The Nimbus shot upwards.
Harry went with it, then the broom jerked sideways.
One leg slipped off the handle.
People around me began to stand.
“What’s he doing?” Malfoy asked.
This time, there was no amusement in his voice.
Harry clamped both hands around the broom.
For a moment, he seemed about to sit upright, but the next jerk tipped him sideways again.
I tried not to lose track of what I could see around the Nimbus.
The dark disturbance returned whenever it tried to level out.
The broom corrected its position, the foreign pressure spoiled the correction, and Harry tried to regain control.
All at once.
Only then did I notice the second spell.
It was harder to see.
It didn’t drive into the Nimbus’s magic as clearly as the first.
It appeared where things were beginning to come apart and held them in order for a moment.
I looked at Snape.
He sat almost motionless, his head raised, his lips moving slightly.
I’d known he would help.
Seeing it was something else entirely.
Two spells acted on the same broom, and for the first time, I could see the difference between what they were doing.
I wanted a closer look.
Harry suddenly dropped several metres.
My hand tightened around the edge of the bench.
All right.
Hermione would move any moment.
I looked towards Gryffindor.
She stood beside Ron with something held to her eyes.
Binoculars.
After a moment, she lowered them and spoke quickly, pointing towards the teachers.
I knew who she’d seen.
For a moment, I considered trying to reach the dark disturbance with the pressure.
I only had to interrupt it.
Perhaps.
Provided I could hit that, from this distance, rather than the spells keeping Harry in the air.
So far, I’d practised on objects hovering above a desktop.
The worst consequence of a mistake had been wood knocking against wood.
Here, the entire pitch lay beneath the broom.
I didn’t reach for the pressure.
Hermione was already pushing towards the stairs.
***
Harry lost his hold with the other leg.
Now he really was hanging beneath the Nimbus.
Someone behind me screamed so loudly that I flinched.
Malfoy stood fully, blocking part of the pitch.
“Move over.”
He didn’t hear.
I touched his sleeve and shifted sideways to see Harry again.
“That’s not normal,” Draco said.
“No.”
Blaise looked at me, then at the broom.
“Will the teachers do something?”
“They should.”
Snape already was.
But I couldn’t say how I knew.
With each jerk, I saw a brief change in the Nimbus’s magic.
The counterspell didn’t steady it completely, but at least some of its movements grew weaker.
Harry used one of those moments to adjust his grip.
Hermione disappeared behind standing students.
I looked lower, searching for her near the passage to the teachers’ section.
I caught a glimpse of robe, familiar hair, then someone moved between us again.
Come on, Granger.
Something flashed below.
A small flame appeared against black fabric.
Snape moved sharply.
Almost at the same moment, Quirrell lurched in his seat.
I couldn’t see exactly what had happened behind him.
For a moment, people blocked one another, some standing, others turning their heads.
But I saw the spells.
The one supporting the broom lost its even shape.
The dark hook jerked once more.
My eye burned so fiercely that tears blurred the scene at once.
And just then, something was exposed around Quirrell.
Not a face.
Not a figure standing behind his shoulder.
More like two things that, for a fraction of a second, no longer fitted together.
The outer layer moved with the professor.
Beneath it, something denser remained, dark and packed too tightly around his head.
I felt a familiar chill.
Like the one that sometimes accompanied the traces.
Except Quirrell was alive.
I blinked instinctively.
When I looked again, the layers overlapped once more.
Only the irregularity and a sharp throbbing beneath my eyelid remained.
I knew what he hid under the turban.
I didn’t know what I’d just been looking at, or why my eye reacted that way.
On the pitch, the Nimbus jerked one last time.
Then it steadied.
***
Harry continued hanging beneath the broom for a moment, as though he hadn’t noticed it had stopped trying to throw him off.
He hauled himself up awkwardly.
Swung a leg over the handle, slipped a little, adjusted his grip.
At last, he sat.
I breathed out.
Only then did I realise how hard I’d been holding the bench.
“He’s got it under control,” Blaise said.
Malfoy didn’t answer.
Harry leaned over the handle.
For a moment, I thought he would come down.
Instead, he accelerated sharply.
Of course.
The Snitch.
The Nimbus shot across the pitch, obedient again.
One Slytherin turned too late.
Harry swept past and dived so low that several people in front of me clutched their heads.
“What’s he doing now?” Malfoy hissed.
This time, I could have answered.
I didn’t get the chance.
Harry stretched out his hand.
Something golden flashed near his fingers, vanished, and then I saw a closed fist.
A whistle.
For a brief moment, I wasn’t certain I’d really heard it.
Gryffindor’s roar removed all doubt.
People jumped between benches, hugged and waved scarves.
Ron looked as though he wanted to run onto the pitch and find Hermione at the same time.
The mood in our section was considerably worse.
“He nearly fell off a moment ago,” someone behind me said.
I couldn’t tell whether it was an accusation or an expression of amazement.
Malfoy sat down.
He watched Harry raise the hand holding the Snitch.
“Impossible.”
Blaise leaned back on the bench.
“Apparently not.”
Draco gave him a hostile look.
I wanted to smile, but turned towards the teachers again.
Snape was standing.
A little smoke still rose from the edge of his robe, and the people beside him had moved away to give him space.
Quirrell was gone.
I searched the aisle and lower rows.
Too many heads.
Too much movement.
I wanted to see whether that darker layer was still visible.
Whether it had vanished with the spell or merely hidden beneath the professor’s magic again.
I’d missed him.
“Peverell?”
I looked at Blaise.
“What?”
“I said we can go now.”
People were standing all around us. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
“In a moment. I don’t want to push through.”
I rubbed my temple.
That wasn’t a lie.
***
The journey from the stadium took longer than the journey there.
Gryffindors stopped to tell one another what they’d all just seen.
Slytherins stopped to explain why it shouldn’t have happened.
After fifteen minutes or so, I knew four reasons Potter didn’t deserve to win and two why the Nimbus should be banned.
None concerned the attempt to throw him off it.
At the castle entrance, I parted from the others.
Draco wanted to hear what Flint would say.
I wanted a drink and to stop hearing about the result.
I paused by a tall window.
A faint reflection of my face appeared in the glass.
My left eye watered a little more than the right, but I saw no blood.
Good.
I pressed cool fingers to my temple for a moment.
That brief instant when both spells had worked together remained in my mind.
Quirrell had interfered with the broom’s corrections.
Snape had interfered with him doing that.
Until now, I’d mainly used the pressure to find out whether I could affect a spell at all.
Today, I’d seen something far more precise.
You didn’t have to disturb the whole structure.
You could target the moment it changed.
I wanted to test that on something simple.
Preferably something without Potter sitting on it.
“Oliver!”
I turned.
Harry was coming towards me, even more dishevelled than usual.
Ron stayed beside him while Hermione caught up, adjusting her bag on her shoulder.
“You’re alive,” I said.
Harry smiled uncertainly.
“Looks like it.”
“Good. The end was a bit difficult to watch.”
“A bit?” Ron cut in.
“He was hanging over the whole pitch!”
“I noticed.”
Harry glanced towards the doors.
“I don’t know what happened. It was flying normally before.”
Hermione stopped beside him.
“It wasn’t the broom’s fault.”
Ron nodded at once.
“Snape.”
I looked at him.
“What about Snape?”
“He was casting a spell. Hermione saw him.”
“He watched Harry the whole time,” she said.
“And his lips were moving.”
Harry glanced at her.
“You said he stopped when you set his robes on fire.”
I raised my eyebrows.
Reading it in a book was different from hearing Harry discuss setting a teacher alight a few paces from the stairs.
Hermione looked over her shoulder.
“Perhaps a little quieter.”
Ron lowered his voice.
“But it worked.”
I wasn’t going to argue.
Everything fitted his version of events, and explaining why it only appeared to fit would require answers to questions I didn’t want to hear.
Hermione, however, was watching me.
“You were looking towards the teachers too.”
“I was wondering whether anyone would react.”
“For a long time, though.”
I looked at Harry.
“He was hanging there for quite a while.”
He didn’t smile.
He was still trying to understand what had happened to him.
Hermione frowned.
“Quirrell was acting strangely too.”
Ron turned.
“Quirrell always acts strangely.”
“When I got there. I don’t know. Everything happened quickly.”
I gave a slight shrug.
“From where I sat, I mostly saw people standing in front of one another.”
That was true as well.
Not the whole truth.
Hermione didn’t look satisfied, but had nothing to challenge.
“Did you see anything else?” Harry asked.
“Apart from your attempt to tear the broom apart with your bare hands?”
This time, the corner of his mouth twitched.
“Nearly managed it.”
“It looked that way.”
Ron glanced along the corridor.
“We should go to Hagrid.”
Harry nodded.
Hermione watched me for another moment.
Then adjusted her bag.
“If you remember anything…”
“You’ll hear if I have anything to add.”
I wasn’t promising when.
They headed towards the exit.
Harry looked back once more.
“See you.”
I nodded and went to the dungeons.
***
Flint was explaining to several students why the match shouldn’t have ended that way.
Apparently, I’d arrived halfway through the speech.
Or during its third version.
Malfoy noticed me at the entrance.
“Peverell saw it too.”
That never boded well.
“What exactly?”
“Potter catching the Snitch.”
“Yes.”
“He could barely sit on his broom.”
“For a while, he wasn’t even managing that.”
Blaise turned his head to hide a smile.
Flint didn’t look amused.
“Then suddenly, he was flying perfectly.”
“Maybe he should start by falling off more often,” someone by the fireplace muttered.
Several people laughed.
The conversation moved away from me, and I took advantage of it.
I went to the dormitory.
After I’d washed my face, my eye looked almost normal.
The pain remained, but had become a familiar dull ache that didn’t prevent me reading.
I took out my notebook.
At the top of a new page, I wrote:
**Match.**
Beneath it, I drew a broom.
It wasn’t particularly good.
I added arrows.
That helped even less.
For several minutes, I tried to capture on paper something I’d seen only briefly.
Eventually, I abandoned the drawing and began describing it.
By the time I finished, I had more questions than statements.
***
I went to the Room of Requirement after dinner.
Not because the pain was completely gone.
It wasn’t.
But my thoughts had returned to one moment for hours, and I wanted to test it before memory began smoothing away the details.
I needed brooms, practice space and something to rest them on.
Two stands waited behind the door.
One held a broom similar to the one I’d examined the previous evening.
On the other lay an older model, its handle scratched and its twigs unevenly trimmed.
A desk stood beside them.
I approached and spread out my notes.
**Quirrell — disruption.**
**Snape — support.**
For a while, I considered the second word.
I added a question mark.
Then returned to the brooms.
Yesterday, I hadn’t wanted to press against their own enchantments because I couldn’t repair them.
Today, I still couldn’t.
But I could lift a broom just as I lifted the rod.
Then, at least, I’d know which spell was mine.
“Wingardium Leviosa.”
The broom rose a few inches above the stand.
I levelled it and waited.
I could still see the old strands along the wood.
Around them appeared the familiar trace of levitation.
I studied that one.
Calm.
Even.
I reached out with my free hand and lightly pushed the handle.
The broom shifted, turned a little, then stopped.
Something in the spell changed just before the movement ended.
I tilted my head.
Again.
This time, I pushed more gently.
I saw the change again.
I smiled.
At the stadium, everything had happened too quickly.
Here, I could repeat one movement until I no longer had to guess where to look.
I took my hand away from the wood.
On the next attempt, I reached for the pressure.
Too early.
The broom tilted and touched the stand before I could catch the moment I wanted.
I ended the spell.
“Excellent start.”
I raised it again.
This time, I waited.
A push.
Movement.
A brief change in the wisp.
Now.
The broom jerked sideways and struck the stand with its twigs.
I withdrew the pressure.
For a moment, I watched it sway in the air.
That had been more pronounced than the rod’s earlier twitches.
I hadn’t broken the entire spell.
The broom was still hovering.
I’d only disrupted part of the movement.
I tried again, more gently.
The handle turned a little further than it should have before stopping.
I laughed softly.
All right.
That no longer looked accidental.
***
I sat at the desk and recorded the attempts.
Put a cross beside the first.
For the next two, I described the direction of movement and the moment I applied pressure.
At the end, I added:
**Easier to disrupt a spell while it corrects the object’s position?**
I looked at the sentence.
I wanted to cross out the question mark.
I left it.
Three attempts didn’t make me an expert.
Particularly when one had ended before I’d really begun.
I returned to the stand.
The second part interested me just as much.
Snape hadn’t been jerking the broom around.
He’d been supporting it.
If I could apply pressure in a way that hindered a spell, could I do it in a way that helped?
I didn’t even know exactly what ‘help’ would mean.
For now, I chose a simpler aim.
Reduce the swaying.
I raised the second broom and set it moving slightly.
Then focused on the place where the magic tried to stop it.
The pressure came almost immediately.
The broom jerked harder.
No.
I tried more gently.
The same result, only weaker.
On the third attempt, nothing happened except increasing heat in my eye.
I lowered my wand and waited a moment.
It was irritating.
I could see where the spell reacted.
I could interfere with it.
When I tried anything else, the pressure still went to the place where it was easiest to disturb the whole thing.
Perhaps I was using it incorrectly.
Perhaps it couldn’t work any other way.
Or perhaps I simply needed more practice.
I raised the broom once more.
One more attempt.
This time, I let it sway longer before doing anything.
I watched the movement gradually weaken.
Found the moment.
Reached more carefully.
For a second, the oscillation stopped.
Sharp pain struck beneath my left eyelid.
I withdrew the pressure, and the broom tilted again.
I stood still.
Had it worked?
Perhaps.
I wanted to repeat the attempt immediately.
Warmth spread beneath my eye.
I touched my cheek.
A thin streak of blood marked my finger.
“Damn it.”
I ended the levitation and lowered the broom onto its stand.
What irritated me most was that it had happened now.
I’d finally got a result I couldn’t yet distinguish from the movement simply slowing on its own, and I had to stop before I could check.
I took out my handkerchief.
Pressed it beneath my eye and sat down.
***
Once the bleeding stopped, I returned to my notes.
**Disruption — two clear results.**
**Stabilisation — one possible result.
More pain.
Repeat another time.**
Below, I added:
**Easier to find a place to damage than one to strengthen.**
I didn’t know whether that was a property of the eye or simply the extent of my current ability.
For now, I wasn’t going to choose an answer because it sounded interesting.
I folded the parchment and slipped it among the earlier notes.
Before leaving, I inspected both brooms.
Nothing had broken.
The first broom’s twigs were slightly splayed where they’d struck the stand, so I straightened them by hand.
A good result, considering where I’d begun.
At the door, another thought stopped me.
At the stadium, I’d observed corrections in flight.
Here, corrections in levitation.
But people corrected their movements too.
Shifted their weight, recovered their balance, adjusted their grip on a wand.
They did it without thinking, dozens of times a minute.
The troll had backed away from me.
The boy in the library had suddenly gone pale.
I didn’t know whether that had any connection to today’s attempts.
Neither had been an object held aloft by a spell.
Even so, I returned to the desk.
On a separate page, I wrote:
**What changes in a person’s magic when they move?**
I considered the question for a while.
Then closed the notebook.
Tomorrow, I had lessons, Transfiguration homework and probably more of Malfoy’s explanations of why Gryffindor hadn’t won fairly.
For the first time that evening, I thought lessons might be useful for more than learning another spell.
In a classroom full of students, there would be plenty of movement to watch.
I left the Room of Requirement with an aching eye and in quite a good mood.