The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix - Part Two

LV: 7 May, 1994

Harry Potter sat up in bed, staring at the open Divination book on his lap, open to the page about the Grim. 

Invisible to all but the person to whose death he predicts predicts, the Grim is a dark omen, a symbol of what is to come. Those who see the omen need not to run or panic - there is no stopping it's coming, after all, so they might as well sit back, relax, and wait for death to come to them.

"Well, that's comforting. Thanks book," Harry said dryly, lowering his illuminated wand. The tip went out and Harry lay back in the pillows.

He wished Ron had woke up when he tried at shaking him out of his slumber, but waking Ronald Weasley up was about as easy as waking up a rock. Impossible, in other words.

Harry hadn't slept a bit. He stared out the window as the sun came up. He fell asleep for a grand total of about fifteen minutes before Ron, who had finally woken up for the day with enough energy to power a small muggle town, woke Harry up and urged him to get ready for breakfast and the morning's quidditch match. "It's going to be great, Harry! It's going to be great!"

The House Championship game was that morning and Harry worried that he ought to have gotten more sleep than fifteen lousy minutes, but the grim had consumed his mind and made it simply impossible to rest. He left the Divination text book open on his bed when he and Ron headed down for the Great Hall.

As they passed the third floor, they saw Professor Lupin standing off to the side of the stairs talking to a short woman who stood two steps ahead of him and was still shorter than Lupin, who was slouching against the banister, trying to make them more evenly matched. The professor's eyes followed Harry as he walked past and if it hadn't of been that strange little woman was there, Harry reckoned he might've just stopped and asked Lupin what he made of dark omens and if he'd ever heard of a Grim that was visible to cats as well as the person whose death was predicted. Perhaps cats were simply more spiritual, Harry thought, and they could see omens.

He decided he'd approach Lupin with the question after breakfast before he went out to the pitch, but the energy surrounding the Gryffindor quidditch team was such that Harry didn't get a chance to talk to Professor Lupin after all.

Oliver Wood was a nervous wreck, pacing about the Gryffindor locker rooms anxiously as he went. Every now and then he paused before an ancient chalkboard with half-faded chalk game play markings - something which Wood always referred to as the Bell Board - and pressed his palm against the edge of it and muttered something about help on the pitch before shuffling back and forth a few more times... Harry didn't understand the superstition that Oliver had with that old board, but he found himself looking at the board and asking for a bit of help with being so tired.

If he was going to be silly and question the legitimacy of one sort of superstition - the Grim, that is - then he might as well adopt belief in a positive one and ask the Bell Board for some help as well. 

The match was a spectacular one - and although Slytherin played rather ruthlessly with an immense amount of dirty plays and horribly bad manners, the Gryffindor team won out in the end. The stands erupted in celebration and screams following Harry catching the golden snitch, and he was carried across the pitch high on the backs of what seemed like the entire school (apart from the Slytherins, that is, of course) and deposited along side a shaking, excited Oliver Wood at the grandstand where Albus Dumbledore waited with the enormous Quidditch Cup, already emblazoned with the Gryffindor 1993-1994 Team names on the silver placard at the base, Oliver Wood's name as Captain forever immortalized.

Perhaps, Harry thought, omens weren't all bad, and he grinned, deciding he would make it a ritual in the years going forward to be sure and put his palm against the old Bell Board before every game from then on.