author: Lucinda
fandom: Harry Potter set post bk 7 (no specific knowledge needed, could be canon)
if you recognize them, they were created by JK Rowling (I did create a few of the other Quidditch players and the reporter).
no pairings present in this fragment.
rated T due to a few bad words.
The breeze felt wonderful against his face, and Harry Potter smiled. There were streams of sunlight, broken up by soft clouds, the sort that had no interest in raining on you, and a gentle breeze that didn't sting the eyes, didn't cause your broom to drift to the side, and couldn't blind the referee. In short, it was perfect Quidditch weather.
A blessing, considering that Puddlemere United was scrimmaging against the Holyhead Harpies today.
Harry spun and dropped about seventy feet, the sudden change disrupting the Holyhead chasers, causing Katie to shriek uncomplimentary things towards him, "You scrawny, hippogriff buggering bastard! Do you have any idea how many bones someone'd break falling from this height?! You don't fly that close to another player you demented..."
It warmed his heart to know that Katie Bell had found a professional job doing what she loved, and she did a wonderful job of it. Granted, the words that she was shouting at him also warmed his cheeks - the girl… no, Katie was a woman now – Katie had quite the mouth on her. He wondered how much of that was all Katie and how much had been Gwenog Jones and Morgana Bulstrode's influence on her. Not that it mattered.
With a grin, he called back, "Demented what? How about demented Gryffindor? Try looking in the mirror, Katie!"
"Have you lost your touch, Katie? Harry's been doing things like that for years now," Oliver taunted from the hoops.
Harry did wonder if it felt as strange to Oliver to be obstructing Katie instead of clearing her way. But Katie had signed with the Holyhead Harpies, a team that neither Oliver Wood or Harry Potter qualified for. Oliver had talked Harry into signing with Puddlemere United, and it was… well, parts of it were great, and parts of it made Harry very aware that Oliver Wood was still a Quidditch-obsessed fiend who believed in practicing at the crack of dawn. He did occasionally wonder if he'd ever get used to the blue robes, or if perhaps he should have tried to sign with the Wigtown Wanderers so that he'd still be playing Quidditch in red robes. Though that would be a silly reason to pick what team you played for in the professionals.
Being a professional Quidditch player was wonderful. He got to travel, was expected to fly almost every day, and nobody was supposed to be shooting spells at him! He wasn't expected to hunt down dark wizards or evil dark artifacts that carried bits of souls, or fight monsters. Just fly the broom and catch the snitch… Today he was supposed to catch it before Glynnis could catch it.
"Reporter on the field!" Con's shout had much the same effect as if he'd knocked a Bludger towards them – a sinking feeling, a spiraling sense of dismay, and a sudden drop in everyone's mood.
"Oh blast, he's from the Prophet," Katie snarled.
"Does that mean we go see what he wants to try to keep him from making up his own story?" Harry asked, flying closer to Katie.
"We might as well give him a chance, though not everyone treats reporting as creatively as Skeeter," Katie replied.
Slowly, the various Quidditch players descended towards the grass, with Jess holding the Quaffle and only the beaters still actively watching for any of the balls, and that just because the Bludgers wouldn't know or care that the rest of the players were trying to see what in the world an reporter was doing on the pitch. Ignoring Bludgers could be disastrous though, and nobody wanted to get things broken in favor of paying attention to a reporter.
"So what brings a reporter from the Prophet to our scrimmage? It's really just an elaborate practice, and you'd be safer in the stands," Morgana called.
"There's been some interesting proposals under discussion among some Wizengamot committees, and I wanted to see if the public could get your opinions on some of those topics," the reporter began.
"One little problem with that," Harry raised his voice just enough to be heard. "We don't actually know what these committees were discussing. Only idiots comment on what they don't know. We'd like to think that we aren't idiots, just athletes. The two aren't the same."
"Fair enough," the reporter spoke. He paused, and then added, "I'm Eth Bleigh, from the Daily Prophet, for those of you who didn't know or might possibly care."
"What's the first thing they're discussing?" Morgana asked.
"The Ministry's taking about placing someone in Hogwarts to…"
Katie's shout of "The hell they will!" interrupted his words.
"From what I heard about the last time they pulled that shit, they sent a pack of Death Eaters sanctioned by a puppet Ministry to turn Hogwarts into a combination Death Eater training grounds and muggleborn torture center," Morgana growled. She sounded remarkably like her cousin Millicent at that moment.
"Before that was Umbridge," Harry commented. "The woman who passed rules to allow her to search students mail, banned all periodicals from being received at Hogwarts, passed laws to forbid dissenting opinions, relationships, dating, fun… Made laws to permit her to do whatever she wanted, and tortured students after class. Class that she refused to teach on the grounds of we would never need to defend ourselves. Because Voldemort wasn't back and there was no danger. If there was anything, we should call an auror and let the Ministry handle everything."
"Because that worked so well for the Talbots, the McKinnons, the Richleaus, and the Chesneys," grumbled Hesson, one of Puddlemere's reserve Beaters.
"Right, a complete lack of confidence in the Ministry's ability to protect the public, and less than that for their ability to improve Hogwarts," Eth Bleigh scrawled some notes on a parchment with a small brown quill.
"Discussion about changing some of the Quidditch regulations?" he asked, glancing hopefully at Glynnis and Oliver Wood.
"If they're doing that then they'd best keep them in line with the rest of the world. Hard to participate in a World Tournament if the rest of the world laughs at your rulebook," Glynnis observed.
"Moldova tried to regulate Quidditch differently than the rest of the world, back in the fifteen hundreds. The Turks invaded them and it was over a century before the rest of the world took their teams seriously," Oliver was gesturing as he spoke, and then admitted, "Though I suppose the Turkish invasion and the following vampire uprising may have hurt their Quidditch chances too."
"As players, we'd rather be able to keep hoping that if our teams are at the top of our game, we might play against the top teams of other nations, which means our regulations have to remain compatible with the rest of the world," Gwenog Jones explained before slamming away the Bludger that had been heading towards the group.
"That makes sense to me," agreed Eth Bleigh.
Harry glanced over towards Katie, "Bet he's saving the worst for last. He looks like he's trying not to mention something."
"That's a sucker bet," Katie agreed.
Making it clear that they weren't the only ones to hold that opinion, Morgana demanded, "What else are they talking about?"
"There's concern about the smaller population figures on the census as compared to before the War. Between that and a rising number of sqibs…" Eth trailed off, clearly trying to find the right words. "Some of them are debating some sort of marriage laws."
"The bloody hell?!?" Katie demanded. "Who the hell do they think they are trying to tell us anything about our marriages?"
"This from the same people who insisted that there was no dark lord, no cause for alarm? The idiots who tried to say that it couldn't happen? The ones who said if anything happened, all we'd need to do would be wait for the aurors?" Oliver scowled. "I don't trust the Ministry to have any more say in my life than they have right now, maybe less."
"Maybe if the fools out there would be willing to have more than one child if the first one's a son, the numbers of pure-bloods wouldn't be falling. Some of those idiots need to be reminded that it takes a two to make a baby, and they can't both be pureblooded wizards," Glynnis snarled. "We all know that they're more worried about how many pure-bloods are there than mixed bloods or muggle-born. What about those population figures?"
"Bet there's something in there about demanding children," Gwenog growled. "That sort of thing can play hell on a witch's career, especially those of us who play Quidditch. There are some witches who don't want to get married, or to have children."
"What about those couples who'd love to have a whole team's worth of children, but can't? Sometimes it isn't a matter of willingness or effort, it just doesn't happen," observed Delin Marchbanks, the Harpies' Keeper.
Harry thought back to what he'd learned of Tom Riddle's mother, and of some of the ragged looking people lurking in the smaller allies. Some of them looked barely able to take care of themselves, how could they afford children? Since the man had asked for opinions, he'd best say something. "What about those witches and wizards who aren't very prosperous? The ones who work as hard as they can just to keep themselves fed and clothed? It's all well and good to say that more children would be nice, but what happens if some of those couples out there can't afford children?"
"What about people who were married and lost their spouse to the war? Is the Ministry trying to demand that they remarry just to pop out a few sprogs?" Con demanded before smacking a bludger.
"In the muggle world, there are healers who specialize in helping couples conceive, and in caring for pregnant women. It's a big area for medical research," Offered one of the other Holyhead chasers. "Maybe St. Mungo's or some of the researchers should look into helping witches conceive before the Ministry starts making their demands."
"Good points," Eth stammered, backing away from the glaring Glynnis and Gwenog. "I can get those questions published, and maybe the Wizengamot will address them…"
With that Eth Bleigh retreated from the pitch.
Harry just shook his head. "I hope they aren't going to push through something stupid."
While there were quite a few voices that echoed Harry's hope, none of them tried to insist that the Ministry wouldn't do such a thing. They'd already learned the hard way that sometimes, when you thought that the Ministry couldn't do anything more appalling and stupid than they'd managed, they surprised you by digging a little deeper and producing something even more spectacularly awful.
End Quidditch Conversations fragment.