Harry Potter 06 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

scanning the skies for some sign of the tiny winged golden ball.
    Ginny and Demelza scored a goal apiece, giving the red-and-gold-clad supporters below something to cheer about. Then Cadwallader scored again, making things level, but Luna did not seem to have noticed; she appeared singularly uninterested in such mundane things as the score, and kept attempting to draw the crowd’s attention to such things as interestingly shaped clouds and the possibility that Zacharias Smith, who had so far failed to maintain possession of the Quaffle for longer than a minute, was suffering from something called ‘Loser’s Lurgy’.
    ‘Seventy–forty to Hufflepuff!’ barked Professor McGonagall into Luna’s megaphone.
    ‘Is it, already?’ said Luna vaguely. ‘Oh, look! The Gryffindor Keeper’s got hold of one of the Beater’s bats.’
    Harry spun round in midair. Sure enough, McLaggen, for reasons best known to himself, had pulled Peakes’s bat from him and appeared to be demonstrating how to hit a Bludger towards an oncoming Cadwallader.
    ‘Will you give him back his bat and get back to the goalposts!’ roared Harry, pelting towards McLaggen just as McLaggen took a ferocious swipe at the Bludger and mis-hit it.
    A blinding, sickening pain … a flash of light … distant screams … and the sensation of falling down a long tunnel …
    And the next thing Harry knew, he was lying in a remarkably warm and comfortable bed and looking up at a lamp that was throwing a circle of golden light on to a shadowy ceiling. He raised his head awkwardly. There on his left was a familiar-looking, freckly, red-haired person.
    ‘Nice of you to drop in,’ said Ron, grinning.
    Harry blinked and looked around. Of course: he was in the hospital wing. The sky outside was indigo streaked with crimson. The match must have finished hours ago … as had any hope of cornering Malfoy. Harry’s head felt strangely heavy; he raised a hand and felt a stiff turban of bandages.
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘Cracked skull,’ said Madam Pomfrey, bustling up and pushing him back against his pillows. ‘Nothing to worry about, I mended it at once, but I’m keeping you in overnight. You shouldn’t overexert yourself for a few hours.’
    ‘I don’t want to stay here overnight,’ said Harry angrily, sitting up and throwing back his covers, ‘I want to find McLaggen and kill him.’
    ‘I’m afraid that would come under the heading of “overexertion”,’ said Madam Pomfrey, pushing him firmly back on to the bed and raising her wand in a threatening manner. ‘You will stay here until I discharge you, Potter, or I shall call the Headmaster.’
    She bustled back into her office and Harry sank back into his pillows, fuming.
    ‘D’you know how much we lost by?’ he asked Ron through clenched teeth.
    ‘Well, yeah I do,’ said Ron apologetically. ‘Final score was three hundred and twenty to sixty.’
    ‘Brilliant,’ said Harry savagely. ‘Really brilliant! When I get hold of McLaggen –’
    ‘You don’t want to get hold of him, he’s the size of a troll,’ said Ron reasonably. ‘Personally I think there’s a lot to be said for hexing him with that toenail thing of the Prince’s. Anyway, the rest of the team might’ve dealt with him before you get out of here, they’re not happy …’
    There was a note of badly suppressed glee in Ron’s voice; Harry could tell he was nothing short of thrilled that McLaggen had messed up so badly. Harry lay there, staring up at the patch of light on the ceiling, his recently mended skull not hurting, precisely, but feeling slightly tender underneath all the bandaging.
    ‘I could hear the match commentary from here,’ said Ron, his voice now shaking with laughter. ‘I hope Luna always commentates from now on … Loser’s Lurgy …’
    But Harry was still too angry to see much humour in the situation, and after a while Ron’s snorts subsided.
    ‘Ginny came in to visit while you were unconscious,’ he said, after a long pause, and Harry’s imagination zoomed into overdrive, rapidly constructing a scene in which Ginny, weeping over his lifeless form, confessed her feelings of deep attraction to him while Ron gave them his blessing … ‘She reckons you only just arrived in time for the match. How come? You left here early enough.’
    ‘Oh …’ said Harry, as the scene in his mind’s eye imploded. ‘Yeah … well, I saw Malfoy sneaking off with a couple of girls who didn’t look like they