Harry Potter and the Quidditch Match
Harry was surprised to find the next morning, when he returned to the tower, that Hermione Granger was now his friend.
“Well, she did try to get us out of trouble,” Ron admitted grudgingly.
Neville was more diffuse. “It was quite funny really. She said she was sorry that she went off and sulked, and he said no he was sorry for being mean to her and then she started crying and said Ron was a- a- shove-vest* or something for not accepting her apology and he said he wouldn’t save her from a troll every time she started crying and then they both started laughing.”
So, somehow, without Harry being aware of it, Hermione had become his third human friend. This turned out to be a very good thing.
Harry hadn’t been intending it exactly, but he had tried to keep Nagara’s existence a secret outside the dorm. Hermione, however, hadn’t been so occupied with a troll attacking her that she hadn’t seen the bright green snake in Harry’s arms before the teachers rushed in. Now that he was out of the hospital wing she cornered him about it.
“You have a pet snake?”
“Um- yes?”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Maybe?”
“Are you going to tell anyone?”
“The boys in our year all know.”
“What kind is it?”
“Um- it’s a basilisk.”
“What’s a basilisk?”
“The King of Serpents.”
“Is it magical?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get it?”
“I made it.”
“You made it?”
And so it went.
Hermione seemed particularly interested, not in the venomous qualities of the snake, but in Harry’s ability to speak to it. She was disappointed that the Hogwart’s library didn’t have more on parseltongue, given that a founder had been a parselmouth, and, until Harry explained about pheromones and body language, was keen to start learning it herself.
Nagara put up with her investigations with apparent indifference. Harry had to start carrying his notes on basilisk rearing around with him because Hermione kept wanting to write down things he’d never thought of, like Nagara’s weight, or its predilection for bats following the Halloween feast.
Harry noted things like Nagara’s insistence that it not inject venom again because it made its head cold. When Harry had pointed out to the snake that it would have to use venom on some of its prey, it had snapped at him and said that Harry would just have to keep feeding it.
Two weeks after The Troll Incident, as it had become known, Professor Snape asked Harry to stay after class. It had been a particularly trying one for Harry. Professor Snape, although acidly berating the efforts of Harry’s classmates, seemed content to ignore Harry and Neville’s cauldron. This was usually beneficial, as the two could get on in comfortable silence with whatever they were brewing today. Neville usually handled the vegetable ingredients, and Harry dealt with the rest. Years of helping Aunt Petunia with cooking had given Harry an easy manner around knives which Neville didn’t share, and he was also familiar with following written instructions.
Today, Neville had been concerned over the state of their shrivelfig. He mentioned to Harry that it looked quite fresh, and that it’s territorial tendency would therefore be more potent than if it had been properly cured in brine for three weeks, as most were. By this point Harry had seen what could happen when even the slightest thing was changed in a potion, so he thrust his hand into the air to ask the Professor whether this would create a problem.
Professor Snape continued to ignore him.
Hermione had asked what Harry wanted to know. Harry had told her in a whisper about the shrivelfig. Hermione had swapped with Harry and Neville and had put up her own hand while Neville got one with preparing the new fruit.
Professor Snape ignored Hermione.
Seamus and Dean got the shrivelfig next. Professor Snape ignored them too.
Eventually Parvati, the Gryffindor of the pair of twins who had been sorted before Harry, took the offending fig, marched up to Professor Snape where he was bending over one of the Slytherins concoctions, tugged hard on his robes and said in a carrying whisper, “Professor, I don’t think this shrivelfig has been properly cured. Will that not affect the potion quite badly?”
Professor Snape straightened and looked down his hooked nose at Parvati with an expression that made Neville shrink back against Harry. He took the shrivelfig from her and glanced at it. “You are correct, Miss Patil,” he uttered, in a voice of ice.
“Oh, it was Neville who noticed it,” said Parvati, with an easy gallantry.
“Indeed.” The one word could have meant anything. “If this fig had been used it would have created a potion capable of dissolving a standard pewter cauldron to a fine dust, then spilled a toxic slime onto the potioneers’ shoes.”
Professor Snape gave Neville and Harry a look of pure venom, then waved his wand to vanish the contents of all the cauldrons in the room. They spent the rest of the double period taking notes on the importance of checking ingredient quality and the various attributes of the shrivelfig.
Harry was desperate to get out of the classroom to give Neville the praise he deserved, and so was not in a good mood when Professor Snape called him back.
“Are you familiar, Mr. Potter, with the uses of troll parts in potions?”
Harry had been expecting more commentary on shrivelfigs and was rather taken aback by this line of questioning. He thought quickly. “Isn’t the blood used in strengthening solutions?” he replied, hastily appending, “sir,” at a glint in the Professor’s eye.
“Indeed, Mr. Potter. And so, the task of dissecting the troll you and your friends so obligingly defeated last month was given to me. And what did I find in the blood of this particular troll but the venom of an incredibly dangerous and illegal snake. Do you know anything about this?”
Harry had the strong feeling that the man in front of him could read minds. Nevertheless he met the Professor’s eyes and hoped his face didn’t give anything away as he answered, “no sir.” Pink elephants he thought, pink elephants. Anything but green snakes. Pink elephants. The thought of Nagara slithering up his sleeve as the teachers had entered the bathroom flitted across his mind. Pink elephants!
“There were no serpents with you in that bathroom at the time?”
“To be honest, sir, I don’t remember much of what happened. I was concussed.”
“Indeed.” Professor Snape said again. He made the one word do a lot of work; Harry considered. “If such a serpent were seen in this school, Mr. Potter, the owner would be not only expelled, but incarcerated. That is to say, imprisoned.”
“I didn’t see anything, sir,” Harry repeated, hoping that those dark eyes boring into him couldn’t really see his thoughts.
“You have asked Professor Kettleburn, Madam Pince, and Rubeus Hagrid about basilisks since arriving at this school. Why?”
“I’m very interested in herpetology, sir.”
“Indeed.”
“Yessir.” Pink! Elephants!
“You may go, Mr. Potter.”
“Thank you, sir,” Harry left the classroom, now trying to get rid of the image of balloon elephants singing about pink elephants on parade out of his head.
Harry found the other Gryffindor first years waiting for him at the top of the stairs from the dungeons. All of them were congratulating Neville on his knowledge of shrivelfigs. Harry added his own congratulations, and his gratitude at saving them from what would have been a terrible mess, before they headed up more stars to Astronomy.
***
Ron had to drag Harry and Hermione to the first quidditch match of the year. Harry, having been banned from flying for the first term, felt rather resentful towards the airborne game. Hermione merely regretted giving up time in the library. Neville tried to tell them the rules on the way to the pitch, but they weren’t really listening.
Gryffindor were footing a largely new team this year, with a new captain, Ron explained, after his brother Charlie, who now worked with dragons, had left Hogwarts. The word handed down to Ron from his twin brothers, who were also on the team, was that their weakest point was their seeker, Cormac McClaggan. He was a second year, like the twins, and they pranked him relentlessly for his poor performance in practice. Hermione pointed out that surely that was self-defeating, and Ron said that the twins’ jokes were normally taken in good humour.
They squeezed into the stands alongside most of the rest of the school, and Harry tried to follow the game. It was soon clear that the Gryffindor chasers and keeper were better than the Slytherin ones, but the seeker was often so distracted in looking for the snitch that his technique was simply to block the Slytherin seeker from pursuit. Harry spotted the snitch several times in the game, and he enjoyed keeping it in view, watching it dive and weave around the other players.
The match dragged on, the cold November air chilling even the most enthusiastic supporters claps and whoops as goal after goal was scored on both sides. Ron explained to Harry and Dean that there was no time limit in Quidditch the way there was in football. Instead, the game ended with the capture of the snitch. Given that the Gryffindor seeker was actively preventing capture that meant the game might go on for hours. Hermione and Nagara got chilled at the same time and Harry, not sorry to give up watching the two seekers fail to notice the snitch as it wove around them, squeezed out with his friend to walk back to the school.
As they made it onto the stairs out of the stands Harry felt his leg jerk suddenly sideways and he fell heavily on the top step. He slid down, feeling as though he was being deliberately kept off balance. Every time he felt that he might be able to stop himself an arm or a leg would spin out of his control, and he’d crash downwards. He heard Hermione racing down behind him, heard Nagara crying out in pain, and then everything went dark.