Love at First Sight (Harry Potter)

Rita Skeeter's Scoop

|ALEXANDRIA WEASLEY'S P.O.V.|

There were no early risers on Boxing Day. The Gryffindor common room was much quieter than it had been all year, many yawns punctuating the laziest of conversations.

Harry had been quite surprised when (at noon) Hermione and I had come down from our dormitory and Hermione's hair was bushy again. Amidst his many questions, she revealed that she had used liberal amounts of Sleekeazy's Hair Potion on it for the ball, "but it's way too much bother to do every day," she said matter-of-factly, scratching a purring Crookshanks behind the ears.

"All thanks to your lovely granddad," I said playfully to Harry. We were on the couch together, facing where Hermione and Ron sat in separate armchairs in front of the fire. I was speaking of Fleamont Potter — the founder of Sleekeazy's potion. It was where Harry's fortune had come from, having been passed on to James and then to Harry himself.

"Terrible I never got to meet him," said Harry humorously. He leant back against the plush of the cushions, his arm stretching behind us both. I sensed it going over the top edge of the couch, just behind my neck; it didn't touch me, yet still a little smile graced my lips. "I would've gotten you a lifetime supply, Mione."

"Ha ha," mocked Hermione with a roll of her eyes. Harry chuckled to himself at his own little quip, bringing his feet up onto the glass table carelessly.

I shook my head slightly in amusement as I flipped another page in the book on my lap: A Healer's Guide to Magical Medical Methodologies. It had been a gift from Hermione for Christmas the year prior. I'd read it twice already, front to back.

Ron and Hermione seemed to have reached an unspoken agreement not to discuss their argument. They were being quite friendly to each other, although oddly formal. He had wasted no time in telling Hermione and I about the conversation that he and Harry had overheard between Madame Maxime and Hagrid.

"He's half-giant!" Ron had said incredulously, his hands waving violently in front of his face as he looked to each of us with widened eyes. Hermione and I had shared a glance. His jaw fell ajar. "How're you not reacting to this?"

"Well," I'd said slowly, crossing my legs one over the other, "it's not exactly surprising information."

Ron's gape deepened. Hermione hummed in agreement, to which his shock rounded on her. I rolled my eyes.

"I thought he must be," she had 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?"

Ron's head tilted and he looked as though he would have liked to reply scathingly, but then he — thankfully — reconsidered. Perhaps he hadn't wanted another row. He closed his mouth tightly and, once Hermione had turned her attention to Crookshanks, shook his head in disbelief.

Now we sat mostly in silence, finding that a bit of awkwardness had overcome our group. Ron was leant as far back in his armchair as it would go, his head lolled to rest atop his shoulder as he stared out into the fire. Hermione was running her fingers through Crookshanks fur, not having noticed that Amara had appeared near her head and curled into a tiny ball; she was too busy chancing quick glances at Ron every few minutes.

Harry was, well, doing nothing. I felt him looking at me now and again but, whenever I looked at him, he was always glancing around at nothing in particular. He was thinking about something; what, I was unsure.

Unable to register the words on the open page in front of me, too distracted by my own curiosity, I closed my book with a click. When I turned to Harry, I felt his forearm behind me brush against my ear. Both of our faces flushed a tad and he retracted his arm in towards him an inch, but not enough to remove it entirely.