Chapter Text
By the time the Weird Sisters were officially booked and Minerva had stopped muttering murderously about “Thunder cannons in my Great Hall,” the entire school had gone mad.
Not dramatically. Not all at once. It was a slow, insidious sort of madness, the kind that crept into conversations and crowded out sensible topics like homework and exams. The sort that turned even intelligent children into babbling messes.
It was the madness of who are you taking to the Yule Ball?
For the next two weeks, Estelle could not cross a corridor without hearing some variation of it.
“Do you think he’ll ask me?”
“Do you think I should ask her?”
“But what if they say no?”
“I heard he already asked Parvati—”
“What if they don’t ask me—”
“I can’t dance—”
“What if I trip and die—”
“Do you think I could take a broom instead of a person?”
Estelle privately thought the last option had merit.
She was, at least, eternally grateful that as staff she was not expected to show up with a date. Ball attendance was compulsory; escorting someone in with a corsage was not.
“Love is optional,” she told a cluster of anxious sixth-years one afternoon in Greenhouse Two. “Attendance is not.”
The girls laughed nervously. One of them—a Hufflepuff with an impressive collection of quills braided into her hair—sighed dramatically.
“You’re lucky, Professor,” she said. “You just have to show up and look pretty.”
“Tragic,” Estelle said dryly. “Truly my burden is great.”
In truth, her burden was mostly listening.
Her days filled as usual with teaching, but there was no escaping the undercurrent of Ball talk. Even the plants, she thought, were beginning to look exasperated.
On the Monday of the first week, she walked into Greenhouse Three to find her fourth-year Gryffindor/Hufflepuff group buzzing louder than a swarm of doxyflies.
Neville was poking anxiously at a pot of puffapples. Seamus Finnegan and Dean Thomas were arguing over whether dragons were a suitable conversation starter. A knot of Hufflepuff girls clustered near the back, whispering and squeaking.
“All right,” Estelle said, clapping her gloved hands once. “We’re going to attempt something radical today.”
The students looked up, startled. “What’s that, Professor?” Seamus asked warily.
“We are going,” Estelle said gravely, “to focus on Herbology for an entire class period.”
A few snorts. A couple of sheepish smiles.
She gestured toward the workbenches. “Your practical today is repotting crysanthemum glacialis. These beauties prefer the cold and will be used in the Hall for some of Professor Sprout’s arrangements. They’re delicate, so if you decapitate them, I will be sad and you will be redoing the assignment in January.”
Neville perked up immediately. “Crysanthemum glacialis? The ones that frost on their own?”
“That’s right,” Estelle said, pleased. “Handle them by the stems, not the petals, and don’t breathe directly on them unless you want them to melt.”
She watched, amused despite herself, as the Ball undercurrent twisted its way into the lesson anyway.
“What if I asked her with flowers?” one of the Gryffindors murmured to his friend. “Like, ‘Here’s this fancy frost-thing, will you suffer through dancing with me?’”
“Romantic,” Dean said. “Nothing says ‘my affection is real’ like a magically-induced temperature drop.”
Estelle passed behind them, adjusting someone’s grip on a pot.
“You might gesture toward less lethal flora,” she suggested. “Unless you truly want the phrase ‘you literally froze me’ in your future arguments.”
The Gryffindor jumped. “Right. Yes. Sorry, Professor.”
She moved on, checking Neville’s work. He was humming softly under his breath, lost in the comforting rhythm of soil and roots. Of all of them, he seemed the least consumed by Ball mania.
“Plant looks healthy,” she murmured. “Nice work, Neville.”
He flushed. “Thanks, Professor.”
“Sorted your Ball plans?” she asked lightly, more to test his reaction than out of genuine nosiness.
His ears went pink. “Er. Not really. Gran says I have to go. ‘Social skills,’” he added, in a passable imitation of an elderly woman.
“You’ll be fine,” Estelle said, more firmly than she felt about the entire event. “No one’s as bad as they think they are at these things. Except perhaps your Headmaster, and he cheats by being charming.”
Neville laughed nervously and nearly tipped a pot; Estelle caught it before it fell.
“Eyes on the soil, Mr. Longbottom,” she said, amused. “The plants are more forgiving than people, at least.”
The second half of the week brought her fifth-year Ravenclaws and Slytherins. They arrived to find neat rows of frost-covered seedlings along the benches.
“Professor, these are brilliant,” a Ravenclaw girl breathed, fogging the air with excitement.
“Don’t breathe on them,” Estelle said automatically. “Today we’re grafting winter-resistant stems. Think of it as matchmaking, since that’s clearly the only thing occupying your minds lately.”
This, of course, sparked an entire conversation about whether it was unethical to use grafted flowers as Ball invitations, which House produced the best hybrid relationships, and whether Professor Vector could be persuaded to calculate optimal date distributions using arithmancy.
“If she does,” Estelle said dryly as she checked a Slytherin’s clumsy knife angle, “she’ll need the astronomy tower to fit her graphs. Eyes on your cambium layer, Mr. Avery, unless you want that plant to reject your advances.”
The real comedic highlight of her week, however, arrived in the form of Fred and George Weasley.
They turned up halfway through a Friday afternoon, hovering in the doorway of Greenhouse One while she tried to coax an especially sulky Venomous Tentacula back into its pot.
“Knock, knock,” Fred said.
“We brought a present,” George added.
Estelle didn’t turn immediately. She adjusted her grip on the Tentacula’s thick stem and gave it a warning shake. “If that present is ‘another excuse to blow up part of the castle,’ I’m afraid I’m at capacity.”
“We’re hurt, Professor,” Fred said.
“Deeply,” George agreed.
“Wounded, even.”
“Insulted, certainly.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “Did any of that sound sincere to you?” she asked the plant.
The Tentacula hissed and tried to smack her with a vine.
“Exactly,” she told it. Then, louder: “Come in, Weasleys. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
They stepped inside with matching grins, their Gryffindor scarves trailing behind them like banners. Both had an air of exaggerated innocence that set off every alarm bell Estelle owned.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” she asked, securing the Tentacula’s root ball with one last firm pat and stepping away. “And before you answer: if this is about polyjuicing yourselves into your dates so you can be in two places at once, the answer is no.”
Fred clutched at his heart. “You think so little of us, Professor.”
George nodded mournfully. “We’d never polyjuice a date. Can you imagine the logistics of the hair collection alone?”
“Not to mention the ethics,” Fred said. “What do you take us for?”
“Chaos goblins,” Estelle said. “With good hearts and terrible judgment.”
They beamed.
“Actually,” George said, “we’re here about a very serious matter.”
“Very serious indeed,” Fred echoed.
“Grave, you might say.”
“Dire.”
“Catastrophic.”
Estelle folded her arms. “You woke up and realized you can’t dance?”
They both froze.
“How did you know?” Fred demanded.
“Have you been talking to McGonagall?” George asked, horrified.
“I’ve been teaching teenagers longer than you’ve been alive,” Estelle said. “I can spot a boy who’s just realized he’ll have to move his feet to music from fifty paces.”
Fred and George exchanged a look.
“She’s good,” Fred muttered.
“Dangerously good,” George agreed.
Estelle leaned back against the workbench, amused. “So. You’re worried you’ll make fools of yourselves in front of your dates?”
“We’re not worried,” Fred said quickly.
“Absolutely not,” George agreed.
“We have complete faith in our natural grace.”
“Which is to say,” Fred clarified, “none whatsoever.”
They looked at her hopefully.
“No,” she said immediately.
“We haven’t even asked yet,” George protested.
“I’m preempting you,” she said. “Whatever you’re about to suggest, it’s no.”
“What if it’s harmless?” Fred tried.
“What if it makes everyone’s night better?” George added.
“I fail to see,” Estelle said, “how any sentence that starts with ‘What if we’ and ends with ‘the Yule Ball’ leads to something harmless.”
They were undeterred.
“We were just thinking,” Fred began.
“Always dangerous,” Estelle noted.
“That we could perhaps,” George continued, ignoring her, “charm the mistletoe.”
“To what?” she asked warily.
“Prevent unwanted snogging,” Fred said, surprising her.
Estelle raised an eyebrow. “Explain.”
“Well, there’s going to be mistletoe,” George said, shrugging. “There always is. And some poor sods are going to get ambushed under it by people they don’t like. So we thought—what if the mistletoe could tell?”
“Magical consent-detecting mistletoe,” Fred said proudly. “If both people want to be there, fine. If not, it drops holly berries down the offender’s shirt.”
Estelle blinked.
“That is…” she said slowly, “either the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard or absolutely brilliant.”
“We’re leaning brilliant,” Fred said.
“But we need access to some higher-level wards,” George said. “To make sure it doesn’t misfire. And we thought, ‘Who do we know who understands defensive magic, plant magic, and teenage disasters?’”
“And we said—”
“Professor Black,” they finished in unison, gesturing at her like they’d conjured her out of thin air.
Estelle stared at them.
“You came to me,” she said, “to help you enchant ethical mistletoe?”
“Yes,” George said.
“Professor Sinistra thinks it’s hilarious,” Fred added. “She said we’d have to talk to you about the plant-based components. And then to Flitwick about tying it into the ceiling charms.”
“And McGonagall?” Estelle asked.
They hesitated.
“We thought we might come to you first,” Fred admitted. “Ease into the scolding.”
“Minerva,” Estelle said, “is going to love this, once she gets past the part where she has to admit she loves this. That’ll be a hill to climb.”
They grinned hopefully.
“I’ll talk to Sinistra,” Estelle said. “And Flitwick. If we can do it safely, I’ll bring it up at the next staff meeting. But if either of you use this as an excuse to cause mischief under the guise of public service, I will personally turn your hair into Devil’s Snare.”
“That seems excessive,” George said weakly.
“Effective,” Estelle corrected. “Now go. You’re contaminating my greenhouse with hormones.”
They left in high spirits. The next day, Sprout marched into the staffroom with a pot of experimental mistletoe and a gleam in her eye, and within forty-eight hours, the staff had quietly agreed that anything which might deter unwanted advances was a good thing.
“Besides,” Flitwick said gleefully as he tweaked the charm anchoring the plant, “if it misfires, I can always claim it was a teaching experiment in boundary-setting.”
And so Hogwarts, without quite realizing it, gained the world’s first consent-sensitive mistletoe.
The days ticked down.
Estelle moved through classes, ticking off practicals she wanted finished before everyone disappeared into dressing rooms and disaster. Her sixth-years brewed frost-protection potions they could take home. Her third-years tested the resilience of winter herbs against minor hexes (she framed it as an academic exercise but privately considered it training for surviving magical parties).
Harry, in particular, grew steadily more pinched.
She saw him in Herbology once, working with a quiet intensity that set him apart from his chattering classmates. Lavender and Parvati were already deep in speculation about dress colors; Ron was trying to see if he could get away with using one hand for his pruning and the other to shovel fudge flies into his mouth.
Harry’s jaw was tight.
“Mr. Potter,” Estelle said, moving to his bench. “Your shrivelfig looks like it’s considering unionizing. Ease up on the knife.”
He blinked, dragged back from wherever his thoughts had been.
“Sorry, Professor,” he said quickly, adjusting his grip.
She watched him work for a moment. His movements were competent—she’d drilled them enough—but his mind clearly wasn’t on the plant.
“Something on your mind?” she asked casually. “Or have you simply been possessed by the ghost of an anxious badger?”
He let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “Just… stuff.”
“Ball stuff?” she guessed.
He made a face. “Is everyone talking about it?”
“Yes,” she said. “And no, it isn’t just you. Half the school is treating it like a social apocalypse.”
He snorted. “Feels like it.”
She leaned a hip against the bench. “Ask or be asked?”
He flushed a little. “Ask,” he muttered. “Ron and I… well. We sort of left it too late. Now everyone’s pairing off and—” He gestured helplessly with the knife. “I dunno. It’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid,” Estelle said. “Terrifying, perhaps. Overblown. But not stupid.”
He risked a glance up at her. There were shadows under his eyes that had nothing to do with late-night studying.
“People keep saying it’s not a big deal,” he said quietly. “But it sort of feels like it is. To everyone else. I’m not good at this stuff.”
“Dancing?” she asked lightly. “Girls?”
“Both,” he said.
“Well, you’re what—fourteen?” she said. “You’re not supposed to be good at this yet. It would be unnerving if you were. We’d have to check you for polyjuice.”
That got a chuckle out of him.
“Look,” she continued, lowering her voice so the others wouldn’t overhear. “You’ve survived a dragon. You’ve been chased by Dementors. You’ve faced down things grown witches and wizards would faint at the mere mention of.”
He grimaced. “People keep saying that like it’s comforting.”
“It’s not meant to be comforting,” she said. “It’s perspective. You’re the Chosen One.”
He rolled his eyes so hard she was momentarily worried they’d get stuck. “I hate when people call me that.”
“I know,” she said. “Which is why I’m using it ironically.”
That earned her a proper grin.
“The point is,” she went on, “you may be the Chosen One when it comes to fighting Dark Lords and surviving ridiculous magical tournaments. That does not mean you have to be the Chosen One in matters of romance. No one is going to engrave your Ball performance on your tombstone.”
“‘Here Lies Harry Potter,’” he said, voice taking on a mock-epic tone. “‘Savior of the Wizarding World. Terrible at asking girls to dances.’”
“Exactly,” she said. “Tragic, but historically accurate.”
He huffed a laugh, tension easing slightly from his shoulders.
“Do you know who you’d like to go with?” she asked.
He hesitated. “Maybe,” he said. “I mean, yeah. But she’s… she’s really popular.” His ears went pink. “And older.”
“Ah,” Estelle said. “The plague of the schoolboy. Older girls who know how to string sentences together. A deadly combination.”
He ducked his head, grinning despite himself.
“All right,” she said. “Here’s my advice, for what it’s worth. One: ask sooner rather than later. The worst is hearing ‘I’m already going with someone else’ when you could have asked last week.”
He made a face. “That’s what I’m worried about.”
“Two,” she said, “keep it simple. No grand gestures, no singing, no seven-course meal delivered by house-elves. Just ask. Honestly. It’s terrifying, yes, but brief.”
“And three?” he asked.
“Three,” she said, “remember that your worth as a human being is not measured by who says yes to a dance. Or by whether you trip over your feet. Or by whether your dress robes fit properly.”
His mouth twitched. “Yours probably do,” he said. “You always look like you know what you’re doing.”
She barked out a surprised laugh. “I can assure you, Mr. Potter, I rarely know what I’m doing. I just walk quickly and carry a clipboard.”
He smiled, then sobered. “So… I shouldn’t worry so much?”
“Oh, you’ll worry anyway,” she said. “That’s what people do. But don’t let the worrying talk you out of doing something you’ll regret not doing. Wood used to tell you the same thing about Quidditch, didn’t he?”
Harry nodded reluctantly. “Yeah.”
“Apply that to dancing,” she said. “And to asking. And if she says no, you have my permission to be disappointed for exactly one evening before you remember that there are worse things in life.”
“Like dragons,” he said.
“Like dragons,” she agreed. “And three-headed dogs. And Ministry paperwork.”
He grinned. “Thanks, Professor.”
“Anytime,” she said, pushing off the bench. “And Harry?”
“Yeah?”
“When someone inevitably tells you you’re the Chosen One again,” she said, “feel free to tell them: ‘Not when it comes to girls.’”
His grin grew a bit sheepish. “Deal.”
She left him with his shrivelfig, feeling oddly hopeful. Harry might be overwhelmed, but he was not alone in it. He had friends. He had people to laugh with him about the absurdity of it all.
It was more than she’d had at his age.
The second week brought more of the same. Decorations began to pile up in corners of the castle, waiting to be deployed. Sprout’s enchanted garlands thrummed with quiet life. Flitwick tested and retested the dance floor enchantments, occasionally enlisting unsuspecting staff to “just take a quick spin” while he observed.
Estelle got caught in one such trial and ended up waltzing with Madam Hooch in the empty Great Hall while Flitwick shouted notes from the sidelines.
“Excellent! No slippage! Slight tendency to tilt if you step too far left—fixable!”
“This is ridiculous,” Hooch muttered, though she was grinning. “I haven’t danced since my cousin’s wedding.”
“You’re doing fine,” Estelle said. “If I can keep my balance in these boots, the students will survive in their ridiculous shoes.”
Hooch snorted. “I’m sending all twisted ankles straight to Poppy. Not my jurisdiction.”
Back in the greenhouses, the cold deepened. Frost rimed the glass in intricate patterns, and Estelle’s breath misted in the air as she moved among the benches. Her seventh-years finished their last pre-holiday practicals; her second-years fussed over potted plants they were allowed to take home as “holiday homework.”
“Talk to them,” she urged the younger ones as she helped them wrap pots in charmed paper. “They like being included. And don’t let your siblings feed them anything. Especially not sweets.”
“Even if it’s treacle tart?” a wide-eyed Gryffindor asked.
“Especially treacle tart,” Estelle said. “That’s how you get plants that try to eat your pillows.”
She saw Fred and George again in the corridor, standing under an entirely innocent-looking sprig of mistletoe. A third-year boy walked underneath it with a girl who was very clearly Not Interested.
The mistletoe dropped a cascade of holly berries down his collar.
He yelped, dancing away, batting at his shirt. The girl laughed, relief plain on her face.
Estelle caught the twins’ eye across the hall. They gave her matching thumbs-up.
“Good work, gentlemen,” she said as she passed. “No Devil’s Snare hair for you today.”
“We’re philanthropists now, Professor,” Fred called after her.
“Doing Merlin’s work,” George added.
She laughed all the way to the staffroom.
The final days before the Ball blurred into a haze of last-minute adjustments and escalating student nerves. There were whispered arguments in corners about who had asked whom and when and why. A few tears. A few triumphs. A lot of frantic shoe-shopping.
Estelle kept her distance from most of it, hovering at the edges like a chaperone ghost. She had her own nerves to contend with—hanging in her wardrobe in the form of silver satin.
She did catch, out of the corner of her eye one evening, Harry crossing the common room threshold with a dazed look on his face and Ron clapping him on the back so hard he nearly toppled.
“Did you—?”
“I did.”
“And she—?”
“Shut up, Ron.”
She smiled to herself.
Chosen One or not, he’d done the brave thing.
The night before the Ball, the castle felt taut as a bowstring. The decorations waited in their assigned corners. The Weird Sisters’ equipment had arrived in a series of battered trunks that Severus eyed as if they might explode on principle. Filch complained loudly about glitter. The house-elves polished every surface until it gleamed.
Estelle finished her last class, dismissed her students with homework and a pointed reminder not to attempt any “pre-ball experimentation” with potions, and walked down to the greenhouses one more time.
The plants muttered quietly in their pots as she checked the wards and temperature charms. Snowflakes melted on the glass above her head, trickling down in thin streams.
“You’ll have the night off tomorrow,” she told a particularly clingy vine. “I suggest you make the most of the quiet. The rest of us won’t have that luxury.”
On her way back to the dungeons, she passed the Great Hall. The doors were closed, but she could hear Flitwick’s spells and Minerva’s brisk commands inside, the murmur of transformation underway.
She thought of the dress waiting in her wardrobe. Of the band. Of the students who would pour into this space in twenty-four hours’ time, wide-eyed and overdressed and terribly young.
She thought of Severus, somewhere downstairs, cataloguing potions and muttering about grapefruit.
For once, the thought made her smile instead of wince.
“Behind the scenes,” she murmured to herself, continuing down the stairs. “If we’ve done this right, they’ll never know half of what went into it.”
And if they didn’t, well—she’d still have the memory of Flitwick’s triumph over friction, Fred and George’s noble mistletoe, Harry’s reluctant courage, and a dress that reminded her, in the dark, that she was allowed to choose beautiful things.
Tomorrow night, she would put it on.
For now, she went to bed early, the castle buzzing quietly around her like a great beast gathering breath.
The Yule Ball was coming.
And whether they felt ready for it or not, they had done the work.
The rest would be chaos, music, and whatever magic the night decided to make of it.