Chapter Nine: The Sacking of the Knight, Sir Cadogan
Harish returned to the common room that evening after finishing his chocolate bar. There, he found the twins talking about joke products, Draco snoozing on a chair, and Hermione sitting at a table in the back, surrounded by piles of books. Harish walked over to her, moved a tall stack of parchment, and sat down.
"This looks like quite a bit of work," he said, picking up her heavy Ancient Runes book.
"I'm managing fine," Hermione replied stiffly, writing paragraphs quickly on her essay.
"Can't you drop a few subjects? How are you even getting to your classes on time?"
Hermione looked scandalized.
"I can't drop any subjects!"
Harish gestured to a piece of parchment sitting nearby.
"Arithmancy looks hard."
"It's my favorite subject!" Hermione exclaimed, snatching up the paper.
Harish shook his head and made his way to get up, just then something brushed against his leg. He looked down to see a furry, orange cat. It jumped up on the table and Hermione started pleasantly.
"Crookshanks!" she exclaimed. "You came back!"
"He was probably just going on a short hunting trip," Harish said with a yawn, walking down to the dormitories. Facing the dementor had been exhausting. He climbed in bed fully clothed and fell asleep quickly.
VERY-NICE-HUNTING-TRIP—YUMMM
On the Friday before the next Quidditch game which was on Saturday, they had practice until nearly dark. Then, Flint had rushed them back to the castle, as they didn't want to be caught outside past hours. Harish walked back slowly, however, for he did not to be rushed. His Firebolt was slung across one shoulder. The twins were on either side of him with Draco lagging behind.
As they walked, night slowly fell. Soon it was very dark. Harish spotted movement out of the corner of his eye when they were about halfway to the castle.
"Lumos!" he exclaimed lighting up the area.
A beam of light fell across the grass, hit the bottom of a tree, and illuminated its branches. Crouching there was Crookshanks. Harish sighed in relief. For a moment, he had thought that he had seen eyes belonging to the Grim. It seemed as if it was only Hermione's cat, out for a midnight snack.
They set back off for the castle. Harish took a deep breath. Slightly ashamed of his panic, he didn't say anything the rest of the trip.
The next morning, they walked down to breakfast confidently. Harish knew that they would win the match that day. He was absolutely sure of it. His positive attitude seemed to rub off on his team, and it also helped that they were now equipped with the best broom.
Harish held his Firebolt and the other Slytherins looked about, as if they were ready for it to be stolen at any moment. The rest of the castle were too thunderstruck to do such a thing though. The Gryffindors especially looked rather sour.
"Put it here, Harish?" Flint said, motioning to the center of the table. Harish gladly obliged and dug into his breakfast.
People wandered over to have a look at it throughout the meal. Justin congratulated Harish on having such a great broom, Luna made an odd comment about Wrackspurts, and Dean asked if he could just hold it.
"Can you manage that broom, Blake?" Ron asked, coming over angrily.
"Yeah, I reckon so," Harish replied casually.
This seemed to make the boy even more angry.
"Shame it doesn't come with a parachute. Sure you won't fall off your broom this time?"
"Shove off, Ron," Fred said.
Ron stalked off, mumbling angrily under his breath.
At a quarter to eleven, the Slytherin team set off for the locker rooms. The weather couldn't have been more perfect. It was a clear, cool day with a very light breeze. There would be no problems seeing this time, and Harish was beginning to feel the excitement that only a Quidditch match could bring. As he pulled on his Quidditch robes and stuffed his wand in a holster in his arm, he could hear the rest of the school coming out to the stadium.
Flint gave them a usual speech about winning and playing their best. Half the team was rolling their eyes at the speech they had heard countless times, while others were sitting nervously, waiting on the edge of their seat for the match to begin. And it did, not much later.
The team captains shook hands and then the separate teams mounted their brooms. When Madam Hooch blew her whistle to signify the start of the match, Harish kicked off and instantly began scanning the pitch for any glimmer of gold. He soared around the stadium, only half listening to the commentation.
"They're off, and the big excitement of this match is the Firebolt that Harish Blake is riding on," Lee Jordan, the regular commentator, said. "According to which Broomstick, the Firebolt's going to be the choice for the national teams at this year's World Championship—"
"Jordan, would you mind telling us what's going on in the match?" McGonagall interrupted.
"Right you are, Professor—just giving a bit of a background information—the Firebolt, incidentally, has built-in autobrake and—"
"Jordan!"
"Okay, okay, Slytherin in possession, Draco Malfoy of Slytherin heading for goal…"
Harish streaked past Draco in the opposite direction, gazing around for a glint of gold and noticing that Cho Chang, the Ravenclaw Seeker, was tailing him closely.
"Hoping I'll lead you to victory, huh?" Harish muttered before pulling into a sharp dive.
He pushed the broom as fast as if would go, heading straight for the ground near the goal posts.
"It seems as if Slytherin's Seeker has spotted the Snitch!" Lee Jordan shouted. "Chang isn't far behind!"
Harish glanced back to see Cho struggling to keep up with him. As he got nearer to the ground, he slowed down, but Cho kept going just as fast. Then, with only seconds before he could have crashed, he pulled up sharply and shot into the air like a bullet. Cho landed on the ground with a thud. Harish grinned. That got rid of her.
Then, just as Draco was scoring, the Slytherin section went wild. Harish looked down, and he saw it. The Snitch was hovering near one of the barriers. He accelerated towards it then, he looked down and saw two tall, black, hooded dementors looking up at him.
Harish didn't stop to think. He whipped his wand out of his holster, whirled it at the dementors, and roared, "Expecto patronum!"
Harish's enormous basilisk shot out of the end and the entire stadium let out a collective gasp. He turned back around and stretched out his arm, ready to intercept the Snitch. A Bludger flew towards him, but he dodged it. Then, his hand closed on cool metal and he held the Snitch up high for the stadium to see.
"Slytherin wins!" Lee shouted. "One hundred and twenty to zero!"
Six green blurs shot toward Harish and he was surrounded by his team, all congratulating him. They landed together on the grassy lawn with a bump and people flooded out of the stands.
"That's my boy!" Flint bellowed.
"Yes!" Draco exclaimed, yanking Harish's arm into the air. "Yes! Yes!"
"We'll have the match now!" George shouted.
"For sure!" Fred agreed.
"Good for you, Harish!" Ginny said. Daphne was with her and she nodded approvingly.
"That was quite some patronus," said a voice in Harish's ear.
He turned to see Professor Lupin, who looked both shaken and pleased.
"May I ask where you learned?" he asked.
"I taught myself!" Harish told him happily over the noise of the crowd. Lupin looked rather impressed. "I didn't even feel the dementors! They didn't affect me at all!"
"That would be because they—er—weren't dementors," Lupin told him. "Come see—"
Harish followed him out of the crowd where two figures lay sprawled on the ground. There, trying to get out of the robes and off of some sort of stilts were Ron Weasley and a sandy haired Gryffindor.
"You gave Mr. Weasley quite the scare…"
Standing over them were Professors McGonagall and Snape. Harish couldn't tell which looked more angry.
"An unworthy trick!" McGonagall shouted.
"Detention!" Snape spat. "And fifty points from Gryffindor!"
"A low and cowardly attempt to sabotage the game! You will be doing detention with me as well and ten points from Gryffindor…"
Harish turned to see Neville and Dean standing at the edge of the crowd, watching their classmates. Both seemed torn between shame, and loyalty to their house. As the Slytherin walked toward them, Neville started quaking in fear.
"I told him not to!" he said.
"It really is ridiculous," Dean said. "The whole house will probably hate them too. Sixty points from Gryffindor! We're surely out of the running now…"
"Come on!" the twins said as he rejoined them.
"Party in the common room!"
It felt as though they had already won the Quidditch Cup; the party went on all day and well into the night. Fred and George disappeared for a couple of hours and returned, arms full of butterbeer, pumpkin fizz, and several bags of Honeydukes sweets.
"Where'd you get all of that?" Hermione squealed as they began throwing Peppermint Toads out to the crowd.
The twins smirked at Harish and he nodded knowingly. They had used a little help from Moony, Padfoot, Prongs, and Wormtail. Then, Harish turned to see that Hermione was still doing homework. Fred joined Harish to talk to her as George started juggling butterbeer bottles.
"Did you even come to the match?" Fred asked her.
"Of course I did," Hermione replied in a strangely high voice, not looking up. "And I'm very glad we won, and I think Harish did really well, but I need to read this by Monday."
"Come on, Hermione, come and have some food," Harish said.
"I can't, Harish. I've still got four hundred and twenty-two pages left!" Hermione said, now sounding hysterical.
Harish shook his head and he lead Fred back over to the main party. The Slytherin party only ended when Professor Snape turned up, looking really sour, and barked at them all to go to bed. The house scattered, doing as they were told and went to sleep.
CELEBRATE-GOOD-TIMES—COME-ON!
"AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGHHH! NOOOOOOOO!"
Neville awoke suddenly as though he had been hit in the face. Disoriented, he fumbled to get out of his twisted sheets and pull back the hangings that blocked his view of the room.
"What's going on?" Seamus asked.
Neville thought he heard the dormitory door slam. At last, finding the divide in his curtains, he ripped them apart just as Dean was lighting a lamp. Ron was sitting up in his bed, his hangings torn from one side, a look of utmost terror on his face.
"Black! Sirius Black! With a knife!"
"What?"
"Here! Just now! Slashed the curtains! Woke me up!"
"You sure you weren't dreaming?" Dean asked skeptically.
"Look at the curtains! I tell you, he was here!"
They all scrambled out of bed; Neville reached the dormitory door first, and they all sprinted back own the staircase. Doors opened behind them, and sleepy voices called after them.
"Who shouted?"
"What're you doing?"
The common room was lit with the glow of a dying fire, but was deserted.
"Are you sure you weren't dreaming, Ron?"
"I tell you, I saw him!:
"What's all that noise?"
"Professor McGonagall told us to go to bed!"
A few girls had come down the staircase. Boys too, were reappearing.
"Everyone back upstairs!" Percy commanded, pinning his Head Boy badge onto his pajamas as he spoke.
"Perce—Sirius Black!" Ron said faintly. "In our dormitory! With a knife! Woke me up!"
"Nonsense!" Percy said, looking startled. "You had too much to eat—had a nightmare…"
"Now really, what is all the commotion?" McGonagall asked, slamming the portrait behind her.
"I didn't authorize this, Professor!" Percy shouted. "It was my brother—had a nightmare—"
"IT WASN'T A NIGHTMARE!" Ron bellowed. "PROFESSOR, I WOKE UP BECAUSE SIRIUS BLACK WAS STANDING OVER ME WITH A KNIFE!"
Professor McGonagall stared at him
"Don't be ridiculous, Weasley, how could he have possibly gotten through the portrait hole?"
"Ask him!" Ron said, pointing a shaking finger at the back of Sir Cadogan's picture. "Ask him if he saw—"
Glaring suspiciously at Ron, McGonagall pushed the portrait back open and went outside. The whole common room listened with baited breath.
"Sir Cadogan, did you just let a man enter Gryffindor Tower?"
"Certainly good lady!"
There was stunned silence, both inside and outside the common room.
"You—you did? But—but the password—"
"He had 'em!" Sir Cadogan informed her proudly. "Had the whole week's m'lady! Read 'em off a little piece of paper!"
McGonagall pulled herself back through the portrait hole to face the silent crowd. She was white as chalk.
"Which person," she said in a shaking voice, "which abysmally foolish person wrote down this week's passwords and left them lying around?"
There was utter silence, broken by the smallest of squeaks. Neville, trembling form head to fluffy-slippered toes, raised his hand slowly into the air.