Chapter 23: Gryffindor vs. Ravenclaw
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Classes started again, and the weather did not improve. In Care of Magical Creatures, Hagrid gave them bonfires full of salamanders to keep them warm, and while this pleased Harry and Ron, who never seemed to have much trouble dealing with creatures, Draco and Hermione spent the lesson hiking back their robes and hastily batting rogue salamanders away from each others’ ankles, where a mere sneeze from the creature could set their wool clothing up in flames.
“It’s a nice idea to keep warm,” tried Hermione, valiantly.
Draco was in no mood to be charitable. He sent a sneer at Hagrid — hunched and red-cheeked from the cold, chains of frost in his great beard, cheerfully showing Lavender how to feed more kindling into the fire — and then crushed one of the tiny white creatures under his heel before it could latch onto his shoe. It was impossible to get scorch marks out of good leather.
“A nice idea to keep warm,” he mimicked her. “And the Great Fire of London was a nice toasty afternoon.”
“It’s only until the end of the year,” she said. “Anyway, it doesn’t do any good to complain about it now. He’s trying, isn’t he?”
Hagrid had indeed made leaps and bounds. They had descended from hippogriffs to a suite of only moderately dangerous creatures after a certain number of students — mostly Slytherins — spread word to their parents over the holidays, many of whom sat the Board of Directors.
“Trying won’t help him,” he said darkly. “Hippogriffs … salamanders… I heard the fourth years were out digging holes for dugbogs… If my father was alive…”
“You won’t report Hagrid, would you?” said Hermione worriedly. “He’s been so kind to us. Just because you don’t enjoy a class—”
“He’s been nice to you,” said Draco, though he privately acknowledged the point. It wasn’t particularly clever or ambitious to go around prosecuting people who did you favors and showed you kindness; the whole point of doing favors was to stop people from going after you later. Anyway, he didn’t really want Hagrid fired. Certainly it would make Draco’s life easier, but that could just as well be accomplished by transferring into Muggle Studies, and without the collateral damage, to say nothing of all the whinging and tears from his friends.
In Potions, Neville completed quite the coup by brewing a grade-appropriate potion for the first time in three years. True, he hadn’t done int in class, where it would count towards his grade, but in one of their tutoring sessions, wherein Draco had sat with his boots on the table and read Granger’s dog-eared copy of Emma until Neville gave him a quivering call to come look. He’d been positively electrified by the success, though he had hidden it with a thin: “That’s sufficient, Longbottom. Now bottle it without spilling, and then I’ll be impressed.”
“But what’s wrong with it?” said Neville, almost alarmed.
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing?”
“Believe me, I’m just as surprised as you are.” When he was met with silence, he glanced up from his book. “Problem, Longbottom?”
The dark-haired boy was staring into his cauldron, transfixed. “I’ve never done nothing wrong before,” said Neville, mystified. “I — I don’t know how to feel about it.”
“Me neither,” said Draco. “In fact, if it were anyone else, I’d suspect you’d dosed me with something, but I suppose that would still require you to brew something right. Clean it up, now, before one or both of us passes out.”
But he was pleased, and in good spirits about it. When they got back to the common room, he didn’t even scare off the first year sitting in his armchair. It was a season of generosity, after all.
Ravenclaw played Slytherin a week after the start of term. Slytherin won narrowly, which was good news for Gryffindor, since they only needed to beat Ravenclaw to take second place in the Cup. Wood, sensing this opportunity, ramped up the number of practices and pushed them onto the field an hour earlier every morning. Within a week, Draco regretted having his cast taken off. It had been a lovely time when he could show up late to practices with a cup of cider and watch the others fly suicides across the field.
He had never had to learn how to fly in sleet before. In this, for once, he did not envy Harry, who now had to do everything Draco did on a rental Cleansweep Four. Not that he heard Harry complaining of it much, or indeed, heard of Harry much at all; between classes, quidditch practices, and homework, the Boy Who Lived had also begun staying in after Defense Against the Dark Arts class, and sneaking out to the Whomping Willow on weekends for dinners with Lupin and Sirius at the Shrieking Shack. Sometimes he extended these invitations to his friends, but it was clear that this was a move from politeness, and it never felt appropriate to accept.
Draco didn’t care. He didn’t understand Harry’s attachment to their professor and Black, but then again, Draco had never been particularly close to any of his family except his mother. He supposed that if one grew up without parents, it would be an unanticipated windfall to get two godfather-types in one inning, but thinking about that sort of thing depressed him, so he didn’t dwell on it.
Hermione didn’t even notice he was gone. As the new term progressed, her workload appeared to balloon. Every night, he found her in a corner of the common room, poring over a miserable spread of Arithmancy charts, runic dictionaries, and dozens of pages of handwritten notes. When she found a rhythm it was bad form to disturb her, and so he would often finish his own homework in a nearby armchair and read until she was prepared to be sociable and normal again. In this way, he and Crookshanks made a sort of praetorial guard. Ron, who under normal circumstances would withdraw from their company to spend time with Harry, found himself bereft and miserable under the combined weight of his friends’ preoccupation.
Indeed, the great Christmas thaw of relations between Ron and Hermione had plummeted back into a cold war. Crookshanks had caught and killed one of the mice they were supposed to be practicing Transfiguration on over the break, which Ron had taken as yet another outrageous reminder of Crookshanks’ guilt. Hermione had denied it up to the very hilt, produced a number of creative revisionist accounts of how the blood and fur could have ended up in Ron’s dorm, and refused to apologize. They had another row about it and did not speak directly to each other through the end of February, which was hard, because their usual translator — Harry — was largely absent, and Draco had no inclination to fulfill the role.
“He’s being an absolute boor,” Hermione complained, dotting an i with such force it speared the table beneath the parchment. Draco eyed their tea set warily; Hermione, like all young witches and wizards, had a touch of rogue magic about her, so in fits of anger nearby beverages were prone to boiling over or erupting in volcanic style. “He doesn’t like Crookshanks, he never has, and that’s why he’s decided to blame it on him. I do understand that he’s a cat, and cats are carnivores, honestly I do, but it’s not like he’s the only cat in the castle — I mean, Ron hasn’t said a word about Mrs. Norris! Poor Crookshanks has taken all the blame… and honestly, and don’t tell him I said this—”
“The danger of that,” said Draco, turning a page in his book, “was zero.”
“—but frankly, the animal was thirteen years old, and if he weren’t already cross with me, I’d be asking why nobody’s talking about the possibility of—”
“Natural causes?”
Her teacup trembled. “Yes! For Merlin’s sake, it’s a rat, Draco. I don’t mean to be cruel, but its average lifespan is two years, so— Occam’s Razor— isn’t it obvious that the poor thing just crawled off and died somewhere with nobody to notice?”
“You’re a sensitive soul, Granger,” he said, squinting at the small lettering. “How old is this Knightley fellow, again?”
Other residents of Gryffindor Tower, namely Fred and George, took no stake in the conflict except that it was very funny.
“Ron, you nitwit, you hated Scabbers more than any of us,” said Fred good-naturedly. “A scrawny little lump of hair and teeth, you called him. Honestly, you should be grateful if Crooks put him out of his misery. Better that than finding him dead in your bedsheets one day.”
“Fred!” cried Ginny. She smacked his arm.
“’Sides, now you can get a real pet,” said George. “One you actually like. When’s the last time you took him out to play with, anyway?”
“That’s besides the point!” said Ron furiously. “He was my rat! It’s easy for you to say when Mum and Dad will buy you two new things, but I’ve got to make do…”
Draco considered offering once more to replace Scabbers, if only to purchase a modicum of peace and quiet for the Common Room — he would consider it a sound investment — but something about the set of Ron’s jaw told him that the gift would not be accepted. Ron was odd about money in ways that Draco could not understand and frankly did not wish to.
In a vain attempt to cheer up Ron, Harry took him down to the quidditch pitch to try out his Cleansweep Four. So it was that Draco and Hermione went down to dinner alone one Saturday in early February. At the end of an unimpressive meal — Hermione worked through it, her eyes glued to the History of Magic textbook, shoveling the occasional spoonful of potatoes into her mouth when reminded — Dumbledore surprised them all by standing and clinking a spoon against his glass. The sound, amplified by magic, echoed powerfully through the hall, and conversation stilled as the four tables turned to listen.
“Your attention, please!” he called. He was wearing his habitual elderly smile, though perhaps Draco was overly suspicious, but he judged it a bit thin. “I must announce that classes will end early on Friday afternoon.” A hesitant order of cheers sprang up, mostly from the Gryffindor table; Hermione gave a small wail of horror. “Hogwarts will be hosting the Minister of Magic.”
Now there were more cheers, but not from the Gryffindor table. Draco frowned at Hermione, who shook her head in equal confusion: what was the Minister of Magic coming to Hogwarts for? And why would Dumbledore announce his visit?
“The Minister will be joining us for an annual meeting of the Board,” said Dumbledore, ignoring the announcement’s lukewarm reception. “We entreat you, as ever, to be on your best behavior — a duty,” he added, with a twinkling glance at the Gryffindor table, “which we do not doubt you will perform. Classes will resume as usual on Monday morning. Please do not be alarmed; this is a routine visit by the new Minister to acquaint himself with Hogwarts, and not an evaluation, or production, of any kind.”
But no matter what Dumbledore had said, it was clear to Draco that the old man was lying.
“For one thing, it’s not routine, and he knows it,” he said under his breath to Hermione, as they packed their things amidst an uproar of chatter. Nobody could believe that the Minister was coming, and Fred and George were already in ecstasies trying to plan what mischief they would visit on the Board. “The Minister doesn’t just pop in every term to say hello. He only came last year when something was wrong.”
“It is a new Minister,” she said doubtfully. “I suppose it’s a bit of pageantry, isn’t it? To show how important he is?”
“To whom? Children? Two dozen wizards on the faculty?” Draco shook his head. “If you want my opinion, it’s something between him and Dumbledore.”
“That wouldn’t explain why they’ve canceled classes.”
“Yes, and I know you’re in a mourning period, but please pretend to be happy for the rest of us. You’re spoiling the mood.”
For the mood as they left the Great Hall was indeed jovial. For one thing, not many students knew who Runcorn was, and so his visit letting them out of classes set off the acquaintance on a very good foot. For another, among those who knew who he was, it was cause for celebration and not dismay — in particular, Draco had rarely seen the Slytherins in such animated good cheer. Theo and Blaise lingered in the Great Hall, having a boisterous chat with a group of Slytherin fourth years, and Theo called out to Draco as he passed by.
“Oi! Malfoy! Good show, isn’t it?” He cracked a grin. “Fancy a friendly? Gryffindor and Slytherin, Friday afternoon? Schedule just opened up.”
It occurred to Draco that Theo might have insight into what was going on. “You go ahead,” he told Hermione, though she hardly needed the invitation; she muttered a bleary goodbye, lost in her notes for Transfiguration. He joined Theo in his circle of friends. “Did you know something about this, Nott?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Theo said modestly, examining his fingernails. “I can’t claim all the credit — obviously the Minister had to be involved somewhere—”
Draco folded his arms and made an expression that Ron had once called ‘death by eyebrow.’
Theo sighed. “You’re no fun. My Dad told me he was coming a week ago. He asked if there was a class I oughtn’t skip, and I told him to take Friday afternoons. Nobody’s paying attention anyway, and that’s when I’ve got the bloody brute.”
“We’ve this one to thank for saving our skins,” said Blaise coolly, leaning on Theo’s shoulder. “Another afternoon with those salamanders and I would’ve been short a toe.”
“You mean Hagrid?” said Draco, slightly queasy.
“Who else?” said Theo archly. “It’s bad enough having to tromp around in the mud with those animals for an O.W.L. — it adds insult to injury, being taught by one. Anyway, why did you care? Our Potions block is in the morning, so you’ve nothing to complain about.”
Draco cleared his throat and made his voice as cool and scathing as he could. “Don’t tell me your father’s staging the visit to get you out of Care of Magical Creatures,” he drawled.
Theo smirked. “No. That’s a convenient byproduct. Dad’s bringing him because he wants to speak to some people here, and the Board’s due for an inspection of the grounds — years over due, in fact. After I told him what happened last year, with Yaxley, he couldn’t believe it — asked how nobody noticed him slinking around the Forest, and I told him, if you think that’s bad, let me just tell you what else Dumbledore’s been cooking up while the Ministry was sitting on its thumbs: have you ever heard of a little thing called ‘Muggle Studies’?”
“That’s been around for decades,” said Draco boredly, hearing Hermione’s voice in his ear. __ “It would’ve existed when he was at Hogwarts.”
“Well, even so, he agreed with me,” added Theo, blithely, “and we both agreed the school’s security was in tatters. The dementors are a good step forward, and supposedly Runcorn is thinking of putting an Auror guard on the castle grounds, but before they do anything else a preliminary inspection is in order. I’m thrilled, personally, I think it’s about time the Ministry gets involved at Hogwarts.”
“You would,” said Draco. He felt subtly ill at ease. The other Slytherins were smiling and nodding as though Theo was the very voice of reason, and he realized they probably didn’t care one way or another what Theo was actually saying; his father was a prize deputy to the Minister of Magic. “I suppose Lord Runcorn will be signing a law naming you Head Boy, next.”
“I wish,” said Theo, amused. “No such luck, chum. Dad says that Runcorn’s very interested in new grading policies — real merit-based standards, all about performance and objective criteria, none of this wishy-washy House points stuff. If we want to stop falling behind Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, we’ve got to actually set our students to work. It’s students like me, like you — like Granger, even! — who will do best under reformed standards. It’s quite modern and fair.”
Draco snorted. “Bully for him. You think Dumbledore’s going to go for that, do you?”
“But it doesn’t matter, does it?” interrupted Blaise. “It’s the Board who decides, ultimately, and the Board isn’t made of faculty. Dumbledore can’t menace them into doing what he wants.”
This made Draco pause. He wanted to ask Blaise who he thought Dumbledore was ‘menacing’ now, but Theo interrupted him before he could. “Ah, that reminds me,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Runcorn is hosting a little reception for students on Friday night. Eight o’clock in the fourth floor lecture hall, near the east wing. Select invitations, you know, just for certain people and their families, but I thought I’d invite you. Spare you another evening in that dismal tower.”
“How kind. Is it only for the board?”
Theo shrugged. “Something like that.” He clapped Draco on the shoulder. “Got to run. Our next period is Charms, and Flitwick’s going to jinx my nose into a pocket watch if I’m late again, he really will.”
“Sure. Say — suppose I’d like to bring someone to your little party,” said Draco, keeping his tone light. “Fair game?”
Theo paused. “Well,” he said, trading a look with Blaise. “Certainly you can. I don’t suppose anyone would stop you.”
Draco smiled without teeth. “Only someone suitable, of course.”
“Oh, then sure,” said Theo, flapping his hand vaguely, as if the question didn’t even bear asking. “Course you can. You know how these things work, Malfoy. Anyway, I’m off. See you at the match; do try and give Ravenclaw a thrashing, by the way. I’ll not root for Gryffindor against a wet sack of murtlap dung, but if we let those sanctimonious swots get close to the Cup, we’ll have failed as gentlemen. Ta.”
With that, the gaggle of Slytherins drifted away into the crowd, disappearing in a melange of dark robes and sneers. Draco lingered in the Great Hall, frowning, as the crowd streamed around him like a river around a rock, gripped by the rising suspicion that something important and invisible was happening about ten inches over his head.
The Gryffindor match against Ravenclaw took place on a drizzly morning in late February. The Gryffindor table was in good spirits, having just reacquired its chaser and its seeker, though Harry’s lack of a decent broom was worrying Draco. Oliver called a last-minute prep session over breakfast, so the team huddled at the end of the table, scarfing down truncheons of bacon, while their captain modeled quidditch plays with salt shakers. Various classmates drifted past to wish them good luck, including several from Hufflepuff, whose informal house alliance with Gryffindor was well-established. Percy and his girlfriend, Penelope Clearwater, came by the table to wish them good luck, though at the sight of Penelope, Oliver fell silent and gave her a frosty look.
“Come now, Oliver, there’s no sabotage,” said Percy heartily, as Penelope flushed and averted her face — as if, Draco thought, anything of note could possibly be gleaned from the positions of the pepper relative to the mash. “Penny and I have got a bet on; ten Galleons on the outcome of the match.”
“Sports betting is against school rules,” added Penelope (a round girl, freckled, rather cute if in a decidedly swotty way, with chunky black glasses and a heavy sheaf of fringe) “but I thought, well, we can make an exception, just the once — if it’s between prefects.”
“Right, if it’s between prefects,” said Fred seriously. “George and I recently learned there are lots of rules that don’t apply if you’re prefects. For instance, being out of dorms after curfew—”
“Boys being in the girls’ bathrooms,” said George idly, stirring his tea, “girls being in the boys’ dorms…”
“Really, the list is endless. Apparently I should have tried harder to make prefect, I had no idea how useful it could be—”
“Anyway,” said Percy, loudly. “Penelope and I came over to wish you good luck, because she’s a good sport. Unlike some.” He turned to escort her away, giving an imperious sweep of his cloak, but paused to whisper something in Harry’s ear as he went. Harry’s eyebrows lifted, and he smiled to himself.
“What did he say?” asked Draco.
“To try and win,” said Harry. “Because he hasn’t got ten Galleons.”
Draco blanched and buried his nose in his tea. How Percy had managed to get a girl with his finances in that kind of shape lay entirely outside of Draco’s understanding. She couldn’t possibly fancy him for his looks.
At a quarter to eleven, they marched down to the locker rooms. Compared to the first match of the season, the weather was downright temperate, though Harry still cast a precautionary waterproofing charm on his glasses. Draco added a warming charm to his broomstick and tucked his wand into the inside pocket of his robes. Footsteps rattled the beams over their heads as the stadium filled with spectators.
“…that new seeker, that Chang girl, you’ve got to keep an eye on,” Oliver was saying to Harry. “She’s faster than you think. She gave Diggory a run for his money in the match last Friday, and she’s only a third year… but remember you’ve got a year of experience on her, so don’t get too wiggy about it, either…”
They emerged onto the field and the stands erupted with applause. The Ravenclaw team stood waiting for them on the field, and Draco gave them a cursory scan, looking for the seeker Oliver was so worried about. It wasn’t hard to find her; she was the only girl on the team, and even shorter than Harry, clocking in at five feet if she was an inch. Her long black ponytail fluttered in the wind like a snapping eel. When she saw Harry she straightened up and smiled at him, which was a bit off-putting; Draco, in contrast, got an ugly glower from his counterpart Ravenclaw chaser.
Madam Hooch gave a sharp pipe on the whistle. “Wood, Davies, shake hands… mount your brooms…”
Chang was still smiling while they mounted their brooms. She flew one of the new Comet models, still shiny with factory wax, and the bristles tightly bound. Draco figured he could outpace her with his Nimbus, but he felt uneasy about Harry’s chances on the Cleansweep.
“Go!”
The whistle blasted. Draco shot into the air.
He was one of the first up, and his initial burst of speed put him well above most of the others. The only people to keep pace with him were Wood, who could probably break Mach 5 on a bespelled teaspoon, and Chang, who had erupted from the initial tussle for the quaffle with surprising speed, and cut a neat arc around the stadium, her head turning this way and that for the snitch. She was very fast, and very skilled. Harry lagged just a moment behind her, bent low and straining the upper limits of his broomstick. His frustration was evident on his face.
“AND THEY’RE OFF… Gryffindor playing its full roster for the first time since the beginning of the season, welcoming back players Potter and Malfoy, seeker and chaser, from their stint in the hospital wing — Potter’s now riding a Cleansweep Four, stark contrast with the Firebolt he was sporting in the first game, unfairly taken in the line of duty; that leaves Malfoy with the best broom on the Gryffindor team— now, he’s flying a Nimbus 2001, which means you can’t beat it for quality or handling, although the model’s about a year old now, and supposedly loses in a head-to-head with the new Thunderbolt—”
“Jordan, where is the quaffle?” interrupted Professor McGonagall impatiently.
“Oh, right you are, Professor, just giving a bit of context. I was going to get around to the Ravenclaws, too— Davies has a Starsweeper this season, fast as murder, terribly sexy—”
“Jordan!”
“AND IT’S GRYFFINDOR in possession, KATIE BELL of Gryffindor, heading for the goal…”
Draco already knew this, having traded the quaffle in a pair of crosses with Katie over the Ravenclaw chaser’s head. As they approached the goals, Harry shot past them in the opposite direction, followed by Chang. He fought the temptation to turn and look to see if Harry had seen something. The snitch wouldn’t show this early in the game; Harry was probably trying to tire her out, to grind down the advantage she had in pure speed. He and Oliver had spent the better part of yesterday’s practice talking it over.
Katie made a shot on goal. It slipped cleanly through the Ravenclaw keeper’s outstretched arms and fell through the goalpost. Draco whooped and hauled his broom around, holding out his arm, and she slapped it as she flew by. The numbers on the scoreboard flipped down of their own accord: GRYFFINDOR 10 - 0.
“That’s Katie Bell, Katie Bell for Gryffindor, ten-nil to Gryffindor, and a beautiful shot it was, too — pretty cross there by Draco Malfoy, did I happen to mention his broomstick — only joking, Professor McGonagall! Anyway, possession to Ravenclaw, and that’s Davies to Burrow, Burrow to Stretton, Stretton to Burrow — oooh! ”
Jordan audibly hissed through his teeth. One of the Ravenclaw beaters had nailed a bludger straight at Harry, and forced him into a swan-dive that narrowly avoided collision with the stands. Draco swore he could see the place where it nicked the back of Harry’s robes. George intercepted the dodged bludger with his bat and sent it hurtling at Davies, who did a barrel-roll to avoid it.
“Bad form!” shouted Angelina. “Who aims for the seeker before the snitch is even out? Fred, teach him some manners!”
“Took the words out of my mouth, gorgeous!” Fred sped past, chasing the second bludger into position. With a crack, he punted it at the other beater’s head.
But Harry was undeterred. His jaw set, he pulled out of the dive and zipped back into the air over the stadium, circling with an eye out for the snitch.
In the confusion, Angelina repossessed the quaffle and was steadily flying back towards the Ravenclaw goals. She and Angelina scored the second and third Gryffindor goals of the game while Draco hovered at midfield, ready to play defense, but they never let the quaffle get that far. Oliver’s assessment had been right; Gryffindor had a clear advantage over Ravenclaw in terms of chaser quality, and their new keeper lacked confidence. Katie and Angelina were running a train through him. If Ravenclaw was going to pull a win at all, it would do so on the back of its seeker.
Harry shot past Draco, ruffling his robes. Draco veered to the side and opened his mouth to snap at him, but the objection died on his tongue when he saw how Harry was flying: belly to the broomstick, head down, as if he were trying to wring every last ounce of speed from his subpar broomstick. Chang followed him a heartbeat later.
“And it’s Gryffindor, Gryffindor in the lead, eighty-twenty, with Ravenclaw milking two goals out of that confusion with the bludger! But Potter is putting on a lot of speed, and Chang’s right behind him, making good time for a Comet, honestly, especially considering the season they just had in the leagues. Never saw a Comet that couldn’t blow a lead of fifty paces if you tried to turn it—”
“JORDAN!”
“And Potter accelerates more, he’s definitely seeing something we don’t, and maybe Chang sees it too — we’ll have to wait and see — oh!”
Chang had swept in front of Harry and executed a complicated swivel on her broomstick, blocking him. Harry swerved to avoid a collision, breaking his line, and both the crowd and Oliver roared with disapproval. The captain actually drifted forward a few feet away from the goalposts to shout at him.
“HARRY, THIS IS NO TIME TO BE A GENTLEMAN! YOU’VE GOT TWO STONE ON HER! IF SHE WANTS TO WRESTLE, PUT HER ON THE GROUND!”
Draco, blinking, realized that Oliver was right. Harry, possibly for the first time in his quidditch career, was no longer the lightest player on the field. But he wasn’t used to throwing his weight around like the bigger players, and he hadn’t thought to try and foul Chang to get her off his tail. It wasn’t Harry’s style of play. Draco wondered if Chang had made the same observation before she cut him off.
The quaffle had returned to Gryffindor. Katie passed it back to Draco, who vaulted it over Burrow’s head to Angelina and then cut underneath him in a stomach-turning dive to get past the defender. They wove a braid of passes over the field, scored again, and wrestled the quaffle back from Ravenclaw possession before it got out of the end zone. Draco kept having to resist the impulse to watch Harry and Chang, who were chasing each other all over the upper quadrant of the field, doing a number of theatrical dives that reminded him of what Theo had once called a typical “seeker’s move.”
Rain drizzled across the pitch, thickening as the game went on. Dim clouds drifted across the sky, spotted with the occasional swell of ominous black. The light continually changed as clouds of different density passed over the sun. This sent waves of alternating light and shadow sweeping over the field, like a passing searchlight. With such inconstant visibility, Draco had to concentrate just to see the quaffle. He couldn’t imagine how hard it was for Harry to see the snitch.
“He’s onto something!” said Jordan sharply. “Potter is in a dead heat with Chang — they’re not chasing each other anymore, they’re neck and neck — I think they’ve seen the snitch—”
Draco couldn’t help it. He was a seeker at heart. He punted the quaffle to Katie and turned to watch as Harry and Chang shot overhead, their shoulders locked, chasing a tiny glint of gold.
“He’s got it!” shouted George. “Go on, Harry — it’s all speed, at this point— oh, no you don’t! ” He smacked away a bludger that would have tagged Harry’s broom, and then rounded back in, intent on landing another hit on the Ravenclaw beater.
Draco’s heart skipped. As Harry extended his arm in front of him, a wave of darkness passed over the pitch. The clouds above turned thick and knotty, like a long spread of wet black cloth, and the light plunged. The only sources of visibility were the glowing exit lines in the stands and the moon-like glow of the scoreboard. Draco squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force his eyes to adjust, and when he opened them he could make out the shapes of the other players hovering in the air: they had all stopped moving because of the impaired visibility. It was too dangerous, with the possibility of running into someone — even the beaters had gone still.
“What’s going on? This wasn’t in the forecast!” shouted Oliver. “The almanac said light rain today! Light! Rain!”
“It’s not clouds,” said Draco. He felt very cold.
“What? Malfoy, what was that?”
“It’s not clouds,” he said, lifting his voice. “It’s dementors.”
For it was: not swarming, like they had at the first game of the season, but floating overhead in a huge bank, like a roll of fog. Their ragged cloaks blotted out the full quilt of the clouds. None of them dipped down to enter the pitch, but moved as one over it, like a flock. In the distance, Draco could hear the hoarse howl of their breath, echoing like a roll of faraway thunder.
“Not again,” moaned Oliver. And echoing him, Draco felt a cold pit of fear in his gut, and thought: Not again.
He spun, looking for Harry. But Harry was already prepared. He held his wand in his hand, his expression fierce, and shouted, “Expecto patronum!”
Something silver-white and enormous sprouted from the end of Harry’s wand and galloped over the pitch. It wasn’t like the Patronuses Black and Lupin had produced; its edges were fuzzier, the shape less discrete, more like an animated hand of mist than a living creature. But it worked just the same. As the ball of white danced past Draco, the cold of the dementors receded, cast off like a coat of frost under the touch of firelight, and his heart started to beat calmly again.
The light started to change. The dementor cloud passed over the stadium and the sun returned. The Patronus, hovering around Oliver’s goalpost, dissipated into white mist as the dementors disappeared. With visibility newly restored, Madam Hooch’s whistle sounded, and the players sank to the ground, many of them on shaky footing.
“Quaffle to Ravenclaw!” shouted one of the Ravenclaw chasers.
“To Ravenclaw? To Ravenclaw?” Oliver roared. “That was the most obvious interference I’ve ever seen! The bloody sun went out! Madam Hooch, please be reasonable—”
“Mr. Wood—”
“A blind man could see that counts as extenuating circumstances, and if they get the quaffle then we should get a ten point penalty, because Katie was about to make a shot on goal when the visibility dropped, and everyone on this field knows damn well she could have made that shot in the dark, so if you want to penalize us for playing fair—”
“Mr. Wood, it doesn’t matter who has the quaffle!” said Madam Hooch shrilly. “You’ve won the match!”
Oliver’s jaw dropped. Harry, who had just landed in the mud next to them, grinned and held up his fist — in which thrashed the tiny wings of the snitch.
“That’s my boy!” he shouted. He and the other chasers dropped their broomsticks and threw themselves on top of Harry, who went down without a stitch of resistance under a pile of muddy red robes. The Gryffindor stands erupted in cheers. Percy gave a single, deliberate whoop. Ron led a chant of Harry’s theme song, which made Harry blush bright red but which did nothing at all to quell the grin on his face.
Draco, however, could not shake a sense of queasiness. Instead of dropping down to share in the riot of Gryffindor celebrations, he turned right and flew across the field, to the faculty box, where McGonagall and Lee Jordan sat in the commentator’s mic. Behind that was Dumbledore’s seat — now empty — and the seat of the man he was actually looking for.
“Professor Snape!”
Snape carried a wide black umbrella, the type that posed an unapologetic inconvenience to everyone sitting behind him, and tipped it back to regard Draco with an expressionless face. “Congratulations, Draco,” he said coolly. “A well-played match. Endeavor not to drip.”
Draco ignored him. “What was that?” he demanded, pointing at the eastern sky. “Why were they here? They’re not supposed to come to quidditch games, Dumbledore said—”
“And they did not.” Snape’s eyes slid past Draco, to the gaggle of Gryffindors now jumping and hugging each other on the pitch. “On a related note, where on earth did your friend Potter learn to produce a Patronus Charm? He is not famous for his grasp of magic above grade-level.”
Draco knew very well, but he wasn’t about to shout the answer over the full faculty box. Lupin was sitting just a few rows back. “I don’t know,” he lied. “Professor, if the dementors weren’t coming to the game, why did they do that?”
“On ceremony,” said Snape. He rose and cast the water from his robes with a flick of his wand, sending droplets scattering onto Draco. Draco shielded his face irritably. “They were going to greet their master.”
“Their master?” Draco said, chilled. “Who’s he?”
Snape gave him a very strange look. “I should think you would have deduced it,” he said. “They serve the Bureau of Corrections. Their master is the Minister of Magic.”
Oh, Theodore.
-Merry chismus!!
-fred and george. kings of my heart. quite possibly the most fun characters to write except for draco himself
-lee JORDAN king of my HEART. his dynamic with mcgonagall is so funny. like the fact that she invites him BACK to commentate game after game, when he is always getting on her last nerve, proves that either (1) no one, and seriously NO ONE, else is willing to take the commentator job, or, more likely: (2) she secretly likes it. minerva “give that first year a broomstick, i can’t believe i finally get to kick severus’s ass” mcgonagall is a gryffindor first and a professor second
-here for penelope clearwater rights. WHO is this girl who is willing to date percy weasley. i could write a seven-volume introspective Proustian series of novels about whatever’s going on in her head
-okay my true TRUE forever darling favorite ravenclaw is, in fact, luna. obviously. but cho chang is such a lovely character and she’s so real and she is done so dirty in the books. she’s smart! and she’s brave! and she’s an athlete! i do think she is the proto-ginny in many ways and she gets such a bad rap because of her book storyline
-SNEAK PEEK: Next chapter’s title is “The League of Promising Youth.” Ciao!!
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