Hermione stretched and closed the book she was reading, she looked up and saw Harry staring at her from behind the book he had open in front of him, but obviously wasn't reading. When she saw him he smiled and then he ducked his head and pretended to be reading.
"Hum." Hermione mumbled and got up to put the book back on the shelf. "Harry, I'm going to go back to the house alright?"
"I'll walk you." He said also getting up, but he left the book on the table and walked toward Hermione.
"You haven't finished your book."
"I wasn't really reading it, it wasn't horribly interesting."
"Maybe you should have found something more to your liking."
"I did." He whispered to himself, under his breath. "Your right maybe I should have." He said to her.
"I'll wait for you if you want to look for something to check out."
"No, I'm sure I'll be fine without reading a book this weekend." Hermione laughed and started to walk out of the library. Harry followed and started to lag behind, she slowed her pace and tried to let him keep up with her till finally she turned around.
"Harry is something wrong?"
"No I was just thinking."
"Oh, about?"
"Nothing really." She sighed and slowly started to walk again. "Do you know tomorrow is Thanksgiving Monie?" Harry asked out of the blue, she stopped and Harry faced her, there was a blank expression on his face.
"Yes, I realized that Harry." She also knew that there was going to be a Thanksgiving ball held this year. She had already been asked twice but she had said she would get back to them because she was waiting for Harry to ask her. Her heart was pounding and her breath was coming in short gulps, she was nervous but also excited because she knew he would ask her now.
"Aren't they having a ball this year?"
"They are." She said simply not wanting to let him know that she had been dreaming of this moment."
"Oh." She was confused, she was sure he was going to ask her but all she got was an "oh".
"Does this conversation have a point?" She asked as nicely and calmly as she could.
"No not really." Hermione's heart did something that it had never done before. It felt as if someone had ripped it out of her and stepped on it repeatedly. She was so upset she didn't even say anything to Harry but just ran off. "Hermione? Did I say something?" He ran after her. She didn't stop until she got to the large painting of the fat lady where she had to give a password to get into the house. She stopped and said the word but before she could get inside and safely away from Harry, she felt a hand grab tightly around her arm and pull her away from the door. "Monie, what did I do?" Harry asked still holding her arm.
"Nothing." She turned her eyes away so she wouldn't have to look into his bright green eyes.
"If I didn't do anything then why did you run down the hall like a maniac?"
"I can walk to the house by myself, can I go now?"
"No!" Harry said loudly. "Tell me what I did!" A few loose people still inside looked at them strangely
"Can we go inside?" She said breaking her arm away from his grasp and ducking inside the door as Harry followed her.
"No can you tell me what I did wrong?" She sighed and looked at him for a minute then shook her head.
"Nothing, you didn't do anything, it's me alright, I'm crazy." She then ran to the girls sleeping chamber where she fell onto her bed and began to cry. "I must be crazy to think Harry was going to ask me to the ball." she said aloud to herself. "I mean why would he want to take his annoying friend the book-worm? He could have his pick of almost all the girls in school." She turned to her side and starred out the small window.
At dinner Hermione finally left the room and cleaned herself up a bit. She stared at her reflection in the mirror and almost started to cry again.
"I look so plain." She said to her reflection. "You couldn't tell me apart from a hundred other plain looking girls." Suddenly she remembered something that Lavender had given her for her birthday.
Running to the small dresser by her bed she opened the bottom draw. At the bottom hidden beneath all her winter school clothes was a large silver box. She pulled it out from under the clothes careful not to mess them up, brought the box with her into the bathroom and opened it. Inside were all sorts of colors of lipstick, eye shadow, eyeliner, and a small tube of mascara. She removed a soft brown color of eye shadow and opened it. Rubbing a brush into the cake of brown she brought it to her eye and carefully brushed it across her eyelid, she did the same with her other eye. Then she placed the small box back into its place in the larger one. She removed an eyeliner pencil next and lined her eyes with black, making sure she didn't stick herself in the eye. She put the pencil back and took the tube of mascara and brushed the black goop onto her eyelashes thin and evenly. Then took out a light cream/natural color of lipstick and brushed it across her lips. She finished off with some lip-gloss and put everything back into its place in the box, and put the box under her bed. She looked at her reflection again.
"Not bad for my first time." She said and smiled. She stepped back and looked at her school uniform and sighed. "I don't even have a dress for the ball." Just then another idea came to her head and she took a book out from underneath a large stack of books she had checked out of the library. The book contained a spell on how to make clothing for important occasions she knew because she had skimmed through it and this was as much of an emergency as any. Reading, the chapter told her to imagine the dress she wanted and then to say a spell and turn around while saying it. Taking a second to make up her mind she decided on a sleeveless dress with white silk covering the chest and yellow around the rest and it parted at the waist to show a white silk skirt underneath that. She said the words while turning and finally she opened her eyes and she was spinning on her own in the air in a cloud or glitter and she felt her school clothes changing into the dress she had imagined. Floating back to the ground and as she looked at the dress she almost died. It was perfect, with soft yellow strappy heels that matched the color of the dress and a sparkling silver crown. She though the crown looked rather silly with her hair down and fluffy. Hermione decided she would put it up the night of the dance and then took off the dress and carefully laid it flat on the floor in a clothes bag under her bed. She also removed her crown and shoes and placed them next to the dress. Washing her face she quickly hopped into bed so it would look like she was sleeping when the other girls came up from dinner.
Harry scanned the dining hall and barely touched his food.
"Come on Harry eat something, you'll make yourself sick." Ron said stuffing his face with a drumstick.
"I'm not very hungry, Ron, have you seen Hermione? I'm worried about her?"
"She's probably in the library reading and forgot it was dinner time." "No, I saw her go back to the house and to the girls room and I've been asking some girls and they all say she was in bed and she said she was sick, I don't think she's come down since."
"Well what did you do to her Harry?" Harry glared at Ron.
"I didn't do anything, I asked her if she knew Thanksgiving was tomorrow and if they were having a ball this year, then she ran away from me and when I asked her what was wrong she said she was crazy and ran to the girls room."
"You sod!" Ron said picking up another drumstick.
"What do you mean?" Harry asked clueless. Ron shook his head and put down his half-eaten drumstick.
"You really don't know. Harry, can't you see Hermione has got it bad for you? Obviously she thought you were going to ask her to the dance. When you didn't she thought she was crazy for believing you were going to ask her."
"How did you know that?" Harry looked confused.
"Well you learn a lot when you hang out with a girl like Lavender." Ron and Harry both looked over at Lavender how was laughing and gossiping about some Ravenclaw girl with her friends.
"That explains it." Harry said. "So Hermione really wanted me to ask her to the ball?"
"Of course."
"I was thinking about asking her but I didn't want to compromise our friendship if she said no."
"I don't think it would if she said no, I don't think she'll say no, I think you should ask her."
"Thanks Ron, I'll do it the next time I see her in class."
"Umm Harry, no classes tomorrow remember? Everyone is getting ready for the dance."
"That's right. So how am I going to ask her?"
"I know, you could use my owl and send her a note telling her to meet you somewhere."
"Great idea, got any paper on you?"
"No, but when we go back to the room you could send it out the window and it would get there faster to."
"Alright." Dinner ended and the boys raced up to the room, where Harry wrote Hermonie a letter telling her to meet him on the tower of the house before the dance. Ron put the note in his owl's talons and let him out the window.