Fallen in grace

The Yule Ball (part 2)

She came down the stairs with a natural elegance I had never noticed before that day. She looked regal in her blue dress. The dress  accentuated her figure nicely. It flowed slightly giving an extra dimension to the look. Her hair, otherwise bushy and seemingly unkempt, was sleek and shiny. Her hair was twisted in an elegant knot at the back of her head. For more than a few seconds I was enchanted before I realized who I was looking at.  

As soon as I realized who she was I tried to look away, but for some reason it was fore more difficult than I would ever have imagined. It was only when Pansy tugged at my arm that the enchantment broke. Luckily she didn't realize who I had been looking at for she was looking towards the great hall with anticipation in her gaze. I followed her inside before glancing over my shoulder to see Hermione taking the arm of Krum. 

The ball turned out to be as boring as I thought it would be. The only thing that made the evening more tolerable was the opening dance where the champions had to dance with their partners. Potter turned out to be as pathetic a dancer as we'd all imaged him to be. I focused on him for he was absolutely ridiculous, but that turned out to be more difficult than I thought. For Hermione was also dancing then as the partner of Krum. Whenever she passed by where I was standing I diverted my glance and searched for Potter and Patil to stay entertained. 

It delighted me that afterwards Potter and Weasley spent the most of the evening at a table, refusing to dance. They looked  out of place which I absolutely enjoyed. I spent the evening with Crabbe and Goyle seated at a table mocking those dressed up in a ridiculous manner. Parkinson was annoyed at my unwillingness to dance more than twice with her and had been sulking till a Slytherin 6th year came over to ask her to dance with him. It made my evening far more pleasing. It was remarkable how many people pretended to be someone they were not, alle dressed up in the most awful dressing gowns or hair styles. How simple many wizards and witches were, thinking this one night of dressing up might change their ordinary lives. 

Throughout the night I could not help the fact that whenever my eyes found Granger in the crowd my eyes were stuck on her. It always took a while before I could look away so I tried not to look too much in the direction of the dance floor where she spent the most of the night dancing with Krum. I did not understand how tonight I could be so drawn to a girl whom I despised most of the time. She was a know-it-all, a Gryffindor, and a mudblood. I had spent my entire life hating my mudbloods as I was told and sure I hadn't wanted her to die during our second year but that did not change the fact that I would rather not have people like her attend Hogwarts. It was how I'd been thaught all my life. I figured it was just something about the dress she was wearing tonight and the fact that her hair for once did not look horrible. Luckily tomorrow she would be back to her normal Hogwarts robes and bushy hair. 

I was in the middle of giving remarks about the ancient looking dress from some Hufflepuff that smelled like the potions classroom after Finnegan once again blew up his kettle when I heard Weasley and Granger engaged in an argument. She stormed off with tears in her eyes while Potter shot Weasley an angry look. I was delighted to see once again see some cracks in the golden trio after the earlier fallen out this year between Weasley and Potter. Aside from seeing Potter fail in class and in general, the only thing that gave me more pleasure where problems within the trio. They were just too much. Weasley had no talent at all, was just one of many of the same children in his blood traitor family. Potter was only famous because of something he didn't really do himself when he was only a baby. Granger was a mud blood with no special features except for the fact that she was a book wurm and knew the answer to everything and always had the best notes of the year. Know-it-all that she was, she enjoyed nothing more than showing just how much she knew at every opportunity. For whatever reason they were always present when someone needed to save the day and got too much rewards and attention afterwards. 

In short, I had despised all three of them for almost four years. So why was it that after my enjoyment at their falling out I turned around to see where Granger went to and felt some disappointment when I could not make out her face in the crowd? 

It was an annoying and unknown feeling. 

Certainly tomorrow all would be back to normal.

I could go back to ignoring her existence as much as possible.