Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J. K. Rowling [231]
“You really miss it, don’t you?” said Cho.
He looked around and saw her watching him.
“Yeah,” sighed Harry. “I do.”
“Remember the first time we played against each other, in the third year?” she asked him.
“Yeah,” said Harry, grinning. “You kept blocking me.”
“And Wood told you not to be a gentleman and knock me off my broom if you had to,” said Cho, smiling reminiscently. “I heard he got taken on by Pride of Portree, is that right?”
“Nah, it was Puddlemere United, I saw him at the World Cup last year.”
“Oh, I saw you there too, remember? We were on the same campsite. It was really good, wasn’t it?”
The subject of the Quidditch World Cup carried them all the way down the drive and out through the gates. Harry could hardly believe how easy it was to talk to her, no more difficult, in fact, than talking to Ron and Hermione, and he was just starting to feel confident and cheerful when a large gang of Slytherin girls passed them, including Pansy Parkinson.
“Potter and Chang!” screeched Pansy to a chorus of snide giggles. “Urgh, Chang, I don’t think much of your taste. … At least Diggory was good-looking!”
They sped up, talking and shrieking in a pointed fashion with many exaggerated glances back at Harry and Cho, leaving an embarrassed silence in their wake. Harry could think of nothing else to say about Quidditch, and Cho, slightly flushed, was watching her feet.
“So … where d’you want to go?” Harry asked as they entered Hogsmeade. The High Street was full of students ambling up and down, peering into the shop windows and messing about together on the pavements.
“Oh … I don’t mind,” said Cho, shrugging. “Um … shall we just have a look in the shops or something?”
They wandered toward Dervish and Banges. A large poster had been stuck up in the window and a few Hogsmeaders were looking at it. They moved aside when Harry and Cho approached and Harry found himself staring once more at the ten pictures of the escaped Death Eaters. The poster (“By Order of the Ministry of Magic”) offered a thousand-Galleon reward to any witch or wizard with information relating to the recapture of any of the convicts pictured.
“It’s funny, isn’t it,” said Cho in a low voice, also gazing up at the pictures of the Death Eaters. “Remember when that Sirius Black escaped, and there were dementors all over Hogsmeade looking for him? And now ten Death Eaters are on the loose and there aren’t de-mentors anywhere. …”
“Yeah,” said Harry, tearing his eyes away from Bellatrix Lestrange’s face to glance up and down the High Street. “Yeah, it is weird. …”
He was not sorry that there were no dementors nearby, but now he came to think of it, their absence was highly significant. They had not only let the Death Eaters escape, they were not bothering to look for them. … It looked as though they really were outside Ministry control now.
The ten escaped Death Eaters were staring out of every shop window he and Cho passed. It started to rain as they passed Scrivenshaft’s; cold, heavy drops of water kept hitting Harry’s face and the back of his neck.
“Um … d’you want to get a coffee?” said Cho tentatively, as the rain began to fall more heavily.
“Yeah, all right,” said Harry, looking around. “Where — ?”
“Oh, there’s a really nice place just up here, haven’t you ever been to Madam Puddifoot’s?” she said brightly, and she led him up a side road and into a small tea shop that Harry had never noticed before. It was a cramped, steamy little place where everything seemed to have been decorated with frills or bows. Harry was reminded unpleasantly of Umbridge’s office.
“Cute, isn’t it?” said Cho happily.
“Er … yeah,” said