Chapter 22 – The Hogwarts Team

“What!” Harry interrupted Dumbledore furiously.

“It’s all right Harry, don’t get upset,” Severus tried to calm him.

“Let me explain first please Harry. In your case, Poppy thinks that it would be better for you to stay in a room in the hospital wing, so that she could check-up on you every evening because of your obvious poor health. She fears that you would not take enough care of your health when you went back to the dormitory, so that you’d be back in the Hospital Wing with bigger problems very shortly. And frankly speaking, Minerva thinks so as well. You could stay in your common room until curfew and then just flash over to your room if you wanted.”

“Harry, I know you don’t want to hear it, but I think I have to agree with your Grandfather.”

“Maybe I should just return to the future,” Harry said stubbornly.

“Ah but Harry, you would have exactly the same problems in the future, and Poppy and Minerva would react in the same way in the future. Please think about it; I assume Minerva is going to talk to you as well. There is also an issue I want to discuss with you Severus.”

Severus raised an eyebrow. “What might that be Professor?”

“You and Lily are our new Head boy and Head girl.”

“Wow, congratulations Severus!” Harry beamed, and Severus smiled back to him.

“Anyway, the head boy and the head girl normally have their own rooms, either rooms in their respective Houses or an adjacent room at a central location within the school. Now you know where you are staying now Severus. I have thought about making a two-room apartment out of it, which means a common room and two bedrooms, so that you would stay right in the middle of the castle, centrally located and near to Harry. What do you think Severus?”

“Yes, Professor, I think that is a very good idea. Thank you very much for your consideration.”

“You are very welcome my boys. Then this is decided. I will ask Twinkle to prepare the rooms as soon as we return to Hogwarts. Will that allay your fears just a little Harry?” Harry shrugged.

-----

Harry’s friends had finally arrived and they were sitting at the Gryffindor table, more or less listening to the Sorting.

“We need a new Keeper for our Quidditch team,” James announced. “Remus, you’ve played so well during the holidays that you’ll have to find a new excuse for not playing!”

“If you think I’m good enough, I’d like to play,” Remus replied eagerly. Now he didn’t have to save all his powers for the transformation on every full moon, so why shouldn’t he play?

“Which means our team is already complete! Cool!” Sirius beamed and Harry nodded his agreement. In the meanwhile, the Sorting was over and food had appeared on the tables. “Did Dumbledore already say who the Head Girl and Head Boy are?” Sirius suddenly asked.

“No, but I already know,” Harry mumbled.

“Then tell us Harry,” Sirius insisted.

Harry glanced questioningly at Lily who seemed to ignore the whole conversation. “As far as I know it’s Lily and Severus,” he said and smiled fondly at his mother. “By the way, James,” he addressed his father, “I have thought about something. What about a Quidditch game students against teachers? We’d have to have one team, consisting of members of all four House teams, and the teachers must field a team also.”

“HARRY! YES! That’s a brilliant idea. Too bad it didn’t come from me,” Sirius shouted over the table.

“We could also make this team a real school team and organize a tournament against Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. How’s that?” Harry extended his idea.

“Only under the condition that you’ll be the team captain,” James demanded, “and we can discuss the details later in our dormitory.”

“I think that’ll be for Dumbledore to decide… IF he agrees at all. I’ll go up and ask him later. I’m not allowed to stay in the dormitory any more, at least not for the mument.”

“Why not?” Remus asked silently.

“Health problems,” Harry answered in a small voice only for Remus to hear.

“Hospital Wing?” Remus mouthed and Harry nodded.

-----

“Mr. Pane, will you please come to my office for a mument?” the stern voice of his Grandmother resounded in his ear.

“All right, I’ll see you tomorrow. Good night,” he said and climbed up the stairs to his Head of House’s office.

“Harry, Albus told me that you didn’t take our decision very well to let you stay in the Hospital Wing?

Harry frowned. “Should I be very happy about it? But you have decided anyway, so I don’t think there is any more need to talk about,” he said reprimanding and added, “I have something much more interesting to discuss.”

“And what might that be?” his Grandmother asked surprised.

“We should found a Hogwarts Quidditch team out of the best Quidditch players of all teams and organize a tournament a) against the teachers and b) against Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. What do you think?”

McGonagall was stunned. What a good idea! “Harry, let’s go to the Headmaster’s Office. Could you flash us over?” she asked excitedly.

“Of course. Grab my tail feathers please.”

“And who is going to play in the Hogwarts Quidditch team?” Albus asked with his eyes twinkling.

“You would have to name a Captain for the team; James already suggested me, but the other teams will want to propose someone as well; and the Captain has to either do tryouts or closely observe the practise and games of the other teams. And of course it has to be someone who is a member of one of the House teams.”

Albus glanced at McGonagall and she nodded smilingly. “Alright Harry, as you said correctly it is up to me to name the captain. Professor McGonagall and I have decided to entrust you with this position. Are you willing to take over the position? The Captain has of course to fix the team; whereby you do not have to try out of course, because as Captain you must be on the team; and you have to do the organizing including the communication with the other schools. However, I will write the first letter to the Headmasters of both schools and ask them to name a contact you can talk to. And all appointments and dates have to be discussed with me in advance. Is that clear?”

“Yes of course, Granddad.”

“Then everything is clear; I will announce it to the school tomorrow morning, and maybe you should post a notice about tryouts. You may return to your… dormitory… no, I mean Hospital Wing.”

Harry glared at him. “Isn’t it ridiculous?” he asked furiously.

McGonagall answered in a very upset tone, “No, it is not ridiculous at all. Your behaviour is more ridiculous sometimes. Can’t you understand that we are only worried about you?”

“Yes, but I’m 17! I’m not an infant.”

“But you behave like one. Spending the night in the forest, although you have not yet recovered from pneumonia, is quite ridiculous. Anyway, go back to your room and try to sleep. Good night, Harry. I will come and check on you later, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course not. Good night Granny, Granddad.” When Harry entered the Hospital Wing, he noticed that all his things were gone from the bed he had been using for the past few months. He was just looking around wondering what this could mean, when Pomfrey came and guided him through her office into a small hall and into the first room on the left side.

“This is the part of the Hospital Wing normally reserved for the teachers. But this will be your room for the time being. There is no necessity for you to live in the open wing for a whole school year; this will be much more convenient, won’t it?”

Harry sighed relieved and smiled thankfully at Pomfrey. “Yes, that’s much better; thank you Madam Pomfrey.”

“You are welcome Harry. Now I would suggest you unpack as much as you like and get ready for bed; the bathroom is the last door on the right side. I will come back and check on you when curfew starts.”

‘How funny…’ Harry thought, ‘…in the future she always offered me my own bed, now I even have my own room.’

-----

At breakfast the next morning, Dumbledore made an announcement. “Good morning on this bright and sunny day at Hogwarts. Before you are thrown into your lessons, I have a small announcement to make. Harry Pane had the idea of putting up a common Hogwarts Quidditch team consisting of members of all four House-teams. We have decided to make Mr. Pane captain of this new team, which has yet to be formed and leave everything else to him. Mr. Pane would you like to say a few words?”

Harry rose from his seat. “All right. I thought it would be nice to have a school team for example to play a match against the teachers or to have a tournament together with other schools like Beauxbatons or Durmstrang. I need two full teams, one 1st team and one reserve team. I hope that you all will understand that I am going to play Seeker, but I still need a reserve Seeker of course. Therefore, as we need 14 players, there should be three or four players from each House team playing. If you are interested, you can either talk to me directly or tell your team Captain, and I would like all team Captains to join me here for a short discussion after dinner tonight. Practise for the school team will be every Sunday morning directly after breakfast. In case we have more players available than we need, we’ll have tryouts this coming Sunday. Thank you!”

Loud murmurs started as soon as he sat down again, and he could hear cheering voices from the corners where several members of each House team were sitting together. So maybe his idea had not been so bad...

“Harry!” he was pulled out of his daydreams. Lily stood behind him trying to hand him his lessons plan.

“Oh thank you Lily,” he managed to say in his confusion. Right, it was the first day of classes and not the day of Quidditch tryouts...

“Now come on Harry, or we will be late for class,” his father’s voice rang in his ears and he followed James and Lily to the classroom they were heading for. It was the Transfiguration classroom.

“You will find that 7th year transfiguration will be more difficult than the 6th year’s has been. Do not forget that you will have to take your NEWTs at the end of the school year, and it will not be enough to review two weeks before the exams, but you will need utmost concentration throughout the whole year. While we spent the last year configuring objects into living animals, this year the transfiguration of a living object into another living object will be the main focus. The few of you who have already managed the Animagus transformation will be able to gain additional points in your NEWTs. Please note that it is not allowed under any circumstances to transfigure any of your classmates into animals. This transfiguration will lead to your immediate expulsion.” With this, the stern Transfiguration teacher ended her lecture.

“Today we will try to transfigure our pink rabbits into black cats.” She waved her hand at a box filled with buttons and a button landed in front of each student. “Now first of all transfigure your button into a pink rabbit.” Harry used wandless magic, and stunned the rabbit immediately.

“Hey, Harry, is your rabbit alive at all?” Sirius called over from two rows behind him.

“Of course, it’s only stunned,” Harry said coolly and a few of his classmates who’s rabbits were running around the room glanced at him in awe. ‘All right, I don’t like rabbits, I want you to be a cute black kitten,’ he thought, and a cute black kitten with a white nose was sitting on his table. He released the stunning spell, and the kitten jumped off the table and ran around the room chasing a few pink rabbits. Soon it was joined by a few more black cats.

“Very good Mr. Pane,” McGonagall complimented and awarded 10 points to Gryffindor. So far, 7th year was all right, but what would come next Harry thought.

-----

Harry was glad that the next lesson was Potions, because he wanted to discuss something urgently with Severus. Fortunately, he was already sitting in the front of the classroom. Harry slipped into the seat next to him and threw a wandless silencing spell around them. “Severus, I need to ask you about something. You know, this thing with the Hogwarts Quidditch team, um…”

“A very good idea, Harry, great!” Severus interrupted.

However, Harry ignored his comment for the time being and continued impatiently, “Anyway, what I was going to ask is… I’d like you to be my Co-Captain. I mean I am the Captain and I’ll do the work and all, but in case I’m ill or something happens I need someone else who can take over or help me if necessary. I know you are very busy with Potions Mastership and so on, but would you be my Co-Captain?”

Severus beamed with pride. “Harry, thank you very much for asking, this really means a lot to me. But I would not be your Co-Captain and only your Deputy Captain, all right?”

Harry sighed and relaxed. “All right Severus, thank you very much! I am very happy to be able to work together with you. Then I’d like you to come over to the Gryffindor table after dinner as well.” With this, he cancelled the silencing spell and threw a glance at the teachers’ table, where Slughorn had arrived in the meanwhile. Suddenly he turned white…

“Harry? Harry! Harry, what’s wrong?” Severus whispered urgently.

Harry motioned to Severus to look at the blackboard, where Slughorn had listed all ingredients they would need today to brew… the Esnopia Potion.

Suddenly it dawned on Severus and he said to Harry in a calm voice, “It’s okay Harry; we will brew it together today. We won’t send you even more in the past.”

-----

After dinner, the captains of the three other Quidditch teams and Severus joined Harry and James at the Gryffindor table. Harry started immediately. “Thanks for joining us here. First, I have decided to make Severus my Deputy Captain, and I hope you can all live with this decision. We know each other very well in spite of him being in a different House, and I think the Hogwarts team really has to be a team open to all Houses. As captains we are on the team anyway, Severus as Chaser and I as Seeker. Therefore, we still need five people for the first and seven people for the second team, which makes three people from each House. Now we’ll try to figure out whom you could recommend for each position and later you can talk to your team about it.” He took a quill and some parchment and wrote,

The Team

PositionNameHouse

1st team

Keeper

ChaserSeverus SnapeSlytherin

Chaser

Chaser

Beater

Beater

SeekerHarry PaneGryffindor

2nd team

Keeper

Chaser

Chaser

Chaser

Beater

Beater

Seeker

“Now – does anyone of you have a really good Keeper? And remember, all positions we can’t decide on right now will be decided at tryouts on Sunday.”

It was soon very clear that they wouldn’t be able to avoid tryouts for Chasers and Beaters, because it was difficult to compare the abilities of the own teammates to those of the other teams except for the positions as Seeker or Keeper.

-----

On Saturday morning James whispered to Harry, “Today’s the full moon; are we going to the forest tonight?”

Harry glanced at his father pensively and answered reluctantly, “You know, both last times we went, I came back with a bad cold, and I can’t afford that tomorrow, because we have the Quidditch tryout. I suppose we can’t go tomorrow, can we?”

James laughed, “You mean it’s better to miss classes, right? Let’s ask Sirius and Remus, but I don’t know why we shouldn’t do it a day later. Hey Sirius, Remus,” he ran over to his friends and whispered, “Do you think we can do our full moon night a day later, tomorrow night?” When Remus raised an eyebrow James explained, “Harry is afraid of catching a cold again, and it wouldn’t be good tomorrow, because we need him for the Quidditch tryouts, and you know he wouldn’t be able to get away from the dragon, so can we change the day?”

“All right,” Remus laughed, “I’m glad to be able to say ‘yes’ easily. A few months ago, I couldn’t have agreed to such a plan.”

“So we will do it on Sunday evening; I’ll tell Lily, please tell Severus, Harry.”

-----

The Quidditch tryouts continued until lunchtime. Nearly every member of the House teams had come to try to get into the Hogwarts team, and they all did their best, so the decision was not easy for Harry and Severus.

“The problem was,” Harry explained to his Grandparents later, “that we didn’t only have to find the best players, but they also had to come equally from all four Houses. We could have made the team only from Slytherin and Gryffindor players, but we had to let at least one Hufflepuff player in the first team and accordingly two in the second team. But now I think we have a good team and a good reserve team. We are going to train every Sunday morning, and I’ll let both teams play against each other. I’m also going to meet with the House team captains once a month to take advice because they have more experience with tactics etc.”

“This sounds very good Harry, I should really give points to Gryffindor for a brilliant idea,” his Grandmother commended.

“I shall do that. 100 points to Gryffindor for a brilliant idea, which has got all Houses to work together for our school. Well done Harry!” Dumbledore added.

Harry blushed. “Thank you, Professors. Um… by the way, I would like to fix a date for a friendly match Teachers against Students. If you agree, we could even have two games, one in October and a revenge match maybe at the very end of the school year.”

“That sounds good, but do you think we will get a team together, Minerva?”

“Yes, I think so Albus. You, me, Pomona, Poppy, Filius…”

“Madam Hooch and Professor Slughorn, or maybe better Professor Sinistra,” Harry suggested.

“All right, that should work. If not, our Head boy and Head girl have to play with the teachers,” Dumbledore joked and was immediately contradicted by Harry.

“No! Severus is my Deputy Captain and is not available, and Lily… if you want to be on the losing team … I don’t mind…”

“What about the first Sunday in October and the last Sunday before the end of the school year, Harry, Minerva?”

“Very good, thank you” Harry beamed.

-----

Later that night, he flashed into the forest to meet with the Marauders. As usual, they were running around. He talked to Severus in Parseltongue for a while, before he went to fly with Lily. It was near dawn when James and Sirius transformed back and produced six bottles of butterbeer. After everyone had transformed back Harry asked, “Is there any special reason for the butterbeer today?”

“No”, Sirius said, “but as you seem to get a cold each time we meet in the forest, James thought we should try to warm you up a bit before we go back.”

Harry laughed. “How kind of you; thanks!” he said and made himself comfortable with his bottle sitting with his back at a tree trunk. The six friends cuddled close together because it was very cold without the thick fur of the animals and talked for an hour before they had to go back. “By the way”, Harry asked, “when are we going to do some more exploring for the map? I think, maybe we should do some of it during the nights when we are undisturbed. During the holidays I did a bit of research and found a few charms that might come useful, but I would like to discuss it with you.”

Severus looked at his watch and said, “We should discuss it later today. We need to go back now. Maybe we can meet directly after lunch beside the lake?”

Everyone agreed, and they quickly went back to their beds to get at least an hour sleep before classes. When they met at the lake after a very short lunch, Harry showed the others what he had found out during the holidays. He had found the charm to make all people visible on the map, but – and of this charm only Severus knew – he had put a hidden charm on the map never to show Harry Potter, but to show him as Harry Pane. He had also discovered a charm with which he could look for people on the map only by saying their name to the map.

-----

On their way down to the dungeons for their first afternoon lesson, Harry felt that he – again – had caught a cold by being outside during the night. Why was he so weak? It was really annoying, but on the other hand it was such fun being outside with his friends, that it was worth the cold he thought. Never mind what the others said he would continue to meet them during their nights. While he was brewing a Potion with Severus, he sneezed so much that Professor Slughorn threw him out of the classroom.

“If you accidentally sneeze into the cauldron, everything will explode, so you better go somewhere safe.” Harry glanced at Severus who threw him a worried glance and left the room. It was a double Potions class, and after that, he had a free period until dinner, so he had lots of time. He thought about what to do now and decided to just go and ask Pomfrey for a Potion.

She put him to bed immediately and checked on him saying, “I can’t imagine why you always get a cold, but fortunately this time it is only a cold, and when your temperature doesn’t go up you’ll be able to attend classes tomorrow.”

Harry only shrugged and drank his Potions before falling asleep in an instant. He woke up to a cold hand on his forehead. Severus had come to look after him and to ask what he was supposed to say at the Quidditch captains’ meeting that was supposed to take place at 9 o’clock that evening.

“You can give each of the captains a plan of the first and second team to put up in their common rooms. In addition, they should know the dates for the match against the teachers, which will be the first Sunday in October and the last Sunday before the end of the school year. That’s all. Apart from that I only wanted to discuss tactics and to ask if they have any advice.”

“All right Harry. Is it okay for you if I hold the meeting instead of you?”

“Of course, Sev, thanks,” he replied tiredly. “I can’t go today.”

“Don’t you think you should refrain from spending the nights in the forest?”

“Yes, I know,” Harry mumbled, “but it is such fun and I enjoy it so much, that I don’t mind a cold for the rest of the day; it’s worth it.”

“I doubt that it only will be the rest of the day,” Severus said more to himself and went to the Quidditch meeting.

-----

In the end, Harry had to miss classes for two more days and was finally allowed to get up a few days before the first Hogsmeade visit of the year. The Marauders had decided to go to Hogsmeade all together, so they were bound to have a lot of fun. “Harry!” He winced; he had been completely absent and had missed everything his friends had said.

“Sorry, what did you say?”

“I thought you had spent enough time in bed sleeping, but you are still daydreaming,” Sirius teased him.

“Sorry” he mumbled.

“Now Harry, listen, we’ve been planning a prank for our Hogsmeade visit, and it involves you,” James said. “You are capable of wandless magic, aren’t you?”