Chapter 15
New Beginnings
In which Harry wins a world cup, and Harry wins a world cup
Harry could not be more proud of Arianne.
It was dangerous, and he had to do it in secret, but he was.
At ten years old she was every bit the soaring eagle he was at eighteen. She had never jumped from anything taller than their manor house, never climbed miles into the air just to drop, never even dodged a real bludger and yet she could've outflown him in his final school game.
Fleur knew not the tenth part of her skill, and that was for her own sake more than the need for secrecy. She was much more adjusted, or at the very least resigned, to her youngest daughter's quidditch-ness now. With Sebastian finally arrived and ready to begin training away from the cursed sport, Arianne had a whole slew of new freedoms in her last year as a chick in the nest. A bit less than a year from now she would be off to her first year of school and Harry had the private goal of making her the best quidditch player in the school before she even got there.
He had begun this fall to teach her how to devise plays of her own. He had a comprehensive set of training dummies and buoys, some of which he'd help develop. They were the things he used to set up obstacle courses to train her on the art of weaving through a game, and how to recognize chaser formations and interact with them. Now though she was arranging them for a play.
It was a basic three-one-two, a broad chaser rush with the seeker overhead to run interference and beaters in the back. It could be offensive or defensive, depending on the execution, and it was one of the more fundamental approaches to team positioning. What was important is he had not taught it to her, because he believed in learning through doing.
He had never really put thought into what the other thirteen players were doing in a game until he saw his first world cup. He'd left that experience changed. Awed by the razor-sharp skill of the Irish chasers and impressed with the aggressive and daring style of Viktor Krum. He returned to school and molded his team after them, and learned how to be a team captain in the process.
People often forgot that about the star seeker, those that had not worked with him at least. His lauded title of undefeated took the main stage and the average person didn't see that Harry Potter was not a household name because he was a good seeker but rather because he was a master strategist.
-o-o-o-
The '98 world cup is widely considered one of the most momentous games in magical sports history.
France was an underdog in the season, it had been twenty years since they'd made it into the finals, and Harry Potter was still only a vaguely familiar name. Associated more with England's last dark wizard than quidditch.
They won every game they played, and the world watched with bated breath as they climbed the ranks into the finals. With two rookies, one of which had never played a professional game, they beat top contenders like Ireland, Germany and Brazil and stood across from Bulgaria on the pitch one day in late July. Harry had eyes only for Krum, he wanted the young man to see him, see him and remember what he'd said to him four years ago.
He did.
They'd eyed each other as the snitch was released, neither of them trying to track its starting pattern, and he knew then what type of game they would play.
It lasted the better part of the day.
Beginning late in the morning, they played for almost eight hours. Luc and the chasers were put on a rotating shift so that they never had more than one reserve player on the field at a time. For Harry they had to wait, the two seekers were given a brief rest, simultaneously, and no longer than it took for them to eat and for that meal to settle. It was brutal play, a spectacle to behold, and one that earned him cold anger from Fleur for days after.
Krum was not above playing dirty, and if the Valkyries were the worst of the Beauxbatons teams the Aigles were not that far behind. Harry knew how to play seeker offensively, and both were confident enough in their teams to absorb the penalty shots.
Harry unseated him first while shooting a diagonal across the pitch to lead a bludger into the Bulgarian chasers. He shoulder-checked the Bulgarian seeker hard from behind as he passed and Krum went down. The charms on the ground caught him well enough and, after a quick examination, he retook the skies.
Lesser seekers could be unnerved by outright hostility in a game, it was an often-used tactic that didn't really apply to Krum. It was done mostly out of spite, and because someone had to be the first aggressor.
Krum returned it in kind soon enough and at a higher altitude to boot.
Fleur watched in horror as the Bulgarian seeker kicked out and struck the twigs at Harry's tail from the top of a dive. It unsettled him, not enough to make him bail out of the dive, but enough that he couldn't properly evade the Bludger that had just been sent his way. It took him straight in the ribs and out into open air.
Her heartbeat in her throat and made it impossible to breathe as he fell. She sat between her father and her sister, squeezing their hands until Gabrielle was forced to turn her attention away from the game and try to free herself from the painful grip.
He didn't allow more than the barest repair of cracked bones before he was back in the air, to her fury and dismay, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. A triviality of the first hour. Things only got more intense as the hours stretched on and the snitch remained uncaught.
That was not to say it was not seen. These two seekers were objectively speaking some of the best of all time, the fact that they were both beginning their careers nearly simultaneously in the grand scheme of things was a delight for the world. They were almost matched, equals in near every aspect, and it ultimately came down to Harry's reckless abandon.
If there was limited formal training material for seekers prior to Harry's book being published at the end of that year, the top performers in the sport all had some conscious understanding of the snitch's mechanics. Perhaps most could not write a book on it, but they knew how to handle the semi-sentient ball, how to corral it and wrangle it out of the air, even if it was instinctual.
These seekers though, their understanding went beyond simple instinct, and the only reason he came out on top was he'd practiced free fall more often, he was comfortable with it. The age-old problem with broomsticks was that they could not turn on a point, even the nimble quidditch variety were powerless to follow a snitch that had just made a hairpin turn.
He was thirty feet off the ground, fresh out of a tall dive, and flying with thrilling speed across the pitch under the game. Krum had been far off when he caught sight of it, in some ways seekers' jobs were made easier once night fell, the harsh stage lighting glinted off the gold ball well. He gave chase with the taste of victory already on his tongue, and Krum was too far. After the dive though, the ball circled a quarter of the field, and Krum had set up new angles of approach rather than give immediate and direct chase.
He entered the ball's field of awareness with his hand outstretched, it darted one of three ways it could have, and it happened to pick the worst. It was approaching Krum now at a sharp angle he couldn't correct for in time. So he lept and soared as his broom shot off in a straight line and he was stretched over the grass below.
No one save Krum saw him catch the ball, they were too focused on his fall. It was too close to the ground for Luc to get to him in time, he was in the air for scarcely more than a second, but he caught the ball and twisted to look up at the brooms above. He knew enough about the cushioning charms below to know the best way to land. Flat on your back, and relaxed, if possible.
Despite the protective magic the landing still took the breath out of him, his vision went black for a second, but he maintained consciousness, and he was gasping in a ragged breath by the time the medics reached him. He thrust his fist up in the air and he had the pleasure of hearing the moment the rest of the world realized he'd just beaten Krum.
-o-o-o-
"Thought any more about what position you want to play?" He asked Arianne in a moment of downtime, they were bobbing in the air high over the cottage field, with her floating mock game sitting stationary below them.
Arianne worried her bottom lip between her teeth and shrugged.
"Whatever I can I guess…"
Harry did not tell her that they would make an opening for whatever position she wanted because it was nice to see the humility from her. He knew that in a few year's time Arianne would be unbearable, she already displayed the traces of her father's cockiness and her mother's stalwart pride. It was a heady mixture that would only grow once she got out in the world and started accomplishing things.
"As long as you don't pick keeper," he teased, and she rolled her eyes like he was being stupid.
"Of course not papa, just sitting there all day waiting for something to happen?" She sounded disgusted. "But how did you pick between chaser and seeker?"
"Well, I didn't really, they just stuck me on a team, I didn't know what I was doing until it was too late." This wasn't helpful to his fretting daughter, who was hoping something similar happened to her because she was torn between the glory of seeking and the action-packed flying of a chaser.
It was a stupid mistake.
Arianne was stretching, twisting and shifting her weight, and she slipped sideways on her broom. He went for her, unnecessarily, because she was his daughter and had no trouble keeping her seat. Nonetheless, his arm shot out to grab her, he leaned over, and something in his back pulled.
He was falling, Arianne could not catch him, she was a third his weight and not quick enough besides. They had cushioning charms, a firm requirement of Fleur's when they first started flying years ago, but he didn't even register the impact. He was contorting before he hit the ground, like he had a string down his back that had just been pulled taut. His vision went black and his entire existence was pain and the feel of his muscles locking and knotting.
"Arianne!" He regained his faculties in time to see her turning from him, making to run inside, too flustered to think of getting on her broom and flying. His tone stalled her though, he had perhaps never been so harsh with her and it made her turn and look at her writhing crippled father on the ground. "I need-" he had to pause to pull in a shallow breath, his back did not want to be moved, it protested to the inhale. "Maman." He finished lamely.
She made to bolt again, tears of fear in the corners of her eyes, but that wouldn't do. "Ari," he was calmer now and thankfully she headed him regardless. "I'm okay little chick-" he pulled in a labored breath "do not run inside screaming and crying. You know maman, she will just get worked up." Arianne nodded, and one of those tears fell. "I'm okay little chick, I just need help."
She still sprinted back to the cottage, but he hoped she would maintain her composure. It didn't much matter because of course Fleur exploded onto the field in fits of rage. It was her preferred mask for worry and fear. She was not mad at him, just generally testy and glaring at whatever fell in her line of sight. She levitated him off the ground and back toward the house and Arianne trailed along uncharacteristically quiet.
"I'm sorry little chick," he'd found the limit of his temporary lung capacity, it was easier to talk now he wasn't over-extending his diaphragm and inciting new waves of agony. "We will have to let maman do the cooking the next few days I think."
"Do not," Fleur warned blackly "try me right now." He knew his wife well enough to see through her anger, she was at least somewhat relieved to hear him cracking jokes, even at her expense. Arianne was relieved to hear her parent's normal banter, and Harry was relieved to make it into the cottage.
Sebastian was napping, a blessing at the moment as the Potter made their procession through the small space, Harry floating and supine in the lead with Fleur conducting him into their bed. Fleur had to take charge, but it was no trouble really, not with Arianne old enough to look after herself now. She spent most of the afternoon in her parent's room, reading and trying to pull her father into conversation to reassure herself he was alright. It didn't exactly help, because talking was trying, but he couldn't begrudge her her concern, and in halting bursts she got the story out of him.
-o-o-o-
Harry's back popped as he stretched, leaning sideways to reach for the wall.
He was not young anymore, and he lamented that fact as he began his exercises early. Luc was with him, another old-timer, they were the senior members of the team now. He had never needed so much prep time before a game in his youth, and sure enough, the other members of the French team were sitting around in varied stages of horror and anticipation. It was just the two grown-ups that felt the need to limber up so early.
At thirty-four they were practically geriatric by World Cup standards. Harry knew, privately, that this was his last Cup. Liliane was three, Fleur wanted another, and he was getting too old to be taking bludgers to the back of the head. If this was his last he was fine with that, Krum had made it back this year, and for the first time in eight years, the two titans of the seeker world would clash. Even if they were aged and dusty, he reckoned they still had a bit of show left in them.
It was a brutal game, if perhaps not as overtly malicious as their first two world cup showdowns. Fleur could never fully grasp their odd friendship, and she had trouble forgiving the Bulgarian seeker for his actions on the pitch, but this game was a touch tamer at the very least.
Its brutality lay in the desperation of it all. In truth Harry's main motivation for retirement wasn't age, it wasn't a wife that was growing less and less accommodating of his profession, as bad as it sounded it wasn't even his daughter at home. It was his legacy.
At fourteen he'd begun telling people he would be the best seeker in the world. It was the reckless boast of ignorant youth. Too arrogant by half, and untempered enough by inexperience to make the claim brazenly. No one ever really called him on it, and he hadn't put much thought into how it would feel when it was true.
Well, it was true now, and it was a great deal more stressful than he pictured it as a cocky teen. Every game he wondered if this would be the one that ended his streak; if the enemy seeker would be the one to snatch the snitch and go down in history as the one to shatter Potter's record. This entire last international season was a buffer. Fleur had wanted him to retire after the 2010 Cup, but he'd convinced her for one more. He'd set the record then for career wins, an unbroken chain stretching back fifteen years to his first season with Chomelix. Instead of bowing out then, he pushed on for one more cup, just to widen the moat, the caveat being they would have their first child. She was ready, the glamor of celebrity life long since faded, and they'd begun transitioning out of the public eye before she'd even gotten pregnant.
"Wish papa good luck!" She was waiting for him in the bowels of the stadium as the team filtered out of the locker rooms. He smiled and kissed his daughter, who at two was at least capable of wishing him good luck but was too distracted by the strange environment.
"You ready?" He didn't know if she was asking about the game, or what came next, but he nodded with a smile regardless. He kissed her and ruffled his daughter's hair, but didn't vocalize an answer because his nerves were still there even after over twenty years of competing.
He couldn't remember the game. He remembered being with his wife and looking over to Luc speaking to his two young boys, and then nothing more.
Fleur watched from the box. The game was already going when she made it to her seat because she'd had to make the trek up from below carrying her toddler. Her family was there to watch him of course, even Gabby had returned from whichever far-flung country she was touring. Fleur wasn't completely certain what she was doing, something with fashion, but she never missed games.
It was not the worst game she had seen, the two seekers were too good for the beaters to be much of a threat, and they seemed more inclined to proving themselves the better player as opposed to unseating the opposition. The years had not quite absolved her of the pit of anxiety that yawned in her when he took to the skies, but they had at least softened the edges, and she managed to enjoy most of the game.
He won, but she couldn't bring herself to care when they told her that later.
The cushioning charms over a quidditch pitch were comprehensive, adaptive to the speed and force of the falling rider, the higher the fall the sooner they triggered. They could probably be devised to remove all pain completely, but because this was a brutish sport there was no fun in that, so at worst a bad fall resulted in bruising and a broken limb if the angle was bad. The one gaping flaw in them was their inability to protect someone who wasn't falling.
He saw the snitch first, tried to corral it up high away from the game and Krum. It worked for a bit, but Viktor caught on and gave chase, up high above the game they had nowhere else to go they entered Fleur's least favorite part of quidditch, the dive. Krum pulled out of it first, but did not give up, he was zipping just overhead trying to predict where the snitch would go when Harry made his grab for it. Harry, single-minded in his determination and supremely confident in his own ability, did not let something so trivial as the ground stop his pursuit.
When he reached the point where he could dive no lower without colliding with the grass below he pulled out and hopped up onto his broom. Standing in a crouch and flying at dizzying speed, he could go lower than Krum had without his legs hanging down to drag the ground. He stood, leaning forward and reaching for the ball. He shuffled forward a touch too far, with his broom zipping through stalks of grass inches from the ground, and the nose pitched forward a hair and caught the dirt, throwing him forward.
It would come to light that he had actually caught the snitch as he was launched into the ground with lethal speed but from the stands that didn't register. The world watched as Harry Potter was tossed forward, his right shoulder touched down first, and then he was flipping and rolling to a stop. It took agonizing seconds for his momentum to halt, and when he was finally still he was on his back, and just that.
Still.
Fleur had Liliane's head clutched against her side, preventing her from watching, perhaps unnecessarily because her three-year-old had long since lost interest in the two-hour game. She couldn't breathe, her heart surely hadn't beat since his broom had bucked him off and shaken itself apart against the ground. She would not, could not, move until he did. His fist should punch into the air, holding that damnable ball, or he would jump up to be accosted by his team.
He didn't.
He was accosted by medics, the whole staff rushing out, and he still wasn't moving. The spell over Fleur broke when he was lifted off the ground under wand point and moved off the field. Liliane was dumped unceremoniously into Elise's arms and she was running down steps trying not to let her mind wander to dark places.
-o-o-o-
"Did you get the snitch though?" Arianne asked and Harry tried to laugh, but it triggered a feeling like a knife between two vertebrae, and that arrested motor function for a second.
"Oui, little chick, I caught it. Papa's record still stands."
"That is so not the point of this story." Fleur entered the room with a reprimand, but she was floating a tray laden with lunch behind her and had little Sebastian resting against her shoulder.
"What happened?" Arianne asked the room at large, unconcerned by her mother's tone now that it was apparent that her father would be fine.
"What happened?" Fleur repeated incredulously, and she had the advantage of being whole and healthy to allow her to seize the narrative. "Papa broke himself chasing stupid balls and ended his career." Harry rolled his eyes because they both knew he was retiring after that game anyway, but he would allow his wife her last futile attempt to warn Arianne away from quidditch.
-o-o-o-
Fleur was asleep when he woke up.
He groaned, but it wasn't from pain. He was under the effects of potent potions. He had drifted back to consciousness in a dim and quiet room and tried to sit up. It didn't work. His body was heavy and sluggish and when he tried to command it he was resolutely ignored. The sound was enough to wake Fleur though, and he struggled to turn his head at her gasp, then she was standing over him.
"What- happened?" He asked dumbly, it was hard to put thoughts together into words, hard to think and move.
She reared back and he thought she would smack him. She thought it too, and it was only the knowledge of his injuries, knowledge he didn't even have yet, that stayed her hand. Instead, she brought that hand to his face and held him in a vice-like grip.
"How dare you." It wasn't a question, it was the opening of a vicious condemnation.
"Fleur-" The look she gave him silenced him, she had tears in her eyes and a fire building in her that he had rarely seen. He didn't know where he was, couldn't remember how he'd gotten here or why. He looked around and surmised it was a hospital room, which could only mean he'd hurt himself flying, the fact that he couldn't remember did not bode well.
Her hand tightened against his jaw, turning his attention back to her, and it felt like she'd rather be gripping his throat the way she was squeezing it. She reached out with her allure, and he wasn't quite sure what she'd hoped to accomplish with it, but her own fear was far too strong to do much more than poison his mind with its acrid tang.
"You will never fly again." She told him fiercely. He furrowed his brow, trying to fight off the alien terror assaulting his mind.
"Fleur-"
"Harry-" she cut him off, and her tone silenced him. It was not angry, it was scared. She sounded like a little girl, younger and more fearful than he'd ever known her to be. "I mean it, if you don't stop… I'll leave you." She said it like she was steeling herself to the reality, like she'd devised this plan of attack while she waited for him to wake but only now faced the truth of it.
It transpired that he'd broken his spine in three places, once in the neck and twice in the back, as well as most of the bones that made up his right shoulder. Magic was a wondrous thing, and saving his life was never in question, but they did not have complete mastery over the human body and the healers were not entirely certain what his life would look like moving forward.
He had to relearn how to walk.
It took long months of physical therapy, several corrective treatments in the hospital, and a whole battery of potions that wreaked havoc on him in the year following the accident. He never regained the memories of that last game, though he could eventually recall up to the moment he walked out onto the pitch.
It was the lowest point in their lives, he fell into depression, and Fleur's barely contained anger simmered below the surface constantly. She had no patience for his sadness, could not forgive him for putting a game before their family and almost killing himself for it. They weathered the storm though, and after a year he had put the worst of it behind him. He was not resigned to being grounded, he accepted it, and once he did he could shake off some of that dark cloud that hung over his recovery.
He still had episodes, more frequently in the early days, one wrong move could throw out his back and he would be out of commission for days. The healers could do nothing about it but give him potions to numb the pain and let it pass.
They had Arianne, and Fleur's anger faded enough that one day she came home from work with a broom, the first one allowed in their house in over four years.
Harry was on teacher duty. In his retirement, it had been agreed that Fleur would return to work. Through the years as his traveling quidditch wife, she had maintained at least a name for herself among certain circles. She was an accomplished charm crafter, and several times published in the fields of enchanting and warding. She took up a post in the French ministry, in their experimental magic department. It was not called as such, it had a much more mysterious and elusive name, but that was what it was.
Arianne was two and presently had a fascination with wizard's chess, she couldn't play it of course, but she loved to handle the pieces and laugh at their protests. It was a good distraction that allowed Harry to begin teaching Liliane maths throughout the day.
Fleur entered their little cottage, half unsure if she wanted to go through with it, but she'd already bought the damn broom so she steeled herself.
-o-o-o-
Arianne had never known a life in which her mother had not worked for the ministry and her father had stayed home with her and Liliane. This last crucial piece of the puzzle clicked into place as they sat on her parents' bed and ate a light lunch of soup and bread. It wasn't even gross to watch her mother helping him eat, he didn't need it after being propped up, but she still batted away his hands when he tried to do it himself. Ariane saw it, and she thought their love was amazing, her parents' actions throughout her life suddenly became clear. All the bitter fights between Arianne and her mother about flying, her father's quiet acceptance of whatever seemingly asinine rules she created, her mother's lack of interest in joining her family in the air. It made a sort of sense now.
"I won't get hurt maman." She told her, looking up earnestly and making promises she had no way of guaranteeing. Fleur just smiled at her little spitfire, reaching across the bed to stroke her silver sheet of hair.
"You will," she countered, but she wasn't condemning her daughter's ambitions "but you will be a better flyer than your papa, non?" Harry grinned and Arianne's face split to match it as her mother's words washed over her.
"Yeah!"
-o-o-o-
Fleur tried to teach her two-year-old daughter wizard's chess but it was a futile ditch effort to keep her eyes off her flying father.
After she brought that broom home he began to take it out, only maybe once a week at first, she expected him to be on it the moment she got home most days but he seemed to be restraining himself in an attempt to ingratiate her to the idea. She had never intended to allow him in the air again, had meant it when she told him she would leave him if he didn't give up his destructive obsession. She clung to that conviction that first year of recovery when he was bitter and depressed, used it to stoke a fire inside that left little room for patience for his moods.
He got better though, he no longer feared tweaking his back at the slightest twist. No longer needed potions that dulled him and left him half alive. No longer needed help walking. They had Arianne, and he began to teach Liliane, and she returned to work. He was happy again, his wistful longing for flight faded to a low burn in the background as he settled into a comfortable existence caring for his family. The one thing he really wanted all those years ago when he set himself on his path to excellence.
He seemed content with his new life. He still stared out the windows on bright clear days with a hungry look in his eyes but he also still woke in starts and cold sweats, with dreams of a crash he couldn't remember haunting him. So after a few years, and with two kids to keep him busy, she picked him out a slow and inept little starter broom. Something he would struggle to push hard enough to hurt himself on, and she brought it home for him.
The obsession with brooms flared up fast in Arianne, and Fleur almost threw the thing in the fireplace the first time she came into the living room and saw her toddler sitting on the floor holding it by the tail. She was fascinated by all the little twigs and delighted in tugging on them. Looking back on it her daughter and husband played foul games on her, colluding and manipulating her in stages. First, it was allowing short tame rides with papa. Next, they were picking out a broom for Arianne, and only because Harry knew how to modify it to keep it stuck at knee height and zipping across the ground.
She was impossible to keep on the ground from there, at three she had more confidence and ability on brooms than her mother had developed in nearly twenty years married to an international star. By the time they took Liliane to school for the first time, Harry was teaching their youngest the Wronski Feints and Sloth Grip Rolls and all manner of horrifying tricks she wished she didn't know the names to. There came an endless series of upgrades that somehow left that little stunted training broom behind, collecting dust in the shed out back and only pulled out as punishment.
Arianne was her father's daughter, and Fleur could only love her more for it, as much as it pained her.
-o-o-o-
"Potter gets the quaffle…" Harry's voice was distorted, warped by his hand over his mouth so that it sounded as if it came from a wireless, but it pulled her from her thoughts. She was propped up in bed next to him, a book open in her lap but forgotten as they stared out their bedroom windows at the solitary figure swooping through the skies outside.
"She shakes off the tail, rolls under a bludger, and- scores!" With his commentary, she could almost see the imaginary game of quidditch happening around their little girl who was now making a wide victory lap with both hands raised.
"A chaser?" She asked him, eyebrow cocked in disbelief, she always figured Arianne was destined to follow in her father's footsteps.
"I think so," he confided, his tone implying this was trade secrets. "She's on the fence, but I think it's mostly out of loyalty."
Their daughter was apparently playing the seeker in her imaginary game now, she assumed as such because she'd never seen a chaser in such a steep dive before.
"She'll never be content seeking I don't think." He elaborated. "Too much sitting around, even if you play it offensively."
Fleur closed her book, busying idle hands in his hair, one of her oldest and most beloved pastimes. "That is not the only reason, I don't think." Her lips curved into a smile as she watched, already relishing in the bit of gossip she could dish out.
"Luc's boy?" He asked, chuckling as best he could with his back inflamed. "Yeah, there's that too."
Fleur deflated.
"How'd you know?" She asked, disappointed that he'd figured out her little secret. He gave that strained laugh again.
"Pretty obvious if you see them in the air together." He informed her. "Poor girl is going to be chasing him for a while with an age gap like that." Fleur hummed in agreement and they were both privately relieved for that fact at least.
The sun sunk ever lower in the sky, bringing the youngest Potter girl's time in the air to a close, but Fleur didn't force her to the ground. She settled in next to her husband to lean over and kiss him. Dinner could wait until her little chick was hungry, for now, she would enjoy her husband's bed-locked state as best she could.
AN Not technically late ;) no promises next week 3