𝐆𝐎𝐋𝐃𝐄𝐍 𝐆𝐈𝐑𝐋 ! || harry potter x reader

41. Catch You Later, Pretty Girl, said the Swoon-worthy Guy

"So?" said Y/N, her nose scrunched. "You hex like you're still a first-year, what's your point?"

Harry sent her a dangerous look.

"Be nice," he mouthed. She rolled her eyes.

"How come you're not in Ravenclaw?" he demanded, staring at Hermione with something close to wonder. "With brains like yours?"

"Well, the Sorting Hat did seriously consider putting me in Ravenclaw during my Sorting," said Hermione brightly, "but it decided on Gryffindor in the end. So does that mean we're using the Galleons?"

There was a murmur of assent and everybody moved forward to collect one from the basket. Harry looked sideways at Hermione as Y/N held the basket, pocketing one herself.

"You know what these remind me of?"

"No, what's that?"

"The Death Eaters' scars. Voldemort touches one of them, and all their scars burn, and they know they've got to join him."

"Well . . . yes," said Hermione quietly. "That is where I got the idea . . . but you'll notice I decided to engrave the date on bits of metal rather than on our members' skin . . ."

"Yeah . . . I prefer your way," said Harry, grinning, as he slipped his Galleon into his pocket. "I suppose the only danger with these is that we might accidentally spend them."

"Fat chance," said Ron, who was examining his own fake Galleon with a slightly mournful air. "I haven't got any real Galleons to confuse it with."

As the first Quidditch match of the season, Gryffindor versus Slytherin, drew nearer, their D.A. meetings were put on hold because Angelina insisted on almost daily practices. The fact that the Quidditch Cup had not been held for so long added considerably to the interest and excitement surrounding the forthcoming game. The Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs were taking a lively interest in the outcome, for they, of course, would be playing both teams over the coming year; and the Heads of House of the competing teams, though they attempted to disguise it under a decent pretense of sportsmanship, were determined to see their side's victory. Y/N realized how much Professor McGonagall cared about beating Slytherin when she abstained from giving them homework in the week leading up to the match.

"I think you've got enough to be getting on with at the moment," she said loftily. Nobody could quite believe their ears until she looked directly at Y/N, Harry, and Ron and said grimly, "I've become accustomed to seeing the Quidditch Cup in my study, you three, and I really don't want to have to hand it over to Professor Snape, so use the extra time to practice, won't you?"

Snape was no less obviously partisan: He had booked the Quidditch pitch for Slytherin practice so often that the Gryffindors had difficulty getting on it to play. He was also turning a deaf ear to the many reports of Slytherin attempts to hex Gryffindor players in the corridors. When Katie Bell turned up in the hospital wing with her eyebrows growing so thick and fast that they obscured her vision and obstructed her mouth, Snape insisted that she must have attempted a Hair-Thickening Charm on herself and refused to listen to the fourteen eyewitnesses who insisted that they had seen the Slytherin Keeper, Miles Bletchley, hit her from behind with a jinx while she worked in the library.

Y/N felt optimistic about Gryffindor's chances; she had been working well with Katie and Angelina in going through several different plays, including the Hawkshead Attacking Formation and the Porskoff Ploy. Admittedly Ron was still not performing to Wood's standard, but he was working extremely hard to improve. His greatest weakness was a tendency to lose confidence when he made a blunder; if he let in one goal he became flustered and was therefore likely to miss more.