Right Now Could Last Forever

The Slytherins clamoured to give their explanations. Snape pointed a long yellow finger at Malfoy and said, “Explain.”

“Potter attacked me, sir –“

“We attacked each other at the same time!” Harry shouted.

“-and he hit Goyle – look –“

Snape examined Goyle, whose face now resembled something that would have been at home in a book on poisonous fungi.

“Hospital wing, Goyle,” Snape said calmly.

“Malfoy got Hermione!” Ron said. “Look!”

He forced Hermione to show Snape her teeth – she was doing her best to hide them with her hands, though this was difficult as they had now grown down past her collar. Pansy Parkinson and the other Slytherin girls were doubled up with silent giggles, pointing at Hermione from behind Snape’s back.

Snape looked coldly at Hermione, then said, “I see no difference.”

Hermione let out a whimper; her eyes filled with tears, she turned on her heel and ran, ran all the way up the corridor and out of sight. This broke me out of my frozen state. I shot Snape a killing look and ran off after Hermione, cursing under my breath.

It was lucky perhaps that both Harry and Ron started shouting at Snape at the same time; lucky their voices echoed so much in the stone corridor, for in the confused din, it was impossible for Snape to hear exactly what we were saying.

I ran out of the Dungeons and saw Hermione running up the stairs; probably on the way to the hospital wing.

“Hermione!” I called after her. “Wait!”

She turned around and I quickly caught up with her. Her teeth were still growing steadily, and I decided I wouldn’t waste any time in getting her to a cure.

“Come on, let’s get you to the Hospital Wing,” I said, putting my arm around her and guiding her up the stairs.

--

Harry had gotten a reply from Sirius, and over the next fortnight, he, Hermione and I spent a long time going over plans for forcing any stragglers out of the common room on the night in question. If the worst came to the worst, we were going to drop a bag of Dungbombs, but we hoped we wouldn’t have to resort to that – Filch would skin us alive.

Meanwhile, Rita Skeeter, the reporter for the Daily Prophet, had published a piece about the Triwizard Tournament. It wasn’t as much about the Tournament as it was about Harry. It had only mentioned the names of the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang champions, and had misspelt them, until the last line, and Cedric hadn’t been mentioned at all.

Rita Skeeter had also involved Hermione and I into the article.

‘Harry has at last found love at Hogwarts. His close friend, Colin Creevey, says that Harry is rarely seen out of the company of either Hermione Granger, a stunningly pretty Muggle-born, who like Harry, is one of the top students in the school, or Corey Samuels.’

Harry had been getting a lot of grief for what Rita had written about him, and Hermione was putting up with what Pansy and the other Slytherin girls were saying to her. Me, however; I was being selfish.

“But she got ‘stunningly pretty’ and I got nothing!” I whined, to Fred and George, as we sat in the Great Hall for lunch.

George sighed.

“They just want to make it seem like Hermione is more desirable, seeing as everyone thinks that you and Krum-“

“That me and Krum what?” I asked.

“It’s just, with the whole World Cup thing and how much you two have been hanging out...”
Fred said, rather bitterly.

“People can’t help but assume that you two are in a relationship,” George said bluntly. “So Rita probably just wanted to leave you two to play happy couples, while Harry and Hermione started their ‘young love.’”

I sighed, realising they were right, and placed my head in my hands; my hair forming a curtain around my plate.

“What should I do?” I muttered.

“Well, first of all, you go dump Krum’s ass,” Fred said.

“We aren’t actually going out,” I said, “so I can’t really dump him.”

“Doesn’t matter,” George said. “Just make it very obvious that you aren’t interested, or tell him straight up.”

I sighed, picking up my fork and spearing it through a piece of bacon. “Does it really look like me and Krum...?”

“Yeah,” Fred said thickly through a mouth of food, not looking up from his plate.

“Oh Merlin’s hairy–“

“Don’t even finish that, young lady,” George cut in.

“But George, you two say it all the time!” I whined jokingly.

“No excuses. Now go break up with Krum,” Fred said.

“Fine,” I said, dragging out the ‘I’.

I stood up and picked up my last piece of bacon in my hand. I stood up onto the bench that I was sitting on and jumped back down, walking towards the big doors that led into the Entrance Hall. I grumbled under my breath as I jumped down the steps onto the grounds, really dreading the moment that I found Krum.

I found him pretty quickly, though. He was sitting on the grass by the lake; some of his Durmstrang friends were just walking away from him, towards the ship.

I took a breath, preparing for what I had to do, and made my way down towards the sitting figure.