May the Power Protect …the Quaffle?

Disclaimer: I wish I owned them but I don't; I'm just borrowing them for the duration of the story.

Chapter Six: Intermission

"Ghu," Charlie moaned. He sank onto one of the benches in the Rangers changing room. "They're taking my defection personally, I swear. Bill about took my head off, and the Bludger wasn't even near us. Mind, he called it 'practice swinging'." He made air quotes for the last two words with a groan.

"There, there," Clare said, settling next to him. She tried to rub his nearer shoulder, to soften it up enough for leaning on, but between his pads and tension, she gave it up as a lost cause. She settled for flopping back against her floral-print robes, hanging on the wall behind her. "Ugamumph," she sighed, and cast a glare in Zander's direction. "This is all your fault, Bly."

"Aw, come on, luv. Nou one could predict Oi'd puncture the &^\ Quaffle first successful block Oi made. We're jest luckiy you know whot ye're doing up theah." Zander had been Keeper for the Rangers for all of ten minutes at the beginning of the match, until his new metal limb had punched a hole into the leather ball. Deciding to retire instead of having to repair and reinflate the poor red thing every save, he'd nominated a nervous Clare into the air. She was as off-and-on as Ron Weasley keeper-wise, so the two teams were still on an even footing.

The Rangetrs were interrupted in musing on their teams' chances by Chip. 'Bleagh!' He was making faces and putting the cap back on a sport drink. "Don't we have anything besides these? I never could stand the taste."

"That's because you don't sweat sweat. You sweat cayenne sauce," Vida accused, swiping his bottle for herself. The other Rangers laughed, long used to the running joke, but Charlie looked at Clare in confusion.

"He puts hot sauce on everything he eats," she explained quietly. He nodded to her with an informed grin.

"Fred was …" he stalled for a second, his grin faltering. After a swallow from his own sport drink, he continued. "Our late brother Fred went through something like that last year. George told me about it at Christmas. For seven months, Fred only ate Indian food, and between the Madras sauce and curry powder, his body temperature went up three degrees permanently, and he bled pepper sauce when he cut himself shaving." The others chuckled, and Charlie cheered back up.

Clare gave him a sympathetic hug. Initially turning just to return the embrace, Charlie surprised her – and the others – by leaning her back against her robes again, and giving her an enthusiastic kiss.

Her 'Eeeph!', and her low-voiced "Whew!" after he released her, were lost in the cries and cat-calls of the Rangers and a just-returning Leanbow.

"Sorry," Charlie said to the room at large once he'd come up for air amidst the noise. "jest couldn't help meself." His Ottery-St. Catchpole brogue sounded worse than Zander's in his effacement.

"Mmmm, don't be," Clare countered. She looped her arms around his nearer one, and sighed contentedly.

"Clare?" her cousin Nick asked, brows raised. She smiled at him, only to shrink back at the unexpected sight of his father's furious face.

"What? I'm not allowed to date, but Nick is?" she grumbled back, at which Leanbow visibly softened – to her at least. He kept giving dark glares to Charlie as soon as she looked away though, and the trained dragon-keeper gulped at his fierce demeanor. Angry dragons he was used to. But angry male relatives of the girl he was dating? He'd not had to deal with that in quite some time.

"You are past seventeen, aren't you?" he asked Clare in a whisper when Chip distracted Leanbow next.

Her giggled "Nineteen next week!" earned them both another death glare.

"The only other thing we've got to drink," Leanbow said in a carrying voice, "is that witch's brew over there." He pointed to a (literally!) steaming cauldron plunked in one corner by a well-meaning fan.

"Oi wouldn't touch thait," Zander chuckled. "Oi'd recognize thait pot anywheah. Thait's old Grisilda's party cauldron. Siee thait dent next tou the front fooit? Thait's wheah Chip tripped oveh it at her New Yeah's Bash."

"Is that what it was? I thought I got on the wrong side of one of her garden gnomes!" Chip returned. Charlie and the others laughed.

"Sounds like me mum. We've got a regular tribe of the blasted things in our family garden, but da won't call Ministry pest control to get rid of 'em for good."

"Oooh!" Clare chirped. "I'll have to send some of our anti-gnome spray home with you. Aunt Udonna cooked it up years ago when there was a breeding surge." She giggled and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. "They started to actually climb Rootcore to get to our balcony herb gardens.

He returned her kiss with a chuckle. "That's saying I go back, luv." That innocent missive earned the pair a round of 'Ooooh!'s and another glare from Leanbow.

Quidditch

"Geroff, Ginny! I told you, I'm fine!" Harry grumped. She was making as much fuss as she had the morning after the final fight with Voldemort.

A true daughter of Molly Weasley, she'd connived Ron and Hermione into making sure she got some time alone with Harry. After a reassuring hug - to make sure he really was there for her own peace of mind – she'd read him the riot act at near-howler level. Then as soon as she'd had her say, she collapsed into his arms, crying "Don't you EVER do that to me again!"

Her fussiness now actually reminded Harry of the first time he ever met her and her mother, when Molly had been worrying over her sons on Platform 9 ¾. Ginny was carefully wrapping an ACE bandage around his head, after soaking it in an analgesic potion she'd learned from her mother years ago.

"You let this set for ten minutes so it'll do you some good, and I will," she responded acerbically, and tucked the end in. She gave him a peck on the lips, and leaned in so their foreheads gently met, well away from the impact spot.

Looking over at their teammates, they saw that George had gotten one of his Extendable Ears out, and was feeding one flesh-colored end into a knothole in the wall between the two teams' changing rooms. He put the other end to his own good ear.

"Wotcher, George?" The Heroes of Hogwarts had unanimously adopted Dora Tonks' habitual greeting of Harry as a memorial salutation. The red-haired jokester held a finger up for silence to his sister, listening to the Extendable Ear for another second, then practically threw it, ashen.

"Gor, they're talking about Fred," he hoarsed, and got up to walk stiffly away. The other Weasley children exchanged sorrowful looks for a moment, then Bill cleared his throat.

"He's okay, you know. He's just going through that 'seven stages' thing still. Once we get back in the air, he should be fine." He drank deeply of his water bottle, and hung his head for a moment panting. It was yet another lupine trait he'd been showing lately, and Ron and his siblings were worried that Greyback's gift wasn't done with their brother. "Reminds me of a bloke I worked with in Egypt, actually. He was a twin too, but fraternal. When his sister got killed in a tomb we were exploring, he … well, he lost it for a bit. But he got better. He told me what helped was staying busy. That whole 'Life goes on, so I should' argument."

Hearing that, Katie gave Angelina a nudge with her knee, and when the darker girl looked up at her, Katie gave her an arched brow. "Oh, all right!" Angelina muttered, then took off after George.

"What was all that about?" Harry and Ginny both asked.

"That," Katie answered, smirking smugly after her best friend, "was about time."

Quidditch

When the two teams headed back to the pitch, it was to find George and Angelina furiously snogging just outside the corridor exit, with a tear-streaked Hermione and Luna cheering them enthusiastically.