‘What can I get you, m'dears?’ s

‘What can I get you, m'dears?’ said Madam Puddifoot, a very stout woman with a shiny black bun, squeezing between their table and Roger Davies's with great difficulty.

‘Two coffees, please,’ said Cho.

In the time it took for their coffees to arrive, Roger Davies and his girlfriend had started kissing over their sugar bowl. Harry wished they wouldn't; he felt that Davies was setting a standard with which Cho would soon expect

him to compete. He felt his face growing hot and tried staring out of the window, but it was so steamed up he couldn't see the street outside. To postpone the moment when he would have to look at Cho, he stared up at the

ceiling as though examining the paintwork and received a handful of confetti in the face from their hovering cherub.

After a few more painful minutes, Cho mentioned Umbridge. Harry seized on the subject with relief and they passed a few happy moments abusing her, but the subject had already been so thoroughly canvassed during DA

meetings it did not last very long. Silence fell again. Harry was very conscious of the slurping noises coming from the table next door and cast wildly around for something else to say.

‘Er ... listen, d'you want to come with me to the Three Broomsticks at lunchtime? I'm meeting Hermione Granger there.’

Cho raised her eyebrows.

‘You're meeting Hermione Granger? Today?’

‘Yeah. Well, she asked me to, so I thought I would. D'you want to come with me? She said it wouldn't matter if you did.’

‘Oh ... well ... that was nice of her.’

But Cho did not sound as though she thought it was nice at all. On the contrary, her tone was cold and all of a sudden she looked rather forbidding.

A few more minutes passed in total silence, Harry drinking his coffee so fast that he would soon need a fresh cup. Beside them, Roger Davies and his girlfriend seemed glued together at the tips.

Cho's hand was lying on the table beside her coffee and Harry was feeling a mounting pressure to take hold of it. Just do it, he told himself, as a fount of mingled panic and excitement surged up inside his chest, just reach out

and grab it. Amazing, how much more difficult it was to extend his arm twelve inches and touch her hand than it was to snatch a speeding Snitch from midair ...

But just as he moved his hand forwards, Cho took hers off the table. She was now watching Roger Davies kissing his girlfriend with a mildly interested expression.

‘He asked me out, you know,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘A couple of weeks ago. Roger. I turned him down, though.’

Harry, who had grabbed the sugar bowl to excuse his sudden lunging movement across the table, could not think why she was telling him this. If she wished she were sitting at the next table being heartily kissed by Roger

Davies, why had she agreed to come: out with him?

He said nothing. Their cherub threw another handful of confetti over them; some of it landed in the last cold dregs of coffee Harry had been about to drink.

‘I came in here with Cedric last year,’ said Cho.

In the second or so it took for him to take in what she had said, Harry's insides had become glacial. He could not believe she wanted to talk about Cedric now, while kissing couples surrounded them and a cherub floated over

their heads.

Cho's voice was rather higher when she spoke again.

‘I've been meaning to ask you for ages ... did Cedric—did he—m—m—mention me at all before he died?’

This was the very last subject on earth Harry wanted to discuss, and least of all with Cho.

‘Well—no—’ he said quietly. ‘There—there wasn't time for him to say anything. Erm ... so ... d'you ... d'you get to see a lot of Quidditch in the holidays? You support the Tornados, right?’

His voice sounded falsely bright and cheery. To his horror, he saw that her eyes were swimming with tears again, just as they had been after the last DA meeting before Christmas.

‘Look,’ he said desperately, leaning in so that nobody else could overhear, ‘let's not talk about Cedric right now ... let's talk about something else ...’

But this, apparently, was quite the wrong thing to say.

‘I thought,’ she said, tears spattering down on to the table, ‘I thought you'd u— u—understand! I need to talk about it! Surely you n—need to talk about it t—too! I mean, you saw it happen, d—didn't you?’

Everything was going nightmarishly wrong; Roger Davies's girlfriend had even unglued herself to look round at Cho crying.

‘Well—I have talked about it,’ Harry said in a whisper, ‘to Ron and Hermione, but—’

‘Oh, you'll talk to Hermione Granger!’ she said shrilly, her face now shining with tears. Several more kissing couples broke apart to stare. ‘But you won't talk to me! P —perhaps it would be best if we just ... just p—paid and

you went and met up with Hermione G—Granger, like you obviously want to!’
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