On the last Saturday in September the tryouts for the vacant Chaser post were held. Like the year before, there was a very good turnout and the quality of the players was much improved. The decision was going to be more difficult than ever. So difficult, that the team were engaged in debate for just short of three hours before they finally decided that each of them would write the names of their top five choices on pieces of parchment, fold them up and put them in an empty cauldron. They then asked Hermione to pick one and read out the name of the winner. “Dennis Creevey,” she said in her crisp and clear voice. Colin and Ginny cheered while Harry and Ron gave each other highly doubtful looks. Dennis had flown okay but he wasn’t brilliant by any means. Quidditch training began in earnest, Harry and Hermione had managed to talk Ron out of daily practices and instead convinced him to settle for a more relaxed two practices a week. The first match of the season was going to be Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw and it was traditionally a friendly game that was too close to call. It was scheduled in for the second to last Saturday in October, which meant the weather was likely to be changeable.
As the days before the game flew by Ron’s behaviour became very erratic, and he sounded more like a Brigadier General preparing his troops for the fiercest battle of their lives. In fact, at one of the practices during the last week before the game the rest of the team went on strike. It was up to Harry to play the go between. “Ron, mate, you’re pushing them too hard,” he said quietly.
“Well, excuse me for wanting to win!” Ron bellowed through the drizzle at him.
“We all want to win, but you’re taking it too far!” Harry was about a minute away from joining the rest of the team in the dressing room.
“Look here, Harry, we’re the team to beat! They’re going to be all over us like Dragon Pox and we need to be ready. We’re not going to win the cup if we just sit around on our backsides!”
“We won’t win it if half the team are suffering from nervous breakdowns either!”
“Don’t be so over dramatic, nobody’s having a nervous breakdown,” Ron snapped.
“I hate to break this to you, but if you shout at Sloper once more he’ll probably burst into tears and tell McGonagall that he wants to leave school! You’ve been absolutely disgusting to him… and don’t even get me started on the way you’re treating Ginny!” Harry yelled even louder as the weather began to change, it was almost as if the charged atmosphere between the two boys was a magnet drawing the stormy weather to them, the wind was picking up speed and the rain was coming down harder.
“She’s my sister, Harry, and I’ll treat her however I want!”
“Is that so? Well, she’s my girlfriend and nobody is going to talk to her like that!”
“Yeah? Or else you’ll what?” Ron challenged him.
“Or I’ll thump you!” Harry screamed, clenching his fist and shaking it in Ron’s face.
“You wouldn’t dare!” Ron laughed. It was a loud, booming and altogether unnatural noise that sounded completely out of place coming from Ron’s mouth.
“Oh yes I would!” With that Harry swung his arm back and allowed his fist to connect with Ron’s cheek. There was surprise in the tall boy’s eyes as he stumbled backwards and nearly fell over. Harry marched off the pitch, straight past his stunned teammates and back up into the castle. He had forgotten just how muddy his feet were until he heard an angry cry from behind him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Filch yelled noisily.
“Going back to my tower,” Harry snapped, he wasn’t in the mood to endure one of the caretaker’s lectures.
“You’ve got mud everywhere!”
“So?”
“Just you wait, Potter, you can come with me to Professor Snape’s office and get your punishment from him,” Filch whispered gleefully.
“I don’t think that will be necessary, Mr. Filch.” Harry and Filch looked around to see Ellie standing on the first floor landing looking thoroughly unimpressed. The only thing that bothered Harry was that her heated gaze was directed at him.
“Professor Weasley,” Filch shrilled. “This boy dragged mud into the castle and then gave me cheek when I confronted him. I want punishment!”
“I fully understand that, but there will be no need to bother Professor Snape. Since I am already here I’ll deal with this,” Ellie said with irritation. She didn’t like being told what to do, least of all by Argus Filch. She remembered the way he had terrorised her during the summers she had spent running in and out of the castle while her grandfather attended to business.
“I want him to clean up his mess!” Filch continued to protest.
“Scourgify!” Ellie said calmly. The splodges of mud that Harry had dragged through the front doors disappeared. “There we are, now, don’t you have other duties to be carrying out?” she asked him frostily.
“Very well, Professor,” Filch said agitatedly, he then stomped off up the staircase.
“Come with me, Harry,” Ellie said as she turned and began taking the route to her office. Harry had the horrible feeling that he was in trouble. Once inside her office she directed him into a seat and sat at her desk looking at him hard. For the first time ever, it truly hit Harry that she wasn’t just his cousin, she was his teacher. “Explain yourself,” she said bluntly.
“I’d been down a Quidditch practice and I forgot that I was all muddy,” Harry shrugged his shoulders. Being told off by Ellie was entirely different from being told off by anyone else, it wasn’t the anger in her voice that got to him; it was the disappointment.
“That doesn’t explain your attitude.”
“It was only Filch, nobody likes him!” he protested.
“He’s still a member of staff, Harry, and he would have been well within his rights to give you a detention or take points, and after hearing the way you spoke to him, I wouldn’t have blamed him. So why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
“I had argument with Ron,” Harry said glumly. He hated the fact Ellie was disappointed with him and he was beginning to feel quite guilty about hitting his best friend.
“What about?” her tone had softened ever so slightly.
“Quidditch, the team went on strike because he’s pushing too hard and then we argued, and I…I hit him,” he said looking at the floor, he couldn’t look her in the eye but he could feel the tirade that was coming.
“Was that really necessary? For goodness sake, Harry, he’s your best friend!” She glared at him for a minute. “Right then, I’ll have ten points for the way you spoke to Filch, ten more for hitting Ron and you’ll serve a detention on Wednesday night.”
“Come on, Ellie!” Harry argued. “That’s not fair and you know it!”
“Keep going, Harry, and I’ll take another ten,” she said sharply. He stopped arguing promptly but couldn’t stop himself from scowling at her. “Go back to Gryffindor Tower and cool off,” she instructed. Harry stormed from the room in an even fowler mood than he had been in when he left the Quidditch pitch. As her office door slammed shut behind the angry teenager, Ellie looked out the window at the stormy sky outside fiercely. “Stop using Harry to channel yourself, Uncle James. I don’t appreciate it.”
When he got to the common room Ginny was holding some kind of conference with Colin, Dennis, Andrew and Jack; Ron was nowhere in sight. “Where did you get to?” she asked him as he approached the group. “I came after you but when I got back to the castle you’d disappeared.”
“Filch caught me trampling mud through the castle and wanted to take me to Snape,” he answered sourly.
“Oh, Harry, what did he say?”
“Nothing, Ell…Professor Weasley interrupted before Filch could drag me down to the dungeons.”
“Phew, that’s alright then,” Colin let out a breath he’d been holding in.
“Not really, she took twenty points off me and I’ve got a detention on Wednesday night.” Harry felt his anger at the injustice of it all building up again. “Where’s Ron?”
“We think he’s trying to drown himself in the Head’s bathroom, Hermione’s gone after him. Did you really have to hit him?” Ginny asked.
“I hit him for you! He was making me so angry and he didn’t think I’d do it…” Harry was vaguely aware of just how pathetic his excuse was.
“So this was all about male pride?” Ginny was giving him that hard look that her mother wore before she went into one of her fierce outbursts. “Here we were thinking that you did it to try and snap him out of his tyrannical running of this team, and instead you did it because he dared you to. Have you any idea how stupid you sound?” The petite red head was now out of her seat with her balled fists resting on her hips and she appeared to be swelling with rage.
“How stupid I sound? I’m not the one that lead the rest of the team to go on strike, am I?” This was the straw that broke the Thestral’s back. Harry was sick of being shouted at today, none of this was his fault.
“So you think that the way Ron was treating us was all right, do you?” Ginny yelled. The whole common room had stopped the various things they had been doing to watch the fight between two of their Quidditch stars.
“Actually, no I don’t, but I think that deciding to strike was a complete over reaction!”
“And I suppose that you punching Ron wasn’t over the top?”
“No it wasn’t, he had it coming!” Harry streaked away from his girlfriend and sprinted up the stairs to his dormitory. He sat down on the edge of his bed but immediately regretted it, because the sludge that was all up the back of his Quidditch uniform smeared on to his bed covers. He cursed loudly before sweeping down to the showers where he attempted to drown himself in the steady flow of hot water.
During the next few days a frosty atmosphere settled in to Gryffindor Tower, it crackled its way in to every corner, freezing everything in its path. The main subject up for the extremely hushed discussion was the Quidditch team. As things stood, the Co-Captains weren’t talking to each other, the Chasers and Beaters weren’t talking to the Keeper, and one of the Chasers was declining all offers to speak to the Seeker as well. All in all, it made for a very tense situation. Students all through the house broke out in sympathy with the poor Head Girl who happened to be in the middle of the whole thing. Harry would only talk to Hermione, and disappeared when either Ron or Ginny showed up. Ginny refused to speak to either Ron or Harry, and often glared at them until they left her alone with Hermione: and Ron didn’t dare come near her if Harry or Ginny were in the nearby vicinity.
Just to make her life so much easier she had a handful of Head Girl duties to carry out and a healthy dollop of homework that needed doing. It was safe to say that Hermione was very close to breaking point. She had hoped that after a day or two, everyone would have cooled down enough to have a chat with each other about what had gone wrong, she was mistaken. She managed to get the team sitting around one of the bigger tables in the common room, the three Chasers were planted in the middle with a Beater on either side of them and then half way round the table to the left was Harry, while almost opposite him was Ron. Hermione sat in between the two sullen young men who were doing their very best to avoid the incensed looks that were being thrown at them by the five people just around the table edge from them. “So…” Hermione said when it became obvious that no one was going to speak up first. “I think you all need to have a good long chat about what happened.”
“There is nothing to talk about, Hermione. He…” Ginny said pointing a sharp finger at Ron. “…Is a selfish pig headed twat and he…” She now made a stabbing motion at Harry. “ …Is a violent brute who is over concerned with his own self importance!”
“Yeah, and you’re a jumped up, interfering, little agitator!” Ron leapt to his own defence.
“Who the hell do you think you are? You can’t talk to her like that, you big, lanky bully!” Harry yelled at Ron as he banged his fist down on the table.
“Excuse me, but I don’t need you to stick up for me, you sexist prat!” Ginny leaned over the table and pushed Harry back into his chair.
“Well, pardon me for trying to be chivalrous! I thought girls liked it when you acted like a gentleman!” he screeched at Hermione, who was too terrified to respond.
“Not when it involves punching their brothers, they don’t! And to think that I tried to make sure that the rest of them would lay off you for going out with Ginny, I wish I hadn’t now!” Ron roared.
“So do I! They might have put me off her and we wouldn’t be having this stupid conversation in the first place, would we?” Harry bellowed back. A deathly silence followed his words. Ron was looking at him with eyes that were wide in astonishment; Hermione was giving one of the most unforgiving stares that he had ever endured and Ginny… poor Ginny, wore an expression of world ending heartbreak. Harry knew he couldn’t repair the damage he had done so he rose from his chair mournfully, and left through the portrait hole with the idea of drowning himself in the lake; it was all he was fit for.
“Is something the matter, Harry?” The calm and soothing voice of the Hogwarts Headmaster asked gently from the closed door of Ellie’s office. Harry had been wandering aimlessly around the castle for hours it seemed, his feet kept moving but his brain didn’t know where he was going.
“Everything is fine, sir,” Harry replied in what he hoped was a cheerful tone; clearly it wasn’t because Dumbledore continued to gaze at him intently.
“Your disagreement with Mr. Weasley persists?” He asked very astutely.
“How did you know?” Harry enquired with surprise.
“There are a great many things that I am proud of, Harry, one of them is that Elizabeth has always shared her worries with me.” Dumbledore put a wrinkly but strong hand on Harry’s shoulder and began to steer him in the direction of the Headmaster’s office. “Too often parents or grandparents feel that they don’t know or understand many of the things which go on in their children’s lives. However, Elizabeth and I have, particularly in recent years, developed a very close relationship, which allows her to tell me almost anything and everything. There are, of course, a few obvious exceptions, she has Professor McGonagall for guidance in the areas where I am of no use,” he smiled.
“What area could you be of no use in?” Harry speculated. Dumbledore always gave the impression that he was a kind of all seeing and all knowing man.
“Apparently, I am particularly bad at unfurling the male psyche,” the older man laughed gently. “I’m also told that there are things about women I could never possibly understand because of the obvious fact that I am not one of them.”
“Oh,” Harry said with dawning comprehension.
“But I digress, back to your quarrel with young Ronald. I assume that the two of you have not reached a compromise yet?”
“Not quite, no, and now I’ve gone and upset Ginny too.”
“It certainly sounds as though you have been busy. Acid Pops,” the professor said to the gargoyles that guarded the entrance to his office. They immediately sprang apart and revealed the moving spiral staircase; Dumbledore encouraged Harry on to it before lightly leaping on to the step behind him. “I’m sure that there is nothing that a well placed box of sweets or a bunch of flowers couldn’t put right.”
“It’ll take a lot more than sweets or flowers to sort out this mess,” Harry said miserably as he flopped down into the cozy chair that was opposite the headmaster’s.
“There is very little you can do in life that cannot be resolved, so long as you have enough determination and compassion, nothing is unachievable.”
“But the things I said, I practically told Ginny that if her brothers had got too much for me then I would have dumped her!”
“Did you mean it?”
“Of course not! I mean, I won’t deny that when I started going out with her I was terrified of what the lot of them would say and do…”
“Quite understandable and most probably advisable, it doesn’t hurt to be on your toes when Fred and George Weasley are about.” Dumbledore smiled widely at this point, he had a great appreciation for the imagination that the twins had.
“Exactly, but I’d never have broken up with her, even if they did hex me a hundred times before breakfast. At the end of the day, I love her and nothing changes that, not mad brothers, not impending doom, not anything. I just said what I did to get back at Ron and I didn’t really think about what effect it would have on Ginny.” The words came tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop them, right now he needed someone to talk to and Dumbledore was here, wiling to listen and probably more capable of helping him than anyone else.
“In the heat of the moment we all say things that we regret; if I were to sulk over every insult that had been paid to me over the years then I wouldn’t leave my office. If I took every invective, particularly those that Elizabeth has provided, to heart then I would never speak to her again. It is rather unfortunate that human nature leads us to hurt those close to us more often than we would like. Sometimes, the many emotions that bubble within us need a release and it is those closest to us who bear the brunt, but these are the things that build friendships. In time, it won’t be what was said that you remember, it will be how you got past it. Friends who only see you through fair-weather are not true friends, Harry, but those who take the worst that you can give them and are still prepared to standby you are the truest friends you will ever have. Ms. Granger and Mr. Weasley, in particular, have stood by you unfalteringly. I am sure that, even at this moment, if you were in true danger, Ronald would be quick to aid you. I’m also positive that if any harm were to befall you Ginevra would be devastated, she just needs some time to calm down.”
“You don’t know Ginny, she’ll steam about this for weeks and then even if she does get over it she’ll use it against me every time we argue!”
“While it’s true that I don’t know Ginny as well as you do.” Dumbledore covered his mouth and gave a little cough that to Harry’s ears sounded distinctly like ‘fourth floor broom cupboard.’ “I do know Molly very well, and I’m told, from very reliable sources, that the two are quite alike…”
“Understatement,” Harry mumbled. Dumbledore smiled at him.
“In which case, you would be surprised at how well a thorough apology and a pretty bouquet of flowers are received. I might be able to provide you with a good opportunity to make your apology,” the headmaster said with a twinkle.
“Really?”
“Indeed, I had a very interesting suggestion from Elizabeth earlier, with regards to Halloween. As you are now well aware, that particular event has heralded particularly raucous celebrations from the Potter family. Elizabeth rather wishes to return to the golden era in which Hogwarts held a dance every year. It used to be quite fun, it was fancy dress and the costumes never ceased to amaze me.” Dumbledore smiled. “Perhaps the announcement of a ball would be a good opportunity for you to make your groveling apology to Ms. Weasley and ask her to accompany you?”
“That’s not a bad idea,” said Harry. He was already running speeches through his head and thinking about what he was going to dress up as.
“As for the dispute with Ronald, I’m sure that it will blow over once you reach Saturday’s match.
“Hm!” Harry snorted in a slightly derisory manner. He couldn’t imagine the match easing the tension between his team-mates; in fact he could see it getting worse.
By Friday night the team still weren’t talking to each other. When Harry got back to the tower after dinner (where he had sat with Neville and Seamus), Hedwig was tapping at one of the tall windows. He opened it to let her in and she fluttered gracefully on to the table he’d been about to sit at. Attached to her leg was a rather tatty bit of parchment that looked as if it had been torn roughly away from the rest of the roll. When he unfolded it he wasn’t surprised by its rough appearance, it was a note from Ron.
“Harry,
We haven’t practiced so we need to meet before the match, when?
Ron.”
Harry pulled out a fresh bit of parchment and quickly scrawled a reply.
“Ron,
It’ll have to be tomorrow morning. What time d’you reckon is best?
Harry.”
He quickly tied this to Hedwig’s leg and expected her to soar out of the open window. Instead she shot into the air and went into a steep dive for a chair by the fire that had its high back to him. Two seconds later she reversed the move and landed on the table in front of Harry, underneath his note was now the addition.
“7.30 am.”
As he sat there with the parchment in one hand and his quill in the other he was overcome by the need to try and make things right so he began to write.
“Okay. Ron, I’m really sorry about hitting you and all the things that I said the other day.
Harry.”
Hedwig looked thoroughly disgruntled at being asked to deliver a letter when the recipient was less than ten feet away. The other people in the common room just looked on in amazement as the owl zoomed between the two boys. Ron’s reply wasn’t very comforting though.
“Tell that to Ginny.”
His short reply annoyed Harry a little, here he was trying to be grown up and mature about things by apologising and Ron wasn’t giving an inch. He huffed and pushed the parchment into his bag. He got up from his seat to put a note up on the notice board telling the team of the change in practice and when he turned around only three of the faces in the crowded common room weren’t staring at him. Suddenly very aware of how depressed he was feeling, he decided to pack his things away and go up to bed.
He hardly slept a wink and seven thirty came around far too quickly for his liking. He and Ron had got up and dressed in silence, slouched all the way to the pitch without single word and stood in absolute quiet to wait for their team. From where he was stood Harry could see the tops of the trees in the forbidden forest. He watched unseeingly as a Thestral emerged from the green, circled effortlessly for a moment and then dived back into the gloom. He was subconsciously aware of birds singing somewhere and the sound of the lake’s water lapping gently against the bank. There was a fair wind, it wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t great either, but if you stopped concentrating then it wouldn’t be hard to get blown off course. Clouds were gathering over head like an oversized and greying vulture that was desperately hungry for prey, if you paused for long enough it would undoubtedly swoop down and engulf you with its misery.
Five subdued figures stepped their way across the pitch and stood opposite the two seventh years to await their instructions. When he eventually grew tired of everybody just looking at each other and waiting for someone to say something, Harry cleared his throat. “Hem-Hem,” he coughed. Ginny shot him a hurt look that seared its way down into his soul. “We probably shouldn’t do anything too energetic, otherwise we’ll wear ourselves out for the match…so I suppose the best thing to do would be just to practice some throwing and stuff in the current conditions…” he said unsurely. He felt better when everyone nodded. They released the balls and began a very quiet training session. Everybody had a sudden need for formality and forced politeness.
“Mr. Sloper, would you kindly not hit bludgers into my face,” Ginny said through clenched teeth when one of Jack’s cannons missed her head by about half a centimetre.
“He’s just working on his accuracy, Ms. Weasley,” replied Andrew. After only an hour and a half they decided to end the session, Harry was more or less panicking about the match now, it they didn’t get their acts together they were going to get steamrollered.
The match was quickly turning into an unmitigated disaster. Ravenclaw were 120 points up on Gryffindor, a figure that Harry was sure must be some kind of all time record. The team was a mess, they were throwing the Quaffle so hard that it often soared through the fingers of the recipient, and then they were glaring at each other for the mistake. Ginny’s earlier reprimand about the accuracy of Sloper’s beating had hit home, the opposition would have been more worried about getting hit if they had been flying over the forbidden forest. He hadn’t hit a Bludger in the right direction during the whole match, and at one point had almost unseated Harry. Ron’s keeping was the worst that Harry had ever seen it, and considering how bad the freckled teenager had been when he joined the team two years ago, that was really saying something. The Slytherins had reverted back to their old version of ‘Weasley is Our King’ and Ron was not dealing with it well. Harry hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the Snitch during the entire course of the game, and just to make things so much better, the wind had picked up and the rain had started. He would have called for a time out, but with the mood everyone was in that would have been a pointless exercise. He just focused his mind on finding the golden ball that was fluttering around somewhere.
‘Above the Hufflepuff stands, floating right over the tall boy with blond hair, third seat from the left in the seventh row.’ Ellie’s voice whispered through his mind. Sure enough when he looked up, it was exactly where she said it was. He flattened himself against his broom and sped towards it. The new Ravenclaw Seeker wasn’t a patch on Cho Chang, or him for that matter, and was practically still down at the other end of the pitch when Harry caught the Snitch.
“Harry Potter catches the Snitch to secure the match for Gryffindor, 150 to 120. GRYFFINDOR WINS!” shouted Jonathan Galloway the seventh year Hufflepuff who was commentating. As the members of his house cheered loudly in the background, Harry landed on the ground softly and popped the Snitch back into its compartment in the trunk; he wasn’t in the mood for celebrating and flying over the pitch in the wake of his victory. The win was hollow, Ravenclaw deserved it after all their hard work. He took one last look up at Ginny before he left the pitch and saw that she was just as happy to win as he was. The second she raised her head Harry looked away, he didn’t want to see her sad eyes and feel even guiltier than he already did. Unfortunately for him, Ginny didn’t see that it was guilt and convinced herself that it was arrogance.
A/N: Ah, the drama! Next we’ll be partying it out in…Ghoul Are You?
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