Hogwarts: The Legacy

(c)2005 by Josh Cohen. May not be reprinted, except for personal use. The Potterverse was created by JK Rowling, and remains her property. I\'m just borrowing it for a little while.

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TWELVE: THE SECOND MATCH

Warning: contains Quidditch.

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Severus had given Hermione the weekend off – it was a Hogsmeade weekend, and as a gift to her, he’d offered to accompany the students to the town in her stead. She’d immediately gone through the Floo in her chambers and made her way up to the bedroom she and Draco shared. It was Saturday morning at half-eleven; she knew he wouldn’t be awake yet if he could help it.

She was right. Draco was asleep in their bed, the thin silk top-sheet all that covered his body. In sleep he was almost gentle, the faux-cruel line of his mouth softened, his face more like the endearing little boy he must have been, instead of the bratty teenager he became or the mature wizard that he was. His long hair was mussed over the pillows, and he was shirtless, his muscles slack.

Except for one. The sheet clung to it as it pointed toward the head of the bed. Hermione slipped off her clothes and crawled into bed beside Draco, seeking comfort, not pleasure. Though she did grin when she saw his erection as she lifted the sheet. It was amazing how the simplest things about Draco made her smile.

When he woke, Hermione was cuddled next to him, her back facing him, using his left arm as a pillow. He rolled onto his side, his erection poking her bare backside. “I didn’t expect you today. I was going to go to Hogsmeade to at least see you.”

“Severus said I could take today off. He went instead of me.”

“Severus? Really?”

“Really.” Hermione grabbed Draco’s right arm, which had been massaging her shoulder, and pulled it around her body. Draco picked up on what she needed and pushed the sleep-warm line of his body against her smooth, slender back. He did his best to ignore the fact that his penis was being cradled by the cheeks of his wife’s soft, shapely bottom.

“What’s the matter?” he asked her, his breath warm against her ear. He had tucked his chin on her shoulder, pushing her hair up and out of the way.

“I’m worried about Caroline.”

One of many subjects guaranteed to not cause arousal in Draco. He hugged Hermione closer, ignoring the fact that his erection had gone the way of the dinosaurs. “What about her? Is she not fitting in?”

“It’s not that,” Hermione said. “Jason Goldman and his friends are doing an excellent job of making her feel welcome.”

“Then what is it?”

She shivered in his embrace. “I don’t know. I just... I feel as though she’s watching me, waiting for me to slip up.”

“In what way?” Draco had a pretty good idea of what Hermione was talking about, but he knew – all this time married, he mused, he damn well better know – that she needed to say it herself.

“I think she knows I’m not her real mother.”

Draco turned Hermione around in his arms and looked into her caramel-brown eyes. “Hermione, love, as far as it matters, you are her mother. She knows nothing different.”

“But she doesn’t even look like me!” Hermione put her arms around Draco, the warmth of his presence a comfort that no security blanket of her youth could ever have provided. “She looks very much like some of your old family photos, though. She’s not stupid; she wouldn’t be in Ravenclaw if she wasn’t whip-smart. She’s going to figure it out.”

“Remember what we agreed, Hermione,” Draco said gently. “If she figures it out, she figures it out. If she doesn’t, we’ll tell her this summer. She’s been through a lot already.”

“I know, Draco.” Hermione didn’t have any terms of endearment for her husband; occasionally, he’d call her “love”, but he didn’t really have any for her either. “It’s just unsettling, that’s all, the way she stares at me. She has your eyes, you know, only darker.”

“I had noticed. She stared at me over breakfast the entire week before term began.”

Hermione buried her face against Draco’s chest. “I just... I never thought I’d have children of my own, you know? And now I fear I’m going to get it all wrong!”

Draco’s thoughts flashed on the tiny scar on Hermione’s stomach. “Hermione, no one gets it right.”

“That’s what my mum always said. She said that for three years before she had me, her and dad argued about it. He was saying they’d never be financially-ready, and she was saying you can’t plan for the perfect situation.”

“Well, on the bright side, we don’t have the financial problem.”

Hermione smiled, a flash of teeth. “I suppose that’s true.”

Draco held Hermione in his arms; she snuggled against him, the downy hairs between her legs brushing him. “Um. Hermione?”

“Yes?”

“I want you to know that I’m not disregarding your concerns or your worries right now, but you are my wife, and you are a beautiful witch, and you are very close to certain parts of my body.”

Hermione reached down and gave Draco’s rising erection a gentle squeeze. “It’s all right. I think a nice, uncomplicated fuck would be very theraputic right now.”

Draco’s brushstroke eyebrows lifted. “Theraputic? Sex with me is theraputic?”

She silenced him with a kiss, then rolled on her back. “Let’s find out.”

Jason was forced to pass the responsibility of looking after Caroline off more and more as Quidditch practices ramped upward. The game against Slytherin was fast approaching, and he was forced to spend more and more time with the team. Not that he minded – Quidditch and Potions vied for top spot in his head on a fairly-regular basis, and they had since he’d come to Hogwarts.

Caroline seemed to understand as well, which was good, because the one time he’d brought her to practice, Andrew Colwyn had in no uncertain terms ordered her to leave. “No one watches our practices who isn’t on the team,” he had said. “I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is.”

“Mr Weasley is watching,” Jason pointed out.

“That’s different. He’s making sure none of us get ourselves killed.”

So Caroline spent her time with Alison doing who-knew-what, and Jason spent his time after classes most days in grueling practices with the other six members of the team. He was getting good – or, at least, he thought he was – but Lisa kept hounding him. Once, she actually threw the quaffle at him, as if it were a bludger, nearly knocking him from his broom.

“What the hell are you doing, Lisa?” Jason shouted as he clambered back onto the broom. “Trying to get me injured? With only a few days before the game?”

“Just reminding you that it’s no picnic out here,” Lisa called back. “I want to win that cup this year!”

“And I don’t?”

Marianne passed him the quaffle and he knocked it into the middle goal hoop. “Just ignore her,” Marianne said as they regrouped. Lisa was high above them, ready to swoop in and drill another play; Jason and Marianne were flying side-by-side. “She’s just being bitchy for the sake of being bitchy.”

Jason laughed. “Probably.”

Lisa began her dive, and Marianne and Jason broke away.

Match day dawned bright and clear and icy-cold. The wind whistled across the pitch as the two teams rose on their brooms. Mr Weasley held the bludgers and the snitch in a stasis spell above the pitch; the quaffle was in his hand, his whistle in the other. “Ready!”

Lisa was at center, facing off against Euan MacTavish, Slytherin’s sixth-year chaser.

“Set!”

Jason gripped his broom and shifted his weight. Even through his heavy Quidditch gloves, the cold was positively pervasive.

Mr Weasley threw the Quaffle in the air and blew a sharp blast on his whistle. The bludgers sped off an instant before the players. MacTavish grabbed the quaffle and zipped toward the Ravenclaw goal. Jason looped around and tried to intercept, but Abraham Parker, a third year Slytherin Jason had had the distinct displeasure of working with in Herbology, stiff-armed him away.

MacTavish passed the quaffle to Aurelia Flint, his teammate Marianne’s seventh year sister, and she scored easily.

Jason snatched up the quaffle and passed it to Lisa, who dropped it to Marianne. But when Marianne drew back to pass it to Lisa, Van Dorn – a Slytherin beater – skimmed past and bumped it out of her hand with his fist. Aurelia Flint caught it and shot it from half-pitch, but Fabian intercepted easily and sent the quaffle back to Marianne.

As the match wore on, Jason realized that playing against Slytherin was far different than watching them from the stands. Up close, even the nicest of them – and Aurelia Flint really was a nice girl, deep down, according to her sister – was rough-and-tumble. When the score hit 100-all, Jason had actually been hit in the chest with a bludger, and it was only luck that he was in the middle of the play that took him within two feet of the ground.

Mr Weasley blew the whistle, stopping play and holding the balls in stasis, and dropped like a stone to check on Jason.

“Are you all right?”

Jason coughed a couple of times before gasping in air. “Fine.” He shifted experimentally, but nothing felt broken. Mr Weasley cast a quick diagnostic spell. “Well?”

“You seem all right. Bruised, but nothing broken. Be more careful up there.”

Jason rolled onto his stomach and levered himself to his feet – there was a wave of polite applause that grew as he mounted his broom and kicked off. His chest hurt worse than anything he’d ever felt, but he could breathe, and if he could breathe, he could play.

“Be careful,” Andrew said as he circled around Jason. “Those things can splinter your broom if it gets in the way.”

Jason swallowed hard. “I will be.”

“You’re doing fine,” he said, a rare moment of kindness. “Just keep fighting out there. And play more dirty. If they can hurt us, we can hurt them back.”

Jason nodded and rose to a ready position. Mr Weasley blew his whistle again, and the balls started moving.

Marianne Flint was out cold. It was only luck that she hadn’t fallen off her broom. Mr Weasley called a stoppage in play and used his wand to send her down to Madam Pomfrey, who levitated her away, following the girl to the infirmary. She’d made an attempt to block play the Slytherins were running – she’d already blocked several that her sister called out – and in a fit of frustration, Aurelia had grabbed a bat and shot a beater at her head.

“That should’ve been a foul!” Andrew shouted as Lisa and I zipped by.

“If she wasn’t in front of the goal, it would’ve been!” Lisa yelled back.

But the fact remained that even though we were up, 270 to 160, we were now down a player. Wesley and Amber Locksley were chasing the snitch, bumping each other as best they could. It zipped sideways and both seekers were forced to split off or hit each other, and by the time they regrouped, the snitch was out of sight.

Lisa, though, was on the warpath. She and I juggled the quaffle back and forth, occasionally passing to Francesca – when a chaser went down, a beater was allowed to handle the quaffle, but not score with it – who did an admirable job keeping the bludgers away while still keeping in the plays. Lisa called the play; Francesca shot the ball to me, and I tossed it up in the air to where Lisa was waiting.

She spun her broom as if to knock it in that way, but missed.

The quaffle fell back down. I spun my broom.

280 to 170, Ravenclaw.

Lisa dropped into a steep dive, watching Angela Flint as she snatched the quaffle as it fell. Flint had no idea what was coming until Lisa drew just above her. She looked up, and Lisa dropped down, her heavy Quidditch boot smashing into Aurelia’s face. Aurelia slipped off her broom, hanging on by one arm, and I stole the quaffle right out of her hands.

But the whistle blew. “Foul!” called Mr Weasley. “Free shot for Slytherin!”

“Bullshit!” shouted Lisa as she spiraled upward. “It’s not my fault she ran into my boot!”

“You watch your language, Miss DeMarco,” Mr Weasley snapped, “or you’ll be out of this game.”

Lisa’s face, already flushed from exertion, grew even more red.

Mr Weasley tossed the quaffle to MacTavish, who snuck it by Fabian.

280 to 180.

Fabian sent the quaffle to me, and I passed it to Lisa, pushing my broom to go faster. I slid past Aurelia Flint, who was still shaking out the cobwebs, and pretended to lose control for a moment.

Flint fell this time. Mr Weasley caught her and helped her fall safely to the ground, but we weren’t hit with a foul, and that’s the important part. That, and we were even for a moment, until Aurelia’s broom got within reach and she was able to get back on it.

Lisa threw the quaffle as hard as she could; on the way up, I deliberately overshot it and hit a dizzying, nauseating vertical spin that knocked it into the uppermost goal. The Slytherin keeper had no idea it was coming.

290 to 180.

Flint was back on her broom now, though, urging it ahead. Lisa and I were chasing Parker, who had just caught the quaffle from MacTavish. She slid between us somehow – she was as slender as her sister, although taller – and pushed outward with both arms. Lisa and I lost control of our brooms for just a moment, long enough for Parker to drop the quaffle to Flint.

Fabian blocked her goal shot to a roar of cheers, far more than normal. I looked around and there was Wesley, hot on Amber Locksley’s tail. Francesca sent a bludger in her direction, but she rolled around it easily and caught the snitch.

The game was over. Slytherin victory, 330 to 290.

The moment the locker room doors closed, Andrew rounded on Wesley. “All right, that one had to have been your fault.”

“Excuse me?”

“Come on,” Lisa added – the two of them were like towers in front of Wesley, who was only five-six. “You were more concerned with Marianne than you were with catching the snitch. It’s the only explanation!”

“Hey!” This was Francesca. “Lay off him. It’s not his fault. Locksley was just faster, that’s all.”

“Besides,” snapped Wesley, “I thought you guys were going to work on scoring enough points that it wouldn’t matter. What happened to that?”

“We were on our way,” said Lisa, “until your girlfriend got herself knocked cold.”

“I didn’t see you guys doing much to knock the Slytherins out until the very end. How very noble of you.”

“What is wrong with you people!” Jason roared. Everyone went quiet and stared at him. “I thought we learned in practice that this is a team game! We play as a team, we win as a team, we lose as a team. What the bloody hell is going on?”

Lisa opened her mouth, but Andrew held up his hand, staying her. “The kid’s right,” he said. “We’re a team. No one person is more or less responsible.”

Lisa stared at Andrew, her mouth still open. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“It wasn’t Wesley’s fault. Amber... Locksley... just caught the snitch before he did.”

Fabian pulled off his armor. “And I seem to remember Aurelia Flint getting a face full of boot, and getting knocked off her broom. I think she paid for what she did to Marianne.”

Lisa sighed. “I want to win that cup. I deserve to win that cup!”

“Grow up,” Francesca said as she tugged off her gloves. “We all want to win that cup. It’s not just yours if we win it, and it’s not any one person’s fault if we lose it.”

“But–”

“Shut up, Lisa,” Andrew said, his voice resigned. “We lost. Now we prep for Gryffindor at the end of March, and we take their asses out.”

Lisa plunked down on one of the benches, not at all happy about being shouted down.

“Andrew, you mind if I...” This was Wesley.

“Give us a few minutes. We’ll all go.”

Marianne had a spectacular headache, made worse by the news that Ravenclaw had lost the match. But she brightened a little when she found out what the team did to Aurelia. “One good turn,” she murmured. Wesley sat by her bedside, holding her hand, while Madam Pomfrey went over Jason’s ribs with her wand.

“You’re quite lucky nothing’s broken,” she said as she cast a low-level healing spell over his chest. “A few yards closer and you’d have been out like your teammate over there.”

The spell dissipated and he stretched his arms behind my back. His ribs felt a little achy, but not nearly as bad as they’d been. “Thank you, Madam Pomfrey.”

She sniffed. “Someday, someone’s going to get killed out there. Someday, some headmaster is finally going to end this barbaric practice one and for all.”

“Maybe,” Jason agreed. “But not today.”

Madam Pomfrey sniffed again and went to check on Aurelia Flint. In all the furor over the match, she hadn’t realized that Lisa’s boot had broken her nose.

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Notes: Bonus chapter for you, because it\'s a holiday.

If you\'re into PWP, hit my Author Page and check out Julie\'s Story.