Year Four, Chapter Twenty Two
"I - yes I'd like to go to the Ball with you," Ginny said, the biggest smile Holly could ever remember seeing on her face. "Is this... is this as friends, or..." Ginny said, a little awkwardly. Holly felt a little stab of worry at 'frieds', but she calmed down. She knew what Ginny was saying.
"Not as friends," Holly said, simply, and Ginny smiled even more. Then she hugged Holly. It wasn't really any different to any of the hugs Ginny had given her before, but they were both suddenly nervous and awkward.
Slowly, deliberately, Holly took Ginny's hand in her own. They walked back to the castle, not really saying much that mattered. The grounds were not yet covered with the snow that Hogwarts seemed to get every year around Christmas, but there was a beauty to their winter starkness.
Everyone in Holly's year suddenly seemed to be in a frenzy about relationships and dating, even beyond the ball. It was as if some great store of bent up romantic explosives had blown up all at once. The older students were even more hurried, with those not already paired off scrambling to find dates to the Yule Ball.
Holly and Ginny hadn't told anyone who they were going with, but Holly had let it slip that she was going with someone. A few people still asked, but as the rumour spread around the torrent of proposals dried up, a little.
"You know, Holly, you're a girl," Ron said one rainy afternoon in the Common Room, perhaps a week into December.
"Thank you for noticing, Ron," Holly said, while Ginny giggled. Hermione just concentrated on the chessboard - she and Ron were playing a game, and even Holly could tell Hermione was probably going to lose. Again.
"It's not - it's just, how do I ask a girl to the Yule Ball? You always seem to travel in packs, and it's bloody intimidating," Ron said.
"It's not going to be the end of the world if she says no, Ron. We only laughed at you for a few days after you tried to ask Fleur," Holly said.
"Well, I wasn't in my right mind for that, was I? What if I go ask some girl when I'm fully myself and make just as big an ass out of myself," Ron said, nervously.
"Are you a Gryffindor or not?" Ginny cut in.
"Fine. I'll go ask her right now. Why do you care, anyway - it's not like you're going," Ron said.
"For your information, Ronald, someone asked me more than a week ago, and I said yes," Ginny said, crossing her arms.
"Wha - who are you going with?" Ron spluttered.
"I'm not going to tell you," Ginny said.
"Why not?" Ron said.
"Because you'd glare at whatever poor boy asked her for the whole month," Hermione said, and Holly winced. She was glad Ron wasn't looking at her, but she saw Hermione's eyes narrow slightly.
"Fine then. I bet it's some really ugly bloke - oy, watch the board!" Ron shouted as Ginny threw a cushion at him.
"And I bet you end up going alone, you prat," Ginny said.
"Her Hermione, want to go to the Yule Ball with me?" Ron asked, very casually.
"Someone's already asked me. And I wouldn't say yes to something you're clearly doing just to get one over on your sister anyway," Hermione said. That was news to Holly and Ginny, and Holly was surprised Hermione hadn't told her, at least.
That night, Dumbledore had another lesson for Holly. She arrived at his office curious what she'd be learning this time, because he had told her at the end of their last Occlumency lesson that she'd be learning something practical this time.
"Ah, it's good to see you, Holly," Dumbledore said as she entered his office. He stood up from behind his desk and walked over to her.
"Uh, good to see you too professor. What am I learning tonight?" Holly asked.
"As we learnt about fire in the last of these practical lessons, today we shall learn about water. If you would take my arm?" Dumbledore responded, holding out his arm. Holly took it, and then she felt like she was being squeezed through a tube of toothpaste and spun around in a washing machine all at once.
Then it was over, and Holly steaded herself on the tiled wall of a... deserted muggle indoor swimming pool? She looked around in confusion and saw that she really was standing by the side of a muggle pool. Nobody else was around, and she could see that the doors were locked.
"Where... where are we, Professor?" Holly asked.
"Well, we will require a sizeable body of water tonight - and this water is at least heated, unlike the black lake," Dumbledore said.
"That - that makes sense, I guess," Holly said.
"Indeed. If one were to get into the Black Lake at this time of year, a good warming charm would be rather crucial. Where wizards and witches often call upon fire to destroy, water is most often used to defend against magic. Anti-apparition wards anchored by a perimeter of water are much stronger, for example," Dumbledore said, and Holly blinked.
"Like a moat on a castle?" Holly asked.
"Literally, in many cases. Water is one of the most effective naturally occurring barriers to magic, certainly one of the most effective that is in any way common. Spells struggle to go through a good quantity of it, and many offensive spells will simply detonate on the surface - including even powerful dark curses like the killing curse," Dumbledore said.
"Really? Then why don't wizards just defend themselves with conjured water?" Holly asked.
"Aguamenti is an involved, time-consuming spell - and most other methods are similarly too slow to be of much use. But, much as summoned furniture and debris are used to stop the killing curse, so is existing water. A rule of thumb that will serve you well, Holly, is that it is faster to manipulate than to conjure. Like so," Dumbledore said, and proceed to demonstrate how much faster he could form the water in the pool into a barrier than the water he had to conjure himself.
The conjured water was far too slow to be useful, but Dumbledore was seriously quick on the draw when it came to manipulating existing water. He had her fire a few spells at him, and he was able to deflect them all with water - but her disarming spell and stunning spells went right through the water. She hadn't hit him, of course, but her eyes still widened.
"And that is the other reason more wizards do not use water to defend themselves against others. However, should you find yourself facing a dark wizard or witch fond of powerful curses... it can prove to be a handy skill indeed. This property of water - that of making many curses detonate on contact - means that witches and wizards sometimes secure things underwater. Without such powerful tools, the magical creatures and dark beasts that live in the depths can prove formidable foes even for a powerful wizard," Dumbledore said.
"Well, you know, so is breathing underwater," Holly said.
"Not at all, my dear girl. A witch like yourself has many ways to breathe underwater - from a bubblehead charm to gillyweed to self-transfiguration, there are enough methods to suit any taste. Let us examine the bubblehead charm, though, as it is by far the most practical," Dumbledore said.
Holly practised her bubblehead charm by sticking her head in the pool, which was great fun - Dumbledore did it with her, and Holly nearly laughed herself silly at the extra-long bubble he made to accommodate his beard.
Then she applied a flame-freezing charm on herself and practised using the water in the pool to defend against Dumbledore's spells - just a simple bolt of fire, but it behaved much like a deadly curse when it hit the water. She took quite a few tries to get it right and felt the bizarre cooling sensation of the flames splashing over her more than once, but by the time she apparated back to Hogwarts she'd gotten pretty good at blocking Dumbledore's spells with the water.
As she walked back to Gryffindor Tower, she decided that she had put it off long enough. She ducked into her dorm room to get her cloak, the golden egg, and the Marauder's Map, then she made her way to the Prefect's Bathroom under her cloak. She double-checked that there was no one in there, and she was very glad she did so when she saw the so-called bathroom for the first time.
Everything was made out of white marble, and the bath was the size of a regular swimming pool, only circular. There was a large central column that went all the way to the vaulted ceiling, and what had to be hundreds of taps jutted out from every inch of its surface at the waterline. As she took in the lovely soft lightning from the chandelier full of candles (scented, she noticed), Holly numbly turned the taps.
This was a far cry from the simple showers in Gryffindor towers. She suddenly had a very great desire to become a prefect next year, simply so she could use this bathroom. She'd patrol all the corridors Dumbledore and McGonagall wanted just to get regular access to this.
"Holly!?" a girl said, and Holly whipped around. She'd double-checked -
"Myrtle?" Holly asked, shocked. What was she doing here, Holly wondered.
"I come here after all the students have gone to bed. It's really quite lovely, isn't it?" Myrtle said.
"Um, yeah it's something else, alright," Holly said, very glad she was still dressed.
"Ohh, are you here to listen to your egg too?" Myrtle said, pointing to the golden egg Holly had laid on the floor.
"Yeah - what do you mean, too?"
"Oh, Cedric comes here to swim at night sometimes. He's ever so kind to me... and the muscles don't hurt. His bathing costume is so conservative, though. Urgh," Myrtle said. Holly didn't really want to think about that any further.
Thinking quickly, she put her things far away from the water and transfigured her uniform into the sort of swimming costume the girls in her swimming classes at primary school had worn. She wasn't really sure what witches wore in situations like these, though it couldn't be too different - although she didn't think wizards had invented the sort of artificial fabrics muggles used.
After she saw herself in the mirror and felt a flash of shame and disgust, she quickly added one of those little skirts some muggle swimming costumes had. That was better, she thought.
Then, as the water had filled up and had all sorts of bizarre bubbles and colours, she jumped into the egregiously large bath with a high spirited giggle. After she'd had all sorts of fun confirming that while she could swim, she wasn't very good at it, she plucked her wand and the egg from the edge of the bath.
She cast the bubblehead charm, and then sat on the bottom of the bath - which was deep enough that her feet didn't reach the bottom - with the egg. Carefully, she opened it up. She winced as she did so, prepared for the wail Cedric had mentioned, but instead, she heard a chorus of melodic voices sing.
"Come seek us where our voices sound,
We cannot sing above the ground,
And while you're searching ponder this:
We've taken what you'll sorely miss,
An hour long you'll have to look,
And to recover what we took,
But past an hour — the weight's around your neck,
Too late, in the third you'll be a wreck,"
"Oh, I wonder what the merpeople are gonna do to you if you lose," Myrtle said. She, of course, could talk just as well underwater as above it. Holly dismissed her charm and broke the surface of the water, only to be assaulted by the wail Cedric had mentioned. She quickly closed the egg and put it back on the side of the bath.
"Merpeople?" Holly asked.
"That was Mermish we just heard. What? I was in Ravenclaw, you know," Myrtle said.
"What are they gonna do, build a huge tank and put a bunch of merpeople in it?" Holly asked.
"No, silly, 'where our voices sound' means the Black lake. You do know that a clan of merpeople live there, right?" Myrtle asked.
"Oh," Holly said. So she'd just need to find a village of merpeople in the depths of the Black Lake and avoid been eaten by the giant squid and whatever else lived in there. Simple.
