The next morning, they all kept bumping into each other while preparing to go to Diagon Alley.
After they’d eaten, they each had to step into the kitchen fireplace one by one after Mrs.
Weasley had thrown in a pinch of floo powder, then they had to yell loudly, “Diagon Alley!”
and make sure they got out at the right grate. Mrs. Weasley was staying at home with Charlie;
Bill was accompanying them on their shopping. He went first, followed by Ron, Ginny, Harry,
George, Hermione and Fred. Mr. Weasley and Percy had already apparated to work at the
Ministry of Magic; they’d had to walk out to the lane to do it, though, since the house was now
an apparition-free zone.
They all landed with a thump in Madam Malkin’s robe shop. Hermione was the only one who didn’t need all new robes; she just wanted one nice one for feasts and dates.
“I haven’t grown any taller in the previous year,” she sighed. “I guess I’ve just stopped...”
“You look fine to me,” Bill told her smiling. Hermione turned away, reddening. Harry got a
funny feeling in the pit of his stomach and felt, for the first time since he’d known him, an almost
irresistible urge to kick Bill in his dragon skin boot-covered shins.
George and Fred were going into their seventh year. “We should look really naff, last year,”
Fred said. “Go out with a bang.” They had the Triwizard Tournament winnings Harry had given
them, and they’d invested some of it, to make sure they wouldn’t spend it and it would be there
for them when they finished school (their father’s idea). But some of it they did just want to
spend. Fred and George started looking at the nicest robes in the shop, and Harry joined them,
thinking that it would look better for his prefect badge to be on some really nice robes...He
hadn’t mentioned being a prefectnor had Hermionesince arriving at the Burrow. After the
way Percy had behaved while a prefect, he didn’t want the Weasleys to think he was full of
himself. Harry felt Ron’s eyes on him while he and Ginny sorted through the second-hand robes;
both of them had grown quite a bit in the previous year. Ginny towered over Hermione.
But first, Harry needed to get some money out of the bank. He told Bill he was going to
Gringott’s, and Bill started to come with him. Harry stopped him. “Shouldn’t you stay with
them?”
Bill looked back and forth between Harry and his siblings, torn. “Listen,” Harry said. “I’ll be at
Gringott’s. You work there. Goblins all over the place. I’ll be fine. Stay with them,” he said,
nodding at Hermione and the others. Bill relented and nodded at him.
“Hurry back.”
He did, and then stood for what felt like an excruciating length of time having his new robes
measured. These were by far the nicest robes he’d ever had; looking at himself in the mirror, he
felt strangely grown up, and realized he looked even more like his father than ever. I really need
that haircut, Harry thought, so I’ll look like me instead. The mirror yelled back at him after a
time, “All right! All right! You look gorgeous! Sheesh, give it a rest!”
After robes, they went to Flourish and Blotts for their books. In addition to The Standard
Book of Spells, Grade 5, and other fifth-year versions of books they’d already been studying
for the previous four years, Harry and Hermione also needed Taking the O.W.L.s: Preparing
Yourself for the Worst Experience of Your Life, by Eglantine Etude. Fred and George gave
Ron the copy they’d used (they had shared it) and this year they were going to share Percy’s
old copy of Taking the Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests (N.E.W.T.s): And You
Thought the O.W.L.s Were Bad, again by Eglantine Etude. Harry also noticed that the
Sweetbriar Publishing Anthology of Muggle Literature was on the fifth-year list, and he
picked up a copy. It had quite a lot in it: plays (Shakespeare, Shaw, Chekhov), some short
stories, (The Lottery, Gift of the Magi) and even entire novels (Lord of the Flies, Tess of the
D’Urbervilles). He wondered what class it was for; it would make good reading, in any case,
Harry thought. It was like a whole library by itself, somehow magically packed into one
average-sized book. He noticed that Ron crossed it off his list, but didn’t buy it.
When they had replenished their potions supplies at the apothecary, they decided to get lunch at
an outdoor cafe. But on the way, they passed Quality Quidditch Supplies. Fred and George
stopped, their faces glued to the window glass, then they turned to look at each other, nodded,
and told the others to wait for them.
“We’ll be right back,” said George.
About ten minutes later, Fred and George emerged from the shop carrying four long packages.
They handed two of them to Ron and Ginny. “Belated birthday presents! From your loving
brothers!” Fred told them.
“My birthday was three-and-a-half months ago,” complained Ron. “And you forgot it entirely!”
“I hope it’s better than my not-belated birthday present...” Ginny began.
“That’s what you get for having April Fool’s Day for your birthday, Gin,” George said. “Open
it!”
She and Ron tore the paper off their packages. Inside were brand new, shining Nimbus 2001
brooms. Ginny exclaimed over hers. “The top of the line is the Nimbus 3000 now. And the
Firebolt, of course. But these are a damn sight better than what you’ve been riding,” said Fred.
“Don’t worry; we didn’t get ourselves Nimbus 3000’s or Firebolts. Ours are the same as
yours. Otherwise we couldn’t have afforded four of them. These are marked down now.”
Ginny hugged Fred and George in turn. “Oh, it’s beautiful! Thank you! Thank you!” Then she
paused. “Do you have any money left now?”
Fred and George looked at each other. “Actually, no. But we could wait until we get home to
have lunch...”
“No need,” Harry said magnanimously. “Lunch is on me!”
Ron was still staring at his unwrapped Nimbus 2001, open mouthed. “I’ve never had a new
broom before...”
Fred came over to him. “Well, like I said, it’s not top of the line, but”
Ron looked up, his face shining. “I don’t care. Thanks, Fred! And you, George!”
His brothers looked at his face and laughed. “You’re welcome, Ron,” Fred said. Ron was still
gazing rapturously at his new broom. Fred cleared his throat. “You sure you two wouldn’t like
to be alone? A little soft music, some wine...”
They all laughed and Ron colored, putting the packaging back on the broom to protect it. He
cradled it in his arms like it was a baby as they walked to the cafe.
They spent a good deal of time at lunch, the seven of them laughing and talking, several
overlapping conversations going on simultaneously while they ate. Harry almost didn’t notice a
very pretty girl with chin-length shining black hair standing next to his chair until he rose to throw
out his trash and almost knocked her over.
“Oh! I didn’t see you there!” he said to her, trying to recover his balance. It was Cho Chang,
the sixth-year Ravenclaw Seeker. Harry recognized some other Ravenclaws, holding shopping
bags from Madam Malkin’s and Flourish and Blotts, standing a few yards away. “How are
you?” he asked her, trying to shut out the feeling of overwhelming guilt again, the image of
Cedric’s lifeless body....
“Can I talk to you alone for a minute, Harry?” Cho asked him. He looked uncertainly at Bill.
“I’ll stay in sight,” he informed Bill, and he led her over to an empty table out of earshot of the
others. He noticed Hermione and Ginny watching them. “What’s up?” he asked her when they
were at the empty table.
She took a deep breath, as though what she were going to do took a great deal of courage.
“Harryon our first weekend trip to Hogsmeade, would you like to go out with me?”
Harry groaned inwardly; a year ago, he’d have given anything to hear her say those words.
Then came the Triwizard Tournament....He drew his mouth into a line, trying to think of the
most painless way to let her down, other than the truth. Sorry, I can’t go out with you
because every time I see you I suffer from crushing, paralyzing, debilitating guilt on account of it’s my fault your previous boyfriend is dead.
He cast about for some excuse, some way out of this extremely awkward situation, when he
had a sudden brainstorm. “Sure,” he said to her. “Only, could we double-date with Viktor
Krum and Hermione? Her folks are a little nervous about her dating someone who’s already out
of school, and this way they won’t be alone....”
“Double date?” she echoed, considering this proposal. “Well, all right. I suppose so.” She
looked over at the other Ravenclaws, who were waving her on. “Oh, I have to be going now.
I’ll see you on the train?”
“Probably,” Harry replied. “Until tomorrow!”
She smiled shyly at him. “Until tomorrow.” She rejoined her friends, who huddled around her,
obviously getting the lowdown on what happened between the two of them. Harry returned to
the table and picked up the bill, getting out his money bag to pay it, since he’d already promised
he would. He calmly gave the waitress five gold Galleons; he wanted to leave her a generous tip
after what Fred and George had put her through. Bill, meantime, had gotten her name so he
could owl her.
Hermione couldn’t take it anymore. Finally she burst out at him, “Well? What was all that
about?”
Harry smiled at her. “That was me being sneaky. She was asking me out. And I was trying to
figure out how to tactfully turn her down”
Bill was floored; he’d seen how pretty she was. “Why?”
Harry sighed. “Because of blinding guilt. Cedric Diggory was her boyfriend.” Bill nodded;
Harry went on. “Anyway, I got a great idea then, and I told her I would go out with her, if we
double-dated with you and Viktor. You see? You see?”
Hermione frowned. “No.”
“We’ll fix them up! We’ll arrange for them to be alone together a lotthey’re both Seekers,
they have that in commonand we’ll be beastly to them, without actually breaking up with them,
and before you know it, Viktor’s going to be looking pretty good to her, and Cho’s going to be
looking pretty good to him, and Viktor will break up with you instead of you having to break up
with him, and they’ll be together and your problem will be solved!” Harry stopped, breathless.
George had his mouth hanging open. “Did I actually hear you say that Hermione doesn’t want
to be with Viktor Krum anymore?”
“Yes,” Harry hissed at him. “But keep it quiet, all of you. If Cho finds out that’s why I said I’d
go out with hermy name would be mud, and so would Hermione’s.” Ginny was perplexed.
“But, Hermione, when you wrote to me when you first arrived in Bulgaria, you said”
“Not now, Ginny!” Hermione whispered, running her finger across her throat. Ginny still looked
confused. She turned to Harry.
“So,” she said softly, “you don’t like Cho Chang anymore?”
“I don’t dislike her, but I don’t want to go out with her.”
“And yet you are.”
“Just until we can get her and Viktor thrown together enough times...”
Ginny nodded, but looked unconvinced. Their conversation had gone largely unnoticed except
by Hermione. George and Fred were deciding who was going to be on whose team when they
returned to the Burrow to play Quidditch after lunch.
“Ron will be a Keeper and Harry can be on his team as Seeker,” George said. “They can have
Bill for their Chaser and Hermione can be their Beater.” Hermione turned her head suddenly when she heard this.
“Hold on, George, me and broomsticks”
“You’ll be fine. You can use Ginny’s old Cleansweep. It’s slow as molasses. And as Beater, all
you have to do is whack the Bludgers”
“So I have to fly with one hand?” she said, horrified.
“Anyway,” Fred interjected before she could raise any more objections. “That means I get to
be Chaser on our team, George can be our Beater, and we’ll take it easy on you gits; it
wouldn’t be fair for Charlie to play Seeker, so he’ll play Keeper and we’ll put in Ginny as
Seeker.” George and Fred exchanged mischievous looks. What’re they up to? wondered
Harry. Ginny herself looked like she was bursting, too. Charlie must be an unbeatable Keeper,
thought Harry. Well, it all comes down to who gets the Snitch...
* * * * *
“One-hundred to nothing!” Bill cried triumphantly as he put the Quaffle past his younger brother
Charlie for the tenth time. Then he screamed and swerved out of the way as a Bludger came
hurtling at him from Hermione’s paddle.
“Dammit, Hermione!” he hollered. “For the last time, we’re on the same team!”
“Oops!” she yelled from the other end of the field. “Sorry!” She had been blindly whacking
Bludgers all game, most of the time in the direction of Harry, Ron and Bill, it seemed, although
Fred and Ginny had had some near misses. Harry flew in circles near where Ron was playing
Keeper, hovering in front of the middle of the three hoops. He scanned the field, looking for the
Snitch. Ginny didn’t seem to be paying much attention at all. She was laughing at something
George had said, and the two of them were chiding Charlie. To Harry’s confusion, it turned out
that Charlie was a terrible Keeper. And Ron was a great one. Granted, Fred was playing
Chaser for them, and he didn’t do that on the school team; he usually played Beater, alongside
George. But Fred had gotten off some nice shots that looked guaranteed to give the other team
some points, and Ron had intercepted every one of them. Harry was impressed. He was
starting to wonder at the way that Fred had distributed the players, however. Hermione was a
menace, mostly to her own teammates, but Bill was quite impressive as a Chaser and Ron
seemed to be unbeatable as a Keeper. Meanwhile, every Quaffle got past Charlie, George was
a good Beater, but having to spend half his time ducking wild Bludgers coming from Hermione,
and Fred wasn’t up to getting a Quaffle past Ron at all. That left Harry as Seeker on his team,
and Ginny on the other team. Why didn’t Fred claim me for his team? he wondered...
And then he blinked, and suddenly, there was Ginny, flying around the field, holding the
struggling Snitch over her head in triumph, her face glowing, and Fred, George and Charlie
hooting with delight.
“That’s one-fifty to one-hundred, our game!” cried Fred, laughing.
Harry stared at Ginny. Her long red hair flew out behind her, she looked like she couldn’t stop
smiling if she tried, and he felt a grin creeping over his own face somehow, even though he
wasn’t used to losing at Quidditch. Hermione looked at him with narrowed eyes.
They played three more times, and each time, although Harry’s team was up by more than onehundred
points, Ginny grabbed the Snitch and won for the other side. Harry never saw it until it
was clutched in her hand.
It was almost time for dinner, and they would have to get up early the next day to go to London
(Ministry cars were being provided), so they decided to stop playing. George, Fred, Charlie
and Ginny couldn’t stop laughing. Bill clapped Harry on the shoulder. “I should have warned you,” he said to Harry. “Or I should have insisted on changing teams...”
“What?” Harry was confused.
“Well, I figured, it was you, Harry. If anyone could beat her, I thought you could, after seeing
you get past that dragon last year. And I knew Ron was unbeatable as a Keeper...”
“You mean”
“Ginny’s a ringer!” Fred howled with glee.
“Sorry, Harry. It was too funny seeing the look on your face” Charlie guffawed.
George put his arm around Harry’s shoulder. “You see, Harry,” George started to explain in
what Harry thought of as his spiffing-wot-wot imitation-Percy voice, “Ginny is a ringer. A
natural Seeker, like Charlie. She can do it with her eyes shut and in her sleep. You never had a
prayer.”
“What do you mean, like me?” asked Charlie. “I’ve never beaten her.” Ginny blushed. “But
she’s not interested in playing at school.”
“All those people watching...” she whispered shyly, not looking at Harry.
“Oh!” yelled Fred, sounding like Hermione when she was trying to get a teacher to call on her
who was ignoring her (usually Snape). “Oh, oh, oh!”
“What’s with you?” Bill snarled at him.
“I just realized; Oliver’s out of school now, and with the Triwizard Tournament last year, there
wasn’t any Quidditch, so we didn’t have to think about it, but we need a new captain and a new
Keeper for the Gryffindor team!”
“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “I forgot all about that...”
“And you can be the new captain, Harry!” Fred cried triumphantly.
“Me? What about you?”
“Oh, I don’t want the responsibility. Rousing people out of bed for early morning practice,
boring people silly with strategy sessions...”
“And you think I’d be any good at that? I never even gave much thought to strategy; I usually
just keep an eye out for the Snitch...”
“But, Harry, you have clout! We’d have for our captain Harry Potter, who defeated You-
Know-Who! Harry Potter, winner of the Triwizard Tournament! Come on, Harry”
“Okay, okay. Butwho actually decides who’s captain of the team, anyway?”
“The other players. George and I will vote for you, and we’ll tell the others to. I don’t think
Alicia wants it; she’s Head Girl, already has enough to do. And Angelina and Katie probably
wouldn’t want it, so that leaves you.”
“Of course, we still need a Keeper”
“As captain, you can pick who the new Keeper is.”
Harry smiled at Ron. “Then I pick Ron. How about it, you want to? Of course, it won’t be
official until I’m elected captain, but it sounds like Fred and George have thought of everything.”
Ron didn’t jump immediately at the chance, though. “Wellit’s not that I don’t want to be the
Keeper, but when I play, I also like to be Chaser. I’m also pretty good at that, not to brag”
“Well then,” Harry thought fast, “you can be Keeper, but you can also be a reserve Chaser, in
case anything happens to one of them. ThenI can be reserve Keeper and” he trailed off,
trying to flesh out the playing roster in his mind. Then he had a sudden inspiration. “And Ginny
can be the reserve Seeker!”
Ginny jerked her head up, opening her mouth to protest, then catching sight of the pleading look
on Harry’s face. She closed her mouth, and she and Harry looked at each other; he didn’t mind looking at her for as long as it took to get her to say.
“All right,” she said softly. “I’ll do it.”
Harry threw his arms around her and picked her up in a twirling hug, like when he’d gotten off
the Knight Bus the previous evening. When he put her down, she was redder than he’d ever
seen her, trying hard not to look deliriously happy, and failing horribly. Hermione looked like
she had steam coming out of her ears. She turned her back on them all and trudged back to the
Burrow without speaking to anyone.
“What’s with her?” Ron said, watching her go.
