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It was very weird being back at Hogwarts. Harry had spent his summer split between courtroom trials at the Ministry and at Hogwarts, helping in the repair efforts, so it wasn't like he hadn't seen it since the final battle, but it was weird being there now as a student again.
Headmistress McGonagall (that was weird, too, but more fitting than Harry had expected) had wanted the repairs to be done so that the term could start at the beginning of September as usual, but the damage had been a bit more extensive than was estimated at first, and so it was October before everyone could come back.
Hermione, predictably, was ecstatic, and Harry suspected Ron was pretending more excitement than he really felt, since he and Hermione were together now. He wasn't sure when it had officially happened, although the two of them had plenty of time together over summer, and they hadn't been summoned to nearly as many Ministry trials for testimony as he had.
But Harry didn't like thinking about their relationship because it reminded him that he wasn't really sure where his own stood, or if he had one. Technically, he'd broken up with Ginny before leaving on his Horcrux Camping Trip, but he was pretty sure it had been with a 'let's get back together afterwards' caveat.
He wasn't sure exactly how getting back together was supposed to work, especially since he hadn't talked much with Ginny since the Battle of Hogwarts. It didn't help that Harry didn't really know how to start a relationship in the first place, and even now, they weren't even sitting next to each other at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall. They hadn't been in the same compartment on the Hogwarts Express, either. He could see her, sitting halfway down the table and twisting around in her seat to talk to Luna and looking gorgeously vibrant and beautiful and –
"Harry!"
Harry jumped at Hermione's voice. "What?"
"McGonagall's standing, I think she's going to say something," she said, gesturing towards the dais excitedly. Harry and Ron obediently turned their attention to the front as McGonagall approached the podium from which Dumbledore had always made his beginning of the school year announcements. By the time she actually reached it, the entire Great Hall had fallen quiet without any prompting from her.
"Students, welcome back to Hogwarts," she began, and was immediately interrupted by a cacophony of cheers and applause from every table. Harry was a bit caught off guard but joined in shortly. McGonagall didn't bother trying to regain order for at least a minute; she was clapping herself, and with the biggest smile Harry had ever seen on her face.
"I'm glad you are all as excited to start this school year as I am," she said, once the quiet had been restored. "It would not have been possible without the efforts of the restoration team, which included many of you here today at one point or another, and I thank you all for your hard work."
McGonagall took what seemed to be a bracing deep breath.
"This past year," she said, and the quiet of the Hall seemed to grow even deeper, "was difficult for all of you, and I am proud of every single person who was able to return here today."
Harry cast a glance at the Slytherin table as McGonagall continued to talk about the importance of unity between Houses. The older students, Malfoy included, merely looked impassive, probably not believing McGonagall's words about treating each other with respect. He hadn't thought about before Hermione had brought it up a few days ago, but she'd made a good point: the Slytherins were going to be incredibly ostracized this year. Apparently, Hermione had been talking to McGonagall already about what to do to 'promote inter-House unity', but Harry felt just as skeptical as the Slytherin table looked about how her efforts were going to go.
For his own part, he was tired of fighting, and just wanted a normal year for once — or, at least, one without a megalomaniac trying to kill him.
"– and it has been decided that Quidditch teams will no longer be House-based."
Harry was abruptly torn away from his contemplation. Quidditch was no longer what!? Ron looked just as surprised as he did, but Hermione was looking rather smug. This must have been one of her 'unity' ideas.
"If you would like to Captain a Quidditch team, please submit your name to me by the end of the week, as well as any players you have already, and a schedule will be drawn up for tryouts as needed. Keep in mind, however, that no team may contain more than four players from the same house."
Well, Harry thought, he could work with that. Ron would be Keeper – a shared glance with his best friend assured him of it – and then he could get Ginny for one of his Chasers, and he thought he'd seen Demelza on the train. Katie had graduated, of course, but Dean used to sub in, although if Harry asked him then he'd be over the same-House limit. And what would he do about Beaters? Peakes and Coote were back, but he couldn't have both of them if he kept Ron, Ginny, and Demelza.
He hardly listened to the rest of McGonagall's opening speech – something about changing the House points system, but he was sure Hermione would fill him in – in favor of trying to remember who had been on the other House teams during sixth year that he could attempt to poach.
As soon as McGonagall's speech ended and the food appeared, Ron leaned over and said, "Think we should try for Chambers?" He nodded towards the Ravenclaw table.
"Worth a try," Harry said. "If he's already taken, though, didn't Smith play for Hufflepuff?"
Ron wrinkled his nose. "I guess."
"This is wonderful, isn't it?" Hermione said, beaming at the two of them. "I knew Quidditch would be good for inter-house unity. See, it's working already!"
Harry looked around the Great Hall, Ron following suit. Sure enough, there seemed to be an awful lot of leaning across the aisles tonight, and quite a few notes being passed round. Even the Slytherin table was seeing some activity, although not as much as the other three Houses.
Harry wondered if Malfoy would join a team, or if he'd Captain one. He certainly hoped so; Harry didn't think it would feel like a proper Quidditch season without at least one match against the git.
As soon as McGonagall sent them off to their dorms, Harry practically ran through the crowd, trying to catch up with Ginny. She'd been sitting closer to the doors, and he had to dodge the rest of the Gryffindors, who all seemed to be taking their time to get back to the Tower.
"Ginny!" Harry called, finally catching up to her just before the portrait of the Fat Lady. "Hey, you'll be Chaser, yeah?"
Ginny just looked at him oddly for a moment. "Yes," she said, finally, "but I decided I want to Captain my own team."
Harry was completely bewildered. "You're what?"
"McGonagall said anyone could, if they wanted to," she said, "and by the way, Demelza's already agreed to be on my team."
And with that, she went through the portrait, leaving him quite dumbfounded out in the hall.
The other weird part about being back at Hogwarts was going back to class. McGonagall had decided those returning for their eighth year were going to take classes with the seventh years. It made sense, of course, but it was still really odd to walk into class and not know half the people sitting there.
Ron promptly ditched him to sit next to Hermione in their first class of the day, Transfiguration, and Harry blankly looked around the room for someone to share a desk with.
Ginny was sitting by herself. Harry hesitated for a moment, because he'd spent quite a bit of time last night and this morning puzzling about what Ginny had said, and hadn't managed to figure it out at all, but he didn't really know anyone else in the year below all that well, so we went to sit with her anyway
"Are you mad at me?" Harry asked as he dropped into the seat next to her, because that was the only reason he'd been able to come up with for her not wanting to be on his Quidditch team.
She glanced over at him and raised one eyebrow coolly. "I'm getting Draco Malfoy for Seeker."
"So, that's a yes, then," he muttered despondently, but was surprised when she laughed at his comment.
"Harry, I'm not mad at you," she said, with a smirk. "I simply mean to have the best Quidditch team."
Harry wanted to protest — after all, how could she talk of having the best Quidditch team if he wasn't Seeker on it— but McGonagall swept in, and he knew better than to try and talk during her class.
"Ginny's got Malfoy for Seeker," Harry told Ron at lunch. Hermione had only stayed at the table long enough to grab a sandwich before heading to the library.
"She mad at you?" Ron said, through a mouthful of… something.
"I think… she's flirting with me?"
Ron nearly choked on his food. "Mate, I did not need to hear that," he said, once he was done nearly dying, and then he wrinkled his nose. "Malfoy? Really?"
"Well, it's a solid choice — I mean, he's a good Seeker," Harry conceded. "But still. Malfoy."
Ron nodded in emphatic agreement.
Ginny's decision to form her own Quidditch team had really thrown off Harry's plans for his own team, but it did mean that he could ask Peakes and Coote to be his Beaters, which he did just before dinner that evening, catching them outside the Great Hall.
The two boys exchanged a glance, and Peakes said, "Sorry, Harry, we're already on a team."
"Oh," Harry said, disappointed. "Whose?"
"Tamsin's Captaining," said Coote, and Harry recalled that she'd been a Chaser for Hufflepuff. "She's my girlfriend."
"Good luck, then," Harry said a bit awkwardly, and his two former Beaters returned the sentiment as they parted ways inside the Hall.
The only person left who had been on the Gryffindor team was Dean, and Harry hoped to Merlin nobody had asked him to join a team yet. He didn't think he could take the disappointment.
Luckily, Dean was ecstatic to join Harry's team.
"Of course, mate!" he said, grinning widely. "Who else do you have so far?"
"Just you, me and Ron," Harry admitted. "Ginny's decided to Captain her own team. She already snagged Demelza, and Peakes and Coote are already on another team."
Dean's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Guess we'll need to have tryouts for the other spots, yeah?"
Harry nodded. He could go around asking other players that he knew were good, but he'd rather host a tryout session so that he could see how people would work together, especially since the remaining positions required good chemistry on the pitch. Seekers and Keepers could operate largely on their own, but Chasers and Beaters had to present united fronts.
He submitted his name and partially-filled roster to McGonagall that evening, and the very next week there was a time table posted of when each team would have the pitch for tryouts. There had been a lot of people interested in Captaining, apparently, because there were six teams looking for more players. Harry noticed that Ginny's team was going to get to hold their tryouts first, and while he was sure McGonagall had been perfectly fair about the timeslots, he was still jealous. She was going to get first pick, and he wasn't even going to get second dibs — he was fourth in line for the pitch!
On the other hand, he thought, wincing at the memory of the tryouts he'd held in sixth year, perhaps it was for the best that he wasn't first.
Harry was unable to resist going to watch Ginny hold tryouts the next weekend, and told himself that it was only because he wanted to observe the playing style of her team and not because he wanted to watch his sort-of-maybe-girlfriend fly around on a broom. Ron and Hermione came with him, although the latter also brought an enormous text and didn't seem much inclined to actually watch at all.
The stands were packed; everyone was excited about Quidditch, Harry supposed, and the fact that the teams would all be inter-House made things all the more interesting.
Ginny had only recruited Demelza and Malfoy before the tryouts, so she had four more spots to fill. She started with the third Chaser spot, and ended up picking a Ravenclaw girl called Queenie, followed by a Gryffindor Keeper named Miranda. It took some time for her to get a pair of Beaters that seemed like they would work well together, but eventually she settled on two girls, Ash Firecanon, who Harry was pretty sure had been on Ravenclaw's team in his sixth year, and a Hufflepuff whose name he didn't catch.
She had spotted him in the stands almost immediately after he'd arrived, and kept sending him smug looks after every new player she added to her roster. Her team was going to be very good, Harry thought, not that he expected anything less from Ginny, but his optimism about his own prospects was fading. Would there be anyone left once it was his turn?
He needn't have worried, obviously. The stands were just as packed for his tryouts as they had been for Ginny's, and there were even more people trying for spots. Harry sighed as he looked over the crowd. This was going to be even worse than sixth year.
He started with the Chaser positions, getting Ron in front of a hoop and swapping in two new people to toss the Quaffle around with Dean every five minutes or so. After nearly forty-five minutes, Dean called a short halt.
"I like her," he said, flying down to Harry, who was hovering on his Firebolt low on the edge of the pitch. "Ray, I mean. Not the other one; I think she's here on a joke or something."
Harry agreed with both assessments, and he was relieved that Evermore was also a Gryffindor, because it meant that he'd reached the same-House cap. At last he could get rid of some of these people!
"Alright," he said to Dean, and then put a Sonorus on his voice to address the crowd, "listen up, you can stick around and watch if you like, but we've got four Gryffindors now, so it's only the other three Houses that can tryout now."
There were quite a few disappointed groans, and about a third of the people waiting on the sidelines left, most for the stands to watch. It didn't take long for Dean and Ray to find their third Chaser — a Slytherin girl named Autumn — and then it was on to find some Beaters.
Thankfully, it didn't take long at all. The third pair he sent up to whack around the bludger hit every target he'd set up, although not always particularly smoothly, but he could work with that. Arty and Resa, both Ravenclaws, rounded up his team, and Harry couldn't help being pretty well pleased.
He'd been trying to ignore the more enthusiastic fans in the stands all afternoon, and hadn't even glanced at them, keeping his attention on the pitch, but the crowds were dispersing now that it was obvious the tryouts were over, and he looked up to see Ginny watching him from the front row.
Impulsively, he flew up and hovered directly in front of her.
"Not a bad team," she said, her tone disinterested, but her eyes sparking, "but I think they'll need a little work."
"Oh, and you think your team is so much better, do you?" Harry narrowed his eyes, and fought back a smile.
"I know they are, Potter," she retorted. The use of his last name caught Harry off guard, but not in a bad way at all; in fact, he found that he was enjoying the competitive banter.
"All right then, Weasley," he said, and was gratified when he saw a blush stealing across Ginny's cheeks, which also made him abruptly very self-aware of how close his broom had drifted to her, "I suppose you'll just have to prove it during our first match."
"Be ready to have your brooms handed to you," Ginny said, flashing him a brilliant smirk. She made her exit during his momentary speechlessness, turning so sharply as to swing a sheet of her floral-scented hair directly in his face.
Harry watched her go, and then let his broom take him back down in a happy daze.
With six teams, there wasn't enough time in the week for them all to have the pitch to themselves for practice. There were only three weeks until the first matches, and all the teams wanted to practice more than once a week. So, a magical barrier was erected to split the field so that two teams at a time could practice. Harry managed to get pitch time three days of the week, which he was pleased with. He didn't want to work his team to death, like he'd sometimes felt Oliver Wood had done, but they did need a good amount of practice time.
Thankfully, the rest of his team was on board, and were eager to start training. Their first day of practice, however, Harry got to the pitch and was surprised to see that they'd be sharing it with Ginny's team.
He wasn't entirely sure how he felt about it. On the one hand, Ginny couldn't very well spy on his practices if her team had practice at the same time, and on the other, Harry discovered that he had to put a lot of effort into not being distracted by the other team. Was it really necessary for Ginny to fly so close to the middle of the pitch so frequently?
Every practice session, it seemed, Ron caught him at it at least once. At one point, the week before the first match, he actually threw the Quaffle at Harry to break him out of it.
"Mate," he said later as they trudged back into the castle, "haven't you two talked yet?"
"Er," Harry said, eloquently, "no."
That wasn't entirely true; they had been flirting, sort of. And by that Harry meant that Ginny had been flirting with him and Harry had been awkwardly attempting to flirt back, which always seemed to amuse her immensely, so he counted it a success.
But the answer to Ron's question was still a no, because Harry was pretty sure he meant 'haven't you two talked about your relationship yet?', and they had not. That answer weighed rather heavily on Harry's mind for the rest of the week leading up to the Quidditch match, and he kept trying to psych himself up to actually have a conversation with Ginny only to chicken out every time.
When the anxiousness finally culminated, it was moments before they left the tent to head onto the pitch for their match.
"Er, Ginny?"
"Yeah?" The rest of their teams had filed out ahead of them, and she looked a bit impatient.
"Oh, um, I just wanted to, well," Harry tried to make his mouth say something intelligible as his brain very helpfully noticed that they were standing very close, and it looked like Ginny had put on some kind of lip gloss —
The sound of someone clearing their throat had them jumping apart, and Harry looked around and found Malfoy standing there with arms crossed and an unamused expression firmly in place.
"If you two don't mind," Malfoy drawled, "we've got a game of Quidditch to play."
He strode directly through the two of them to exit the tent, despite the fact that there was just barely enough room between Harry and Ginny for him to walk through.
There was a beat of silence as the tent flap closed behind Malfoy, and then they both spoke at the same time:
"Suppose we should go, then."
"I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what?" Ginny asked, seemingly bewildered.
"Well, y'know," Harry said, with a small, self-deprecating laugh, "not talking to you all summer, for starters."
The confusion disappeared from Ginny's face. "Harry, it's okay."
He wasn't exactly convinced, and she clearly could tell.
"You were still ending the war," she continued, reaching out to place a gentle hand on his shoulder, "and, well, there were a few things I had to deal with, too."
Fred's name hung unspoken in the air between them.
"Really, Harry, it's okay."
"Al-alright," he said, fighting past the lump in his throat as he fell deep into her reassuring eyes and thought, quite firmly, I love her.
"I thought it would be more fun to do this afterwards," Ginny said casually, her hand sliding up to cup the back of his neck, "but I'm feeling a little impatient."
She tugged him down, pulling him into a kiss, and then Harry couldn't have cared less about anything else, totally lost in a haze bliss where it was just him and Ginny —
"Oi! There's a Quidditch game going on, here!" Harry silently vowed to curse Ron with something unpleasant later.
Ginny pulled away, and he sighed. "Do we have to go out there?"
"Are you scared I'm gonna beat you?" she teased.
"What! No!"
"You'll have to come and prove it, then," she said with a laugh, and opened up the tent flap, holding out her other hand for him.
Harry took it with a smile, and they entered the Quidditch pitch together.