Lightning split the sky above the pitch.
Harry spun toward it — and saw them. Dark shapes pouring out of the clouds, robes hanging off them like rot, gliding down toward the pitch in silence.
Dementors.
His broom lurched under him. What were they doing on the grounds — Dumbledore had said they wouldn't—
One shot up directly in front of him.
He wrenched the broom sideways and dodged — but the move put him face to face with another. It halted in the air before him, tilting its hooded head slowly upward. Beneath the hood was nothing. Just darkness where a face should have been.
It opened its mouth.
The cold hit him like a wall. Not weather — something deeper, something that reached inside and pulled. The crowd noise fell away.
The pitch fell away. There was nothing left but the screaming — a woman's voice, somewhere inside his own head, high and desperate and getting louder—
His hands went slack on the broom.
He couldn't feel his fingers. Couldn't feel anything.
The broom spun away beneath him and he fell.
The stands erupted. In the teachers' row, Dumbledore was already on his feet.
He pointed his wand straight up at the falling figure and said clearly, "Arresto Momentum."
Harry's descent slowed, his body drifting down through the rain until he met the ground with nothing worse than a bump.
Dumbledore was already turning.
He looked up at the Dementors still circling above the pitch, their robes trailing beneath them, drawn in from the grounds in numbers that had no business being this close to the castle.
He raised his wand.
"Expecto Patronum."
The silver light that erupted from his wand was enormous — a great sweeping force that tore across the pitch and drove upward in a wave.
The Dementors recoiled, scattering, pulling back from the light with the particular wrongness of things that had no choice but to flee it. They retreated toward the treeline, back to the edges of the grounds where they belonged.
The cold lifted.
Dumbledore lowered his wand and looked down at the pitch where Harry lay still on the wet grass.
His expression was difficult to read.
But his eyes were not calm.
Hermione was out of her seat before Dumbledore had lowered his wand.
She grabbed Victor's sleeve without looking at him. "Come on."
Victor didn't argue. Ron was already a step ahead of them, pushing through the crowd spilling down from the stands.
By the time they reached the pitch Madam Hooch was already there, crouching beside Harry, her wand moving efficiently over him.
She got him upright with help from the nearest students and steered him firmly toward the castle, one hand at his shoulder.
The hospital wing was quiet when they arrived. Madam Pomfrey took over immediately, drawing the curtain halfway and setting to work while the others waited just beyond it.
Eventually she let them in.
Harry was propped up against the pillows, sleeping. The three of them gathered around the bed — Hermione closest, Ron beside her, Victor standing slightly back with his arms folded.
He looked at Harry for a moment.
"You're remarkably unlucky with Dementors," he said. "Genuinely. Of all the people on that pitch they went straight for you both times."
Ron looked at him. "Both times?"
"The train," Victor said. "And now this."
He shook his head slightly.
"It's a gift, really."
"But aren't they supposed to be searching for Sirius Black?" Hermione said. "Why did they go for Harry? Do they have no control over themselves?"
She was still tense from the pitch, her arms crossed. "If Dumbledore hadn't intervened Harry would have been seriously hurt."
"Dementors don't follow rules the way we do," Victor said. "The Ministry says they have them under control, that they won't harm anyone. But Dementors don't care about Ministry assurances."
"I hope they catch Sirius Black fast," Ron said. "I really don't want to end up in Harry's position." He glanced at Harry. "Who knows, third time it might be me standing in the wrong place."
"You think it's easy to catch someone who escaped from Azkaban?" Victor said. "The most secure prison in the wizarding world and he walked straight out of it."
Sirius wouldn't be caught. Not yet. He hadn't come for the Ministry or for Hogwarts — he had come for Peter Pettigrew.
That was the whole of it. He had seen the Weasley family in the newspaper, noticed the rat in the photo, and recognised him after twelve years. That was what had finally broken him out of his cell.
Harry's eyes opened slowly.
"Where am I?" he asked, trying to sit up.
Victor pushed him back down with one hand. "No. You're too injured. Don't move."
Harry settled against the pillow, blinking. The last thing he remembered was the cold, and the screaming, and his hands going slack.
"You're in the infirmary," Victor said. "I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?"
Harry looked at him. "Good news."
"You were hit by Dementors and fell from that height," Victor said. "Due to Dumbledore's intervention you're alive with minor injuries. So that's something."
"And the bad news?"
Ron stepped forward quietly and held up a handful of splintered wood.
Harry stared at it.
"Your broom," Ron said. "When you fell — it went into the Whomping Willow. There wasn't much left after that."
The silence that followed was not a comfortable one.
Harry looked at the broken pieces of his Nimbus 2000 for a long moment, saying nothing.
*****
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