Wood takes Hermione aside as they reach the Quidditch pitch, before entering the changing rooms. “Alright, Hermione. Real quick, how much do you know about seekers?”
“Not much,” she answers. “I haven’t read up on them. They catch the snitch, right?”
He sighs. “Yeah. Well, I’ll have to give you the full introductory lesson sometime later- but for now, we’ll use the plan we formulated with Harry: Stay high up, out of the way, until you spot the snitch. Then dive in and catch it. Especially with your inexperience, I’d rather you not be targeted.” He glances towards the castle. “And… Was that fear of heights Moondancer was referring to?”
She nods meekly. “Don’t worry, I’ll… I’ll get through it. I won’t be falling off the broom, or seizing up in fright, or anything.”
She hadn’t counted on just how scary it would be to be this high up.
Every time she looks down, she spots the golden glint of the snitch- but looking down like that also makes her stomach queasy, so she hasn’t gone after it yet. She’s been mostly staring up into the sky, pretending she’s on a lawn chair back home, enjoying the sun on her skin. It’s… not the same as actually doing that, but it’s the fastest- and easiest- way she’s found to calm herself down.
“Wait a minute. Was that the Snitch?”
She blinks, and looks down, instantly spotting the golden ball and the chaser staring at it. She tightens her grip on Harry’s broom, willing herself not to fall- or hurl.
She’s not going to get it. The Slytherin seeker will, and they will win the match by a hundred and twenty points or so. She hasn’t been following the score, but she has noticed that Gryffindor has scored more often than Slytherin.
Then Fred Weasley’s bludger comes out of nowhere, making contact with the snitch- and causing it to streak halfway across the field before it recovers and veers off to the side. The bludger, meanwhile, redirects itself straight towards the charging Slytherin seeker. Nobody else seems to have managed to follow the snitch, though, so it seems to have “gotten lost”.
She quickly looks up again, stomach churning. She’s still not ready to go after it.
She glares at the sun.
Why did she have to say yes?
“Not much for Harry to do just yet, huh?”
Ron glances up. “Hagrid! What’re you doing here?”
He taps his giant binoculars. “Been watching from me hut. Better view from up here, though.”
“Oh,” Ron mutters. “Um, it’s Hermione up there, actually, not Harry. Harry had… a run in with the Crusaders, so they had to get a substitute.”
“That’s Hermione?” Hagrid asks, raising his binoculars to the distant, faint speck that is the Gryffindor seeker. “Sure looks like Harry.”
“Yeah, I know,” Ron mutters. “She’s using Harry’s broom and robes- they couldn’t get her some of her own fast enough.”
“Oh. Doesn’t exactly help she’s flying so high I can’t see her clearly even with my binoculars!”
“Wait, what? Wouldn’t that mean she’s flying so high she can’t see the snitch?”
Grunt. “Yeah. Not to mention, if yer fly too high, the air gets too thin and yer can’t breathe.”
Professor Quirrell raises his wand to the distant speck that is the Potter boy. Then he draws his breath, and mutters his first spell.
The shockwave of feedback coming back from the broom is a surprise; even a Nimbus doesn’t have nearly that much power, nor ability to fight back. But this one does. He groans, moving on to his next incantation as he engages in a fast-paced thrust and parry with the broom’s strange magic. He’s good, though- he’ll still get through it. It’ll just take him a little longer.
Professor Snape squints through his binoculars again, up at James’ son. He hasn’t gotten a good look at the boy since yesterday at dinner- and now, he’s flying so high he doesn’t have a hope of spotting the snitch.
Snape is torn between two opinions on the matter, though. On the one hand, he’s so high Quirrel- who he rather suspects is related to the Dark Lord- won’t be able to see him clearly or, hopefully, find him.
On the other hand, he’s so high he can’t see him clearly himself, to apply any countercurses.
Completely aside from how that gives Slytherin’s seeker a free run at the snitch. Honestly, next to Harry’s safety, he doesn’t care about the outcome of the match.
Hermione’s eyes open wide, very suddenly. Something’s attacking Harry’s broom, she can feel it. She snaps forwards on the broom, laying down against the handle and gripping it tightly as she rockets forwards in a wide arc, scanning the ground for the source of the magical attack.
She doesn’t see it.
Then her gaze crosses the teachers in the stands. There! Professor Snape is gazing up at her with his binoculars, wand in hand!
No, no, in order to jinx a broom like this, you have to maintain eye contact- and binoculars are known to not work for that.
There! Professor Quirrell is gazing up at her with his naked eyes, wand pointed, and muttering!
She draws her wand, pointing it down at him. “Finite incantatem!” It’s a completely harmless spell that simply disrupts active spellcasting.
The attack against her broom stutters, but picks back up again quickly.
She narrows her eyes. Thank the heavens his Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons are being ignored by the second-tier instructors for it. “Expelliarmus!” She watches his wand fly away from him.
The attack against her broom stops completely, and the broom stops twitching.
Her hand moves to her radio. “Just caught Professor Quirrel messing with my broom,” she announces. “Disarmed him.” She would have spoken in code, but she hasn’t had time to learn all of the various codes they’re using just yet. Plus, she’s not sure if there is a code for this situation- and the Agents aren’t above using plain english when no code is applicable.
“Roger,” Bonbon’s voice comes back, one of the few she can recognize. “Indigo Sierra.”
She nods. That was an information code, to tell her Dumbledore is being made aware.
Bonbon’s not done yet, though. “Finish the game, Papa One.”
Priority One orders to finish the game?
There’s the snitch.
She dives, thrusts herself forwards, downwards. She lifts a hand off the handle and catches the elusive ball, before flicking her broom out from under her just in time to make a perfect three-point landing, less than two seconds after she first dived.
Then she folds her wings.
Snape winces when Potter suddenly bursts into motion, racing off to the side. He hadn’t moved when the Snitch had been spotted earlier, and now he’s racing in a massive arc, wrapping around the stadium at what has to be top speed.
A few seconds pass, before he hears Professor Quirrell gasp behind him. A quick glance shows the man looking behind him, empty-handed. Strange; hadn’t the man had his wand out a minute ago?
Two seconds after that, Potter suddenly dives.
But, he doesn’t simply dive. No; with whatever he’s doing in addition, he left a brilliant, metallic red ring of energy, with slices of icy blue on either side, expanding in the sky behind him.
Then he streaks to the ground, a metallic red contrail in his wake, and slams into the middle of the pitch in a shockwave of dust and sparkle of bronze.
He redirects his binoculars down just in time to see Potter rise from his three-point landing, broom in hand, and hold the other hand held triumphantly high, the Snitch held tight.
Hold on a second.
That’s not Potter!
That’s the Granger girl that’s been most effective- second only to Lyra- in containing the Crusaders’ destruction!
… He can’t see any bronze, though. Where might that have come from?
“GRYFFINDOR WINS!” Lee Jordan, the Gryffindor doing the commentary, yells across the stadium.
“Oh come on!” a more distant yell echoes from somewhere in the Gryffindor section.
An echoing boom sounds from above.
Hermione steps into the changing rooms in a bit of a trance, and slumps into a chair, leaning back before leaning Harry’s broom against the wall next to her. Throughout her walk back to the changing rooms, the broom had healed itself of the damage Quirrell’s attack had done. Rather fortunately; she had not been looking forward to returning Harry a damaged broom.
Wood sits down next to her. “Thank you, Hermione! That was amazing!”
“ ‘Anks,” she answers distractedly, staring unseeingly across the room. She’s still trying to figure out exactly what she just did, and how- and of course, there doesn’t seem to be any books on the matter.
“But how did you do that?” Wood asks her. “I’ve never seen that kind of- of- ringboom before.”
“Rainboom,” she corrects automatically. Several Agents had complimented her on the Rainboom over the radio, but she doesn’t know what that’s supposed to be.
“Rainboom, then,” he states. “How did you… Uh…”
His suddenly worried tone draws her attention, and she raises an eyebrow. “What?”
“You’re… Glowing,” he mutters.
She looks down at her hand, then stares, lifting it up. “What the…?”
He’s not wrong. She does seem to be glowing, in a strange sense of the word; an icy blue aura is appearing around her, the same color as the fringes of her hair.
Then she drops her hand down, smiling at him. “Probably something to do with Equestrian magic.”
“Right,” he states. “I keep forge-!”
She misses the rest of the word, and whatever else he was saying. That aura-glow-thing had flashed really bright for a moment… and she’s not in the changing room.
She’s also a pony again.
She closes her eyes, concentrates on being human, and opens them again- but she’s still a pony.
Still a pegasus.
She looks back at her side, and back. Hithertoyet, she hasn’t looked at herself as a pony; she’s been avoiding this form as much as she can.
A whirl of icy blue… energy comes out of nowhere, quickly picking her up and blazing around her… then it’s gone, dropping her back to the cloud-like ground.
Not that she really notices, beyond her instinctive landing; she seems to have a whole new part of her mind that she simply didn’t have before.
Then everything flashes icy blue once again, and she feels the Quidditch robes on her arms once again.
She immediately turns to the startled Wood, still sitting where he had been before she disappeared. “I have a very important question,” she begins. “Am I human?”
He blinks. “Uh, yes? Is… Is something wrong?”
She lets out a sigh of relief, leaning back against the wall. “No, just… some kind of vision, I think. In it, I was transformed into something else.”
“... Oh.”
“Yeah. Um… I’m pretty sure the Rainboom was Equestrian magic as well. The stuff can be really disorienting sometimes.”
Fred suddenly crouches down in front of her. “You were flying at, what, a mile and a half up?”
“Two point three miles, actually.”
“And it took you two seconds to hit the ground,” George states, looking over the top of Fred’s head.
She winces. “Or so, yeah.”
Fred tilts his head. “Isn’t that, like, impossible?”
“No,” she states, shaking her head and scowling. “I was only moving… uh…” Her eyes widen.
“What?” Wood asks.
She turns to look at him. “I averaged about six times faster than sound on that dive.”
“That makes it a sonic Rainboom,” Fred states.
“The Nimbus Two Thousand has a top speed of about two hundred miles an hour,” George mutters. “Even in a steep dive.”
Wood scowls. “That makes no sense.”
Hermione scowls as well. “No, it doesn’t. Maybe Lyra knows more about it.”