Chapter 12: (Quidditch) Trials and Tribulations
"Right, you all know what we're looking for." Marcus Flint paced around the locker room, a manic glint in his eye shared by absolutely no one else in the room. "We need speed. We need agility. We need skill out there-" here he jabbed his finger in the vague direction of the pitch - "and up here." He gestured toward his own head, and Warrington and Montague, both sprawled out across benches meant to seat at least four, raised their heads just enough to roll their eyes.
Try as he might, Draco couldn't seem to make his head part company with the locker door behind him. He knew it was nearly ten, but it felt like the crack of dawn.
"I'll need you all to work as hard as you would at a match," Flint went on, unfazed by the lack of enthusiasm from his audience. "We don't want to make it easy on them. We want them to be prepared." He paused. "Has anyone got any questions?"
"Yeah, Marcus, I've got a question," replied Montague at once.
"Any questions related to Quidditch trials?" said Flint pointedly. Silence. "Right then. Let's go. And for fuck's sake, don't embarrass me."
With much muttering and groaning, the team peeled themselves from their seats and trudged the fifty or so feet from the locker room to the pitch as if they were being led to the gallows. The moment he kicked off from the ground, however, Draco felt a hundred times more awake. The air was cool, conditions were perfect, and, now he thought about it, he had to admit he was sort of excited. Being the youngest person on the Quidditch team was beginning to annoy him.
Flint allowed them to roam the pitch freely for a few minutes, but sent them to stand along the sidelines at the start of trails. As people turned up, he divided them into twos and threes and asked them to simply fly once around the pitch. Draco thought this seemed awfully silly, but understood as he watched the first group. One did all right, but the other two could scarcely fly in a straight line.
The subsequent groups scarcely fared better, but at the end of a half-hour Flint had a group of about ten people who'd managed the task.
"Right then." He turned back toward his assembled team. "Draco." He beckoned lazily, and Draco, slightly startled but intrigued, went to join him.
"Sorry," he muttered, so only Draco could hear. "But you're fastest." Draco opened his mouth to ask what that had to do with anything, but Flint had turned away and was answering his question.
"You're all going to do one more test," he told the applicants. "You're going to race Draco. Whoever beats him gets to go first." Thoroughly taken aback, Draco snatched Flint's elbow.
"They're going to do what?"
"Don't let them beat you," Flint replied in an undertone.
As it happened, this wasn't a tall order. He was nearly halfway across the pitch when he risked a glance over his shoulder, and bit back a laugh at once. No one was within ten feet of him.
He turned back to look where he was going, torn between a vindictive desire to beat them all by as wide a margin as possible and the fear that Flint would make them (and therefore him) do it over until someone managed to beat him. Vindictive won, and so he clutched his broom tightly and put on a burst of speed, squinting slightly against the wind stinging his eyes. He was ten feet from the end of the pitch, now five, two, and then-SMACK!
Something hard and solid appeared out of thin air, cuffing him soundly on the left shoulder and knocking him off-balance. In the split second it took to get his bearings, a third-year girl he'd seen perhaps twice in his life had shot past him, clearing the end of the field.
"Thank god," she said flatly, without a trace of humor. "Thought I'd be too late." Draco blinked, astounded.
"I'm not sure it counts if you foul me." She frowned.
"You play Seeker?" He nodded. "Cobbing the Seeker isn't a foul unless you're within twenty feet of the Snitch," she said matter-of-factly. Draco stared. This rule sounded highly dubious, for one-he'd have to ask Ginny about it. Regardless of whether the rule held water, his shoulder hurt quite badly and he couldn't believe the nerve of her.
"Who the hell are you?"
"Ruby Adler." She smirked. "By the look of it, we're going to be spending a lot of time together."
Draco had an idea she was right, and the rest of the morning served only to reinforce it. She managed Flint's series of complicated (and, Draco suspected, made-up) passing drills handily and went on to score eight goals before anyone else scored one.
Keeper trials were more painful. For one, the rest of the team had descended into a stupor and Flint, rather than rouse them, made Draco pose as Chaser alongside him. For another, no one saved more than three goals out of five; two saved none at all, one fumbled the Quaffle and managed to punch Draco square in the nose in the process, and one had to be escorted to the hospital wing by a highly disgruntled Montague after a spectacular failure to block one of Draco's easiest shots ended in several broken teeth. By the time Flint cleared the pitch and ushered the team back into the locker room, the afternoon sun was bearing unpleasantly down on them and Flint's glare did little to subdue the resentful muttering as they took their seats. Draco wasn't sure what the others were complaining about; he was utterly exhausted, and though his nose had stopped bleeding, it throbbed unpleasantly and he couldn't say whether his left shoulder would ever be the same again.
"This is a waste of time, Marcus," said Warrington at once. "We know who we want on the team, so let's just go and tell Bole and Derrick and enjoy our afternoon." Draco's snort of laughter escaped him before he could think to contain it.
"You're joking," he said flatly. Bole and Derrick, who often hung around with Warrington and Montague, were as slow on broomsticks as they were in lessons. At the head of the group, Flint raised an eyebrow ever so slightly but withheld comment.
"What is it this time?" sighed Montague, returning from the hospital wing and throwing himself down at the back of the group.
"Draco wants the girl on the team," said Warrington, with a nasty smirk.
"I didn't say that," snapped Draco.
"You were about to. I saved you the trouble." Draco couldn't say why this annoyed him so much-Warrington was right, after all-but at the moment it was all he could do to contain the urge to punch him. Montague gave a short laugh.
"Don't be such a git," he said lightly, clapping Warrington on the shoulder. "Draco's young. He'll understand in a year or so."
"I understand she scored more goals than anyone else," Draco retorted. Montague shrugged.
"That's fine enough, but you've got to look at the bigger picture. They can be a liability, girls." Draco rolled his eyes.
"If we're talking about liability, Bole scored fewer goals today than I did." Warrington opened his mouth, looking furious, but Flint held up a hand to forestall him.
"I don't actually recall asking any of your opinions," he said coldly. "Go on, all of you, out. Now," he added after a moment, then no one moved. Everyone hastened at once to stow their brooms and began to pile out the door, but at the last second, Flint held Draco back and considered him for a moment, a shrewd, calculating sort of look in his eyes.
"It's my last year, you know," he said at length. Draco waited for him to go on, but he didn't.
"I hadn't thought." This was true; though he now felt a bit silly, Draco had simply assumed Flint would always be the Slytherin captain. Flint shrugged.
"I have. I want to win. We're going to win." He paused. "So we've got our work cut out for us, you and I. Which of those Keepers won't get in our way?" Draco wondered, for a moment, whether he was imagining things.
"I...don't suppose Derrick was any worse than the rest of them," he said vaguely, after a moment. The thought of sharing a locker room with another of Warrington and Montague's thuggish cronies struck him then, and he stifled a grimace. "Or there was that Bletchley bloke. He didn't fall off his broom. Or punch me." Flint gave a rueful laugh, and nodded.
"Right." Draco studied him for a moment, unsure whether he dared voice his next question.
"You haven't asked about Chasers," he said finally, taking care to keep his tone utterly devoid of inflection. Flint didn't blink.
"I said we've got our work cut out for us. Maybe Ruby Adler will help."
"...Just saying you might've told us before, and then all of this would've been easier!" Fred's voice preceded him into the common room, followed moments later by George, who looked uncharacteristically grave, and Ginny, who looked frankly dangerous.
"Oh, it would not," Ginny snapped, throwing herself into the armchair nearest the fire and turning sharply away from her brothers. "As a matter of fact, this is exactly why I didn't tell you! Leave me alone, or I'll hex you!"
On the other side of the common room and halfway through an offensively detailed History of Magic essay on goblin rebellions, Hermione fervently wished for Fred and George to comply. She'd grown quite sick enough of this argument yesterday evening, and if they put her behind schedule on her weekend's homework she'd need to hex them herself.
"Go on, Ginny, just think for a moment about the position you've put us in…" George sat calmly beside his sister, who gave him a death glare that told Hermione quite plainly things weren't about to improve. She gritted her teeth and wrenched her mind firmly back to her essay.
"What position is that, exactly?"
"Oh, come off it!" cried Fred, as George gave an exasperated sigh. "Now we've got to write to Mum-"
"You definitely don't-"
"And you know we've never been any good at writing to Mum-"
"Don't, then!"
"And it'll be all our fault, just you wait-" here, Fred put on a very good imitation of Mrs. Weasley's most severe manner. "'Oh, what were the two of you thinking, letting your sister go around-'"
"Enough!" cried Ginny, shattering Hermione's last shred of concentration and leaping up from her chair. She stalked angrily across the room, nearly smacking into Harry as he slipped in through the portrait hole looking exhausted and world-weary.
"Where's Ron got to?" Hermione asked in an undertone, shifting her books off the chair beside her to allow him to sit. Harry sighed.
"Dunno." He paused and bit his lip. "I, er. Suggested he give Ginny a bit of a break." Hermione winced as George earned himself yet another angry shriek from his sister.
"I'm going to the library," she decided, rolling up her parchment and closing her book with a snap. Harry looked stricken.
"Oh, please, Hermione, you can't leave me alone-"
"You can come, but you've got to be quiet and you've got to work on your History of Magic essay," Hermione told him, unable to entirely keep the wry grin off her face. Harry sighed and rolled his eyes.
"I'll stay," he muttered darkly.
"Good luck," she said lightly, swinging her bag over her shoulder and relishing the quiet as she stepped into the empty seventh-floor corridor.
The library proved a welcome respite from the din of the common room; it was nearly deserted, as most people didn't even think about their weekend homework until sometime on Sunday afternoon. Madam Pince greeted her with a tight-lipped smile, and she made her way to her usual table near the window. Within minutes she was properly immersed in the story of Urg the Unclean, who appeared to be called that simply because a group of young wizards had dunked him in the village pond during his youth. This public humiliation, according to A History of Magic, sparked the series of goblin rebellions marking the 18th century as Urg the Unclean urged his followers to stand up against the frequent cruel treatment they endured at the hands of young wizards. She paused, then closed the book and bit her lip in thought. The book bemoaned the violent uprising of the goblins and enumerated the mass destruction of wizard property, but to Hermione, it seemed as if goblins were simply tired of mistreatment at the hands of wizards...mistreatment similar, she realized with a jolt, to that of House-Elves.
"Thank god." Hermione nearly jumped out of her skin, but it was only Draco, still wearing his Quidditch robes and looking thoroughly worse for wear. He threw himself into the chair beside her and laid his head on the desk with a sigh. "Is it just me," he went on, after a moment, "or has everyone got stupider the longer we've been in school?" Hermione bit back a laugh.
"If I hear the word 'Quidditch' once more this week, I'm leaving the country," she warned. Draco blinked.
"What's happened?" She sighed.
"Well, you know Ginny made the Gryffindor team last night." He grinned.
"'Course she did."
"Right. Only, her brothers feel she shouldn't have tried out this year," Hermione went on, shaking her head slightly at the absurdity. "Because, you see, she's sort of...upset the order of things." Draco frowned.
"The...order of things?" Hermione sighed.
"She's skipped Ron." Draco stared.
"You're joking."
"I'm hiding," she corrected, with a grimace. "From the noise in the common room." Draco muttered something highly uncharitable under his breath, glanced at her parchment, and groaned.
"Not another pointless goblin essay." Hermione raised an eyebrow.
"You've known about it for days now."
"Yes, but I forgot, and now if I have to spend the afternoon reading about goblins I'll kill myself."
"Well, that seems a bit of a strong reaction," said Hermione lightly, opening her book once again with a slight shrug. "But if you feel it's what's necessary…" she paused, catching a proper glimpse of his face for the first time that afternoon. "You're bleeding." He grimaced.
"Not anymore." Drawn by a strange fascination she couldn't have explained in a million years, she lightly traced the bruise under his left eye with her finger.
"What happened?" Draco paused for a moment.
"I'd tell you," he said slowly, a smirk making its way onto his face, "but then you'd leave the country." She laughed. He looked a mess, hair falling in all directions, a spot of dried blood around his nose, face slick with sweat and slightly pink from cold or exertion, and he smelled like the outside air...and something else. Something warm and vaguely sweet, something that drove her essay and the rest of her morning clean out of her mind.
"You look...nice." She wasn't conscious of deciding to speak before the words left her, but she wasn't sorry about them either. He raised an eyebrow.
"It's not polite to lie."
"I'm not." She paused. "You smell nice." He laughed.
"Come off it." He spoke softly, and his eyes didn't leave hers. She shrugged, and a moment later a grin found its way onto his face. He gave her cheek a light stroke, and his hand found its way back into her hair.
"You like Quidditch now, do you?" She swatted his hand away and dodged his kiss.
"I've got to leave the country now!" They laughed.
"I think we can work out a deal," he said matter-of-factly, after a moment. "You stay in the country, right? And I'll work on this stupid...this goblin essay and I won't kill myself." She smirked.
"I thought it was a pointless goblin essay."
"D'you want the deal or not?" She laughed.
"Yes, all right." Draco sighed and eyed her open book with distaste.
"Only, we're not starting with the bloody goblin rebellion of 1612," he said flatly. "Daphne got it into her head it's not fair to call it a rebellion, since they were all fighting about-" he broke off and glanced upward, biting his lip in thought, then shook his head impatiently. "I can't remember." He paused, a grin making its way onto his face now. "Blaise told her to shut up and listen to Binns, and then we all took bets as to whether anyone's ever actually said 'shut up and listen to Binns' before." He laughed. "All right, we can start with the goblin rebellion of 1612." Hermione could certainly recall a time or two she herself had urged Harry and Ron to shut up and listen to Professor Binns, but quite apart from that, she suddenly felt as if she'd had her spine removed.
"They were fighting," she said quietly, "because they wanted a goblin on the Wizengamot. Daphne's right." Draco frowned.
"That's not it, it was something to do with-" he broke off as Hermione shoved the book impatiently in front of him.
"It's right there," she snapped. "They didn't get very far, just stormed Hogsmeade and sort of...left it at that."
"Killed half the villagers, don't forget," Draco added with a smirk. "I thought it was because of Gryffindor's sword," he said thoughtfully after a moment, glancing up from the book. Hermione frowned.
"What about Gryffindor's Sword?" Draco shrugged.
"Well...goblins sort of believe that what they make...well, it still belongs to them, even if they've sold it off to wizards. So there's an old story that says the goblin who made Godric Gryffindor's sword wanted it back, so he sent a few of his friends off to steal it, Gryffindor wasn't so keen on it, and that's supposed to be the start of the conflict between goblins and wizards." He frowned. "Binns never mentioned it?" Hermione shook her head, flummoxed.
"You've been in the same lessons I have."
"Yes, but you listen in History of Magic," Draco reminded her.
"Well...they've sort of got a point, haven't they?" said Hermione after a moment. "Wizards use all kinds of goblin-made things, but they aren't allowed wands…" she flipped back a few pages in the book, read for a bit, then glanced out the window. Clouds were forming across the formerly spotless sky, white and harmless for now but whispering of a night like the one they'd arrived at school. "Draco," she said slowly. "All these goblin rebellions seem to have started with the goblins asking the Ministry for more rights, and the Ministry refused." He frowned.
"Er-yeah?"
"Has there ever been a House-Elf rebellion?" Draco burst out laughing at once, but caught sight of Hermione's face and slapped a hand over his mouth. When he could breathe normally again, he shook his head.
"Sorry," he said quickly. "Sorry, it's just…well, think what it would look like…"
"Draco."
"All right, no, there's never been any House-Elf rebellion," said Draco hastily, edging slightly away as she stared daggers at him.
"Because no one's ever bothered to go and plead their case with the Ministry," Hermione realized, and glanced up at the ceiling in thought. Draco frowned at her.
"And this has got what to do with our History of Magic homework, exactly?" She turned back to face him with an exasperated sigh.
"Because it's all connected, you idiot. Wizards have done the same thing to goblins as we're doing to House-Elves, and werewolves, and…" she broke off. "I'm going to do something about this."
"Do something about what?" asked Draco. "I mean, it's the law, isn't it?"
"Laws change. It used to be illegal for a woman to own property, didn't it?" Draco looked scandalized.
"No," he said at once. "Not in the Wizarding world, anyway. What sort of-"
"The point is," Hermione interrupted, raising a hand to forestall him, "laws change. Someone's just got to do something about them." Draco studied her for a moment, but this time he didn't look confused or doubtful or mocking. Instead, unless she was quite mistaken, his eyes were alight with what could only be called admiration.
"You realize you're fourteen years old." She shrugged.
"I'll be fifteen Wednesday after next." He laughed.
"I-" to her surprise, he broke off and went slightly red. "You're amazing." She felt her face grow hot, and quickly busied herself flipping through her History of Magic notes.
"Stop it," she told him. "You promised to work on this goblin essay."
"Pointless goblin essay," he corrected with a smirk.
"Oh, it's pointless again, is it? Write it down, will you, so I don't have to keep track." Draco laughed.
"You'll just have to listen to me as much as you listen to Professor Binns." She grinned.
"Sorry, I didn't catch that."
It was a very long time before their History of Magic essays were finished.
