“Are you going out with him, then?” asked Parvati, wide-eyed.

“Are you going out with him, then?” asked Parvati, wide-eyed.

“Oh—yes—didn't you know?” said Harmione, with a most un-Hermione-ish giggle.

“No!” said Parvati, looking positively agog at this piece of gossip. “Wow, you like your Quidditch players, don't you? First Krum, then McLaggen.”

“I like really good Quidditch players,” Hermione corrected her, still smiling. “Well, see you... got to go and get ready for the party...”

She left. At once Lavender and Parvati put their heads together to discuss this new development, with everything they had ever heard about McLaggen, and all they had

ever guessed about Hermione. Ron looked strangely blank and said nothing. Harry was left to ponder in silence the depths to which girls would sink to get revenge.

When he arrived in the Entrance Hall at eight o'clock that night, he found an unusually large number of girls lurking there, all of whom seemed to be staring at him

resentfully as he approached Luna. She was wearing a set of spangled silver robes that were attracting a certain amount of giggles from the onlookers, but otherwise she

looked quite nice. Harry was glad, in any case, that she had left off her radish earrings, her Butterbeer-cork necklace, and her Spectrespecs.

“Hi,” he said. “Shall we get going then?”

“Oh yes,” she said happily. “Where is the party?”

“Slughorn's office,” said Harry, leading her up the marble staircase away from all the staring and muttering. “Did you hear, there's supposed to be a vampire coming?

”

“Rufus Scrimgeour?” asked Luna.

“I—what?” said Harry, disconcerted. “You mean the Minister of Magic?”

“Yes, he's a vampire,” said Luna matter-of-factly. “Father wrote a very long article about it when Scrimgeour first took over from Cornelius Fudge, but he was forced

not to publish by somebody from the Ministry. Obviously, they didn't want the truth to get out!”

Harry, who thought it most unlikely that Rufus Scrimgeour was a vampire, but who was used to Luna repeating her father's bizarre views as though they were fact, did not

reply; they were already approaching Slughorn's office and the sounds of laughter, music, and loud conversation were growing louder with every step they took.

Whether it had been built that way, or because he had used magical trickery to make it so, Slughorn's office was much larger than the usual teacher's study. The ceiling

and walls had been draped with emerald, crimson and gold hangings, so that it looked as though they were all inside a vast tent. The room was crowded and stuffy and

bathed in the red light cast by an ornate golden lamp dangling from the center of the ceiling in which real fairies were fluttering, each a brilliant speck of light.

Loud singing accompanied by what sounded like mandolins issued from a distant corner; a haze of pipe smoke hung over several elderly warlocks deep in conversation, and

a number of house-elves were negotiating their way squeakily through the forest of knees, obscured by the heavy silver platters of food they were bearing, so that they

looked like little roving tables.

“Harry, m'boy!” boomed Slughorn, almost as soon as Harry and Luna had squeezed in through the door. “Come in, come in, so many people I'd like you to meet!”

Slughorn was wearing a tasseled velvet hat to match his smoking jacket. Gripping Harry's arm so tightly he might have been hoping to Disapparate with him, Slughorn led

him purposefully into the party; Harry seized Luna's hand and dragged her along with him.

“Harry, I'd like you to meet Eldred Worple, an old student of mine, author of Blood Brothers: My Life Amongst the Vampires—and, of course, his friend Sanguini.”

Worple, who was a small, stout, bespectacled man, grabbed Harry's hand and shook it enthusiastically; the vampire Sanguini, who was tall and emaciated with dark shadows

under his eyes, merely nodded. He looked rather bored. A gaggle of girls was standing close to him, looking curious and excited.

“Harry Potter, I am simply delighted!” said Worple, peering short-sightedly up into Harry's face. “I was saying to Professor Slughorn only the other day, Where is

the biography of Harry Potter for which we have all been waiting?”

“Er,” said Harry, “were you?”