Somehow, Tracey and Zabini were already on the dance floor by the time they got inside. Unfortunately for Blake and Daphne's eyes and memory, they weren't exactly dancing.
"Predictable," Daphne said, disgusted, beside him.
"Completely," Blake agreed.
They found Charlotte at a table near the side, and she was grinning in the wide, sudden way she sometimes did that reminded Blake she was fifteen and not actually constitutionally miserable.
"You both look nice," she said slyly, as if with an agenda.
"Thank you, Charlotte," Daphne said with a small smile.
"Very nice," Charlotte added, looking at Blake specifically, with an even larger agenda.
"Thank you, Charlotte," Blake said, confused.
Her grin widened. She looked across the hall to where a girl with Hufflepuff robes was waving at her.
"I'm going to go talk to Susan," she said. "I'll leave you both to it."
And then she was gone, and it was just the two of them at the table.
Daphne looked at the dance floor.
Blake looked at the dance floor.
"Tracey looks happy," Blake said.
"So does Zabini," Daphne agreed.
"Good."
"I thought they would've got together earlier, though."
"I told you that."
"No, you didn't!"
The music was something slow, the hall looked extraordinary, and the candles reflected in everything, and for some reason - for the first time in months, actually - it didn't feel awkward. Blake wasn't sure when that had happened. At some point in the last few minutes the thing that had been sitting between them had just quietly stopped sitting there, and they were just talking, normally, the way they had done before the attack at the World Cup.
"Zabini's going to be insufferable after tonight," Blake said, with faux annoyance.
"He's already insufferable," Daphne said, mirroring his tone but unable to hide her smile. "Tonight just gives him more material."
"They're happy though."
"They are," she agreed, and something in her expression was warm.
Blake looked at them on the dance floor. Then he looked back at her.
Should I…
No.
Yes.
No.
Ask her, he thought to himself. It's just dancing. You've faced Voldemort twice. You can ask a girl to dance.
She was already smiling.
"What?" he said.
"Nothing," she said. "You seem like you're in deep thought."
"I'm not."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I am, actually."
"Hm."
"What d'you mean, 'hm'?"
Daphne looked directly at him, and for the umpteenth time this night, Blake found his breath catch under her gaze.
"Did you have something to ask me?"
He looked back at her.
"Do you want to dance with me?"
Finally, she smiled.
"Yes," she said simply.
He wasn't a particularly good dancer, and unsurprisingly, she clearly was. Luckily, however, Blake was a fast learner and Daphne was a good teacher, and they found a rhythm quickly.
"You're not terrible," she noted. "For a beginner."
"That might be the nicest thing you've said to me all year," he said.
"Don't get used to it."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
She has the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen.
She smiled serenely, and for once, Blake didn't feel the need to hide the blush on his face. They kept dancing.
The music was slow enough to talk over, and at some point he told her about the Moody situation - the lesson, the corridor, the piece of paper - it was easier to say things that mattered when you were moving and not looking directly at each other. She listened without interrupting.
"Be careful," she said, when he finished.
"I'm always careful."
Daphne just sighed, with a small, knowing smile.
Eventually, they drifted into Zabini and Tracey, who had clearly been tracking them.
"Finally," Tracey said, with a fat grin on her face.
"Mind your own business," Blake said, moving his hand to Daphne's waist, feeling bold for no reason.
"Absolutely not," Tracey replied cheerfully, and spun away with Zabini, who caught Blake's eye over her shoulder with a rare, full blown smile.
Blake looked back at Daphne.
She was looking at him, her cheeks slightly flushed.
"Getting bold, are we?"
"Is that an issue?"
"Not in the slightest," she responded. "But to be honest, it's less bold than I'd have liked."
Blake's heart skipped a beat.
"What does that mean?" he said, leaning ever so closer towards her subconsciously.
"Who knows," she replied, mirroring him.
They were closer than he'd registered. The music, the candlelight, the fact that neither of them had moved apart. He wasn't certain which of them moved first, but they both leaned in.
The kiss lasted about two seconds. Maybe three.
As their lips met, Blake felt something inside him melt all at once.
When they separated, she was looking at him with an expression that he didn't have a name for - open, and quiet, and entirely unguarded in a way he almost never saw from her - and he was fairly certain he looked the same. They both smiled, and they kept dancing, long into the night.
/
The goodnights were brief.
Blake and Zabini ended up in the dormitory the way they sometimes did after nights that mattered, each on their own bed, the lamp on, sitting together in silence.
"Good night?" Zabini asked, with a small smile on his face.
"Yeah," Blake replied. "Good night."
Blake lay back and looked at the ceiling.
The dancing, the conversation, the moment - all of it better than the version he'd constructed in his head beforehand. He was still warm from it, and despite himself, he couldn't stop smiling as fell into a dream. But that's when went it all went wrong.
The World Cup.
The campsite. The dinner in the Greengrass tent. Her saying it's been a good day in that tone. The kiss on his cheek and walking back to his family, properly happy, for what felt like the first time in a long time.
And then the masks. And then the screaming. And then Connor on one knee, injured. And Daphne hadn't come.
Blake woke up abruptly, in a cold sweat, heart racing.
She had Astoria, he thought. They were further out, and she had Astoria, and it's completely logical that-
Zabini came, the other part of him said. Zabini was further out too, and Zabini came.
He stared at the ceiling and said nothing.
It had been a good night. It had been a genuinely good night, and he knew that, and he also knew that the World Cup was still sitting there underneath everything, and he hadn't said anything about it, and she hadn't said anything about it, and now tonight had happened, and he still hadn't said anything, and-
What are you doing? he thought. What are you actually doing?
You kissed her, and now you're backtracking?
He didn't have an answer.
Blake lay in the dark for a long time, turning it over again and again in his mind, until he fell asleep.
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