Love Is In The Air: The Angelic Witch And Draco Malfoy (Book 4)

Losing Harry Potter

Everybody got up late on Boxing Day. The Gryffindor common room was much quieter than it had been lately, many yawns punctuating the lazy conversations.

Ron and Hermione seemed to have reached an unspoken agreement not to discuss their argument. They were being quite friendly to each other, though oddly formal. Ron and Harry wasted no time in telling Heroneka and Hermione about the conversation they had overheard between Madame Maxime and Hagrid, both being half-giants. Heroneka realised that when she had seen them with Draco, trying to hear people talking, they were trying to hear Hagrid and Madam Maxime talking.

Hermione didn't take the news as shockingly as Heroneka did.

"Well, I thought he must be," she said, shrugging. "I knew he couldn't be pure giant because they're about twenty feet tall. But honestly, all this hysteria about giants. They can't all be horrible...It's the same sort of prejudice that people have toward werewolves...It's just bigotry, isn't it?"

"I agree!" Heroneka nodded. "We have seen the best examples so far in the case of giants and werewolves. Hagrid and Remus!"

Ron looked as though he would have liked to reply scathingly, but perhaps he didn't want another row, because he contented himself with shaking his head disbelievingly while Hermione wasn't looking.

It was time now to think of the homework they had neglected during the first week of the holidays. Everybody seemed to be feeling rather flat now that Christmas was over - everybody except Heroneka and Harry that is, who were starting (once again) to feel slightly nervous.

The trouble was that February the twenty-fourth looked a lot closer from this side of Christmas, and Heroneka and Harry still hadn't done anything about working out the clue inside the golden egg. Heroneka told Harry about what Cedric had suggested to her - Taking a bath with the egg in the Prefects' bathroom.

To her surprise, Harry wasn't happy to hear the idea. Instead, he began to argue with her. They were sitting in the common room. Ron and Hermione watched them argue while the others turned their heads to look at them.

"Really?" He said, "now you're getting help from him? If you trust him so much then why didn't you go to the Ball with him? Now, he's probably trying to show off that he is helping you and me. That ought to impress the girls around him even more!"

"Look!" Heroneka tried to keep her calm. "The Yule Ball is gone, Harry. It's over! Can we please focus back on the second task now? We need to figure out the egg soon or --"

"We?" Harry let out a harsh laugh. "What we? When you have some work, you come to me? And, when you have to have fun, you jump onto some other guy's lap?"

"Harry!!" Hermione snapped, standing up so quickly that some of her books dropped off the table.

"You think that I am going to help you figure out the egg?" Harry snapped at Heroneka. "Guess what! We are competing against each other so you have to do this without me. I'm done with you. Go - just go and be with any guy you want."

He looked around for some guy. "Go find your Cedric - Malfoy - " he spotted the twins, "oh, here's Fred and Geroge too! You keep jumping over from one guy to another. That's what you do. Go on! Jump onto them!"

"Hey!" Fred snapped from the other end of the common room.

"That will be enough!" George got up eyeing Harry.

"You think that I enjoy this attention?" Heroneka couldn't believe where Harry had taken the conversation. "You think that I jump from one boy to another?"

"Of course," Harry laughed again, his face red with rage. "There was a time when we both were there! You were my best friend, Snitchy! But now? You belong every other guy I can think of."