Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Nor do I own James Potter, Lily Potter, any member of the Potter family or any associates of theirs, past, present or future. Clear?

Oh and by the by: Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed. Nobody has said it's terrible yet either which is a huge plus. -grins again- This chapter is ever-so-slightly longer than the previous ones. Next up, letters to (and from) the whole gang. What fun…

Quidditch Journal
Entry number 2
July 14th, again

Dear Thing,
Young Mister Case was sadly drawn away by the dinner bell. I, in my eternally powerful position as "New Whipping Boy in chief"… that is to say 'Rookie Camp Counsellor', had the high honour of dining with Seth Jefferson - -the maniac who's in charge of this place- - in his private cabin.

Whoop-de-do.

Anyway, he showed up, we talked, he was way too enthusiastic and he's assigned me my very own cabin of little nightmares to look after as of tomorrow. There was someone else in there with me, some South-African girl with blond hair and far too much energy. She spent most of the time prattling on about how great it is here.

Yeah, right, whatever you say, Little Miss Nutcase.

So yeah, anyway. The place that I have been sentenced to spend my summer is "The Little Champions International Quidditch Training Camp". Hang on a minute, I'll go get the brochure's description. After all it's a lot more complimentary than anything I could possibly say about this establishment.

"A tough, stimulating, motivating breeding ground for the Quidditch champions of tomorrow set in an idyllic desert setting and focusing on the skills needed for true champions. Your child will be absorbed in Quidditch from first thing in the morning to last thing at night and taught by enthusiastic and understanding counsellors who will work tirelessly to ensure their needs are fully met. At the end of the day they'll be returned to comfortable and accommodating cabins where they will rest, relax and drive (mostly) innocent Marauders, stark raving bonkers."

That was copied word for word apart from that last part. So let's examine this shall we? First of all, in a two page brochure they have managed to use the word 'Champion' no less than forty seven times. Do they think that if they repeat the word often enough then the concept will somehow become less crap?

"Tough, stimulating, motivating breeding ground for the Quidditch champions of tomorrow". For the love of Morgana le Fey, these Quidditch Champions of tomorrow are barely toilet trained, leave them alone. Seriously, these kids shouldn't be doing this. They're tiny, not to mention petrified of everything here. So far as I can see this is just a way for bitter, has-beens to live through their kids and turn them into something they're not.

If a kid wants to be a Quidditch champion and he (or she) has the talent to do so then not much is going to stop them. If they are told by Mummy and Daddy to go become Quidditch champions then their future captains will see right through them and they'll never be allowed to play, meaning they'll become bitter, twisted, has-beens themselves by the age of eleven. Now, what kid needs that?

For crying out loud, what sort of parent would do that to their child?

I mean granted, not exactly the most mature of people here. But if my kid came up to me one day and said "Dad, I hate Quidditch, I hate flying, I hate everything you've ever enjoyed doing and I want to do my own thing" then my response would be "Fine, whatever, I wish you all the best. Be sure to eat your vegetables."

Okay, it would probably be "You're sure about the Quidditch thing?" but if he or she was really sure about it, then good for them. Let them do what they want. I mean I think I've been robbed of a summer, but since I've had seventeen of the things that isn't such a huge tragedy. What about this lot? Some of these kids are five and six years old and they're already being forced to work the summer. They'll probably loose their minds by the time they reach fourteen.

Besides, this particular "enthusiastic and understanding counsellor" has spent his first day thinking up ways to drown the little gits, so they were sent here under false pretences anyway. But then again, that could just be the heat. Ah yes. The heat. Did I mention the heat? See this camp is in the middle of the Great Sandy Desert in Australia. And can I just comment on the huge amount of thought and concern that obviously went into THAT name.

They couldn't have held this little thing in Britain, could they? Despite the fact that it's widely considered to be the Quidditch capital of the world they still decided "Yeah, you know, the middle of nowhere is really a better venue." I wouldn't mind so much, it's just that Seth Jefferson informs me that they have campfire nights. A campfire night is where everyone takes refuge from the blistering heat, by sitting around a fire and 'getting to know one another'. Bloody hell, somebody stun me.

Things get started properly tomorrow, so I'm told. And I still have to look through the 'lesson plans' so that I'm prepared. You see apparently, in conjunction with being in charge of a cabin-full of screaming children I am also in charge of teaching basic flight manoeuvres for the first two weeks.

It's going to be one hell of a long summer.

- - -

Harry rolled over and started working the tension out of his neck. "If my kid came up to me one day…"

This was killing him. Every word his father had written seemed to be designed to affect his son. He spoke about hypothetical children, his approach to parenting, his friends who betrayed him and his friends who died.

Harry wondered for a moment if Lupin had written this himself just to make Harry feel better about his father but instantly dismissed it as ridiculous. Lupin was simply too honest to do something like that. He smirked. Lupin was even too honest to lie convincingly to Snape about Marauder's Map.

He debated putting the notebook away. If he just put it away and never thought about it again then it wouldn't bother him and he wouldn't have to imagine his father's face if he only knew about his future… But he still wanted to know what happened to make Lily Evans change her mind about him. He supposed he could just skip ahead to the notes James kept in his seventh year and find out from them before putting everything away and forgetting about it.

An image of Hermione's face floated into his head. "You did WHAT? You skipped parts of books! Are you mad? You'll be getting information completely out of context! And then do you know what will happen? Walls will buckle, foundations will crumble, locusts will be unleashed, worlds will collapse and universes will implode, all because you skipped a few pages you lazy little git."

All right. Maybe that wasn't quite what she'd say. But she'd still be appalled. And since no one knew more about books than Hermione Granger, he supposed he should listen to her. With a severely put upon sigh, Harry continued reading.

He was doing it for Hermione, he told himself. He, personally, wasn't interested at all… It was all for Hermione…

- - -

Quidditch Journal
Entry number 3
July 15th

Dear Thing,
You know I'm wondering why I don't just suck it up and say 'Dear Diary'. Probably because that has too many thirteen year old girl connotations for my oh-so-manly Quidditch Journal. Whatever.

I have never, in all my life, been surrounded by so many idiots. What sort of morons put five-year-old children, that have never been near a broom before, onto top of the line race brooms? Half of the kids went rocketing fifty feet in the air for Merlin's sake. I've never dived around so much in all my life, it was raining children.

And Amy, the South African nutcase I mentioned yesterday, just stood on the ground batting her eyelids at me, telling me how cute the kids were. "Oh you'd make a wonderful father, by the way there's another one plummeting to Earth, and would you like to meet up after lights out?" Vacuous twit. Evans would probably eat her alive. Metaphorically speaking of course… well, probably. If Amy was that moronic and then she started cursing Snape, then maybe it would be literal. You know when surrounded by so many brain-dead fools you really start to appreciate people like Evans. Then again, days that end in Y make me appreciate Evans, so probably not a huge surprise.

In the end I had to call everybody onto the ground and teach them one at a time. All these kids were just staring at me, hanging on my every word about flying. Like I'm some kind of expert or something. It was deeply disturbing. I mean I'm used to people listening to my opinion on things; people acting like what I say is the gospel truth, however, is just plain scary. Don't these children understand that I don't know what I'm talking about?

Wormtail, it has to be said, puts far too much stock in anything I have to say. Moony just looks at me like he's dealing with a slightly unstable toddler, who he has this underlying affection for but, in all honesty, would rather be reading a book (which half the time is probably true, I drive the poor guy crazy). Sirius basically agrees with me about everything in the first place. I swear I've had three hour long conversations with him and neither of us said a word.

Which brings me to everyone else. You've got Snivellus who dismisses everything I say (though that one's mutual, greasy little git). You've got Evans who is of the opinion that I'm on the same intellectual level as a rotten Bouncing Bulb. You've got Mum and Dad who just seem thoroughly amused by everything I say.

And then you've got these kids. Who keep looking at me like I'm the messiah or something just because I can pull off a Wronski Feint without wetting myself. Honest to God, one of them came up to me just before dinner and quoted a ten minute long rant I had about broom safety back to me, word perfect and then asked if I had any more tips. Doesn't that strike you as a little disturbing?

I'm the first to admit that I enjoy showing off and appreciate being praised for things I do well which does, I'm sorry, include cursing Snape. Nobody does it better. But there's a line between "show off" and "hero to be worshipped by all" and I don't know about you, but I was happy with my position on the show off side of said line. Anyway, have you ever tried explaining to a seven-year-old that if they're scared of the broom it'll control them? Or that if your broom is vibrating too much you need to calm down because it's feeling your tension? Or how about that despite all these characteristics the broom is still inanimate and it is not out to get them? No?

Well I have. And it's bloody exhausting.

And speaking of exhausting, I'm sitting in the cafeteria eating some hideous concoction that Arvid, the overly groomed Swedish guy, informs me are affectionately dubbed 'Sloppy Joes'. So far as I can tell someone ate a lot of bolognaise sauce, threw up on a bun and then served it to me. That, in itself, is not exhausting. Nauseating, yes, but not exhausting.

No, the exhausting thing is that I'm sitting here listening to some prat called McLaggen who has spent the past twenty minutes detailing how he flew too high once and nearly got hit by a muggle fighter jet when he was six. A story I find particularly unbelievable, considering the fact that, to my knowledge, fighter jets fly slightly higher than eight feet off the ground - -the highest I've seen McLaggen go without loosing control- - and also since, so far as I'm aware, there are no muggle fighter jets hovering around Diagon Alley, which is where this joker lives.

I'll have to ask Sirius if he was at Hogwarts because I don't remember him, even though he told everyone he was in Gryffindor last year. Actually, sod it, if it'll shut him up I'll ask now…

Hmmm. I asked him. He didn't answer. In fact, he appears to have developed a severe case of lockjaw. Wonder if it'll stop the idiot talking. Oh no, there he goes again. Acting like nothing happened. Come on mate, you could at least be a good show off. Good show offs don't let quiet kids with notebooks a plateful of bolognaise vomit undermine them in front of everybody.

Nope, not a word about it. Pah. Amateur. Maybe I should teach classes on being a first class, show off too. "A brilliant breeding ground for the little tosspots of tomorrow, where they will be taught arrogance and obnoxious behaviour by experts in the field." Maybe not.

Oh marvellous. Amy just came in and keeps trying to talk to me. And now McLaggen is staring dreamy eyed at her… and glaring at me. Great. Just great. Mister no-neck is acting like I'm his arch-rival in life and I haven't even picked up a fork yet. Wonderful. You know what, bugger this. I'm going to my cabin. I haven't been there yet and I might as well meet the little gits before the 'evening activities' start.

- - -

Harry frowned. McLaggen. He'd heard that name before. God knew where though…

An image of Oliver Wood ranting about his replacements appeared in Harry's mind. "And then there' McLaggen… he's very good but I don't think he'd last long with you lot. Especially not if Fred and George are still here. Which brings me to Dean Thomas…"

That was right. He was the slightly irritating sixth year whose hair Fred and George had dyed pink last year. Was the McLaggen in James's notebook his father? Uncle maybe? Whoever he was, Harry didn't see him lasting long if he kept on glaring at James Potter like that. After all, as Snape's memory had shown, James was fairly potent when unprovoked. Harry couldn't imagine him being much cuddlier when antagonized.

He glanced at the alarm clock by his bed. It was coming up for ten o'clock at night. With a shrug he turned the page in the notebook and continued reading.

- - -

Quidditch Journal
Entry 4
July 16th

Dear Thing,
It's four o'clock in the morning so forgive my less than brilliant humour. I met the kids in my cabin, the four of them.

There are supposed to be six kids per cabin, all boys or all girls. I have three boys and a girl because they're the ones there was no room for anywhere else. I was, originally, in a cabin with six of the cockiest little tossers you've ever met in your life but I switched with McLaggen. After all, it was a match made in heaven. One of the brats was even lacking a neck, so he'll feel right at home.

The first kid is annoyingly edgy. He jumps like six feet into the air if there's a loud noise. His name is Albert Larson, he's nine and comparatively old. Judging by his build I'd go with Keeper as his position of choice but that's just a hunch.

After that there's Ignatius Octavius, who has so many illnesses and ailments that I'm amazed he doesn't drop dead right here. I'm actually going to have to talk to mum about his health, there's got to be something that could give the kid a bit of life in him. Anyway, he's six years old, tiny, sickly pale and looks so tired that it even makes me feel drowsy. Half the time, he seems so frail that a strong wind might float him away. Until he gets a bit healthier I don't know what we're going to do with him.

After that we have Yuan Ping. Or Ping Yuan. I'm not one hundred percent sure. We call him Ping anyway. He's from China, and amazingly cheerful. Again, not the healthiest of people but he seems to be enjoying his state of ill health. He's eight years old and I'd say Beater material.

And last but not least, Sofia Ivanova. She hasn't said a word to me since I came here. I'm guessing she's destined for Chaser-dom but it behoves me to keep my mouth shut about such things until she opens hers. She keeps trying to read a book but in a cabin full of disgruntled boys she's not having much luck. She's seven and is like a mini Remus except female and scary. And she keeps rolling her eyes at all the displays of idiocy she sees. All the things I'd love to roll my eyes at but can't, which makes me automatically like her. She should be interesting to work with at any rate. She's from Bulgaria and could give out a scowl that would make Sirius weep with pride. I think I like her.

Now I'm telling you all this because I found out from Seth that there's an inter-cabin tournament type thing at the end of the six weeks where each cabin forms a team. Which explains why Ping and Ignatius didn't get picked by other cabins: they both look unwell and everybody here is psychotically competitive. Albert, I assume, was just too jumpy to make friends during his first few days here and so got left behind. And Sofia is one of only seven girls here. The other six are all wearing bright pink, pigtails and mini-skirts while giggling a lot. She's wearing black jeans, a black polo-neck (in this heat) and scowling into a book called 'Illegal Animagi; the hidden threat'.

So she wasn't really going to fit in.

I'll be honest though and say that her book is making me nervous.

So here's how it'll go for the rest of my stay here: I spend the mornings teaching everybody basic flight manoeuvres with the other counsellors, then I go to lunch. After lunch I train my cabin on their own and try to ensure that nobody dies horribly or anything before evening activities. Evening activities consist of songs, stories and 'Bonding Sessions' around the fire.

I had my very first Bonding Session last night and I can safely say that I would rather be the one tell Sirius's mum that her real dad was a muggle milkman named Ed, than go through another one of the dratted things. What sort of question is "If you were an animal, what animal would you be?" anyway?

I had to sit there and pretend to think about it for Merlin knows how long before saying stag. Then they went around again and asked why we thought this. What was I supposed to say? "Oh yeah my personality has antlers". And why, exactly, does anybody need to know my favourite colour? Will me telling them that I like dark green somehow enrich their lives or give them a deeper understanding of the world around them? No.

After we finished 'getting to know one another' we were allowed to go back to our cabins. Which was amazingly dull since eight-year-olds tell pathetic ghost stories. So I told them a decent one about the Bloody Baron, and then they all got scared and couldn't sleep for…well… ever. After a slightly sub-legal calming spell on the cabin they finally nodded off.

Sadly, Ignatius (Iggy) said something about night-terrors so I spent most of the night in with them, keeping an eye on him rather than going to bed in my private room. Well, when I say 'private room' I mean a tiny area at the end of the cabin that's walled off. There's a single bed in it and a fold down desk, oh and there's my trunk but that wasn't really provided.

Anyway, by the time I figured he'd be safe to go to sleep I was beyond sleeping. So I'm writing in this thing and glaring out at that frigging desert. Not that there's much to see. You want a description of my view? Sand dune, sand dune, someone else's cabin, sand dune, sand dune, dead tree, sane dune. Lovely.

I've still got a couple of hours to kill before the kids wake up. Maybe I'll write everyone. Ask mum about how to improve Iggy's health, ask Dad for tips on teaching kids to fly, maybe ask Remus if he knows any child-friendly horror stories and ask Sirius… God, anything. Ask him how he feels about the metric system I it'll give me some contact with someone with a personality.

If I'm honest, I'm so busy craving some contact with some familiar people that I'm about three Sloppy Joes away from inviting Snivellus for tea and crumpets. Yeah, that's what I'll do. Just a general pleading message to everybody… then maybe I'll go for a run or something.

- - -

Harry smirked. Something about the idea of James Potter being scared of a seven year old girl with a book struck him as terribly amusing. "Oh yeah, my personality has antlers" The man was quite clearly losing his mind and he'd only been there a few days. He had to admit, the idea was cheering Harry up to no end.

It wasn't that he wanted his father to suffer, per se, it was more the fact that if his father suffered then Harry could mentally reconcile his treatment of Snivel… Professor Snape, in his head.

He cringed as he mentally used the Marauder's old nickname for Snape. Perhaps the notebook was brainwashing him…

- - -

Quidditch Journal
Entry 5
July 17th

Dear Thing,
Do you know that I'm only allowed to pick up incoming mail on Thursdays and Sundays? What possible logic is there in that? Seth says it's to keep us all focused. Because teaching kids to go five feet in the air is obviously so difficult that all your energies have to be directed at it. Dung.

Anyway, moving on. Sofia happens to be a glorious flier. I discovered this because yesterday, after I was done with my letters, I went for a run around the camp and I saw her flying in the compound. The second she saw me she fell off her broom and ran inside. She wouldn't even get on the thing while other people were watching and she still hasn't said a word. I asked Sirius what to do about it in my letter but I'm not sure how much help he can really be since he's never met her.

Iggy is fairly terrible, if I'm honest. I mean he does have potential in him. Deep, deep, deep in him, but I'm not entirely sure why his parents sent him on this thing. When I asked him about it he said that his whole family had been big fans of the game and wanted a good player. Idiots. You can't force someone to be good at Quidditch. I told him that I'd make him the best and most competent flier I possibly could but that when he went home he should tell his family to shove a broomstick somewhere unpleasant. (Or pleasant if you're into that sort of things I suppose, I'm not here to judge, merely complain. Still, a whole broomstick, can't be a good idea either way. In fact I remember mum saying something about that… ah, the joys of having a Mungo's healer as a mum.)

Iggy seemed delighted by this suggestion.

Albert is my first real problem, he's good. He is very, very good. But he is so damn scared of going near the broomstick that I don't see how we can exploit his talents unless we manacle him to the blasted thing. And he won't tell me why he's scared of it either, which isn't a great help to me.

Ping isn't a spectacular player or anything but he's got skill, no doubt about it. My first big problem with him is the fact that he lacks the fitness required to participate in Quidditch for more than twenty minutes at a time. I tried to keep him playing for two hours straight and he fell off his broom. Which, when we're tackling high altitude problems with the class, and are 150 feet up, is sort of a dramatic situation. I've never dived so fast in my life.

There's that and there's the language barrier. He understands English no problem, however me understanding him is slightly trickier. The kid has one hell of an accent on him.

I just finished dinner and am writing this before going back and grabbing my kids before evening activities. I know this is sort of abrupt, but Amy just walked in. I am so out of here…

I wonder who all will have been able to respond to my letter by tomorrow?

- - -

Harry got to his feet and started pacing. The next page in the notebook was stuffed with over half a dozen envelopes addressed to his father. The thing was he wasn't sure he wanted to read them.

It had, quite suddenly, occurred to him that this notebook was deeply personal. The letters would surely be more personal, wouldn't they? Did he honestly have a right to be looking through them anyway? It wasn't just his father either. Sofia Ivanova, wasn't she on the Bulgarian Quidditch team? Did she really want some kid she'd never met reading about what she was like as a seven year old girl?

He pinched the bridge of his nose and willed away the discomfort that had appeared in him as he imagined kids he'd never met reading about his exploits over the years. Or, worse still, about his relationships with people. Would he really want complete strangers reading about him and Cho? No he wouldn't.

He had a horrible mental image of people across the face of the Earth discussing the fact that he'd been stupid enough to go on a date with someone whose boyfriend he'd seen killed just months previously… Harry didn't like that image.

And yet there he was reading (or hoping to read) about his mother and father.

Harry threw himself onto his bed and stared at his ceiling. What he really needed to do was sleep on it. But since that probably wasn't going to happen he could just "stare off into space" on it instead… He wondered if Dumbledore ever had problems like this when he went looking through the Pensieve…

That was his last thought before he slipped out of consciousness.