Chapter 2
Quidditch would be good for the soul if she ever got the chance to play it as it was intended.
The first match of the year had been against Slytherin. What a bunch of prats and thugs! The match had been the usual slugfest, full of fouls, sucker punches, and the normal bag of dirty tricks. The only thing that even made the Slytherin team competitive was the fact that every single one of them flew on a top-notch broom. That they were completely ruthless and unbounded by any concept of sportsmanship or fair play didn't hurt either.
Draco Malfoy, the Slytherin Seeker, didn't deserve to sit on a broom. His idea of playing Seeker was to follow her around until she found the snitch and then make a mad rush at the last second. It never occurred to him to look for the bloody thing himself. The day she lost a Snitch to Draco Malfoy was the day she would hang up her broom and quit.
If the Slytherin match had been bad, the Hufflepuff match had been infuriating. David Brigstock, Elwyn's younger brother, had refused to compete against her. Of course, she didn't know that until after she'd already caught the Snitch or she would have called the match a forfeit. She understood that it was supposed to be some sort of gesture, but how could they think she would appreciate such a thing? Even Cedric would have known better than that.
It had been an insult, but she'd had to accept it graciously. It was like cheating. It sullied the purity of Quidditch. If Hufflepuff had done this though, what was going to happen at their next match when they played against Gryffindor? How could they do this to Quidditch? Didn't they know how important this game was to her?
Something similar to Cho's thoughts was echoing through the minds of almost everyone at the school. Particularly pre-occupied by these thoughts were the members of the Gryffindor House Quidditch team. Everyone knew Harry held himself responsible for Cedric's death. Would he be able to play against Cho? The team decided that they would leave the decision to Harry, whatever he decided, they would support. The problem was that Harry wasn't talking.
Match time approached and the members of Gryffindor didn't know whether they were walking into a match or a mass suicide. They had pledged themselves either way, but they wanted to know. Angelina Johnson, the new Captain, tried to give a pre-game pep talk but it was hard when she didn't know what was going to happen herself. Harry remained stone-faced, clutching his Firebolt, nobody remembered him having said a word for days.
Out on the pitch, both teams assembled for Madame Hooch's lecture. Cho squared off with Harry and locked eyes. A bond of silent understanding passed between them. Harry saw the plea on her face and he knew, she was sure of it. He made no gesture of acknowledgement, but she could tell. At the whistle they mounted their brooms and launched into the air. Harry's teammates had no idea what he had planned, and until they knew, they were going to play Quidditch.
Traditionally, a Seeker spent most of a Quidditch match waiting. A Seeker's first task was to find the Snitch. This was hard to do, as the Snitch was small and fast. Usually the search was done high above the normal activity of the game, until the little winged orb was actually spotted, then the Seeker would dive and try to snatch it out of the air. To find the snitch required a special eye, many who played the position did not actually have the eye for it, and thus was born the strategy of waiting for the other Seeker to find the Snitch, then take advantage of superior flying or speed to take it from them. Maneuvers such as the Wronski Feint had been developed to counter such behavior.
Although the position required superior flying ability, courage, and speed, it was generally considered a passive position. An indeterminate period of boredom followed by 60 seconds or so of sheer adrenaline was how someone had once summed it up. Patience was considered to be the forgotten virtue needed by a Seeker.
This game did not follow tradition. Harry reached his normal searching spot and turned to face the pitch, seeking out the figure of the opposing Seeker. When he was sure that he had her attention he picked a spot in the middle of the pitch and started to edge towards it. When Cho started to move as well he began a steep rapid dive. Three-quarters of the way there, he pulled himself out of the dive and returned to altitude searching the air around him for any sign of the snitch or his opponent. Unable to pull out of her dive as quickly as he had, he found her skimming slightly above ground level and starting her own climb.
As soon as Cho reached altitude, she made a feint of her own. Harry started to follow but then dipped his broom steeply in the opposite direction. He had called her bluff. She rolled 360 degrees and brought herself back up to a decent height, scanning the sky continuously. The game was about six minutes old and there had already been two feints and a counter-feint. That was more than she'd had the entire season so far. Lee Jordan was shouting something about Harry and his Firebolt and she quickly turned to look for him. She found him streaking across the Pitch, bent low onto his broomstick, probably approaching maximum speed. As he approached the boundary he pulled up into a dive, corkscrewed and reversed directions.
In the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of gold. She accelerated up and away from it, tracking it with her peripheral vision. It was the snitch. Nonchalantly she maneuvered her broom to point in the right direction. He was watching her, she knew it, this had to be done carefully. Finally in position she accelerated and dove. He was immediately on her tail. She could hear Lee Jordan screaming and the roar of the crowd. Harry was fast, but she was closer. Even his Firebolt would not get him there fast enough. Then, in a flash, the Snitch was gone.
Quickly she braked. The bloody Snitch had leapt straight up and out of her field of vision. Hastily, she tried to reacquire it. It wasn't hard. All she had to do was trace Harry's line of sight. He was moving too fast though, he was going to have to turn around or go out of bounds. That meant he would lose his eye lock on the Snitch. She rose and built up speed to resume the chase. In one of the most amazing aerial maneuvers she had ever seen, Harry made an outside loop followed by a barrel roll to re-orient himself onto the field. It would take him precious seconds to reacquire the Snitch. Cho tried to coax a little more speed out of her Comet.
She flew right into a Bludger. The wind was knocked out of her, but she was okay. What was really bad was that she had lost her eye lock. Harry was still searching though, and still moving at near full velocity. That was the bright side. Guessing that she had lost the Snitch as well Harry made a mad dash for nowhere. Cho couldn't take the risk of not answering this feint. When it turned out to be false, she answered with a feint of her own. They continued to feint back and forth for what seemed forever.
There were feints within feints within feints. There was continuous high- speed motion. Never, in six years of flying and five years of Quidditch, had Cho ever pushed her broom so hard. What had happened to sitting high above the action of a game, seeking the Snitch by eye? Harry zipped through the action of the game, caused the Ravenclaw chasers to lose the Quaffle. He buzzed the Keeper. He made the Beaters foul. Cho tried to do the same to the Gryffindors tried to distract him from his offensive maneuvers with feints. What had happened to find the Snitch and catch it?
Cho didn't have a clue what the score was, but couldn't risk taking the time to find out. She had never ever played a game of Quidditch like this. She had never even imagined a game of Quidditch like this. This was the most amazing experience of her life, it was better than her very first game. She had taken a Bludger to the stomach, and knew she must be bruised, but she was so high on adrenaline that she felt no pain. There would be time for pain and scores when the game was over – just now, she had to find that bloody Snitch.
She spotted it near the center Gryffindor goalpost. Harry was already in pursuit but the Snitch, sensing that the chase was on had taken off on a curly-cue like course towards the opposite end of the field. Cho, rather than simply follow in Harry's wake, decided to try and anticipate the Snitch's course. The Snitch bounced and lurched and surged and bobbed its way randomly down the pitch. Cho had played Quidditch for five years and she had never seen one possessed by such a demonic determination to avoid being caught. On reaching the Ravenclaw goalpost the Snitch immediately changed directions and shot like a bullet to the opposite end of the field.
Cho inverted and pulled an inside loop. Her broomstick moaned with the stress of the maneuver. Harry was already ahead of her, but it didn't matter. The snitch hurtled past them in the opposite direction. Harry immediately started braking but before he could even maneuver the snitch was back bobbing in the 10 meters or so between them, taunting them. Cho lunged her broom at the orb. Harry accelerated forward, away from the Snitch. What was he doing? He couldn't possibly be throwing the game now. The Snitch leapt into motion before she could reach it.
Turning to chase it, she saw Harry ahead of her mounted backwards on his broom, eyes locked on the small, winged ball. He had anticipated it. Once again the orb began to corkscrew. Harry tried to catch it as it flew over his head, but missed it by inches. Cho was still trying to catch up. She still had a chance because Harry could not fly at full speed while facing backwards. With less than a meter between them, Harry began a series of rolls that resembled an American Indian pony trick. She had no idea how he was even managing to stay on his broom. Then suddenly his broom went in to a steep dive. Harry wasn't on it.
For an instant in time Harry hurtled downward. He was hurtling toward the Snitch though. He closed his finger around it with one hand, then reached out with his other hand to grab the Firebolt. Cho realized he had done it on purpose. As he made contact with the broom, it started to come out of his dive. Harry's arm looked like it was about to be pulled out of its socket, but somehow he managed to hang on. The broom and Harry were moving downward too fast to totally prevent contact with the ground. Harry hit first and immediately began somersaulting forward from the force.
Perhaps a dozen meters from where he first land, he finally came to a halt. Dizzily he stood himself up and help up his hand. He still had the Snitch. He had won. The crowd in the stands was completely silent. Cho was the first to land. She got off her broom and stood in shock. That was the most amazing thing she had ever seen. Tears came to her eyes as her teammates started to land around her, concern and question in their eyes. Cho could only stand there and weep. Even Madam Hooch was in shock, she still had not blown the whistle to end the match.
The Gryffindors came to land around Harry, with similar expressions on their faces. Harry was barely able to manage it, but still he was standing there holding up the Snitch, trying to catch his breath. No one was sure what had happened. Quidditch was not played like that. Whatever had happened up there was not what Seekers did. The Ravenclaw Beaters began to mutter about Harry Potter going too far, first he had taken the TriWizard competition, had something to do with Diggory, and then couldn't even allow Cho to catch a bloody Snitch. The sentiment seemed to take hold and the Ravenclaws moved into a defensive formation around Cho. The Gryffindors, quick to catch the drift, moved into a similar formation around Harry.
Cho pushed all of them aside. The Gryffindors let her through, but kept their eye on the rest of her team. If this was something between her and Harry, they were going to settle without outside interference. As Cho approached, Harry made his best effort to stand up straight. He had no idea what she wanted, but he wasn't going to cower. Cho looked at him and tried to get the tears out her eyes. She was sure she looked absolutely horrid. It didn't matter. She threw her arms around him and hugged him as tightly as she could. She was as out of breath as he was or she was quite sure she would have kissed him. He put his arms around her in return and they simply stood there.
Sensing that the moment of tension had passed, Madame Hooch blew her whistle and declared "240-80 Gryffindor". The match was over and the cheering began. The crowd finally decided that whatever had happened was a good thing. Harry and Cho broke their embrace. Harry was immediately swept off on the shoulders of his teammates. Cho watched until he disappeared, then returned to the warm welcome of her own teammates.
Author's Note: Again, this is posted without the benefit of a beta reader. If you are interested in becoming a beta reader for this story, please drop me an email.
This story is my ambitious attempt to write a female main character. Let's all hope I can pull it off.
Quidditch would be good for the soul if she ever got the chance to play it as it was intended.
The first match of the year had been against Slytherin. What a bunch of prats and thugs! The match had been the usual slugfest, full of fouls, sucker punches, and the normal bag of dirty tricks. The only thing that even made the Slytherin team competitive was the fact that every single one of them flew on a top-notch broom. That they were completely ruthless and unbounded by any concept of sportsmanship or fair play didn't hurt either.
Draco Malfoy, the Slytherin Seeker, didn't deserve to sit on a broom. His idea of playing Seeker was to follow her around until she found the snitch and then make a mad rush at the last second. It never occurred to him to look for the bloody thing himself. The day she lost a Snitch to Draco Malfoy was the day she would hang up her broom and quit.
If the Slytherin match had been bad, the Hufflepuff match had been infuriating. David Brigstock, Elwyn's younger brother, had refused to compete against her. Of course, she didn't know that until after she'd already caught the Snitch or she would have called the match a forfeit. She understood that it was supposed to be some sort of gesture, but how could they think she would appreciate such a thing? Even Cedric would have known better than that.
It had been an insult, but she'd had to accept it graciously. It was like cheating. It sullied the purity of Quidditch. If Hufflepuff had done this though, what was going to happen at their next match when they played against Gryffindor? How could they do this to Quidditch? Didn't they know how important this game was to her?
Something similar to Cho's thoughts was echoing through the minds of almost everyone at the school. Particularly pre-occupied by these thoughts were the members of the Gryffindor House Quidditch team. Everyone knew Harry held himself responsible for Cedric's death. Would he be able to play against Cho? The team decided that they would leave the decision to Harry, whatever he decided, they would support. The problem was that Harry wasn't talking.
Match time approached and the members of Gryffindor didn't know whether they were walking into a match or a mass suicide. They had pledged themselves either way, but they wanted to know. Angelina Johnson, the new Captain, tried to give a pre-game pep talk but it was hard when she didn't know what was going to happen herself. Harry remained stone-faced, clutching his Firebolt, nobody remembered him having said a word for days.
Out on the pitch, both teams assembled for Madame Hooch's lecture. Cho squared off with Harry and locked eyes. A bond of silent understanding passed between them. Harry saw the plea on her face and he knew, she was sure of it. He made no gesture of acknowledgement, but she could tell. At the whistle they mounted their brooms and launched into the air. Harry's teammates had no idea what he had planned, and until they knew, they were going to play Quidditch.
Traditionally, a Seeker spent most of a Quidditch match waiting. A Seeker's first task was to find the Snitch. This was hard to do, as the Snitch was small and fast. Usually the search was done high above the normal activity of the game, until the little winged orb was actually spotted, then the Seeker would dive and try to snatch it out of the air. To find the snitch required a special eye, many who played the position did not actually have the eye for it, and thus was born the strategy of waiting for the other Seeker to find the Snitch, then take advantage of superior flying or speed to take it from them. Maneuvers such as the Wronski Feint had been developed to counter such behavior.
Although the position required superior flying ability, courage, and speed, it was generally considered a passive position. An indeterminate period of boredom followed by 60 seconds or so of sheer adrenaline was how someone had once summed it up. Patience was considered to be the forgotten virtue needed by a Seeker.
This game did not follow tradition. Harry reached his normal searching spot and turned to face the pitch, seeking out the figure of the opposing Seeker. When he was sure that he had her attention he picked a spot in the middle of the pitch and started to edge towards it. When Cho started to move as well he began a steep rapid dive. Three-quarters of the way there, he pulled himself out of the dive and returned to altitude searching the air around him for any sign of the snitch or his opponent. Unable to pull out of her dive as quickly as he had, he found her skimming slightly above ground level and starting her own climb.
As soon as Cho reached altitude, she made a feint of her own. Harry started to follow but then dipped his broom steeply in the opposite direction. He had called her bluff. She rolled 360 degrees and brought herself back up to a decent height, scanning the sky continuously. The game was about six minutes old and there had already been two feints and a counter-feint. That was more than she'd had the entire season so far. Lee Jordan was shouting something about Harry and his Firebolt and she quickly turned to look for him. She found him streaking across the Pitch, bent low onto his broomstick, probably approaching maximum speed. As he approached the boundary he pulled up into a dive, corkscrewed and reversed directions.
In the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of gold. She accelerated up and away from it, tracking it with her peripheral vision. It was the snitch. Nonchalantly she maneuvered her broom to point in the right direction. He was watching her, she knew it, this had to be done carefully. Finally in position she accelerated and dove. He was immediately on her tail. She could hear Lee Jordan screaming and the roar of the crowd. Harry was fast, but she was closer. Even his Firebolt would not get him there fast enough. Then, in a flash, the Snitch was gone.
Quickly she braked. The bloody Snitch had leapt straight up and out of her field of vision. Hastily, she tried to reacquire it. It wasn't hard. All she had to do was trace Harry's line of sight. He was moving too fast though, he was going to have to turn around or go out of bounds. That meant he would lose his eye lock on the Snitch. She rose and built up speed to resume the chase. In one of the most amazing aerial maneuvers she had ever seen, Harry made an outside loop followed by a barrel roll to re-orient himself onto the field. It would take him precious seconds to reacquire the Snitch. Cho tried to coax a little more speed out of her Comet.
She flew right into a Bludger. The wind was knocked out of her, but she was okay. What was really bad was that she had lost her eye lock. Harry was still searching though, and still moving at near full velocity. That was the bright side. Guessing that she had lost the Snitch as well Harry made a mad dash for nowhere. Cho couldn't take the risk of not answering this feint. When it turned out to be false, she answered with a feint of her own. They continued to feint back and forth for what seemed forever.
There were feints within feints within feints. There was continuous high- speed motion. Never, in six years of flying and five years of Quidditch, had Cho ever pushed her broom so hard. What had happened to sitting high above the action of a game, seeking the Snitch by eye? Harry zipped through the action of the game, caused the Ravenclaw chasers to lose the Quaffle. He buzzed the Keeper. He made the Beaters foul. Cho tried to do the same to the Gryffindors tried to distract him from his offensive maneuvers with feints. What had happened to find the Snitch and catch it?
Cho didn't have a clue what the score was, but couldn't risk taking the time to find out. She had never ever played a game of Quidditch like this. She had never even imagined a game of Quidditch like this. This was the most amazing experience of her life, it was better than her very first game. She had taken a Bludger to the stomach, and knew she must be bruised, but she was so high on adrenaline that she felt no pain. There would be time for pain and scores when the game was over – just now, she had to find that bloody Snitch.
She spotted it near the center Gryffindor goalpost. Harry was already in pursuit but the Snitch, sensing that the chase was on had taken off on a curly-cue like course towards the opposite end of the field. Cho, rather than simply follow in Harry's wake, decided to try and anticipate the Snitch's course. The Snitch bounced and lurched and surged and bobbed its way randomly down the pitch. Cho had played Quidditch for five years and she had never seen one possessed by such a demonic determination to avoid being caught. On reaching the Ravenclaw goalpost the Snitch immediately changed directions and shot like a bullet to the opposite end of the field.
Cho inverted and pulled an inside loop. Her broomstick moaned with the stress of the maneuver. Harry was already ahead of her, but it didn't matter. The snitch hurtled past them in the opposite direction. Harry immediately started braking but before he could even maneuver the snitch was back bobbing in the 10 meters or so between them, taunting them. Cho lunged her broom at the orb. Harry accelerated forward, away from the Snitch. What was he doing? He couldn't possibly be throwing the game now. The Snitch leapt into motion before she could reach it.
Turning to chase it, she saw Harry ahead of her mounted backwards on his broom, eyes locked on the small, winged ball. He had anticipated it. Once again the orb began to corkscrew. Harry tried to catch it as it flew over his head, but missed it by inches. Cho was still trying to catch up. She still had a chance because Harry could not fly at full speed while facing backwards. With less than a meter between them, Harry began a series of rolls that resembled an American Indian pony trick. She had no idea how he was even managing to stay on his broom. Then suddenly his broom went in to a steep dive. Harry wasn't on it.
For an instant in time Harry hurtled downward. He was hurtling toward the Snitch though. He closed his finger around it with one hand, then reached out with his other hand to grab the Firebolt. Cho realized he had done it on purpose. As he made contact with the broom, it started to come out of his dive. Harry's arm looked like it was about to be pulled out of its socket, but somehow he managed to hang on. The broom and Harry were moving downward too fast to totally prevent contact with the ground. Harry hit first and immediately began somersaulting forward from the force.
Perhaps a dozen meters from where he first land, he finally came to a halt. Dizzily he stood himself up and help up his hand. He still had the Snitch. He had won. The crowd in the stands was completely silent. Cho was the first to land. She got off her broom and stood in shock. That was the most amazing thing she had ever seen. Tears came to her eyes as her teammates started to land around her, concern and question in their eyes. Cho could only stand there and weep. Even Madam Hooch was in shock, she still had not blown the whistle to end the match.
The Gryffindors came to land around Harry, with similar expressions on their faces. Harry was barely able to manage it, but still he was standing there holding up the Snitch, trying to catch his breath. No one was sure what had happened. Quidditch was not played like that. Whatever had happened up there was not what Seekers did. The Ravenclaw Beaters began to mutter about Harry Potter going too far, first he had taken the TriWizard competition, had something to do with Diggory, and then couldn't even allow Cho to catch a bloody Snitch. The sentiment seemed to take hold and the Ravenclaws moved into a defensive formation around Cho. The Gryffindors, quick to catch the drift, moved into a similar formation around Harry.
Cho pushed all of them aside. The Gryffindors let her through, but kept their eye on the rest of her team. If this was something between her and Harry, they were going to settle without outside interference. As Cho approached, Harry made his best effort to stand up straight. He had no idea what she wanted, but he wasn't going to cower. Cho looked at him and tried to get the tears out her eyes. She was sure she looked absolutely horrid. It didn't matter. She threw her arms around him and hugged him as tightly as she could. She was as out of breath as he was or she was quite sure she would have kissed him. He put his arms around her in return and they simply stood there.
Sensing that the moment of tension had passed, Madame Hooch blew her whistle and declared "240-80 Gryffindor". The match was over and the cheering began. The crowd finally decided that whatever had happened was a good thing. Harry and Cho broke their embrace. Harry was immediately swept off on the shoulders of his teammates. Cho watched until he disappeared, then returned to the warm welcome of her own teammates.
Author's Note: Again, this is posted without the benefit of a beta reader. If you are interested in becoming a beta reader for this story, please drop me an email.
This story is my ambitious attempt to write a female main character. Let's all hope I can pull it off.