One Day at a Time
Quidditch and the Hog
I blearily opened my eyes the next morning, a Saturday, and tried to focus on the clock across the room. 9:50…? No, 11:45. I remembered with a jolt that I was supposed to meet Neville at noon to tutor him. Wow, I must have been tired, I thought as I glanced at the clock again and started hastily getting ready. By the time I arrived at my office, Neville was already standing outside. "Sorry, hope I'm not late," I smiled embarrassedly.
"No, I'm just early, professor," he said respectfully. We walked into my office and he explained, "I'm having trouble aiming the anti-stunning spell. I can cast it, but I'm never sure how close it has to be to the path of the actual stunning spell."
"That's more of a learned thing," I said thoughtfully. "It doesn't have to cross the stunning spell mid-air, but it does have to be fairly close." The spell we were discussing was a specific counter to the stunning spell; if the caster of the stunning spell was powerful, this charm was much more effective than a shield charm.
He started practicing the stunning counter while I gave him pointers. After that, we moved onto another spell, and by the end of the hour we were sitting and going over the most recent chapter in the textbook.
The door opened and I looked up to see Sev standing in the doorway. His dark eyes glanced from me, to Neville, to the textbook before he drawled, "Longbottom is also failing your class, Lee? I would ask how many classes he's failing in total, but perhaps a better question would be how many classes he's taking period. That would also answer the first question, as well," he said silkily.
Neville's face gained a pinkish tint and I replied on his behalf in a slightly annoyed tone. "Neville is doing perfectly fine in my class, and I'm sure he's doing equally well in all of his other classes. He's a very dedicated student." The pink tint to Neville's cheeks became even more pronounced as I said this.
The teenage boy looked up at the clock and hastily replied, "I don't think I have any more questions, professor. And I'm supposed to meet up with some friends soon, anyway." With a last "Thank you" he darted out of the room.
"If Longbottom's not failing your class, why on earth are you spending your Saturday tutoring him?" Sev drawled as he casually took a seat.
"Why wouldn't I? He wants to do better," I shrugged. The odd look I had seen only a few times before flitted across his face again. "So I'm assuming you're here for a reason other to berate my students," I changed the topic of conversation.
"I saw you weren't at breakfast or lunch today, and I wanted to—ah—make sure nothing had gone awry last night," he subtly alluded to the Death Eater attacks.
"I'm not that injury prone," I rolled my eyes, annoyed that he might see me as weak. "You saw me last night, anyway. It's not like I fell down a flight of stairs on the way to breakfast."
"No, falling down a flight of stairs wouldn't do much to a witch," he said disinterestedly. There was a pause and then he asked in the same tone, "Are you going to the Quidditch game today?"
"I didn't know there was a Quidditch game, today," I said, mildly surprised.
"Not Slytherin," he clarified. "Gryffindor versus Hufflepuff."
"Oh." I thought for a moment and replied "Yeah, I think I will. Quidditch is fun to watch even if your own team isn't playing. What about you?"
"I was planning to," he replied coolly. "It starts soon, you know."
"Considering I didn't know about the game's existence until about thirty seconds ago, no, I don't know," I replied, my mood improving. "We should probably leave now, then," I attempted to switch to the plural first person without hesitating. He stood up and we started making our way to the Quidditch field. As soon as we had set foot outside, though, my owl immediately started following me.
"Your owl was waiting for you rather impatiently at breakfast," Sev said, eyeing the owl as it flew around my head, trying to get my attention.
It finally landed on my shoulder and I took the scrap of parchment tied around its leg. It said in a recognizable cursive script "Lunch? –T". Severus had not been giving me updates on Tarazet's health, but I judged from the neat handwriting that his left arm was fully recovered. I scribbled on the back of the parchment "Week from today? Same time and place" and gave it to my owl without so much as breaking my walking pace.
"So did you ever play Quidditch?" I tried to make conversation with Severus.
"No," he replied with a frown. "I didn't like it very much while I was at Hogwarts myself. I felt that many of the Quidditch players were a bit self-centered. They seemed to think that one's skill in Quidditch was everything, and that turned me away from the game a bit."
"Oh." I thought about how my ex-boyfriend, Regulus, and three of my brothers had been on the Slytherin Quidditch team, but I decided not to say anything about that. Instead, I replied "I never played competitively, but I liked playing with friends. I was almost always Keeper, because that's the position my brothers forced me to play when I was younger, and I just got used to it."
At that point we had reached the Quidditch stadium. It was a mass of red, gold, yellow and black (although the gold and the yellow looked awfully similar from a distance.) Even though the game had not yet started, the crowd was already making a great deal of noise, and I couldn't help but feel that Sev and I stood out: silent, dressed in dark colors, and neither Gryffindor nor Hufflepuff. I noticed that Neville was sitting in the front row with Hermione, Ginny and Luna, and they, like the rest of the stadium, went crazy with cheering when the teams swooped out onto the field. The game was rather exhilarating to watch, and it even helped me succeed in putting the previous night's attacks fully from my mind.
The next week passed rather quietly, excluding escorting some second years to the hospital wing when they accidentally turned purple from the defensive charms they were practicing. It almost seemed to me as though I had blinked, and it was suddenly the weekend again. I had not been aware that Saturday was a Hogsmeade day for the students when I had agreed to see Tarazet, and I was now sitting in the Hog's Head, looking around the glum joint to make sure there were no students. I most definitely did not want the students to associate me with my convicted criminal of a brother, and I felt almost a twinge of guilt for being so ashamed of him.
"I see we both have a liking for corner tables," my youngest brother said as way of greeting as he approached the table.
I gave him a slight smile and replied "Good to see you're feeling better."
He nodded. "Yes, thankfully. I didn't know you were friends with Snape," he raised his eyebrows as he met my eyes.
"What makes you say we're friends?" I said in a casual tone, trying to hide my rising emotion.
"He was doing you an awfully big favor in healing me. And 'Lee' and 'Sev' don't exactly sound like the most formal method of address," he was eyeing me with an amused look, before he added in a mischievous voice that was a notch quieter, "Why, by the way you were treating him, I'd say you fancy him, if I didn't know better." And here he gave me a look that said he did too know better, even if he wasn't saying as much in those words.
I opened my mouth and snapped it shut again before curtly replying, "We're just friends."
"Funny, a second ago you were implying that you weren't even friends." He looked terribly amused by all this and added in a slightly more serious tone, "I will say one thing for him, though. It's very nice to meet somebody with their head screwed on right."
"What do you mean?" I said suspiciously.
"Well judging by what he is," a Death Eater, "He holds good beliefs. But at the same time, he doesn't strike me as being a crazy fanatic like Seginus and Matar are." I remembered Sev's comments about how there was nothing wrong with Muggle born parents and wondered how accurate Tarazet's impression really was.
Somehow I felt I shouldn't reveal this, though, so instead I coolly replied "I suppose 'good' is a matter of opinion."
Tarazet looked exasperated. "I just don't get why you don't agree with our beliefs, Liseli. I mean, Merlin knows some of the extremists are crazy. People like Seginus and Matar, who think that women are property and Muggles are animals, are living in the Dark Ages. But you just can't deny that if Wizards keep accepting and marrying Muggleborns there are going to be repercussions."
"Like what?" I said angrily. We had already this argument before, but we seemed to be going down the same path to have it again.
"Well, for one thing I bet if you look at the statistics you'd find that Mudbloods and people with one Muggle parent aren't as successful," he pointedly answered my question.
"There are plenty of wonderfully successful Muggle-borns. My best student is one." At this point we were speaking in civil but annoyed voices.
"I'm not arguing against that, I'm just saying that they're exceptions to the trend. If somebody grows up with two magical parents, and spends the first eleven years of their life completely surrounded by magic, do you really think that that's not going to give them an advantage? Look, whether it's Mudbloods or marrying Muggles themselves, it's going to have consequences for the Wizarding race. Whether they intend to or not, they're slowly destroying Wizarding culture, destroying its uniqueness and making it more like Muggle culture," he continued his meticulous argument while I attempted to be polite and restrain myself from interrupting.
He seemed to have finished his thought so I replied in a forced calm tone, "Look, Tarazet. You know I'm proud of our pure blood, and that I've never been exactly an enthusiastic defender of Muggle rights, but you also know I don't share your beliefs. I hate the way purebloods will discriminate against individuals simply because of the way they were born. It disgusts me and I refuse to take part. You may have all of these high and mighty ideals, but it's awful what they lead to, especially the attacks." The various attacks I had been witness to and participated in flashed before my eyes.
"It's not like the other side is so high and mighty, no matter how they try and portray themselves," he said in the same civil but annoyed tone.
"They don't kill people," I said shortly.
"No, they just hastily run people through a court designed to give as much punishment to as much people as possible," his voice gained a bitter tone. "Do you know how many life sentences in Azkaban they issued in a single week? Over two dozen. You can't tell me that all of those cases were treated with the utmost justice. A death sentence would be more merciful than a life sentence in Azkaban." He paused and sighed as though he was trying to release his bitterness. "Now, I'm not exactly for all of these attacks on Muggles," he added in a slightly less bitter tone. "But they're necessary casualties. Necessary casualties for a necessary war. If they'll get Muggles and Mudbloods to leave us alone, then they're worth it."
I shook my head. I couldn't think of anything more to say. We seemed to have reached a stalemate of the wills, him disappointed in me and me ashamed of him. We both firmly believed that the other one held the wrong beliefs. Tarazet sighed and leaned back in his chair, apparently having reached the same conclusion. "I'm going to go place our orders with the bartender. He seems to have forgotten us back here."
He left the table and I started looking around the room again, thinking about how it was a Hogsmeade day for students. I was still nervous about being associated with my ex-convict of a brother, and I was just thinking, Good, there aren't any students here, when the door opened and in walked Hagrid with Harry, Hermione and Ron. Crap! I thought, and I immediately started looking the other direction, hoping they wouldn't see me. But, no, I could see them in my peripheral vision. Not only had they seen me, they were walking towards me. Crap! I reflexively thought again.
"Liseli!" Hagrid heartily exclaimed. "I was just showing them," he gestured towards the trio, "The Hog's Head. I feel it has a bit more character than the Three Broomsticks. Say, what're you doin', sitting by yourself? Mind if we join you?"
"Oh, uh, of course," I quickly thought how to phrase my jumbled thoughts. "I am with somebody, though," I stated and, speak of the devil, Tarazet came walking back at that moment.
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A/N: A big thank you to MarkDarcy, Mywaychan, tibys, PollyWantCookie, angelofire and argyle owl for reviewing! I appreciate every single review :)