Presenting
Chapter 1:
James was in a hurry as he walked down to the Quidditch pitch on Monday morning. Practice was supposed to begin in 5 minutes and he was late. It didn't need much imagination to guess how Marlene would react to him being late to practice for the first time ever.
She would tease him mercilessly and he would never hear the end of it. It wasn't normal for him to oversleep, he always rose with the sun. Normally by this time he would have already returned from his morning run and set everything up for practice. Being a responsible Team captain and all that...
But today he felt exhausted, as if he hadn't slept at all last night. The strange thing was he had slept even more than usual when he thought about it.
Last night he went to bed almost straight after dinner. Back then he blamed it on the full moon on Saturday, which they spent exploring the grounds with their werewolf friend.
Remus was reluctand at first to let them come to the moons after his presentation. For some reason he was convinced that him presenting Alpha would turn the wolf into even more of a danger to his friends. Eventually they wore him down, even though James suspected that to be more Sirius's achievement than his or Peter's.
He arrived in the changing rooms and forced the exhaustion to the back of his mind. He really didn't need the distraction, they were one game away from winning the Quidditch cup.
He stumbled in the room and was greeted by a smirking Marlene. She must have waited for him because the rest of the team seemed to already be out on the pitch.
"Youre late, captain" she taunted. "Yeah thanks Mckinnon, I didn't even realise" James replied sarcastically. "It's a shame that Sirius never shows up for morning practice. No one would ever again be the last to arrive" he grumbled.
"Woah okay, I see you're in a bad mood today so i will leave you alone. Hurry up we need to be prepared if we want to beat the Slytherins next month." With that she basically flew out of the room and James was alone.
He changed quickly and soon joined his Team in the air. They had a cup to win.
~●~
Practice was shit. The team was great, they were all perfectly synchronised, normally James would've been in the center of it. Scoring most goals giving Tips and encouraging all his players.
But not today...
He lost the Quaffel, almost fell off his broom and nearly collided with a bludger. To summorise it... today was not his day.
James felt almost grateful when he could blew his whistle and end the practice after almost 2 hours of humiliation. He took extra long to store the balls and brooms back in their storing room, he didn't want to face his teammates right now.
Over the last hour or so he had started feeling sick. It felt like he was burning up and he felt weak walking back to the changing rooms on his wobbly knees.
For ones he was lucky, the room seemed deserted. He climbed into the shower in the hopes to feel better after refreshing himself a little. He actually felt a little better after cooling off. He dried himself and began walking out of the shower and back to the dressing room, when the scent hit him, he instantly felt dizzy.
Distantly he registered another person with him in the room. But his vision was foggy and he couldn't breathe properly. Deep in his mind he knew what it was... Alpha. But in his state he didn't register what was going on. He just knew this was important whoever it was they smelt delicious, like smoke and the signature smell of a storm, James wanted to roll over and bathe in it. The person moved towards him and he suddenly knew who it was.
Barty fucking Crouch Jr.
Now that was just his luck. He sank to the floor, as his mysterious sickness seemed to overflow him. Pathetic he thought. What's wrong with him today?
Barty stepped closer, probably grossed out James guessed but he wasn't making fun of him. He just leaned down and gently brushed James's cheek with his thumb. The ringing in his ears lessened and James finally realised Barty was talking to him.
"J - ames? James are you okay?"
~●~
~Barty~
"I- Im dizzy"
Wtf Barty thought, here he was, in the Quidditch changing rooms with James Potter. Ha had been watching the Gryffindor practice, or more accurately the captain of the team. There just was something about James Potter that seemed to have caught his attention.
He could easily admit to himself that Potter was good looking. And he wasn't the only one who seemed to have realised that. His two dormmates and, if they would be honest with themselfs, his boyfriends took a liking to the Gryffindor too.
So it happened quite often that one of them would visit the Quidditch pitch on a Gryffindor practice day. Today Barty woke up early because some damn bird, believed it the right time to deliver his very late (his father was an asshole) birthday present.
So Barty decided to use the offered time and began his walk to the pitch.
And in this current moment, standing in the changing rooms he regretted nothing. James looked beautiful with his doe eyes, glancing up at Barty, his pupils blown wide. And the smell -
Gosh the smell. Like cinnamon and vanilla but with a hint of spice. Gods Barty wanted to eat him. To turn him over and fuck him against the bench next to them. He could almost picture it... it would be so easy...
But dispite what everone said about Barty he wasn't a complete Idiot. As soon as he had stepped into the room he knew what was going on. James was presenting, against all the odds he presented one year after all of his classmates. And he wasn't a Beta, no Beta could ever smell this entracing for an Alpha, nor was he an Alpha, but Barty thought this made just perfect sense. James Potter wasn't agressive and commanding he was sweet and caring... he was an Omega.
Now everything made sense, Barty knew as soon as he saw Potter flying this morning that something was very wrong. His normally graceful loops and turns were messy and he couldn't seem to wrap his head around the game.
When Barty then realised that all the other players had already returned to the school and James was still nowhere to be seen he decided to check on him. And thank Merlin that he did! If James would have crouched here the rest of the day nothing good would habe happened to him that was for sure.
Now he needed to get James back to the castle. It was still early in his heat but Barty already found it hard to control himself around James. He has to get him somewhere safe but the Infirmary didn't seem like a nice place to spend your first ever heat.
He already imagined James spending his heat with him, Regulus and Evan but he couldn't do that right? James wasn't in his right mind and definitely not able to give proper consent for literally everything. Besides he was nearly 100% sure that James was straight, regardless of his obvious reaction to Barty's scent.
He stroked the other boys hair while thinking but he got snapped out of it when James gave a pitiful whimper noise which hit something deep in Barty's core.
"What..." James trailed off.
"James, you're going into heat, you're an Omega."