Finally, the school week is over. Harry is looking forward to sleeping in on Saturday morning. Or he was, up until he's woken up by an excited Oliver Wood, inches away from his face.
"Ah!" Harry yells, flailing.
Oliver laughs and skips back.
Harry sits up and blinks stupidly at the older student. "...what?"
"Quidditch practice, Harry! You're lucky I let you sleep in," Oliver says seriously.
Harry looks at him incredulously before looking over to the window, where the light of the sun has only just hit the very edge of the horizon. Harry raises an eyebrow.
"Oh Harry," Oliver laughs, following his gaze. "If you plan on going professional after you graduate, you're going to need to get used to early mornings."
Harry has never once expressed interest in going professional. He has no intentions of disabusing Oliver of this notion, though, because Harry enjoys not being badgered about quidditch for the rest of his school career.
"Trust me," Harry grumbles as he tumbles out of bed. "I'm used to early mornings. This is outrageous. What is it, one in the morning?"
"Very funny. I'll have you know that it is actually a very respectable five forty-five. Anyways, I'll leave you to it! Meet at the quidditch pitch in fifteen!"
Oliver rushes off, presumably to wake the others.
Harry yawns tiredly and goes to get ready for practice.
Once he's got his quidditch gear on, Harry pokes at the Merlin-shaped lump under the covers. "You coming?"
Merlin flops out of bed, slithering over to the satchel without a word. Harry laughs softly and swings the satchel over his chest.
Harry goes to make his way down to the common room, then pauses. Why walk when he can just fly?
Harry pulls his broom from the satchel, unshrinks it with a tap of his wand, and clambers up onto the window sill. He opens the window with a grunt, then looks down. It's a long, long way down. He backs up, mounts his broom, and sails out the window. Harry circles the tower once, before coming back to the open window to close it with a twist of his magic.
Escape from the tower completed, Harry glides down to the pitch, beating the others by a couple minutes.
Oliver comes running up, and without pausing to slow down just waves for Harry to follow him into the locker room.
Harry sighs, shrinks his broom, and goes to follow.
Upon entering the locker room, Harry slumps onto a bench and watches Oliver unshrink a stack of boards. Harry groans internally. If he'd wanted to sit through a lecture on a Saturday, he'd just go listen to Professor Binns.
Soon enough, the others trail into the room and take their seats.
Angelina looks as awake as Oliver, but Alicia and Katie seem dead on their feet. Fred and George look so tired Harry wouldn't be surprised if even they couldn't tell themselves apart.
"Alright!" Oliver says, clapping. "I've got a new strategy this year! I'm really confident about this one, and I think you'll like it too. I actually had help from an anonymous source, and let's just say… if anyone knows strategy, it's P- my source."
One of the twins elbows the other.
"Hey George, how much do you think Oliver had to pay Percy for that?" Fred whispers.
He's so quiet that Harry thinks he might be the only one that hears.
George rubs his eyes tiredly. "Nothing," he whispers back. "Have you seen Oliver's puppy dog eyes?"
Harry tunes back into what Oliver is saying, then tunes right back out again when he realizes Oliver is mostly just singing the praises of the new strategies. It's going to be a long couple of hours.
"That was a long couple of hours," a grumpy Katie says to Alicia as Oliver puts his boards away.
"Informative, though!" Angelina says brightly.
Alicia stares at the burly girl like she's grown another head.
"At least we get to fly now," Harry points out.
"I like your attitude, Harry!" Oliver says, having finished cleaning up. "Also, you are correct! Let's fly, everyone."
Harry walks out into the sunlight, blinking rapidly. It's a sharp contrast from the muted lighting in the locker room. He takes off, flying in lazy circles as he waits for Oliver and Angelina to set up some drills.
"Hey Harry!" Hermione waves from a bench. Harry swings around and floats over to where she, Neville, and Ron are sitting. "We missed you at breakfast, and decided to come watch practice."
"Think you could take Merlin for me?" Harry asks.
Hermione nods eagerly.
"Also, where are the others?" Harry continues as he hands his satchel to Hermione.
"Still sleeping," Ron says. "I thought Theo especially could use the rest."
Harry nods in understanding.
"Harry!" Oliver calls.
Harry gives his friends a wave goodbye before flying off to start the drills.
They run through a couple drills when Oliver flies up high, hand shielding his eyes. "Who is that?" He asks.
Harry turns, and groans as he sees a familiar looking firstie frantically clicking his camera in Harry's direction.
"You know him?" Oliver asks, amused.
"Yeah." Unfortunately. "He's a Gryffindor. A first year."
"Do you think he wants to be on the team some day?" Oliver asks.
"I don't know," Harry says truthfully. "I do know that he thinks I hung the moon and painted the stars, though."
"You are the youngest seeker in a century," Oliver muses.
Harry sighs.
"Hey!" One of the twins waves.
Oliver turns his broom to face the twin. "What!" Oliver yells.
The twin doesn't say anything, just points.
Harry looks, and groans again when he sees a group of green-clad students walking up to the pitch. Oliver purses his lips and urges his broom into a shallow dive. Harry looks off into the distance, wondering if he should just fly home, say hello to Remus, and fly back. Surely whatever this is shaping up to be will be over by then, right?
Harry sees the others floating down to where Oliver and the Slytherin team is, and instead goes to follow resignedly.
As he lands lightly, he hears Oliver tightly saying, "...our practice time. Sorry for the mix-up."
"Plenty of room for all of us," the Slytherin captain, Marcus Flint, says. Oliver's smile goes even more wooden.
"We booked the field," Oliver says finally.
"I've got a specifically signed note from Professor Snape," Flint counters. He pulls out a folded slip of paper, unfolds it, clears his throat, and reads, "I, Professor S. Snape give the team permission to practice today on the quidditch field owing to the need to train their new seeker."
Oliver perks up. "New seeker?" He asks, distracted.
A smirking Draco Malfoy steps out from behind the team, smirk widening when he catches Harry's eyes. Harry holds back a groan of dismay, but just barely.
Harry idly notices his friends making their way over to join the crowd.
"Any good?" Oliver says.
"Pretty good," Flint concedes.
Malfoy gets a hurt expression on his face and Harry has to squash a laugh.
Oliver nods thoughtfully, then shakes his head. "Regardless, we booked specifically for today. You can train with a new seeker any other time."
Flint pulls out a second folded slip of paper with a flourish. "I, Professor S. Snape, give the team permission to practice today on the quidditch field owing to the need to practice with their new brooms."
"New brooms?" Alicia cuts in, narrowing her eyes.
Malfoy's smirk is back, and mirrored on the faces of every Slytherin team member.
Flint holds up the broom he's holding. The Gryffindor team sans Harry gasps as one.
"Nimbus 2001?" Oliver says disbelievingly.
"A generous donation from Lucius Malfoy himself. Oh, look: interlopers." Flint says, eyes falling on Harry's friends.
"What's going on?" Ron asks, looking over the scene. "Why aren't you playing-woah! Are those Nimbus 2001s? Those are brand new!"
Malfoy rolls his eyes, but Ron only has eyes for the Nimbus 2001s. Harry looks between the identical shiny new brooms and back to his team's assorted used brooms and back again.
"Hang on," Harry starts. "That's allowed?"
Malfoy raises an eyebrow. "Surely you aren't going to throw a hissy fit over a couple new brooms?"
Harry waves him off. "No, of course not. I mean, is it school-sanctioned, or are they personal gifts?"
Flint narrows his eyes. "Why?" He asks.
Harry holds his hands up placatingly. "No reason," he lies.
Harry has a letter he needs to write, but first:
Over the last few minutes, Oliver has looked more and more like he's about to cry and it's making Harry feel a little panicky.
"We really could just share the field?" Harry suggests.
Oliver waves him off. "Nah," he says, forcing cheer into his voice. "We'll just practice another day."
Harry grits his teeth, glaring at Flint. Flint remains unswayed.
"It's not really very fair that you get to come in and take over the whole pitch just because some kid bought his way onto the team with some fancy bits of wood," Hermione mutters.
Evidently, she didn't say it quietly enough (or maybe she'd said it exactly as loud as she intended), because Malfoy whips around to face her, face going red.
"No one asked for your opinion, you mudblood."
Everything goes still and quiet, Malfoy going pale as he realizes what he's said. Harry has to clamp down hard on his magic but through the haze he registers Hermione raising an eyebrow as though she's saying, "seriously?"
Then, hell breaks loose.
Oliver and Angelina have to hold the twins back from lunging at Malfoy.
"What the fuck?" Alicia demands, fists clenched.
Katie is staring confusedly.
Most of the Slytherins back away from Malfoy as though he's just stepped onto a minefield. Even Flint looks a little queasy.
Ron, a cold, blank fury painted on his face, pulls his wand out of his robes, points it at Malfoy, and shoots a wordless spell at the boy. (Harry thinks that even if Theo, Daphne, and Blaise had been here, they would have stepped aside at the look in Ron's eyes.) Unfortunately, it's right at this moment that Harry realizes that Ron's wand is wrapped in a thick layer of spellotape.
He realizes this because instead of the spell shooting towards the intended target, it instead backfires spectacularly, shooting Ron backwards several feet.
Numbly, Harry reaches a hand out and slows Ron's fall with a twist of his magic. As his magic wraps around Ron, Harry's eyes widen as he feels the presence of Ron's spell tangled up around Ron's abdomen.
Unthinkingly, Harry pushes at the mess of a spell as Ron shakily stands up, dissolving it in one go.
Ron doubles over and Harry's heart stops as he sprints over to his friend's side. What had he been thinking?
"Ron!" Harry chokes out, grabbing at Ron's shaking shoulders as Ron vomits into the grass.
"I'm- okay," Ron says in between retches.
Harry notices distantly that, instead of breakfast and stomach bile, Ron seems to be throwing up… live slugs?
Finally Ron weakly coughs up a couple more slugs, then stands up and wipes his mouth. "Eugh," Ron moans. "That was not supposed to happen."
"You think?" Hermione says, irritated. "What spell even was that?"
"Hex. Fred and George taught me."
"L-lets get y-you to the hospital wing," Neville decides.
Ron shakes his head, and Harry levels such a venomous glare at Ron that he actually steps back.
"I'm really okay, now," Ron protests anyway.
"Ron," Harry growls.
"Actually, that hex should have had me throwing slugs up for hours. I guess my wand really is well and truly broken."
Harry stares at the boy disbelievingly, magic flaring uncomfortably in his chest. He can't decide who he's the most angry at, himself or Ron.
"Be right back," Harry grits out before summoning his broom and mounting it. He shoots into the air without looking back.
Harry grabs his magic, struggling to bring it back under control. Of all the stupid, impulsive, reckless things to do! Harry levels out, high above the grassy pitch below and takes a deep breath, trying to calm his racing heartbeat.
Instead of dwelling on the thought of Quirrell and the smell of melting plastic, Harry shoots back and forth over the pitch and tries to focus on the feeling of the wind flying though his hair and the familiar polished wood texture of his Nimbus 2000.
Feeling considerably calmer, Harry circles the pitch for a minute.
He notices that the Slytherin team seem to have disappeared. Fred and George look like they are checking in with Ron; Oliver, Angelina, and Alicia are talking to Hermione and Katie; and Neville seems to be keeping an eye on Harry.
Harry spirals back down, landing a short distance from Ron. Ron runs up to Harry, worried.
"Look mate, I'm really fine, but if it means that much to you I can check in with Pomfrey no problem."
Harry gives him a tight smile. "Sorry Ron, but it really would make me feel better. I accidentally panicked and pushed your spell from you."
Ron gets an impressed look on his face and Harry grimaces.
"It's not a good thing. I've never done anything like that before. What if you're bleeding internally? Or, or what if I vanished your stomach?" Harry is getting more and more worked up.
By this point, Hermione and Neville have joined them, both of them looking a little sick at Harry's words. Ron lays a hand on his arm.
"Okay," is all Ron says.
Harry puffs out his cheeks and lets the air escape slowly before giving Ron a relieved smile.
"Thanks." Harry says. "Let's go."