Quidditch Woes
It took Sirius two weeks to realize that he had done it again.
Without even meaning to, Sirius had driven away the one person that meant the most to him.
Harry didn’t start conversations with Sirius, he didn’t make eye contact in their dorm. They didn’t walk together to classes or sit beside each other at meals. Harry didn’t goof off with Sirius in class and had even partnered with Draco in potions to get away from him.
Sirius had spent a few of those days so wrapped up in his own shite that he had been savagely grateful that Harry was avoiding him. It had been misery beyond almost anything Sirius expected to have to see Remus see him. Remus was professional, but Sirius knew him, he knew when Remus hurt and that hurt Sirius in turn.
Then Sirius turned around and hurt Harry. He was a bloody poison, ruining all the best people with the nastiness inside of him.
When the second week rolled around and Sirius couldn’t get more than two words in to Harry, he knew he had fucked up royally. If Harry would tell him exactly how Sirius screwed up, he might know how to fix it.
Was it because of Remus? Because Sirius had been stressed over hurting him with his thoughtless lie? That didn’t seem like Harry, Harry was something of a bleeding heart. Harry liked Remus, he had done extra lessons with him in his third year and sought him out for conversations when the Order had been using Grimmauld Place for meetings.
Sirius didn’t think it was that, probably. Though Harry definitely had an issue with Remus as he treated him to almost the same silent treatment that Sirius was receiving.
If Sirius thought about it, he knew it was because of what he said, what he couldn’t understand. Harry had a problem with Remus, but he didn’t have a problem with Sirius until Sirius brought the veil up again.
It had made Sirius selfishly happy at first, knowing that he would still have Harry to restart life with. Harry didn’t need to rewind his life, he didn’t. Harry had friends he was damn desperate to have again, Harry had others who had admired and cared enough about him to follow him to the Ministry.
Harry gave it all up for Sirius. That was what Sirius couldn’t understand and what made Sirius shove at Harry until Harry had finally seen that Sirius wasn’t worth it.
September had ended in a slow and miserable state, starting Sirius’s least favorite month of the year.
Harry wasn’t talking to Sirius, Sirius didn’t know how to talk to him.
Sirius thought he could get Harry’s attention in their flying lesson, but that had been a miserable failure.
Harry spent the entire time being so patient and kind with bloody Hermione Granger and not even Sirius loudly trying to goad him into a race would bring Harry around.
“I don’t know what to do!” Sirius vented aloud while he walked around the lawns after their flying lesson. Blaise walked with him, since apparently he didn’t have any other friends either.
“About Harry?” Blaise asked. “If you told me what your fight was about, maybe I could help?”
“Nice try,” Sirius scoffed. Blaise and Draco had both tried countless times to figure out what had driven Sirius and Harry apart.
They had all seen the argument, they just didn’t hear it. They certainly noticed when the two closest blokes in Hogwarts suddenly stopped speaking to each other though. Blaise had been careful to not criticize Harry, but Sirius still appreciated him taking Sirius’s side a time or two when Sirius had ranted about it all.
“Does he think we’re going to not speak to each other for seven years?” Sirius said, kicking a rock on the lawn and sending it toward the lake. It hit the water, but that didn’t matter.
One little rock in the bottomless lake would make no difference at all, not to the lake. It was the rock that was in a new place, alone, causing ripples the whole time it sank.
When Sirius couldn’t shake his rubbish mood, Blaise just lapsed in silence for a while. Sirius poked at him, trying to get him to go, but he turned stubborn out of nowhere and sat down on the ground, watching Sirius pace and rant with his chin in his hand.
“What do I do?” Sirius asked when he eventually tired himself out and threw himself on the ground beside Blaise. He turned to look at him and hung all his hopes on the advice of an eleven year old.
“Hmm?” Blaise laid back and stretched out on the grass beside Sirius. He had another twig in his mouth and chewed it for a moment.
“Have you tried apologizing?” Blaise asked. “Harry seems nice enough, you could start there.”
“That’s no good,” Sirius said. The last time he had made his closest friend hate him, an apology did nothing.
“Buy him a present?” Blaise suggested.
“Like what?” Sirius asked, considering that for a moment. Harry was willing to show up to school in rags, he wasn’t an altogether materialistic kid. Sirius couldn’t even buy him a decent broom for a couple more years, but a Nimbus might not be unreasonable…
Except Harry was a first year and first years couldn’t own brooms.
It had been a daft rule when Sirius truly was eleven and it was still a daft rule.
“Chocolate?” Blaise said. “He’s got that owl, maybe owl treats or something?”
No, that was thinking small.
Sirius tried to think of something that Harry would love, something that he would have to forgive Sirius over. The problem was that the only things Harry seemed to be interested in were quidditch, dueling, and his friends.
Sirius mending a bridge between Harry and Ron would happen only as a last resort. That had the potential to backfire and only drive Harry further from Sirius. Dueling wouldn’t make much sense either, the only person Harry would want to duel would be Sirius.
Which left quidditch.
“Who’s the seeker for Slytherin?” Sirius asked Blaise.
“Terrance Higgs,” Blaise said immediately. “Seventh year, ugly teeth.”
Sirius laid outside for a short while longer, plotting out the terrible accident that Terrance Higgs was going to have befall him.
It was a convoluted plan, one that Sirius only trusted Blaise and Draco to help him set up. Draco had whined about how he planned to be Slytherin’s seeker next year, but Sirius didn’t have to work hard to shut him up.
Draco’s problem was he had both Lucius’s mouth and his backbone.
The first part of the plan was simple, Sirius tracked Higgs down early Saturday morning and told him to quit the quidditch team. Higgs had been in the loo and Sirius barely blinked before he dragged Blaise and Draco inside the restroom with him to tell Higgs to quit.
“You’re bloody joking.” Higgs scoffed at Sirius after Sirius made his demand. “I ain’t quitting quidditch. Who the ‘ell d’you think you are?”
“I am Sirius James Black,” Sirius said, perfectly calmly. “And I’m the person telling you that you have by lunch to find Flint and quit the team or you’re going to have a horrible, terrible, accident. I’ve seen it in the stars, Higgs. A horrible, painful, accident.”
“Get the ‘ell outta my way.” Higgs shoved his way between Sirius and Draco and left the bathroom, muttering all the while about ‘idiot firsties’.
“He’s going to regret that, right?” Draco asked Sirius when the door slammed behind Higgs.
“He is,” Sirius grinned.
“And that makes you happy?” Blaise asked.
“It does!” Sirius said. He waved grandly for both boys to leave the loo ahead of him. “It means that we are looking at the first prank of the year.”
A prank that would convince Higgs to quit the team immediately, leaving the spot wide open for Harry.
Sirius gave Harry his space through the morning and lunch, seething internally while Harry and Daphne Greengrass chatted at the end of the table.
“They’re just in their own little world, aren’t they?” Sirius whispered, clenching his fork hard while he forced himself to not swap it for a wand.
“I think Daphne fancies him,” Draco whispered to Sirius, little gossip he was. “She told Pansy that he was cute.”
Sirius did glare at Daphne then, both insulted and irritated by that bit of news. Harry was a sweet enough looking kid, but Daphne couldn’t know that he would be on the shorter side when he was older or that once he grew his hair out that it would lay flatter and frame his eyes just right.
Daphne was probably one of those girls that were interested in Harry because of his fame and not who he was as a person.
“Good for her,” Sirius bit out. “Harry would never go for her, she’s bloody boring.”
“And Granger isn’t?” Blaise asked. “Ever since you two broke up, he’s been spending all his time with her.”
“We didn’t ‘break up’,” Sirius said, rolling his eyes at the juvenile term. “We’re having a fight, one that I’ll have fixed in about an hour. You two know what to do, right?”
“Yes,” Blaise said.
“Not really,” Draco said.
Draco was lucky that he was clinging to Black family loyalty because otherwise Sirius wouldn’t have the patience for him.
Just before lunch ended, the boys split up.
Blaise went down to the locker rooms, Draco went to find Remus, Sirius went to Minerva’s office.
The Slytherin quidditch team would be on the field in twenty minutes and Sirius needed Minerva there to see Harry fly. Harry told Sirius before that it had been Minerva who appointed him to the Gryffindor team, Sirius was banking on the witch’s love of the sport to push Harry on the Slytherin team.
It wasn’t likely that Snape would give Harry a spot, no matter how brilliant a flier he was.
Sirius hurried to Minerva’s office just beside her classroom and knocked politely on her door. When she called for him to enter, Sirius did so with his head hung low and a dejected curl to his shoulders.
“Mister Black,” Minerva sounded concerned, though Sirius might have only heard it after having heard it for years. “Are you alright?”
“It’s Blaise, ma’am,” Sirius said sadly, lifting his head enough to give Minerva his most pathetic look. “I think he’s being bullied. I told him he should tell someone, but Snape didn’t care at all. I thought he should come to you, but…” Sirius tossed his hands out helplessly. “I reckon he’s embarrassed.”
“Is that so?” Minerva straightened her glasses and peered over them seriously. “Why don’t you have a seat and tell me about what’s going on?”
“Yes, please.” Sirius hurried to the seat and felt his own wave of nostalgia hitting him. The office all looked exactly the same as it had when Sirius had been a real student. The plaid curtains, the books on the shelf, a few photographs in frames.
There was a small stuffed tabby plushy on one of the higher shelves next to a framed photo that hadn’t been there when Sirius had been a student. It was a perfect likeness to Minerva’s animagus and it had been delivered with a bottle of her favorite wine and the photo. There had been a card too, a simple note… one Sirius wrote himself and the marauders all signed.
Minerva saw where Sirius had been staring and there was a small softening in her expression.
“Your father gave me that,” Minerva said, surprising Sirius with her honesty. “He wrote a note too, one he signed with Harry’s father and their other friends. It said they hoped I would retire before their children arrived.”
That wasn’t quite what it had said. It had said: ‘You can run, you can hide, but you can’t retire before a new era of marauders arrives’. Sirius signed the card with all his love and respect, meaning it fully.
“I guess that didn’t work out then,” Sirius said, reluctantly looking away from the photo that he couldn’t quite see but knew what it looked like anyway.
“It did not,” Minerva said, smiling thinly. “You and Mister Potter remind me quite a bit of your fathers. I’ve been surprised to see the distance between the two of you recently. Did something happen?”
Minerva always had the ability to make Sirius feel like a child. Even when he had been twenty and reckless, ready to tackle the world and destroy the enemies of the Order, it only took one firm command from Minerva to reign Sirius in.
“We fought,” Sirius told her. “And he hasn’t spoken to me since.”
“I see. Am I about to discover the cause behind the mysterious and silent fight that’s been gossiped about by every class of Slytherin students I have had recently?”
Sirius wished he could tell her, he wished fiercely that he could spill his troubles to her as he had when it had been Remus who wasn’t speaking to him. Minerva had always been something more than a professor to Sirius, something very nearly what he imagined good mothers were like.
Maybe if he was careful… didn’t mention Remus or the veil…
“Harry did something stupid over the summer,” Sirius said, careful to not lie to Minerva. The woman was more like a bloodhound than a cat when it came to lies.
“He did it because I did it and he could have died,” Sirius told her. “It was stupid and I told him so.”
Since Minerva didn’t say anything, she only watched Sirius as if waiting for the rest of the story, it spilled out of him. Sirius stayed vague, but he told her about not wanting to hurt ‘a friend’ and how he thought Harry of all damn people would understand that, but he didn’t.
At some point, Minerva pulled a tin of biscuits from her desk drawer and Sirius finished his complaints with a peanut butter biscuit in his hand.
“And now I’m trying to get him a spot on the quidditch team to make it up to him.” Sirius sighed and slumped in his chair. “I can’t lose him, I can’t.”
Minerva had stayed quiet so Sirius could spill the whole sorry story to her. She made a quiet hum and Sirius was surprised when she actually smiled at him.
“You remind me so much of your father,” she said kindly. “Your father was also deeply loyal to his friend and considered the only gestures worth doing to be grand ones.”
Sirius started to smile at the obvious complim—
“He also lacked all emotional tact.”
Sirius’s mouth dropped open and he wanted to argue - Sirius had tact - but Minerva didn’t give him an opening.
“It’s been some time since I was a young witch, but I do spend quite a bit of time around children,” Minerva said. “It sounds to me as if Mister Potter was jealous of your other friend. Perhaps he thought that they were going to take his place in your life.”
Sirius didn’t think that was the issue. Remus had been the love of Sirius’s life, Harry was Sirius’s life. It was different and surely Harry knew that.
“And,” Minerva gave Sirius a stern look, “if you do not want Mister Potter to risk his life, maybe you should set a better example for him.”
It wasn’t like Sirius went through the fucking veil on purpose, though he saw Minerva’s point.
“Yes, ma’am,” Sirius said gratefully. Even if Minerva didn’t have the full picture and her advice was skewed, Sirius felt less restless over it all just by talking it through.
There was more of an age gap between Sirius and Minerva than Sirius and Blaise, but Minerva was one of the most intelligent human beings he ever had the pleasure of meeting.
“As for this business with apologizing by helping Mister Potter gain a spot on the quidditch team…” Minerva had a small twinkle in her eyes that filled Sirius with glee.
An injury could take a witch out of the pro leagues, but quidditch would always be a priority to her.
“Is he a good flier?” Minerva asked.
“The best seeker you’ll ever see,” Sirius said without hesitation. He had seen Harry fly and he was born to be a seeker. Harry doing anything else was incomprehensible. Sirius didn’t care why he thought he should be an auror, Harry Potter was made to be a seeker.
“Seeker?” Minerva deflated some. “Slytherin already has a seeker.”
“Well…” Sirius smiled brightly, as charming as he could be. “Not for long. I think the position should be open by now.”
“First years are not allowed to own broomsticks,” Minerva reminded him, apparently choosing to not comment on Sirius’s intimate knowledge of the Slytherin quidditch lineup.
“But if the school was gifted a Nimbus specifically for the Slytherin seeker to use…” Sirius shrugged carelessly. “That seems like a thing he could use.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Minerva agreed. She stood up and cleared her desk with a wave of her wand. “Is Mister Potter at the quidditch pitch?”
Sirius giddily checked the time and nodded. Higgs should be gone by then and hopefully Blaise knew to keep Harry there.
“Yes, ma’am,” Sirius said, lurching to his feet as well. “I think if the Deputy Headmistress were to say Harry should fly then there wouldn’t be any complaints.”
Minerva tsk’d, but Sirius saw her eyes. She was curious. Minerva knew how talented James had been, surely she would see the same talent amplified tenfold in Harry.
“Perhaps,” she allowed. “Come. I sense you put some effort into setting this up, the least I can do is see if it was worth the work.”
It was. It absolutely was.
Sirius and Minerva arrived on the quidditch pitch in time to see Higgs being carted up to the castle by two of the other Slytherin quidditch players. Minerva gave Sirius a severe look, he only looked innocently confused.
Sirius certainly didn’t do anything, he had been with Minerva for some time.
Remus stood on the edge of the pitch, watching while Flint had a meltdown over his seeker quitting the team after a ‘minor injury’.
Blaise was near the lockers and he nodded when Sirius tapped his forehead subtly, their signal for him to get Harry out on the field. Draco had a broom ready outside the lockers, one they were borrowing from Anastasia.
It wasn’t like Harry could use Higgs’s broom, Sirius would be in a tricky position if he had to un-curse it in front of Minerva.
“Higgs quit?” Minerva asked Remus.
Remus barely acknowledge Sirius standing there before he quickly looked back out at the pitch.
“It seems that way,” Remus agreed with mild amusement in his voice. “He couldn’t control his broom and told Flint that he had been cursed by the stars.”
It wasn’t a lie.
“I see,” Minerva said, clearly not as amused. “And you saw this happen? There was no evidence of sabotage?”
“Sabotage?” Remus asked, his eyebrows raising. He hesitated when he saw Sirius again. “Not that I witnessed, no,” he said slowly. “Is Mister Black here to try out for the position?”
It was a good guess, wrong though.
“He is not,” Minerva said. “Would you believe me if I said that, in what I’m sure is a happy coincidence, Mister Potter happens to be an excellent seeker and Mister Black would like me to watch him try out for the team?”
“I - Yes.” Remus cleared his throat and stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets, firmly looking forward, away from Sirius. “I would believe that, yeah.”
Sirius’s heart ached for Remus, it did. Sirius wished he could tell him that Sirius didn’t betray him, he didn’t betray James. Sirius wished that Remus wasn’t heartbroken every time he looked at what seemed to be further evidence of Sirius’s disloyalty.
Sirius would have died for his friend, his Moony.
But Sirius couldn’t trust Remus with his and Harry’s secret, not when it risked Harry’s safety.
Once again, there simply wasn’t enough trust between them.
Harry couldn’t have timed it more perfectly when he walked out on the pitch, Hermione Granger beside him, arguing with Draco.
“I’m not getting expelled because you can’t find your snitch,” Harry complained, though Sirius could see his fingers twitching every time he looked at the broom Draco held.
“Don’t be a wuss, Potter.” Draco shoved the broom at Harry then stepped back with his arms crossed. His body was turned just enough and his voice carried enough for the professors and Flint to hear him.
“Sirius said you’re some brilliant seeker, so seek,” Draco said. It took the poor kid a second, but he finally spit out the magic word. “Please.”
That was all it took for Harry to swing his leg over the broom and kick off from the ground. Draco waited for Harry to turn away, then he released the snitch.
“Oh.” Minerva sighed and Sirius swore he heard real emotion in it. Her face was certainly lit up with pleasure when Harry began circling the pitch, looking entirely professional despite everything.
“Just like his father,” Remus said softly.
Sirius nearly said it out loud, then he caught himself before blurting more of what he shouldn’t know.
Harry wasn’t just like James though, Harry was the kind of flier that James and Sirius wished they could be.
It didn’t take long for Flint to spot Minerva at the sidelines and sprint to her.
“Professor, look at him!” Flint waved to where Harry flew - bloody hell, as if anyone could look away when Harry was flying.
“I see him,” Minerva said. “Am I to understand that you require a seeker?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Flint said. “Professor Snape - uh…” Flint scratched his head. “He probably won’t like it though.”
“Nonsense,” Minerva sniffed. “If Professor Snape wants a chance to win the Cup this year, he’ll certainly approve. Give Mister Potter your training schedule, I’ll speak with Professor Snape.”
“Yes!” Flint threw a fist in the air, nodded respectfully to Sirius, then tore down the pitch, screaming Harry’s name all the while.
“Effort unwasted, I see,” Minerva murmured to Sirius. She put a hand on Sirius’s shoulder, only for a moment, and gave him another rare smile. “I would think that Mister Potter will accept a simple apology next time. One that doesn’t cause any star-born curses to befall his classmates.”
Sirius heard the warning and agreed quickly. When Minerva began walking back to the castle, Sirius impulsively chased after her for one chance to tell her another truth.
“Ma’am.” Sirius stopped in front of Minerva and looked up at her with nothing but honesty in his eyes.
“He didn’t do it,” Sirius told her. He didn’t need to explain, she would know what Sirius meant. “I can’t prove it yet, but he didn’t do it. He never would have. Ever.”
Sirius would have died. Voldemort himself could have tortured Sirius and Sirius never would have broken.
Minerva studied Sirius hard for a long moment and then nodded.
“I look forward to the day that you can prove that,” she said quietly. “I have high hopes for you.”
With those words of encouragement, Minerva patted Sirius’s shoulder once more before leaving for the castle. And Sirius?
Sirius went to Harry, feeling fifty feet tall.
Draco, Blaise, and Hermione were waiting for Harry off in their own group. Sirius joined them as Harry walked over with Anastasia’s broom in his hand and a slightly dazed look of surprise on his face.
It wasn’t Hermione who Harry looked at - it was Sirius.
It was Sirius that Harry beamed at and Sirius who Harry ran to.
“I’m seeker!” Harry screamed, launching himself at Sirius.
Sirius grinned twice as hard as Harry and they both laughed when Sirius tried to spin him and they fell in a heap on the ground.
“Not as strong as I used to be,” Sirius joked when they finished laughing and helped each other to their feet. He did lope his arm around Harry’s shoulders and the black cloud hovering over him dissipated when Harry didn’t shake it off.
“I can’t believe the luck,” Harry told Sirius, positively gushing. “Higgs quit just earlier! Then Flint said that McGonagall is going to go over Snape’s head to give me permission!”
That was the second best part in Sirius’s opinion.
Harry was distracted by telling Sirius every moment of getting appointed to the team that it was Sirius who handed the broom to Draco and shook his head for him and Blaise to piss off. Blaise, smart kid he was, took Hermione with them, leaving just Sirius and Harry to walk toward the castle together.
Sirius didn’t stop grinning the entire time Harry told him about trying out without realizing he was trying out and how Flint swore that the school would get Harry a decent broom or he’d do it himself. Sirius would buy Harry a broom, he didn’t need Marcus Flint to do it.
Actually, Harry would have to buy Harry a broom since Sirius was impoverished until they figured out his vault situation.
They were both lingering outside the castle when Harry finished his side of the story Sirius set up for him. Neither of them seemed in any rush to go inside and there was too much lingering between them that had been unsaid.
Sirius was going to start first, he was going to tell Harry that he was sorry, even if he wasn’t certain what he was sorry for. Sirius knew he was damn sorry though.
Harry beat him to it and wiped the half-arsed apology out of Sirius’s thoughts.
“I’m not James,” Harry said, his eyes trained on his shoes. “I can’t be James, Siri.”
James? Why would Sirius want Harry to be James?
“Yeah, I know that,” Sirius said, mystified. “You’re Harry.”
Harry’s shoulders curled up and Sirius wished he understood what conversation they were having.
“I can’t replace him.”
“Nobody could,” Sirius said without thinking. It didn’t seem to be the right answer because Harry only looked more rejected.
It was the truth though; nobody could ever replace the place in Sirius’s heart where James Potter had and would always reside. James was Sirius’s best friend, his safe haven, the first person who Sirius knew without a doubt that he loved.
Harry was the second.
It was different though because Harry was Harry and James was James.
“I don’t want James to be replaced,” Sirius said, trying to understand what Harry thought. Did Harry think that Sirius was reliving his Hogwarts days with one dark-haired Potter replacing the other?
“You look like your father, but you’re not him,” Sirius said. “I don’t want you to be him. I want you to be Harry, but - a Harry who doesn’t throw his life away for me.”
A safe Harry, a happy one. One who didn’t carry the weight of the bloody world on his shoulders before he was properly a man.
Sirius wanted Harry to just be Harry; not James, not the Boy-Who-Lived.
Harry.
“Throw my life away?” Harry seemed puzzled then too, which was good - Sirius would hate to be the only one lost in the conversation.
“Sirius, I… I didn’t throw away my life when I followed you,” Harry said slowly, as if Sirius were exceptionally daft. “I followed you because… well… I didn’t want my life without you in it.”
Sirius stood frozen, his heart racing, as he looked into Harry’s sunlit eyes and realized that Harry hadn't just confessed something small - he had confessed everything.
It was everything.
And Sirius deserved nothing.