Henri had made it halfway up the staircase towards her bedroom before being intercepted by one of her sisters. She ought to have expected this, she supposed, particularly since the ruined train of her dress trailing behind her was slowing her down, but the last thing she wanted to do at the moment was talk to a sibling. The only thing worse would have been to talk to her mother, but she was, evidently, focused on damage control in the main ballroom. Henrietta was allowed up to her room, but not to spend the rest of the night sulking behind a locked door as she had intended. Instead, she was only here long enough for Hermione to magically mend the hem of her dress, seeing the train removed so that no further damage could be done to it. Henrietta felt on the verge of tears the entire time, thinking of her beautiful gown in shambles, but when her mother appeared in the doorway she steeled herself, unwilling to cry in front of the woman.

Things were salvaged, apparently. Word had been spread that the bouquets igniting had been planned, as a sort of fireworks display, and that the only unintentional part had been that they hadn't been meant to go off until midnight, which would have given all the guests enough warning to clear the tables. Mrs. Cartwright had apologized for any inconveniences, accidental fires had been extinguished, and no one had been seriously injured... which meant, regrettably, Henrietta was supposed to go right back to the middle of the fray. And don't cause any more trouble, her mother instructed sternly, despite Henri's protests that the burnt centerpieces hadn't been her fault. She'd certainly never intended to burn their ballroom down with all her debut guests inside, at any rate.

The one positive outcome from the event was that her sisters seemed determined not to let her from their side for the rest of the evening, so she could at least offload some of the burden of keeping up polite conversation onto them. Except the strangest thing happened — when Henrietta returned to the ballroom, she found she didn't want to stand quietly and listen to other people's conversations at all anymore. Not as soon as she saw him.

It was the man who had stepped on her train and torn her dress, the man who had caused her to fall on Holden's friend. Henri's cheeks burned red at the memory. She knew he hadn't intended to do anything of the kind, but that was almost worse than if he had had some malicious intent. Here was yet another gentleman who didn't even know she existed, at her own Coming Out Ball, and she'd spent the past twenty minutes at least feeling miserable for his sake. She didn't even know his name, but she was determined — suddenly and more fiercely than she had ever been determined towards anything in her life — that he would know hers, before the evening was through. Did he even know that he'd stepped on her train now, or had he been so disinterested he hadn't even seen her fall?

Henri watched her sister for a moment until she was suitably distracted, then seized her chance and darted across the ballroom towards him. "Hello," she announced as she approached, as though the word were a challenge. "I'm Henrietta Cartwright. This is my ball."

Yassine Bensouda Elias Grimstone