Your reviews are kind of making me addicted to this story. It won't leave me alone; I'm literally thinking about it all the time and dreaming up scenes in my sleep. But that's alright because it gives me ideas and more of a plot to flesh out and focus on. Usually when I start projects like this, I have the beginning and the end, but no way to get from A to B. However, now I have a lot of details for each year of Hogwarts. Thanks for reading and reviewing, everyone, I feel very grateful for your support.

Dobby's Polka-Dotted Sock

Chapter Nine:

The Reserve

Hands down, Defense Against the Dark Arts was the new favorite class of the school. Sure, Malfoy and some of his group would occasionally make fun of Professor Lupin's wardrobe or the man's obvious lack of wealth, but for the most part, everyone was awed by the new teacher. And how could they not be? Professor Lupin was officially the coolest adult to walk the corridors of Hogwarts, just like Dumbledore was the strangest.

And when they weren't busy with school work, or were stuck with the first and second years when the other students went to Hogsmeade, Lupin was there with a kind word, and the occasional story about his times at Hogwarts with Harry and Leila's parents. He seemed to have a bit of a spotty memory however, as he would have trouble remembering the names of some of his fellow students. He would start a story by saying,

"One time, you father got what he felt was the most brilliant idea in his head of how to impress your mother. So he had, er…..a good friend of his bring Lily into the common room…"

But it didn't matter because Harry and Leila were enthralled. It was a nice thing to hear that your parents were 'good people', and the photo album Hagrid had gifted them with at the end of their first year was indispensable, but it was another thing entirely to hear about what it was that they did; just their everyday lives, to know what they were like and the things that happened to them within these very walls. When Professor Lupin spoke about Lily and James Potter, it was like they had come alive again.

There were sometimes when they would come to visit, only to find that the professor was out on business away from the castle, or that he was ill, or he was busy talking to Professor Snape as the other man sneered at them over a smoking goblet he then handed to the sickly man.

"I'm sure it's nothing Leila," Hermione said as they changed for bed, surrounded as she always was this year by the endless supply of text books and reference books.

"I know," the dark-haired girl admitted, frustrated still by their potions teacher, "But if whatever that drink is hurts him—"

"It won't," Hermione insisted as she pulled the curtains shut around her bed. "Now goodnight."

"Goodnight, Hermione," Leila muttered, knowing she wouldn't get a response from the girl, not even a yawn. It was eerie how quiet Hermione could be even as she kept studying behind that curtain, like she wasn't even breathing. Once or twice, Leila entertained the idea that Hermione had built a secret tunnel to the library and wasn't even in her bed. She ran the theory by the boys, which Ron found particularly funny.

Somehow the bushy haired witch was keeping up with and even enjoying the majority of her classes, the exception being Divination. While Leila wasn't going to publicly denounce Professor Trelawney as a fraud, it was quite clear that the woman was not suited to teach little children. She frightened Neville Longbottom into dropping his teacup so he would validate her prediction, she talked of the Inner Eye as though it came and went like the weather, and she smelled quite strongly of some type of alcoholic beverage, bringing back unpleasant memories of Aunt Marge and even a caretaker at the old orphanage.

Trelawney's specialty apparently was in predicting death, Harry was the popular test subject for her premonitions, with Leila being a close second. They had just begun studying tea leaves when she struck again.

"…so you're going to suffer, but you're going to be…happy about it," Ron finished up lamely as he placed Harry's teacup back on the little round table. The four friends shared bemused glances, and Hermione was reaching for Harry's cup to 'read' for herself, but was beat by their professor snatching it up to examine with her own eyes, magnified as they were by her glasses.

"Let's see, what have we…Oh!" The woman gave a sudden shriek and a shuddering gasp as she dropped the teacup in surprise. Leila reached out and grabbed it before it could shatter, feeling that enough glassware had been broken in the classroom already.

"What is it, Professor?" Lavender and Parvati were instantly by the woman's side, both with identical expressions of worry and awe.

"My dear," Trelawney whispered, completely ignoring her two protégés, "my-my dear boy, you have….The Grim."

Here, most of the class gave their own large gasps, before Harry sort of interrupted by asking, "What's 'The Grim'?" Hermione was rolling her eyes once again at their teacher, but the woman chose to ignore her non-believer as well.

"What is it? My boy, it is the worst omen! The person who sees The Grim will have terrible misfortune befall them! Those that have The Grim in their tea leaves will meet only with Death."

Leila stared into the cup, squinted, titled her head, and was tempted to start sifting the tea leaves around as she said, "Doesn't look much like a 'Grim' to me. What's it even supposed to be? A dark and ominous blob?" Ron couldn't contain a snort of laughter at that, but their professor seemed to take it as the sneeze that Ron used to cover it up.

"You caught it? Why would you do such a foolhardy thing! Its evil tidings will only latch themselves onto you if you take The Grim for your own!" Leila raised an eyebrow at the teacher's ranting, but placed the cup back on the table to appease her, for it calmed the woman immensely. Still, class was dismissed early so that Professor Trelawney could gaze into the Inner Eye to see what The Grim would truly mean for the Potters.

"Useless, and absolutely useless class!" Hermione fumed as they climbed down the many stairs. "What a waste of time!"

"If you care about not wasting the daylight, Hermione, why don't you just drop the class?" Leila suggested.

"Yeah, no need to stress yourself over something you're not at all interested by," Harry agreed.

"Maybe it'd even make your schedule more, y'know, actually possible to follow?" Ron hinted. The red head had been trying to discover the 'secret' of Hermione's rather nonsensical schedule all year, but the other girl refused to tell.

Another 'waste of time' to Hermione was the sport Quidditch. Too bad for her, Harry and Ron were nearly as obsessed as Oliver Wood, the Gryffindor Captain, and Leila didn't mind one bit sitting up late and listening to them discuss different tactics and formations along with going to every game Harry played. Of course, if you were in Gryffindor and didn't go to see your team play, you were considered to be a traitor to the whole house unless you had a very good excuse. Even Percy Weasley, their very own Head Boy, was known to bet on the outcome of the matches, certain as everyone else was that Harry would catch the Golden Snitch.

The last couple years had met the excellent team with roadblocks on their way to the Quidditch Cup, but this year Wood was positive they would win and planned to make sure of it as it was his last year at Hogwarts. Therefore the team had even more practices than ever before. Leila, Ron, and Hermione would stay up late in order to help Harry finish his homework, although Hermione usually was also working on her own. Her brother didn't seem to mind the extra stress, for he was as determined as the rest of the team to win.

The flying conditions for Gryffindor's first game were the worst that Leila had yet to see, and hoped to ever see as it made watching the match miserable for one. She could barely see any of the players through the rain, and tried not to think of how cold Harry and the others were feeling.

But the more she tried not to think about it, the more it seemed to affect her. Soon she was so aware of the chilling wind that it raised goose bumps all up her skin, and she couldn't see anything through the thick fog that had rolled in, obscuring everything.

'Fog…? No, no!'

Distantly she could hear the beginnings of a woman's voice crying, pleading with someone, but she pushed it aside as best she could. "Hermione, Hermione!" She shouted over the wind, rain, and screaming, reaching blindly for her friend and shaking her.

"What, Leila not so loud in my ear!" Her voice was so far away, being drowned by a high-pitched, yet cold voice laughing.

"Hermione, I think Dementors are coming! I hear the woman screaming for help again and- and I can't see you!"

"Dementors? Hold on, Leila!"

She thought she heard the other girl telling Hagrid to get someone, Dumbledore maybe? A whistle blowing far away. And she drifted in between noise, trying not to fall into the fog for she felt she would drop as far down as the Quidditch stands, but there was a man's voice, a nice man speaking and what was he saying?

"Lily! Take the twins and run, I'll hold him off!"

That was nice of the man, wasn't it? But she felt her stomach lurch and her head began to hurt so much, as the crowd around her gave a collective scream.

Falling, falling….

She burst through the fog and pushed forward, gripping the stands as she screamed to the falling, falling boy.

"HARRY!"

A flash of light from a man on the ground- Dumbledore –and Harry slowed then stopped falling as the aged Headmaster turned his fury on the dark creatures in the air. Leila didn't care about that and quickly raced for the stairs flying down them so fast it was almost a surprise that her feet suddenly met with soggy ground. She shook it off and kept running for the locker room, so intent on getting to Harry she didn't even notice the icy feeling of the Dementors lifting from her chest as they were driven away.

"Just give us five minutes, Madam Hooch, Harry needs time to recover, regain his bearings—" Wood was pleading with the referee before being sharply cut off by the hospital matron.

"He needs days of recovery in the Hospital Wing! Here boy, eat this," she gave Leila a large hunk of chocolate which the girl began feeding to the still very groggy Harry.

"But- the match!" Before Madam Pomfrey could round on the seventh year for his prioritizing, a prefect entered the locker room.

"Madam Pomfrey, some first years who feel ill have been escorted to the Hospital Wing." The nurse seemed torn, glancing at the ice-cold Harry propped up on a bench.

"Want…to play," He got out, holding his hands in front of him as his sister rubbed them between her own trying to warm his fingers.

Madam Pomfrey huffed. "Very well, you can stay here, but think wisely, Mr. Wood, about what's more important: The game, or your star player?" She swept out and Madam Hooch followed with the warning,

"Five minutes," hanging in the air.

"Well, what's the plan, Oliver?" Angelina Johnson demanded, "You have Harry here, but he can barely see his hand in front of his face, let alone the Snitch!"

"Why not just forfeit? Diggory nearly caught it anyway," Fred started.

"And we haven't got a reserve Seeker, let alone one as brilliant as Harry. You're just prolonging the inevitable," George finished.

"But- we can't- the Cup! Just- let me think," Wood managed, pacing nervously in the small space as the rain continued to hammer down.

"Ah-ah-ah!" Leila scolded, gently pushing Harry back down on the bench as he tried to stand. She started pulling his boots off, then the cap he wore to keep the wet tangled mess called his hair out of his eyes, and then his goggles, wiping them on her sleeve. "Sit down, Potter. I may not be Pomfrey, but I know you're not going to get very far on those legs." She brought the goggles up to her face to check for any smudge marks, but felt a strange prickling sensation on the back of her neck. Turning around with the goggle still up, she brought them down slowly making sure what she saw was the same; Oliver Wood staring at her with a strange smile spreading across his face.

"Oliver?" Katie Bell questioned the Quidditch Captain.

"That's it!" He proclaimed, smile turning to a triumphant beam.

"No, Oliver, no! It is not perfect, it's insane!" Angelina yelled, seeming to have found where this was going.

"What?" Leila asked, wary of whatever idea this was.

"Harry's not fit to go out there," Oliver explained, "and we have no reserve Seeker." The others nodded, this having been established.

"Go on," Alicia Spinnet prompted.

"But," And here Oliver got that gleam in his eye again, "we do have a reserve Harry."

They all stared at her while it sank in.

"No!" Leila protested. "No bloody way! Just forfeit already!"

"No, you don't get it, it's perfect!" Oliver cheered. "All we have to do is just let everyone think that you're Harry and we can get back in there and play!"

"Until I make you lose, 'cos Harry might not have told you, but I've never ridden a broom!"

"That's true," George verified. Leila had always spent the mock Quidditch games at the Burrow with Ginny, since the boys didn't allow their little sister to play.

"Well, don't sell her short, even if her height's questionable, dear brother," Fred interrupted, seeming to side with George. He probably just thought it would be funny to watch her fall for non-Dementor related reasons. "Harry is a natural flier; maybe his twin is the same."

"Exactly!" Oliver agreed. "Sure, the weather's downright awful, but no better way to learn how to fly! And Harry's got the best broom out of both these teams, safest too!"

She was ready to protest again when Harry tugged on her sleeve. "Leila, please?"

"Oh bloody hell, you're that desperate to win?" She asked him.

"Uh-huh."

She sighed, defeated. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but fine, I'll do it."

Wood practically cried for joy, the Chasers began looking hopeful, but the Weasley twins took no time to celebrate in order to start working on the disguise.

"Now they won't be seeing you up close," Fred said, circling round her.

"And the cap and those goggles will do a fine job covering up your hair and eyes," George followed his brother in their examination.

"Shame though, what a lovely hazel," Fred remarked, tilting her chin upward as his twin smirked. Leila simply arched an eyebrow until she was released.

"Harry's robes look like they'll fit you just fine height-wise." She was turned sharply around by Fred once more, who picked up his own commentary again while his eyes scrutinized her appearance.

"You can keep on the clothes underneath; I doubt the outer Quidditch robe will have any trouble hiding that non-existent chest of yours," he leered down at her while she returned with a scowl before pulling herself from his grasp.

"I got it; Hide my hair and eyes with the goggles and cap, put on the robe, and try not to fall to my death. Anything else?" She snapped as she grabbed the things needed while storming to the girl's showers.

"What about catching the Snitch?" Olivier called unhelpfully while one of the twins wolf-whistled.

There wasn't the time to be too hurt by their teasing as she was rushed back to the pitch right as she stepped back into the locker room, Harry giving her a good luck smile. Now she was standing on the pitch as the sea of red and gold cheered for Harry's 'recovery' and the black and gold and green and silver crowd booed down at the 'returned' Seeker who was clutching at the broom for all it was worth. She wondered if Harry's Nimbus could tell that she wasn't his owner or if it could sense fear like a dog. The rain still hadn't let up, but she knew there was no way of backing out now.

The whistle gave a sharp blast, and she kicked off trying to do so like the rest of the team, but getting a little stuck by the mud, before the wind picked her and the broom up and they started being pushed this way and that by the storm.

"Potter seems to be off to a rough start there." She heard Lee's confused yet concerned voice echo across the stadium, magically amplified over the wind. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes or something equally ineffectual, and saw Cedric Diggory, Hufflepuff's Seeker, spare her a glance as she jerked a little sharply upward, still trying to get used to controlling the broom.

"Those bloody Dementors really did a number on Gryffindor's Seeker," Lee continued, not even stopped by McGonagall for foul language, "but he'll pull through, just you watch. Come on, Harry!"

"And it suddenly hit her that this wasn't just a matter of her filling a role for Harry while he waited backstage. This was her being Harry. Every single person watching her saw him. They saw Harry James Potter, their Boy-Who-Lived, Quidditch Champion. And if she blew all that on just pretending to be him for a Quidditch match, she would never forgive herself. People were expecting great things from her brother, and she would deliver.

'Alright, Quidditch fans, one Golden Snitch coming up!' The adrenaline coursed through her as she shot forward, eyes easily scanning for that glint of gold, yet still keeping watch on Cedric, and she had the most absurd thought that being Harry Potter was the best feeling in the world—

"The Snitch! Potter and Diggory have both spotted the Snitch! It's going to be close—!"

He had been a hair closer, but Harry's broom was faster and it was neck and neck, both Seekers straining forward for the little golden ball. His arm, longer, stretched his fingers mere centimeters before hers and she was about to try one more burst of speed, but it suddenly doubled back, easily dodging the first hand. It wasn't quite able to maneuver out of the way of the second, and flew right up the sleeve of Harry's robe with a gust of wind. She stopped the broom and clamped her left hand over the ball struggling under the fabric and extricated it, shoving her clenched fist triumphantly in the sky.

The crowd had begun cheering, but it took a moment for the shock of Harry's team to wear off. But then she was suddenly mobbed by six red and gold blurs as they all hugged and screamed, sinking down on brooms to the pitch.

"We did it!" Angelina, Katie, and Alicia shrieked, piercing, but it didn't matter.

"You really pulled it off, can't believe it!" The twins roared and thumped her on the back hard for appearances, but nothing was broken.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" Wood sobbed and he seemed close to kissing her, but she didn't care.

They landed and were swamped by the spectators. People shouted praise, Percy counted money, Lee jumped up and down, and something crashed into her with all the force of a fierce hug.

"You did it again, mate! Great- er—" And before she could let the feeling of that warm contact sink in, it pulled back in the form of a very, very confused Ron Weasley holding her at arm's length and not quite sure what to say. She beamed at him and winked as his eyes widened in realization. The team made their way quickly as possible to the changing rooms where Harry rewarded her with his own hug and his own praise.

"Knew you'd be brilliant!" They changed and journeyed just as quickly to Gryffindor Tower where a party was in full swing.

And though Hermione scolded her when she found time to stop studying for her upcoming Ancient Runes exam the she was pretty sure Padma Patil had failed last Tuesday, and it really was Harry that the Gryffindors lifted on their shoulders, and she was told countless times she should have stayed and watched the match instead of leaving for the Hospital Wing, she still felt absolutely brilliant.

So, there's another chapter that I hope you all enjoy. Let me know what you think, and I'll try to get more out soon!