Ron-Weasly book 1. V2

Harry swooped down sharply. Slytherin team seeker Terence Higgs also saw the Snitch. He and Harry rushed towards him at the same time, and all the hunters froze in the air, forgetting about their ball and intently watching Harry and Higgs compete in agility and speed.

Harry was faster than Higgs...

"boom!"

From the stands, there was an indignant roar from the Gryffindor fans — Marcus Flint, as if by accident, crashed into Harry at full speed, and he flew away, clinging to a broom and thinking only about how to stay in the air.

"Violation!" it came from the stands. I was shouting and shaking my fists.

It's good that the brooms have a protective field and you still have to try to fall off it.

Madam Hooch stopped the game with a whistle and, after making a strict suggestion to Flint, awarded a free kick towards the Slytherin goal. As for the snitch, when there was a commotion on the field, the golden ball, as expected, disappeared in an unknown direction.

"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.

Chapter 10.1 Comfort in the living room.

Professor Binns, as always, was mumbling something about medieval laws about magical creatures, and his voice blended with the soft rustle of pages and the clink of inkwells. Trying to look like I was paying attention, I was actually stealthily holding a Transfiguration textbook just below my desk and trying to read the chapter on button transfiguration.

Nearby, Lavender rested her cheek on her palm and looked at Padma with sincere curiosity:

"Is it true that in India cows are like... well, almost like domestic dragons? Does everyone love them, and can they do anything?"

Padma smiled a little, as if she was pleased that someone was even asking about her native land, and not about Quidditch or potions.

"Not exactly like dragons," she said softly, trying not to shout over the professor's monotonous voice, but so that Lavender would definitely hear. "But yes, they are very respected. Our cows are called "gau mata", that is, "mother cow". Not because they give a lot, but because they give everything without demanding anything."

Lavender leaned a little closer, as if afraid to miss a word:

"All? How's that?"

"Well, milk, of course," Padma began counting off her fingers, as if listing the ingredients for a potion. Ghee is made from milk, which is ghee. It is eaten and used in rituals. Manure also sounds strange, but it is needed: they fertilize the land, dry it and burn it as fuel, even smear the walls with it so that insects do not enter the house. And urine... in Ayurveda, it is used for medicinal formulations.

I was listening to this conversation out of the corner of my ear and flipping through the textbook, I couldn't stand it and snorted softly without looking up from the textbook:

"Urine? Seriously?"

Padma squinted at me, but without anger-more with the patient smile of an older sister:

"Seriously. And that's not the strangest thing. The strangest thing is that people treat the cow as a wet nurse and protector. They don't kill her, they take care of her. Even the bulls who plow the fields are respected as helpers."

Lavender nodded thoughtfully, as if trying to put it all in her head:

"I mean, it's like... a magical cow. The only magic is that it just exists."

Padma smiled.

"Exactly."

Professor Binns finally paused, as if he remembered that there were real people in the classroom, and looked around the audience with a translucent gaze:

"So, who can say what impact the laws of 1289 had on the status of pets in the magical community?"

Lavender immediately raised her hand, eager to tell him about the cows, but the professor didn't seem to notice her. But I looked up, realizing that the silence had become suspicious:

"Well, have they become more... secure?"

Binns blinked:

"That's generally true. Pets received a special status, as they often became bearers of family charms and keepers of ancestral secrets."

Padma added softly, not for the professor anymore, but for Lavender and me:

"Here. Even in the magical world, they are valued not only for their strength or teeth. Sometimes the most important thing is that they are just there and help every day."

I went back to my textbook, but it wasn't so intense anymore. And I thought for a second: but the cow really looks something like Mrs. Norris — it doesn't growl, it doesn't do magic, it just keeps order in its corner of the world.

* * *

Christmas was approaching. As promised, I wrote to my mother about the gift for Harry. Let him be happy. I used my pocket money to order chocolate for him and Hermione. Harry likes milk with nuts, and Hermione likes bitter with almost no sugar. In the middle of December, when everyone woke up in the morning, they found that the castle was covered with a thick layer of snow, and the huge lake was frozen.

On the same day, the twins received several penalty points for conjuring snowballs they had made, and they began flying after Professor Quirrell, crashing into the back of his head. The few owls who managed to fight their way through the blizzard that morning to deliver mail to school were on the verge of death. And Hagrid had to tinker with them thoroughly before they could fly again. Only Hedwig circled around the castle like a ghost, scaring the students.

As before, I'm sitting with my legs tucked under me, my sweater is warm, and a mug of hot tea is in my hands. Brownies bring tea to the living room if asked. I'm telling another story about the brothers, exaggerating a bit, and laughing at it myself.

Harry listens, nodding from time to time, sometimes smiling, but more often he just watches me brighten up when I speak. For Harry, this is also a comfort: to see that a friend feels good. He adjusts his robe on his shoulders and reaches for a cookie that someone brought with the cocoa.

Hermione is sitting with her feet on a low pouf, her textbook is open in front of her, but she keeps getting distracted by my story. Her pencil freezes in the margins, she smiles out of the corner of her lips, and then she makes a note in the margins: "don't forget to ask about the heating spell." She wants everything to be right, but she already understands that comfort is not only about order, but also about these evenings when you can just be around.