Nobody had expected Crabbe to be capable of gathering useful information, and Draco's surprise was entirely visible. He looked at Crabbe, then at Henry, as though confirming he had not misheard something.
"You actually heard that?" Draco's voice came out slightly dry.
Crabbe nodded with the solemn, slightly stiff expression of someone completing an assignment, even though the discovery had been entirely accidental. "Yeah. Two Gryffindor seniors, talking while they were polishing the trophies—"
He did not get to finish. The heavy stone door of the common room swung open with some force, and Marcus Flint's massive frame filled the doorway.
He had clearly come straight from the training grounds; his clothes were still dusted with frost and grass clippings, and his face was flushed red from the cold.
"Wales!" His gaze found Henry immediately, his voice filling the room without apparent effort. "The match is tomorrow. No training tonight, save your energy. But think through those evasion sequences and your exit route after catching the Snitch until you could do them in your sleep. Tomorrow I'm going to show Wood exactly what Slytherin is made of."
He crossed the room and dealt Henry a heavy clap on the shoulder, the force of which was enough to make him shift in his seat. Then he turned to Draco.
"Malfoy. Keep your mouth in check before the match. I want a victory on the pitch, not you and those Gryffindors bickering in the corridors. Are we clear?"
Draco straightened up immediately and nodded, his lips pressed together.
November arrived, and with it came a bitter, biting cold. The mountains surrounding the school disappeared into grey haze, their peaks lost under accumulating snow and ice.
Every morning the ground was hard with frost. Hagrid could occasionally be seen on the Quidditch pitch before the sun had properly risen, wrapped in his enormous moleskin coat and heavy fur gloves, working to defrost the practice brooms.
Every time Hagrid spotted Henry during training, he waved with unmistakable warmth and sometimes appeared with a mug of hot tea.
Hermione, for her part, had learnt a charm that produced a small quantity of brilliant blue flames, which she kept in a jam jar for warmth.
She presented Henry with his own jam jar one afternoon, which earned a poorly concealed smirk from Draco.
That same afternoon, sitting with his tea, Henry heard from Lucy about something that had occurred in the castle.
"Lucy heard from Poppy in the kitchen," she said, in her high, careful voice, "that Professor Snape was seen in Mr. Filch's office. His leg was injured, and Mr. Filch was helping him dress it. Mr. Potter came upon them by accident, and Professor Snape was very unhappy and told him to leave at once."
Snape had been injured. Almost certainly Fluffy's work, Henry thought. He nodded to Lucy.
"Thank you for telling me, Lucy."
The morning of the match arrived clear and cold.
The Great Hall hummed with an unusual intensity even before the food had appeared.
The smell of fried sausages, toast, and hot pumpkin juice filled the air, but it was less noticeable than the crackling, barely contained restlessness of a school on the edge of something.
The Slytherin table was remarkably orderly. Almost every student wore silver and green, scarves wound high, hats pulled low.
Draco, resplendent in brand-new dark green robes despite not being a player, was delivering his tactical analysis of Gryffindor's weaknesses to Crabbe and Goyle in his most authoritative drawl, his voice pitched precisely to carry to the neighbouring tables.
"Their only real hope is Potter's Nimbus 2000, but the finest broomstick in the world is only as good as the person riding it, and the person riding it is a first-year who has probably not yet memorised the basic rules of the Blinking penalty—" his gaze swept with theatrical casualness toward the Gryffindor table.
Harry sat there with Ron and Hermione. His plate was barely touched and his face was pale; Captain Oliver Wood was delivering what appeared to be final strategic instructions, complete with a tactical diagram sketched on his napkin.
Ron was eating bacon with the slightly mechanical urgency of someone who is nervous and eating to manage it. When his eyes met Draco's he glared back immediately.
Hermione was dividing her attention between her Quidditch reference book and Harry's untouched breakfast with the expression of someone trying to solve two problems at once.
Henry sat at the centre of the Slytherin table in his ordinary robes.
He ate his simple breakfast at a measured pace, exchanging a few quiet words with Daphne beside him now and then, as though the morning were entirely unremarkable.
Pansy had arranged her hair with unusual precision. In a tone of studied composure that did not quite conceal the excitement beneath it, she said to Millicent beside her, "My father sent the newest telescope, apparently it can resolve the wingbeats of the Golden Snitch from three hundred feet away. I intend to use it to watch certain people lose their balance in the air." The Slytherin girls nearby responded with giggles; the implication was not subtle.
At the staff table, Professor Quirrell sat with his purple turban wound so high it covered the lower half of his face, stammering something to Professor Sprout beside him.
Professor McGonagall sat with her customary uprightness, her expression appropriately grave, though her gaze kept moving toward the Gryffindor table in a way that revealed more than she would have chosen.
Snape cut his black pudding with deliberate slowness, his expression unreadable, his eyes fixed on his plate rather than on either House table.
Most noticeable was Hagrid, his enormous frame wedged into the far end of the staff table, wearing a heavily patched fur coat and waving at the Gryffindor table with unrestrained enthusiasm.
His expression made his meaning perfectly clear even across the hall: Go for it, Harry.
Harry saw him and managed a pale, grateful smile in return. Hagrid also caught Henry's eye and raised a hand in encouragement; Henry returned a composed smile.
Gemma Farley appeared and settled into the seat beside him with her characteristic quietness.
"You don't appear nervous at all," she said, looking ahead rather than at him. A house-elf appeared immediately and set down a plate of scrambled eggs with toast and a second plate of sliced sausages.
"If nervousness were useful, every athlete in the world would be shaking before they competed," Henry said, placing the last forkful of scrambled eggs in his mouth and lifting his napkin with an unhurried ease that belonged more to a breakfast table in Kensington than a school common room. "It's a natural feeling, but letting it govern your actions is putting the wrong thing in charge. I trust Captain Flint's preparation and I trust my teammates. That is what there is to trust."