"We should get a move on, you know...ask someone. He's right. We don't want to end up with a pair of trolls."
Hermione let out a sputter of indignation.
"A pair of...what, excuse me?"
"Well -- you know," said Ron, shrugging. "I'd rather go alone than with -- with Eloise Midgen, say."
"Her acne's loads better lately -- and she's really nice!"
"Her nose is off-center," said Ron.
"Oh I see," Hermione said, bristling. "So basically, you're going to take the best-looking girl who'll have you, even if she's completely horrible?"
"Er -- yeah, that sounds about right," said Ron.
"I'm going to bed," Hermione snapped, and she swept off towards the girls' staircase without another word.
"All the good-looking ones taken, Ron?" said Hermione loftily. "Eloise Midgen starting to look quite pretty now, is she? Well, I'm sure you'll find someone somewhere who'll have you."
But Ron was staring at Hermione as though suddenly seeing her in a whole new light.
"Hermione, Neville's right -- you are a girl...."
"Oh well spotted," she said acidly.
"Well -- you can come with one of us!"
"No, I can't," snapped Hermione.
"Oh come on," he said impatiently, "we need partners, we're going to look really stupid if we haven't got any, everyone else has..."
"I can't come with you," said Hermione, now blushing, "because I'm already going with someone."
"No, you're not!" said Ron. "You just said that to get rid of Neville!"
"Oh did I?" said Hermione, and her eyes flashed dangerously. "Just because it's taken you three years to notice, Ron, doesn't mean no one else has spotted I'm a girl!"
"Hermione," said Ron, looking sideways at her, suddenly frowning, "your teeth..."
"What about them?" she said.
"Well, they're different...I've just noticed...."
"Of course they are -- did you expect me to keep those fangs Malfoy gave me?"
"No, I mean, they're different to how they were before he put that hex on you....They're all...straight and -- and normal sized."
Hermione suddenly smiled very mischievously, and Harry noticed it too; It was a very different smile from the one he remembered.
"It is all to 'eavy, this 'Ogwarts food," they heard her saying grumpily as they left the Great Hall behind her one evening (Ron skulking behind Harry, keen not to be spotted by Fleur). "I will not fit into my dress robes!"
"Oooh there's a tragedy," Hermione snapped as Fleur went out into the entrance hall. "She really thinks a lot of herself, that one, doesn't she?"
"Hermione -- who are you going to the ball with?" said Ron.
He kept springing this question on her, hoping to startle her into a response by asking it when she least expected it.
"Padma's going to meet you in the entrance hall," she added to Ron.
"Right," said Ron, looking around. "Where's Hermione?"
"Where is Hermione?" he said again.
Parvati seemed to be enjoying herself; she was beaming around at everybody, steering Harry so forcefully that he felt as though he were a show dog she was putting through its paces. He caught sight of Ron and Padma as he neared the top table. Ron was watching Hermione pass with narrowed eyes.
"How's it going?" Harry asked Ron, sitting down and opening a bottle of butterbeer.
Ron didn't answer. He was glaring at Hermione and Krum, who were dancing nearby.
Hermione came over and sat down in Parvati's empty chair. She was a bit pink in the face from dancing.
"Hi," said Harry. Ron didn't say anything.
"It's hot, isn't it?" said Hermione, fanning herself with her hand.
"Viktor's just gone to get some drinks."
Ron gave her a withering look. "Viktor?" he said. "Hasn't he asked you to call him Vicky yet?"
"If you don't know," said Hermione scathingly, "I'm not going to tell you."
Hermione stared at him, then at Harry, who shrugged.
"Ron, what --?"
"He's from Durmstrang!" spat Ron. "He's competing against Harry! Against Hogwarts! You -- you're --" Ron was obviously casting around for words strong enough to describe Hermione's crime, "fraternizing with the enemy, that's what you're doing!"
Hermione's mouth fell open.
"Don't be so stupid!" she said after a moment. "The enemy! Honestly -- who was the one who was all excited when they saw him arrive? Who was the one who wanted his autograph? Who's got a model of him up in their dormitory?"
Ron chose to ignore this. "I s'pose he asked you to come with him while you were both in the library?"
"Yes, he did," said Hermione, the pink patches on her cheeks glowing more brightly. "So what?"
"What happened -- trying to get him to join SPEW were you?"
"No, I wasn't! If you really want to know, he -- he said he'd been coming up to the library every day to try and talk to me, but he hadn't been able to pluck up the courage!"
"Yeah, well -- that's his story," said Ron nastily.
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
"Obvious, isn't it? He's Karkaroff's student, isn't he? He knows who you hang around with....He's just trying to get closer to Harry -- get inside information on him -- or get near enough to jinx him --"
Hermione looked as though Ron had slapped her. When she spoke, her voice quivered.
"For your information, he hasn't asked me one single thing about Harry, not one -"
Ron changed tack at the speed of light.
"Then he's hoping you'll help him find out what his egg means! I suppose you've been been putting your heads together during those cozy little library sessions --"
"I'd never help him work out that egg!" said Hermione, looking outraged. "Never. How could you say something like that -- I want Harry to win the tournament, Harry knows that, don't you, Harry?"
"You've got a funny way of showing it," sneered Ron.
"This whole tournament's supposed to be about getting to know foreign wizards and making friends with them!" said Hermione hotly.
"No it isn't," shouted Ron. "It's about winning!"
People were starting to stare at them.
"Ron," said Harry quietly, "I haven't got a problem with Hermione coming with Krum --"
But Ron ignored Harry too.
"Why don't you go and find Vicky, he'll be wondering where you are," said Ron.
"Don't call him Vicky!"
Hermione jumped to her feet and stormed off across the dance floor, disappearing into the crowd. Ron watched her go with a mixture of anger and satisfaction on his face.
He climed into the common room and found Ron and Hermione having a blazing row. Standing ten feet apart, they were bellowing at each other, each scarlet in the face.
"Well, if you don't like it, you know what the solution is, don't you?" yelled Hermione; her hair was coming down out of it's elegant bun now, and her face was screwed up in anger.
"Oh yeah?" Ron yelled back. "What's that?"
"Next time there's a ball, ask me before someone else does, and not as a last resort!"
Ron mouthed soundlessly like a goldfish out of water as Hermione turned on her heel and stormed up the girls' staircase to bed. Ron turned to look at Harry.
"Well," he sputtered, looking thunderstruck, "well -- that just proves -- completely missed the point --"
"He's really nice, you know," she said. "He's not at all like you'd think, coming from Durmstrang. He likes it much better here, he told me."
Ron said nothing. He hadn't mentioned Viktor Krum since the ball, but Harry had found a miniature arm under his bed on Boxing Day, which looked very much as though it had been snapped off a small model figure wearing Bulgaria Quidditch robes.
Fleur bent down, kissed Harry twice on each cheek, then said to Ron, "And you, too -- you 'elped --"
"Yeah," said Ron, looking extremely hopeful, "Yeah, a bit --" Fleur swooped down on him too and kissed him. Hermione looked simply furious.
Ron was still goggling at the girl as though he had never seen one before. Harry started to laugh. The sound seemed to jog Ron back to his senses.
"She's a Veela!" he said hoarsely to Harry.
"Of course she isn't!" said Hermione tartly. "I don't see anyone else gaping at her like an idiot!"
"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 shark's head. Madam Pomfrey gave us both blankets and then he sort of pulled me away from the judges so they wouldn't hear, and he said, if I wasn't doing anything over the summer, would I like to --"
"And what did you say?" said Ron, who had picked up his pestle and was grinding it on the desk, a good six inches from his bowl, because he was looking at Hermione.
"And he did say he'd never felt the same way about anyone else," Hermione went on, going so red now that Harry could almost feel the heat coming from her, "but how could Rita Skeeter have heard him? She wasn't there...or was she? Maybe she has got an Invisibility Cloak; maybe she sneaked into the grounds to watch the second task...."
"And what did you say?" Ron repeated, pounding his pestle down so hard that it dented the desk.
"We will see each uzzer again, I 'ope" said Fleur, as she reached him, holding our her hand. "I am 'oping to get a job 'ere , to improve my Eenglish."
"It's very good already," said Ron in a strangled sort of voice.
Fleur smiled at him; Hermione scowled.
Order of the Phoenix Excerpts
"...And it might have been a good idea to mention how ugly you think I am too," Hermione added as an afterthought.
"But I don't think you're ugly," said Harry, bemused.
Hermione laughed.
"Harry, you're worse than Ron.... Well, no, you're not," she sighed, as Ron himself came stumping into the Hall splattered with mud and looking grumpy.
"You should write a book," Ron told Hermione as he cut up his potatoes, "translating mad things girls do so boys can understand them."
"Oh," said Ron, his smile fading slightly. "Are you that bad at kissing?"
"Dunno," said Harry, who hadn't considered this, and immediately felt rather worried. "Maybe I am."
"Of course you're not," said Hermione absently, still scribbling away at her letter.
"How do you know?" said Ron in a sharp voice.
On their way downstairs they met Hermione. "Thanks for the book, Harry!" she said happily. "I've been wanting that New Theory of Numerology for ages! And that perfume is really unusual, Ron." [Perfume? Isn't that the kind of thing a boyfriend would give to his girlfriend?]
"Who're you writing the novel to anyway?" Ron asked Hermione, trying to read the bit of parchment now trailing on the floor. Hermione hitched it up out of sight.
"Viktor."
"Krum?"
"How many other Viktors do we know?"
Ron said nothing, but looked disgruntled. They sat in silence for another twenty minutes, Ron finishing his Transfiguration essay with many snorts of impatience, rolling in up carefully and sealing it, and Harry staring into the fire, wishing more than anything that Sirius's head would appear there and give him some advice about girls. But the fire merely crackled lower and lower, until the red-hot embers crumbled into ash and, looking around, Harry saw that they were, yet again, the last in the common room.
"Well, 'night," said Hermione, yawning widely, and she set off up the girls' staircase.
"What does she see in Krum?" Ron demanded as he and Harry climbed the boys' stairs.
"Well," said Harry, considering the matter, "I s'pose he's older, isn't he...and he's an international Quidditch player...."
"Yeah, but apart from that," said Ron, sounding aggravated. "I mean he's a grouchy git, isn't he?"
"Ooooh, Dijon?" said Hermione excitedly. "I've been there on holiday, did you see --?"
She fell silent at the look on Ron's face.
"Don't let Ron see what's on those Slytherin's badges," she whispered urgently.
Harry looked questioningly at her, but she shook her head warningly; Ron had just ambled over to them, looking lost and desparate.
"Good luck, Ron," said Hermione, standing on tiptoe and kissing him on the cheek. "And you, Harry --"
Ron seemed to come to himself slightly as they walked back across the Great Hall. He touched the spot on his face where Hermione had kissed him, looking puzzled, as though he was not quite sure what had just happened.
"...you can do all sorts of stuff that full-grown wizards can't, Viktor always said --"
Ron looked around at her so fast he appeared to crick his neck; rubbing it, he said, "Yeah? What did Vicky say?"
"Ho ho," said Hermione in a bored voice. "He said Harry knew how to do stuff even he didn't, and he was in the final year at Durmstrang."
Ron was looking at Hermione suspiciously.
"You're not still in contact with him are you?"
"So what if I am?" said Hermione coolly, though her face was a little pink. "I can have a pen pal if I --"
"He didn't only want to be your pen pal," said Ron accusingly.
Hermione shook her head exasperatedly and ignored Ron, who was continuing to watch her.
