Chapter 60 - Seizing Glory

Above the pitch, Potter's face snapped into total concentration. He charged straight at the Slytherin formation. Draco followed without hesitation, as if he genuinely believed Potter had spotted the Golden Snitch.

The feint caught both Slytherin Beaters at once. Bole and Derrick both lunged for Potter, got played, and crashed into each other.

Lee Jordan burst out laughing. "Ha! Looks like if Slytherin wants to catch Harry on his Firebolt, they'd better set off a day early!"

Millicent Bulstrode shot him a flat look. "Classic feint. Potter makes a fake Snitch run, draws two Beaters and one Seeker, one move for three targets. He slipped both Beaters and sent them straight into each other. Slytherin's coordination needs serious work."

Draco didn't let his teammates' blunder touch him. He held to the plan they'd laid out beforehand: stick close to Harry Potter, scan constantly, find the Golden Snitch.

Gryffindor penalty!

Gryffindor scored!

Gryffindor up by sixty points. Ten more, and they'd start chasing the Snitch.

The Gryffindor students screamed themselves raw. Slytherin screamed back. Even Praeris and Daphne Greengrass were on their feet.

The match had hit its pivot.

Up in the commentary box, both voices had roughened. Neither Millicent nor Lee Jordan sounded anything like they had at the opening whistle.

Lee Jordan lost it entirely at one point, went full sailor, and Professor McGonagall confiscated his microphone.

Slytherin was losing. Draco should have been furious. Should have been raging, going at the opposition the way his teammates were. His head was already running hot. The old him would have done exactly that without thinking twice.

But Draco, somehow, let all of it go. He clamped down on the instinct.

"The moment you get angry is the moment you lose. Don't sacrifice your judgment over this, or forget about winning."

She had said things like that to him more than once over these past few months. As if in her eyes he was nothing but a brainless beast driven by feeling, one prod away from losing every shred of sense and collapsing in an instant.

That look she had. Pitying. Patient. The same careful tone Professor McGonagall used when walking Neville Longbottom through something for the third time. Every time, it scraped at something inside him. She thought nothing of him. Thought he couldn't do it.

Since first year, Draco had felt it more than once: this girl, with her miserable family and her small circle and her frail body and her strange ways, looked down on him.

Who did she think she was?

And yet it was her. The one who stopped him from going after Potter over the dragon. The one who pulled him out after the Hippogriff. The one who looked straight through him.

Which only kept telling him the same thing: give it up. She's that sharp, she sees right through you. She said you'd fail because of anger, because of fixating on Potter. So if you let it, you will.

Harry Potter surged forward again. Draco's instinct said dive, chase him down, but he split his attention, kept sweeping for any trace of gold.

Seventy points. They weren't there yet, right?

Praeris had said it flat out: in this situation, Potter had no intention of catching the Snitch.

A faint gold flash. Wrong direction.

Draco stiffened. He broke off his line without thinking and shot toward it.

Harry Potter hadn't expected his decoy run to be seen through. He wrenched his broom around and charged after Draco. The Firebolt ate up the distance between them at a terrifying rate.

Bole sent a Bludger screaming at Harry. Harry dropped flat against his broom and let it pass.

Fred launched another one. Draco barely dodged it.

The two Seekers closed on each other. Closed on the Snitch.

"Do you like running away?"

"Have you finished delivering your loser's manifesto?"

"I'm waiting —"

"Waiting for Slytherin's victory —"

And then, in the end, it was Praeris's voice. There at his ear.

Soft. Warm. Steady. That scent of bitter herbs and old parchment woven through every word: "This is Felix Felicis. You know I have some talent with potions. Drink it before the match. Trust your instincts at the crucial moment. Don't hesitate. You'll win."

Draco couldn't have explained what happened next, not rationally. He had barely known hardship as a child, so he feared pain and feared worse. His parents had kept him content in every way that mattered, which meant even the smallest disappointment could crack him wide open.

This was the first time he had ground through this much. This much time, this much effort, wanting something badly enough to bleed for it. Wanting to prove himself. Wanting to take the win.

Something moved through him then. Something strange and enormous, the kind of thing that had no business existing for someone like him. It got his hand off the broom. It threw him forward.

This must be the Felix Felicis.

He had drunk Felix Felicis. He would beat Potter to it. He absolutely would.

2/3 of Draco's body cleared the broom. His hand skimmed past Potter's. Then he and the broom hit Potter together, and they were both falling.

A wall of sound crashed up from the stands. Two figures, one green and one red, dropped like birds shot mid-flight.

Madam Hooch was already in the air, but the players got there first. Both Seekers had been pulled apart by their teams before she reached them.

"Who has the Golden Snitch?" Miles shouted.

"Who won?" Wood's voice was tight.

"Harry! Harry, are you alright? Harry!" Fred was running his hands everywhere, checking.

"Draco, are you okay?" Marcus got an arm under Draco's shoulders.

Harry was curled in on himself. Draco was screaming in sharp, broken waves, clutching the arm the Hippogriff had already broken once, rolling with the pain.

"Let him go, move aside, let me see!" Madam Hooch pushed through.

Draco heard her. With a shaking hand, he pressed something into Marcus's grip. He sucked in a breath through his teeth and forced the words out, one at a time: "Tell that arrogant Prince, I won. The loser isn't me."

The Golden Snitch opened its wings in Marcus's hand, buzzing faintly.

The moment it appeared, Miles grabbed Bole in a stranglehold: "It's Draco! Draco got it! He outflew the Firebolt! He took the Golden Snitch!"

Millicent Bulstrode planted a shoulder into Lee Jordan, who was craning over her trying to see, and roared into the mic: "At the final moment, Slytherin seized the opening! Draco Malfoy lunged ahead of Harry Potter, threw himself at the Golden Snitch, and took the victory! Congratulations to Slytherin!"

"Ah!" Pansy locked her arms around Praeris and screamed. "Draco won! Draco won!"

Praeris exhaled. She smiled, genuinely, and hugged Pansy back.

In the Slytherin changing room, Draco had already been rushed to Madam Pomfrey, but the room was still crammed wall to wall with Slytherins who had come to be near the victory.

Millicent caught Praeris's hands. "Prae, you have no idea how close it was. Draco's Nimbus could never outrun the Firebolt, but he saw through Potter's feint, found the Snitch's real position, and moved first."

"Potter needed time to turn. That was Draco's window, but Potter still closed the gap. The Firebolt and his instincts together are just too much to beat. I still don't know how Draco pulled it off at the end. That margin, that tiny margin, and he still got there. Aaahh! He's unbelievable!"

Marcus, catching Millicent's wrecked voice across the crowd, finally found Praeris.

He shouldered through the press of green and silver and looked at Millicent. "My apologies, esteemed commentator. I need to borrow your clever friend."

Praeris blinked, and then Marcus had her by the wrist and was pulling her out of the changing room. They ended up in an empty corridor, around a turn where no one could see.

"Little P, I owe you and Stella." Marcus cut straight to it. "There's a bottle in my dorm. Tell Stella to come collect."

Praeris made a face. "Don't pick up her habits. I don't need a nickname."

"OK, fine. Prae." Marcus almost looked apologetic. "And you, obviously. Whatever you want, tell me before break."

"That's really all you brought me out here for?" Praeris didn't believe it.

Marcus pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. "There's more. Draco said, look, I think he was running on adrenaline, and maybe you should hear it from him directly, because I don't think it's what he actually meant..."

Praeris looked at him. "Don't act like a nervous best man at a wedding. Just say it. Do I look like I have a glass heart to you?"

Marcus still looked pained. "He said. He said, 'Tell that arrogant Praeris — I won.'"

Praeris raised an eyebrow. "So the last thing he used his remaining strength to say, before passing out, was a taunt aimed at me. Is that right."

"I don't think that's what it was. He probably wanted to announce his victory to you." Marcus was clearly trying to find a better angle.

"Arrogant?"

"Uh —"

Praeris patted him on the shoulder. "I'm winding you up. With that mouth, what exactly was he going to say?"

Marcus let out a long breath. "I was genuinely afraid you'd come at me. Word around the dungeons is you know hundreds of poisons."

"That's what happens when rumors travel. My exact words were dozens..."

"Isn't that still quite a lot?"

That night, Slytherin ran wild until the small hours. They celebrated with everything they had, and they didn't need the person who had actually won the thing to be there to do it.

They went until 1 in the morning, when Professor Snape finally ran out of patience and came down to tell them to sleep.

Praeris lay in bed, watching the curtains drift, and thought: this is a good feeling.

This win had cost her.

It started with that conversation with Draco, when she began quietly steering him toward the thing he'd been refusing to look at.

Then she had brought Stella in, and together they had built a new tactical approach aimed specifically at Harry Potter.

And then, last, she had needed to trick him. A placebo. Just enough borrowed courage to get him through the moment.

Right. A placebo.

Specifically: honey water. Safe, harmless, completely inert.

Would the Dark Lord make his move this year? Would Harry Potter stop him again, the way he always had? Would he take away what Draco had worked himself half to death to win?

Praeris didn't know.

Against the possibility of the Dark Lord's return, one Quidditch cup meant almost nothing. She understood why Dumbledore kept putting Potter at the center of things, rewarding him and his friends with a hundred points, two hundred points at a stroke. He was building something. Preparing someone.

Praeris saw it. She couldn't fault the logic.

But if Harry Potter decided to act this year, Praeris was not going to stand back and let it happen.

Dumbledore could be a Gryffindor in his sympathies. That was his right as a man. But as headmaster, that same bias had been cutting into Slytherin for years, and the wound hadn't closed.

It was time for something to belong to them. Wasn't it.

Unlike last time, when he'd been flat on his back in Madam Pomfrey's ward for days, Draco was back the very next morning.

Arm in a sling. Absolutely insufferable. Telling everyone who would stand still long enough about what he had done.

"Yes, it was incredibly dangerous!" Draco announced, with the full theatrical gravity of someone who had stormed a fortress. "Potter tried to trick me, tried to make me think he'd found the Golden Snitch! But I saw through him instantly. I didn't even look at him. One second, and I had the Snitch's position locked."

"So you're basically unstoppable?"

"Naturally!" He swept his good hand through the air. "So what if Potter had a Firebolt? I came out of nowhere like a Muggle bullet and had the Snitch before he could blink. Unfortunately Potter is the petty type, couldn't stand seeing me win, so he deliberately knocked me off my broom."

"Now that's genuinely arrogant."

"What do you mean arroga —"

Draco went still. Completely still, mid-sentence, like something had seized up inside him. He turned around slowly.

A pair of dark eyes looked back at him.

"Right," Praeris said, very quietly. "Who exactly is arrogant? I'm genuinely curious."

One minute later, Draco stood in the corridor facing the windows, studying the sky and the grounds and the trees and the birds with intense concentration. Anything. Anyone but Praeris.

"100 Galleons." Praeris extended her hand, perfectly pleasant about it.

Draco made a confused sound.

Praeris looked at him with exaggerated astonishment. "Excuse me? The Malfoy heir is trying to skip out on the bill? Felix Felicis, and you don't think it's worth 100 Galleons? There are people who would want it and never get the chance."

"Ah, well, I don't actually have that much on me right now..."

The panic that crossed his face was immediate. Draco was not a person who worried about money. He never had been.

His mother had sent him plenty this year, that was true. But he had also spent without thinking, the way he always did, and he'd been to Hogsmeade several times on top of that. Somewhere along the way, unrestrained and untracked, his pocket money had drained down to thirty-odd Galleons by end of term.

Nowhere near enough to pay for his "Felix Felicis."

➤ Next: Felix Felicis