Harry Potter 04 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

considerably more cheerful than he usually did when descending the steps to the dungeons.
    Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle were standing in a huddle outside the classroom door with Pansy Parkinson’s gang of Slytherin girls. All of them were looking at something Harry couldn’t see and sniggering heartily. Pansy’s pug-like face peered excitedly around Goyle’s broad back as Harry, Ron and Hermione approached.
    ‘There they are, there they are!’ she giggled, and the knot of Slytherins broke apart. Harry saw that Pansy had a magazine in her hands – Witch Weekly. The moving picture on the front showed a curly-haired witch who was smiling toothily and pointing at a large sponge cake with her wand.
    ‘You might find something to interest you in there, Granger!’ Pansy said loudly, and she threw the magazine at Hermione, who caught it, looking startled. At that moment, the dungeon door opened, and Snape beckoned them all inside.
    Hermione, Harry and Ron headed for a table at the back of the dungeon as usual. Once Snape had turned his back on them to write up the ingredients of today’s potion on the blackboard, Hermione hastily riffled through the magazine under the desk. At last, in the centre pages, Hermione found what they were looking for. Harry and Ron leant in closer. A colour photograph of Harry headed a short piece entitled HARRY POTTER’S SECRET HEARTACHE :
     
    A boy like no other, perhaps – yet a boy suffering all the usual pangs of adolescence , writes Rita Skeeter. Deprived of love since the tragic demise of his parents, fourteen-year-old Harry Potter thought he had found solace in his steady girlfriend at Hogwarts, Muggle-born Hermione Granger. Little did he know that he would shortly be suffering yet another emotional blow in a life already littered with personal loss.
    Miss Granger, a plain but ambitious girl, seems to have a taste for famous wizards that Harry alone cannot satisfy. Since the arrival at Hogwarts of Viktor Krum, Bulgaria Seeker and hero of the last World Quidditch Cup, Miss Granger has been toying with both boys’ affections. Krum, who is openly smitten with the devious Miss Granger, has already invited her to visit him in Bulgaria over the summer holidays, and insists that he has ‘never felt this way about any other girl’.
    However, it might not be Miss Granger’s doubtful natural charms which have captured these unfortunate boys’ interest.
    ‘She’s really ugly,’ says Pansy Parkinson, a pretty and vivacious fourth-year student, ‘but she’d be well up to making a Love Potion, she’s quite brainy. I think that’s how she’s doing it.’
    Love Potions are of course banned at Hogwarts, and no doubt Albus Dumbledore will want to investigate these claims. In the meantime, Harry Potter’s well-wishers must hope that, next time, he bestows his heart upon a worthier candidate.
     
    ‘I told you!’ Ron hissed at Hermione, as she stared down at the article. ‘I told you not to annoy Rita Skeeter! She’s made you out to be some sort of – of scarlet woman!’
    Hermione stopped looking astonished and snorted with laughter.
    ‘Scarlet woman?’ she repeated, shaking with suppressed giggles as she looked round at Ron.
    ‘It’s what my mum calls them,’ Ron muttered, his ears going red again.
    ‘If that’s the best Rita can do, she’s losing her touch,’ said Hermione, still giggling, as she threw Witch Weekly onto the empty chair beside her. ‘What a pile of old rubbish.’
    She looked over at the Slytherins, who were all watching her and Harry closely across the room to see if they had been upset by the article. Hermione gave them a sarcastic smile and a wave, and she, Harry and Ron started unpacking the ingredients they would need for their Wit-Sharpening Potion.
    ‘There’s something funny, though,’ said Hermione ten minutes later, holding her pestle suspended over a bowl of scarab beetles. ‘How could Rita Skeeter have known …?’
    ‘Known what?’ said Ron quickly. ‘You haven’t been mixing up Love Potions, have you?’
    ‘Don’t be stupid,’ Hermione snapped, starting to pound up her beetles again. ‘No, it’s just … how did she know Viktor asked me to visit him over the summer?’
    Hermione blushed scarlet as she said this, and determinedly avoided Ron’s eyes.
    ‘What?’ said Ron, dropping his pestle with a loud clunk.
    ‘He asked me right after he’d pulled me out of the lake,’ Hermione muttered. ‘After he’d got rid of his