Tryouts

Chapter 10: Tryouts

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

The first day of classes dawned dull and overcast. Draco woke far before any reasonable hour because of Ron’s snoring, and resigning himself to the year ahead, he dressed in the cold, gray light of dawn, and went down to the Great Hall early. The only others at the table were some older girls who went jogging in the mornings, and they were sipping coffee together at the end of the table. He put on his headphones and thumbed the side of his walkman, injecting his breakfast with an infusion of melancholy guitar, and made himself a pot of tea, stewed loose-leaf, the way Dobby would have.

Sometimes, when this place gets kind of empty

Sound of their breath fades with the light

A pair of first years came skidding into the Great Hall, laughing obnoxiously at nothing, their cheeks flushed from running. Draco recognized one of them as a Gryffindor from last night, Colin Creevey: a small boy with a cherubic face, whose head rioted with yellow curls, and whose eyes were shiny, blue, and perfectly enormous. The other was a tall Hufflepuff with a narrow, homely face and an aquiline nose, dark-haired, and missing a front tooth.

Because Draco was one of the few at the Gryffindor table, the first years ambled towards him. He dropped his head and hoped they would mind their own business.

“All right, there!”

No such luck.

“I’m Colin! Colin Creevey! Gryffindor!” He climbed into the seat next to Draco’s. “Is this seat taken?”

Draco tipped his head at it, in a sort of ‘as you will’ gesture, and grunted.

“Thanks! Justin, you can sit down, too. This is Justin Finch-Fletchley. We met on the stairs. He got lost when the staircase moved and I found him and then we raced here. Isn’t this castle enormous? I’ve never seen anything this big in my life! I’m from Leeds, where are you from? I’m the first wizard in the family. My dad’s a milkman. Can I take your picture?”

A bulb exploded without warning in Draco’s face. He threw up his hand.

“Aw but please can I take your picture? I’m trying to take a picture of every Gryffindor and also every person I meet and everything I see so I can show my parents when they go home. They still don’t believe it’s actually magic, they think it’s a school for magicians, like people who play pretend? So I’m going to prove it to them. I want to be a photographer when I grow up, if I’m not a wizard that is, I mean being a wizard is my first choice but if I can’t hack it here my dad says it’s always good to have a day job. What do your parents do? Do you think it’s reasonable to plan on being a wizard? Also, where does the food come from during meals? Is it magic? It scared the living heck out of me when it appeared last night, and I’d had a lot of heck scared out of me already by the rest of it, the train and the boats and the cave and the big guy with the lantern, isn’t he huge? Justin, did you see him? Isn’t he huge?”

Justin had seen him, and thought he was huge.

“And now I have to find my way to Herbology in the greenhouses and I don’t know where the heck that is, Professor McGonagall told us to ask a prefect but I can’t find any and they didn’t give us a map which would be pretty useful.”

“There’s no map,” said Draco shortly.

“No map? Like anywhere? Like they didn’t make a map when they built it or they did but they lost it and didn’t make another one? Or—”

“Hogwarts is unplottable. The structures change. The map would need to move.”

“Oh okay. But hang on a minute. Why can’t you guys make moving maps? Is that like a rule, no moving maps? Are there other rules? Oh my gosh.”

“No,” Draco said, rubbing his temple. “You’d only have to explore enough of the castle that you could plot it. And you’d have to understand how the castle moves. Which is complicated.” At the risk of sounding like Hermione, he refrained from citing Hogwarts: A History, though the temptation lingered.

“Oh that makes sense. Thank you. Wait but also. Um, Peeves said that sometimes they feed first years to the Giant Squid if they don’t get to class on time? And um that was very scary but Percy said he was lying, was he lying?”

“No, that’s true,” Draco said immediately.

“What. Wait no really? Like are you being serious? You’re not being serious. Okay. Wait but are you being serious, though.”

“It’s usually Gryffindors,” he sighed.

The five stages of grief passed briskly over Colin’s face.

“Justin,” he said gravely, “we’ve got to go.”

“Okay,” said Justin simply, and he left in the middle of a perfectly good sausage.

Draco made a mental note to let Harry and Ron in on the joke, and put his headphones back on.

The Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom was an ample, vaulted chamber with wide windows and lots of sunlight. Blackboards still untouched from the long summer sat at the front of the room, and the excited burble of the first day of classes propelled students to their seats with a vigor that would not soon reappear. Draco, who was determined to beat Hermione in D.A.D.A. this year, found a seat near the front of the desk and took out a new dragonhide notebook with cream-colored pages, wet an eagle-feather quill, and stacked the textbooks neatly to his left. He was still waiting when most of the other Gryffindors came in.

The professor emerged from his office: a tall, broad-shouldered man with a straw-colored coif. He smiled, and crow’s feet around his eyes gave his face a kindly affect, as did the twinkling green eyes that crowned his sculpted cheekbones. A long, slender scar ran from his right cheek to his scalp.

Hermione cleared her throat and tucked her hair behind her ear. Draco shot her a suspicious look.

“That’s Sturgis Pod -more,” whispered Susan Bones. “He was in the Order of the Phoenix. He got the Order of Merlin for saving a town of muggles from Death Eaters in Surrey. I heard—”

But they never learned what it was Susan heard, because Hermione shushed her.

“Good morning,” the professor said. “I don’t think you know who I am. That’s fair enough, you didn’t have me last year. I’m Sturgis Podmore — that’s S-T-U-R-G-I-S, and yes, my mother hated me. You can call me Professor Podmore, or Professor Sturgis, or just Sturgis, to be honest, I won’t stand on ceremony.” He risked a grin, looking faintly nervous. A few students tittered politely, unsure if they were supposed to laugh. “I hope to learn all your names, eventually. I understand that not all of you may be fans of this class, and that’s fair enough; I didn’t give one hoot for it, when I was your age, personally speaking. I’d much rather have spent all my time in Charms. So I don’t expect you to come hanging on my every word, but so long as you’re here, awake, and on time, I promise not to give you — well, too much trouble.”

He grinned, and his teeth glinted. Susan Bones leaned over and whispered something to Hermione, who nodded.

“Anyway. I’m sorry I didn’t have you last year. So if I retread any of that material, or if we jump too far ahead, you lot just let me know. There’s no shame in asking to slow down, right? Good!” He rubbed his hands. “I see that the curriculum for first-through-third years focuses on Dark Creatures, instead of wizard-to-wizard combat. I think we’ll start with something small, since it’s the first day… and well, a house-elf is quite small, isn’t it?”

Draco frowned. None of the Gryffindors or Hufflepuffs showed any sign of alarm.

The professor pointed his wand at the blackboard. A chalk sketch of a house-elf appeared, spread-eagle.

“Elvus farfadet,” said Podmore, and a transcription of his words appeared on the board as he spoke. “The common house-elf. Distant cousins of the erkling, house-elves are by far the most common of the elvish species. They range between two to three feet tall, and can be identified by their oversized heads and bat-like ears — see right there, and there.”

He waved his wand again, and the sketch revised itself to show the house-elf’s back. “Breeding — was that a giggle, you there? In the back? I thought not — breeding tends to be rare for house-elves, as most are born sterile. Difficulties with conception, as well as other various health problems, come from centuries of selective breeding performed by wizards in order to produce a perfect… magical… slave.”

Hermione gave a small gasp. Draco slumped in his chair, quill abandoned, arms tightly crossed.

“Not so funny, is it?” said Podmore crisply. “No. House-elves are conceived under the influence of powerful Dark Magic, and during their gestation period, several wards are laid on the dam to bind her offspring, inviolably, to whatever wizard casted them. When the elf is born, the wizard, usually a professional breeder, will then sell the house-elf into the keeping of its eventual master, and transfer ‘ownership’ by transferring the signature on these wards.

“A house-elf must obey any commands given to it by its masters. If they refuse, their wards punish them by forcing them to inflict grievous self-harm. If a house-elf’s master dies, ownership can be bequeathed legally to an heir of their choosing, or it will pass generally into the master’s family. If none of the wizard’s family survive them, the house-elf becomes part of the estate, and the Ministry deals with it as it would any other… material asset.”

Hermione’s hand shot into the air. Podmore nodded at her.

“How do you free them?” she demanded.

He smiled at her. “What a good question,” he said. “House-elves can be freed at their master’s will. It can take the form of a gift, or a ceremony, or some acknowledgement that the house-elf is a Being, unto itself. Clothes are a good example, but anything could work. You could use a scrap of paper with its name on it, and that’d be enough, if the master assents.”

Her hand went right back up. He waved to continue.

“But what if the master doesn’t want to let them go? How do you free them then?”

His smile lost some of its luster. “You don’t,” he said. “In Britain, it’s illegal to free someone else’s house-elf. It’s considered theft.”

“But they’re enslaved!”

“Yes, they are.”

“And — and that’s all right? Wizards just do that? Nobody stops them?”

Draco sank lower in his chair, scowling.

“I understand your distress, Miss…?”

“Hermione Granger, sir.”

“Miss Granger. Thank you. To frame the question, house-elves are not terribly common. Because of the difficulty in breeding them, they tend to be very expensive, and their population has been declining since the nineteenth century.”

“That doesn’t explain why nobody’s done anything about it,” she said, tone sharp. “Just because there’s not a lot of them—”

“Quite right you are, Miss Granger. And to your question, I think that the Ministry’s position — and I’m entirely speculating, so forgive me — but I believe the Ministry’s position is that if it waits about, say, a hundred years, the last house-elves will die out, and the problem will solve itself.”

Several hands flew up now, including Hermione’s. Podmore called on Susan Bones.

“How many of them are there now?”

“Worldwide? Ten, twenty thousand, I suppose. They’re native to Europe, although some of them were exported to the United States. Yes?”

It was Hermione again. “Is anyone trying to free them?” she snapped. “Have these people been prosecuted at all? Is the production of house-elves even regulated? Or is the whole world all right with a race of creatures that exist to be abused?”

Draco finally couldn’t stand it. He threw up his hand.

“Yes, Mister…?”

“You haven’t given us the whole picture, though,” he argued. “You make it sound like house-elves are miserable.”

Podmore blinked, leaning against his desk. “Do I?” he said. “I don’t think I’ve used the word ‘miserable’ once. Perhaps there’s something about a lifetime of chattel slavery that… implies a certain degree of misery.”

Draco bristled. “Yeah, but have you ever talked to one?” he accused. “They love being servants. They’re delighted. They adore their — the people they work for. They feel like part of the family.”

Hermione scoffed.

“And,” he continued, louder, “most of them don’t want to be freed.”

A rustling of uncomfortable snickers began at the back of the classroom.

Podmore was implacable. “Do you think so?” he inquired, rolling his wand between his fingers.

“I know so. Ask one, if you don’t believe me, Hogwarts has loads of them in the kitchens.”

Hermione’s head whipped around.

“I’m not saying it’s this great thing,” Draco added, uncomfortably, as the whispers intensified. “I wouldn’t… prefer they exist. But they do, and people have them, and most of them aren’t unhappy. And there’s a lot of complicated emotions involved. It’s not black-and-white. Especially if they’ve been with a family for generations, if they’ve watched children grow up—”

“Young man—”

“I’m just saying, it’s silly to be teaching this in Defense Against the Dark Arts,” he said, sweeping his arm angrily around the classroom, “as if it’s Dark magic to own a house-elf. It’s not!”

Sturgis Podmore waited for him to finish. The whispers had reached an intolerable volume, almost a roar. Hermione was staring at him, her shock tinged with horror.

Podmore raised his hand, silencing them.

“Thank you,” he told Draco simply. “I appreciate you sharing your opinion with the class.”

Then he announced, “Page two hundred and seven, everyone. I’d like a volunteer to read…”

When it ended, Draco was the first one out of the room. He shoved through the door and surged down the hallway without waiting for the others, even Hermione.

He was halfway down the staircase before anyone caught up to him. “Malfoy! Malfoy, wait!”

“Leave me alone.”

“I need to talk to you! P-P-P-Please slow down! I can’t — hff, hff — run that fast!”

He paused on the landing, and spun around the banister. Neville Longbottom came trotting down after him, taking the steps as fast as his short legs would carry him.

“Not a word about the lesson,” he said darkly. “Not a word.”

“But I didn’t want to talk to you about that!” Neville doubled over, huffing. “I wanted to tell you — they’re letting me take second-year Potions!”

He rocked back on his heels, his frustration drowned out in a genuine wave of surprise and pleasure. “And how on earth did you finagle that?” he said, almost cheered.

“It’s a funny story,” he said, as if it could have been anything else. “So over the s-s-s-summer my gran wrote a letter to McGonagall, asking her to move me up even though I didn’t p-p-pass Potions I. She didn’t want to, but my gran wore her down, and so she said if I could pass a p-p-placement exam at the end of August, she would let me take P-Potions with the other second years.”

“And you passed it?”

“Right, that’s the thing. Over the summer, my gran brought in this tutor who’s applying for his b-b-board certs, and he was really nice, I really liked him, we spent all summer when I took the test I got an Acceptable!”

“Fair enough,” said Draco, marginally impressed. “That’s one embarrassment you’ll be spared. Well done to your grandmother, I expect she could sell water to a fish.”

“Thank you! So, s-so, I was wondering — f-f-for this year, would you still want to d-d-do that extra Potions stuff? Like last year?”

He could imagine any number of things he’d rather do with his time, and several involved coitus with a hippogriff. “I don’t know,” he deferred, “I’m really quite busy—”

“Gran says she’ll pay you,” Neville blurted. “Name your price! Sh-sh-she said to tell you money’s no object—”

“Do I look like someone who can be bought?”

“I know! I know. But it’s just, it was so helpful, a-a-a-and — and the thing is, I really need to pass Potions the normal way this year, b-b-because McGonagall won’t make another exception for me.” Neville wrung his hands as if trying to shuck the skin from bone. “Gran said if I couldn’t get it right this t-t-time, she’d pull me out and send me to Durmstrang.”

Draco grimaced. “Don’t they still use the rod?”

“Yes! Yes, that’s what everyone s-s-s-says!” wailed Neville. “I’ll b-b-be toast!”

“All right! All right, pack up the waterworks. I’ll do it.”

“You will?”

“Yes. Don’t make a thing of it.”

“Thank you! Oh, but by the way, also — if it’s not too much b-b-bother, I mean, only if it’s no trouble.”

“What.”

“Could my friend Leanne come?” asked Neville tentatively. “When I mentioned I might do more of these lessons with you, she asked me to ask you if she could come.”

“No.”

“But she’d be so grateful! She’s rubbish at Potions, too. Only her parents are muggles, and they can’t afford to hire tutors for her…”

“Tough. I’m not running a charity.”

“I’d pay for her!”

“There are a lot of people at this school who are good at Potions,” he said flatly. “She can hire one of them.”

Neville, who could see his window of opportunity shrinking, grew desperate. “I’ll do your Herbology homework,” he blurted.

“I don’t want you to do my Herbology homework.”

“Fine. I’ll help with your Herbology, then.”

Draco clucked his tongue. “And why do you think I need help in Herbology?”

This was something of a misdirection. In fact, he did need help in Herbology, because—

“Because it was the only subject last year where you didn’t make top three.”

He looked sharply at Neville. A specter of animal cunning lurked in the boy’s round face.

“And it wouldn’t matter,” he added, “except I know it probably ticked you off. Because you and Hermione are always competing, and her grade was better than yours.”

Well, then. Apparently it ran in the family. Draco struggled not to be impressed.

“Good pull, Longbottom,” he drawled. “If you only applied it to brewing instructions, we’d be in business.”

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Well, is that a deal?”

“Does your gran negotiate like this? I understand why McGonagall broke down.”

“Is that an answer?”

He sighed. Neville beamed.

---

Aside from Podmore’s classes, the first few weeks of second year passed much quicker than last year’s. Draco fell into a routine he’d forgotten having, and to his chagrin, found himself enjoying it. He and Hermione were silently competing for first rank in Charms, a contest that led both of them to strain their arms from raising them, and led Harry and Ron to strain their eyeballs from rolling them. In Transfiguration, McGonagall had them start working on the transformation of live flora, a noxiously difficult subject in which Hermione had to haul Draco, Harry, and Ron altogether up to standard before every quiz. In History of Magic, Hermione wore quilltip after quilltip down to nubbins while Draco napped on her shoulder, and in Astronomy, she fell asleep under their telescope while he drew star-charts she couldn’t be bothered to transcribe. (“It’s not observation, it’s math,” she said, “if math already tells me where they are, why bother with the telescope?”) (“Because you can’t math your way through magic, Granger.”) (“Watch me!”)

In Potions, they so cleanly annihilated everyone that even Snape couldn’t begrudge them a few points to Gryffindor every now and then. When a long inspection of their Floriforous Potion yielded a reluctant, “Competent” from the Potions Master, it put Draco in such good spirits that he allowed Hermione to coax him into a muggle “high five.”

On the morning of quidditch tryouts, Harry didn’t touch a morsel of food. He sat with his elbows on the table, staring into the middle distance with an expression split between nausea and thrill.

Draco, in contrast, ate both their servings of hashbrowns and sausage, and washed it down with two goblets of pumpkin juice.

“Come on, Potter, have a pastry. You ought to eat something, or you’ll be a sitting duck in the air.”

“Can’t,” droned Harry. “Already will be.”

“Don’t be dramatic. I’ve seen you fly. Mark me: This is your game to lose.”

“What if it isn’t?”

“Well, in that case—”

“What if I fall off?”

Draco decided to give it to him straight. He said, “Well, you definitely won’t make the team, that’s certain. So try to avoid it.”

Harry breathed heavily.

“Buck up. You won’t fall off,” Ron said, thumping him on the back. “Barely ever happens. Anyway, George says it’s not so hard. You fly some suicides, you hock the ball around, you shoot a little. Wood blows the whistle, you go home.”

Draco nodded. “You coming, Granger?” he asked, nudging the witch in question, who was buttering her toast with crisp, short strokes.

“Do I have to?” she sighed.

“Only if you want to be a good friend,” said Ron.

“But it’s boring.”

“Bite your tongue,” Draco said indignantly. “You’re talking about the sport of kings.”

“That’s tennis.”

“Fine. It’s the sport of wizards, which is better, anyway. And you don’t even have to watch. Just bring your book.”

“In the cold?” she said weakly. “And the wet?”

“‘And the wet’? I’m sorry, are you lost? This is the Gryffindor table, Hufflepuff’s over there.”

He knocked his knee against hers, chastising. She knocked him right back.

“Yeah, and what if Harry does fall off his broom?” Ron demanded. Harry turned several shades paler and spit up a mouthful of pumpkin juice. “How’ll you feel then? What if Draco bashes his head in on the goalhoop? I bet you’ll be sorry you weren’t there to watch!”

“I certainly won’t be!” she cried, and the insistence in her voice ended the argument; but when the three boys tromped down to the quidditch pitch after breakfast, she tagged along, complaining under her breath.

The evening rains had churned a thick layer of mud on the pitch, and the mist knit a silver crown around the hoops, just starting to glow at the touch of the midmorning sun. Hermione and Ron sat in the bleachers while Draco and Harry queued on the pitch, up to their ankles in mud and grass. Ginny came up and sat next to Ron, bringing with her steaming paper cups of something hot. Hermione had swaddled herself in a wool scarf and a puffball hat, and the wind kept sweeping her hair into her face.

Oliver Wood gave them training pinnies with a number on them and directed them to take a loaner broom. Students weren’t allowed to use their own brooms during tryouts (something insipid about it “not being fair”), so they all clambered onto dingy Comets and did a warm-up lap of the stands. (Harry outpaced them all easily, weaving through the upperclassmen with the ease of someone born in the air, but he was so nervous he didn’t hear the command to stop, and Wood had to go chasing after him.)

The team only had slots for a chaser and the seeker, so Wood didn’t bother having them practice with the beaters’ bats. Each student had to fly the length of the field, passing the ball back and forth with one of the chasers, and then make a shot on Wood at the hoop. Draco got paired with Katie Bell.

Katie was the kind of person one recognized easily. She had choppy black hair and wore a studded choker with matching leather wristcuffs, and she put lots of muggle makeup on her face, great swooping rings of black around her eyes. Despite her alarming appearance, she grinned at him when he pulled up alongside her, and threw a snappy pass into his chest. “All right, Malfoy?” she called.

He snapped it back to her, and she caught it with a grunt. “Just getting old, here, Bell.”

They volleyed easily across the field, steering their broomsticks with their legs, and he lobbed the quaffle at Wood from behind his back. Wood dove and snapped it up, but it was clear he’d had to move quickly.

“Not too flashy, Malfoy,” warned Wood. “This is a tryout, not an exhibition. Next?”

Harry didn’t do as well with the volleying drill. He was paired with Angelina Johnson, who tried to take it easy on him, but he accidentally lobbed the quaffle high over her shoulder and made her dive to go fetch it. His attempt to score on Wood was a hard pitch into the center goal-hoop, which Wood caught as easily as if it’d been a pass.

From the stands, Ron applauded stoutly, anyway.

The last drills were seeker drills. Each hopeful was given sixty seconds to find and catch the snitch, once it was released, and to make it harder, Fred and George were allowed to heckle.

“Oi, Blondie!”

“Over here!”

“Is that a flying ferret?”

“I didn’t know mongooses could have albinism! Mongooses? Mongeese?”

“Hey Malfoy! What’s the plural of mongoose?”

“Oh my God, what is that?”

“It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s—”

“Fred Weasley! Duck!”

Fred dive-bombed him, forcing him to swerve and roll.

Even with their harrying, Draco caught the snitch in twenty-seven seconds. He delivered it to Wood with a triumphant expression.

Then it was Harry’s turn. To Draco’s ear, the twins were a bit more soft on him, but it didn’t end up mattering. As soon as he took off, he shot into the clouds, clinging to the Comet like a lifeline, and disappeared into a puff of fog.

“Damn,” marveled Katie, kicking off and hovering. “D’you reckon he lost control of his broom?”

“I don’t like how long he’s been up there,” said Wood, scanning the sky. “Fred, George, take Katie and go see—”

Just then, Harry plunged down from the clouds, soaked to his skin, clutching something gold in one outstretched fist.

“I’ve got it!” he shouted. His glasses were opaque with droplets, and he seesawed wildly across the pitch before sliding off in a clumsy crumple of limbs. “I did it! I caught it! I’ve got it! Wood, I’ve got it!”

“Good Lord,” gasped Angelina. “He does have it.”

And he did: he leapt off his broom and ran the rest of the way across the field, brandishing the ball over his head. Ron, Ginny, and Hermione were all on their feet, clapping.

Hermione cupped her hands around her mouth and cheered, and Draco felt slightly sour. She hadn’t done any cheering when he’d caught the snitch. Then again, he thought to himself, it wasn’t like she knew anything about quidditch. She wouldn’t recognize a Wronski feint if he did one over her head. She was probably just clapping because Ron was.

Oliver Wood had them do a few more flying drills before they wrapped up. They finished around noon, and the five of them met at the foot of the stands to walk back to the castle.

“Well done, Harry,” managed Ginny. This was the longest sentence Draco had ever heard her utter in Harry’s presence, and she seemed proud of it.

“Thanks, Gin,” said Harry, grinning at her, and her face flushed redder than summer roses. She hid her face in her hair.

“You’ve got it made, Harry!” exclaimed Ron. He might as well have been skipping. “That was amazing! I think Wood was drooling!”

“Draco did really well, too,” protested Harry.

“Oh, yeah,” he amended, “you, too, Draco. But Harry—”

Draco scowled. He strode ahead of them, shoving a hank of sweat-slick hair out of his eyes.

Hermione hurried after him. He wished she wouldn’t. It nearly impossible to sulk when Hermione was after him about something.

“Ron doesn’t mean it like that,” she said. “He’s proud of you, too, he’s just excited. He and Harry are — well, you know how they are.”

He did. Everyone knew. Ron had been Harry’s shadow ever since they stepped off the boats in first year; they did everything together, like two heads of the same being, always snickering together in the common room and tussling with each other in the dorms. You couldn’t say a harsh word about Harry when Ron was in the room. And Harry pretended to love all his friends equally, but in his heart of hearts, in the deepest vault, behind a locked door, there sat Ronald Weasley, reigning from a throne nobody else would ever touch.

“I don’t care,” he lied.

“Besides, you did quite well.”

“And how would you know?”

“Oh, fine,” she sighed. “Be unhappy, then! There’s no dealing with you when you get like this.”

“When ‘I’ get like this? You’re the one insisting I’m upset.”

“I don’t understand you at all,” she said, exasperated. “You insist on pretending that nobody can read you, but you’re a terrible liar, what you’re feeling is written all over your face.”

His cheeks turned warm.

They were interrupted by a group of Slytherins picking their way down to the field, clearly en route to their own tryouts. Among them was Theodore Nott, wearing green-and-silver quidditch robes and carrying a gleaming black Nimbus 2002. Beside him trotted Pansy Parkinson, who was wearing a pair of furry black earmuffs the size of oranges.

“Oh, Pans, look,” said Theodore drolly. “The competition.”

He drew to a halt on the hill above them. Behind him stood Pucey and Bletchley, chasers sporting twin buzzcuts and sneers, as well as Goyle, who — to Draco’s astonishment — was carrying a Cleansweep 9.

“Greg,” he said, incredulously, “you’re not trying out?”

Goyle’s lip curled. “What’s it to you, Malfoy?”

He sincerely hadn’t meant it as an insult. He’d been too surprised by the idea of Goyle playing quidditch to moderate his tone. In particular, he was recalling a rather traumatic Christmas in 1986, when a certain someone had broken Draco’s toy broomstick by sitting on it wrong.

He hadn’t spoken to Goyle since the start of first year.

Harry, Ron, and Ginny, seeing the group of green robes, came hurrying up the hill behind Draco and Hermione. “Nothing, he’s just surprised you found a broomstick that can carry you,” said Ron, leaning on Harry’s shoulder. “Or do you plan on using two?”

Draco winced. Goyle was sensitive about his size. Crabbe wasn’t, but Crabbe’s mother was a lot nicer to him than Goyle’s was.

Goyle shoved past Pucey and Bletchley. “Got something to say, do you? Think it’s funny? At least some of us can afford a broomstick.”

“I’m gonna think it’s hilarious,” retorted Ron, “when Flint manages to bag the world’s only flying troll.”

Goyle lunged, but Pucey and Bletchley both got fistfuls of his robes and hauled him back. Theodore made a show of yawning. “Heel, Greg,” he said. “He’s a Weasley, remember? He’s not worth the snot you’d beat out of him.”

“Don’t you dare touch Ron,” said Hermione, stepping in front of him.

“Don’t speak that way to Teddy,” snapped Pansy.

“Then you watch your tone with Hermione,” said Ginny, shouldering her way to the front.

“Back off, she-weasel,” sneered Pansy. “I don’t want these robes to smell like blood traitor.”

Immediately, Ron drew his wand. Seeing so, Harry did the same. In response, Pucey, Bletchley, and Goyle all drew back, although Theodore did not. He shot Draco a nonplussed look that said: Are we really doing this?

“Do we have a problem, Parkinson?” Draco said, trying to keep his voice dry and disinterested. “I’d remind you that Weasley’s done nothing to offend you.”

Pansy scowled. “She’s a Weasley,” she said to Draco. “The fact that she’s even here, at Hogwarts, is insulting. Almost as insulting as her being here.”

She pointed at Hermione, who startled.

“Watch it,” said Draco warningly, more to Theodore than to Pansy. The boy was starting to look uncomfortable, and opened his mouth, but Hermione spoke before he could.

“I know what you think about me,” she told Pansy coldly. “But it’s far more embarrassing for the school to have students like you than students like me.”

Pansy screeched, “Nobody asked what you think, mudblood!”

Draco moved — he wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do, but he was going to do something — but others moved faster. There was a flash of red, and a flash of green, and a horrible, feminine yowl went up: Ginny had tackled Pansy into the dirt.

The two went rolling down the hill a ways, and Ginny ended up straddling Pansy’s chest. Pinning her arms down with her knees, she slapped Pansy back and forth across the face like an angry rider laying the crop on a disobedient horse. “Don’t! You! Ever! Say! That! Again!”

“Help!” screamed Pansy. “Help! Help! Get her off! She’s feral! She’s going to kill me!”

“Don’t! You! Ever! Use! That! Word!”

The girl had a surprisingly powerful arm. Eleven years and six brothers had schooled her in the arts of martial discipline, and despite her prey’s wriggling, she was immovable. The others put away their wands, relieved: Harry hid a bark of laughter in a cough, and Ron looked like it was Christmas and his birthday, all at once.

Theodore was less amused. He dropped his broomstick — the Nimbus went clattering, and Draco mourned, thinking of the scratches — and swept down on the squabbling pair.

“Let her go,” he shouted, and his voice boomed like thunder. Draco had never heard him raise his voice before.

Ginny popped up like a boxer, and was clearly deciding whether or not to swing for Theo when Draco intercepted her. He picked her up and plopped her down safely on the other side of himself from Pansy.

Pucey and Goyle had come running forward at the first strike, wands drawn, and Draco was just thinking nauseously how very small Ginny was compared to both of them when Theodore flung out his arm and stopped them. “Oh for Merlin’s sake, would you stop it,” he snapped, his brogue rising with his irritation, “you want to end up in Dumbledore’s office, do you?”

Harry and Ron, who had been preparing a counteroffensive of wands and fists, saw the tension deflate and reluctantly retreated. Hermione was chewing fervently on one of her cuticles.

Theodore knelt by Pansy and helped her sit up. She was sobbing so hard she was about to be sick, cradling her face in her hands. Red welts flowered like rosacea across her cheeks. Draco winced.

“Come on, up with you,” murmured Theodore. “You’re all right. There’s a girl. Stand up for me, or we’ll get Greg to carry you.”

“Take me to the Hospital Wing?” she asked tearfully.

Ginny stuck her head around Draco’s shoulder. “Oh, don’t be such a girl,” she said scornfully. “You don’t need the Hospital Wing.”

At this, Pansy burst into tears again, and Theodore swept her out of sight, under his arm. “Draco, get your weasel back on a leash,” he said, much colder than he’d been before.

“Talk about my sister that way, and I’ll give you a lot more to worry about than a smack in the face,” said Ron angrily.

“I didn’t start it,” Draco said to Theo, taut with frustration. “You heard Parkinson—”

“Yes, I heard her, and I’m sure the headmaster will agree that was perfectly valid grounds for physical violence.”

“She should be expelled,” cried Pansy, pointing at Ginny.

Theodore discreetly shouldered her further away from the Gryffindors. “Out of respect for your family alone,” he warned Draco, “I’m not going to do anything about this, but if your posse comes near Pansy again—”

“His posse?” said Ron incredulously. “His?”

“Then I’m letting Pucey and Goyle have at it, and I might even join in. We understand each other?”

Pansy, her tears momentarily subsided, leaned out and spit at Ginny. The gob landed on Ginny’s shoe. Ginny looked up.

In one movement, Harry, Ron, and Draco all lunged and caught her. She thrashed a bit, shouting: “Let me at her, oh, come on, let me go!”

“Get her out of here, or it’ll be her own fault if she gets her teeth kicked in,” Draco snarled at Theodore, indicating Pansy.

With a last glare at all persons involved, Theodore turned and whisked Pansy up to the castle, his arm laid around her shoulders.

“God, but I wish I could’ve punched him,” said Ginny, gazing after the pair like it was her life’s only wish.

Harry stared at her. She noticed, blushed, and said, “What?”

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s just that I’ve never heard you — talk before.”

“She talks loads,” said Ron comfortably, slinging his arm around her shoulders. “Just never around big famous wizards with pretty hair. Is that right, Gin?”

“Gerroff,” she said, pained, “I hate you,” but he laughed and tweaked her ear.

The others started cracking jokes about it on the way back, and in each retelling, the gravity and scope of heroism performed by both Weasleys increased tenfold. But Hermione was subdued while they walked up to the castle.

“Granger,” he said gruffly. “About what Parkinson said—”

“I’m very fine,” she said tightly. “And thank you for your concern, but we all knew she was thinking it, so it was honestly refreshing that she came out and made it clear.”

“Yes, but it was… she oughtn’t to have said it.” He didn’t know how to explain his feelings about it, but of that much, he was certain. She had been very wrong to say it, and Ginny had given her more or less what she deserved.

“No, but she did,” said Hermione crisply, “and I’m sure I’d be cut up about it, if I gave a split what she thinks about me.”

Unduly relieved, he said, “Good. It scarcely matters, anyway.”

They picked their way up through the frosted grass, their shoes crunching on the stiff blades.

“Sorry,” he said, “did you say ‘split’?”

She cleared her throat. “It’s a word for — you know, when you don’t care about something. At all. It’s a strong word for that.”

“You’re kidding me. This — this is a joke. You’re having me on.”

“Don’t say it.”

“Hermione Granger,” he said, in dumbfounded joy, “did you mean ‘give a shit’?”

“Oh don’t make that face, Ron made that same stupid face, and I told him too, it’s not my fault my parents don’t let me swear!”

“Give a split? How old are you, again?”

“I have young cousins!”

“No, seriously, you’re having me on. You know it’s not actually—?”

“I know what the word is.”

---

September came and went like a burglar in the night. Draco woke to Ron’s snores or Finnigan’s CDs, and dressed in companionable jockeying with the other boys, making fun of Neville’s haircut and Dean Thomas’s un-subtle attempts to show off his new white trainers, arguing about homework and teachers and quidditch. Seamus Finnigan was putting together a small betting league for the season among the boys, and Draco, in an effort to be sporting, put twenty galleons on Puddlemere United to take the whole thing. Ron consulted his pockets and put four knuts on the Cannons. Harry consulted them both as to where his money should go, and the resulting argument lasted for the better part of three days. By the third night, the original question of Pud U or Cannons had been almost forgotten, so intricately had the tangents bred and braided together.

“…you’re mad, and I mean you’re barking mad, if you think Firch could have taken Erkstein. In his prime? In his prime?”

“This is what Cannons fans don’t understand. You’re delusional about this. You actually are. You’re delusional if you think Erkstein was anywhere near Firch, when he was playing two decades later, and the broom technology was whole fathoms better. It’d be like pitting a thoroughbred against a mule…”

Hermione groaned and buried her head in her arms.

“You two,” said Harry sternly, interrupting them. “Either write a book together or shut up about it. I’m putting five sickles on the Kestrels, and that’s all I’m going to hear on the subject.”

Draco and Ron looked at each other.

“Might as well just give five sickles away.”

“Yeah, I don’t know where I lost you, mate—”

“Entirely wrong, and I’ll tell you why…”

Hermione went up to the common room early, declaring her tolerance had reached its limit. Draco and Ron kept up through dinner and all the way back to the Pink Lady, whereupon Draco split off from the others for Neville’s Potions lesson.

He had booked one of the workrooms in the dungeons, and to save himself time, he took one of the secret staircases down from Gryffindor Tower, emerging behind a tapestry of Aggripus. From there he was within sight of the Potions classroom, where the door was ajar, and a yellow knife of light spilled into the dim hallway.

Feeling in uncharacteristically high spirits after his argument with Ron, Draco decided to say hello to his godfather. He stopped, however, when he heard voices behind the door.

“I fear I made a grievous mistake, Severus.”

That was Dumbledore. Draco stopped with his hand poised over the doorknob.

“Refusing to hire that farceur,” said Snape, “was not a mistake.”

“It would be a small sacrifice for the greater good.”

“And a reprehensible breach of your students’ trust. Answer this. Do you believe, for one minute, that he would have served as a competent teacher?”

“More easily than I can believe he would serve as a competent Minister of Magic.”

“Don’t be absurd. He won’t win.”

“I daresay not.”

“He’s a showboat. A grandstanding braggart. Announcing is a play for attention… he’ll stay in the race for a month or two, reap some free publicity for his next piece of drivel, and drop out to go sell more books… you think he wants to be Minister of Magic? He’s never held a real job in his life, he’d loathe it. These things simply happen in politics, Albus, you can’t be scared of them.”

“Everything that happens in politics scares me,” said Albus calmly, “and not without good reason. I should have given him the position… I could have controlled him, from here…”

“And what of your students?” Snape’s tone dwindled on the edge of anger. “What of their education? What of the seventh years taking N.E.W.T.s in Defense Against the Dark Arts? Your seventh years — our future Aurors, who will be your soldiers in the wars you think to come? What do you think they would have learned from Gilderoy Lockhart?”

Dumbledore did not reply.

“Less, do you suppose, than they would from Sturgis?”

“Sturgis did not want the job. I had to bully him into it.”

“And how very hard it is,” drawled Snape, moving to the door, “for you to compel people into things they would rather not do.”

“I have never had to compel you.”

“A dog that knows the length of its own leash does not pull it.”

“Severus.”

Snape moved closer to the door, and Draco scuttled further into the shadows. “Forget the business about Podmore. Lockhart will drop out before winter, and Fudge will scrape by with the votes, God help us all. In the meantime, you should try to soothe Asquith; I hear he grows frustrated with Fudge…”

The door closed, and Draco was left blinking in the darkness, totally unsure of what he just heard.

He was still reeling when Neville arrived for his lesson. He was so distracted that he failed to even scold Neville for being ten minutes late, and allowed him to set up his cauldron incorrectly, twice.

“Where’s your friend?” he said. “Lena, or what-have-you?” After all his begging and bartering, the boy had come alone.

“I don’t know,” Neville said, frowning. “I t-t-t-told Leanne to meet me outside the Pink Lady at seven f-f-forty-five, but at seven f-f-fifty she wasn’t there. S-s-so I wondered if she’d come early and m-missed me, and I asked the Pink Lady if she s-s-saw a Hufflepuff girl with f-f-fringe come by, but she said no… so I eventually gave up and came d-d-down.”

“Hm. A mystery,” said Draco disinterestedly, still mulling over Snape’s conversation with Dumbledore. “Perhaps she decided she didn’t need remedial potions, after all.”

“M-M-Maybe, but that’s totally unlike Leanne,” said Neville. “She’d never stand a-a-anybody up. She’s very s-s-sweet, and s-s-socially anxious. She’s never late for c-c-class…”

“Take it easy on the salamander blood, Longbottom, you’re not making a cocktail.”

“Oh, right you are. Sorry.”

One grueling trek through a Strengthening Solution later, and they climbed back to Gryffindor Tower. It was slow going, since Neville was carting his book and his cauldron with him, and had to stop every other flight of stairs to catch his breath. At this time of night, the halls were mostly empty, and black slabs of night pressed against each window. The torches flickered dimly, and long shadows scurried on the floor.

On the last flight, a first year came thundering down from the Tower, knocking into Neville, and sending the cauldron flying out over the banister. Neville gave a forlorn wail as it spiraled down nine flights of distance, and hit the bottom with a distant crack.

“Oi,” Draco said sharply, catching the first year by the scruff of his neck. “What’s the big idea? Apologize to Longbottom.”

It was Colin Creevey. He was shaking so badly he could have vibrated into another dimension.

“Let me go! Please! I’ve got to get a teacher!”

“Colin, what’s wrong?” cried Neville.

“She’s — she’s — I think she might be dead—”

Draco dropped him unceremoniously and sprinted up the last flight.

A crowd had gathered outside the portrait hole. There was shouting and weeping, and a lot of people were on their knees. The Pink Lady was nowhere to be found. Something shone on the wall above the Pink Lady, barely legible in the torchlight.

As he drew closer, he could make out a row of letters, each a foot high, daubed in dark red on the stone.

---

NO MORE MUDBLOODS

The crowd parted, and he realized someone was lying on the floor beneath the portrait-hole.

He shouldered through, and saw it was a small girl in a Hufflepuff tie. She had a long, dark fringe, and she clutched a used copy of Magical Drafts and Potions to her chest. She was pale, her skin leeched of color, and stiff as stone.

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NEXT CHAPTER: 9/30/22

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