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

Professor Sprout’s head and knocking off her old patched hat. Harry went to retrieve the pod; when he got back, Hermione was saying, ‘Look, I didn’t make up the name “Slug Club” –’
    ‘“Slug Club”,’ repeated Ron with a sneer worthy of Malfoy. ‘It’s pathetic. Well, I hope you enjoy your party. Why don’t you try getting off with McLaggen, then Slughorn can make you King and Queen Slug –’
    ‘We’re allowed to bring guests,’ said Hermione, who for some reason had turned a bright, boiling scarlet, ‘and I was going to ask you to come, but if you think it’s that stupid then I won’t bother!’
    Harry suddenly wished the pod had flown a little further, so that he need not have been sitting there with the pair of them. Unnoticed by either, he seized the bowl that contained the pod and began to try and open it by the noisiest and most energetic means he could think of; unfortunately, he could still hear every word of their conversation.
    ‘You were going to ask me?’ asked Ron, in a completely different voice.
    ‘Yes,’ said Hermione angrily. ‘But obviously if you’d rather I got off with McLaggen …’
    There was a pause while Harry continued to pound the resilient pod with a trowel.
    ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ said Ron, in a very quiet voice.
    Harry missed the pod, hit the bowl and it shattered.
    ‘Reparo,’ he said hastily, poking the pieces with his wand, and the bowl sprang back together again. The crash, however, appeared to have awoken Ron and Hermione to Harry’s presence. Hermione looked flustered and immediately started fussing about for her copy of Flesh-Eating Trees of the World to find out the correct way to juice Snargaluff pods; Ron, on the other hand, looked sheepish but also rather pleased with himself.
    ‘Hand that over, Harry,’ said Hermione hurriedly, ‘it says we’re supposed to puncture them with something sharp …’
    Harry passed her the pod in the bowl, he and Ron both snapped their goggles back over their eyes and dived, once more, for the stump.
    It was not as though he was really surprised, thought Harry, as he wrestled with a thorny vine intent upon throttling him; he had had an inkling that this might happen sooner or later. But he was not sure how he felt about it … he and Cho were now too embarrassed to look at each other, let alone talk to each other; what if Ron and Hermione started going out together, then split up? Could their friendship survive it? Harry remembered the few weeks when they had not been talking to each other in the third year; he had not enjoyed trying to bridge the distance between them. And then, what if they didn’t split up? What if they became like Bill and Fleur, and it became excruciatingly embarrassing to be in their presence, so that he was shut out for good?
    ‘Gotcha!’ yelled Ron, pulling a second pod from the stump just as Hermione managed to burst the first one open, so that the bowl was full of tubers wriggling like pale green worms.
    The rest of the lesson passed without further mention of Slughorn’s party. Although Harry watched his two friends more closely over the next few days, Ron and Hermione did not seem any different except that they were a little politer to each other than usual. Harry supposed he would just have to wait to see what happened under the influence of Butterbeer in Slughorn’s dimly lit room on the night of the party. In the meantime, however, he had more pressing worries.
    Katie Bell was still in St Mungo’s Hospital with no prospect of leaving, which meant that the promising Gryffindor team Harry had been training so carefully since September was one Chaser short. He kept putting off replacing Katie in the hope that she would return, but their opening match against Slytherin was looming and he finally had to accept that she would not be back in time to play.
    Harry did not think he could stand another full-house tryout. With a sinking feeling that had little to do with Quidditch, he cornered Dean Thomas after Transfiguration one day. Most of the class had already left, although several twittering yellow birds were still zooming around the room, all of Hermione’s creation; nobody else had succeeded in conjuring so much as a feather from thin air.
    ‘Are you still interested in playing Chaser?’
    ‘Wha—? Yeah, of course!’ said Dean excitedly. Over Dean’s shoulder Harry saw Seamus Finnigan slamming his books into his bag, looking sour. One of the reasons why Harry