After that eventful night, Harry had expected things to simmer down, but now he was looked upon by others in the castle in a way even he noticed. It didn't help that somehow the Daily Prophet had gotten word of the story and printed it as front-page news for the entire country to see. But now he wanted to know more about why some girls would treat him like an exhibit at the zoo, surely it wasn't just being in the papers, so he went off to the library and frankly, he found squat.
"Are you looking for something in particular?" a person asked him from behind, turning to face them, Harry saw that it was Hermione who stood with a stack of books in her arms.
"Yes actually, it might sound a bit weird, but well… I've noticed that Hogwarts doesn't have a lot of wizards and I was curious why, the Sorting Hat didn't tell me much about it. I just thought that one of the books had to explain what happened," shrugging because he figured that he was the only one in the castle who didn't get it.
Nodding her head, Hermione quickly set down her books and went over to another section. "I thought that was weird too, I did notice there weren't any boys when Professor Flitwick took my parents and I to get school supplies, but I thought nothing of it and just assumed I didn't pay enough attention, but once I was on the train, I only saw half a dozen boys, yourself included," explaining to him her perspective on seeing the discrepancy.
"Oh, so are you from a muggle family too?" Harry asked because he never really bothered to ask anyone what magical families were like yet.
Hermione nodded before scrunching her features, Harry was a wizard, surely, he knew all this stuff already, like most of the other girls seemed to. "I'm muggleborn, but you're not from a muggle family, you're Harry Potter."
"Well, my mum was a witch, but since they you know… I've been living with my aunt and uncle, they're muggles, I only learned about magic after Ms. Hagrid came to give me my letter.
Eyeing the wizard in front of her, like he was a puzzle, Hermione pulled out the book she was looking for and came back over to him to set it down. "This is so far the first book I found that talks about it."
"The Order of Merlin, a retro- a retrospective," Harry sounded out the bigger word he'd not seen before. Opening the pages, it looked like a biography about the famous wizard that even he'd heard of in the muggle world, and it went into great details of his astounding accomplishments. Moving along to a section listed as The War of Witches and Wizards, Harry read along the passages.
From what historical accounts believe is that Merlin was in a devastating magical duel with the witch Morgan le Fay. A battle that Merlin ultimately won, but the witch placed a curse with her dying breath that would wipe out Merlin and his kind from the world, leaving her the victor. The scholars theorize that while the curse did not kill Merlin it caused the birth rates of wizards to plummet, they were now a quarter that of witches.
Harry thought about that for a few moments, and something didn't add up to him.
"You saw that wasn't right either?" Hermione bit her lip and pointed to the section he had just read.
"Yeah, wouldn't… wouldn't there still be more boys in the castle even if there were four girls for each one?" Harry questioned because even if he wasn't the greatest at math, in a year with thirty odd girls, it seemed unlikely he would be the only boy, and as far as he could tell the next youngest boy in the castle was Cedric Diggory so there were two whole years separating them without a single wizard.
"I know, that's what I've been trying to figure out," Hermione admitted, as she pointed to the other texts.
"Well," Harry stopped to think, unless he wished to spend all of his free time scouring the books to learn more about why that ratio was off, for now he was going to chalk it up as it got worse overtime. "I'll leave you to that, I still have some homework to do before Oliver takes me out for more quidditch practice."
"That's quite alright Harry," Hermione smiled at the boy, happy that he was focused on making sure his homework was done, unlike some of the other girls, like Pavrati, Lavender and Ronalda, who gossiped and goofed around and did their homework at the last minute.
At dinner, Harry was confused why Hedwig was flying towards him with a package in her talons, but she dropped in gracefully in front of him and opening the wrapping, it drew much attention from the witches around him that he had been given a Nimbus 2000, the current top of the line broom. A note had come with it. "For a courageous hero, the Nimbus Racing Broom Company would be honored to gift to Hogwarts' newest and no doubt soon to be most accomplished wizard, our finest product."
It was a tad strange Harry thought that he was being given something that from what he saw in the windows at Diagon Alley looked quite pricey, all because he had gone to save someone, it would seem that the witches in this world weren't just nice, they were quite generous too.
The first game of the year was set to start, and it made Harry nervous because while they practiced quite a bit, unlike the newest addition to the team, a second-year girl with dirty blonde hair who was the third chaser on the team, he had never seen a game of quidditch before.
Standing with the team, next to Oliver, he could hear the thumping of the footsteps in the stands above them and the loud crowd was a cacophony inside his fretful mind.
"Don't worry," Oliver suddenly said to catch Harry's attention. "It's not likely to be like my first game, caught a bludger in the head two minutes in, woke up in the hospital wing a week later. Least that's what I think, don't really remember much of it, had to be told by Madam Pomfrey."
Harry opened his mouth to tell the other wizard that had been one of the worst motivational speeches he had ever heard but the horn sounding had signified the start of the game, so mounting his broom because he was to lead out the team with Oliver, something he thought weird, he took to the air and was flying above the pitch.
And every concern he had melted away, it was incredible. So totally different from practice that you couldn't even call it the same thing. The roaring crowd, the players racing around the sun beaming on his face. He took a deep breath and finally understood what made Oliver so crazy about the game.
He nearly missed when Madam Hooch came out to officiate the game between the opposing teams, but when that whistle blew, Harry shot off. The wind rushing against his face, the way the sounds outside of the game were drowned out. Even though for the first few minutes he hadn't found the snitch yet, just seeing the witches racing around, passing, blocking and dodging the quaffle, each other and the bludgers, it made him want to stay here forever. At least that was until his broom seemed to get a mind of his own and tried to buck him off.
Shocking the crowd, Harry had nearly fallen off, which was now concerning because what Oliver had told him was that the brooms were enchanted to slowly descend if their rider were dismounted but instead it seemingly got more violent in its attempts to make him plummet.
Tonks had been happy to see Harry engaged in his first game and since he was up against Slytherin she had an excuse to cheer for him over the other team, but when the seeker's broom looked like it was doing everything it could to remove its rider, she knew something was up. A top-of-the-line racing broom had to be enchanted to resist tampering, it'd be useless in a crowded stadium if anyone could fire a couple charms or hexes to disrupt the game, the school brooms possibly, but not a brand-new Nimbus. So, she knew it would take someone far beyond what was taught in classes to make this all happen. Looking up to the professor's box, she fixed her eyes on Severia, the Slytherin head of house.
Maybe it was bias, but Tonks wasn't so young that her mother hadn't told her about the Death Eaters that followed You-Know-Who, she knew quite a lot about who followed that mad wizard in her opinion. So she knew that her potion's professor had been one of them back in the day, now it seemed that the witch was taking her chance to avenge her fallen master. Slipping away from her fellow students, Tonks hurried through the stands and up to the faculty box, she didn't even draw her wand, just leaping into the mass of teachers, to knock Severia over, sending them all crashing down in a pile at the bottom of the seats, raising a fist, she swung it to connect with Severia's jaw and she kept punching.
This commotion in the booth had all the professors trying to separate the two but looking over to the sky, she could see that Harry's broom had stopped acting up and he was able to get back on it. She was relieved that he was no longer in mortal danger, but now she had the problem of a lot of pissed off professors staring her down. "I uh…"
"Oh, we understand Nymphadora," Pomona smirked knowingly as to what had urged the metamorph to act so swiftly and violently. She, like all the professors, were aware of the rumors surrounding her and Mr. Potter. It had come as a shock to them that Harry's tastes ran older but for all the times Harry kept approaching her, it became obvious that Harry was staking his claim on Tonks becoming the head witch of his coven. A bit unusual at his age, but a wizard wants what a wizard wants.
Severia was rubbing her jaw as Poppy tended to the injuries, she opened her mouth to belt out a slew of infinite detentions and point losses but Albus cleared his throat and nudged his head slightly, Severia knew that he was drawing her attention to Quirenette subtly, and as much as she hated it, the bumbling girl tackling half the teachers to the floor did serve the purpose of ending the curse the defense professor was muttering imperceptibly. Drawing more attention to the situation might set off Quirrell into knowing that they were onto her.
Nymphadora was escorted back to the Hufflepuff stands and left her to her fate as the other girls now had, in their eyes, concrete proof that Tonks and Harry were an item. And that her actions were to demonstrate that she was the head witch because of how swiftly she was in coming to his aid before anyone else did.
Harry after remounting had seen the cluster of activity in the professor's skybox and noticed that Tonks was being led out by Professor Sprout, he put that detail together with how he regained control of the broom and concluded that Tonks had been the one to put an end to whatever was happening. Since Madam Hooch had halted play, he had a moment to himself before he had to retake position, so he quickly flew over to where she was in the crowd. Her bright pink hair was like a vibrant island in a sea of blacks, browns and blondes. When he stopped in front of her, the other witches began to make oohing sounds.
"Tonks, you saved me," Harry said in awe to the now bashful witch.
"Well yeah Harry," Tonks shrugged and tried to play it off so people didn't get the wrong idea.
"I knew you were incredible," Harry praised the witch because she had been the coolest, most fun witch he'd met yet. "I just didn't know that my first, my first friend would do so much for me. Tonks, thank you."
That Harry said friend had been drowned out when Harry called her his first, to them it was Harry declaring unequivocally that Nymphadora Tonks was the leader of his coven.
There would be no magical power on Earth that could have hidden the redness on Tonk's face, it was so public for everyone that she was chosen by him, that she couldn't even deny it anymore.
Just opening her mouth, she almost breathlessly said, "Whatever you require of me, my warlock."
Hearing Madam Hooch's whistle Harry had to take off back to where he had been when the timeout had been called, but the game would begin again and he'd try his hardest to make sure it was an impressive match.
And the way that it ended was enough to get the entire crowd on their feet, because apparently nobody had ever caught a snitch in their mouth. But Leela Jordan's comment on his tongue work wasn't too far off, the metal had an odd taste to it, barely there at all, but he'd never sucked on gold before so he didn't really have much to compare it to. Thinking idly while he tried to carefully and not so grossly spit out the snitch into his hands, he considered that maybe later tonight when he was alone he would bite a couple of galleons to compare.
He heard a resounding slap from the magical speakers and that drew him out of his own musings, but he missed what had been said.
Leela Jordan was rubbing the back of her head because Professor McGonagall had allowed more than enough double entendres slide in the match but the young troublemaking announcer trying to start a bidding war for the golden snitch that had been in Harry's mouth was a step too far for her liking. Because she just knew that there would be more than a few takers to have that piece of memorabilia.
If the party for Harry becoming the seeker and fighting a troll was big, pulling off a stunning victory in his first match ever had the party going hours past curfew.
After that match, Harry didn't have to seek out Tonks to spend time with her, she came to him. She'd even come over and sit with him during meals. He was worried that someone would complain but no one ever did, even Professor Snape who seemed in his mind a stickler for the rules had no comment as she passed them by. It was a little odd that she'd hold his hand whenever they weren't occupied with something but, truth be told he quite liked the contact with another person, her hand was soft and that she'd rub her thumb on the back of his hand, that was pleasant. And he guessed that all the other girls who got odd looks whenever they were together finally got over it because they now knew they were friends.
That there were different looks however completely went over his head because he wouldn't understand what those looks meant for a while longer.