"Upper class etiquette held that, while you could snub your friends any time you felt like it, it was the height of bad form to be impolite to your worst enemy." - Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
On the last night of 2005, at Greengrass Manor.
New Year's Eve had arrived, and everyone was ready to welcome in 2006, or at least, everyone present would have said so.
Every year, the aristocracy of magical Britain gathered for this particular celebration, and the honor of hosting it usually fell to whichever family had maneuvered hardest, and most visibly, to earn it. It was a strange kind of competition, but one that made sense once you understood the stakes. Hosting wasn't really about throwing a good party. It was a statement, a way of telling the rest of wizarding society exactly where you stood heading into the new year: how much influence you commanded, how many families owed you a favor, how untouchable your name currently was. Refusing the honor, or worse, hosting badly, cost more than embarrassment. It cost leverage. So every year, the old families circled each other for months beforehand, trading small favors and smaller insults, all building toward the one night that would set the tone for the next twelve.
This year, it hadn't been much of a contest at all. Given everything currently unfolding, it only made sense that the family hosting the New Year's ball would be the Greengrasses, heads of the Neutral Faction in the Wizengamot. After a handful of token complaints, nobody had put up much of a real fight over it. The Neutral Faction tended to end up hosting more often than not whenever tensions between the Light and Dark Factions ran especially high, and this year, as anyone could have guessed, those tensions were about as high as they'd ever been.
Greengrass Manor rose at the end of a long, frost-white drive, three stories of pale stone that looked like it had been carved rather than built, ivy climbing one entire wing in tight, disciplined lines that had clearly been charmed to grow exactly where someone wanted it to and nowhere else. Every window on the ground floor glowed gold, and even from the gates, the faint sound of an orchestra tuning up drifted out into the cold.
Inside, the ballroom spanned two full floors, a sweeping staircase curling down from the upper gallery so that every new arrival got their own small, unavoidable moment of being seen by the entire room below. Crystal chandeliers hung low enough to catch the light off every piece of jewelry in the place, and the floor beneath them had been polished to a near-mirror shine, dark wood inlaid with pale stone in a pattern that spiraled outward from the center like a compass rose. French doors ran the length of one wall, thrown open despite the December cold, magically warmed just past the threshold, leading out into gardens strung with floating lanterns that drifted lazily between the hedges like a slow-motion constellation. A fountain at the garden's center had been charmed to run gold instead of water for the night, catching the lantern light and throwing it back up against the manor's pale stone face.
It was, in every sense, exactly the kind of ballroom you'd expect to find in some elaborate isekai court drama, the sort where a single misstep on the staircase could apparently ruin a person's entire social standing for a decade. Harriet suspected that wasn't actually far from the truth here either.
She arrived with her plus-one, Yuna, in a deep sapphire gown that caught the light in that quiet, expensive way silk only managed when someone had clearly overpaid for the privilege, the color dark enough to read as serious but not enough to disappear into the shadows of the ballroom. Yuna had gone with black, sleek and fitted, a small nod to her own theme that only Harriet would ever catch, and honestly, black suited a proper ball just fine, nobody batted an eye. Harriet had decided this whole thing would be fun, and it was, technically, her first real ball. Which meant she was, admittedly, more than a little curious, especially with an atmosphere like this one. Some small, entirely unserious part of her kept wondering if some prince was about to storm in and publicly break off his engagement to a duke's daughter over some poor girl he'd fallen for while harassing her mercilessly for the better part of a year. That would honestly be hilarious to witness in person.
Unsurprisingly, they didn't go unnoticed, or rather, Harriet didn't. This was, after all, the first time she'd ever been seen at an event of this kind, and plenty of eyes followed her, curious ones, amused ones, a few openly calculating ones too, there was no shortage. That the first time she showed up somewhere this formal happened to fall right on the eve of what could very well turn into open war struck more than a few people as remarkable. Neither of them bothered lingering over the attention. They headed straight for the host of the evening.
Cyrus Greengrass stood near the top of the grand staircase, tall and silver-templed, dressed in deep emerald dress robes trimmed with black, the kind of understated cut that whispered old money rather than shouted it. Beside him, his wife wore pale gold, elegant and warm, one hand resting lightly on his arm. Daphne stood just behind them, composed as ever in silver-grey, and next to her, Astoria, the youngest Greengrass, watched Harriet approach with something that read unmistakably like distaste.
"Ah, it's a pleasure to have you here, Miss Potter." Cyrus inclined his head, polished and practiced. "And I presume you're Miss Yuna. I've heard quite a lot about you. You're absolutely stunning, both of you."
Yuna answered first. "Only good things, I hope. Thank you for having us." She offered a proper curtsy, precise and unhurried, clearly no stranger to the motion.
Harriet did her best to follow suit, a small dip of the head paired with the barest suggestion of a curtsy, not quite committing to it, like the whole custom was something happening near her rather than to her. "Well, we were invited, so it would've been rude to say no, especially with everything coming down the line. Times ahead promise to be entertaining, so I figured I'd come see the 'great minds' of our fine little country in person."
Yuna kicked her, subtly, in the ankle.
"Ah, right, thank you for having us." Harriet recovered, echoing Yuna's own words back almost verbatim before adding, "I've heard the buffet at these things is supposed to be excellent. Looking forward to that, honestly."
Cyrus looked, if anything, thoroughly entertained by the whole exchange and didn't hold any of it against her. His wife, Celia, seemed to share the sentiment. Their eldest daughter, rolling her eyes and visibly two seconds from burying her face in her palm over having invited them at all, was clearly experiencing something new. As for the younger one...
Harriet had already turned her attention there too. "What's wrong, midget? You're way too cute to be shooting curses at me with your eyes like that." And with absolutely no regard for decorum whatsoever, she reached out and pinched the girl's cheek.
Astoria bristled and swatted the hand away. "Don't talk to me like that! You've got no business even being-" she started, voice climbing, before Cyrus cut her off.
"Behave yourself, Astoria. These are our guests, and you'll treat them with respect." Even though the offense had clearly started with Harriet, there was no missing the contempt still simmering in the girl's eyes as she looked back at her. "My apologies," Cyrus said, tone somewhere between weary and resigned. "For reasons I honestly can't quite explain, she's grown rather attached to a certain Draco Malfoy, and has heard the two of you don't exactly get along. Please forgive her, she's still young."
"No need to apologize, Mr. Greengrass, I won't hold it against her at all." Harriet tapped her chin, genuinely intrigued now. "Though now I'm curious. Draco Malfoy has a fan club?" She glanced back at the younger Greengrass, who was still glaring daggers at her. "I've got so many questions for you now, but they can wait." Then, turning back, formal enough this time to actually pass for it, "Thank you again for inviting the two of us. We're genuinely glad to be here among you tonight." She finished with a small, proper nod, then shot a quick wink toward Daphne. "We'll catch up later."
With that, she and Yuna slipped off into the crowd, Yuna drifting toward a cluster of familiar faces, mostly people steeped in trade and commerce, and Harriet, true to form, making a beeline straight for the buffet table.
"I don't know how you managed to talk her into coming, Daphne, and I'm genuinely glad the Girl-Who-Lived's first formal outing happened to be here. Well played." Cyrus said, pride evident, this was, after all, a first, and regardless of how she carried herself, she was still a celebrity. "You're certain she's not aligned with Dumbledore and his little army of yes-men, though?" he asked, one last time, needing the reassurance.
"Don't worry." Daphne said. "She's got roots there, sure, but she's clearly not in their camp, and she's even further from the Dark's than we are. Honestly, she barely seems to care about the political climate at all. Don't underestimate her for it, though. When she needs to, she knows exactly how to use her head, and she won't hesitate to lean on every privilege she's got. She's a lot more dangerous than people give her credit for. Before she outgrows both Dumbledore and You-Know-Who, it's worth being on good terms with her." She kept the reasoning strictly professional, even though personally, she'd genuinely started to like Harriet quite a bit.
"I see. I'll trust your judgment on that." Cyrus said, just as another cluster of guests arrived to pay their respects to the hosts.
…
"Why am I not surprised. Honestly, I should've seen this coming." Harriet said, arriving at the buffet and spotting, without any real surprise, both of Malfoy's usual lackeys, their fathers standing not far off either. It was almost funny, watching all four of them hover near the spread, picking at small things here and there, careful not to actually rush the table and make fools of themselves in front of everyone. Like father, like son, apparently.
"I remember you two." She said, looking straight at the fathers, Mr. Crabbe and Mr. Goyle, as she made her way toward the buffet itself. The table ran the length of one wall, silver trays stacked with things that looked far too elaborate to actually be food, tiny golden pastries that shimmered faintly under the chandelier light, a roast of something that had clearly been carved with more artistry than necessity, an ice sculpture of a phoenix slowly melting into a bowl of punch that changed color depending on which side you scooped from. She helped herself without any hesitation, piling her plate generously, and caught both men's jealous glares out of the corner of her eye, right up until they registered exactly who she was and visibly reconsidered picking a fight, though clearly not without still wanting to, given the occasion.
"I'm honestly surprised you're both still alive." She popped a small, absurdly delicious canapé into her mouth. "I would've assumed one of you would've slipped up by now and gotten disposed of by that little lich you both call a master. Guess you've got more survival instinct than I would've given you credit for."
"You'll get yours eventually, filthy half-blood." Said Mr. Goyle, all four of them shooting her furious looks now, though it was hard to say whether it was because their enemy had shown up, or because she was helping herself so freely at the buffet.
"Oh, threats already? I was just worried about you two, honestly, no need to get so aggressive about it." Harriet said, thoroughly delighted, still working her way through the table without a shred of restraint. "This is genuinely delicious, by the way. Surprised nobody else is eating any of it."
At that, Malfoy senior's grating voice cut through, dripping with its usual sarcasm. "Because, dear girl, indulging yourself so openly at an event like this signals rather poorly. It tells the room you don't get fed particularly well at home, or worse, that you lack the self-control to wait for a proper seated course like everyone else." A thin, condescending smile. "Though I suppose nobody ever bothered teaching you any manners. What a shame."
And there he was, in all his peacock splendor, Lucius Malfoy, gloved false hand resting atop his ever-present silver-headed cane, the one everyone knew concealed his wand somewhere inside it, arriving alongside his stunning wife, Narcissa, and Draco, who looked distinctly unthrilled to be anywhere near Harriet at all. Seeing no one from the Light Faction rushing to their so-called savior's defense, and watching her mock his lackeys' families outright, Lucius apparently saw no reason to hold back his own opening volley of hostility.