A/N: So... neat book we had out in July, wasn't it? I certainly liked it and was pleased that it didn't throw off my story... too much. That being said, I don't plan on going back to change this story to fit into canon, so it'll continue to remain AU. That means that all characters who were alive in this story previously are still breathing, Ginny and Harry didn't date at Hogwarts, so on and so forth.

I want to once again apologise because this chapter is once again quite later than I thought it would be, though I forced myself to write a scene that I thought many readers would thoroughly enjoy reading. Also, any fans of a certain book series about a bunch of American kid-minders... keep your eyes peeled. In the words of Captain Jack: "I couldn't resist, mate." (And once it got started, it took on a life of its own)

And so, without further ado (disclaimer aside), I bring you the final chapter, save the Epilogue, of Garnet Snitch.

Chapter Seventeen: The Garnet Snitch

Harry paced the inside of his hotel suite, his trainers nearly tearing furrows in the inoffensive carpet as his eyes roamed restlessly over the inoffensive paintings and the inoffensive décor. His hand flexed over the handle of his wand, twanging a bit as the spells repairing the broken flesh still continued to mend tendon and bone. The Ministry healer that had separated him from the other injured down in the sewers had taken one look at his hand and tutted. It had taken nearly ten minutes to spell the hand back to normal; apparently the healer had never seen a hand nearly eaten by concrete.

"Fingers nearly clean off," he'd muttered. "Dangling by—"

"I know," Harry had interrupted, grimacing at the wand pokes that flamed through his whole arm like fire. "Can you fix it or not?"

The healer's eyes didn't meet his; the man studied the hand, entirely bemused. "I've no doubt of it, Mr. Potter. But perhaps I might take some photos? Show the boys at the office? They won't believe me if I tell them I've seen a hand that had been eaten by concre—"

"Just heal it!"

"All right, all right. Patience, Mr. Potter. I'll have this fixed in two shakes."

And now he was left here, away from all of the others who'd Apparated back to various locations. Hermione's terse orders had sent him back to the hotel suite alone. The injustice made his blood boil even as curiosity dogged his heels. Where had the all the Ministry wizards come from? What on earth had Melinda Warren been doing there? Where was everyone now? Why hadn't they come back and told him something yet? Had they forgotten him?

And where the bloody hell was Ginny?

As if answering his very thoughts, the door adjoining his suite to Ron and Hermione's opened. Ron, his face so pale beneath the stark-white bandage that his freckles stood out like signs, entered. "How's the hand, mate?"

"What's going on?" The question exploded from him. "Where is everyone?"

"Ministry wizards have gone back to England, I reckon." Ron rubbed a hand over his hair, unconsciously making it imitate Harry's. "Hermione and Melinda are meeting with some Department of Ministries bloke. I imagine the twins and Neville are still in Neville's room with the healers."

"Ginny?"

"Dunno." Harry snarled, but Ron just shrugged. "She went off to find Tara, I think. I'd give her a bit of time. It's not like she's in danger now that they've handed Dermot over to the yanks."

Though he wanted to chase after Ginny, to ensure for himself that she was truly okay, Harry just nodded. She wasn't in danger any longer. He'd find her later.

"Any idea what's going on?" he asked, nodding toward the door where he was sure Hermione and Melinda were meeting with the Department of Mysteries wizard.

"Well, we've just managed to get the story out of Bear and Luna—"

"No, no. That's not important right now." Though it was, vitally so. Knowing that Bear and Luna had been found, safe and unconscious, lifted a huge load off of his chest. Those were two more deaths Ginny didn't need on her head. "Who were those wizards? How did they know to Apparate to right where we were?"

Ron crossed to the mini-bar and pulled out the clunky, inoffensive tumblers the hotel room provided. "Wish they had a good firewhiskey. The Muggle stuff'll have to do."

Harry watched as his best friend began to fix them both drinks. Stalling, he saw. Ron had something to tell him, something bad if it required the use of alcohol to impart. Everybody and his pet Puffskein knew that a house-elf could drink Harry Potter under the table.

"Don't toss that back," Ron muttered absently, handing Harry a drink. "You're going to want to stay sober for this part. Trust me."

By silent agreement, they sat down at the hotel room's tiny dining table. Neither drank, though both played with the ugly tumblers. Harry stared at Ron, who seemed unwilling to meet his eye. Finally, the redhead cleared his throat. "Harry, who do you think started the Tunnel?"

Of all of the things Harry expected to come out of his friend's mouth, this had never made the list. Harry stared at him, baffled. "You did, didn't you? Hermione, too, I expect, and the twins helped."

"Harry, we were barely nineteen years old then."

What on earth? "So?"

"So you never wondered how a couple of nineteen-year-olds started an international mercenary ring—and kept it going?"

Put that way, it did sound a bit impossible—and ridiculous. Harry frowned as he thought back. He'd played for the Chudley Cannons when he was nineteen, and had even nearly helped them win a game or two, if memory served correctly. But the Cannons Curse had lived on, even when Harry had been the first to the Snitch every single time. Ron had always been working late, Hermione later. That was the year Ron and Harry had finally worked up the nerve to move out of the Burrow and into the Hutch. The same year that Hermione had forced firewhiskey on him and began to help him in a way that he still didn't understand years later.

He scratched his head. "Well," he said, stabbing in the dark with his words, "you had Hermione, Ron, and she's the most brilliant witch to ever come out of Hogwarts. Then, er, there's you—you got an almost unheard-of position in the M.L.E.S. right off the bat. I just figured you had the, you know, aptitude or whatnot for it."

"I got that job because I survived the final battle. You and Hermione were offered the same position." Ron took a long drink. The old resentments had long faded, but sometimes they came back to sting him. Now wasn't one of those times. For the first time, he looked up and steadily at Harry. "Hermione and I didn't start the Tunnel."

"What?"

"It's been around for years. England's branch was, I don't know, defunct or something. Hermione read up about it at work the same day M.L.E.S. offered me a chance to start it up again—by their rules. We discussed it, agreed to get a branch going with Dean Thomas's help. We figured with you and my brothers, we had something like the Tunnel started anyway. A little organisation couldn't hurt, we reckoned. So we started it up, started taking on cases that were...just a hair outside the law, I guess." Ron shrugged. "Wasn't too different than some of the stuff we used to do at Hogwarts."

"I'm still amazed more professors didn't try to kill us," Harry joked weakly, wondering where on earth this conversation was going.

"You and the entire world. Anyway, we started it up, and you and the twins were helping a little by that point, but the M.L.E.S. started placing some restrictions that were just a bit – tight. They got a little too interested in some of our practices. So Hermione and I went rogue.

"We needed money to do that. So we told you we'd started something on our own, knowing you wouldn't back anything started by the Ministry. We branched out into the real Tunnel, became the real deal. It got to be so much that Dean transferred abroad, and Ginny headed to Prague."

Harry remembered it now, how stressful those first months had been. He frowned deeply, mentally cataloguing his feelings. Surprise, a little anger that he'd been lied to—anger that he'd well get over, as it wasn't a terribly huge thing—and bafflement. "So you took credit for an organisation that already exists. Big deal. What's that got to do with Dermot and what happened today?"

"Oi, have some patience, will you? I'm getting there."

"Well, get there quickly."

Ron wrinkled his nose. "Drink your whiskey."

Harry glared as he took a sip.

"The Ministry found out." Ron stared hard at his glass now, breaking eye contact with Harry. "We kept it hushed, I promise you we did, but somehow they found out about the Glass Table."

Harry frowned, thinking of the table that had solved so many of the Tunnel's problems over the years. "So?"

"It's extremely illegal to have that sort of mapping device. Too late, I found out that they've got some kind of tracking device for items like that."

Once again, Harry frowned, trying his hardest to remember the Ministry regulations Hermione had listed the first time she'd showed him the Glass Table. She'd mentioned a loophole of some sort, something to do with, absurdly enough, the Marauder's Map.

"But it doesn't show actual humans and their activities," Harry said, puzzled. "It only shows the infrastructures and things like that. Like the Marauder's Map only showed names."

Ron squinted at Harry, took a sip of whiskey. "Figured you'd remember as it had to do with just squeaking by rules and regulations," he remarked off-handedly, though Harry detected a note of pride in his voice. "Yeah, anyway, and the Glass Table was in construction at the time, Hermione and the twins were still working on it. That's one of the reasons we're not in Langoliyer right now."

Harry looked blank for a second, remembered that Langoliyer had been started up by the Aurors for those with minor infractions. They'd agreed the Dementors were no longer safe guardians of prisoners.

"So... the Ministry found out," Harry said. "Big deal." He'd been flaunting Ministry regulations for years. Hadn't they called him an idiot in his fifth year, after all?

Ron choked back a laugh. "Should've known you'd take it like this. I told Hermione — "

"So why's the Ministry working with the Tunnel now, if you went rogue?" Harry interrupted, wanting to get to the meat of the matter.

"The Glass Table." Ron shrugged. "It all comes back to that. They were holding Hermione and me on pretty heavy charges, even with the loophole. Thankfully, one of Hermione's bosses called her into his office one day and said that the Department of Mysteries was willing to cut us a deal — if we took on some projects on the side."

"Isn't that why you originally started the Tunnel, though? The, er, rogue version of it?"

"That's what we thought, too." Ron's eyes had a misty, faraway look; Harry wasn't entirely sure he was fully focused on the room around them. "We went round and round about that, but it turned out that the Unspeakables had a much better deal for us. They didn't try to run us the way the M.L.E.S. was going on about doing."

"What sort of projects?" Harry asked, his gaze narrowed. That explained, at least, how easy it had been for Ron to tap several Aurors to work with their interviews. If the Tunnel worked with the Department of Mysteries, they were unofficially part of the Ministry. No wonder such lax rules about interrogations stood up against the Wizengamot.

"You know I can't tell you that."

"Projects like the Fizzing Whizzbee Scandal?"

"Seriously, mate, have you even heard the term cloak-and-wand?"

Harry, who'd never heard of any such thing, though he might have stumbled upon a Muggle equivalent in the past, just frowned. "No."

"Well, the gist is, I can't tell you. I have, however, been authorised to tell you that Melinda Warren is an Unspeakable."

Harry, who'd made the unfortunate choice to take a drink, promptly coughed it all over the table. "Mel—Melinda Warren works for the Department of Mysteries?"

"She's a liaison to the Tunnel." Ron ignored the mess Harry had made of the table. "They only use her for special projects in the Quidditch world — she's dead useful for that sort of thing. I think."

"And her killer barrel roll," Harry put in.

Ron shrugged. "She's been working against Teddy Gingham for years now. She's near as brilliant as Hermione, but she doesn't talk, so you don't know it — "

Harry, who felt his head might explode with all of the things that had apparently been going on behind his back for years, shook his head again. "But if she's been working against Gingham and all of them for years, how come it was Dermot that leaked the information we were digging up to the Daily Prophet, and not her?"

"She wasn't expecting anybody to be after the information, so she didn't try to hide it in her flat. Dermot broke in and took it from her." Ron scooped his hair back so that parts of it stood up in soft, red spikes. "Problem is, we've only just received confirmation of that because he waited until she was on her way to the states until he did it. We thought he somehow got the information from your place — which, trust me, was a bloody nightmare — when all along, all he did was swipe it straight off of Melinda's kitchen table."

It was a long-shot that Dermot would even recognise Melinda's work and know enough to steal it, but Harry didn't put it beyond him. The man was military trained in reconnaissance and intelligence. Surely he'd spot another person gathering intelligence. That much, at least, made sense to Harry.

"So Melinda knew that Ginny and I were working on it," Harry surmised. "Why didn't she come to us? We could have helped."

"That was the Department's decision. We were simultaneously running two investigations, seeing if you and Ginny could come up with anything Melinda couldn't." Ron shrugged. "It's not always the most convenient way to do things, but sometimes it pays off."

"And did it?"

"Well, Gingham's on his way to Geroodhain right about now, so it did. Through a happy accident, thanks to Dermot Raine." Ron ran his hand through his hair again. "Never thought I'd be saying that. But it leads us to our second point. Dermot Raine."

"Was the Department of Mysteries involved in that, too?" Harry asked immediately.

"Not directly. They tried to be, at the beginning, but we didn't quite agree about how to go about things." Now Ron's frown was genuine and he took a sip of the whiskey. "They wanted to send Ginny to New Zealand."

"What?"

"They didn't want anybody that could convince the Witch Hunter to come to our shores. So they wanted to get rid of Ginny, as it were. Well, I talked to Bill about it, and the agreement was unanimous: we told them to stuff it."

The thought of Ginny being all the way in New Zealand, so far away, made Harry uncomfortably hot. He shifted a bit and frowned. "If the Department of Mysteries wasn't involved with all of that, why were they down in the sewers with the rest of us, then?"

"Hermione contacted Melinda because she thought — almost rightfully — that we were in over our heads. Thankfully, you and Ginny incapacitated Dermot on your own, so the Tunnel can take points for that victory — "

Harry, who didn't give a newt's eye about points, as long as Ginny was fine, just scowled. But Ron wasn't done. "So Hermione used that pamphlet she charmed from the stadium and tracked us, then she and Melinda Apparated down to join us. Lucky they did, too — I'm told Hermione had to stop you from outright kicking Dermot to death."

The thought of doing so had crossed his mind.

"So what now?" he asked. "Is Melinda heading back to work for the Department again? Is she dropping out of the tournament?"

"Oh, no," Ron said absently. "I think she told Hermione that she's turning her Unspeakable badge in and sticking to the Typhoon for good. Said something about finally finding the right team. As we speak, she's off giving Chris and Tracy a very limited rundown on what's happened — we're telling Bear the whole story, of course, can't have him running around Obliviated. Can't stand Oblivators Lockhart did to himself — but we've informed Chris Gingham of Ginny's true identity."

"Good to know," said a new voice.

Harry and Ron both twisted around to see Ginny standing in the doorway, still holding her hotel key card. She looked as pale as Ron, though there was no bandage hiding most of her face. Her left arm, however, was in a sling. She had probably been forced to swallow at least a gallon of knitting concoction, though Harry doubted it had done much good. She held an icepack, forgotten, in her other hand. For her knee, Harry remembered.

"So am I still employed by the Nottingham Typhoon?" she asked Ron, ignoring Harry altogether.

"Probably." Ron shrugged. "Chris Gingham's always raving about how they've got the best promoter in the league — Melinda told me she thinks he's going to promote you, actually, to manager — "

"Great," Ginny said, but she didn't appear enthusiastic. She shrugged her good shoulder. "That's good to know. Do me a favour, Ronald?"

His full name made Ron frown. "What?"

"Get out? I want some time with my boyfriend."

"Reasonable, I suppose." Ron tossed back the rest of his whiskey and rose from the table. "If the two of you have any more questions, we'll be finishing up the paperwork this entire mess has caused, just next door."

"Yeah, thanks," Harry said absently, his gaze never leaving Ginny. Once he heard the door click behind Ron, he rose and crossed the kitchenette to Ginny. "Are you okay?"

In return, she wrapped her good arm around him and leaned against him. "My shoulder and knee hurt. You?"

"Got my hand back — you can hardly tell Fred and George's project tried to eat it — " Though he wondered if he'd always bear those faint scrapes on his right hand. He had enough scars to put him in Moody's Hall of Fame Aurors' Club, so what was a couple more?

Ginny laughed hollowly. "Might not want to tell people that at the next benefit you attend for the shop."

"I'll keep that in mind. But you're truly okay?"

Ginny mulled over the question for a minute, then unexpectedly flashed him a brilliant smile, one so full of light that it almost hurt to look at. "I'm going to be," she informed him. "Right now, though, I'm kind of tired of thinking."

"Well, I've got an idea of something we can do that requires very little thought at all — " His smile was pointedly lewd.

Instead of flirting back, she frowned, puzzled. "Are you sure you're up for that? You hit your head pretty hard?"

He gave her a quizzical look. "You can play Exploding Snap with a head wound."

She twitched backwards and blinked at him. "You were talking about Exploding Snap?"

"Sure." His pause was purely for dramatic effect. "What were you thinking of?"

"I — " Ginny broke off and laughed, dropping her good arm away from him and stepping back. "Never mind. I've got a deck in the room. I'll just go fetch it — " She broke off at tapping from the window; both looked over, immediately recognising the hassled barn owl as belonging to Chris Gingham. "Apparently not. Bet you five Sickles that's for me."

"Looks like our lives aren't our own," Harry observed. "Again."


Four days later, Harry stood in the middle of the tiny kitchenette, listening for noises—for sounds of somebody rifling through the newspaper, or comparing Quidditch teams in the tournament, or even chatting casually about the weather. But there was nothing but silence, save for the comfortable whistle of the tea kettle, and his own breathing, of course.

It was an absolute miracle.

He smiled as he rummaged around for the chunky blue things the hotel called coffee mugs. Yanks didn't prefer tea, as a rule, but he'd scrounged some up, mostly out of desperation. He'd have preferred something stronger. The match determining the winners of the American Quidditch Open was only two hours away. For the first time in ages, it looked as though the Brits might have a chance at sending the yanks packing in shame. It sent a pleasant thrill through him as he sipped his tea.

A pile of letters sat on the counter, waiting to be read and replied to. Most of them were business, though a couple were short notes from friends or Tunnel members. Harry had no doubt they'd be congratulating him in the victory against Dermot. He wasn't sure how he felt about that, so he ignored them and instead began to browse through the business letters.

He gave Ginny an absent look when she wandered in, no doubt just back from a meeting. "How'd it go?"

"Bunch of gladhanders who wanted to suck up to the girlfriend of the great Harry Potter. About what I expected. Chris is really enjoying touting that angle."

Ginny poured herself a cup of tea and leaned back with it to study him. Wrapped up in a report of one of Emma D. Barnaby's charities changing headquarters, he didn't notice. "Where is everyone? I know Tara, Euan and George went out to catch a matinee before your match, but where are the others?"

"Haven't the vaguest idea." Harry looked up to smile fully. He cocked his head. "Would you listen to that? Quiet."

She laughed. "Missed that, have you?"

"No bickering, no planning, no betting on matches. Just quiet." Harry gave a dramatically blissful sigh. "No bloody chaos."

Ginny just laughed again, and watched him as he continued to peruse the letters. She moved over to the counter, peeled off her robes to reveal Muggle jeans and a button-up shirt beneath them. He gave her no more than a half-hearted notice.

At length, she picked up her tea, put it hastily aside, stretched. Harry didn't pay her any mind.

"Harry?"

"Hmm?" His mind was full of the investment ideas Charlie Weasley had sent him about the Claw, Tooth and Scale Dragon Home. He didn't look up, and therefore missed the catty confidence that slid into her eyes.

"Now that all this bother and fuss with Dermot's out of the way, I've been doing some thinking."

Was investing in a dragon stable even a good idea? Harry had no idea. He'd have to ask somebody who wasn't a Weasley, and therefore wasn't swayed by family loyalty. Puzzling that over, he lifted an eyebrow at Ginny. "About what?"

"Well, to be honest, I think it's time we had sex, don't you?"

The coffee mug slipped right out of his hand. "I beg your pardon?"

She met his gaze evenly. "You heard me."

He wasn't sure he had. All thoughts of Charlie Weasley's dragon stables slipped out of his mind. In fact, every single coherent thought he'd ever had raced away, leaving him blank and staring. He could only hope that his jaw wasn't dangling. "I don't think I heard you right," he said, the words heavy and foolish in his mouth. "Did you just say that you think it's time we had sex?"

He expected her to laugh uproariously and tell him it was a joke. Some small part of him hoped for that, but that part was currently drowned in the shock the rest of his system suffered. And still there was part of him, the part just behind his sternum, that began to thrum quickly between hot and cold.

But she didn't laugh. Instead, she met his eye. "Yeah. I said that."

"But...but..." He sputtered for a minute, blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "I've a match in two hours—"

Amusement lit up her eyes. Ignoring the shattered coffee mug, she took a step toward him. Blocking him in. "Oh? You think it'll take that long? Confident, are you?"

Somewhere deep—perhaps very, very deep—inside of him, there was a witty rejoinder to that comment. The majority of him, however, could do little more than hope his tongue didn't start wagging, especially when she took another step.

"I, ah, er—" He wished there were words. Where were the words? They'd never failed him quite so spectacularly before. Belatedly, he realised that his jaw was swinging gently in the breeze. He levered it shut.

Ginny, on the other hand, didn't seem bothered. Her eyes never left his as she flicked her wand at the pile of smashed ceramics and the tea that had seeped, unnoticed, into Harry's socks. Immediately, the cup sprang back together, and was quickly Banished to the counter. Harry didn't pay it a single bit of attention. He was too busy fighting that rumble beneath his sternum, a rumble that he was quite certain could become a full-forced growl if he didn't put a lid on things soon.

But Ginny didn't seem to know that. She took another step forward, smirking with that impish grin that he had always found so attractive. Right now, however, it made his throat feel as dry as the Sahara. He cleared it, and it sounded to his dazed ears like a rusty, broken engine trying to get one last spurt of life before danger hit.

"You know," Ginny said, slinking a step closer and sending his blood pressure rocketing through the roof like a rogue Bludger, "it's entirely possible that I'm using you."

"U-using me?"

"I have a lot of issues. I could be using you to get past them."

He couldn't say he minded. Or at least, he didn't think he did. He couldn't tell. His thoughts were a blur.

"And it might take a while," Ginny finished, "so I really hope you don't mind."

He meant to say "Do your worst." In fact, the words sat in the front of his brain, ready to be formed into actual physical sounds. But what came out instead was somewhere between a croak and a growl. And he moved forward, closing the distance between them. He might have caught her off guard, for she chuckled a bit against his mouth before she became busy with other things.

The next few minutes passed quite enjoyably, though to his honest opinion, they seemed a bit of a blur — a very happy blur in which they were so entangled in each other that Harry wasn't quite sure where one ended and the other began. With barely a thought to the last time this had happened, he fumbled for the buttons on her shirt — felt her fingers doing a much better job undoing his own shirt buttons — he began to work his way down her neck, nibbling and —

"Ahem."

Harry leaped back as though somebody had dumped scalding potion over the both of them. A sense of dread accompanied him as he swiveled his head about. He wasn't disappointed: standing in the open door of the hotel room, gaping in shock, was what seemed like the entire Weasley family. Realistically, his mind told him that it was only Bill and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, but they were the three last people on earth that he wanted to see right now. They eyed him and Ginny, caught somewhere between skeptical and thoroughly disapproving.

Before any of them could say anything about the fact that Ginny's shirt flapped open in the breeze, voices from the hallway drifted in.

"Not surprising the Arches lost—who names a team after Arches?"

"I expect that they were named for the St. Louis Arch – it's a famously large Muggle landmark here in the states – "

Inside the room, Mr. Weasley was a delicate shade of pink. "Er, afternoon, Harry, Ginny—"

The greeting seemed to startle Mrs. Weasley into action. "Ginny," she hissed at her youngest, "your shirt – "

"What? Oh, right," Ginny said blithely, though the tips of her ears were just as red as her mother's. She hastily began to fumble with the fastenings Harry had undone in his ardor.

Harry's face, he was sure, was flushed geranium red as he cleared his throat and attempted not to look at the Weasleys as though he hadn't been about to shag their daughter on the kitchen floor. "Er, have a good trip? Mr. Weasley? Mrs. Weasley? Portkey get off all right?"

Though it was torture to meet the Weasleys' eyes, he made sure not to look at Bill, who he was positive looked absolutely capable of committing a nice Avada Kedavra on the spot.

Mr. Weasley, on the other hand, looked as though he'd like nothing more than to escape this situation. Looking a bit desperate as he clutched his hat in front of him, he opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off by the sound of Ron elbowing his way into the room.

"If you're going to build a giant landmark," he was saying to Hermione and the twins, who'd followed him in, "why not make it something useful, like a Quidditch stadium or – hey, why's Ginny messing with her shirt – "

He trailed off and his gaze locked on Harry's. Behind him, the twins arrived at the same conclusion if their identical stony glares were anything to go by.

Faced with two mortified parents, four angry brothers, and one traitorously amused Hermione, Harry wondered seriously, not for the first time in his life, if he were about to meet his end. He wished that his wand wasn't sitting on the counter, a very dangerous three feet out of reach. He was very aware of the fact that he faced a clan of Weasleys wandless, with his shirt very tellingly open to the waist and his hair a sight more rumpled than usual.

Ginny cleared her throat beside him, startling him into fully looking at her. The moment he did, he regretted it. His heart betrayed him by pounding more strongly than ever, sending that pleasant rush of blood to his head; she was just as rumpled as he was, very sexily so, that red hair falling out of its prim hairstyle. Beneath the freckles, her skin was flushed. He found it safer to stare at the floor.

"Well," Ginny said, her voice falsely bright, "this is awkward, isn't it?"

Harry's gaze moved to his wand, then flitted back to the Weasley brothers. If he jumped for it, would he be able to counter any of the curses they were destined to fling at him?

He doubted it.

"Yeah, Harry," said one of the twins, whom Harry couldn't tell apart in their stony countenances. "Mind telling us what exactly is going on here?"

Ginny scowled and rounded on him, but to everybody's surprise, Mrs. Weasley whirled on all four of her boys. "You lot – out!"

"But, Mum – "

"Gone! Out!" Obviously reluctant, Ron and the twins began to slink from the room. Their glares promised horrible, foul things to Harry—at a later date, when Mrs. Weasley wasn't there to protect him. Mrs. Weasley made shooing motions with her hands. "I'll handle this myself! I mean that, William Arth— "

Bill had been glaring ferociously at him, but at Mrs. Weasley's admonition, he looked pained. "Mum —"

"Get! Shoo!"

Once all four Weasleys—and Hermione—had slunk from the room, Mrs. Weasley finally rounded on Ginny and Harry. "And what," she demanded in a voice slightly higher than normal, "is the meaning of all this?"

Harry stared desperately at the icebox, entreating it to swallow him whole. When it didn't, he took a deep breath and began to fidget nervously with the knob on his watch. "Mrs. Weasley—"

"Oh, no you don't!"

Harry jumped, but Mrs. Weasley hadn't been addressing him. She was glaring instead at Arthur, who'd been trying to sidle from the room after his sons.

"This is your daughter, too!" Mrs. Weasley screeched at him. "You will deal with this!"

Arthur twisted his hat between his hands, eyeing the door as though it were a particularly scrumptious-looking pumpkin pasty. "But, Molly—"

Molly, however, had moved on to other things. "Ginevra Molly Weasley," she snapped, and Ginny, despite herself, jumped at the use of her full name. "Explain yourself!"

Now it was Ginny's turn to look pained. She picked up Harry's tea, discovered the mug empty, and picked up her own instead. Perfectly blasé. Harry was torn between wishing for even an ounce of her decorum, and wanting to warn her not to poke at her mother. This could not end well. "I'm nearly twenty three. I'm a bit old to have to explain myself to you, don't you think?"

He'd never seen that shade of eggplant rage on anybody's face before, not even when the twins had locked Ron in the shed with one of their inventions just before sixth year. He stared with morbid fascination at Molly's face as it began through a kaleidoscope of red—angry umber to furious beetroot, to outraged puce. Somewhere between beetroot and puce, he got that distinct feeling that he should run away, far and fast. But Ginny just held her ground, her face perfectly bland. The only sign of fear was that the coffee mug in her hand shook.

Though, come to think of it, that could have been anger, too.

Mrs. Weasley seemed to be beyond the capacity for coherent sentences. Staring accusatively at her daughter, she spluttered. "Sex before marriage — an unmarried woman — scarlet — "

"I've had sex before, Mum," Ginny said at her most bored. "For that matter, so's Harry."

Harry shot her a desperate "don't drag me into this!" look.

Mr. Weasley saw an opportunity to flee and cleared his throat. "Harry, might I have a word? Er, out there?" He pointed toward the hallway, where Harry knew for a fact that the other four Weasleys were waiting to ambush him.

Still, one look at Mrs. Weasley's face had him deciding. He practically ran from the room, but he still heard Ginny mutter, quite clearly, "Coward," as he retreated behind Mr. Weasley.

Sure enough, Ron, George, Fred, and Bill stood in the hallway, their arms crossed over their chests and their expressions homicidal. Harry was positive that if Mr. Weasley hadn't been there, they would have tackled him straight-off. But Mr. Weasley just cleared his throat loudly. "Nothing to see here, boys. Move it along."

Once it was just Harry and Mr. Weasley in the hallway—neither quite sure where to look—Mr. Weasley cleared his throat again. An eternity of thoroughly uncomfortable silence stretched between them as both men shifted their feet and avoided each others' eyes. Through the door, they could hear Mrs. Weasley and Ginny shouting at each other, though the door muffled the words to unintelligible rants. Finally, Mr. Weasley said, in a strained voice, "I had no idea the two of you were even dating."

"Er, for several months now, sir."

"Oh. Oh, right." Mr. Weasley finally seemed to realise that he was mutilating his hat. He set it, wreckage and all, atop his head. "And what are your, er, intentions toward her, may I ask?"

Where was a Death Eater to kill him when he needed one? Harry glanced wildly at the walls, wishing to be anywhere—anywhere—else on earth but here. Meanwhile, his mind raced, thinking of something, anything to say that would keep Mr. Weasley from killing him on the spot. When his mind stumbled upon it, he actually jumped, though it was the truth. Before he lost his nerve, he blurted it out.

"Well, sir, I think I might, er, love her."

He stood, tense though he didn't have his wand, ready for an attack that never came. For Mr. Weasley, after staring inscrutably at him for several long moments, threw his head back and roared with laughter. Harry gaped.

"Really, son," Mr. Weasley said, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes as he continued to chuckle, "do you need a glass of water or something?"

"Er, what?"

"You look a bit surprised, that's all."

Harry opened his mouth to say something, but before any sound could emerge, raised voices from the hotel room beside them interrupted him. "I am NOT a scarlet woman, Mum! And just for your information, I will have sex with whomever I choose, whenever I choose!"

Very abruptly, Harry had a hard time meeting Arthur's eye all over again.

As if the universe were finally taking pity on him, his watch—unbeknownst to him, nearly an hour ahead by all his nervous ministrations to it—began to shrill. "Locker room!" Harry practically shouted, grateful for any excuse whatsoever.

Mr. Weasley seemed to have an equally hard time meeting his eye. "Er, right, well, good luck, then, I suppose. I'll just, ah —"

"GINEVRA MOLLY WEASLEY!"

"—Go that way, I suppose," Mr. Weasley finished. And without meeting Harry's eye yet again, he hurried off.


The utter, bone-crunching and deep mortification had not worn off by the time Harry reached the Typhoon locker room. Still a bit dazed, he waved aside the security wizards posted outside the room, and wandered inside. His head felt a bit foggy, as though somebody had hit him with a brain-fuzz charm.

Thankfully, most of the team hadn't arrived yet. He saw only Tad, suiting up on the men's side of the room, and Tracy, who seemed to be absorbed in a novel of some sort, already robed and ready.

""Lo Harry," Tad greeted, giving him a nod. "You're early."

Harry made a grunt that Tad took for a greeting or an assent.

"Did you catch anything on the wireless last night? I swear, these yanks don't understand the value of a good wireless programme…"

"That's because they've all got tellies," Tracy called from the women's half.

"And what's the point in that? If you have to watch and listen, you can't do the more useful things that need to be done." Tad rolled his eyes at the absurdity of it all, and then peered hard at Harry. "Oi, mate, you all right? Get attacked by fans on the way here? Your shirt's undone."

Harry glanced down fuzzily, sighed. "Curse it," he swore without rancor and solved the matter by simply peeling the garment off.

"Seriously, though, are you all right?"

"Ginny's parents are here." Harry tossed the shirt aside and crossed not to his locker, but to Tad's. The other man watched as he reached in and pulled out the Beater's Bat. Tad had etched his wife's name on the handle, below the tape. He took this now as Harry held it out. "Please."

Tad shifted the bat, his eyebrows low in confusion. "What?"

"Beat me with it round the head a few times, will you? Put me out of my misery."

"Her parents can't be that bad, can they?"

Harry just stared at him.

Curiosity had Tracy coming round to the men's side of the room, her book forgotten under one arm. "What's all this about, then?"

"The in-laws have arrived," Tad informed her.

Harry looked pained. "They're not my in-laws. Which may be part of the problem, as had they walked in ten minutes later, I might be the groom of what the yanks call a shotgun wedding."

Both Tracy and Tad stared at him. Tracy understood first; her face cleared and she hooted with laughter. "Got caught doing something a bit naughty with Miss Weasley, have we, Potter?"

Harry turned away from them both and finally yanked open his locker. He reached past the grey uniform and yanked out the trousers. Without a single thought to modesty in front of Tracy, he swapped them for his own slacks. "I have to admit, their timing was spectacular. And of course, they had not only her eldest brother with them, but the twins and my best mate, too. It was like a friggin' comedy, except somebody forgot to warn me that I'd be at the butt of the joke."

"Oh, come off it," Tad told him bracingly. "In a few years, they'll have forgot all about it."

"I highly doubt that," Harry muttered darkly. He reached for his undershirt.

When the locker room door opened again, all three turned as one. Ginny entered, still a bit red from her fight with her mother. Her gaze immediately locked on Harry's, ignoring Tad and Tracy completely. "Do you have a minute?"

"I have a few of them, as most of the team isn't here yet." And Harry was glad to escape Tracy and Tad's speculative looks. Hastily grabbing his over-robes, he followed Ginny from the locker room and down the hall.

"Well," Ginny said once they were heading down the hall, away from the security wizards and the press agents (Harry ducked his head and tried very hard not to look like himself). "That was certainly very awkward."

"You think? A little warning that your parents might be dropping by would be nice next time."

Ginny pinked again. "Honestly, I had no idea they were coming. It was a surprise—the twins paid for a few days' vacation for them, and they wanted to see you play."

"Well, they saw something, that's for sure." The mortification was slowly fading to exasperation with both of them. "For Merlin's sake, we were close to doing it on the kitchen floor, and they nearly got a free show."

"I didn't seem to mind it before they arrived, now did I?" Ginny shot back, annoyance bleeding into her tone as well.

Seeing an alcove off the main corridor ahead, a perfect spot for talking, he aimed for it. And quickly backed away once he saw that it was already occupied. "Is there something in the bloody water in this place? What is it with people today?"

Bear surfaced from where he had been wrapped around Stacy Harrows. "Get your own alcove, mate—"

Ginny hurriedly cleared her throat and grabbed Harry's sleeve. "Don't worry, we're doing that."

Harry hissed his irritation as she dragged him away. "He wasn't supposed to kiss her until after we've won the game, that was the bet —"

"Given the display we witnessed back there, I'd say they've been doing a bit more than just kissing. Here, this'll work. This team's gone home, nobody's using this room." And Ginny pulled him into the Bismarck Flickertails' locker room, long abandoned since Harry and the Typhoon had beaten the team. The lighting seemed to have been permanently turned off, but Ginny just waved her wand at the lighting sconces and they sprang to life. In the wincing candlelight, she studied him. "My brothers haven't hexed you, have they?"

"Your dad didn't give them the chance, and I'm smarter than you think. I escaped."

Ginny nodded, her face now tightly white. "Wise. And nice, not to see my boyfriend with an extra arm growing out of his head."

"Oh, they'll do a lot worse than that when they get to me."

Ginny didn't seem to have any reply to this. She just looked at him, her face still that odd white colour. And finally, the tiniest of smiles appeared. As though the sight of it cracked something in Harry, he began to smile back, then to grin, and finally to laugh. By then, Ginny was laughing alongside him—they chuckled so hard that they had to hold each other up—and finally slid bonelessly to the ground right inside the locker room door, tears of mirth streaming down their faces.

"Did you see Mum's face?" Ginny laughed. "I thought she would have a coronary on the spot—"

"No, I didn't, I was too afraid—but Bill—"

"Nice shade of magenta. Fetching colour on him, too—"

"And when Ron walked in, prattling on about arches or whatever?"

They laughed until their sides hurt, reliving the shocked faces of Ginny's family now that the fear was suitably far in the distance. Finally, as Harry dashed mirthful tears from his eyes and Ginny hiccupped, they leaned back against the wall. Ginny rested her head on his shoulder and, quite companionable, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

"How many years do you think it'll take for us to live that particular scene down?" Harry wondered aloud.

"Dunno, but they're expecting a wedding out of us soon."

"W-wedding?" Quite inexplicably, Harry felt his chest constrict as though a big fist had reached down and squeezed. He wheezed—which only made Ginny begin to snort with giggles.

"Your face!" she gasped, poking him in the ribcage and making him jump. "S'priceless!"

But Harry was fighting to breathe properly. "It's all a bit… soon, isn't it?" he asked, desperately hoping that the past twenty minutes had been nothing but a very bad, prolonged nightmare. "For a wedding?"

Ginny's giggles disappeared and she looked up at him earnestly, her gaze steady. "Well, my family certainly thinks we're sleeping together, and in their eyes, I suppose that means we're to be married. It'd be nice to oblige them, don't you think?"

For a long time, he stared at her, hearing the words but not quite comprehending them. A…wedding? Like the one Bill and Fleur had had years before, that he only vaguely remembered? Roses and dress robes and cake—though he wouldn't have minded cake, come to think of it—and saying "I do?" Though he imagined the thought of spending the rest of his life with Ginny should fill him with a certain warmth, all he felt was the cold steel of dread at the thought of yet another wedding.

Ginny, however, didn't seem to think so. She continued to study him levelly.

"Really, shouldn't we, ah, give this a bit more, er, thought before we begin thinking about things like commit—like weddings…" Harry trailed off, realizing with some disgust that he was about five seconds from throwing himself at her mercy and begging her never to mention the nuptial ceremony ever again.

"What, you don't like weddings?" Ginny asked, driving the nail home.

"It's not that, it's just—"

But Ginny grinned. "Relax, Harry. It's too early to be talking about marriage. I was just having a bit of fun at your expense—if you could have seen your face—"

Quite abruptly, the thing squeezing his chest to pulp vanished, and Harry stared, narrow-eyed at her. "Very funny."

But Ginny was giggling too hard to reply. She stopped when Harry's watch shrieked, making both of them jump once more. "Now I've really got to get to the locker room," he muttered, staring at the symbols on the edge of his watch. "Do me a favour?"

"Sure, what?"

"Keep your brothers from hexing me mid-match, please?"

"I'll do my best," Ginny promised. She walked him back to the locker room and left him with a send-off that would have made her brothers hex him all over again, though he certainly didn't mind. Feeling a bit warmer, though still a bit shaken, he walked into the locker room and hoped that he'd forget about this whole mess by the time he had to find the Snitch.


Ginny debated her options. She was more than welcome to stick alongside the team and accompany Chris Gingham and Tad and Frank's wives up to the family press box, where Chris had undoubtedly purchased champagne. But her family would be up there soon, officially serving as Harry Potter's closest relatives. And she just didn't want to face her family right now.

So Ginny sought out Tara and Euan, who'd made it back to the hotel suite and were watching the telly. Though she'd suspected a romance between them, they had nearly an entire sofa between them. Obligingly, Ginny dropped into the middle of it and helped herself to a Cauldron Cake. "How was the film?" she asked.

"Awful," Tara said just as Euan said, "Fantastic!"

Ginny raised her left eyebrow.

"Too many explosions, and the dialogue was crap," Tara informed her. "Giant robots coming to fight their final battle on earth? Come on, that's just dumb."

Euan, however, nearly bounced excitedly. Sometimes Ginny forgot that he was several years younger than the rest of them, but in his excitement he seemed at least a decade younger. "Not just any robots," he told Ginny with relish. "They formed those Muggle whatsits—"

"They turned into cars," Tara cut him off. "Utter crap."

Pecking from the window made all three look over. Ginny didn't recognise the bedraggled barn owl that tapped desperately, its feathers in heavy disarray. "Hooter!" Euan cried, leaping from the sofa and racing over to throw open the window.

Both Ginny and Tara stared as he quickly untied a grubby letter from the owl's leg. They'd been stationed in the states, in the Muggle for far too long. "You named your owl Hooter?" Tara finally asked.

"Yeah, what of it?" Euan wasn't giving them any mind; he was instead poring over the letter, ignoring the owl that pecked feebly at his sleeve. "I was twelve, and he was loud."

Tara and Ginny exchanged a look. "Er, no reason," Ginny muttered, thinking of a chain of American restaurants that emphasised certain assets of the female figure. "Who's the letter from?"

But Euan just smiled and headed to his room in the suite, leaving the two women alone with the blaring telly. After a minute, Ginny reached over for the remote, searched the buttons, and hit the power button. She then stowed it beneath the cushion, just in case her father came in. She didn't fancy having to explain to the hotel manager how the room's remote had become something as absurd as a shrink ray or something that Mr. Weasley could dream up.

"So…" Tara prompted, digging her elbow into Ginny's ribs "Now that he's gone, I have to know. Why're you red?"

Ginny had a brief and unpleasant flashback of her mother's red face. "No reason," she lied.

"Must be serious," Tara observed, "for you to try and hide it."

"Just a fight with Mum. The usual." This time her watch beeped and she remembered belatedly that she had agreed to meet Chris Gingham before the match. She groaned. "I'd better get changed into proper robes before Mum has another coronary."

Tara, claiming there wasn't anything good on the TV, offered to change into "proper" robes as well and accompany her. Figuring that her brothers couldn't kill her if there was a witness around, Ginny agreed. They made short work of polishing up and heading down to the pitch, where crowds were already amassing, practically quivering in anticipation of the championship game.

"It's nice to be the best friend of a woman dating somebody famous," Tara observed as they were escorted through security to the Typhoon press box.

Ginny squared her shoulders, ignoring the comment. "Time to get to work."

With the opening release only an hour away, the press box swam with people, all wanting to talk to Chris or her—and Tara, by association. By the time the five minute warning klaxon sounded, her head was full of names and promotional opportunities. Everybody, even American promoters, seemed to want a piece of the hot, young team from England. Ginny had a handbag full of business cards that she discretely handed to Tara to sort. The other woman understood American promotions much better than she did.

"Ginny!" Hermione appeared at her elbow, having entered without Ginny spotting her. She grinned around Ginny at Tara, turned back to Ginny. Her expression was pure mischief, something she had undoubtedly learned from Ron or Harry. "How're you holding up? Seen any of your brothers yet?"

"No, thank Merlin. Where're they at?"

"Last I checked, Fred and George were trying to smuggle something past security. Ron's around here somewhere, though, with Bill and your parents." Hermione, who'd always had the misfortune of being shorter than most everybody around her, craned her neck to look past a particularly tall wizard in front of her. "Which team did you say Harry was playing today?"

"The Phoenix Tail Feathers."

"They call themselves the Tail Feathers? That's an odd—"

"No, they're actually from Phoenix. In Arizona," Tara informed her.

Hermione mulled that over for a second. "Fitting," she decided.

Ginny heard something shift beside her sister-in-law and turned to see Ron, who still looked as though he might be capable of murder. He grinned fiercely at her and cracked his knuckles. "I caught the last match the Tail Feathers played. They're real fond of hitting Bludgers at the Seekers – "

"If you think Harry isn't good at ducking by now, you're a real git," Ginny told him coolly. "And besides, I started it."

The tips of Ron's ears went scarlet as Tara looked up in interest. "Started what?" she asked, looking from brother to sister.

But neither Ginny nor Ron had to answer, for a strong wind started around the stadium, dislodging empty Butterbeer cups and abandoned programmes into the air. It began to howl; the announcer cleared his throat. A perfect grey funnel cloud formed dead center of the pitch. "LADIES AND GENTS! ALL THE WAY FROM NOTTINGHAM, ENGLAND, OUR GUEST TEAM – "

With a crash, seven grey blurs hit the air, flying straight into the funnel cloud of wind. Instead of being thrown from their brooms, however, they formed a perfect V with Bear leading, waving at the crowd as they sped by.

"WINSLOW – HARROWS – WARREN – HARROWS – GREELEY – GIDEON – AAAAAND POTTER!"

The Typhoon press box exploded with noise. Fred and George, who had slid by security, threw streamers of grey, blue, and red into the air. Even Hermione shouted until her voice was hoarse.

When the Typhoon had completed their lap, the crowd began to thrum, reminding Ginny that they were the strangers here. Red and yellow began to appear in the crowd, wands sending sparks high into the air. Somewhere in the tallest bleachers, the chant began: "PHOENIX – PHOENIX – PHOENIX – "

And the Quidditch pitch burst into flame.

Despite herself, Ginny jumped back, and felt every Tunnel member around her do the same. Ron even had his wand up in the defensive position, but he very quickly dropped it back to his side, mumbling, "Sorry — reflex."

Judging by the fans' reactions, though, the pitch en flambé was expected. Sure enough, the announcer crackled back to life and shouted, "AND I GIVE YOU YOUR HOME TEAM, THE PHOENIX TAAAAAIL FEATHERS! THOMAS – MCGILL – PIKE – RAMSEY – KISHI – SCHAFER – AAAND SPIER!"

The Phoenix Tail Feathers burst out, streaks of bright red and brighter yellow, no more than blurs as they sped around the pitch. Sparks shot out of the back of their brooms, raining down in yellow and red flowers over the crowd as they sped by. Speeding over a flaming pitch, they'd made quite an impressive entrance, a great deal showier than Nottingham's tornado. The Typhoon didn't seem to notice; Ginny craned her neck and spotted them in a huddle, laughing (albeit a bit nervously—she could tell from the way Harry kept rumpling his hair, and Tad shifted his grip on his bat) and joking with Bear. Since their foray in the alcove, Stacy and Bear looked in better spirits than they had for the entire Open.

"Wow," Tara said as they all watched Frank put Mel into a mock headlock. Bear and Frank seemed to be squabbling for the honor of rescuing her, while the victim laughed at all of them. "They're goofing around like a bunch of first years. It's like they're not afraid of losing at all."

"They're not," Ginny said absently. "They're all just here for the fun of it."

The Tail Feathers, on the other hand, seemed to be in the arena solely for the purpose of winning. They glared across the pitch, as though insulted that the other team would dare have fun. Ginny raised her eyebrows; for a team that had battled its way to the top of the tournament through sheer ferocity, the Tail Feathers seemed... awfully young. Six witches and one wizard, all a great deal younger than Harry, who was the youngest member of the Typhoon.

Around the two teams, the crowd grew wilder as the announcer moved through the requisite pre-game announcements and promotions. Ginny watched as Harry's eyes slid over it, as bemused as he always was when faced by crowds. Finally, he looked up at the press box and his eyes found hers. He grinned—but happened to glance just to her left. She frowned when he quickly looked away, turning a delicate shade not dissimilar to split pea soup.

Annoyed, Ginny whirled on Ron. "Cut that out!"

He tried to look innocent. "What?"

"He's got to play Quidditch and he can't do that if he thinks you're going to jinx him every time he turns around! For the love of Merlin's little green apples – "

Bill, who'd been drinking Butterbeer to Ginny's right, choked. "Ginny — language—"

"You're not Mum, you know," Ginny informed him waspishly. She looked around and dropped her voice. "And just so the lot of you know, it's my business who I sleep with and when, so all of you can sod off, got that?"

Though her brothers looked grumpy, Tara rocked back on her heels and craned her neck to get a better look at Harry on the pitch. "Hmm," she said brightly in a voice patented to get Ginny in trouble. "This is just an observation, as it's apparently none of my business, but I just want to say that Ginny can't have slept with Harry yet."

Ginny gave up as every one of her brothers turned puce and Hermione perked up, finally interested in a conversation taking place near a Quidditch match. "Why not? How do you know?" she asked.

"If she had, he'd be a lot more relaxed now, wouldn't he?"

Ginny simply closed her eyes. This was turning into the game that wouldn't end—and it hadn't even started yet.


The Tail Feathers' reputation for brutality had been well-earned. As the home team and the ones actually from the country, they were quickly adopted as the crowd favourite. And it was a bit disconcerting to hear almost everybody in the stadium cheering when one of his friends took a particularly nasty hit from the Bludger. Only the Nottingham Typhoon press box remained silent when one of Schafer's or McGill's Bludgers narrowly missed Harry. And he practically heard the wince from the box when Mel took a vicious blow to the back of the head.

Not that it stopped her. Three hours into the match, and the Typhoon Chasers were leading Phoenix on a merry, well, chase. They were up by fifty points. It wasn't a solid lead, but it had the crowd booing whenever one of the Typhoon chasers neared the Phoenix goal posts.

Harry, meanwhile, was discovering again just how inadequate his Chasing ability was. He tried to keep up with the trio, but they were in top form—they literally flew circles around him.

"Just try to find the Snitch—we'll be fine!" Tracy called on one fly-by.

Harry didn't reply, as he was too busy doing a barrel roll to avoid McGill's malicious Bludger. He felt a breeze as it just missed his forehead, and spared the Beater a glare. The strawberry blonde woman just grinned and tossed him a salute.

"Bloody yanks," he grumbled under his breath. "The instant I get back to England, I'm never playing Chaser again."

"As if we would want you to!" Stacy called on her way by.

Harry just made a face at her.

But ten minutes of desperately seeking the Snitch told him that the Chasers were beginning to flag. They were essentially playing three-against-four without Harry to help them. Spier, the other team's Seeker, didn't seem to be searching very earnestly for the Snitch. Harry knew better; he'd seen the woman's gaze tracking the entire pitch while her teammates went for a toss-back from their Keeper.

Seeing the strain on Mel's face, he made his decision. Even while he sought out the Snitch, he made his way breezily towards the Tail Feathers goal posts. Behind him, he heard the play break out—Tracy stole the Quaffle, shot it to her sister—Stacy arrowed forward, passed it to Mel—Mel barrel-rolled and—

"I'm open!" Harry shouted.

Without missing a beat, Mel hurtled the ball at him. It hit his hand with a smack that would ache for weeks. He tucked it under his arm, dove for it. With only a split second to aim, he threw it as hard as he could — it soared toward the middle hoop — Kishi made a desperate lunge —

"GOAL! SCORE ONE FOR POTTER, THE RELUCTANT CHASER!"

Harry heard the flashbulbs on the sideline explode with smoke, capturing the moment, but he didn't care. The journalists knew as well as he did that the goal had been his first in professional Quidditch.

"Great job!" Stacy flew by.

Tracy streaked by on his other side. "Now find the Snitch and let's go home!" She raised a fist in the air, and shouted: "For England!"

"For England!" echoed the rest of the team.

Harry's goal seemed to put more energy into the rest of the Chasers. They flew at the Tail Feathers with renewed vigor, manic grins on their faces. This caused the Tail Feathers' Beaters to double their efforts, though they aimed most often at Harry. Unable to keep the wolfish grin off his face, he ducked Bludger after Bludger, his eyes never pausing in their search.

"Oi, Frank!" he shouted as he dodged what had to be the fiftieth Bludger. "Mind watching out for a bloke?"

"Sorry, Harry," Frank grunted as he swatted the Bludger at Pike and Ramsey, who shrieked and split up to avoid it. "They keep hitting it at you — your head's so large, easy target. Can't be helped!"

Harry snickered.

The Snitch had been spotted thrice by the time the Tail Feathers managed to catch up in points, but each time it vanished before Harry or Spier could reach it. Spier seemed to be taking cues from him; she had given up on Chasing and was drifting over the pitch very much like he was, scanning every inch for a flash of gold.

Only, Harry thought, this was the strangest gold he had ever seen. The first time he had spotted the Snitch, he hadn't been sure that it was the actual thing. He was positive that the flash had been red, not gold. It wasn't until Spier dove for it that he realised it was actually the Snitch, and the Tail Feathers were going to win unless he acted fast. In the two times he had seen it since, Harry confirmed it: this Snitch was a bright, flashy red.

What on earth?

"The Snitch is red!" he shouted to Bear while the Chasers took the Quaffle to the other end of the pitch.

"Yeah—didn't you read the rule books, Potter? Finals game has a red Snitch!" Bear waved him away as the Tail Feathers Chasers came hurtling toward their half of the pitch.

"Now they tell me," Harry muttered, and scowled. First he was an informal Chaser, now he was supposed to find a red Snitch? What was the bloody world coming to?

It didn't help that the Tail Feathers' uniforms were a bright, flashy red, nor that the Typhoon had red stripes on their sleeves and across their chests. Harry paused above the Typhoon hoops, seeking out every piece of red and categorising it as best he could. Red sleeve—that was Tracy, zooming by—and there was the red on the sleeves of Thomas, the bold brunette that was surprisingly adept at Keeper. Pike, the Chaser with amazing accuracy, had hair that was a flaming red, not unlike the Snitch or Ginny's...

And when Frank went to back-beat a Bludger, he spotted more red than he ever wanted to see on the other man's underpants. "Wonderful," he groused. Finding a red Snitch was going to be next to impossible.

He didn't find it first, either. Proof of his sour luck surfaced once again when Spier, only a mere twenty yards away from him, went into a steep dive. Without giving any thought to the fact that it might be a feint, Harry swore and dropped flat against his broom handle. Up ahead, he saw it—the telltale flicker of red by Bear's left foot, though the Keeper was too busy watching his Chasers to notice. He swung around abruptly when the crowd, spotting the two Seekers in a head-on race to the Snitch, began to scream madly.

"Bloody hell!" Harry heard him shout as he dove out of the way.

Harry didn't care—he was gaining on Spier, flat as a giant's enemy against his broom handle. Wind streamed through his goggles, making his eyes water, but he didn't take his gaze off of the flitting Snitch. It hovered by the goal post, unaware of impending danger...

CRRRRUNCH!

Harry's fingers closed around cold metal just as his entire world splintered. With a great noise that had the fans screaming in horror, his broomstick cracked on the edge of the goal post and burst into a thousand pieces of wood. Shouting, he readied himself for the fall...

But it never came.

He glanced down, almost swearing to himself when he saw that his broom hadn't collided with anything. It was as whole as the day he'd received it from the factory. Splinters, however, sprinkled down from where most of Spier's broom was still stuck into the side of the goalpost. And Spier wasn't with it.

Horrified, Harry looked down, the Snitch in his hand forgotten. Spier plummeted, a blur of red and yellow robes as she hurtled toward the ground. Harry didn't stop to think – he let go of the Snitch and dropped into a vertical dive so steep and so fast that his broomstick protested. Harry ignored it—he kicked at the bristles, shoving it down faster, until the wind screamed in his ears like demented Banshees. In a trice, he passed the hurtling Spier, kicked his broom down with his back foot as hard as he could, and braked hard enough that he would feel it for days, possibly weeks.

But he didn't have time to dwell on it; Spier slammed into him, an unwieldy mass of barely conscious Seeker beneath her voluminous robes. Harry threw out an arm to steady her as she clambered on behind him and began to shake so hard that he could feel it quaking the broom. He could only be grateful that she seemed rather small.

"I think your broom's toast," he informed her.

"Figures," he heard her mutter. "Thanks for catching me."

Since he couldn't really see her face, he focused on getting them safely aground, amid the cheering and booing of the crowd. He felt the broom shift as she reached for something and, annoyed that she wouldn't sit still, steadied both of them.

"Here," and a hand pushed over his shoulder, holding something small, metallic, and bright red. "I believe this is yours. It's following us."

Harry took the Snitch, looking wonderingly at it for the first time. Unlike the Snitches he had caught before, this one shone, a very brilliant red glow. He almost had to look away from it, the light was so bright, so he closed his fingers around it and felt not metal, but... a gem.

"It's a gemstone!" he gasped to Spier, who clung to him as they drifted to the ground.

She actually threw her head back and laughed. "Of course. Championship games are played with Garnets. You caught yourself a Garnet Snitch."

Then they were finally on the ground, and she ran off, calling another "Thank you!" over her shoulder as she hurried to where her team huddled. Harry, meanwhile, looked wonderingly at the Snitch in his hand one more time, let out a whoop, and launched himself back to where the rest of the Typhoon clustered in the air, shouting and celebrating as they hugged and nearly wrestled each other from their brooms. He was welcomed into the fold and together they laughed and passed the Snitch around, hollering their victory. Ignored around them, the crowd began to chant and shout, not "PHOENIX – PHOENIX" but "TYPHOON! POTTER! TYPHOON!"

"Oh, I hate it when they do that," Harry said when he realised what the crowd was shouting.

"Too bad, mate." Bear wiped sweaty hair out of his eyes and raised a fist, laughing. "You keep doing heroic things, they're gonna treat you like a hero. It's a downside of that chivalry complex of yours."

Harry just laughed and took the Snitch back. Looking around, he scanned the crowd until he found the Typhoon press box, then sought within it. When his eyes met Ginny's, he grinned and held the Snitch aloft. She smiled back, and that odd, compressed feeling his chest had endured since she'd mentioned weddings vanished.

It looked as though he'd caught himself a Garnet Snitch, indeed.

A/N the Second: Wanted to say thanks to everybody who made it to this point, and to apologise, as it seems I do every chapter, for how long it's taken all of us to get here. There is ONE more chapter left, a brilliant epilogue that will explain several things that happened a few chapters ago—why Harry went to Rosenheim, who Ginny was meeting that day he went—so please stick around for that.

Thanks, as always, to Shalli, who keeps me in my 'Strine and does me the honour of reading my chapters before they go up.