The Spectacle

To everyone's surprise, it was Harry himself who suggested they blow off the pile of homework awaiting them upstairs. After the drama of the morning - and the guilt he knew his eldest was feeling - a relaxed morning on the Quidditch pitch was exactly what everyone needed. At least, that's what he'd told Hermione.

"I mean, we can do homework tonight," Ron said as he, Harry and Ginny followed the kids down the sloping lawns towards the Quidditch pitch, their broomsticks over their shoulders, and with Hermione's dire warnings that they would fail all their O.W.L.s still ringing in their ears. "And we've got tomorrow. She gets too worked up about work, that's her trouble."

"You married her," Ginny reminded him, somehow managing to stifle her laughter.

There was a pause and Ron added, in a slightly more anxious tone, "D'you think she meant it when she said we weren't copying from her?"

"Yeah, I do," Harry said gravely. "Still, this is important, too. We've got to keep a sense of normalcy up for the kids, right? Even Hermione says so. And it's not like we can let them play on the team, so ..."

"So three-a-side family games will have to do?" Ginny offered helpfully.

"Yeah, that's right," Ron said confidently. "And we have got plenty of time to do it all ..."

They collected balls from the cupboard in the changing room and set to work, Ron guarding the three tall goalposts, Harry playing Seeker and James as their Chaser. On the other side of the pitch, Scorpius was Keeper while Ginny played Chaser and Lily, as per usual, was Seeker. Al - who hated playing Quidditch at the best of times - volunteered to be a bipartisan Beater, though he may have conveniently 'forgotten' to release the Bludger at all.

The kids were surprisingly impressed at Ron's Keeping skills. Despite being rusty, having not played for real in years, he blocked three-quarters of the goals Ginny - a professional Chaser, back in her younger years - tried to get past him.

James, who lived up to his grandfather's reputation of being a bit of a show-off, had taken it upon himself to fly across the pitch doing loop-the-loops, taunting Scorpius with loud cries of, "I do not fear the dark side!"

Al, who was perched in mid-air about ten metres away, was surprised when his sister pulled up in front him, the Quaffle held securely under one arm. "Aren't you a Seeker?"

"Oh, I am many things, big brother," she said, taking the bat out of his hand with a smile. Her back still to the goalposts, where James was busy taunting Scorpius, she threw the Quaffle above her head and swung the bat as hard as she could, grinning the whole time.

Al burst into laughter even before the Quaffle hit its target. James had seen it coming - the brief "Uh-oh" he gave moments before it made contact was enough to tell everyone that. The flying Quaffle hit him square in the stomach, the force of it actually pushing him backwards along his broom.

Lily looked over her shoulder and called, "You really should fear the dark side, you know. We have cookies!"

That only made Al laugh harder.

Scorpius approached them then, abandoning his post at the goalposts knowing James was winded and completely incapable of doing anything right now. Concerned, he asked, "What just happened?"

Al clapped him on the shoulder. "That, my friend, is how siblings show love."

"That's love? That?" Scorpius said, pointing over at James, who was still doubled over clutching the Quaffle to his stomach. "No way - that's borderline assault, that is!"

At the goalposts on the other side of the pitch, Harry approached Ron and Ginny, who were both trying their hardest not to burst out laughing, and were truly failing miserably.

Wiping away a tear of laughter, Ron glanced to Harry and said, "This is nice, right?"

"What is?" Harry asked as he distractedly reached over and tucked a few loose strands of hair behind Ginny's ear.

"Getting to spend time with them, just being. Not, you know, as the, uh -"

"- 'Chosen One'?" Ginny offered helpfully, the grin she was throwing at Harry telling all of them she knew exactly how much he truly hated that title.

Harry chuckled. "Yeah. It really is."

"I mean, here we're just us, right? You're not the famous-saviour-auror-guy, she's not the Quidditch superstar, I'm not married to the Minister."

"We're not constantly living in fear of our children blowing up the school," Ginny offered helpfully.

"Yeah, that's a plus," Ron laughed. Quickly, he added, "But to be fair - my kid would not be involved."

"No, Rosie'd probably be tied up somewhere to stop her from trying stop them," Harry conceded. "But Hugo - mate, who are you kidding? The kid probably lit the fuse!"

"Your kid is a bad influence on him," Ron said darkly.

"Oh, our kid?" Ginny questioned him good-naturedly. "And remind me again - who is it that supplies Jamie with all those damn joke supplies? 'Cause it's definitely not us."

"Yeah, he does not get enough pocket money to support his mischief-making ventures," Harry added.

Ron did not dignify those comments with a response.


After a couple of hours they returned to the castle for lunch - during which Hermione made it quite clear she thought they were irresponsible and, worse still, teaching the kids bad habits - then returned to the Quidditch pitch for the real training sessions. All their teammates but Angelina were already in the changing room when they entered.

"All right, Ron?" George asked, winking at him.

"Yeah?" Ron said, not fazed in the slightest.

"Ready to show us all up, Ickle Prefect?" Fred asked, emerging tousle-haired from the neck of his Quidditch robes, a slightly malicious grin on his face.

"Shut up," Ron said with a roll of his eyes, pulling on his own team robes for the first time. They fitted him well considering they used to belong to Oliver Wood, who was rather broader in the shoulders.

"Okay, everyone," said Angelina Johnson, entering from the Captain's office, already changed. "Let's get to it; Alicia and Fred, if you can just bring out the ball crate for us. Oh, and there are a couple of people out there watching but I want you to just ignore them, all right?"

Something in her would-be causal voice told Harry exactly who the uninvited spectators were. Sure enough, when they left the changing room for the bright sunlight of the pitch it was to a storm of catcalls and jeers from the Slytherin Quidditch team and assorted hangers-on, who were grouped halfway up the empty stands and whose voices echoed loudly around the stadium.

"What's that Weasley's riding?" Pansy Parkinson called in her loudest voice. "Why would anyone put a flying charm on a mouldy old log like that?"

Crabbe, Goyle and Blaise Zambini guffawed with laughter. Harry couldn't help but notice that Draco Malfoy - sitting slightly removed from the rest of the group, a textbook in his hands - cringed a little at that. Ron, however, did his best to ignore them; He mounted his broom and kicked off from the ground. Harry followed him, watching his ears turn red from behind.

"Ignore them," he said, accelerating to catch up with Ron. "We'll see who's laughing after we play them ..."

"Exactly the attitude I want, Harry," Angelina said approvingly, soaring around them with the Quaffle under her arm and slowing to hover on the spot in front of her airborne team. "Okay, everyone, we're going to start with some passes just to warm up, the whole team please -"

"Hey, Johnson, what's with that hairstyle, anyway?" shrieked Pansy Parkinson from below. "Why would anyone want to look like they've got worms coming out of their head?"

Angelina swept her long braided hair out of her face and continued calmly, "Spread out, then, and let's see what we can do ..."

Harry reversed away from the others to the far side of the pitch. Ron fell back towards the opposite goal. Angelina raised the Quaffle with one hand and threw it to Fred, to passed to George, who passed to Harry, who passed to Ron, who dropped it.

The Slytherins far below them roared and screamed with laughter. Ron, who had pelted towards the ground to catch the Quaffle before it landed, pulled out of the dive untidily, so that he slipped sideways on his broom, and returned to playing height, blushing. Harry saw Fred and George exchange looks, but uncharacteristically neither of them said anything, for which he was grateful.

"Pass it on, Ron," called Angelina, as though nothing had happened.

Ron threw the Quaffle to Alicia, who passed back to Harry, who passed to George ...

"Hey, Potter, how's your scar feeling?" called Zambini. "Sure you don't need a lie down? It must be, what, a whole week since you were in the hospital wing. That's a record for you, isn't it?"

George passed to Angelina; she reverse-passed to Harry, who had not been expecting it, but caught it in the very tips of his fingers and passed it quickly to Ron, who lunged for it and missed by inches.

"Come on now, Ron," said Angelina crossly, as he dived for the ground again, chasing the Quaffle. "Pay attention."

It would have been hard to say whether Ron's face or the Quaffle was a deeper shade of scarlet when he again returned to playing height. The Slytherins below them were howling with laughter.

On his third attempt, Ron caught the Quaffle; perhaps out of relief he passed it on so enthusiastically that it soared straight through Katie's outstretched hands and hit her hard in the face.

"Sorry!" Ron groaned, zooming forwards to see whether he had done any damage.

"Get back in position, she's fine!" barked Angelina. "But as you're passing to a teammate, do try not to knock her off her broom, won't you? We've got Bludgers for that!"

Katie's nose was bleeding. Down below, the Slytherins were stamping their feet and jeering. Fred and George converged on Katie.

"Here, take this," Fred told her, handing her something small and purple out of his pocket, "it'll clear it up in no time."

"All right," called Angelina, "Fred, George, go and get your bats and a Bludger. Ron, get up to the goalposts. Harry, release the Snitch when I say so. We're going to aim for Ron's goal, obviously."

Harry zoomed off after the twins to fetch the Snitch.

"Ron's making a right pig's ear of things, isn't he?" muttered George, as the three of them landed at the crate containing the balls and opened it to extract one of the Bludgers and the Snitch.

"He's just nervous," Harry told them. "He was fine when we were playing with the kids this morning. Kept up with your sister and everything."

Fred frowned. "And that's a compliment?"

Harry raised an eyebrow. "You have no idea."

Harry grinned as he returned to the air, amused by the twins' shouts of "What does that mean?!" and "You can't leave us hanging, scar-face!" from below.

When the twins - who still hadn't let up on their probing for information - returned to the air, Angelina blew her whistle and they released the Snitch and the Bludger. From that moment on, Harry was barely aware of what the others were doing. It was his job to recapture the tiny fluttering golden ball that was worth a hundred and fifty points to the Seeker's team and doing so required enormous speed and skill. He accelerated, rolling and swerving in and out of the Chasers, the warm autumn air whipping his face, and the distant yells of the Slytherins so much meaningless roaring in his ears ... but too soon, the whistle brought him to a halt again.

"Stop - stop - STOP!" screamed Angelina. "Ron - you're not covering your middle post!"

Harry looked round at Ron, who was hovering in front of the left-hand hoop, leaving the other two completely unprotected.

"Oh ... sorry ..."

"You keep shifting around while you're watching the Chasers! Either stay in centre position until you have to move to defend a hoop, or else circle the hoops, but don't drift vaguely off to one side, that's how you let in the last three goals!"

"Sorry ..." Ron repeated, his red face shining like a beacon against the bright blue sky.

"And Katie, can't you do something about that nosebleed?"

"It's just getting worse!" said Katie thickly, attempting to stem the flow with her sleeve.

Harry glanced round at Fred, who was looking anxious and checking his pockets. He saw Fred pull out something purple, examine it for a second and then look round at Katie, evidently horror-struck.

"Okay," Harry said, flying over to Katie. "We need to get you to the Hospital Wing."

"No, reaby," Katie said, her voice becoming thicker and thicker. "I'b fine."

"No, you're really not," Harry said, passing her the clean handkerchief he always kept stashed in his pocket.

She took it gratefully and sighed, resigning herself to following him to the ground. Meanwhile, the Slytherins had set up a chant of 'Gryffindor are losers, Gryffindor are losers,' which has really starting to grate on everyone's nerves.

As they headed back to the ground, Angelina yelled, "What do you think you're doing?!"

"She's not okay, Angelina!" Harry called back. "Protecting our pride is not worth hurting our friend. I'm taking her to the Hospital Wing."

By the time they approached the ground - barely thirty seconds later - Harry had to lean over and grab hold of Katie to stop her from falling over. She was now chalk white and covered in blood.

"Okay," Harry said, wrapping one of her arms around his shoulder and supporting her full weight. "Come on, Katie. We'll get you up to the castle, and you'll be just fine."

Fred approached quickly, jumped off his broom with a couple of feet still to go, and wrapped her other arm around his own shoulders, helping Harry to keep her upright. "That, uh, may not have been what I thought it was."

"No kidding," Harry grunted. "So, what was it?"

"It may have been a Blood Blisterpod," George said, collecting the brooms they had abandoned on the ground.

Harry rolled his eyes. "You know there's a reason you never took those things to the open market, right? Honestly, Blood Blisterpods - what's next, antifreeze?"

"Anti-what?"

"It's a Muggle thing."


By the time Harry had all but carried Katie up to the Hospital Wing - and was quizzed repeatedly on exactly what had happened by a very unimpressed Madam Pomfrey - and gone back to the changing rooms to collect his belongings, well over an hour had passed.

He climbed through the portrait hole into the Gryffindor common room to find Hermione and Ginny sitting in their favourite sofas by the fire, their books spread out on the ground around them.

"Everything okay?" Ginny asked him in way of greeting. "Ron stormed in nearly an hour ago."

"And he's not talking to us," Hermione added, doing her best to stifle a snuffle. Clearly, whatever Ron had said had really upset her.

"It was, uh ..." Harry said. He sank onto the sofa opposite them and said. "Actually, it was crap. What could go wrong did go wrong. And the Slytherins showed up - that was fun. Oh, and Katie's in the Hospital Wing -"

"- She's what?" Ginny jumped in.

"She's fine, Gin. It's nothing serious, but ... well, Ron's feeling bad about it."

Ginny sighed. "And he's still juvenile enough to take it out on Hermione."


None of them seemed to make much headway on their homework that night. Hermione was still upset at Ron, who hadn't left the dormitory since he'd come back from Quidditch. Ginny was more worried about keeping the kids on task - James wanted nothing more than to abandon his homework in favour of spending time with Lee and the twins; Al and Scorp were midway through a two-person wizards chess tournament, and every time they dared to interrupt her peaceful reading time, Lily would surreptitiously hex them. Needless to say, even forty-something-year-old Harry Potter was struggling with the distractions being hurtled his way.

They spent the whole of Sunday in the common room while the room around them filled and emptied. Harry, Ron, Hermione, a very unwilling James, and a very persuasive Ginny spent their time with their heads buried in books (or, in Ginny's case, threatening her son with a bat-bogey hex if he so much as dared look up from his books), while Al and Scorp continued their tournament with Lily, who had long ago given up on her "boring" book, keeping a running commentary.

By lunchtime, Harry had developed the kind of headache that gave him the sense his brain had been thumping against the inside of his skull.

"This is ridiculous," he said to Ginny as they escaped the common room in search of lunch, rubbing his temples tiredly. "Not even the Lestrange trial rocked me like this. It's just homework! What's wrong with me?"

Ginny couldn't help but laugh. "You know what I think?"

"Sweetheart, we might've been married for twenty-odd years, but I've never developed the ability to read your mind."

Surprisingly, Ginny didn't even flinch at the mention of their future life. Instead, she rolled her eyes and quipped, "I should hope not. Someone has to keep you on your toes."

He opened his mouth to respond with something about the three people they created still managing to do just that all the way from Scotland, but the sight that met them as they rounded the corner into the Entrance Hall stopped him dead in his tracks.

There stood Draco Malfoy, surrounded by his Slytherin cronies, who all had their wands drawn and pointed at him. Draco was in a defensive stance, wildly looking from person to person as though he were trying to work out who was going to curse him first.

"Should we -?"

"- No," Harry said quickly, though he still held her arm and pulled her out of the way. "We can't. I -"

In the corner of the room beside the stairs, where they couldn't be seen, courtesy of the crowd that was gathering to watch the spectacle unfold, Ginny held both hands securely on Harry's face, forcing him to look at her.

"It's okay," she whispered for only him to hear. "You're here with me. We're okay."

"And what exactly do you think you're doing?"

The two Potters had never been so glad to hear Professor McGonagall's voice. She, however, didn't give the Slytherins a chance to respond.

"I'll tell you what you're doing - you're getting yourselves indefinite detention. All of you, in Professor Snape's office. Now."

And just like that, the spectacle was over before it had really started. With a wave of her hand, Professor McGonagall had dispersed the remaining students, and Harry and Ginny were left to their day once more.

Neither missed the pained glance Draco sent them as he was marched back toward the dungeons.

"We've got to do something, don't we?" Ginny whispered.

"Yes, love," Harry answered without so much as thinking what he was saying. "I just don't know what."