Aerial Dogfight and the Golden Snitch (7)

Five feet. That glint of gold expanded in his field of vision, becoming a tiny, wildly trembling sun.

He heard the Golden Snitch's wings beating—fine, frantic, as if it were crying for help.

Three feet. His fingers had already spread, his fingertips tracing an arc through the rain as they lunged for that golden sun.

One foot.

His hand had already brushed the edge of those wings. He felt the tiny, icy-cold thing struggling frantically beneath his fingertips.

He had it.

The instant his fingers closed around the rapidly flying golden ball and clenched it in his palm—

Crack.

A clear, teeth-grating sound of breaking came from beneath him without warning. It was not loud, but in the rain, beside his ear, at that distance only he could hear, it exploded in his mind like a thunderclap.

Then the Nimbus 2000 beneath him—the main shaft carrying all its power—snapped cleanly in half under the repeated strain of his overloaded body and the momentum of his full-speed dive.

It did not slowly crack or gradually bend. It broke sharply and neatly down the middle, like a snapped chopstick. The front half of the broom remained in his hands, while the rear half, still attached to his footrests, carved a desperate arc through the air before the two halves flew in different directions.

All thrust vanished in an instant. The momentum of his high-speed dive came to an abrupt halt. Harry felt his body suddenly drop, as though an invisible sledgehammer had struck him in the chest.

He clutched the Golden Snitch tightly in his palm—the tiny thing he had paid an unknown price to catch. It was still struggling in his hand, its wings beating so fast they seemed to be crying.

Like a puppet with its strings cut, his body