Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J. K. Rowling [292]
“We haven’t got to do anything yet!” Harry tried to reassure her in a quiet voice, as they joined a stream of jabbering Hufflepuffs heading back toward the castle. “He’s not asking us to do anything unless he gets chucked out and that might not even happen —”
“Oh come off it, Harry!” said Hermione angrily, stopping dead in her tracks so that the people behind her had to swerve to avoid her. “Of course he’s going to be chucked out and to be perfectly honest, after what we’ve just seen, who can blame Umbridge?”
There was a pause in which Harry glared at her, and her eyes filled slowly with tears.
“You didn’t mean that,” said Harry quietly.
“No … well … all right … I didn’t,” she said, wiping her eyes angrily. “But why does he have to make life so difficult for himself — for us?”
“I dunno —”
Weasley is our King,
Weasley is our King,
He didn’t let the Quaffle in,
Weasley is our King …
“And I wish they’d stop singing that stupid song,” said Hermione miserably, “haven’t they gloated enough?”
A great tide of students was moving up the sloping lawns from the pitch.
“Oh, let’s get in before we have to meet the Slytherins,” said Hermione.
Weasley can save anything,
He never leaves a single ring
That’s why Gryffindors all sing:
Weasley is our King.
“Hermione …” said Harry slowly.
The song was growing louder, but it was issuing not from a crowd of green-and-silver-clad Slytherins, but from a mass of red and gold moving slowly toward the castle, which was bearing a solitary figure upon its many shoulders. …
Weasley is our King,
Weasley is our King,
He didn’t let the Quaffle in,
Weasley is our King …
“No!” said Hermione in a hushed voice.
“YES!” said Harry loudly.
“HARRY! HERMIONE!” yelled Ron, waving the silver Quidditch Cup in the air and looking quite beside himself. “WE DID IT! WE WON!”
They beamed up at him as he passed; there was a scrum at the door of the castle and Ron’s head got rather badly bumped on the lintel, but nobody seemed to want to put him down. Still singing, the crowd squeezed itself into the entrance hall and out of sight. Harry and Hermione watched them go, beaming, until the last echoing strains of “Weasley Is Our King” died away. Then they turned to each other, their smiles fading.
“We’ll save our news till tomorrow, shall we?” said Harry.
“Yes, all right,” said Hermione wearily. “I’m not in any hurry. …”
They climbed the steps together. At the front doors both instinctively looked back at the Forbidden Forest. Harry was not sure whether it was his imagination or not, but he rather thought he saw a small cloud of birds erupting into the air over the treetops in the distance, almost as though the tree in which they had been nesting had just been pulled up by the roots.
O.W.L.S
Ron’s euphoria at helping Gryffindor scrape the Quidditch Cup was such that he could not settle to anything next day. All he wanted to do was talk over the match and Harry and Hermione found it very difficult to find an opening in which to mention Grawp — not that either of them tried very hard; neither was keen to be the one to bring Ron back to reality in quite such a brutal fashion. As it was another fine, warm day, they persuaded him to join them in studying under the beech tree on the edge of the lake, where they stood less chance of being overheard than in the common room. Ron was not particularly keen on this idea at first; he was thoroughly enjoying being patted on the back by Gryffindors walking past his chair, not to mention the occasional outbursts of “Weasley Is Our King,” but agreed after a while that some fresh air might do him good.
They spread their books out in the shade of the beech tree and sat down while Ron talked them through his first save of the match for what felt like the dozenth time.
“Well, I mean, I’d already let in that one of Davies’s, so I wasn’t feeling that confident, but I dunno, when Bradley came toward me, just out of nowhere, I thought