The Big Dipper

The Yule Ball

The last week of term became increasingly boisterous as it progressed. Rumors about the Yule Ball were flying everywhere, though Ursula didn't believe half of them — for instance, that Dumbledore had bought eight hundred barrels of mulled mead from Madam Rosmerta. It seemed to be fact, however, that he had booked the Weird Sisters, a popular musical group.

Some teachers, even in their NEWT classes, gave up trying to teach them much when their minds were so clearly elsewhere; Professor Flitwick allowed them to play games in his lesson on Tuesday. Fred and George started up a large round of Exploding Snap that had everyone excited. Other teachers were not so generous. Nothing would ever deflect Professor Binns, for example, from plowing on through his notes on goblin rebellions — as Binns hadn't let his own death stand in the way of continuing to teach, they supposed a small thing like Christmas wasn't going to put him off. Professors McGonagall and Moody kept them working until the very last second of their classes too, and Professor Snape, of course, would rather poison the lot of them then let them play games. Staring nastily around at them all, he informed them that they would be brewing the Draught of Living Death during the lasty lesson of term.

Of course, where everyone's mind was occupied was with the upcoming Yule Ball, so much so that there was an added Hogsmeade visit. Ursula, Lilian, Gemma, and Vanessa giggled as they strolled down High Street, a combination of excitement and nerves.

The Hogwarts staff, demonstrating a continued desire to impress the visitors from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, seemed determined to show the castle at its best this Christmas. When the decorations went up, Ursula and the other prefects made sure that they were the most stunning they had yet seen inside the school. Everlasting icicles had been attached to the banisters of the marble staircase; the usual twelve Christmas trees in the Great Hall were bedecked with everything from luminous holly berries to real, hooting, golden owls, and the suits of armor had all been bewitched to sing carols whenever anyone passed them.

It was quite something to hear "O Come, All Ye Faithful" sung by an empty helmet that only knew half the words. Several times, Filch the caretaker had to extract Peeves from inside the armor, where he had taken to hiding, filling in the gaps in the songs with lyrics of his own invention, all of which were very rude.

Despite the very heavy load of homework that the sixth years had been given — "Just because we're NEWT students doesn't mean we have to act like we're preparing for them every week," said Cassius — they were in no mood to work when term ended, and spent the week leading up to Christmas enjoying themselves as fully as possible along with everyone else.

Fred and George had begun handing out sweets of their own design called Canary Creams. Ursula was instantly suspicious when they gave her one, and handed it to Cassius, causing him to turn into a large yellow canary in the middle of Charms. Indeed, such was the success of the Canary Creams that people kept bursting into feather all over the place. Fred confided to Ursula that he and George had begun working on developing something else.

"Would you ever open a shop?" asked Ursula, as she corrected her Transfiguration notes.

"Well, yeah, we want to," said Fred, looking surprised. "How'd you know?"

Ursula shrugged.

"Just a lucky guess, I suppose," she said. "You and George have been developing so much over the years that I figured you had a goal in mind."

"We're going to call it Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes," confided Fred, lowering his voice as Professor McGonagall swept past. "We have the order forms and everything — only trouble is, we bet all our savings at the World Cup, and Bagman paid us in leprechaun gold."

"He's deep in debt with the goblins," said Ursula, sighing.

"Well, he owes us," said Fred. "We've been trying to write him for weeks, but he won't pay. Now he's turned nasty, telling us that we're too young to gamble. He avoided us during the First Task."