The angle on the shot Ron had just knocked away hadn't been especially tricky, so the save itself wasn't much of a challenge.
But even so, it was the first successful save Gryffindor's Keeper had managed all match—not counting the ones Slytherin had simply shot wide. It was enough to send Gryffindor's morale soaring.
A roar of cheers erupted from the Gryffindor stands.
Cho Chang, Neville, Dean, Lavender, Parvati, and the rest leapt to their feet, waving their arms with wild enthusiasm.
Hermione threw her arms around Sherlock and squeezed hard.
Luna, watching this, took on a thoughtful expression.
"It's decided."
Just then, Sherlock spoke.
Everyone turned to him in surprise.
But a moment later, they understood exactly why he'd said it.
Almost the instant Ron completed his save, Harry and Malfoy spotted the Golden Snitch at the very same time.
In flying skill and in broom, Harry outclassed Malfoy in every respect.
So, the moment the two of them shot forward, the outcome of the chase was never in doubt.
With his quick reflexes and the Firebolt beneath him, Harry stretched out his hand just ahead of Malfoy and closed his fingers securely around the Golden Snitch. Exactly as Sherlock had said, moments before.
With the Snitch caught, the match was over.
The final score settled at one hundred and seventy to sixty—Gryffindor had won.
The Lions' supporters erupted, pouring onto the pitch with wild shouts.
Surprisingly, the fastest of them all were two girls.
Cho Chang and Lavender Brown.
Cho, just as she had after every previous match, flung her arms around Harry and held him close.
Lavender's display put even the currently-dating Harry and Cho to shame.
Without a shred of hesitation, without a flicker of restraint—in full view of the entire school, she marched straight up to Ron and, rising onto her toes, kissed him.
Unlike everyone else, Ron wasn't in the best of moods.
Gryffindor had won in the end, yes, but he'd let in a great many goals over the course of the match.
If Harry hadn't stepped in and covered for him, there was no telling how the result might have gone.
But—Lavender's kiss was so bold, so full of heat.
A sensation utterly unlike anything he'd felt before.
It yanked him bodily out of his self-reproach.
The girl's soft lips carried a warmth that chased away the gloom of the match's failures.
Even the sour taunts drifting over from the Slytherin students behind him—"Weasley is our King, shame he's the King of gifting goals away!"—seemed to reach him through a thick layer of cotton wool, no longer able to pierce the burning in his ears.
"Did you see that, Sherlock?"
Hermione's voice carried a thoughtful edge as she turned to look at the boy beside her, ever composed, her thick brown curls were swaying with the motion:
"The power of love really is greater than you'd imagine."
She lingered deliberately on the word love, a trace of anticipation hidden in her eyes.
But before Sherlock could respond, Luna Lovegood's pale, misty grey eyes lit up.
She tilted her head and asked, in a tone both innocent and direct:
"If that's really true, I think I'd like to try it myself—Sherlock, would you be interested?"
Hermione stared at Luna in utter shock.
No. Wait. Girl.
Wasn't that supposed to be my line?
I spent the entire morning laying the groundwork—not so you could waltz off with the reward!
Fortunately, Sherlock didn't answer Luna's blunt question right away.
After three seconds of careful deliberation, he said: "Not at the moment."
Hermione quietly let out a breath of relief, her tensed shoulders were sinking just slightly. She was just beginning to relax when she heard Sherlock add:
"If I do become interested later, I'll come find you."
Hermione turned to stare at Sherlock again, this time in even greater shock.
No. Wait. You two.
Don't tell me you'd planned that together!
The thought struck her, and Hermione decided she couldn't afford to hesitate any longer.
Because—
To hesitate was to lose!
She drew a deep breath and gathered her courage, looking straight at the boy before her: "Sherlock."
At the critical moment when the heroine was about to bare her heart to the hero, there was no sudden commotion, no clichéd interruption to spoil it.
The lingering warmth of the match still hung in the air, distant cheers still faintly audible, and everything fell quiet at just the right moment.
Hermione's voice carried a barely perceptible tremor, yet came through with unusual clarity: "If you ever do become interested in love, I'd be willing to talk too."
Sherlock looked at her with a flicker of surprise, then nodded. "All right."
Hermione's eyes lit up at once with a brightness they had never held before.
A radiant smile bloomed across her face—the kind that felt as though it could melt away an entire winter's chill.
"I'll be waiting."
Not long after that thrilling Quidditch match, Hogwarts was blanketed by a heavy snowfall.
Feathery snowflakes drifted down in a soft rustle, settling over the castle's spires and the treetops of the Forbidden Forest, until the whole world lay dressed in silver.
On just such a cold winter afternoon, a tall, familiar figure the four of them had missed for half a term came trudging back through the thick snow to Hogwarts.
Rubeus Hagrid.
At Harry's urging, the four of them dashed off to find him the moment their day's lessons were done.
But when Harry asked where he'd been, Hagrid wouldn't breathe a word about what he'd been up to.
"No, now, you lot listen here.
This is strictly confidential. Can't tell you.
Not even if it cost me my job."
Harry immediately shot Sherlock a pleading look.
Sherlock shrugged. "Mm, quite. You needn't tell us, Hagrid—you and Madame Maxime went off to see the giants."
Crash!
Hagrid shot to his feet, staring at Sherlock in utter shock.
"You—how could you possibly know that!
Sherlock, I never told a soul!"
Sherlock said nothing, only looked at him.
Because the four of them had arrived quickly enough that the half-giant hadn't had time to tidy himself up.
His hair was a matted, tangled mess, crusted with dried blood.
His left eye had swollen into a slit, dark purple and blue; his face and hands were covered in wounds, some were still bleeding.
He'd moved slowly answering the door, none of his usual boisterous energy about him.
Wasn't it obvious?
The real trick would have been explaining how he'd known.
Hagrid, though, recovered from his shock quickly enough, gazing at Sherlock with a look somewhere between exasperated and proud.
"Sherlock, I'll tell you, in all my years I've never met anyone like you.
A little kid, and you know all these things you've no business knowing."
"Mm. Well, now you have," Sherlock said, arching an eyebrow, picking up right where Hagrid left off.
Ron couldn't hold it in any longer and let out a muffled snort.
Harry and Hermione both glared at him.
Ron stuck out his tongue and hurriedly grabbed the teacup in front of him, taking a huge gulp.
The scalding tea made the corners of his mouth twitch, but he clenched his teeth and didn't make another sound.
"Well, all right, it's just like you said—I did go see the giants. With Olympe.
Truth is, they're not that hard to find—not with how big they are. The whole thing went like this…"
Hagrid quickly slipped into his usual habit of being unable to keep a secret bottled up.
Sherlock had barely given him an opening, and he'd gone ahead and spilled the entire story of his own accord.
Once Dumbledore had confirmed Voldemort's return, he'd assigned Hagrid and Madame Maxime their mission.
Dumbledore had already worked out the giants' location beforehand, which made the journey considerably easier for the pair.
The two of them had set off during the Hogwarts summer holidays, pretending they were simply going on holiday together to France.
That was because Voldemort would certainly be searching for the giants too, and if he learned of their movements, the two of them would be in real danger.
Even though both half-giants were formidable fighters in their own right, they were still nowhere near a match for Voldemort.
The pair had spent some time at Beauxbatons before using a Portkey to reach the remote mountains where the giants dwelt.
It seemed Voldemort had suffered fairly significant losses on the night of the Triwizard Tournament's final task, leaving him without enough manpower to properly reach out to the giants himself.
As a result, the negotiations between the pair and the giants had gone reasonably smoothly.
They'd brought the giant chieftain a gift Dumbledore had prepared in advance—an Everlasting Fire.
That gift proved to be the key to winning the chieftain over, sparking his interest in Dumbledore's proposal.
In the end, the giant chieftain said that while they weren't prepared to side with Dumbledore just yet, they wouldn't be throwing in with Voldemort either. Beyond that, Hagrid had managed to learn some news about his own family while he was there.
His mother, the full-blooded giantess Fridwulfa, had passed away.
But when Hagrid spoke of it, there wasn't much sorrow in his voice.
No one quite knew how an ordinary human and a giant woman had ever come together, but the fact remained—they had fallen in love, and Hagrid, the half-giant, had been born of it.
In the end, because Hagrid hadn't grown tall enough to satisfy her, Fridwulfa had abandoned him and his father when he was three years old, returning to the giant clans. Hagrid's father had been devastated after she left.
But Fridwulfa had gone without a shred of hesitation, and from then until Hagrid's father's death, she had never once come back.
So as far as Hagrid was concerned, she hadn't been much of a mother at all.
He told the whole tale with great energy, as though the entire journey had held nothing but exhaustion and no real trouble at all, never once mentioning where the wounds on his body had actually come from.
Only once he'd finished the very last word did he rub his hands together with some satisfaction:
"All in all, it went off without a hitch."
"Except for your eye."
Sherlock let out a soft sigh, cutting him off.
His gaze settled on Hagrid's left eye, swollen into a slit, and he said calmly:
"Hagrid, since you've already told us this much, why not tell us the rest of it?"
"Er… well." Hagrid's cheeks flushed faintly, and he looked away from Sherlock, somewhat awkwardly, reaching up to rub at his swollen eye socket.
"It's really nothing much. Just something that happened while I was having a bit of a scuffle with one of the giants over there. Pure accident."
Harry, Hermione, and Ron exchanged glances.
They'd all assumed that, given Hagrid's size and strength, it would be hard for him to get hurt at all.
But then again, his opponent had been a giant too and a full-blooded one at that, taller and more powerful than Hagrid himself.
And considering how heavy-handed Hagrid always was with them normally—even a friendly pat on the shoulder from him could knock a person into the ground—
It made sense that a friendly bout with a giant, without properly controlling his strength, could end with him getting hurt in return.
But Sherlock slowly shook his head.
"My dear Professor Hagrid, I'll just say it plainly."
He met Hagrid's gaze, which had suddenly turned tense, his voice as calm and level as ever—yet each word landed like the precise stroke of a scalpel, slicing straight through the surface calm:
"That giant you've hidden away in the Forbidden Forest—who exactly is he? Or rather—what's your reason for bringing him back?"
"Hssh—"
Harry, Hermione, and Ron all sucked in a sharp breath at the same time, turning as one to stare at Hagrid.
"Hagrid…" Harry looked at him, utterly unable to believe it.
"You actually—" Hermione's voice rose involuntarily.
"Brought a giant back!" Ron's eyes looked ready to pop straight out of his head.
Absurd as it sounded, all three of them knew perfectly well that Sherlock never spoke without cause.
If he'd said it, then he had solid proof to back it up.
"Hagrid, you told us—" Hermione instinctively wrapped both arms tightly around Sherlock's arm, her body was trembling faintly with shock, her voice was shaking: "You just told us they weren't willing to come!"
But the shock on Hagrid's face dwarfed that of Harry, Hermione, and Ron combined.
He stared at Sherlock as though the sudden exposure had robbed him of the ability to string together words.
His mouth opened and closed several times, but all that came out was a helpless stammer.
"How did I know, you mean?"
Sherlock let out a somewhat weary sigh, spreading his hands in a gesture of the utterly obvious.
"This one was so simple I hardly know how to explain it to you.
First—you described the entire trip as going smoothly, and yet from the moment you left over the summer to now, it's taken you a full two months to return. A smooth negotiation doesn't take that long.
Second—Madame Maxime, whom you described as 'elegant, brave, and inseparable from you,' didn't come back with you. That doesn't fit with how you've described your relationship at all.
Third—when you brought that enormous creature deep into the Forbidden Forest, your attempt to conceal the traces left behind was, frankly, passable at best—good enough to fool most of Hogwarts. But it certainly didn't fool me."
He paused, his gaze sweeping over to Ron, and added:
"And besides—even Ron here could tell, just from the state you're in, that something wasn't quite right."
"Oi!"
Ron immediately protested looking indignant.
He glared at Sherlock—what did he mean, even Ron could tell? Was he really that dense?
"My dear Ron, if what I just said offended you, then I offer you my apologies."
Ron lifted his head, gave a huff, and felt his irritation ease slightly.
Then he heard Sherlock continue: "But you are, in fact, the least intelligent of the four of us."
Ron: "…"
That blasted apology.
He'd have been better off without the explanation at all.
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