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

going on outside, where the match would have just started … Ginny playing Seeker against Cho …
    Harry glanced again and again at the large clock ticking on the wall. It seemed to be moving half as fast as a regular clock; perhaps Snape had bewitched it to go extra slowly? He could not have been here for only half an hour … an hour … an hour and a half …
    Harry’s stomach started rumbling when the clock showed half past twelve. Snape, who had not spoken at all since setting Harry his task, finally looked up at ten past one.
    ‘I think that will do,’ he said coldly. ‘Mark the place you have reached. You will continue at ten o’clock next Saturday.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    Harry stuffed a bent card into the box at random and hurried out of the door before Snape could change his mind, racing back up the stone steps, straining his ears to hear a sound from the pitch, but all was quiet … it was over, then …
    He hesitated outside the crowded Great Hall, then ran up the marble staircase; whether Gryffindor had won or lost, the team usually celebrated or commiserated in their own common room.
    ‘Quid agis?’ he said tentatively to the Fat Lady, wondering what he would find inside.
    Her expression was unreadable as she replied, ‘You’ll see.’
    And she swung forwards.
    A roar of celebration erupted from the hole behind her. Harry gaped as people began to scream at the sight of him; several hands pulled him into the room.
    ‘We won!’ yelled Ron, bounding into sight and brandishing the silver Cup at Harry. ‘We won! Four hundred and fifty to a hundred and forty! We won!’
    Harry looked around; there was Ginny running towards him; she had a hard, blazing look in her face as she threw her arms around him. And without thinking, without planning it, without worrying about the fact that fifty people were watching, Harry kissed her.
    After several long moments – or it might have been half an hour – or possibly several sunlit days – they broke apart. The room had gone very quiet. Then several people wolf-whistled and there was an outbreak of nervous giggling. Harry looked over the top of Ginny’s head to see Dean Thomas holding a shattered glass in his hand and Romilda Vane looking as though she might throw something. Hermione was beaming, but Harry’s eyes sought Ron. At last he found him, still clutching the Cup and wearing an expression appropriate to having been clubbed over the head. For a fraction of a second they looked at each other, then Ron gave a tiny jerk of the head that Harry understood to mean, ‘Well – if you must.’
    The creature in his chest roaring in triumph, Harry grinned down at Ginny and gestured wordlessly out of the portrait hole. A long walk in the grounds seemed indicated, during which – if they had time – they might discuss the match.

 
     
— CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE —
     
The Seer Overheard
    The fact that Harry Potter was going out with Ginny Weasley seemed to interest a great number of people, most of them girls, yet Harry found himself newly and happily impervious to gossip over the next few weeks. After all, it made a very nice change to be talked about because of something that was making him happier than he could remember being for a very long time, rather than because he had been involved in horrific scenes of Dark magic.
    ‘You’d think people had better things to gossip about,’ said Ginny, as she sat on the common-room floor, leaning against Harry’s legs and reading the Daily Prophet . ‘Three Dementor attacks in a week, and all Romilda Vane does is ask me if it’s true you’ve got a Hippogriff tattooed across your chest.’
    Ron and Hermione both roared with laughter. Harry ignored them.
    ‘What did you tell her?’
    ‘I told her it’s a Hungarian Horntail,’ said Ginny, turning a page of the newspaper idly. ‘Much more macho.’
    ‘Thanks,’ said Harry, grinning. ‘And what did you tell her Ron’s got?’
    ‘A Pygmy Puff, but I didn’t say where.’
    Ron scowled as Hermione rolled around laughing.
    ‘Watch it,’ he said, pointing warningly at Harry and Ginny. ‘Just because I’ve given my permission doesn’t mean I can’t withdraw it –’
    ‘“Your permission”,’ scoffed Ginny. ‘Since when did you give me permission to do anything? Anyway, you said yourself you’d rather it was Harry than Michael or Dean.’
    ‘Yeah, I would,’ said Ron grudgingly. ‘And just as long as you don’t start snogging each other in