Chapter 24: Quidditch Makes the Man
Harry stumbled from his bed, too groggy to notice what he put on his aching body or who he was talking to at breakfast. Quidditch try-outs had worn him out. Exhilarating as it was to fly again, to play again, he had never worked so hard doing so little in his entire life.
Once the positions were assigned, James had the chosen team practice together just to make sure their dynamic was workable – Sirius's tendency to cast aside his partners after a few weeks made him a favourite target for 'friendly fire' from jilted Beaters; Lara Novotny, whom everyone had forgotten he had dated once fourth year, was rejected and replaced by Connor Marsh after Lara wacked Sirius in the shoulder with her club. Certain that Marsh was in no way connected to Sirius's love life, practice began. Harry caught the snitch three minutes after the game had started, earning a brilliant smile from most of the team but a glare from James for stopping the game so quickly.
He was made to sit on the side-lines with Remus for the first ten minutes of the next practice game, and even then he flew straight across the pitch and nabbed the little, flying ball. "Just stop that!" James yelled at him. "Go practice flying over there and stop winning our games too quick. You're taking the fun out of it!"
He laughed but did as he was told.
Getting shouted at for being too good: Oliver Wood would never have done that to him. Harry flew in circles, dove down at breakneck speed and lifted into nausea-inducing sprints to the highest observation towers, feeling the strain in muscles he had forgotten existed.
He felt it even more this morning. "Ow," he groaned and eased himself down onto the bench.
"Over did it?" Remus asked, smirk in his voice. "James will do that to you."
"Everything hurts."
"Even your pride?" Sirius smirked.
"No, that's feeling pretty good right about now," Harry smiled dopily. It certainly wasn't every day that he had his father kicking him off the pitch because he was too good at his job. That alone was enough to induce a stupid grin. Being back on the team was reason for that stupid grin to split his face wide open.
"I can see that," Sirius smirked. "No wonder you were going to be captain. You're not bad, Harry James Granger."
"Thanks," Harry said and kept smiling.
He was too delirious to see the way James and Sirius kept elbowing one another and jerking their heads sideways periodically, as if signalling one another. The subtle gestures might have eluded his notice but the shout that rang through the Great Hall and silenced the chatter easily drew his attention. "What was that?" he asked.
"In honour of your addition to the team," Sirius muttered and nodded for him to look. Harry turned in his seat to follow the boy's gaze across the hall.
Racing clumsily down the aisle toward the exit was Snape. He was having a difficult time of it. The poor boy kept tripping on his own hair, which had grown to inconvenient, though comical, lengths in just two minutes. It was still growing even as he ran.
"Wait for it…" Sirius said eagerly, grin widening and eyes narrowing to slits as he followed Snape's progress.
Without warning, the boy's hair, well past his ankles and growing ever longer, turned a vibrant, unnatural shade of blue. The azure locks did nothing for the boy, only making him flush red with embarrassment and scramble from the Great Hall even quicker. He glared hard over his shoulder through the long curtain of blue hair. His eyes focused intently on the Gryffindor table, concentrating his ire directly where the Marauders sat eating their breakfast calmly as if they had no idea what was happening. A chill ran through Harry as those hard black eyes met his and he had to look away.
"Pay him no mind," James advised sagely. "He gives everybody that look."
"Congratulations!" Sirius cried. "You're one of us now!"
"That was for me?" Harry asked, amazed.
"For us, too, but mostly for you, yeah," Sirius agreed. "Those were your precise words, as I recall; that you didn't see the harm in sneaking hair-growth potion into someone's breakfast or turning them blue. So there you have it, your own ideas made real. What did you think?"
"Very impressive," he replied, still taken aback that they had pulled a prank just for him. "How did you even get that into his food?"
"We have our secrets just as you've yours," James replied with a wink. "But in time all shall be revealed."
Harry's smile fell with his head, but not before the others noted his unease at the prospect of divulging his secrets. "You don't have to tell me anything, really," Harry insisted quietly.
"You just don't want to share, you git," he replied. "Don't think I haven't heard the way you sigh and groan when people call after you. I know what sort you are."
"What sort might that be?" Harry wondered apprehensively.
James leaned in, dropping his voice, "A troublemaker, Mr Granger, same as us. And we'll not have you hoarding your South African secrets when they could be put to valuable use here at Hogwarts. Is that understood, young man?"
Smiling, Harry agreed. That very evening, he dug into his trunk to find the bag Fred and George had pompously presented him as he left the Burrow. Their most popular products, they had said. Hidden behind the curtain of his bed, he cast a spell to bring the products back to their right size and looked through what he had been given. Two Skiving Snack Boxes, five boxes of Canary Creams, two pairs of Extendable Ears, a Punching Telescope and a box of U-No-Poo. Quite the haul.
He set the telescope aside, knowing that Hermione would break it if she saw it; an understandable reaction after she had been punched by one. The Extendable Ears might come in useful later, but he saw no value in them for pranking. He would keep the Skiving Snack boxes for the Marauders themselves. If they ever trusted him enough to share Remus' secret, then he would help them fool the other students and keep Lupin's lycanthropy quiet. It was the Canary Creams that he thought carried the most pranking potential. It was tempting to hand them over to James and let him run wild, as he surely would, but the Lupin-like voice in his head chided him. 'Playing with the past is dangerous. They didn't have these. It might change history.'
Harry frowned. 'How could someone turning into a canary have devastating consequences to the timeline?'
'What if that someone would have been studying, but instead became a canary. That someone would then fail the test, never go on to invent, oh… Wolfsbane Potion, as an example,' the Lupin voice said.
'I doubt whoever invented that is at Hogwarts right now,' he informed the voice flatly, not liking its scare tactics one bit.
'You know what I meant.'
He ignored the voice as best he could and put the Weasley products away, not that he was giving the voices in his head much heed; he just wanted to consider the consequences of giving some of the brightest and most devious students in the history of the school such novel pranking products. There was a real possibility they might back-engineer the Canary Creams and start a side business of their own some twenty years before Fred and George thought the candy up. Hardly end of the world stuff, but it would impact the world he knew.
"Granger!" James shouted as he came up the stairs, making Harry scramble to finish hiding the Weasley products. The boy marched into the dormitory, looking in no way amused. "Why weren't you at dinner?"
"I wasn't hungry," Harry said with a shrug. His appetite had grown, but some days, when his thoughts turned melancholy, his stomach revolted at the mention of food.
The boy stood over him, arms cross and face stony. "Not good enough."
"Sorry?"
"You'll never be able to compete against the other Seekers if you're weak from not eating," he said. "Starting tomorrow, you eat properly, every meal. I don't care how hungry you are, you will eat what I put in front of you. Understood?"
Harry's stomach protested at the idea. "I don't think I can."
"Too bad," James said and dropped onto his own bed.
Harry watched him a moment before deciding not to offer any further objections. He wanted to smile, to let his heart soar with the knowledge that his father cared so much, but he couldn't. James's iron-fisted decree was hardly the stuff fatherly concern was made of. This was more something Oliver Wood might have thought up at his most manic moment. It was right up there with pre-dawn strategy meetings and hour-long pep talks.
With the dread of breakfast hanging over him, he slept fitfully until James threw a pillow at his head.
"Up!" the Chaser commanded.
"Wha' time 's it?" Harry slurred and blinked at his clock. "Wha'the hell? Why you waking me up so early?" He rolled over and pressed the pillow to his head to block out the noise James was making trying to wake Sirius.
"Oh, no you don't," James growled when he saw Harry trying to fall back into sleep. The mad captain grabbed his arms and hauled him from bed. While he carried barely half the muscle of Sirius, James easily pulled the underweight Harry around. "You need to eat a proper breakfast, Granger. Get up!"
"Don' need to be up so early to eat," Harry moaned and tried to return to his bed.
"You're going to need the extra time."
Even half asleep, Harry found the statement suspicious. "Why?"
"Shut up and get dressed," he ordered and turned to the other bed. "Sirius! Stop rolling over, you git!"
An elbow dangerously close to the groin and several curses later and all three were sitting in the Great Hall. It was eerie being in the hall without teachers at the high table or other students around them. Most of the candles were out save the ones nearest them, making Harry feel even more like they ought to be in bed. Still the food appeared before them.
James stole Harry's plate and started piling it high with more food than the boy had managed to eat in the whole month of August. It really did turn his stomach. He ran for the washroom and heaved into the closest toilet. Nothing came up, but it somehow eased the sickness he felt. Shaking and still feeling queasy, he shuffled slowly back to the Great Hall.
"Told you you'd need the extra time," James said, an inappropriately smug smile on his face. Merciless, he dropped the plate down in front of Harry. "Eat."
"How much?" he gaped at the contents as his stomach took another turn.
"All of it," James ordered. "Nothing left, not even a crumb. I don't care if you have to skip Care of Magical Creatures afterward, but you will eat everything. If you throw up, you'll start again." Harry stared at the eggs and sausage, the bacon and mushrooms, the tomatoes and toast. It was too much. Anyone who had seen him eating at any time since he had arrived only twelve days ago would know that he could not possibly fit that much in his shrunken stomach.
Master of the impossible, James pressed him on. Bite after bite, coaxing, shouting, insulting, he got the boy to eat every last crumb. He did the same at lunch and dinner, and at breakfast the next day. When Harry hid, the others found him and dragged him to the Great Hall. If he ran, they caught him. There was no escaping James's fanaticism, and Harry was growing healthier for it. Quidditch practices exhausted him to the point where the dreams never came on the nights he had chased the Snitch on his broom. He was sleeping restfully five nights out of seven. It took weeks of flying and James shouting at him and forcing him to eat, but his body finally started to rebuild itself after the abuse he had visited on it over the summer.
All the loose and baggy clothes Tonks had bought him started to fit, properly as September drew to a close, snuggly by the last week of October. 'Harry Potter you are one sexy beast,' the woman's voice repeated in his head as he looked at himself in the mirror. The concave chest and knobby ribs were long gone, replaces by muscles that filled and stretched the washed and worn fabric of his shirts. It was embarrassing wearing clothes so tight.
It only got worse as the thirty-first of October rolled around.
"Oi, Gorgeous Granger!" Tildy called to him across the common room.
He rushed over to keep her from shouting it again. "Could you not call me that?"
"What?" she asked innocently. "You're name is Granger. You're gorgeous. Gorgeous Granger. It fits."
"It really does," Sirius agreed. "I'm actually quite jealous."
"Don't be," Harry grit and slumped into the chair opposite them. "What do you want?"
"Well…" Tildy smiled her familiar, toothy smile. "I know you're still hung up on that Ginny girl, but I was wondering if you wanted to go out… with me."
He tried to keep his face unreadable. Ginny was nice and kind of pretty, but he could never seriously fancy his best mate's sister. That was beyond wrong. There had to be a rule against that sort of thing. Keeping to the story he and Hermione had fabricated, he hung his head and sighed. "I don't think I can."
"But it's Hogsmeade weekend and I hate going alone," she complained. "How about we make it a group? Sirius, bring someone."
The boy glanced without much interest around the common room for someone he could invite. More than a few girls looked his way, but his eyes moved over them without even noticing. "Nobody worth asking," Sirius said, a devious smile taking over his bored face. "Unless I can take Gorgeous Granger and you can find someone else to go with."
"No fair!"
"Uh, tell you what… I'm going to sit this weekend out," Harry decided hastily, not at all comfortable with people talking about him in front of his face like this. "I'm kind of bored with Zonko's and I have research to do and… stuff…"
The corner of Sirius's mouth rose with his eyebrow as he looked him over. "What's the matter, Gorgeous Granger?"
"Nothing," Harry insisted far too quickly for it to be true. "I have stuff to do. Hermione and I have to do some research for a personal project."
Sirius nodded, but it was obvious that he didn't believe a word of it.
"You want to go with me, then, Sirius?" asked the persistent Tildy Moorehead.
"Yeah, sure."
Harry's sigh of relief dried up in his throat as he saw the way Sirius kept his eyes on him as he replied to Tildy. If he really was going to Hogsmeade with the girl, Harry did not expect him to stay there for long