Chapter 11

Disclaimer: Harry Potter etc still belongs to JK Rowling, plot still belongs to me.

Author's Note: I'm hoping that this chapter won't be as ridiculously challenging as the last. Chapter 10 was worth it though... at least to me it was. Here goes.

I'm having a guilty moment right now. I wrote this stuff months ago, and it feels kind of odd just posting it up without even re-reading it or whatever. From now on, I vow to make an effort. And who knows? It might not be so long before you're up to chapter 36! (That's where I've written up to).

Invisible Voice: My browser doesn't let me view email addresses either. But I think I've got a solution. Go to my website: www-dot-yahoo-dot-com/isorfidiensodyssey. (Replace the –dot-s with an actual dot.). Go to the Hub and post me a message with your email address in it. I can read it and then delete it instead of it getting posted for all to see. Then I can email you! Clever huh? (Seriously, I've probably been giving this way too much thought.)

Harry's initial reaction to this unexpected twist was to feel like he was about to throw up. He stood, frozen, for a moment, then turned and walked, at a strangely controlled pace, back in the direction he had come. Instead of going back to Gryffindor tower, he turned off the corridor into a narrower one, where he waited for a few minutes. At last he assumed that Draco and Pansy (ouch, it hurt to think of them as 'Draco and Pansy', that made it too real) would have gone into the Great Hall to start their real breakfast. Then he turned and headed straight back to the Great Hall. He had no real wish to be in the same room as that traitor Draco, but he needed breakfast. The only other option was to go down to the kitchens and beg some food off the house elves, and Harry really couldn't face making conversation with Dobby when he felt this bad.

It was a mystery to Harry how he managed to eat breakfast, as his nausea was refusing to leave him. If he had thought Ron and Hermione's lovey-doveyness had been bothering him, it was nothing compared to seeing Draco and Pansy together. Of the whole year so far, this situation was the most confusing thing. Draco had said he loved him, and now he was kissing Pansy. He had told Harry he hated Pansy! Of course, Draco might have been playing with him all along. But he had seen the look in Draco's eyes when they had been talking. Crap, this was confusing. Confusing, painful and infuriating. Harry would never in a million years have guessed that, one day, he would be jealous of Pansy Parkinson.

Still fighting the urge to throw up, or possibly start a fight (the latter being the more attractive option), Harry left the Great Hall. He walked back to the common room, struggling to keep his face impassive.

Once back in the common room, he wondered how he would spend the day. He considered going down to the lake and going for a nice swim with the giant squid, but decided this would not be very practical. After all, it wouldn't be fair on the squid, and in any case, someone might pull him out before he had a chance to drown. This train of thought showed, very well, how depressed he was feeling.

Eventually, Harry took his usual last resort, and started his homework. After an hour of writing a particularly nasty essay on Reviving Draughts for Snape, his raging heart had calmed. Ironically, it had been sent to sleep by the essay.

Ten minutes later, he at last deemed the parchment long enough to satisfy Snape. This presented a new problem - what to do now.

Harry climbed the stairs to his dormitory, dumped the essay on top of his trunk and settled on the one activity that, without fail, always made him feel better: flying. He picked up his broomstick, hurried down the staircase to the common room, which was getting slightly busier, and climbed out of the portrait hole, heading for the Quidditch stadium which, fortunately, was deserted.

He mounted his Firebolt and kicked off. For the first time ever, he wished that flying did not come so naturally to him. The fact that he did not have to devote too much attention to what he was doing meant that his mind was left free to debate other issues. Hard as he tried to block out thoughts of Draco, they kept coming back.

Harry soon discovered that angry and confused was not the best state in which to fly a broomstick. The strength of his feelings was unbalancing him and making what was usually an enjoyable pursuit something of a dangerous one. Several times he came close to falling.

After the sixth time this happened, he landed, sat down at the edge of the pitch and gave himself a good mental talking to. He knew that his feelings were a potential threat to Gryffindor's chances of winning at Quidditch the following weekend. It would be no good whatsoever having a Captain and Seeker who was so angry with the other Captain that he kept nearly falling off his broom. With this thought at the front of his mind, Harry vowed to himself that he would go back to treating Malfoy the way he always had, possibly with a little more venom. That way, things would be a little less confusing, and no one else would pick up on what was going on.

Harry flew for a while longer, practising blocking his thoughts. When he was at last able to keep his balance for five whole minutes, he landed for the second time and walked back up to the castle. He took his Firebolt back to the dormitory, then sat in the common room, no longer remotely surprised by the fact that Ron and Hermione ignored him entirely. He then proceeded to spend the afternoon reading a book on Quidditch tactics that he had bought on the trip to Hogsmeade. Being Seeker for his whole time at Hogwarts, he had been disconnected from any main tactical plans, and had never paid much attention to tricks and game plans before. Now, as Captain, it was his job to direct the other players. The team had arranged to have a meeting in the common room that evening to discuss their new tactics, which at least gave Harry something to occupy his mind.

Dinner was another sickening affair. Seeing his current two most hated Slytherins sitting next to each other, behaving in a way that made Ron and Hermione look distant with each other by comparison, made Harry feel more than faintly ill. His newfound ability to block out his thoughts was quickly squashed, and he found a soundtrack of Saturday night's conversation running through his head on a constant loop. He kept his eyes fixed on his food as he ate, trying like crazy to silence his thoughts. This was in vain, however, and he left the Great Hall thoroughly disheartened.

The meeting turned out to be the perfect distraction. The other team members were delighted to hear of Harry's success in booking the Quidditch pitch for training on Tuesday evening, Thursday evening and first thing on Saturday morning, ready for Sunday's match.

"We've got a damn good team," Harry told them, "and with some training we could have a great one. I'm not going to lie to you all, I am nervous about this, what with captaining a whole new team..." He caught Ron's eye and Ron grinned. This small act of recognition and friendship made Harry feel a lot better, and he continued. "... But I know we can win this. I know it."

Everyone else was beginning to look more confident, which in turn encouraged Harry further.

"Is everyone taking good care of their brooms?" He asked. He was answered immediately by a mixture of 'Yes's and enthusiastic nods.

"I've been looking after mine really carefully," third year Natalie McDonald ventured timidly, "but it's been listing a bit. Do you know what might be wrong with it?"

"Bring it down here." Harry replied. "Everyone else stay here, I need to get something." He disappeared up the boys' staircase as Natalie disappeared up the girls'. A minute later he emerged, carrying his Broomstick Servicing Kit.

He arrived back in the common room just before Natalie did. She set the broomstick down on the table. The name written in silver on the handle announced that it was a Silver Moth - not top of the range, but a good broom nonetheless.

Harry turned it over, looking carefully at it. "Is this one of the 300 series?" He said to Natalie, who looked unaccountably nervous.

She nodded. "It's a 370. Can you do anything about the listing?"

"I think so," Harry answered. "Can you just hop on it for a second?"

She looked at him nervously. "Isn't flying indoors against the rules?"

Harry grinned. "Hang on a moment." He turned round and called across the room, "Hey Hermione, is it against the rules to fly inside the castle?"

"Yes," Hermione replied immediately, "but when it comes to Quidditch, you know McGonagall'll let you get away with murder if it'll help us win the Cup."

Harry turned back to Natalie. "There you go then."

Still looking sceptical, Natalie climbed onto her broom and rose a few feet into the air. Harry walked round the broom, looking carefully at it. "I think it's the tail," he said at last. "You can come down now."

Natalie did so, looking relieved. Harry took the broom and looked more closely at the tail.

"Does this look familiar?" He asked as he pulled a small, spherical object from among the twigs.

The thing looked, at first glance, like a custard coloured lump of fluff, but it had two tiny eyes and was humming slightly. The assembled students all recognised it as a Puffskein, including Natalie, who took it from Harry straight away and began stroking it, murmuring: "Are you OK, Fuzzy? Oh, I thought you'd got lost!"

Harry and Ron forced down laughter. It took a few moments before they could speak, then Harry said brightly: "Well, that's fixed your broom problem, hasn't it? And now you've found... Fuzzy, was it?"

Natalie nodded happily. "Thanks, Harry!"

"No problem. Anyone else got any questions, problems or anything?"

The team shook their heads.

"Right then, meeting over. I'll see you all on the Quidditch pitch after dinner on Tuesday." Harry said, without realising two things; firstly, that Ron and Hermione were no longer ignoring him; and secondly, that he had forgotten all about the Draco/Pansy thing.

Author's Note: There you go, I kept my promise, it's longer. I hope you like the Puffskein bit. There may be more involving Fuzzy later... Puffskeins aside, I think this chapter worked.