A moment later Harry felt rewarded by the feel of fluttery wings against his palm. "Yes!" his shout rang out as he soared skyward hand clenched in victory around the shiny snitch. His teammates joined him in a victory lap, before they came down for the end of game handshakes. Harry was careful as he took each Gryffindor's hand so they couldn't try to crush his hand in retaliation for the win. Suddenly out of the corner of his eye there was a flash. He turned and spotted a small boy with a camera. He frowned. He shook the last lion's hand then walked over to the boy who had taken the picture.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Colin Creevey." He said nervously. "I just wanted to take your picture to prove to my family that I've seen you in person."
"Alright. This once, as long as I get a copy of it too. I'd appreciate if in the future you didn't take my picture. I find the whole Boy-Who-Lived crap to be rather annoying and unrealistic. Understand?"
Colin Creevey looked torn between being overjoyed his idol had spoken to him, and as if he'd just been told Christmas was cancelled. Harry didn't have much sympathy though, and was overjoyed by the fact he wasn't in the same house as this little cretin. Fan girls were bad enough, fan boys were just disturbing. At least as a Slytherin, Harry wasn't expected to be nice.
Marcus came over at that moment and put an arm around Harry's shoulder to lead Harry back towards the locker room. Once they were out of earshot of others, he spoke,"Good game. I couldn't help noticing that you were playing, shall we say more aggressively than you usually do? And before the game, I noticed signs you've been crying. Care to share?"
Harry got a stricken look and suddenly felt like blubbering again, but he said nothing.
Marcus took one look and said, "Up on your broom, we'll talk up there. I'll go tell the team to head in without us."
Harry took off without another word.
Marcus jogged to the locker room and saw Adrian just coming out of the shower, "Adrian, you and the rest of the guys head in without me and Potter."
"Something wrong Flint? Harry seemed a little…"
"Yeah, something upset him. I'll try to get to the bottom of it before we come in. But you know him, cards close to the chest and really only relaxes up in the air, I figure it's better if I try to pry it out on the pitch instead of up it the castle."
"Yeah. If anyone asks, I'll just say Harry wasn't done flying yet, and you stayed with him for safety."
Anyone who knew Harry at all would believe those comments, although Harry's teammates all believed if anyone was safe flying by themselves it would be Harry. They sometimes joked that Harry's broom was an extension of himself, and that if he wanted to, Harry could sleep, eat, and even shag on a broom.
Marcus headed back out, and quickly joined Harry in the sky. The two boys made four circuits of the pitch before Marcus said, "Spill it out before it eats you alive."
"You remember that time last year when Snape was such a total bastard?"
Marcus could remember many points last year that he felt could be described that way. "Which one?"
"The one when he was going off on my dad, saying I would be such a disappointment, blah, he'd be ashamed because I'm a snake, blah, he'd be rolling in his grave because I wasn't a lion, blah, buh, blah, buh, blah, blah, blah."
Marcus couldn't help it he smirked. Trust Harry to blow off a chewing out by their Head of House in such a cavalier fashion. "Oh that one, yeah."
"You know how my godfather got cleared?"
"Yeah, it's been in the news."
"Well same speech, different source and point of view."
"What?"
"Yeah," Harry's voice took on a slightly hysterical note. "I get the jerk out of prison, see to it he gets some help so hopefully he comes out of all this sane, and what does he do the moment he realizes I'm not a lion like my forebears? He tells me, my dad would be rolling in his grave over the fact I'm a Slytherin. I chose to be a snake… I, so, don't need this crap."
Marcus watched concerned as Harry pushed his broom down in a sharp dive. For a second he was concerned that Harry meant to plow into the pitch full tilt, but the boy pulled up just brushing the grass with his toes. He watched as Harry put himself and his broom through a couple more aerial maneuvers that would have professional fliers green with envy, then felt a bit of relief as the boy leveled off and rejoined him in the sky.
"Better?"
"Yeah."
"Harry, I asked last year, and you said I had to be able to protect my thoughts. I talked to my great-uncle. He taught me occlumency over the summer. Why Slytherin, and why the dislike of the headmaster? My oath as a wizard, this will go no farther."
Harry 's expression said he wanted to witness the oath.
Marcus pulled his wand, "On my honor and my magic what Harry Potter tells me in privacy will remain between us." The glow of his oath encompassed him and his broom.
"I chose Slytherin because I felt anything else gave Dumb-as-door room to maneuver me into being a proxy hero, which is something he wants. In Slytherin, fewer people would try to force me into that mold. I didn't count on the Professor being an ass and under Dumble's thumb."
"What? the professor isn't under Dumbledore's thumb!"
"Marcus, shush and listen for a second, okay?"
"Okay."
"I know you respect Professor Snape a lot, but I'm fairly certain the man hates teaching. I mean what kind of teacher hampers three quarters his students by immediately denying them the extra supplemental books? I know that the smart ones get them for themselves anyway, and nothing stops the rest from doing so. But how is putting a potion on the board, and saying "make it" teaching? I'm all for experiential learning, but I swear if he didn't spend half his time scaring students and instead spent a bit of time explaining there would be fewer problems. I will say, he is good at preventing catastrophic accidents, but still favoritism in the classroom creates more problems than it solves. This school is rife with it.
"Snape's not the only culprit, Dumbles, himself, does it too. If you watch the two of them closely, it's obvious. Snape dances to the Headmaster's tune; he doesn't like it but he does it anyway.
"I don't trust Dumbledore because the man put me on my aunt's doorstep after my parents' deaths. He didn't ask, hell, he didn't even have the bloody decency to tell them in person, he just dumped me there. My parents had made provision for me, but the Headbastard didn't bother to see my aunt and uncle got it. He dumped me on a doorstep some time between ten p.m. and six a.m. Like I was a bottle of milk, never mind it was November and I was able to walk. I could have gotten up and walked out into traffic or been bitten by a rabid animal.
"If that's not bad enough, his so-called protective wards there, basically trap us there and there are coercive spells that make my uncle refuse to move away, and it has hurt his career. That's not all the wards do. They've also made my aunt and uncle infertile. He took away their right to have more children. He told my aunt it would stop when I'm seventeen but muggles have trouble having children after thirty five. The likely hood of conception goes down like five percent a year and the risks to the baby go up by like ten percent a year. When I'm seventeen my aunt will be forty two, technically still able but at what risk? What right did he have to make that choice for them?
"Then there's the fact, they really had trouble coping with accidental magic. I stuck my cousin and three other people to the ceiling when I was in nursery school for interrupting me while I was painting and in my cousin's case bumping me. I was nuts about art, even then. Dumbledore bound my magic for the next five years. It felt like I was suddenly blind, deaf, and wrapped in cotton wool all my senses muffled, my energy ripped away. For that alone, I hate him. I was lucky, it didn't shatter my magic; it very easily could have. My grandfather's magic was shattered by a block. Plus with the block, if something would have happened shortly after it was set that threatened my life, I would have been hard-pressed to do anything to save myself. I was lucky. When I was nine, I had gotten strong enough that I temporarily breeched the block, otherwise my cousin and I would have been dead beneath the wheels of a lorry.
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