Chapter 38, The Rogue Bludger
"Scorch marks, a puddle of water, weird spider activity, and un-erasable writing?"
Harry said, "Yes, but I don't see any connections."
"And Myrtle didn't see anything, either, and she was right next to the attack."
Vanella leaned back in her chair. "The 'horror within' the Chamber must be a snake of some sort, because we could hear it, and no one else could."
"So it must be going through the walls somehow," said Harry.
"But how can it go through solid stone?" Draco asked. "Only ghosts can do that. Perhaps it's a Parseltongue ghost? Slytherin himself, maybe."
Vanella said, "And it Petrifies things. What type of snake, or ghost, can do that?"
Draco nodded. "Dumbledore said it would take Dark Magic of a strong wizard. Can snakes perform Dark Magic? The ghost of Slytherin could."
"But would it? And could it really have gone unnoticed all these years? Dumbledore, at least, would have known." Harry took out his quill. "We should talk to Hermione," he said. "I'll have Vitesse bring her a note."
"What can Hermione do?" Vanella asked.
"She can research," said Harry. "Very well, too."
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Five of them met in the library the next day. Rival houses united by second years for the common goal.
"What am I looking for?" Hermione asked, less frustrated now that the Chamber of Secrets had been mildly explained.
"Anything," Harry said. "A clue of some sort. Look for snakes, something dangerous, that can Petrify things somehow."
Vanella thought back. "Something that scares spiders."
Hermione shook her head and shrugged. "I'll look, but I can't promise anything."
Draco said, "That's alright. Just look. We need to know as much as we can."
As four of them left Hermione in the library, Ron elbowed Harry playfully. "Good job," he said, "now she'll spend even more time in there."
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Harry woke early next Saturday morning and lay for a while thinking about the coming Quidditch match. It was the first game of the season, Slytherin versus Gryffindor, the most heavily anticipated game other than the final one for the Cup. Last year he had been in the Hospital Wing for the last match of the season, and Slytherin was defeated because their second string Seeker wasn't nearly as good as Harry.
The only problem he had with defeating Gryffindor was that he hated beating the friendly, usually funny Weasley twins, though they almost always said there were 'no hard feelings'. But the whole of Gryffindor seemed to hate him after he won, more than they usually did. Truthfully, the only Gryffindors that never seemed to hate him were the Weasleys and Hermione Granger. Though Neville Longbottom never said anything to indicate harsh feelings either. In fact, he never really said much to Harry at all. He usually hid, avoiding Harry altogether.
When it was time for the match, Flint gave the usual threatening pep talk, and they stepped out onto the field. On the other side, Gryffindor team was doing the same. Fred and George Weasley saluted Harry from across the field, then got in position for take-off.
Flint and Wood were told to shake hands, and they did, exchanging threatening stares and gripping rather harder than was necessary, Flint even going so far as to bare his teeth like a rabid, hungry animal.
"On my whistle," said Madam Hooch. "Three…two…one…" The whistle sounded.
With a roar from the crowd to speed them upward, the fourteen players rose toward the leaden sky. Harry flew higher than any of them, squinting around for the Snitch.
"All right there, Harry?" Draco called from the goalposts, keeping an eye on the Quaffle at the same time. Multitasking.
Harry had no time to reply. At that very moment, a heavy black Bludger came pelting toward him; he avoided it so narrowly that he felt it ruffle his hair as it passed.
"Close one, Harry!" said George, grinning, streaking past him to knock the Bludger at other Slytherin. Harry saw George give the Bludger a powerful whack in the direction of Adrian Pucey, but the Bludger changed directions in midair and shot straight for Harry again.
Harry dropped quickly to avoid it, and a Slytherin beater hit it hard towards the Gryffindor chaser with the Quaffle.
Once again, the Bludger swerved like a boomerang and shot at Harry's head.
Harry put on a burst of speed and zoomed toward the other end of the pitch. He could hear the Bludger whistling along behind him. What was going on? Bludgers never concentrated on one player like this; it was their job to try and unseat as many people as possible….
Fred Weasley was waiting for the Bludger at the other end. Harry ducked as Fred swung at the Bludger with all his might; the Bludger was knocked off course, towards Flint.
"Gotcha!" Fred yelled happily, but he was wrong; as though it was magnetically attracted to Harry, the Bludger pelted after him once more and Harry was forced to fly off at full speed.
It had started to rain; Harry felt heavy drops fall onto his face, splattering onto his glasses. He didn't have a clue what was going on in the rest of the game until he heard Lee Jordan, who was commentating, say, "Slytherin lead, sixty points to zero—"
The Slytherins' new, superior brooms were clearly doing their jobs, and meanwhile the mad Bludger was doing all it could to knock Harry out of the air. The Slytherin beaters, the idiots called Crabbe and Goyle, were now flying so close to him on either side that Harry could see nothing at all except their fat, flailing arms and had no chance to look for the Snitch, let alone catch it.
"Someone's—tampered—with—this—Bludger—" Harry heard, dodging a bat that was swatting the Bludger away from him.
Harry tried to signal to Flint for a time out. Flint saw it and called it to Madam Hooch.
"What's going on, Harry?" he growled once the team had huddled.
Harry answered, "That Bludger's trying to kill me! Even the Gryffindor beaters are protecting me from that thing!"
"It's been tampered with," growled a Slytherin beater thickly, Harry thought it was Crabbe. He never could tell the dunderheads apart, most likely because he never bothered to ask which was which. "Every time we bat it away, it comes right back."
Draco nodded, "Even I can see that from the goalposts."
"Must have been one of the Gryffindors, trying to get back at us because we've got better brooms."
Harry shook his head, "I don't think so, why would Fred and George protect me if their team is trying to kill me?"
Flint shook his head. "The Bludgers have been locked in Madam Hooch's office since our last practice, and there was nothing wrong with them then."
Madam Hooch was walking toward them, and over her shoulder the Gryffindor team was watching them.
"Listen," Harry said as she came nearer and nearer, "with our beaters flying around me all the time, the only way I'm going to catch the Snitch is if it flies up my sleeve. Go back to the rest of the team and let me deal with the rogue one."
"It'll take your head off," Draco said. "This is insane, we can't let Harry deal with that thing all by himself."
"Don't worry, and if I can't catch the Snitch because of it, just score more points before the Gryffindor seeker does."
Madam Hooch had joined them.
"Ready to resume play?" she asked Flint.
Flint looked at the determined look on Harry's face, scrutinizing him.
"All right," he said. "Leave Harry alone, he'll deal with the Bludger himself."
The rain was falling more heavily now. On Madam Hooch's whistle, Harry kicked hard into the air and heard the telltale whoosh of the Bludger behind him. Higher and higher Harry climbed; he looped and swooped, spiraled, zigzagged, and rolled. Slightly dizzy, he nevertheless kept his eyes wide open, rain was speckling his glasses and ran up his nostrils as he hung upside down, avoiding another fierce dive from the Bludger. He could hear laughter from the crowd; he knew he must look stupid, but the rogue Bludger was heavy and couldn't change direction as quickly as Harry could; he began a kind of roller-coaster ride around the edges of the stadium, squinting through the silver sheets of rain to the Gryffindor goal posts, where Adrian Pucey was trying to get past Wood—
A whistling in Harry's ear told him the Bludger had just missed him again; he turned right over and sped in the opposite direction.
"Training for the ballet, Harry?" yelled Draco jokingly as Harry was forced to do a stupid kind of twirl in midair to dodge the Bludger, as he fled, the Bludger trailing a few feet behind him; and then, looking back at Draco with a small smile, he saw it—the Golden Snitch. It was hovering inches above Draco's left ear—and Draco, busy keeping the goals, hadn't noticed it there.
For an agonizing moment, Harry hung in midair, too shocked at the Snitch's convenient place to move.
WHAM.
He had stayed still a second too long. The Bludger had hit him at last, smashed into his elbow, and Harry felt his arm break. Dumbly, dazed by the searing pain in his arm, he slid sideways on his rain-drenched broom, one knee still crooked over it, his right arm dangling useless at his side—the Bludger came pelting back for a second attack, this time aiming at his face—Harry swerved out of the way, one idea firmly lodged in his numb brain: get to Draco.
Through a haze of rain and pain he dived for the shimmering, smirking face below him and saw its eyes widen in fear: Harry was coming right at him, barely in control because of his useless arm.
"What the—" he gasped, careening out of Harry's way.
Harry took his remaining hand off his broom and made a wild snatch; he felt his fingers close on the cold Snitch but was now only gripping the broom with his legs, and there was a yell from the crowd below as he headed straight for the ground, trying hard not to pass out.
With a splattering thud he hit he mud and rolled off his broom. His arm was hanging at a very strange angle, riddled with pain, he heard, as though from a distance, a good deal of whistling and shouting. He focused on the Snitch clutched in his good hand.
"Aha," he said vaguely. "We've won."
And he fainted.
He came around, rain falling on his face, still lying on the field, with someone leaning over him. He saw a glitter of teeth.
"Oh, no, not you," he moaned.
"Doesn't know what he's saying," said Lockhart loudly to the anxious crowd of Slytherins and a few Gryffindors surrounding them. "Not to worry, Harry. I'm about to fix your arm."
"No!" said Harry. "I'll keep it like this, thanks…."
He tried to sit up, but the pain was terrible. He heard a familiar clicking noise nearby.
"I don't want a photo of this, Colin," he said loudly.
"Lie back, Harry," said Lockhart soothingly. "It's a simple charm I've used countless times—"
"Why can't I just go to the hospital wing?" said Harry through clenched teeth.
"He should, really, Professor," said a muddy Fred Weasley, who was looking a little upset. "Nice capture, though, Harry. Really great. One of the best, I'd say."
Through the thicket of legs around him, Harry spotted George Weasley and Oliver Wood, wrestling the rogue Bludger into a box. It was still putting up a terrific fight.
"Stand back," said Lockhart, rolling up his jade-green sleeves.
"No—don't—" said Harry weakly, but Lockhart was twirling his wand, and a second later it was directed straight at Harry's arm.
A strange and unpleasant sensation started at Harry's shoulder and spread all the way down to his fingertips. It felt as though his arm was being deflated. He didn't dare look at what was happening. He had shut his eyes, his face turned away from his arm, but his worst fears were realized as the people above him gasped and Colin Creevey began clicking away madly. His arm didn't hurt anymore—nor did it feel anything remotely like an arm.
"Ah," said Lockhart. "Yes. Well, that can sometimes happen. But the point is, the bones are no longer broken. That's the thing to bear in mind. So, Harry, just toddle up to the hospital wing—ah, Miss Incendie, Mr. Malfoy, would you escort him?—and Madam Pomfrey will be able to—er—tidy you up a bit."
As Harry got to his feet, he felt strangely lopsided. Taking a deep breath, he looked down at his right side. What he saw nearly made him pass out.
Poking out of the end of his robes was what looked like a thick, flesh-colored rubber glove. He tried to move his fingers. Nothing happened.
Lockhart hadn't mended Harry's bones. He'd removed them.
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Madam Pomfrey wasn't at all pleased.
"You should have come straight to me!" she raged, holding up the sad, limp remainder of what, half an hour before, had been a working arm. "I can mend bones in a second—but growing them back—"
"You will be able to, won't you?" said Harry desperately.
"I'll be able to, certainly," she said, throwing Harry a pair of pajamas, "but it'll be painful. You'll have to spend the night…."
Vanella waited outside the curtain drawn around Harry's bed while Draco helped him into his pajamas. It took a while to stuff the rubbery, boneless arm into a sleeve.
"How can Dumbledore even keep Lockhart now? What kind of idiot removes someone's bones when trying to fix them?" Draco said.
"Maybe he meant to remove them?" Vanella called from the other side of the curtain.
"Why would he remove bones when they're so much easier to just fix?"
Harry looked down at his rubbery arm, flapping around pointlessly.
"Well, at least it doesn't hurt anymore," he said.
Draco pulled the rubbery fingers through the cuff of Harry's pajamas. "Doesn't do anything else, either," he said.
Vanella and Madam Pomfrey came around the curtain. Madam Pomfrey was holding a large bottle of something labeled Skele-Gro.
"You're in for a rough night," she said, pouring out a steaming beakerful and handing it to him. "Regrowing bones is a nasty business."
So was taking the Skele-Gro. It burned Harry's mouth and throat as it went down, making him cough and splutter. Still tut-tutting about dangerous sports and inept teachers, Madam Pomfrey retreated, leaving Vanella and Draco to help Harry gulp down some water.
"We won, though," said Draco, a smirk breaking across his face. "That was some catch you made. Though you speeding at me like that was a little…unnerving."
"I want to know who fixed that Bludger," said Vanella, frowning.
Harry shrugged. "That can be something we'll have to look for clues for. Unfortunately, I can't think of many enemies that would want to do that, except the Gryffindor Quidditch team, but I can't see Gryffindors playing dirty like that."
"Wonderful flying, Harry," said Draco teasingly. "The way you spin and dance and dart. You could be a performing artist."
"If I had both arms I'd throw a pillow at you, Draco."
Just then, Ron and Hermione, followed closely by Fred and George and Ginny Weasley, arrived in the room to see Harry.
"Nice flying, Harry," George said grudgingly.
The other Gryffindors agreed before Madam Pomfrey came storming over, shouting, "This boy needs rest, he's got thirty-three bones to regrow! Out! OUT!"
And Harry was left alone, with nothing to distract him from the stabbing pains in his limp arm.
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Author's Note: Apologies. This, also, was mostly taken from the book. I apologize profusely. If it bothers you to read such a sorry manipulation to my needs, imagine how I feel re-typing it. I hate having to use pre-written stuff, but this fits. If it's any consolation, inside the Chamber of Secrets will be incredibly different than the book, as will most of the other important stuff.
In case you haven't noticed, I'm now just waiting till the chapter hits five reviews to update. That way, I'm happy, and you have to make me happy if you want the next chapter. I'm mean. But, I figure, this way I can blame the late updates on you. It just all works out. So, this chapter was late because the fifth review didn't come until earlier today.
Au revoir, amigos. Whoops. Those are two different languages, aren't they? Hmm….