Nothing made Leo feel more alive than quidditch, and her feeling alive in the first place was rare in and of itself. If it wasn't for Regulus pointing her entire life down a path with a locket at the end of it, she might never have stepped off a broom the first time she got on one. Sometimes, she liked to think that maybe she would live past the end of Regulus's crusade and spend the rest of whatever life she had never touching the ground. But as it was, her job wasn't done yet, and Regulus definitely wasn't going to let her forget about it.
"Let me focus," she growled, gripping her broom tightly and glaring through Regulus at the Ravenclaw seeker. Beside her, Shafiq shifted away.
The moment Hooch blew her whistle, Leo took off and flew straight through Regulus—something she normally avoided doing but that she was annoyed enough to not care about right now.
"If he gets the Stone, he'll be back!" Regulus screamed after her. "You're wasting time!"
Right, because a lot of good would come from her lingering constantly in the third floor corridor until Quirrell decided she was in his way. She bared her teeth in Regulus's direction and dove out of the way of a bludger. She twisted, flat against her broom handle, and sped upward. She had a match to win, an opposing seeker to deal with, and a snitch to catch. She went up, up, up, as Lee Jordan yelled out his commentary, letting her know that Ravenclaw's seeker had turned to follow at her sudden movement.
Good.
She turned her head quickly as if she was following something and then twirled into a spiral dive. She straightened on her broom, lifting a hand slightly as if preparing to reach for the snitch. She saw a brief flash of gold out of the corner of her eye and glanced towards it just enough, not turning her head but making sure the other seeker was still following her. The ground was getting closer and closer, and she leaned out from her broom with her hand outstretched.
She swept upward at the last second, brushing her fingers against the ground as she went. It was a game she'd played ever since her first time on a broom, a question she'd been answering each and every time she flew: could she touch the ground without crashing?
Now, with a blade of grass between her thumb and index finger, she shot upward, listening to the roar of the crowd as the Ravenclaw seeker collided with the ground and Lee Jordan started yelling about the Wronski Feint. She flew a loop and then another as she climbed higher and higher, looking about. She leaned forward and low, twisting in the direction of the speck of gold on the far side of the pitch. She kept her focus on it, even as she had to duck and weave out of the way of both bludgers. The grass fluttered free as she closed her hand around the snitch.
"The snitch is caught! Slytherin has won, 160 to 10!" Lee Jordan announced to a crowd that cheered and booed in a loud, mixed response. "At seven minutes, this is one of the shortest matches we've ever had!"
Leo landed smoothly, snitch clutched tightly in one hand and her broom in the other. Regulus swept in front of her, eyes narrowed. "Now you can—"
She stalked past him. "I have one more match to win."
She'd been on her way back to the dormitory from the library when she'd spotted her brother trailing after Harry and his friends. She'd grit her teeth, looked over at Regulus and his expectant expression, and turned on her heel to follow them. "How you're happy," she muttered. "If Draco wants to mess with them again, Harry's made it clear he wasn't want anything from me."
"Your brother likes to make things more difficult."
"He does, doesn't he," she mused proudly.
She lingered at a distance, watching as Draco spied through the window of Hagrid's hut. When he bolted, he almost ran straight into her. "What are you doing here?" he hissed, recovering from his stumble and speeding up as she fell into step beside him.
She glanced over her shoulder and back at the hut to find Hagrid standing in his open doorway. She slowed as she realized she was outpacing Draco. "I was seeing what you were doing. Have fun spying?"
Draco was gasping heavily from running as they slowed upon reaching the castle. "That oaf has a dragon," he whispered, throwing open a door.
Oh, well that hardly seemed worth following them for. Unless Hagrid was planning to have the dragon eat Harry, she shouldn't need to get involved. "And? What are you going to do about it?"
He snickered. "I'm sure I'll figure something out. Want in?"
She considered that for a moment. "Maybe," she hedged, aware of Regulus looming over her shoulder.
Cedric Diggory was large for a seeker, and she'd heard a lot of doubt when he'd first joined Hufflepuff's team earlier that year. Leo knew that her slight—or, if Draco was asked, skeletal—form kept her light and quick on a broom. Cedric didn't have that advantage, but that didn't seem to mean much as she raced him for the snitch. His eyes were keen and his reflexes fast, and she'd long since abandoned the hope that a well-placed bludger would take him out. Not that Bole and Shafiq had ever aimed bludgers well in their lives. It didn't help that the wind was determined to throw everyone around the pitch, and Cedric's size was actually an advantage for him there.
At one point, the snitch was within arms reach of them both, and Leo barrel rolled towards Cedric, forcing him to pull up to avoid her. He was shivering as he did so, and they both lost track of the snitch. Despite that, he threw a grin in her direction before rising higher in the air to start searching again.
A bludger tried to take her out, and she yelled for her team's beaters to do their job just as she turned to do another lap of the pitch. Hufflepuff was ahead in the score, and it had been dragging on much longer than she liked.
There it was, the snitch buzzing around close to her team's hoops. She sped off, fully aware that Cedric started diving from his spot above the pitch only a half-second later. She looped between Bletchley and the quaffle just before he caught it and then wove through the hoop and back after the snitch. It was as she was flying through the smaller hoop on the left that she caught it and held her hand up high to make sure it was noticed. The crowd erupted, with the cheers mostly coming from Slytherin.
Leo landed and had just turned the snitch over to Madame Hooch when someone landed beside her. She looked up, bracing herself for an argument.
"Good match," Cedric said, beaming. He held out his hand. "You turn tighter corners than anyone I've ever flown with. I was thinking that after the Ravenclaw match, but now I know it."
She stared at his hand. "You don't want me to touch you."
"Ah, okay." His smile didn't change. "I'm looking forward to playing you again next year."
"You'll have to practice more for that."
"I intend to." He gave her a wave in place of the handshake and then jogged off to rejoin his team as she stared after him in bewilderment.
"That's all your matches," Regulus said, drifting into her side. "Focus on the third floor corridor and the Stone."
"Got it," she said through gritted teeth, clutching her broom tightly as she stalked off the pitch.
"And Potter. He's—"
"Key. Yeah. Sure. I'll keep him out of trouble."
Keeping Harry Potter out of trouble was harder that it sounded. To start with, it involved waking near midnight to Regulus crowing that he'd seen her brother sneak out of the common room. Sneaking out herself was easy; she did it all the time. She caught up to him after several flights of stairs, cornering him against a wall and hissing, "What are you doing?"
"Potter and those friends of his are wandering around with the dragon right now!" He was grinning at the thought.
"What's your plan, then? Lose as many of our house points as you can? We're going back."
"What?" he squawked indignantly. "I'm not going—"
"Just what reason do you two have for wandering around this time of night?" The sharp voice cut through Draco's protests, and Leo whipped around. There stood Professor McGonagall in a tartan bathrobe, a hairnet, and a most displeased expression.
"Professor, I was just trying to get Draco to go back to our dormitory."
"Potter has a dragon!" Draco burst out. He then launched into a story about Harry, Hermione, and Ron hiding a dragon and trying to sneak it out of the castle via broom-flying visitors.
McGonagall was not buying it. "Preposterous. You as well, Miss Malfoy. You are not a prefect. Policing the other students is not your job and does not excuse your own rule-breaking. Come with me, both of you!"
"You don't understand, Professor," Draco insisted. "Harry Potter has a dragon and he's—"
"Detention, both of you!" she snapped, taking Draco by the ear when he didn't immediately start walking with them. "And twenty points from Slytherin each! Wandering around in the middle of the night, how dare you!"
Unbelievable. Leo had spent months sneaking about Hogwarts—to the third floor corridor to check on the trapdoor guarded by a murderous three-headed dog and to the Shrieking Shack to practice spell after spell out of her potions textbook—and of course she only got caught when Draco was around. She'd even gotten away with it when Harry had been with her.
Draco's frustration and desperation were still rising. "But Professor—"
"Chou, shut up," Leo hissed at him. Both of them were stubborn, but Draco especially never knew when to quit. "Understood, Professor."
McGonagall pinned her with a look. "Your Head of House will hear about this. I doubt he will be pleased by either of you. However," —her looked was appraising— "your sister is right, Mister Malfoy. Do not make this any worse for yourself than your decisions already have."