“Goes back to what I said, doesn’t it?” said Ron, who was now shoveling mashed potato into his mouth. “She’s gone a bit funny. Lost her nerve. Women,” he said wisely to Harry, “they’re easily upset.”
“And yet,” said Hermione, coming out of her reverie, “I doubt you’d find a woman who sulked for half an hour because Madam Rosmerta didn’t laugh at their joke about the hag, the Healer, and the Mimbulus mimbletonia.”Ron scowled.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling
He therefore sprinted up the stairs, slowing down only when he reached the corner into the corridor, when he began to creep, very slowly, toward the very same little girl, clutching her heavy brass scales, that Hermione had so kindly helped a fortnight before. He waited until he was right behind her before bending very low and whispering, “Hello . . . you’re very pretty, aren’t you?”
Goyle gave a high-pitched scream of terror, threw the scales up into the air, and sprinted away, vanishing from sight long before the sound of scales smashing had stopped echoing around the corridor.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling
“How d’you spell ‘belligerent’?” said Ron, shaking his quill very hard while staring at his parchment. “It can’t be B — U — M —”
“No, it isn’t,” said Hermione, pulling Ron’s essay toward her. “And ‘augury’ doesn’t begin with O — R — G either. What kind of quill are you using?”
“It’s one of Fred and George’s Spell-Check ones . . . but I think the charm must be wearing off. . . .”“Yes, it must,” said Hermione, pointing at the title of his essay, “because we were asked how we’d deal with dementors, not ‘Dugbogs,’ and I don’t remember you changing your name to ‘Roonil Wazlib’ either.”
“Ah no!” said Ron, staring horror-struck at the parchment. “Don’t say I’ll have to write the whole thing out again!”
“It’s okay, we can fix it,” said Hermione, pulling the essay toward her and taking out her wand.
“I love you, Hermione,” said Ron, sinking back in his chair, rubbing his eyes wearily.
Hermion turned faintly pink, but merely said, “Don’t let Lavender hear you saying that.”
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling
“What happened?”
“Cracked skull,” said Madam Pomfrey, bustling up and pushing him back against his pillows. “Nothing to worry about, I mended it at once, but I’m keeping you in overnight. You shouldn’t overexert yourself for a few hours.”“I don’t want to stay here overnight,” said Harry angrily, sitting up and throwing back his covers. “I want to find McLaggen and kill him.”
“I’m afraid that would come under the heading of ‘overexertion,'” said Madam Pomfrey, pushing him firmly back onto the bed and raising her wand in a threatening manner.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling
“And Harry Potter’s now having an argument with his Keeper,” said Luna serenely, while both Hufflepuffs and Slytherins below in the crowd cheered and jeered. “I don’t think that’ll help him find the Snitch, but maybe it’s a clever ruse. . . .”
Swearing angrily, Harry spun round and set off around the pitch again, scanning the skies for some sign of the tiny, winged golden ball.
Ginny and Demelza scored a goal apiece, giving the red-and-gold-clad supporters below something to cheer about. Then Cadwallader scored again, making things level, but Luna did not seem to have noticed; she appeared singularly uninterested in such mundane things as the score, and kept attempting to draw the crowd’s attention to such things as interestingly shaped clouds and the possibility that Zacharias Smith, who had so far failed to maintain possession of the Quaffle for longer than a minute, was suffering from something called “Loser’s Lurgy.”
“Seventy-forty to Hufflepuff!” barked Professor McGonagall into Luna’s megaphone.
“Is it, already?” said Luna vaguely.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J. K. Rowling
“And that’s Smith of Hufflepuff with the Quaffle,” said a dreamy voice, echoing over the grounds. “He did the commentary last time, of course, and Ginny Weasley flew into him, I think probably on purpose, it looked like it. Smith was being quite rude about Gryffindor, I expect he regrets that now he’s playing them — oh, look, he’s lost the Quaffle, Ginny took it from him, I do like her, she’s very nice. . . .”
Harry stared down at the commentator’s podium. Surely nobody in their right mind would have let Luna Lovegood commentate? But even from above there was no mistaking that long, dirty-blonde hair, nor the necklace of butterbeer corks. . . . Beside Luna, Professor McGonagall was looking slightly uncomfortable, as though she was indeed having second thoughts about this appointment.“. . . but now that big Hufflepuff player’s got the Quaffle from her, I can’t remember his name, it’s something like Bibble — no, Buggins —”
“It’s Cadwallader!” said Professor McGonagall loudly from beside Luna. The crowd laughed.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling
Private detective Cormoran Strike is back on a new case in The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith (a pseudonym for Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling). After solving the high-profile murder of supermodel Lula Landry in last year’s The Cuckoo’s Calling, Strike has had almost more business than he can handle, most of it filled with divorce cases, jealous lovers and jobs for the tabloids. It’s not particularly fulfilling work but it’s allowed him to finally start clearing his debts, even if he’s running himself ragged in the process, causing his leg, which was amputated after an explosion in the war in Afghanistan, to become increasingly more painful.
Before anybody could respond to this ominous pronouncement, the dormitory doors opened again and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley hurried up the ward. They had done no more than satisfy themselves that Ron would make a full recovery on their last visit to the ward; now Mrs. Weasley siezed hold of Harry and hugged him very tightly. “Dumbledore’s told us how you saved him with the bezoar,” she sobbed. “Oh, Harry, what can we say? You saved Ginny . . . you saved Arthur . . . now you’ve saved Ron . . .”
“Don’t be . . . I didn’t . . .” muttered Harry awkwardly.
“Half our family does seem to owe you their lives, now I stop and think about it,” Mr. Weasley said in a constricted voice. “Well, all I can say is that it was a lucky day for the Weasleys when Ron decided to sit in your compartment on the Hogwarts Express, Harry.”
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling
“Er-my-nee,” croaked Ron unexpectedly from between them.
They all fell silent, watching him anxiously, but after muttering incomprehensibly for a moment he merely started snoring.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling
“Blimey, it was lucky you thought of a bezoar,” said George in a low voice.
“Lucky there was one in the room,” said Harry, who kept turning cold at the thought of what would have happened if he had not been able to lay hands on the little stone.
Hermione gave an almost inaudible sniff. She had been exceptionally quiet all day. Having hurtled, white-faced, up to Harry outside the hospital wing and demanded to know what had happened, she had taken almost no part in Harry and Ginny’s obsessive discussion about how Ron had been poisoned, but merely stood beside them, clench-jawed and frightened-looking, until at last they had been allowed in to see him.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling
The Love Pirate 