Title: Harry's Woeful Week
Summary: Harry was not having a good week. It's a good thing he had a date to look forward to, right? Right?
Disclaimer: Anything you recognise belongs to the wonderful J.K. Rowling.
Harry Potter lay in his bed and sighed. He had not had a good week. Firstly, Snape had rather nastily insulted Neville about the colour of his potion, which led to Neville shaking so frightfully that he accidentally dropped an extra eye of newt into his cauldron. Needless to say the resulting explosion that covered Neville, his unfortunate partner Lavender, and Harry, who sat at the desk next to them, did not do much to improve the situation. In fact, as a consequence, Neville had a week of detention with Filch and brand new eau de cologne à la skunk. Excepting the detentions, Lavender and the ill-fated Harry Potter also shared Neville's punishment. Madame Pomfrey did what she could to minimise the smell but for the rest of that day and the next, Harry, Lavender, and Neville were shunned by the rest of the school. No amount of bathing could get the smell of skunk off of them and they had to wait until it wore off the next day by itself. Their dorm-mates had not been happy and as such, they were all banished to the hospital wing to spend the night in each other's equally smelly company.
Secondly, Malfoy and his cronies in the 'Inquisitorial Squad' were strutting around Hogwarts like they owned the place, docking points left, right, and centre. A rather unpleasant encounter with Malfoy under some of the twins' enchanted mistletoe (that was designed to leave the two unwilling participants stuck under it until they smooched it out) had Harry and the twins losing a collective 150 points from Gryffindor. Harry could deal with the loss of the points; what he couldn't deal with was the indignity of how he escaped the twins' trick mistletoe. He would never forgive them for that. He found himself wishing he had a Lockhart level obliviate placed on him right about then. Funnily enough, he felt like for once he and Malfoy were on the same page. The blond had all but squeaked '50 points each from Gryffindor' before he hightailed it, red faced, to wherever he was originally intending to go before getting stuck with Harry. The twins had then proceeded to laugh till they cried, despite Harry's death glare directed at them. They swore they'd never breathe a word to anyone. But it didn't matter if nobody else knew about it, Harry knew about it.
The twins had since made themselves scarce when it seemed that it was unlikely that he'd see the funny side of their ingenious prank (he'd screamed at them that mistletoe was for Christmas anyway and not Valentine's Day). He supposed that while it was possibly the most traumatic thing to ever happen to him (and considering he was Harry Potter, that was saying a lot) that at least one good thing had come out of it; Malfoy had also been avoiding him since The Incident, much to the bafflement of Ron and Hermione of course. But he wasn't about to shed any light on Malfoy's uncharacteristic behaviour towards them, they'd just have to come up with their own explanations for that. He was quite certain however, that no matter how smart Hermione was or how creative Ron's theories could get, that they'd never come up with anything even remotely close to the truth. And if they thought that he himself was acting strange for not wanting to discuss it when he was usually so eager to dissect Malfoy's every move, well, that was fine by him.
Thirdly, well, thirdly was what happened earlier that day. He finally had a date with Cho Chang. You'd think that was a good thing right? Well, you'd be surprised at how wrong you'd be. Harry had had a crush on Cho since he first saw her play for the Ravenclaw Quidditch team in his third year at Hogwarts. Since she was going out with Cedric at the time he didn't stand a chance, and he was also rejected when he asked her to the Yule Ball in his fourth year. However, the death of her beloved boyfriend meant that she was single. And apparently interested in Harry. Or...she was. He wasn't quite sure she'd still be after the way today had gone. Harry had thought that even after their disastrous kiss last December, the fact that she'd still agreed to a date with him and on Valentine's Day especially, meant that she was interested in him. But today she'd seemed more interested in talking about Cedric's death. Harry still felt a deep pang of sadness, regret, and guilt whenever he thought about Cedric and his untimely demise. It wasn't something he wanted to discuss, especially with the boy's ex-girlfriend. Though he wasn't sure ex was the right term for someone who lost their beau to death rather than a break up. Needless to say things were rather awkward between them. The date had started rather well, talking about Quidditch which they both liked and had in common. But then it turned to the other thing they had sort of in common: Cedric. He thought back to her attempt to get him to open up and talk about it, which of course, he didn't want to do.
"Look," he said desperately, leaning in so that nobody else could overhear, "let's not talk about Cedric right now... let's talk about something else." But this, apparently, was quite the wrong thing to say. "I thought," she said, tears spattering down on to the table, "I thought you'd u - u - understand! I need to talk about it! Surely you n - need to talk about it t - too! I mean, you saw it happen, d - didn't you?"
"Well - I have talked about it," Harry said in a whisper, "to Ron and Hermione, but -"
"Oh, you'll talk to Hermione Granger!" she said shrilly, her face now shining with tears. Several more kissing couples broke apart to stare. "But you won't talk to me! P - perhaps it would be best if we just… just p - paid and you went and met up with Hermione G - Granger, like you obviously want to!"
Ron and Hermione were his best friends, everybody knew that, so of course he would talk to them. But she didn't seem to have a problem with him talking to Ron, it was solely Hermione she got bent out of shape about. He really didn't know what Hermione had to do with it. He also recalled her reaction when he said he had to meet Hermione.
"Er… listen, d'you want to come with me to the Three Broomsticks at lunchtime? I'm meeting Hermione Granger there."
Cho raised her eyebrows. "You're meeting Hermione Granger? Today?"
"Yeah. Well, she asked me to, so I thought I would. D'you want to come with me? She said it wouldn't matter if you did."
"Oh, well, that was nice of her." But Cho did not sound as though she thought it was nice at all. On the contrary, her tone was cold and all of a sudden she looked rather forbidding.
He had thought Cho a rather nice girl. But she did seem to have a big problem with Hermione, and he didn't know how to feel about that. Hermione was his friend and he didn't appreciate people hating on her for no reason. He wasn't sure what Hermione ever did to Cho to warrant those reactions. Hermione had even tried to help him when he told her about it so he didn't think Hermione had anything against Cho.
"You should have told her differently," said Hermione, still with that maddeningly patient air. "You should have said it was really annoying, but I'd made you promise to come along to the Three Broomsticks, and you really didn't want to go, you'd much rather spend the whole day with her, but unfortunately you thought you really ought to meet me and would she please, please come along with you and hopefully you'd be able to get away more quickly. And it might have been a good idea to mention how ugly you think I am, too," Hermione added as an afterthought.
This had just served to confuse him further.
"But I don't think you're ugly," Harry had said to her honestly.
Hermione had just laughed. He was quite sure she muttered something to herself after that but she denied it when asked.
He didn't quite understand the entire situation. Harry wasn't the most eloquent or romantic guy as he well knew but he always thought his heart was in the right place at least. He'd gone with Cho to Madame Puddifoot's even though he thought the place was terribly nauseating, especially when surrounded by kissing couples everywhere. But she seemed to think he'd rather go meet Hermione, even though he made time to go with her. Besides, what was wrong with meeting one of his best friends? It's not like he was ditching Cho, she could have come along with him! It would have been nice for his friends and his date to get along and get to know each other. In any case wasn't she the one who said Roger Davies had asked her to go with him? If she had such a big problem with Harry meeting his friend shouldn't she have just gone with Roger? She could have spent her time glued to his face rather than crying which was all she seemed to do around Harry. He thought back to how awkward it was even before Cho started crying over Cedric, again.
Cho's hand was lying on the table beside her coffee and Harry was feeling a mounting pressure to take hold of it. Just do it, he told himself... But just as he moved his hand forwards, Cho took hers off the table. She was now watching Roger Davies kissing his girlfriend with a mildly interested expression. "He asked me out, you know," she said in a quiet voice. "A couple of weeks ago. Roger. I turned him down, though." Harry, who had grabbed the sugar bowl to excuse his sudden lunging movement across the table, could not think why she was telling him this. If she wished she were sitting at the next table being heartily kissed by Roger Davies, why had she agreed to come out with him?
He was still wondering about that. They didn't even hold hands and she seemed more interested in either watching Roger and his girlfriend or talking (and by extension, crying) about Cedric. Harry was starting to wonder if she agreed to go with him just to talk about Cedric. But then again she got mad when he talked about his perfectly platonic friend Hermione. He would understand if she cried because she wasn't over Cedric and his death but then shouldn't she avoid dating anyone? Whether it was him or Roger? He sighed despondently. Maybe a good night's sleep would help him clear his thoughts and figure out where he went wrong. As he closed his eyes there was only one thought remaining in his head.
"Why are girls so confusing?"
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A/N: Reviews help Harry to understand girls.
I might do either another chapter of this or a sequel sort of. Harry has some realisations to make after all. Didn't intend to end it here but somehow it seems right at the moment. Maybe my mind will change idk all I know is this was floating around and wanted to come out so here it is. Harmony if you squint really hard.
Quotes are from Order of the Phoenix, chapter 25 I believe, during Harry and Cho's cringeworthy date...I mean really, if you read that scene and didn't cringe I applaud you. Oh the second-hand embarrassment.