Harry was not looking forward to the first Hogsmeade weekend, two weeks after Hermione’s
birthday. That meant, of course, that the day seemed to zoom at him with alarming speed.
Schoolwork, prefects’ meetings, O.W.L. preparation, Quidditch practice and Animagus training
seemed to have little effect on how rapidly the dreaded day approached. He remembered his
third year, when he hadn’t officially been allowed to go to Hogsmeade because the Dursleys
hadn’t signed his permission form and everyone was worried about his godfather, Sirius Black,
the only escapee from Azkaban ever, possibly lurking around the village waiting to kill him. He
had longed for nothing more that year than to be able to go to Hogsmeade, even if he had to
wear his Invisibility Cloak and use secret passages out of the castle to do it. Now, Hogsmeade
was the last place he wanted to go, especially on a double date with Viktor Krum, Cho Chang
and Hermione.
He wished he had progressed further in his Animagus training so that he could just transform
into a lion and run off to hide in the Forbidden Forest. He had advanced to being able to grow
and shrink his nails (on both his hands and his feet) in the blink of an eye, and also growing and
ungrowing his hair (if he’d known it was that easy, he never would have put off the haircut).
Professor McGonagall had been impressed by his rapid progress; he wondered whether he
might be able to become an Animagus in less than six months.
Harry also had gotten to the point where he definitely needed to start shaving, but he decided to
try to control his facial hair using the Animagus technique, too, and found that this worked quite
well, and he was able to avoid being cut. No one questioned him about this. Ron used his wand,
when he saw enough reddish growth on his chin and upper lip to warrant giving himself a shave.
Hermione had suggested he try growing it, as Charlie had done; red beards looked really nice,
she told him, coloring. This had greatly annoyed Harry.
That Saturday morning, Harry and Hermione went running as usual. When they were doing the
warm-down stretches on the dewy grass of the Quidditch field, Hermione suddenly stopped,
then sat down, staring into space. When Harry saw her sitting as if turned to stone, he crept
over to her and touched her shoulder.
“Hermione?” he whispered. She looked up at him and he could see the fear in her eyes. “What
is it?”
“Harry?” she said, as though she weren’t sure of his name. He put his hand to her cheek and
she put her hand over his.
“You’re worried about Viktor,” he stated. She nodded. “Don’t be. You won’t be alone.” She
nodded again.
“But” she hesitated.
“Yes?”
“This thing with fixing up Viktor and Cho. Should weshould we do that to her? What do we
really know about him? Maybe I should just break up with him and take my chances...”
“Do you want to do that?” he said gently, moving his hand to her shoulder. “I could cancel the
date with Cho. We’ll do whatever you want.”
Suddenly, Hermione shook herself, as if trying to wake up. She rose gracefully to her feet and continued the stretching exercises. “I’m sorry, Harry. I’m just worrying needlessly. We’ve got a
plan; we’ll stick to it. Hold my ankles?” He nodded at her, crouching down to grip her ankles
while she did some sit-ups. He watched her closely, the way her face was scrunched up in
concentration, the perspiration beading on her brow. Everything she did, she was so serious
about it. Except Divination, and that had shocked everyone. He tried not to think about
Divination; he’d been leaving Sandy in his room for Divination class ever since that first day, and
he’d managed to avoid anyone else giving him a Tarot reading since then. He felt like he’d
actually gotten better at doing them, though. He had performed one for George which had
predicted some behavior of Angelina’s that he hadn’t suspected in the least. Of course, they
hadn’t known until afterward that that was what the reading was pointing to. Still...
“Harry!”
“Wha?”
“I’ve been sitting here shouting at you. You can let go of my ankles now. I think five thousand
sit-ups is pretty much my limit for one morning. It’s your turn, now.”
“Oh, right.” And now she held his ankles while he did sit-ups. He took his shirt off first, wiping
some sweat off his brow and then bundling it up to make an ad hoc pillow to put behind his
head. He was about half through his sit-ups, counting in his head, trying to block out other
thoughts, when a sudden shadow darkened the area of the field where they were. Harry
stopped, panting, and looked up
Into the pale, pointed, and extremely smug-looking face of Draco Malfoy. “Looking good,
Granger,” he drawled, “for a Mudblood.” Harry saw Hermione color. She stood, as did he; he
looked up at Malfoy (who was slightly taller than him now). He and the other six Slytherins with
him were in their green Quidditch robes and carried what looked like brand new Nimbus 3000
broomsticksprobably curtesy of Lucius Malfoy, thought Harry.
Harry’s angry face was very close to Malfoy’s. “Language, Malfoy,” Harry said in a low,
dangerous voice. He clutched his sweaty shirt in his left hand, wishing he had his wand in his
right. Malfoy looked down at him.
“Sorry, are you trying to tell me what I’m allowed to say? You’re sweating all over our
Quidditch pitch, and my team needs to practice.”
“Your team?”
“Yes,” Malfoy replied, his smugness increasing by the second. “I’m the new captain of the
Slytherin team. How do you like that?” Well, that explains all the new broomsticks, Harry
thought.
Hermione had come over and stood next to them. “Well, isn’t that a coincidence. You see,
Harry’s now the captain of the Gryffindor team.” Malfoy’s face lost what little color it had.
“Yes,” Hermione went on. “You are both prefects and you are both captain of your house
team. Can you give it a rest, already? What are you going to compete over next?”
They both turned to look at her, glowing and tan in the morning sun, her running bra and bicycle
shorts making it completely unnecessary to use any imagination in picturing the shape of her
body, her short curls clustered around her face. Not wanting to hear what might come out of
someone’s mouth next, she announced loudly, “I have to go get ready for my date with Viktor
Krum!” And she turned and stalked back toward the castle.
Harry thought Draco Malfoy looked slightly dazed, watching her walk off; Harry had to admit,
the view was quite nice...But Malfoy turned back to him after a second. “So,” Malfoy sneered
at him. “The great Harry Potter lost out to Viktor Krum...”
“I wasn’t” Harry began, then shook his head, smiling. “You can’t get to me, Malfoy. Not
today.” He tried to look happier than he felt. “I’m going along with Hermione and Viktor with
my own date: the Ravenclaw seeker, Cho Chang.”
He wished he could have had a camera to record Malfoy’s stunned expression. “But she’s a
sixth year!” sputtered Malfoy.
“And she’s really pretty,” said Zabini, awe in his voice.
“Shut up!” Malfoy lashed out suddenly.
“I know,” Harry said, sounding like he was mulling it over. “She is really pretty. I was thinking
that when she asked me out in Diagon Alley...”
“ She asked you out?” Malfoy was incredulous. Harry was trying not to laugh at his expression.
He turned and walked after Hermione, calling over his shoulder, “Have a good day, Malfoy! I
know I will!” He turned back in the direction he was walking, wishing that what he’d just said
were true, not just a really good way to needle Malfoy.
As he walked away, he heard a Slytherin say, “Every girl in school is slobbering over him these
days...”
“Well, look at him. He’ll probably cause a riot, walking into the castle with no shirt on...”
“Shut up, will you?” he heard Malfoy explode again. Harry smiled and kept walking.
The second Slytherin was just about right, however; the moment Harry walked into the entrance
hall, he regretted not putting his shirt back on. He thought it was quite possible that Madam
Pomfrey would be busy much of the morning from minor injuries to girls who had stumbled on
steps or walked into walls because of him. On the third floor, just as Hermione was going into
the girls’ prefect bathroom, Cho Chang was coming out. She stopped dead when she saw
Harry.
“Harry” she said softly, staring at him. Harry felt himself reddening,
“Good morning. We were just out running,” he said, gesturing toward Hermione, who smiled at
Cho and slipped past her into the bathroom. Cho didn’t look at Hermione.
“Uh-huh,” she said, still gazing at Harry.
“I’m going upstairs to shower now. We’ll go after breakfast.”
“Okay,” she answered, looking a bit glazed-over. Harry continued on up to the fifth floor,
wondering whether it was going to be possible to get her to notice that Viktor existed. I hope
I’m not getting a big head, he thought.
The ceiling in the Great Hall was the same brilliant, cloudless blue they’d seen while running
around the Quidditch pitch earlier in the day. When the post-owls came, a letter to Hermione
from Viktor Krum confirmed that he would be meeting them at Honeydukes. After breakfast,
Harry looked at Hermione sitting next to him at the Gryffindor table and said, “Ready?”
She sighed deeply. “As ready as I’ll ever be.” Ron and Fred looked at each other and nodded
for some reason.
Harry and Hermione rose and went over to the Ravenclaw table. Harry tapped Cho on the
shoulder and she turned around, smiling broadly when she saw him. He had put on his nicest
black robes with his prefect badge, and he wore a simple black button-down shirt under it and
black slacks and his black boots he’d worn for gardening, but newly shined and polished. With
his newly cut black hair and black glasses, set off by his bright green eyes, he looked every inch
a Triwizard Tournament winner.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked her. He tried to ignore the twitters of the other Ravenclaw
girls, the elbow nudges being exchanged as Cho’s housemates saw who her date was. “Yes,” she said simply, evidently not one for banter. She stood and took the arm he offered
herit was old-fashioned, but he it felt oddly appropriate to him, at this moment. They walked
out to the entrance hall, all eyes at every house table following them.
As they walked down to the village, Harry tried to engage her in conversation, but every topic
he introduced resulted in her making monosyllabic responses that frustrated his attempts. So he
tried to make sure they were walking close enough to Hermione so that he could converse with
her, and Cho seemed to be perfectly happy to walk along gazing up at him (she only came up to
his shoulder) and listening to them talk (although Harry wasn’t convinced she really was
listening; he and Hermione had each laughed at things the other had said, but no laughter was
forthcoming from Cho).
When they reached the village, they walked up the High Street to Honeydukes Sweets Shoppe.
Viktor was waiting outside, and kissed Hermione on the cheek when she was close enough. He
actually looked like he’d been aiming for her mouth, but she had turned her head and presented
him with her cheek at the last second. They bought a few sweets and then strolled through the
village streets for a while; Harry was getting more and more tired of trying to talk to Cho,
especially now that Hermione was with Viktor. It didn’t sound like there was much conversation
going on there, either, inasmuch as his English was still heavily accented and there seemed to be
a bit of a problem for him with British colloquialisms.
“I learn English from American television programs,” he explained to Hermione.
“But you don’t have a television,” she remembered. “You don’t even have electricity.”
“Oh, no. I go to the store in Sofia that sells televisions and I stand there and watch until they tell
me to go. They don’t like people to stay too long who are not going to buy.”
That’s scintillating conversation, thought Harry, compared to what I’ve got here . He had
thought perhaps of asking her whether she’d seen the Quidditch World Cup the previous
summer, but since that was a whole year ago, and Viktor had played in the World Cup and he
didn’t want to make it seem that he was gushing over Viktor, he couldn’t very well use that
topic. He tried to ask her how bad the O.W.L.s really were, but she said, “Oh, they’re as bad
as you’ve heard,” and would not elaborate. He tried to ask her what one could expect to cover
in sixth-year classes, and she said, “Oh, pretty much what you learn in fifth-year, only more so.”
I could have a deeper conversation with a lamppost, Harry thought.
Finally, when it was close to lunchtime, they opted to go to the Three Broomsticks. It was
already pretty crowded with students who’d come down from the castle for the day, but they
got a table in the cornerwhich just happened to be near a table with Ron and Fred Weasley,
who seemed determined to pretend they didn’t recognize their housemates. Harry and
Hermione told Viktor and Cho that they would get them all some butterbeers and order some
food at the bar.
While they were waiting at the bar for Madam Rosmerta to notice them, they looked over their
shoulders at their dates, who didn’t exactly seem to be talking up a storm together.
“Hermione, are you sure that love potions are illegal? Because I am dying to put something in
Cho’s and Viktor’s drinks right now to speed up this process. I have never been more bored in
my life!”
“Really?” Hermione said, her brow furrowed. “But she’s very pretty”
“Oh, cut it out. You know that’s not all I’m looking for”
“It was last year when you asked her to the Yule Ball.”
Harry grimaced. “I am obviously never going to live that down, am I?”
She smiled merrily at him. “Not for the next hundred years, anyway. Oh, come on, it can’t be
that bad. Surely there’s something you two can do together...”
He didn’t take her meaning at first, then as it dawned on him, he exclaimed, “Hermione! How
can I go from not even being able to talk to her to kissing her?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes I think when people have too much to talk about, it can keep
them from kissing...” She looked at him very pointedly, and he remembered that moment in the
Dursleys’ garden when they’d almost kissed, before Sandy had told him that Sirius was coming.
He had no answer to this. He glanced back over his shoulder.
“They’re moving their lips a little. Maybe an actual conversation is imminent,” he said hopefully.
Hermione placed an order for four butterbeers and fish-and-chip platters and indicated which
table should get the food order. They each carried two mugs of butterbeer back to the table,
moving slowly through the crowd more to prolong their absence than because they thought they
would spill the beverages.
Harry thought that it was possible now that there was something in the world more boring than
one of Professor Binns’ classes: a date with Cho Chang. This experience should be bottled and
sold as a sleep aid, he thought. Meanwhile, he was acutely aware of Ron and Fred at the next
table, trying to hear what little conversation was taking place among those on the date.
Once their food had arrived, at least they had the excuse of having full mouths to avoid talking.
Harry had never even experienced such a quiet meal even at the Dursleys, where he routinely
got the silent treatment (when he wasn’t being given the opposite, the yelling treatment). Even
Ron and Fred were starting to look bored, he thought. When Spies Get Bored , Harry pictured
the headline in Witch Weekly. By Rita Skeeter . If she were still writing.
After they were done eating, he decided he couldn’t take it any more. “Well,” he said briskly,
“this has been fun, but Hermione and I have a load of homework to do. I have to put in some
hours in the Potions dungeon, and didn’t you say Professor Vector had given you a ton of
Arithmancy homework, Hermione?” His eyes looked pleadingly at her.
“Oh!” she said suddenly. “Yes. So much work. Unbelievable.” She nodded vigorously. Viktor
and Harry paid the bill (Hermione argued with Viktor about paying her way; Cho did not say
anything about Harry paying for her, despite having been the one to ask him out). They all rose
to go, and as they reached the door, Harry saw out of the corner of his eye that Ron and Fred
were also rising to leave.
As they were walking back to the castle, Harry with Cho and Hermione up ahead with Viktor,
Harry simply decided to stop even trying to talk with Cho, and she seemed perfectly happy to
just walk along, arm in arm, enjoying the spectacle of the autumn colors. Ron and Fred were
skulking about forty feet behind them.
When they reached the entrance hall of the castle, Harry extended his hand to Cho, shaking it
vigorously, thanking her for a lovely day, and saying that they would have to do it again the next
Hogsmeade weekend, but thinking That’s five hours of my life I’m never getting back . As they
were shaking hands, Ginny emerged from the stairs to the Potions dungeon. She stopped dead
when she saw Harry and Cho, frowning at first, then looking happier as she saw that no kissing
was following the hand-shaking. Actually, she looked like she was going to laugh, thought
Harry, who sincerely hoped she wouldn’t. Then he saw Viktor and Hermione over Cho’s
shoulder, and groaned inwardly; this plan wasn’t going well at all...
Their kiss in the entrance hall made the one on the train platform look sick. When they
separated, Harry thought Hermione looked like she was having difficulty standing up. Cho went up the stairs toward Ravenclaw, seeing the end of Viktor’s and Hermione’s kiss and giving
Harry a bit of a hurt look as she left. Viktor departed, and Hermione stood looking out the open
door, her brow furrowed, pulling at her lower lip with her right hand.
Ginny started to come toward Harry and Hermione, but suddenly, Draco Malfoy emerged from
the same stairs Ginny had ascended. “Ginny!” he called as he climbed the stairs. “You forgot
your mortar and pestle...” He handed it to her and while Harry and Hermione whirled in
surprise.
“Were you both in the Potions dungeon?” Harry asked suspiciously, just as Fred and Ron
entered from the outdoors.
“Yeah. So?” Malfoy said, coming closer to him.
“So what were you doing down there?” Ron wanted to know.
“Potions homework,” Ginny informed him stiffly.
Ron regarded Malfoy through narrowed eyes. “And I’m supposed to believe that?” Harry felt
rather than saw Ron and Fred come and stand on either side of him, facing Malfoy.
“Yes,” Malfoy said as Harry and the Weasley brothers presented a united front. “I do work for
my grades, I don’t just depend on the goodwill of my head of house. I mean, I believe that
Potter and the Mudblood aren’t shagging on the Quidditch pitch every morning...”
Simultaneously, Harry and Ron grabbed Malfoy’s arms and pinned him to the stone wall; they
both quickly whipped out their wands and pointed them at Malfoy’s throat. “You stop calling
her that, Malfoy,” Ron hissed at him. Malfoy grinned evilly at them.
“Ron! Harry! Let go of him!” came Ginny’s unexpected voice. “He’s my friend!”
“Your friend ?” squealed Harry, Ron and Fred. “ Hermione is your friend,” Harry reminded
her.
“Let go of him,” she said firmly, and Harry had a sudden vision of her someday being Head
Girl. Alicia Spinnet probably couldn’t have mustered as much authority, he thought. They
released him and Ginny strode over to him. “You know I don’t like that word...” she said to
Malfoy quietly but sternly.
For the first time since Harry had known him, Draco Malfoy looked abashed. “Sorry”
“Nope. Not to me. To Hermione.” Harry tried to suppress a smile; she was so in charge.
Malfoy walked over to Hermione and looked her in the eye sincerely. “I’m sorry I called you
that, Granger.”
“And” Ginny prompted him.
“And it won’t happen again.”
Hermione crossed her arms and looked at him, expressionless. “Apology accepted. Excuse
me,” she said, going up the stairs toward Gryffindor Tower. Harry, Ron and Fred were not
going anywhere until Malfoy left; none of them wanted him to be alone with Ginny again. She
turned to him once more. “Thank you for my mortar and pestle, Draco.” Draco ? Harry
thought. She was calling him Draco ?
“You’re welcome,” he smiled at her, and Harry was shocked to see that he could actually
produce a smile that wouldn’t better be described as a smirk or evil grin. He then shot daggers
from his eyes in the direction of Harry and the Weasley brothers before going down another
staircase leading to Slytherin house.
Just then, Neville Longbottom emerged from the stairway to the Potions dungeon, carefully
carrying a glass beaker which was steaming and obviously hot; he was handling it with dragonhide
gloves. He stopped short when he saw Harry, Ron, Fred and Ginny standing around in the entrance hall.
“What’s up?” he asked, cautiously eyeing his potion; it looked as though it might have been
considering overflowing its container.
“Were you down in the Potions dungeon with Ginny and Malfoy?” Ron wanted to know.
“Yeah. We all had stuff to do. Malfoy was dead useful, actually. Helped me finally get this
memory-enhancing potion looking right...” He continued up the stairs, holding it out carefully in
front of him.
Fred looked accusingly at Ginny. “Well, why didn’t you say you weren’t alone with Malfoy?”
She looked incredulous. “Why didn’t Iwhat am I, on trial here? Did you ever bother asking?
And what if I had been? Why would that mean that we were doing anything other than Potions
work? It just so happens that he helped me with my potion, too.” She looked challengingly at
Harry and her brothers.
Harry leaned toward Fred and Ron, whispering, “Why don’t you two clear offlet someone
who’s not her brother talk to her for a minute, all right?” Ron looked like he wasn’t sure that
was such a good idea, but Fred nodded and motioned for Ron to follow him. He did so,
looking over his shoulder at them.
Harry and Ginny walked up the stairs more slowly. “Sorry about all this Ginny. Ron and Fred
spent the day spying on our date, and I had to actually be on the ruddy stupid dateand I
suppose we’re all on edge...”
“So, it didn’t go well,” she said softly.
“That’s an understatement. I won’t bore you with details; I’m already bored enough. No point
in doing it to you, too.” He smiled at her, and she gave a feeble smile back. They continued
walking upward, slowly and steadily. “But, I suppose it was a bit of a shock to hear you calling
Malfoy by his first name...”
She stopped. “Really? I suppose it’s just becauseI’ve always thought of him as Draco. It’s his
father I think of as Malfoy, since his father...”
“Gave you Tom Riddle’s diary,” Harry finished for her, also stopping. She nodded grimly, then
started moving again.
“When he’s not showing off, when he’s not around a lot of people, he can be okay, you know.
Actually, he seems a bitlonely these days. Not even many friends among the Slytherins.”
“Some of them must be his friends. The Quidditch team just voted him to be their new captain.”
But then Harry remembered the new broomsticks they’d all been holding. He didn’t have to
wonder why they’d voted for him.
“I suppose. But think of this: he helped Neville, which you’d probably never expect, and he
helped me, and I’m Ron’s sister, and you know what bad blood there is there.”
“SoI’m supposed to believe Draco Malfoy’s turned over a new leaf?”
“You’re supposed to give him the benefit of the doubt.”
“That was the second time today he called Hermione a Mudblood. That’s not helping me give
him the benefit of the doubt.”
“WellI have my theory about that...”
He stopped. “What?”
She also stopped. “I think he might havejust possiblya little crush on Hermione.”
“What? So he insults her with the rudest possible name he could call her?”
“It’s justI think he knows she’d never give him the time of day. So he tries to convince himself
she’s beneath him, or something, because she’s not pureblood...”
He looked at her levelly. “You’re pureblood.”
Then she surprised him by blushing. “Don’t be ridiculous, Harry. I’m also a Weasley....That
would be...it would be...Don’t be ridiculous,” she repeated, finishing lamely. She walked up the
stairs ahead of him, moving more quickly this time, and Harry wished he had Moody’s magical
eye, so he could see her expression.
* * * * *
