Chapter Text
Draco Malfoy followed Professor Snape along the corridor. He trotted behind the billowing black robes wondering why it never got any easier to trail Snape. No matter how much taller Draco grew, he still had to nearly jog to keep up. Now, in fourth year, Draco was almost as tall as his father, but all the adults close to him seemed to be going even faster than they used to, racing ahead of him, just like Snape, flying headlong into -- something that might be more menacing than a bit of flashy mischief at the Quidditch World Cup.
That night had been something else. It would have been a good time if he hadn’t run into Granger in the trees, standing there like a stupid doe, where anyone could spot her. Bloody Potter, couldn’t he take care of anything? The whole point was for everyone like her to lighten up and back off and stop taking all the very best of everything. No one had to get hurt over it. Why didn’t anyone seem to get that?
Snape spun around so quickly Draco almost kissed him on the lips. “Wait,” he said as Draco recoiled, “here. Be agreeable. Do you un-der-stand?”
“Yes, sir.”
He leaned against the stone wall as Snape sailed away. More strange requests, more alone time with Snape. Never a good sign.
A tall black hat was moving toward him now, Professor McGonagall. “Mr. Malfoy, thank you for meeting us,” she said, though she appeared to have come alone. “We are looking for some help.”
He promised nothing, but followed her into an empty classroom. The desks had been pushed aside, clearing the centre of the room.
“As you know,” she began, “the Yule Ball is coming. The centrepiece of the evening will be a dance by our Tri-wizarding Tournament champions and their chosen partners.”
He nodded. Fine then, whatever this was all about, it couldn’t have much to do with him. Maybe they wanted a truce between himself and Potter, at least until the tournament was over. Boring, but doable. He braced himself.
“Our Durmstrang champion,” McGonagall went on, “has chosen as his partner an exemplary Hogwarts student from my house who is, unfortunately, completely at a loss when it comes to ballroom dancing. Truly enough, it is a dying art, especially among our male students, and so we find ourselves entreating you, Mr. Malfoy, to aid us as a tutor.”
He was both flattered and dismayed. “With respect, professor, is there no one in Gryffindor house who can help?”
He didn’t think it was possible for McGonagall to stand any straighter, but she did. “During an international tournament, Hogwarts houses put differences aside and band together for the honour of the school. And furthermore, the young lady tells me that, for personal reasons, she does not wish her housemates to know she is a champion’s partner at this time.” She turned to speak over her shoulder. “But I am assured she will get ahold of herself and let it be known before long.”
McGonagall faced him again. “What do you say, Mr. Malfoy?”
He shifted from foot to foot. “If it’s all the same to you, professor -- “
“It is not all the same, as a matter of fact,” she said. “Your head of house has not yet disciplined you for a hex cast on the teeth of a Gryffindor student, but the headmaster may still administer discipline beginning with revoking your invitation to the Yule Ball and sending you home. Since the student you hexed required medical attention, the consequences may extend beyond that. It’s completely up to Professor Dumbledore. But he has agreed you may make amends by serving as a dance tutor. Of course, the choice is yours.”
He sighed. Choice his arse. “Right then. I can help.”
She nodded her thanks, turning away from him again, raising her wand and coiling it in a circle, counterclockwise, un-disillusioning the student who had been standing beside her all along.
Granger.
She appeared with her face twisted into a grimace. “Professor, is there no one else?”
“Miss Granger, we have already done you a favour by not simply sending you to the Weasley twins for dance lessons. We will do no more. Besides, the headmaster handpicked Mr. Malfoy, in the hopes that cooperation between two influential students like yourselves may inspire some badly needed school unity. Of course, the choice is yours. Say the word and I will summon the Weasleys.”
“Perhaps I could study dancing on my own -- “
“Out of the question. Not everything is best found in the library, Miss Granger.”
She swallowed hard. “Very well, Professor. I’ll do my best with -- him.”
McGonagall flicked her wand, transfiguring a chair into a machine topped by a large cone, like a bell with no clapper. “You may use this phono-blast to play practice music. Run a wand along this groove to hear the music for the champions’ dance. The standard Epicruvean Waltz, Mr. Malfoy. No need for anything fancy,” she eyed both of them, “or dangerous. Understood?”
They muttered agreement and she swooped out of the room. There was silence for a moment after the door banged shut.
“Krum asked you?” Malfoy spat. “How’d you pull that one off?”
She groaned. “This is exactly why I don’t want anyone to know. Go on, accuse me of lying, or of bewitching him.”
He scoffed. “Don’t flatter yourself that anyone would think you’re powerful enough to bewitch the Durmstrang champion. No one is going to assume that. You might not have realized, but not all the champions are dough-headed as Potter.”
She was scoffing now. “Jealous of the dough-head much, Malfoy?”
It was a weak, childish reply -- perfectly excusable in a fifteen-year-old, and easy enough for Draco to ignore. He turned his back and stormed toward the phono-blast. The sooner they got started, the sooner he could leave.
“And why,” she was calling after him, “why are you the school’s de facto dance tutor?”
“Because I was raised right,” he said. “And it’s not like I asked for it. But it is important, actually. Dancing is a fine art, like any other. And art isn’t optional -- though you wouldn’t know it to look at the curriculum of this bloody school.”
“Raised right?” she echoed. “What is that supposed to mean? My parents put me in dance lessons when I was little.”
He waved his arm across the empty classroom. “Yet here you are, getting teachers to bully people into tutoring you.”
She rolled her eyes. “I was raised right even without being taught this kind of stuffy dancing. I was in ballet.”
He raised both his eyebrows. “Muggles have ballet?”
“Of course they do. Loads of it.” She was proving it now, spewing evidence. “I was five and I had a pink tutu and slippers. We called our teacher Mademoiselle and she wore her hair in a tight bun leaking hairpins everywhere. The night before our recital, Mum put my hair in curlers, to force it into ringlets, just like Shirley Temple. And we did the cutest routine, about all the fish under the sea.”
She started to sing, elbows bent, fingers splayed, hands waving, stepping toward him and the phono-blast in a funny, rhythmic heel-toe walk. “Come along and follow me,” she sang, “to the bottom of the sea. We’ll join in the jamboree, at the codfish ball…”
He gaped, naturally stupefied, coming to his senses to lunge toward her, to catch her and hold her still. “Stop it, Granger. That is not ballet. Not even Muggle ballet.”
She dodged with an abrupt but effective turn on the ball of one foot. “...Lobsters dancing in a row, shuffle off to Buffalo…”
“For the love of the stars, Granger -- stop.”
“You know, you’re right, Malfoy,” she said, stomping her foot before shuffling it and hopping onto the other one. “The fish number was from Mademoiselle’s tap dancing class. It was right after ballet, hard to keep them straight.”
“Tap dancing?” he said, but only to distract her so he could lunge at her again.
“Is there no tap dancing in wizarding Britain?” she said, reversing direction and returning to her song and her jazz hands. “The catfish is a dancing man, but he can’t can-can like the sardine can -- hey!”
He had caught her, both of his arms clamped around her and his hands locked in the small of her back, pinning her arms to her sides. She blinked into his face, straining against him but still talking, “Do you reckon wizards tap dance in America? They must.”
He didn’t answer. It was the first time they’d been in physical contact with each other since she hit him in third year. Maybe that was why his blood surged -- a learned reaction to her touch, something like anger, or at least self-defense. The light through the windows was oblique and dim, hiding the flush of colour in his cheeks.
“Fine, Malfoy, I’ll dance your way,” she said, pushing against him again. “Get off me.”
He unclasped his hands and stood back. “We’re going to have to touch each other, pretty much constantly, in order to do this,” he said. “It can’t be helped. But I need to know I can trust you not to up and hit me again.”
She lifted her chin. “If I can trust you to give me no reason to hit you, then you can trust me.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means,” she said, crossing her arms, widening her stance, “no name-calling. And that extends beyond me to my friends, and to outside of this room as well as inside it.”
“That’s going to have to go both ways then,” he said, standing taller. “No more mentions of ferrets.”
He was standing close enough that she could have reached up and scratched him under his chin, just like a pet ferret. Instead she resisted, nodding. “I can accept those terms.”
He spun away, back to the phono-blast, starting the music. It was light and lilting chamber music set in 3-4 time.
“Now,” he began, speaking louder to be heard over the violins. “Krum obviously doesn’t know you very well, so he will be expecting to lead.”
“Lead,” she repeated.
“Yes, lead, Granger,” he said, snatching her right hand in his left, pressing his right hand against her waist. He didn’t have to tell her to put her free hand on his shoulder. Honestly, couldn’t they have found someone shorter for her? “Leading means you move where this hand,” he tapped his palm against her flank, “steers you. And -- this is important -- to start, you walk backwards, he walks forward.”
“What? Why?” she said, pulling her hand out of his.
He shook his head. “I don’t make the rules here. Neither do you. This is traditional, just how it works. If you try to take over, you’re going to tread on his feet.”
“Fine, fine,” she said, taking his hand again. “All I want is to get through this without embarrassing Viktor, or the school. Backwards it is.”
The Epicruvean Waltz, though standard in wizard ballroom dance, is not danced in the Muggle world. This is probably because it is worse in every way -- faster, more complicated, needlessly ornate. The first step to learning it is the same as learning a Muggle waltz, a simple box step. And all Muggles can box step...
“You can’t do it?” Malfoy raved when Hermione admitted she couldn’t. He sighed hard enough to stir the hair on her crown with his breath. “Right, so we’re going even more basic. Granger, do tell me you can count to three.”
She nodded. “Like a house on fire.”
“Right. On a count of one, I step forward with my left foot while you step back -- no, back.” Their chests crashed together. “Step back with your right -- not yet, wait for me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m leading.”
“Then lead, already…”
They stomped and squabbled for the rest of the hour, the music looping and looping, their voices chanting “1-2-3, 1-2-3…”, their jumpers tossed on the floor in a pile, their hands growing hot against each other’s shirts. She stopped to rub her palms against her skirt. He stretched his arms and rolled his shoulders, kneading his neck. Between McGonagall’s threats and his body’s lingering stress reaction to Granger, the tension was exhausting.
“I swear you get worse the longer we go on,” he said.
“How inspirational,” she snapped. “Did you learn your teaching manners from Snape?”
“There is no way Snape would put up with this. He’d have you sat somewhere by yourself writing metres of parchment with ‘I will not be a clumsy, overbearing, toe-stomping --’”
“Oh, give over, Malfoy.”
“Honestly, I’m going to have to send home for a pair of steel-toed boots at this rate,” he said. “What are you wearing on your feet right now, anyways? Breeze blocks?”
She pointed her toe between them, showing him her shiny black school loafers. “Just my uniform shoes.”
He scoffed. “You should be practicing in the shoes you’ll be dancing in.”
“Well, they’re not here yet, are they,” she answered. “Mum put them in the post yesterday. They should get here by Christmas Eve.”
He frowned. “That long?”
“From London to the highlands by Royal Mail? Of course that long.”
Draco sneered. “Unacceptable. I’ll send home to have something owled here for you to practice in by tomorrow morning. There’s no point in you doing anymore clomping around in those.”
The phono-blast wound down, the music wavering to a stop. Malfoy twitched. “Time’s up,” he chirped, and fled the room.
-------------------------------------------
They were back the next afternoon. The goal for the day was to be able to do the box step without counting out loud and with Hermione’s head held high, not staring at their feet.
“Look up -- up,” he said. “No, not at the ceiling.”
“At what then? At the knot of your tie?”
“Only if you plan on spending the night staring Krum in the throat,” he said. “Dancing isn’t just a physical maneuvre. It’s a social exchange, an opportunity. Don’t make it weird. Practice looking at my face, like normal people would do.”
She tried it, raising her chin, tracking her eyes up his neck, over his chin and mouth, his nose, and into his eyes. It was impossible. They hadn’t been eye-to-eye a full second before she broke away, laughing. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Yes, aren’t you always,” he answered, toes still smarting.
“Does it hurt any less when I tread on you in these pretty shoes?” She looked down on purpose this time, peeking at the shoes Madam Malfoy had sent for an anonymous (and completely fictitious) female Slytherin student her noble Draco was helping out of the kindness of his heart. “Are they charmed to never harm the Malfoy heirs?”
Enchanted or not, the shoes were beautiful, heels just high enough to be interesting, light leather soles for gliding and turning, and their uppers formed from a clear material with the shine and lustre of glass but somehow comfortable and form-fitting on the inside. Malfoy was sure to tell her that the clear uppers would make the shoes easier to clean thoroughly once she returned them. The Malfoy family had never heard the Muggle fairy tale of Cinderella and didn’t realize they had lent a Muggle-born girl a pair of princess shoes. Hermione certainly wasn’t going to say anything to ruin it.
Draco flexed his toes inside his own sleek, shiny dress shoes. She had improved since yesterday. But he couldn’t tell her that. “Still hurts,” he said. “I started off annoyed that you weren’t taller but at the rate you keep walking on me, I’m glad you’re not any bigger.”
Dammit -- too much like a compliment.
He coughed, returning to the subject of where she should look. “Right, so if you’re too immature to maintain eye-contact, try looking over my shoulder instead,” he said. “Krum might prefer you coy, anyways. Wait -- ouch -- Granger, you’ve lost the beat, 1-2-3…”
Eventually, his counting trailed off. “Listen, Granger, if you make it to the end of the song without any incidents, I am prepared to declare you a competent box-stepper,” he announced.
She nodded, her eyes trained above his shoulder, not breaking her concentration to speak until the song ended. As the music began to loop again, she let go of him, raising her arms in the air and cheering. “I did it! I’m ready for the Yule Ball!”
“That’s what you’re not,” he answered, drying the palms of his hands on his trousers. “You have the basic step and now you're ready to move on to the rest of the Epicruvean waltz.”
She groaned. “There's more? No, Malfoy, not today. We did so well already. Can we leave it on a good note? I've got other work to do.”
He gestured toward the phono-blast with his head. “You can try to go, but I don’t think the door will open until the music runs out its hour.”
She sighed. “Can we at least sit down while it plays out. You’re extra sweaty today and I’d rather not be mashed against you anymore.”
“Sit down and shut it, Granger.”
They sat on the cool stone floor. She was right. He was sweating far too much today, still tense to be touching her. She didn't seem bothered by him, sitting next to him, digging through her school bag as if he wasn't there anymore. He rolled his eyes and folded his jumper into a pillow, stretching out on his back. The floor was cool through the cotton of his shirt and he felt his nerves calming. Was something animal and instinctive in him still afraid she'd hit him, or was there something else making him his blood rush all through these lessons. Maybe it was just the fear of having his feet stepped on. Whatever it was, he'd better get used to her soon so it could stop. He glanced at her where she sat over her book. Maybe he should try talking to her, the way he might talk to a friend -- someone who didn't beat him in every class and then publicly accuse him of bribing his way onto the quidditch team.
He was still trying to think of something normal to say to her when she spoke to him, “I’ve been wondering, Malfoy. What do you know about ballet? Why so offended when I mistook my tap dancing routine for ballet?”
He blinked at the ceiling. “Why do think? Because ballet has been part of my dance education too.”
She yelled a laugh. “I knew it. You dance ballet.”
There was no making fun of him when he admitted it so freely. He smoothed his hair as he owned it. “Yes, when I was younger, when we summered in France every year, I did ballet with all of my cousins. Father was forced to learn it as a child too, so he assumed I must hate it like he did, and he quit on my behalf as soon as my great-grandmother would let us. I didn’t mind it though. The sense of timing and the flexibility are useful in quidditch.”
“Can you still do it?” she pressed.
He shrugged against the floor. “I’ve kept up a few of the moves, yeah.”
"Show me."
"No."
"Show me! Do a -- a pirouette.”
He laughed. "Haven't tried in years."
"Probably fall flat on your face, yeah?"
"Please, Granger, I'm not that easily manipulated. You can’t goad me into it like that."
She shoved his arm where he lay beside her. "Sure, I can, Malfoy. Get up and do it."
He glanced at his watch. "Oh, go on then."
She sat up on her knees as he stood and walked to the centre of the room.
"Don't expect too much," he said.
"From you, Malfoy? Never."
He shook out his hands, considered his feet, repositioned them, extended his arms, and looked up one more time to see she was watching. Then he pushed off, rising onto the ball of one foot, spinning with the momentum of his arms, shoulders, hips, even his head. He went 'round once, twice and again before he dropped to the flats of his feet, catching himself with a step to keep from falling over.
Hermione was cheering, clapping her hands. "Malfoy! That is by far the coolest thing you have ever done."
He clicked his heels together and took a bow.