Secret Weapon

November came in hard. The mountains round the school turned the grey of old ice, the lake lay flat and dull as a sheet of cold steel, and every morning the lawns were white with frost. From the upstairs windows you could see Hagrid out on the Quidditch pitch at first light, thawing the school brooms one by one, wrapped to the ears in a long moleskin overcoat, rabbit-fur gloves and a pair of beaverskin boots the size of coal scuttles.

The Quidditch season had begun. On Saturday, after weeks of practice, Harry would play his first match: Gryffindor against Slytherin. If Gryffindor won, they would move up into second place in the House Championship.

Hardly anybody had seen Harry play. Wood had decided that, as Gryffindor's secret weapon, Harry ought to be kept, in Wood's own words, a bloody good secret, and he had made the point to the rest of the team with some force.

'Anyone grasses about this,' Wood had said, slapping a Beater's bat into his palm, 'and I will personally bash their head in with this. You think that's funny, Fred?'

The news that Harry was playing Seeker had leaked out anyway. Since nobody had turned up to practice with a bat-shaped dent in their skull, Harry supposed it hadn't been the team. He couldn't decide which was worse: the people who told him he was bound to be brilliant, or the people who told him they would be running about underneath him with a mattress.

It was a very good thing that Harry now had Hermione for a friend, though what a fussy, anxious, hovering friend she was turning out to be. He could not have got through his homework without her, with all the extra practices Wood kept calling, and she had made quite sure he never had to try. She was doing it for him. All of it.

'You're my friend now, Harry,' she said, when he protested, 'and I owe you, after the troll.'

It seemed to make sense to Harry, so he let her.

She had also lent him Quidditch Through the Ages, which turned out to be a far more interesting book than its cover suggested. Harry learned that there were seven hundred ways of committing a foul in Quidditch, every one of which had been committed in a single World Cup match in 1473; that Seekers were generally the smallest and fastest players on a team, and that most of the game's serious accidents happened to them; and that although people very rarely died playing Quidditch, referees had been known to vanish in the middle of a match and turn up months later in the Sahara Desert. The book mentioned, in a footnote, that every one of these referees had been having trouble at home with his wife, and then said no more about it, as being unsuitable talk for respectable witches and wizards.

He also learned that the English and the French had argued over the rules for more than a thousand years, and that the argument had been settled, now and then, with wands. In 1877, a dispute over the proper weight of a Quaffle between the England manager, Francis Grail, and the French manager, Juste Valmond, had ended in a duel, and the duel had ended with two hundred witches and wizards dead in the crossfire. The book gave a casualty list that ran to three pages.

'Wizards are mad, sometimes,' Harry told Ron and Hermione, reading it. The matter had finally been settled when every national team agreed, from 1901 onwards, to play by the Austrian rules. Harry thought privately that the Austrians would have had rather more on their plate about thirteen years after that, but he had no idea whether the wizarding world had even noticed the First World War going on around it. He must remember to ask Hermione. She would know.

Hermione had grown a little more relaxed about rules since the night Harry and Ron pulled her out from under the troll, and she was a great deal nicer for it. She was nicest of all to Harry, and she was at her very nicest to Harry whenever Malfoy happened to be in sight, which Malfoy repaid with exactly as much hostility as Hermione put out warmth.

'Look at wee Pottyhead and his little Mudblood friend,' Malfoy would say to Pansy Parkinson, as the three of them passed in a corridor. 'And here comes the Weasel.'

Pansy had a laugh like a horse, and it could have stripped paint.

'I told you,' said Harry. 'Learn some better insults, you absolute five-year-old.'

Malfoy only rolled her eyes. But it struck Harry, afterwards, as odd. She had every one of the insults he had given her that night on the Quidditch pitch, the ones that would really have hurt, and she had never used a single one. Not once. It was always just Pottyhead.

As Ron's dad would say: women. No, Harry still had no idea what it meant.

The day before Harry's first match, the three of them were out in the courtyard at break, with the frost crunching underfoot, and Hermione, eager as ever to be useful, had conjured up a bright blue fire that could be carried about in a jam jar. They were standing with their backs to it, warming themselves, when Snape crossed the courtyard.

Harry saw at once that he was limping. He could not have thought of a nastier git for it to happen to. He, Ron and Hermione shuffled closer together to hide the fire, since they were fairly sure it would not be allowed, but something in their faces caught Snape's eye, and he limped over. He had not seen the fire. He seemed to be looking for an excuse anyway.

'What is that you have there, Potter?'

It was Quidditch Through the Ages. Harry held it up.

'Library books are not to be taken out of the school,' said Snape. 'Give it to me. Five points from Gryffindor.'

'He's just made that rule up,' Harry muttered, as Snape limped off. 'I wonder what he's done to his leg.'

'Dunno,' said Ron bitterly. 'But I hope it really hurts.'

The Gryffindor common room was very loud that evening. Harry, Ron and Hermione had a table by the window. Hermione was going through Ron's Charms homework and marking it. She would never let Ron copy from her ('How will you learn?'), but she had already written a complete, separate version of the essay for Harry, and had it ready before he had so much as found his quill. Harry told her, several times, that he was really all right now, and could manage his own homework. Hermione insisted. He was beginning to feel that he was taking advantage of her. She must still be feeling strange about the troll, he decided, and let it go.

He was restless. He wanted Quidditch Through the Ages back, to take his mind off the match, and the more he thought about it the less he saw why he should be afraid of Snape. He got up and told the others he was going to ask for it.

'Rather you than me,' they said together.

Harry had an idea that Snape would not refuse him with other teachers listening. He went down to the staff room and knocked. Nobody answered. He knocked again. Nothing. Perhaps Snape had left the book in there? It was worth a look. He pushed the door open a crack and peered in, and a horrible sight met his eyes.

Snape and Filch were inside, alone. Snape had his robes hitched up above his knees. One of his legs was torn and bloody, and Filch was handing him bandages.

'Wretched thing,' Snape was saying. 'How is anyone supposed to watch all three heads at once?'

Harry tried to ease the door shut, but...

'POTTER!'

Snape dropped his robes to hide the leg, his face twisted with rage. Harry gulped.

'I only wondered if I could have my book back.'

'GET OUT! OUT!'

Harry went, before Snape could take any more points off Gryffindor, and ran all the way back upstairs.

'Did you get it?' said Ron, as Harry dropped into his chair. 'What's the matter?'

In a low whisper, Harry told them what he had seen.

'You know what this means?' he finished, out of breath. 'He tried to get past that three-headed dog at Hallowe'en! That's where he was going when we saw him. He's after whatever it's guarding! And I'd bet my broomstick he let that troll in on purpose, to clear everybody out of the way!'

Hermione's eyes were very wide.

'No. He wouldn't,' she said. 'I know he's horrible, but he wouldn't try to steal something Dumbledore was keeping safe.'

'Honestly, Hermione, you think all teachers are saints or something,' snapped Ron. 'I'm with Harry. I wouldn't put anything past Snape. He's a right git. But what's he after? What's that dog guarding?'

Harry went to bed with the same question buzzing round his head. Neville was snoring, and Harry lay awake. He tried to clear his mind. He needed to sleep. He had to sleep. His first Quidditch match was hours away. But the look on Snape's face when he had seen Harry looking at his leg was not a thing you forgot easily.

The next morning was bright and bitterly cold. The Great Hall smelled gloriously of fried sausages, and everybody was chattering about the match.

'You've got to eat something.'

'I don't want anything, mate.'

'Just a crumpet?,' wheedled Hermione.

'I'm not hungry.'

Harry felt the way the troll must have felt after Ron dropped the club on it. In an hour he would be walking out on to the pitch.

'You need your strength, Harry,' said Seamus Finnigan. 'The Seeker's always the one who gets nobbled by the other side.'

'Thanks, Seamus,' said Harry, watching him pour ketchup over his sausages.

By eleven the whole school seemed to be out in the stands, and a good many of them had binoculars. The seats were high above the pitch, but even so it could be hard to follow what was happening. Ron and Hermione went up to the top row to join Neville, Seamus, and Dean, the West Ham supporter.

Dean had his West Ham scarf on. Harry knew from Dudley that at some football grounds you could get flattened for wearing the wrong scarf. Dudley might have been exaggerating. And that was football, a game that had never, so far as Harry knew, drowned two whole countries in blood over the weight of a ball. Perhaps Dean was in more danger than he thought. Harry hoped somebody would tell him to swap it for a Gryffindor one.

As a surprise for Harry, the five of them had painted a banner on one of the sheets Scabbers had chewed through. It said POTTER FOR PRESIDENT, and Dean, who could draw like Harry could fly, had done a big Gryffindor lion underneath. Hermione had put a tricky little charm on it so that the paint flashed from colour to colour.

Down in the changing rooms, Harry and the rest of the team were pulling on their scarlet Quidditch robes. Slytherin would be in green. Wood cleared his throat.

'Right, men,' he said.

'And women,' said Angelina Johnson, who was a Chaser.

'And women,' Wood agreed. 'This is it.'

'The big one,' said Fred Weasley.

'The one we've been waiting for,' said George.

'We know Oliver's speech off by heart,' Fred told Harry. 'We were on the team last year.'

'Shut up, the pair of you,' said Wood. 'This is the best side Gryffindor's had in years. We're going to win. I know it.' He looked round at all of them as though to add, or else. 'Right. Time to go. Good luck.'

Harry followed Fred and George out of the changing room and, hoping that his knees would hold, walked out on to the pitch to a roar of cheering.

Madam Hooch was refereeing. She stood at the centre of the pitch with her broom in her hand, waiting for the two teams.

'I want a good, clean game from all of you,' she said, once they had gathered round, and Harry had the impression she was addressing the Slytherin captain in particular. His name was Marcus Flint, he was a fifth-year, and he had a single black eyebrow that ran right across his face like a hedge. Harry thought there was a fair chance of troll somewhere in his family.

Out of the corner of his eye, high above the crowd, he saw the banner ripple and flash. POTTER FOR PRESIDENT. His heart jumped, and he felt braver. Yes. He could do this.

'Mount your brooms, please.'

Harry swung himself on to the Nimbus Two Thousand. Madam Hooch blew a long blast on her silver whistle, and fifteen brooms rose into the air, higher and higher, and they were off.

As he climbed, he saw her. Dracina Malfoy, in the Slytherin stand, her silver eyes fixed on him. There was no hate in them, and no malice. What was in them, to his astonishment, looked very like worry. Then she seemed to notice that he was looking back, and scowled. The wretched girl was putting him off before the match had properly started. He tore his eyes away and made himself concentrate.

'And the Quaffle goes straight to Angelina Johnson of Gryffindor, what a Chaser that girl is, and easy on the eye as well...'

'JORDAN!'

'Sorry, Professor.'

Lee Jordan, the Weasley twins' friend, was commentating, with Professor McGonagall sitting beside him and watching him like a hawk.

'And she's really motoring up there, neat pass to Alicia Spinnet, good find of Oliver Wood's, that one, only a reserve last year, back to Johnson and... no, Slytherin have it, Slytherin captain Marcus Flint with the Quaffle and away he goes, like an eagle, he's going to sc... no, brilliant save by Gryffindor Keeper Wood and Gryffindor have it back, that's Katie Bell of Gryffindor, lovely dive round Flint, off up the pitch and... OUCH, that'll have hurt, Bludger to the back of the head, Quaffle to Slytherin, that's Adrian Pucey tearing off towards the hoops, but a second Bludger cuts him off, courtesy of Fred or George Weasley, couldn't tell you which, nice work from the Gryffindor Beater either way, and Johnson has the Quaffle again, open pitch ahead of her, off she goes, she's flying, swerves a Bludger, hoops coming up, come on Angelina, Keeper Bletchley dives, misses... GRYFFINDOR SCORE!'

Gryffindor cheers rang out across the frozen air, with groans and howls from the Slytherin end.

'Budge up there. Shift along.'

'Hagrid!'

Ron and Hermione squashed together to make room for him.

'Bin watchin' from me hut,' said Hagrid, patting the enormous pair of binoculars round his neck, 'but it's not the same as bein' in the crowd. No sign o' the Snitch yet?'

'Nope,' said Ron. 'Harry hasn't had much to do.'

'Kept out o' trouble, though, that's somethin',' said Hagrid. 'Oh, an' Dean, I brought yeh a Gryffindor scarf. Best not go startin' anythin'.'

He wound it round Dean's neck himself, over the top of the West Ham one, and glanced warily round the stand as he did it. He had seen a few dark deeds from these benches over the years, and had no wish to see another. Quidditch crowds could be nutters. Then he patted Dean on the shoulder, raised the binoculars, and squinted up at the speck that was Harry.

High above the game, Harry was gliding in slow circles, squinting about for any sign of the Snitch. This was his part of the plan he and Wood had made. 'Stay out of it until you see the Snitch,' Wood had said. 'No sense getting attacked before you have to be.'

When Angelina scored he had done a couple of loop-the-loops to let the feeling out. Now he was back to searching. Once he thought he saw a flash of gold, but it was only the glint of one of the Weasleys' watches, and once a Bludger decided to come straight at him like a cannonball.

'Bugger!' Harry yelled, and swerved, and Fred Weasley came thundering after it.

'You alright there, Harry?' Fred had time to shout, as he belted the Bludger furiously in the direction of Marcus Flint and his car bumper of a forehead.

'Slytherin in possession,' Lee Jordan was saying. 'Chaser Pucey ducks two Bludgers, two Weasleys and Chaser Bell, and he's racing towards the... hang on. Was that the Snitch?'

A murmur went round the stands as Adrian Pucey dropped the Quaffle, too busy staring over his shoulder at the streak of gold that had just gone past his ear. It had gone past the Slytherin stand, in fact. Just by where Malfoy was sitting. Of course it had.

Harry saw it. In a rush of excitement he dived after it. Terence Higgs, the Slytherin Seeker, had seen it too. Neck and neck they hurtled down towards the Snitch, and every Chaser in the match seemed to have forgotten what they were there for, hanging in the air to watch. Harry was faster than Higgs. He could see the little ball ahead of him, wings whirring, darting about. He put on another burst of speed...

WHAM!

A roar of fury went up from the Gryffindors below. Marcus Flint had blocked Harry deliberately, and Harry's broom spun off course with Harry hanging on for dear life.

'Foul!' screamed the Gryffindor stand.

Madam Hooch gave Flint a piece of her mind and awarded Gryffindor a free shot at the hoops. But in the confusion, of course, the Snitch had vanished again.

Down in the stands, Dean Thomas was on his feet. 'Oi, Get him out, ref! Red thumpin card!'

'This isn't football, Dean,' said Ron, glancing round. A couple of older students were eyeing Dean up, and Ron thought it best to get him sat down quickly. 'You can't send people off in Quidditch. And what's a red card?'

Hagrid, however, was on Dean's side.

'They oughta change the rules. Flint coulda knocked Harry clean out o' the air.'

Lee Jordan was finding it hard to stay neutral.

'So, after that dark and disgusting piece of cheating...'

'Jordan!' growled Professor McGonagall.

'I mean, after that naked and transparent foul...'

'Jordan, I'm warning you...'

'All right, all right. Flint nearly murders the Gryffindor Seeker, could happen to anyone, I'm sure, so it's a penalty to Gryffindor, taken by Spinnet, who puts it away, no bother, and play goes on, Gryffindor in possession.'

It was as Harry dodged another Bludger, which went whistling past his head, that it happened. In the Slytherin stand, he noticed, Malfoy was on the very edge of her seat. For the Slytherin Seeker, no doubt. So why did she keep looking at him?

Then his broom gave a lurch.

It felt like the lurch of a horse that's had enough. For a second Harry thought he was going to fall. Then something in him set hard. No. He'd been thrown about by Dudley for ten years without crying once. A length of wood with twigs on the end was nothing to that, and he was not going to let it, whatever it was, beat him. He clung on with a stubbornness that, in one of the old Greek stories, would have been taken as a dare by some spiteful god.

It happened again. And again. And again. It was exactly as though the broom were trying to buck him off. Sod that. Not happening. But a Nimbus Two Thousand did not simply decide to throw its rider. Harry tried to turn back towards the Gryffindor hoops, half thinking of asking Wood to call time out, and found that he had no control over the broom at all. He could not turn it. He could not steer it. It was zigzagging through the air and giving sudden violent swishes that all but had him off, and the thought that went through his head, absurdly, was that he was about to make a fool of himself in front of Malfoy, and he would never hear the end of it from her.

Lee was still commentating.

'Slytherin in possession, Flint with the Quaffle, past Spinnet, past Bell, Bludger straight in the face, hope it broke his nose, only joking, Professor, Slytherin score, oh no...'

The Slytherins were cheering. Nobody seemed to have noticed that Harry's broom was behaving very oddly. It was carrying him slowly higher, away from the game, jerking and twitching as it went.

'Stop it,' Harry told it. 'No, you bloody well don't.' He felt extremely stupid, talking to a broom.

'Dunno what Harry thinks he's playin' at,' Hagrid mumbled, staring through the binoculars. 'If I didn' know better I'd say he'd lost control of his broom... but he can't have...'

All over the stands, people had started to point. The broom had begun to roll over and over, with Harry barely hanging on. Then the whole crowd gasped. The broom had given a wild jerk, and Harry had swung clean off it. He was dangling from it by one hand.

'Did something happen to it when Flint hit him?' Seamus whispered.

'Can't have,' said Hagrid, and his voice shook. 'Can't nothin' interfere with a broomstick but powerful Dark magic. No kid could do that to a Nimbus Two Thousand.'

At that, Hermione snatched the binoculars from round Hagrid's neck. But instead of looking up at Harry, she began raking the crowd. She looked at Malfoy first. It had to be Malfoy, trying to humiliate him. Yet to her great annoyance Malfoy was white as paper, half out of her seat, with both hands over her mouth, and looked as frightened as anyone in the stadium. Hermione felt a stab of irritation at that, which she did not stop to examine. She swung the binoculars on.

'What are you doing?' moaned Ron, grey in the face.

'I knew it,' Hermione breathed. 'Snape. Look.'

Ron grabbed the binoculars. Snape was in the middle of the stand opposite, his eyes locked on Harry, muttering under his breath without a pause.

'He's doing something. He's jinxing the broom,' said Hermione.

'That greasy git,' said Ron. 'What do we do?'

'Leave it to me.'

Hermione nodded once, and before Ron could say another word she had gone.

Ron turned the binoculars back on Harry. He was frightened for his best mate's life. When had Harry become his best mate? It didn't matter. He was, and he was in danger. The broom was shaking so hard now that it seemed impossible for anyone to hold on to it, and yet Harry was holding on. Ron would have called it a miracle if he hadn't watched Harry fly.

The whole crowd was on its feet, watching in terror as the Weasleys flew up to try to drag Harry on to one of their brooms, but it was no use. Each time they got near, the broom jumped higher. They dropped lower and circled underneath him instead, plainly hoping to catch him if he fell. Marcus Flint, meanwhile, picked up the Quaffle and scored five times without a soul noticing.

'Come on, Hermione,' Ron muttered.

Hermione had fought her way round to the stand where Snape stood and was racing along the row behind him. She was so angry with Snape for trying to hurt Harry that she didn'tt even stop to apologise when she knocked Professor Quirrell head first into the row in front. She reached Snape, crouched down, pulled out her wand, and whispered a few carefully chosen words. Bright blue flames leapt from the wand to the hem of Snape's robes.

It took Snape perhaps thirty seconds to realise he was on fire. A sudden yelp told her she had done her job. She scooped the flames off him into a little jar in her pocket and scrambled back along the row. Snape would never know what had happened.

Serve him right, Hermione thought. Ronald had been correct. He was a greasy git. But Harry was safe now, and that was what mattered. Harry was her friend. Harry would keep her safe. So she had to be very sure that Harry was kept safe.

It was enough. Up in the air, Harry was suddenly able to haul himself back on to his broom. It was fortunate that most of the crowd was out of earshot, because he was describing the broom, as he did it, in language that would've got him thrown out of a dockside

pub. One of the few people who did hear him was Lee Jordan.

'Harry, mate, you've been spending too much time with Ron. Pack it in.'

'For once, Mr Jordan, I agree with you,' said Professor McGonagall.

'Neville, you can look now!' said Ron. Neville had spent the last five minutes sobbing into Hagrid's coat.

Harry was speeding towards the ground when the crowd saw him clap a hand over his mouth, as though he was about to be sick. He hit the pitch on all fours, coughed, and something gold dropped into his hand.

'I've got the bloody Snitch!' he shouted. What a faff that had been.

He waved it above his head, and the match ended in complete confusion. It was certainly confusing to Harry, because across in the Slytherin stand, despite Slytherin having just lost, Dracina Malfoy was on her feet and cheering. Why, he had no idea at all. Malfoy was a very odd girl.

'He never caught it, he nearly swallowed it,' Flint was still howling twenty minutes later, but it made no difference. Harry had broken no rule, and Lee Jordan was still joyfully shouting the result. Gryffindor had won, a hundred and seventy points to sixty.

Harry heard none of it. He was in Hagrid's hut, with Ron and Hermione, being made a cup of very strong tea. Hagrid's tea was exactly as good as his baking was bad, and it was an excellent cup.

'It was Snape, that dodgy git,' Ron was explaining. 'Hermione and I saw him. He was cursing your broom. Muttering. He never took his eyes off you.'

'Rubbish,' said Hagrid, who had not heard a word of what had gone on beside him in the stands. 'Why would Snape do a thing like that?'

Harry, Ron and Hermione looked at each other, wondering how much to tell him. Harry decided on the truth.

'I found something out about him,' he said. 'He tried to get past that three-headed dog at Hallowe'en. It bit him. We think he's trying to steal whatever it's guarding.'

Hagrid dropped the teapot.

'How do you know about Fluffy?'

'Fluffy?'

'Yeah. He's mine. Bought him off a Greek chappie I met down the pub las' year. Well, I think he was Greek. He had the caravan and funny voice the greeks have.'

Harry had a growing suspicion that Hagrid was not in fact describing a Greek man.

'I Lent him to Dumbledore to guard the...'

'Yes?' said Harry eagerly.

'Now, don' ask me no more,' said Hagrid gruffly. 'That's top secret, that is.'

'But Snape's trying to steal it.'

'Rubbish,' said Hagrid again. 'Snape's a Hogwarts teacher. He'd do nothin' o' the sort.'

'Then why did he just try to kill Harry?' cried Hermione. The afternoon had clearly changed her mind about Snape. 'I know a jinx when I see one, Hagrid, I've read all about them! You have to keep your eyes on the target, and Snape never blinked once, I saw him!'

'I'm tellin' yeh, yer wrong!' said Hagrid hotly. 'I don' know why Harry's broom did what it did, but Snape wouldn' try an' kill a student! Now, you listen to me, all three of yeh. Yer meddlin' an' consortin' an' philanderin' in things that don' concern yeh. Not at all! It's dangerous. You forget that dog, an' you forget what it's guardin'. That's between Professor Dumbledore an' Nicolas Flamel...'

'Oh!' said Harry. 'So there's someone called Nicolas Flamel in it, is there?'

Hagrid looked like he wanted to and hadn't shut his big fat mouth.