An Owl From The New Guy

Ginny shot up in her bed and peered anxiously around the room.

"Some wicked nightmare you must have been having" said Harry from somewhere to her left. She gave a startled bounce and snapped to face him. He was sitting on the edge of her small bed, still in his pajamas. His skin looked unimaginably pale. Except for his scar. His scar seemed strangely definite today. Although Ginny couldn't often see it as Harry kept running his fingers over his forehead almost obsessively.

"What?" she asked shortly

"Sorry to wake you..." he mumbled, seemingly distracted by a hole in Ginny's wall.

"HARRY!" she yelled loudly. He snapped to attention.

"What?"

"What?"

"What? OH! It's...I just got..." he reached a shaking hand into his pocket and pulled out an official looking envelope "And...and I was wondering..did you...I mean did you get one?"

"No." she replied bewildered "What is it?"

He fingered, the open envelope anxiously

"Harry?" she asked "What is it?"

About a nanosecond after Ginny finally gave up and swiped her hand towards Harry's letter in a desperate attempt to for once, know what was going on, an enormous brown owl flew clumsily in through the broken window and collided with her bed post.

"Argh!" cried Harry jerking his hand into the air. His eyes snapped to the floor at the flash of deep brown. Immediately Ginny lost interest in Harry's letter. She wasn't the only one. The forgotten parchment lay on the worn floor as the two of them crawled cautiously across the bed. Ginny stretched out her fingers and carefully untied the knot, binding the yellowish envelope to the owl's scaly feet. It snapped, less than affectionately at Ginny's finger before ruffling his feathers proudly and soaring back out the window.

"It's from Hogwarts." Ginny shrugged tossing aside the envelope and ripping out the contents. "At least...wait it said it was from Hogwarts..." she mumbled confusedly, furrowing her brow. She fingered the official looking envelope. It was very different from the letter, which was scrawled in thick, untidy green writing. It had obviously been written by someone completely different.

"It is." said Harry plainly. "I got one too." he waved his own letter through the air with a hint of bitterness. "It's about quidditch."

Ginny felt her face turn scarlet with heat. Automatically she feared the worst. Attacking her letter with her nails, she picked it up and slammed it against the faded wallpaper, her eyes flashing horrified, across it.

"Don't worry, it hasn't been cancelled or anything like that." Harry commented.

Still locked in a state of disbelieving suspicion, Ginny didn't look up from the parchment.

Hey Team

It''s me Barry! The new guy I guess you could say! Wow it feels odd to be addressing you all when I've never met most of you. I'm sure we'll get along great. I can't believe I'm captain of a team I've never worked with before, I'm not sure I'm worthy. Anyways, the real reason I'm writing this, is because-well- I'm at Hogwarts...-

at

"He's AT Hogwarts? You can DO that?" Ginny blurted out

"Just keep reading." Harry answered shortly

Still amazed, Ginny returned to the letter.

...I got an owl from Dumbledore about three weeks back. All the captains did. It's this new thing they're starting this year. Well actually I shouldn't really call it a thing, as I think it's just for this year. The idea for making it an annual thing is still being debated. But I should really tell you what I'm talking about before I keep gibbering shouldn't I? Well someone on the board for the Quidditch World Cup had this insane idea that they should send a scout to Hogwarts this year, since I guess Dumbledore's always going on about how amazing all the teams are. That's what I got from the speech. Well anyways, what he wanted to do was pick one of the four teams and...let them play as a team for the Cup. The World Cup. The Quidditch World Cup! Isn't that amazing! Well they voted and surprise, surprise it passed. It has some big long official name, and they've been calling it like VOMIT or something...I forget what it stands for..well I just wanted to give you a heads up. What happened to the team captains was, we all got here about two weeks ago and we met with the members of the Ministry who are involved, and McGonagall explained what was going on and everything. We're free to go home whenever we like and the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff captains both have. They said, they would hate to miss the train ride. I think I'll just stay because I've been getting ahead on my class work (N.E.W.Ts, argh...) And I've been scoping some new moves for us plus a new training regime. We can DO this! Oh, and I hope then envelope didn't confuse any of you and make you think you were getting expelled or something. I know I was frightened when I got a Hogwarts owl, two weeks before letters usually tlinecome, I just didn't feel like going out to get envelopes and McGonagall offered to let me use some of her Hogwarts ones. I figured it was better then going out to Hogsmeade and pointlessly spending a bunch of knuts on blank envelopes I don't really need, so yeah... I can't wait to meet you all. And just so you know, I haven't mastered my Duplication Charm yet and I had to write all of these individually. That''s why my writing...looks like a two year old's. Well that's it.

Hope to see you soon.

Barry

Ginny finished the letter, her suspicion lingering. Why had this upset Harry so much?

"He sounds nice." she said slowly

"He sounds like Wood." he said in a bitingly sour tone.

"You liked Wood." Ginny pointed out quietly

"Yeah I did." Harry shrugged.

The two of them stared and random points in the room as an awkward silence rent the air.

"So...?" Ginny ventured daringly after a few moments

"So." Harry repeated

"So aren't you excited?"

Harry shrugged

"Why aren't you excited?"

Harry shrugged

"Has Ron gotten his letter yet?"

Harry shrugged

"Why did you come to me about this before you came to Ron?"

Harry shrugged

"Why aren't you happy about this?"

Harry shrugged. Ginny stared at him annoyed.

"Well this is getting absolutely no where." she snapped. She wasn't angry at Harry. She had simply just realized, that she wasn't all that happy about this either. And that if she had been first to receive her letter, she reasonlessly but most definitely would have first talked to Harry about it first. The tension ran thickly through the room as that familiar silence once more began to ring. "I think you should go." Ginny said sharply

"What?"

"Go. Talk to Ron about this. He's on the team too."

"Why don't you come?"

"I have things I have to do." she half-lied. Harry gave an indistinct shrug.

"Okay I guess." he stood up, looking down at Ginny, still pale as a ghost, his scar still shining vividly and more definitely than any other one of his features.

"Bye." Ginny said cooly when he didn't move. Taking the hint Harry grasped the doorknob quickly and made his way back to Ron's room leaving Ginny very much confused