Chapter Text
Hazel woke up to the sounds of roaring winds. She peeked outside the curtains framing her bed and saw that it was still dark outside, her alarm clock confirming that it was just past four in the morning. She attempted to fall back asleep but found it difficult to ignore the storm rumbling outside. Thunder clashed, and the rain pelted so hard against the windows she was sure that magic was the only thing keeping them from breaking. The castle seemed to grumble in protest of the wind, and Hazel was tempted to let out a groan of her own.
In just a few hours, she would be out on the Quidditch Field, attempting to fly in this weather, which she knew was against her luck of disappearing before then. Finally, giving up on the idea of getting any more sleep, she grabbed her Nimbus Two Thousand and walked quietly out of the dormitory. As she reached the common room, she realized Crookshanks must’ve followed her out as she saw the orange cat race ahead of her and up the spiral staircase towards the boys' dormitory.
“You know, I reckon Ron was right about you,” Hazel grumbled. There were plenty of mice around the castle, but Crookshanks did seem to be fixated on the one rodent that was actually a pet. Hopefully, the boys had shut the door to their dormitory, or they might be in for a rude surprise.
Hazel shrugged off the thought. It was too early for her to go traipsing up the boy's stairs. Nothing was preventing her from doing to, at least not in the way the girls stairs were charmed against boys, and she and Hermione had both been in the boys dormitory more than once to drag Ron out of bed, but she figured if she was caught on the boys stairs this early in the morning it wouldn't be a good look. And Merlin knows that Hazel didn’t need any other reason for her schoolmates to gossip about her. Scabbers would just have to defend himself for a night.
The noise of the storm was even louder in the common room. Hazel knew better than to think that the match would be cancelled. Oliver Wood told her once that a match had kept going on for days, even after several of their players had fainted from exhaustion. Something as silly as a thunderstorm would not be considered a good reason to reschedule the match.
Nevertheless, Hazel was starting to feel very nervous. Wood had pointed out Cedric Diggory to her in the corridor; Diggory was a fifth year and a lot bigger than Hazel. Seekers were usually light and speedy, which Hazel was considered on the extreme side of both, but Diggory’s height and weight would be an advantage to him in the weather. He’d be less likely to be blown off course.
Hazel sat in front of the fireplace on her favorite couch until dawn, until at long last she thought it must be time for breakfast. As she headed out of the portrait hole, she heard Sir Cadogan yell after her.
“Stand up and fight!”
“Oh, shut it,” her reply was muffled by her yawning.
She was able to revive herself a bit over a large bowl of porridge, but her appetite was interrupted by the arrival of her teammates.
“It’s going to be a tough one,” said Wood, who wasn’t eating anything.
“Stop worrying, Oliver,” said Alicia soothingly, “We don’t mind a bit of rain.”
But it was considerably more than a bit of rain. Such was the popularity of Quidditch that the whole school turned out to watch the match as usual, but they ran down the lawns toward the Quidditch field, heads bowed against the ferocious wind, umbrellas being whipped out of their hands as they went. Just before she entered the locker room, Hazel saw Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle laughing and pointing at him from under an enormous umbrella on their way to the stadium.
She followed the rest of her teammates and changed into her scarlet Quidditch robes as she waited for Wood’s typical pre-match pep talk, but it didn’t come. He tried to speak several times, made an odd gulping noise, then shook his head hopelessly before gesturing for them all to follow him out to the field.
Hazel could barely see the Hufflepuff team in their canary yellow robes as they approached from the opposite side of the field. Once they met in the middle, the captains walked up to each other and shook hands. Diggory smiled at Wood, but Wood merely nodded back. Seeing Wood stressed about Quidditch was nothing new for Hazel, but this was a whole other level. She was worried that her captain had developed lockjaw with how his face was pinched.
She wasn’t able to hear Madam Hooch blow her whistle, but she saw everyone else mounting their brooms and kicking off. Hazel had to pull her feet out of the mud to swing her leg over her broom and kick into the air.
Hazel rose fast, but her Nimbus was swerving slightly with the wind. She held it as steady as she could, squinting into the rain.
Within minutes, she was soaked to the bone and frozen. She could hardly see her teammates, which gave her little hope of being able to see a tiny snitch. She flew back and forth between the goal posts, watching as red and yellow shapes darted by.
She lost track of time. It was getting more and more difficult to keep her broom going straight. The sky was getting darker, as though night had decided to come early. Twice, Hazel nearly hit another player, without knowing whether it was a teammate or opponent; everyone was now so wet, and the rain so thick, he could hardly tell them apart…
It was a ridiculous sight, really. Or it would be if Hazel could see anything .
She couldn’t imagine what the students in the crowd were seeing, hidden underneath an army of umbrellas.
At the first flash of lightning, she heard what must’ve been the now magically enhanced sound of Madam Hooch’s whistle. She could just barely make out the shape of Wood in the rain, gesturing her to the ground. The whole team splattered down into the mud.
Scrambling under a large umbrella at the edge of the field, Hazel was able to take off her glasses and try to wipe them clean on her soaked robes.
“What’s the score?”
“We’re fifty points up,” said Wood, “but unless we get the Snitch soon, we’ll be playing into the night.”
“I’ve got no chance with these on,” Hazel said exasperatedly, waving her glasses.
At that very moment, Hermione appeared at her shoulder. The whole team watched in awe as Hermione tapped her wand to Hazel’s glasses.
“Impervius!”
“There!” she said, handing them back to Hazel. “They’ll repel water!”
Wood looked as though he could have kissed her.
“Brilliant!” he called hoarsely after her as she disappeared into the crowd. “Okay, team, let’s go for it!”
Hermione’s spell had done the trick. Hazel was still numb with cold, still wetter than she’d ever been in her life, but she could see. Full of fresh determination, she urged her broom through the turbulent air, staring in every direction for the Snitch, avoiding a Bludger, ducking beneath Diggory, who was streaking in the opposite direction…
There was another clap of thunder, followed immediately by forked lightning. This was getting more and more dangerous. Hazel needed to get the Snitch quickly. She turned, intending to head back toward the middle of the field, but at that moment, another flash of lightning illuminated the stands, and Hazel saw something that distracted her completely: the silhouette of an enormous shaggy black dog, clearly imprinted against the sky, motionless in the topmost, empty row of seats.
Hazel’s numb hands slipped on the broom handle, and her Nimbus dropped a few feet. The dog had vanished.
“Hazel!” came Wood’s anguished yell from the Gryffindor goalposts. “Hazel, behind you!”
Hazel looked wildly around. Cedric Diggory was pelting up the field, and a tiny speck of gold was shimmering in the rain-filled air between them.
With a jolt of panic, Hazel threw herself flat to the broom-handle and zoomed toward the Snitch.
“Come on!” she growled at her Nimbus as the rain whipped her face. “Faster!”
But something odd was happening. An eerie silence was falling across the stadium. The wind, though as strong as ever, was forgetting to roar. It was as though someone had turned off the sound, as though Hazel had gone suddenly deaf. What was going on?
And then a horribly familiar wave of cold swept over her, inside her, just as she became aware of something moving on the field below…
Before she’d had time to think, Hazel had taken her eyes off the Snitch and looked down.
At least a hundred dementors, their hidden faces pointing up at her, were standing beneath her. It was as though freezing water were rising in her chest, cutting at her insides. And then she heard it again… Someone was screaming, screaming inside her head… a woman…screaming her name…
“Not Hazel, not Hazel, please not Hazel!”
“Stand aside, you silly girl… stand aside, now…”
“Not Hazel, please no, take me, kill me instead —”
Numbing, swirling white mist was filling Hazel’s brain… What was she doing? Why was she flying? She needed to help her… She was going to die… She was going to be murdered…
She was falling, falling through the icy mist.
“Not Hazel! Please . . . have mercy . . . have mercy. . . .”
A shrill voice was laughing, the woman was screaming, and Hazel knew no more.
——————
“Lucky the ground was so soft.”
“I thought she was dead for sure.”
“But she didn’t even break her glasses.”
Hazel could hear the voices whispering, but they made no sense whatsoever. She didn’t have a clue where she was, or how she’d gotten there, or what she’d been doing before she got there. All she knew was that every inch of her was aching as though it had been beaten.
“That was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Scariest... the scariest thing... hooded black figures... cold... screaming...
Hazel’s eyes snapped open. She was lying in the hospital wing. The Gryffindor Quidditch team, spattered with mud from head to foot, was gathered around her bed. Ron and Hermione were also there, looking as though they’d just climbed out of a swimming pool.
“Hazel!” said Fred, who looked extremely white underneath the mud. “How’re you feeling?”
It was as though Hazel’s memory was on fast forward. The lightning — the Grim — the Snitch — and the dementors . . .
“What happened?” she said, sitting up so suddenly they all gasped.
“You fell off,” said Fred. “Must’ve been — what — fifty feet?”
“We thought you’d died,” said Alicia, who was shaking.
Hermione made a small, squeaky noise. Her eyes were extremely bloodshot.
“But the match,” said Hazel. “What happened? Are we doing a replay?”
No one said anything. The horrible truth sank into Hazel like a stone.
“We didn’t… lose?”
“Diggory got the Snitch,” said George.
“Just after you fell. He didn’t realize what had happened. When he looked back and saw you on the ground, he tried to call it off. Wanted a rematch. But they won fair and square… even Wood admits it.”
“Where is Wood?” said Hazel, suddenly realizing he wasn’t there.
“Still in the showers,” said Fred. “We think he’s trying to drown himself.”
Hazel put her face to her knees, her hands gripping her hair. Fred grabbed her shoulder and shook it roughly.
“C’mon, Hazel, you’ve never missed the Snitch before.”
“There had to be one time you didn’t get it,” said George.
“It’s not over yet,” said Fred.
Fred and George proceeded to tell her all the ways it was still possible to win the Quidditch Cup, but Hazel lay there, not saying a word. They had lost… for the first time ever, she had lost a Quidditch match, and it was all her fault.
After ten minutes or so, Madam Pomfrey came over to tell the team to leave her in peace.
“We’ll come and see you later,” Fred told him.
“Don’t beat yourself up, Hazel, you’re still the best Seeker we’ve ever had.”
The team trooped out, trailing mud behind them. Madam Pomfrey shut the door behind them, looking disapproving. Ron and Hermione moved nearer to Hazel’s bed.
Finally, in the comfort of her two closest friends, she thought the worst news was behind her. Hermione was still rather teary. Hazel thought she was being dramatic, but when Ron admitted that for a moment, most of the school feared her dead, she felt a little more sympathy for her friend.
She let Hermione ramble on for several minutes, not really listening, thinking about what she had heard when the Dementors got near... about the screaming voice. She looked up when she realized the talking had ceased and saw Ron and Hermione looking at her so anxiously that she quickly cast around for something matter-of-fact to say.
“Did someone get my Nimbus?”
Ron did have it, but it really couldn’t be classified as a broomstick any longer.
Slowly, he reached down for a bag at his feet, turned it upside down, and tipped a dozen bits of splintered wood and twig onto the bed, the only remains of Hazel’s faithful, finally beaten broomstick.
_________
Madam Pomfrey insisted on keeping Hazel in the hospital wing for the rest of the weekend. She didn’t argue or complain, but she wouldn’t let her throw away the shattered remnants of her Nimbus Two Thousand. She knew he was being stupid, knew that the Nimbus was beyond repair, but Hazel couldn’t help it; she felt as though she’d lost one of her best friends. Her broom was one of the first real gifts she’d ever received.
She had a stream of visitors, all intent on cheering her up.
On Sunday morning, the Gryffindor team visited again, this time accompanied by Wood, who told Hazel, in a hollow, dead sort of voice, that he didn’t blame her in the slightest. Ron and Hermione rarely ever left Hazel’s bedside.
Hazel felt like the dementors had left a permanent gloom on her body, as she felt unable to be cheered up by her friends. It wasn’t just because of her broom…
She hadn’t mentioned the Grim she had seen to either of her friends. She knew that Ron would panic and Hermione would just scoff.
The fact remained, however, that it had now appeared twice, and both appearances had been followed by near-fatal accidents. The first time, she had nearly been run over by the Knight Bus. The second, she had fallen fifty feet from her broomstick. Was the Grim going to haunt her until she actually died? Was she going to spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder for the beast?
And then there were the dementors. Hazel felt sick and humiliated every time she thought of them. Everyone said the dementors were horrible, but no one else collapsed every time they went near one. No one else heard echoes in their head of their dying parents. Because Hazel knew who that screaming voice belonged to now. She had heard her words, heard them over and over again during the night hours in the hospital wing while she lay awake, staring at the strips of moonlight on the ceiling. When the dementors approached her, she heard the last moments of her mother’s life, her attempts to protect her, Hazel, from Lord Voldemort, and Voldemort’s laughter before he murdered her…
Hazel was interrupted from her spiraling thoughts when the door to the hospital creaked open. Ron and Hermione had just left her not more than 10 minutes ago, she doubted that even Ron could shovel his dinner down that quickly and have already returned.
She sat up in her bed a little straighter when she realized who it was. Diggory. What was he doing in here? Was he also injured during the match, and just now coming in?
The boy made his way over to Hazel’s bed.
“I think Madam Pomfrey is back in her office -”
“I came here to see you, actually,” Diggory said, rather bashfully.
“Me?” she replied, trying not to let her mouth hang open. Why would he be here to see her?
“I wanted to see how you were doing.” He sat down in the chair that Hermione had been sitting in earlier, just a foot or so away from her bed.
“Oh.”
“So, you’re alright?” he asked.
“Er-yeah. I’m fine.”
“It was a nasty fall.”
“Oh, well, Dumbledore caught me, with a spell, I guess,” she shrugged.
Cedric opened his mouth before closing it quickly, like he changed his mind on what he was going to say. Hazel chewed her lip in the few seconds of silence.
“I feel awful. I asked for a rematch, it wasn’t fair, with the Dementors…” he blurted out, his anxious eyes betraying his calm demeanor.
“Wood told me you caught it fair and square, before I even reached the ground,” she countered, embellishing a little. She wasn’t quite sure why she was trying to reassure the Huffleboy about the validity of his win. She had spent all the hours since the game up until now feeling embarrassed and guilty over Gryffindor’s defeat.
“You were right there, you could’ve had it-,” he tried to reason. Hazel couldn’t help but feel that it was endearing, if not a bit annoying.
“Diggory, it’s okay.” She reached over and grabbed the boy’s hand, giving him a soft smile.
He looked down at where her hand lay over his, before looking back up to her face, surprised.
“Oh, erm- sorry…” she blushed, pulling her hand back quickly.
Cedric just laughed softly and took his turn, patting his hand over hers, where it now lay by her side.
“No need to apologize. I guess I was just startled for a moment. I came here to check on you, and then you were the one comforting me.”
His smile was soft and warm, and Hazel felt flushed as he looked her in the eyes.
“Why’d you come though, you barely know me,” she asked.
“Do you have to know a person well to care if they plummet to their death?” he teased.
“S’ppose not,” she said, giving him a wry smile in return.
They sat in another few seconds of silence when he pulled his hand from the bed just to extend it back towards her, offering, “I’m Cedric.”
“Yeah, I know who you are,” she said, puzzled.
“You’ve called me Diggory, my first name is Cedric,” he smirked.
She chuckled, deciding to play along, shaking his hand, “Fine, Cedric. I’m Hazel.”
“And now we’re on a first-name basis. Now we know each other,” he declared, leaning back into the chair.
“Are you sure you didn’t hit your head during the match?” she laughed. “Usually, one does introductions at the beginning of a conversation.”
“Well, I guess not much of this conversation has gone to plan,” he shrugged.
“You had a plan?” she teased.
“No,” he admitted, still smiling.
“Just burning guilt that drove you to make sure I wasn’t on my deathbed?” she joked.
His smile faltered, just a little.
“Guilty as charged,” he said.
“Diggory, I’m fine, really. Madam Pomfrey just wanted me to stay overnight as a precaution.”
“Cedric”
“Right, Cedric.”
She thought he would leave after clearing his conscience, but he stayed for a little while longer. They talked more about Quidditch and how her classes had been fairing this term. She was surprised at how easy it was to talk to him. Despite Hazel being sure that she led the conversation into several dead ends, Cedric was unfazed, always ready with a new comment or question. Maybe that was a Hufflepuff quality.
Madam Pomfrey did finally come out of her office to tell Cedric that visiting hours were ending. Hazel was shocked to see that the boy had been there for nearly half an hour. He bid her goodnight, telling her he’d see her around.
As she lay in bed that night, she couldn’t help but think of how unexpected the visit had been. She’d never visited anybody but Ron and Hermione in the hospital wing. As odd as it initially felt, she couldn’t deny that Cedric was… nice.
She figured she would keep that piece of information from Wood. He probably wouldn’t take the idea of her becoming friendly with Hufflepuff’s seeker very well, especially after the match. He might try to drown her in the shower.