Author's Notes

This is, by far, one of my favorite chapters of the entire series. The Marauders were clearly guiding my hands toward the end of it, and it practically wrote itself.

I will also admit to crying a bit.

Just a little.

Harry Potter, the Valerians, and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Chapter Fifteen: The Quidditch Final

Hermione begins to crash as her workload, both school and otherwise, consumes her, Gryffindor pits themselves against Slytherin for the Quidditch Cup, and Tarana and Ivory see an old friend ride again.


Blaise remained a grim figure as he led the group down to Hagrid's cabin.

Hagrid appeared to have just arrived, still wearing the giant hairy brown suit, the only formal clothes the half-giant owned, much to Blaise and Draco's distress/disapproval, though the accompanying ugly yellow and orange tie had been tossed on the table.

He had a mug of something that wasn't water in front of him and looked absolutely gutted.

"Hagrid, I'm so sorry," Hermione said quietly, putting a hand on his arm.

Hagrid shook his head. "S' not yer fault," he told her. "Appreciate all the help you 'n Blaise n' Neville gave me. Jus' got all tongue-tied. Forgot all the dates 'n notes yeh all looked up fer me…." He shook his head. "Then Parkinson stood up an'," he shook his head again, dropping it into his palms.

"Don't go blubbering now," Draco said sharply, garnering hisses from the rest of the teens.

He ignored them and gestured to Buckbeak lying on Hagrid's bed and watching Hagrid.

"You've still got the appeal to fight," Draco told him. "Are you going to give up on him now?"

Hagrid blinked blearily at the blond, before pushing to his feet and turning to wrap his arms around Buckbeak.

"Come," Yoko said quietly. "We'll come and visit later."

XX

"Thanks," Blaise murmured to Draco as they all headed back up to the castle.

"Don't," Draco sighed. "I still think bringing hippogriffs to his first lesson ever wasn't a smart idea, and letting him represent himself was a fool's errand from start to finish. We knew before he left this morning that the odds weren't in his favor. Don't count on the appeal to do so either. It's a formality at best when my father is whispering in the ear of the Committee, and with Parkinson being the injured party…." He shook his head.

"Why won't your father listen to reason?" Blaise asked.

"Because the ties between our two families are already being cast," Draco admitted, averting his gaze. "There's a contract between Pansy and I."

Blaise frowned. "But you're only thirteen!"

Draco shrugged. "Doesn't matter yet. It's only a contract, not a full betrothal, but…."

Blaise hissed out through his teeth. "Why didn't you just tell me that?" he asked.

"Because I don't like to talk about it here," Draco told him sharply. "Here is all the evidence I have that I run my own life. I chose the House I was Sorted into. I chose who my friends were." He shook his head and gestured vaguely toward the gates. "Out there is the reality. My father is the Head of the House and my every action and contract is written for me without any input on my part."

"But you can break the contract when you reach your majority, right?" Blaise asked, staring at him with frightening intensity.

"Yeah," Draco said bitterly. "And risk losing my inheritance and my right to the Ring." He shook his head. "Why bother?"

Blaise's expression stuttered - like he wanted to look at something and was firmly reminding himself it was a tell and not to do so.

The action caused Draco to frown.

"It's nothing," Blaise whispered. "None of my business."

XX

Things were growing increasingly tense between the researchers and Slytherin, Pansy in particular, as the days passed after Hagrid's court appearance.

Outside of the public eye, Hermione scoured everything she, Neville, and Blaise had gathered in Hagrid's defense, looking for something, anything that would have further helped the half-giant.

After his brief talk with Draco, bridges had been mended between he and Blaise, and Blaise was just as frustrated as Hermione, but not with their lack of given assistance.

He, like Draco, had no such illusions that the appeal was anything more than simply a formality, and there was nothing left that they could do to help Buckbeak, Hagrid, or Fang.

Things came to a head between Pansy and Hermione, however, after their first Care of Magical Creatures class following the hearing.

Due to the increased security following Sirius' second break-in, the staff that worked outside the castle were required to pick up and drop off their classes in the Entrance Hall of the castle.

Ron was struggling to reassure Hagrid that the appeal hadn't been held and all wasn't lost yet, and Hagrid was in a far more realist mindset than the Gryffindors had ever seen him in and wasn't having it.

He realized that between Percival Parkinson and Lucius Malfoy the committee was firmly under their control and had resolved to simply treat them as best he could for the potentially limited time that he had them.

With the castle in sight, Hagrid couldn't hold it together any longer.

The idea that he would lose Buckbeak, who had only been at the lesson because the Hyer was doing him a favor, and Fang, his longest-lived companion, was heartbreaking for the half-giant.

Pansy nudged Katelyn and snickered.

"Look at him blubber," she sneered hatefully. "He's supposed to be our teacher?" she shook her head.

"How pathetic," Katelyn agreed with a nasty smirk of her own.

Harry grit his teeth and stepped forward, and Blaise's mouth was open, a nasty retort of his own already on his lips, when Hermione stepped forward and grabbed Pansy's hair in a fist, drawing her head forward into her other clenched fist.

Pansy howled in pain, scratching, and clawing at Hermione's grip on her head, but the Gryffindor refused to release her, pulling her further forward, and throwing her to the ground.

"Hermione!"

The girl dropped to her knees, straddling Pansy, and drew her fist back to let it fly again.

Ron recovered first and grabbed her beneath the shoulders, hauling her backward off the Slytherin. Once she realized she was being moved, however, Harry and Neville quickly ran forward to help contain her struggling limbs.

"Hermione!" Neville cried again, this time through grit teeth.

Blaise knelt beside Pansy and gave her a once over.

The first blow appeared to have gone off-center and a bruise was already blooming on her fair skin high on her right cheekbone, just under her eye. The second had flown true and either bruised or broke her nose.

"One hell of a right hook," Yoko sneered from the girl's other side.

There were tears in the Slytherin's eyes as she sat up, cupping her nose.

"You'll be next, mudblood," Katelyn hissed at her, shoving Blaise aside roughly to wrap her arms around Pansy and help her to her feet.

Hermione lunged forward against the hands restraining her. "Bring it," she hissed, real rage in her eyes. "Drag me into court and we'll see what kind of defense this mudblood can scrape together! Trust me, I'm nothing like Hagrid!"

The use of the muggle-born slur out of Hermione's mouth was enough to shock everyone, Slytherin, Gryffindor, and the approaching Ravenclaw/Slytherin Second Years coming up from Herbology, who had missed the physical fight but not the current aftermath.

"What is happening here!" Professor Sprout cried, looking between Hermione, who had shrugged off the loosened grip of her friends and was now storming up to the castle, and Pansy who was still crying, and now swaying, under Katelyn's lax grip on her shoulders.

"Minor altercation," Tarana said evenly, no remorse in her tone as she blatantly lied to a professor. "Ms. Parkinson made a disparaging remark about a professor that Hermione felt the need to counter. It was most certainly a one-time thing." The Queen's blue eyes caught and held Pansy's own. "Isn't that right, Ms. Parkinson?"

Pansy squeaked out some sort of response, but Tarana nodded sharply and turned on her tail, Yoko and Blaise darting after her, to catch up to the others who had followed Hermione through the castle doors.

XX

For Pansy, the day only got worse.

After a trip to the infirmary, where Madam Pomfrey had put her nose to rights with a painful tap of her wand and a warning to avoid any further altercations that year, she had arrived five minutes late to Potions and again cajoled Draco into being her partner.

This time, there were further ulterior motives.

She took great delight in informing her former friend of what Hermione had done to her on the front lawn, eager to see him repay the mudblood in return for it.

Draco, however, turned sharp eyes on Hermione.

"You," he muttered just loud enough for her to hear. "You used that word? Are you out of your mind?"

Hermione shrugged, completely unapologetic though she didn't take her eyes off the potion she and Ron were brewing.

Draco smirked, clearly amused, which wasn't at all the reaction that Pansy had wanted from him. "You've got more grit than I gave you credit for, Granger," he said, glancing down at Fallen.

The red wolf was watching Pansy with a warning the Slytherin witch couldn't see, eyes darting up and to the side.

Draco glanced over his shoulder to see Severus approaching, slowly, as he looked over the Slytherin's potions, but his destination was clear, as this was the only area in the entire class that was making any sort of noise.

He grimaced.

Pansy was oblivious.

"You've spent too long with the Lions, Draco," she sneered at him. "They've turned you into a mudblood-lover."

"That," Severus drawled evenly from over her shoulder, "will be thirty points from Slytherin." Pansy squeaked, startled by his appearance. "And ten from Gryffindor, for speaking out of turn."

Draco wilted under his godfather's gaze, fixating it on the worm he was supposed to be dicing.

"I'll be seeing you for the rest of this week, Ms. Parkinson," he informed her. "We'll see about rewriting your vocabulary."

Draco kept his gaze averted until after Severus had moved on.

Pansy seemed to be in a state of shock that Severus had taken points from Slytherin over a rather commonly used muggle-born slur.

'Lucky girl,' Fallen muttered, closing his eyes and laying his head back down on the floor.

"You know how he feels about that word," he muttered to her. "You were there." He snorted. "I wish I got off as light as you did when I used it."

Pansy's cheeks turned a rosy pink, and she fixed her gaze on the cauldron between them.

XX

Blaise and Yoko left Ron and Neville to head up to Divination alone, as Hermione hadn't shown up at lunch.

They found her in the common room, passed out on her Arithmancy book, quill still somehow upright in her hand.

The fox shook his head and jumped onto the table, nudging her gently with his muzzle. "Poor thing has been working herself to the bone," he muttered when she didn't so much as twitch. "She's exhausted."

"Severus did warn us that taking too much on at once would burn us out," Blaise added. "Should we leave her here? It's just Divination. She doesn't even like the class."

"She'll wake with a crick in her neck sleeping like this," Yoko countered, glancing around the common room with a critical eye. "Move her to the couch, instead."

Blaise slowly, carefully, pulled the quill from Hermione's grip and stoppered her ink bottle, moving both aside.

She woke with a start, however, when he pulled her back to lift her into his arms.

"Blaise?" she asked, rubbing her eyes and leaving a thin streak of ink above one, where the ink had bled from her quill. "What time is it?"

"We've got Divination in five minutes," Blaise told her, readjusting his hold to put both hands on her shoulders. "You missed lunch, Hermione. You're burning yourself out. You really should consider dropping a class or two."

Hermione shook her head, closing and shoving her book into her bag. "I'm fine," she assured him. "Come on, we're already going to be late."

Blaise glanced at Yoko as he let her stand, concerned.

"Hermione-"

"I'm fine," Hermione insisted. "Come on!"

With nothing else for it at the moment, though both were resolved not to let the incident go, they followed her out of the Tower and headed for the seventh floor.

XX

It was immediately clear, however, that Hermione likely should have remained in the Tower to catch up on her sleep.

Her exhaustion combined with her still-present frustration with Hagrid's case and made her worse than usual with Trelawney.

"I have decided to introduce the crystal ball a little earlier than I had planned," the professor said from her usual armchair, features cast mostly in shadow because of the fire behind her. "The fates have informed me that your examination in June will concern the Orb, and I am anxious to give you sufficient practice."

Blaise grimaced beside Hermione because he could see it coming before it did, and he didn't need the gift of Foresight.

"Well, honestly," Hermione huffed with little care as to the volume of her voice. "'The fates have informed her'…who sets the exam? She does! What an amazing prediction!"

Ron had to put a hand over his mouth to keep his sniggering to himself and Neville used his own hand to hide his smile.

'Oh, boy,' Yoko muttered.

"Crystal gazing," Trelawney continued as though she hadn't heard Hermione, "is a particularly refined art. I do not expect any of you to See when you first peer into the Orb's infinite depths. We shall start by practicing relaxing the conscious mind and external eyes-"

Ron snickered again, but Blaise heard it as though from far away. He'd mastered the art of blanking his mind for an entirely different reason years ago and the dreamy quality to Trelawney's voice, combined with the sickly-sweet aroma of her classroom, made it easy to simply slip into that state.

"-to clear the Inner Eye and superconscious. Perhaps, if we are lucky, some of you will See before the end of the class."

Blaise felt very far away as he stared into the ever-moving clouds of white fog in the crystal before him, he could feel thoughts drifting in his head, but he didn't think they were his own-they felt detached and lost.

"Do you see anything," he heard Ron hiss through the fog of his own mind.

Blaise blinked slowly, hypnotized by the grass moving swiftly around his tiny form.

His heart started pounding.

"Oh, for goodness' sake!" Hermione cried, shoving away from the table and rocking the crystal ball, tearing Blaise from the vision and back to reality. "First Blaise and now Ron?"

Blaise glanced at Ron, confused, but the teen shrugged. "Saw the Grim stalking me, apparently."

Blaise frowned, but Trelawney was looking through her beaded glasses with unmistakable anger.

"I am sorry to say that from the moment you have arrived in this class, my dear," Hermione's lip curled and she narrowed her eyes at the professor's tone, "it has been apparent that you do not have what the noble art of Divination requires. Indeed, I don't remember ever meeting a student whose mind was so hopelessly mundane."

There was only a moment's silence before Hermione grabbed her bag. "Fine," she said, swinging her bag over her shoulder and almost braining Ron in the process, as Blaise ducked beneath it.

Without another word, the Gryffindor stalked across the room and, kicking open the trap door, climbed out of sight.

Though it took a few seconds for the shock of Hermione leaving a class to fade, Lavender quickly remembered Trelawney's prediction from the beginning of the year, drawing the professor's attention away.

"Do you think she really saw the Grim?" Neville asked, scooting into Hermione's now vacant chair.

Ron snorted. "She hasn't gotten it right yet, has she?"

Blaise looked back into the crystal ball, but it was white fog again.

He wasn't quite as convinced as Ron was, which was quite the change of pace from the first time that Trelawney had used it in a prediction, that Trelawney hadn't seen it.

"Blaise?" Neville asked, nudging his friend.

Blaise shook his head.

He waited until they were leaving class, reunited with Yoko and Arcana, to bring up the fragment of what he thought might have been a vision.

"I wasn't doing anything special," Blaise repeated after several minutes of everyone trying to make sense of it. "Just…running."

Ron nudged his shoulder. "Maybe you were daydreaming," he said. "I've done it plenty up there."

"And out of it," Arcana replied promptly, before turning to Blaise. "If it was a vision, I'm sure you'll see it again," he told the dark-skinned teen. "You've got a rare gift, boy, even for the wizarding world, if you can get even a partial vision out of that room."

Blaise flushed at the compliment and Neville barked a startled laugh.

Blaise glanced at him with a smile.

It was the closest thing to amusement out of his friend since the night Black had attacked Ron.

XX

The rest of their friends had taken Hermione's outburst in Divination pretty much in stride, though Blaise had caught Draco frowning at her and wondered if it had anything to do with the conversation they'd had in Severus' office about her being in two places at once.

The Easter holidays were nothing like their Christmas ones, which wasn't abnormal, as they were so close to the end of year exams that the professors piled on homework to prepare them for them.

Hermione, even after dropping Divination, was still taking more classes than anyone else and it had, surprisingly, been Ron that had snatched the notes that the trio had drawn together over the year and settled in an armchair with them.

"What," he said when they all stared at him, flushing slightly. "Maybe it just needs a new set of eyes and, let's be honest, I have the least amount of responsibilities outside the three o' you."

It was the first time that Hermione had a different kind of tears in her eyes since the drive to prepare for exams had begun.

On top of exams and Hagrid's appeal, the Quidditch Finals between Gryffindor and Slytherin were quickly approaching, and Oliver was losing his mind.

Draco and Oliver had spent days going over plans for their match with the only ones in the school who could really give them trouble, as it was a team on the fastest - second-fastest now that Harry had the Firebolt – broom in mainstream production and at Hogwarts.

After the year before, Slytherin was likewise not going to underestimate Gryffindor, Draco in particular, again.

It was made worse, however, because this time of year was generally when things started truly going to shit, with the hunt for the Philosopher's Stone and the Chamber of Secrets both culminating around the last quidditch match of the year.

Harry, as seeker, only had a small part in a couple of the chaser plays, and, admittedly, a major part in the overall game, but the way Oliver followed him from class to class, insisting on repeating those parts to him over and over, you would think that Harry was going to be the only one on the whole pitch.

In the Third Year's defense, it took him almost a week before he lost it and spun on Oliver.

"-must catch it only if we're more than fifty points up," Oliver told him, ignoring the low rumble of Tarana on Harry's other side, as they walked to his Muggle Art class, one of two classes he didn't share with any of the others. "Only if we're more than fifty points up, Harry, or we win the match but lose the Cup."

Harry exhaled sharply and turned on his heel, slamming the heel of his palm to Oliver's chest and shoving him back. "I KNOW, Oliver!" he yelled, pushing him again. "I got it! Don't you have your own class to get to! I don't need you harping on me about winning the match! I get it. I have as much reason to win as you do!"

Oliver grimaced.

No one quite knew what it was that had caused such animosity to grow between Katelyn and Harry in the last few weeks, but the atmosphere between Gryffindor and Slytherin had responded and mutated in kind.

There were scuffles in the corridors between classes – the worst of which was where a Fourth Year Gryffindor and a Sixth Year Slytherin had been sent to the infirmary with leeks sprouting out of their ears – and there had been three whole days were everywhere that Harry had gone, Slytherins had tried to trip him.

That phase had ended a quick and painful death when Tarana had turned her head one afternoon and sank her fangs so deeply into the offender's offered leg that she had torn muscle and blood vessels badly enough that a specialist from St. Mungo's had needed to come down to the Hospital Wing to help Pomfrey fix the damage.

Harry exhaled uneasily when Oliver finally left him alone to continue to class. "That was close," he muttered quietly.

Tarana chuckled. "Well handled, cub," she told him.

There was one part of the plans for the Finals that Oliver wasn't aware of.

Draco had felt bad that the last two attempts to get the Quidditch Cup had ended because of events that they had been a part of – though he'd never say it aloud – and had privately pulled the team aside after practice, while Oliver was in the showers.

\/\/\/

"To win this," Draco had stated seriously, "we need to be fifty points ahead of Slytherin. I think that we can do better."

Fred and George had leaned an elbow each on Draco's shoulders.

"What do you have in mind, fearless one?" Fred had asked in mock seriousness.

"To break the school record," Draco had replied. "We need fifty points to win the Cup. I want to do it in a minimum of eighty, preference of a hundred."

The team had tittered quietly, each wondering if Draco had lost his mind, but keeping their voices down to avoid alerting Oliver in the other room.

Draco had turned his gaze to Harry seriously. "Oliver is going to tell you that we need you to catch the snitch after we reach that fifty-point lead. I want you to wait until we hit a minimum of eighty and knock Katelyn out of the sky if you have to."

"Slytherin isn't an easy team to take on, Draco," Katie had pointed out uneasily. "We may not be able to make it that far."

"We'll make it to eighty," Draco had said firmly. "It's the hundred that I'm most worried about." He had looked at Harry again. "If an hour goes by after we hit eighty, and we've made no additional progress forward, you catch the snitch before we lose that gained ground."

/\/\/\

It was a lot of additional pressure on Harry, who would then have to keep an eye on the game itself, watch for the snitch without the intent to catch it, and keep an eye on Katelyn to make sure she didn't make any attempts to end the game before Gryffindor was ready.

Even harder, was keeping the whole thing a secret from Oliver, because as Draco had pointed out to them, he was already a nervous wreck just trying to keep a fifty-point lead and telling him that they were going to try and push that lead would probably put him in the hospital wing.

XX

Three days after Harry had screamed at Oliver to leave him alone, two days before the match, Draco disappeared from the common room in search of a place to decompress.

Ron had found a mysterious essay that he hadn't finished and disappeared to the library, finding a table that was far too close to be a coincidence to where Draco and Theodore were in the middle of a chess match.

To Fallen's eyes, the redhead wasn't getting much work done and seemed fixated on the board.

'I'll put odds on next year,' the 'wolf told his King.

Arcana cracked open an amber eye and snorted. 'No bet. We'll be lucky if he lasts the end of this one.'

Fallen snickered until Draco nudged him with his foot, his amusement apparently a distraction.

XX

The night before the match, Harry slunk down from the dorm and, instead of curling up with Tarana as they'd expected, came to kneel before Fallen's armchair.

Fallen cracked an eye open to look at the teen.

"I want your advice," the brunette said bluntly.

Fallen shifted, careful to avoid falling off the armchair and onto the teen kneeling there, so he was sitting more upright, giving him his full attention.

Tarana watched the two, curious.

"I've been having a reoccurring nightmare," he said. "I'm being chased, sometimes in the Forbidden Forest, sometimes just through the grass. I heard hooves in the one after our last quidditch match. It always changes to hearing my mum scream. Sometimes for me, like I was hearing before, and sometimes she's screaming for my dad."

Fallen tilted his head, watching Harry and waiting for what he needed his advice for.

Arcana, as Tarana was fixated by the apparent bond between her General and her charge, glanced at Yoko, confused.

'I was working on the diary for a lot of last year,' Yoko told them. 'But Fallen had been teaching Harry to mediate due to the nightmares he was having then.'

"Will they stop when I'm bonded with Tarana?"

Fallen stayed silent, pondering Harry's question, before sighing and lowering his head to nudge the boy's forehead. "You have a lot of trauma in this head of yours, Potter," he told the teen. "Bonding with Tarana might help with some of it, particularly the parts surrounding your reaction to the dementors. I assume they've been getting worse the last few weeks?"

Harry nodded.

"I'm not a Mind Healer," Fallen cautioned him, "by your standards or ours, but I assume that they're getting worse because of the additional stress you've been under. Classes, quidditch, Black's assault on the common room, and the steps we've been taking to try and rectify that. Though you aren't all directly involved, it still involves you." The 'wolf shrugged. "Plus, you're a human teenager. You have odd dreams."

For some reason, that comment caused Harry to flush darkly and Tarana to cough, delicately, to try and hide her own amusement.

"Can you…," he glanced over his shoulder at Tarana before squaring his shoulders and looking back up at the General. "Can you keep teaching me to meditate?"

Fallen raised his eyes to look at Tarana over Harry's head.

Tarana raised a brow. 'What are you looking at me for?' she asked him. 'You've done as much for him as I have, haven't you? He's not asking me for help with it.'

Fallen grimaced.

He mediated before battle because it helped to center him, but Tarana was the one with the most practice, as she did it to keep her Talent under control before she used it.

He sighed and dropped his gaze to Harry, who had taken his silence as the hesitation it was and then refusal, and was rocking back to the balls of his feet so he could regain them.

"Do you remember how to clear your mind?" he asked, stalling the motion.

Harry smiled. "Yes, sir," he said, settling, cross-legged, before the armchair and closing his eyes, letting his palms rest on his knees.

The common room fell silent again as Fallen coaxed Harry through telepathy alone, back to his mediative state, more of a half-awareness of the outside world as he couldn't quite drop into a full meditative trance.

Around two in the morning, Fallen pulled him out of it just as he was starting to lose the calm.

"Well done," Yoko praised. "You stuck through it for longer this time."

Harry smiled at the praise.

"Hopefully, you'll be able to sleep for a few more hours," Fallen told him, nudging his shoulder with his head to urge him back toward the stairs.

Harry paused at the bottom to look back. "Thanks, Fallen," he said.

"Of course," Fallen replied, tilting his head in acknowledgment of the thanks.

XX

Before going to bed, however, Harry went to the silver jug that was kept by the window in case the students got thirsty in the middle of the night.

While he stood there, sipping the water and looking out at the moonlit grounds, he nearly dropped the cup back onto the tray, spilling water over the surface when he tried to recover it to avoid the noise it would make.

Leaving the mess, he bolted back to the stairs.

XX

Fallen had barely settled back in his armchair when Harry came running back down the stairs.

"Harry," Tarana said warningly, much less inclined to let him get away with being awake at two in the morning.

Harry ignored her, slipping between the tables and chairs to press his face and hands against the glass.

It took him a minute but, though he wasn't where Harry'd last seen him from the upstairs window, Ebony was still pacing the grounds.

Though he had never met the Shade, there was no mistaking him as anyone else. He was practically identical to Ivory in every way except his coloring.

He breathed the leopard's name.

Fallen nearly knocked the armchair over in his haste to join Harry at the window, rearing up to brace his front paws on the sill; Tarana and Arcana leapt the couch to stand on the tables, both of which creaked with the weight of the Valerians; and Yoko crouched on one of the other windows, all eyes fixated on the cat stalking the grounds.

"Awfully brazen," Yoko commented quietly, frowning, and tilting his head. "He doesn't look like he's got much of a destination in mind."

Indeed, though the Valerian Shade was moving in the direction of Hagrid's cabin, he wasn't doing so with any real intent. He just appeared to be taking a stroll over the grounds of Hogwarts, as though he had every right to be there.

"How'd he get past the dementors?" Harry asked quietly.

"I'll go ask him," Fallen sneered, dropping to his four paws, and heading for the portrait hole.

"No," Arcana said sharply, not taking his eyes off Ebony outside. "If you leave, by the time you get to the first floor, he'll be long gone. Just…watch from here. Perhaps if he sees that no one is going after him, he'll give us something as to his reason for risking exposure like this."

Tarana glanced at her hicari. The tiger didn't sound all that pleased with having to give up the opportunity to interrogate her brother further.

As though aware of their eyes, Ebony paused and raised his head, making eye contact with each of them through the glass.

Harry flinched when those eyes fell on him but tried to meet them despite the distance.

"Bloody bastard," Fallen huffed, sounding almost affectionate as he sneered the words. He glanced at Harry as he braced himself on the window again. "Go to bed, Harry."

Harry stared at the Valerian outside for another few seconds, before eventually turning and going back up the stairs.

His head was fuller now than the last time, however, and he knew sleep wasn't going to come easily.

Why was Ebony clearly searching the grounds?

If Harry was the target, as everyone seemed to be assuming, why would the Shade have gone through what must have been some effort to get onto the grounds and past the dementors, to not try and enter the castle?

Harry certainly wasn't going to be out on the grounds at two in the morning, after all.

Frustrated, Harry buried his face in his pillow with a growl.

XX

Having gotten so little sleep the night before, Harry's eyes were tired but the rest of him was too excited to feel the exhaustion.

He was among the first awake and was, therefore, one of the first in the Great Hall for breakfast, the only member of the team there before him was Oliver.

Shaking his head, Harry was so busy trying to rub the sleep from his eyes and wake them up like the rest of him, that he nearly walked into Theodore Nott and several other Slytherins he didn't know the names of, though Draco's friend was flanked by Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, both mountainous for being only thirteen, a byproduct of inbreeding between their individual families.

If Theodore wasn't surrounded by other Slytherins, Harry would have thought the teen had done it on purpose.

"Sorry," Harry grunted.

Theodore smirked, tilting his head to talk to the Slytherins behind him. "Looks like our chances are pretty good," he snickered. "If Gryffindor's seeker can't even see what's happening on the ground, there's no chance he'll be able to catch the snitch in the air."

Harry blinked once and let the comment roll away.

Uncle Vernon and Dudley had said much worse to him, Theodore's comment was meaningless in comparison.

"Don't suppose you've got any extra advice for me then, Nott?" he asked.

Theodore gave him a once over and rested a hand on his hip, as though honestly thinking about it. "Rollover, Potter," he eventually told him, leaning forward a bit as though to impart a secret. "Rollover and give Slytherin its due."

Harry snorted, unimpressed. "Your due is going to come in the form of a spectacular arse whooping," he retorted. "With the team we've got, the Cup is already in our hands."

With a dismissive wave, Harry moved around them, confident that this group of Slytherins wasn't going to try and hit him in the back.

Sure enough, as he dropped onto the bench, he can hear Theodore sharply reprimanding one of the others, Sebastian, for having drawn his wand.

"It'll be suspicious if he's injured just before a match against Slytherin."

'You handled that very well,' Tarana complimented.

Harry rolled his shoulders and glanced over his shoulder. "It's Theo," he muttered quietly to her. "Considering he told me about Katelyn and the others' trying to use my thing with the dementors against me."

Tarana lazily flicked her tail across the floor as she surveyed the Great Hall as it slowly came awake in preparation for the Finals. 'And here I thought it was because he was a friend of Draco's,' she teased.

Harry didn't so much as look down at her, leaning across the table to reach a plate of sausages. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

His attempted nonchalance was lost, however, when Tarana caught sight of the red cheeks he had tried to hide by leaning forward.

She was still laughing at him when Fallen and Draco made it down for breakfast with Angelina and Katie.

"Alright, Harry?" Draco asked, dropping onto the bench across from his friend. "Heard Theo stopped you on your way in." He frowns when Tarana starts cackling.

Draco doesn't actually get an answer from his friend, who is too busy screaming at Tarana to 'shut up' to pay him and the question any mind.

Fallen, caught up in the Queen's good mood, shook his head and grinned, despite not knowing what had set her off.

XX

Gryffindor pulled their lead early, weaving around and through the Slytherin chasers and their attempts at defense.

Angelina, Draco, and Katie were helped along by Fred and George keeping the Slytherin beaters, Bole and Derrick, out of play by blocking them from any attempts they made on bludgers in the area around them, keeping rigidly just within the rules for blocking to avoid giving Slytherin any penalty shots that can close their lead.

The downside, of course, was that Fred and Gorge couldn't get at the bludgers either, focused as they were on keeping their counterparts away from it. To avoid being called out for it, the twins would 'swing and miss' at the bludgers as they went by.

Was it suspicious given that the twins were almost always fairly accurate with their skills?

Yes.

Were they taking advantage of the fact that they couldn't be called out on it?

Also, yes.

With the four beaters essentially out of play, it was left for the Gryffindor chasers to outmaneuver the faster Nimbus 2001s that Slytherin played on.

A fact that was balanced by flying and practicing against Draco and his own 2001 to get a feel for the differences in speed and maneuverability and compensating with skill and experience.

It allowed a thirty-point lead within the first hour.

For Harry's part, he was high above them, twisting in dizzying circles to keep well away from Katelyn, without being too far to prevent her from making any move for the snitch when it made its appearance.

Despite her pureblood status giving her years more practice on a broom, Harry's natural ability and rigorous training through Oliver's practices had closed the gap likely in his First Year and he was now unabashedly the best in Hogwarts before he'd gotten a Firebolt between his legs.

Despite it being the second game the Firebolt was in play for, Lee Jordan, the commentator for Hogwarts' Inter-House Cup, still found it difficult to avoid mentioning the broom and all the fascinating bits of knowledge he'd gleaned about it.

For Harry, this was a problem because he needed Lee to focus on the game and keep him informed of how far up in points Gryffindor was.

He was again thankful for McGonagall's watchful eye as she tried, and usually succeeded, in bringing the twins' friend back to task, because though things were currently going well for Gryffindor, they couldn't count on it remaining that way.

There was one thing that Draco had informed the team of that he'd had no reason to, as they'd known it was going to happen without his input.

As soon as Slytherin began to lose and not recover, they were going to turn to their age-old standby.

XX

"I don't need to tell the lot of you that Slytherin's full of for-shit-sportsmen and terrible losers, especially since this will be the year that we make them work for that trophy," Draco had told them.

There had been several derisive snorts.

"The last thing they're going to want to do is give us blatant penalties to raise the score, especially since they know we'll be trying to widen a fifty-point-"

"Eighty," Draco had interrupted, causing Wood to look at him oddly.

"We've unanimously decided that we're going to wipe the smirks off those Snakes and make this a match to remember," Katie had said fiercely.

"Harry's only going after the snitch if we can get a minimum eighty-point lead," Fred had added, wrapping an arm around the seeker, and rocking him slightly with a manic smile on his face.

"We can't let your last match be so mundane, right?" George had added, nudging the keeper with the tip of his bat.

Oliver's eyes had watered before he got himself under control and his 'game face' came back. "Eighty-point lead," he had continued, voice breaking as though he wanted to believe it but wasn't sure he should. "So, they'll start with the beaters, try to knock our chasers out of the game."

"So, we don't give them the chance," Fred had said, slapping his bat into his free hand and had narrowly missed Harry's nose. "Be nice, won't it, George?"

George had grinned viciously. "Glorious, Fred," he had answered. "Bloody brutal against Ravenclaw those two were."

"It won't stop them long," Draco had pointed out. "Flint's not above using his chasers to physically block and collide with our players to try and take them out and distract them," he had glanced at a mildly uneasy but determined Oliver. "They're going to be vicious and brutal about it."

"But I thought you said they weren't going to give us free shots," Angelina had frowned confused.

Draco had shrugged. "We're not going to leave them all that many options. Harry's too high in the air and out of play to help us too much, so Katelyn will likely stick near him to flaunt his better sight," he had glanced at Harry, both of them finding it amusing that for all that Harry's vision sucked it was still better than Katelyn's when it came to looking for a glittering golden ball in full sunlight. "They won't want the match to stretch out the way we do, she'll be looking for that snitch. That leaves the three chasers and the keeper."

"Bletchley and I will be contained by the goalposts, which only leave the three chasers," Oliver had added.

"I'm not satisfied with letting Oliver leave this school with a subpar set of seasons since I came onto this team," Draco had said. "And given the shit Slytherin has pulled over the last few weeks, I want to obliterate them. Let them hit us. Let them block us. So long as the twins can keep their beaters occupied," the twins had rubbed their hands together with vindictive glee and assured them it would happen, "their attempts to keep the quaffle out of our hands are going to be physical.

"We need a fifty-point lead to win. We can get that easily. It's keeping the gap and then widening it even further that's going to be the hard part." Oliver had pointed out, still struggling with the fact that they were going to be testing their luck and essentially going for broke.

Harry had glanced at Draco and the blond rolled his eyes, glad that he hadn't mentioned the fact that the team was actually shooting for a hundred-point lead.

"Which is why I said we're going to let Slytherin hit us," Draco had told them. "We're going to take full advantage of the fact that Flint just won't be able to help himself. Given that the two of you are crack shots, they'll be practically gift wrapping those shots for us."

Katie had shaken her head and laughed, delighted, as Angelina had wrapped him in an uncomfortable hug.

"You are by far the most devious Gryffindor ever," Angelina had said, looking very much like she was going to kiss the younger teen.

Draco had struggled to keep his expression bland and not to shove the girl off him. "A little ambition and cunning won't kill you," he had drawled sarcastically.

Katie reached over and pinched his cheek, furthering the Second Year's discomfort. "That's what we've got you for, apparently," she teased.

/\/\/\

By the time Harry first caught sight of the snitch, Gryffindor was sixty points in the lead.

Rather than go for it, however, he swung a sharp right and darted almost a full one-eighty degrees in the opposite direction, corkscrewing a bit into a dive to further confuse the following seeker.

And Katelyn was following.

A few minutes later, he caught sight of the snitch again, this time by the Slytherin goal posts, with Gryffindor back to only fifty points in the lead.

Instead of turning away from it entirely this time, Harry shot upward and a bit more to the left of it.

A bludger came flying by him, avoiding by a roll in one direction and Harry adjusted himself slightly to avoid the second as it whizzed by his elbow.

It appeared, that Bole and Derrick were back in the game, meaning that Fred and George had moved on to try and help the three chasers maintain and gain their lead to where it needed to be to end the game before Slytherin's cheating got them seriously injured.

A whistle sounded below, but Harry couldn't tell who the penalty was against, as his sixth sense was warning him that three players were converging on him and odds were all Slytherin.

He waited until the two beaters had come into his peripheral vision before pulling the nose of the Firebolt up sharply.

Bole and Derrick came together so hard they knocked heads and one of them took a broom to the stomach.

Lee cackled over the magical megaphone, calling both idiots for trying to outmaneuver a Firebolt.

Harry swung a wide circle around them both, smirking as they rubbed their heads, before swinging away to begin a renewed search for the snitch.

Per Draco's prediction, the game was turning into one of the dirtiest in Hogwarts' history, with the twins circling the game and retaliating only with the bludgers to avoid giving away too many potential scoring penalties to Slytherin – though Montague had gotten a bat to the back of the head when he'd grabbed Katie by the head instead of the quaffle in her hands.

Angelina soared in below her as she dropped it, however, and neatly put it in the goal, flipping two fingers in Montague's direction and spitting a vile name in his direction, and giving their ninth goal, putting them eighty-points ahead again, they were rounding off to the forty-five-minute mark, with only fifteen minutes more before Harry was to catch the snitch regardless of their lead.

Harry pulled another false start, causing Katelyn to follow, but much slower this time, finally catching on that Harry wasn't actively looking for the snitch and that meant she needed to start verifying his attempts to 'catch' it.

Another penalty, this time due to Bole and Derrick hammering Oliver with both bludgers, gave Draco their tenth goal.

Harry grinned and rose higher.

One more shot would have Gryffindor winning by a two-hundred-and-fifty-points when they caught the snitch. The largest margin win in school history.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of nearly every member of the Slytherin team moving toward the Slytherin goals, bolstering the keeper to prevent Angelina from scoring.

Harry swung the Firebolt into a backflip and dove down into the throng, with Fred and George hammering the bludgers in the same direction.

Screaming as he descended, the three missiles scattered the Slytherin team as Draco and Katie came up to flank Angelina, swarming around her to prevent anyone from coming at her to try and take the quaffle.

Harry's momentum took him so close to the ground that his toes touched it and as he moved to head back into the sky, he caught Katelyn - the only member of the Slytherin team not surrounding the goalposts as Angelina sunk their eleventh goal and the chasers separated again – diving out of the air.

Harry's head whipped toward where her angle would take her and there, hovering as he was a few feet off the ground, was the snitch.

The distance between the three was about equal, as Harry didn't need to descend to get to the same level as the glittering winged ball, but Harry was amid both teams, and Slytherin did their level best to slow him down, forcing him to weave up and around them.

Bludgers slammed into the grass and it felt very much like a warzone as the sod was thrown up in their wake, pelting him with dirt even as they forced Montague and Flint out of his way or get hit in the head with them.

His vision tunneled.

He could feel the stands holding their breath as he and Katelyn both reached for the snitch.

"Come on," he breathed, begging the Firebolt for just that little bit more-

Both seekers rose back into the sky, but it was Harry's hand that the wings of the snitch beat futilely against, raised victoriously over his head.

XX

Harry barely made it to the ground in one piece as the team swarmed him, hugging, and screaming.

There's the briefest of moments after they touch down, before the red-clad supporters of Gryffindor swarmed the field, that Harry caught sight of a mangy black dog in the shadows of one of the stands, far too small to be Dark or Ebony.

Catching his eye, the dog raised himself up on his hind legs and bat a single paw into the air, before dropping down, tilting its head, and slipping into the shadows.

Before Harry could register the sheer oddity of the moment, he was submerged in the cheering mob of nearly three-quarters of Hogwarts students, cheering and lifting the team onto their shoulders to carry them toward the staff's stands, where the Valerians were patiently waiting their turn.

Turning his head, Harry caught sight of Katelyn stalking toward one of the entrances and he whistled sharply to get her attention.

She scowled at him.

"Good game," he called to her.

It was the closest that she'd ever come to catching the snitch before him without cheating.

That was a seeker he'd play again any day.

XX

It was a long time before the team was left alone to get themselves out of their sweat-soaked and filthy quidditch gear and they were still riding the high of their win, the twins singing loudly in the enclosed space.

Tarana laughed as they all tumbled out together, the Valerians and their Bonded waiting eagerly to escort them all back to the Tower for the unspoken celebration that was going to take place there.

Harry dropped to his knees and wrapped her in his arms.

"How do you feel?" she asked, wrapping her paws around him in return.

"Like I can cast the Patronus," Harry said, voice muffled in her fur.

Tarana dropped her head onto his shoulder and Ivory nudged her sharply. "Oi, budge up!" the leopard protested, nudging her again before simply dropping his forepaws on their entwined form and toppling all three.

Once they'd gathered their feet, Ivory nudged Harry. "Give it a shot," he encouraged.

Enveloped by the cheer and great spirits, Harry didn't even hesitate before drawing his wand and spinning it in the Patronus' dizzying circles. Drawing on his happiness and excitement, his wand tip exploded with a silver light, immediately solidifying in a great, galloping silver stag.

The Patronus reared and threw back its great head, hooves driving into the air without a sound.

Tarana made a sound as though she'd been punched in the gut, but Ivory stepped forward, entire form glowing, and leapt.

Though Ivory stayed still after the leap, the light that had surrounded him, now a perfect, incandescent replica of him, loped toward the silver stag, weaving between the rearing hooves until the stag started its drop to the ground.

As one, the Afterimage and Patronus made a victory lap around the Gryffindor Team to the delighted cries, ohs, and ahs.

George ruing his concentration, thumping an arm down on Harry's shoulders, and the stag began to fade immediately.

"That," he said, pointing at the fading Patronus, "is wicked. This calls for butterbeer!"

With a great heave, Harry was hefted onto George's shoulders and a startled squawk escaped Draco as Ron and Blaise shoved him onto Fred's.

The Valerians were left behind, forgotten for the moment, as the teens all disappeared up to the castle and the party that awaited the first non-Slytherin win of the Cup in just under a decade.

XX

Though the children were all in good spirits, the Valerians were a bag of mixed emotions.

Once the teens were out of sight, Tarana, whose gaze had been fixated on where the Patronus had disappeared, sagged to the ground.

Unsure of what the exact cause was, though Remus appeared to have more than an idea if the dampness of his eyes was any indication, the Valerians circled warily.

Ivory approached her first, chuffing her chin and rubbing his muzzle against her neck. "So, he rides again," he murmured to her, voice breaking slightly.

Tarana trapped her brother's head in her paw, holding him against her and making him sink lower to keep the contact. "And isn't it just like James to return simply the celebrate a quidditch victory with his son." She whispered damply.

Yoko lay his head sideways over her neck. 'Did you two see the dog?' he asked them.

Tarana rolled her eyes to look at him without breaking contact with either. 'How long did it take you to figure out?'

Yoko smirked and glanced at Remus. 'He went so pale so fast I thought he was having some sort of stroke.'

Tarana closed her eyes and sighed, pushing herself to her paws, causing Ivory and Yoko to rearrange themselves to keep contact with her. Raising her head to the sky, she exhaled black and green sparks into the air.

"It's fitting," she told them. "That in the absence of his father, the last of the Marauders were here to watch his son win the Cup." Her gaze dropped to trail over Remus and Ivory. "All three of them, perhaps for the last time."

Remus ducked his head and closed his eyes, feeling the welling grief that she was feeling.

It had gone unacknowledged by the trio that, even if Sirius hadn't betrayed the Potters and was, in fact, trying to protect his son and friends, he would be lost by the time they managed to reunite properly.

Arcana rumbled quietly and stepped forward, lowering his gaze to meet hers.

"Last though they are, they don't watch him alone. We watch for them here on Earth. They will watch from the Ether and will step with you all every step of the journey, regardless if that journey belongs to you, Harry, Remus, or Sirius."

Fallen surprised them all, tipped his head back and letting out a low, mournful howl, his voice quickly joined by Yoko's higher-pitched one. Ivory threw in a low, throaty yowl, and Arcana a deeper, rumbling one.

Tarana felt the echo of another howl and the challenging scream of a stag echo in her heart as her own low yowl joined the symphony.

Remus' eyes glowed an unholy amber as he watched the Valerians call to the souls beyond in the Ether, feeling the call of his pack, weak as it was. A single tear fell from each of his eyes as he joined his voice to theirs.