A/N/:

Hello again! Now, we have a very big announcement to make. On the second of June, we are going to start our very own fanfiction competition, called the Potter Complex! There will be four rounds. In some of them, you might be put into teams, or be on your own. There may be prompts, or no prompts. All short stories. But there will be 40 competitors, and only 1 winner. Only take part if you have written at least one HP fic before. The forum is here:

www . fanfiction topic/240360/186523859/1/Introduce-yourself (remove spaces)

Hope to see you there!

xXxDoubleKxXx

DavidoDaVinci

Chapter 20: Vs Gryffindor

Harry's feet lifted off the ground, automatically, as though he were some highly tuned machine, and his eyes immediately got to work. The trick to finding the snitch… or, rather, Harry's preferred method for finding the snitch, was to find a glimmer somewhere there shouldn't be one, which made finding things laughably easy. There it was, right now, above Jason Wilson's head, and he hadn't even noticed yet.

Oh, and off it went, to circle a ravenclaw fan's head for five minutes. Well, in the meantime, he may as well watch what was going on with everyone else.

"And an excellent pass to Angelina Johnson there, folks and back to Alicia Spinnet again," Lee Jordan commented idly, eyes constantly fixed on the quaffle. "Great witch she is, and rather pretty too-".

"Lee!" McGonagall cut in. "Do this properly or I will find someone else."

"Yes, Miss."

Harry snickered. There was very little doubt as to why Lee Jordan had decided to become the Quidditch commentator at Hogwarts. And, before Harry could finish his mental tangent about Gryffindors, one of their chasers, Katie Bell, scored the first point of the game, to the dismay of the Slytherins, and just about nobody else.

"And 10-0 to the Gryffindors!"

Harry watched Jason closely. He wasn't really bothering to look for the snitch, having evidently been watching the game the whole time. However, as a Slytherin beater flew past, Jason's eyes lingered on his fellow seeker for a moment too long.

Harry took the chance. He flew, as though seeing something, away from the snitch. Jason had narrowed his eyes to a point where he must have been seeing things as though they were cinematic. Harry grinned to himself, as the score was brought up to 10 all, which Lee announced in a deadpan tone.

He swerved, and watched as Jason flinched. Noticing out of the corner of his eye that the snitch was lying down on the ground, on the alert, he made half a dive towards it. The other seeker spotted it, but it moved out of the way just in time. Harry scratched his arm, and flew over to Jason.

"What did you do that for?"

"Thought I saw the snitch." he mumbled.

Harry slowly led him, without him noticing, to the middle of the field, and then yelled 'Look out!' a moment too late, as a bludger, sent by one of the Weasley twins, knocked him out.

Madam Hooch blew her whistle and called time out. The rest of his team were trying to make him feel better, and Harry kept apologising profusely for what had happened, a strategy which worked much better than silent triumph.

Eventually, the match started again, and Jason seemed under the impression that he would go easy on him now, thanks to the injury, Harry noted, as Gryffindor got two points in one minute, something which was not out of the ordinary for their team. In any case, he was taking a more relaxed approach than before, waiting for Harry to find the snitch, rather than just doing it himself. A few times, Harry would do a 180, and he would tense.

He got back to watching the match. Katie Bell got Gryffindor yet another point, by grabbing the quaffle from her fellow chaser, and did a loop-de-loop to celebrate. Jake Wallace, who had decided to become a chaser now that Harry was seeker, very nearly got hit by a bludger, but managed to pull through, and got a point through Oliver Wood. It was around this point that he decided to start listening to Lee's commentary again.

"And, Alicia Spinnet immediately grabs the quaffle, zigzagging through the Slytherin beaters and throwing to Angelina Johnson, but, oh no! That can't feel good! But it doesn't perturb Will Rocker, who grabs it, and underarms it through the hoop! It's 40-30 to Gryffindor! And off again, and-"

Harry stopped listening to the commentary and just watched again. Katie Bell got hit in the arm by a bludger, and dropped the quaffle to Will Rocker again, who got hit by a bludger from one of the Weasleys, who then caught the quaffle, and quickly dropped it, realising what he had done. It was then caught by Alicia Spinnet, before a save from Marcus Flint, who had been the Slytherin captain till Jake took over, who then threw it over to the other side of the pitch, and it was a tie again.

Jason had got bored of watching Harry's eyes flickering about like a fly, and had started searching for the snitch, which he quickly emulated.

This time, though, he really couldn't find it. The snitch wasn't clearly visible whatsoever. He couldn't stop his eyes from looking back at the match. The movements of Will Rocker, Angelina Johnson, Fre-

Fred Weasley had the snitch. Or maybe George? Hm. It didn't matter, because Madam Hooch had spotted it too, and blew the whistle for the second time that game, to the disappointment of everyone in the crowds.

"Penalty!" she barked, marching up to him. "Hand it here, boy!"

Fred, it was Fred: he had checked now, gave her the snitch, gingerly.

"I cannot believe that a Beater in Gryffindor, nay, at Hogwarts, would do such a thing as to grab the snitch and hide it from the opposing team's seeker. Penalty shot for Gryffindor, and you are sitting out until the end of the game!"

With only one beater, things became considerably harder for Gryffindor. First, Oliver Wood failed to stop the penalty shot miserably, probably thanks to him shaking with rage about the fact that Fred had broken the rules. Then, Slytherin scored two more goals with ease.

"70-40 to Slytherin!" came Lee's voice from Harry's right. It was becoming clear that with every score Slytherin got, Jason was becoming more and more agitated. Harry decided to hold off until they were fifty points ahead.

And the game was a spectacle. Angelina passed to Alicia, who passed it to Katie, but it was intercepted by Tom Blight, who shot towards the rings, then Oliver Wood knocked it back, before being hit by a bludger, but Gryffindor scored, only for Slytherin to score again, and Angelina, to Lee's dismay, to throw the quaffle directly into their own goal, where she had thought Katie was. After ten minutes, the score was 100-60, and both teams were stressed.

George grabbed the quaffle a few times, then hit Katie in the shoulder blade, who somehow managed to get Gryffindor a goal, before Slytherin bit back by getting another goal. Oliver Wood and Jake Wallace both made the mistake of throwing to the other team, before Gryffindor finally took a lead, only for four consecutive goals by Will Rocker, which meant that the scoreboards read 120-160. The game was lasting longer than Harry had anticipated, and if he was going to do what he wanted to, he was going to need to do it now.

Carefully making sure he was in Jason's line of sight, he acted surprised, looking at the corner of the pitch closest to the Gryffindor goal hoops, before diving towards them at speed. He heard the gasp of the crowds, even Lee had stopped talking, and he saw Jason diving towards him. The two boys were picking up pace, he had outstretched arms, and then…

… he dived upwards, narrowly avoiding the ground, the beads of sweat on above his upper lip feeling cool. Jason, however, had not been quite so lucky, and had slammed himself into the ground. Lee half-heartedly explained the wronski feint to the crowd, and Hermione looked interested (she was probably the only Ravenclaw not supporting Gryffindor in this match, but she wasn't about to tell anyone that).

Fred was let back on the team, since nobody thought it fair for Gryffindor to be down two players, however, as the team was aware, this meant that Harry could take as much time as he wanted to catching the snitch, since Jason wouldn't be able to get it in his current state. This news affected the players differently. George, Angelina, and Alicia seemed like they were barely trying, and just wanted to stop playing. While Jason, Oliver, and especially Katie were playing harder than ever. She alone managed to get Gryffindor three more goals, and eventually got Alicia to help.

They would have been 80 points ahead, if Slytherin hadn't got another 100. Harry was once again struggling to find the snitch. He saw it a few times, but Fred kept hitting bludgers towards him, causing him to lose focus. The Gryffindor team was slowly beginning to get some hope back. This was helped by Gryffindor getting another 20 points, and now they were tying on 260-260.

It wasn't the longest Quidditch game ever played at Hogwarts. That one was about six weeks long, but not many Quidditch games got to nightfall, so it had that on its side. Gryffindor took back a lead of 40 points, then Tom Blight got a goal, then Katie got one, then Jake, Jake again, Will Rocker and Gryffindor was just barely winning at 310-300.

But it was then that Harry at last saw it. He forgot everything around him, all that mattered was the snitch. The crowd had tensed. He was pushing people and bludgers out of his way as though they were made of cushions, and at the last second…

The snitch swerved. It very nearly escaped him. But no. He was holding it up above his head, and the Slytherin stands were shouting in happiness. McGonogall was announcing that the green team had won 450-310, since Lee had refused. Nothing mattered, he was standing there, it was perfect, and nothing could make him feel bad.

He didn't even notice Ron running off into the castle.

Hey everyone. This is a later update from Ebony with some important news.

My out of school exams have finished but I just found out that my end of year exams in school will be taking place soon so writing will be slow until late May, sorry guys.

Other than that, I've been struggling a lot with BiT and, as I'm not really getting anywhere at the moment, it will be on hiatus for an indefinite amount of time. As a result, I'll be focusing more on Clockwork which is picking up speed and HPDL when I get the time to write with Davido. Sorry to BiT readers.

Thanks for your patience and have a good rest of the hols.