And I had forgotten that I'd folded two smaller chapters into each other, so Chapter 12 (the one with a lot of the answers about why everyone thinks Connor is the Boy-Who-Lived in it) is now Chapter 11, and will be posted tomorrow.
Meanwhile, let's all scream at Harry for being very stubborn.
Chapter Ten: Connor's Big Day"Connor!"
"Dad!"
Harry smiled as he watched their father swing Connor up and around in a circle, his red Quidditch robes trailing behind him like streaks of flame.
Or the unicorn's hooves, kicking in the forest that night…
Harry shook the impression away, and moved carefully out of the doorway of Hogwarts so that their parents could see him. They'd come up to greet Connor just as he left, heading down to the pitch for one last-minute drill or practice with the mad Gryffindor Captain, Oliver Wood. Lily stood slightly behind James, smiling at both of them with a faintly wistful cast around her eyes, as though she knew that moments like this couldn't last for long. Sirius and Remus were here, Harry saw, but had paused to stand by the lake, and appeared to be having an animated argument that could have involved anything from the Giant Squid to the last girl Sirius had dated.
"Harry."
Harry smiled again when he saw that his mother had noticed him. He came forward and stood in front of her, and she reached out a careful hand, running her fingers through his hair. From her alone, Harry liked the gesture. She knew how to actually arrange his hair, so that it looked less messed-up rather than more. He leaned against her, and she put one arm around him.
"We heard how you defended your brother, Harry," she whispered. "We are proud." Her eyes glimmered with tears, briefly, as she squeezed his shoulder.
Harry nodded. He and Connor had both sent letters to their parents after the troll incident, and even though both of them had told the exact same story, Lily would have known how to read between the lines. The look on her face gave him a warm, contented feeling. He had had letters from her in the past few months, of course, including one reassuring him firmly that his parents were startled but not disgusted that he'd been Sorted into Slytherin. Connor had written even before he could, even before Harry came and talked to him, saying that there must have been a mistake, and now all the Potters were united firmly behind his theory that there had been a mistake, probably on the Sorting Hat's part.
James put Connor down and came over to Harry, embracing him and ruffling his hair, destroying Lily's order. Harry caught their mother's glance, and they exchanged an eye-roll, while Lily fussed over Connor and admitted that his Quidditch robes did indeed make him look very handsome.
"Harry! There you are."
Harry turned to greet Sirius, who looked tired. Harry frowned. "Haven't you been sleeping well?" he asked his godfather.
Remus snickered behind Sirius's shoulder, then ducked without even looking when Sirius tried to punch him. "You could say that," said Remus. "Of course, not sleeping at all would have been more accurate."
"I like to have fun," Sirius defended himself, in a sulky mutter that made him sound younger than Connor. He increased the impression by rubbing one hand over his face, emphasizing the dark circles around his gray eyes. "I always did."
"Yes, but you're not nineteen any more, Sirius," Remus said, facing him with gentle humor in his amber eyes. It was just past the dark of moon, and Remus looked healthier than he did most other times of the month, Harry thought—definitely healthier than Sirius did just now. "And you're not eleven, either, no matter how much you sometimes act like it—"
Sirius tried to tackle Remus. Harry got hastily out of the way, and watched in delight. He'd missed their frequent fights since he got to Hogwarts, something he was used to at home. Sirius and Remus had never really had to grow up, he thought sometimes, despite tragedies like Peter's betrayal and near-tragedies like Voldemort's attack on Godric's Hollow. They could still play like this, still have fun, as Sirius said. Harry thought that, if Connor could reach their age and still act this innocent, he himself would die content.
"Potter!"
Four heads turned, which Harry found amusing, but only until he saw Snape standing in the doorway. His eyes were fixed on James, and there was a hatred in his face that made Harry understand all the unkindness he'd shown so far was only a shadow of the real thing.
James, for his part, froze, his hazel eyes fierce. Then he took one step forward.
"Snivellus, is it?" Sirius asked, letting Remus go from the headlock he'd got him in. "We can show him!" He strode up eagerly to match James.
Harry winced. He didn't like this part of the Marauders' innocence. It meant they held onto childhood grudges far too long.
Of course, Snape wasn't that much better, Harry thought, as he observed his Head of House's narrow lips and poisoned stare, and he was, on the outside at least, anything but innocent.
"Potter," Snape repeated, his voice almost caressing the name. His gaze fastened on Harry then, and he motioned curtly to him. "Get yourself into the Quidditch robes you should already be wearing, and then find Flint. You are to be on the patch at the proper time. You are not to embarrass Slytherin House in front of anyone." His gaze shifted back to James, and he sneered. "Even those who would love to see you fail."
"I don't live for seeing either of my sons fail, Snape," James said, and Harry had never heard a tone like that in his father's voice before, scraped raw and cold. "I do know that Connor's going to win, but that's just a matter of natural talent. And we all know it's a mistake, anyway, that Harry's in Slytherin. He's not cold and slimy like the rest of you." He half-lowered his head, reminding Harry of the stag he could become at times. "You're not going to convince me to hate my son, Snape, however much you may want to."
Snape's stare snapped back to Harry. Harry winced, but held his chin up and endured it. He knew that at least part of its force was puzzlement; Snape must not have realized that he concealed his talent at Quidditch even from his parents. Of course, Snape could say that, and James and Lily still wouldn't believe him. They wouldn't believe anything that a Slytherin said.
Never in his life had Harry been so grateful for that.
"Potter," said Snape. "Into your Quidditch robes." And he turned around and left, his robes snapping behind him, oblivious to the insults that James and Sirius tossed at his heels. Remus winced and hung back, as he tended to do.
Harry shrugged at his family. "Sorry," he said softly. "I've got to. But I'll see you at the game, right?"
"Of course," said James, and knelt down in front of him. Harry met his father's eyes, and was a little stunned at the amount of love he saw in them. He knew that his father felt it, of course; James just wasn't as demonstrative with him as he was with Connor. "Harry, don't worry about anything he says. I'm going to speak to Headmaster Dumbledore after the match and see about getting you Re-Sorted myself."
A lump of emotion rose into Harry's throat, and he couldn't speak. He just hugged James, who looked as startled by the suddenness of the gesture as Harry was, and then hurried away to put on the green robes.
They were not the reason that he was going out on the pitch, of course. That reason had to do with a conversation in the woods a week earlier and the wandless magic that tingled and sang beneath his skin now, lodged in a few specific Charms, just waiting to be used.
Try to hurt my brother, Harry challenged Quirrell and this unknown traitor and whoever else might come to the game. Try to hurt him now. I dare you.
The whistle blew. The balls flew out of the circle at the center of the pitch.
Harry rose from the ground the moment he saw the others rise, so that he was one of a crowd, not pulling out recklessly ahead and alone, the way that Connor had. He smiled at his brother, but he would have found it hard not to smile.
He was in the air again.
He circled the pitch as the Slytherin team spread out around him, dipping and ducking, heading for the Quaffle and the Bludgers respectively. The Gryffindor fliers were streaks of fire that clustered around the Slytherin team like diving falcons. Harry could see, from one glance, that the Gryffindor Keeper and Captain, Oliver Wood, was obviously a dedicated player, and the Gryffindor Chasers and Beaters didn't look bad, either.
In a different place, at a different time, it might have mattered. Now, it didn't.
Harry circled, high and steady, keeping an eye on the sides of the pitch as well as the stands of watchers. Briefly he caught sight of his parents, Sirius, and Remus, all sitting together and waving a banner that Sirius had enchanted to glow with the Gryffindor colors. Harry smiled.
Then he rolled over his broom as he heard the warning whistle of air, and the Bludger passed just above his head. There was another whistle as the ball turned back, but Harry was ready, and dived in a twisting spiral that made the ball, too heavy to turn as fast as he did, lose track of him and veer off into the crowd of fliers. Harry spun out of his dive and watched to make sure the Bludger didn't hurt Connor. Of course, it didn't; Connor got out of the way with an ease that made anybody's chances of hitting him look laughable.
But they can't be, or they wouldn't have arranged to kill him here, Harry thought, as he twirled upright again. Where are they going to come from? Where are they going to strike?
"And Johnson takes the Quaffle and scores ten points for Gryffindor!" announced the commentator, whom Harry felt sure was a Gryffindor, given the gleeful tone in his voice. "Meanwhile, it seems as though the Slytherin Keeper was too busy trying to find his own arse with both hands to notice—"
"Jordan," came McGonagall's prim voice.
Connor cut beneath Harry, his eyes trained forward, his neck craned as he searched for the Snitch. Harry made another turn, and briefly caught Snape's glare from the Slytherin stands.
He'd have to pretend to look for the Snitch, then. There was no help for it. He shook his head in brief irritation, and swung around in a carefully coordinated maneuver that just happened to lead to both Bludgers avoiding him, and colliding with a ringing smack. They darted off again, wobbling slightly and appearing dazed.
Harry reoriented himself in time to hear the Gryffindors shouting themselves hoarse, and presumed another goal had been scored. He would have known, and been far more relieved, if Connor had caught the Snitch already. He made another tour of the pitch, varying his height, which allowed him to look for the Snitch and any incidental nasty little traps that Quirrell had left lying around.
"And the Gryffindor team—"
Harry abruptly jerked. A moment later, he felt the conscious counterpart of the strange sensation that had assaulted him: the anti-Apparition wards around the pitch had fallen.
The next instant, two figures in dark cloaks and white masks burst out onto the pitch, coming from the direction of the Forbidden Forest, wands in upraised hands that were already spitting curses. A dark purple hex headed straight for Connor.
Harry's heartbeat tripled in pace, and his vision narrowed. He had practiced for this. He had trained for this. And the time for his first real battle with Death Eaters had finally come.
"Stupefy," he said, using all his will and the word only, as he had when he fought the troll.
The spell hit Connor, whose broomstick promptly tumbled out of the path of the nasty purple hex. Harry cast Wingardium Leviosa at him, not allowing himself to think about what would have happened if Connor had hit the ground before he could perform that spell, and then cast Fumo. Everyone was screaming, feeling for wands, trying to storm out of the stands, but they would notice if Harry started fighting without his wand, or fighting at all for that matter, if the pitch remained clear. The rest of the Quidditch team members had fled—except for that mad fellow Wood, who was hovering in front of his goal as if he could protect it from curses.
The smoke spread out around the pitch, obscuring sight for everyone except those who might use a Specularis, which was the spell Harry cast next. He could feel the steady burn and pull of his magic fighting him, not used to being called on like this. But he had practiced nonstop for the past week. Three wandless spells had dropped him after the troll fight. That was not going to happen this time.
A weight jolted him from beneath—Connor's broomstick, bearing the unconscious Connor on it. Harry grabbed his brother's arm and towed him towards the ground, holding the Levitation Charm and the Specularis both with all his mind. The first kept his brother from dropping like a stone, the second was the only way he could see, and both were necessary to keep his brother alive.
Harry dropped Connor gently in the grass before the Quidditch stands, and then kicked off. His heart was beating fast again, and he nearly choked on the mixture of terror, rage, and battle-joy filling him.
Here I come.
He extended the Specularis before him, from a small clear window into a narrow tunnel that cut through the smoke and afforded him further sight, and soon enough he made out two flashes of dark and white on the ground. One of them was firing off hexes randomly and wildly into the air, but the other had a Specularis of his own in front of him, and he looked up and saw Harry coming.
The Death Eater laughed. The laughter was shrill, high-pitched, mad—and a woman's.
Harry swallowed once. This is Bellatrix Lestrange.
"Attacking us alone, little baby?" she crooned at him as he curved above the pair—he thought the other was probably her husband, Rodolphus Lestrange—and then stopped, hovering so that he could see them. "You have a high opinion of your bravery, don't you?" Then she swung her wand.
"Protego!" Harry intoned.
"Crucio!" she cried in the same instant.
The Shield Charm formed itself before the blast of the Cruciatus could reach him, but then Harry had to hold it against the sheer force of the curse, rolling waves that flowed around his defenses and set his broomstick spinning in midair. Harry hissed and clasped the broomstick with his knees, rolling back upright. He wasn't afraid of falling in the air, he never was, but that curse made him the closest thing to it.
He dived the moment he thought of the plan, dropping towards the ground and screaming as though Bellatrix's curse had managed to fell him. Bellatrix laughed in delight and ran forward.
Harry did not dare drop the Shield Charm, so his options were limited, but he managed to call a divot of grass from the ground with Wingardium Leviosa and smash it into her hip. Bellatrix winced and limped for a moment, and that meant that a hex from her husband hit her instead of Harry. Bellatrix shook it off, turned to scream and berate Rodolphus while Harry lifted steeply back into the air.
The smoke was already thinning. He didn't have much chance to defeat the pair of them, not if he was going to do it in the way he planned. Harry spun in a brief circle, thinking, and then stopped both his broom and his thoughts.
New plan. Always use what's around you. Mum told me that once. In a forest, it's branches, and on the Quidditch pitch, it's grass. But not only grass…
This had to work. His strength was flagging already. He had practiced Protego, because he thought he might need it, and held it longer than this, but not against such powerful spells. And both of the Death Eaters had their wands out and were advancing on him now, and he did not think that he could bear it much longer.
He reached out with all his strength and all his will, and grabbed for something he could feel floating in the mist. Now he had to wait for it to get there.
Bellatrix intoned another spell he didn't know, and Harry winced as the Shield Charm briefly threatened to crumble under it. The mad Death Eater cackled cheerfully and tried another, and another, and another, and then one that must have been non-verbal, since Harry heard nothing before the burn of blue flame lit the air. That one got through to him, a little. He winced and cradled a scorched hand.
He couldn't fight them, not the normal way. He wasn't strong enough yet. But though that was a bitter pill to swallow, at least he knew his weaknesses now. If he survived this—and he would, because he had to protect Connor—then he knew what to practice with. Defensive wandless magic had just been added to medical magic and spells to effectively muffle noise. With this kind, though, he could practice on his own. There was that to be said for it.
He drifted closer to the Lestranges, not letting them see how much he hurt. The Shield Charm was faltering, but he had only a few moments more to endure. He had to have only a few moments more. He could feel it getting closer.
"What are you doing, little baby?" Bellatrix asked, swishing her wand back and forth, trailing sparks. "Have you given up?"
"Waiting," Harry said, as calmly as he could.
"For wh—"
The Bludger took her in the side of the head, snapping her neck sideways at an angle and flinging her to the ground. She was still alive, Harry thought, when he noticed her breathing, and so was Rodolphus after the Bludger hit him and knocked him out beside his wife. Good. He wanted that. Let them get questioned, or go back to Azkaban, or, preferably, both.
He let his will relax, and dropped the Bludger beside the Lestranges. There was only one more thing he had to do.
Well, perhaps two more.
He flew back to the stands where he had laid his brother, casting another Fumo on the way, so that the smoke thickened just as it had begun to dissipate. He knew he had to be quick about it. The professors and the other adults in the stands had been concerned with getting the students to safety and away from the Death Eaters so far, which meant "off the Quidditch pitch," but that wouldn't least much longer, even if wand magic had to struggle against wandless magic.
He grabbed Connor in his arms and skimmed back to the Death Eaters, laying him gently down beside them and putting his right hand on the Bludger, as though Connor had hammered it into their heads. Then he glanced around the Pitch. It was a slim chance, but just in case—
A gleam of gold flashed past above him, and Harry snatched the Snitch out of the air. Holding it tightly enough to almost damage the wings, he put it into Connor's left hand and clasped his fingers around it.
Then he flew randomly, almost to the Slytherin stands, and dropped to the ground as if he had collapsed from inhaling smoke. And he let it all go: Fumo, and Specularis, and the sheer effort of producing wandless magic.
Exhaustion came down on him like a waterfall. But he was awake long enough to hear the shouts, and then the silence, and then the cheers.
They had found Connor. And he looked like an absolute hero.
Harry smiled, closed his eyes, and let his weariness take him.
Snape stepped carefully away from all the festivity, lowering his wand. It appeared that the majority of the students were fine, and, in fact, had been more injured in the stampede from the stands than by anything that the Death Eaters had done. And, of course, now the crowd was chattering about the Boy-Who-Lived as the hero of the hour—he'd not only defeated two trained Dark wizards more than twice his age, he'd won the Quidditch game while doing it!
Harry's lies depended on everyone being besotted by the resident hero, Snape had told him. They were tissue-thin with the troll, really, and tissue-thin here.
But because everyone wanted to believe them, they were going to believe them.
Snape smiled tightly. He had seen. He had looked. When everyone else was screaming at the appearance of Death Eaters, his gaze had gone at once to the two smallest figures on the pitch, one in scarlet robes, one in green.
He knew Connor had been unconscious when the Smoke Charm spread its obscuring arms over the pitch.
Snape had had enough of this. He knew the truth, now, and was not in a mind to let a Potter brat hide behind lies. It was time to find Dumbledore, and have a talk with the Headmaster about getting some credit for a certain stubborn Slytherin who, apparently, still refused to believe that he belonged in Snape's House.
When, really, Snape thought as he saw Albus's star-covered robes and quickened his steps, he fits in so remarkably well. Will that not half-kill his father? Oh, I think it will.