HARRY'S LIST
Later, in bed, Harry can't fall asleep. All around him, silence reigns, interrupted only by the occasional snore or Neville's deep, loud breathing. He keeps turning over in his head Fred and George's words about the list of candidates to go to a ball that, apparently, he should have. Harry makes most of life at Hogwarts around the Weasleys and Hermione, but he doesn't see himself including any of them on that hypothetical list: Hermione and Ron are his best friends, and with Fred, George and Ginny he has a relationship that is more brotherly than friendly.
Mentally, he mentally broadens the range of people to ask to a ball to his entire year and his Quidditch teammates. Parvati Patil is one of the prettiest girls in the school, as is Cho Chang, and Lavender Brown seems nice and talkative, but he doesn't feel like asking them to the ball and spending an entire evening with them – he wouldn't know what to do. At least with Brown, though, he'd be guaranteed topics of conversation, and from what he knows of the girl, most of it would probably be about Divination and Harry's tendency to get into trouble.
Bell, Johnson, Spinnet... Harry automatically dismisses them. He likes them very much, but they have always had a rather remarkable hierarchical relationship, Harry having been the smallest in the team for the previous few years. It may be an imaginary barrier, but it's also an insurmountable one – he'd feel very uncomfortable asking them on something that looks suspiciously like a romantic date. Not to mention that some of them probably already have plans with Fred and George. Of their roommates, Neville already has a date, judging by what the twins have said, and Dean and Seamus are going together, though Harry isn't sure it's exactly the same as if he and Ron were, but they haven't made much more comment. Which opens a door that, until now, Harry hasn't considered: McGonagall has assumed that boys would take girls, but it seems that it doesn't necessarily have to be that way.
He sits up in bed, a little nervously. From here the number of people he can fit on a list is very small. He knows a few upper and lower Gryffindor members by sight, and he has no doubt that Colin Creevey would be more than willing to accompany him, but Harry doesn't find the idea appealing at all. Of the other houses, he wouldn't want to go with someone from Hufflepuff like Zacharias Smith or Ernest Macmillan. He knows even fewer people of Ravenclaw, and Chang has already been asked. And Slytherin... Well, it would be more than ironic to ask Draco Malfoy, the stuffy, posh, unbearable Draco Malfoy.
Draco Malfoy. While it's true that they haven't fought for a while, Harry feels like laughing at the thought of his nemesis since they started Hogwarts, before that even, and the idea of the two of them going to the ball together. If it were at least a wand duel, or even a fistfight, they might stand out, but he can't imagine the blond boy with the ever-smug expression walking arm-in-arm into the Great Hall. Or, given that Malfoy is a little taller, just a few inches, maybe Harry should be the one holding on to his arm. Startled by the sharpness of the image in his mind, Harry shakes his head and lies back down, trying to push the thought of Malfoy and the list of people he'd be willing to take to a ball away, cursing the twins for having suggested the subject to him.
The next morning, Ron and Hermione argue lively at breakfast, but Harry ignores them. Ron is a little obsessed, now that he's confirmed that Hermione is going with someone to the ball, with finding out the guy's name, and he's urging her on while scanning the Slytherin table for Viktor Krum, who hasn't yet come down for breakfast, something he does every morning, longing to see his idol. Harry is also looking around, squinting to compensate for his short-sightedness, but he's looking for Draco Malfoy's blonde hair, the culprit behind his sleepless night. His dreams, or rather nightmares, have been plagued by images of him and Malfoy entering the Great Hall, of the two of them dancing, arguing, casting spells at each other, and a few others that he prefers not to remember and that have caused his sheets to be wet when he woke up. All in all, Harry is pretty pissed off at the Slytherin for ruining his night off on the very day he has a double Potions class with Snape followed by a double Defence Against the Dark Arts class also taught by the professor he loathes so much.
"Harry? " asks Ron, puzzled. Harry blinks, surprised at what he's doing. He has stood up, pushing back the bench they are sitting on. His two friends have stopped talking to each other and are now looking at him with a mixture of concern and curiosity. "Is something wrong?"
"I—" Harry doesn't know what to say. He is not aware that he has stood up suddenly, only that Draco Malfoy has entered the Great Hall followed by his whole gang of friends and some of the Durmstrang students, including the famous international Quidditch player. Realising that several people have begun to look at him curiously, Harry tries to sit down, but his body will not obey him.
"Harry?" repeats Ron once more. Hermione, on the other hand, starts pestering him with questions, worried about whether his scar hurts, whether she thinks someone might be hexing him, and is about to run off to the teachers' table when Harry, with an enormous effort of will, manages to sit back down. "Do you think it has something to do— you know— with the concoction?" The Weasley twins' brew. Once again, suspicion works its way into her mind. Hermione frowns and rants about how dangerous it is to test experimental potions on underage students.
"You should go and see Madam Pomfrey and tell her about it, in case it has anything to do with anything," says she and Harry, for once, agrees with her. He doesn't like the Hospital Wing, and this year he's managed to avoid it quite successfully thanks to the fact that there are no Quidditch matches or troubles to get into, and the ones fighting dragons and attracting the school's attention are others, but he doesn't mind breaking the streak.
Harry gets up again and makes his way across the Great Hall towards the door, relieved to find his muscles responding easily this time and his legs feeling lighter than ever. Hermione and Ron, who have picked up his rucksack for him, hurry after Harry to catch up with him before he leaves the hall, but as he reaches the door, Harry realises, horrified, that his feet are heading not towards the exit but towards the Slytherin table.
Specifically, to the place where Draco Malfoy is sitting with his friends and Viktor Krum.
"No—" He mumbles the word in a plea for help, for even his jaw does not obey him properly. It doesn't feel like the Imperius Curse that the fake Professor Moody had put them through at the beginning of term, for Harry's mind is clear and there's no one whispering orders to him, and he doesn't have that unpleasant, intrusive feeling, but he's as unappealable as Imperius is. "No!"
With effort, drawing on his experience against the Imperius Curse and, grateful for the first time since the term began for the knowledge gained in those Defence Against the Dark Arts classes, no matter how much they were taught by a batty Death Eater, Harry manages to stop himself. Ron and Hermione crash into his back, causing him to take another step forward and stumble over the bench at the Slytherin table, though this is not necessary to attract the attention of all the members of the house, who are already looking at him with a mixture of surprise and curiosity, surely anticipating a round of insults or a fight between him and Malfoy.
"Potter?" Malfoy looks at him dumbfounded, a little defensively.
Harry doesn't judge him. If it was Malfoy who had stormed up to the Gryffindor table and stood in front of him with his friends flanking him, he probably would have drawn his wand as quickly as the blond boy has. A sense of rage washed over him. Not only had he managed to get through several weeks of term without getting into trouble or risking his life and, for the first time in over three years, without being the centre of the school's attention, but he had also avoided any sort of confrontation with Malfoy since the previous term when Malfoy had played a practical joke on him by disguising himself as a Dementor.
They had been evenly matched, because Harry had taken him and his two bodyguard-friends down with a powerful Patronus, thinking it was a real Dementor, and then, in the Hospital Wing, they had had a reluctant conversation of few words, thanks to the mediation of Madam Pomfrey and Professor Lupin, in which both had agreed to a sort of truce that, initially, Harry hadn't even considered respecting. However, with no insults, either to him or to Hermione or Ron, from Malfoy and no further Quidditch confrontations as there had been no matches for the rest of the previous term and this one, what had at first been a feigned ceasefire in verbal and physical aggression had become real. So much so that Malfoy hadn't mocked Harry when his name had come up in the Goblet, though he had celebrated Dumbledore's announcement that he wouldn't be allowed to compete for not following the rules. Of course, Harry himself had also celebrated.
And now it is about to wipe out all the previous months and, Harry is not sure why exactly, the prospect saddens him.
