Thumbs up to everyone who reviewed. Oh, yes, and pure rose, I do indeed remember your devotion to my parodies and you wacky reviews as well. I'm so glad one of my old fans is still reading my new stuff and I hope you review more often--I hope you all will review more often, because you're all lovely and I really like seeing what you have to say about this thing.

That done with, please enjoy.

Chapter Twenty-Two: Dog

"Did you see him?" Blaise Zabini cried.

"Fell clear off the damn broom like it'd been buttered up!" a fourth year Slytherin said with a whoop. His words echoed around the Quidditch team's changing room.

Harry chortled with laughter.

"Oh, Potter, don't pretend to be so amused." That was Malfoy's sardonic drawl that Harry could recognize a mile away. "As if you weren't clutching your broom and bawling for mummy."

Harry turned around and mockingly grinned at his smirking friend as he entered the room. "You get him to the infirmary alright, love?" he asked, raising his pitch to a breathy falsetto.

Malfoy scowled at the name, but answered anyway: "Yeah. He's got a lump on his head the size of an egg." He smoothed his hair, plastered to his skin from the tumultuous rain outside, out of his eyes.

Harry shrugged. "Didn't notice a difference in his looks," he said wickedly.

Malfoy snorted. "That isn't Goyle's fault, that's just your wonky glasses, Four-Eyes."

Harry laughed and put away his Beater's bat. Generally, anytime Goyle, his fellow Beater, made a blunder in the air was cause for mirth. The fact that Goyle never screamed in pain but only grunted confusedly only seemed to amplify this sort of amusement. "Good job with that Snitch," Harry told Malfoy. "I'm startled you can focus on that little runt in a storm like that."

The other boy rubbed his arm. "Oh, yeah. I'd congratulate you on your marvelous work with that bat, Potter, if my elbow wasn't throbbing so hard from the Bludger you let at me. Next time, maybe."

Harry said in mock defense, "Honestly, Malfoy, I can't win them all. A couple are always gonna slip by me."

"Ha—you mean you'll conveniently skip by one headed right at your best friend. Not to mention Goyle."

Harry grinned and threw his arm around Malfoy. "Best friend? That he is, young master, that he is."

"I hate to break up your sad little love-fest, but you have company," Zabini said dryly from behind them. Harry turned around and instantly leapt back before he got speared on the giant hook protruding from his visitor's face.

"Watch that thing, Professor, you nearly had my eye out!" he cried indignantly.

Snape curled his lip. "How amusing. Potter, it seems that I have rather unfortunately left the Quaffle outside after your match. Would you be so kind as to get it for me?"

Harry smirked inwardly. Of course the big bat would ask him to go get the ball. No problem, he thought, and gave Snape a wide smile to show how pleased he was with this prospect. "Love to, sir. You know what they say about us Slytherins—neither rain nor sleet nor snow—"

"—Oh, Potter, for Merlin's sake, just GO!" Snape spat out. Harry obliged.

Outside the rain was pouring. Harry, who'd spent ten minutes drying in the changing room, was instantly soaked. "Snape, you oily git," Harry muttered. He could barely see his own feet trodding over the sodden grass of the Quidditch field, much less the Quaffle—no matter how brightly colored it was. Is this how Malfoy feels when he's Seeking? Harry wondered.

Squinting, Harry thought he saw something red in the distance. The next second, he could have sworn it moved—was this just the rain? Or perhaps his stupid, blurry glasses? But, no—there, it was definitely bobbing about. Quaffles can't do that, Harry thought slowly.

Curious now, he walked across the slippery ground towards the shape. It wasn't on the ground, it was moving about in the air. Harry thought perhaps this was the spawn of a Quaffle's tryst with a Bludger until he saw that there was a body beneath it. Harry wiped his glasses and squinted.

"Oh," he laughed. "It's you. What are you doing here, you stupid little girl?"

The female weasel turned, startled at his voice, and instantly glared. "None of your business," she hissed with a fierce tone.

Harry looked around him amusedly. "It isn't common for little girls to wander round an empty Quidditch field in the pouring rain."

"I'm not little, and it isn't empty any longer, is it?" She turned her back to him again and continued plodding through the mud. Harry watched her curiously. There was something about the way her red hair was plastered to her back that held his attention.

Then his reverie was broken as he heard her call, "Dog! Dog!"

Harry laughed. "You named your dog Dog?"

"You've been here longer than I have and you still don't realize we aren't to keep dogs?" the redhead asked, torn between scorn and fear. "Please get on your way."

"Haven't you heard what they say about flies and honey—"

"You're not a fly, you're a mean little snake, you and that white-washed friend of yours, and I don't want anything to do with you!" she cried, stomping away.

Harry, now, was rather taken aback. He wanted, for a moment, to call after her, remind her indignantly of the sunny-faced girl who'd waved to him on the train—what had happened to make her lose that shy cheer?

You know what happened, a little voice in his brain said. It happens to everyone. It happens to you too, and to Malfoy, and your mum and dad and Sirius—

Harry shook his head to clear it and watched the girl make her way through the rain. The black sky shook and flashed and rumbled as he tried to regain the light mood from winning the Quidditch match.

"Dog!" came her distant cry. Harry struggled with himself—with this new dark thought in his head—for a moment, then followed her.

"Wait up!" he called. She glanced at him incredulously.

"Didn't I tell you to scram?" she asked.

"I don't generally follow orders from anyone but me, and Malfoy on my good days," he said with a shrug. She watched him curiously, then shrugged likewise and continued on her search.

"Listen here," Harry said casually, even though he felt completely barmy. "If you're trying to find this—Dog—why don't you just fly? I mean, before you, y'know, start displaying the first symptoms of pneumonia?"

"Haven't got a broom. Spent all my birthday money on Dog last year."

"You want to use mine, then, girl?"

She faced him slowly, wiping her eyes of the rain. "Look, what are you playing at? I know you aren't being nice to me."

Harry shrugged. "I was looking for the Quaffle, and I happened to find you instead. We may as well look together," he concluded, a little wary that soon her fists would start to fly.

Ginny—er, Weasley—was staring at him with her mouth slightly open, but for a moment Harry was distracted by the curious coloring of the Quidditch field. The storm had moved on and left a slight pitter-pattering of rain, and through a hole in the patch of clouds the sun shone so that the rainy field was covered in an out-of-place golden light. And finally Harry saw it, a small red shape in a thick section of grass. He glanced back at Ginny, who was still watching him shrewdly, decided he'd had enough of her for the moment, and went to retrieve his target.

"Good luck with that Dog, Weasel," he said as he passed her on the way back to the changing room. "But if I were you, Gryffindor, I'd flit out of here. Saw a mean-looking kitty prowling around the stands that could tear your little self a new one." Harry smirked for a moment until she asked, "Did you say cat? You found him then?"

Harry looked back incredulously at her, standing all drippy in the shining field. "You named your cat Dog, then?"

She nodded, and was already walking swiftly towards the stand Harry had mentioned by the time he murmured "Bloody Gryffindors" with a roll of his eyes and headed inside.

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