Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire hp-4 Read online

“Thank you, Harry Potter, thank you,” said Dobby breathlessly, rubbing his head.

  “You just need a bit of practice,” Harry said.

  “Practice!” squealed Winky furiously. “You is ought to be ashamed of yourself, Dobby, talking that way about your masters!”

  “They isn’t my masters anymore, Winky!” said Dobby defiantly. “Dobby doesn’t care what they think anymore!”

  “Oh you is a bad elf, Dobby!” moaned Winky, tears leaking down her face once more. “My poor Mr. Crouch, what is he doing without Winky? He is needing me, he is needing my help! I is looking after the Crouches all my life, and my mother is doing it before me, and my grandmother is doing it before her… oh what is they saying if they knew Winky was freed? Oh the shame, the shame!” She buried her face in her skirt again and bawled.

  “Winky,” said Hermione firmly, “I’m quite sure Mr. Crouch is getting along perfectly well without you. We’ve seen him, you know—”

  “You is seeing my master?” said Winky breathlessly, raising her tearstained face out of her skirt once more and goggling at Hermione. “You is seeing him here at Hogwarts?”

  “Yes,” said Hermione, “he and Mr. Bagman are judges in the Triwizard Tournament.”

  “Mr. Bagman comes too?” squeaked Winky, and to Harry’s great surprise (and Ron’s and Hermione’s too, by the looks on their faces), she looked angry again. “Mr. Bagman is a bad wizard! A very bad wizard! My master isn’t liking him, oh no, not at all!”

  “Bagman—bad?” said Harry.

  “Oh yes,” Winky said, nodding her head furiously, “My master is telling Winky some things! But Winky is not saying… Winky—Winky keeps her master’s secrets…”

  She dissolved yet again in tears; they could hear her sobbing into her skirt, “Poor master, poor master, no Winky to help him no more!”

  They couldn’t get another sensible word out of Winky. They left her to her crying and finished their tea, while Dobby chatted happily about his life as a free elf and his plans for his wages.

  “Dobby is going to buy a sweater next, Harry Potter!” he said happily, pointing at his bare chest.

  “Tell you what, Dobby,” said Ron, who seemed to have taken a great liking to the elf, “I’ll give you the one my mum knits me this Christmas, I always get one from her. You don’t mind maroon, do you?”

  Dobby was delighted.

  “We might have to shrink it a bit to fit you,” Ron told him, “but it’ll go well with your tea cozy.”

  As they prepared to take their leave, many of the surrounding elves pressed in upon them, offering snacks to take back upstairs. Hermione refused, with a pained look at the way the elves kept bowing and curtsying, but Harry and Ron loaded their pockets with cream cakes and pies.

  “Thanks a lot!” Harry said to the elves, who had all clustered around the door to say good night. “See you, Dobby!”

  “Harry Potter… can Dobby come and see you sometimes, sir?” Dobby asked tentatively.

  “’Course you can,” said Harry, and Dobby beamed.

  “You know what?” said Ron, once he, Hermione, and Harry had left the kitchens behind and were climbing the steps into the entrance hall again. “All these years I’ve been really impressed with Fred and George, nicking food from the kitchens—well, it’s not exactly difficult, is it? They can’t wait to give it away!”

  “I think this is the best thing that could have happened to those elves, you know,” said Hermione, leading the way back up the marble staircase. “Dobby coming to work here, I mean. The other elves will see how happy he is, being free, and slowly it’ll dawn on them that they want that too!”

  “Let’s hope they don’t look too closely at Winky,” said Harry.

  “Oh she’ll cheer up,” said Hermione, though she sounded a bit doubtful. “Once the shock’s worn off, and she’s got used to Hogwarts, she’ll see how much better off she is without that Crouch man.”

  “She seems to love him,” said Ron thickly (he had just started on a cream cake).

  “Doesn’t think much of Bagman, though, does she?” said Harry. “Wonder what Crouch says at home about him?”

  “Probably says he’s not a very good Head of Department,” said Hermione, “and let’s face it… he’s got a point, hasn’t he?”

  “I’d still rather work for him than old Crouch,” said Ron. “At least Bagman’s got a sense of humor.”

  “Don’t let Percy hear you saying that,” Hermione said, smiling slightly.

  “Yeah, well, Percy wouldn’t want to work for anyone with a sense of humor, would he?” said Ron, now starting on a chocolate eclair. “Percy wouldn’t recognize a joke if it danced naked in front of him wearing Dobby’s tea cozy.”

  22. THE UNEXPECTED TASK

  “Potter! Weasley! Will you pay attention?”

  Professor McGonagall’s irritated voice cracked like a whip through the Transfiguration class on Thursday, and Harry and Ron both jumped and looked up.

  It was the end of the lesson; they had finished their work; the guinea fowl they had been changing into guinea pigs had been shut away in a large cage on Professor McGonagall’s desk (Neville’s still had feathers); they had copied down their homework from the blackboard (“Describe, with examples, the ways in which Transforming Spells must be adapted when performing Cross Species Switches”). The bell was due to ring at any moment, and Harry and Ron, who had been having a sword fight with a couple of Fred and George’s fake wands at the back of the class, looked up, Ron holding a tin parrot and Harry, a rubber haddock.

  “Now that Potter and Weasley have been kind enough to act their age,” said Professor McGonagall, with an angry look at the pair of them as the head of Harry’s haddock drooped and fell silently to the floor—Ron’s parrot’s beak had severed it moments before—“I have something to say to you all.

  “The Yule Ball is approaching—a traditional part of the Triwizard Tournament and an opportunity for us to socialize with our foreign guests. Now, the ball will be open only to fourth years and above—although you may invite a younger student if you wish—”

  Lavender Brown let out a shrill giggle. Parvati Patil nudged her hard in the ribs, her face working furiously as she too fought not to giggle. They both looked around at Harry, Professor McGonagall ignored them, which Harry thought was distinctly unfair, as she had just told off him and Ron.

  “Dress robes will be worn,” Professor McGonagall continued, “and the ball will start at eight o’clock on Christmas Day, finishing at midnight in the Great Hall. Now then—” Professor McGonagall stared deliberately around the class.

  “The Yule Ball is of course a chance for us all to—er—let our hair down,” she said, in a disapproving voice.

  Lavender giggled harder than ever, with her hand pressed hard against her mouth to stifle the sound. Harry could see what was funny this time: Professor McGonagall, with her hair in a tight bun, looked as though she had never let her hair down in any sense.

  “But that does NOT mean,” Professor McGonagall went on, “that we will be relaxing the standards of behavior we expect from Hogwarts students. I will be most seriously displeased if a Gryffindor student embarrasses the school in any way.”

  The bell rang, and there was the usual scuffle of activity as everyone packed their bags and swung them onto their shoulders.

  Professor McGonagall called above the noise, “Potter—a word, if you please.”

  Assuming this had something to do with his headless rubber haddock, Harry proceeded gloomily to the teacher’s desk. Professor McGonagall waited until the rest of the class had gone, and then said, “Potter, the champions and their partners—”

  “What partners?” said Harry.

  Profesor McGonagall looked suspiciously at him, as though she thought he was trying to be funny.

  “Your partners for the Yule Ball, Potter,” she said coldly. “Your dance partners.”

  Harry’s insides seemed to curl up and shrivel.

  “Dance partners
?” He felt himself going red. “I don’t dance,” he said quickly.

  “Oh yes, you do,” said Professor McGonagall irritably. “That’s what I’m telling you. Traditionally, the champions and their partners open the ball.”

  Harry had a sudden mental image of himself in a top hat and tails, accompanied by a girl in the sort of frilly dress Aunt Petunia always wore to Uncle Vernon’s work parties.

  “I’m not dancing,” he said.

  “It is traditional,” said Professor McGonagall firmly. “You are a Hogwarts champion, and you will do what is expected of you as a representative of the school. So make sure you get yourself a partner, Potter.”

  “But I don’t—”

  “You heard me, Potter,” said Professor McGonagall in a very final sort of way.

  A week ago, Harry would have said finding a partner for a dance would be a cinch compared to taking on a Hungarian Horntail. But now that he had done the latter, and was facing the prospect of asking a girl to the ball, he thought he’d rather have another round with the dragon.

  Harry had never known so many people to put their names down to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas; he always did, of course, because the alternative was usually going back to Privet Drive, but he had always been very much in the minority before now. This year, however, everyone in the fourth year and above seemed to be staying, and they all seemed to Harry to be obsessed with the coming ball—or at least all the girls were, and it was amazing how many girls Hogwarts suddenly seemed to hold; he had never quite noticed that before. Girls giggling and whispering in the corridors, girls shrieking with laughter as boys passed them, girls excitedly comparing notes on what they were going to wear on Christmas night…

  “Why do they have to move in packs?” Harry asked Ron as a dozen or so girls walked past them, sniggering and staring at Harry. “How’re you supposed to get one on their own to ask them?”

  “Lasso one?” Ron suggested. “Got any idea who you’re going to try?”

  Harry didn’t answer. He knew perfectly well whom he’d like to ask, but working up the nerve was something else… Cho was a year older than he was; she was very pretty; she was a very good Quidditch player, and she was also very popular.

  Ron seemed to know what was going on inside Harry’s head.

  “Listen, you’re not going to have any trouble. You’re a champion. You’ve just beaten a Hungarian Horntail. I bet they’ll be queuing up to go with you.”

  In tribute to their recently repaired friendship, Ron had kept the bitterness in his voice to a bare minimum. Moreover, to Harry’s amazement, he turned out to be quite right.

  A curly haired third year Hufflepuff girl to whom Harry had never spoken in his life asked him to go to the ball with her the very next day. Harry was so taken aback he said no before he’d even stopped to consider the matter. The girl walked off looking rather hurt, and Harry had to endure Dean’s, Seamus’s, and Ron’s taunts about her all through History of Magic. The following day, two more girls asked him, a second year and (to his horror) a fifth year who looked as though she might knock him out if he refused.

  “She was quite good looking,” said Ron fairly, after he’d stopped laughing.

  “She was a foot taller than me,” said Harry, still unnerved. “Imagine what I’d look like trying to dance with her.”

  Hermione’s words about Krum kept coming back to him. “They only like him because he’s famous!” Harry doubted very much if any of the girls who had asked to be his partner so far would have wanted to go to the ball with him if he hadn’t been a school champion. Then he wondered if this would bother him if Cho asked him.

  On the whole, Harry had to admit that even with the embarrassing prospect of opening the ball before him, life had definitely improved since he had got through the first task. He wasn’t attracting nearly as much unpleasantness in the corridors anymore, which he suspected had a lot to do with Cedric—he had an idea Cedric might have told the Hufflepuffs to leave Harry alone, in gratitude for Harry’s tip off about the dragons. There seemed to be fewer Support Cedric Diggory! badges around too. Draco Malfoy, of course, was still quoting Rita Skeeter’s article to him at every possible opportunity, but he was getting fewer and fewer laughs out of it—and just to heighten Harry’s feeling of well being, no story about Hagrid had appeared in the Daily Prophet.

  “She didn’ seem very int’rested in magical creatures, ter tell yeh the truth,” Hagrid said, when Harry, Ron, and Hermione asked him how his interview with Rita Skeeter had gone during the last Care of Magical Creatures lesson of the term. To their very great relief, Hagrid had given up on direct contact with the skrewts now, and they were merely sheltering behind his cabin today, sitting at a trestle table and preparing a fresh selection of food with which to tempt the skrewts.

  “She jus’ wanted me ter talk about you, Harry,” Hagrid continued in a low voice. “Well, I told her we’d been friends since I went ter fetch yeh from the Dursleys. ‘Never had to tell him off in four years?’ she said. ‘Never played you up in lessons, has he?’ I told her no, an she didn’ seem happy at all. Yeh’d think she wanted me to say yeh were horrible, Harry.”

  “’Course she did,” said Harry, throwing lumps of dragon liver into a large metal bowl and picking up his knife to cut some more. “She can’t keep writing about what a tragic little hero I am, it’ll get boring.”

  “She wants a new angle, Hagrid,” said Ron wisely as he shelled salamander eggs. “You were supposed to say Harry’s a mad delinquent!”

  “But he’s not!” said Hagrid, looking genuinely shocked.

  “She should’ve interviewed Snape,” said Harry grimly. “He’d give her the goods on me any day. ‘Potter has been crossing lines ever since he first arrived at this school…’”

  “Said that, did he?” said Hagrid, while Ron and Hermione laughed. “Well, yeh might’ve bent a few rules, Harry, bu’ yeh’re all righ’ really, aren’ you?”

  “Cheers, Hagrid,” said Harry, grinning.

  “You coming to this ball thing on Christmas Day, Hagrid?” said Ron.

  “Though’ I might look in on it, yeah,” said Hagrid gruffly. “Should be a good do, I reckon. You’ll be openin the dancin’, won yeh, Harry? Who’re you takin’?”

  “No one, yet,” said Harry, feeling himself going red again. Hagrid didn’t pursue the subject.

  The last week of term became increasingly boisterous as it progressed. Rumors about the Yule Ball were flying everywhere, though Harry didn’t believe half of them—for instance, that Dumbledore had bought eight hundred barrels of mulled mead from Madam Rosmerta. It seemed to be fact, however, that he had booked the Weird Sisters. Exactly who or what the Weird Sisters were Harry didn’t know, never having had access to a wizard’s wireless, but he deduced from the wild excitement of those who had grown up listening to the WWN (Wizarding Wireless Network) that they were a very famous musical group.

  Some of the teachers, like little Professor Flitwick, gave up trying to teach them much when their minds were so clearly elsewhere; he allowed them to play games in his lesson on Wednesday, and spent most of it talking to Harry about the perfect Summoning Charm Harry had used during the first task of the Triwizard Tournament. Other teachers were not so generous. Nothing would ever deflect Professor Binns, for example, from plowing on through his notes on goblin rebellions—as Binns hadn’t let his own death stand in the way of continuing to teach, they supposed a small thing like Christmas wasn’t going to put him off. It was amazing how he could make even bloody and vicious goblin riots sound as boring as Percy’s cauldron bottom report. Professors McGonagall and Moody kept them working until the very last second of their classes too, and Snape, of course, would no sooner let them play games in class than adopt Harry. Staring nastily around at them all, he informed them that he would be testing them on poison antidotes during the last lesson of the term.

  “Evil, he is,” Ron said bitterly that night in the Gryffindor common room. “Springing a test on us o
n the last day. Ruining the last bit of term with a whole load of studying.”

  “Mmm… you’re not exactly straining yourself, though, are you?” said Hermione, looking at him over the top of her Potions notes. Ron was busy building a card castle out of his Exploding Snap pack—a much more interesting pastime than with Muggle cards, because of the chance that the whole thing would blow up at any second.

  “It’s Christmas, Hermione,” said Harry lazily; he was rereading Flying with the Cannons for the tenth time in an armchair near the fire.

  Hermione looked severely over at him too. “I’d have thought you’d be doing something constructive, Harry, even if you don’t want to learn your antidotes!”

  “Like what?” Harry said as he watched Joey Jenkins of the Cannons belt a Bludger toward a Ballycastle Bats Chaser.

  “That egg!” Hermione hissed.

  “Come on, Hermione, I’ve got till February the twenty fourth,” Harry said.

  He had put the golden egg upstairs in his trunk and hadn’t opened it since the celebration party after the first task. There were still two and a half months to go until he needed to know what all the screechy wailing meant, after all.

  “But it might take weeks to work it out!” said Hermione. “You’re going to look a real idiot if everyone else knows what the next task is and you don’t!”

  “Leave him alone, Hermione, he’s earned a bit of a break,” said Ron, and he placed the last two cards on top of the castle and the whole lot blew up, singeing his eyebrows.

  “Nice look, Ron… go well with your dress robes, that will.”

  It was Fred and George. They sat down at the table with Harry, Ron, and Hermione as Ron felt how much damage had been done.

  “Ron, can we borrow Pigwidgeon?” George asked.

  “No, he’s off delivering a letter,” said Ron. “Why?”

  “Because George wants to invite him to the ball,” said Fred sarcastically.

  “Because we want to send a letter, you stupid great prat,” said George.

  “Who d’you two keep writing to, eh?” said Ron.