HARRY:

Saturday morning dawned bright and early. Ron was already awake — to my surprise — and pulling his Quidditch robes over his head. I soon jumped out of bed and followed suit; I'd been looking forward to Quidditch more than nearly anything else about returning to Hogwarts. I wanted to wait for Lucy in the common room, but Ron seemed tense at the prospect of his first practice, so I didn't say anything and instead followed him out of the portrait hole.

She won't be alone, Angelina and Alicia will walk down with her, I reasoned to myself.

The twins were already there when Ron and I arrived in the changing room.

"Alright, Ron?" George asked, taking in the paleness of his face and the stiffness of his shoulders.

Ron nodded. "Yeah."

Fred smirked. "Ready to show us all up, Ickle Prefect?"

"Shut up," Ron muttered back.

The curtain behind us parted, and I turned around with a smile to offer Lucy.

My smile vanished when it was Katie Bell who entered with Angelina and Alicia instead of Lucy.

Angelina started talking as if nothing was wrong. "Okay everyone," said Angelina, entering from the Captain's office, already changed. "Let's get to it; Alicia and Fred, if you can just bring the ball crate out for us. Oh, and there are a couple of people out there watching but I want you to just ignore them, alright?"

I blinked, remaining rooted to the ground even as the rest of the team filed out around me.

Lucy had always been there for Quidditch. She had been there when Ron first told me about it. She had been there when I had chased after Malfoy with the Remembrall. She had been there for the match where Quirrell jinxed my broom and the match where I beat her brother to the Snitch. She had been there and even replaced me in the match I missed because I was in the Hospital Wing. She had been there when I broke my arm and when Lockhart made it worse, and she had been there that night in the Hospital Wing, too. She had been there that fateful day Hermione was petrified, and she had been there when Quidditch practice started up again the next year. She had been there when I fell off my broom, she had been there when we cast our Patronuses at the "dementors," she had been there when we won the Quidditch Cup. She had been there at the Quidditch World Cup, too, and even though we didn't watch the match together and found ourselves separated when the Death Eaters attacked, we'd still spent the early hours of the morning together, away from everyone else.

Lucy had always been there for Quidditch. I had no idea what it would be like without her, or why she wasn't there in the first place.

But I didn't have time to wonder. I reluctantly tossed my broom onto my shoulder and followed everyone else out onto the Pitch.

We were immediately met with a mocking uproar from a group of Slytherins in the stands.

Malfoy's voice, of course, rang out the loudest. "What's that Weasley's riding? Why would anyone put a Flying Charm on a moldy old log like that?"

Ron kicked off, ears reddening from anger and humiliation, so I shot up behind him.

"Ignore them. We'll see who's laughing after we play them," I muttered.

"Exactly the attitude I want, Harry!" Angelina said with a smile. She opened her mouth to say something else, but Pansy Parkinson interrupted her.

"Hey, Johnson, what's with that hairstyle anyway? Why would anyone want to look like they've got worms coming out of their head?"

Fred looked for half a second as if he'd chuck his bat straight at Pansy's face, and if I'd had something to throw I would have thrown it, but Angelina wasn't fazed. She merely pushed her hair over her shoulder and said, "Okay everyone, we're going to start with some passes just to warm up, the whole team, so spread out and let's see what we can do!"

The Quaffle went from Angelina to Fred to George to me to Ron. The only problem was that Ron dropped it, and when he went down after it, he slipped a bit and almost fell. While the team ignored it, the Slytherins cheered as if that was the best thing they had ever seen.

"Pass it on, Ron," Angelina called, so he passed it to Alicia.

A couple more passes happened before the Slytherins interrupted.

Malfoy again. "Hey, Potter, how's your scar feeling? Sure you don't need a lie-down? It must be, what, a whole week since you were in the Hospital Wing, that's a record for you, isn't it?"

"I'd love to send you there, I still owe you for what you've done to Lucy over the years," I growled under my breath.

I snagged the Quaffle and sent it Ron's way. He dropped it again, but his recovery was cleaner. He caught it securely the third time, but in his excitement, he threw it directly into Katie's nose, which immediately spurted blood.

He immediately started flying toward her. "Sorry!"

Angelina shook her head. "Get back in position, she's fine! But as you're passing to a teammate, do try not to knock her off her broom, won't you? We've got Bludgers for that!"

The twins flew over to Katie, Fred rummaging through his pockets until he found a small purple candy and dropped it into her hand.

"Here, take this," he said. "It'll clear it up in no time."

Angelina took charge again. "Alright! Fred, George, go and get your bats and a Bludger; Ron, get up to the goalposts, Harry, release the Snitch when I say so. We're going to aim for Ron's goal, obviously."

I landed at the same time as the twins, and we fished out our respective balls.

"Ron's making a right pig's ear of things, isn't he?" George asked.

I shrugged. "He's just nervous. He always does alright when we play over summer."

"Yeah, well, I hope he hasn't peaked too soon," Fred replied as we kicked off again.

When Angelina blew her whistle, the Bludger and Snitch were released, and for the first time in what felt like forever, I experienced something rather akin to relief. There was so much going on in the world, so much out there that was unknown and frightening. I didn't know where I belonged in any of it. But I knew Quidditch. I knew I belonged on the Pitch. I could play Seeker, I could find the Snitch, and I could do it all well. While I was hunting for the Snitch, I wasn't listening to the Slytherins or worrying about Ron or thinking about Voldemort. I was just Harry, Quidditch player, which was quite frankly all I wanted to be at the moment.

Angelina's whistle put an end to that blissful state. "Stop — stop — STOP! Ron — you're not covering your middle post! You keep shifting around while you're watching the Chasers!" said Angelina. "Either stay in center position until you have to move to defend a hoop, or else circle the hoops, but don't drift vaguely off to one side, that's how you let in the last three goals!"

"Sorry," Ron said, turning bright red again.

"And Katie, can't you do something about that nosebleed?"

"It's just getting worse!" she said, pressing her sleeve to her nose.

The twins exchanged a horrified look. Fred rifled through his pocket, pulled out another purple candy, and looked back at Katie, even more horrified.

"Well, let's try again," Angelina said, making a point of ignoring the Slytherins in the stands who had taken up the childish chant "Gryffindors are losers!"

I had just spotted the Snitch when the whistle sounded again.

"What now?" I asked Alicia.

"Katie," she replied, and the team all sped toward her as fast as we could. She was ghostly pale, blood still shooting out of her nose.

"We'll take her. She — er — might have swallowed a Blood Blisterpod by mistake," Fred admitted.

Angelina sighed as he and George left with Katie. "Well, there's no point continuing with no Beaters and a Chaser gone. Come on, let's go."

The Slytherin chants faded as we returned to the tent. Lucy wasn't in the common room when we arrived a couple minutes later, so I headed up to my dormitory and showered. The air in the dormitory was still tense after the row Seamus and I had the first night of term.

"I'll have a go at anyone who calls me a liar." Those had been my exact words.

I hadn't backed down from that yet, and I wasn't sure I ever would.

When I emerged, the dormitory was empty except for Neville, who blinked when he saw me. "Oh, hi, Harry."

"Hi, Neville," I replied, recalling with a rush of gratitude the way he'd defended me during the Seamus incident.

His eyes wandered to my hand, and I was too slow in trying to hide it. "It's okay," he said. "I saw Lucy's. She told me that you two don't want anyone else to know, though, so don't worry. Your secret's safe with me."

I nodded, tossing my Quidditch robes into the trunk at the foot of my bed. "Thanks."

"L-Look," he continued, suddenly seeming shy. "Lucy told me a little bit about what happened to her this summer. A-And I'll do what I can to help, but I think she needs you more. You understand better than I do, even though I want to help, too. You were the one who saw... well, you were there, and I wasn't, and... and Lucy means a lot to me. I hate seeing her hurting so much."

"So do I," I said with a sigh. "Don't worry, Neville, I'm doing my best to take care of her. Did she happen to mention this morning why she quit the Quidditch team, by any chance?"

"She did? But she loves Quidditch! And she's really good!"

I nodded, rubbing the back of my neck and reaching for my stack of homework, already tall after a single day of classes. "Yeah. Well, I should probably go find her, but thanks for taking care of her this morning while I was at practice."

This time when I entered the common room, Lucy was sitting at a table with Hermione, forehead resting against a bandaged hand as she-

Wait, bandaged hand?

I slid into the seat next to her and gently grabbed her wrist.

"And here I was thinking that you quit because Quidditch was too dangerous," I commented as lightheartedly as I could. "How'd you manage to hurt yourself in a greenhouse?"

She blushed a bit. "I got bitten by a cabbage." But she discreetly slid a scrap of parchment over to me, on which she'd already written the true explanation. I dropped something onto where the quill cut me last night and it started bleeding again, but I'm telling everyone it's a cabbage bite.

I released her wrist and offered a smile. "Lucy, Herbology extraordinaire, bitten by a cabbage? I almost don't believe you."

"Well, believe it, Potter," she replied, a faint amused smile toying with the corners of her lips as her face reddened a bit more.

"So if it's not too dangerous... why did you?" I asked quietly.

"I can't play." Her voice was oddly strained.

Hermione glanced up from her homework for the first time. "But you love Quidditch. You know, Lucy, Cedric would want you to play. You don't have to not play just because he's not playing anymore."

Lucy winced. "Well, I can't play whether he'd want me to or not." She sighed, dropped her quill, and held up her uninjured hand. It trembled so violently I wondered how she was able to write at all. "If I tried to throw a Quaffle right now, it'd probably end up in the Forbidden Forest or something. I'd be rubbish. And Madam Pomfrey says I can't play anyway, so it's not like I have much choice."

Ron chose that moment to take the fourth chair at the table, looking nearly as defeated as Lucy did.

"How was practice?" Hermione asked.

"Completely lousy," Ron muttered.

"Well, it was only your first one, it's bound to take time to-"

"Who said it was me who made it lousy?"

"No one, I just thought-"

"You thought I was bound to be rubbish?"

"No, of course I didn't! Look, you said it was lousy so I just-"

Ron started to get up, but Lucy shot her leg out and practically kicked him back down into the seat. "I'm sure practice was better than you think it was. You've been a bloody good Keeper when we've played over summers. What happened?"

"We had an audience," I said. "A whole group of Slytherins."

Lucy rolled her eyes. "Don't let the bullies get to you, Ron, they're just determined to make life living hell for us. They were probably only attacking you because you're new to the team." She glanced at me. "How was Katie?"

Ron sighed, pushed Lucy's leg off, and stomped off to the dormitory.

"Should I not have said that?" Lucy asked quietly, cheeks reddening. "I didn't mean to set him off, I was just curious."

"No, it's alright, you didn't do anything wrong," I replied. "Ron did hit her in the face, though, and when the twins gave her something to try to help, it only made matters worse. I reckon he just feels bad about that."

"But they've already perfected their anti-nosebleed candy. That's what George..." She blinked and shook her head. "He gave her the purple end, right?"

I nodded. "Fred said something about a Blood Blisterpod?"

Lucy sighed. "Brilliant." She shook her head. "Anyway, I do wish I could play, I know he would want me to, it's just... I'd be rubbish. I'd bring the team down."

"You're far from rubbish, Lu, but I understand. Maybe you should stick to the cabbages for now."

She reddened slightly and reached for her quill again. "Shove off, Potter."

Hermione glanced at me. "Was Ron lousy?"

"No."

She raised her eyebrows in response.

"Well, I suppose he could've played better, but it was only the first training session, like you said."

"Yeah, he'll be fine, I just know it," Lucy added, not looking up from her essay.

And I know you will be, too, I thought to myself, studying her for a second while she wrote.

The way the autumn sun streamed through the window made her eyes seem almost startlingly blue. Now that her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she didn't hide behind it anymore, I could see better than I had in a while the swirling storm of emotion that lay just beneath, but at the moment, it seemed she was only thinking about her essay.

I reluctantly reached for a quill of my own and cracked a textbook. It was O.W.L. year, after all. The fight to stay on top of homework started on a Saturday morning.

I sighed. "Have I complained yet about Potions this year? Because I bloody hate Potions."

"Complain all you want," Lucy muttered in response, "because so do I. One potion in particular."

She glanced up for half a second, a small smile on her face, then bowed her head again and continued writing. It was the smallest gesture, but somehow, it felt important.

I'll admit it took me longer than it should have to realize she was talking about wolfsbane.

So much had happened in the past 24 hours, I was still struggling to keep up with it all.

"Merlin, this whole you-know-what idea will take a bit of time to sink in, won't it?" I whispered, shaking my head.

"A bit," she whispered back, glancing up at me one more time. Some of the tension in her shoulders disappeared, and she offered me another small smile before looking down again.

Merlin, I missed her smile.

A/N: I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! I'm personally very excited for Saturday's, but I have to survive three more days of school before then. This is the first day I've gotten the chance to breathe in a week, and it's wonderful. Thank you all for reading! See you Saturday!