The Yearning

Harry and Ron were halfway through breakfast the next morning when Dracina Malfoy came into the Great Hall.

She did not come in the way she usually did, which was with her nose up and Crabbe and Goyle trailing behind her like a pair of wardrobes. She came in slowly, on her own, and her shoulders drooped, and Harry, glancing up from his eggs, thought that she looked about as sad as he had ever seen anybody look. Then her eyes found the Gryffindor table, and found Harry at it, and something in her face lifted all at once, like a blind going up. Then she saw Ron beside him. Her eyes rolled towards the enchanted ceiling. And then, quite visibly, she remembered that she was supposed to be angry.

'Why are you two idiots still here?' she screeched.

Heads turned all along the Hufflepuff table.

'We weren't thrown out,' said Harry. He buttered his toast with great care. 'Don't worry about it. You looked a bit upset there for a minute, Malfoy.'

He said it slyly, and it hit the mark. Malfoy huffed. Her cheeks went pink.

'I was not upset! I was never upset! Why would I be upset about you?' She stamped her foot on the flagstones. 'Standards are slipping at this school if they let the pair of you stay after what you did to me. Assaulting me on a broomstick! My father will hear of this!'

And she stalked off to the Slytherin table, where she sat down with her back to them and did not turn round once, which Harry knew because he checked.

'What was that about?' said Ron.

'No idea,' said Harry, and went back to his eggs.

As far as Harry and Ron were concerned, meeting the three-headed dog had been an excellent adventure, and they were quite ready for another one. In the meantime Harry told Ron everything about the grubby little package Hagrid had taken from vault seven hundred and thirteen, and the two of them spent a great deal of time wondering what on earth could need that much guarding.

'It's either really valuable or really dangerous,' said Ron.

'Or both,' said Harry.

But as all they knew for certain about the thing was that it was about two inches long, they did not get far without more to go on.

Neither Neville nor Hermione showed the least curiosity about what lay under the dog and the trapdoor. All Neville wanted was never to go near the dog again as long as he lived. Hermione, meanwhile, had stopped speaking to Harry and Ron altogether, and since she was such a bossy, interfering know-it-all, they regarded this as a treat.

What they really wanted now was a way of getting back at Malfoy, and to their great delight it arrived with the post about a week later.

The owls came pouring into the Great Hall as they did every morning, and everyone's attention was caught at once by a long, thin parcel being carried between six large screech owls. Harry was as curious as anybody about what could be in it, and he was astonished when the owls wheeled and dropped it in front of him, knocking his bacon to the floor. Before Hagrid, nobody had ever sent Harry anything. Harry never felt he deserved anything. He found that his hands were trembling. The six owls had hardly fluttered clear when a seventh shouldered past them, grumbling, and dropped a letter on top of the parcel.

Harry opened the letter first, which was lucky, because it said:

Do not open the parcel at the table.

It contains your new Nimbus Two Thousand. I would rather the whole school didn't know you have a broomstick, or they will all want one. Oliver Wood will meet you on the Quidditch pitch at seven o'clock this evening for your first training session.

Professor M. McGonagall

Harry had a hard job keeping his face straight as he passed the note to Ron.

'A Nimbus Two Thousand!' Ron moaned. 'I've never even touched one.'

They left the Hall quickly, meaning to unwrap it in private before their first lesson, but halfway across the Entrance Hall they found the stairs blocked by Crabbe and Goyle. Malfoy was between them. She nodded, and Crabbe wrenched the parcel out of Harry's hands and passed it to her, then she felt it up and down through the paper.

'That's a broomstick!' she said, and threw it back at Harry with a look that was half jealousy and half spite. 'You're for it now, Potter. First-years aren't allowed them.'

Ron could not help himself.

'It's not any old broomstick,' he said. 'It's a Nimbus Two Thousand. Top of the range. What did you say you had at home, Malfoy, a Comet Two Sixty?' He grinned at Harry. 'Comets look flashy, but they're nowhere near a Nimbus. Only poor people have a Comet Two Sixty.'

Malfoy actually growled.

'What would you know about it, Weasley? You couldn't afford half the handle. I expect you and your brothers have to save up for one twig at a time.'

Before Ron could answer, Professor Flitwick had appeared at Malfoy's elbow. He was so small that Harry privately wondered whether there was a goblin somewhere in his family.

'Not quarrelling, I hope?' he squeaked.

'Potter's had a broomstick sent to him, Professor,' said Malfoy at once.

'Yes, yes, quite right,' said Professor Flitwick, beaming up at Harry. 'Professor McGonagall explained the special circumstances to me, Potter. Which model is it?'

'A Nimbus Two Thousand, sir,' said Harry. He gave Malfoy his best imitation of the smug look she was so fond of giving him, and watched the horror spread over her face. 'And I've really got Malfoy to thank for it. So, thanks, love.'

He and Ron went up the stairs with their hands over their mouths, while behind them Malfoy's voice rose to a shriek.

'I am not your love, Potter! I wouldn't be seen dead with you and your ignoble bloodline! Father will hear about this miscarriage of justice!'

'Well, it's true,' Harry chortled, as they reached the top of the marble staircase. He turned and called down over the banister, 'If you hadn't pinched Neville's Remembrall, I wouldn't be on the team. I'm very grateful, Malfoy. I owe you a favour.'

He turned away again before he could see what the word did to her: how her face went bright pink from chin to hairline, and how her lips shaped the word favour after him, silently, as though he had just handed her something precious.

Harry and Ron would have laughed all the way to the common room, but they were intercepted.

'So I suppose you think that's a reward for breaking the rules?' said an angry voice behind them.

Hermione was stamping up the stairs, glaring at the parcel under Harry's arm.

'I thought you weren't speaking to us,' said Harry.

'Yeah, don't stop now, Little Miss Grass,' said Ron. 'It's doing us a world of good.'

Hermione marched away with her nose in the air. Harry watched her go. Was she trying to copy Malfoy? Girls were bizarre.

He found it very hard to keep his mind on lessons that day. It kept drifting up to the dormitory, where the broomstick lay under his bed, or off to the Quidditch pitch, where he would be learning the game that evening. He bolted his dinner without noticing what it was and rushed upstairs with Ron to unwrap the Nimbus Two Thousand at last.

'Wow,' Ron breathed, as it rolled out across Harry's bedspread.

Even Harry, who knew nothing about brooms, could see that it was beautiful. It was sleek and glossy, with a handle of polished mahogany and a tail of neat, straight twigs, and Nimbus Two Thousand was written near the tip in gold.

As seven o'clock came round, Harry left the castle and walked down to the Quidditch pitch in the dusk. He had never been inside the stadium before. Hundreds of seats rose in tiers round the pitch so that the crowd could see everything, and at either end stood three golden poles with hoops at the top. They reminded Harry of the little plastic wands children blew bubbles through, if the wands had been fifty feet tall. He supposed wizards had never heard of bubble wands.

He was far too eager to wait for Wood. He mounted the Nimbus and kicked off, and if anyone was watching, he decided, he would give them something to watch. He was not good at many things, and he meant to enjoy this one.

It was wonderful. He swooped in and out of the goal hoops and tore up and down the length of the pitch, and the Nimbus Two Thousand went wherever he thought of going, at the lightest touch.

'Oi, Potter! Come down!'

Oliver Wood had arrived with a large wooden crate under his arm. Harry landed beside him.

'Very nice,' said Wood, and his eyes were gleaming. Harry's chest swelled. There was a small, mean voice in the back of his head, one the Dursleys had spent ten years training, that told him he was useless and never did anything right, and he noticed that it was getting fainter with every kind word the Quidditch team said to him. 'I see what McGonagall meant. You're a natural, all right.'

Yes, Harry allowed himself to think. I am.

'I'm only going to teach you the rules tonight,' said Wood. 'After that you'll be at team practice three evenings a week.'

He opened the crate. Inside lay four balls of different sizes.

'Right,' said Wood. 'Quidditch is easy enough to follow, even if it's not easy to play. Seven on a side. Three of them are Chasers.'

'Three Chasers,' Harry repeated, as Wood took out a bright red ball about the size of a football, though a good deal harder. Harry would have liked to see Dudley try his trick of heading a ball with this one. It would have knocked out whatever small portion of brain he had.

'This is the Quaffle,' said Wood. 'The Chasers pass it between them and try to put it through one of the hoops. Ten points each time it goes through. With me so far?'

'The Chasers put the Quaffle through the hoops to score,' Harry recited. 'So it's a bit like basketball on broomsticks, with six hoops.'

'What's basketball?' said Wood, interested.

'Never mind,' said Harry quickly.

'Then there's one player on each side called the Keeper. That's me, for Gryffindor. I fly round our hoops and stop the other lot scoring.'

'Three Chasers, one Keeper,' said Harry, who was determined to get all of it. 'And they use the Quaffle. Got it. What are those three for?'

'I'll show you. Take this.'

Wood handed him a short, heavy club, something like a rounders bat.

'These two are the Bludgers,' he said. He showed Harry a pair of identical balls, jet black and a little smaller than the Quaffle, and Harry noticed that both of them seemed to be straining against the straps that held them in the crate.

'Stand back,' said Wood.

He bent and loosed one of them. The black ball shot straight up into the air and then came rocketing at Harry's face. Harry swung the bat to save his nose and sent it zigzagging away; it looped round their heads once and dived at Wood, who flung himself on top of it and pinned it to the grass.

'See?' Wood panted, wrestling it back into the crate and strapping it down. 'They fly about trying to knock players off their brooms. That's why there are two Beaters on a side. The Weasley twins are ours. Their job is to keep the Bludgers off our players and knock them at the other team. Got all that?'

'Three Chasers score with the Quaffle, the Keeper guards the hoops, the Beaters keep the Bludgers off their own side,' said Harry in one breath.

'Very good,' said Wood.

'Er. Have the Bludgers ever killed anyone?' said Harry, trying to sound as though it did not much matter to him.

'Never at Hogwarts. A couple of broken jaws, nothing worse. Now, the last player is the Seeker. That's you. You needn't bother about the Quaffle or the Bludgers at all...'

'Unless they crack my head open.'

'Don't worry, the Weasleys are more than a match for a Bludger. They're a pair of human Bludgers themselves, if I'm honest.'

Wood reached into the crate for the fourth and last ball. Next to the others it was tiny, about the size of a large walnut, and it was bright gold, with small silver wings that fluttered.

'This,' said Wood, 'is the Golden Snitch. It's the most important ball of the lot. It's so fast and so small that it's very hard to see, and catching it is the Seeker's whole job. You have to weave through the Chasers and the Beaters and the Bludgers and the Quaffle and get to it before the other side's Seeker does, because whichever Seeker catches it wins their team an extra hundred and fifty points, and that nearly always means the match. That's why Seekers get fouled so often. A game doesn't end until the Snitch is caught, so it can go on for ages. I think the record is three months. They had to keep bringing on substitutes so the players could sleep.

'So. That's the lot. Any questions?'

Harry shook his head. He understood what he was supposed to do. Doing it would be the problem.

'We won't practise with the Snitch yet,' said Wood, shutting it carefully back in the crate. 'Too dark. We'd lose it. Let's try you with a few of these.'

He pulled a bag of ordinary golf balls out of his pocket, and a few minutes later the two of them were in the air, Wood hurling golf balls as hard as he could in every direction and Harry catching them. He did not miss one. Wood was delighted. After half an hour it was fully dark, and they had to stop.

'That Cup's got our name on it this year,' said Wood happily. 'Hang on here while I get the kit back in, lad.'

As Wood walked off with the crate, Harry noticed somebody sitting in the stands. In the dark he would never have seen them at all, if it had not been for a head of silvery blonde hair.

'Malfoy!' he shouted, and went stamping up the steps towards her. 'What are you doing here?'

Malfoy shot up out of her seat. She looked, for once, flustered, and she said nothing at all.

'Have you been watching me?' Harry demanded.

'No!'

Harry looked at her. Her cloak was creased from the bench and she had grass on her shoes. He had a strong feeling she had been there the whole time.

'Come off it, Malfoy. You have, haven't you?'

Malfoy huffed and dusted herself down.

'Fine. Yes. I was watching you, Potter. You, on a Quidditch team! It's a disaster waiting to happen. You're going to make a mistake, and I mean to be there when you do, so that I can tell Father and he can put a stop to this before Hogwarts is embarrassed any further. He's a school governor, you know.'

'Pack it in, Malfoy,' said Harry wearily. 'You sound like Hermione, only nastier. Practice is over. Just leave me alone.'

He could see that being compared to Granger stung her badly, and she fired straight back.

'So that you can be a failure in private? How pathetic, Potter.'

'Oh, wonderful. Very original. "You're a failure, Potter," blah blah blah Clear off, Malfoy. This is Quidditch practice. It's for Quidditch players, which I am and you're not. You can't even hold a broom properly, and yet you reckon you've dodged one of those enormous American Apache helicopters...'

'I don't know what an Apache is, Potter, but I was dodging those big black Muggle helicopters while you were still in nappies.' She tried to laugh, and could not quite manage it. She knew she was losing ground, and that Harry had the whole conversation in his hands.

'Good for you. But you're still not on the team. Jog on, Malfoy.'

It did not have the effect he wanted. Instead of shooing her off, it seemed to go into the daft girl's head as a challenge, and she wanted back whatever it was that this stupid boy kept taking from her so easily.

'No,' she said. 'Make me, Pottyhead.'

She folded her arms and sat straight back down on the bench, daring him to move her.

The trouble was that Harry had had enough.

'Pottyhead?' he said. 'Pottyhead. Is that it? Is that the best you've got?' His voice was climbing with his temper. 'Because my name's Potter, is it? Has anybody ever properly slagged you off? No. I didn't think so. You're too posh for it. Nobody dares to insult the ancient and noble house of Smug Gits!'

And then the kettle that was Harry Potter boiled over. He was right in her face now, redder than Uncle Vernon when he saw an IRA attack on the news..

'Sod you, Malfoy! My cousin Dudley used to hang me off the school roof by my ankles, and his mates made a game of kicking my head! Hard enough to make it ache for days, and all the while he'd be calling me a freak, a retard, and whatever else he'd learned in the playground that morning! Over and over again!'

The memories were ones Harry had thought he had left behind him when he came to Hogwarts, and dragging them up made him angrier still. He was so angry that he didn't notice Malfoy shrinking back from him, though she was the taller of the two.

'You want to insult me? Go and find some proper insults! What are you, five? I had to take whatever Dudley gave me and then go home to Aunt Petunia waving a frying pan and calling me a disgrace, from my cupb...'

Harry stopped.

The rage drained out of him all at once, and in its place came two cold thoughts. The first was that he had just shouted in a girl's face, close enough to make her flinch, and she was frightened of him, and whatever she had done he felt ashamed. The second was that he had just handed Dracina Malfoy everything she could ever want. He had told her exactly which insults would hurt him, and she would use every one.

But she was not sneering. There was a strange look on her face, and her silver eyes had begun to shimmer. She was going to say something.

'I'm...'

'Pitch is booked,' said a voice. 'Move along.'

Wood had come up behind Harry without either of them hearing him. He put a hand on Harry's shoulder and looked down at Malfoy, and he was very large in the dark.

Malfoy snarled up at him like a lioness cuffed aside by a bigger lion. Then she looked at Harry again, with that same odd look, and mumbled something he didn't catch, then she turned and ran, and Harry could have sworn she was nearly as fast as his Nimbus.

'Well, at least she said sorry for coming on the pitch,' Wood said

Harry sighed. That must have been it. He supposed she had only said it because Wood was tall and alarming, even for a fifth-year. He shook his head. What was Malfoy playing at? Harry never heard, and never would've guessed, that Dracina Malfoy had said sorry to him, and to him alone.

Perhaps it was because he was so busy, with Quidditch practice three evenings a week on top of all his homework, but Harry could scarcely believe it when he realised that he had been at Hogwarts two whole months. The castle felt more like home than Privet Drive ever had. Nobody had so much as threatened him with a frying pan, which Harry found went a long way towards endearing a place to him. For the first time in his life he could sit in a room without listening for Dudley behind him with a fist or a water bomb. His lessons were getting more interesting, too, now that they had all got the basics.

On Hallowe'en morning they woke to the smell of baking pumpkin drifting through the corridors, and better still, Professor Flitwick announced in Charms that he thought they were ready to try making things fly, which they had all been longing to do since the day he had sent Neville's toad whizzing round the classroom.

Professor Flitwick put them into pairs. Harry got Seamus Finnigan, which was a relief, because Neville had been trying to catch his eye and Harry had no wish for Neville's luck to rub off on him; he suspected he was due a dose of bad luck after the coup of getting on to the team. Ron, however, was put with Hermione Granger. Ron scowled at Hermione. Hermione stared daggers at Ron. It was hard to say which of them was angrier about it. She had not spoken to either of them since the morning the broomstick arrived, and though Harry had rather softened over the whole business, Ron had not.

'We don't talk to grasses, mate,' he had said only that morning, as they passed her on the second-floor corridor.

'Don't forget the wrist movement we've been practising!' squeaked Professor Flitwick from his pile of books. 'Swish and flick, swish and flick. And pronounce the words properly. Remember Wizard Baruffio, who said "s" when he meant "f" and found himself flat on the floor with a buffalo on his chest.'

It was very hard. Harry and Seamus swished and flicked until their arms ached, and the feather they were supposed to be sending to the ceiling lay on the desk and did nothing. Seamus got so impatient that he prodded it with his wand and set it alight. Harry nearly swore, caught himself just in time, and had to put the fire out with his hat. It was a very good thing there were charms for mending hats, or Seamus would have heard about it.

Ron, at the next desk, was doing no better.

'Wingardium Leviosa!' he bellowed, waving his long arms like a windmill.

'You're saying it wrong,' Harry heard Hermione snap. 'It's Win-gar-dium Levi-o-sa. Make the "gar" nice and long.'

'You do it, then, if you're so clever,' Ron snarled.

Hermione pushed up the sleeves of her robes, flicked her wand, and said, 'Wingardium Leviosa!'

Their feather rose off the desk and hung in the air four feet above their heads.

'Oh, well done!' cried Professor Flitwick, clapping. 'Look here, everyone, Miss Granger has done it!'

Ron was in a foul temper by the end of the lesson.

'No wonder nobody can stand Little Miss Grass,' he said to Harry as they shoved their way out into the crowded corridor. 'She's a nightmare. Honestly.'

Somebody knocked into Harry as they hurried past. It was Hermione, and Harry caught a glimpse of her face and was startled to see that she was crying.

'I think she heard you.'

'So?' said Ron, though he looked uncomfortable. 'She must've noticed she hasn't got any friends.'

'That still wasn't right, Ron,' said Harry. 'I didn't have any friends, once.'

He left it there. He did not know what to say to girls at the best of times, least of all a bossy know-it-all like Hermione, and he was afraid of saying the wrong thing, so he let her go.

But Hermione did not turn up for the next lesson, and nobody saw her all afternoon. On their way down to the Hallowe'en feast, Harry and Ron overheard Parvati Patil telling Lavender Brown that Hermione was crying in the girls' toilets and wanted to be left alone. Ron looked more awkward still, but a moment later they walked into the Great Hall, and the decorations drove Hermione out of their heads.

A thousand live bats fluttered along the walls and ceiling, and a thousand more swooped low over the tables in black clouds that made the candles in the pumpkins gutter. The feast appeared on the golden plates all at once, as it had on the first night.

Harry noticed then that somebody else was missing. Dracina Malfoy, who was normally the loudest person at the Slytherin table, was nowhere to be seen. Then he saw the jacket potatoes, and forgot what he had been thinking about.

He was just reaching for one when Professor Quirrell came sprinting into the Hall with his turban askew and terror all over his face. The whole school watched him stagger up to Dumbledore's chair, slump against the table, and gasp, 'Troll. In the dungeons. Thought you ought to know.'

Then he slid to the floor in a dead faint.

What a thoroughly useless Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher he was turning out to be, Harry thought.

There was uproar. It took several purple firecrackers from the end of Dumbledore's wand to bring the Hall to silence.

'Prefects,' he rumbled, 'lead your houses back to the dormitories at once!'

Percy was in his element.

'Follow me! First-years, stay together! No need to fear the troll if you do as I say! Keep close behind me, now. Make way! First-years coming through! Excuse me, I'm a Prefect!'

'How does a troll get in?' Harry asked, as they climbed the stairs.

'Don't ask me. They're meant to be really thick,' said Ron. 'Maybe Peeves let it in for a Hallowe'en joke.'

They passed groups of students hurrying in every direction. As they pushed through a crowd of bewildered Hufflepuffs, Harry grabbed Ron's arm.

'I've just thought. Hermione.'

'What about her?'

'She doesn't know about the troll.'

Ron bit his lip.

'Oh, all right,' he snapped. 'But Percy had better not see us.'

They ducked down and joined the Hufflepuffs heading the other way, slipped into an empty side corridor, and hurried towards the girls' toilets. They had just turned a corner when they heard quick footsteps behind them.

'Percy!' hissed Ron, pulling Harry behind a large stone griffin.

But when they peered round it, it was Snape they saw. He crossed the corridor and vanished.

'What's he doing?' Harry whispered. 'Why isn't he in the dungeons with the rest of them?'

'No bloody clue, mate.'

As quietly as they could, they crept along the next corridor after the fading footsteps.

'He's going up to the third floor,' Harry said, but Ron held up a hand.

'Can you smell something?'

Harry sniffed. A foul stench reached him, like old socks and the sort of public lavatory nobody ever cleans. And then they heard it: a low grunting, and the shuffling of enormous feet. Ron pointed. At the end of a passage to their left, something huge was coming towards them. They pressed themselves into the shadows and watched it shamble out into a patch of moonlight.

It was horrible. It was twelve feet tall, with skin the dull grey of granite, a great lumpy body like a boulder, and a small bald head perched on top like a coconut. Its legs were short and as thick as tree trunks, with flat, horny feet. The smell was beyond belief. It carried a vast wooden club that dragged along the floor, because its arms were so long.

The troll stopped at an open doorway and peered in. It waggled its long ears, making up what mind it had, and slouched slowly inside.

'The key's in the lock,' Harry muttered. 'We could shut it in.'

'Good idea,' said Ron nervously.

They edged towards the door with their mouths dry, praying the troll would not choose that moment to come back out. With one long leap Harry seized the key, slammed the door and turned the lock.

'Yes!'

Flushed with triumph, they set off back up the passage, but as they reached the corner they heard a sound that stopped their hearts: a high, terrified scream. Two screams. And they were coming from the room they had just locked.

'Oh, no,' said Ron, as pale as the Bloody Baron.

'It's the girls' toilets!' Harry gasped.

'Hermione!' they said together.

It was the very last thing either of them wanted to do, but what choice was there? They wheeled round and sprinted back, fumbling the key in their panic. Harry wrenched the door open and they ran inside.

Hermione Granger was shrinking against the far wall, looking as though she might faint at any moment. Then Harry saw that she was not alone. Dracina Malfoy was flattened against the wall opposite, and she looked as if she couldn't decide whether to stare daggers at Hermione or at the troll. The troll was lumbering towards Malfoy, knocking the sinks off the wall as it went.

'Confuse it!' Harry shouted to Ron, and he snatched up a tap and hurled it against the wall as hard as he could.

The troll stopped a few feet from Malfoy. It turned round, blinking stupidly, to see what had made the noise. Its mean little eyes found Harry. It hesitated, and then came for him instead, lifting the club.

'Oi! Gormless prat!' Ron yelled from the other side of the room, and threw a length of pipe. The troll did not seem to feel it strike its shoulder, but it heard the yell, and paused again, and swung its ugly snout round towards Ron, who swore so fluently that a sailor would have asked him to mind his language. It bought Harry the time to run round the troll to Malfoy, and to Hermione too, if he was careful.

'Come on! Run! Run!' he yelled at both of them, and tried to drag Malfoy towards the door, but she could not move. She was still flat against the wall with her mouth open in terror.

The shouting and the echoes seemed to be driving the troll mad. It roared and started for Ron, who was nearest and had nowhere to run.

Harry then did something that was both very brave and very stupid. He took a long run-up, jumped, and got both arms round the troll's neck from behind, and found himself competing with Ron for the number of filthy words a boy could say while in mortal danger. The troll could not feel Harry hanging there, but even a troll notices when a long piece of wood goes up its nose, and Harry's wand had still been in his hand when he jumped. It had gone straight up one nostril.

The troll howled and twisted and flailed its club, with Harry clinging on for his life. At any second it was going to tear him off, or catch him a blow that would finish him. Hermione had sunk to the floor in fright. Dracina had her arms wrapped round herself, and her eyes never once left Harry. Ron pulled out his own wand, and with no idea what he meant to do with it, he heard himself cry the first spell that came into his head.

'Wingardium Leviosa!'

The club leapt out of the troll's fist, rose high into the air, turned over slowly, and came down on its owner's head with a sickening crack. The troll swayed, and fell on its face with a thud that shook the whole room.

Harry got up. He was shaking and out of breath. Ron stood with his wand still raised, staring at what he had done.

Harry looked at the two girls. Malfoy seemed on the point of saying something, or doing something. But it was Hermione who moved first. She flew across the room and into Harry's arms, trembling from head to foot.

'Is it... dead?'

'I don't think so,' said Harry.

'Of course it's not dead, Granger, you idiot, it's knocked out. Honestly...'

Malfoy sounded fed up. If Harry had not been so taken up with the troll, he would have seen that she was staring at Hermione with pure murder in her face as Hermione clung to him, and that Hermione, over his shoulder, was giving Malfoy a small, smug, triumphant look, as though she had won something. Ron saw the whole thing. It puzzled him for years before he finally understood it.

Harry let go of Hermione and went to see to Malfoy.

'Ugh. I'm fine. No thanks to you, Potter.' She waved him off as though he were a servant.

He'd just saved her life, and she was still being foul about it. Harry failed to notice the softness that came over Dracina then despite her words. Or how her eyes lingered on him.

Harry bent down and pulled his wand out of the troll's nose. It was coated in something that looked like lumpy grey glue, and Dracina very nearly brought up her dinner on the spot.

'Urgh. Troll bogies.'

He wiped it on the troll's trousers.

'You barbarian!' Dracina cried. 'I've met centaurs with better manners than you, Potter!'

A sudden slamming of doors and a thunder of footsteps made the four of them look up. They had not realised how much noise they had been making, but of course somebody downstairs must have heard the crashing and the troll's roars. A moment later Professor McGonagall burst into the room with Snape close behind her and Quirrell bringing up the rear. Quirrell took one look at the troll, gave a faint whimper, and sat down quickly on a toilet with a hand pressed to his heart.

Snape bent over the troll, and then spared one quick look for Malfoy. Professor McGonagall was looking at Harry and Ron. Harry had never seen her so angry. Her lips were white. Any hope of fifty points for Gryffindor went straight out of his head.

'What on earth did you think you were doing?' she said, and her voice was cold with fury.

Harry had been thinking of saving Hermione, and then Dracina, from a troll, but he had a feeling that was not the answer she wanted, so he said nothing. He looked at Ron, who was still standing with his wand in the air.

'You're lucky you weren't killed. Why aren't you in your dormitory?'

Snape gave Harry a swift, piercing look. Harry looked at the floor. He wished very much that Ron would lower his wand.

Then a small voice spoke out of the shadows.

'Please, Professor McGonagall. They were looking for me.'

'Miss Granger!'

Hermione had got to her feet at last.

'I came looking for the troll. Because I... I thought I could manage it on my own...'

'I came with Granger!' Malfoy cut across her. 'I wanted to fight the troll as well. Er. To impress my father.'

Ron dropped his wand. Harry could see Malfoy lying from a mile off, but Hermione Granger, telling a barefaced lie to a teacher?

'If they hadn't found me, I'd be dead. Harry stuck his wand up its nose and Ron knocked it out with its own club. There wasn't time to fetch anybody. It was about to finish me when they got here.'

Harry and Ron did their best to look as though none of this was news to them.

'Well. In that case...' said Professor McGonagall, looking from one to the other of them. 'Miss Granger. Miss Malfoy. You foolish girls. How could either of you think of tackling a mountain troll alone?'

Hermione hung her head. Malfoy did her best to look sheepish, which was something she had never practised and did not suit her in the least.

Harry was speechless. Hermione was the last person alive to break a rule, and here she was pretending she had, to get them out of trouble. It was as though Snape had started awarding points to Gryffindor.

'Miss Granger, five points will be taken from Gryffindor for this,' said Professor McGonagall.

'And five from Slytherin, Miss Malfoy,' said Snape quietly. 'I expect rather more cunning from you in future.'

Malfoy gave him a look, and Harry saw that she was wounded to the quick at having disappointed him.

'I am very disappointed in you, Miss Granger. If you're not hurt, you had better go up to Gryffindor Tower. The students are finishing the feast in their houses.'

Hermione went. On her way to the door she gave Malfoy a look Harry could not read at all, and Malfoy returned a far more familiar one, haughty and cold, as though she were goading her. Or was it Hermione goading Malfoy? What had gone on between the two of them in the girls' toilets, Harry wondered.

Professor McGonagall turned to Harry and Ron.

'Well. I still say you were lucky, but not many first-years could've taken on a fully grown mountain troll. You each win Gryffindor five points. Professor Dumbledore will hear of this. You may go.'

They hurried out and did not say a word until they were two floors up. It was a relief to be out of range of the smell, apart from anything else.

'We should've got more than ten points,' Ron grumbled.

'Five, you mean, once she's taken off Hermione's.'

'Good of her to get us out of it like that,' Ron admitted. 'Mind you, we did save her.'

'Malfoy did it too,' said Harry. 'I just don't know why.'

'My dad always used to say, "Women..."' Ron held up both hands and shrugged.

'Women what?'

'Dunno,' said Ron. 'That's all he'd say.'

'Weird,' said Harry.

They had reached the Fat Lady.

'Pig snout,' they said, and went in.

The common room was packed and noisy. Everybody was eating the food that had been sent up. Hermione, though, stood alone by the door, waiting for them. There was a very awkward pause. Then, none of them looking at the others, they all said, 'Thanks,' and hurried off to find plates.

But from that moment, Hermione Granger was their friend. There are some things you cannot go through together without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.

And a little way down the corridor, where the shadows were thickest, unseen by any of the three of them, Dracina Malfoy watched the portrait hole swing shut on the three friends. she seethed with jealousy, and thought about her brave knight