“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.