"Harry." Kevin caught him in the entrance hall before the team headed out. "The Dementors have been clustering up high. Don't chase the Snitch into the clouds. I know Wood wants to win — but don't."
Harry gave him a steady look. "I know. I'll watch for them."
He meant it. Kevin could see that. But he also knew what adrenaline did to good intentions.
The match began in driving rain under a sky the colour of old iron. Thunder rumbled somewhere to the north. The stands were packed — students huddled under umbrellas and waterproofing charms, pressing together for warmth.
Kevin cast a rain-repelling charm over their row and immediately had half a dozen people crowd under it uninvited. He put his arm around Hermione to keep her from being jostled, and she settled against his side and watched the game with comfortable attention.
Hufflepuff's Seeker was easy to spot — Cedric Diggory, fifth year, flying well. Harry had found him too, both of them circling wide above the match.
Kevin tracked the sky while the commentary crackled through the rain.
A bolt of lightning hit one of the goal posts. The crowd flinched. The Chasers kept flying.
Then Cedric shot upward and vanished into a cloud bank. Harry followed.
Kevin watched the clouds and waited.
Here it comes.
A shape fell from the cloud's edge — Cedric, hit by the lightning inside. He dropped twenty feet before his broom caught him. Students below screamed. The Hufflepuff reserves were already moving, wands out.
Kevin felt the cold before he saw them.
Dark shapes descending through the rain. Not birds. Not clouds. The cold spreading downward in a visible wave.
"There — Harry's diving —"
The announcer's voice. Kevin was already standing.
Harry's broom was in freefall. The cold hit the stands like a wall — laughter dying, warmth vanishing, the worst of everything rising to the surface.
"Arresto Momentum!"
Dumbledore's voice cut through the noise. Harry's fall slowed, became a drift. He hit the pitch on his back, unhurt, but didn't move.
More Dementors still coming. Dozens of them, drawn by the crowd's emotion, the open air, the sheer mass of living people.
Dumbledore stood at the edge of the teacher's box and flung his wand in a wide arc.
"Expecto Patronum!"
Silver-white energy detonated outward from the wand tip — not a single creature but a wave of pure light, billowing across the entire pitch in concentric rings. Dementors shredded at the edges of it, recoiled, scattered.
Kevin had already vaulted the barrier. He landed on the pitch, crossed to Harry, and tipped a restorative potion between his lips. Not enough to wake him — Dementor exposure hit something deeper than ordinary unconsciousness — but it would help.
"Match over! Everyone back to the castle — now!"
Dumbledore's voice, stripped of its usual warmth, carried a fury Kevin hadn't heard before. Not at the students. At the Dementors. At whoever had let this happen.
McGonagall arrived at a run, checked Harry, directed the staff. Kevin stayed close until Harry was on a stretcher and moving.
The infirmary.
Harry's friends clustered around the bed. Draco had appeared briefly, assessed the situation, and departed back to the Slytherin dormitories with a quietness that looked, on closer inspection, like genuine concern.
"That's the first time I've seen Dumbledore angry," Hermione said. She'd glimpsed his face as he turned back to the staff after the Dementors scattered — white around the jaw, eyes hot.
"That wasn't anger," Kevin said, biting into an apple from the bedside table that had been left for Harry. "That was settling accounts. Fudge is going to have a very unpleasant conversation."
"That was Harry's apple." Hermione swatted his hand.
"Harry's unconscious. I'm taste-testing it for him."
She gave him the look that meant she was done arguing, which meant he'd won.
"You two really can't stop," Ron muttered from the other chair. He had the expression of a man who had accepted that his life contained this.
Harry's eyebrow twitched. Then his eyes opened.
"Good morning," Kevin said. "How was the Dementor? First impression?"
"You should try it," Harry said, voice rough. "Apparently very peaceful."
"I'll add it to the list." Kevin grinned.
Hermione pinched Kevin's side and turned to Harry with a completely different expression. "How are you feeling? Really?"
"Fine." Harry pushed himself up slowly. His colour was wrong but improving. "What happened? Who won?"
Ron went quiet.
"Gryffindor lost," Kevin said. "Match was called. Your score wasn't enough against Hufflepuff's."
"Nobody blames you," Hermione said quickly, the hand that had pinched Kevin now on Harry's arm. "The Dementors weren't supposed to be there. Dumbledore is furious about it."
"Your Nimbus 2000 hit the Whomping Willow," Kevin added. "It's gone."
Hermione fixed him with a look that had very specific intentions.
"You're making that face," Kevin noted, standing. "I'll be over here."
She chased him three steps around the infirmary, lecturing in a pointed whisper. He retreated, laughing. She gave up and came back to Harry, who had watched this with an expression that had moved from grief to bafflement to something much lighter.
He shook his head at Ron. Ron shrugged back.
"Kevin," Harry said.
Kevin stopped.
"When the Dementors hit — I heard a woman's voice. Screaming." He paused. "I think it was my mum."
The laughter went out of the room.
Kevin came back and sat on the edge of the bed.
"That's what they do," he said, quietly. "They drain out the good and what's left is the worst thing in you. You heard the worst thing you carry." He looked at Harry steadily. "Which means it was the night she died. The night she was protecting you."
Harry was very still.
"The Patronus I'm teaching you — it works the same direction that grief does, but backwards. Your happiest memories. The things worth protecting." Kevin put a hand on his shoulder. "When a Dementor comes for you again, you send it your mother's love instead of your mother's death. That's what a Patronus is."
Harry looked at him for a long moment.
"When Lupin's recovered," Kevin said, "we'll go to him. Get the story. Deal with what's actually happening, not what you're afraid of."
Harry nodded. His fists had unclenched.