An accident still happened.
Harry's blurred vision and fierce desire to win made him dive for the Golden Snitch by Malfoy's ear without seeing the other Bludger at all.
"Watch out, Harry!"
Fred shouted.
There was a bang, a spray of muddy water, and Harry crashed into the pitch, rolling off his broom into the mud.
His arm was hanging at a very strange angle.
Through waves of stabbing pain, he heard whistles and shouts as if from very far away. When he blinked hard, he saw the Golden Snitch clenched tight in his good hand.
"Ha–ha…"
he slurred, "We… won."
And then he passed out.
Up in the stands, everyone had gone dead silent in shock at the sudden crash.
Sean quietly lowered his wand. It seemed Harry's luck wasn't all that great.
"Harry!"
Hermione cried, and she and the crowd surged down from the stands.
On the pitch, Sean saw the Gryffindor team caught between cheering and panic— some players celebrating in the distance, others scrambling toward Harry.
By the time Sean reached the pitch, Lockhart had already elbowed his way to Harry's side.
Sean watched Harry jolt awake just as Lockhart flashed that blinding white grin.
Everyone heard Harry's shaking voice: "Oh no… not you."
Harry groaned.
"I don't know what he's talking about,"
Lockhart said loudly to the worried Gryffindors crowded around,
"Don't worry, Harry. I'm just going to fix that arm of yours."
"No!"
Harry gasped. "Leave it— it's fine, really— thanks—"
He tried to sit up, but the pain in his arm was unbearable.
"Lie still, Harry,"
Lockhart soothed.
"It's a simple spell. I've done it hundreds of times."
"Why can't I just go to the hospital wing?"
Harry ground out through clenched teeth.
"He should go to the hospital wing,"
Wood said, caked in mud and still unable to suppress his grin despite his Seeker's condition,
"That was the best catch you've ever made, Harry— brilliant, just brilliant."
Through a forest of legs, Harry could see Fred and George wrestling the rogue Bludger back into its crate.
It was still thrashing like mad.
"Stand back,"
Lockhart announced, rolling up the sleeves of his emerald-green robes.
"Don't— don't—"
Harry said weakly, but Lockhart's wand was already spinning.
Harry's bones were fixed— or possibly gone.
Whatever the case, Sean, watching from a distance, had no time to intervene. Lockhart's spell was quick, and by the time he realized what was happening, it was already done.
Harry's arm, now a limp, boneless thing, flopped uselessly at his side. Sean found himself wondering whether such a spell actually existed.
He rifled through the Standard Book of Spells series in his head and finally concluded: Lockhart had invented it himself.
That discovery left Sean a little stunned.
"Brackium Emendo?"
Justin blurted out for no clear reason.
Sean gave him a very strange look.
"Well, Sean, if you're not worried, I suppose I don't need to be either—"
Justin said with a quick blink.
It was a line that came out of nowhere, but nearby Neville, who'd been trembling like a leaf, slowly stopped shaking.
Justin cast him a quick sideways glance; only then did worry show in his eyes.
Lockhart hadn't mended Harry's bones at all— he'd removed them.
By the time they got Harry to the hospital wing, Madam Pomfrey was furious.
"You should have come straight to me!"
she snapped, lifting the floppy, rubbery thing that had been an arm barely half an hour ago.
"I could've fixed those bones in a second— but regrowing them—"
"You can do it, can't you?"
Harry asked urgently.
"It'll be painful. Drink up— bone regrowth is nasty business."
Madam Pomfrey held up a large bottle labelled Skele-Gro and poured him a brimming glass under the curious gaze of the others.
Harry took one sip, gagged, and almost spat it back out.
"What did you expect, pumpkin juice?"
she said sharply, rolling her eyes.
As far as she knew, only one person ever got the "special flavours" out of a certain Potions Master's brews.
Her gaze shifted briefly to the boy with the book; Sean's fingers covered most of the cover, but she still caught a glimpse of the title:
An Easy Primer on the Empty Sigil.
Just then, the infirmary doors flew open and the Gryffindor team trooped in to visit Harry, soaked with mud and looking like drowned rats.
"Harry, you were brilliant,"
George said,
"I just saw Marcus Flint screaming at Malfoy— said the Snitch was right over his head and he didn't see it. Malfoy looked ready to explode."
They'd brought cake, sweets, and bottles of pumpkin juice.
They crowded around Harry's bed, ready to turn it into a party— until Madam Pomfrey descended on them like an avenging harpy:
"This boy needs rest, he's got thirty–three bones to regrow! Out! Out!"
She shooed them all away like a mother hawk— "All of you… except you, dear Sean. We need to discuss those potions we've been short on lately—"
So the ward was left with just Harry and Sean.
After Sean finished going over stock numbers, Madam Pomfrey bustled off in a much better mood.
"And don't you go tinkering with the taste of my potions, child. If they get used to them being pleasant, Merlin knows what kind of crowd I'd end up with."
Sean finally understood why everything in the hospital was so vile.
He glanced toward the curtained bed; Harry was tossing and turning, unable to sleep. Regrowing bones was not pleasant.
The funny thing was, Harry had a certain connection to Skele-Gro.
One of the Potter ancestors— Linfred of Stinchcombe— had invented many potions, one of which later evolved into Skele-Gro.
Now it was working on his descendant.
Which led Sean to another question: if magic really was a kind of faith, then how were those strange bloodline abilities supposed to fit into that?
He suddenly noticed a pattern.
It always seemed to be the bloodlines of powerful wizards that left behind abilities: Dumbledore's phoenix affinity, Slytherin's Parseltongue…
At least, Sean had never heard of anyone with "Slug Tongue" or "Caterpillar Affinity."
Theoretically, magic was vast; if bloodlines were just random mutations passed down, quirky abilities should crop up everywhere.
But in reality, the record was blank.
Only the unique traits of truly great wizards seemed to endure.
So when a wizard reached that kind of height… what exactly was it that changed inside them?