Ron-Weasly book 1. V2 part 9

"Kick him off the field, Referee!" Dean Thomas shouted from the podium, still not calming down. "Give him a red card!"

This is normal for professional Quidditch, although Slytherin plays a bit dirty.

"Dean, you've probably forgotten that you're not at your favorite football game", I reminded him. "In Quidditch, you don't get kicked off the field. By the way, what is a red card?"

To my surprise, Hagrid took Dean's side.

"So they need to change the rules, yes! After all, this Flint could easily knock Harry to the ground!"

That's the order of the day. Although they usually try to shoot down siker's with bludgers. Or they lure each other to the ground with feints.

Commentator Lee Jordan, knowing full well that he must be dispassionate, nevertheless could not resist stating his position.

"So, after an obvious, deliberate and therefore dishonest and disgusting violation..."

"Jordan!" Professor McGonagall snarled.

"I mean," Jordan corrected himself, "After this blatant and disgusting forbidden reception..."

"Jordan, I'm warning you..." McGonagall interrupted him.

"Good, good. So, Flint almost killed Harry Potter's Gryffindor team hunter, but without a doubt, this can happen to anyone."

Jordan's words were laced with undisguised irony, but there was nothing Professor McGonagall could do about it.

"Gryffindor takes a free kick, Spinnet takes it, she passes it back, Gryffindor still has the ball, and..."

Lee continued to comment on the game.

"Slytherin has the ball... Flint misses the ball, it ends up at the Spinner... Spinnet makes a pass to Bell... Bell gets hit hard in the face with a bludger, hopefully the bludger broke her nose... Just kidding, just kidding, Professor... Slytherin throws the ball. Oh, no..."

The Slytherin fans applauded in unison. A green wave passed through the stands. Ravenclaw, as usual, was rooting for Slytherin, Halfpuff for Gryffindor.

Everyone's attention was focused on the game.

"I don't understand what Harry is doing there. What's he thinking, huh?" Hagrid muttered, watching Harry through the binoculars. "If I didn't know better, I'd say he wasn't driving the broom, she was driving it... No, he can't..."

Suddenly, someone shouted loudly and drew attention to Harry, and all eyes turned to him. His broom turned sharply in the air, then again, but he barely held on to it. And then the whole stadium gasped. The broom suddenly jumped, tilted, and finally threw Harry off. He was hanging from the broom now, one hand gripping the handle.

So, the field went down. Did they break his broom? I hope they catch him if he falls.

"Did something happen to her when Flint crashed into him?" Seamus whispered.

"No, it shouldn't be like that," said Hagrid in a trembling voice. "Nothing bad can happen to a broom like that, unless there's Dark Magic involved, and strong magic at that. The kid can't do that with a Nimbus."

Hearing these words, Hermione snatched the binoculars from Hagrid, but instead of looking at Harry, she pointed it at the crowd of spectators, peering intently at her. My friend was looking at the teachers' podium, and she was swearing.

"What are you doing?" I groaned, feeling the blood drain from my face.

If he falls from such a height, he may die or be injured.

"I knew it," said Hermione, "Snape, look."

I grabbed the binoculars. Snape was sitting on the podium directly in front of us. His gaze was focused on Harry, and he was muttering incessantly to himself.

"He's bewitching a broom," Hermione explained.

"So what do we do?"

"Leave it to me."

Before I could say anything, Hermione disappeared. It looks like we can only wait. I turned the binoculars back on Harry. His broom was vibrating so violently that it was clear he didn't have long to hang on to it. The audience jumped to their feet and gaped in horror at what was happening. My brothers rushed to Harry's aid, hoping to reach out to him and drag him onto one of their brooms. But nothing worked — as soon as they got within a suitable distance, the broom would soar up sharply. The twins dropped down a bit and circled underneath Harry, obviously hoping to catch him when he started to fall.

"Come on, Hermione," I whispered. She ran across the stadium to Snape, and after a while everything stopped. Harry suddenly managed to climb onto the broom. Uff the field is working.

"Neville, you can open your eyes!" I shouted. Neville had been sitting with his face buried in Hagrid's jacket for the last five minutes, crying loudly.

Judge Hooch did not stop the game, the game stopped on its own, but still no one understood why Harry, having climbed on the broom, suddenly swooped down. The attention of the entire stadium was still focused on him, so everyone could clearly see how he suddenly raised his hand to his mouth, as if he was about to vomit. Harry leveled the broom near the ground, rolled off it, falling to all fours, coughed, and something flashed in his hand.

"I've caught the Snitch!" He shouted loudly, holding the golden ball high above his head. The game ended in complete confusion.

"He didn't catch it, he almost swallowed it." Flint was still howling twenty minutes later, but no one was listening to him, because it didn't matter, because Harry hadn't broken the rules of the game. Lee Jordan happily shouted the result into the microphone: the Gryffindor team won with a score of 170:60. Damn, when did we manage to score five more goals?

Immediately after Harry showed everyone the golden ball he had caught, Hermione, Hagrid, and I took him to Hagrid's hut. And now he was sitting in it and drinking strong tea. We were still reeling from the experience, especially Harry. But the herbal tea has already begun to take effect. I inhaled the soothing scent of honey and mint and took a sip from the cup.

"It's all Snape," I explained fervently to Harry. "Hermione and I saw everything. He looked at you without taking his eyes off you and whispered incantations."

"Nonsense," said Hagrid indignantly, who, when strange things began to happen to Harry, was watching him with such intensity that he did not hear what Hermione and I were whispering on the podium, and did not notice that Hermione had gone somewhere. "Why would Snape do such a thing?"

Harry, Hermione, and I looked at each other, wondering if we should tell Hagrid the truth.

"I've found out something about him," Harry informed Hagrid. "On Halloween, he tried to get past a three-headed dog. The dog bit him. We think he was trying to steal what this dog is guarding."

Hagrid dropped the teapot in surprise. Well, it was empty.

"How did you find out about the Fluffy?" He asked when he could speak again.

Now we have lost coherent speech.

"About Fluffy?"

"Well, yes, that's my puppy. I bought it from a... uh... The Greek boys, we met last year... well ... in a bar," Hagrid explained. And then I lent Dumbledore a Fluffy to guard him...

What a puppy. Although, considering Hagrid's size, it suits him. But taking Cerberus to school?! Was the Headmaster even thinking about the students? We're not the only ones who broke into the forbidden corridor. Fred said that all the senior Gryffindor students had been in that hallway.

"What?" Harry asked quickly.

"All right, stop asking me questions here," muttered Hagrid. "It's a secret. The most secret secret, do you understand?"

"But Snape tried to steal this thing," Harry persisted.

"Nonsense," Hagrid waved him off, "Snape is a teacher at Hogwarts School. He wouldn't do anything like that in his life."

"Then why did he try to kill Harry?" Hermione cried.

It seems that after everything that happened today, she has radically changed her view of Snape, whom she defended against the accusations of Harry and me yesterday.

"I know what curses are, Hagrid. I've read all about them and I can immediately understand when someone is trying to curse something! In order to cast a spell, eye contact is needed, and Snape did not take his eyes off Harry, did not even blink once. I was watching him through binoculars, and then I saw when I crept up on him!

"And I'm telling you, it's not true!" Hagrid blurted out, looking flustered. "I don't know what happened to Harry's broom, but Snape would never do something like that to try to kill a student! Anyway, you three, listen up: You're meddling in matters that don't concern you at all, yes! You'd better forget about a Fluffy and forget about what it's guarding, too. This thing only concerns Dumbledore and Nicholas Flamel..."

"Yeah!" said Harry, pleased. "So someone named Nicholas Flamel is involved, right?"

Hagrid looked terribly angry with himself. But he couldn't change anything.