A/N: Here is chapter six of TAD!

I'm SO sorry for the long time I took to update, and I'm sure you realise that this will be the last post before I've had the chance to read OotP. When I come back with chapter 7 of this story, it will no longer be a possible road for fifth year, it will mostly (probably) be AU. I hope you'll bear with me, still.

As the first week back at Hogwarts come to it's conclusion the Gryffindor Quidditch team hold their tryouts for their Keeper-to-be and a new reserve- team is chosen. Ron receives a disappointing message. The Duelling Club has it's first session, and all is not well... (Finally! Some real action!)

I just want to give a message to one or two reviewers (I never learn to remember who said what - sorry about that) who didn't think that Sirius would be the Animagus-teacher, but Lupin. How come you thought that? I mean, Lupin isn't an Animagus, after all. Merely the reason to which Sirius, James and the slimy traitor we like to call Wormtail became Animagi in the first place.

Oh! And I PROMISE you: After this chapter, things WILL speed up quite a lot.

Now, no more torture. I will stop rambling and let you go on to the next chapter of TAD!

~oOo~

Chapter 6 - Keeping safe

~oOo~

Harry didn't get much sleep on the night between September fifth and sixth. He'd spent Friday night with the team, going over the tryouts and what they were looking for in a Keeper and a reserve-team. They'd stayed up late, and he awoke at the crack of dawn from Hermione, who was jumping on his bed.

"Harry! Wake up!", she was nearly shouting.

Harry moaned and stirred. He was mighty tired and this was far from the ideal way of waking up in the morning.

"Huh? One?", he yawned as he sat up and put his glasses on.

"Rise and shine, Potter!", she said cheerfully and smiled widely.

She got up from his bed and went over to the curtains covering the window and drew them aside quickly.

"What a lovely day!", she exclaimed.

Harry had still to wake up properly. He got out of bed and walked over to his drawer, where he got out a pair of sweat-pants and an ordinary T-shirt. He didn't dare approach the mirror, which was a magical one. It would certainly scold him greatly for looking a big great morning-mess.

He slumped down into his armchair while Hermione busied herself with the ashes in the fireplace. Harry heard her mumble "Incendio" and when she moved away from the fireplace she had rekindled the fire and it was sparkling merrily. She turned to look at him.

"What's with you today? You look like you could fall asleep within a nanosecond. Are you ill or something?", she asked, her voice still the cheerful tone of a minute ago.

Harry failed to hide a yawn.

"No...", he said slowly, removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes before putting them back on again. "But I was up rather late last night with the team and do you even know what time it is, One?"

"Sure I do", she said quickly. Harry was nearly beginning to find her alert cheerfulness a little annoying. "It's about 06:15, why?"

She saw the under-the-brow look Harry shot back at her, and realisation finally seemed to dawn on her. She walked over to him and kissed his forehead.

"Oh, Harry", she sighed, even though her voice was filled with laugher and love as she said it. "Harry, dear, I'm so sorry. I'm just so excited about the tryouts today, I couldn't sleep and I needed to see you."

Harry looked up at her. She was smiling sweetly and he knew he could never find it in his heart to be angry with her. He took her hands in his and met her eyes.

"Oh, it's all right, One. I could use this time to do something that hasn't got to do with Quidditch. The rest of the day will probably be spent on the trials and then choosing who makes it onto the team. Now come here", he said and patted his lap.

Hermione immediately sat down and wrapped herself into his arms. They simply sat there, heads leaned against each other and looked into the fire, enjoying each other's company.

~oOo~

About an hour later Ron barged in, followed by Orion. Harry and Hermione had by that time almost fallen asleep in the armchair, and they both stirred and looked around the room confusedly when their two friends came in.

Ron raised his eyebrows. Orion snickered. Harry was still very tired, but he managed to grasp the situation enough to realise that both he and Hermione would soon be at the receiving end of a whole morning filled with mocking from Ron and Orion's direction.

Harry was right. None of his two friends let a second go to waste.

"My, my, my, what have we here?", Orion said smugly.

Ron wasn't so subtle.

"What the---", he began. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't go get McGonnagall".

Harry knew Ron was joking, but never the less he also understood his friend's reaction.

"Look, Ron, nothing happened - all right? One woke me up at the crack of dawn and we fell asleep again together in the armchair. That's all there was to it".

"Unless you count the large amount of snogging you two have had time to undergo during the early morning hours", the red-head answered and wriggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Hermione blushed deeply and Harry twisted a bit uncomfortably. None of them spoke, though.

Harry came to think of something else, Ron and Animagus-class, to be precise. He decided now would be a good time to talk to him about it, seeing how they were all present. Harry couldn't have had better timing.

"So", Ron continued. "Now onward to something completely different. What about that Animagus-book you got, Harry? When do we start?"

Harry exchanged glances with both Hermione and Orion, who nodded discretely towards him and smiled reassuringly. He took a deep breath and prepared himself for what he had to do.

"We've already begun, Ron", he said and exasperated.

Harry saw the confused look on his friends face and continued.

"One, Orion and I have been offered to take Animagus-classes - legally and supervised - instead of Transfiguration. We've taken the offer - our first class was Thursday last", he explained.

"Oh", was the only response they got out of him. Ron looked around the room for a moment and then spoke up again. "Who's the professor?"

"Snuffles", Hermione answered. "We talked to him about this, though - about how we had already decided to become Animagi without Dumbledore's approval and how you kind of got left out now. Snuffles said he'd figure something out - he's going to talk to Dumbledore, and we'll just have to wait and see where we end up. I'm so sorry, Ron."

Ron looked very disappointed, but managed to keep a straight face and the anger from his voice. He sighed.

"That's all right, I guess. You're doing what you can to fix it, and I can't expect you to throw away this possibility - can I? Now, tell me all about your forms," he looked over at Harry and smiled mischievously before sheltering his head from possible violent outbursts from Hermione's side. "Say, Harry - is Hermione a bookworm?"

They all laughed at his comment, but Hermione sent a pillow from Harry's bed flying straight into the back of Ron's head. Harry decided his friend clearly deserved that one.

~oOo~

Twenty Gryffindors of different ages were assembled on the Quidditch-pitch. Everyone looked anxious and exited about the tryouts, and immediately stopped talking when Harry walked in, followed by the rest of the team and Ron. He spotted Hermione in the group, she was standing next to Ginny, who actually looked like a cloud of thunder. Harry had never seen her look so angry before. He made a mental note to ask Hermione what she knew about that later, but as for now, they had some tryouts to get started.

Ron and he had, with some opinions from the rest of the team, worked out a plan for the whole ordeal, and Harry began with taking everyone's name and the position they were trying out for, whereupon he wrote them down on a clipboard he was carrying around.

"Alright," he began. "Everyone trying out for Keeper go stand over there," he pointed at the three golden hoops they were supposed to guard. "We will go over your tryouts first, and then the reserve team, from which the Chasers and the Beaters will get on the regular team next year, when the ordinary ones we have now leave school."

Seven of the twenty in the group followed Harry and the rest of the team over to the row of brooms that were lying on the grass next to the hoops.

"Grab a broom each. You'll have to use school-brooms so that no-one gets the benefit of a better or faster broom. Ron, would you explain the procedure of this tryout, please?", Harry said and hastily added before he handed the word over to Ron. "He's my co-captain for this year, and if you have any questions you can just as well go to him as you can to me."

"The tryouts are based on two parts. First, we want to test your accuracy, a. k. a. you will have to guard the hoops meanwhile Katie, Alicia and Angelina will try to score with the Quaffle. Next, there will be a race across the pitch to test your speed. This will be more of a challenge than you think, since Fred and George will fire the Bludgers at you while you fly, so you have to avoid those as well. The one of you who makes it onto the team will receive a message later tonight, hopefully, or tomorrow morning", Ron explained.

"All right, let's get started!", Harry called, the aspiring Keepers lined up in single file and the first took the air.

Except for Hermione, only one of the others in the group was a girl. It was a fourth year Harry mostly knew as "Ginny's friend", but he thought he remembered that her name was Marie Lewis. Other than Hermione and Marie, there was Dean (who actually looked rather miserable), two sixth years, Thom and William, Colin Creevey (who Harry suspected was trying out just to get some attention from him) and Colin's friends Ian.

The first round passed by rather uninterestingly while Thom, Ian and Dean did their work. None of them were BAD, but they were far from Keeper- material either. Colin gave them all a laugh when he messed up with getting into the air. He got stuck in his robes and decided to stay on the ground after all. Harry gave him a big reassuring smile to cheer him up, and from Colin's reaction Harry reckoned that he was more than fine with his failure.

William was fairly good. He was no Wood, that was for sure, but with some practice he'd be quite good. He was definitely a possible reserve. Harry just hoped that at least one of the girls would do better.

His wish came true. Marie probably had been practising for this quite a while. She caught all shots but one, but since that shot was a result of The loop-hoop, Angelina's special-technique, no-one held it against her. Even though Harry still secretly hoped Hermione would make it onto the team, he had to admit that Marie would fill in Wood's gap quite perfectly.

When Hermione took to the air she flew better than she ever had before. Harry knew she was showing off, but when she caught The loop-hoop as well as all the others, he reckoned she was as good as on the team already.

She zoomed around the hoops, studying the Chasers' moves intently, and when Angelina fired a spiralling, bent Quaffle towards the leftmost hoop, Hermione knew what to do and stayed at her position in the middle. She made a quick spin on her broom and the Quaffle bounced off the twigs in the back.

As for the moment of speed, None of the boys were even close to Marie or Hermione. Harry realised that they'd both make fair Chasers as well, seeing how they had the proper agility and speed to do the job well. Marie was faster than Hermione, though, and Harry knew they'd have to discuss who'd be the reserve for quite some time.

When the Keeper-aspirants were dismissed, both of the girls stayed behind in order to watch the rest of the tryouts and give some moral support to their friends. He thought that Dean would stay, as well, to watch Ginny play, but he noticed Ginny giving him a dangerously poisonous death-glare, and Dean immediately left the pitch.

Some of the Chaser-aspirants were quite a surprise. Ginny was there, but Harry knew she had been playing that position for fun quite a lot, and he also knew she was good at it. A few second years tried out, and there was a girl among them who looked like she was born on a broom. Her name was Claire, he learned, but nearly choked when he heard her last name. How on earth could he miss that Wood's younger sister had started school last year?

The real surprise was Lavender Brown, who Harry had always though of as a giggling Divination-fanatic who only cared about clothes. He couldn't believe his eyes when she turned out to be very promising, and also noticed that Hermione almost had to threaten her in order to make her take the air.

Orion tried out for Beater, and was rather good, nearly equal to Seamus. A third year named Henry Lawrence was the best. It would be very hard to replace Fred and George next year, but with some practice Henry and whoever they chose of the other two were probably going to manage.

Only three people tried out for Seeker. Harry reckoned it was because no- one really felt comfortable wearing his shoes when the time came. But if it was up to him, he knew who it'd be easiest to train into a good replacement. Among the three trying out, one was in sixth year - too old for Harry's opinion, since they'd be forced to find someone new in two years anyway - and the boy who could have been a reserve now would probably never be the ordinary Seeker.

'Dennis Creevey?', Harry though to himself. 'Not a chance in the world!'

The second year wasn't at all that bad, but his admiration for Harry would get in the way of him playing and concentrating when they had practices. The only one left was Nathalie McDonald. She was a second year, too, and looked like she could be quite an ace when Harry had whipped her into shape in three years.

He understood that everyone would have preferred it if they had been ready to choose right away, and as far as he was concerned, they already were. But the others might have thoughts he hadn't reflected upon, and he knew they'd have some discussing to do, especially when it came to the Keeper.

"I know you'd all like us to reach a decision this instant", he said. "But I think we need to discuss the matter for a while, and we'll hopefully decide before the hour grows too late this evening."

~oOo~

They all gathered in Alicia's study. As Head Girl, her quarters were more extensive than the regular prefects'. Harry sat down in an armchair, much like the one he had in his own room, and most of the team found seats in armchairs or the sofa around the small table, meanwhile George and Alicia made themselves comfortable stretched out on her bed. Fred's remark didn't exactly take a True Seer to foresee.

"You look very homestead over there, George", he said and raised his eyebrows suggestively. "One could easily assume...".

He didn't get any further, since he found himself with Angelina's hand clamped over his mouth the next instant. George and Alicia grabbed a pillow each and banished them to the back of Fred's head. Fred obviously licked Angelina's hand, because she quickly ripped it away.

"Eew!", she scolded her boyfriend. "You gross idiot!"

Fred just smiled.

"Yes - but I'm a CUTE, gross idiot, and you know it", he stated.

"Do I?", she answered and kissed his cheek.

Ron was clearly annoyed.

"PLEASE, can you not do that right now?", he said. Harry noticed he was almost blushing.

"I never knew you to be such a prude, Ron", George said.

Harry sighed.

"Can we please get to business? Or we'll never finish in time and I'll have One waking me up at the crack of dawn again so she can make me tell her if she made it."

"Ai, ai, Captain", Fred said and saluted.

"Well, we'll take the reserve-team first, since I think that'll be the easiest", Ron said. "I think the best would be if you chose your replacements yourselves, since you will have to be the ones to train them anyway. And I think we've got nothing to discuss anyway, right?"

"I want that Lawrence kid for a Beater", Fred said, George grunted in agree. "For the second I would like Malfoy, but I'm not sure if Finnegan's better."

"Me too", George stated. "Malfoy isn't as good as Finnegan, but I like Orion better than Seamus, as a person. I think I'll have an easier time teaching him the job. But I guess everyone else can have their say in this."

The girls had trouble deciding as well. They thought Seamus was better right now, but Orion could excel him with practice, and if Fred and George found him easier to teach, then he might be a better choice.

"I don't really know", Ron said. "Seamus was a bit better. But I guess I'm partial since Orion is one of my best friends. The one's who actually have to play with him has more of a say than I, actually."

"Orion could be useful, especially when we play Slytherin. He tics his cousin off to the point of near-insanity, and that might help us bring them out of balance. That is of course an advantage", Harry said. "But on the other hand, Orion loathes him as much as the other way around, and that might bring ORION out of control. I think we'd do best choosing Seamus. The difference isn't that grand, and Orion has this thing about school-work that might get in the way."

"So do you, Harry", Ron stated dryly.

"I see his point", Fred said. "Finnegan it is, then."

Harry took notes on his clipboard. The parchment would be placed on the board of notice in the Gryffindor Common Room, with the line up for the team and who the ordinary Keeper was going to be.

"Chasers?", he said and looked at the girls.

"I vote Ginny and Claire", Katie said. "And I'm surprised - I never thought I'd say this - but Lavender would be great, too."

"I agree with Katie", Angelina said.

Alicia didn't bother to say anything, but merely nodded.

"That's settled, then", Harry made another note on the clipboard.

"Who do you want, Harry?", Alicia asked.

"Nathalie McDonald. She was by far the best, she'll do great with some practice."

"I have no objections", Katie said. "Anyone else?"

They all shook their heads.

"Now, how about that Keeper?", Ron asked. "This is the tough one."

"Yes", Harry agreed. "Both One and Marie are excellent, I know how I WANT to choose, but I'm not certain if it's the proper thing to do."

"How so?", Angelina wondered.

"Well, just as with Orion, there's the thing about school-work, you all know One when it comes to that. But I like to think she'll be able to juggle both, I know I can, and I nearly work as hard as she. And One IS my girlfriend. People might think she got on the team not only on talent. And then there's that thing about special treatment. What if I treat her differently just because I happen to be involved with her?"

"So you, Harry, to worry about a thing like that", Katie laughed. "Come on, you know who you want to choose. Hermione read the game better - she even caught The loop-hoop, by Merlin! And Marie has another year to play when you leave school. Let's take a vote; everyone for Hermione say 'I'."

From the team came a unified, clear and loud:

"I."

Harry laughed and placed the final names on the parchment.

"Go tell her, Harry", Angelina urged him. "She's probably already lost half of her nerves by now, and Hermione isn't the kind of girl I'd keep waiting."

~oOo~

Gryffindor Common Room was completely deserted. It was dinnertime, and everyone was naturally down in the Great Hall. Harry knew he'd find Hermione in her room, though. She'd given him her password, and he didn't even bother to knock.

"Books and Cleverness", he said, and Hermione's portrait-door swung aside.

He saw the back of her head above the back of her armchair. Apparently, she was staring into the fire. He didn't think she had the ability of concentration to study at a time like this. He cleared his throat loudly and walked into the room.

"Excuse me", he said. "Is this where I can find the resident Gryffindor Keeper?"

Hermione jumped out of her chair.

"What?", she said.

"I SAID, is this where I can find the resident Gryffindor Keeper?"

She squealed and threw herself into his open arms. Harry held her close and laughed.

"Really, One, why are you so surprised?"

She didn't answer, but pressed her lips against his in a bruising kiss.

~oOo~

That Sunday Harry called the first official team practice. It was a bit different than it used to, since they were twice as many players on the pitch as they used to be before. The advantage was that they could play real trial-games, the ordinary team versus the reserve one. The ordinary team won, of course, especially since they had Harry. Nathalie was very promising, but she needed a lot of practice to reach Harry's levels.

That evening Harry spent in his room with Hermione, they were doing their Arithmancy homework, but it struck Harry that he had some things he needed to talk to his girlfriend about.

"Hey, One", he said and she looked up from her book. "I was wondering, what's with Ginny lately? Do you know why she looks so vicious?"

Hermione sighed.

"Yes, I don't really know if she wants me to tell you this... but I guess it's OK, as long as you don't let a word of this trough to Ron. He'll kill someone, I fear."

"Alright, I won't. I just wonder what happened, since she looked like she could murderer someone at the tryouts yesterday, and in the meantime Dean looked totally miserable. Did they have a fight or something?"

"That's the understatement of the century, Harry", she said an frowned. "I know I'm not living in the girls dorm anymore, but I'm telling you, if you put the fourth and fifth year girls dorms together here, you've got the soap-opera of a lifetime. Yes, Ginny fought with Dean, since she caught him kissing Parvati. Apparently, Ginny had been in the library with Marie and Lavender, and they were all going into Lav and Parvati's dorm to get something or other. And there they found Dean and Parvati - kissing. Ginny dumped Dean that instant, of course, and that's why she's acting the way she is. Dean feels miserable, and as far as I know, he hasn't exactly carried on with Parvati the way SHE would like. Lav had a fit and yelled at Parvati for two hours straight, and they're not best friends anymore."

"Sweet Merlin!", was all Harry could say.

"Yep, see how I meant? And that's not all there is to it. Lav had begun fighting with Parvati as early as on the school-train this year. Something about Quidditch and how she was trying out for the team. You know how Parvati feels about Quidditch, right?"

Harry just sighed.

~oOo~

A/N: This is all I have had time to write; SORRY! I was going to do that Duelling Club meeting, and I HAVE started writing about it. But now I have to leave home for the week-end, and I wanted to give you at least this much before OotP comes. (Longs...) Aw, well. That's just a shame that I didn't have time to finish this chapter. I will write the last two or three pages when I return home on Sunday, though, and those will be up as soon as possible. I'll leave some kind of note when they're up. Hang in there!