The next day was a fine and sunny one. Wispy white clouds drifted slowly across the sky, as blue as a gemstone, reminding one of the vanilla - flavored ice - cream in Honeydukes that could float in the air for half a day without melting. The air no longer carried the gloomy and damp smell of winter. Although the sunlight couldn't yet bring warmth, there was a crispness, a feeling that belonged to spring.
I arrived at the Quidditch pitch a bit late. The stadium was erupting with cheers that made the floor beneath my feet vibrate slightly. It sounded like Lee Jordan had already started introducing the Ravenclaw players. I somewhat regretted the time I'd wasted in the library looking for this thick book in my hand. At least, from the information I'd skimmed through while running on the way, this book focused on the development of modern magic, like other books in the library, avoided any content related to You - Know - Who. Naturally, it was hard to find any passages explaining the relationship between Albania and him.
"Draco?" I widened my eyes. This match seemed to be quite important for Slytherin too. As the Slytherin Seeker, why wasn't he watching the game in the stands? Instead, he was in this corner, trying to squeeze into a pitch - black bag?
"Iris?" He probably didn't realize how ridiculous he looked right now, his blond hair as messy as a bird's nest. I caught a glimpse of Crabbe and Goyle's dull faces in the constantly wriggling big bag. They seemed to be accusing each other of stepping on their feet. Draco pursed his lips and jumped out of that black bag. He stood on the ground and stamped his legs first, then lifted his chin at me, "What are you doing here?"
"Wait a minute, this is a robe... What are you holding in your hand?" I saw that he was still holding something in the hand that he quickly hid behind his back.
"That's none of your business." He gave a wink to Crabbe and Goyle, who were still struggling laboriously in that huge black robe. The two of them slowly crawled out of the fabric, crumpled the whole thing into a ball, and then walked in the direction of the pitch. After there were only the two of us left in the corridor, Draco turned around, tidied his hair, still keeping his hand behind his back, and retorted to me, "Well, you, Miss Iris Snape, who never watches Quidditch matches, why suddenly have the interest to watch this one?"
I lifted my chin, also pretended to tidy my hair, then slightly stood on tiptoe and imitated his tone, saying to him, "That's none of your business."
He was stretching out his free hand to pinch my nose. I raised the wand that I had taken out of my pocket and hidden in my sleeve a few minutes ago, and said to the hand he was holding the thing with, "Accio!"
A black object flew out from behind him, smacked through a slowly passing ghost, and landed on a painting. The red - haired woman in the painting, who was carefully doing her makeup in front of a mirror, immediately threw away the comb in her hand and started yelling at us angrily, saying that we had ruined her grand ball. If she couldn't dance with her lover tonight, she would make us pay.
"Sorry, Lady Martha." I jumped up, trying to grab the thing before Draco to see what it was, and answered with difficulty amidst the woman's shrill accusations, "But you've been doing your hair for hundreds of years, and the ball has never started yet - "
Amidst Lady Martha's shouts of "You're lying! You're lying!", I rushed to the bottom of her picture frame. I was about to catch the thing, which seemed to be a kind of veil. But just as my fingertips were about to touch it, someone directly hugged my waist, and then I could only watch helplessly as the black veil slipped through my fingertips and returned to Draco's triumphant hands.
"Shut up. There's no lover waiting to invite you to dance at the ball. You're just a stupid painting." Draco said rudely to Lady Martha, who was screaming non - stop.
Lady Martha was stunned, and then tears slowly welled up in her eyes. She started wiping her eyes with her skirt and chattering on about how she fell in love with her lover at the last ball, but because a huge crystal chandelier fell in the middle of the ball, they couldn't finish that dance on the dance floor covered with broken crystals like a sea of stars, amidst the wails and curses of the people around who got injured. So they made an appointment to finish that dance at this ball.
"All right, all right, he'll be waiting for you." I had to comfort her. "Look, you've wasted more time telling us the story. It would have been better if you'd started dressing up seriously just now. If you delay any longer, you really won't be able to finish this dance in your life."
Lady Martha gave us a fierce glare, then turned to the dressing mirror and started fiddling with her makeup vigorously, no longer speaking.
I patted Draco's hand that was still across my waist, motioning for him to let me go quickly. There was another burst of enthusiastic cheers from the pitch. I thought that if I delayed any longer, Potter might catch the Golden Snitch before I even climbed up to the spectator stand.
Draco stuffed the thing into his robe, looking in a great mood. "You actually wanted to compete with the best Seeker at Hogwarts in catching something in the air, huh?"
If the Gryffindors heard this, it would start another commotion. I pursed my lips. "That's because you have longer arms and legs and run faster than me. Otherwise, I would have caught it."
He stretched out his free hand and compared it to the top of my head, saying proudly, "I still remember in first year, Iris. You were a little taller than me back then."
"Don't play tricks on Potter." Seeing that Draco was so happy, I could only sigh and reach out to straighten his crooked Slytherin scarf. "Pretending to be a Dementor won't work on him anymore. Believe me."
He narrowed his eyes and was just about to say something when we heard an extremely cheerful voice from behind. "You two, not going to watch the Quidditch match. What are you doing by the pitch - Oh, it's Iris?"
Professor Slughorn first looked at Draco's hand that was still on my waist with his small eyes, and then at my hand that I had just quickly withdrawn from the side of his scarf and was still stiffly hanging in mid - air.
"Just about to go, Professor." Draco gave Slughorn a bright smile. "I wanted Liz to accompany me, but she wouldn't sit with me in the Slytherin spectator stand."
"Oh, oh, oh!" Slughorn showed a look of sudden realization. Of course, what he understood was quite different from the truth. "Well, how about you two come and sit with this old man? You can tell me who's who on the field. It's been quite a few years since I left Hogwarts."
"An honor, of course." Draco said eagerly. "Professor, you may not know this, but I'm the Seeker of Slytherin."
"I see!" Slughorn said with a beaming smile. "Well, although my interest in this wild activity is limited - I'm getting old after all. But we're at school! The students all love it. Come on, let's go." Without asking for my opinion, I had no choice but to follow the two of them to the faculty viewing stand. At this moment, everyone's attention on the pitch was on the players who were flying around in the air, and not many people noticed us.
"Who gave you permission to call me Liz?" I muttered to Draco while Slughorn was talking to Professor McGonagall. "Don't call me that."
"Why?" Sitting by the pitch, Draco's eyes were carefully following the two blurry gold - and - red figures that were as fast as the wind on the field. (We had been sitting for ten minutes, and Lee Jordan had spent at least eight minutes praising Potter and Black's Firebolts until Professor McGonagall loudly interrupted him.) He didn't turn his head, but by the tone of his voice, he was clearly in a good mood.
"Only mom... calls me that." I awkwardly touched my hair, but my hand met nothing. Then I remembered that I had put the cat - eyed green hairpin deep in the drawer after returning to the dormitory yesterday.
I tried hard to watch the game. As a layman, I could only enjoy the spectacle. I could tell that Cho Chang's broom couldn't keep up with Potter's, but she was stubbornly sticking close to Potter. She had just interrupted his dive again. All kinds of shouts were coming from the Gryffindor side. I suspected I had misheard, but Wood seemed to really have shouted something at Potter. Because I was relatively close, I heard the words carried by the wind: " - If it really doesn't work, knock her off the broom!"
"Youth." Slughorn lazily half - closed his eyes in the sun. The few sparse hairs on his head looked a bit comical in the golden light. Looking at the figures shuttling back and forth on the pitch, he sighed. "It feels like just yesterday. Look at the pitch, look at the classrooms. I just thought it was James Potter flying by. Nothing has changed, right, McGonagall?"
Draco let out a disdainful snort. Due to the noise around, Slughorn didn't hear it. Professor McGonagall, focused on interrupting every one of Jordan's enthusiastic and free advertisements for the Firebolt, just pursed her lips into a faint smile to respond to Slughorn.
"You kids can't feel it. From our perspective, we almost don't need to ask your names, and we can see the shadows of your parents in you." Slughorn said to me. "Ah, although I always tell Dumbledore that I'm old, but coming back to Hogwarts and looking at you, thinking that your mother stood there with the same posture and expression more than ten years ago, it feels like time hasn't passed at all."
"Is it like a cycle to you, Professor?" I asked softly. "Do I really look exactly like my mom?"
"Oh, of course not exactly the same," he winked at me. I lowered my head. "Hmm."
"No, no, no, Iris." As if he could see through what I was thinking, he said to me kindly, "No one is exactly the same as their parents. What's the point if everything just follows an unchanging cycle? It's like potions - potions are the art of decomposition and fusion, combining different substances to create new works and powers. You should understand the principle well. I can see the traces of both your father and mother in you, my child. This is the meaning of life. They've left their best parts to you."
Suddenly, there was a scream from the Gryffindor spectator stand. A gold - and - red figure dived down at an extremely fast speed. Although Cho Chang was closely following him, she was tricked by his brief pause. In that moment of her hesitation, Potter accelerated downward again with an extremely fast reaction. Just as I could finally clearly see the Gryffindor emblem on him, Madam Hooch blew the whistle to end the game. After a second of silence, the Gryffindors began to shout in unison, "GO! GO! Gryffindor! GO! GO! Gryffindor!"
The Ravenclaw players also started to land on the ground gradually. They expressed their congratulations to Gryffindor with friendly applause. I saw Cho Chang smiling naturally and shaking hands with Potter. I thought what the girls said about her, "She's nothing more than an ordinary British beauty," was obviously unfair. She was indeed a very beautiful girl.
"Well, some things, haha, oh my." Slughorn laughed out loud at me after seeing Potter, who was being carried by his teammates, waving the Golden Snitch in his hand vigorously in our direction, and then looking at Draco's face, which was so gloomy that it seemed like water could be wrung out of it. "Some things really seem like they haven't changed at all. They're still so difficult to deal with, right, my child?"