Chapter 15: The new seeker

'Stop staring!' Harry reminded himself for the god-knows-how-manyth time, but it was hard not to. Sabrin Gibbon walked into the Great Hall, her jaw clenched, her eyebrows hanging flat and low above her eyes like defensive fortifications. She was followed by an entourage of girls that had obviously grown since last week. Both the entourage and the girls. If it had all started with a small group of second years who shared a dormitory, now third and fourth years tagged along too. They invaded the bench like it was their private party, and some invisible force made Harry shift aside. He barely stopped himself from bowing.

The morning owls stormed the Slytherin table. Harry was spared this time, but couldn't help glancing over at Gibbon again. A card landed on top of her toast, and when she opened it, for a second Harry thought someone had added a shot of Polyjuice to her tea. Her eyebrows rose to soft round arches, her lips parted, and she broke into a most unbridled smile.

The entourage vacated the bench and gathered behind her back. They gasped, moaned, giggled, and cheered in insufferable high pitch.

"So adorable!"

"So cute!"

"What a darling!"

"What's his name?"

Gibbon sniffed, her eyes all wet and shiny. Harry remembered her pregnant mother in Diagon Alley and put two and two together: She'd got a little brother.

The Quidditch season started early. They hadn't passed Hallowe'en yet and Hagrid had only just begun to harvest his pumpkins, but the first match, Slytherin–Ravenclaw, was coming next Saturday and Urquhart fell into a frenzy, drilling the new team like it was their last battle, rather than the first. Harper was promoted from a universal substitute to an actual beater, and was now bludgering Gibbon down together with Goyle. The new keeper was the fifth year Malcolm Baddock, whose muscle mass filled a large part of a goalpost hoop. Incidentally, he was now one of the few who were allowed to call Vaisey 'Strange'. The proportion of death suckers in the team had not dropped.

Whatever. The wind tore away the warm air of Harry's sigh. Quidditch was happening without him this year. From the top of the empty stands he could see Hagrid's hut and a new wooden structure next to it, which kept Hagrid suspiciously busy and cheerful. Judging by the numbers of water buckets and dead animals that disappeared inside its walls, the barn housed Hagrid's larger pets.

Harry saw Ron and Hermione walk down to the hut. Hagrid welcomed them with a big hug. Draco was not with them.

If someone had told Harry that he would one day be supporting the Slytherin Quidditch team he would probably have punched them. But when he took his seat on the stands on Saturday, he could not help feeling for the green serpent. Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, and Ravenclaws were roaring with bloodlust. A blue banner fluttered along the entire length of every other tower. An eagle the size of a whale crushed a green snake in his beak in one of them. Another eagle pinned down a whole snake nest with his talons in the next. The third one flew over what looked like a pile of dead snakes. In the fourth banner there were no snakes at all, only eagles. Some green and silver flew above the rows of the Slytherin section, but due to the sheer mass of the Ravenclaw colours that flooded the rest of the Quidditch pitch, even the Slytherin banners acquired a bluish hue.

The second-year Adam Horton and the third-year Mercedes Flyte in the row below, who Urquhart had recruited as substitutes, were putting up a brave face. But Sloper, who sat next to Harry, was already throwing nervous glances at the closest way to the exit. Against the resistance of his own chest, which felt like someone had placed a brick upon it, Harry pulled air into his lungs, and with all the force he could muster cried out "Slytherin!" into the space.

"Here we go! The Ravenclaws are out and we can see what Bradley has made of it," the magnified voice of Zacharias Smith thundered over the roar of the crowd. "Two years ago the team was almost entirely renewed after the departure of Roger Davies and Cho Chang, and last year it had to be renewed again for all-too-well-known political reasons. Now the Muggle-born players are back, last year's squad is still there, and Bradley had hard choices to make between two excellent seekers and two excellent keepers. And look there! Ben Chambers is back on the team as seeker! Welcome back, Ben!"

The stands exploded in deafening cheers.

"The keeper is one of the first string of two years ago, too, Gemma Wilson. We missed you, Gem!"

And another round of cheers followed.

"Great players, no question about it, but nothing wrong with Randle and Montgomery. We all saw them beat Gryffindor last year, which leaves us wondering if Bradley's choices were dictated by political considerations."

By Smith's standards, that was unusually positive. He left the beaters in peace and only bellyached a little about the new inexperienced chasers. One of them was the blond with the snub nose, whose Comet Harry had signed in Diagon Alley. Ha!

But now Smith's attention turned to Slytherins. He detailed how Harper was a plug for every hole, how Zabini was kept on the team in exchange for steering clear of Urquhart's girlfriend, and how 'strange' was Vaisey's style of lacing his shoes.

"Les— Vaisey, Goyle, Gibbon... What names, what names! But notice: no Malfoy!" And Smith recounted his version of Harry's fall at Gibbon's bludger in the tryouts.

Now that all the Slytherin players were thoroughly pissed off, the whistle sounded, and the teams surged into the air.

Zabini and Vaisey seized the quaffle, but Wilson was saving like god. To Harper's credit, his bludger blew the snub nose off her Harry Potter broomstick not five minutes into the match. Chambers and Gibbon peered into the space.

Chambers was probably in his last year. Next to him, Gibbon looked like a little snitch herself. The difference in size was to Slytherin's advantage, if only she would use it properly.

The snitch shot across the pitch and disappeared again. The seekers crashed into each other where it went beyond the boundary line, if 'each other' was the right word for it. Chambers swept Gibbon away like a speck of dust. But the snitch reappeared and started zigzagging between the goalposts, and the seekers mixed into a single turquoise blur.

"Chambers on an old Nimbus against a Firebolt. Who cares about the wood! There we go! It's the skill that matters!"

Next second, Gibbon shot wildly off course. Harry jumped up from his seat. This could only mean one thing.

"Gibbon lost it. Chambers has taken the lead!"

No! Chambers had rammed, but Smith chose not to notice! The older Slytherins shrieked with rage, the younger ones turned and shifted in confusion.

But Gibbon was already catching up. For a moment, when the snitch took a course straight into his face, Harry caught a glimpse of Gibbon ramming back. Chambers pushed on unperturbed. The snitch shot skywards.

"We're getting close, very close! Come on, Ben!"

All Harry could see was two tiny figures melting in the diffuse white light. One of them, the smaller one shot astray again, and the stands exploded with blue and bronze. Chambers returned with a snitch in his hand. Urquhart and Zabini were just in time to close in on Gibbon from the flanks before she got herself disqualified for the rest of the season. They dragged her to the Slytherin corner.

"I'll avada fuckin' kedavra his fuckin' bludger into his fucked back chambers!" was what Harry could make out in the noise of the crowd.

Slughorn waddled out onto the pitch. "Miss Gibbon, let me remind you that the difference between swearing and cursing is subtle. Beware of the power of your words!"

Something told Harry that Slughorn's prospects to get her for his Slug Club were gone forever. Gibbon spat on the ground before his feet and made an inch deep black fuming crater on the spot where her body fluids hit the grass.

"That's exactly what I mean," Slughorn said, watching her limp away.

When Harry woke up the next morning out of an ecstatic Quidditch dream, his whole body itched with the urge to fly. He gave in to it first thing after breakfast.

When he finished changing to his Quidditch outfit, the door of the changing room flew open, Gibbon walked in, and started rummaging in the 'lost and found' box. She pulled out odd gloves one by one, tried them on, and sorted them into two piles. When would Harry get another chance?

"You shouldn't ram," he said.

She gave him a brief irritated look.

"With someone like Chambers you shouldn't ram."

Gibbon stopped messing with the box and looked at Harry.

"He's big, you're small, he's strong, you're, well, small. You have no chance against him when it comes to ramming."

"He rammed me," said Gibbon and continued sorting the gloves.

"I know. You should also not let him ram you."

"How?" Gibbon turned her back to the box and stared at Harry.

"Stay at an arm's length."

"But then he's closer to the snitch!"

"True. If he's too close, bad luck. But if not and you have time to catch up, then overtake while you're at a safe distance, you will because you're lighter and because you have a Firebolt, and when he falls behind half the distance to the snitch, go straight for it."

"What if I keep the distance and he rams me anyway?"

"That is the stupidest thing he could do. That brings him totally off course."

"And if he's stupid?"

"Well then, great! Use it! Take his place! Dive under him, let him shoot past you, and then you're closer to the snitch."

Gibbon took one glove from the left pile and one from the right pile and put them on.

"Want to ram me?" she said, and pulled out a snitch out of her pocket.

"Er, sure."

She headed for the door but just before she opened it, Vaisey opened it on the other side. His figure blocked the doorway.

"Gibbon? Malfoy?" One of his raised eyebrows slid down, and his mouth mirrored the asymmetry. "What? Girls with boobs won't have you? Trying your luck with a minor?"

He was doing what with a minor?

"Girls with boobs will plant leeks in your ears, Vaisey," Gibbon said, before Harry could open his mouth. Oh, yeah. To Vaisey's attempt to win her for the Yule Ball, Astoria Greengrass had replied with a lush leek jinx. Harry couldn't help chuckling.

"What's so funny, Malfoy? I don't molest defenceless children."

"Yeah, you'd rather fuck your cousin," countered the supposed defenceless child.

"Mind your language. Only mudbloods speak like that." Vaisey didn't sound too unfriendly.

"I'm a mudblood all right." And she flushed down a load of colourful invective.

Vaisey stared at her like she'd just fed him a poisonous toad. "Mudblood, are you?" he said coldly. "Who are you trying to score points with, Gibbon?"

She showed him the snitch in her hand.

"Not who. What."

"Hurry up then." Vaisey swayed out of their way, entering the changing room. "Win me a match first, before you open your mouth. Mudblood."

Harry would have probably punched Vaisey, if he wasn't Malfoy, and if he wasn't in fact more puzzled than enraged by the exchange he'd just witnessed.

"You're not a mudblood!" he said, as they kicked off and were picking up speed.

"Yes, I am!"

"No! First of all, there's no such thing—mudblood. There's Muggle-born. And second of all, if you were Muggle-born, you wouldn't be in Slytherin."

"What d'you mean there ain't no such thing?!" Gibbon's Firebolt swished before Harry's nose. In a second, he was pinned to the balustrade of the nearest spectator stand. "What d'you mean I wouldn't be in Slytherin?!" The handle was pressing painfully against his chest.

"Hey! No offence!" Harry clutched to the part of his own broom that was still his, and tried to find the rest with his knees. "But Gibbon, Muggle-born and in Slytherin? How does that fit?"

"Muggle-born?" Gibbon sneered and backed off. "My mum's a witch and my dad's a wizard, am I Muggle-born?"

"Certainly not!"

"Okay. My mum's a Muggle-born witch and my dad's a Muggle-born wizard, what does that make me?"

"Er..."

"I ain't pure-blood, that's clear. I ain't half-blood neither. And I'm also not Muggle-born, we've just established that. What are we left with?"

"Er..."

"That's right! A fuckin' mudblood!"

There was definitely a gap in terminology there, but Harry did not dare to suggest that Gibbon think of some other expression. As compared to what would probably come out of that effort, 'mudblood' was elegant.

"All right, if you insist. But you're a Gibbon! You must be half-blood. Aren't you related to the—?"

"The Death Eater Gibbon?"

"Yeah."

"There're fuckin' thousands of Gibbons in this country. You think they're all related?" Gibbon stretched her back while hovering comfortably on her broomstick. "My Gibbon grandpa was an accountant at British Rail, my Gibbon grandma's a cashier at Tesco, my other grandma was basically a whore, and my other grandpa was a prospect for Hells Angels, he never lived long."

Surely, few witches and wizards could pride themselves on such lineage. But then the inevitable question was:

"So... so... how did you manage last year then? How did you manage to come to Hogwarts at all?"

"Ha!" Gibbon's chin shot upwards and her Firebolt followed suit. "Thanks to the Death Eater Gibbon, of course." She traced a cheerful eight in the air. "My dad forged a family tree and hung the Death Eater Gibbon on it. The sod was already six feet under and didn't protest. And my dad can charm you bonkers if need be. Everyone bought it. Even the Sortin' Hat."

"You must be the first Mu— mudblood in Slytherin then." Harry liked the thought. Gibbon was making history in more than one way. Of course, there could have been other Slytherins who faked their bloodline, but... "At least, you're the first one to say it out loud."

"Tides've turned, Malfoy." The snitch burst out of her hand, and they dashed after it.

They spent the rest of the morning in the air, chasing the little glitter-bugger, as Gibbon lovingly called it. Towards lunch time she became harder to ram—floating somewhere underneath or above him, but not where Harry expected to crash hard into her flank.

"Next Thursday at five?" she said, taking off her unmatched gloves and throwing them back into the 'lost and found' box, once back in the changing room.

"Er, sure."

The Quidditch season started for Harry, too.

The next few days flew past in a flash. For each essay Harry finished, two new assignments came in, not to mention the dancing thing on Tuesdays. The only subject for which they had no homework this week was Defence against the Dark Arts. Charnay had promised that they would start something new, and that it would be less theoretical than wandless magic, at which both Harry and Draco failed miserably.

"After the events of last year, the British Ministry of Magic has insisted on including a new item in the seventh year's curriculum. One charm that will protect your soul and keep it safe inside your body." He looked expectantly at the audience.

Hermione's hand rose. "The Patronus?"

"Correct, Ms Granger!" Charnay gave another one and a half points to Gryffindor.

Harry and Draco shot a glance at each other.

"I thought it was against Dementors," said Dean Thomas.

"It is, but not only! Any magic that threatens to damage the connection between your body and your soul can be warded against by a Patronus."

"Even the killing curse?"

"Even the killing curse, if the attacker decides to have a coffee between 'avada' and 'kedavra'. Otherwise I would stick to defensive spells that are faster." He gave Draco a wink. "For some of you, this is nothing new, as far as I'm informed. Would someone like to demonstrate it?"

"Potter!" Parkinson blurted out, and turned to Draco with a challenge.

Draco flipped through his notes, inked his quill, and scratched fervently on the parchment like the greatest insight into the nature of defensive charms would be lost to future generations if he didn't put it down right now.

"Yeah, Potter!" Bulstrode patted him on the shoulder.

Draco shuddered.

"What?" he raised his eyes from his manuscript, "I'm— I'm out of stags!"

That was a good one. Harry laughed with the rest of the class. If Draco were to produce a ferret now, that would have explained it. But Draco's face was drained of blood, and even the scar on his forehead turned an unattractive shade of grey. He was not going to produce anything at all.

"Come on, Potter, we've all missed that part," said Parkinson, and glanced right and left at the other Slytherins. "Please."

Draco looked imploringly at Charnay, but Charnay either did not notice, or acted as if.

"Ladies are asking, Mr Potter."

Sweat glistened on Draco's forehead. The Slytherin girls were whispering and giggling under their breath. The silence stretched beyond the limits of the socially acceptable.

"Why does it always have to be Potter?" Ron's figure materialised at the back of the classroom. "Harry's not the only one with a Patronus here."

Charnay turned around. "Mr Weasley? Very well then."

After a few miscast sparkles and helpless profanities, a beam of light spilled from Ron's wand and a silvery dog came leaping. It wagged its tail, gave Draco a lick on the nose, and vanished with a splash of glowing particles.

"Excellent!" Charnay assumed his lecturing pose, perching on top of the class register. "Five points to Gryffindor!"

Harry's task during the practical was unusual, to say the least. He had to shout "Expecto Patronum!" and make sure that nothing happened. Dudley? Uncle Vernon? Malfoy five years ago? Or maybe, Umbridge? Oh no, Skeeter! Skeeter it was! Harry remembered the beetle on his sofa and Ginny pressing a bag of ice cubes against her forehead. "Expecto Patronum!" Stags would go extinct after such treatment.

"Is he a Patronus machine or what?" Ron's voice droned at the back of the classroom again. He stood facing a bewildered Hermione, his arm wrapped around Draco's shoulders. "Harry Potter can have a bad day. Right, mate?"

Draco's lips moved in reply. With some luck it was a "Thanks!"

After the last class, Harry fetched his broomstick from the Room of Requirement—this was the only place where he trusted to leave it. His housemates were convinced that it was one of the stolen Nimbuses. For all Harry knew, they could be right, but he saw no reason for fair play whatsoever. He found it under the rowan trees, after all. It was his loot.

As he approached the Quidditch pitch, Gibbon emerged from the back door of the Slytherin dungeon, and they fell into step on the way to the changing room.

"My mum says hello," she said instead of saying hello.

"Er, okay," Why would her mother send him greetings? Was it a hidden message? A warning? 'You treat my daughter well, or else?' But his intentions with regard to Sabrin Gibbon were immaculately honourable. Was it because he was Malfoy?

Sabrin lingered in the doorway, looking at him, when he held the door for her.

"Do you remember my mother?"

Huh? His cluelessness must have shown on his face.

"You don't remember her?" Sabrin said, entering. "Of course you don't. How many mudbloods passed through your cellar? Hundreds?"

Harry stopped dead.

"Your mother was in— in our cellar?"

The door squeaked and whumped shut behind him.

"Oh, yes! Three days and three nights." Each step Sabrin made seemed to overshoot its target, and her voice sounded like she would drop something heavy onto something hard, if she had anything suitable.

"I'm— I'm sorry, Sabrin, you should know, I must have been obliviated. There are a few things I don't remember."

"Obliviated?"

"That's a charm that makes you forget certain things."

"What things?"

"Anything. That depends. What the caster wants you to forget, if they are skillful enough."

"How convenient!" Sabrin found her shin guards and was pulling them on.

"I'm really sorry!" Harry said, sinking onto the bench. "Did I do something bad to your mother?"

"You really don't have no clue, huh?"

"Did I?"

Sabrin took a moment, struggling with her shin guards.

"No, you didn't."

Air flowed out of Harry's lungs and washed away a heavy rock from his chest. He'd better catch up with changing.

"Quite the opposite," Sabrin continued vividly. "If it wasn't for you, my little brother wouldn't've been born, I s'pose."

When the message sank in, Harry's breathing came to a halt. No! No no no. Malfoy couldn't have... made... NO! Harry tried to restart his lungs and was getting his lips in position to say 'What?!', when Sabrin broke into hoots.

"Oh, no, you never—" she guffawed like a drunken fisherman, "You ain't—" She rolled against the wall in another fit.

Now, finish the sentence will you? The only comfort was that if Malfoy had really— you know— she probably wouldn't find it that funny.

"Do you know Frolik's Flower Farm?" she finally managed to articulate.

"Fro— What?"

"Never mind." Short bursts of giggles came out between phrases. "My baby bro's dad is Martin Frolik. He and my mum were on the run together, and both ended up in your cellar." She stopped laughing. "You and Greyback were supposed to bump them off."

Oh. Harry's neck grew thick on his shoulders again.

"Well, Greyback tried to have a go at my mum in his own way. But you stunned him, and took them to the Ministry, to the Muggle-born Registration Commission. But Mysteries interfered. And so my mum and Martin ended up in Benveniste's basement. You really can't remember none of that?"

"No."

"Perhaps it's better that way." Sabrin put on her arm guards. "Anyway. In May my mum came out four months pregnant, in August my parents were divorced, and now—"

"I'm sorry about your parents."

"No need. They're both alive. And now I've also got a step-dad, a little brother, and a Firebolt!" she said proudly. Harry did not quite see the connection though, especially as far as the last item on the list was concerned.

"There ain't nothing better than divorcin' parents when you need a good broomstick!" Sabrin added triumphantly.

"Huh?"

"Well, you know," she made an innocent face, "because I have a thing for Quidditch, my mum wanted to give me a good broom for my birthday. But her idea of a good broom was like Cleensweep Eleven," Sabrin's mouth made a disgusted twitch, "and her financial capacity was more like half a Shootin' Star.

"So I told her how much I loved her, and what a wonderful birthday present and all that. And then went to my dad and told him, how I needed a decent broom and how my mum had no fuckin' idea what I really needed. And my parents were fightin' about who I should live with after their divorce, you know. So my dad pledged three hundred Galleons! That would get me a second hand Nimbus fifteen hundred or so.

"So I told him how much I loved him, and how he understood me better than mum did. And then I went to Martin..."

Harry was listening spell-bound, while Sabrin was pulling on her gloves, which she had obviously found since Sunday.

"By the way, that was before my mum agreed to marry him. So I told him that my parents were going to give me a good broomstick for my birthday, but couldn't stop arguing about money, and what a stingy blighter my dad was anyway.

"And Martin, he has his farm, you know, rare plants and stuff. So he's a bit more minted. So, to impress my mum, I guess, he offered to give me a Nimbus 2001! And of course, I told him, how much she loved him, and that she was just unsure because of the circumstances in which— Anyway, in the end I had almost a hundred Galleons from my mum, three hundred from my dad, and the price of a whole new Nimbus 2001 from my future step-dad."

"And was it enough for a Firebolt?"

"Of course not! I also sold my grandpa's old Harley Davidson and exchanged the quid for Galleons."

Harry remembered the scene in the Quality Quidditch Supplies and the pile of gold on the counter. Her mother was there, she must have—

"But didn't your parents find out?"

"Oh yeah, in the end, they did! I even got howlers from all three of them. But it was too late. I already had my Firebolt."

Right. Harry could vividly remember the deafening yells in the Great Hall at breakfast a few weeks ago. But since the three howlers were screaming at Sabrin all at the same time, one could not make out a word, and none of her wrongdoing became revealed to the general public.

"They still haven't asked their money back," Sabrin said, shrugging.

"What if they do?"

"Well, it would be a shame for the Firebolt, of course," she sighed, "but now I could sell it for twice the price, thank the Goblins! Then buy out my parents and get a Thunderbolt for the difference."

"I hope there'll be no need." Harry felt his mouth go dry. "But just in case, before you sell it, I might know someone who wants to buy it."

Sabrin picked up her Firebolt and made for the door.

"Hey, Malfoy, you still haven't geared up?" She smirked and gave him a condescending once-over. "Need some privacy, do you, princess?" And she walked out of the changing room.

Hurriedly pulling on his guards, Harry realised just now how lucky he was. If Sabrin had been a little quicker, she could have let him believe that he, that is Malfoy, had played a more immediate role in the addition to her family, and then he, that is Malfoy, would be buying out her parents, all three of them, just like that.

A gust of damp October wind hit Harry in the face when he stepped outside. He rose into the air to join his extraordinary trainee, who was already playing with the snitch like a cat with a ball of wool. Harry wasn't sure yet if she was a friend, but one thing was clear: Mudblood or not, Sabrin Gibbon belonged in Slytherin.