Up in the Air, for Ariana - Part 1
Title: Up in the Air
For: Ariana
Characters/Pairings: Harry/Katie
Rating: 6th/7th Years
Warnings (if any): Mild Profanity, Sexual Situations
A/N: I suck for making you wait this long. I should really learn to manage my time better. This was way out left of what you asked for, but I saw the 'married the wrong person' prompt and knew I had to try it. This is actually my second attempt to write a story, but the first one ballooned into one far too long for me to complete in any sort of timely manner, so I left off of it and tried this one instead. Enjoy! Oh, and LJ cut is broken. Sorry!
Harry blankly stared down at the broken bits of his wand, blinking almost robotically at the two splintered chunks of holly dangling precariously by only the bent shaft of phoenix feather than ran though the core. It looked small and fragile, much less like the trusty teammate that had battled with him through thick and thin, and far more like a feeble, withered carcass that was ready to die at any second.
His wand had been broken before, but on that fateful day over six years before, Harry had been outraged on its behalf. Heart-broken, even. But as he glanced over at his mortified co-worker, who had sat on it quite by accident, he felt a whole lot of… nothing. He knew he should’ve been more careful, instead of leaving it carelessly on the settee, and the whole thing was pretty much his own doing. Yet he was completely devoid at anger, either at himself or the immensely apologetic Jeffrey Simmonds.
“Harry, I…” started Jeffrey. “I’m sorry, mate. I didn’t see it, and -”
“It’s okay,” Harry interrupted, his voice flat. Not looking over, he stood, the remnants of his wand clutched firmly in his fist. He reached over and patted Jeffrey’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” he repeated before walking out the door of the on-call room of the Auror Offices.
Where Harry planned on going, he had no idea. His shift wasn’t due to end for another three hours, but there wasn’t much he could do without a wand, and there were, as usual, far too many Aurors for the miniscule amount of work that might possibly come up. So, his feet carried him through the winding corridors of the Second Level of the Ministry and to the lift. Soon, he found himself in the Atrium, digging in his pocket for a Sickle to put into the Floo Powder dispenser. When his search turned up a few Galleons and Knuts, and he recalled that the machine didn’t make change, Harry felt a chuckle brewing in his chest. He looked down at his left hand, which grasped the splintered wand, and then to his right, which held his currently useless coinage.
He couldn’t stop himself. That smattering of mirth spiralled into a deep, rumbling belly laugh. Even as his brain struggled to understand what was so amusing, his lungs continued to vomit mirth into the empty, echoing Atrium. The sound was so out of place that it almost served to fuel it further. The more he tried to restrain himself, the worse it became.
His eyes watering, Harry leant against the wall and felt himself slide to the floor, unable to quit laughing despite his throat burning in protest. Finally, though, he simply ran out of wind and choked on large gasps of air until all he had left in him to do was whimper pathetically. When Security Desk Wizard Jim Peakes came over, wand out, to investigate the disturbance, Harry couldn’t muster enough energy to either stand or to even pretend that everything was normal.
“You all right, Harry?” Jim asked hesitantly, clearly not having a clue what the hell was going on.
Grinding the coins in his hand against one another, Harry mumbled, “I’m out of Sickles.”
If Jim had not been confused already, he was by that point. Scratching his head, he said, “Well, I know not everyone likes to Apparate, but I’m sure…” When Harry’s left hand containing the broken wand shot into the air, Jim merely said, “Oh. Tough luck, mate.” He dug into his own pocket, and Harry felt something land in his lap. He glanced at it. A single, glittering silver coin.
“Best get to Ollivander’s before it closes for the day,” Jim advised as he began to creep back toward his desk. “Who knows how many you’ll have to try out.”
Nodding woodenly, Harry shoved his own coins back into his trouser pocket and awkwardly stood. At once, he was struck by how heavy and cumbersome his Auror robes were. Without a second thought, he let them slide from his shoulders and onto the floor. Feeling much lighter, he spent the Sickle in the Floo powder machine and poised to toss the silvery dust into the grate. However, he stilled his hand when he realised he had no idea where he wanted to go. Jim was right about Ollivander’s, but wand-selection was not on the list of things he cared about at the moment, even if complete reliance on the Floo to get around would be noisome at best.
At last, Harry’s brain settled itself on Diagon Alley. He could just buy the first wand that seemed remotely interested in him for the time being and then go-
Go where? he asked himself. Back to work? Home to his tiny flat, filled to the rafters with old wanted posters and piles of dirty laundry? To the Leaky for a pint or twelve? The first option did not appeal to him in the slightest, and the second was little better. Plus, there were still a few of Ginny’s things strewn about from the last time she had visited for the night, and that had been well over a year before. Actually, the more he considered the former two possibilities, the more the idea of copious amounts of beer appealed.
Having settled on that, he pitched the Floo powder into the grate and said, “The Leaky Cauldron.” Taking a steadying breath, he prepared himself for the accompanying jolt of being sucked into the network and his subsequent graceless deposit on the hearth. Stumbling to his feet, he brushed himself off and headed straight for the doorway that led to the rest of Diagon Alley. As usual, he could hear people talking along the pavement, the sight of the Boy-Who-Won still a notable event to them. Typically, he tried to hear what they said about him, but on this particular day, he couldn’t have cared less.
Harry strode straight to Ollivander’s and to the desk, where a boy, probably working during his summer holidays away from Hogwarts, stood behind the counter. The young man was reading the latest edition of Quidditch Weekly and didn’t stir when Harry slapped his broken wand onto the counter. Finally, a very loud clearing of the throat made the shop boy look up, and, for once, someone jumping to attention because of who he was didn’t bother Harry.
“Is Mr Ollivander in?”
Nodding, the boy backed away slowly, nearly upsetting a pallet of wand boxes because he wasn’t looking where he was going. He finally disappeared around a corner and began to shout for his employer in a squeaking, excited voice, and Harry settled onto a bench lining the wall. After a few minutes, he heard the dull thud of a walking stick, and Ollivander hobbled slowly toward the counter.
Once Ollivander saw Harry, he grinned. “Well, Mr Potter, I haven’t seen you in ages! What brings you here today?”
Feeling contrite for making Ollivander come all the way from the back of the shop, Harry said, “I’m sorry. I could’ve just… Well, you see, it’s my wand. It’s, er, broken, and-”
“Say no more, my boy,” Ollivander said with the wave of his hand. “Do you have it with you?” Fishing in his pocket, Harry withdrew the carcass of his holly and phoenix wand and handed it to the old man. Upon seeing it, Ollivander frowned. “Oh, this is beyond repair, I’m afraid. You may have to purchase a new one.”
With a sigh, Harry said, “I thought as much. We’ll just do that then.” He almost hated to ask Ollivander to undertake such a task, but before he could rescind his statement, the wandmaker started to call out a series of numbers, which sounded like catalogue codes. The young man sprang into action and collected a series of boxes for his master before laying them out in order on the counter. Nodding at his apprentice, Ollivander said, “Thank you, Jeremy.”
One by one, Ollivander handed Harry different wands, shushing him when he tried to settle on the first decent one. Jeremy was sent back for new stacks of them a good number of times when Ollivander wasn’t satisfied with the result. At this juncture, Harry was ready to take the next wand that so much as warmed his hand just so he could leave.
However, the very next box yielded the best results yet. Ollivander said, “Go on, try something.”
Looking around, Harry fixed his attention on the bench he’d inhabited earlier. With a quick flick, he Transfigured it into a rocking chair. This wand felt good in his hand, almost as much so as his old one. A smile threatened, either in relief or in triumph, and Harry patted the box. “I’ll take it.”
“Excellent!” Ollivander said as Jeremy began to re-stock the discarded wands. “Larch and unicorn hair, ten inches with a little bit of give. Very versatile, this one.” Harry began to dig into his pockets for payment, but Ollivander stopped him. “I wouldn’t think of taking payment from you, Mr Potter. If not for you, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
“But, Mr Ollivander, I-”
“And that’s the end of it! Consider it a token of appreciation.”
Seeing that Ollivander wasn’t going to cave, Harry simply said, “Thank you, sir,” grabbed both his new wand and his old one, and left.
Upon hitting the street this time, the attention he was garnering was far more noticeable, pressing him to return to the Leaky Cauldron post-haste. Harry just hoped to be left alone once inside, and there was a darkened corner that appeared quite useful to that end. None of the other patrons seemed to notice him at the moment, and the woman working the bar…
Harry started. He would’ve known her anywhere; it just surprised him that she was working in a bar and not in an office somewhere - not with her qualifications. And she was a lot different. In school, she’d had more rounded cheeks and a girlish look, but her face had thinned and really complemented her short hair, which was yet another change from what he remembered. And her figure was quite striking in its dissimilarity to his recollection. Formerly, her body had been thin, wiry, and athletic, but certain aspects of it were more pronounced than they used to be. Before, he hadn’t even had an opinion on the matter, but at that moment, he couldn’t help but find her attractive.
When she caught his eye, Harry flushed and looked down at his hands, annoyed that he had been staring. In his peripherals, he tried to gauge whether she had noticed his over-attentiveness, only to find her making her way toward him. Under his breath, he swore, not looking forward to explaining why he’d been gawking at someone who was an old friend. To his surprise, though, she sat across from him and smiled widely.
“Harry, I haven’t seen you in ages! How have you been?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but all he could manage was, “Hi.”
She gave him a dubious look. “You don’t remember me? I saw you looking over at me, so maybe…”
At her crestfallen expression, Harry said, “No, no, no! Of course I remember you, Katie!” He ran his fingers through his hair, chuckling nervously. “You just… look different, that’s all. The hair, and…” he struggled to keep his gaze from wandering into rude territory, “…other things.
Katie smiled sheepishly. “I wasn’t sure about the hair. It wasn’t really my thing, but my hairdresser swears up and down it is.” She looked away, clearly self-conscious as she smoothed non-existent fly-aways. “I might grow it back out. Just… needed a change, I suppose.”
Empathising with that sentiment, Harry said, “Yeah. I get that.” His fingers drummed on the table, eager to wrap themselves around a mug full of alcohol. He was torn between catching up with an old friend and wanting to crawl into a glass before she could ask him too many questions that he didn’t want to answer. But one look at her face told him that she needed to talk to someone. “So, um…” he fumbled, “you work here?”
Shaking her head, Katie said, “Not exactly. I just took my divorce settlement and loaned Hannah Abbott some money so she could buy it. I just come and help out here and there to keep my mind off things.”
Just how out of touch he’d been with people he considered friends struck Harry with full force. “You were married? I had no idea.”
She didn’t seem too bothered about his ignorance, instead choosing to shrug nonchalantly. “It’s no big deal, really. I was young, stupid, and thought I was in love. In the end, I think I made him more miserable than he made me.”
Frowning, Harry asked, “So, who was it? Anyone I know?”
With a sigh, Katie said, “Yeah, you know him. Roger Davies.”
“Huh,” Harry mused aloud. “Never took him as being a jerk. Shows what I know, I suppose.” He searched his brain for any evidence he could that Davies was worthy of his scorn on Katie’s behalf, but he could find none. Instead, he settled on idle chit chat. “So, um… what do you do these days, or are you just a rich divorcée between jobs.” He could’ve kicked himself for the way he phrased that, but Katie didn’t seem to mind the question.
“Before I married Roger, I worked in the front office for the Arrows. It was the one job I could find where playing Quidditch actually meant more than getting NEWTs, so I took it. Roger plays on the team, and we dated a few times before things got serious. He proposed, I said yes. It didn’t work out, so we got divorced. That’s about it, really.”
Feeling far less antagonistic toward Davies after Katie’s account of their relationship, Harry nodded and averted his gaze. Silence took over for a while before she waved a hand in the air, summoning Tom, who had taken her place at the bar. Soon, two pints of lager were set in front of them, but before Harry could get so much as a few dregs in, Katie had already finished hers and ordered another.
“Piss water, this stuff,” she said, wrinkling her nose at the empty cup. “Been trying to get Hannah to spring for better quality, but she insists that lower prices make for better sales. I disagree.”
Though he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was, there was something drastically different about Katie, which he noticed the more he talked to her. It wasn’t just her appearance; she seemed far more jaded than the sweet girl who wouldn’t have so much as harmed a fly. This was further evidenced when she ordered another round when his own glass was still well over half full. He had come there to crawl into a mug and forget things, so he could only imagine what sort of things she was trying to drown out.
The server came over with a fresh drink, but before he could leave, Katie said, “Make the next one a scotch, three fingers and no ice.” And as he was leaving to comply, she called, “Keep them coming!”
“So, um…” Harry started, not sure where to go from there. Marriage didn’t seem to be a happy topic, and he wasn’t enthused about the idea of talking about his own life. Searching his brain for anything they had in common, he stuttered, “Are you, er, going to the fundraiser ball for St Mungo’s tomorrow night?”
After taking a long chug, Katie said, “Bought two tickets. Probably won’t go, though.” When Harry raised a brow, she supplied, “He’s going to be there.”
“Ah,” he said, not blaming her for wanting to avoid her ex. It was the same reason he had been searching for an excuse to get out of it himself. Ginny was almost certain to attend, probably on the arm of some guy who deserved her more than he ever had. And as happy as he would be for her, he really didn’t care to see her with that someone in person.
As if cognisant of his train of thought, Katie scrutinised him closely. “Whatever happened with you and Ginny?”
“It didn’t work out,” Harry said, hoping that would be the end of it. “We wanted different things.” And while he privately acknowledged that this wasn’t entirely true, he was willing to lie to himself until he believed it. It hadn’t been that he and Ginny didn’t want the same thing; it was more their respective levels of confidence in things working out that drove a wedge between them, eventually causing them to split up. As much as he would’ve liked to say they were both to blame for their relationship falling apart, he knew he was almost solely at fault.
Mercifully, Katie’s new drink arrived, surprising Harry anew that she had found the time to empty her second while he was still on his first. But he hadn’t expected her to push it across the table toward him. When he looked at her in askance, she said, “Drink it. God knows you need it more than I do.”
Not in a position to argue, Harry took the generous helping of liquor and drank it in one great gulp. He coughed and sputtered when it scorched his oesophagus, but even as it burnt with pain, he relished the sensation. A warm coil began to unwind in his belly and snake its way through his limbs, giving him a dizzied, almost dazed feel. He tried to remember what he’d been thinking about previously and couldn’t for the life recall. She was right; he had needed this. “You know,” he prefaced, “I never got why people drank stuff that tasted like turpentine, but I think I’m starting to see the appeal.”
With a smile of triumph, Katie took the half-drunk beer that sat in front of him and downed it, chasing the latent froth around her mouth with her tongue. Harry’s breath caught in his lungs as he watched it, lithe and pink, skimming over the swell of her bottom lip before retreating. Several seconds passed by before he realised that he was staring, and the placement of two more scotches was a welcome distraction.
This time, though, she slowly sipped her drink. At first, Harry thought he’d offended her and wasn’t sure how to broach an apology. But she looked up, and for the first time, her detached demeanour seemed to be cracked. “Are you okay?” he asked quietly. Tentatively, he moved his hand across the table to rest atop hers.
Shaking her head, Katie said, “It… it’s nothing, really. Just thinking about things. You know how that is.”
And he did indeed. There were few things he was surer of than being stalked by one’s own thoughts. Perhaps it was fate that had intersected their paths, but in Katie’s sullen brown eyes, he saw honesty, raw and painful and unbridled. She needed to talk, and he needed to listen. Maybe in order to find himself again, he had to find someone else first, because they were both lost.
Fuelled by that resolution, Harry said, “Tell me, Katie.”
By that point, the server came back with a fresh round. Harry, not looking up, ordered, “Just leave the bottle.” Quickly, the young man complied, and Harry refocused on the only person who he could bring himself to care about at the moment.
“No one calls me Katie anymore,” she said with a sigh. “Roger always called me ‘Katherine’ or ‘Kate’, and everyone else said ‘Miss Bell this’ or ‘Mrs Davies that’. It’s like I’m a different person now, and no one remembers me. You didn’t.”
“I knew you straightaway,” Harry admitted. “You just… looked a lot different than you used to.”
Katie laughed sardonically. “That’d be Roger’s doing. The first thing he did when we got married was send me off to France for cosmetic enhancement. He didn’t see why Appleby’s best player shouldn’t have the best-looking wife.”
Appalled by what Katie had said, Harry said, “If he really cared what you looked like that much, he’d have been better off marrying someone else.”
Shaking her head, Katie said, “That’s not how he operates. I was naïve and idealistic, so he could bend me to his will so long as he spoon-fed me his lies about loving me and making dreams come true. I can’t believe I fell for a load of waffle like that, but I did. I fell hard.” Taking a long dreg straight from the bottle of scotch, she added hoarsely, “Took me ages to figure him out, but I finally got him back.”
At Harry’s questioning gaze, she continued. “The thing is… married Quidditch players attract more fans and eventually end up getting paid more. It’s… complicated how it works, but wholesome family men sell more tickets. All he needed was someone stupid enough not to know what he was playing at, and he found me.”
The pieces began to fall in place for Harry. It no longer surprised him that she was cold and so as different from his old teammate as someone could possibly be. He hadn’t thought Roger Davies was that much of a prat, but money, for wizards and Muggles alike, made people do all manner of things to get it. And that included decimating the life of a girl like Katie Bell. “I’m sorry,” he said finally, not sure what sort of comfort he could possibly offer.
Katie smiled tightly. “So am I.”
Quiet fell between them, leaving the pair to polish off the remnants of the bottle. Harry felt his equilibrium slowly erode, and it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to sit straight upright. However, this was nothing compared to the wave of discord that hit his senses when he stood to go to the loo. Nearly toppling to the floor, he hugged the back of his chair to steady himself. He looked up to tell Katie he was okay, but when they made eye contact, both of them burst into laughter.
“You look a right prat,” she snickered.
Abandoning his bathroom mission in favour of making the room stop spinning, Harry snorted, “I reckon I do.” He picked up the bottle and squinted down its neck. “Bollocks. Should we order another one?”
Her hair swishing with the motion, Katie slurred, “Oh, no you don’t!” She jabbed her finger at him and said, “You, sir, have had enough. Bar’s cuttin’ you off now.”
Harry harrumphed. “How rude.” Setting the bottle back on the table, he said, “Well, then I suppose I should be off. I’ve done what I came to do, judging by the evidence, as I have no idea why I came here.” Yawning loudly, he murmured, “Just need to… need to rest my eyes a bit.” With a contented sigh, he folded his arms and nestled his head in the crook of his elbow.
* * *
His skull was going to crack open. He was sure of it. There was simply no way that such pressure could be lunging at his nerves and not cause his whole head to break under the strain. The blaring summer sun did nothing to remedy his distress, either. With a groan, Harry flopped his arm over his eyes and muttered, “Damn.”
A chuckle permeated the haze of pain. He felt something being pushed into his hand - a tiny bottle. An arm slid under his shoulders and helped him sit upright, the motion of which made vomit rise in his throat. As if his mysterious benefactor could read his mind, a bucket appeared in his lap, into which he gratefully jettisoned the poison writhing in his stomach. When he had nothing left in him to empty, he squeezed his eyes shut and panted for fresh breath to chase away the lingering sourness in his mouth.
“Drink it,” said a voice, made indistinguishable by his roaring headache. At first, he had no idea what ‘it’ was until something nudged his hand and reminded him that it wasn’t empty. He uncorked the tiny phial and, as he was too tired and agonised to question what he was being told, downed it in a single gulp. If anything tasted like Polyjuice Potion without being quite as foul, this was most certainly it. It was all he could do not to spit it out.
A glass of water was pushed in front of him, which he consumed greedily. The vile flavour in his mouth abated, and as the liquid hit his stomach, a cool, calming sensation spidered through his limbs and, thankfully, into his pounding head. The sharp ache eased and virtually disappeared before he could even finish his drink, and he could finally inhale fully without the feeling of his brain exploding.
“Here,” the voice said again, which he could finally identify as female as she put his glasses in his hand. Once he could see again, he was offered a couple Tooth-Flossing Stringmints, which made short work of the bitterness left in his mouth. He sighed, grateful to feel human again, before flopping back on the pillows.
Pillows? It was this point that Harry started to realise that he had no idea where he was. He instantly shot up and looked at his surroundings. It was a rather large bedroom, decorated in varying shades of purple, centre-pieced by the gigantic bed he inhabited. And sitting on the edge of the mattress right next to his feet was Katie, who was smiling.
“Welcome back,” she said as she Vanished the contents of the sick bucket.
“Where am I,” he asked, still visually exploring his unfamiliar surroundings.
Sweeping her arm toward the expanse of the room, Katie said, “Welcome to my humble abode. You passed out, so I brought you home with me before the wrong people could catch wind of it.” Holding up her hands like a mock headline, she said in an overly serious voice, “Harry Potter: Luscious or Just Plain Lush?”
Harry laughed. “I’ve never been ‘luscious’ a day in my life, so I’d imagine ‘lush’ would be more accurate.”
With nothing left to add, Harry fell silent. With the end of his physical distress came a new dilemma: what had happened the night before? He remembered having a couple beers before starting on the liquor, but anything after that, he wasn’t sure. Katie seemed happy to see him, which made him wonder out loud, “Did we, um… you know?”
Her expression was inscrutable. “What if I said we did?” She raised a brow, as if challenging him to answer.
He felt his face flame in embarrassment. “I suppose an apology would be in order. So, er…” he looked squarely at his feet, “sorry.”
The reaction he had expected had not been amusement, yet that was what he received, “Why on earth would you apologise? Even if anything had happened, why would that be a problem?”
“I, uh…” he stuttered. “That’s not what I meant.” Frowning, he said, “Actually, I’m not sure what I meant. I guess it’s because, well, your divorce and all. I don’t want to make things worse.”
Shaking her head, Katie rolled her eyes. “As if you could have done. If anything, you should be happy that I didn’t take advantage.”
“Oh, please!” Harry fired. “I haven’t found a life I couldn’t wreck!” His fingers delved into his hair, pulling hard as if to inflict pain upon himself, despite having just banished it. It was starting to come back to him, the reasons why he had tried to drown himself in the release of inebriation. “My life is normal; my life is boring! Why can’t I just be happy with that like everyone else?”
“Because you’re not like everyone else,” Katie replied quietly. “If you were, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
Her abrupt change in demeanour jarred Harry. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Do you know how long it’s been since anyone has ever asked me how I was doing?” Looking down at her hands, which she was wringing in her lap, she said, “Everyone just assumes that, since I’m rich now…”
Harry shut his mouth and didn’t look at her, just in case he found something stupid and insensitive to say and upset her. He was good at that, a fact to which Ginny could well attest. Even Ron found it difficult to be around him sometimes, and Hermione made it her life’s mission to psychoanalyse him at every opportunity. But there was something about Katie that made him want to talk to her. He felt low, and so did she. His friends had all moved on to happiness, but, like him, his former teammate woke up every morning, questioning why she should even bother getting out of bed.
“I broke my wand yesterday,” he said, uncertain of why he did. “Well, um, I didn’t break it, per se, but it got broken.”
“Oh?” Katie said, fleetingly catching his eye before her gaze retreated once more.
Nodding, Harry said, “Yeah. It was… weird. I didn’t even care.” He thought about it and amended, “Well, I did care, but it was more of an annoyance that I couldn’t Apparate without it and I’d have to take the Floo.” From the nightstand, he took the replacement wand he’d purchased the previous day and looked at it closely. “What the hell is wrong with me?”
“Are you happy?” Katie interjected.
Thrown off by the question, Harry said, “W-what?”
“Are you happy?”
“I…” The more he pondered it, the less of a clue Harry had of what the answer was. “I suppose so. I don’t know.”
Katie shook her head. “Didn’t think so.” Pursing her lips, she appeared deep in thought before asking, “When’s the last time you got on a broomstick?”
This time, Harry didn’t need to hesitate with an answer. “Day of the battle.”
“Why?” She raised a brow, awaiting his reply.
Opening his mouth was as far as Harry got as he struggled to formulate a response. He loved to fly, yet he hadn’t done it in over six years. Not even two weeks before, he had turned twenty-four, and the idea of celebrating had not even occurred to him. He had spent his birthday on the settee, reading the Prophet. Ginny had climbed to fifth in the top scorer leaderboard, and Oliver Wood was set to earn a starting roster spot for Puddlemere United in the upcoming season. St Mungo’s announced that an up-and-coming music group, The Troll Brothers, were set to perform at their fundraiser ball. Ernie Macmillan and Mandy Brocklehurst were getting married. And then he’d gone to bed before ten.
In other words, it was hardly discernable from any other day he spent at home after work. Was he happy? If he thought about it hard enough, his daily routine didn’t vary all that much from what his Uncle Vernon did every day. That realisation made something inside of him wither, and he was dangerously close to throwing up again. “I don’t know.”
“Then let’s go,” Katie said simply. “I’ve got a few brooms in the wardrobe.”
Unable to come up with a reason to refuse, Harry simply followed Katie and took the broom she handed him. He looked down at it to see which model it was. “A Nimbus 2000.” The high polish and gleaming gold lettering of his very first broomstick model made a smile tug unbidden at the corners of his mouth.
Grinning, Katie said, “I thought you might like that one.” She took her own broom in her right hand and hooked her left arm to Harry’s elbow. “Let’s be off then.” Before Harry could ask where, he was tugged into the pressing blackness of Apparition. The jolting did nothing to ease his newly dispelled nausea, but before he knew it, he found himself in the centre of a field of sunburnt grass.
...To Part 2
For: Ariana
Characters/Pairings: Harry/Katie
Rating: 6th/7th Years
Warnings (if any): Mild Profanity, Sexual Situations
A/N: I suck for making you wait this long. I should really learn to manage my time better. This was way out left of what you asked for, but I saw the 'married the wrong person' prompt and knew I had to try it. This is actually my second attempt to write a story, but the first one ballooned into one far too long for me to complete in any sort of timely manner, so I left off of it and tried this one instead. Enjoy! Oh, and LJ cut is broken. Sorry!
Harry blankly stared down at the broken bits of his wand, blinking almost robotically at the two splintered chunks of holly dangling precariously by only the bent shaft of phoenix feather than ran though the core. It looked small and fragile, much less like the trusty teammate that had battled with him through thick and thin, and far more like a feeble, withered carcass that was ready to die at any second.
His wand had been broken before, but on that fateful day over six years before, Harry had been outraged on its behalf. Heart-broken, even. But as he glanced over at his mortified co-worker, who had sat on it quite by accident, he felt a whole lot of… nothing. He knew he should’ve been more careful, instead of leaving it carelessly on the settee, and the whole thing was pretty much his own doing. Yet he was completely devoid at anger, either at himself or the immensely apologetic Jeffrey Simmonds.
“Harry, I…” started Jeffrey. “I’m sorry, mate. I didn’t see it, and -”
“It’s okay,” Harry interrupted, his voice flat. Not looking over, he stood, the remnants of his wand clutched firmly in his fist. He reached over and patted Jeffrey’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” he repeated before walking out the door of the on-call room of the Auror Offices.
Where Harry planned on going, he had no idea. His shift wasn’t due to end for another three hours, but there wasn’t much he could do without a wand, and there were, as usual, far too many Aurors for the miniscule amount of work that might possibly come up. So, his feet carried him through the winding corridors of the Second Level of the Ministry and to the lift. Soon, he found himself in the Atrium, digging in his pocket for a Sickle to put into the Floo Powder dispenser. When his search turned up a few Galleons and Knuts, and he recalled that the machine didn’t make change, Harry felt a chuckle brewing in his chest. He looked down at his left hand, which grasped the splintered wand, and then to his right, which held his currently useless coinage.
He couldn’t stop himself. That smattering of mirth spiralled into a deep, rumbling belly laugh. Even as his brain struggled to understand what was so amusing, his lungs continued to vomit mirth into the empty, echoing Atrium. The sound was so out of place that it almost served to fuel it further. The more he tried to restrain himself, the worse it became.
His eyes watering, Harry leant against the wall and felt himself slide to the floor, unable to quit laughing despite his throat burning in protest. Finally, though, he simply ran out of wind and choked on large gasps of air until all he had left in him to do was whimper pathetically. When Security Desk Wizard Jim Peakes came over, wand out, to investigate the disturbance, Harry couldn’t muster enough energy to either stand or to even pretend that everything was normal.
“You all right, Harry?” Jim asked hesitantly, clearly not having a clue what the hell was going on.
Grinding the coins in his hand against one another, Harry mumbled, “I’m out of Sickles.”
If Jim had not been confused already, he was by that point. Scratching his head, he said, “Well, I know not everyone likes to Apparate, but I’m sure…” When Harry’s left hand containing the broken wand shot into the air, Jim merely said, “Oh. Tough luck, mate.” He dug into his own pocket, and Harry felt something land in his lap. He glanced at it. A single, glittering silver coin.
“Best get to Ollivander’s before it closes for the day,” Jim advised as he began to creep back toward his desk. “Who knows how many you’ll have to try out.”
Nodding woodenly, Harry shoved his own coins back into his trouser pocket and awkwardly stood. At once, he was struck by how heavy and cumbersome his Auror robes were. Without a second thought, he let them slide from his shoulders and onto the floor. Feeling much lighter, he spent the Sickle in the Floo powder machine and poised to toss the silvery dust into the grate. However, he stilled his hand when he realised he had no idea where he wanted to go. Jim was right about Ollivander’s, but wand-selection was not on the list of things he cared about at the moment, even if complete reliance on the Floo to get around would be noisome at best.
At last, Harry’s brain settled itself on Diagon Alley. He could just buy the first wand that seemed remotely interested in him for the time being and then go-
Go where? he asked himself. Back to work? Home to his tiny flat, filled to the rafters with old wanted posters and piles of dirty laundry? To the Leaky for a pint or twelve? The first option did not appeal to him in the slightest, and the second was little better. Plus, there were still a few of Ginny’s things strewn about from the last time she had visited for the night, and that had been well over a year before. Actually, the more he considered the former two possibilities, the more the idea of copious amounts of beer appealed.
Having settled on that, he pitched the Floo powder into the grate and said, “The Leaky Cauldron.” Taking a steadying breath, he prepared himself for the accompanying jolt of being sucked into the network and his subsequent graceless deposit on the hearth. Stumbling to his feet, he brushed himself off and headed straight for the doorway that led to the rest of Diagon Alley. As usual, he could hear people talking along the pavement, the sight of the Boy-Who-Won still a notable event to them. Typically, he tried to hear what they said about him, but on this particular day, he couldn’t have cared less.
Harry strode straight to Ollivander’s and to the desk, where a boy, probably working during his summer holidays away from Hogwarts, stood behind the counter. The young man was reading the latest edition of Quidditch Weekly and didn’t stir when Harry slapped his broken wand onto the counter. Finally, a very loud clearing of the throat made the shop boy look up, and, for once, someone jumping to attention because of who he was didn’t bother Harry.
“Is Mr Ollivander in?”
Nodding, the boy backed away slowly, nearly upsetting a pallet of wand boxes because he wasn’t looking where he was going. He finally disappeared around a corner and began to shout for his employer in a squeaking, excited voice, and Harry settled onto a bench lining the wall. After a few minutes, he heard the dull thud of a walking stick, and Ollivander hobbled slowly toward the counter.
Once Ollivander saw Harry, he grinned. “Well, Mr Potter, I haven’t seen you in ages! What brings you here today?”
Feeling contrite for making Ollivander come all the way from the back of the shop, Harry said, “I’m sorry. I could’ve just… Well, you see, it’s my wand. It’s, er, broken, and-”
“Say no more, my boy,” Ollivander said with the wave of his hand. “Do you have it with you?” Fishing in his pocket, Harry withdrew the carcass of his holly and phoenix wand and handed it to the old man. Upon seeing it, Ollivander frowned. “Oh, this is beyond repair, I’m afraid. You may have to purchase a new one.”
With a sigh, Harry said, “I thought as much. We’ll just do that then.” He almost hated to ask Ollivander to undertake such a task, but before he could rescind his statement, the wandmaker started to call out a series of numbers, which sounded like catalogue codes. The young man sprang into action and collected a series of boxes for his master before laying them out in order on the counter. Nodding at his apprentice, Ollivander said, “Thank you, Jeremy.”
One by one, Ollivander handed Harry different wands, shushing him when he tried to settle on the first decent one. Jeremy was sent back for new stacks of them a good number of times when Ollivander wasn’t satisfied with the result. At this juncture, Harry was ready to take the next wand that so much as warmed his hand just so he could leave.
However, the very next box yielded the best results yet. Ollivander said, “Go on, try something.”
Looking around, Harry fixed his attention on the bench he’d inhabited earlier. With a quick flick, he Transfigured it into a rocking chair. This wand felt good in his hand, almost as much so as his old one. A smile threatened, either in relief or in triumph, and Harry patted the box. “I’ll take it.”
“Excellent!” Ollivander said as Jeremy began to re-stock the discarded wands. “Larch and unicorn hair, ten inches with a little bit of give. Very versatile, this one.” Harry began to dig into his pockets for payment, but Ollivander stopped him. “I wouldn’t think of taking payment from you, Mr Potter. If not for you, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
“But, Mr Ollivander, I-”
“And that’s the end of it! Consider it a token of appreciation.”
Seeing that Ollivander wasn’t going to cave, Harry simply said, “Thank you, sir,” grabbed both his new wand and his old one, and left.
Upon hitting the street this time, the attention he was garnering was far more noticeable, pressing him to return to the Leaky Cauldron post-haste. Harry just hoped to be left alone once inside, and there was a darkened corner that appeared quite useful to that end. None of the other patrons seemed to notice him at the moment, and the woman working the bar…
Harry started. He would’ve known her anywhere; it just surprised him that she was working in a bar and not in an office somewhere - not with her qualifications. And she was a lot different. In school, she’d had more rounded cheeks and a girlish look, but her face had thinned and really complemented her short hair, which was yet another change from what he remembered. And her figure was quite striking in its dissimilarity to his recollection. Formerly, her body had been thin, wiry, and athletic, but certain aspects of it were more pronounced than they used to be. Before, he hadn’t even had an opinion on the matter, but at that moment, he couldn’t help but find her attractive.
When she caught his eye, Harry flushed and looked down at his hands, annoyed that he had been staring. In his peripherals, he tried to gauge whether she had noticed his over-attentiveness, only to find her making her way toward him. Under his breath, he swore, not looking forward to explaining why he’d been gawking at someone who was an old friend. To his surprise, though, she sat across from him and smiled widely.
“Harry, I haven’t seen you in ages! How have you been?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but all he could manage was, “Hi.”
She gave him a dubious look. “You don’t remember me? I saw you looking over at me, so maybe…”
At her crestfallen expression, Harry said, “No, no, no! Of course I remember you, Katie!” He ran his fingers through his hair, chuckling nervously. “You just… look different, that’s all. The hair, and…” he struggled to keep his gaze from wandering into rude territory, “…other things.
Katie smiled sheepishly. “I wasn’t sure about the hair. It wasn’t really my thing, but my hairdresser swears up and down it is.” She looked away, clearly self-conscious as she smoothed non-existent fly-aways. “I might grow it back out. Just… needed a change, I suppose.”
Empathising with that sentiment, Harry said, “Yeah. I get that.” His fingers drummed on the table, eager to wrap themselves around a mug full of alcohol. He was torn between catching up with an old friend and wanting to crawl into a glass before she could ask him too many questions that he didn’t want to answer. But one look at her face told him that she needed to talk to someone. “So, um…” he fumbled, “you work here?”
Shaking her head, Katie said, “Not exactly. I just took my divorce settlement and loaned Hannah Abbott some money so she could buy it. I just come and help out here and there to keep my mind off things.”
Just how out of touch he’d been with people he considered friends struck Harry with full force. “You were married? I had no idea.”
She didn’t seem too bothered about his ignorance, instead choosing to shrug nonchalantly. “It’s no big deal, really. I was young, stupid, and thought I was in love. In the end, I think I made him more miserable than he made me.”
Frowning, Harry asked, “So, who was it? Anyone I know?”
With a sigh, Katie said, “Yeah, you know him. Roger Davies.”
“Huh,” Harry mused aloud. “Never took him as being a jerk. Shows what I know, I suppose.” He searched his brain for any evidence he could that Davies was worthy of his scorn on Katie’s behalf, but he could find none. Instead, he settled on idle chit chat. “So, um… what do you do these days, or are you just a rich divorcée between jobs.” He could’ve kicked himself for the way he phrased that, but Katie didn’t seem to mind the question.
“Before I married Roger, I worked in the front office for the Arrows. It was the one job I could find where playing Quidditch actually meant more than getting NEWTs, so I took it. Roger plays on the team, and we dated a few times before things got serious. He proposed, I said yes. It didn’t work out, so we got divorced. That’s about it, really.”
Feeling far less antagonistic toward Davies after Katie’s account of their relationship, Harry nodded and averted his gaze. Silence took over for a while before she waved a hand in the air, summoning Tom, who had taken her place at the bar. Soon, two pints of lager were set in front of them, but before Harry could get so much as a few dregs in, Katie had already finished hers and ordered another.
“Piss water, this stuff,” she said, wrinkling her nose at the empty cup. “Been trying to get Hannah to spring for better quality, but she insists that lower prices make for better sales. I disagree.”
Though he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was, there was something drastically different about Katie, which he noticed the more he talked to her. It wasn’t just her appearance; she seemed far more jaded than the sweet girl who wouldn’t have so much as harmed a fly. This was further evidenced when she ordered another round when his own glass was still well over half full. He had come there to crawl into a mug and forget things, so he could only imagine what sort of things she was trying to drown out.
The server came over with a fresh drink, but before he could leave, Katie said, “Make the next one a scotch, three fingers and no ice.” And as he was leaving to comply, she called, “Keep them coming!”
“So, um…” Harry started, not sure where to go from there. Marriage didn’t seem to be a happy topic, and he wasn’t enthused about the idea of talking about his own life. Searching his brain for anything they had in common, he stuttered, “Are you, er, going to the fundraiser ball for St Mungo’s tomorrow night?”
After taking a long chug, Katie said, “Bought two tickets. Probably won’t go, though.” When Harry raised a brow, she supplied, “He’s going to be there.”
“Ah,” he said, not blaming her for wanting to avoid her ex. It was the same reason he had been searching for an excuse to get out of it himself. Ginny was almost certain to attend, probably on the arm of some guy who deserved her more than he ever had. And as happy as he would be for her, he really didn’t care to see her with that someone in person.
As if cognisant of his train of thought, Katie scrutinised him closely. “Whatever happened with you and Ginny?”
“It didn’t work out,” Harry said, hoping that would be the end of it. “We wanted different things.” And while he privately acknowledged that this wasn’t entirely true, he was willing to lie to himself until he believed it. It hadn’t been that he and Ginny didn’t want the same thing; it was more their respective levels of confidence in things working out that drove a wedge between them, eventually causing them to split up. As much as he would’ve liked to say they were both to blame for their relationship falling apart, he knew he was almost solely at fault.
Mercifully, Katie’s new drink arrived, surprising Harry anew that she had found the time to empty her second while he was still on his first. But he hadn’t expected her to push it across the table toward him. When he looked at her in askance, she said, “Drink it. God knows you need it more than I do.”
Not in a position to argue, Harry took the generous helping of liquor and drank it in one great gulp. He coughed and sputtered when it scorched his oesophagus, but even as it burnt with pain, he relished the sensation. A warm coil began to unwind in his belly and snake its way through his limbs, giving him a dizzied, almost dazed feel. He tried to remember what he’d been thinking about previously and couldn’t for the life recall. She was right; he had needed this. “You know,” he prefaced, “I never got why people drank stuff that tasted like turpentine, but I think I’m starting to see the appeal.”
With a smile of triumph, Katie took the half-drunk beer that sat in front of him and downed it, chasing the latent froth around her mouth with her tongue. Harry’s breath caught in his lungs as he watched it, lithe and pink, skimming over the swell of her bottom lip before retreating. Several seconds passed by before he realised that he was staring, and the placement of two more scotches was a welcome distraction.
This time, though, she slowly sipped her drink. At first, Harry thought he’d offended her and wasn’t sure how to broach an apology. But she looked up, and for the first time, her detached demeanour seemed to be cracked. “Are you okay?” he asked quietly. Tentatively, he moved his hand across the table to rest atop hers.
Shaking her head, Katie said, “It… it’s nothing, really. Just thinking about things. You know how that is.”
And he did indeed. There were few things he was surer of than being stalked by one’s own thoughts. Perhaps it was fate that had intersected their paths, but in Katie’s sullen brown eyes, he saw honesty, raw and painful and unbridled. She needed to talk, and he needed to listen. Maybe in order to find himself again, he had to find someone else first, because they were both lost.
Fuelled by that resolution, Harry said, “Tell me, Katie.”
By that point, the server came back with a fresh round. Harry, not looking up, ordered, “Just leave the bottle.” Quickly, the young man complied, and Harry refocused on the only person who he could bring himself to care about at the moment.
“No one calls me Katie anymore,” she said with a sigh. “Roger always called me ‘Katherine’ or ‘Kate’, and everyone else said ‘Miss Bell this’ or ‘Mrs Davies that’. It’s like I’m a different person now, and no one remembers me. You didn’t.”
“I knew you straightaway,” Harry admitted. “You just… looked a lot different than you used to.”
Katie laughed sardonically. “That’d be Roger’s doing. The first thing he did when we got married was send me off to France for cosmetic enhancement. He didn’t see why Appleby’s best player shouldn’t have the best-looking wife.”
Appalled by what Katie had said, Harry said, “If he really cared what you looked like that much, he’d have been better off marrying someone else.”
Shaking her head, Katie said, “That’s not how he operates. I was naïve and idealistic, so he could bend me to his will so long as he spoon-fed me his lies about loving me and making dreams come true. I can’t believe I fell for a load of waffle like that, but I did. I fell hard.” Taking a long dreg straight from the bottle of scotch, she added hoarsely, “Took me ages to figure him out, but I finally got him back.”
At Harry’s questioning gaze, she continued. “The thing is… married Quidditch players attract more fans and eventually end up getting paid more. It’s… complicated how it works, but wholesome family men sell more tickets. All he needed was someone stupid enough not to know what he was playing at, and he found me.”
The pieces began to fall in place for Harry. It no longer surprised him that she was cold and so as different from his old teammate as someone could possibly be. He hadn’t thought Roger Davies was that much of a prat, but money, for wizards and Muggles alike, made people do all manner of things to get it. And that included decimating the life of a girl like Katie Bell. “I’m sorry,” he said finally, not sure what sort of comfort he could possibly offer.
Katie smiled tightly. “So am I.”
Quiet fell between them, leaving the pair to polish off the remnants of the bottle. Harry felt his equilibrium slowly erode, and it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to sit straight upright. However, this was nothing compared to the wave of discord that hit his senses when he stood to go to the loo. Nearly toppling to the floor, he hugged the back of his chair to steady himself. He looked up to tell Katie he was okay, but when they made eye contact, both of them burst into laughter.
“You look a right prat,” she snickered.
Abandoning his bathroom mission in favour of making the room stop spinning, Harry snorted, “I reckon I do.” He picked up the bottle and squinted down its neck. “Bollocks. Should we order another one?”
Her hair swishing with the motion, Katie slurred, “Oh, no you don’t!” She jabbed her finger at him and said, “You, sir, have had enough. Bar’s cuttin’ you off now.”
Harry harrumphed. “How rude.” Setting the bottle back on the table, he said, “Well, then I suppose I should be off. I’ve done what I came to do, judging by the evidence, as I have no idea why I came here.” Yawning loudly, he murmured, “Just need to… need to rest my eyes a bit.” With a contented sigh, he folded his arms and nestled his head in the crook of his elbow.
* * *
His skull was going to crack open. He was sure of it. There was simply no way that such pressure could be lunging at his nerves and not cause his whole head to break under the strain. The blaring summer sun did nothing to remedy his distress, either. With a groan, Harry flopped his arm over his eyes and muttered, “Damn.”
A chuckle permeated the haze of pain. He felt something being pushed into his hand - a tiny bottle. An arm slid under his shoulders and helped him sit upright, the motion of which made vomit rise in his throat. As if his mysterious benefactor could read his mind, a bucket appeared in his lap, into which he gratefully jettisoned the poison writhing in his stomach. When he had nothing left in him to empty, he squeezed his eyes shut and panted for fresh breath to chase away the lingering sourness in his mouth.
“Drink it,” said a voice, made indistinguishable by his roaring headache. At first, he had no idea what ‘it’ was until something nudged his hand and reminded him that it wasn’t empty. He uncorked the tiny phial and, as he was too tired and agonised to question what he was being told, downed it in a single gulp. If anything tasted like Polyjuice Potion without being quite as foul, this was most certainly it. It was all he could do not to spit it out.
A glass of water was pushed in front of him, which he consumed greedily. The vile flavour in his mouth abated, and as the liquid hit his stomach, a cool, calming sensation spidered through his limbs and, thankfully, into his pounding head. The sharp ache eased and virtually disappeared before he could even finish his drink, and he could finally inhale fully without the feeling of his brain exploding.
“Here,” the voice said again, which he could finally identify as female as she put his glasses in his hand. Once he could see again, he was offered a couple Tooth-Flossing Stringmints, which made short work of the bitterness left in his mouth. He sighed, grateful to feel human again, before flopping back on the pillows.
Pillows? It was this point that Harry started to realise that he had no idea where he was. He instantly shot up and looked at his surroundings. It was a rather large bedroom, decorated in varying shades of purple, centre-pieced by the gigantic bed he inhabited. And sitting on the edge of the mattress right next to his feet was Katie, who was smiling.
“Welcome back,” she said as she Vanished the contents of the sick bucket.
“Where am I,” he asked, still visually exploring his unfamiliar surroundings.
Sweeping her arm toward the expanse of the room, Katie said, “Welcome to my humble abode. You passed out, so I brought you home with me before the wrong people could catch wind of it.” Holding up her hands like a mock headline, she said in an overly serious voice, “Harry Potter: Luscious or Just Plain Lush?”
Harry laughed. “I’ve never been ‘luscious’ a day in my life, so I’d imagine ‘lush’ would be more accurate.”
With nothing left to add, Harry fell silent. With the end of his physical distress came a new dilemma: what had happened the night before? He remembered having a couple beers before starting on the liquor, but anything after that, he wasn’t sure. Katie seemed happy to see him, which made him wonder out loud, “Did we, um… you know?”
Her expression was inscrutable. “What if I said we did?” She raised a brow, as if challenging him to answer.
He felt his face flame in embarrassment. “I suppose an apology would be in order. So, er…” he looked squarely at his feet, “sorry.”
The reaction he had expected had not been amusement, yet that was what he received, “Why on earth would you apologise? Even if anything had happened, why would that be a problem?”
“I, uh…” he stuttered. “That’s not what I meant.” Frowning, he said, “Actually, I’m not sure what I meant. I guess it’s because, well, your divorce and all. I don’t want to make things worse.”
Shaking her head, Katie rolled her eyes. “As if you could have done. If anything, you should be happy that I didn’t take advantage.”
“Oh, please!” Harry fired. “I haven’t found a life I couldn’t wreck!” His fingers delved into his hair, pulling hard as if to inflict pain upon himself, despite having just banished it. It was starting to come back to him, the reasons why he had tried to drown himself in the release of inebriation. “My life is normal; my life is boring! Why can’t I just be happy with that like everyone else?”
“Because you’re not like everyone else,” Katie replied quietly. “If you were, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
Her abrupt change in demeanour jarred Harry. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Do you know how long it’s been since anyone has ever asked me how I was doing?” Looking down at her hands, which she was wringing in her lap, she said, “Everyone just assumes that, since I’m rich now…”
Harry shut his mouth and didn’t look at her, just in case he found something stupid and insensitive to say and upset her. He was good at that, a fact to which Ginny could well attest. Even Ron found it difficult to be around him sometimes, and Hermione made it her life’s mission to psychoanalyse him at every opportunity. But there was something about Katie that made him want to talk to her. He felt low, and so did she. His friends had all moved on to happiness, but, like him, his former teammate woke up every morning, questioning why she should even bother getting out of bed.
“I broke my wand yesterday,” he said, uncertain of why he did. “Well, um, I didn’t break it, per se, but it got broken.”
“Oh?” Katie said, fleetingly catching his eye before her gaze retreated once more.
Nodding, Harry said, “Yeah. It was… weird. I didn’t even care.” He thought about it and amended, “Well, I did care, but it was more of an annoyance that I couldn’t Apparate without it and I’d have to take the Floo.” From the nightstand, he took the replacement wand he’d purchased the previous day and looked at it closely. “What the hell is wrong with me?”
“Are you happy?” Katie interjected.
Thrown off by the question, Harry said, “W-what?”
“Are you happy?”
“I…” The more he pondered it, the less of a clue Harry had of what the answer was. “I suppose so. I don’t know.”
Katie shook her head. “Didn’t think so.” Pursing her lips, she appeared deep in thought before asking, “When’s the last time you got on a broomstick?”
This time, Harry didn’t need to hesitate with an answer. “Day of the battle.”
“Why?” She raised a brow, awaiting his reply.
Opening his mouth was as far as Harry got as he struggled to formulate a response. He loved to fly, yet he hadn’t done it in over six years. Not even two weeks before, he had turned twenty-four, and the idea of celebrating had not even occurred to him. He had spent his birthday on the settee, reading the Prophet. Ginny had climbed to fifth in the top scorer leaderboard, and Oliver Wood was set to earn a starting roster spot for Puddlemere United in the upcoming season. St Mungo’s announced that an up-and-coming music group, The Troll Brothers, were set to perform at their fundraiser ball. Ernie Macmillan and Mandy Brocklehurst were getting married. And then he’d gone to bed before ten.
In other words, it was hardly discernable from any other day he spent at home after work. Was he happy? If he thought about it hard enough, his daily routine didn’t vary all that much from what his Uncle Vernon did every day. That realisation made something inside of him wither, and he was dangerously close to throwing up again. “I don’t know.”
“Then let’s go,” Katie said simply. “I’ve got a few brooms in the wardrobe.”
Unable to come up with a reason to refuse, Harry simply followed Katie and took the broom she handed him. He looked down at it to see which model it was. “A Nimbus 2000.” The high polish and gleaming gold lettering of his very first broomstick model made a smile tug unbidden at the corners of his mouth.
Grinning, Katie said, “I thought you might like that one.” She took her own broom in her right hand and hooked her left arm to Harry’s elbow. “Let’s be off then.” Before Harry could ask where, he was tugged into the pressing blackness of Apparition. The jolting did nothing to ease his newly dispelled nausea, but before he knew it, he found himself in the centre of a field of sunburnt grass.
...To Part 2