“Yes, sir.”
Harry stuffed a bent card into the box at random and hurried out of the door before Snape could change his mind, racing back up the stone steps, straining his ears to hear a sound from the pitch, but all was quiet… It was over, then…
He hesitated outside the crowded Great Hall, then ran up the marble staircase; whether Gryffindor had won or lost, the team usually celebrated or commiserated in their own common room.
“Quid agis?” he said tentatively to the Fat Lady, wondering what he would find inside.
Her expression was unreadable as she replied, “You’ll see.”
And she swung forward.
A roar of celebration erupted from the hole behind her. Harry gaped as people began to scream at the sight of him; several hands pulled him into the room.
“We won!” yelled Ron, bounding into sight and brandishing the silver Cup at Harry. “We won! Four hundred and fifty to a hundred and forty! We won!”
Harry looked around; there was Ginny running toward him; she had a hard, blazing look in her face as she threw her arms around him. And without thinking, without planning it, without worrying about the fact that fifty people were watching, Harry kissed her.
After several long moments—or it might have been half an hour—or possibly several sunlit days—they broke apart. The room had gone very quiet. Then several people wolf-whistled and there was an outbreak of nervous giggling. Harry looked over the top of Ginny’s head to see Dean Thomas holding a shattered glass in his hand, and Romilda Vane looking as though she might throw something. Hermione was beaming, but Harry’s eyes sought Ron. At last he found him, still clutching the Cup and wearing an expression appropriate to having been clubbed over the head. For a fraction of a second they looked at each other, then Ron gave a tiny jerk of the head that Harry understood to mean, Well—if you must.
The creature in his chest roaring in triumph, he grinned down at Ginny and gestured wordlessly out of the portrait hole. A long walk in the grounds seemed indicated, during which—if they had time—they might discuss the match.
25. THE SEER OVERHEARD
The fact that Harry Potter was going out with Ginny Weasley seemed to interest a great number of people, most of them girls, yet Harry found himself newly and happily impervious to gossip over the next few weeks. After all, it made a very nice change to be talked about because of something that was making him happier than he could remember being for a very long time, rather than because he had been involved in horrific scenes of Dark magic.
“You’d think people had better things to gossip about,” said Ginny, as she sat on the common-room floor, leaning against Harry’s legs and reading the Daily Prophet. Three Dementor attacks in a week, and all Romilda Vane does is ask me if it’s true you’ve got a Hippogriff tattooed across your chest.”
Ron and Hermione both roared with laughter. Harry ignored them.
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her it’s a Hungarian Horntail,” said Ginny, turning a page of the newspaper idly. “Much more macho.”
“Thanks,” said Harry, grinning. “And what did you tell her Ron’s got?”
“A Pygmy Puff, but I didn’t say where.”
Ron scowled as Hermione rolled around laughing.
“Watch it,” he said, pointing wamingly at Harry and Ginny. “Just because I’ve given my permission doesn’t mean I can’t withdraw it—”
“‘Your permission,’” scoffed Ginny. “Since when did you give me permission to do anything? Anyway, you said yourself you’d rather it was Harry than Michael or Dean.”
“Yeah, I would,” said Ron grudgingly. “And just as long as you don’t start snogging each other in public—”
“You filthy hypocrite! What about you and Lavender, thrashing around like a pair of eels all over the place?” demanded Ginny.
But Ron’s tolerance was not to be tested much as they moved into June, for Harry and Ginny’s time together was becoming increasingly restricted. Ginny’s O.W.L.s were approaching and she was therefore forced to revise for hours into the night. On one such evening, when Ginny had retired to the library and Harry was sitting beside the window in the common room, supposedly finishing his Herbology homework but in reality reliving a particularly happy hour he had spent down by the lake with Ginny at lunch-time, Hermione dropped into the seat between him and Ron with an unpleasantly purposeful look on her face.
“I want to talk to you, Harry.”
“What about?” said Harry suspiciously. Only the previous day, Hermione had told him off for distracting Ginny when she ought to be working hard for her examinations.
“The so-called Half-Blood Prince.”
“Oh, not again,” he groaned. “Will you please drop it?”
He had not dared to return to the Room of Requirement to retrieve his book, and his performance in Potions was suffering accordingly (though Slughorn, who approved of Ginny, had jocularly attributed this to Harry being lovesick). But Harry was sure that Snape had not yet given up hope of laying hands on the Prince’s book, and was determined to leave it where it was while Snape remained on the lookout.
“I’m not dropping it,” said Hermione firmly, “until you’ve heard me out. Now, I’ve been trying to find out a bit about who might make a hobby of inventing Dark spells—”
“He didn’t make a hobby of it—”
“He, he—who says it’s a he?”
“We’ve been through this,” said Harry crossly. “Prince, Hermione, Prince!”
“Right!” said Hermione, red patches blazing in her cheeks as she pulled a very old piece of newsprint out of her pocket and slammed it down on the table in front of Harry. “Look at that! Look at the picture!”
Harry picked up the crumbling piece of paper and stared at the moving photograph, yellowed with age; Ron leaned over for a look, too. The picture showed a skinny girl of around fifteen. She was not pretty; she looked simultaneously cross and sullen, with heavy brows and a long, pallid face. Underneath the photograph was the caption: Eileen Prince, Captain of the Hogwarts Gobstones Team.
“So?” said Harry, scanning the short news item to which the picture belonged; it was a rather dull story about inter-school competitions.
“Her name was Eileen Prince. Prince, Harry.”
They looked at each other and Harry realised what Hermione was trying to say. He burst out laughing.
“No way.”
“What?”
“You think she was the Half-Blood…? Oh, come on.”
“Well, why not? Harry, there aren’t any real princes in the wizarding world! It’s either a nickname, a made-up title somebody’s given themselves, or it could be their actual name, couldn’t it? No, listen! If, say, her father was a wizard whose surname was “Prince”, and her mother was a Muggle, then that would make her a ‘half-blood Prince’!”
“Yeah, very ingenious, Hermione…”
“But it would! Maybe she was proud of being half a Prince!”
“Listen, Hermione, I can tell it’s not a girl. I can just tell.”
“The truth is that you don’t think a girl would have been clever enough,” said Hermione angrily.
“How can I have hung round with you for five years and not think girls are clever?” said Harry, stung by this. “It’s the way he writes. I just know the Prince was a bloke, I can tell. This girl hasn’t got anything to do with it. Where did you get this, anyway?”
“The library,” said Hermione, predictably. “There’s a whole collection of old Prophets up there. Well, I’m going to find out more about Eileen Prince if I can.”