"Okay Hermione, breathe…" muttered Hermione under her breath. "Just breathe, breathe and carry on walking…" It was at that last thought that Hermione realised that she had actually stopped dead in the middle of the stairs leading up to the top box and her chin seemed to be in danger of dragging along the very same stairs.

And then, Hermione saw in slow motion, Draco turn to face her (obviously trying to catch a glimpse of what other people were now pointing and laughing at). Hermione also saw in slow motion, Draco's face contort into surprise and then something Hermione had never seen on Draco's face before: relief. Relief and was that a trace of tenderness?

Just as Hermione was looking at him quizzically, the strange emotion riddling Draco's face was masked as if by a shadow of contempt and hatred. As this snapped Hermione back to reality she realised that she was still standing in the middle of the stairs and was in danger of missing the pre-game entertainment.

Hurriedly, she sidled into her seat (thankfully an aisle seat) and settled back to watch the Bulgarian and Isle of White mascots prance around. It did not escape Hermione's notice that she was almost directly in front of Draco. From the look on his face, it had not escaped his notice either.

However, Hermione had not noticed this because the Bulgarian mascots had just walked onto the pitch. They were, of course, the acclaimed Veela. As Hermione stuffed her fingers in her ears so she didn't have to listen to their wailing, she gazed around the stadium and sighed as she saw almost every single male in the stadium drooling, entirely captivated. In fact, the only male that didn't seem to be captivated by the Veela was Draco who was staring, equally open-mouthed and drooling, but at Hermione instead.

A few minutes later, the Veela stopped their singing/screeching (to many boos from the crowd) and exactly 143 small balls of what seemed to be glowing fibre glass flew round the goals, diving in and out of the hoops. They were Feewups – the Isle of White mascots. As well as being incredibly cute, they also arranged themselves into a variety of different shapes, with different combinations of their number lit up.

After the Feewups had made a rather vulgar gesture at the Bulgarian end, the players walked out. First was Dimitrov, Ivanoca, Zograf Levski, Vulchanoc and Volkov. The Bulgarian players. Hermione had obviously met this rabble on several occasions when she had been unwilling dragged to a social event of Viktor's. Hermione had a soft-spot for Volkov – he was so under-appreciated. Dimitrov also made a wicked martini. However, she had never liked Zograf because once when he was very drunk and Hermione was almost as drunk, he had tried to … shudder. Hermione would rather not remember. Suffice to say it was a memory that could not be wiped out with 14 martinis and was likely to last permanently.

As Hermione was brooding, a huge cheer went up from the crowd. She didn't need to look up to know that Krum had walked onto the pitch. Grudgingly hoisting herself up, Hermione stood up and clapped and cheered and screamed with everyone else. Krum looked up in her general direction and squinted. Then he waved at someone he supposed was Hermione but was actually several rows down from her and on the wrong side. The girl that Krum had waved at fainted and Hermione thought that she would need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Luckily Krum hadn't noticed and was busy getting psyched up for the game, chatting with his team mates as he mounted his broom, punching one of them playfully on the shoulder. The punch almost made his teammate (who happened to be Zograf) fall off his broom.

The commentator announced that Murphy, Brown, Outhwaite, Crawford, Mortensen, Black and Worth had walked onto the pitch and the game commenced almost immediately.