Harry Potter 06 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

for?’
    ‘She laughed at my moustache!’
    ‘So did I, it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.’
    But Ron did not seem to have heard; Lavender had just arrived with Parvati. Squeezing herself in between Harry and Ron, Lavender flung her arms around Ron’s neck.
    ‘Hi, Harry,’ said Parvati who, like him, looked faintly embarrassed and bored by the behaviour of their two friends.
    ‘Hi,’ said Harry. ‘How’re you? You’re staying at Hogwarts, then? I heard your parents wanted you to leave.’
    ‘I managed to talk them out of it for the time being,’ said Parvati. ‘That Katie thing really freaked them out, but as there hasn’t been anything since … oh, hi, Hermione!’
    Parvati positively beamed. Harry could tell that she was feeling guilty for having laughed at Hermione in Transfiguration. He looked around and saw that Hermione was beaming back, if possible even more brightly. Girls were very strange sometimes.
    ‘Hi, Parvati!’ said Hermione, ignoring Ron and Lavender completely. ‘Are you going to Slughorn’s party tonight?’
    ‘No invite,’ said Parvati gloomily. ‘I’d love to go, though, it sounds like it’s going to be really good … you’re going, aren’t you?’
    ‘Yes, I’m meeting Cormac at eight and we’re –’
    There was a noise like a plunger being withdrawn from a blocked sink and Ron surfaced. Hermione acted as though she had not seen or heard anything.
    ‘– we’re going up to the party together.’
    ‘Cormac?’ said Parvati. ‘Cormac McLaggen, you mean?’
    ‘That’s right,’ said Hermione sweetly. ‘The one who almost ,’ she put a great deal of emphasis on the word, ‘became Gryffindor Keeper.’
    ‘Are you going out with him, then?’ asked Parvati, wide-eyed.
    ‘Oh – yes – didn’t you know?’ said Hermione, with a most un-Hermione-ish giggle.
    ‘No!’ said Parvati, looking positively agog at this piece of gossip. ‘Wow, you like your Quidditch players, don’t you? First Krum, then McLaggen …’
    ‘I like really good Quidditch players,’ Hermione corrected her, still smiling. ‘Well, see you … got to go and get ready for the party …’
    She left. At once Lavender and Parvati put their heads together to discuss this new development, with everything they had ever heard about McLaggen, and all they had ever guessed about Hermione. Ron looked strangely blank and said nothing. Harry was left to ponder in silence the depths to which girls would sink to get revenge.
    When he arrived in the Entrance Hall at eight o’clock that night, he found an unusually large number of girls lurking there, all of whom seemed to be staring at him resentfully as he approached Luna. She was wearing a set of spangled silver robes that was attracting a certain amount of giggling from the onlookers, but otherwise she looked quite nice. Harry was glad, in any case, that she had left off her radish earrings, her Butterbeer-cork necklace and her Spectrespecs.
    ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Shall we get going, then?’
    ‘Oh, yes,’ she said happily. ‘Where is the party?’
    ‘Slughorn’s office,’ said Harry, leading her up the marble staircase away from all the staring and muttering. ‘Did you hear, there’s supposed to be a vampire coming?’
    ‘Rufus Scrimgeour?’ asked Luna.
    ‘I – what?’ said Harry, disconcerted. ‘You mean the Minister for Magic?’
    ‘Yes, he’s a vampire,’ said Luna matter-of-factly. ‘Father wrote a very long article about it when Scrimgeour first took over from Cornelius Fudge, but he was forced not to publish by somebody from the Ministry. Obviously, they didn’t want the truth to get out!’
    Harry, who thought it most unlikely that Rufus Scrimgeour was a vampire, but who was used to Luna repeating her father’s bizarre views as though they were fact, did not reply; they were already approaching Slughorn’s office and the sounds of laughter, music and loud conversation were growing louder with every step they took.
    Whether it had been built that way, or because he had used magical trickery to make it so, Slughorn’s office was much larger than the usual teacher’s study. The ceiling and walls had been draped with emerald, crimson and gold hangings, so that it looked as though they were all inside a vast tent. The room was crowded and stuffy and bathed in the red light cast by an ornate golden lamp dangling from the centre of the ceiling in which real fairies were fluttering, each a brilliant speck of