Euphemia entered her third month at Hogwarts, and the weather had turned bitterly cold, as is typical of winter in Scotland. This did not deter her from Quidditch practice. They trained longer and harder than they had before as their first match loomed against Ravenclaw. No one apart from the Hufflepuffs, Dumbledore and Neville knew that Euphemia was the new Hufflepuff seeker. Hufflepuff were the most underrated team in the school, and they planned to use this to their advantage.
Cedric Diggory was the only other person on the team who was not a sixth or seventh year, and because of this he was the person on the team Euphemia spent the most time with. He was incredibly kind, friendly and helpful and he soon became one of Euphemia's closest friends outside her year. He was also incredibly good looking, and Euphemia had to keep reminding herself how much she hated people staring at her, and not to be a hypocrite.
Gryffindor and Slytherin had played each other the previous Saturday. Gryffindor had the superior chasers and keeper, while Slytherin had a better seeker. Gryffindor's tactic had obviously been for their beaters, a pair of red haired twins, to target the Slytherin seeker, Higgs. They had eventually knocked him out of the air when Gryffindor had been ahead 30-10. It had taken three hours for the Gryffindor seeker to finally catch the snitch, when Euphemia had seen it on three separate occasions beforehand. The final score in what had been a brutal, dirty match was 260-70 to Gryffindor.
The following Saturday, Euphemia woke up early and made her way down to breakfast. Her broom and Quidditch robes were down in the changing rooms, unlike the rest of the team who had carried them out with them. That way Ravenclaw would have no idea who the Hufflepuff seeker was until the announcer announced the teams. They would have no time to adapt their tactics.
'You alright Mia?' Cedric asked as he plopped down next to her. 'Any first game jitters?'
'I'm nervous but excited', she replied. 'I can't wait to see the other teams reactions'.
Cedric smirked. 'We'll show them Hufflepuff are no pushover.' They stuffed their faces with food and then Hufflepuff as one made their way down to the Quidditch pitch. It would be exceedingly difficult to see someone as small as Euphemia slip into the changing rooms.
After everyone had gotten changed, Mark stood up to give a speech. 'Hufflepuff have gone too long without winning a Quidditch cup. No one expects us to win. They think we're not brave enough, or cunning enough, or smart enough. We're going to prove that they're wrong. We're going to prove that we're as good as everyone else. We're going to win!' he roared passionately, looking each of them in the eye as if daring them to disagree.
They stood in the tunnel, waiting for the teams to be announced. Professor Sprout handed the team sheet to the commentator, a third year Gryffindor named Lee Jordan. As they prepared to walk onto the pitch they heard his voice booming through the stadium.
'Now, what everyone has been wondering these past few weeks is who exactly the new Hufflepuff seeker is, or indeed if they have managed to find one at all. I can confirm that the new seeker is someone I don't think anyone expected. Through a loophole in the rules, Hufflepuff have managed to get a first year onto the team. Yes, you heard correctly, a first year. So I can now confirm that Hufflepuff's new seeker, and the youngest seeker in Hogwarts in over a century, is none other than Euphemia Potter!'
The crowd went wild. Both teams mounted their brooms and Madam Hooch gave a shrill blast on her whistle. Euphemia rose high into the air above the match. She tuned out the crowd, Lee's commentary and focused on looking for the snitch. She flew laps around the pitch, high and low, keeping an eye out for bludgers and the Ravenclaw seeker. Hufflepuff had two good chasers in Mark and Cedric, but their Keeper and Beaters weren't brilliant. Euphemia knew she needed to catch the snitch as soon as possible. Glancing at the scoreboard she saw that Hufflepuff were leading 40-20. The teams were fairly evenly matched, and as was so often the case in Quidditch, the seekers would end up deciding the match. She swivelled around and suddenly saw a flash of gold at the Hufflepuff goalposts. She was in the middle of the pitch. The Ravenclaw seeker, a second year named Cho Chang was not far behind. Euphemia drifted about ten metres towards the goals, trying not to draw attention to herself. Once she was confident she had a good head start she put on a burst of speed. She chased after the snitch, leaning forward on her broom in order to be as streamlined as possible. She dived towards the ground, focused entirely on the golden ball.
She heard a bludger coming towards her, dodged and was now within an arms length of the snitch. She reached out her arm, and her fingers brushed against it. She stretched as far as possible and managed to snatch the snitch out of the air. She held it high to the screams of the Hufflepuff supporters, and Lee Jordan shouting out the score 'Hufflepuff won by 190 points to 30'.
Euphemia was delighted with herself. Quidditch had really brought out a competitive streak in her and winning was an amazing feeling. She walked back to the Hufflepuff common room with her friends. Some of the older students had managed to get a feasts worth of food from the kitchens, which Cedric had promised to show them soon. As she sat there celebrating with her friends, Euphemia realised this was the happiest she had been in her life. A huge achievement to celebrate, and more importantly, good friends to celebrate it with.
Nothing much of note had happened since the match. Euphemia was currently boarding the Hogwarts express with her friends to leave for the Christmas holidays. Neville was her best friend she mused. She felt he understood her better than anyone else, even more than Hannah and Susan. Hannah and Susan had been best friends all their lives and together they made up a nice group of four.
Professor McGonagall had gone around with a list for people to sign if they wanted to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas. Euphemia had debated staying, however there were things she wanted to do, and she had eventually decided to go home. Or at least find somewhere else to stay, she didn't exactly have a home. She had no intention of ever going back to the Dursleys. She had said goodbye to her friends at King's Cross, greeted their parents and guardians (Neville's grandmother had been rather intimidating, and then headed for the Leaky Cauldron and booked a room. Tom was slightly suspicious about an eleven year old girl staying in his inn over Christmas, however he didn't ask too many questions.
Euphemia spent a lot of her holidays hanging around Diagon Alley and muggle London. She bought presents for her friends. She bought sweets for all the members of the Quidditch team, Sally, Megan and the Hufflepuff boys. She bought Susan, Hannah and Neville sweets, and tickets to go to the cinema with her after Christmas. She had wracked her brain to make sure she was buying presents for everyone she should be buying for. She had never had to buy presents for anyone before.
She had also spent some time catching up on her muggle education. She wasn't bothered reading plays and learning poetry that she figured she would never use, however she didn't want people to think she was an idiot. So she had bought books on Business, Science, History, Geography, French and Mathematics. Business and Maths would be helpful for understanding her accounts when she had access to them. Science would hopefully be helpful with Transfiguration and Potions. Languages were always useful, and she partially wanted to learn French to spite Vernon Dursley, who was a racist who believed everyone should learn English. History and Geography were interesting too. She doubted she would ever sit her GCSE's, but she wanted to at least have a passable muggle education. She didn't ever want people to be able to compare her to the Dursleys by calling her lazy and ignorant.
She had also researched her Greek heritage, and bought as many books on Greek Mythology as she could find. She now knew the names of most of the major Greek Gods and heroes, and had tried to narrow down who her parent was. It was proving very difficult as there were so many minor gods as well as all the major ones. She had managed to cancel out a few that she was pretty sure weren't her parent, but that was about it.
She had also received a sword which she had had custom made by Gringotts. She had paid much more than necessary to ensure that the sword would belong to her family for generations to come. It had cost much more than the contents of her trust vault, so she was paying for it via a substantial loan. It was extremely extravagant, but it was made from celestial bronze, an incredibly rare material used to kill monsters. It had her name engraved on it and was enchanted to shrink down into a bracelet. It was enchanted to always return to her hand if she ever lost it and was modelled on Hercules' sword. It fit perfectly in her hand and as soon as she held it Euphemia knew she had made the right decision. There was no telling when she might encounter a monster, and all of her gold would be no use to her if she was dead. In truth she was incredibly lucky she hadn't encountered one yet. She would make sure to keep it on at all times. Euphemia didn't have anyone to teach her sword-fighting, and there wasn't much room in the Leaky Cauldron for swinging a large sword. She bought a book on sword fighting and hoped that would help her. She hoped that part of being a demigod meant a natural inclination towards dangerous weapons.
She hadn't spent all her time learning. She had gone to Muggle London and browsed, looking at things Aunt Petunia would never let her buy, supplementing her wardrobe and buying more concealer to cover her scar.
Euphemia woke up on Christmas morning to a large pile of presents at the foot of her bed. 'Wow' she whispered. It was times like this that she realised how much her life had changed. She got a book called Quidditch through the ages from Cedric, a book about plants from Neville, a six month subscription to Witch Weekly from Susan and Hannah, a selection of chocolate from a shop called Honeydukes from Megan and Chocolate frogs from Sally-Anne. She had also received a beautiful quill and an apology note from Draco. Knowing how prideful the boy was, Euphemia knew it had taken a lot for him to write the letter, and while she still hadn't fully forgiven him for what he had done to Neville, she would work with him to rebuild their friendship.
There was one more present, with no signature, and Euphemia didn't recognise the writing on the note. It was a silvery grey cloak, and the note said it used to belong to her father. Now that was strange. Someone who knew her father, but hadn't signed their name on the note. Nothing dangerous should be able to reach her through the mail thanks to protective enchantments that had been set up when she was a baby. Had this really belonged to her father? She draped the cloak over her shoulders, and let out a gasp. This was an incredible gift. A cloak that rendered her invisible. Numerous possibilities began to come to life in Euphemia's mind. She could pay back Snape for the way he treated her. But her common sense took over and she resolved to have the goblins check it out for her to be safe.
She had the best Christmas Day of her life even though she spent the majority of it alone. She had gotten presents, and a proper Christmas dinner.
She got the cloak checked out a few days later and it had turned out to be clean to all the goblins tests. They had said, however, that they had never seen another cloak quite like it, as it was much older and more durable than any they had seen before.
She met up with Neville, Hannah and Susan and brought them to the cinema. They went to see Beauty and the Beast and really enjoyed it. The three purebloods had rarely been outside of the wizarding world in their lives, and knew very little about muggles. Euphemia herself had never been brought to the cinema by the Dursleys, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience as well.
Soon the holidays were over and Euphemia and her friends were back at school. She hadn't told any of her friends about the cloak yet. It had belonged to her father, and she felt rather protective over it. On her first night back she decided to go exploring the castle. It was certainly different at night. Most of the portraits were asleep, and for once she went completely unnoticed. She wandered the halls for a while, generally exploring until she came across a door that she had never seen open before.
At first it had seemed like an entirely normal empty classroom but then she came across something that didn't quite fit. It was huge mirror with a detailed gold frame, and an inscription across the top which she didn't even bother trying to read. It certainly didn't look like English. It was strange however that she could not see her reflection. She stepped closer and peered into the mirror.
She gasped. Reflected in the mirror were many people. But it was the four people at the front of the mirror who had caught her attention.
She was standing in the centre of them. On her right were two people she could easily recognise, people that she had seen in books about the fall of Voldemort in 1981. A tall, thin man with glasses and messy black hair. A pretty red haired woman whose bright green eyes were the same shape as Euphemia's. The people she was constantly being compared to, that she had missed every day of her life.
Her parents.
How was this possible?
It wasn't, Euphemia forced herself to acknowledge with a sigh. Dead people can't come back. She tore her eyes away to look at the figure standing to her left, who was somehow even more intriguing. It was impossible to distinguish any of the figures characteristics. Euphemia couldn't even tell if they were male or female. Judging by the fact that two of the other two prominent figures were her mortal parents, Euphemia assumed that this must be a representation of her godly parent. Euphemia mused that the fact that her parent hadn't yet claimed her was preventing the mirror from disclosing their characteristics, unless her parent was some sort of a shape-shifting god. There were other blurry figures in the background, men and women of all ages, but none so interesting as the three at the front.
Euphemia stared at the mirror for a long time, although it felt like no time at all, and eventually decided she needed to leave. On her way back to bed she resolved she would never return, it had hurt too much to see her dead parents seemingly alive and well like that.
Euphemia spent a lot of her time after Christmas practicing Quidditch in preparation for their upcoming match against Gryffindor. Both teams desperately wanted to win. It was a critical game in the championship. The winners would be the only team to have won two games out of two, and would be in a very good position for their last match.
Apart from that, the only interesting things that had happened were Ron's frequent spats with Ron Weasley. She didn't really understand why they hated each other so much, and when she asked Draco about it, the only answer she got was 'He's a Weasley'.
There were quite a lot of differences between this game and the last. There was none of the secrecy surrounding Euphemia for a start. They also knew that Gryffindor would likely have a game plan to combat her, likely similar to their plan against Slytherin. Take out the seeker. It was perfectly legal, but it meant that Mark made Euphemia spend hours dodging bludgers in preparation for the match. Euphemia became rather acquainted with Madam Pomfrey and the hospital wing, and was there at least three times a week looking for bruise paste. Mark's sister Katie was a chaser on the Gryffindor team, and this made him even more determined to win.
Finally the big day arrived, and the game kicked off with the shrill blast of Madam Hooch's whistle. The plan was to keep moving, and keep an eye on the Gryffindor beaters, the very talented Weasley twins. Euphemia knew from watching their last game they were more talented, versatile and worked better together than the Hufflepuff beaters. She flew high above the game, avoiding bludgers as she went. She attempted feints and steep dives, hoping to lead the other seeker into the path of a bludger. Sadly they didn't seem to fall for it. Their captain, Oliver Wood, was known to be an excellent tactician, if a tad obsessive.
The game continued and Euphemia rose back up into the sky, dodging bludgers as she went. It seemed the Weasley twins had decided to split up. One of them would target Euphemia, while the other was attempting to break up the chasers plays.
The score was fifty points to twenty in favour of Gryffindor when her broom suddenly jolted. It was an incredibly strange sensation. The broom was rocking up and down and from side to side, almost as if it was trying to throw her off. The rocking was becoming harsher and more frequent. And yet no one seemed to have noticed due to how high up she was. Her Weasley stalker had gone off after the bludger. It was all she could do to cling on for dear life. Euphemia gave a piercing scream, drawing the crowds attention to her. She was too far away. The broom gave a particularly violent buck, and she was flung off, holding on by only one hand. Cedric had begun to fly towards her, but he was still a long way off. The broom gave one last massive lurch, almost as if it was putting all its effort into this attempt. Euphemia lost her grip and began tumbling off the broom amid screams from the crowd.
Then possibly the strangest thing of all happened. Her fall slowed, and she came to a stop approximately forty feet above the ground. This was incredible. She stared around in amazement and relief.
She never saw the bludger that crashed into her back.
Hope you guys enjoy!