The doorway of the Hospital Wing was already packed with people, and Madam Pomfrey had to order them out in no uncertain terms.
The Gryffindor team filed out one by one, faces long and sheepish — and ran straight into Kate, who came walking up hemmed in on all sides by Hermione, Cho Chang and Luna.
"Hey! Kate, your Patronus was absolutely brilliant!" Out of the whole team, only the Weasley twins still had the spirit left to joke with her.
Even Wood, whose face was grim from losing the match, came over to thank her.
All Kate could do was accept it awkwardly.
She hadn't meant to make a spectacle of herself in front of the entire school. It was only that Dumbledore happened to be away from the castle.
Why away?
Because the Ministry of Magic had stationed so many extra Dementors around the grounds, of course, and he'd gone off to have tea with Fudge about it.
And in exactly that window, something like this had happened to Harry.
Now Fudge would certainly cut the Dementor numbers again, which meant she had to eat as many as she could before the Ministry sent anyone to collect them.
She finally squeezed through the crowd into the Hospital Wing, where Madam Pomfrey — long since familiar with her — pulled her out of the knot of girls without a word and put her flat on a bed.
"Lie still. Once I've settled the other patients I'll give you a quick examination."
Kate obediently tugged the blanket over herself and turned her head to look for Hermione and the others, but Madam Pomfrey yanked the bed curtain across and cut off every line of sight.
Silence — such was Cambridge tonight.
With nothing to say to that, she turned her head back and listened to the faint sounds Harry made in his unconsciousness on the next bed. She waited a good long while before Madam Pomfrey drew the curtain open again.
"Is Harry —" She started to sit up and ask, and was pushed straight back down.
Madam Pomfrey raised her eyebrows sourly. "He only fainted from shock. Whatever it is can wait until I've finished examining you."
Fair enough — at times like this it was better to do as the doctor said.
Kate closed her eyes and let Madam Pomfrey run every diagnostic spell in existence over her.
Nearly ten minutes later, the voice above her head said, "Just a slight chill. One bottle of Potion and you'll be fine."
She opened her eyes and sat up in a hurry. "I — I keep a supply of that Potion myself, I'll drink it back at the dormitory!"
If she drank it here, she'd sleep away the entire rest of the day. And by then, who knew how many Dementors would be left for her to eat.
Madam Pomfrey frowned, but given how special this particular little patient was, she grudgingly agreed.
By rights she ought to stay here and wait for Harry to wake. But Kate lifted the edge of the curtain and stole a look.
Ron and Hermione were already there. There didn't seem much point in her staying — better to go get some XP and level up.
She was easing herself off the bed, toes not yet touching her shoes, when Hermione's hand shot out and pressed her back down. "Rest properly!"
Flat on the bed again, Kate gazed up at her with an entirely innocent face. "I need the toilet."
Hermione froze, then let go in a fluster. "D-do you need me to help you?"
"Help me?" Kate frowned, the question written all over her face. "How exactly were you planning to help? You'd come and watch me use the toilet?"
She wasn't a famous tourist attraction.
Cho Chang, caught mid-sip of water, choked and coughed.
Even Luna looked up at her, a flicker of animation in her eyes.
"…You go on, then."
Hermione's face went scarlet as she released her. For a girl who hadn't yet grown a thick skin, Kate's words were altogether too blunt.
Only then did Kate put on her shoes and leave. Once she'd made certain no one had followed, she cast the Disillusionment Charm.
There were still plenty of people gathered at the Quidditch pitch. She took one look from a distance, then moved off quickly and found a small hill that was usually deserted.
But she'd barely climbed it when she saw a blonde figure working away at thin air, practicing the Patronus Charm.
"Expecto Patronum!"
"Expecto Patronum!"
The shouting was loud enough. The results were considerably less impressive.
Malfoy stared at the thin wisp of silver mist coughing out of her wand and clenched her teeth.
On the train, most people hadn't seen clearly — they only vaguely knew that somebody had cast a Patronus and driven the Dementors off.
But today she had seen it with her own eyes: the silver dragon Kate had unleashed.
It was nothing like the palm-sized little dragon she'd seen last time. That thing had been a Patronus the size of a true dragon — larger and more terrible than any true dragon.
Even across all that distance, it had torn through the curtain of rain and driven back over a hundred Dementors.
How much Strength did it take to do something like that?
And her?
Driving off Dementors was out of the question — she couldn't even produce a Patronus with a shape. The gap between her and Kate hardly needed spelling out.
"Expecto Patronum! Damn it!"
Malfoy stamped her foot hard, her head full of nothing but that silver dragon soaring across the sky.
Would she never, ever be able to cast a Patronus as powerful as Kate's?
Her eyes reddened without her meaning them to. Malfoy bit down and kept casting the spell — and visibly, with every incantation, the silver mist she could summon grew thinner and thinner.
Kate stood in silence a little way behind her, and for a moment couldn't name what she was feeling.
This was one of the reasons she disliked standing out.
A small gap only made people want to catch up. But once the gap grew too wide, all that was left for the people around her was defeat.
She let out a soundless sigh, kept the Disillusionment Charm up, and turned to find somewhere else.
But perhaps Malfoy's emotions were running too fiercely just then — or perhaps the Dementors were simply starving.
While she was lost in her practicing, the Dementors that the silver dragon had frightened into hiding began to appear one after another, drifting slowly toward her.
"Expecto Patronum —"
Malfoy was already sweating through her hair, so fixed on mastering the spell that she noticed nothing of the danger closing in around her.
With Dementors, if you failed to sense them at the start, then by the time they were close all that remained for the victim was an endless cold.
"Expecto —"
A shiver ran through her at the sudden plunge in temperature. Malfoy turned her neck stiffly and found at least several dozen Dementors standing behind her.
Those faces, hidden and hollow as black holes, all lifted to look at her. Icy water seemed to surge up into her chest. She screamed, and nearly lost her grip on her wand.
The Dementors closed in inch by inch, forcing Malfoy back one step at a time until she fell flat on the ground.
"Expecto Patronum!"
The incantation came from somewhere she couldn't place, and her spirits leapt with it. Then the world spun end over end, and when she came back to herself she was buried in a warm embrace.
Kate's voice sounded at her ear. "Good girl. Close your eyes and don't move."
The silver dragon, only half a person tall now, harvested the Dementors in front of it without making a sound.
For that she had the creatures themselves to thank: Dementors made no noise whatsoever, even when they were being killed.
Kate held Malfoy and watched coldly as the dragon bit down on every Dementor that tried to flee, one after another, while the System kept reporting numbers in her ear.
[Dementors devoured x5]
[Dementors devoured x10]
[Dementors devoured x16]
In under three minutes, the number the System reported came to rest at 37.
[Rolling random rewards…]
[Congratulations, Host — you have obtained Attribute Points x12 in total!]
[Congratulations, Host — Patronus Charm has been upgraded to Level 9. Spell Extension is now available!]
Kate raised an eyebrow slightly and glanced down at Malfoy, who for once was being perfectly obedient, eyes still squeezed shut.
She was about to speak when something occurred to her, and she looked up at the silver dragon, still crunching away as it savored the flavor of its meal.
It might look a bit like protesting too much, but it was still better that Malfoy never find out who had killed the Dementors.
Kate released her without a sound, waved her wand to recall the Patronus, and — still under the Disillusionment Charm — fled the hill.
Malfoy stood where she was for a while. Sensing that the person in front of her seemed to be gone, she called out, "Hey. Are you still there?"
No answer came, naturally.
She called twice more before opening her eyes and looking around in some confusion.
That voice just now had been Kate's! It had to be her!
She could die and still not forget the voice that bickered with her every single day.
Malfoy lifted her head eagerly and searched in every direction for a long time, but the figure she was hoping for never appeared, and her mood dropped straight to the bottom again.
Had she imagined it?
That would make sense — she'd clearly seen Kate go off to the Hospital Wing with those girls.
She had been watching Kate all along, secretly, from a distance: watching her cast the Patronus Charm, watching her get swept up in a crowd of girls, watching them walk away until they vanished from her sight.
As her declared rival, she couldn't show the slightest concern for Kate in front of anyone else, and she had to keep calling her by her surname, cold and formal.
So… maybe it really had just been a fantasy from practicing too long.
She bent down and picked up the wand she'd dropped in her panic. Malfoy stared at it in silence for a moment, then raised her arm and said calmly, "Expecto Patronum."
A great gush of silver mist poured out and slowly took on the rough shape of an animal in the air.
Malfoy gaped at the blurred silver creature before her. All she'd done was remember that warm embrace — and it had produced this much improvement?
"Is that a…" She squinted, struggling to make it out, then hazarded uncertainly, "a peacock?"
Thirty-odd Dementors in one go — eaten by the Patronus, admittedly, but Kate still had the strangest sensation of being full.
Understood. From now on, if she wanted to lose weight, she'd eat Dementors.
Ahem… with her current figure there was no need to lose anything at all. If anything, any thinner and her chest would disappear entirely.
Her height was shooting up, and yet her chest showed practically no movement whatsoever. Kate looked down at herself with deep resentment.
She hurried back to the Hospital Wing, dropped the Disillusionment Charm just outside, and strode in — only to find everyone gathered around Harry's bed.
He was awake.
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