The Great Hall had been transformed for the Yule Ball.
It was a shame Hogwarts had never possessed a proper ballroom. The founders had not built for comfort or ceremony. They built to hide children, feed them, arm them with knowledge, and keep them alive in a world that had wanted them drowned or burned at stake. A ballroom sat rather low on the list beside defensive wards, storage, and kitchens. The absence was understandable.
It was still a shame.
The expanded hall compensated for it.
Long tables lined the sides rather than cutting across the room, leaving the centre open for dancing. They were dressed in deep green cloth and candles set in bronze holders, the light steady and warm rather than church bright. Garlands of holly, ivy, pine, and oak leaves had been wound around the pillars and balcony rails. Evergreen for endurance. Holly for protection through the dark. Oak for strength carried into the turning year. Bundles of mistletoe hung high enough to be decorative first and dangerous later.
Instead of bewitched snow drifting from nowhere in a sentimental parody of winter, small suspended braziers burned with contained golden flame above the edges of the hall, giving off more glow than heat and making the room feel like a place built to resist the longest night. Out of the castle stood a long arrangement of evergreen boughs surrounding a low circle of unlit candles for midnight. Just the old turn of the year honoured in old ways.
The hall was full despite the expansion.
Students from all three schools had dressed with the full seriousness of youth, told that tonight would matter. Hogwarts mixed awkwardness with inherited pride. Slytherins wore dark formal robes with family colours hidden in cuff stitching, lining, and clasp work. Ravenclaws looked intellectually expensive. Hufflepuffs tended to warmth and correctness rather than theatricality. Gryffindors tried to make bold choices and succeeded about half the time.
Durmstrang entered with martial elegance. Their formal robes carried sharper tailoring, heavier collars, deeper colours.
Beauxbatons brought polish that looked effortless until one examined the cuts, fabrics, and finishing work closely enough to realise how much calculation it had taken to produce such effortless ease.
The older and more visible couples drew the usual attention. Harry arrived with Susan Bones, who wore dark blue well enough to make half the table arrangements look underdressed. Neville escorted Hannah Abbott. Draco came with Astoria Greengrass and looked, for once, like a boy successfully raised for this exact kind of night. Fred and George drifted through the room separately, which by itself worried several professors. Angelina Johnson slapped Fred's shoulder when he bowed too deeply. George had Alicia Spinnet laughing before the first dance had even been announced. Daphne Greengrass stood apart with the calm of a girl about to lead a champion onto the floor and fully aware of what that would look like.
The newer names sat comfortably among the old. Blacks, Rosiers, Selwyns, Greengrasses, and the rest of the lines that still understood how wizarding nobility functioned. The hall held them all at once, a mixture of school-age nerves and old blood instruction.
Enchanted instruments stood upon the raised platform where a band might have been. Violins, cellos, a harp, a dulcimer, and a pair of old brass horns tuned themselves. The instruments would play themselves, which suited Hogwarts far better.
Even so, the room remained restless until the champions entered.
Altair Black came first.
He wore a formal black cut to the standards of a house Black. Silver thread marked the inner edges of his sleeves, barely visible unless the light caught it. At his side walked Daphne Greengrass in dark green silk, her gown shaped with enough restraint that the details had to be earned by looking. Her hair had been pinned high with sapphire pieces fine enough to announce wealth without shouting.
The hall approved.
Hogwarts most of all.
Viktor Krum entered second with Geneviève Rosier.
Krum wore deep formal crimson trimmed in black, the lines severe enough to suit Durmstrang's tastes without making him look like part of the furniture aboard the war galleon. Geneviève Rosier, however, was the point of impact. She wore silver white with black detailing at the waist and sleeves, the contrast making her look colder and sharper than many girls older than she was. The Nest's education sat on her comfortably, which meant she did not seem impressed by the room, admiring her.
That was when people at the faculty table began noticing that Grindelwald's attention had shifted.
Fleur Delacour entered last with Corvus Black.
The hall did not fall silent because it had planned to. It fell silent because beauty and scale, placed correctly, sometimes stripped language from a crowd before the crowd remembered itself.
Fleur wore pale gold with ivory undertones, the sort of colour that looked weak on ordinary girls and became radiant on her. The gown fitted her properly, which was to say it neither hid nor vulgarised her shape. It followed the line of her waist, her hips, and the long elegance of her frame to show what needed showing and no more. Her hair had been dressed to fall over one shoulder, the gold of it answering the candle glow each time she moved. She was, in simple words, the most beautiful lady in the hall, and from the proud smile on her face, she was aware of it.
Corvus at her side made the contrast worse and better at once.
He wore black formal robes cut with noble severity, silver hidden at the seams and collar, turquoise stones worked subtly at the clasp and cuff to answer the strange light in his eyes. He was far too large to disappear into elegance, so the tailoring did the sensible thing and made the size part of the statement. Beside him, Fleur should have looked slight. She looked chosen.
At the faculty table, Elizaveta sat to Arcturus's left, pale and perfectly composed, with the two seats beside her left open for the pair. Ministers Black, Delacour, and Krafft shared the same table with the headmaster and headmistresses, turning what ought to have been a school dance into an event that half Europe would soon discuss as if the students had only been decorative justification.
The reactions to Grindelwald were worth watching.
Durmstrang students gave him open respect, the kind that came from being raised on a version of history not written by his enemies. Slytherin and much of Ravenclaw did the same, though Ravenclaw's looked more analytical, as if they were mentally sorting legend from present fact and finding both equally inconvenient. Gryffindor and some Hufflepuffs showed respect more timidly, because refusing to show it to a man sitting comfortably beside Vinda Rosier and Arcturus Black would have required a level of courage that usually arrived only after three drinks or a bad upbringing.
The Beauxbatons students, led by instinct and national memory alike, offered a cooler form of courtesy. For them, Grindelwald was not a complicated academic question. He was history and fire.
The first dance began.
The champions moved onto the floor in order. Altair and Daphne took their place with almost insulting ease. Krum and Geneviève followed, his large athlete's frame adjusted with visible care to her exact line and timing. Fleur and Corvus stepped into the final place, and whatever conversation still lingered in the hall died again.
The size difference should have looked absurd.
It did not.
Corvus's hand rested at Fleur's back with measured precision. Fleur set her hand in his and seemed, in that moment, less like a school champion and more like what she was becoming. The music rose from the enchanted instruments.
They moved.
Altair danced like someone trained from childhood to understand that even celebration could be assessed. Krum surprised half the hall by being better than expected, not natural perhaps, but disciplined enough to hide the work. Geneviève gave him nothing easy and was clearly enjoying that fact.
Fleur and Corvus drew the eye anyway.
He guided without crowding. She followed without vanishing. The line between them remained formal, yet not cold. When he turned her, the gold of her gown caught and moved like a living thing. When she stepped back into him, the difference in their size only sharpened the impression of control. It was not romance in the clumsy schoolboy sense. It was elegance with authority under it.
By the time the dance ended, the hall remembered to applaud.
Vinda and Grindelwald did so first from the faculty table, their approval gentle enough not to cheapen itself. Arcturus followed. Minister Delacour's expression had settled into the strange combination of pride and worry common to fathers who had successfully arranged something magnificent and then remembered who their daughter had been engaged to.
While the applause continued, Vinda leaned slightly toward Arcturus. Grindelwald did not need to lean. He had already fixed his gaze on Viktor Krum.
Krum, unfortunately, was standing very close to Geneviève Rosier while the figures of the dance finished their last turn.
Across the hall, Karkaroff saw that gaze land and stopped moving so completely he might as well have been another decoration.
Grindelwald looked from Krum to Karkaroff and left enough silence between the two glances to make the message settle properly.
"You will inform this young and, mind you, still alive man's family to pen a letter of intention. I will be waiting."
Karkaroff bowed his head too quickly. "Of course, Lord Grindelwald."
Inwardly, he cursed Viktor Krum with the concentration of a man who had never before seen a waltz produce administrative damage. Geneviève Rosier, like her sisters and brothers, was a Nestborn. Unlike the younger children, they had been born from Vinda's eggs and the strongest donor available at the time. Still, Grindelwald and Vinda saw them as their nephews. Hence the protectiveness.
After the first dance, Corvus returned Fleur to the faculty table. He kissed her knuckles before seating her, then moved her chair into place with the easy courtesy expected from a gentleman.
Then he turned to Elizaveta.
Even though she was his fiancée, he still extended the courtesy properly.
"My lady, will you dance with me?"
Elizaveta let him wait for the answer long enough to satisfy herself that the room was watching.
She placed her hand in his.
That movement prompted the next wave. Grindelwald rose for Vinda. Arcturus invited Apolline Delacour with old school grace that made Minister Delacour smile despite himself. Couples across the hall followed, some confidently, some with the expression of students stepping into a duel they had not trained for.
Apolline smiled at Fleur before taking Arcturus's arm.
Gabrielle remained at the table with a long face.
She had dressed beautifully, which only worsened the injustice as far as she was concerned. Her gown was blue-grey with silver trim and enough softness in the shape to keep her from looking overdressed into adulthood.
Castor Black approached her chair, and the light in Minister Delacour's eyes dimmed another notch.
He bowed.
"Mademoiselle Gabrielle, would you honour me with a dance?"
Gabrielle brightened at once and looked to her mother before answering. Apolline, already moving toward the floor, gave the smallest nod over her shoulder.
Gabrielle placed her hand in Castor's like she had been waiting for civilisation to correct itself all evening.
The ball unfolded from there into what such nights were always meant to be. Music, movement, alliances disguised as courtesy, adolescent excitement disguised as poise, and at least seven future scandals being born in corners where people thought curtains counted as walls.
Fred and George crossed paths twice, once together and once by design, each grinning too easily for Vinda's comfort. Susan and Harry managed their dances well enough that the Hufflepuff table visibly approved. Neville did better than he had feared, and Hannah better than he deserved. Draco and Astoria moved with enough grace to satisfy even Narcissa's standards.
The night softened as it went on.
Then the clock moved toward midnight.
The change in the hall was immediate and solemn.
The enchanted instruments lowered themselves into silence. Conversation thinned. Chairs scraped back. Students and guests alike began to move toward the doors and the waiting gardens beyond.
Outside, the air bit with proper winter cold. The long tables set among the grounds now held only candles, ribbons, and the old greenery. One by one, people took their places before the waiting lights.
No one had to explain the custom to those who mattered. They stood still, thought of what they owed and what they guarded, lit one candle for the turning year, and, if they chose to light a second, offered it to the dead.
Harry stood with Susan beside him and Neville a little beyond, Hannah near his shoulder. Draco and Astoria took their own place among the Slytherins, more serious now than either had been indoors.
Harry drew a breath, reached for the first candle, and lit it. Susan did the same. Then, after only a moment's pause, they each lit a second.
Around them, many other students did likewise. Some for parents and some for siblings. Some for the fallen and some to honour the dead. The grounds brightened slowly with those second flames.
The Yule Ball ended in the old way, not with spectacle, but with stillness, candlelight, and the small, solemn air that came when people remembered the year had turned.