Chapter 53
The Quidditch World Cup. An event significant in every sense — international, practically sacred not only to British wizards but to the entire European magical community. And beyond Europe, the game had no shortage of devoted fans.
Which was part of why I — still something of a Muggle at heart, in certain respects — found myself quietly bewildered and privately questioning the sanity of everyone around me. But Quidditch genuinely was a cultural phenomenon in wizarding society. There was no arguing with that.
At the school level, the game had always struck me as roughly analogous to American football at an American college — a pastime that nearly everyone was happy to watch, played primarily by sociable troublemakers, some of whom enjoyed considerable popularity among their peers. Nothing exceptional. Just another entertainment for wizards who didn't exactly have an abundance of options.
In practice, it turned out to be considerably more than that. For wizards, Quidditch was truly sacred — very nearly the only sport that mattered at all. Agatha Greengrass, in preparing me for this particular public appearance, had delivered a small lecture on the game, encouraging me to look at wizarding society through the lens of broomstick sport.
It sounded somewhat strange at first. But after a moment's actual thought, I recognized that what wizards did very often mirrored what happened in Quidditch exactly. The Death Eaters and Dumbledore's Order were a remarkably clear example.
Two openly hostile organizations — metaphorical Quidditch teams. They fought each other stubbornly, schemed, spilled blood. But in the end, everything came down to the metaphorical Seekers — Voldie and Dumbi. As the most powerful wizards on their respective sides, they had determined the course of the last war almost entirely. The appearance of either one on the battlefield could reverse the entire situation in an instant.
The Headmaster, by disposition and perhaps by age, had exercised that influence less frequently than he might have. But both of them had played the decisive role in that war — just as Seekers in Quidditch determined the outcome of eighty percent of all matches.
And for wizards, this is entirely normal. Natural. The only way things could possibly be. I think I'm beginning to understand where the magical world gets its compulsive tendency toward personality cults and its general reverence for power.
I noted that particular feature of my new society with an inward sigh.
And the truth was, I was sinking deeper into this world with every passing day. My newly acquired mentor — not yet bound to me by a formal contract, but already unmistakably at work — had already begun reshaping my perception and my understanding of things.
A strange feeling. But over the past several weeks, I had genuinely learned to look at a great many things that had previously struck me as strange or irrational in an entirely new way. Which was, in some sense, even refreshing.
I also began to understand certain attitudes, actions, and words from other wizards more clearly. And I realized, in the process, why almost no other students had been giving me any particular trouble since the previous year. Most of them had simply observed my nonverbal spellwork — which I used freely and openly at any available opportunity, purely to drill the skill and refine the reflexes — and gone quiet.
Every skeptic, every student who'd held any ill will toward me, had arrived at a clear understanding: I was coming into my power. The capable, high-achieving boy with the somewhat blunt and occasionally sharp-edged personality was becoming something else. Something that would one day be a force in the wizarding world to be reckoned with. In that light, even my sharpness — and I had, on occasion, responded to certain "jokes" at Luna's expense with consequences wildly disproportionate to the original offense — had begun to work in my favor.
It wasn't the most endearing quality I possessed. In the past it had generated minor but real friction. Now it had simply become another facet of the impression I made, and had cemented my position as the dominant presence on my House.
Genuinely. I hadn't thought about it in those terms before, but to the Ravenclaws, I had long since become more than some symbolic figurehead. I was something closer to a shield against outside pressure.
Not in the sense that anyone expected me to personally defend them. Simply the fact of my presence in Ravenclaw — and my fairly steady relationship with the House — had given it a reputation beyond that of aloof intellectual snobs. Ravenclaw was now also the House that could produce a truly formidable wizard.
And where one appears, another might follow. Or at the very least, for wizards, that's how the reasoning goes.
I noted this with private amusement, trying not to think too hard about how my current company and social circle must appear through that same lens.
Because last year I had begun spending even more time with three girls, one of whom was my official fiancée. And Luna and Ginny, viewed through the framework Agatha had provided, could quite easily be read as future junior companions — which would, in that world, be consistent both with their ages and their relative social standing. I was practically quoting some of Lady Greengrass's explanations to myself, the ones she had occasionally illustrated with references to her younger daughter as well.
And even that — even that — fell within the range of things wizards found comprehensible. Not commonplace, exactly, but not outside the known order of things. Wizarding society remained deeply patriarchal, and House Greengrass was something of an anomaly in that regard. The world surrounding me was closer in its customs to some medieval arrangement than to anything modern, and while the practice was no longer accepted openly, a mere three hundred years ago — well within the living memory of the oldest wizards still alive today — it had been entirely normal for especially powerful and gifted wizards to have several official wives and any number of companions. Accepted. Even, in its way, expected.
Which meant that if something like that were to develop around me now, it would be strange — genuinely archaic — but it wouldn't shock most wizards who hadn't been raised in the Muggle world. Powerful wizards were supposed to have their peculiarities. That was simply understood. The stories about Merlin's eccentricities and escapades were read to magical children practically from the cradle.
"Well then… I really do need to sort out my eyesight," I murmured with considerable sarcasm, feeling a particular kind of discomfort in realizing that certain rumors circulating about me at school had a far more substantial basis than I had previously credited.
Lady Greengrass's rather insistent desire to bind me more firmly to her daughter had also become entirely legible, though I'd already understood that my close friendship with Luna and Ginny couldn't possibly have escaped this woman's notice. But I needed to use my eyes and my head more carefully going forward — not exclusively in the service of studying magic.
"What's wrong, Harry? Afraid your glasses will get in the way of watching the match?"
Sirius had somehow caught my last murmured remark and was clapping me on the shoulder with enthusiasm, entirely missing the self-critical edge to it.
"Forget it, Sirius. It was nothing — I was just thinking out loud. Letting my mind wander while we waited," I said calmly, deflecting the energetic Black, who was currently constituting one of our party for the occasion alongside the Greengrass family.
We had come to the World Cup together — as families, more or less — having reserved a respectable but non-ministerial box and settling into a degree of pleasant seclusion. A few other wizards shared the VIP box with us — it was arranged for ten — but they weren't particularly disruptive to our group.
Daphna and I had been placed in the corner, given the two outermost seats. Sirius sat between me and Lady Greengrass, engaged in an unhurried conversation with her about my potential apprenticeship. Astoria sat tucked against her mother's side, looking mildly bored. And Jacques Greengrass appeared to have mentally departed for some other plane entirely, already gazing at the stadium with undisguised rapture. He had turned out to be the most devoted Quidditch enthusiast among us — which surprised me, as I'd initially placed my money on Sirius.
Sirius, for his part, was genuinely interested in the game that hadn't yet started — but Agatha had claimed his attention. My future mother-in-law was making her case with full conviction, arguing to Black that her instruction would be precisely what I needed and that spending the better part of the upcoming holidays on it was absolutely the right decision. Sirius disagreed, wanting at least one of the summer months to train with me himself.
"You're plotting something again, aren't you?" Daphna's voice pulled me out of my meandering thoughts. She gave me a slightly reproachful pinch on my right side. "Or are you just drifting off into those tremendously important thoughts of yours again?"
"More the second one," I said quietly, not wanting to attract unnecessary attention to our conversation. There was a reason the adults had deliberately seated us apart even from Astoria. "Some of your mother's lectures on wizarding society still haven't fully settled in my head."
"Ha, ha, ha. Welcome to reality, hero." The insufferable blonde laughed at me — not unkindly, with no real bite to it — having somehow grown even more like her mother over the past weeks. She'd probably noticed that I found Lady Greengrass rather appealing. "The wizarding world turned out not to be so simple, did it?"
"It's not funny." I paused. "Your society — or I suppose now our society — turned out to be considerably more specific than I'd assumed. I used to look at certain things very differently. And I underestimated what some rumors and passing remarks actually meant."
That made Daphna flush slightly.
"Don't worry about it too much. Nobody's really taking seriously the ones claiming you're the new Dark Lord, or Dumbledore's chosen heir, already gathering loyal followers around you." She offered this as reassurance, while simultaneously reminding me that those particular rumors existed in the first place. "The hot topic lately is actually our — mine, Ginny's, and Luna's — little 'sisterhood.' One of Astoria's friends even approached me about joining."
"…" I had no idea what one was even supposed to say to that.
And yet Daphna — along with our shared friends — had never, as far as I could recall, gone out of her way to comment on those rumors before. She hadn't rushed to show any jealousy toward the younger girls either, which could itself be interpreted in a great many ways.
"Nothing to say at all?" The Greengrass heir narrowed her eyes at me — amused, bright, and something close to happy — looking directly into my face. I let her. I made a point in ordinary circumstances of not meeting people's gazes too directly, but with her I allowed it.
"No, I can say plenty," I replied at last, deciding the only way out was to treat the whole thing as a joke. Possibly a slightly ill-judged one, walking the line a bit closely — but the only option available. "I just haven't decided yet whether to name you head wife now, or take a little more time to think it over."
Daphna didn't seem offended.
"Unfortunately, the betrothal already concluded between us leaves you no choice in the matter," she said, with a trace of dry amusement. "Whereas I still have quite a lot to think about — specifically, whether to include a provision for a mistress in our marriage contract, or simply do without that particular archaism."
"…" Again, I had absolutely nothing to say.
I was reasonably certain she was returning the joke in kind — matching my tone, giving back what I'd served. But her expression and the emotional register behind it didn't quite read as joking. She seemed to be watching my reaction with some care. And having apparently found whatever she was looking for in my thoroughly nonplussed face, she simply smiled again — a smile that promised something, though exactly what was unclear — and turned away.
She rested her head on my shoulder a moment later.
And so we sat. Me, adrift and turning things over in my mind. Daphna, calm and settled — having reached some conclusion, or perhaps simply accepted something. I wasn't certain which, and I didn't ask. Not with Sirius on one side and her parents a breath away. I was content enough to let it go, and more than relieved when the waiting finally ended and Ludo Bagman's voice rang out across the stadium, beginning the introductions for today's teams.
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