Funny Excerpts

Funny Excerpts from the Fourth Book
"I told you!" Ron hissed at Hermione as she stared down the article. "I told you not to annoy Rita Skeeter! She's made you out to be some sort of - scarlet woman!"
Hermione stopped looking astonished and snorted with laughter. "Scarlet woman?" she repeated, shaking with surprised giggles as she looked around at Ron.
"It's what my mum calls them," Ron muttered, his ears going red.

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"Yeah, someone might slip dragon dung in it again, eh, Perce?" said Fred.
"That was a sample of fertilizer from Norway!" said Percy, going very red in the face. "It was nothing personal!"
"It was," Fred whispered to Harry as they got up from the table. "We sent it."

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Dudley had done the thing he was threatening to do since age three: He had become wider than he was tall.

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One of them was a very old wizard who was wearing a long flowery nightgown. The other was clearly a Ministry wizard; he was holding out a pair of pinstriped trousers and almost crying with exasperation.
"Just put them on, Archie, there's a good chap. You can't walk around like that, the Muggle at the gate's already getting suspicious-"
"I bought this in a Muggle shop," said the old wizard stubbornly. "Muggles wear them."
"Muggle women wear them, Archie, not the men, they wear these," said the Ministry wizard, and he brandished the pinstriped trousers.
"I'm not putting them on," said old Archie in indignation. "I like a healthy breeze 'round my privates, thanks."

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"Mad-Eye Moody?" said George thoughtfully, spreading marmalade on his toast. "Isn't he that nutter-"
"Your father thinks very highly of Mad-Eye Moody," said Mrs. Weasley sternly.
"Yeah, well, Dad collects plugs, doesn't he?" said Fred quietly as Mrs. Weasley left the room. "Birds of a feather..."

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"OH NO YOU DON'T, LADDIE!"
Harry spun around. Professor Moody was limping down the marble staircase. His wand was out and it was pointing right at a pure white ferret.
"I want to fix that in my memory forever," said Ron, his closed and an uplifted expression on his face. "Draco Malfoy, the amazing bouncing ferret..."

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"Don't be prat, Neville, that's illegal," said George. "They wouldn't use the Cruciatus Curse on the champions. I thought it sounded a bit like Percy singing... maybe you've got to attack him while he's in the shower, Harry."

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"Enjoying it?" said Ron darkly. "I don't reckon he'd come home if Dad didn't make him. He's obsessed. Just don't get him onto the subject of his boss. 'According to Mr. Crouch...as I was saying to Mr. Crouch...Mr. Crouch is of the opinion...Mr. Crouch was telling me...' They'll be announcing their engagement any day now."

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Ron: "Who're you going with then?"
Fred: "Angelina."
Ron: "What? You've already asked her?"
Fred: "Good point. Oi, Angelina! Want to come to the ball with me?"

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Ron: "I could've taken those mer-idiots any time I wanted."
Hermione: "What were you going to do, snore at them?"

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[Harry considering whom to tell that his scar hurt] As far as informing the headmaster, Harry had no idea where Dumbledore went during the summer holidays. He amused himself for a moment, picturing Dumbledore, with his long silver beard, full-length wizard's robes, and pointed hat, stretched out on a beach somewhere, rubbing suntan lotion onto his long crooked nose.

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(Harry, reading Ron's letter) ...Thought I'd send this with Pig anyway.
Harry stared at the word "Pig," and looked up at the tiny owl now fluttering around the light fixture on the ceiling. He had never seen anything that looked less like a pig.

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"I've got two Neptunes here," said Harry after a while, frowning down at his piece of parchment, "that can't be right, can it?"
"Aaaaah," said Ron, imitating Professor Trelawney's mystical whisper, "when two Neptunes appear in the sky, it is a sure sign that a midget in glasses is being born, Harry..."

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He therefore had to endure over an hour of Professor Trelawney, who spent half the lesson telling everyone that the position of Mars with relation to Saturn at that moment meant that people born in July were in great danger of sudden, violent deaths. "Well, that's good," said Harry loudly, his temper getting the better of him, "just as long as it's not drawn out. I don't want to suffer."

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"Excuse me, I don't like people just because they're handsome!" said Hermione indignantly.
Ron gave a loud false cough, which sounded oddly like "Lockhart!"

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"Oh, am I?" said Ron peering down at his predictions. "I'd better change one of them to getting trampled by a rampaging Hippogriff."
"Don't you think it's a bit obvious you've made these up?" said Hermione.
"How dare you!" said Ron in mock outrage. "We've been working like house-elves here!"

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"Oh Professor look! I think I found an unaspected planet! Oooh, which one's that, Professor?"
"It is Uranus, my dear," said Professor Trelawney peering down a the chart.
"Can I have a look at Uranus too, Lavender?" said Ron.

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"Mr. Weasley, it's Harry.. the fireplace has been blocked up. You won't be able to get through there."
"Damn!" said Mr. Weasley's voice. "What on earth did they want to block the fireplace for?"
"They've got an electric fire," Harry explained.
"Really?" said Mr. Weasley's voice excitedly. "Eclectic, you say? With a plug? Gracious, I must see that... Let's think...ouch, Ron!"
Ron's voice now joined the others'.
"What are we doing here? Has something gone wrong?"
"Oh no, Ron," came Fred's voice, very sarcastically. "No, this is exactly where we want to end up."
"Yeah, we're having the time of our lives here," said George, whose voice sounded muffled, as though he was squashed against the wall.

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"Why weren't you two at dinner?" she [Hermione] said, coming over to join them.
"Because - oh shut up laughing, you two - because they've both just been turned down by girls they asked to the ball!" said Ginny.
That shut Harry and Ron up.
"Thanks a bunch, Ginny," said Ron sourly.
"All the good-looking ones taken, Ron?" said Hermione loftily. "Eloise Midgen starting to look quite pretty now, is she? Well, I'm sure you'll find someone somewhere who'll have you."
But Ron was staring at Hermione as though suddenly seeing her in a whole new light.
"Hermione, Neville's right - you are a girl..."
"Oh well spotted," she said acidly.
"Well - you can come with one of us!"
"No, I can't," snapped Hermione.
"Oh come on," he said impatiently, "we need partners, we're going to look really stupid if we haven't got any, everyone else has..."
"I can't come with you," said Hermione, now blushing, "because I'm already going with someone."
"No, you're not!" said Ron. "You just said that to get rid of Neville!"
"Oh, did I?" said Hermione, and her eyes flashed dangerously. "Just because it's taken you three years to notice, Ron, doesn't mean no one else has spotted I'm a girl!"

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"Wild!" he said, twiddling the replay knob on the side. I can make that old bloke down there pick his nose again ... and again ... and again. . ."

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"I was saying that Saturn was surely in a position of power in the heavens at the moment of your birth...your dark hair...your mean stature...tragic losses so young in life...I think I am right in saying, my dear, that you were born in midwinter?"
"No," said Harry, "I was born in July."
Ron hastily turned his laugh into a hacking cough.

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"Of course we still want to know you!" Harry said, staring at Hagrid.
"You don't think anything that Skeeter cow - sorry, Professor," he added quickly, looking at Dumbledore.
"I have gone temporarily deaf and haven't any idea what you said, Harry," said Dumbledore, twiddling his thumbs and staring at the ceiling.

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"What are you working on?" said Harry.
"A report for the Department of International Magical Cooperation," said Percy smugly. "We're trying to standardize cauldron thickness. Some of these foreign imports are just a shade too thin - leakages have been increasing at a rate of almost three percent a year--"
"That'll change the world, that report will," said Ron. "Front page of the Daily Prophet, I expect, cauldron leaks."

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"Mr. Crouch?" said Percy, suddenly abandoning his look of poker-stiff disapproval and positively writhing with excitement. "He speaks over two hundred! Mermish and Gobbledegook and Troll..."
"Anyone can speak Troll," said Fred dismissively. "All you have to do is point and grunt."

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"Mr. Crouch!" said Percy breathlessly, sunk into a kind of half-bow that made him look like a hunchback. "Would you like a cup of tea?"
"Oh," said Mr. Crouch, looking over at Percy in mild surprise. "Yes — thank you, Weatherby."
Fred and George choked into their own cups. Percy, very pink around the ears, busied himself with the kettle.

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"You’re not by any chance writing out a new order form, are you?" said Mrs. Weasley shrewdly. "You wouldn’t be thinking of restarting Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, by any chance?"
"Now, Mum," said Fred, looking up at her, a pained look on his face. "If the Hogwarts Express crashed tomorrow, and George and I died, how would you feel to know that the last thing we ever heard from you was an unfounded accusation?"

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"But I think Durmstrang must be somewhere in the far north," said Hermione thoughtfully. "Somewhere very cold, because they’ve got fur capes as part of their uniforms."
"Ah think of the possibilities," said Ron dreamily. "It would’ve been so easy to push Malfoy off a glacier and make it look like an accident... Shame his mother likes him..."

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"Harry’s got a long way to go before he finishes this tournament," she [Hermione] said seriously. "If that was the first task, I hate to think what’s coming next."
"Right little ray of sunshine, aren’t you?" said Ron. "You and Professor Trelawney should get together sometime."

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"You’re joking, Weasley!" said Malfoy, behind them. "You’re not telling me someone’s asked that to the ball? Not the long-molared Mudblood?"
Harry and Ron both whipped round, but Hermione said loudly, waving to somebody over Malfoy’s shoulder, "Hello, Professor Moody!"
Malfoy went pale and jumped backward, looking wildly around for Moody, but he was still up at the staff table, finishing his stew.
"Twitchy little ferret, aren’t you, Malfoy?" said Hermione scathingly, and she, Harry, and Ron went up the marble staircase laughing heartily.

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"Colin, I fell in!" he [Dennis Creevey] said shrilly, throwing himself into an empty seat. "It was brilliant! And something in the water grabbed me and pushed me back in the boat!"
"Cool!" said Colin, just as excitedly. "It was probably the giant squid, Dennis!"
"Wow!" said Dennis, as though nobody in their wildest dreams could hope for more than being thrown into a storm-tossed, fathoms-deep lake, and pushed out of it again by a giant sea monster.

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"He's not even good-looking!" she [Hermione] muttered angrily, glaring at Krum's sharp profile. "They only like him because he's famous! They wouldn't look twice at him if he couldn't do that Wonky-Faint thing - "
"Wronski Feint," said Harry, through gritted teeth. Quite apart from liking to get Quidditch terms correct, it caused him another pang to imagine Ron's expression if he could have heard Hermione talking about Wonky-Faints.

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"Maybe he'll believe I'm not enjoying myself once I've got my neck broken or - "
"That's not funny," said Hermione quietly. "That's not funny at all." She looked extremely anxious. "Harry, I've been thinking - you know what we've got to do, don't you? Straight away, the moment we get back to the castle?"
"Yeah, give Ron a good kick up the - "
"Write to Sirius."

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"An excellent point," said Professor Dumbledore. "My own brother, Aberforth, was prosecuted for practicing inappropriate charms on a goat. It was all over the papers, but did Aberforth hide? No, he did not! He held his head high and went about his business as usual! Of course, I'm not entirely sure he can read, so that may not have been bravery..."