Time Travel:- The Emerald Eye King

5. Quidditch And The Centaurs

It had been ten days of summer vacation and a week of attending the Quidditch Camp and it had been quite an experience for Harry. He was the youngest in the camp with every other participant being fifteen or older. He was also by far the most popular participant in the camp and that was not because of the hyphenated title he was provided with. Being surrounded by Quidditch lovers meant that they didn't give much damn about his fame... at least not as much as others. He had to earn their respect purely on the strength of his Quidditch skills, which luckily for Harry wasn't a very hard thing to do. Adding that with his easy-to-approach behaviour which took many of them by surprise, as they might have expected him to be an entitled brat for which he completely blamed the fictional books written on him, he was very well-liked among the participants. He also met many familiar faces Oliver Wood, Cedric Diggory, Adrian Pucey, etc. in the camp, which was a good thing.

He grinned as he thought about the recent tournament, the Hogsmeade Cup, which his team had won just a day before. Even if his team was weakest in offence having most inexperienced chasers who had to score behind keepers like Oliver Wood. Fortunately for him, the keeper was a decent one and the beaters had the best coordination among the beaters of other teams. He was shocked when the coach appointed him as one of the team leaders along with Oliver Wood and Joseph Hornby leaving behind Cedric Diggory and Adrian Pucey who actually captained their own teams at Hogwarts, but he took it in stride, knowing it was one of the test he had to pass to become a pro-quidditch player.

He has named his team Blackmoore Basilisk, after one of the smallest magical settlements in magical Britain. The others were named Hogsmeade Hawks led by Oliver Wood and Diagon Dinos led by Joseph Hornby. The tri-series was completely dominated by his team, with the great performance of his beaters and himself.

The first match had been played between his team and Wood's and they had won by 280-210. The second match between BB and DD was also won by them by 300-230. The third match between HH and DD had been won by HH by 270-30, with Wood showing exceptional performance in the match letting only 3 goals slip by his guard. The fourth match between HH and BB was again won by BB by 150-90. Their final and fifth match was played between DD and BB and was won by 210-90. The final match of the tournament was played between HH and DD and was won by Wood's team by 270-160.

The final score had been 4 wins for BB, 2 wins for HH and 0 wins for DD. He had enjoyed the game very much and also the ending feast prepared for all the teams by the people of Hogsmeade for provided entertainment.

As he geared up for practice, he noticed the other participants behaving oddly and whispering something related to him. He wondered what was going on when Munroe, one of the aspiring Keepers, five years his senior, slapped the Daily Prophet in front of him, and asked, "Is it true?"

Harry looked down at the paper to see what was it that had them surprised. There was a moving picture of him being dropped on the head of Basilisk by a Phoenix as he killed the beast by stabbing it through its head. With that, the headline showed - Boy-who-slayed?

As pleased as he was inwardly he suppressed it from showing on his face by rubbing the back of his head and acting embarrassed, "Yeah, I guess!"

"The hell! The Slytherin's monster was supposed to be a Basilisk! Why didn't Dumbledore tell us," This time it was Oliver Wood, "Why didn't you tell us?"

"Ehh... Dumbledore told us not to, that is me and Hermione. Said it would create panic or something. We didn't understand but we had to obey the headmaster. I don't know how did the Daily Prophet got its hand on my memory. I mean the only ones I showed it to were Ollivander and Rufus," Harry lied with a straight face while he was grinning internally. To make it convenient he added with a groan, "I think Rufus might have something to do with it. I didn't tell him not to share the memory after all."