Chapter 103

His vision narrowed in on the Snitch and everything else faded out of his mind. Now it was just him and the Snitch. It had not pulled out of its dive and was nearing the ground now and, despite the dangers present, Harry refused to move out of his dive either. He stuck on its tail like a magnet and refused to move away.

When the Snitch was just a few feet from the ground it pulled out of its dive, turning nearly ninety degrees exactly and began running parallel to the ground. It had not lost an ounce of momentum.

Harry jerked on the handle of his broom hard. His feet touched the grass and Harry flinched as his broom nearly flew out of control. It began shaking so erratically that he was almost sure it would simply fall apart on him. And yet, he refused to let that stop him. Not now. Not when he was so close.

The Snitch was almost right next to him now. Just a few feet away, feet that was beginning to disappear as he closed in on it.

Three feet.

He felt the broom's shuddering as he picked up speed. It wasn't going to last much longer.

Two feet.

His hands gripping the brooms handle for all it was worth, Harry narrowed his eyes and focused on the Snitch.

One foot.

Keeping a firm grip on the broom with his left hand, Harry stretched his right hand out in preparation the grab the Snitch. He was close. So close. Just a few more inches. He stretched his arm further and could feel the Snitch grazing the tips his fingers. He was—

—Harry's eyes widened as he felt the broom getting yanked out from under him and, suddenly, there was no longer any broom underneath him and he found himself airborne. He flew across the pitch but was losing altitude. Lower and lower he descended and Harry, his body and magic acting on nothing more than instinct, flung his left hand out towards the ground.

His magic came forth, cushioning him as much as it was able. It wasn't as much as he would have liked. He hit the ground arm first, then rolled end over end for several feet before stopping in a painful manner, lying on his back, gasping for air as all the oxygen was driven from his lungs.

Harry had no idea how long he laid there. His vision was blurry and there was a ringing in his ears. It could have been minutes, or it could have only been seconds. Eventually, his eyes snapped back into focus, the ringing stopped, and he became aware of the sound of rushing feet and his name being frantically called by several people.

"Harry!"

The first one to reach him was Susan Bones. The red-haired Hufflepuff looked close to tears as she knelt down next to him. She looked frantic.

"Harry! Are you ok!? Where does it hurt!?"

Harry didn't get a chance to answer, because in that moment, the rest of his friends reached him, and all of them began asking more or less the same series of questions, just worded differently by each person.

A moment of guilt passed through him as he saw that all of his female friends looked like they were on the verge of tears. Tracey was the only one who had any modicum of control, and even her eyes were beginning to water at the corners. He felt awful, like he had done something wrong, like their tears were his fault. Yet at the same time he felt... happy? Yes, he supposed that was the proper word for it. He felt happy that they were worried about him so much that they would cry for him. Happy and cared for.

He tried to suppress these feelings. Neither of them would do any good right now. Not the guilt, and not the elation.

Everyone around him was still talking, asking him if he was alright, but it all sounded like jumbled background noise that his currently addled mind couldn't make sense of. There was a pounding in his skull like that of a war drum being beaten by a troll. He must have hit his head as well, he concluded. Only when he had a concussion from one too many knocks in the skull did he have trouble understanding others.

He didn't worry about that though. Later tonight he could sort through his memories and fix them up so he could understand the separate words everyone was saying. For now, he needed to focus on calming his friends down.

"I'm fine," Harry told everyone, holding up his hand so he could get them to stop talking. It took a while, but the noise died down to a more manageable level. When he felt he would be heard over his friends, he asked, "what happened?"

"That jerk MgLaggen is what happened!" Tracey said with a scowl from where she knelt on his left. Harry looked at her and she gestured to where MgLaggen was currently surrounded by Oliver and the three Chasers. Fred and George were off to the side, but they did not look particularly pleased either. They were all yelling at the second year, but were so far away he couldn't here what they were saying. "The ponce had the gall to grab the bristles of your broom and yanked it out from under you." Her scowl darkened. "He's so lucky the others are berating him or I would have shown him some of the hexes Daphne's been teaching me."

While the comment about Daphne was interesting, Harry decided to focus on something else. Namely, what he should do with MgLaggen.

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