THE MISSING SCENE
- a missing scene from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire where Viktor Krum asks Hermione Granger to the ball. One shot.
She was, as usual, seated at a table in the library, a stack of books before her, each thicker than the one beneath it. Pausing only to restrain her bushy brown hair with a scrunchie, Hermione Granger returned to her notes.
She was deeply immersed in a small, mostly un-touched book about dragons. It had not escaped Hermione's mind that she had Arithmancy homework to be doing, but this, she felt, was more important. She was trying to find a link between the dragon egg and the awful screeching noise it made when opened. Anything, darn it, that would help Harry.
So far, she had come up blank. Scowling, she cast aside the dragon book and started on the next one, opening to a marked passage about banshees, and tried to focus.
Of course, it was very difficult to focus on what she was trying to read when there was a group of twittering girls nearby, spying on Viktor Krum through the bookshelves.
"D'you reckon he'd go to the ball with me?" A rather buxom sixth-year Ravenclaw girl asked.
"I doubt that! He's much more likely to go with me!" A vaguely pretty Slytherin girl cut in.
It was the first time Hermione had ever seen Slytherin girls being nice - or rather, actively being friendly - to other girls. She supposed they all had their fangirling in common. She, personally, didn't see the appeal. To her, Krum seemed surly and almost stupid, although she was certain he wasn't as stupid as Harry and Ron thought. After all, there he was, sitting a distance from her, with his rather curved nose buried in a thick book. She didn't need to be near him to know what he was reading- Hogwarts: A History - one of her favorites.
Somehow, it almost impressed her that he was reading about her school, instead of showing the disdain for Hogwarts that most of the Beauxbatons students were displaying.
The fan-club of girls appeared to grow bored, and they left, still whispering and throwing very obvious looks of desire at the foreign young man.
Thankful for the silence, Hermione buried her face back in her book, entirely certain she would not be disturbed.
Imagine her confusion then, when approximately three minutes later, a surprisingly quiet voice cut through her silent reading, just as she turned a page.
"Excuse me?"
Hermione looked up and found herself face-to-face with Viktor Krum.
"Yes?" She tried not to sound annoyed.
"Vare is ze second volume of zis book?" He held up Hogwarts: A History.
"There isn't one, yet." Hermione said.
"Do you mind?" He asked, looking at the empty seat next to her.
She expected to. But oddly, she didn't. Perhaps it was the fact he had been reading her favorite book. Or the fact that he, too, spent so much time in the library.
"No," she moved some of her books so he could sit, then she curiously asked, "don't you have a library at Durmstrang?"
"Vell, ve haff a very small vun. Ve do not light fires very often, so it is hard to read books. Your castle has better books."
"I didn't think you were the type to like books," Hermione said before she could stop herself. She went to apologize, but found he was smiling.
"Ve don't place a lot of importance on books at Durmstrang." He shrugged, "ve focus on flying and spells..."
He stopped, and she understood why - all of the major European magical schools liked to keep their secrets.
"Hermyown," Krum said suddenly - the use of her first name surprised her so much she didn't bother to correct him - "I haff been vundering... Vood you come to the ball vith me?"
Hermione stared. "The - the ball? With you?"
He looked almost sheepish. "I haff been coming here every day, trying to be brave enough to talk to you. Ve don't have girls like you at Durmstrang... But I vood be very happy if you came vith me."
She considered it for a moment. She liked him, she realised. He was surprisingly nice, and who knew that he liked to read?!
So she smiled and said, "I'd love to go. Thank you."
She half-expected him to grin and walk off, but instead, he grinned and stayed sitting beside her, both of them reading companionably until Madam Pince came to kick them out of the library for dinner.