"Ron, my brother, I told you at the beginning of the year, Hermione has a huge amount of power, and I want her on my side, and, yes, she is a cute girl, and, by the end of the year, I plan on making her my girlfriend, because, as I told you earlier, there will come a time that "The Boy Who Lived" will need to have a public girlfriend, and, being Muggle born, it will be a slap in the face of the Pureblood bigots. Besides, remember what I said about Percy? Right after the winter holidays, I saw he and that Ravenclaw, Penelope something, come out of a broom closet, and he was grinning, and she was wiping her mouth, so they were doing something in there."