Chapter Nine: The Power of Light
Ivory is cornered by his twin and given a dire warning. Draco gains a piece of evidence he doesn't realize the importance of, and Harry's quidditch luck flares again.
Within the hour, every student had been returned to the Great Hall and was under guard from the professors of the school.
Tarana had sent Yoko and Ivory out into the depths of the school in search of Ebony and Sirius but waited until the last of the students had been sealed, essentially, within the Great Hall to step out onto the steps.
Her roar echoed in near-visible ripples across the grounds, calling Arcana and Fallen back from their hunt, but she didn't wait to see if they adhered to it, already aware that they would. She turned on her tail and slipped into the shadows in search of her missing Kin.
XX
In the Great Hall, Harry couldn't be sure how he knew it, considering he and Tarana weren't actually Bonded at the moment, but he was certain the hunt for Black and Ebony had just become a race between the staff of Hogwarts and the Valerian Crown and Collective.
XX
Ivory found him first, a black shadow in a sea of darker shadows.
Every torch on the corridor had been blown out and the place was dark enough that if Ivory hadn't been looking for him, particularly by scent and sound, he would have missed him visually.
The shadow and Ivory stared at one another for a second, before the darker of the two darted down the connecting hall, Ivory hot on his proverbial heels.
Ivory couldn't remember much about the mad dash through the corridors, only that they, somehow, managed to not run into a single person, whether it be staff or Valerian, in the who twenty minutes they ran.
He collapses in a mess of paws and tail when, somehow, he manages to turn a corner and slam into the wall, though he could have sworn he had just seen his brother take the same turn.
He groaned as he got to his paws, shaking his head to try and make the fun stars disappear.
"You haven't changed a bit," he grumbled, lowering his head so he could put a paw on it.
The leopard, darker mirror to himself, that now stood, backlit by the torches wherever they were, didn't answer.
"I don't get it," Ivory said, looking up at his brother. "You two are essentially home-free. I spend more time on the grounds than I do in the castle, figuring the only reason you wouldn't have immediately fled the country is because of Sirius' condition, and rather than show up where it's certain it'll just be the three of us, you attack the Fat Lady while there's no one in the Tower."
Ebony didn't move, staring at his brother.
Ivory scoffed, Ebony's silence, as always, making his irritation flare. "What do the two of you want with Hogwarts, Ebony? You could be fucking anywhere right now! Do you want to test us?"
Ebony stared at him for a few moments. "I have no need to test you. There's danger already in the school, Ivory," he finally told him.
Ivory froze. "There's a Thrall in Hogwarts? Who is it? Ebony we can rout the idiot and you can come home."
"The threat is far more dangerous than a Thrall," Ebony told him. "A coward has infiltrated Harry Potter's close-knit circle."
"Ivory!"
Ivory cursed quietly, taking another step toward his brother. "Ebony-"
Ebony tilted his head in the direction both could hear Remus' footsteps echoing in the hallway.
"Remus is trustworthy," Ivory said quickly, not sure if he was going to see the black leopard sink fangs into the were' or simply take off. "He's the same as when we all parted ways in '88. He's worried about Sirius-"
"Keep a close eye on the Tower, Ivory," Ebony warned him.
Ivory lunged after his fleeing brother, but the darkness around him had come to life, chaining him to the walls.
Chains of pulsing black power were literally wrapping around his limbs, keeping him contained in the hallway.
Light flooded the hall and Ivory landed on four paws immediately outside of it, shaking his fur out as he completed the forcefully aborted leap.
Remus, wand pointed at the ground, came to kneel beside the leopard. "Where is he?" he asked, wand dangling between his legs.
Ivory growled. "Long fucking gone," he said angrily.
Remus sighed. "Any chance we can track him down?"
Ivory shook his head, trying to let go of the anger that he'd again been played by his fucking brother. "Not likely."
XX
Neville and Harry were the only ones still awake when Dumbledore stepped back into the Great Hall, being that it was shortly after one in the morning and they'd just helped Blaise through a nightmare. It was one of the few that he suffered because on the few nights that Yoko couldn't make it back to the Tower by the time Blaise was going to bed, Fallen would stay with him or Tarana would Walk with him, keeping the nightmares at bay.
Dumbledore found Percy first, who just happened to be nearby.
Neville and Harry met one another's gaze before, almost simultaneously, closing their eyes to pretend they were sleeping.
Harry was more familiar with the process of pretending to be asleep to avoid any attention from his aunt or uncle – not that it usually mattered much – and pulled his sleeping bag (given to the students before the staff had joined in the search for Sirius Black) farther up over his nose to hide anything his lower face might do without his consent.
Nothing Dumbledore and Percy talked about was anything of interest, though the Headmaster had revealed that they'd managed to find the Fat Lady, but midway through Percy informing Dumbledore that the Great Hall had been quiet, Severus returned to the Great Hall.
If anything, Neville and Harry got even more still.
If anyone was going to figure out that they were faking and move the conversation away, it was probably going to be Severus.
"The whole third floor has been searched," the man said. "He's not there. Filch and I swept the dungeons and there's nothing there either."
Dumbledore sighed. "The Astronomy Tower? The Owlery?"
"The Valerians got there first. Fallen and Arcana have searched most of the grounds and there's no sign whatsoever that he ever came that way."
"Severus," Dumbledore sighed.
"Do you have any theory as to how he got in, Albus?" Severus asked, glancing dismissively at Percy and suspiciously down at the children around their feet.
"Many," Dumbledore said. "Each as unlikely as the next."
Harry wished he was still wearing his glasses, but it would be a dead giveaway that he wasn't really asleep.
Neville, however, didn't have such a problem.
The teen shifted in what he hoped looked natural, so he could crack his eyes open and see the faces of the people standing over him.
Dumbledore's back was to him, but he could see Percy a little blurry because he didn't want to open his eyes too far, but Severus was closer and a little clearer, and he looked almost as angry as he did when Neville screwed up in Potions.
"Weasley," Severus said sharply.
Percy jumped, as though he'd been hoping to avoid being noticed long enough to listen to whatever the two professors were going to talk about.
Severus waited until Percy had made himself scarce before turning to the Headmaster again. "You remember the conversation we had before the start of term, Headmaster?"
The disappearance of Percy didn't make Dumbledore appear to want to have the conversation any more than when he was actually standing there. "I do."
"It seems almost impossible that Black could have entered the school without inside help."
"I don't believe any single person inside this castle would have helped Black enter it," Dumbledore said firmly, ending the conversation. He turned away from the professor. "I must go inform the dementors that our search was complete."
Severus clenched a fist as the Headmaster walked away, before glancing back down at the children around him, shaking his head and following the older wizard out of the Great Hall.
XX
Though the staff and Valerians both spend the rest of the night searching for Ebony and Sirius Black, there are no further sightings of either.
The Valerians meet in Remus' rooms, while the professor is meeting with the rest of the staff, and Ivory shares with his Kin the conversation he'd had with Ebony, short as it was, with the others.
"He claims that there's a threat already living in Gryffindor Tower," Ivory finished, tail lashing with his displeasure. "Though I didn't have time to try and push for a name before Remus spooked him."
There wasn't a single non-vocal response to Ivory's revelation.
The fact that there may be a threat in the same place that their charges slept was enough to enrage them on a general level.
Fallen was the first to step back and away from his instinct to melt the Tower down to sludge with everyone inside.
"There's been no hint of one in the two months we've been here," he pointed out evenly. "It's a very real possibility that Ebony is simply creating a diversion."
"There's no question that Ebony only stepped out of the shadows at all to ensure that Black got back out of the castle, however it was that he got inside it."
"Of that, I don't doubt," Ivory agreed, glancing at the fox, "but it doesn't make sense for him to turn all of our attention to Gryffindor Tower."
Fallen bared his fangs in frustration, and reluctantly agreed. "Turning our attention to the Tower does make it harder for him to get inside it, particularly if Harry is his target."
"Currently," Arcana said slowly, "Harry is at his lowest level of protection in the Tower at night when the rest of us are off doing things we can't do while the staff is occupied with classes. Telling us to turn our attention to the Tower ensures that we'll be there more often, lessening a chance of success. It doesn't make sense if his target is Harry."
"We can't dismiss his warning, however," Ivory pointed out. "If there's a threat inside the Tower, it isn't just your charges that are in danger, it's the whole of Gryffindor."
Fallen looked around at his Kin. "Why are we taking him seriously?" he asked. "Ebony's never shown any remorse in using the rest of us as pawns. If he wants us in the Tower, then isn't it in our best interest to not be in the Tower?"
"Any plan that Ebony has maneuvered the rest of us as 'pawns' in, General, have always been in the favor of the Collective." Arcana pointed out evenly. "And until Ebony gives us a concrete reason to believe otherwise, we will consider the threat he says is in the Tower to be exactly that. Going forward, we will keep a closer eye on the Tower. Taking turns in staying inside the Tower in groups as opposed to a single guard."
Fallen and Yoko both looked livid.
"I've been among those students for the last three years, Your Majesty, and none of them have ever given any hint of being a threat. They're simply students. You can't treat just treat them like assassins on Ebony's say so!" Yoko argued.
"And we won't," Tarana said, having remained silent and out of the way, lying in the shadows cast by Remus' desk. Now, she got to her paws and approached the others. "We will consider the threat to the Tower, by investigating those within it, discretely," she said firmly, looking at Arcana and Ivory. "We will not, however, focus all of our attention on the Tower. They're right, if Ebony is trying to keep our attention off something else, it is in our interests to try and figure out what it is. Our primary objective regarding both still stands. Containment. Arcana and I are interested in speaking with Sirius, as he was supposedly the first on the scene at Godric's Hollow. He will have seen things that anyone coming after him might miss, and I, in particular, wish to know who was the Secret Keeper responsible for keeping the Potters hidden."
Fallen and Yoko glanced at one another.
Tarana still wasn't considering Sirius a threat, but at least she was taking steps to investigate the possibility, which was more than Arcana or Ivory were prepared to do, apparently taking it entirely on faith that Ebony and Sirius were still serving the Collective.
XX
Slipping out of the castle, even with the staff overcrowding the halls and corridors, was simple for the Shade.
The black fur and darker spots made it easy to blend into the shadows naturally cast by the torches; and considering it was closer to dawn than midnight, their eyes were tired and not focusing on the subtle differences that would alert them to his presence.
An inferiority that Ebony took great pride in rubbing in their faces by pretty much walking out the front doors of the castle, even though the mortals wouldn't know he did it until he mentioned it.
If he mentioned it.
So focused were the mortals inside on the fact that he couldn't have escaped the halls of Hogwarts, none of them, not even his Kin, thought to look outside the windows as he loped across the lawn, made nearly black by the lack of sun or moon and further hiding him.
The hardest part of the night had been waiting for Fallen and Arcana to reenter the castle, more because he wasn't sure what sort of trouble his charge was getting into without supervision than because he was having difficulty keeping himself hidden.
Their current den was too far away for Ebony to speak to the fugitive, but he could feel his downward spiral into one of his episodes and was eager to ensure that the man didn't get himself killed so close to his self-proclaimed objective, making everything that Ebony had worked for since the 'death' of the Queen useless.
He'd kill Sirius himself if all this planning went to waste.
The deep shadows of the Forbidden Forest welcomed Ebony back and he slipped easily into them, letting them draw him further into the worst parts of the Forest, particularly the Acromantula nest that he was currently using to keep his Kin as far from him and his charge as possible.
Aragog remembered well the threat the Shade had made himself the previous year and ensured that he was given a wide birth.
Pausing, Ebony tilted his head.
Darting sharply to the right, the Shade slammed his larger bulk into a smaller black figure and threw it hard enough that it lost breath as it hit a tree.
Stalking after his prey, the leopard sank his fangs into a hindleg and hauled it back in the direction of the cave he and Sirius were using as a temporary den.
He could hear the giant spiders, hidden in the shadows, fleeing from the sharp yelps and echoing yowls his prey sent into the depths of the Forest as it struggled to escape his grip.
XX
It was after noon the day after Sirius' attack on the Fat Lady when the staff was able to find any that would be willing to stand in for her while they repaired her portrait.
Sir Cadogan was a knight, loud and obnoxious, that resided not far from the Divination classroom in the North Tower.
He was the only one who enjoyed his position.
The knight was forever coming up with challenging passwords – some that were so complicated that Neville forgot them and needed to wait for someone else to come by – and changing them, sometimes multiple times in one day.
He thought himself a rather famous Knight of the Round table and often tried to prove it by challenging students to duels, even when they had the right passwords.
By the end of the first week, Yoko'd had more than enough and had disappeared in search of the Fat Lady himself.
"If this goes on much longer, Lady, the children will revolt and one of us will likely set the canvas on fire," he told her. "You must come back."
The woman was quivering and her voice shaking when she told him, "I've told Dumbledore and I'll tell you, Master Fox, I will return to that position as soon as Sirius Black is caught."
XX
Less than a week before the first quidditch match of the season between Gryffindor and Slytherin, the Slytherin Captain, a brutish Seventh Year, Marcus Flint, was reported to have, rather angrily, informed Madam Hooch that Katelyn Malfoy had scheduled a disposition with Percival Parkinson the day and time they were to play.
The rumor was that Hooch had warned Flint to get his seeker under control because she wouldn't be so accommodating a second time.
There was obvious tension between the team and their seeker, and Katelyn herself was seriously subdued in the aftermath of that meeting, so odds were high that Flint hadn't been kind to the only female member of the team when 'getting her under control'.
Gryffindor wasn't best pleased with the change either because they had spent the last month practicing strategies for the Slytherin opposition.
Hufflepuff, their new opponents, played entirely differently to the more aggressive and, honestly, unsportsmanlike, Slytherins and they now only had a matter of days to redo those strategies based on the Hufflepuff team.
The only one who seemed eager for the challenge was Draco, but he often needed to be escorted, more than once, back to bed by Fallen when the 'wolf put his paw down and forced him to get some sleep.
XX
Draco's other, self-proclaimed, mission got its first real clue when, the day before the match, Lupin didn't show up to teach his class, which didn't appear to surprise or worry any of the Valerians.
Ivory was likewise nowhere to be seen, but Draco couldn't be sure if it was something concerning Lupin's own absence or if it was because Severus was the professor standing in for the other man.
Severus was making no secret of his dislike of Lupin, either, commenting on everything from his lack of organization to the dismal expectations the other man supposedly had for his class.
"I would expect First Years to be able to deal with red caps and grindylows. Today we shall discuss," the man flipped almost casually to one of the last chapters in the book.
Draco frowned.
Given how early in the school year it was, there was no feasible way that they could have gotten around to covering anything past the first third of the textbook, let alone one of the back chapters.
His frown got deeper when he could have sworn that Severus' black eyes flicked up in his direction, then back to the book before he finished, "werewolves."
Hermione had never been able to keep her mouth shut when she had a pressing question and, despite how often – both in this lesson and out of it – Severus blatantly told her he didn't need or want her input, she still couldn't contain herself.
"But, sir," she said, apparently oblivious to Harry inhaling a hissing breath behind her and Fallen's narrow-eyed glare, "we're not supposed to do werewolves yet, we're due to start hinky-punks-"
Surprisingly, it was Ron who jammed an elbow into her side and got her to stop, because Severus' gaze was cold and one of his fingers was tapping the page of the textbook as one counting in their head to keep from doing something they shouldn't.
"I," Severus said coldly, "was under the impression that I am teaching this lesson, not you."
Hermione flushed red and ducked her head.
"And I," the professor continued, "am telling you all to turn to page 394."
The Gryffindors glanced at one another, nervously, but the sound of pages turning covered the bitter mutterings of most of the class.
Draco glanced down at Fallen, wondering what his godfather was doing, but the red wolf's gaze was fixated on Severus, and he didn't look pleased.
A glance at Tarana, on the floor before them, made the blonde wince.
She and Severus had a tense relationship, most of which seemed to be on Severus' end, but if looks could flay, the potions master would have been bleeding out on the floor by now, but if she was saying anything to the man, Severus' expression didn't show it.
A glance around the classroom told the blonde that the class wasn't likely to get any better.
He wasn't wrong.
It ended with a detention, more than one curse laid upon Severus and his children's children, and Gryffindor minus fifteen points.
XX
The day of the quidditch match dawned – so to speak, since the clouds were so dark and heavy that there wasn't even a flicker of sunlight – to a localized monsoon.
Both sides were subject to not only the poor visibility, but the driving winds that buffeted the two teams fought to blow them off any course they chose, and the quaffle, a large reddish ball about the size of a muggle football that was passed between the chasers to score, could easily be blown through the air in the middle of a play, forcing the teams to use shorter and shorter passes to keep it in play.
Above them all, Harry soared and tried to keep an eye out for a small glittering, winged gold ball that moved faster than most eyes could follow in good weather, and was near impossible to see with the rain falling in buckets around him.
He grumbled under his breath as he fought to keep his Nimbus Two Thousand steady and silently thanked both Hermione and Draco for the Repelling (for his glasses) and Warming (for the rest of him) Charms respectively, as they were the only things that were keeping him in the game.
He'd been in the air for, what he assumed - because he'd lost track of time almost as soon as he got in the air – for maybe an hour when a flash of lightning – which was unnerving, as the players were ungrounded and in the air with the flashes of electricity – illuminated the deep shadows close to the ground.
For that brief moment, Harry swore that he had seen a dog.
Or a black wolf.
Swinging around sharply, heading back toward where he'd seen the shadow, Harry was nearly blown off his broom as the wind buffeted him.
As he regained control, he caught a glimmer of gold in the following flash of lightning as he snapped his head back toward where he'd seen Dark. As the light faded, however, there was no further sign of the creature.
Harry hung a second, searching for the Valerians huddled beneath the Gryffindor seats to avoid the worst of the rain, if not the wind, and found that none of them appeared aware or concerned by the Traitor's possible presence on the grounds.
Given that nature seemed ready to try and take Harry and Draco out of the air at any moment, he supposed it wasn't really that odd that they weren't concerned about the threat of Dark.
Harry rolled his broom, preparing to dive down through the thick of the game beneath him to investigate the stands himself – keeping well above the ground, of course, because he wasn't suicidal – when a blur of yellow out of the corner of his eye told him that he definitely should have investigated that golden flash from a moment earlier.
Cedric Diggory, the Hufflepuff seeker, was hurtling across the pitch, where that flash of gold reappeared in another jagged lightning strike.
In Harry's favor, Cedric was further away from his target, but the Gryffindor still cursed himself for not paying attention.
A small part of him wondered if he should be stalling, keeping the match going so that no one accidentally stumbled on Dark when the match ended, but a voice that sounded suspiciously like Draco warned him violently against even trying.
Harry was one of the best fliers at Hogwarts and, according to Tarana, he came by the talent honestly.
He didn't even think about it as he turned his broom into the wind and pushed forward, angling up a little after a moment and gaining an extra burst as the weather shifted for half a second and the wind went with it.
One hand came off his broom as he flew, flexing his fingers to try and bring more warmth back to them as he shook off what water he could, preparing to stretch out and grab his target.
He couldn't see him, but he knew that Diggory was coming up fast behind and on his right. He barrel-rolled to one side to avoid a bludger – or maybe it was the quaffle, as he was passing through a section of the actual game for a moment – never taking his eyes off the tiny fluttering snitch.
It wasn't unusual for Harry's vision to tunnel when he was coming up on the snitch, so he didn't think anything of the black edges of his vision, and the warming charm had been fading a little at a time for several minutes now, so the chill that was coming up his appendages was attributed to the weather.
Until it wasn't.
Suddenly there was no mistaking the icy chill that had accompanied the dementors on the Express.
Harry barely had a moment to look up and see hundreds of the cloaked wraiths dropping out of the clouds.
Someone screamed, but he couldn't be sure if it was in his head or not, because the world, which had steadily been darkening without his conscious knowledge, went dark.
XX
Draco recognized the chill for what it was the moment it had begun because it was different from the chill that had steadily been creeping back as his Warming Charm wore off.
Immediately he pulled up and out of play, searching for the dementor that must have come onto the grounds, while calling out to his guardian.
"Fallen!"
Something else had caught Fallen's attention, however.
'Harry!'
Draco cursed and swung up.
It was the work of moments to catch sight of Harry because the brunette's broom had sunk into a dive, the only one on the pitch, but the teen astride it was already slipping sideways.
Distantly, Draco was aware of one of the twins swinging his broom to follow Draco higher into the air, but he didn't glance over, his focus centered on his friend as his lax form free-fell through the air.
Fred was closer, the beaters having been hanging slightly above the rest of the gameplay to keep an eye on the bludgers in play, and caught Harry by the sleeve, but the material was sopping wet and his grip was clearly failing.
The wind around the two grew darker and cut out entirely, a bubble of stillness enveloping the two, which Draco breached barely a moment before Fred lost his grip and Harry sank down into the sky again.
Hatefully, Draco shoved his mother's shrill voice out of his head - screaming about his uselessness, no doubt – and he snagged Harry by the boot, pulling hard on the handle of his broom, trying to break Harry's momentum and keep them both up in the air.
Like with Fred, however, the leather was slick, and his grip wasn't going to hold, so he was thankful when Fred returned to his side and grabbed Harry by the sleeve again.
Both teens hauled with both hands, then there were others reaching in to help.
Draco didn't know Cedric Diggory beyond what he needed to know about his flying skills and quidditch stats, but he was thankful for his presence as the other seeker suddenly came up from below, pulling Harry onto his broom and freeing Draco and Fred of the need to hold Harry in the air.
Panting, Draco took stock of everything else that had escaped his notice as he and Fred had struggled to keep Harry from becoming a smear on the pitch hundreds of meters below them.
Water bubbled around each of the stands, keeping the swirling dementors away from the students and a silver barrier of some sort was flickering around the staff's own stands.
Wind and rain had turned from an enemy of everyone to weapons of the Valerians as they turned nature itself against the dementors, giving the two quidditch teams time to head for the ground.
"Draco!" Fred screamed when the blond only hovered there, glaring at the wraiths.
Shaking himself, the younger teen followed the Fifth Year to the ground.
Almost as soon as he had planted his feet, Dumbledore was suddenly on the pitch, an expression of such rage on his face that Draco was actually terrified of him for a moment.
The Headmaster turned his wand to the sky and added his own magic to that of the Valerians, driving the dementors that made it around their assault back into it.
There was a rumble of rage at Draco's side and, looking down, he wondered how he'd missed Ivory as the leopard had entered the pitch because he was glowing.
Draco had both seen and heard Tarana use her voice as a weapon but watching Ivory do it was something else entirely.
Throwing his head to the sky, the Valerian's roar echoed, piercing even the roaring thunder overhead, unlike the ripples of telekinetic power that accompanied Tarana's, the glow that covered Ivory's form leapt into the air in a mirror of the leopard's own head.
It was made entirely of white light and, though soundless, it shook its head in mimicry of Ivory's roar and snapped elongated fangs at the dementors.
Though Draco had been taught to fear the dementors, he'd also been told that they couldn't be killed, but he stared, jaw agape, as more than one disintegrated in the light of the leopard's attack.
"Harry!"
Ron's voice brought Draco back to the present and his eyes immediately zeroed in on Harry, held aloft beneath Dumbledore's wand.
The Headmaster had levitated the unconscious teen off Diggory's hands and was quickly marching away, likely in the direction of the infirmary.
It was more of an afterthought that had Draco reaching down to swipe up the broom he'd dropped to shield his eyes from the explosion of light beside him, as he and the rest of the team, and their friends, ran after him, leaving the Valerians behind to deal with the fallout.
XX
Harry hadn't even opened his eyes when he came to, and he already had Tarana's voice hissing wearily in his head.
'-lucky if you ever get on a broom again at this rate, child, let alone play in another quidditch match. You can't even keep yourself out of trouble on the ground, I don't know what I was thinking letting you up into the air-'
"Don' mak' m' st'p play'n'," he slurred with a groan, cutting the ranting Queen off.
"I think my reaction's rather valid," Tarana countered, sounding both tired and relieved, which made Harry wonder just how long he'd been unconscious for this time, "given that this is the third time in as many years that you've nearly died playing this bloody game."
"Promis'," he groaned again, struggling to sit up. Hands were on each of his shoulders, helping him up. "It isn't on purpose."
Draco was clearly the helping hand on his right because he snorted in disbelief as he offered what Harry blurrily recognized as his glasses to him. "Here," he said.
As the world came back into focus, Harry saw that he was surrounded by most of the team and all his friends.
Blaise shifted a little at the end of the bed and revealed Tarana sprawled out across from him, blue eyes wearily watching him with relief, with Arcana curled half beside, half on her, with Yoko laid out over her hind legs and her tail curled over his back. Fallen and Ivory sat like sentinels on either side of it.
All of them, Valerian and human alike, looked like drowned rats.
Harry was rather surprised that the bed held up under all the weight that must have been laid on it.
"She had another seizure," Draco murmured to him as an explanation.
Harry immediately gave the panther another once over, fear pulsing in the back of his head.
'I'm fine, Harry,' Tarana reassured him. 'Though I could do without the additional heart attacks that happen every time you take your feet off solid ground.'
Harry smiled weakly at her, knowing that as soon as they were alone, he was going to harass her for more details.
As it was, it took everything in him to not ask them now and instead turn to the still mud-covered team.
It did something to him, to realize that they hadn't even changed out of their quidditch gear before coming to visit him.
"Did we-" he let the unspoken question hang in the air, but seeing as how Oliver wasn't around, he assumed it wasn't a good answer.
"You lost," Fallen said. "Apparently Diggory didn't realize you'd fallen back for 'medical' reasons and not because of the game. He caught the snitch before anyone but Gryffindor realized that you were in danger."
Harry felt an angry flush building on his cheek.
What was wrong with him that he couldn't even play a game without suffering such debilitating effects – effects no one else was suffering – from some stupid prison guards?
"In his defense," Blaise said, "he did offer Oliver a rematch.
"Which he didn't take," Ron said, sounding rather irritated about it.
"He's a better man than me because I would have in a friggin heartbeat," Draco said, aiming for a little levity.
Fred leaned a little heavier on the headboard beside Harry. "Pretty sure he's figured that out already," he said with a grin that was nowhere near its usual strength.
"Mm," George hummed in agreement. "He's been in the showers for the last twenty minutes. We're pretty sure he's trying to drown himself."
"It's not all lost," Blaise pointed out. "You only lost by a hundred points. You can still come back and take the Cup."
There were murmurs of agreement that quickly rose to a debate as to whether it was an accomplishable goal or not.
Harry didn't hear any of it.
He clenched a fist in his blanket, angry with himself.
He'd lost a quidditch match, the first time he'd lost a match, and it was because he couldn't control himself around those stupid dementors.
Now that they'd seen he was fine, Pomfrey was quick to usher the team out of the infirmary as they were dripping filth all over her pristine floors.
Harry waved absently at their attempts to reassure him over the loss, but he didn't answer, not even when Fred and Draco left, squeezing his shoulders, and Blaise and Ron took their places.
"I've never seen Dumbledore so angry," Hermione murmured. "Or such raw power." She glanced at Ivory, who stared back at her with half-lidded eyes. "He made some kind of animal head out of light and…"
"What was that?" Ron asked, frowning at Ivory thoughtfully. "It destroyed dementors! I didn't know that was possible!"
"Such is the difference between an Element of their nature and one of mine," Ivory said dismissively, though he looked entirely too smug as he did so.
Harry jerked his head up suddenly, looking around. "Did anyone get my Nimbus?"
Ron winced, but Neville was the one who solemnly stepped forward.
The other brunette wasn't, Harry just realized, wearing his cloak and his ears were smoking slightly, a tell-tale effect of the Pepper-Up Potion.
He laid the cloak in his hands out on the end of the bed and Harry rushed to move his feet as Neville and Hermione worked the bundle open.
"It was blown off the pitch when you fell," Blaise murmured, putting a hand on his shoulder, comfortingly.
"It hit the Whomping Willow."
On Neville's ruined cloak, lie less than a dozen large pieces of sticks and a twig or two.
Harry made a soft wheezing sound, reaching for the largest piece of his faithful broomstick.
Tarana struggled to rise, but Arcana and Yoko put their weight into keeping her firmly on the bed, leaving his friends to each put a hand on whatever part of Harry they could reach, trying to comfort him in her stead.
