Harry Potter 04 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry.’
    ‘’Course she did,’ said 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.’
    ‘She wants a new angle, Hagrid,’ said Ron wisely, as he shelled salamander eggs. ‘You were supposed to say Harry’s a mad delinquent!’
    ‘But he’s not!’ said Hagrid, looking genuinely shocked.
    ‘She should’ve interviewed Snape,’ said 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?’ said Hagrid, while Ron and Hermione laughed. ‘Well, yeh might’ve bent a few rules, Harry, bu’ yeh’re all righ’ really, aren’ you?’
    ‘Cheers, Hagrid,’ said Harry, grinning.
    ‘You coming to this ball thing on Christmas Day, Hagrid?’ said Ron.
    ‘Though’ I might look in on it, yeah,’ said 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,’ said Harry, feeling himself going red again. Hagrid didn’t pursue the subject.
    The last week of term became increasingly boisterous as it progressed. Rumours about the Yule Ball were flying everywhere, though Harry didn’t believe half of them – for instance, that Dumbledore had bought eight hundred barrels of mulled mead from Madam Rosmerta. It seemed to be fact, however, that he had booked the Weird Sisters. Exactly who or what the Weird Sisters were Harry didn’t know, never having had access to a wizard’s wireless, but he deduced from the wild excitement of those who had grown up listening to the WWN (Wizarding Wireless Network) that they were a very famous musical group.
    Some of the teachers, like little Professor Flitwick, gave up trying to teach them much when their minds were so clearly elsewhere; he allowed them to play games in his lesson on Wednesday, and spent most of it talking to Harry about the perfect Summoning Charm he had used during the first task of the Triwizard Tournament. Other teachers were not so generous. Nothing would ever deflect Professor Binns, for example, from ploughing on through his notes on goblin rebellions – as Binns hadn’t let his own death stand in the way of continuing to teach, they supposed a small thing like Christmas wasn’t going to put him off. It was amazing how he could make even bloody and vicious goblin riots sound as boring as Percy’s cauldron-bottom report. Professors McGonagall and Moody kept them working until the very last second of their classes, too, and Snape, of course, would no sooner let them play games in class than adopt Harry. Staring nastily around at them all, he informed them that he would be testing them on poison antidotes during the last lesson of the term.
    ‘Evil, he is,’ Ron said 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 revision.’
    ‘Mmm … you’re not exactly straining yourself, though, are you?’ said Hermione, looking at him over the top of her Potions notes. Ron was 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 would blow up at any second.
    ‘It’s Christmas, Hermione,’ said Harry lazily; he was re-reading Flying with the Cannons for the tenth time in an armchair near the fire.
    Hermione looked 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 said, as he watched Joey Jenkins of the Cannons belt a Bludger towards a Ballycastle Bats Chaser.
    ‘That egg!’ Hermione hissed.
    ‘Come on, Hermione, I’ve got ’til February the twenty-fourth,’ Harry said.
    He had put the golden egg upstairs in his trunk, and hadn’t opened it since the celebration party after the first task. There were still two and a half months to go until he needed to know what all the screechy wailing meant, after all.
    ‘But it might take weeks to work it out!’ said 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,’ said Ron, and he placed the last two cards on top of the