When he eventually came to, Harry adjusted his glasses in the haze that accompanies waking up in a place that is not your own bed. The time turner he had fallen asleep grasping jolted him back to reality, and his mission. His parents and godfather`s lives depended on him.
Standing up fast, he quickly exited the secret passage, still a bit dizzy and dazed, but certain of one thing…
Actually, Harry realize, stopping short, he had absolutely no idea when he was. Exactly how many times had he spun the hourglass? Pulling out the time turner, he tried to look at the amount of sand in each of the bulbs, hoping for any sort of clue.
"Ooph!"
Something collided with Harry from behind, sending him flying strait to the floor below. Despite being still terribly disorientated from waking up in Merlin knows what year, he managed to catch himself, and his seeker instincts kicked in just in time to catch the time turner before it could shatter on the stone floor.
"Whoops, sorry. Hey, nice catch Potter."
The world set back into focus as Harry righted his glasses, his gaze settling on the playfully troublesome smile of the accidental assailant. From the ground, she looked vaguely celestial, what with the hands on hips and an aura of undoubtable strength about her, even despite the ponytail barely containing her mane of black hair. Harry was fairly certain he`d never seen her before in his life, which he supposed was a decent indicator that at least he could be pretty sure of at least one thing: he wasn`t in 1996 anymore.
But then why had she called him Potter?
As Harry`s brain was still waking up and processing the last few minutes, the angelic Asian`s eyebrows were slowly descending, and a frown began to form. She would not stop staring at his eyes (except for the occasional flicker of a glance to his hair), and it was vastly unnerving.
"Wait…Who are you?"
Harry could tell his expression was probably as confused and shocked as hers, and as the question hung in the air, he knew he had to answer fast, before she started to wonder how he had popped out of the wall.
"Er… Harry. You?"
She blinked once, as if processing this in the briefest of moments, then reached an arm down to help him up. "Mattie Bell, and…" Mattie`s eyes flicked to the windows, "…extremely late for Quiddich tryouts."
Harry smiled at the familiar hint of anticipation in her expression, the mark of a Quiddich player ready to take flight. It had been ages since he`d been on a broom, not since Umbridge had locked up his Firebolt…
Mostly out of nostalgia, he asked, "What are the tryouts for?"
"Well, it`s supposed to be for a new seeker, but they`re all bloody awful, so it might just end up being for a chaser instead, and our captain will be bumped to seeker."
"How do you know they`re awful? You haven`t even gotten to the pitch yet!" Harry questioned skeptically.
Mattie smirked sorrowfully. "Oh, the team`s been dreading this since our old seeker left for the Auror Academy. In the past week alone, those perspective seekers have lost seven snitches trying to practice for tryouts."
"Well, I hope at least your captain is able to make a decent catch."
"He`s alright considering he`s a chaser, but he`d never be able to make a catch like…"
Something changed in her eyes, and her clouded expression became super focused. Matilda turned to him with a rash-like impish grin.
"You fly, right? You do, I can tell by the way you were looking at the pitch…" She drifted off, gaze catching on his tie. "Gryffindor! A saving grace! Is there any chance you could repeat the catch from earlier, when I ran into you, in the air?"
Great, first she knocked him to the ground like a sack of potatoes, and now she was trying to recruit him. Harry wondered if it was too late into the conversation to oblivate her and get back to saving Sirius and his parents. But as dedicated as he was to his mission, it appeared Mattie was equally determined.
"That was a brilliant catch. You`re exactly what the team needs. Please come down there with me, I`m willing to bet fifty galleons you`ll get the spot as soon as the team sees you in action."
Shouts drifted up from the pitch, and Harry looked longingly at the speeding figures. It had been ages since he`d touched a broom, let alone been invited to play….
"I can`t." He said finally. "You don`t understand…"
Mattie scoffed, and challenged him. "Come on, it`s 1976. Humor me with what you think I can`t comprehend, mate"
1976! 1976… he`d gone back twenty years…surely there was enough time to save his parents and Sirius, and play some quiddich along the way. And it wasn`t like he was actually going to be staying and filling the seeker position, he still was going to find Dumbledore and his parents and warn them of things to come, but it wouldn`t hurt to go down there and cheer up this hopeless team.
"I haven`t got a broom."
Mattie broke out into what Harry was starting to recognize as a trademark devilish grin. "Oh, that`s an easy fix."
He had been drastically mistaken at first glance: she wasn`t angelic, far from it. If their first few minutes of conversation were anything to go on, Mattie Bell was anything but.
On the way down to the pitch, Harry ran through all the possible ways he could explain his situation to Dumbledore in a way that would make him seem, well, not crazy. The prophesy Neville had smashed in the Department of Mysteries was less than fifteen years old, so that was, quite literally, a bust. Everything Harry knew about the past was yet to come, or was easily readable off of a chocolate frog card. So how could he get his warn….Madame Prince had black hair?
Harry forced himself to stop staring at the absence of silver and pretend, at least for the sake of the bystanders from the past, that he hadn`t just dropped in from Mars. Wait, had that tapestry always been there?
"Over here." Mattie directed, as if he didn`t already know the way by heart. "Hey, so Harry, have I seen you around here before? You look awfully familiar."
"No, I`m fairly sure I`ve never seen you in the past." Harry replied, acutely aware of the double meaning in his words.
"Hmm." She crinkled her eyes thoughtfully, but shrugged and tugged him into the locker room. "I could have sworn… your eyes. But I guess it just must be that your hair reminds me of a friend of mine."
Once in the locker room, Mattie set about digging through an overstuffed locker, carelessly chucking unwanted garments every which way.
"Hold this." She instructed, lugging a beater`s bat into his arms.
"You`re a beater?"
"Ha! No, but could you imagine…?" Harry caught a pair of scarlet robes haphazardly thrown his way, fumbling with the bat until she relieved him of the burden and stuffed it in the locker. "Nah, I`m a chaser. But since our beater is in detention for setting fire to some Slytherin`s hair, he won`t be needing his robes and broom today."
Harry started to change, but froze when he noticed the large block letters adorning the back of the robes.
BLACK.
There had only been one member of the house of Black ever to wear scarlet and gold. What were the odds that Harry would end up accidently wearing the uniform of the very man he`d been trying to save?
Greif hit him like a bludger to the ribcage.
Hands shaking, Harry lifted the robes on over his head, trying not to cry out as he saw the laughing face of his godfather disappear into the veil. He would save him this time. He would save them all.
"Ready?" Luckily, Harry managed to look up and pull himself out of his thoughts in time to catch the broom that was chucked at his head. Straightening the slightly too-big uniform, he managed a smiled.
"I think so."
On the far end of the field, groups of perspective seekers were lining up to get their chance to show what their skills, catching as many balls that the people in scarlet robes, Mattie`s teammates, threw their way. The stands were pretty crowded for tryouts, considering how wobbly and unrefined the flying of most applicants was. A large group of Slytherins hung like a smog cloud by the front of the stands, leering and criticizing in a way that made Harry`s blood boil, "Weasley Is Our King" almost paling in comparison to some of the comments hurled at the team.
"Perkins, how`s your mum? Heard she was at the raid earlier this week, you know, the one that sent seven Aurors to St. Mungo's? With any luck, she`s been hexed into reassessing her loyalties."
One of the scarlet robed girls froze, a glint of tears forming in her eyes. Mattie`s grip on her broom solidified, but across the pitch, someone was already coming to the sobbing girl`s defense.
"Sod off, Mulciber, you dark arts loving twat, or your I.Q. won`t be the only thing that`s the size of a pixie."
The defending speaker, who had been circling the field from the air, landed a few feet away from them, eyes never leaving the stands as he messed up his hair. It had been only a few months since Harry had seen his father in Snape`s memory, but evidently that had been longer for James, who was now several inches taller, meeting Harry`s height exactly. "Didn`t I specifically ask you to come early, Bell?"
"Yeah I know, sorry." Mattie said, not bothering with excuses. "Is it as bad as we thought?"
James signed, running a frustrated had through his hair. "I`ve got to say, things are not looking good for the cup this year. Some of these kids would be stellar catchers, the ones that can fly, anyway… but there`s not a single one who has an ounce of consistent coordination when it comes to a real snitch. Thanks to this bunch, we haven`t even got any practice ones left, only golf balls."
In the stands, the Slytherins were getting louder. "Oi, that mudblood can`t even fly straight! I knew Gryffindor was bad, but I didn`t know they were this desperate! What do you say, Avery, maybe he`ll reconsider trying out after we show him how real magic`s done."
"A good crucio ought to do it, I think."
Before any of the Quiddich players, all of whom were just about ready to curse the offending Slytherin into next month, could move an inch, a girl stood up from farther back in the stands, much to the evident protests of her friends.
"Detention, Rodolphus, and fifty points from Slytherin."
Rodolphus sneered. "Oh, little Mudblood Evans is going all perfect prefect on me, how very noble of her. Still spiteful your precious Severus decided to join the cause?"
"Use that word again and I`ll make sure you`ll be too incapacitated for You-Know-Who to even think about needing your help." James seethed, Mattie not bothering to hold him back.
"I`ve got this under control, thank you very much, Potter." Lily called back, voice tainted with just as much poison as she`d used on the Slytherins, if not colder. Turning back to Mattie and Harry, James` face was a mask of controlled rage.
Obviously used to this sort of thing and hoping to divert James` anger, Mattie elbowed Harry forward, sacrificial lamb style. "Black wanted me to tell you that he`s got detention again this morning for that stunt with Filch and the portraits, but I found someone in his place who I think you might be interested in."
Harry froze as his father looked him over, equally wishing for James to recognize him and at the same time knowing that there could be sever, paradoxical repercussions if his father was to ever find out the truth.
"Well, you`re certainly as scruffy as Black, that`s for sure." James declared finally, and Mattie rolled her eyes, mumbling something that sounded like 'look in a mirror much?', but thankfully the Quiddich captain was too preoccupied to pay her any attention. "Ever played as a seeker before?"
"A bit." Said the youngest Quiddich player in a century, lying to his father`s face.
"Then let`s see what you`ve got."
Anxiety bubbled up inside Harry as he mounted his broom, hyperaware of every eye in the stadium turning to him, the newcomer. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath, channeling the carefree ease of a Weasley pickup Quiddich game. Without a Firebolt, he was relying on pure talent. Flashing back to a jibe Hermione had once thrown at Malfoy, he smiled, remembering that`s what had gotten him on the team in the first place.
Eyes flying open, Harry kicked off and shot up into the air.
The thrill was incredible, adrenaline flowing through his veils like Felix Felicis. If only Umbridge could see him now.
Speeding around the field as fast as he could, Harry weaved the rings for good measure before diving, then pulling up into a hover several feet in front of his dad. James was having trouble keeping a straight face, reminding Harry of Oliver Wood the first time Harry had met him.
"Lin," He shouted, "Throw that kid some practice balls."
The other members of the Gryffindor Quiddich Team resumed their drills with the other applicants, but Harry caught some of them watching him out of the corners of their eyes. Mattie had gone over to join them, but not before giving Harry two proud thumbs up.
One by one, he caught the golf balls with ease, fighting the urge to look up at James, who was circling above. The girl, Linda, seemed to be glad to have an excuse to throw something as hard and as far as possible, and Harry didn`t blame her, remembering how those Slytherins had been targeting her earlier.
Eventually, James blew a whistle. "Everyone circle up!"
After being divided into two teams, evenly stocked skill wise, James called for the game balls to be released, including the only remaining snitch. For the scrimmage, Harry had been paired against the younger brother of the Gryffindor team`s keeper, the small but speedy kid that James had mentioned earlier.
For the first few minutes of the game, the snitch was nowhere to be seen, so Harry was free to circle above in the habitual way he`d technically never done before, observing the game and people below. James, who was supposed to be acting as a referee while assessing potential seekers, had instead taken to gazing off towards the risers, where, sure enough, Lily was chatting with Remus and some girls. It was so surreal, Harry almost forgot he wasn`t in a memory again, and forced himself to keep a part of his brain on alert for the snitch.
As if on cue, there was a rocketing glint flickering through his peripheral vision. But no, it was only a bludger, coming up the length of the field. The bludger didn`t really seem to have any sort of purpose to it, since it was passing most of the players by. It was getting awfully close to the stands, though.
But no, Harry realized abruptly, that bludger did have a target.
James Potter, currently yelling something back to Lily about how he was allowed to fly where he bloody pleased, was completely and utterly unaware of the bludger that would soon be crashing into his side and toppling him from his broom to the rigid ground below.
Harry didn`t even hesitate. It was what he had come to do.
He dove.
"Dad!"
The wind ripped the cry from his throat, muffling the dangerous truth.
Harry`s luck seemed to have abandoned him after that, though. The bludger hurled into the side of his head at top speed, pitching him from the broom and rocketing to the ground below. Right before Harry blacked out from the searing pain, he was able to register the sickening crunch of glass shattering against his chest.
A/N:Thank you to everyone who has been following and reviewing on the story so far, I`m thrilled you all seem to like it! Chapter updates should get quicker once I`ve finished off Never Never and the edits of the Black Files.
