Disclaimer: Everything you recognize is J.K. Rowling's except Jamie, Luka, and Ariana.
Chapter 19-The Unexpected Task
"Potter! Weasley! Pendragon! Will you pay attention?" Professor McGonagall's irritated voice cracks like a whip through the Transfiguration class on Thursday, and Harry, Ron and I jump and look up.
It is the end of the lesson; we have finished our work; the guinea fowl we have been changing into guinea pigs has been shut away in a large cage on Professor McGonagall's desk (Neville's still has feathers); we have copied down our homework from the blackboard ("Describe, with examples, the ways in which Transforming Spells must be adapted when performing Cross-Species Switches"). The bell is due to ring at any moment, and we, have been having a sword fight with a couple of Fred and George's fake wands at the back of the class, looking up, Ron holding a tin parrot, Harry, a rubber haddock, and me with what looks to be an elongated candy cane.
"Now that Potter, Weasley, and Pendragon have been kind enough to act their age," says Professor McGonagall, with an angry look at the three of us as the head of Harry's haddock droops and falls silently to the floor — Ron's parrot's beak severed it moments before — "I have something to say to you all."
"The Yule Ball is approaching — a traditional part of the Triwizard Tournament and an opportunity for us to socialize with our foreign guests. Now, the ball will be open only to fourth years and above — although you may invite a younger student if you wish —"
Oh you have got to be kidding me a ball! I really hate those things. The only good thing to come out of it is the dancing.
Lavender Brown lets out a shrill giggle. Parvati Patil nudges her hard in the ribs, her face working furiously as she too fights not to giggle. They both look around at Harry. Professor McGonagall ignores them. Merlin save Harry.
"Dress robes will be worn," Professor McGonagall continues, "and the ball will start at eight o'clock on Christmas Day, finishing at midnight in the Great Hall. Now then —"
Professor McGonagall stares deliberately around the class. "The Yule Ball is of course a chance for us all to — er — let our hair down," she says, in a disapproving voice.
Lavender giggles harder than ever, with her hand pressed hard against her mouth to stifle the sound. Someone really has to smack her soon. I can see what is funny this time: Professor McGonagall, with her hair in a tight bun, looks as though she has never let her hair down in any sense.
"But that does NOT mean," Professor McGonagall goes on, "that we will be relaxing the standards of behavior we expect from Hogwarts students. I will be most seriously displeased if a Gryffindor student embarrasses the school in any way."
The bell rings, and there is the usual scuffle of activity as everyone packs their bags and swings them onto their shoulders.
Professor McGonagall calls above the noise, "Potter — a word, if you please." Ron and I follow Hermione out the door to wait in the hall for Harry.
"Great another ball." I say flatly. Hermione's cheeks are the slightest bit pink from thinking about it. I can see that she really wants to go. Ron looks like someone had just given him his death sentence though.
"Is that why mum gave me those hideous robes?" Ron asks looking ashen. Just the memory of those robes is enough to send me into a gale of giggles. God those were awful. He glares at me and tries to hit me but I dance out of the way grinning.
"Will you two stop acting like children for a moment! This is huge news, our first real step into adulthood!" She cries. I grimace when she puts it that way.
"Mione— there is nothing about balls that scream adulthood. Luka and I attended our first one when we were six now are six-year-olds very adult like? I can promise you the pie war that we had was very childish indeed." I say with a smirk.
Hermione huffs and crosses her arms, but I smile victoriously. I don't understand why everyone is so intent on growing up. I don't think that it is such a bad thing being young.
Harry comes out of the classroom white as a sheet and sweating. "What's wrong Harry?" Hermione asks him quickly.
"I… I have to get a partner for the ball— and I have to dance in front of everyone." He says shakily. After a moment I can't help myself. I burst into peals of laughter imagining my friend dancing. Oh this is too good to be true!
A lot of kids are staying at Hogwarts for Christmas this year. I'm kind of disappointed with that really. I like having the castle to myself for a while—its peaceful that way.
This year, however, everyone in the fourth year and above seems to be staying, and they all seem to me to be obsessed with the coming ball — or at least all the girls are, and it is amazing how many girls Hogwarts suddenly seem to hold; I have never quite noticed that before. Girls giggling and whispering in the corridors, girls shrieking with laughter as boys pass them, girls excitedly comparing notes on what they are going to wear on Christmas night. . . .
In other words I'm completely out of my depths and partially petrified even though I'm supposedly a girl myself. Since when have I been known to do very girly acts?
"Why do they have to move in packs?" Harry asks Ron and me as a dozen or so girls walk past us, sniggering and staring at Harry. "How're you supposed to get one on their own to ask them?"
"Lasso one?" Ron suggests. "Got any idea who you're going to try?" I know exactly who Harry would like to ask (Cho Chang).
"Come on Jamie you're a girl how do we ask them?" Ron says spinning towards me. I guess that they've finally seemed to notice that I am indeed a girl.
"Well… I'm no expert but I'd expect it to go something like this," I clear my throat, and stick out my hand, "Hello there I'm Harry Potter, would you go to the ball with me?" I say grinning at the end.
Harry and Ron scowl not liking my perfectly reasonable approach to asking a girl out to the ball. Boys I don't understand them at all. I huff seeing as they're probably not going to take my advice on this.
"Listen, you're not going to have any trouble. You're a champion. You've just beaten a Hungarian Horntail. I bet they'll be queuing up to go with you." Ron says. As it turns out, Ron is quite right.
A curly-haired third-year Hufflepuff girl to whom Harry has never spoken in his life asks him to go to the ball with her the very next day. Harry is so taken aback he says no before he'd even stopped to consider the matter. The girl walks off looking rather hurt, and Harry has to endure Dean's, Seamus's, and Ron's taunts about her all through History of Magic. I chose to give my friend a break. The following day, two more girls ask him, a second year and (to his horror) a fifth year who looks as though she might knock him out if he refuses.
"She was quite good-looking," says Ron fairly, after he's stopped laughing.
"She was a foot taller than me," says Harry, still unnerved. "Imagine what I'd look like trying to dance with her." I couldn't help but chuckle at the mental image that gave me.
Things have been going better for Harry as well since the first task. He's been having an easier time of it since people are starting to support him more. Thankfully as well no story has yet to come about Hagrid, but I know that beetle is just biding her time on a Pendragon story. Unfortunately my family is too much of a commodity not to write about.
"She didn' seem very int'rested in magical creatures, ter tell yeh the truth," Hagrid says, when Harry, Ron, Hermione, and I ask him how his interview with Rita Skeeter went during the last Care of Magical Creatures lesson of the term. To our very great relief, Hagrid had given up on direct contact with the skrewts now, and they are merely sheltering behind his cabin today, sitting at a trestle table and preparing a fresh selection of food with which to tempt the skrewts.
So no more risking of life and limb for us thankfully. "She jus' wanted me ter talk about you, Harry," Hagrid continues in a low voice. "Well, I told her we'd been friends since I went ter fetch yeh from the Dursleys. 'Never had to tell him off in four years?' she said. 'Never played you up in lessons, has he?' I told her no, an' she didn' seem happy at all. Yeh'd think she wanted me to say yeh were horrible, Harry."
"'Course she did," says Harry, throwing lumps of dragon liver into a large metal bowl and picking up his knife to cut some more. "She can't keep writing about what a tragic little hero I am, it'll get boring."
I nod my head and grimace. I hate that we have to put up with Rita Skeeter they literally could have picked anyone else and it would be better.
"She wants a new angle, Hagrid," says Ron wisely as he shells salamander eggs. "You were supposed to say Harry's a mad delinquent!"
"But he's not!" says Hagrid, looking genuinely shocked.
"She should've interviewed Snape," says Harry grimly. "He'd give her the goods on me any day. 'Potter has been crossing lines ever since he first arrived at this school. . . .'"
"Said that, did he?" says Hagrid, while Ron, Hermione, and I laugh. "Well, yeh might've bent a few rules, Harry, bu' yeh're all righ' really, aren' you?"
"Cheers, Hagrid," says Harry, grinning.
"You coming to this ball thing on Christmas Day, Hagrid?" I ask Hagrid.
"Though' I might look in on it, yeah," says Hagrid gruffly. "Should be a good do, I reckon. You'll be openin' the dancin', won' yeh, Harry? Who're you takin'?"
"No one, yet," says Harry, going red again. Hagrid doesn't pursue the subject though.
The last week of term becomes increasingly boisterous as it progresses. Rumors about the Yule Ball are flying everywhere, though I don't believe half of them — for instance, that Dumbledore has bought eight hundred barrels of mulled mead from Madam Rosmerta. It seems to be fact, however, that he has booked the Weird Sisters a very famous musical group. I was in fact quite excited to have them coming.
Some of the teachers, like little Professor Flitwick, give up trying to teach us much when our minds are so clearly elsewhere; he allows us to play games in his lesson on Wednesday, I send most of my time enchanting little paper snowmen to juggle themselves. Other teachers are not so generous. Nothing will ever deflect Professor Binns, for example, from plowing on through his notes on goblin rebellions — as Binns hasn't let his own death stand in the way of continuing to teach, we suppose a small thing like Christmas isn't going to put him off.
It is amazing how he can make even bloody and vicious goblin riots sound as boring as Percy's cauldron-bottom report. Professors McGonagall and Moody keep us working until the very last second of our classes too, and Snape, of course, would no sooner let us play games in class than adopt Harry. Staring nastily around at us all, he informs us that he will be testing us on poison antidotes during the last lesson of the term.
Well Merry Christmas to no one. "Evil, he is," Ron says bitterly that night in the Gryffindor common room. "Springing a test on us on the last day. Ruining the last bit of term with a whole load of studying."
"Mmm . . . you're not exactly straining yourself, though, are you?" says Hermione, looking at him over the top of her Potions notes. Ron is busy building a card castle out of his Exploding Snap pack — a much more interesting pastime than with Muggle cards, because of the chance that the whole thing will blow up at any second.
"It's Christmas, Hermione," says Harry lazily; he is rereading Flying with the Cannons for the tenth time in an armchair near the fire. I am playing with my charmed paper army. I'm putting the finishing touches on my little paper Snape dressed up like a muggle's version of an elf Harry showed me. The scowl drawn on his face seems to grow deeper on its own.
Hermione looks severely over at him too. "I'd have thought you'd be doing something constructive, Harry, even if you don't want to learn your antidotes!"
"Like what?" Harry says still focused on his book.
"That egg!" Hermione hisses.
"Come on, Hermione, I've got till February the twenty-fourth," Harry says. He put the golden egg upstairs in his trunk and hasn't opened it since the celebration party after the first task. There are still two and a half months to go until he needs to know what all the screechy wailing means, after all.
"But it might take weeks to work it out!" says Hermione. "You're going to look a real idiot if everyone else knows what the next task is and you don't!"
"Leave him alone, Hermione, he's earned a bit of a break," says Ron, and he places the last two cards on top of the castle and the whole lot blows up, singeing his eyebrows.
"Nice look, Ron . . . go well with your dress robes, that will." It is Fred and George. They sit down at the table with Harry, Ron, Hermione, and me as Ron feels how much damage has been done.
"Ron, can we borrow Pigwidgeon?" George asks.
"No, he's off delivering a letter," says Ron. "Why?"
"Because George wants to invite him to the ball," says Fred sarcastically.
"Because we want to send a letter, you stupid great prat," says George.
"Who d'you two keep writing to, eh?" asks Ron.
"Nose out, Ron, or I'll burn that for you too," says Fred, waving his wand threateningly. "So . . . you lot got dates for the ball yet?"
"Nope," says Ron.
"Well, you'd better hurry up, mate, or all the good ones will be gone," says Fred.
"Who're you going with, then?" says Ron.
"Angelina," says Fred promptly, without a trace of embarrassment.
"What?" says Ron, taken aback. "You've already asked her?"
"Good point," says Fred. He turns his head and calls across the common room, "Oi! Angelina!"
Angelina, who has been chatting with Alicia Spinnet near the fire, looks over at him.
"What?" she calls back.
"Want to come to the ball with me?" Angelina gives Fred an appraising sort of look.
"All right, then," she says, and she turns back to Alicia and carries on chatting with a bit of a grin on her face. Good I've always known that Angelina has had a sort of thing for him for a long while now.
"There you go," says Fred to Harry and Ron, "piece of cake." He gets to his feet, yawning, and says, "We'd better use a school owl then, George, come on. . . ."
They leave. Ron stops feeling his eyebrows and looks across the smoldering wreck of his card castle at Harry.
"We should get a move on, you know . . . ask someone. He's right. We don't want to end up with a pair of trolls."
Hermione lets out a sputter of indignation and I raise my eye brows at them. "A pair of . . . what, excuse me?"
"Well — you know," says Ron, shrugging. "I'd rather go alone than with — with Eloise Midgen, say."
"Her acne's loads better lately — and she's really nice!"
"Her nose is off-center," says Ron.
"That's mean Ron." I say disappointed in him.
"Oh I see," Hermione says, bristling. "So basically, you're going to take the best-looking girl who'll have you, even if she's completely horrible?"
"Er — yeah, that sounds about right," says Ron.
"I'm going to bed," Hermione snaps, and she sweeps off towards the girls' staircase without another word.
"What'd I do?" Ron cries. I roll my eyes at him.
"You were a right prat that's what." I state firmly. We're silent for a while before Harry turns to me.
"Hey Jamie, do you have a date for the ball yet?" He asks me. I raise my eyebrow again at the question.
"No, but then again I don't really want to go in the first place. People have asked but I tell them I'm going stag." I respond carefully. Harry bites his lip and nods.
"Well then what do you say about going with me? It'll be as friends of course but that way we can suffer together." Harry tells me as Ron watches on with an open mouth.
I chuckle softly at him. "No Harry, you don't want to go with me. I know that you want to ask Cho. I'm not going to be the reason that you back out of asking her." I tell him watching him deflate.
"But— if that doesn't work out then yes Harry, I will go to the ball with you as a friend," I stress, "as long as you don't step on my toes when we dance." I tell him with a smile. Harry grins back at me as I gather up my paper army.
"Good luck boys but I'm heading to bed." I tell them crossing the common room and starting up for bed.
The Hogwarts staff, demonstrating a continued desire to impress the visitors from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, seem determined to show the castle at its best this Christmas. When the decorations go up, I notice that they are the most stunning I have yet seen inside the school. Everlasting icicles have been attached to the banisters of the marble staircase; the usual twelve Christmas trees in the Great Hall are bedecked with everything from luminous holly berries to real, hooting, golden owls, and the suits of armor have all been bewitched to sing carols whenever anyone passes them. It is quite something to hear "O Come, All Ye Faithful" sung by an empty helmet that only knows half the words. Several times, Filch the caretaker has to extract Peeves from inside the armor, where he has taken to hiding, filling in the gaps in the songs with lyrics of his own invention, all of which are very rude.
I think that it is brilliant of course. I love Hogwarts at Christmas. I don't know what I'm going to do without it when I graduate.
And still, Harry hasn't asked Cho to the ball. He and Ron are getting very nervous now, though as Harry points out, Ron will look much less stupid than he will without a partner; Harry is supposed to be starting the dancing with the other champions.
"I suppose there's always Moaning Myrtle," he says gloomily, referring to the ghost who haunts the girls' toilets on the second floor.
"Harry — we've just got to grit our teeth and do it," says Ron on Friday morning, in a tone that suggested they were planning the storming of an impregnable fortress. "When we get back to the common room tonight, we'll both have partners — agreed?"
"Er . . . okay," says Harry. I sigh as I watch the two boys leave. For some reason I have a feeling that this all is going to end very badly.
Harry is distracted all day. I guess that is understandable though I don't understand what's so hard about it. Harry asked me the other night, but I guess that it's different when you're asking a friend.
When we're done with Potions class Harry says that he'll meet us at dinner. The three of us stare after him. "You think he's going to do it?" Ron asks.
"Three sickles he does." I say.
"You're on." Ron says smacking my hand. Hermione just rolls her eyes at the two of us.
As we make out way to the Great Hall I fall back so that I can talk to Hermione. "So have you been asked yet? I know I've been a lousy friend but balls— they make me nervous." I say softly. Hermione casts her eyes over to me.
"That's all right Jamie. I'm not exactly the biggest fan of balls either but I think that its going to be rather exciting. And…" She starts but stops when Ron falls back to see what we're talking about.
I'm partially irritated for I'm sure that she was going to spill on who has asked her. Ron eats dinner rather quickly saying that he's off to go and do something. I assume ask a girl out. Hermione and I share bemused looks over the table and finish our meal. I decide to let Hermione keep her secret for a little while longer since it seems like a good one.
Hermione excuses herself saying that she'd see me later so I'm left walking up the common room by myself. Halfway there I bump into my brother. He looks rather haggard.
"Hey Luka." I say. He freezes and turns around to look at me.
"Oh, hey Jame. What's going on?" He asks me. I shrug my shoulders and lean against the banister.
"Nothing much, everyone's just going crazy over this Yule Ball though." I tell him. Luka snorts and shakes his head.
"I know everyone seems to want to go to the ball with me for if they can't have a champion they can have a Pendragon instead. So in the interests of keeping both of our sanity Ariana and I have decided to go together so as to not be the target of any more unwanted attention." Luka tells me. A pang of displeasure hits me suddenly, and I frown wondering where it's coming from.
"Good— I'm happy for you two." I say forcing the best smile I can onto my face.
"Yeah well what about you, I've seen you reject guys left and right. Are you going with anyone?" He asks me. I blow out a breath of air and groan.
"I was planning on going stag that way I wouldn't have to bother, but Harry ended up asking me." I say. Luka's eyes widen and he gives me an incredulous look.
"Jamie— after all that's happened I would have thought…" Luka says but I cut him off.
"As friends of course. I said no and made him ask Cho Chang but if that doesn't work out I agreed to go with him anyway. He has to have a partner so that he can do some sort of dance at the beginning. I'm more afraid for my toes than anything." I tell him.
Luka sighs and lets out a low chuckle readjusting his glasses. "Well then it seems like we'll be in good company at least for this event. If all else fails though we can always start a food war. Many of the purebloods can account for that." Luka grins.
I snicker and bump my brother's shoulder playfully. "I was kinda hoping to get out of another ball you know." I tell him.
He snorts at that. "Jamie we are Pendragons we will always be going to balls especially when we're older. Don't you think for one moment that I won't drag you along with me." He threatens. I scowl at him.
"Now I remember why I don't talk to you more. You're mean." I pout. Luka laughs and starts for the Ravenclaw tower.
"Goodnight Jamie!" He calls.
"Night you prat!" I call after him. With that I climb back to the portrait hole and say fairy lights to the Fat Lady. She nods her head and swings open so that I can climb in. I run into Harry in the common room. He's looking over at the far corner of the room.
I see Ron sitting ashen-faced in a distant corner. Ginny is sitting with him, talking to him in what seems to be a low, soothing voice.
"What's up, Ron?" says Harry, joining them, me a step behind him. Ron looks up at Harry, a sort of blind horror in his face.
"Why did I do it?" he says wildly. "I don't know what made me do it!"
"What?" says Harry.
"He — er — just asked Fleur Delacour to go to the ball with him," says Ginny. She looks as though she is fighting back a smile, but she keeps patting Ron's arm sympathetically. I can't believe that he did that. I have to admit that Ron has more guts than I thought he did.
"You what?" says Harry.
"I don't know what made me do it!" Ron gasps again. "What was I playing at? There were people — all around — I've gone mad — everyone watching! I was just walking past her in the entrance hall — she was standing there talking to Diggory — and it sort of came over me — and I asked her!"
Ron moans and puts his face in his hands. He keeps talking, though the words are barely distinguishable.
"She looked at me like I was a sea slug or something. Didn't even answer. And then — I dunno — I just sort of came to my senses and ran for it."
Wow. I didn't know that asking people to go to a ball could be so hard.
"She's part veela," says Harry. "You were right — her grandmother was one. It wasn't your fault, I bet you just walked past when she was turning on the old charm for Diggory and got a blast of it — but she was wasting her time. He's going with Cho Chang."
Ron looks up. Oh well that sucks. "I asked her to go with me just now," Harry says dully, "and she told me."
Ginny has suddenly stopped smiling. "This is mad," says Ron. "We're the only ones left who haven't got anyone — well, except Neville. Hey — guess who he asked? Hermione!"
"What?" says Harry, completely distracted by this startling news. Neville? I don't think that Hermione would go with him would she?
"Yeah, I know!" says Ron, some of the color coming back into his face as he starts to laugh. "He told me after Potions! Said she's always been really nice, helping him out with work and stuff — but she told him she was already going with someone. Ha! As if! She just didn't want to go with Neville . . . I mean, who would?"
"Don't!" says Ginny, annoyed. "Don't laugh —"
"Come on guys. Don't pick on Neville." I groan. Just then Hermione climbs in through the portrait hole.
"Hey what are you guys doing?" She asks coming over to us.
"Oh shut up laughing, you two — they've both just been turned down by girls they asked to the ball!" says Ginny. That shuts Harry and Ron up.
"Thanks a bunch, Ginny," says Ron sourly.
"All the good-looking ones taken, Ron?" says Hermione loftily. "Eloise Midgen starting to look quite pretty now, is she? Well, I'm sure you'll find someone somewhere who'll have you."
But Ron is staring at Hermione as though suddenly seeing her in a whole new light. "Hermione, Neville's right — you are a girl. . . ."
"Oh well spotted," she says acidly. Oh please let this not be going where I think that it is.
"Well — you can come with one of us!"
"No, I can't," snaps Hermione.
"Oh come on," he says impatiently, "we need partners, we're going to look really stupid if we haven't got any, everyone else has . . ."
"Well actually since Cho said no Jamie are you still okay to go with me? Totally friends mind you." Harry tells me holding his hands up. I sigh and glance around. Ginny is avoiding my eyes. Damn I thought that crush of hers was gone.
"I did promise but are so sure there's no one else you want to ask?" I ask him. Harry shakes his head.
"Fine Potter, but don't make me regret this." I tell him. Harry beams at me and hugs me tightly before letting out.
"You're a life saver Jamie." He cries. With that we turn back to the brewing argument.
"I can't come with you," says Hermione, now blushing, "because I'm already going with someone."
"No, you're not!" says Ron. "You just said that to get rid of Neville!"
"Oh did I?" says Hermione, and her eyes flash dangerously. "Just because it's taken you three years to notice, Ron, doesn't mean no one else has spotted I'm a girl!" Ron stares at her. Then he grins again.
"Okay, okay, we know you're a girl," he says. "That do? Will you come now?"
I'm about ready to punch him.
"I've already told you!" Hermione says very angrily. "I'm going with someone else!" And she storms off toward the girls' dormitories again.
"She's lying," says Ron flatly, watching her go.
"She's not," says Ginny quietly.
"Who is it then?" says Ron sharply.
"I'm not telling you, it's her business," says Ginny.
"Right," says Ron, who looks extremely put out, "this is getting stupid. Ginny are you going?"
"I'm going with — with Neville. He asked me when Hermione said no, and I thought . . . well . . . I'm not going to be able to go otherwise, I'm not in fourth year." She looks extremely miserable. "I think I'll go and have dinner," she says, and she gets up and walks off to the portrait hole, her head bowed.
I turn and hurry after her. "Gin!" I say catching her arm. When she turns to face me she has tears in her eyes.
"I'm sorry Gin I didn't think that you liked Harry anymore." I say softly. She shakes her head and leans into me slightly as I wrap my arm around her.
"It's okay Jame— he sees you as his best friend. Of course he'd ask you. He just doesn't see me though." She sniffles. I let out a sigh.
"Look it's his own fault then for you're an amazing girl, and Harry would be lucky to have you. Let me tell you one thing that I've learned about boys from all the time I spend around them." I say.
"What?" She asks wiping her eyes.
"They're idiots when it comes to relationships. Don't worry about it so much, and if the time comes then good but if not, just go with someone else who can see what an amazing girl you are." I tell her. Ginny pulls away and looks up at me with a small smile.
"Okay I'm going to go eat now." She tells me and we part ways. I go back up to my dorm and see Hermione angrily throwing her books about.
"He's a prat." I state firmly sitting down on her bed. Hermione turns towards me a glare on her face.
"Who does he think he is? Of course I'm a girl it shouldn't take him practically a month to realize that!" She hisses. My eyes widen at the tone of her voice.
"Mione... are you sure that there's not something else going on?" I ask her hesitantly. She stops dead and levels me with a glare good enough to be Mrs. Weasley's.
"Don't you even think about going there with me Jamie Pendragon, not when you're in denial about how you feel as well!" She snaps at me. I bite down on my lower lip suddenly worried about what Hermione thinks that she knows. I don't even known what she thinks she knows.
"Okay… so who are you going with?" I ask her softly not looking her in the eye. There's a shift on the bed as she sits down beside me and places her head against my shoulder.
"Viktor Krum. He asked me out in the library. Apparently he was going there all the time to see me." She says. I raise my eyebrows in shock. "I know, who would have thought that he would like me." She says apparently still shocked herself.
"Well I would for one. You're a brilliant girl Mione and anyone would be lucky to have you ask their date." I tell her softly. She chuckles and releases a sigh.
"So are you still going stag to the ball?" She asks me. It's now my turn to sigh.
"Harry asked me to go as friends and I said yes." I admit. Hermione sucks in a breath of air.
"Ginny?" She questions.
"Will be okay in time. She knows I don't like him." I reply.
"Well this has been quite the night hasn't it?" Hermione says. I scoff and nod my head as well. Growing older sucks.