The Cupboard Series 2: Hermione's Book Nook

Chapter 23

The flash of violent purple smoke announced to the world that Colin Creevey had taken yet another picture.

Winding the camera on, Colin looked around at the crowd, trying to decide what his next shot should be. Gryffindors all around him were bedecked in red and gold scarves and banners and streamers. Already he'd taken half a dozen photos of the crowd and the teams hadn't even made it onto the pitch yet.

In the interests of fairness, Colin turned his gaze to the other four stands around the Quidditch pitch – one for each of the Houses, plus the smaller one for the professors. At the opposite side of the pitch, silver and green dominated. Whistles, cat-calls and jeers came from the snakes, directed not only at the Gryffindors but also the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs. Both of those two towers seemed dominated by Lions supporters.

Which, to Colin's way of thinking, made sense. From everything that he'd heard, the Slytherin Quidditch Team had cheated their way to the win the Cup for seven years before Harry Potter had joined the Gryffindor Team the year before to finally wrest it away from their grasp.

The roar of a lion erupted around the ground, drowning out everyone else and Colin spun around. His eyes darted this way and that before finally, he spotted the source of the noise. Grinning from ear to ear, he brought his camera up and focused in, once more lamenting that wizard cameras didn't come equipped with a telephoto lens like cameras did in the muggle world.

The image in his view steadied onto the elaborate lion head-dress and he gently squeezed the button. As he wound the camera on, he continued to look across at Luna Lovegood. He didn't have many classes with the blonde Ravenclaw and consequently didn't know her very well. Yet. He thought that he'd like to change that.

She was different, quirky and always seemed good for some weird titbit of information that he'd never heard before. And there was just so much that, growing up in the muggle world, he didn't know. Colin smiled as he noticed that, finally, that ever-present little book that she was always walking around with and talking to wasn't to be seen. Thinking on it, he realised that it'd been a few days since he'd seen it. And Luna appeared happier without it as well, which was good.

"Aaand, here they come, ladies and gentlemen, the Quidditch teams for this match," Lee Jordan, one of Gryffindor's fourth year's announced.

Hurriedly, Colin spun around, bringing his camera up to get some action shots of the teams as they emerged from the tunnel.

"First up is Slytherin!" Lee continued. "Captained once again this year by Markus Flint, the big talk for his year's team is the Nimbus Two-Thousand and Ones that each team member was bribed with for letting Draco Malfoy join the team."

"Jordan!" Professor McGonagall warned the announcer.

"Sorry, Professor," Lee said sounding incredibly unapologetic. "Did I say 'bribed', no, no, I didn't mean 'bribed', I meant gifted. Yes, gifted. The Slytherin team was gifted with brand new brooms. A present from the father of Slytherin's brand new Seeker, Draco Malfoy."

All the while, Colin's camera was going crazy. His finger was clicking and winding away furiously. He was sure that he'd managed to get a photo of every player as they flew out of the tunnel, but he wouldn't know for sure until he developed them later. At Lee's next announcement, Colin's finger flew even faster, attempting to snap each of the Gryffindor team, especially Harry.

"Aaaand here comes the Gryffindors! Captained once again by that Keeper extraordinaire, Oliver Wood, ably assisted by those three beautiful, perfect chases, Johnson, Spinnet and Bell, those two unbeatable Beaters, the Weasley twins and, of course, last but certainly not least, the Seeker to end all Seekers, Haaarrry Potter!"