The Mudblood

Chapter 71 : Year 4

"So, what do you do if a Gryffindor is flying toward you with the Quaffle in hand?"

I raised my eyebrows dubiously. "Er—wait for them to shoot and then catch the ball before it goes through the hoop?"

"Wrong. You charge at them and knock them off their broom before they can even think about shooting. C'mon now, Mudblood, if you want to be my reserve, you can't plan to be so soft on our enemy."

"I'm not even playing on Saturday," I reminded him with an eye roll. "I'm just watching."

"Well, we'll have to find some way of making you useful toward our team's cause," Miles Bletchley insisted as he leaned casually against the edge of the bookshelf to his right. Currently we were standing in the school library, where the Slytherin Quidditch Keeper had cornered me about five minutes ago to hound me with questions regarding unrealistic scenarios.

Like Bletchley, the rest of the school had been buzzing with talk of the upcoming Quidditch match for the past two weeks. Captain Montague, who had previously believed that our team was too stacked to need practice, had mandated that we have practices every evening because we were inadequately prepared to face Gryffindor. He was right of course: Crabbe and Goyle were barely sufficient fliers; Bletchley was too high on his potions half the time to see the Quaffle coming; Montague, Adrian, and Warrington were all ball-hogs who never wanted to pass; and Malfoy only managed to catch the Snitch during practices because he had no competition. Nevertheless, I still found daily practices to be a bit excessive.

Other than being bombarded with Quidditch, the past two weeks had been spent doing homework in the Slytherin common room, joking around with the Weasleys in the Gryffindor common room, or avoiding Draco Malfoy in every part of the castle. It was nearly impossible to believe that between sitting next to him in two classes and seeing him at every Quidditch practice, I'd somehow managed not to talk to him in two full weeks. I was proud of my will power, of course, though Professor Vector was completely disgusted with my Arithmancy grade, which had dropped below the point of redemption due to the fact that I ignored every word that Malfoy said. All that being said, I felt light and free in the absence of his oppressive behavior, a feeling that I knew—possibly because of my Clairvoyant nature—would not last forever.

"Now, Mudblood," Bletchley went on, pointing his finger at me as he spoke, "what do you do if you see a member of the Gryffindor Quidditch team studying so vulnerably in the library?"

My brow furrowed with my lips. "Er—nothing?"

"Wrong," he corrected again before spinning his head around to gaze at Alicia Spinnet, a Gryffindor Chaser who was studying amongst her friends at one of the library's wooden tables. "You jinx them."

"What!" I hissed as the meaning of his words sunk in. Bletchley reached into his pocket for his wand, but I violently grabbed his forearm before he could whip it out. "You can't just jinx people in the middle of the library—you shouldn't even jinx people at all!"

Bletchley raised his eyebrows in amused disbelief. "I've heard you like to jinx people. Goyle tells me you're particularly skilled at the Jelly-Legs Jinx."

"That is different," I insisted through my gritted teeth. "I've only attacked Crabbe and Goyle with jinxes when they've threatened to attack me. I don't go up to my enemies while they're studying and use spells against their backs. That's wrong—"

"Oh hush up, Mudblood," Bletchley droned as he rolled his eyes. "C'mon, you can be my accomplice."

I tried to use what strength my little body had to keep my feet planted firmly on the ground, but when Bletchley spun his arm out of my grasp and then clasped his hand around mine, I had no choice but to be dragged across the library toward Alicia.