Oh God Not Again!

Chapter Six

Disclaimer: I still do not own Harry Potter.

Note: Yeah, I am skipping quite a bit of time, but to be fair the actual books do skip a lot of time, too, or else the year would just drag on

As much as Harry wanted to find a way to contact Sirius (after all, he hadn't seen the man in eight years and with Sirius, at least, he didn't have to pretend to be a near-stranger, unlike everybody else he'd met again), he knew that he couldn't. Not yet. He wouldn't put it past Dumbledore to monitor his mail once he learned of Sirius's escape; not to be nosy or anything, but to keep Harry safe from what he thought was a huge threat. And at the Dursley's, where he had no one to monitor him twenty-four seven, it would be even worse. No, Harry would have to wait until Sirius contacted him. The problem being, of course, that Sirius had no way of knowing that Harry knew all about what had really happened with Pettigrew and those Muggles and the Secret Keeper Switch. And yes, he would have to return to the Dursley's, at least this year. After all, he really had nowhere else to go and Mrs. Weasley had the unfortunate habit of taking Dumbledore's word as law.

Harry also couldn't just go up and capture Pettigrew now for a number of reasons, not least of all that he had never taken the time to learn how to cast the spell to reveal an animagus. As a first year, he really shouldn't know what an animagus WAS and, given his lack of contact with any of his father's old friends, had no way of knowing that Peter was a rat and even less cause to think it was Scabbers. If he took this up with an adult, they wouldn't believe him and Scabbers would probably move on to another wizarding family, knowing his cover was blown. No, as vexing as it was, he'd have to wait until he heard from Sirius again.

Shortly after the incident on Halloween (which, of course, just invited more staring but did also have the unexpected side effect of convincing Fred and George that Percy wasn't a lost cause after all due to his part in their little escapade) was Harry's first Quidditch match. He wasn't really nervous as Draco Malfoy, though admittedly quite talented for an eleven-year-old and the best Slytherin House had to offer, had nothing on him. He could fly circles around Ginny back when she was on a professional Quidditch team. Harry wished he had joined one instead of becoming an Auror straightaway, but then again, it was right after the fall of Voldemort and he felt like he had a moral obligation to help round up all of his followers. Maybe this time, if he could end the war quicker or (if he was sufficiently brilliant/lucky) prevent it from taking place at all. Then he could play all the professional Quidditch he wanted before he reached thirty or so and had to retire (to become an Auror). Come to think of it, becoming an Auror while in possession of the world's most powerful and death-attracting wand probably wasn't the best plan, was it?

The game started off innocently enough. Draco and Harry flew around aimlessly, searching for the Snitch. Harry hoped he'd be able to catch it before Quirrell thought to jinx his broom, but fate did not seem to be on his side. The second he did spot the Snitch, Flint slammed into him and one of the twins shot a Bludger at Draco. Naturally, in the confusion, the Snitch disappeared.

A few minutes later, to Harry's great annoyance, his broom started lurching. Harry groaned. He'd forgotten about that. Now, if he didn't do something quickly, Ron and Hermione would jump to conclusions about Snape and Harry really didn't want to set the precedent of blaming Snape every time anything went wrong. Not to mention he didn't want to have to actually start defending Snape until he absolutely had to as he really didn't like his Potions Professor and so saying nice things about him made him nauseous. Petty, perhaps, but Snape was worse.

The best thing to do would be to start a counter curse and hope that his and Snape's combined efforts would be enough to stabilize the broom. Unfortunately, counter curses to such things as bewitched brooms had been the sort of thing he'd resolved to look up later and so that was out. He could take his chances that Snape could stop Quirrell, but he vaguely recalled Quirrell saying something about how he only needed a few more seconds to knock Harry off his broom when Hermione knocked him over. And come to think of it, why in the world would Quirrell try such a public and clearly not accidental method to kill him? Idiot.