'Ginny,' Harry began, 'there's something I don't quite understand. Why is it that in this latest film, you look so unbelievably bored?'
She didn't respond right away, just sipped her pumpkin juice. After setting the goblet back on the tabletop she looked up and met his eyes. 'It's because I have to kiss Daniel Radcliffe.'
'What, really?' piped up Ron, before Harry could speak. 'He's a good-looking bloke, isn't he?'
Ginny made an odd noise in the back of her throat and tipped her hand left and right in a 'so-so' gesture.
Harry stared at her. 'Thanks, Ginny.'
'Honestly,' Hermione scoffed, 'the whole thing is ridiculous. Ginny, I don't think it's a matter of you being bored, you just aren't yet comfortable enough with the role. Ron, you're chewing too loudly. And Harry, you get upset too easily.'
'I do not get -!' Harry said crossly, but stopped when he noticed the smirk on Hermione's face. Ron snorted.
'Heads up, guys,' said Ginny in a low voice. 'It's Alan Rickman.'
The other three glanced around and sure enough, there was Alan Rickman striding across the Great Hall, his black cloak billowing around him. Harry, Ron and Hermione watched him approach and sit down at the Top Table whereupon Gambon immediately struck up a conversation with him.
Hermione said, 'what do you think about him as Snape?'
'Gotta be someone, hasn't it?' said Ron at once. 'Jeremy Irons wouldn't have been bad, either.'
'Oh yeah,' Harry laughed, 'like that French and Saunders thing!'
'Yeah. It was good, that.'
'It was okay,' said Ginny to no one in particular. Ron exchanged a glance with Harry, jerked his head in Ginny's direction and then rolled his eyes as if to say 'I see what you mean.'
'He's old though,' Hermione said abruptly. Harry and Ron looked around and realised she was still thinking about Mr. Rickman.
'Yeah, but Gary Oldman's no Channing Tatum though, is he?' said Harry (Hermione's and Ginny's expressions immediately became dreamy; Ron pretended to throw up onto his plate), 'and yet here he is, playing Sirius.'
'True,' replied Hermione, her expression vague again.
Harry looked at his friend; really looked at her. Seeing her, sitting there with one hand on the tabletop, the other frozen in mid-air as if the motor running her limbs had suddenly short-circuited, Harry thought that he had never looked at her so clearly before.
'Hermione, do you do weightlifting with those eyebrows?'
'Huh?' This broke her reverie. Her head whipped round and she drilled him with her brown eyes.
'Well, it's just that every time you say a line (and I really mean every time), your eyebrows look like there's an electric current running through them.'
'Oh,' she said, 'I didn't, er... oh -!' Her cheeks were beginning to redden.
'Whoa, Harry!' Ron almost shouted, looking round with wild eyes.
Harry shrugged off the accusation, and continued to look at Hermione. He had apparently embarrassed her to the colour of beetroot. She opened her mouth to speak; closed it; opened it again. Nothing came out, at first. Then -
'At least I look like I'm effing acting, unlike Ginny!'
Now it was Ginny's turn to go red. Harry and Ron physically backed away up the bench; it was as though sparks were shooting from her eyes. Her lips worked furiously - they almost heard her teeth grinding - then pulled back, exposing her teeth in a horrible snarl.
Hermione's eyes widened as Ginny got slowly, tauntingly, to her feet.
Plunged her hand into her robes, withdrew her wand.
A moment of perfect stillness. Then Ginny screamed.
'AVADA KEDAVRA!'
The almost comic look of terror on Hermione's face never left it as she rose up, her head tilting back , away, followed by her torso; her body rising and spinning backwards through the air as if in slow-motion to land with a crashing thud on the other side of the table.
Into the ensuing silence, Ron whispered, 'Blimey! Talk about overkill.'
'Literally,' said Harry, beginning to chuckle.
Ron looked at him. They both burst out laughing.