The next day was Harry's debut as a Seeker on the Quidditch pitch. Even the weather cooperated: it was a rare clear day, with not a cloud in the sky and sunshine everywhere.
But Harry felt anything but sunny. The smell of sausages roasting made his mouth water, yet his stomach felt as though a heavy stone had settled in it. He kept pushing his fork through his mashed potatoes without taking a bite.
"You need to eat something, Harry," Hermione urged.
"I can't."
"Mate, you have to eat." Ron grabbed a chicken leg, rolled it in mashed potatoes, and shoved it toward Harry's mouth. "Seeker isn't an easy job. Everyone's watching you!"
"Urgh—" Harry choked, his eyes rolling back as he shoved Ron away.
Ron landed on the bench with a thump, looking utterly baffled. "Hey, you didn't react like that when Eliana did it yesterday!"
"Shut up, Ron." Harry's ears burned red. He stole a glance to the side and saw Eliana eating while casting worried looks toward the High Table. She hadn't noticed them at all.
He breathed a sigh of relief, then felt strangely disappointed. He chewed fiercely on the chicken leg in his mouth.
Still, the interruption had done him some good. His appetite had returned.
He stuffed down another two slices of toast and was struggling to chew them when he heard a soft chorus of sharp breaths around him, as though they had suddenly found themselves in a nest of snakes.
Eliana had appeared close beside him on his left—so quickly it was as if she had learned to teleport over the past few days—with a brilliant smile on her face.
"Oh, Eliana." Harry choked on his toast and hurriedly swallowed it. "Thanks for the encouragement. I'll do my best in the match. I'm not nervous."
Eliana tilted her head and gave him a puzzled look. Before Harry could work out what it meant, a soft, familiar voice that made his skin crawl sounded on his other side.
"I should think so."
Harry looked up in horror, straight into Snape's expressionless face. "After all, you weren't afraid of a Troll. What could a little Quidditch match possibly be to you?"
The corner of his mouth twitched into something like a sneer. "Good luck—even if your opponent is Slytherin."
Harry shuddered on the spot.
Snape paid him no further attention. He strode toward the Entrance Hall and called back without turning his head, "Ritchie, come along."
"Coming!"
Harry watched Eliana spring up from the bench and skip after the great black banner ahead of her like a cheerful little rabbit.
"Did he come over just to mock you?"
"What did he want with Eliana?"
Harry and Ron spoke at the same time.
Ron wrinkled his nose at Harry, his face twisted as though he had a stomachache.
"Worry about yourself, mate," he said mournfully. "Stop thinking about Eliana. You're about to play!"
"What about Angelina?" Wood hurried over with a stern face. "Yes, Angelina, our excellent Chaser, is about to play—and we're going to win today! Harry, come with me."
Harry shot up from his seat like a javelin and stumbled after him.
Ron watched them go, grimacing. "That was the captain? With hearing like that? I mean, our Gryffindor Quidditch team..."
He wrestled with it for a moment, then summoned every scrap of tact he had. "It's not quite what I imagined."
"I reckon I could do it too," he muttered.
He seemed to picture himself as Quidditch captain. He raised his chicken leg as though it were the Quidditch Cup, a dreamy, foolish grin spreading across his face.
Hermione snorted in exasperation.
Fortunately, she didn't have to endure the babbling idiot alone for long. Eliana soon came skipping back.
"What did Professor Snape want with you?"
Eliana triumphantly produced something. Her little canine teeth showed in a grin that made her delight in showing it off perfectly clear. "He gave me this!"
It was a dark purple potion bottle with a round belly and a wooden stopper wedged firmly into its neck. It was filled to the brim with a liquid whose color they couldn't make out.
"So that's why he wished Harry good luck—did he tell you to drug him?" Ron snapped back to attention and drew the nastiest conclusion he could.
"Good grief, that's a lot of potion. Is he trying to poison Harry?" He turned urgently to Eliana. "You wouldn't do that, would you?"
Huff—
Eliana drew a deep breath, and the smile dropped from her face.
"Don't make me slap you when I'm this happy, Weasley," she said through gritted teeth. "It's Essence of Dittany!"
"Essence of what?"
"Oh, honestly, Ron, don't you ever read your textbooks? It's in One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi," Hermione said, at the end of her patience too. "Essence of Dittany is a potion extracted from the Dittany plant. It helps wounds heal quickly."
She paused. "It's rather expensive, too."
At last, Eliana got the pleasure of having someone recognize the wonderful thing she was showing off. The corners of her tightly pressed mouth curled upward despite her best efforts.
Ron's eyes filled with envy.
"Why would Snape give you that?" He could hardly take his eyes off the bottle.
Eliana carefully put the bottle away. "Because he wanted to."
She recalled what Snape had said as he tossed her the bottle—"I don't need a student's things"—and promptly edited it in her mind.
"He was worried I'd used mine up and wouldn't have any when I needed it," she said with conviction.
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