yellow ribbon | a harry potter fanfiction

gowns and robes, favourable in her odds

Wendy saw the boy and the people that were dancing around her just in the same way. But she never thought of herself as anything even near to that. Many characters in books are just as flawed as people in real life, that what brings them so close to the reader, and most of the time, those flaws were the exact reason why the readers loved them. She wondered if her flaws made the reader of her story fall for her too.

"I'm far from perfect," she took three steps.

"Good," he span her around, "I am too."

"Wendy!" Hermione called for the girl, "The Weird Sisters are gonna be playing later tonight!"

Wendy never really heard the famous band playing in real life, but the hype was so overwhelming that she just had to go along with it. But at that moment, her feet were killing her and decided to rest for a while.

"Seems like the Queen is down," Draco said from behind her.

The girl chuckled at her new nickname and turned to look at him, "Queen?"

He shrugged his shoulders, "princess is too simple for you."

"The twins call me princess," she said.

"They're simple people."

Wendy preferred not to say anything, she still didn't like that part of Draco and tried her best to find ways to deal with it. She's proud to say that Draco didn't search for fights against the Gryffindors anymore, but the snide comments were still hard to get rid off.

"Wanna dance?"

"I thought you were tired," he said.

"I promised you a dance," she offered her hand.

The boy smirked and helped her up, "won't Diggory mind I'm stealing his date?"

"Diggory," she mocked him, "is a very understanding person, unlike other people."

They walked towards the crowd of couples dancing, "am I other people?"

Wendy simply smiled mockingly at him, refusing to answer and when they reached the edge of the dancing floor, he pulled her close and gently put his hand at the little of her back. Her breath was short and, for the second time that night, she found herself close to a boy she never even dared to touch.

Their chests were almost touching. Her breath tickled his neck and he forced himself to hold it all in. He was not gonna let this chance go just because he was a little ticklish. Her hand in his, and unlike Cedric his touch was light, almost scared to touch her, but the hand behind her back pushed her so close it was almost like he didn't want her to get far even for an inch.

Draco's steps were smoother too, almost natural. She thought of the big mansion she stayed over for the summer and wondered if there was a ballroom for the big events his parents would host. His body flowed towards the center of the dance floor, and in seconds they were dancing among the other students.

Most people continued dancing, but it was inevitable for them to catch some unwanted eyes. Mostly Slytherins and Gryffindors were the ones studying the two. Draco's loyal friends whispered to each other and Parkinson was not even trying to hide her glare. Harry, who has been dancing with Cho Chang the whole night, couldn't ignore his best friend dancing with Malfoy.

Although he was not in favour for it, he couldn't stop them and cause unneeded drama. He united with Ron and Hermione, hoping to find some sort of support of his unease.

"This is wrong, isn't it?" He said.

Ron nodded in agreement, not find in him the force to say anything bad, for she had helped him with his new more elegant robes.

Hermione, though, she did have something to say, "leave her be, I'm sure she knows what's she's doing."

"What if he's trying to manipulate her?" Harry offered, "to know about Sirius or something."

Hermione's mind did touch that thought, but she knew that Wendy was smart enough to know wrong and right, and she stood by her, "we gotta trust her."

Harry looked again at the two. Wendy was smiling with delight and Draco, Harry never saw him with an expression so gentle, a little colour on the pale of his cheeks; and his lips, in a smirk that didn't have to do with anything malicious. Just happiness.

notes:
the whole yule ball was supposed to be in one chapter only, but it became around 9000 words and i thought it would have been too long to read. So i made reasonable shorter chapters. Hope you like them!

I am working on Draco's character development, but it's hard to keep him the way he is (the way we have learned to love him) and change him for the better too. I kind of put a whole thing about it in this chapter, talking about the flaws of fictional characters. 

I hope you will start thinking about yourself like that too. Someone somewhere will love your flaws, or maybe there already is someone. Don't hide. You're a Wendy too, may be feeling insecure around amazing people, but you are quite amazing yourself!

Stay safe everyone!