Chapter 35: Slytherin reborn

Something was very wrong. A few first-year Slytherins were shepherded into the hall by Hufflepuff prefects and the staff table was completely empty. The Gryffindors and the Ravenclaws gathered around the Hufflepuffs, glowing with unhealthy excitement.

"—been taken to st Mungo's—"

"Aurors? Why?"

"—at McGonagall's office—"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, Robards, hundred percent!"

"—interrogating them—"

"Malfoy!"

"No way, Malfoy?"

"Malfoy! Haha, I wonder wh—"

Aurors? Interrogating? Malfoy?! Draco turned around and darted straight back for the exit. He dashed between Granger and Weasley, bolted up the staircase, and was in the second floor corridor before the door of the Great Hall closed behind him.

The crowd thickened with every step he came closer to the Gargoyle. The shouts got louder.

"Free Sabrin Gibbon! Free Sabrin Gibbon! Free Sabrin Gibbon!"

An edge of green fabric swept over Draco's face as he pushed closer to the heavily guarded door. He turned and saw a banner waving above the crowd. Under an image of Gibbon on a broomstick, her hair swept flat by the head wind, the words "Free Sabrin Gibbon" burned in fiery orange. The picture disappeared and was replaced by another—a disconcertingly immobile face of a blond young man next to a bleak outline of a hair gel bottle. "Free Draco Malfoy" appeared underneath.

A heavy hand landed on Draco's left shoulder and a row of fingernails dug into his right arm.

"You are going there now and telling them who you are!" Granger shouted with an exterminating look in her eyes. "Now!"

"If anything happens to Harry!" The point of Weasley's wand prodded into his back.

"What the hell is going on?" Draco shouted at the closest Slytherin.

"Free Draco Malfoy!" the crowd chanted in reply. The closest Slytherin turned out to be Astoria Greengrass.

"Free Draco Malfoy, Potter!" she screamed at him, like it was his job.

Unsatisfactory as the reply was, one thing was clear: Potter had done something such that he needed to be freed. The only thing that came to Draco's mind was...

"Thorny!" Draco yelled at the top of his lungs.

A pair of flappy ears popped out where Granger had almost set her foot and she tumbled backwards into Astoria's boobs.

"Harry Potter, sir?"

"Get Knox now!"

Thorny disapparated. Weasley had brought Granger back into vertical position and pointed his wand at Draco's chest.

"I am going!" Draco shouted, and pushed through the crowd towards the Gargoyle.

A black woman stood flapping her trembling eyelashes, a blond curly boor, red with anger next to her. Where had he seen that shade of red before? Oh no! Draco wanted to vanish right where he stood. The mess of moving limbs in the Love Room of the Department of Mysteries, his prisoner's lower body, hairy and pantless, straddled by the fat extremities of the Gibbon woman, her butterfly tattoo glowing shamelessly above a polka-dotted stripe of her pulled down panties.

Crash! Thorny and Knox with a tea towel over his elbow apparated into the midst of the crowd. Two bodies flew aside and Granger's furious face disappeared under a fallen banner.

"With all respect, Mr Malfoy!" Knox indicated a half-full baby bottle sticking out of his breast pocket.

"Thorny will take care of it." Thorny disapparated with the teatowel and the baby bottle. Knox turned to Draco with a questioning look.

"For all I know, Robards is interrogating Malfoy."

"Gibbon conjured a Dementor, the death suckers lashed out, and Malfoy sicked a bunch of snakes on them."

Finally. Thanks, Astoria.

"Casualties?" Knox asked.

"Most snake bites have just been released from the hospital wing." Robards appeared out of the crowd. He was not interrogating Malfoy, obviously. "Vaisey is alive, but— hello, Harry!"

The wall rumbled behind them, the Gargoyle slid aside, and a big Auror appeared on the other side.

"Mr and Mrs Gibbon?" he said looking at the Gibbon woman and the red-faced guy.

"I'm Mr Gibbon," said a short wizard Draco hadn't noticed was there.

The auror made a feeble attempt to stop the red face from entering, but Robards, Draco, and Knox pushed from behind.

"No! No, no one else is entering. It's a closed hearing!" the auror shouted as they left him behind standing in the doorway, and the Gargoyle rumbled shut.

Hearing? Draco didn't like the sound of it.

"Am I right in assuming that none of those bitten by a snake whether or not conjured by Mr Malfoy suffered any substantial damage?" Knox started interrogating Robards, as they rose with the winding staircase.

"Good to see you, Mr Knox," replied Robards.


They squeezed through the door and shoved into a wall of backs. It took some pushing and craning before McGonagall came into view. She was seated on the throne behind her desk, surrounded by staff. Slughorn had aged a decade since their last Potions class.

Robards apologised his way through the rows of solemn figures in Auror and Unspeakable uniforms. Draco followed closely in the elusive plume of empty space behind him. Upper-year Slytherins stood in a circle, Gibbon sat on a chair with an Auror standing on either side, wands out. Potter offered the same picture, except he was chained to his chair, like in courtroom number eleven.

"So—" Robards yawned, "—orry. I've been here since yesterday evening," he whispered.

"Yesterday evening? When— er..."

"We came immediately when the trace signalled a Serpensortia."

"What trace?!"

"A combined surface contact and core allegiance tracker. New method from Mysteries. The contact sensing makes sure that the wand is actually in Malfoy's hand, and the allegiance tracker signals when the wand does his bidding. Still in testing, though."

"He's an adult for god's sake! That's ille—"

"And a Death Eater on parole! Paragraph fifty-nine, Exception three, since last summer."

"But he— Did he know that he was traced?" That wasn't a question. That was the most polite way Draco could think of to express his outrage.

"Well." Robards shifted from one foot to the other. "We'd tell him if the trace worked properly, I suppose."

"It doesn't?"

"It's playing weird. Sometimes it's blurred, sometimes it's like we are tracing two wands at the same time."

"Huh?" Were they both traced now?

"I mean, can you cast a levitation charm and summon with a time lapse of fifteen milliseconds?" Robards whispered. Milicent Bulstrode hissed at them like an annoyed cat and Robards continued under a Muffliato, "We've been wondering if he had tampered with his wand, and I wanted to ask you, actually. Did you notice anything?"

"No!"

Draco felt sick. His mind raced through all the spells he had run through Potter's wand in the past months. If the trace got confused between them, all his shrinking charms could be on Aurors' record now. What else had he done? A wave of chilling shame and another of shocked relief followed the realisation of what he hadn't done. He hadn't obliviated Ewen when Potter had started to stick his nose in their past!

"So, is it 'dementor suck you' or 'dementors suck you', singular or plural?" said Scarlett Kaye and her gaze wandered from Gibbon over the faces of the Slytherins in the first row.

Zabini stood leaned against a marble column. He shrugged and looked at the ceiling.

"It doesn't matter. Both variants exist," said Pansy, her arms crossed and her face like a bulldog refusing to lick piss off a nettle.

"And how many times have you seen this curse used?"

"It is not a curse."

"What is it then? Too powerful for an ordinary hex, isn't it?"

"It's an expletive."

"An expletive? What do you mean 'an expletive'?"

"Like bugger off, up your arse, fuck you, get piss—"

"Thank you, Miss Parkinson. And er, how often have you heard Miss Gibbon use the expression 'dementors suck you' as an expletive?"

"Every other day, perhaps." Pansy said. "Not only Gibbon though, I use it too."

"You do? Aha. And, who else uses this expression?"

All the Slytherins, as one, raised their hands.

"And none of the times you used this expression did a dementor appear anywhere close?"

"No. Not once," said Parkinson. The other Slytherins shook their heads vigorously.

"All right. In that case, I have to ask you, Miss Gibbon," Kaye towered above her. "What did you do yesterday so that this so-called expletive conjured a dementor?"

"It was not a dementor!" shouted mother Gibbon, "It only looked like a dementor!" And Mr Frolik growled menacingly like a leashed dog.

"Whether it was a real dementor is immaterial. A student's soul was nearly sucked out."

"Whose soul?" Draco whispered.

"Vaisey's," Robards whispered back. "You know anything about him?"

"Except he's been running a Voldemort fan club, not much." Draco said.

"So, I repeat my question, Miss Gibbon: What did you do differently when you pronounced the expletive in question yesterday evening? Why did this time a dementor-like entity appear?"

Gibbon froze in a wary shrug, blinking. "Butt plug fell out?"

"Butt... what?" Ms Kaye turned scarlet.

Parkinson cleared her throat.

"I think what Sabrin means to say is that it was an unlucky coincidence."

Gibbon nodded energetically, and so did the rest of the Slytherins.

"A coincidence?"

"It seems to me that the case is absolutely clear," said McGonagall, "A strong outburst of underage magic with an unusual effect."

"But—"

"I am sure your colleagues at the Department of Mysteries will soon shed light on the nature of this expletive." McGonagall shot a glance first at Kaye and then at Benveniste. "In the meantime, if Miss Gibbon and her housemates promise not to use the expression henceforth, no harm can come to anyone—"

Gibbon, Parkinson and the rest nodded like they were hammering nails with their chins.

"—while Professor Slughorn will make sure that the message reaches the entirety of his house."

"Of course, Professor," Slughorn replied with a solemn frown.

McGonagall, Benveniste, and Kaye exchanged deadly looks. Kaye's questioning eyebrow turned to Robards. Robards shrugged and gave a dismissive wave of his hand to the Aurors that guarded Gibbon. They stepped back and to the thunder of applause, Gibbon plunged into the triple hug of her three parents. They pulled her hastily to the exit.

"All right," Kaye said, "Then we can proceed to the last item on our list. Malfoy."

Gibbon stopped at the door and fought herself out her mother's grip.

"In my opinion, the case is very clear. By using dark magic, Mr Malfoy broke condition one paragraph one of his parole and will serve the rest of his sentence in the prison of Azkaban."

The Aurors that had just let go of Gibbon stood behind Potter pointing their wands at his back.

"Objection!" shouted Knox.

"Fuck you!" exhaled Gibbon.

"Free Draco Malfoy!" screamed the huge letters on the banner that shot into the air above the door. Astoria, Harper, and a dozen younger Slytherins had managed to fight their way into the Headmistress's office after all.

"You seem to assume that Mr Malfoy used dark magic," Knox said to Kaye. "I haven't seen the slightest evidence for it so far."

That was technically true. Knox, just like Draco, walked in on this 'hearing' perfectly clueless about what actually had happened, and was now obviously playing for luck.

"Mr Malfoy had cast a Serpensortia sixteen times. Sixteen serpents were found on the scene."

"That is, you seem to assume that said sixteen serpents did not get there by natural means, that someone conjured them using a spell, that that someone was Mr Malfoy, and that the spell in question was dark. Those are four unwarranted assumptions."

Ms Kaye stared at Knox for a second and let out a clear metallic laugh. "You are not trying to say that those snakes just happened to slither into the Slytherin common room last evening, accidentally when the fight broke out?"

"It is certainly not unheard of that murderous reptiles wander randomly about this school. In defence of the sixteen specimens involved in yesterday's events, none of them brought about the death of a student. If I may, Professor," Knox turned to McGonagall, "if I may, I would like to ask the witnesses: Did any of you see Mr Malfoy summon a snake?" He peered at the group of students around Pansy.

A bunch of shoulders shrugged. Harper emerged from under the banner.

"I'm pretty sure it was an Expelliarmus."

"An Expelliarmus, yes," repeated Pansy.

Heads nodded. Kaye looked around in disbelief.

"Your house solidarity is touching, but," she walked up to Robards with a demanding gesture, pointing towards the scroll of parchment in his hands, "it happens so that Mr Malfoy's wand was traced, and we have a complete transcript of the spells it cast with a precise time stamp."

Robards let go of the scroll hesitantly, and Kaye handed it over to Knox. No one dared to utter a peep.

"How peculiar." Knox's eyebrows pulled half way up his forehead.

"What is so peculiar, Mr Knox?" said Kaye.

"Between the eleventh and the twelfth Serpensortia there is an Accio pyjamas."

Right. That was the only spell Draco had been able to cast last evening after the Quidditch practice.

"Did anyone see Mr Malfoy summon a pair of pyjamas last night?"

The Slytherins shook their heads.

"Were any pyjamas found on the scene afterwards?" Knox looked at the staff.

Professor McGonagall, Flitwick, and Slughorn replied in a resolute negative.

"In that case, Ms Kaye," Knox held the edge of the unrolled scroll with two fingers, "this so-called transcript tells us nothing about Mr Malfoy's magical activity. Perhaps you put a trace on the wrong wand." He opened his fingers and the parchment fell into Kaye's hands.

Kaye threw an angry look at Knox and an exasperated one at Robards. Robards shrugged apologetically, and pulled a wand out of his pocket. Thick greyish ash. He handed it to Kaye and her face cleared.

"Very well, Mr Knox," she said, "If you don't trust our trace method, there is an old proven way to find out. This is the wand we took off Mr Malfoy last night. Priori incantatem!"

Kaye pointed her wand at Draco's, green light spilled out and a ghostly shape of a boa constrictor formed in its midst, followed by a king cobra, followed by a bunch of other snakes.

"What do you say to that?" Kaye gave Knox a satisfied grin.

Knox stood scratching his head silently. Potter pulled at his chains and desperately tried to say something but his lips moved voicelessly.

"What— Why—" Draco said, "He wants to say something. Why can't he speak?"

"We've silenced him," replied Robards. "In his own best interest. He was shouting that he's not Malfoy. Completely delusional."

Draco's heart missed his stomach and dropped all the way to his left knee.

"Are you going to try to prove, Mr Knox, that Serpensortia is not a dark spell?"

Knox's forehead glistened in the sun rays pushing through a tall window.

"Why don't we ask the expert, as we are lucky to have one among us?" said McGonagall, and everyone looked at Benveniste.

Benveniste gave a soft cough and the front row parted before her.

"According to a common opinion, dark magic is a less technical term for what we call fundamental magic, the magic that manipulates the connection between a body and a soul, be that the body and soul of the target or the caster. A simple conjuration spell like this lies nowhere close."

"With all respect, Rebecca," Kaye smirked, "we all know that you don't share that common opinion."

Benveniste stared into the audience with a stony face of a sphinx.

"According to another common opinion, dark is a spell intended to harm a being. In that sense, any spell can be dark or not. It all depends on the intention of the caster."

"Well, Serpensortia is clearly dark," Kaye said.

Benveniste raised an eyebrow.

"Why would one conjure a venomous snake without harm in mind?"

"Oh, snakes can be useful for many peaceful purposes." Professor Sprout emerged from behind Slughorn's back. "Some species are very effective in controlling rat populations, for instance."

Kaye laughed.

"I'm not saying that's what Mr Malfoy had in mind," Sprout continued. "I'm only saying, there is no way to know until we ask him."

"Very well then," said Kaye and turned to Potter. "Mr Malfoy, why did you conjure sixteen snakes yesterday evening in the common room full of fellow students? What was your purpose?"

An Auror that had been holding Potter at wand point unsilenced him.

"I'm not— I'm not—" Potter shouted. Draco pushed to the front of the circle. It was going to happen now. Potter's enraged eyes met his. Knox dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief, and Potter shot him a glance. "I'm not saying anything before I talk to my defender!"

The voice of Phineas Black sounded softly in the silence that followed. "Very wise, my boy."

"You will have ample opportunity to talk to your defender before the hearing at the Ministry, Mr Malfoy. For the time being, Professor McGonagall, Professor Slughorn, we'll have to take Mr Malfoy in custody, in the interest of other students' safety."

McGonagall and Slughorn exchanged glances, Benveniste closed her eyes, and Knox hurried to Potter's side.

"Whose safety?!" Parkinson came forward. "My safety?!" She looked scarier than all the sixteen snakes taken together. "I was cruciated until the fucking scumbag got a fucking cobra in his face. If that's what it takes to control the population of idiots in this fucking house, be my fucking guest!"

A pair of feet stomped through the crowd.

"God's honest truth!" Gibbon stood next to Parkinson.

"Three," Zabini raised his hand, without leaving the comforting support of the marble column.

Four, five, six, seven... The Slytherins got into formation, banner athwart, and Pansy... Oh Pansy! What a woman! When she made it clear that the skirmish started with Malfoy's objection to Vaisey's use of the m-word, Kaye and Robards gaped at each other like a pair of puffer-fish out of water. McGonagall helped out with the conclusion:

"What a lovely example of the use of snake conjuration! Something to consider for the new Transfiguration curriculum, Clementine."


To the cheers of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws that had gathered under the green banners, Harry walked out of McGonagall's office surrounded by an impenetrable wall of Slytherins and couldn't believe his wand was pressing against his chest again. After Goyle and Baddock were expelled and shipped off to the Ministry in a matter of five minutes, Harry was sure he'd cost them no more than another three. But Pansy had received a special award for services to the school, and Kaye was too polite to ignore her. She'd kept them talking, and talking, until the room filled to a point where the Unspeakables had to shift to the back row, and not even every Auror had a free shot at him. Now he was standing in the second floor corridor, on his own feet with a wand in his pocket, and couldn't believe his luck.

"Hey, everyone! Thank you," he said to the circle of silent faces that formed around him. None of them looked like they were about to celebrate. "Thank you," Harry said to Pansy, but she clenched her jaw and glanced at Urquhart, who stood facing Harry, arms crossed.

"Malfoy." Urquhart looked at him like he would now personally feed him to the Dementors. "I don't know what shit got into you last night, but I hope you realise that your fit of political correctness cost us a chaser, a beater, and the keeper!"

"Well..." If it wasn't for the political context, Harry would be on his way to Azkaban now. "That's the cost of populating your team with death suckers, I supp—"

"Silence!"

Harry's eardrums caved in.

"You have eight days to train. I expect you from six to eight in the mornings and from eight to ten in the evenings on the Quidditch pitch, plus four to seven on Friday."

"As what?"

"Beater." Urquhart said and turned to go.

"Beater?!" Harry scoffed to his back. "I'm no fucking beater!"

The crowd started moving after Urquhart.

"You are now!" Harper said.

"But—"

"You say you're a Slytherin?"

Harry threw a quick glace at a nearby green banner. That was hard to take back, after yesterday.

"If you're a Slytherin, now do what you're told and make yourself useful!" Harper thrust a beater's bat into his hands.

"But—"

"You're back on the team, honey." Sabrin patted his shoulder blade. "Don't kick up a fuss."

The second floor corridor emptied slowly. The Unspeakables left one by one, after them the Aurors. Professor Flitwick hurried past with a copy of Magick Moste Evile under his arm.

"Charms in ten minutes, Mr Malfoy. Don't be late."

The green banners had multiplied and now stretched across the spaces between the windows. Annoyed portraits grumbled behind them.

Astoria stood in front of one, fidgeting with her wand. Under a picture of Malcolm Drake the inscription 'I'm Slytherin' faded away, and 'Blood doesn't matter' faded in instead.

"I hate it," Astoria said.

"What? Why?"

"The slogan."

Harry shrugged. "It's a great slogan!"

"Nah. Too wordy. Too negative." She rummaged in her bag and pulled out a drawing. "I wanted to use Zabini's original quote, but Slughorn censored it." She pressed the drawing into Harry's hand with a sigh. "Here, a souvenir."

The drawing was the banner in small. Underneath the picture shone the words:

I am Slytherin. Fuck blood!


Next Saturday, the wet grass of the Quidditch pitch gleamed silver in the sun and the wind drove lonely clouds across the sky. Slytherin roared. Half of the Ravenclaws and most of the Hufflepuffs swayed green banners, and a picture of a king cobra the size of a Hungarian Horntail hissed menacingly from one of the spectator towers. A line 'I'm Slytherin. Blood doesn't matter!' ran across its glossy belly.

Draco led the Gryffindor team onto the pitch. He wasn't sure the pep talk he had given them five minutes ago had helped raise the spirits, but there was circumstantial evidence that they had understood what he wanted from them and that he meant it.

"Team! I'll be honest with you. Without Ginny we're fucked," he had announced, over the muffled chants that came from outside the changing room. "I have no chance against Gibbon."

"Come on, Harry! You can do it!" came Peakes' unsteady voice.

"But!" Draco looked around the row of sombre faces. "Slytherin is also fucked! They lost their best chaser, their keeper is a second-year and purely symbolic, and they've got one really shitty beater."

Approving murmur rolled around the changing room. Weasley scowled at the back and stared gloomily into a corner.

"The chasers and the beaters, it will all depend on you. Peakes and Coote?"

Coote rested the bat across his shoulder and stretched to attention.

"Take down the keeper!"

"Why not the seeker?" Peakes said. "We'll bludger Gibbon down, and you'll have a free ride for the snitch."

"Absolutely not!" Draco remembered the Slytherin tryouts very vividly. "For god's, Merlin's and fuck's sake, never ever bludger Gibbon!"

Peakes shrugged and gave an unsatisfied nod.

"If you manage to take down the keeper, give Harper a hard time! If you take him down too, you're my heroes!"

"The plug? Why him?"

"The wildcard! That's why!"

Understanding showed in Coote's face.

"And the rest of you, just do your best! You're great!" Draco took a deep breath. "If you think I'm doing weird things, don't worry. I know what I'm doing."

"What weird things?" Five curious faces glared at him, and Weasley rolled his eyes.

"No time to explain now. Ready?"

That was the best he could make of it. He had a plan. As with almost everything in his life, he wasn't proud of the way he got it, but he knew what he knew, and after Ewen told him, he couldn't stop knowing it. That knowledge nested like a malignant tumour in his brain, grew and branched out into a scheme, and if these players weren't total idiots, there was a small chance that Weasley wouldn't kill him after the match. Now they stood in the middle of the pitch. The clock above the commentator's booth showed a clean row of six zeroes. Madam Hooch released the snitch and it disappeared in the white rays of the sun. The whistle blew and fourteen broomsticks surged into the air.

"The Gryffindors divided by petty quarrels within the team!" The piercing screech of Zacharias Smith's voice sounded above the roar. "Harry Potter is back on the broom after inflicting a serious injury on the team's first string seeker, Ginevra Weasley, in a duel. Yes, just as we all thought that the stellar couple had made a peaceful break-up, old resentments boiled over after all. With dire consequences! Or was it all about who will chase the snitch against Slytherin? Anyway, today is the last time we see Harry Potter go after the snitch. His glorious but short Quidditch career is coming to an end. Let's see what he'll make of it."

Draco had firmly decided not to be bothered by Smith's nonsense. Zabini seized the quaffle and Draco dived after him.

"Hey, Blaise! Romilda says hello!"

Zabini made a disgusted face and passed to Urquhart, but Dean Thomas cut the side of the triangle between Urquhart and the Gryffindor goalposts, and Urquhart passed back to Zabini.

"You wondering why she's not in the stands today?" Draco had no idea whether Romilda Vane was on the stands, but he was sure Blaise didn't either. "It's a new moon!"

Zabini took a swing to attack.

"Best time to hex away an unwanted pregnancy."

Zabini ducked, his throw went astray, and the quaffle landed with Thomas. It wasn't even a new moon.

"Drop dead, Potter!"

"Go Dean! Go Dean! Go Dean!" chanted the red and gold part of the stands, and Draco zoomed to the Slytherin part of the pitch.

Adam Horton guarded the hoops. Draco didn't even have to say anything. The quaffle from Thomas and two bludgers from Peakes and Coote flew at the tiny Slytherin keeper and he had to choose between getting and ducking all three. He whizzed out of the hoop, and the bell chimed over the pitch.

"Dean Thomas opens the score for Gryffindor. The first-time keeper Adam Horton loses ten points for his team. Great job—"

Draco missed the rest of the rant. Harper's furious face and a bludger materialised in his line of sight and the metal brushed Draco's ear. Ooff, that was close!

"Don't ask me what Potter is doing behind the Slytherin goalposts," Smith blabbered away. "Thomas and Coote attempt the same manoeuvre, Horton gets the quaffle this time, and bang! No? No bang. Potter's still on the broom. A miracle!"

The middle two digits of the clock sprang to twelve. There was plenty of time.

The chasers and the beaters got the hang of it. The quaffle went through the hoop along with a bludger again and again, and Horton had no chance. The bell kept chiming: twenty, thirty, forty, fifty for Gryffindor.

"Ha! Third-year Mercedes Flyte, the new Slytherin chaser, captures the quaffle. Now it's Urquhart. Zabini. Urquhart. Flyte. Flyte. Flyte dodges a bludger. Attack! Weasley saves! The first decent attack from the Slytherins since the start of the game!"

Flyte? Who was Flyte anyway? Draco knew exactly how to hack off Zabini, or Urquhart, or Goyle if he were here, but newbies like Flyte were a mystery.

"Slytherin is in possession of the quaffle! Again! Urquhart passes to Flyte. What is Potter doing there again? He's dogging her. No way! Did you see that? Potter ducked before Malfoy's bludger, and Flyte got it. That was a glorious but short flight for Flyte. Madam Pomfrey is on the pitch, Flyte moves from broomstick to stretcher."

The Slytherins, the Hufflepuffs and half of the Ravenclaws joined in with a furious growl. The oversized king cobra blew up its hood and its fangs glistened in the sun.

The middle digits of the clock sprang to twenty-nine, and the score to ninety against ten for Gryffindor. Gibbon soared somewhere above the mayhem. Ewen had been right so far.

"What is Potter playing at? Now he's behind Harper. Coote and Peakes are behind Harper, too, it seems. Now let's hope Potter gets it by mistake. Hey! Gibbon! She's seen something, she dives! Potter doesn't give a sh— Gibbon stops? A failed Wronski feint. Now, when will we finally see the real snitch? Potter is still behind Harper and not interested in the snitch. At. All. "

"Hey, Harper! How many snitches had to slip through your fingers for Malfoy to stop paying you?"

Harper's bat banged, but instead of going after Weasley, the bludger swept past where Draco's head had been a second ago.

"Weasley saves again! Urquhart could just as well be playing against a wall!" Smith said through his megaphone. "And, what? Harper's going down! Couldn't handle two bludgers at a time."

Harper thumped onto the grass, his broomstick made a curve in the air and disappeared between the rows of spectators.

"The Slytherin team cleansed of some infamous names enjoys unusual support today. What a shame they're losing. Losing players. Five Slytherins against seven Gryffindors. Only Gibbon can turn the scales now. Where is the snitch for Merlin's sake?"

The scores stood at one hundred and sixty to twenty for Gryffindor. Horton was still alive, but useless. The clock sprang to forty-nine minutes. Come on! Two more goals and Gibbon may stick the snitch up her arse.

"Dean Thomas wins another ten points for Gryffindor! Horton is just—"

A golden sparkle struck like a match across the wall of the castle. Already? Where had it gone to? Draco dashed after his first guess, and there it was—hovering above the spectator stands, just beyond reach. A small shadow passed over Draco's head. Gibbon was ready to plunge after it too. The snitch danced teasingly an arm's length outside the pitch, and disappeared behind the king cobra.

Gibbon peered after it, then made a circle around Draco with an angry snort, as if it was his personal fault that the snitch was gone again.

"Zabini has the quaffle, Malfoy deflects Coote's bludger. Urquhart. Urquhart attacks! And? The quaffle goes through the hoop!"

A green tsunami swept over the stands. One hundred and sixty to thirty. Now was not the time to lose points! Fifty-three minutes. Draco scanned the space for gold, keeping one eye on Gibbon.

"How about saving a goal for a change, Adam? One hundred and seventy to thirty!"

Draco looked after the quaffle and saw it—the golden dot behind the Slytherin hoops.

"Potter goes after the quaffle again, don't ask me why. Gibbon, oh, Gibbon does too! Is it contagious or what? Oh no! It's not contagious, it's finally the snitch!"

Gibbon was still half a broomstick behind him, and the snitch a dozen feet ahead. Draco wished he could shrink back to Potter's twelve-year-old self. The wind ground against his shoulders. Gibbon pulled noiselessly along, streamlined like a fish. The golden dot grew larger by the second.

Gibbon's shoulder levelled with his, Draco's outstretched arm still topped Gibbon's by a couple of inches, but he began to lose his nerve. Her elbow was pulling slowly along the length of his arm. The snitch was coming closer, the crickety whizz of its wings sounded in the wind.

Gibbon was too far to ram. He could call her a mudblood, but it would probably only spur her on. He could, he could... Suddenly, Draco knew exactly what he could do. Mr Frolik's red face, polka-dotted knickers hanging down from Mrs Gibbon's knee, and a failed butterfly tattoo came to mind. 'How's your little brother?' he could inquire. 'No lasting damage from an overdose of love potion?' he could elaborate. 'Luckily, no one else's contesting fatherhood,' was a bit bulky for a punchline, but with the right swing of tone, it could work.

Gibbon's elbow passed Draco's, and her fingertips were catching up with his. The snitch was inches away. Four inches, three, two... Now or never. Draco took a breath, and stretched his arm as far as he could. His fingernails scratched the glistening surface. Gibbon's Firebolt jerked forward.

"A desperate move! Horton gets a bludger to his head." Smith's voice screeched over the pitch. "And the quaffle goes in. Gryffindor is now exactly one hundred and fifty points ahead."

But Gibbon's fingers had already crushed the tiny golden wings.

"Not any more! Gibbon caught it! Gryffindor and Slytherin draw!" Green, red, gold, and silver exploded all over the stands, like a giant Christmas wreath. "Bye-bye Harry. It was a nice try."