Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor am I affiliated with it in any way.

Author Note: We're getting ever-so-close to the end, my dearlings, and Chapter Thirteen is about 50% longer than the others, so enjoy, and as always, please review.

/-wujy

Chapter Thirteen – Snitches and Stones

Whitney retained much of the information that both Oliver and Ron had given to her on Quidditch, which was a surprising amount. Oliver taught her more about the technical aspect of how to play and Ron went on for hours about the teams and their strong points. Whitney would have shrugged off any other sport, but she found that the circumstances surrounding Quidditch were—like the circumstances surrounding everything in the magical word—far more fascinating than Muggle sports. She could think of little else for the next several weeks and, though she was shaky and uncertain at first, she really was learning better control over her broomstick. It was made easier by the fact that her broom was incredibly intuitive. Of course, sitting on a broomstick for hours at a time was uncomfortable at first, but not any more than sleeping on the floor was, and she'd done that for years.

Even though she had warned herself about it from the beginning, Whitney was becoming more and more attached to Hogwarts and magic and Quidditch as the days went by. It felt more natural than anything in the Muggle world ever had, which was an odd thought when she considered that she hadn't even believed in magic until three months ago.

While Quidditch was a consuming factor in her weekly routine, with practices often enough to keep most of her free time tied up, classes were also a point of fascination. Seriously. Magic. It was incredible and it seemed like there was a spell for just about everything. She didn't memorize course material like Hermione seemed to, but her eagerness to learn magic showed whenever she ended up accidentally overdoing it. Her first few attempts at Hovering Charms had sent her feather soaring up to the ceiling where Professor Flitwick couldn't remove it for hours.

"Really, though," Ron was saying after Charms the morning of Halloween. He was annoyed at Hermione for whatever reason again. She'd barely talked to either of them since the incident on the third floor. "It's no wonder she eats lunch by herself every day. I think her best friend is probably Hogwarts, A History."

Whitney rolled her eyes, but said nothing as she noticed Hermione dashing away toward the girls' bathroom, in tears. Guilt hit Whitney almost instantly. Why hadn't she told Ron to knock it off? She knew was it was like to be made so upset that you just want to run away in tears. It was one of the most miserable sensations. Still, she was made very uncomfortable by the thought of going after the other girl. She wasn't sure what she'd do if she did catch up other than stare at her dumbly and try to think of something reassuring to say. After a few moments' pause, Whitney turned slowly to walk to her next class with Ron, looking a little sick.

That evening, Whitney only picked at her dinner for a short while, still thinking about Hermione who was nowhere to be seen. After a few minutes, she dropped her fork onto her plate, looking determined, and said to Ron, "I'm going to go find Hermione."

Ron nodded, but didn't say anything. He looked almost as guilty as Whitney felt.

In the Entrance Hall, Professor Quirrell bumped into her roughly as he swept past her and into the Great Hall, looking slightly more panicked than usual. Scowling as she rubbed her forehead where the professor's elbow had caught her, she turned away and walked down the hallway to the girls' bathroom.

Whitney knocked before she came in, which she realized was silly since there were separate stalls in the bathroom. She walked in slowly, closing the door behind her. Sobs were coming from the last stall on the right and Whitney approached it, trying to make enough noise that Hermione knew someone was there. She cleared her throat to announce her presence and said, "Um, Hermione?"

The sobs stopped and the room was quiet for a moment until a great shuffling and a smash sounded from behind Whitney. She flipped around, hand moving instinctively to her wand, though what she planned to do with it, she had no idea. Still, it thrummed in her hand, comforting her even though her heart was bouncing circles around her chest.

"W-Whitney?" Hermione asked. Whitney simply hissed at her to be quiet, but it didn't seem to matter much as a huge, hulking figure knocked back the door to the bathroom and slid into the room, looking dimwitted but extremely dangerous.

The thing advanced on her, wielding a club that was twice Whitney's width and longer than she was tall. Whitney took two steps back, tripped, and landed on her rear with her wand pointed up at it. She waved it around uselessly, her tongue paralyzed in her head as she attempted to stutter out a few syllables. The wand merely sprayed harmless, gold sparks.

"Oy!" someone shouted from behind the troll. A piece of wood from the broken door knocked the troll in the side of the head, but it paid very little attention. It lifted its club with the intention of turning Whitney into a pancake, which might have been more effective with a wand than she was currently being.

The troll swung its club in a downward arc directly at Whitney, landing with a shower of floor tiles where she had been a second ago. Some self-preservation instinct had kicked in and Whitney rolled out of the way of the club, putting her arms over her head as debris fell around her. Then she quickly got up from the floor and moved toward Hermione who was completely frozen in horror. She attempt to drag Hermione around the troll, which was blinking stupidly in the dust that had yet to settle, but Hermione was not budging.

"Wake up!" Whitney shouted, slapping Hermione in the face in desperation. This seemed to jerk Hermione back into the physical realm, but too late as the troll had spotted them and was lofting his club over its head once more. Whitney looked around for an escape, but they were in an alcove of shattered stones and broken stall doors.

Ron's voice was muffled from the other side of the troll as he shouted an incantation Whitney could barely make out, but it was too late. She closed her eyes as she prepared to accept the blow from the club that would hopefully only maim them nearly to death so they could live in unimaginable agony until Madame Pomfrey could fix them.

When she was not crushed to death and when the troll made a confused 'uhh?' sound. Whitney opened her eyes to see its own club floating in the air, held up by what she could only guess was a Hovering Charm. The dumb creature looked up at it curiously and the club fell out of the air, striking it cleanly in the center of its forehead and falling to the floor, followed by its owner.

Whitney acted immediately, pushing Hermione forward in front of her. "Move!" she shouted, following the other girl out of the bathroom and nearly collapsing on the floor of the corridor.

"What on earth is going on?" Whitney heard from above her, but she was near the opposite wall, dry heaving in a corner and trying not to suffer from death by hyperventilation. She was vaguely aware that she was crying slightly, but wiped furiously at the tears as her petrified lungs caught up with the oxygen supply her brain was demanding.

She tried to speak, but ended up only sputtering a few, disconnected consonants as a headache tore through her head angrily.

I'm going to have a permanent stutter from living here, she thought to herself, leaning her forehead against the cool stone of the wall.

She could only point vehemently in the direction of the unconscious troll.

"It's unconscious," she heard Professor Snape tell McGonagall. Whitney could feel his glare from where she was sitting and couldn't bring herself to face him. Her eyes fell somewhere around his knees where his cloak was swept aside to reveal a nasty gash on his left leg. He shifted his robes quickly, covering the wound.

"What were the three of you thinking? You could have been killed!" Professor McGonagall said.

For some reason, Whitney found this at once insulting and hilarious and forgot all about Snape's leg. "Th-Th-Thinking?" she stuttered, trying not to dissolve into hysterics.

"They… weren't in the Great Hall when Professor Quirrell…" Ron began to say, trailing off. "I… I was looking for them."

Whitney could only nod vaguely as she used the wall for support while Professor McGonagall looked sorry. "Well, ten points to Gryffindor for your concern, Mr. Weasley. Now off with you. To your common room."

Whitney thought it was silly to tell them where they should go when there was nothing she wanted to do more than to go to bed. Whitney helped Hermione up to the girls' dorm when they arrived. The other girl was still trembling and Whitney couldn't blame her. When Hermione was in bed, Whitney changed to her pajamas and wrapped herself in her covers, shoving her head under her pillows to block out the world.

Whitney dreamed of trolls flying on broomsticks throwing rocks at her the size of Bludgers that night. They were all on Nimbus Two Thousands and she was riding one of the school's old Cleansweeps. The broom kept bucking her off over the side and she found it increasingly difficult to right herself each time. Finally, she was knocked in the side of the head with a rock-Bludger and thrown clear of the broom.

She hit the floor of the girls' dormitory before she hit the ground in her dream, rubbing her forehead painfully where she landed on the hardwood. Groaning slightly, she got up and proceeded to get ready for school, wondering about her dream. It had been years since she'd had a dream she remembered when she woke up, but her first Quidditch game of the year was fast approaching and she attributed it to nerves.

She glanced at the calendar on the common room notice board and looked at the date of the game for the hundredth time since it had been scheduled a few weeks before. Her face was grim, though she knew she was improving at the sport. She had to be; all she did aside from homework was attend Quidditch practice with her teammates and battle trolls.

She'd formed a good bond with Katie Bell, one of the Chasers for the team who was only one year older and also new to the team. Katie spent more of her time with the other two Chasers who looked out for each other in the air, but Katie understood Whitney's nervousness. She'd confided in Whitney that, even though she'd flown a broom before as a child, the thought of actually playing an official game made her sick to her stomach.

On the day of the game, both girls were sitting together in the locker room, soundlessly turning green as Oliver tried to pep talk them into higher spirits. Whitney barely digested anything he was saying, but walked out onto the field with her teammates anyway. She'd forced herself to drink a glass of orange juice at breakfast and now her churning stomach was reminding her that she'd had very little to eat.

Madame Hooch winked at Whitney as the Gryffindor team lined up across from the Slytherin team, but Whitney couldn't quite force up more than a pained grimace as she mounted her broom. "Glad I didn't eat anything," she told her broom. "Flying vomit is probably worse than the regular kind."

The broom didn't respond… because it was a broom. Whitney quickly pulled her long, auburn hair into an elastic at the back of her head to keep it out of her face, and when Madame Hooch blew her whistle, Whitney kicked off the ground. Though she hadn't kicked very hard, her broom was responsive enough to her touch to rise faster than any other one on the field. The wooshing sensation in Whitney's stomach began to level out slightly and she rose high above the rest of the players, waiting for the Snitch to be released. Madame Hooch blew her whistle again and threw the Quaffle into the air.

After the game, Whitney made a mental note to pay better attention to dreams of falling off a broom if she intended to be on a broom in the near future.

The game started out tame enough. There was some hostility, which didn't surprise her much with the House rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin, but it amounted to little more than some vigorous Bludgering for the most part. However, Whitney spotted the Snitch early on, and found herself bodily blocked by the massive Slytherin team captain. She'd nearly fallen off her broom then, but kept a firm grip and swung her body around with the momentum of her own falling weight. By the time her ears had stopped ringing, however, she'd lost the Snitch.

She soared back into the air, high above the main activity of the game. It was there, more than a hundred feet in the air, that Whitney felt the first jerk in an otherwise smooth flight. Her initial reaction was to panic and she gripped the broom handle too tightly, making the Nimbus jerk upward sharply. Thinking better of it, she forced herself to relax her grip just enough so that it was still firm. The broom jerked again, wildly, and she wrapped her ankles tightly around the base just in time for the broom to take off, zigzagging and rolling and bucking.

In spite of her best efforts to control her emotions and her grasp, Whitney shrieked as the broom made a short dive and tried to roll her off. The base of the broom scraped her ankles painfully and she flipped over the handle, hanging from it by one arm and one ankle. Katie flew up to try and pull Whitney onto her broom and Fred and George circled under her, intending to catch her if she fell. Seeing this, a reckless part of her brain began to aim for one of them and she prepared herself to jump so that she could at least control the beginning of her fall and have a chance at not breaking her neck.

Just as she was preparing to swing away from her broom, however, it jerked wildly again, slinging her around before became placid once more and hovered innocently above her. Grunting with effort, she pulled herself up onto the broomstick again and dove straight for the ground. The Nimbus turned up before she hit the field, rolling her onto the ground where she dry heaved a few times and spat a golden ball onto the ground in front of her. Slowly, forcing air into her lungs, she picked up the tiny ball and flopped over onto her back, holding it above her.

The stadium erupted into cheers. Whitney, exhausted, dropped her arm to the ground after she heard Lee announce the final score, and released the Snitch which was immediately caught up Madame Hooch who had just finished wrangling the Bludgers back into their holders.

Wood rushed over to her and pulled her up from the ground, hugging her tightly as he cheered along with the rest of the Gryffindor team. She smiled tiredly at Katie, who slapped her on the back and allowed the Weasley twins to dance around her in celebration. Here were people who didn't want anything bad to happen to her—didn't want her to be hurt. It was enough to make her tear up.

"It was Snape!" Ron shouted from behind her, but he looked pleased that she was all right, too. "He was doing something to your broom," he told her. The Gryffindors were making too much noise to be able to hear her.

Whitney looked confused and glanced up into the stands where Professor Snape was glaring at her, his robes looking slightly singed. Whitney's scar twinged painfully and she scratched at it.

"You all right?" Ron asked her, looking worried.

"Fine," she said, looking away from Snape. "My scar… hurts sometimes is all."

"Hermione saved you," Ron said, beaming as he led Whitney off the Quidditch field, Hermione following. "She was brilliant."

Hermione blushed slightly, but said nothing as they walked wearily to Hagrid's cabin where he was waiting for them with tea and… cakes?

"Can't 'ave been Professor Snape," Hagrid maintained when Ron told him what had happened.

"Snape was doing a curse, Hagrid," Hermione told him. "I know it. And the second I'd broken his concentration, Whitney was able to get back up on her broom.

"Snape wouldn' hurt a student," Hagrid told her firmly. "He… he jus' wouldn'."

"He doesn't really pretend that he doesn't hate me, though," Whitney said, looking glum. Potions was no less a nightmare than it had been at the beginning of the year.

"Codswallop," Hagrid said, dismissing it. "Dumbledore trusts Snape."

"I wouldn't be surprised," Whitney said, looking annoyed. "Let's count the number of things that have tried to kill me so far," she said. "First, there's Snape who loves to pick me to test his poisons against first year students' antidotes. Second, there are rogue trolls that occasionally make it into Hogwarts on a whim, even though it's supposed to be a safe place. You know, for students. Then, for no good reason I can think of, there's a three-headed dog in an abandoned corridor guarding who knows what from who knows whom."

"How do you know about Fluffy?" Hagrid asked, looking at her suspiciously while Hermione and Ron hissed at her to be quiet.

Whitney paused, cringing when she realized that she'd just admitted to being one of the students who'd been chased around the castle by Filch. Of course Hagrid would know about that incident.

"Fluffy?" Ron asked, breaking the silence.

"Yeah," Hagrid said, looking a little uncomfortable. "He's mine…"

"You keep a mad three-headed monster in school?" Whitney asked, sounding bewildered. "Where there are children?"

"Well, Dumbledore needed him ter 'elp guard…" Hagrid trailed off, clearing his throat. "Abou' time you three headed up ta yer common room, now," he said.

"So it is guarding something. What could be so important that—"

Hagrid interrupted her. "Now, don't be askin' be abou' that. What's down there isn't fer children to know abou', so you forget what you saw an' don't go back to that corridor. That stone is well-guarded and you lot really need ter get goin' now."

Hagrid ushered them out of his hut and shut the door behind him.

Whitney looked at Ron and Hermione, confused.

"Stone?"