How It All Goes Down
The Unexpected Task
- Harry and Ron are talking so much in Transfiguration that Professor McGonagall has to shut them up before she can make an announcement.
- The announcement is: "The Yule Ball is approaching – a traditional part of the Triwizard Tournament and an opportunity for us to socialize with our foreign guests" (22.5).
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- Mrs. McGonagall pulls Harry aside.
- It's traditional for the four champions to open the Yule Ball with a dance.
- So Harry has to hurry up and find a partner for the dance. (And, presumably, learn to dance.)
- Harry is terrified: he has never asked a girl out before.
- He wants to ask Cho, but she's pretty and a year older than him, so he's shy.
- Harry is relieved that no article has appeared about Hagrid in the Daily Prophet yet.
- Maybe Rita Skeeter just isn't interested in Hagrid?
- Fred and George want to borrow Pigwidgeon so they can send a letter, but they still won't say to whom.
- They warn Harry and Ron that they better get dates quickly, "or all the good ones will be gone" (22.71).
- Ron and Hermione start to squabble because Ron is "going to take the best-looking girl who'll have [him], even if she's completely horrible" (22.90).
- Harry finally works up the courage to ask Cho.
- But Cho has already said she's going to go with Cedric Diggory.
- Harry is disappointed and embarrassed.
- He returns to the Common Room to find Ron in a similar state.
- Ron asked Fleur Delacour to the dance!
- Apparently, he "was just walking past her in the entrance hall – she was standing there talking to Diggory – and it sort of come over [him] – and [he] asked her!" (22.131).
- Harry comforts Ron: after all, Fleur does have veela blood.
- Ron couldn't help but make an idiot of himself.
- Ginny has also told Ron that Neville asked Hermione to the dance.
- Ron laughs: he's sure that Hermione just told Neville she's going with someone else to avoid going with Neville.
- Hermione comes in and Ron blurts out, "Hermione, Neville's right – you are a girl ..." (22.154). (Oh yeah. This is going to go well.)
- He suggests that Hermione go to the dance with Harry or himself.
- Hermione can't because she's going with someone else: "Just because it's taken you three years to notice, Ron, doesn't mean no one else has spotted I'm a girl!" (22.161). Snap.
- This fight really starts to turn nasty.
- Ron insists, "Ginny, you can go with Harry, and I'll just –" (22.170).
- But Ginny can't: she agreed to go with Neville.
- In desperation, Harry approaches Parvati Patil and asks if she'll come to the ball with him.
- She will, and she'll try to bring her twin sister, Padma, for Ron.
- Harry has now decided that "this ball was a lot more trouble than it was worth" (22.189).