Chapter 129: The First Match
The next morning dawned bright and bitterly cold. The Great Hall was thick with the mouth‑watering smell of grilled sausages, and everyone chattered excitedly about the Quidditch match to come.
"Like we said, Harry, you are going to do brilliantly!" Ron had been bolstering Harry's courage since first thing.
The two of them were sitting at the Gryffindor table just behind Shawn.
Harry nodded.
Wizards were almost universally mad about Quidditch. Ron and Harry could not help thinking: if Harry showed some real talent on a broom, would that finally make him worth something?
Like Justin, who knew all sorts of food magic and helped organise Shawn's notes, sorting and combining them in a methodical, almost scientific way.
Or Neville, who helped Shawn refine the Herbology notes. The magical plants he nurtured gave Shawn and the others specimens to study up close.
Or Hermione, who was always teaching everyone spells, only handing the truly difficult bits over to Shawn.
According to Justin, Shawn could do almost everything – and could even record everyone's spell levels using some special method.
His eyes positively shone when he said that.
Harry and Ron did too. They had never dreamed that spells came in "levels."
Was it not enough just to scrape through the end‑of‑year exams?
With their minds full of nothing but the glory of a pass mark, neither of them had the faintest idea just how much enthusiasm they would be showing later.
"You will be fine," Ron said again.
In the Hall, Ron was more nervous than Harry. For him, this was not just the first match – it was their ticket into a secret society.
Seeing their tense faces from the Ravenclaw table, Justin could not stop grinning.
One look from Shawn, and he hastily wiped the smile away.
He has been acting a bit strange lately, Shawn thought.
By eleven o'clock, it seemed the whole school had crammed into the stands around the Quidditch pitch.
Many students had brought binoculars. The seats were practically hanging in mid‑air, yet it was still hard to follow every detail of the game.
The match began quickly. Shawn and the others sat a little further back.
To him, even though the match looked thrilling, it was more like children playing at Quidditch – they were all far too slow. The commentary was much more entertaining.
Even with Professor McGonagall sitting right beside commentator Lee Jordan, she could not stop his dreamy running patter.
"The Quaffle is immediately taken by Angelina Johnson of Gryffindor – what a superb Chaser she is, and if I may say so, rather stunning as well – if I could just take her—"
"Jordan!"
"Sorry, Professor."
His style of commentary was, to put it mildly, very free.
Gryffindor cheers rang through the cold air, cut through by Slytherin roars and groans.
Suddenly, even Gryffindor erupted in angry shouts.
Marcus Flint had deliberately rammed Harry. Harry's broom swerved violently off course, and only a white‑knuckled grip kept him from falling.
Lee Jordan bellowed, forgetting entirely that he was meant to be neutral.
"Slytherin takes the lead – thanks to that blatant and disgusting bit of cheating—"
"Jordan!" McGonagall snapped.
"I mean, thanks to that very obvious and highly objectionable foul—"
"Jordan, I must remind you—"
"All right, all right. Flint very nearly killed the Gryffindor Seeker. I am sure it could happen to anybody. Anyway, Gryffindor has a penalty, Spinnet takes the Quaffle, she passes, nice and clean, play continues, Gryffindor still in possession."
Sometimes that barbed tone was even more infuriating than open insults. Every Slytherin in sight was glaring daggers at him.
Shawn suspected that Professor McGonagall was sitting beside him not only to keep him on script but to stop him from being mobbed by enraged Slytherins.
Shawn quietly opened Ancient Runes Illustrated. The only reason he had come to the pitch at all was because Professor McGonagall had said, "Go and have a look, child. The Quidditch season is starting."
Suddenly, a roar went up from the stands. Harry's broomstick was behaving strangely.
It bucked and writhed madly, carrying him higher and higher, further and further from the game.
Then it began to loop and roll. Harry could only cling on for dear life. A second later came another violent jolt. Harry slipped. For a horrible moment, he hung in mid‑air, dangling by one hand from the broom handle.
The sight made every pair of eyes in the stadium widen.
Something tugged at Shawn's memory. When he turned his head, Hermione had already forced her way out of the stands, fighting through the crush towards the staff section where Snape sat.
She even sent Professor Quirrell sprawling into the row in front and did not stop to apologise.
"It is Snape," she muttered under her breath. "He is jinxing the broom – he is cursing it."
Harry, who would not come to any harm, was less surprising to Shawn than Hermione's behaviour.
On another stand,
Hermione crouched behind Snape, ready to aim her wand at his unhealed leg.
Her lips shaped the incantation, but the spell fizzled before it ever left her wand.
She spun round in fright and saw Shawn.
He had just slipped his wand back into his sleeve and said quietly, "Hermione, look."
Up in the sky, Harry had suddenly managed to haul himself back onto his broom.
Moments later, the stands exploded with noise – Harry had caught the Golden Snitch.
Only then did Hermione turn her head back, stiffly.
"How… why, Shawn?" she whispered.
Shawn did not answer. He simply guided her back to where Justin and the others were waiting.
Neville was sobbing, all trace of the boy who had once stared down a troll gone.
On the highest stand,
Penelope Clearwater's brows were drawn so tight that her anger all but swallowed Roger whole. He was Ravenclaw's star athlete, the Quidditch team's vice‑captain.
"You were in charge of recruiting first‑years, and you somehow missed a student who passed the flying test – that even Gryffindor knows about?!" she said, staring at the burly wizard as if he were a pig. Perhaps pigs were cleverer.
"Who could have known… no one has passed that test in… I do not even know how many years…" Roger stammered, smiling like a man resigned to his fate.
"Go and find him. Now," Penelope snapped.
Then she checked herself.
"No – come back. I will go."
But it seemed they were not the only ones looking for Shawn. At a bend in the corridor, he was already being blocked by two identical red‑haired figures.
"You finished those books?!"
"Never seen a wizard with talent like that—"
"We have got to teach you some real tricks!"
"And all it takes is—"