"Alright there, Scarhead?" Malfoy taunted from above the quidditch pitch, shooting underneath Harry to show off how fast his Nimbus 2001 was.

"Oh, yeah, just fine," Harry responded, absently, idly tracking the snitch across the sky, barely able to worry about his tormentor while he decided when to pounce.

The week since the defeat of the diary had been a blur. Every free moment had been claimed by Oliver Wood to practice for the match against Slytherin. Harry hadn't been able to even get to the library. He hoped that Hermione and Ron had gotten some research done, or at least managed some homework.

His conundrum was when to catch the snitch. It had been locked in his targeting bracket against the cloudy sky since it had been let free of the case. Moments after Wood and the Slytherin captain, Flint, had tried to break each others' hands "shaking" at the start of the match. Minutes after Wood had insisted that he catch the snitch or die trying.

But should he just grab it? The actual reality of being able to end the match at any time and get 150 points was sinking in. Should he give his team a chance to play? Should he let them build up some points first? As much as the Slytherins all getting superior brooms was cheating, was ending the game in under a minute even worse?

Initially, he'd had the idea of running up the score. Technically, they could lose the quidditch cup even if he shut out all three games 150 to 0. All it would take would be some other team managing to accumulate more than 450 points over the year. Obviously, losing to Gryffindor with 0 points would mean that each other team would have to get an average of over 225 points in each of their other two games to have a shot at it, but it was possible.

But maybe he should just go ahead and end it. As the rain started to fall, running up the score was not a thing that was happening. The Gryffindor quidditch team was quickly giving up goals to the superior Slytherin brooms.

Fred and George were playing a blistering game, their new ability points giving them an advantage in controlling the bludgers. They'd finally decided to distribute them in an even mix, Fred taking Perception and Willpower, while George took Agility and Intelligence. The idea that the twins were not evenly matched in their attributes shook everyone, but it made sense that they would diversify to shore up each other's weaknesses.

Lee had gone full Charisma, and the rest of the Marauders suspected that meant he'd maxed it out. In the last week, every time he'd wanted to say something, everyone in the room had shut up and looked toward him, even if he hadn't actually interrupted. Plus, he was having to carefully decide who he'd take to the next Hogsmeade weekend out of all the invitations.

But that didn't make much difference from the announcer's booth, other than that McGonagall wasn't stopping him from his usual favoritism of Gryffindor. "And another goal for Flint. It's almost like they all have new top-of-the-line brooms. I wonder how this game would be going if the equipment was fair."

[Marauders: Active] Harry Potter: Should I just go ahead and catch it, or wait to see if we get more points?

Lee Jordan replies: As much as I hate to say it, I think now's the time.

George Weasley replies: I worry about Slytherin beating us for the year on points, but…

Fred Weasley replies: We can make it up against Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. Go for it.

Hermione Granger replies: It's getting gross out here. I'd appreciate it if you finished the match.

She wasn't wrong. The rain was starting to come down in sheets. "Ready to get shut out, Potter?" Malfoy's annoying drawl came from right next to him, just as he was about to make a play for the snitch.

He glanced over, where the boy had decided to mark him, clearly realizing that his superior broom meant if Harry started going for the snitch, he could get there first. And Wood had been teaching Harry to mark his opponent, but hadn't really gotten around to some of the techniques for avoiding being marked by another seeker. Harry glanced up with his peripheral vision, trying to keep Draco from spotting it, but realizing that the snitch was hovering well above the pitch. If he started to fly towards it, the faster broom might wind up winning out. "We're not shut out," he lamely countered, "we've got twenty points."

"Oooh, twenty points. Which just means you're forty behind," Draco chuckled. "Once I catch the snitch, We'll be up probably over two-hundred. Should make winning the year a foregone conclusion." He paused for a moment as if considering that Harry wouldn't recognize those words and snidely explained, "That means that it's in the bag."

Harry wished that some of the books he'd been reading had given him a trash-talking skill. He tried, "It's not like it counts. Your father bought you any wins you get, with the Nimbus 2001s."

"Oh, it counts," Malfoy grinned. "You'll find, Potter, that money always counts. Best to get used to losing because all your friends are poor."

"I guess that's why…" Harry glanced around, trying to figure out how to finish the sentence without admitting he didn't have a comeback. He spotted the Minister waving at him from the professors' box.

CORNELIUS FUDGE
Minister, Level 10
[MINISTRY OF MAGIC (MINISTER FOR MAGIC),
HUFFLEPUFF]

Harry half-remembered a dream where Fudge was planning to meet with him at this match, and that seemed to have been as true as his other ones. He wasn't sure why he kept associating pink toads with that particular dream. But it gave him an idea, "...the snitch is hanging around the Minister."

DECEPTION CHECK SUCCEEDED

He'd started to dart toward the box, and that had convinced Draco, who yelled, "Too slow, Scarhead!" while rocketing past him. If there had been a glint of gold it had, in fact, simply been McGonagall's wedding ring, sitting behind the Minister. (At some point, he should probably ask someone about why they'd never met a Mr. McGonagall.) As soon as Draco was committed and no longer had him in his peripheral vision, Harry banked up and pointed toward where the snitch actually was, far above.

[Marauders: Active] Harry Potter: I'm grabbing it. Keep Malfoy off of me if he realizes.

If Harry got a response from Fred and George, he didn't have time to check the chat log to see. Somewhere behind and below him, he heard Lee selling the fiction from the announcer's box. "It seems like Malfoy has spotted the snitch! Is it hovering behind the professors' box? And where is Harry Potter!?"

The brackets containing the snitch began to move as it realized he was bearing down on it. But they were rapidly increasing in size as he got closer: open air meant that there wasn't anything to hide behind. In another few seconds he'd be right on top of it…

Which was, of course, when everything went wrong.

He hadn't even turned off his map. He'd barely turned it off since the debacle with Lockhart. But nothing had shown up on it to warn him of the enemies floating above the pitch. Laser-focused on the snitch, which was banking East, Harry barely even noticed them until they were right on top of him.

And then he couldn't miss them.

Coming out of the storm clouds, they were neon holes in his user interface. As soon as he noticed them, he couldn't figure out how he hadn't seen them from a mile away. Vaguely-humanoid forms, they were made of flickering colors. No, wait, not just flickering colors, but flickering pieces of the interface. Somewhere behind it all, his physical eyes saw nothing but black cloaks floating against the stormclouds and bearing down on him. But they were overlaid by shards of text boxes, the map, and fragments of digital text.

The dementors were coming.

It should have only been seconds before he was grasping the snitch, but suddenly his head was full of noise. Snatches of arguments with Dudley and Draco. Lockhart planning to obliviate him. That time his elementary school teacher had accused him of stealing school supplies because of his cousin. A really annoying song that Uncle Vernon insisted on turning up whenever it came on the radio. All of them were burning into his ears, underlaid with a woman's rising scream of pain.

His vision wasn't much better. At the top of his eyeline, his map began to stutter, jumping to previous places he'd been with no rhyme or reason. The arrows for his teammates were spinning like a compass in a whirlpool, and the letters of their names were rearranging themselves. Various windows began to open and close themselves outside of his control. And the pop-ups were impossible to follow.

MENTAL FORTY355 741L3D

OU357 1NC0MPL373

7H3 CH4M83R 0F 534845525 (83IN 893ST)

DHEPC!0N I#CK2 F$1RD

ERROR!

Somehow prompted by the torrent of sound, he glanced at the chat log in the lower right of his vision, where a jumble of half-remembered snatches of conversation were haphazardly filling the log.

Lily Pot7er says: N0t Harry, not H4rry, p1ease not Harry!

Dud1ey Dursley says: He 4lways sp0ils everyth1ng!

T0m Riddle says: St4nd aside, you s1lly girl… s7and aside, now…

Vern0n Durs1ey says: See. If th3y can't deliv4r them, the7'll just g1ve up.

Li1y Pott3r says: N0t Harry, p1ease no, take me, ki1l me instead…

Pe7unia Durl3y says: I w4s the 0nly one who s4w her for what sh3 was—4 freak!

Li!y P0tter says: Please… have m3rcy… h4v3 mercy…

Quirinus 0u1rrell says: Tel1 me the tru7h! What did y0u ju5t see?

Tom R1ddle says: Avada kedavra!

Harry couldn't understand what was going on with his user interface. He couldn't understand why his mental fortress wasn't protecting him from this mental onslaught. He couldn't even understand why the game system seemed to have suddenly turned on him: each flicker in the user interface was accompanied by noise and pain.

It had only been seconds.

Somewhere to his right and below, he thought he saw a flicker of green quidditch armor and platinum-blond hair as Draco was catching him up. Some stubborn part of himself continued to reach toward the snitch, its brackets flickering into shards in the air. Some other part was losing his grip on his broom. Whatever was going on, it couldn't be as important as the quidditch match, which should have been so easy with his gifts.

O1iver Wo0d says: Get t0 that sn1tch before M4lfoy or d1e trying…

Moments before he thought his hand would clasp around the snitch, one of the figures dropped directly in front of him. This close, it was obvious. It was not a physical entity, though you could roughly describe its form as like unto that of a robed wizard. Instead, every inch of it was light and noise, text and border. It was clothed in shards of the game system. It screamed with the noise of a modem connecting.

As his consciousness finally gave up on trying to hold on, he lost his grasp of his broom, and he began to fall, Harry glimpsed the header that appeared above the creature. Above it, where names and creature descriptions lived for everyone else, were only three letters.

G U I