Ginny Weasley woke up to what sounded like the ghoul hammering out "A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love" on the pipes in the attic.
"Shut up," Ginny muttered, squeezing her eyes tight shut.
Bang, bang, bang, CRASH.
"Noooo…I need sleeeeep…"
BANG! BOOM!
"Ron, go sort out your ghoul!" she shouted.
From half a dozen floors up, she heard Ron shout back, "How come when it's bothering anyone it's my ghoul?!"
"You're the nearest!"
"You're the one who's being bothered!"
Smash!
"I think it broke something!" Ginny screamed, trying to bury herself in the bedclothes to no avail.
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, BANG.
"Ron!"
"Ginny?"
She froze in the very act of throwing off her bedclothes. A boy's voice came from outside her door, but it wasn't Ron's.
A very soft knock sounded on the door, and then the boy's voice again. "Ginny?"
"H-Harry?"
"Are you up?"
She leapt from the bed, rubbed her eyes furiously, grabbed her robe, and had the door half open before she realised that she probably had morning breath and her hair had drool in it.
"Hi," said Harry. "Happy birthday."
And he held out a small box.
She stared at it.
"How did you know it's my birthday?" she asked.
"When we went up to bed Ron said that you were going to wait up to make sure you got your acceptance letter, and then I woke up around midnight because you were screaming and sort of ping-ponging all over the house. Oh, and congratulations and all that. I know how much you wanted to go. You want the…the…thing?"
He held up the box and she took it, blushing furiously. Harry Snape is giving me a birthday present!
The box was cardboard and rectangular, and emblazoned with a picture of a mango being dropped into a mug of water. "Oh, Puddifoot's Mango Tea," she said, before she could stop herself. "Just what I always wanted."
He grinned. "It was the only box I could find."
I made Harry Snape smile!
"How come you're giving me a present?" she asked.
"'Cause," he said. "It's kind of a stupid present, actually, because I don't have much money, but I thought…" He shrugged. "Go ahead and open it. Or you could open it at breakfast, I don't care."
She tore away the spellotape keeping the box together and was greeted by a fistful of crumpled parchment.
"There you are! Thought you'd appreciate some paper of your very own," he said seriously, but when she looked up his green, green eyes were twinkling.
OH MY GOD HE'S MAKING JOKES HE'S SMILING AT ME OH MY GOD
She must have stayed there, immobile, for a long time, because his smile faded a little and he said, "Er, it was a joke. I mean there's, like, an actual present in there, if you…"
"Oh, no, sorry, I, yeah, I know, sorry," she stammered. Away went the paper and out came the gift.
"I woke up early and took my Nimbus to that little village, Otter St thingy, and there was a little crafting shop place and I got the stuff there and…I know it's a pretty rubbish present…"
In one of her saner moments, Ginny would have immediately admitted that it was, in fact, a rubbish present. It was a long piece of cord with six large white beads strung on it. Five of the beads were engraved with letters—G, I, N, N, and Y—and the sixth had a little flower.
Ginny was, however, by no means sane at the moment. She felt like crying.
Harry Snape gave me a BIRTHDAY PRESENT!
She immediately tied the two ends in the kind of knot that no one can get apart no matter what and put it on over her head—it was about a foot too long and hung down past her chest, but she didn't care.
"Thank you," she said.
"Welcome," he said.
And she smiled.
The school letters and booklists came the next day, along with a very characteristic epistle from Hermione about following the rules and doing schoolwork ("How can she be thinking about schoolwork? We're on holiday!" Ron had exclaimed). The letter did, however, invite them to meet her in Diagon Alley on Wednesday next to buy books.
"Mum, Hermione wants to meet us Wednesday next, that's when she's going to buy her school things."
Mrs Weasley said all right, that was a good idea, and then went back to worrying about how she was going to buy books for everyone, particularly the thirty five brand new publications which were necessary for Defence Against the Dark Arts alone.
When they heard her worrying, George said he and Fred could share. Ron said for that matter they could all share since it looked like the same books for all of their years, but then Percy said that he preferred not to have scorch marks and candy fingerprints all over his books, and Fred said if Percy was going to keep his books locked in a cupboard and only turn the pages in kid gloves then he'd rather not share with him either, and Ginny said she didn't want her books smelling like "boy", whatever that meant. Harry offered to share his with Ron, but Mrs Weasley said it wouldn't be necessary, they'd manage somehow.
With that pronouncement she bustled out of the room to look for some of Percy's robes to trim down for Ron.
"Fantastic," said Ron gloomily. "More hand-me-downs. Hullo, here's another letter," he said, as a large eagle owl flew in the window and shrieked loudly. It bore in its talons a small envelope made out of some kind of thin paper, addressed in silver ink. The owl flew directly for Harry and landed in front of him, holding out the letter with a haughty expression on its beak.
"Dumbledore not the only one who knows I'm here, looks like," said Harry, accepting it. The direction read Master Harry Snape, Esq., "The Burrow", near Ottery St Catchpole, Devon. Harry turned it over; the enormous green seal on the back comprised a large M, surrounded by little squiggles and spears and things, and along the bottom the legend Sanctimonia Vincet Semper. The paper inside was pale green and almost translucent; half of the message was printed, like a form letter, and the other half handwritten with so many flourishes as to make it almost illegible.
MR LUCIUS MALFOY AND MRS NARCISSA BLACK MALFOY
REQUEST THE PLEASURE OF
~Master Harry Snape's~
COMPANY FOR DINNER
AT THEIR HOME AT MALFOY MANOR, WILTSHIRE
~Half after eight o'clock~
~August 31, 1992~
R.S.V.P. BY RETURN OWL
~If convenient, Mr and Mrs Malfoy would also be pleased to receive Master Harry for the night, and to convey him the following morning to Platform 9¾ at King's Cross Station, London~
Ron, peering over Harry's shoulder, yelped as if something had bitten him and jumped back.
"You got an invite from that blithering git?"
"He said he'd have me round," said Harry, trying to swim through the scribbles and squiggles on the last couple of words. "And technically I suppose I've got an invite from his parents, not him himself."
"That's about fifty times worse, Harry! Do you know who his parents are?"
"Yeah, you've told me. Ex-Death Eaters, liars, cons, generally rotters…how do you reply to one of these things?" he asked, glancing at the eagle owl, who was bobbing insistently, waiting for a reply. "You just send back the piece of paper with 'Yeah, OK, see you then' on the back? Or have you got to go I, Harry Snape, do accept thy, Mr and Mrs Malfoy's, invitation to dinner…?"
"That's wedding vows…and Harry, you're not seriously thinking of going?"
"It's just I haven't heard from Malfoy all summer. You don't think your parents will mind my nipping out a bit early, do you?"
"Harry, they're ex-Death Eaters! They could kill you!"
"Somehow I doubt they'd send an invite to the house of a Ministry official and get me all the way out to…Wiltshire just to poison my pumpkin juice," said Harry. "If they wanted to off me they could get Malfoy to do it at school sometime. No, I'd say they probably want to have me over just to lure me into a false sense of security. I'll ask if I can bring you, if you want."
"No fear!" said Ron, sounding alarmed. "I wouldn't be caught dead at a Malfoy dinner! Actually that's probably just how I would be caught! His father hates my father and Malfoy hates me…"
Ron went on, but Harry wasn't really listening. He was half-enjoying a new sensation—that of being fought over. Two people liked him enough to invite him round, and they each (probably) disliked the other person who liked him enough to not want the other person who liked him to have him round.
Harry picked up a pen and a piece of scrap parchment. After studying the invite for a moment, Harry wrote, slowly and carefully, in his "final draft" handwriting,
Master Harry Snape accepts Mr and Mrs Malfoy's invitation to dinner and also their invitation to ac
"How many Cs in accompany?" he asked the air in general.
"Three," said Ron.