Give Her a Chance | Harry Potter

Bawling and Broomsticks

Madam Pomfrey insisted on keeping Harry and Emma in the hospital wing for the rest of the weekend. They didn't argue or complain, but Harry wouldn't let her throw away the shattered remnants of his Nimbus Two Thousand. He knew he was being stupid, knew that the Nimbus was beyond repair, but Harry couldn't help it; he felt as though he'd lost one of his best friends.

Emma, on the other hand, was beyond distraught about the whole broom situation. Her grandmother thought that Quidditch was an unacceptable sport for girls, and didn't even know Emma played. That's why she had to borrow a school broom. There was no way her grandmother would even let Emma discuss Quidditch, let alone own a broom.

Now that the Shooting Star had been destroyed, Emma's short-lived Quidditch dreams were dashed. The school only allowed students to borrow a broomstick if they kept it in good condition, and Emma's was definitely not in good condition. After two-and-a-half years on the Gryffindor Quidditch team, Emma was going to be forced to quit. Of course, she hadn't told anyone this and was planning on telling the twins first. Emma figured that Fred and George would take the news the best, and then let Wood know. Emma definitely didn't want to face his wrath alone.

Emma and Harry had a stream of visitors, all intent on cheering them up. Hagrid sent a bunch of earwiggy flowers that looked like yellow cabbages, and Ginny Weasley, blushing furiously, turned up with a get-well card for Harry she had made herself, which sang shrilly unless Harry kept it shut under his bowl of fruit. For Emma, she had brought a much lesser gift, but it was still appreciated. The Gryffindor team visited again on Sunday morning, this time accompanied by Wood, who told Harry (in a hollow, dead sort of voice) that he didn't blame him in the slightest. And wished both of them a speedy recovery. Ron and Hermione left their bedsides only at night. But nothing anyone said or did could make Emma feel any better, because they knew only a sliver of what was troubling her.

She also hadn't told anyone about the Grim, not even Ron, Harry, and Hermione, because she knew Ron would panic and Hermione would scoff. She wasn't sure what Harry's reaction would be, but she knew it would fall somewhere in between the other two. The fact remained, however, that it had now appeared at school, and many appearances had been followed by near-fatal accidents; the first time, she had nearly fallen out of a tree at home; the fourth, fallen forty 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?

Probably not.

And then there were the Dementors. Emma felt sick and humiliated every time she thought of them, and she could tell that Harry felt the same way. 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 Emma 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, Emmaline, from Lord Voldemort, and Voldemort's laughter before he murdered her... Emma dozed more fitfully than normal, sinking into dreams full of clammy, rotted hands and petrified pleading, jerking awake to dwell again on her mother's voice.

It was a relief to return to the noise and bustle of the main school on Monday, where she was forced to think about other things, even if she had to endure Draco Malfoy's taunting. Malfoy was almost beside himself with glee at Gryffindor's defeat. He had finally taken off his bandages and celebrated having the full use of both arms again by doing spirited imitations of Harry and Emma falling off their brooms. Malfoy spent much of their next Potions class doing Dementor imitations across the dungeon; Emma finally cracked and flung a large, slippery crocodile heart at Malfoy, which hit him in the face and caused Snape to take fifty points from Gryffindor.