Giselle entered the yellow pavilion tent, that stood at one end of the Quidditch pitch, as the Gryffindor spectators were still whooping and cheering their team.
Slytherin had gone down in defeat just twelve minutes after Madame Hooch released the quaffle. Harry caught the snitch directly over the Slytherin bleachers, a feat that was especially sweet for his fans.
Giselle, looking out at the slowly emptying Gryffindor bleachers, saw Hermione clapping happily as she descended the steps to the grassy verge that bordered the pitch.
Giselle was half expecting Hermione to come fetch the Befriendly bookbag. But instead Hermione joined Ron at the victor's circle where Harry and his teammates were posing for photos.
This brought a heart-felt sigh of relief from Giselle. It meant, she hoped, that her experience last night in the Gryffindor common room had indeed been a dream, as Auntie was so keen to insist.
"Gather round!" said Deidre, the Hufflepuff team captain, who played the Keeper position. "Let's do a quick review of our strategy plans while we've time."
Giselle, turning back to the open tent flap, saw the Ravenclaw pavilion going up at the opposite end of the pitch, the house team strolling over to it with their brooms in hand, their captain and Seeker in front tossing back her sparkling platinum hair.
Monetta Fargo, the part Vela, was the focus of attention. She even had the Gryffindor team losing interest in their victory celebration to stare at her. But she wasn't just all-looks, she was a fierce competitor and quite amazing in her flying skills. Rumor had it that the Chudley Cannons were already approaching her with offers to play on their junior team.
"Giselle!"
"Yea, Deidre, coming."
Ham Munstead heard a bang and rattle echo through his dim, dusty shop. He rose from his chair by the sales counter and reached for his wand.
"Expelliarmus."
The wand leaped to the outstretched left hand of Snape.
"Severus! Ods bodkins, man, you've given me a fright!"
"It is expedient for me that we have complete privacy, Munstead. Your shop is now closed, 'for repairs,' and will remain so until you satisfy my curiosity concerning the necromancer's weave. I see you have several bolts of the fabric on your shelves, next to the jars of graveyard dirt."
The shop owner bit his lip in perplexity. "Aye, that I do. And I be wondering why you feel a need to confiscate my wand if this is to be a routine exchange. Ten galleons for ten meters of weave. A good bargain, Severus. And seeing as how you are a fellow Death Eater, loyal to our Dark Lord's unholy memory, I shall sweeten the bargain. I shall include, free of charge, a box of fire-hardened bezeors of the cockatrice type. A five-galleon value, free with your purchase of the weave."
Snape smiled grimly. "Your glib offer doesn't interest me," he said, going over to Munstead with his yew wand held menacingly. "A blond woman was here not very long ago, and she purchased a length of the weave. I wish you to reveal her identity."
Munstead, who was a strongly built man with a scarred granite-like face,
began to tremble like a boy. "An odd request coming from one who was Lord Voldemort's most trusted lieutenant."
Snape held his wand level with the shop owner's chest. "Munstead, I have a role to play at Hogwarts and I must maintain my cover in the event the Dark Lord returns. Reveal the lady's identity."
"I can't! No, I won't!"
Snape's voice deepened. "You don't want me for an enemy."
"Severus, listen to me! I made an Unbreakable Vow of Secrecy! I can not divulge the woman's identity, for if I do--!"
Snape stared at the frightened, pleading eyes for a tense moment, his jaw muscles flexing. Then, with no hint of regret, he said, "Unfortunately for you, I must pretend to place a higher value on the lives of Hogwarts students than on your life, Munstead."
He tapped his wand on the man's temple. When he withdrew it a shiny filiment emerged from the head and wrapped itself around the wand.
Munstead cried out, dropping to his knees.
"Somnolus," Snape intoned, and the shop owner fell into a death-like sleep, lying in the fetal position on the dusty floorboards.
The potions master pointed his wand at the counter top.
"Accio, Pensieve."
He waited, feeling in his gut a sense of swift motion.
Moments later the curtained window in the shop door erupted in a spray of glass shards as a stone bowl came revolving slowly into the room and settled on the counter.
Snape flicked his wand. The filiment of memory dropped into the colorless liquid of the Penseive.
Hesitating, he leaned over the bowl. There came the familiar sensation of flight, of a cosmic shift in time...
Too high! Oh much too high!
Giselle had glimpsed the snitch lingering near the base of a goal hoop, far below, and now she angled down and went flying as fast as her Meteor 500 could go.
Through the whistling wind of her descent she heard the crowd shouting, as it always did when the snitch made an appearance. The Chasers continued their zigzagging flight toward the goal hoops, Ravenclaw with the quaffle, but the Beaters turned their attention to the Seekers.
Just as Giselle was zeroing in on the drifting snitch, a bludger grazed the end of her broomstick. The contact twisted her off course. She barely missed colliding with a goal post, but recovered quickly, circling back with an eye on Monetta.
The Vela had been loitering at the far end of the pitch, but now she was storming after the rising, spiraling snitch as Giselle rose straight up to cut her off.
Somewhere behind her a Hufflepuff Beater sent a bludger flashing past Giselle's shoulder. It caused Monetta to swerve radically.
Now the Hufflepuff crowd were pointing toward the Ravenclaw bleachers. Seeing this, Giselle shot toward the canvas tower where rows of Ravenclaws were waving their blue scarves, hoping to distract her.
Monetta did a backward somersault on her sleek Nimbus at great speed, drawing a gasp from all the spectators. In the next moment she was ahead of Giselle, soaring upward toward the golden glimmer of the snitch. Giselle's heart plummeted.
And then she saw something totally unexpected.
Hermione sat in the top row holding the bookbag. Her face was expressionless.
As Giselle flew past the canvas tower, unable to catch up with Monetta, she felt the strangest feeling ever. She even glanced from side to side to see if she really did have giant bat wings.
No, of course not. But it certainly felt like it! It felt so astonishingly real that she didn't doubt it for a second.
She went whizzing so swiftly past Monetta that the Vela's cape was blown forward over her head, temporarily blinding her.
The snitch was not cooperating. In fact, had Giselle not felt so invincibly
quick she couldn't have hoped to catch it. It was doing vertical figure-8's in a blur of motion.
But catch it she did, swirling around after it until she was dizzy. Her left hand enclosed it. The Hufflepuff crowd was on their feet yelling. Lee Jordan's amplified voice announced:
"Giselle McGonagall with the snitch! A come from behind victory for Hufflepuff, one-seventy to eighty!"
As she came gliding down toward the victor's circle, her team mates congregating around her, she opened her hand and was mildly shocked to see that the snitch was a bright green.
But only for a moment.
She let it go floating down to the equipment box at Madame Hooch's feet. And, for only a moment, the palm of her hand was green.
The little bell above the shop door tinkled.
Snape, invisible by the shelves of braided goblin hair, a ghostly sensation coming over him, watched the door open and the lovely blond customer in a dark brocaded gown come in, clutching a money pouch.
"A great pleasure this is!" said Munstead, his nervous hands stroking the counter top.
"I trust you will not disappoint me," the woman said, glancing out at the alley before softly closing the door.
"Never in my life would I think it, Mrs Malfoy."
Narcissa looked doubtful. "I shall see that you don't," she said.
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