Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J. K. Rowling [237]
Cho Chang walked into the hall with her friend Marietta. Harry’s stomach gave an unpleasant lurch, but she did not look over at the Gryffindor table and sat down with her back to him.
“Oh, I forgot to ask you,” said Hermione brightly, glancing over at the Ravenclaw table, “what happened on your date with Cho? How come you were back so early?”
“Er … well, it was …” said Harry, pulling a dish of rhubarb crumble toward him and helping himself to seconds, “a complete fiasco, now you mention it.”
And he told her what had happened in Madam Puddifoot’s Tea Shop.
“… so then,” he finished several minutes later, as the final bit of crumble disappeared, “she jumps up, right, and says ‘I’ll see you around, Harry,’ and runs out of the place!” He put down his spoon and looked at Hermione. “I mean, what was all that about? What was going on?”
Hermione glanced over at the back of Cho’s head and sighed. “Oh, Harry,” she said sadly. “Well, I’m sorry, but you were a bit tactless.”
“Me, tactless?” said Harry, outraged. “One minute we were getting on fine, next minute she was telling me that Roger Davies asked her out, and how she used to go and snog Cedric in that stupid tea shop — how was I supposed to feel about that?”
“Well, you see,” said Hermione, with the patient air of one explaining that one plus one equals two to an overemotional toddler, “you shouldn’t have told her that you wanted to meet me halfway through your date.”
“But, but,” spluttered Harry, “but — you told me to meet you at twelve and to bring her along, how was I supposed to do that without telling her — ?”
“You should have told her differently” said Hermione, still with that maddeningly patient air. “You should have said it was really annoying, but I’d made you promise to come along to the Three Broomsticks, and you really didn’t want to go, you’d much rather spend the whole day with her, but unfortunately you thought you really ought to meet me and would she please, please come along with you, and hopefully you’d be able to get away more quickly? And it might have been a good idea to mention how ugly you think I am too,” Hermione added as an afterthought.
“But I don’t think you’re ugly,” said Harry, bemused.
Hermione laughed.
“Harry, you’re worse than Ron. … Well, no, you’re not,” she sighed, as Ron himself came stumping into the Hall splattered with mud and looking grumpy. “Look — you upset Cho when you said you were going to meet me, so she tried to make you jealous. It was her way of trying to find out how much you liked her.”
“Is that what she was doing?” said Harry as Ron dropped onto the bench opposite them and pulled every dish within reach toward himself. “Well, wouldn’t it have been easier if she’d just asked me whether I liked her better than you?”
“Girls don’t often ask questions like that,” said Hermione.
“Well, they should!” said Harry forcefully. “Then I could’ve just told her I fancy her, and she wouldn’t have had to get herself all worked up again about Cedric dying!”
“I’m not saying what she did was sensible,” said Hermione, as Ginny joined them, just as muddy as Ron and looking equally disgruntled. “I’m just trying to make you see how she was feeling at the time.”
“You should write a book,” Ron told Hermione as he cut up his potatoes, “translating mad things girls do so boys can understand them.”
“Yeah,” said Harry fervently, looking over at the Ravenclaw table. Cho had just got up; still not looking at him, she left the Great Hall. Feeling rather depressed, he looked back at Ron and Ginny. “So, how was Quidditch practice?”
“It was a nightmare,” said Ron in a surly voice.
“Oh come on,” said Hermione, looking at Ginny, “I’m sure it wasn’t that —”
“Yes, it was,” said Ginny. “It was appalling. Angelina was nearly in tears by the end of it.”
Ron and Ginny went off for baths after dinner;