arry's head.
"Listen, you're not going to have any trouble. You're a champion. You've just
beaten a Hungarian Horntail. I bet they'll be queuing up to go with you."
In tribute to their recently repaired friendship, Ron had kept the bitterness in his
voice to a bare minimum. Moreover, to Harry's amazement, he turned out to be
quite right.
A curly-haired third-year Hufflepuff girl to whom Harry had never spoken in his
life asked him to go to the ball with her the very next day. Harry was so taken
aback he said no before he'd even stopped to consider the matter. The girl walked
off looking rather hurt, and Harry had to endure Dean's, Seamus's, and Ron's
taunts about her all through History of Magic. The following day, two more girls
asked him, a second year and (to his horror) a fifth year who looked as though she
might knock him out if he refused.
"She was quite good-looking," said Ron fairly, after he'd stopped laughing.
"She was a foot taller than me," said Harry, still unnerved. "Imagine what I'd look
like trying to dance with her."
Hermione's words about Krum kept coming back to him. "They only like him
because he's famous!" Harry doubted very much if any of the girls who had asked
to be his partner so far would have wanted to go to the ball with him if he hadn't
been a school champion. Then he wondered if this would bother him if Cho asked
him.
On the whole. Harry had to admit that even with the embarrassing prospect of
opening the ball before him, life had definitely improved since he had got through
the first task. He wasn't attracting nearly as much unpleasantness in the corridors
anymore, which he suspected had a lot to do with Cedric - he had an idea Cedric
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might have told the Hufflepuffs to leave Harry alone, in gratitude for Harry's tipoff
about the dragons. There seemed to be fewer Support Cedric Diggory! badges
around too. Draco Malfoy, of course, was still quoting Rita Skeeter's article to him
at every possible opportunity, but he was getting fewer and fewer laughs out of it -
and just to heighten Harry's feeling of well-being, no story about Hagrid had
appeared in the Daily Prophet.
"She didn' seem very int'rested in magical creatures, ter tell yeh the truth," Hagrid
said, when Harry, Ron, and Hermione asked him how his interview with Rita
Skeeter had gone during the last Care of Magical Creatures lesson of the term. To
their very great relief, Hagrid had given up on direct contact with the skrewts now,
and they were merely sheltering behind his cabin today, sitting at a trestle table
and preparing a fresh selection of food with which to tempt the skrewts.
"She jus' wanted me ter talk about you, Harry," Hagrid continued in a low voice.
"Well, I told her we'd been friends since I went ter fetch yeh from the Dursleys.
'Never had to tell him off in four years?' she said. 'Never played you up in lessons,
has he?' I told her no, an she didn' seem happy at all. Yeh'd think she wanted me to
say yeh were horrible, Harry."
" 'Course she did," said Harry, throwing lumps of dragon liver into a large metal
bowl and picking up his knife to cut some more. "She can't keep writing about
what a tragic little hero I am, it'll get boring."
"She wants a new angle, Hagrid," said Ron wisely as he shelled salamander eggs.
"You were supposed to say Harry's a mad delinquent!"
"But he's not!" said Hagrid, looking genuinely shocked.
"She should've interviewed Snape," said Harry grimly. "He'd give her the goods
on me any day. 'Potter has been crossing lines ever since he first arrived at this
school. . . .'"
"Said that, did he?" said Hagrid, while Ron and Hermione laughed. "Well, yeh
might've bent a few rules. Harry, bu' yeh're all righ' really, aren' you?"
"Cheers, Hagrid," said Harry, grinning.
"You coming to this ball thing on Christmas Day, Hagrid?" said Ron.
"Though' I might look in on it, yeah," said Hagrid gruffly. "Should be a good do, I
reckon. You'll be openin the dancin', won yeh, Harry? Who're you takin'?"
"No one, yet," said Harry, feeling himself going red again. Hagrid didn't pursue
the subject.
The last week of term became increasingly boisterous as it progressed. Rumors
about the Yule Ball were flying everywhere, though Harry 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
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the Weird Sisters. Exactly who or what the Weird Sisters were Harry didn't know,
never having had access to a wizard's wireless, but he deduced from the wild
excitement of those who had grown up listening to the WWN (Wizarding Wireless
Network) that they were a very famous musical group.
Some of the teachers, like little Professor Flitwick, gave up trying to teach them
much when their minds were so clearly elsewhere; he allowed them to play games
in his lesson on Wednesday, and spent most of it talking to Harry about the perfect
Summoning Charm
Harry had used during the first task of the Triwizard Tournament. 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. It was amazing how he could make
even bloody and vicious goblin riots sound as boring as Percys cauldron-bottom
report. Professors McGonagall and Moody kept them working until the very last
second of their classes too, and Snape, of course, would no sooner let them play
games in class than adopt Harry. Staring nastily around at them all, he informed
them that he would be testing them on poison antidotes during the last lesson of
the term.
"Evil, he is," Ron said bitterly that night in the Gryffindor common room.
"Springing a test on us on the last day. Ruining the last bit of term with a whole
load of studying."
"Mmm . . . you're not exactly straining yourself, though, are you?" said Hermione,
looking at him over the top of her Potions notes. Ron was busy building a card
castle out of his Exploding Snap pack - a much more interesting pastime than with
Muggle cards, because of the chance that the whole thing would blow up at any
second.
"It's Christmas, Hermione," said Harry lazily; he was rereading Flying with the
Cannons for the tenth time in an armchair near the fire.
Hermione looked severely over at him too. "I'd have thought you'd be doing
something constructive, Harry, even if you don't want to learn your antidotes!"
"Like what?" Harry said as he watched Joey Jenkins of the Cannons belt a Bludger
toward a Ballycastle Bats Chaser.
"That egg!" Hermione hissed.
"Come on, Hermione, I've got till February the twenty-fourth," Harry said.
He had put the golden egg upstairs in his trunk and hadn't opened it since the
celebration party after the first task. There were still two and a half months to go
until he needed to know what all the screechy wailing meant, after all.
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"But it might take weeks to work it out!" said Hermione. "You're going to look a
real idiot if everyone else knows what the next task is and you don't!"
"Leave him alone, Hermione, he's earned a bit of a break," said Ron, and he placed
the last two cards on top of the castle and the whole lot blew up, singeing his
eyebrows.
"Nice look, Ron ... go well with your dress robes, that will."
It was Fred and George. They sat down at the table with Harry, Ron, and
Hermione as Ron felt how much damage had been done.
"Ron, can we borrow Pigwidgeon?" George asked.
"No, he's off delivering a letter," said Ron. "Why?"
"Because George wants to invite him to the ball," said Fred sarcastically.
"Because we want to send a letter, you stupid great prat," said George.
"Who d'you two keep writing to, eh?" said Ron.
"Nose out, Ron, or I'll burn that for you too," said Fred, waving his wand
threateningly. "So . . . you lot got dates for the ball yet?"
"Nope," said Ron.
"Well, you'd better hurry up, mate, or all the good ones will be gone," said Fred.
"Who're you going with, then?" said Ron.
"Angelina," said Fred promptly, without a trace of embarrassment.
"What?" said Ron, taken aback. "You've already asked her?"
"Good point," said Fred. He turned his head and called across the common room,
"Oi! Angelina!"
Angelina, who had been chatting with Alicia Spinnet near the fire, looked over at
him.
"What?" she called back.
"Want to come to the ball with me?"
Angelina gave Fred an appraising sort of look.
"All right, then," she said, and she turned back to Alicia and carried on chatting
with a bit of a grin on her face.
"There you go," said Fred to Harry and Ron, "piece of cake."
He got to his feet, yawning, and said, "We'd better use a school owl then, George,
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come on. .. ."
They left. Ron stopped feeling his eyebrows and looked across the smoldering
wreck of his card castle at Harry.
"We should get a move on, you know . . . ask someone. He's right. We don't want
to end up with a pair of trolls."
Hermione let out a sputter of indignation.
"A pair of... what, excuse me?"
"Well - you know," said Ron, shrugging. "I'd rather go alone than with - with
Eloise Midgen, say."
"Her acne's loads better lately - and she's really nice!"
"Her nose is off-center," said Ron.
"Oh I see," Hermione said, bristling. "So basically, you're going to take the bestlooking
girl who'll have you, even if she's completely horrible?"
"Er - yeah, that sounds about right," said Ron.
"I'm going to bed," Hermione snapped, and she swept off toward the girls'
staircase without another word.
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. Harry noticed that they were the
most stunning he had