"Yes?" said Draco. "Did you want something?"

"You haven´t asked me out for at least two days," said the girl. "Usually you would have chased me down in the corridors or sent me an owl by now."

"I´ve been busy," said Draco.

"Busy?" said the girl in a tone that suggested no boy had ever told her he was busy before.

"Itś not a quiet life, being Harry Potter," Draco went on, warming to his subject.

"I´ve got classes, plus Quidditch, plus interviews with the Daily Prophet, loads of good to do and evil to vanquish, plus I´m being hunted down by the remorseless killer who murdered my parents. I haven´t got time to go barging around after girls."

The girl was staring at him with her mouth open. She looked much less pretty that way. "If you think you´re going to get me to go out with you by talking to me like that," she said, her voice tight with rage, "you´re wrong, Harry Potter!"

"Fine," said Draco. "Don´t go out with me. I´m really famous, I could go out with anyone."

With a scream of rage, the girl bounded to her feet and stalked away across the field. Draco watched her go, mildly grateful that she had taken his mind off the impending horror of Quidditch practice.

* * *

If Harry had known that Draco Malfoy was at that moment ruining any chance he might ever have had with Cho Chang, he might have been upset. But as he was quite asleep in the back of Lucius Malfoyś invisible carriage (Madam Pomfrey wouldn´t let Lucius Disapparate with his son while the boy was unconscious), being carried rapidly across the barren and windswept moors towards Malfoy Manor, he wasn´t.