The Duels
Chapter One: The Beginning
Harry watched as the snitch dived beneath the Slytherin goal posts. Draco Malfoy was halfway there already. Leaning low, Harry sped off toward the goal posts urging the broomstick on with every fibre of his being. He kept his eye on the snitch; too many times had he lost it while paying attention only to his speeding broomstick.
The snitch made a turn and flew straight around Draco Malfoy just as it was within arms reach. Harry grinned. Lady Luck was on his side today.
"Parsnip!" Harry heard a beater call from his right. That was their code for a bludger coming from the right hand side and above. Their new captain decided that in a Slytherin game where they may be cheating. It was best to try to confuse everyone with a secret code. Training had been especially hard because it was like learning a completely new language composed of every word they already knew. For the first time, the Gryffindor Quidditch team had been given homework between practices.
Harry looped back and over the speeding bludger. The other beater flew past. "Marbles Harry!" he called before hitting a bludger straight toward Malfoy who was once again within arms reach of the snitch.
"Thistles, mate!" Harry called, forgetting it as soon as he saw where the snitch was. It was teasing Malfoy, flying left and right, always just out of reach. Then the bludger started coming back.
"Baked beans, Malfoy!" Harry called, forgetting that he wouldn't understand.
Malfoy stayed where he was and just stared at Harry while the bludger came ever closer. Harry ignored him and headed for the snitch, which was flying back down into the action where Slytherin was leading 80 – 50 and Alicia had the quaffle. The snitch dived towards another Gryffindor player; its wings flapping faster than Harry had ever seen it before.
Thump. Malfoy was out of the running.
Harry raced after the snitch, using his ears and natural instincts to avoid any major scrapes, but a Slytherin beater was less than impressed by Firebolt bristles in his face. And bludgers seemed to be drawn to the fastest moving player. In this instance, it was Harry. For a moment, his world was searing red and white, but as he felt metallic wings fluttering near his armpit, pain was forgotten and the golden snitch was clutched in one hand.
A whistle and the final score 80 – 210 meant that Harry could relax and let the pain consume him. He was unconscious before he hid the ground.
Harry woke with a very familiar ceiling above his head. It did look slightly different lit only by the stars and distant candlelight from Hogsmeade. He didn't feel half-bad, actually, he thought as he sat up. He must have been given something while he was asleep or maybe he was awake and just didn't remember.
Stretching and sitting up, Harry wondered what they it was and how many potions lessons he'd missed. Hopefully more than one, as long as they hadn't learnt anything that would be relevant to the NEWTs next year. But knowing Snape, as soon as he realised Harry wouldn't be in class, he'd purposely pick something difficult for Harry to learn by himself. Harry groaned. Then someone else groaned. Harry turned to the bed beside him.
"Fancy meeting you here, Malfoy," Harry said, trying to keep the conversation a little civil. His head was beginning to hurt and he was tired. All in all, in no mood to put up with an insulting Draco Malfoy.
"Funny you should say that as it's your fault that I'm here in the first place. I almost had that snitch before you distracted me."
"Sounds like you're just making excuses. So while we're on the subject, it's your fault that I'm here. If you were a better seeker, and you'd listened to my instructions you could have avoided that bludger, caught the snitch and ended the game."
"Instructions?" Malfoy sneered with a look of absolute disbelief on his face. " 'Baked beans'? Potter, you amaze me sometimes."
"Well if you were a better Slytherin, you would have come to our practices and found out that baked beans means that a bludger's coming at you from your left, from your lower left."
Malfoy's eyes narrowed and his cheeks flushed faintly with both suppressed embarrassment and anger. Potter was obviously winning this battle.
"You insult my seeker abilities, my Slytherinism. Is there anything else while you're at it? My Malfoyness?"
"Since you asked oh so politely," Harry began, smiling Malfoy's trademark smirk. "You only fell unconscious once you hit the ground. I managed on the way there. Oh, and you screamed like a girl the entire way down."
Harry laughed to himself quietly as Malfoy covered his head with his pillow and screamed into the mattress.
"Night Malfoy," Harry said before turning over and snoring. Potter 2, Malfoy 0.
Harry noticed when he next awoke that it was still the middle of the night, and that there was no reason why he should have woken up. Then the pillow hit him on the side of the head and Harry knew exactly why he was awake. Draco Malfoy was wearing a frown and holding a pillow. Thump. And he'd charmed one to hit him, too. Well, two could play at that game. Harry reached for his wand to find that it had not been placed on the nightstand and remembered that he'd left it in his trunk before the quidditch game, sensing that if he took it with him it would break. So, Harry grabbed his pillow and got up on his knees, only to be knocked back by the combined force of both Draco Malfoy and the charmed pillow. He fell back onto his bed and was promptly thwacked upside the head, by a pillow of course, and in less than a minute, Malfoy had Harry saying 'uncle' and pinned for suffocation by pillowcase.
"Malfoy 1, Potter 0," he triumphed.
"What?" Harry asked, confused. "The score's Potter 2, Malfoy 1, which is the only reason why I gave you that one, even though you did cheat by springing it on me when I was asleep and you knew I didn't have a wand."
It sounded like this was going to be an excited whisper battle.
"How'd you get two points then, Potter? I'll give you one for the verbal spar we had earlier and call it even."
"No way, Malfoy. This was an incredibly unfair pillow fight. And you've forgotten your quidditch loss. The score, by the way, was 210 – 80, our way, of course. Which means that we're ahead of you 130. And the Hufflepuff - Ravenclaw match was heaps closer effectively placing Slytherin in last place for the Quidditch Cup." Harry said this all very quickly with a very triumphant tone of voice.
Malfoy was beginning to go red with anger. Very uncharacteristic of any Malfoy to show emotion like that. "I'll drop the pillow fight if you drop the Quidditch. Everyone's going to be on me about that and I'd appreciate if you wouldn't add your two knuts-"
"Done. But wouldn't that mean that you lose this day?"
"I wasn't finished yet, Potter!" He practically spat the name. "If you'd listened, I would have told you that because you're one up, I'm challenging you to a fair game of time-snitch and another fair pillow fight to break any tie."
Harry didn't have to think before accepting. "Now will you let me get some sleep? Geez, we both managed to get serious quidditch injuries and you just want to fight. We really are enemies. Then he gave Malfoy a wicked grin. "I would have wiped the slate clean, you know. Gryffindor fairness and all that. But you're a Slytherin so you thought I wouldn't agree unless you put me one up and you're damn cocky so you think you'll win anyway."
By then Malfoy had chosen not to listen and showed Harry this by letting out a snore.
The next day, once Madam Pomfrey was finished attending to the little that remained of their wounds, the two enemies sorted out the finer details.
"If we're going for fairness," Harry said. "Then I don't think there should be a Slytherin judge. They'd be biased towards you."
"You say that only because you know any Gryffindor would do the same for you. If there's no Slytherin judge, then there's no Gryffindor judge."
"Well then, what about if we get a Ravenclaw or a Hufflepuff into it."
"What if for the game of time-snitch, we get a Ravenclaw and a Hufflepuff for the extra eyes and time-keeping, and Madam Hooch for the tie break if we need one. We could do the same sort of thing for the pillow fight."
"Okay," Malfoy agreed. "But I'm picking the teacher for the pillow fight. And it's going to be-"
"Teachers with house biases are not allowed."
Harry looked toward Draco noting that he indeed was going to ask Snape to referee. "You were!" Harry exclaimed with a huge, incredulous grin. "You were going to ask Snape. Snape. To referee a pillow fight."
Malfoy had the decency to look appalled at himself.
"So who do you suggest?" he asked Harry.
"Flannagan," Harry suggested. Their new DADA teacher was a lot of fun with a vibrant spirit, full of energy. Most of the students liked him. He seemed like he was going to stay. Most of the Gryffindors had agreed that they would ask to keep him even if it turned out that he was a vampire.
"Fine, but if anyone asks, it was my idea."
"Yes Mr. I'm-the-brains-don't-listen-to-him-he's-the-lackey. You forget that you wouldn't be competing with me if you didn't think I was a worthy opponent."
"I pick fights with everyone," Malfoy said.
Harry was grateful for the interruption of Madam Pomfrey with the lunch trays. It was bangers and mash.
A few minutes later, Ron and Hermione entered, both with their own sausage sandwiches.
"Hi Harry!" Ron called before being silenced by the Madam Pomfrey's 'Shh'.
"Hello Harry," Hermione greeted at a more acceptable noise level.
Harry was preoccupied with the sausage in his mouth, so just indicated that his mouth was full.
"How are you?" Hermione asked, sitting on the end of his bed as Ron sat on the visitors' chair beside the bed.
"Almost as good as new," Harry said. "A little stiff, a little sore, a little headachy-" he was interrupted by a snort and Hermione and Ron's attention was called to the one they call Draco Malfoy.
"Oh. It's so unfortunate that you're still here," Ron said in greeting.
"And it's so unfortunate that your friend Potter here is going to get creamed like butter next week," Malfoy retorted.
"What are you talking about?" Hermione asked, seriously. She still remembered Malfoy's call for revenge at the end of their last year.
"Just a little competition Potter and I have going. You're invited to watch, if you must."
"Harry?" Ron asked, inviting him to speak.
"I don't know if we were thinking at the time, but we agreed to a few competitions just to test ourselves. I've already got a point from a 'battle of tongues'." He turned to Malfoy. "You know that means you've got to win the snitch game or I'm the outright winner."
"Who said it was best of three? Just because we only decided the next two doesn't mean there won't be any more."
"But we've got to end it somewhere," Harry said reasonably.
Hermione began to laugh quietly to herself. "I can just imagine the two of you old and decrepit arguing over who wins. You'd both be grey, wrinkly and senile, deciding to go out for another snitch game because you couldn't remember who'd one the last one." She burst out. A final image of Malfoy's false teeth falling out and Harry catching them in his mouth ala his first quidditch game was too much.
The other three were also laughing a little at the images this had conjured: a point to Potter just because he'd gone the longest period of time without peeing himself, one to Malfoy for remembering not to leave his false teeth behind when they left the house, and the two of them, in a retirement home arguing about whose turn it was to change the channel and adding another point to a list fifty scrolls long.
The laughter caused Madam Pomfrey to make them all leave. Harry and Malfoy each shot one last lingering insult. These duels were going to be fun.
Next chapter: A game of time-snitch.