Harry Potter 04 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

facing the prospect of asking a girl to the ball, he thought he’d rather have another round with the Horntail.
    Harry had never known so many people to put their names down to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas; he always did, of course, because the alternative was usually going back to Privet Drive, but he had always been very much in the minority before now. This year, however, everyone in the fourth year and above seemed to be staying, and they all seemed to Harry to be obsessed with the coming ball – or, at least, all the girls were, and it was amazing how many girls Hogwarts suddenly seemed to hold; he had never quite noticed that before. Girls giggling and whispering in the corridors, girls shrieking with laughter as boys passed them, girls excitedly comparing notes on what they were going to wear on Christmas night …
    ‘Why do they have to move in packs?’ Harry asked Ron, as a dozen or so girls walked past them, sniggering and staring at Harry. ‘How’re you supposed to get one on their own to ask them?’
    ‘Lasso one?’ Ron suggested. ‘Got any idea who you’re going to try?’
    Harry didn’t answer. He knew perfectly well whom he’d like to ask, but working up the nerve was something else … Cho was a year older than he was; she was very pretty; she was a very good Quidditch player, and she was also very popular.
    Ron seemed to know what was going on inside Harry’s head.
    ‘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.’
    In tribute to their recently repaired friendship, Ron had kept the bitterness in his voice to a bare minimum. Moreover, to Harry’s amazement, he turned out to be quite right.
    A curly-haired third-year Hufflepuff girl to whom Harry had never spoken in his life asked him to go to the ball with her the very next day. Harry was so taken aback he said ‘no’ before he’d even stopped to consider the matter. The girl walked off looking rather hurt, and Harry had to endure Dean’s, Seamus’s and Ron’s taunts about her all through History of Magic. The following day, two more girls asked him, a second-year and (to his horror) a fifth-year who looked as though she might knock him out if he refused.
    ‘She was quite good-looking,’ said Ron fairly, after he’d stopped laughing.
    ‘She was a foot taller than me,’ said Harry, still unnerved. ‘Imagine what I’d look like trying to dance with her.’
    Hermione’s words about Krum kept coming back to him. ‘They only like him because he’s famous!’ Harry doubted very much if any of the girls who had asked to be his partner so far would have wanted to go to the ball with him if he hadn’t been school champion. Then he wondered if this would bother him if Cho asked him.
    On the whole, Harry had to admit that even with the embarrassing prospect of opening the ball before him, life had definitely improved since he had got through the first task. He wasn’t attracting nearly as much unpleasantness in the corridors any more, which he suspected had a lot to do with Cedric – he had an idea Cedric might have told the Hufflepuffs to leave Harry alone, in gratitude for Harry’s tip-off about the dragons. There seemed to be fewer Support CEDRIC DIGGORY badges around, too. Draco Malfoy, of course, was still quoting Rita Skeeter’s article at him at every possible opportunity, but he was getting fewer and fewer laughs out of it – and just to heighten Harry’s feeling of well-being, no story about Hagrid had appeared in the Daily Prophet .
    ‘She didn’ seem very int’rested in magical creatures, ter tell yeh the truth,’ Hagrid said, when Harry, Ron and Hermione asked him how his interview with Rita Skeeter had gone during the last Care of Magical Creatures lesson of term. To their very great relief, Hagrid had given up on direct contact with the Skrewts now, and they were merely sheltering behind his cabin today, sitting at a trestle table and preparing a fresh selection of food with which to tempt the Skrewts.
    ‘She jus’ wanted me ter talk about you, Harry,’ Hagrid continued 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,