"Wait, you want to know who I would pick?" Cedric asked, sounding surprised.

"Well, yeah. I mean, you're going to have to fly with them, too and I don't really know anyone who has much experience with casting in the air. Just, they have to have decent occlumency, Beauxbatons has veela and a mind mage, not sure about Durmstrang."

The Hufflepuff Captain winced. "So I guess that rules Cho out, then. I almost want to say you should think about asking a pair of beaters instead of me and someone else — they'd be used to coordinating, you know?"

"Yeah, but the only beater team who both know any occlumency are the Weasley twins, and Lyra wants them for something else. Besides, I've flown against you. You're good, and our styles are pretty similar. I think we can make it work."

Cedric nodded absently, smiling slightly at the compliment. "Thanks. Oh! What if we don't try to coordinate styles, but bring in someone who can work around us?"

"Like a stunt flier? The only one I know is Lyra, and I don't think she's actually very good..."

"Have you met Enyo Seran?"

፠

Harry had not met Enyo Seran. He recognised her when they finally found her though, practising Suicide Dives near the opposite shore of the lake. She was a Slytherin, he saw her all the time down in the Dungeons, he'd just never really spoken to her. Well, the only reason he'd noticed her in the first place was because she'd once told off Parkinson for harassing him on his way down to Blaise's room, but other than that. She was a slender, willowy girl, at least a head taller than he was. She was also at least a year or two above him, and generally had a sort of piss off vibe about her. She was a commoner, he thought, because Daphne and Tracey had pointed out all of the Nobles in Slytherin for him by now, but one who didn't give a single flying fuck about that political, social ranking shite, because, again, told off Parkinson.

He also kind of had the impression she was a serious, no-nonsense sort of person. Aside from her completely reasonable, sane-person disregard for the whole ridiculous wizarding nobility thing, her dark hair was always braided and pinned into a bun at the nape of her neck, and she wore healers' robes around Slytherin. (Lyra's penchant for wearing dueling-style clothes casually wasn't entirely unique, it was just weird that she wore them everywhere — a lot of the Slytherins who preferred trousers wore those or healers' robes when they were in private, throwing their uniform over-robes on whenever they had to go out into the rest of the school.) She was almost always in the Slytherin Common Room when he passed through it, and never seemed to just hang out talking to anyone. Every time Harry had noticed her, she'd been reading in an out-of-the-way corner. He didn't think he'd ever seen her smile, or even smirk maliciously at some idiot for being an idiot in her general vicinity, and her mental presence was similarly restrained.

That impression, he immediately decided, was dead wrong.

Suicide Dives were called that for a reason. Basically the idea was to start high enough that you would hit your broom's top speed before you hit the ground, and throw yourself into a death dive — within twenty degrees of straight down — the closer to a vertical drop the better, from a technical perspective. And then when you were within a few metres of the ground, you pulled into a front flip. If you didn't break your neck smashing your face into the ground or kill your broom (and then yourself) by smashing the twigs before you could reverse your momentum, you ended the trick going straight up. Technically it only counted as a Suicide Dive if you came in within five degrees of perpendicular, and your twigs (or fletching, Seran was flying a stunt broom) dipped within a metre of the ground when you pulled out.

Seran's dives were absolutely textbook. He and Diggory watched her do two in quick succession, throwing in flip-turns at the top as well as at lake-level. The third time she came down, she cut it too close, had to corkscrew off at an angle because her momentum would've carried her into the water in the split-second it would have taken to pull back to vertical. She spiralled off into a generally upward course, standing on her stirrups, clinging with one hand to the nose of her broom, her free arm out to create drag, slow her down. Eventually she came to a hover just a few metres below them, and maybe twenty metres away. She turned to look up at them with a brilliant, elated grin. "Wanna try, Potter? I'll spot you."

"Um..." Well, he kind of did, but he also didn't want to die — and there was only so much a spotter could do, short of giving him an illusory ground target with plenty of room to stop if he overshot. He was pretty sure that was how professional stunt-fliers did it, in shows.

She laughed at his hesitation, relaxing to lie on her broom — stunt brooms weren't really intended for sitting — floating toward them rather slowly, maintaining the thirty-degrees-off-vertical angle she'd ended up at, sort of as though leaning on an invisible wall. "Hey, Diggory. What's up?" she asked, inspecting the end of her braid, and wringing water out of it. (Her hair was longer than Harry had realised, the braid reached past her bum when she was just casually leaning there, but if she'd gotten it wet on that last run, that was still way too close to face-smashing death for comfort.)

"Ah, well— Okay, I know you don't care, but I have to say it anyway: Suicide Dives?! What the fuck Seran! Have you finally actually lost your bloody mind?! You're going to kill yourself one of these days, you mad bloody danger-addict! Twenty points from Slytherin for reckless endangerment of a student's life! And if I catch you doing something that stupid again, I'm definitely telling Professor Snape!"

"My birthday was in September, I'm allowed to do stupid shite now without Snape reading me the riot act. Or you." She smirked at Diggory. "Got it out of your system, now?"

Diggory gave a loud, dramatic groan. "Yes. Mostly. Enyo Seran, this is Harry Potter, I'm sure you recognise him. Potter, this is Enyo Seran, sixth-year Slytherin. She's probably the best flier in the school, but she makes Black look like a bloody paragon of sanity."

Diggory clearly didn't know Lyra very well.

Seran just rolled her eyes at his dramatics. "Yeah, we've met." Kind of. "So, why are you two out here? Other than to offer entirely unwanted commentary on my Suicide Dives — which, in case you didn't notice, I was absolutely killing."

"Uh, yeah, I did notice," Harry muttered, trying not to sound too, well, weird, since the next thing he had to say was, "Um. So, I was wondering— That is, um— Well, first, I guess, do you have plans this Saturday?"

"You're a little young for me, Potter," she informed him drily.

"What? God damn it, why does everyone think— It's about the first task! We're looking for a third flier, you know, for aerial support, and wanted to know if you'd be interested."

She raised an eyebrow at him in that all-purpose expression all of the Slytherins seemed to have learned from Snape. "What? You just asked Diggory here who would be mad enough to get into an aerial battle with Victor Krum and half a dozen veela, and he gave you my name?"

Well, when she put it like that, it sounded a hell of a lot more intimidating! "Well, if you don't want to, just say so," Harry snapped.

Seran just laughed. "Oh, no, I'm definitely up for it. What are you thinking? You two run defence, I take offence?"

Oh. Shite. They needed tactics now, and...stuff. Right. "Um, we haven't really talked about it, but...I guess that sounds fine to me? I mean, yes, that should work," he added more decisively, as he noticed that both of the sixth-years were looking at him with an expression he could only characterise as doubtful.

"Right," Seran drawled. "Your confidence and leadership are doing wonders for my morale, here, Potter."

Diggory snorted, turning her skeptical glare to himself. "Oh, come on, we both know you and team sport don't mix. Leadership my arse... You've seen Potter fly, he's a natural, and we've still got a few days, we'll figure it out."

"I hope you two didn't have any plans for the rest of the afternoon," the Slytherin said, every bit as serious as Harry had thought her, back before he'd seen her out here. "Because I don't know about you, but I don't intend to go out there and lose on Saturday."

"Yeah, well, that makes two of us," Harry snapped. He didn't want to lose either, after all. He'd settle for not making a complete fool of himself, but...yeah.

"Three," Diggory said, grinning and shooting off to take a position over the lake. "What are you waiting for, Seran? Gimme your best shot!"