Harry woke up on Saturday grateful for a day off. He slid through the curtains groggily only to see Ron standing in the corner, pulling on his pants.
"Where are you going?" He asked.
Ron shot him an angry look.
"We have to go see Hermione's parents," he said and went silent. He appeared to be thinking about something very hard. Then, turning red, he said:
"Look…er, there's something Hermione and I forg—didn't tell you the other day…we didn't really know if we were actually going to…"
"YOU'RE GETTING MARRIED?" Harry screamed.
"Wha—! Hey—! DON'T USE LEGILIMENS ON ME!"
"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DIDN'T TELL ME BEFORE NOW!"
"Well…! We didn't really know if we were actually going to…and then her parents and my parents were all like 'get married' and we didn't know if we could, or if we were old enough…"
He said all this while he took off his shirt and replaced it in a very halfhearted way. Harry glared at him.
"I'm sorry—when is this happening? Surely not today—"
"NO!" shouted Ron. "I mean, it will eventually, but I'm…she's…we're not—"
"Ah," said Harry, understanding. "I see. Do you…want to?"
"Well…yeah!" said Ron. "I just thought that if we did we'd wait for a while. A long while…like…years. But now this has happened—"
"It's a baby Ron, not a 'this'."
"Yeah, thanks, I got it," he snapped at Harry. "Nevermind, I have to get out of here…"
Ron walked through the door and disappeared. Harry rolled his eyes, wondering if there would ever been an opportunity for him to have his friends back. Now the only people he had were Neville, Luna, and Ginny, all of which he didn't really want to talk to.
"Howdy Harry," said some random girl that Harry didn't recognize. She was walking past the door, followed by someone who looked strangely familiar…
"HEY!"
He darted out the door and chased after the two girls.
"HEY! YOU! STOP!"
The two girls stopped and looked at him.
The first girl was one he'd never remembered seeing, but both looked his age. The first was sort of pale, had long curly brown hair and dark plastic glasses. The second was a tad taller; she had short brown hair, brown eyes and a long nose a little like Ron's.
"You're the one who told—"
"I never said anythin' to anyone," said the brown-eyed girl, shaking her head. She had a weird accent that Harry couldn't quite place.
"Yeah you did! You're the one who told Ron I was—was—with Ginny—which I wasn't!"
She looked at him doubtfully.
"I can't believe you told people that!" shouted the curly-haired one, throwing an angry glare at the other. She had the same accent.
"You never said it was a secret!" said the second reproachfully.
Finally, Harry placed it.
"Where are you two from?" he asked, though he thought he knew the answer.
The one with the glasses looked at him.
"America," she said shortly. "Well, Texas…more specifically. We're transfer students."
He looked back and forth between the two of them, unsure.
"Can you do tha—"
"Oh yeah," said the second. "People do it all the time."
"Except, not lately," said the first.
They stared at him silently, narrowing their eyes as they inspected him. He didn't like the staring.
"I'm Rebekah," said the first sort of haughtily. "I'm in my seventh year. This is my cousin, Alex. She's in her sixth year like you, only she's in Slytherin."
He gave Alex a suspicious look.
"What are you doing in here?" he asked, unable to contain his loathing for Slytherins.
She shrugged.
"A little of this, a little of that," she said mysteriously. "On the look out for new gossip, as always."
"Yeah, well I'd appreciate it if you would keep quiet every once in a while," he spat at her. "You shouldn't be in other house's common rooms."
"Why not?" asked Rebekah. "That Luna Lovegood is in here all the time…among other places."
"Yeah, well Luna's—what?"
She smiled devilishly and said nothing else.
"Well, I better get going," said Alex. "Apparently Ernie McMillan is making a fuss in the Hufflepuff common room."
Without another word, she disapparated with a loud crack. Harry jumped about a mile.
"How'd she—you can't—Hogwarts, A History said—"
"Oh," said Rebekah. "Right."
"Well how'd she—"
"We're elves. Well…partly so. My great-great-great grandmother was a house elf and got married to the wizard she worked for, which had…interesting side-effects for the children."
"Married a…house elf? Can you do that?"
"Oh, yeah! In America you can do almost anything. Anyway, so…we can apparate whenever we want to and the ministry only thinks it's the other elves. We can also use bits of magic that the ministry doesn't pick up on, and are really good at wand-less magic."
"Oh…well, that's…that's..."
"Really weird? We know."
"But, why would someone want to marry a house elf?"
"Why would someone want to marry a giantess," she asked pointedly. "Talk about black holes of doom. Besides—you can't control the forces of love, Harry."
He wished people would stop telling him that and Rebekah walked away up the girl's stairs.
He thought this over for a minute and went back upstairs to change, shaking his head.
"Hiya Harry," said Neville, passing by the room. Harry followed him down the stairs and went to breakfast before he had to hurry off to Quidditch.
He made it to the Quidditch pitch where Katie Bell was standing in front of Ginny, looking angry. Ginny was glaring at her.
"I'm sorry, Ginny, but there's no way in hell McGonagall would ever let you play—"
Ginny took off toward the building and didn't look at him as he passed.
"Holy mother of Sauron, Harry," said Katie. "I think I might just kill the Weasleys."
Harry chuckled in spite of himself.
"What's the matter with them?" she asked as they walked toward the changing room together. "They've got extra fertile magical blood. And it makes them all mad—HEY! WATCH IT!"
The Gryffindor Harry met earlier that day was sitting on her broom, hovering a little over them.
"Keep your shirt on, Katie, I've got everything under control," she said.
"Tell her to keep her hands off of the quaffles!" Katie yelled at Rebekah, pointing one angry finger at Alex.
The Slytherin was sitting on her broom a little while away, smiling at Harry and waving. He thought for a moment about not waving back, and then did anyway. Rebekah and Alex took off down the Quidditch pitch, throwing the quaffle back and forth to each other. Rebekah threw the quaffle toward the goal and made it in spite of Alex's efforts; the Gryffindors who had started crowding around started to cheer while the Slytherins scowled.
"That's not nice," said Alex as they both landed on the ground. "I'm a beater."
"Yeah, well your chasing skills need a little work," said Rebekah.
"Why don't you try a little beating, and see how that works out! No one ever told you that you could hit a wicked bludger!" spat Alex.
"I don't have to hit anything," sneered Rebekah. "All I have to do is be faster than you…and I am."
She followed Harry and Katie into the changing rooms while Alex stood on the pitch, fuming; Harry asked her again why she and the Slytherin were friends.
"Well, she's normally pretty tame," explained Rebekah. "But she gets kind of angry before Quidditch games. I think it's the beater in her."
Harry changed quickly and went out to the pitch where he and Katie talked to the new stand-in keeper, Seamus Finnigan, who would be playing in the game since Ron had to leave for the weekend. Katie scolded the new beaters, Allison Richardson and Marissa McLaughlin, who were third-years, and a good deal younger than most members of the team. They'd been trying to hit each other with the bludgers until Katie had started screaming at them.
The permanent chasers had been Ginny, Rebekah, and Katie, but Ginny had to be replaced with Romilda Vane. She looked less than excited to be there, although she did, much to Harry's disliking, cheer up a bit when she saw him come out onto the pitch.
Harry took a moment to inspect the new Slytherin members.
The new beater, Alex, could hit surprisingly hard; she'd already given Crabbe a black eye for annoying her. They had a new chaser, a boy Harry'd never seen before, but he wasn't too worried because the boy looked a little slow in the head. Draco, as always, had returned as a seeker, and was standing on the ground with an arm around his thin girlfriend; she was decked out in Hufflepuff wear, but she had a Slytherin-green scarf around her neck.
"Odd looking girl, isn't she?" asked Katie, looking at them. "And what'd Draco do to his hair?"
"Those robes make you look retarded," said Rebekah to Alex. Alex grabbed her beater's bat and hurled one of the struggling bludgers in her direction; Harry was very glad to see that Rebekah was as fast as she had boasted, because she shot out of the way and sped off as the bludger chased her around the pitch. She appeared to be enjoying herself and didn't stop until McGonagall stormed onto the field screaming and telling people to stop messing around.
"Captains!" shouted Hooch. "Get your teams to the center of the pitch now."
They all lined up and Hooch blew the whistle; a small boy from Ravenclaw was commentating.
For a moment, all Harry did was stand back and watch the game. The Gryffindor beaters were in no way Fred and George, but they played fair. Alex sent Romilda out of the game five minutes in with a broken jaw. Rebekah got back at her by scoring three times in a row, so Alex retaliated by aiming at Harry himself, but he was too fast for the aging bludger.
Harry viewed the game with fascinated interest; the Gryffindor beaters ganged up on Crabbe, who was finally knocked out when both bludgers hit him opposite sides of the head. Draco also had a close call with the hospital wing when he rammed purposely into Rebekah; she chased after him and tackled him in the air. From the Slytherin side, Harry could hear Pansy screaming.
"Katie Bell scored another point for Gryffindor!" Harry heard.
Wondering what Rebekah said to get out of being suspended from the game, Harry finally spotted the snitch. Draco was suspended high in the air, looking unaware and completely uncaring after his fray with the chaser, who was back to scoring more points on the Slytherins.
Harry took off after the snitch.
"It looks like Harry Potter, the Chosen One, has seen the snitch!"
At the sound of "the Chosen One" several things happened; Harry rolled his eyes, the Slytherin's booed, and Rebekah sped past him, giggling, with her brown hair whipping in the air behind her.
Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Harry noticed Alex, followed closely by a bludger she was obviously trying get in the right spot to hit. Harry was still trying hard to focus on the snitch, Draco (who was now chasing him), and Alex, who looked like she was going to run right into him.
"WATCH IT HA—"
Suddenly, she vanished. The crowd gasped as she disapparated, sending a huge crack that ricocheted across the field; several students and teachers got to their feet, looking for her.
The bludger she had been chasing hit Harry's side as his fingers laced around the snitch. He felt the snitch struggle in his hand and fell off his broom.
Alex apparated again, still on her broom, and crashed right into Draco. Once again, Harry could hear Pansy screaming as they all collapsed on the ground with a terrifying thump.
McGonagall and Snape were racing onto the field, followed closely by Hagrid, Madam Pomfrey and Ginny.
Harry shoved Draco off of him and immediately grabbed his side. His ribs were aching.
"Why hello, Draco," said Alex, and Draco shot her a confused look.
"Harry!" screamed Ginny, racing toward him. "That bludger hit you right on! Are you ok!"
Madam Pomfrey grumbled about the dangers of Quidditch while McGonagall stood behind her turned back, rolling her eyes. Snape helped Alex and Draco to their feet, ignoring Alex's "Why hello, Professor Snape."
"Come on, Potter," said Madam Pomfrey, helping him to his feet carefully. "Let's get you to the hospital wing."
She conjured a stretcher and Harry rode while he, Ginny, and Katie all talked about the game. Madam Pomfrey listened disapprovingly and barked at them when they laughed about Crabbe's fractured skull.