Chapter 8 – Hallowe'en
September passed by with nary a complaint from Harry. He felt as if he were getting a good handle on his classes, finally, and he hadn't had any altercations with the Gryffindor boys. Draco seemed to have taken the other boys' little intervention well enough that he still sat next to Harry in Transfiguration. Harry still wasn't entirely sure he wanted Draco there, but he proved to be decent enough at Transfiguration that they worked quite well together.
Even their Flying lessons had progressed to a point where most of the students had actually taken to the air on a broom, and Harry found that he enjoyed it rather a lot. He even seemed to be quite good at it, too—Professor Snape had told him and Draco to attend Slytherin team practises to observe, since the team would be losing members next year. He still wouldn't be allowed his own broom, but none of the other first years were allowed one either, so Harry couldn't say the rule was unfair, exactly, just that it was completely ridiculous.
Harry's excitement over watching the Slytherin team practise couldn't even be dented by Draco's generally dismissive and overly-nonchalant manner. And Blaise had told him anyway that Draco was terrified of doing something stupid and had written home for reassurance and advice. Harry however had taken to flying on a broom like he'd been doing it all his life already, and he was more worried about fitting in with the older, all wizarding, Slytherin boys. Draco would be automatically accepted in that way – he was the son of a rich and important pureblood, and he had known some of the boys on the team since he was a child – but Harry had noticed that some of the older Slytherins seemed to dislike him and he couldn't figure out what he had done to deserve it.
The other first years had said it was all in his head, but he couldn't help notice how some Slytherins stopped talking when he walked into a room, or changed the topic rather suddenly when they saw him, or couldn't quite look him in the eye. Although come to think of it, Harry had noticed that most of the school got like that when he was around, except the first years he had classes with, although not all of them liked him either. The little group of friends Harry had made usually insulated him from the general weirdness, but at the Quidditch sessions – which were to be 'closed' – he would only really know Draco, who behaved unpredictably.
At least Harry knew he was good at flying. That would probably be enough for the Quidditch boys—it was the only thing some of them cared about, apparently. Well, Quidditch and girls.
In the end when it came time to actually attend the Quidditch practise Harry managed to exit the castle with a smile. Even Draco seemed happy. He and Draco would both be going in for Seeker, true, but it wouldn't matter until the following year – assuming either of them actually proved good enough to make the team after all, which wasn't at all assured given that there were second years who hadn't got a chance to play yet. Even Snape picking them out for observation sessions might come to nothing if there was someone else better.
"If Flint knows what he's doing he'll have me up in the air doing manoeuvres right away," Draco said to Harry as they walked out of the Entrance Hall together. Harry supposed the other boy sort of had to get all his nonsense out now, since he doubted he would say any of it to Flint through sheer embarrassment, and Draco being Draco, someone would have to sit though it eventually. Harry just wished it wasn't him.
"Snape said we weren't going to do any flying this session," said Harry, although he did secretly hope Flint would ignore Snape's command. The Quidditch boys all had proper brooms, too. He wondered if maybe they'd let him ride one. He could try, anyway.
Draco ignored Harry.
"Seeker is what I usually play but I'm pretty good as a Chaser, too," he said instead, "but of course, you've never played, have you? So you don't know... Well, that's what practise is for I suppose…"
Draco's tone suggested to Harry that practise wouldn't be enough, but Harry had seen Draco fly during lessons and he didn't seem that much better – if he was better at all – than Harry himself was. Harry got the impression even Hooch thought Harry was the better flier.
If he could get Flint to agree, he'd be quids in—or as the wizarding boys would say, 'stirring a full cauldron'.
"Why do you think Snape had the team do this with us?" Harry asked. "Your obvious talent aside," he added, since he'd found you really had to keep Draco on track. "It doesn't seem like the sort of thing he would do…"
Draco stopped walking and considered it for a moment, then dismissively waved his hand as if to bat the question away as pointless.
"Well, he's a Slytherin, isn't he? He'll want to win the Cup next year as well as this year, so why waste us this year when we could be training? I'll bet he does this whenever he finds a promising first year. It's only sensible." Draco frowned as he seemed to realise he might have even more competition for a place on the team than just Harry. At least he'd admitted – even if just by implication – Harry was promising.
Harry considered what Draco had said as the two boys walked towards the Quidditch Pitch. He supposed it didn't really matter anyway, and he had wanted to do something more exciting than just Flying lessons. Maybe next week Flint would have them up in the air!
When they arrived at the Quidditch Pitch however and Harry saw Flint and the other boys on the team, his enthusiasm dimmed somewhat. He hadn't interacted much with Flint before – the older boy was always surrounded by the Quidditch team – but up close the boy gave off a slightly dangerous vibe as he laughed and joked with the team. Harry tried not to judge by appearances generally, given how he himself usually looked with his unkempt hair and general indifference to fashion, but Flint looked almost rough and unfinished. A bit like someone had started a sculpture, then stopped before getting the details just right. His jokes, too, seemed more like jibes than good-natured banter, but Harry thought that maybe he just wasn't used to how the Quidditch boys behaved and it was all in good fun.
"Higgs, you son of a mudblood troll—get your arse in gear! The Snitch is right be-fuc—" he screamed, although he cut off when he saw Harry and Draco. "Looks like our firsties are here. Hey, I wonder which of them will replace you, Higgs? Potter or Malfoy?"
Higgs, the unhappy-looking boy hovering some ten or so feet in the air on his broomstick, glowered at Flint and shot off in the direction of the Snitch – or at least, what he thought was the Snitch. It wasn't, though, as Harry could see it fluttering cautiously in the opposite direction.
"Oi! Either of you see why Higgs is an idiot?" shouted Flint from his broom.
"The Snitch is over there, near the Chasers," said Harry, pointing. Draco obviously hadn't seen it or he would have jumped right in with the answer.
"See?" bellowed Flint. "Higgs, you useless lump of ghoul shit! Potter saw the bloody Snitch and he wears glasses! Sit down you pair of shits," he said, "I'll give you something to do later. Watch for now."
Flint sped off to berate Higgs some more far up into the sky, and Draco dragged Harry off towards the section of the stands where they were supposed to watch the training. Despite what he had said, he never did come back to give Harry or Draco something to do and spent most of the training session with the players. Still, Harry found it all very educational – he even learnt some new and, frankly, exotic swear words from Flint – although he did have to borrow Draco's weird binoculars a few times to see what was going on high up into the sky. Fortunately, they could even rewind the action so both boys could see what was going on even if Harry did see it a bit later. Harry tried to remember to ask Tracey or Theodore where he could get a pair of his own.
"Flint swears a lot, doesn't he?" said Harry during a relative lull in the action. "What do you think being on the team would be like?"
"Oh, I'm sure we'd get along just fine," said Draco. "Flint's family is a good one," he said, as if that answered Harry's question. When Harry didn't say anything, Draco continued. "His sort are a bit rough but I don't believe the rumours about troll blood in the family, no matter what Blaise says."
Harry made a mental note to look up whether wizards and trolls could even have children together, then shrugged.
"I don't know about that," Harry said, "but he seems a bit full on."
"Oh, that?" said Draco, smiling. "It's because he's not very good academically. Stebbins—not the one you're thinking of, the other one—told me he's going to flunk his NEWTs again, no question, and everyone knows it apparently, so Quidditch is really all he's got. He could try again but after a certain point it just gets embarrassing." Draco shrugged.
"The Flints are an old family but they're not exactly well-off, you know, so he wants to be scouted. They say he's good enough to play for England, but I'm not so sure. He's no Keaton Flitney."
"Er, yeah, right," said Harry. He could understand that: before finding out he was quite rich, Harry had wondered just what he would do after finishing school. His best option had been somehow convincing his uncle to give him an easy management job, but Harry suspected neither he nor Vernon would have been pleased with that, no matter how good at his job Harry turned out to be. Harry looked up at Flint and the others. "I wouldn't mind playing for England one day," he said.
"You'll have to get on the Slytherin team first," said Draco with a smile, "so good luck beating me to it. There's only one Seeker, Potter, and it's going to be me."
"We'll see," said Harry. He certainly didn't intend to let Draco beat him to the team. That was a problem for another day, another year. But Harry was going to work for it. Sod Draco and his private tuition and the Quidditch pitch he had had at his house; Harry could beat him without any of that and not be a prat about it.
The latter half of October went by fairly smoothly, at least as far as Harry was concerned. He attended another couple of Quidditch practises, which were always entertaining, and although the professors had started piling on the homework the first year Slytherins had settled into a good study routine and everyone – even Vince and Greg, although with some assistance – had managed to at least keep up. Lessons were even starting to get quite interesting, as a lot of the very basic introductory material had been covered.
For the entire week leading up to Hallowe'en Harry had to deal with whispers and comments about this or that thing relating to his parents, Voldemort, and even Sirius Black. Some of the upper years had even been caught betting on whether or not Sirius Black would try to come and 'finish the job' on Sunday – something made even more likely by reports of multiple sightings of Black in and around Hogsmeade earlier that week.
By the end of lessons in the week of Hallowe'en, Harry still hadn't even had the time to properly consider that it was the twelve year anniversary of his parents' deaths and the attack on their family by Voldemort, or what that meant and how he felt about it, or even how he should feel about it.
Until, of course, multiple other students helpfully pointed it out to him in various ways over the course of the day. It had started in the morning double Potions session with the Gryffindors.
"I wouldn't like to be Potter today, would you?" Finnegan had said to Weasley on their way into the Potions classroom. "Must be awful. I wonder if he's cried."
"I wonder if he remembers anything about it," Weasley had said in reply.
Of course, as far as Harry knew, he remembered nothing. He had strange nightmares occasionally, but whether those were memories he couldn't say. And he didn't particularly want to remember it, nor have his attention brought to it again and again, so it was irrelevant. Snape had been particularly grumpy for whatever reason that morning, too, enough that Finnegan and Weasley were both sent to see McGonagall after mucking up their potion, which did make Harry feel a little better.
It had continued in Charms with the Hufflepuffs after he overheard a – not particularly quiet – conversation between Sophie Roper and Megan Jones about whether Harry would want revenge on Sirius Black. By the end of the day Harry couldn't even enjoy the Hallowe'en decorations – real bats, enchanted skeletons, and gigantic pumpkins that changed their facial expressions – without thinking about things he would really rather not.
At least their last lesson on Thursday was a double Herbology session, so Harry could focus on his work instead of the Gryffindors and their – almost always very loud - whispering about the attack on his parents. Harry thought it might not be so bad if they were brave enough to say Voldemort while they were talking about him within earshot, but some of them couldn't even manage to say 'Sirius Black' or 'You-Know-Who'.
"The Feast on Sunday should be really good," said Tracey, breaking Harry from his reverie. "We just have to get through lessons tomorrow first. Sorry most of our year is a big sack of gits!"
"Hufflepuff wasn't that bad in Charms," said Harry. "Except for a couple." He did think that Ernie might have said something to them, but whatever the reason, at least nobody had mentioned it right in front of him. "Not like that lot." He took a glance at the Gryffindors walking behind them.
"D'you think he remembers?" Harry heard one of the girls ask. "You know—"
"Ignore them," said Tracey. "I heard Sprout is going to show us her Wailing Neeps!"
"It's easy to say—wait, what's a Wailing Neep?"
"You'll see!" said Tracey. She grabbed his arm and pulled him along. "Come on!"
After all the students had filed into the places at the tables of Greenhouse One, Sprout placed an earth-filled crate on each of them. Gently wiggling leaves poked out of the dark, moist soil.
"Today we're going to be harvesting Wailing Neeps," said Sprout. She placed her hands together. "Who knows what a Wailing Neep is?" After a few moments she pointed to one of the Gryffindor girls waving her hand in the air. "Miss Brown?"
"Singing vegetables, Professor," said Brown. "Some people train them to sing at parties."
"One point to Gryffindor for an excellent answer, Miss Brown!" said Sprout. "Quite right. Yes, class. Wailing neeps are a kind of turnip—related to the common variety we eat but quite distinct—which can sing. Or, more accurately, wail. In times long past they featured commonly in funerary rites of some Celtic wizards, but nowadays we see them more often at parties and other such events. Can anyone tell me what the leaves are used for? Someone from Slytherin, perhaps?"
The Slytherins – Harry included – shuffled uneasily. Harry had no idea Wailing Neeps had existed until a few minutes ago, so he hoped he wouldn't be called on to answer. Eventually Daphne put up her hand.
"If you boil them under the first full moon after Hallowe'en, and spread the leaves over your garden, it stops gnomes eating your herbs and vegetables." Daphne paused. "By screaming at them."
"Excellent work!" said Sprout. "One point to Slytherin. Indeed, Wailing Neeps are quite the versatile little veggie. Now, I want you to split into pairs – or threes – and get your gloves on. We're going to be preparing a batch of Neeps for tonight's Feast. Most of the Neeps for tonight have already been shipped over to the castle, but these ones needed just a bit more time to rest. This is a good lesson to prepare you for something we'll be working with next year, but which are much more dangerous than Neeps!"
The students got into the pairs and threes with only a couple of incidents – localised to the Gryffindor half of the class – and Harry started to feel a bit better. Professor Sprout placed another few crates of Neeps on the other tables and demonstrated the proper way to remove them from the soil.
"Remember to be firm but gentle!" shouted Professor Sprout over the noise. "We don't want to traumatise the poor things before tonight's performance! Wash them slowly and then place them over here after stuffing their mouths with a damp, muddy cloth. Don't worry, they like it well enough once they get used to it. If it gets too loud for you, pick up a pair of ear-muffs and carry on. We've got a lot to get through."
Harry looked at the crate full of twitching leaves dubiously. Could they really like what was about to happen?
"Let's get you out of there…" said Tracey. She reached into the crate and pulled out the first of their Neeps. It immediately opened its gash-like mouth and wailed. All through the greenhouse students were pulling Neeps from the soil, and each one joined in the cacophonous dirge. After about a minute or so, the Neeps started to wail in unison. The relatively harmonious song didn't last for long, however, as students started shoving muddy rags into the strange vegetables' mouths.
Harry stared at their Neep. It even had little sockets above the mouth that looked like eyes, although Harry didn't think the Neeps could see. At least, he hoped they couldn't see; singing vegetables with mouths were already strange enough without them being able to see. Seeing singing vegetables raised questions about whether or not they could think that Harry didn't want to explore just then. Perhaps not ever.
"Wash the Neep!" shouted Tracey. "It's starting to struggle!"
Harry jumped to it, and the pair spent the rest of the lesson carefully removing their Neeps from their crates, washing them, and placing muddy cloths into their mouths so that they could rest together with the others.
At one point he caught Blaise and Theodore making faces like the Neeps, and joined in until Sprout told them all off.
The lesson ended up being rather fun, and it was loud enough that even if people were talking about him, Harry couldn't hear them. By the end of the lesson Harry had almost had enough of the Neeps and their wailing, but did find himself wondering what they tasted like. Did wizards even eat Neeps?
By the time he got back to the Slytherin Common Room with the others, he felt much lighter than he had all day.
Wizards, for reasons that nobody had really explained to Harry but which they probably thought were obvious, loved Hallowe'en. Most people back at home in Surrey were uninterested in it – Harry did remember attending one or two Hallowe'en discos at primary school, but otherwise, Hallowe'en was a non-event with maybe a scary film on television at home. Not that Vernon or Petunia would want to watch one.
But at Hogwarts the wizards went all-out. Harry had thought the castle already decorated in time for event, but over the weekend just before Hallowe'en, dozens of new decorations had popped up all over the castle. Harry had already seen the dancing skeletons, the enchanted bats, and pumpkins that made faces at you as you walked past, but somehow the Hogwarts staff had managed to go one step further with the festivities at the Hallowe'en Feast. A choir of Wailing Neeps sang at either end of the Great Hall – rather better than Harry would have expected from his experience in Herbology that day – and suits of armour clashed and banged as they re-enacted duels and battles at the ends of the tables. Trios of jittering skeletons juggled their own heads and wandered throughout the Hall.
It was quite the event, and although Harry didn't fully understand it, he did enjoy the atmosphere in the Great Hall.
Instead of the usual dinner and dessert, the kitchens had produced a five-course feast with all sorts of offerings. Some were a bit too exotic for Harry's tastes, like the jellied eels, but others such as the mutton in dirigible plum sauce were a welcome addition to his plate.
"Brilliant!" exclaimed Millicent. "Look at the ghosts!"
The House ghosts, and a gaggle of others Harry didn't recognise and which didn't usually visit the Great Hall, floated into the cavernous room and started to perform some sort of choreographed dance—including the Bloody Baron! Harry turned to get a better look.
Below the ghosts the suits of armour still fought their battles, and the choir of Neeps wailed. The ghosts, to their credit, managed to fit in to the whole display quite nicely. Ghosts Harry had never seen before twirled and glided through the air whilst the armour clashed sword against pike on the ground. Harry had never experienced anything like it.
Which is why he almost missed Professor Quirrell bursting into the Hall and shouting with a magically enhanced voice.
"Trolls! In the dungeons!" The poor wizard looked almost close to fainting.
Immediately Dumbledore stood and called out to the gathered students.
"Prefects! Take your Houses back to their Common Rooms at once! You may finish the Feast there. Professors, with me!"
Dumbledore exited the Great Hall in a swirl of lavender robes with most of Hogwarts's professors trailing behind him. The Gryffindor and Ravenclaw Prefects led their students away from the Great Hall, but the Slytherin and Hufflepuff Prefects lingered at their House tables.
"If the trolls are in the dungeons where the bloody hell are we supposed to go?" shouted one of the fourth-year Slytherin Prefects to the fifth year Prefects for Slytherin.
"Not to worry!" said Professor Sprout, who had stayed behind. "Fall in with me, all of you. We'll get you back safely! I know a safe route back for emergencies."
Miss Root and Mr Shafiq followed along behind the students as they streamed out of the Hall and into a discreet passageway opened by Professor Sprout.
"Quick as you can, but carefully!" shouted the portly woman.
The first years got sent through the passageway first, followed sequentially by the other years, until eventually the entirety of Hufflepuff and Slytherin Houses were squeezed into the normally unused secret route through the dungeons. After a bit more time than it would usually take to get to the dungeons, Sprout stopped at a fork in the passage.
"Bella, you take the Hufflepuffs through the cellars! Ali, you go with the Slytherins to the dungeons. I'll see the rest through here."
"I know it's all really dangerous," Harry heard Millicent say, "but it's rather exciting, isn't it?"
"What are you, a Gryffindor?" hissed Blaise, who looked like he might be sick. "Trolls! Where we sleep."
"The dungeons are massive," said Millicent dismissively. "And it's not like all the professors at Hogwarts will be outdone by a bunch of trolls. Be real! Where's your sense of adventure?"
Harry agreed with Millicent. The students seemed to be perfectly safe—Sprout had even found them a secret passageway which was presumably as far from the excitement as one could be and still be in the dungeons—and a bunch of trolls running around the dungeons was quite an exciting thing especially when you were safe from them.
"But what if Black sent them in?" retorted Blaise. "Then it's not just trolls, is it?"
Harry hadn't thought of that particular possibility, but now that Blaise had mentioned it, it did worry him. Everyone else in the castle would most likely be completely safe from Black—it was apparently only Harry he was after. With that particular thought in mind, the situation became a lot less exciting for Harry.
"We'll deal with that when it happens," Harry managed to say through clenched teeth.
About a minute or so later the Slytherins emerged into the hallway which housed their Common Room entrance, and one of the prefects opened the doorway and ushered the younger students inside. Once inside, Harry saw that food and dessert had been moved from the Slytherin table in the Great Hall to about a dozen smaller tables in the Slytherin Common Room. A wireless played music from a popular channel in one of the corners, although there was a marked absence of Neeps and disembodied suits of armour. The Slytherin Common Room did have its own ambience which paired well Hallowe'en, so Harry didn't feel too disappointed.
And it was presumably safe from Black, who shouldn't know how to enter the Common Room in the first place.
Once inside the Slytherins dispersed into their various friend groups and occupied their usual positions within the Common Room. Some of them got food from the tables, and others – the fourth and fifth years – disappeared and reappeared with bottles of something Harry was sure was alcohol which they tipped into a punch bowl. One of the Quidditch boys guarded the bowl fiercely, preventing anyone too young from taking anything from it.
Harry and the other first years found themselves banished to their usual little enclave out of the way of the other students. Finally satisfied of his own safety, Blaise lounged near a fireplace listening to Draco rant. Millicent sat next to him rolling her eyes at Tracey, who had started to braid Daphne's hair.
"Trolls! A pack of bloody trolls in the dungeons and where does that worthless old man send us? To the dungeons!" said Draco.
"Mm," replied Blaise, bored, and with all traces of his former fear absent. "We did have Sprout, and Shafiq and Root, and a secret passageway back to our Houses, though."
Draco ignored him.
"We could have died!" he continued. "When my father hears about this there'll be Hell to pay." Draco sounded almost genuinely happy at the thought.
"I think you're right, Draco," said Pansy. "We could have all died! It was lucky, really, that there was even a passageway for us to use. Not that Dumbledore seemed to care." Next to her, Victoria Runcorn nodded in agreement.
"Dumbledore took all the other professors to deal with the trolls," pointed out Harry. "So wouldn't they have been able to deal with it? I don't think we were in danger, not really." He left out his lingering worry about Sirius Black. If the troll attack had been a diversion, the crazed wizard could already be in the castle getting up to whatever nefarious deeds he had planned.
"I'd pay good money to watch what's happening," said Millicent. "I wish that passage didn't exist and we had to go the normal way. Can you imagine? Think about it! All the professors fighting a horde of bloody trolls!"
Daphne turned away from Tracey briefly to pull a face at Millicent, who ignored her.
"With the way this school's gone, it wouldn't surprise me if the trolls won," said Draco.
"Come off it," said Theodore. "Think what you want about Dumbledore's politics, Draco, but there's no way a bunch of trolls could get the better of him. If he can beat Grindelwald he can handle a few trolls!"
Harry had managed to pick up some bits and pieces of history in his time as a wizard, so he did at least know the basics of the story concerning Dumbledore and Grindelwald. What he felt less certain about were wizarding politics—in both the general and specific senses. His peers in Slytherin, however, seemed much more clued in and willing to comment. Although why a bunch of bloody thirteen year olds had any interest in politics was beyond him. Harry assumed it was just parroted comments and opinions from their parents, like Dudley did with Vernon, but it was a common enough topic of conversation that Harry thought they probably had some of their own opinions on it.
Theodore and Draco got into a little argument over Dumbledore's martial prowess which sounded to Harry as if they had had it before. They continued like this—with the occasional interjection from one of the other Slytherin first years—until Vince and Greg brought back a few plates heaped with food and placed them where the others could grab stuff from them.
Argument forgotten, the first years started to pick over the remains of the Feast. After all, Harry had been looking forward to dessert before the trolls had interrupted proceedings, and whoever had transported the food into the Common Room had chosen to bring everything.
When Tracey finished braiding Daphne's hair, the pair of them got up and made their way to the tables with all the food to get some glasses of punch. When they returned a few minutes later—without the punch—both girls appeared visibly shaken.
"What's wrong with you?" asked Pansy.
"When we went to get some punch the prefects were talking and—and apparently a student was caught in the attack," said Daphne. "The professors got there too late, and—and they said she was hurt. Badly."
"Gemma Farley said it was one of the Gryffindor girls," added Tracey. "They sent her to St Mungo's."
"Rowle said the teachers think she might not make it," said Daphne, her lip quivering. "But they shooed us away before we could hear anything else. I hope it's not Parvati."
"With any luck it'll be Granger," said Draco smugly, "and the trolls would've done us all a favour."
A few of the other first years made noises of disgust and walked away from the wider group, although most of Harry's friends stayed, save Millicent who got up in disgust to sit somewhere else. Tracey appeared more uncomfortable than before, and after a few moments' indecision went to sit next to Millicent. Daphne stood her ground and glared at Draco.
"That's not very nice, Malfoy," she said. "Someone could have died, and even if—no one deserves—What an awful thing to say!" She grunted. "You're such an arse!" she said, and stormed off to sit near Tracey and Millicent.
"If it is Granger it's her own fault," continued Draco as if nothing had happened. "Serves her right, the uppity little Mu—"
"Draco," said Theodore sharply, with a quick glance at Harry. It was fast, and brief, but Harry did notice it. "Daphne's right," Theodore added quietly. "There's no need to be nasty about it. You shouldn't be happy about someone dying." He fidgeted with his robe sleeve and stared at the floor next to Draco's seat.
Harry had the feeling Draco wasn't about to call Granger a 'muggleborn', and although he didn't know precisely what word Draco had been about to say or exactly what it meant, it left a sour taste in his mouth nonetheless.
Draco looked set to say something else, but Harry didn't feel much like letting him.
"You can be a real prat sometimes, Draco," said Harry. He stood up. "You've got all this money, people want to be friends with you, your family is famous and your dad is like, big in the Ministry… so why d'you have to be so nasty to someone like Granger? Daphne's right; you are an arse." Harry shook his head and walked away to join Tracey, Millicent, and Daphne at their table. He could feel the eyes on him as he walked away, but found that he didn't care.
After a few minutes he noticed that Blaise had left Draco and his little group to join some of the other first years, although Theodore had stayed. With a not insignificant effort he put it out of his head, and tried to enjoy the rest of his Hallowe'en, but it had already been ruined at least twice over.
