*
Author's Note: the characters of the Harry Potter novels are the property
of their creator, J.K. Rowling, and are used here without her knowledge
or permission. All other characters property of the author, with the exceptions
of Becca Morgan and her parents, who are themselves. November 2001. 35,000
words.
*
For Becca, with love.
*
Chapter Six – Foul Play
Hermione didn't believe it when
they told her that Snape had actually smiled. She believed it even less
when they admitted, grudgingly, that smiling made the Potions teacher almost
handsome. What fascinated her, though, was their description of Ophidia
Winterwind. She hurried to the library first thing to look her up.
The rest of them, in the meantime,
stuffed down a quick breakfast in a Great Hall bubbling with talk about
the upcoming game. Harry and the rest of the Gryffindor team ate quickest
of all and were the first ones to leave their table. At the door, they
ran into the Slytherin team. They were all grinning in a way that made
Harry's skin creep. Malfoy looked especially pleased with himself.
"Feeling good, Potter?" he asked
snidely. "Enjoy it while you can, because they'll be carting you off of
the field on a stretcher today."
"We'll see about that, Malfoy."
"You might as well forfeit now,"
the Slytherin captain told them. "Save you looking bad in front of all
the relatives."
"That won't bother Potter," Malfoy
said. "He hasn't any."
"Well, then," said the captain,
"we'll have to settle for making him look bad in front of all his Muggle
friends."
"Laugh it up," Fred Weasley told
the Slytherins. "We'll accept your apology later."
"Accept this," growled
a Slytherin Beater, making a rude gesture.
Fred bridled and stepped toward
him, but George held him back. "Save it for the field, brother."
"Care to put some money where
your forked-tongue mouth is, Slytherin snake-boy?" Fred asked hotly.
"Tsk, tsk, Gryffindor," the Slytherin
captain said. He was another Flint, Byron, and they all looked as if a
troll was lurking somewhere in the family tree. "You know wagering money's
not allowed. How about this? When we win, you lot have to launder all our
Quidditch robes. By hand, mind you. No magic, no help from the house elves."
"And when we win," Fred
said, "you'll have to put underpants on your heads and sing the Gryffindor
House song tonight at dinner."
"Done!" They shook on it, over
the dismayed grimaces of the rest of the teams.
"Now it's even more important
we win," Alicia Spinnet, the Gryffindor captain who'd taken over from Oliver
Wood, said as they continued on to the locker room. "I'm not spending my
evening elbow-deep in Slytherin laundry."
Harry didn't so much care about
that. All he wanted was what he usually wanted – to beat Slytherin and
increase Gryffindor's chances for the House Cup. He got into his red robes
and joined the others, broomstick in hand, as they proceeded onto the field.
Temporary bleachers had been set
up in addition to the regular stands, allowing seating for all the guests.
It made the field seem like a huge stadium, and the noise of the spectators
was increased to a rumbling roar reminiscent of crashing surf. Harry swallowed.
That made for an awful lot of people to be watching them.
Alicia must have read his mind.
"It's not so bad," she said cheerfully. "The professional players see crowds
ten times this size, and they do all right. Just stick to the game and
you'll be fine, Harry."
Harry scanned the stands, seeing
Ron, Hermione, and Becca struggling to unroll a large sign that read: The
Snitch can't hide from Harry! in bold lettering. They were surrounded by
their families and Hagrid, bulking large among the smaller people. Most
of them in that section waved Gryffindor pennants. Each visitor had been
offered a program booklet outlining the Quidditch rules and naming the
players and their positions, for the sake of the Muggles who'd never seen
the game before. Now they were rustling those programs irritably, impatient
for the start of the game.
Madame Hooch finally appeared,
moving slowly instead of with her ordinarily brisk stride. She whistled
the teams to attention and the whistle sounded weak and half-hearted rather
than the sharp shriek they were familiar with. The teams kicked off, Seekers
soaring high above the rest of their teammates to have the best vantage
point for the appearance of the Snitch. Madame Hooch tossed the Quaffle
and blew another lukewarm blast, and the game was on.
Right away, Slytherin came out
swinging. The players usually tried to pace themselves, because there was
no way of knowing how long a game might go. It all depended on the Snitch
and the Seekers. Sometimes the Snitch would be caught before a single goal
was scored, sometimes it could flit around and hide itself for an hour
or more. But the Slytherins launched a brutal series of offensive plays,
Beaters beating the Bludgers hard toward the other team, Chasers flying
too close to their opponents, bumping broomsticks, flapping the sleeves
of their robes in the other team's face. In less than five minutes, Slytherin
had scored forty points to Gryffindor's ten.
Draco Malfoy, the other Seeker,
hovered high like Harry, but he wasn't content to wait in one place watching
for the Snitch. He zipped this way and that, sometimes passing right in
front of or right under Gryffindors, making them veer to avoid a collision.
To stop him, Harry suddenly dove as if he'd seen the Snitch, and Malfoy
at once set after him in hot pursuit.
As he swung low and banked steeply
near the bottom of the stands, Harry saw Madame Hooch swaying on her feet.
She was trying to follow the action above, but as he flashed by, Harry
noticed that her face was turning a sickly green.
He called out, but just then Malfoy
caught up with him and slammed his elbow into Harry's side. Distracted
by Madame Hooch, Harry slipped and lost control of his broom. It sped straight
toward the stands. Yelping, he pulled up hard and skimmed over the heads
of the crowd as they ducked and shouted and waved their fists at him.
Harry came around in a tight circle
just as Slytherin scored another ten points and Madame Hooch collapsed
in a flurry of black and white cloth. Everyone saw that, the audience shooting
to its feet.
"And the referee is down!" Lee
Jordan cried from the announcer's booth. "Hold the game! Hold the game,
I say!" Lee thrust his fingers in his mouth and blew, and the screeching
whistle brought all the players to a halt, made the spectators stuff their
fingers in their ears, and from Hagrid's cottage, Fang the boarhound howled
in counterpoint.
Madame Pomfrey was first to reach
Madame Hooch, simply Apparating from her seat to the grass, where she knelt
beside the stricken referee. Dumbledore joined her an instant later, while
the Gryffindors and the Slytherins touched down nearby. A concerned babble
came from the crowd, everyone leaning and trying to get a better look.
Nobody knew what to do as Madame
Pomfrey checked Madame Hooch and spoke to Dumbledore in tones too low to
hear. Dumbledore nodded and straightened up, looking around at the stands.
"Ladies and gentlemen, guests,
students, teachers," he proclaimed in a carrying voice. "It seems our coach
and referee, Madame Hooch, has been taken ill. There will be a short delay
while we move her to the infirmary."
"A delay?" asked Flint, his eyes
hard with slyness. "Shouldn't we call the game?"
Harry sucked in a breath. So that
was it! They'd done it! He was even sure he knew how, the answer hitting
him like a slap to the face. He sprang back on his broom and sped toward
the locker room entrance, hunching low to avoid taking off the top of his
head on the underside of the doorjamb. It was tricky work flying a broom
down the narrow hall, but he did, and took the corner so fast that his
robes whipped out to the side.
The door to Madame Hooch's office
was dead ahead. Harry stuck out a foot, hoping it wasn't locked because
if it was, he was about to splatter himself all over the place and probably
break his broom. But it wasn't. His foot kicked it open so hard that the
door bounced off the wall and came back, but by then Harry had zoomed into
the middle of the room and jerked to a stop.
Hooch's office was a mess, with
spare brooms hanging on hooks on one wall, a rack of Quaffles, another
of Bludgers clamped down to keep them from going wild, a broken goal propped
against the window, and the chalkboard and wizard's chalk that she used
to diagram plays. A shelf held books like Quidditch Through the Ages,
1001 Little-Known Quidditch Facts, Broom Handling Basics, and The
Wizard Sports Book of World Records. The desk was tucked in the corner
as an afterthought, buried under papers.
Playing Quidditch was hard enough,
she'd told them. But refereeing it, trying to keep track of all the action,
was even harder. Before each game, she always had a nice mug of Alert-Ade,
a drink designed to heighten her sight and concentration so she didn't
miss a thing.
A mug sat on the desk, with a
little bit of a fizzy liquid still in it. Harry sniffed and recognized
Alert-Ade. But the smell wasn't right. Bitter, somehow.
Harry grabbed it and ran back
to the door. He was on his broom before he'd fully cleared the frame, streaking
toward the field while trying not to spill the contents of the mug.
Madames Hooch and Pomfrey were
both gone, but Dumbledore was still there, talking to the audience, assuring
them that everything was going to be fine.
"I'll have more information as
time warrants," he said. "For now, Madame Hooch's health is the important
thing. I'm sure she'd want the game to go on as planned."
"We can't play without a referee!"
Byron Flint protested. "You have to call the game. Let the final score
stand."
The Gryffindor team yelled in
outrage at this.
"The game can't end until the
Snitch is caught!" Alicia said firmly. "Those are the rules. If the game's
cancelled, the score is nullified."
"They're only saying that because
they were ahead," Angelina said. The Gryffindor Chaser was holding her
broom like she wanted to smack somebody with it. "If we'd been leading,
they'd be singing a different tune."
Harry approached Dumbledore with
the mug. "Professor?"
"Just a moment, Harry." Dumbledore
motioned the arguing players to hush. "The game will continue," he announced.
"We'll have a five-minute break and resume shortly. All players please
report to your locker rooms. All spectators, now might be a fine time to
avail yourselves of the refreshment table."
There hadn't been a refreshment
table, but now there was. House-elves, all wearing little paper hats with
the school crest printed on the front, capered around it hawking juice
and snacks. "Snapcorn! Get your Snapcorn!"
"But, Professor," Harry tried
again as the rest of the team trudged toward the locker room. "I found
this in Madame Hooch's office. I think it's been tampered with."
Dumbledore took the mug, sniffed
it, and his eyebrows drew together fiercely. "Thank you, Harry. I'll see
that Madame Pomfrey is aware of this at once."
"Has it been poisoned, sir?"
"Leave this one to me, my boy."
His tone brooked no dispute. Harry
slowly steered his broom back to the Gryffindor team entrance, craning
his neck to look at the Slytherins. They were clustered together, grumbling
and shooting dark glances at Dumbledore. Lee Jordan suddenly started chattering
brightly about the history of Quidditch and the past performance of the
various school teams, no doubt prompted by Professor McGonagall. Once back
in the locker room, Harry told his teammates what he'd found, and they
all scowled furiously.
"It's the Slytherins," said Fred
Weasley. "They must have done it. Did you hear how eager they were to call
the game and let the score stand? Did you see how hard they played to get
those points? And they always get the best marks in Potions, too."
They waited anxiously until the
five minutes were up. When Dumbledore had Lee Jordan ask for everyone's
attention, they filed back onto the field and were greeted by the astonishing
sight of Professor Reginald Winterwind standing beside the headmaster,
in
ill-fitting referee robes that had probably come from Madame Hooch's closet.
He was fingering the whistle that hung on a silver cord around his neck,
and was all flushed and flustered.
"Thank you for your patience,"
Dumbledore said. "I'm pleased to announce that Professor Winterwind will
take over as referee for the remainder of the game. Thank you, Professor.
If the players will take their places, please?"
"Winterwind?" Angelina said dubiously.
"The one who only knows that single spell?"
"He's got experience," Harry said,
and told them quickly what Hermione had found out.
"Looks like the Slytherins aren't
too happy," said Fred in great satisfaction.
Winterwind blew the whistle, and
the game was on again. The former reckless abandon with which the Slytherins
had played was absent now, though they remained as aggressive as ever.
Malfoy didn't waste time trying to distract the other players but watched
for the Snitch with fearful intensity. Harry was not about to let him get
it, not about to let Slytherin win after the unfair stunt they'd pulled.
It was the most despicable form of cheating he could think of.
At least, until one of the Slytherin
Chasers threw a packet of something that puffed twinkly red dust into Alicia's
face. It was quick, barely noticeable, and when Alicia reeled back pawing
at her eyes, it only looked like she'd gotten the sun in them. The Quaffle
scored another goal, but Reginald Winterwind's whistle screamed.
"Foul. Slytherin, illegal use
of magic, ten point penalty!"
The Slytherin fans in the stands
booed, and the team looked so dangerous that for a moment Winterwind paled
beneath their combined hateful expressions. He held firm, though, and Lee
Jordan waxed ecstatic as he announced the point reduction.
Gryffindor scored again and again,
and soon it was tied at 80 to 80. Harry still hadn't spotted the Snitch.
He saw Angelina whiz past with the Quaffle, going for a goal, with a Slytherin
on her tail. The Slytherin player dove under her, came up, and reached
out to grip the leading end of his broom in a funny way. His lips moved.
The Quaffle popped out of Angelina's
grasp, startling her. A Slytherin Beater, waiting for just that moment,
whacked the Quaffle with his stick and sent it careening the other way.
It came right at Harry, who'd sunk a bit to try and see what had happened.
Rather than duck or dodge, he pivoted his broom in mid-air and hit the
Quaffle back to Angelina. She caught it as neatly as if they'd planned
it.
Harry grinned triumphantly as
she scored, bringing Gryffindor into the lead. A moment later, Draco Malfoy
collided with him out of his blind spot and quick as a snake, scattered
a handful of scorpion-ants onto Harry's robes.
The fast, mean-tempered little
bugs swarmed up Harry's arm and down his leg, their pincers digging at
him even through the cloth. They skittered toward his unprotected skin
with their jointed tails flexing eagerly and drops of venom glistening
on their barbed stingers.
Trying not to scream, Harry shook
his arm and flailed at his robe in hopes of dislodging them. It partially
worked; a few fell but they dropped right toward George Weasley as he went
after a Bludger that was bearing down on Katie, another Chaser. They missed
landing on George by inches, but that didn't solve Harry's own problem.
One had reached his hand and stabbed the stinger deep.
Biting his lip against the pain,
Harry shot away from the rest of his team and tried to shake the scorpion-ants
off. The one that was on the back of his hand, he squashed by smacking
his own hand against the broomstick, almost breaking his bones.
Something tickled at the side
of his neck. He slapped at it wildly and earned a sting in the palm of
the other hand, but flattened the scorpion-ant into brown paste. More were
on him, all over him, and he realized his broom was veering crazily all
over the field. To make matters worse, he spied a golden glimmer and Malfoy
closing in.
Another shiny object, much larger
and silver and not shaped at all like a Snitch, landed on Harry's leg.
He nearly fell off his broom in alarm, thinking it was another Slytherin
trick, but it was Quicksilver. The drake trilled cheerfully at Harry and
went to work chomping scorpion-ants in his jaws.
"Thanks!" he said, and went after
Malfoy.
The Snitch was performing its
usual antics, dancing around teasingly out of reach, darting all about.
Malfoy didn't even see Harry until Harry, laying flat on his broom, passed
over him close enough that the wind of his passage messed up Malfoy's hair.
Out of the corner of his eye,
he saw Malfoy grip his broomstick in that same strange way he'd noticed
the Slytherin chaser doing, just before Angelina lost the Quaffle. He heard
Malfoy's low utterance of "Leviosa!" just as Harry's hand was about
to seize the Snitch.
The Snitch popped up like a champagne
cork. As Malfoy soared after it, Harry saw a wand stuck to the side of
his broom, probably held there with Insta-Gloo. They'd done it during that
five-minute break, he realized. Madame Hooch always checked the brooms
before a match to make sure no one had been tampering with them, but no
one had thought to check again before the game resumed.
Outraged, Harry pursued. His hands,
both of them, ached abominably and were starting to swell. If this kept
on, he wouldn't be able to maintain his grip, let alone get hold of the
Snitch. He had to end this now.
Malfoy saw him coming and swung
at him. They'd gone so high that the other players were red and green specks,
and they couldn't make out individual faces in the crowd. The Snitch frolicked
tauntingly above them.
In a desperate lunge, Harry launched
himself off his broom as if he meant to jump over the moon. At the height
of his leap, he grabbed the Snitch in his puffed, painful hand. Its wings
fluttered and it jerked as it tried to free itself, but he held it tight
and landed on his broom again, neat as could be.
Dimly, Lee Jordan's amplified
voice bellowed, but he sounded horrified rather than pleased. "The Snitch
has been caught! Game over, but Slytherin wins!"
"What?" Harry looked at the scoreboard.
The Snitch was worth one hundred and fifty points, but while he and Malfoy
had been chasing it, Slytherin had regained their lead and extended it,
until the final score even with the Snitch was Slytherin 310, Gryffindor
300.
"Hah!" jeered Malfoy exultantly.
He dove past Harry to meet his teammates, who were cheering and clapping
each other on the back as most of the crowd booed.
Harry caught many a look of hurt
and disappointment from the Gryffindor fans, and from Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws
too because everyone would rather see Slytherin trounced. He descended
glumly and settled onto the grass, his hands throbbing and swollen like
water balloons.
Winterwind's whistle split the
air. He commanded the Slytherins to stop where they were as they were about
to leave for their locker room. They looked like they might disobey and
go anyway, but obeyed. He went to them and inspected their brooms, peeling
off one wand after another that had been Glooed to the hafts. The audience
booed and hissed. Winterwind's next act was to pat down Draco Malfoy and
produce a box from a Knockturn Alley vermin shop, the source of the scorpion-ants.
"Multiple fouls for Slytherin.
Illegal use of magic, illegal modification of game equipment, interference,"
he said. "Thirty-point penalty."
"WA-HOOOO!" Lee Jordan drowned
out the eruption of cheers from the stands. "And in a last-minute decision,
Gryffindor wins after all! Just going to show that cheaters never prosper,
and virtue is its own reward! What a game! Ladies and gentlemen, what a
game!"
The Gryffindor team blinked at
each other, hardly able to believe their ears. Then, with a whoop of joy,
Angelina hugged Harry and they were all over him, rubbing his head, smacking
him on the shoulders, everybody talking at once. Harry tried to join in,
but lances of pain were shooting up his arms and his hands were turning
a vivid shade of red.
People were pouring out of the
stands, running across the grass. In the confusion, only Harry saw the
Slytherin team bunch together, and then chant and point all as one.
"Professor!" Harry yelled.
He never knew if Winterwind heard
him or reacted on his own, but the next thing anyone knew, a dome of bright
light bloomed around the substitute referee. It discolored in a black blotch
where the spell hit it, and several feet away, a witch burst into flames
as the spell bounced off randomly into the crowd.
"Aquaris!" cried two voices
together.
A glowing pitcher of water appeared
in the air, and upended over the burning witch, dousing the fire with a
sizzle of steam.
Everyone stopped where they were,
silent and shocked. Harry looked for the source of the voices and found,
not to his surprise, Becca and Hermione standing side by side, wands in
hand. They grinned at each other and gave a high five.
The Slytherins, shifty-eyed with
guilt, were trying to slip away and lose themselves in the crowd when Dumbledore
arrived, very much not amused.
**
Continued in Chapter Seven -- The Grim Fate of Neville Longbottom
2001 / Christine Morgan / http://www.christine-morgan.org
/ christine@sabledrake.com |