Acknowledgements: First and foremost, I'd like to thank Shalli, who pre-beta'd last chapter and helped name the Bendigo Bunyips. She also gets on my case about my 'strine and something about hitting crow en flambé with rocks. Also, I'd like to thank my parents. Just because.

A/N: I tried to get this chapter out fast because I know how much the ending to last chapter sucked for all of you, so it's a little shorter than most chapters (they usually range about 9-10 pages, and this one's about 7). Keep your eyes open for a longer chapter next time.

Disclaimer: You know the drill. You've been here all these chapters. JKR owns it all, Warner Brothers has some of it, and I have none.

Chapter Fourteen: Amber of my Eye

"I'm hit!"

Tracy's anguished shout shattered the chaos and the terror.

Ron and Harry hastily untangled themselves from the pile, manhandling Tracy roughly in their haste to make sure that none of her vital organs were hit. Neither had forgotten that they were still in danger; they dragged Tracy behind a column, carrying her between the two of them. Not for the first time, Harry was grateful that Tracy and Stacy were both rather short and small; he could keep his wand out without having to juggle it. Uselessly, he pointed it all around them, but there were no further gunshots.

"Where? Where are you hit?" Ron asked Tracy.

Harry saw Chris and Stacy behind another pillar and motioned frantically for them to stay put until the threat had been contained. There was no doubt in his mind who had shot Tracy; he knew Dermot would pick off as many of his team members as he could.

"My leg—" Tracy's grimace spoke volumes. She was clutching the limb, her face squeezed and contorted from the agony. "Shot my leg—"

"I've got it," Ron mouthed to Harry, who nodded and set to search the rafters for any sign of Dermot. He couldn't remember how many shots had been fired; was Tracy the only one hit? Quickly, his eyes swept over the crowd. They were still running around in utter panic, but he didn't see anybody hit. Nobody was crowded around a fallen comrade. Were the situation any less dire, he might have found the sight of the entire team from Alabama huddled behind a simple blue mailbox amusing.

"I don't see him," he told Ron in an undertone. Ron had busily cut away the robes from Tracy's thigh down and was regarding the bloody mess underneath with a cool eye. "I think he split."

"Good. Call for a healer. She just got grazed, but I think it hit a major vein."

Harry signalled the Healer, who had burst onto the scene in bright purple robes. Stacy and Chris took this as their cue to race from behind the other pillar. Their frantic questions tumbled over one another as Ron and Tracy tried their hardest to downplay the situation. Meanwhile, Harry continued to search, to no avail.

"What's going on?" Chris asked Harry. His styled coif was mussed from the dive he'd taken to roll out of the way; Harry wondered if he knew that he was bleeding from a cut on his cheek. "You look like you know what's happened—"

"I don't," Harry interrupted shortly. "I just know what gunfire sounds like."

Chris regarded Harry suspiciously only for a minute before he turned back to his girlfriend, now being looked after by the healer. A few seconds later, Luna squeezed into the remaining space behind their pillar, a bit white but still pleasantly unaffected. "I spotted him, but it was too late," she told Harry, not bothering to keep her voice low.

Before Harry could even so much as grimace, Chris had jumped all over the problem. "You saw him?" he demanded fiercely, eyes burning.

Luna looked back at him, unfazed. "Yes. He really doesn't have the head shape for it, but he keeps his hair shaved."

"You'll have to tell the Aurors—"

Tracy swore loudly enough to break off all conversation as the cut was fixed up on her leg. "Sorry," the Healer said, without sounding sorry at all. "I'm fresh out of pain potion. You're lucky—I think you're the only one that was hit."

"How does that make me lucky?" Tracy groused at him, rubbing a hand over the newly healed cut.

Far too late, Aurors swarmed the convention centre, arriving in a black-robed whirl of businesslike voices and barked orders. The members of the Nottingham Typhoon were interrogated with surprising efficiency by an Auror that looked to be no older than fifteen. He took down Luna's description without an expression and disappeared after collecting names and even a few autographs. His order, called absently over his shoulder as he walked away, ensured that the Nottingham Typhoon would be there for quite some time.

"They just make them younger and younger," Harry remarked, rubbing a hand through his hair. "I hope that Hermione and Amy aren't waiting by the wireless."

"Oh, they are." Ron's expression was almost cheerful, but Harry knew that his best friend was feeling the very same guilt that Harry himself was experiencing. They both knew the bald truth: they had lured Dermot there. Without them there, Tracy would not have been shot, nor would such a panic have happened. They hadn't underestimated the man in general, but they had underestimated what he would do when he found out that Ginny was not in attendance. "Guess that's confirmation that Dermot was planning a large attack tonight."

"I could do without confirmation involving taking sniper shots at my team-mates," Harry remarked dourly.

"Oh, he was aiming for you," Luna said from her seat by a water fountain, looking bored and thoroughly detached from the happenings all around them. "I saw the black thing, but I didn't know what it was."

"Why didn't you try to stop him?" Ron asked.

Luna looked at him with unfocused eyes, the same ones that had always disturbed Harry. "I didn't see him soon enough."

Ron opened his mouth, but Harry shot him a look. "Drop it. She doesn't know what a sniper rifle looks like, and very well she shouldn't."

Obviously disgusted, Ron shook his head.

"You three." Another Auror, this one older and harder in the lines of his face, approached them from the gaggle of law enforcement officers. His expression was grim. "Word has it that the sniper—that's Muggle for person who shoots bullets at people—was aiming for you three. Do you have any idea why?"

Harry and Ron exchanged a dubious look. The Auror and Luna might not have seen it, but a hurried and silent conversation took place in the space of seconds. Decision made, Harry turned back to the Auror. "Sir, I'm Harry Potter," he said, politely but firmly. "I have had Voldemort and his supporters out for my blood since before I could walk. It's possible that this is an ex-follower of Voldemort that decided magical means weren't good enough to kill me."

"Our Muggle experts are saying that this was the work of a professional sniper," the Auror said suspiciously, thumbing his moustache and watching Harry's eyes.

He was surprised that the Auror force here had "Muggle experts," let alone ones that could tell the difference between an amateur and a professional sniper. But he refused to let this show. "Then I don't know, sir," he said, shrugging. "I'll stand by my theory unless you can come up with something better."

The Auror asked them the usual questions—where they had been standing, had they seen the shooter, what happened when the shooting started (Harry fibbed a little here and said that he had hit Ron and Tracy after he heard all the gun shots). Like his underling, he asked for names and contact information. Finally, he announced them free to go. Luna bade them good night there and Apparated straight back to her room. Ron and Harry checked on Tracy, who testily assured them that she was just fine and had suffered worse during matches, so why didn't they leave her alone? Chris shook their hands, thanking Harry profusely and apologising for Tracy's disgruntled attitude. Harry endured a hug from Stacy before he Apparated back to the hotel—and ran straight into Ginny.

She'd obviously been pacing, for he appeared and she walked right into him with enough force to send both of them tumbling. Harry managed to catch himself on his elbows, cushioning Ginny's fall with his own body. She didn't even climb off of him before she launched into her tirade.

"Where have you been? We heard on the wireless that there had been a shooting but when you didn't Floo or even call the hotel, we thought for sure you'd been hit—"

"Tracy was," Harry interrupted.

Ginny stilled. "Tracy was what?"

"Hit. Dermot clipped her leg—he might have done worse if I hadn't pushed her out of the way." Propped up on his elbows was a strange place to have this conversation, especially with everybody in the other half of the room, staring at the pair of them on the floor. "She's fine," he added, predicting her next question. "The Healer patched her up and she growled at all of us. I think she was more embarrassed than anything else, but she's fine, and she was the only one hit. We're all okay—though my back's a little sore with you on top of me like this."

Belatedly, Ginny crawled off of him. "I swear, when we find that man, I'm going to strangle him with my bare hands!"

Hermione cleared her throat, bringing all of those assembled into Harry's notice. "Are you two finished yet?" Harry noticed that she was gripping Ron's arm tightly, her knuckles starkly red and white.

"We're done," he replied, climbing to his feet. "Sorry to have scared you all. The Aurors made us stay behind after everybody else, and there wasn't a handy Floo portal accessible."

"It's okay, Harry." Hermione rolled her shoulders and Harry could almost literally see the stress begin to evaporate in the air around her. "We've been using the time wisely. Well, most of us." She rolled her eyes in Ginny's direction.

"She means to say those of us that weren't pacing like lunatics," Ginny muttered under her breath, explaining for Harry's benefit.

"Where are Fred and George?" Ron asked suddenly, looking around.

"One's posted himself as a potted fern outside of the suite Tracy, Stacy, and Chris are sharing, and the other's a coat rack on the floor where the rest of the team are staying," Neville recited. "Scotty Darrow and I will replace them in a few hours. When did you say the back up teams you requested were arriving, Hermione?"

"We're calling back up in to this?" Ron demanded.

"Unfortunately, it's necessary. Dermot has escalated so much faster than predicted if he's already willing to use the Typhoon as collateral." Hermione pushed her fingers clockwise on her temples, closing her eyes briefly. Harry felt a brief spurt of guilt that turned to relief when Ron finally made his wife sit down. "Oh, honestly," she protested, but everybody in the room looked so stern that she gave in.

"I can take a shift," Harry offered guiltily, "since they're my team members he's going after."

"No," Ron, Hermione, and Ginny said at the same time. Ginny continued, "You need your rest for the next game. You need to stay in the Open as long as you can so that we have time to get the trap set up."

Though he didn't like the thought of leaving all of the protection to the others, Harry couldn't deny that Ginny had a point. He frowned as he nodded.

"Neville, do you have any protests to doing some footwork?" Ron asked, tugging his robes off. Underneath, patches of sweat had sprouted on his jeans and black T-shirt, after-effects from the shooting. "We're going back to the convention centre to see if we can dig up any clues that the Aurors are bound to overlook."

"Count me in," Neville told him, looking grimly determined.

Once Neville and Ron had taken off, and Hermione had slipped through the door that adjoined her suite to theirs, Harry and Ginny were finally left alone. Harry collapsed immediately onto the sofa, finally allowing himself to feel the drag of a long and complicated day in his bones.

"I have a game tomorrow, and all I want to do is sleep for the next week," he groused, lifting his head from the cushion. "When does Ron think we'll set that trap?"

"It varies from day to day." Ginny sighed and scrubbed at her face with both hands. She sat down gingerly on the arm of the sofa, her eyes on him. "Do you think he was really aiming for Tracy? Or was he trying to hit you or Ron?"

Harry replayed the frantic minute of diving at Ron and Tracy in his mind, mulling it over. How had he known that something was going to happen? Had he seen something? He didn't recall anything, so maybe it had been subliminal, below the surface. But would seeing a sniper rifle register for him? He hadn't watched much Muggle television or films, so he was only vaguely aware of how one looked. So why had it invoked that terrible sense of dread…

Dread.

Harry sat bolt upright and immediately felt like kicking himself. "Ginny," he said slowly, trying to compile all the thoughts in his head to make sure they made sense, "Dermot—how does he act? Like, at first? When he's still in his 'stalking his prey' mode? Does he—does he deliver warnings or anything like that?"

"That's his favourite thing to do," Ginny replied, puzzled. "Why? He's been delivering warnings the whole time—personally at Tony's that time, through that note he left in the door. Since his last attempt failed when you got into a fistfight with him, he'd logically start the stalking process all over again. Warnings and such."

"Because, and this is just a thought, I think that's what he did tonight." The exhaustion had dissipated, leaving nothing but a frantic sort of energy behind. Harry launched himself to his feet, began to pace. "Right before the shots were fired, I felt dread. Like something horrible was about to happen."

"It was," Ginny confirmed, still confused.

"Right. But I've never shown that much divining talent before. And I really don't think I spotted the gun or anything amiss."

"Well—" Ginny trailed off and her eyes widened. When she had worked through the problem, she swore softly and viciously, almost too quietly for Harry to hear her. "The dread spell? He hit you with the dread spell? The one that makes you more aware of imminent danger?"

Solemnly, Harry moved his chin up and down once.

Ginny stood up and kicked the sofa, leaving a largish dent in the side. "Now he's just playing with us." She snarled it at the wall. "Sodding fine mouse we make!"


It was strange to have her own bed again.

Since it was likely that Ron and the twins would be in and out of the hotel room like they owned the place, Harry and Ginny had silently and mutually agreed to take their own rooms in the hotel suite. Ginny hadn't been too bothered by it; in fact, she had almost looked forward to having her own bed. She sprawled in her sleep, and she didn't imagine that it was too comfortable for Harry. She felt bad for him since she and Neville had basically stolen his flat from him, but he had never complained. Well, she thought to herself, turning over to face the wall that held a very bland and boring portrait of cattails in a swamp, at least he'd get the whole bed to sleep in tonight. It was the very least she could do.

The latest and scariest encounter with Dermot had her wide awake, even though weariness tugged listlessly at her limbs and refused to let go. To compensate, she lay still, staring at the cattails dipping into the marsh. Logically, she knew that none of this was her fault. This was Dermot's fault. But…without Ginny at the Open, Tracy wouldn't have been shot tonight. So she couldn't help but feel that ridiculous and illogical tightening knot of guilt in her stomach. She wondered if the healers had released Tracy yet, if the other woman was asleep or maybe having a drink to get rid of nerves. She thought of her brothers and their relentless hunt for Dermot, all for her.

She thought of Harry and was unable to erase the sight of him, beaten and broken, sitting in Ron's room at the Burrow with that adolescent anger vibrating on the surface. The fight with Dermot had uncovered a jarring display of the chip on his shoulder he'd carried as a youth. The temperature in her room dropped ten degrees; she shivered. If Dermot won, would Harry lose it? Would he lose everything he had worked so hard after Hogwarts to achieve? Would Hermione be able to help him rebuild it?

There was too much space on this bed, she decided as she rolled over yet again, to stare at a similar and still boring shot of yet more cattails over a bog. She had too much space to sprawl, which made her feel very small and—

A soft tap on the door interrupted her thoughts. It was just the one sound, as though whoever it was on the other side of the door didn't want to risk waking her if she was already asleep. Immediately, Ginny reached for her wand on the night-stand. "Hello?" she called towards the door, wand up and ready.

Slowly, the door creaked open. The sliver of light in its corner grew to a wide, bright square. Ginny blinked.

"Ginny? Still awake?"

It was Harry, more mussed than usual so that his hair stuck out in absolutely comical patterns. He lingered in the doorway, a timorous slope to his shoulders.

"Sleep's not my friend," Ginny replied, lowering her wand slightly and finally dropping it when Harry recited, in order, most of what had happened in the Department of Mysteries. "What are you still doing awake? You have a game tomorrow."

Harry shrugged and looked down at the carpet in front of his socked feet. "I, er, I wanted to make sure you were all right."

Ginny blinked at the showcase of nerves. "I'm fine," she said uncertainly.

"Oh. Okay." Harry turned to head back into the main room of the suite and then stopped, obviously thinking better of it. It took an eternity for his gaze to return to Ginny, and he looked down quickly. "I feel incredibly foolish. D'you mind if I stay in here a bit? I—I just don't want…" He trailed off with a frustrated sweep of his hand. "I'll sleep in the chair over there or on the floor, even."

Because it would do neither of them any favours, Ginny stamped down on the laughter that threatened to bubble up in her throat. The entire situation was awkward, and Harry made it endearingly so by shifting nervously from foot to foot.

"Don't be ridiculous," she replied, setting the wand back on the bedside table. By doing so, she missed seeing Harry's face fall. "I'm not going to let you sleep on the floor, Harry. You can get into the bed like a proper adult. Just, er, lock the door so that none of the idiots that call themselves my brother burst in without knocking."

An easy smile finally crossed Harry's face. "I'll be sure to hide in the closet should that happen."

Ginny shook her head. "If you're forced to hide in the closet, I'm going to feel very fifteen again," she groused, and scooted over to the side she normally took up at the Hutch. "Look—more room on this bed. Hey, maybe I won't even hog the covers tonight."

"I doubt that very much."

Ginny stuck her tongue out at him, but she wasn't sure he saw it in the darkness.

Now that he wasn't worried about being turned down cold, Harry allowed the exhaustion to show on his face as he crawled into the bed and worked his way underneath the covers. "Bloody long day," he muttered.

"Get some sleep," Ginny instructed. "You've got a game tomorrow. And sleep well." But he was already out cold by the time she finished. She shook her head at him and hunkered down onto the sheets. Before long, she too was dead to the world, curled up with her back pushed against his side.


Ginny had forgotten to mention to the Nottingham Typhoon that it rained a lot in Florida. They might not have minded, for England always seemed to produce rain whenever big games came around. But this wasn't the cold drizzle from England. This was warm and sticky, washing away the sweat as soon as it popped up and generally making everything miserable. There was no relief in this rain, just an enduring warmth that made Harry set his teeth.

"Please, whatever you do, find the Snitch," Stacy begged as she passed him in flight. "Spare us any more agony! Please!"

Harry offered her a tight-lipped smile in reply.

It was the day after the shooting. The Typhoon was already back on its feet, raring to go against the newest enemy, another foreign team called the Bendigo Bunyips. Their robes were a sky blue, an effective tactic on a sunny day but useless on a rainy day such as the one they were suffering through currently. A patch of the Australian flag sat on the left shoulder of every team member, opposite a patch of a strange creature that vaguely looked like a walrus had mated with a dragon and had left some very unfortunate offspring behind. They swapped gibes back and forth; Harry caught about every other word.

The best thing about them was that they played proper Quidditch. Harry was free to act solely as a Seeker, a fact that made the unbearably warm rain somewhat more tolerable. He wasn't the only one who felt this way; he could see relief in his opponent's face even from over a hundred metres away.

Tracy flew by him, offering him a reassuring smile in the process. She'd joked before the game had started that she was going to start carrying around a sign that said, "I'm fine, thanks for asking" because so many people kept asking her how she felt. She hadn't seemed all that affected by the fact that she had been hit by a sniper just the night before. In fact, she and Stacy had an air of jollity about the whole thing. Chris had come into the locker room to gift Tracy with a purely Muggle contraption that he called a "kevlar vest," whatever that meant. He'd claimed that he couldn't find shin guards made of the stuff for her, so she should just avoid getting shot in the future. The team had made her wear the vest until they came out onto the Pitch.

"See the Snitch yet?" Frank asked as he chased a Bludger down. Even the rain hadn't managed to wipe away his everlasting grin.

"I'd be moving a little faster if I'd seen the Snitch, don't you think?" Harry replied.

"True! Just checking to make sure you're not just missing it on purpose! Because that's considered cruelty!"

Inadvertently, Harry's gaze wandered to the press boxes, where he knew Ron, Hermione, and now Tara Staples and Euan Abercrombie were clustered around Ginny on all sides. Ginny's best friend had arrived that morning, rousting them both from bed without a single word of apology. Harry didn't know how he was going to get any sleep with Tara and Euan staying with them now. He'd make do, he supposed, but it would be very crowded and hectic. Oh, who was he kidding? It was already crowded and hectic to the point of insanity in the suite.

"Keeping your mind on the game, Potter?" Stacy rolled to catch a pass and fired it off to Mel.

Harry gritted his teeth and nodded. Was every single member of the Typhoon on a personal mission to pester him?

Time to see what the Australians have for me, he decided. The only way to get his team-mates to leave him alone was to somehow join the game. Since there wasn't a Snitch in sight, he'd have to make one up. He made sure that the Australian Seeker wasn't paying close attention to him, and then made a very large and ostentatious jump into a dive. The wind flattened his hair to his skull, but he made sure not to intensify the dive until the Bunyips Seeker had caught on and was on his tail. Then he shoved the nose of his broom down, ignoring the cries of the wind in his ears that mingled with the announcer's demands to know if Harry had actually seen the Snitch—there was the ground—he jerked the handle up hard and fast, using his velocity to shoot upwards.

He glanced over his shoulder just in time to see the Bunyip Seeker flail and narrowly miss the ground. The man sent him a dirty look, to which Harry just smirked and tapped his finger to his forehead in a salute. It was then that he discovered that the bird was an international signal.

Harry returned to flying above his team's goal posts, close enough so that he and Bear could shout at each other. "He's good!" Bear called to him. "That one usually works!"

"Good, but gullible," Harry agreed. "Seen the Snitch yet?"

"Do your own job, mate!"

The Bunyips and the Typhoon were pretty evenly matched, especially since their Seekers were operating solely as Seekers. Tracy, Stacy, and Mel were pulling out all of the stops, but nothing they did could pull them significantly ahead of the other team. It would come down to a battle of the Seekers. As the points continued to rack up for them and against them, Harry's gaze intensified. Only the lukewarm rain dripping down the back of his neck disturbed him.

When the score was tied at an even three hundred, and the Snitch had been spotted twice only to have it disappear only instants after the sighting, the Australian Seeker decided to repay the favour. Through the corner of his eye, Harry saw his opponent move. A flash of gold stopped him when he swivelled around to tear off after the other Seeker.

By the time the other Seeker noticed that Harry wasn't falling for his feint, it was too late. Harry emerged from a short and fast dive with his hand wrapped around the walnut-sized ball, waving it triumphantly. "Better luck next time," he called.

"Bloke needs to get a bigger vocabulary of hand signals," Bear decided as Harry flew up to him, having been a recipient of the bird yet again. "C'mon. Let's skip the victory lap and get out of this rain!"

Not a single member of the team opposed this idea, so they flew straight for the player's doors, thirsty to get inside where the cool air blitzed them. Once they were inside, the women didn't even let Harry set his broom to the side before they started the hugging ritual that took place after every game. Harry went down on one knee, laughing, as Stacy and Mel piled atop of him. The laughter quickly changed to grunts when Frank and Tad joined the mix. Flashbulbs went off; reporters hastened to the scene in hopes of catching quotes and pictures from the victors.

"Get off, you oaf!" Harry laughed as Tad insisted on scooping him up in a huge bear hug.

"Sure thing!" Tad howled as he let go—and Harry promptly landed flat on his rump, his wet boots losing their traction on the polished floor.

The sight of so many flashbulbs blinded him and he put up a hand to block his eyes. When he lowered it, he was attacked. Ginny barrelled into him, dropping to her knees at the last second so that she skidded across the wet floor. Even more flashbulbs exploded light onto the scene when she kissed him, hard and long, in front of the team. Tad and Frank whooped like adolescents; Harry was amazed that they refrained from jumping around like gorillas. "Your parents are going to love that picture," Harry told her as they climbed to their feet.

"Oh, my parents are happy for us and you know it," Ginny replied, laughing. Harry kept his arm around her shoulders, since she was already wet enough not to mind.

Now that he was on his feet, the reporters weren't interested in him anymore. They were clamouring to get a comment from either Tracy, or Chris (who had joined them around the same time as Ginny). "Miss Harrows—can you comment on last night?"

"Miss Harrows, how is your leg today?"

"Is it true that you know the sniper?"

"Miss Harrows, 'Wizard Chef' readers want to know—what's your favourite type of sandwich—?"

Tracy rolled her eyes. "Peanut butter and barbecue sauce! No comment!"

Ginny moved her head so that her lips were close to his ear. "Ron's picked a date."

"A date for what?" Tracy and Chris were already attempting to make their escape into the locker room, a hard feat with hordes of reporters and photographers blocking the path. He saw impending disaster as Tad and Frank began to roll up their sleeves.

"For—you know. My ex-boyfriend."

Dermot, Harry realised. Ron had picked a date to lay the trap for Dermot, and to set the plan that Harry and Ginny had worked on for months into motion. The thought of it made his belly drop somewhere into the region around his ankles, but he kept a smile on his face. Since they had to keep the façade up so that they could communicate under the noise of the reporters firing questions and the players shouting, "No comment!" he nuzzled her neck and kept his eyes on his team-mates. "Yeah? When?"

"You're playing the Bismarck Flickertails on Friday. We're going then, during your game."

Harry opened his mouth to protest, but shut it very quickly. That was an argument they could have in private.

Meanwhile, "convulsive" was the word best used to describe what had become of the Nottingham Typhoon. Harry and Ginny stood in the back of the group, so they had perhaps the best seats to view what happened next: a man burst through the crowd of reporters and headed for Stacy. Harry didn't think it was his imagination that she paled and glanced swiftly at Bear before the man reached her and gave her a kiss that was entirely too steamy to be given in a hallway filled with reporters and photographers.

"Hold on a minute," Harry muttered to Ginny, and broke away from her. Without knowing precisely why, he aimed for Bear—and grabbed the other man's arm just in time to keep him from stalking up to Stacy and the stranger. "Hey, Bear. How's it going?"

"Get your hands off of me," Bear snarled softly, quietly enough so that none of the press noticed.

Harry tightened his grip. "I don't think that's such a good idea, mate."

Bear tried to yank his arm away, but Harry had expected this. "He's not good enough for her!"

"I think that's for her to decide." Harry kept his voice even, though he found himself agreeing with Bear. Stacy was unnaturally tense even though she was still lip-locked with the stranger. When he finally let her go, she took a very telling step back.

"He's all over her," Bear growled, resigning himself to the fact that Harry wasn't letting go. He eyed Harry's hand venomously. "I'm not going to attack them. Mind letting me go now?"

"I have your word that you're not going to attack them or embarrass Stacy in front of the press?" He'd come to discover that the three Chasers were very much like sisters to him now; he didn't want anything bad or even ambiguous befalling any of them, especially things they had no way to stop. It was his duty to keep Bear from ruining Stacy's reputation in front of the Associated Press. If that meant making an enemy of his captain, so be it.

Bear glowered. "I won't say anything to her."

"Or him?"

"Or him. Let me go, Potter."

Harry waited a beat before he released the Keeper. Bear sent him one final poisonous look before he stalked away and into the locker room. Harry didn't miss the fact that Stacy craned her neck to watch him go.

Feeling very tired all of a sudden, Harry scanned the crowd for the other Tunnel members before he left Ginny outside the locker room and headed in to join his team. The thought that they were going to try and trap Dermot in the next game made victory suddenly seem very, very sour.

A/N the Second: I don't know when the next chapter's coming out, unfortunately. But I am working on a recaplet from each chapter since I have a feeling it might be awhile. Keep an eye on my profile--I'll post it there.