"There's no other choice!" Flint turned sharply, his gaze cutting across the substitutes' bench and settling on Henry without hesitation.
"You." He crossed to him in a few strides, his shadow falling over Henry where he sat. "How's your form?"
"Perfect, Captain," Henry replied.
Flint stared at him for two full seconds, then landed a heavy clap on his shoulder.
"Get up there. You don't need to catch the Snitch right away, just stay on Potter. Don't give him a clean run at anything." He lowered his voice, the words coming out in a controlled growl. "We're up by forty. If you can keep Potter off the Snitch until we're ahead by more than one hundred and fifty, we win on the tiebreaker even if he catches it then. Understand?"
"Understood, Captain."
Henry turned, gave Draco and the others a brief thumbs-up, and mounted his Nimbus 2000.
"Slytherin requests a substitution!" Madam Hooch's amplified voice rang across the pitch. "Seeker Terence Higgs is withdrawn due to a broken broom and injury. Replacing him: Henry Wales!"
When a first-year in dark green Seeker's robes rose into the air on a brand-new Nimbus 2000, the stadium went momentarily silent, and then broke into a noise considerably louder than before.
"Another first-year Seeker!"
"It's Wales! Slytherin's prince!"
"First year against first year, Merlin's beard!"
"Can he actually do this? Higgs had three seasons behind him!"
"That Nimbus 2000 looks new, at least..."
In the Gryffindor stands, Ron stared. "They put Henry in? He's a reserve player."
Hermione pressed her lips together. "The rules allow a substitution when a player is injured or their broom is broken. The timing is very convenient, though."
Harry looked across the pitch at his new opponent, his feelings genuinely complicated. He and Henry had had a good afternoon at Hagrid's hut. But this was a different kind of territory entirely.
He gave Henry a brief nod. Henry returned it, composed and unhurried.
On the bench, Draco pumped his fist with visible excitement before catching Flint's eye and falling immediately silent. Flint had already turned back to the field, his expression grim.
Staking the outcome on a first-year reserve was very far from what he had planned. But there was no other option available to him.
Farley watched from the stands with her usual stillness, adjusting her gold-rimmed glasses and crossing one leg over the other.
Madam Hooch blew her whistle, and play resumed.
Henry rose quickly to the high position Seekers occupied, taking his place on the opposite side of the field from Harry.
He did not go looking for the Snitch. Instead he followed Flint's instructions precisely: watch Harry Potter, and make his movements difficult.
The Nimbus 2000 responded exactly as he directed, the weeks of intensive training having made his control considerably more precise than it had been on his first flight.
He moved without flourish, settling into an alert, watchful pattern, always positioned, always ready to shift in any direction.
Harry felt the difference almost immediately. Higgs had worked through experience and misdirection, drawing Harry toward positions that suited him.
Henry's approach was different: he did not provoke and did not feint. He simply moved a fraction of a second before Harry committed to a direction, consistently closing off the most convenient line before Harry had fully decided to take it.
In the Ravenclaw stands, Cho Chang watched with quiet attention. "He's not in any rush to find the Snitch," she said to the student beside her. "He's controlling the space around Potter and wearing him down. Slytherin can afford to wait."
"His technique is genuinely good," a Ravenclaw boy said, adjusting his glasses. "Almost no wasted movement. The broom responds to him as though it's an extension of his own body."
The match ground on. Slytherin exploited a brief lapse in Gryffindor's concentration and extended their lead to fifty, then Gryffindor's twin Beaters launched a sustained counter-campaign of dazzling intercepts and bold passing that began to create real problems for Slytherin's Chasers.
"George Weasley!brilliant! He clips the tail of Slytherin Chaser Bole's broom! Bole loses his line—Angelina Johnson takes the Quaffle! She's through—and she scores! Fifty to ten! The comeback is on!"
The Gryffindor stands erupted.
Slytherin answered immediately on the next possession. Sixty to ten.
Henry watched from above, noting the moment when Slytherin scored and Harry involuntarily glanced at the scoreboard, a brief, involuntary tightening around his eyes.
The psychological lift that Higgs' exit had handed Slytherin was draining away. The pressure was returning to Gryffindor.
Time passed. Both sides scored in turn. Bole had to leave the field, Gryffindor converted the resulting space into two quick goals, and the score settled at seventy to fifty.
Slytherin still led, but the margin was narrowing.
Flint circled above his Chasers, waving his arms and shouting with the controlled fury of someone watching his plan erode in real time.
Henry remained high above it all, his attention on Harry. From this position he could read the momentum more clearly than anyone below.
Gryffindor's energy was rising. Harry's eyes had taken on a particular quality, focused, intent, beginning to sharpen into something that meant he had spotted something, or was very close to it.
Then Harry's broom lurched.
Without any warning or apparent cause, the Nimbus 2000 beneath Harry bucked violently. Harry threw himself forward and gripped the handle with both hands, but the broom had begun to twist and spin in a way that had nothing to do with its rider, wild, irregular rotations interspersed with sudden sharp dives followed by equally sudden upward jerks, as though something had seized control of it entirely.
"What is happening?" Lee Jordan's commentary had lost its performance quality and taken on something genuinely alarmed. "Harry Potter's broom appears to be malfunctioning! It is completely out of control!"
The noise from the Gryffindor stands cut off mid-roar, replaced by a sharp collective intake of breath, then cries of alarm.
Hermione was on her feet in an instant, both hands pressed over her mouth. Ron went pale beside her.
Harry was being thrown through a series of genuinely dangerous manoeuvres, spiralling flips, plunging dives arrested only at the last possible moment, violent wrenching motions that seemed aimed at throwing him sideways toward the stands and the stone of the nearest tower.
He held on with every part of himself, his knuckles bloodless around the handle, his body fighting each motion with the instinctive desperation of someone who knows what happens if they let go.
Madam Hooch's whistle sounded in a long, urgent series of blasts. She moved toward Harry on her own broom, but his trajectory was too erratic and unpredictable to approach safely.
On the Slytherin bench, Draco's expression moved through shock and settled, in a way that suggested he was aware this was probably the wrong response, into something that looked like satisfaction. "Potter's broom is finished—"