He turned his teary gaze to Lucius who made a slight movement with his eyebrow and Harry sucked in a huge, deep breath and composed himself, his hands tightening on the broomstick that had been given to him by his now-dead godfather. The very broom that his ex-friends had tried to destroy. There was no going back from this now, they knew how very much this broom meant to him and they had still tried to damage it beyond repair. He swallowed all of the upset and the raging anger that was burning him up on the inside; he glared at the table that held Ron, Dean, Hermione, and Ginny, who were all trying to avoid the gaze of so many authority figures.
"Miss Granger, would you care to explain why this stolen broomstick was found in your trunk, in the state that it is in?" Professor McGonagall demanded of the red-faced girl. The professor's lips were white and pressed into a thin line, her nostrils flaring in anger. Harry didn't think he'd ever seen her so angry before, not even after the troll incident, or the Norbert incident.
"It was already like that." Ginny jumped in quickly.
"So you were involved in this too, Miss Weasley?" "I can assure you that my son's broom was not in this state when he came to school just a month before it was stolen. I have pictures of him playing on it with Draco on the Quidditch pitch at the manor and it is in perfect condition with not a single tail twig out of place. Harry takes incredibly good care of his broomstick as it was a gift to him by someone very special and he treasures it deeply."
"I…I have the kit up in my trunk, I service this broom at least once a week, sometimes twice. It means so much to me, which is why I desperately wanted it back, but this…this is severe damage. The tail is ruined, the licence numbers have been severely scratched, likely to hide that it is my broomstick, though as the only one in this school with this broom, I can't see how that would have worked, and the handle could be compromised. This is deliberate damage and defacement and I won't stand for it." "How much will it take to fix the broom?" One governor asked.
Harry swallowed down the tears and the anger that were both battling for dominancy.
"It'll have to be sent off so that it can be professionally evaluated by the company that made it and that won't be cheap. The entire tail could need replacing and the licencing needs to be smoothened out and re-engraved. I'm looking at a hefty bill of a couple hundred Galleons and that's only if the tail can be salvaged. If it can't, or if the handle is at all compromised, then it might not even be worth it to fix all of the damage. It would have to be fully replaced with a new broom and then it would lose all of the sentimental value that it holds for me."
Harry was so torn between utter devastation at what had happened to the Firebolt that Sirius had given to him and such furious anger at his former friends that his vision had tunnelled until all he could see were the faces of his housemates, four people that just last year he had called his friends, including two people who had been his very best friends in the world.
A hand landed on his shoulder and he flinched away from it, startled. He looked over his shoulder to see Dumbledore standing behind him. His bitter, hostile anger flared colder and his head started searing in pain. He gasped and raised a hand to the scar on his forehead and he pressed against it hard.
Lucius was there then, with a handkerchief and a flash of burning anger in his grey eyes as he glared at Dumbledore.
"What did you do to my son?" He demanded coldly as Harry was pulled away from Dumbledore, his hand was peeled from his forehead and Lucius looked at his bleeding scar, pressing his handkerchief over it again. "This is Voldemort's doing." Dumbledore insisted to the worried governors. "Harry's scar often hurts him when Voldemort is being active and it has bled before."
"Stop lying!" Harry shouted out. "Stop feeding me these lies, you're always lying to me! This happened when you touched me! I didn't even have a headache or anything before you touched me!"
Lucius squeezed him tightly, warning him to calm himself down and keep his composure, even as he kept the pressure on his forehead.
"Keep your temper; you are revealing more than you know in your anger." Lucius whispered into his ear.
"You know that this is Voldemort's fault." Dumbledore told him.
"You were always telling us that it was his fault when your scar was hurting you, Harry." Hermione spoke up quietly. Harry gritted his teeth. "You have no right to speak to me or to use my given name. I told you what I was told by the headmaster, I only knew what he was telling me, but he's lyingabout it. This happened when he touched me, he did something to me."
"This is unacceptable, Dumbledore." One of the governors said angrily. "This child is bleeding after you touched him, just what is going on in this school?!"
"I assure you, Governor Lettna, I did no such thing. This type of event is common for Harry."
"Nothing like this has happened in the seven weeks that he has been with me over this summer and he has been fine for the first two months of the school term." Lucius hissed. "It is very strange, I think, that he has had this type of reaction just as you touch him."
Harry just stood there and allowed the governors and Dumbledore to fight it out in the middle of the Gryffindor common room. He went back to his ruined Firebolt and looked at it sadly, even as Lucius' hand cupped a handkerchief to his forehead. It seemed to him that his friends had repeatedly bashed and forced the tail into the floor at a vertical angle, snapping the perfectly sleek, honed birch tail twigs, making an utter mess of them when he'd done nothing but groom and clip them since he'd received the broomstick. It was sickening what they'd done to something that had meant so, so much to him. He would never forgive them for this. Never.
"Come, Harry, we shall send this broomstick off immediately and whatever the bill, those involved will share the cost of that as well. My my, I wonder if your parents can even afford that, young Weasleys. The cost of destroying all of Harry's school things and my need to replace them was going to be hefty enough, but a Firebolt in this condition to repair as well, that is going to cost excessively." "You can afford to buy it yourself!" Ron exploded.
"That's not the point! Why should my father have to?" Harry demanded furiously. "Whether rich or poor, it was still you who destroyed all of my things and they all had to be replaced. You need to take responsibility for what you did and if you couldn't afford to replace it, then you shouldn't have destroyed it all in the first place!"
"There is no need to lose your temper, Harry. Not over such a matter as this." Lucius told him with a sniff. "At least now we know what happened to your broom and we can have it repaired, no matter the cost."
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