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On Friday morning, just a couple of days after the assembly, Iris was walking down the corridor on her way to the Great Hall for lunch. Her dark hair bounced in sync with her jubilant steps and she would smile at people as she passed, most of the time getting a smile back.
The kind witch was just rounding a corner when a muscular arm slipped around her waist and a familiar presence joined her. The arm tugged on her side, spinning her backwards and into their chest.
"Why hello there, sir," Iris said, grinning up at her boyfriend as her hands came up to rest on either side of his Hufflepuff tie.
Cedric was beaming, the corners of his eyes crinkling, "Hello beautiful."
And then he pulled his right arm out from behind him. In his hand was a flourishing bouquet of tiny sky blue flowers making Iris gasp.
"Oh Cedric, they're lovely!"
He handed them to her, grinning from ear-ear, "They're forget-me-nots. Will you, Iris Potter, do me the honour and be my date to the Yule Ball?"
Iris pretended to think for a moment before telling him, "Yes, I would love to!" She lifted up to the tips of her toes to kiss him softly.
The pair couldn't pull the smiles from their faces as Cedric offered her his arm, continuing on to Iris' previous destination of the Great Hall. Iris had the bouquet shoved practically up her nose as she smelled the blue flowers, one hand in Cedric's. They were so happy, and so in love. They didn't need anything but each other, the company and his hand in hers were more than enough to tell one another everything that needed to be said. Iris had never felt like this before, but she loved the feeling of being in love. He made her feel safe. And happy, things she hadn't felt in so long.
When they walked into the Great Hall and started heading for the Hufflepuff table, Iris heard a whisper of a thought bump into her mind. Her vision narrowed in on the culprit almost immediately and as she and Cedric reached his friends, she took the opportunity to take a seat next to Issac.
The dark-haired boy was staring over towards the Ravenclaw table in front of him, not noticing as Iris looked at him, waiting. She tucked her hair behind her ear as she observed him, the hint of a smile pulling at her mouth.
"You should ask him to the ball," she suggested quietly.
Issac jumped, turning to Iris with wide eyes. "What?!"
She grabbed a sandwich off of a golden platter in front of them, repeating herself, "The boy you've been staring at – you should ask him to the ball."
Her boyfriend's best friend spluttered before sighing heavily, "But I don't even know if I'm his type."
Iris took a bite of her sandwich and looked across and down the Ravenclaw table to where a cute Beauxbatons boy was sitting, eating with his friends. She stared at him for a minute before she hummed and gave Issac a thumbs up, speaking through the food in her mouth, "You're good."
He stared longingly at the boy. "You really think I should do it?"
"Absolutely." Iris nodded. "His name is Nathan by the way. And besides, if for some reason he does say no, you have nothing to lose."
Issac nodded nervously, "Right."
Iris sat there waiting for a minute as he didn't move, just watching the boy.
"You should go do it now."
He jerked slightly, "Oh – oh yeah, okay."
And with a reassuring pat on the shoulder from Iris, the ocean-eyed boy got up from the bench and nervously started walking down the length of the table. Watching Issac leave, Maddie turned to Iris asking, "Where's he going?"
Iris kept her eyes on him with a smile, "He's asking that boy to the Yule Ball." she pointed.
Maddie, Kasper, and Cedric all turned immediately to watch. When she saw the Beauxbatons student in question, Maddie gasped loudly.
"Yes! Finally! He's been staring at that guy for weeks."
They all watched in barely contained excitement as Issac reached the boy named Nathan and tapped him on the shoulder. Their raven-haired friend said something to him, bringing a charming smile to the boy's face. They exchanged a few more words before a large grin split across Issac's face.
The four onlookers let out quiet cheers, turning to high-five each other in victory.
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A week or so later, after getting back to the common room after dinner, Iris said goodnight to Harry and Ron before she and Hermione split from the two of them, heading up to the girl's dormitory. Walking up to their room, they were greeted by Lavender and Parvati upon entering.
"Something came for you, Iris. It was on your bed when we got in here," Parvati informed her with a smile, before grabbing her things to get ready for bed and going into the bathroom.
With an intrigued smile, Iris walked over to her four-poster bed, where, sure enough, was sitting a large-ish box with a thick red ribbon tied around it and into a bow on top. Hermione followed behind her, peering over her shoulder curiously as Iris searched for any sort of note that would tell her what it was and who had sent it.
"What is it?" Hermione asked.
Iris shrugged before pulling the tails of the ribbon bow causing the rest of the ribbon to loosen so she could unwrap it. As she took the lid off of the box and looked inside, her eyes nearly popped out of their sockets and she heard Hermione let out a soft gasp of wonder.
Folded and placed inside was a beautiful, satin, imperial red dress. Iris slowly reached down and lifted it out of the box, the fabric rippling down like a waterfall as she held it up.
"Wow," Iris breathed out.
It was a gorgeous dress. She had never ever had anything even remotely this nice. It had a soft v-neckline, capped sleeves, and sinched in at the waist before flowing down to the ground in a full skirt with a slit on one side. Lavender wandered over to them, and the three teenage girls just stared at the gown in awe.
"Who's it from?" Lavender questioned.
Wondering the same thing, Iris carefully set the dress on her bed and peered into the box. Sitting at the bottom of it was a small folded piece of parchment. Grabbing it curiously, she unfolded the note and read:
My dear Iris,
I hope you like the dress, I'm not sure if my fashion sense withstood the test of time so you'll have to let me know if you approve of my choice. This'll be my early Christmas gift to you, so Happy Christmas. I hope you have a wonderful time at the ball, send me lots of pictures!
Well done with the dragon, I know your parents would be so proud of you.
-S
"A family friend," Iris informed the girls in response to Lavender's question. She smiled as she looked down at the red dress, happily imagining herself dancing the night away in it.
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Iris had never known so many people to put their names down to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas; she and Harry always did, of course, because the alternative was usually going back to Privet Drive, but they had always been very much in the minority before now. This year, however, everyone in the fourth year and above seemed to be staying, and they all seemed to Iris to be obsessed with the coming ball – or at least all the girls were, and it was amazing how many girls Hogwarts suddenly seemed to hold; she had never quite noticed that before. Girls giggling and whispering in the corridors, girls shrieking with laughter as boys passed them, girls excitedly comparing notes on what they were going to wear on Christmas night...
The last week of term became increasingly boisterous as it progressed. Rumours about the Yule Ball were flying everywhere, though Iris didn't believe half of them – for instance, that Dumbledore had bought eight hundred barrels of mulled mead from Madam Rosmerta. It seemed to be fact, however, that he had booked the Weird Sisters. Exactly who or what the Weird Sisters were Iris didn't know, never having had access to a wizard's wireless, but she deduced from the wild excitement of those who had grown up listening to the WWN (Wizarding Wireless Network) that they were a very famous musical group.
Some of the teachers, like little Professor Flitwick, gave up trying to teach them much when their minds were so clearly elsewhere; he allowed them to play games in his lesson on Wednesday, and spent most of it talking to Harry about the perfect Summoning Charm Harry had used during the first task of the Triwizard Tournament. Other teachers were not so generous. Nothing would ever deflect Professor Binns, for example, from ploughing on through his notes on goblin rebellions – as Binns hadn't let his own death stand in the way of continuing to teach, they supposed a small thing like Christmas wasn't going to put him off. It was amazing how he could make even bloody and vicious goblin riots sound as boring as Percy's cauldron-bottom report. Professors McGonagall and Moody kept them working until the very last second of their classes too, and Snape, of course, would no sooner let them play games in class than adopt Harry and Iris. Staring nastily around at them all, he informed them that he would be testing them on poison antidotes during the last lesson of the term.
"Evil, he is," Ron said bitterly that night in the Gryffindor common room. "Springing a test on us on the last day. Ruining the last bit of term with a whole load of studying. "
"Mmm... you're not exactly straining yourself, though, are you?" said Hermione, looking at him over the top of her Potions notes. Iris looked up from the pile of notes and study-guides Hermione was helping her go over and memorize. Ron was busy building a card castle out of his Exploding Snap pack – a much more interesting pastime than with Muggle cards, because of the chance that the whole thing would blow up at any second.
"It's Christmas, Hermione," said Harry lazily; he was rereading Flying with the Cannons for the tenth time in an armchair near the fire.
Hermione looked severely over at him too. "I'd have thought you'd be doing something constructive, Harry, even if you don't want to learn your antidotes!"
"Like what?" Harry said as he watched Joey Jenkins of the Cannons belt a Bludger toward a Ballycastle Bats Chaser.
"That egg!" Hermione hissed.
Iris held back a groan, she'd made no progress with her's either and didn't want the reminder. She didn't even know where to start with it.
"Come on, Hermione, I've got till February the twenty-fourth," Harry said.
He had put the golden egg upstairs in his trunk and hadn't opened it since the celebration party after the first task. He had concluded that with a little over two months until the task, he'd have plenty of time to figure it out.
"But it might take weeks to work it out!" said Hermione. "You're going to look a real idiot if everyone else knows what the next task is and you don't! And that goes for you too Iris, though at least you're trying." She made a pointed look in Harry's direction.
"Leave him alone, Hermione, they've both earned a bit of a break," said Ron, and he placed the last two cards on top of the castle and the whole lot blew up, singeing his eyebrows.
"Nice look, Ron... go well with your dress robes, that will."
It was Fred and George. They sat down at the table with Iris, Harry, Ron, and Hermione as Ron felt how much damage had been done.
⌗ ⌗ ⌗
The Hogwarts staff, demonstrating a continued desire to impress the visitors from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, seemed determined to show the castle at its best this Christmas. When the decorations went up. Iris noticed that they were the most stunning she had yet seen inside the school. Everlasting icicles had been attached to the bannisters of the marble staircase; the usual twelve Christmas trees in the Great Hall were bedecked with everything from luminous holly berries to real, hooting, golden owls, and the suits of armour had all been bewitched to sing carols whenever anyone passed them. It was quite something to hear "O Come, All Ye Faithful" sung by an empty helmet that only knew half the words. Several times, Filch the caretaker had to extract Peeves from inside the armour, where he had taken to hiding, filling in the gaps in the songs with lyrics of his own invention, all of which were very rude.
And still. Harry hadn't asked Cho to the ball. He and Ron were getting very nervous now, though as Harry pointed out, Ron would look much less stupid than he would without a partner. Iris took every opportunity to tease her brother for not having a date yet. Multiple girls had approached him throughout the weeks leading up to the ball, yet he turned every one of them down. Iris couldn't understand why he wouldn't just go ask Cho to go with him, he obviously fancied her, and from what Iris could tell, she felt at least a bit of the same way back.
He put off asking her for so long that when he finally did, she told him she had already said yes to someone else. Ron had asked Fleur Delacour, well, more of yelled it at her and then ran away in embarrassment. Shortly after that, though, Harry had managed to get both of them dates with the Patil twins. Hermione, too, had gotten a date to the ball with none other than Viktor Krum, but she refused to let the boys know that.
"Hermione – who are you going to the ball with?" Ron would ask.
He kept springing this question on her, hoping to startle her into a response by asking it when she least expected it. However, Hermione merely frowned and said, "I'm not telling you, you'll just make fun of me."
Despite the very heavy load of homework that the fourth years had been given for the holidays, Iris was in no mood to work when term ended and spent the week leading up to Christmas enjoying herself as fully as possible along with everyone else. Gryffindor Tower was hardly less crowded now than during term-time; it seemed to have shrunk slightly too, as its inhabitants were being so much rowdier than usual. Fred and George had had great success with their Canary Creams, and for the first couple of days of the holidays, people kept bursting into feathers all over the place. Before long, however, all the Gryffindors had learned to treat food anybody else offered them with extreme caution, in case it had a Canary Cream concealed in the centre, and George confided to Harry and Iris that he and Fred were now working on developing something else. Iris made a mental note never to accept so much as a crisp from Fred and George in future. She still hadn't forgotten Dudley and the Ton-Tongue Toffee.
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Snow was falling thickly upon the castle and its grounds now. The pale blue Beauxbatons carriage looked like a large, chilly, frosted pumpkin next to the iced gingerbread house that was Hagrid's cabin, while the Durmstrang ship's portholes were glazed with ice, the rigging white with frost. The house-elves down in the kitchen were outdoing themselves with a series of rich, warming stews and savoury puddings, and only Fleur Delacour seemed to be able to find anything to complain about.
Finally, it was the day of the Yule Ball. The whole morning seemed to drag on as excitement built for that evening and everyone participated in fun activities trying to make time move quicker. They went out onto the grounds in the afternoon; the snow was untouched except for the deep channels made by the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students on their way up to the castle. Hermione chose to watch Iris, Harry and the Weasleys' snowball fight rather than join in, and at five o'clock said she was going back upstairs to get ready for the ball and asked Iris if she was coming. Iris immediately perked up, running through the snow to join her.
"What, you need three hours?" said Ron, looking at them incredulously and paying for his lapse in concentration when a large snowball, thrown by George, hit him hard on the side of the head. "Who're you going with?" he yelled after Hermione, but she just waved as they disappeared up the stone steps into the castle.
"He's going to be so shocked when he finds out," Iris said and Hermione laughed.
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Jordan Fisher as Nathan Woods
right so the chapter ended up being close to 7k words so I cut it into two chapters
you're welcome :)
part 2, in my not so humble opinion, is some high quality stuff. lowkey wanted to cry writing it ✌️
it'll be out later today, thanks for reading, ily guys 🥺🥺