The Yule Ball announcement came in the first week of December, at breakfast, in the specific manner of Hogwarts announcements — posted on the noticeboard with the understated efficiency of an institution that had been doing this for a thousand years and saw no reason to make a production of it.
He read it on his way to Arithmancy and came back to the table and sat down.
Hermione looked at him. 'You've seen the noticeboard.
'Yes,' he said.
'And?'
He looked at her. She had the quality she had when she was asking something she already knew the answer to and was waiting for him to say it anyway, because the saying mattered independently of the knowing.
'Will you come to the Yule Ball with me,' he said, 'as my date? Which you already are. But the occasion seems to require stating it explicitly.'
The corner of her mouth moved. 'It does seem to require that,' she agreed.
'So will you.'
'Yes, Ron,' she said, with the patient warmth of someone who had been asked something obvious and found the asking worth it anyway. She went back to her breakfast. 'The robes are already sorted.'
'Yes,' he said.
She looked at him with the expression she had when she had confirmed something she had already concluded. 'We walked into that shop separately and came out with outfits that match.'
'The periwinkle and the purple work together,' he said. 'The colour theory is sound.'
'You saw the gown in the window,' she said. 'You saw it before I did.'
He said nothing.
'Ron,' she said.
'I had a strong feeling about the gown,' he said.
She held his gaze for a long moment. Then she shook her head in the way she did when something was both entirely characteristic and slightly excessive, and returned to her breakfast, and that was the end of it except that it wasn't, because she was smiling for the rest of the meal in the specific way she smiled when she had been given something she found exactly right.
Neville asked Luna on the Thursday.
He did it in the corridor outside Herbology, which Ron knew because Ginny had been three feet away when it happened and had told him that evening with the quality of someone relaying information they found both accurate and pleasing.
'He said: Luna, I would very much like to go to the Yule Ball with you, if you don't already have someone you're going with. As friends, obviously, unless you'd prefer something else, in which case I'm also open to that, but I didn't want to assume.' Ginny had paused. 'He said all of that in one breath.'
'What did Luna say?' Ron asked.
'She said: I would like to go with you, Neville. I think the assuming would have been fine, but I appreciate that you didn't.' Ginny had looked at him. 'And then she went back to whatever she was reading.'
'Good,' Ron said.
'He was pink for about twenty minutes,' Ginny said. 'The good kind.'
Ron thought about Neville — about the window seat in the common room on the first night of third year, the specific careful quality of someone deciding whether this year was going to be different. About the aloe variants. About the second week of the three weeks, the quiet consistency that had exceeded expectation. About the Boggart lesson photograph, Neville mid-laugh, the Room catching it.
The good kind of pink was correct.