It was Fred and George. They sat down at the table with Harry, Ron, and Hermione as Ron felt how much damage had been done.

“Ron, can we borrow Pigwidgeon?” George asked.

“No, he’s off delivering a letter,” said Ron. “Why?”

“Because George wants to invite him to the ball,” said Fred sarcastically.

“Because we want to send a letter, you stupid great prat,” said George.

“Who d’you two keep writing to, eh?” said Ron.

“Nose out, Ron, or I’ll burn that for you too,” said Fred, waving his wand threateningly. “So… you lot got dates for the ball yet?”

“Nope,” said Ron.

“Well, you’d better hurry up, mate, or all the good ones will be gone,” said Fred.

“Who’re you going with, then?” said Ron.

“Angelina,” said Fred promptly, without a trace of embarrassment.

“What?” said Ron, taken aback. “You’ve already asked her?”

“Good point,” said Fred. He turned his head and called across the common room, “Oi! Angelina!”

Angelina, who had been chatting with Alicia Spinnet near the fire, looked over at him.

“What?” she called back.

“Want to come to the ball with me?”

Angelina gave Fred an appraising sort of look.

“All right, then,” she said, and she turned back to Alicia and carried on chatting with a bit of a grin on her face.

“There you go,” said Fred to Harry and Ron, “piece of cake.”

He got to his feet, yawning, and said, “We’d better use a school owl then, George, come on…”

They left. Ron stopped feeling his eyebrows and looked across the smoldering wreck of his card castle at Harry.

“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 toward the girls’ staircase without another word.

The Hogwarts staff, demonstrating a continued desire to impress the visitors from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, seemed determined to show the castle at its best this Christmas. When the decorations went up, Harry noticed that they were the most stunning he had yet seen inside the school. Everlasting icicles had been attached to the banisters of the marble staircase; the usual twelve Christmas trees in the Great Hall were bedecked with everything from luminous holly berries to real, hooting, golden owls, and the suits of armor had all been bewitched to sing carols whenever anyone passed them. It was quite something to hear “O Come, All Ye Faithful” sung by an empty helmet that only knew half the words. Several times, Filch the caretaker had to extract Peeves from inside the armor, where he had taken to hiding, filling in the gaps in the songs with lyrics of his own invention, all of which were very rude.

And still, Harry hadn’t asked Cho to the ball. He and Ron were getting very nervous now, though as Harry pointed out, Ron would look much less stupid than he would without a partner; Harry was supposed to be starting the dancing with the other champions.

“I suppose there’s always Moaning Myrtle,” he said gloomily, referring to the ghost who haunted the girls’ toilets on the second floor.

“Harry—we’ve just got to grit our teeth and do it,” said Ron on Friday morning, in a tone that suggested they were planning the storming of an impregnable fortress. “When we get back to the common room tonight, we’ll both have partners—agreed?”

“Er… okay,” said Harry.

But every time he glimpsed Cho that day—during break, and then lunchtime, and once on the way to History of Magic—she was surrounded by friends. Didn’t she ever go anywhere alone? Could he perhaps ambush her as she was going into a bathroom? But no—she even seemed to go there with an escort of four or five girls. Yet if he didn’t do it soon, she was bound to have been asked by somebody else.

He found it hard to concentrate on Snape’s Potions test, and consequently forgot to add the key ingredient—a bezoar—meaning that he received bottom marks. He didn’t care, though; he was too busy screwing up his courage for what he was about to do. When the bell rang, he grabbed his bag, and hurried to the dungeon door.

“I’ll meet you at dinner,” he said to Ron and Hermione, and he dashed off upstairs.

He’d just have to ask Cho for a private word, that was all… He hurried off through the packed corridors looking for her, and (rather sooner than he had expected) he found her, emerging from a Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson.

“Er—Cho? Could I have a word with you?”

Giggling should be made illegal, Harry thought furiously, as all the girls around Cho started doing it. She didn’t, though. She said, “Okay,” and followed him out of earshot other classmates.

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Ron seemed to know what was going on inside Harry’s head.	\|	Harry turned to look at her and his stomach gave a weird lurch as though he had missed a step going downstairs.

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