at the champions' table, and she too was murmuring under her breath:

"Su-gar-quill, su-gar-quill... sorry, Neville, those dancing lessons must have got under my skin."

"Let's be hoping they did!" cried Zacharias, apparently not noticing that no-one had been speaking to him.

"I hope I didn't miss anything by not going to those practices," worried Longbottom.

"Probably not, it doesn't look difficult," Ginny reassured him.

Roger Davies and Fleur Delacour were gliding onto the floor, as if the whole hall belonged only to them. For a moment I could have believed it did, they melted so effortlessly into the music. But Diggory and Cho Chang glided after them, a little less expert, but a sublimely beautiful couple. Then came the flat-footed Krum, touching Hermione Granger's waist as lightly as if she were porcelain, and Parvati Patil, firmly locking Potter into precise circles.

As the teachers and exchange students followed the champions into the dance, Sally-Anne and Megan were tapping their feet impatiently. Only Luna remained in her chair, floating dreamily on the music. Professor Dumbledore was leading Madame Maxime out with great courtesy, but Professor Karkaroff, interestingly, had simply moved himself into a chair at the low end of the hall. The young Ministry employee was holding Penelope Clearwater in a tight embrace, and Ludo Bagman had whirled a surprised Madam Hooch into the thickening crowd. After the seventh- and sixth-year students had followed the teachers onto the floor, Zacharias whooped, "This is us, Tracey!" and pulled her into the dance. I ripped my eyes away from Ginny Weasley, now revolving in Longbottom's arms, and held out my hand to Luna, who moved into the ballroom hold.

It was impossible to tell whether Luna was accustomed to dancing. She moved faultlessly, but left all the steering to me. I found myself muttering, "Sugar quill, sugar quill," to be on the safe side.

"But it's just a dance, you know," said Luna. "It doesn't really matter if we lose rhythm."

That, I supposed, was a matter of opinion. A ballroom floor seemed to me a very public place to make a fool of oneself. I changed the subject to: "Is Ginny Weasley a friend of yours?"

"We do Herbology together. She's nice."

"Do you know Ginny's boyfriend too?"

"Her – ? Actually, I'd be fairly sure he isn't her boyfriend. No, I assumed that you knew him."

"How can you tell he isn't her boyfriend?" I tried not to sound too eager.

But Luna didn't know how she knew, and in trying to pump her on that subject, I completely overlooked that she was expecting me to supply Longbottom's name. In fact, I think she came to the end of the evening without knowing it.

The music ended. The second dance was a lively Swing – a whizzbee that properly fizzed. Before Luna and I could begin moving, we were interrupted by a blinding light. Creevey's flashiest camera was within a foot of our faces.

"Caught you!" He grinned. "Now, can you do us a little favour, Corner? I've been so busy taking pictures of everyone else, but I'd like just one of Lilith and me. Can you snap that for us?"

I snapped uncertainly, but Creevey seemed delighted.

"Excellent! Listen, I really do want to take pictures of everyone, but that won't be much fun for Lilith. So I wonder if you two could entertain her for ten minutes, and after that, I promise I won't take any more pictures for at least an hour."

"It's all right, Michael," said Luna. "Why don't you dance this one with Lilith, and I'll sit out? She dances better than I do anyway." I couldn't tell whether Luna was happy to make this offer or just being noble, but Lilith was very obviously pleased, so I took her hands, while Luna trailed back to the side of the hall.

Lilith certainly had learned something from Madam Hooch: she threw herself into the Swing with effortless verve, and I suddenly found that I was keeping in step with no effort either.

"Colin was snapping away all through the feast and all through that first dance," she told me. "He's hardly danced at all so far." But she didn't seem to mind.

"He's a pretty keen photographer, then?" was all I could think of to say.

"Oh, he's marvellous. His pictures always look right. He's already shot off three reels, just of me, during these holidays."

Lilith chatted happily about Creevey throughout the dance. By the time it ended, Creevey was back at our elbows, asking if I could place his camera on a table so he wouldn't be tempted. They both thanked me and walked off for the next measure as if no-one else existed.

Luna was gazing at the chandeliers, apparently in ecstasy, while her foot tapped out the new rhythm. It was a Fox-Trot, a whizzbee that fizzed slowly. She turned to look at me as I put the camera down.

"Colin's like that," she said, as if I had spoken. "He once spent the Herbology lesson taking pictures of students at work, and Professor Sprout took the camera off him. But after class she asked for a set of the photos."

"Shall we dance this one?"

"If you like."

As we were half way across the hall, Luna remarked, "I don't think Padma's enjoying herself very much."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Padma was sitting crossly next to Weasley, who was having some kind of argument with Hermione Granger, while Potter looked on in irritation. Parvati was nowhere in sight.

"She hasn't seemed happy all evening about having Weasley as her partner," I remembered. Weasley had always struck me as a decent sort, and I was surprised that the ever-poised Padma wasn't even managing to be polite to him. I swung Luna off in the opposite direction, and we found ourselves fizzing into an oval formation of couples who were rotating as regularly as satellites. Whoops, we were intruding!

"Good evening, Michael," said Justin Finch-Fletchley. "Come to join the solar system?"

"What, are we planets?" asked Susan Bones.

It was odd how Justin had perceived them as a stellar system too, as if he had read my mind. "Luna's a comet," was all I could think of to say, "never trapped in anyone else's orbit."

Luna giggled, as if I had said something terribly witty, but Susan looked bewildered, trying to work out the logic of the joke.

"It's all right; we are not talking sensibly," Justin reassured her.

Some people – like Justin and Padma and the obnoxious Zabini – always seem to know what to say, no matter how serious or trivial the situation. Other people – like Zacharias and Tracey and Luna – unerringly manage to strike the wrong note, even when they have the best of intentions.

Some of the other planets, I noticed, were quite outrageously dressed, yet they were all carrying it off with the most natural aplomb. Wayne Hopkins and Megan Jones, still flirting in Welsh, wore curiously matching designs, red dragons dizzily swirling on black and white backgrounds. Ernie Macmillan was a blast of red and yellow tartan, yet – unlike Zacharias Smith – he looked completely dignified, as if the Macmillans had worn nothing else since the founding of Hogwarts. Hannah Abbott was an April day, all fine white lace over pale blue silk, while Sophie Roper was sunshine, a shock of buttercup yellow against Eddie Carmichael's small-scaled, complicated blue-and-green squares. Stephen's red-and-green tartan ought to have clashed with Morag's red-and-black, and everyone ought to have clashed with Thomas's great flapping stripes of sky-blue and burgundy. Justin and Susan looked ordinary enough, but Finnigan's robes were embossed with huge four-leafed shamrocks, and Lavender Brown, nestling in his arms, looked like a sprig of, well, lavender.

I hardly had a moment to realise I was staring before Thomas winked at me. "Great colours, aren't they?" he grinned. "Mum ran it up on her old Muggle sewing machine because we couldn't find a wizarding tailor who'd do it. Madam Malkin claimed that no purebloods would ever buy from her again if she stitched up stripes like these."

"No! What snobbery!" exclaimed Eloise Midgen – herself an ostentatious shimmer of peach satin. She didn't seem to find Thomas's stripes unusual. Perhaps those widely trailing sleeves and hems were what Muggles wore to play legball. None of them, in fact, seemed to notice the dress-sense of any of the others. They rotated on their own axes, as well as around the oval, with the rhythm of a single person.

When that dance ended, Luna trailed off to another table to speak to Lisa and Mandy. I returned to our table to check on Creevey's camera (it was still safe) and saw that Longbottom was bringing a tray of butterbeers. He poured for Ginny Weasley first and me second. "I wonder what Harry and Ron are shouting about?" he remarked. "I hope they're okay."

"They're fine, apart from their bad manners," said Ginny. "Ron's just confused about what he wants tonight... Neville, are you all right?"

"Stubbed my toe on the table leg. It's nothing." But Longbottom was wincing. "No, actually, I think I'd rather sit quietly for a while. Corner, could you do me a big favour and dance the next one with Ginny?"

She looked into my eyes – she had wonderful eyes, of the brightest amber-brown – and smiled as she rose to her feet. And as the Weird Sisters struck up an allegro, Ginny Weasley was in my arms. She's a rainbow. She's a snowflake. She's a fire. She's a dream...

I must stop this, I thought, or she'll think I'm stupid. In fact the dance was too lively to allow much daydreaming. We needed to keep in formation as well as in step, and at quite a high speed, so no-one spoke at first.

"Your friend Longbottom seems to be the right sort," I said, when we had finally established the flow of the dance.

"He's a darling," she said. "I simply hate people who can't be kind to Neville ... oh, not many people. Mainly in Slytherin. What about Tracey and Zacharias, are they friends of yours?"

I didn't have to answer, because as I swung Ginny around to the other side of the hall, we came face to face with Padma! I knew it was Padma from the hot turquoise robes and silver bangles, otherwise I would have mistaken her for Parvati. Padma was no longer discontented, mustering her courage to perform an embarrassing duty. She was radiant with joyous energy, alight with graceful animation. Moreover, Weasley was nowhere in sight; Padma was dancing with Tahleb Tahseen.

I registered that Tahseen's friend, Émile Beauvisage, was dancing with Parvati before we turned away. "Strange," I said, "I thought Padma was with Weasley... hey, is he your brother?"

"Yes," said Ginny. "All the Weasleys at this school are my brothers. All four of them!" She nodded at the red-headed Ministry official chatting to Ludo Bagman. "Four if you count Percy. He isn't usually at school, of course."

After that we talked about Quidditch. Ginny supported the Chudley Cannons, had aspirations to play Chaser on her House team, and had spent her childhood sneaking into the garden shed to borrow her brothers' broomsticks. By the time the dance stopped I felt I knew her well.

"Oh, look!" said Ginny. "That tells you all you need to know about Neville."

I followed her gaze. Longbottom was very politely holding out his hand to Millicent Bulstrode, even though she was twice his size and scowling ferociously. I bit back my instinctive comments about true self-sacrifice and nobility. Millicent might relax her scowl now that she had the opportunity to dance. But Ginny's eyes were laughing at me.

Luna was nowhere in sight, so I had a second chance to dance with Ginny. Unfortunately, the next dance was a progressive, so we had hardly danced four bars before Ginny and I had to cast off in opposite directions. After that I danced with half the girls in the room – and Professor McGonagall and Madam Pince too! – and had no real conversation with any of them.

As I said good-bye to my last partner (Alicia Spinnet of Gryffindor), I was standing next to Hermione Granger. She was talking to the pale-faced Durmstrang girl whom Warrington had rescued from Zabini. "Viktor says you're very good at Transfiguration. But, I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch your name."

"Cneajna Tepes. Am from Trrransylvania."

"Really?" Hermione sounded impressed. "Are you a direct descendant?"

"Yes," said Cneajna, "in de twenty-one generrrat-ion."

But I never found out from whom Cneajna was descended, because at that moment the clock struck ten. And Malfoy, hurriedly abandoning Hannah Abbott, called out:

"Zabini! Your time is up!"