//------------------------------// // What A Sight // Story: Harry Potter and the Crystal Empire // by Damaged //------------------------------// George and Fred didn't look like they were ready to crack jokes at Percy's expense. They sat on the bed beside their brother and seemed to stare through him. Ron sat beside them, but he was looking down at his hands—slowly clenching and unclenching them. "How is he?" I asked. I'd already asked Madam Pomfrey, but she'd just told me he was recovering. Percy's brothers, I knew, would have a better idea of their brother's health than that. "He keeps mumblin' stuff. About Ginny, about Sombra. Only, he keeps calling Sombra his master." Ron's fists clenched so tight his pale skin practically blanched to pure white. "If he's done something to Percy I'll—" "We'll!" Fred said with vehemence. "We all will." George turned his head to look at me. I nodded. What else could I do? Beating up dark wizards was practically my gig now. "Yeah we will." There was another occupant of the room, sitting on the bed on the opposite side of Percy from the brothers. Penelope held a white handkerchief in her hands and kept dabbing at her eyes with it. The room might have been warm and brightly lit, but it had an oppressive weight that made it hard to talk. I hated what I had to do, but Oliver had wrung a promise out of me before I'd left from breakfast. "George, Fred, about—" "We're going to play." George's voice made me feel sorry for any bludger he encountered. Fred turned his head a fraction and nodded. "Yeah we will. Percy wouldn't want us to lose a game to Ravenclaw just because he'd had a bump on the noggin. Ron'll keep an eye out." He raised his head and looked over the ponish shape of Percy. "And Penny. Won't ya?" Snorting away her tears as best she could, Penelope nodded her head. Then, as if she realized she needed to speak, she added, "Of course. But I'll cheer for Ravenclaw from up here." "You ready, George?" Fred asked. "Yeah, Fred. Feels kinda odd, don't it?" "Not 'avin' our big bruv to watch us? Yeah it does. Come on, Oliver's probably going spare." Fred stood up, mirrored by George, and both looked down at me. "Lead on, 'Arry." The walk to the Gryffindor tower to get our gear was somber. I grabbed my broom, my catching glove, and the roll of tape Katie had gifted me when I spoke to Oliver. Fred and George changed into their quidditch gear and we headed down to the pitch. Oliver, Katie, Alicia, and Angelina were already there and in their gear. I felt practically naked—and for good reason. Oliver nodded to the twins. "You guys okay?" "Yeah, Oliver. We're here to kick butt." Fred's voice didn't have his usual playfulness behind it, but he sounded more alive than he had with Percy. George punched his brother in the arm. "What're we doing first?" That neither brother was their usual selves—they tried to joke but it didn't seem the same—worried me a little. All the more reason to work my mojo and beat up this Sombra so Percy would get better. Oliver gave a stiff nod to the brothers. "Let's do some running. I heard your lessons were called off, Harry." We all broke into a run with Oliver. The quidditch pitch was our target, and it looked like we'd be doing laps as a warm up. Despite my smaller size, my legs ate up the distance with a really cool 3-thud run. "Yeah. All the stuff with the scavenger hunt for the Heart. Still, I'll try to get something happening tomorrow." The others were running in their full quidditch gear, whereas I just had to focus on the two Locomotion charms I had active (the baseball glove and my broom). Oliver kept the pace up for what seemed like an hour. Not a single one of us was out of shape, we all kept up with him for the whole run. He got us doing ball passes next, and finally had the twins swinging practice bats at practice bludgers to hit small—snitch-sized—targets. By the time he called a break, all of us were buzzing with energy and ready to play. "Come on, lunch time. Everyone needs to eat light." Our walk into the castle and to the great hall was triumphant. We already felt like we could win, and it showed. Every Gryffindor student we came across pumped their fist in the air and fell in behind us as we marched to the dinner table. It wasn't like our times playing against Slytherin, this was much more important. This was the first game of a new tournament and a new tournament style—points wouldn't carry over from one game to the season, so the importance of just winning meant we were all focused on this one game. We sat apart from the rest of Gryffindor at the tail end of the table. My glasses got a good workout as I glanced up at Ron, Hermione, and Addera—particularly Addera. In such a short length of actual time we'd become so close that having a meal apart from her was a big deal for me. "Eat up, everyone, this could be a long game. Remember, taking the snitch will be the most important play—we all have to help with that as well as the normal game." For all his words, Oliver made no move to reach for any of the food spread out before us. He was like this for every game. I had no clue where he got the energy to keep going during play—perhaps it was just his core Oliver Woodness that sustained him. Me? I cast my usual set of Locomotion charms and got in a tug-o-war over a plate of chicken wings with Fred and George while they insisted they would save me from the horrors of a meat diet. "You know, I had another idea we could use. Probably not for this game, but another one after some practice." Alicia had stopped shoveling baked beans into her mouth to explain her idea. "See, we're only allowed to have two beater bats on the field at once, right?" A round of mumbles answered her, most of them sounding at least somewhat in agreement. I managed to grab two of the wings and pulled them onto my plate. Alicia poked her fork in the direction of Fred. "Okay, but the rules don't state that only two players get to use them. What's to stop me tossing the quaffle to Fred, him tossing me his bat?" "Or just swapping the bats around?" Katie asked. "'Old up. We're not thinkin' about this far enough. Only chasers can score, right?" George looked around and got nods from everyone except Oliver. "Huh?" "Seeker can score," Oliver said. Six pairs of eyes turned to look at me before everyone let loose a laugh. "I've not had any practice with—I mean, I—" My brain spun in circles trying to come up with reasons why I couldn't score or even participate more in the game. "But you said it was more important in this game to get the snitch." Oliver reached over and ruffled my mane—which wasn't required to make it look like a mess. "Yeah, Harry, it is. We'll work on your throwing arm another time. What were you getting' at, George?" "Well, only they can score, but there's nothing that says they can't have our bat and be herding a bludger at the goalie too." George looked proud of his logic and sat back on the bench. "Give Page a bit of something extra to think about." "Here's a tip," Fred said, addressing the girls of the team. "Aim for Page's nu—" "Fred!" Oliver cut Fred off sharply, though he had a huge grin and was on the verge of laughing. "You'll do him an injury if you aim there, but he might get back up. Aim to break an arm. He can't guard the goals if he can't use his arms." "I'll keep this brief." The magically amplified words were enough to hush everyone in the great hall. McGonagall was standing at the lectern and looking out at us all. I could see the hint of coloration at her neck that implied she'd been using more magic than was otherwise apparent, and her fuzzy ears continued to twitch and flick through two neatly cut holes in the sides of her witches hat. "I wish both teams the best of luck this afternoon, and look forward to watching you play. Thank you." The roar of all the students almost completely drowned out McGonagall's last words. At our end of the hall, however, I was sure I'd still be heard. "So we all need to learn at least one other position." "What's to know? Get a bat, beat the snot out of them with it." Alicia flashed a daring look at Fred. George was the one to reply, however. "You know, of the seven hundred or so fouls, about two thirds of them have the word beater in them? 'What's to know?' It's easy being a beater, Alicia, but being one and not giving the other side a pile of penalties is the hard part." Angelina spoke up. "Yeah, but we don't have to be beaters, we get all the perks and none of the penalties." "Yeah you do. Some of the fouls are specific about beater bats." Trust Oliver to know the wording of each specific (published) rule. "But this thinking is good." "What other rules can we bend?" Fred asked. Oliver shook his head. "Right now? None. I don't want any of you doing this, even if things get really bad, until we've examined the rules and fouls. Let's head out, if you're all done?" As one, we stood and marched from the hall and down to our locker rooms. The others were all getting changed, but I just stared at my broom. "You want some help with your tape, Harry?" George asked. "Harry," Alicia said with a sing-song quality to her voice. "We got you a proper jersey and robe to fit you." She was holding out what looked like cut-down versions of the normal gear roughly sewn to fit over my back and tie around my body. "There's no way I'm getting out of this, is there?" I looked toward Oliver, but he just shrugged at me. Sighing, defeated by what was almost certainly witch logic at work, I let them tape me to my broom again and tie a little jersey to me and a little robe. "I look ridiculous." "You haven't even looked in the mirror yet," Katie said. "Besides, you still need your helmet and goggles." "I don't have to wear goggles because of my glasses!" Angelina pulled something onto my head and tied the straps under my chin. The helmet only stayed on thanks to the mass of my mane shoved under it. I'm not sure if I wanted to see, now, but I had to look. Walking to the solitary mirror of the locker room, I looked at the little quadruped that looked about what you'd think of if a quidditch team had a mascot. I couldn't help myself—I giggled. Looking about as ridiculous as I had in my life, I couldn't keep back a deep laugh that overwhelmed me. We spent half an hour getting our heads together for the game. We went over all our established and practiced tactics again and again until Oliver finally stood up. "We've got a game of quidditch to win." "Grab your glove, 'Arry," George said. Studying magic aside, there was actually not much that compared to walking onto a quidditch pitch with six of my best friends. We were going to do battle today, and it was always amazing. Quidditch games always seemed far too short when it came to remembering them, but actually playing was a blast that often lasted most of a day. The stands were full of students, we had a good half the school shouting excitedly at us from all around, with Hufflepuff yellow and Gryffindor red dominating the colors of those on their feet. My glasses let me spot him in the Slytherin stand—Draco Malfoy—but he was talking to Gemma and completely ignoring us. It was odd to think we both got on well with Gemma—but I didn't have time to worry about the politics of a bunch of vipers. "Let's hear it, everyone, for GRYFFINDOR!" Lee Jordan's voice blasted, and the crowd somehow got louder. Beside us, somehow immune to the volume of the crowd, Hooch was twitching her wings and wearing a huge grin. "Take to the air. Go on." We didn't need to be asked twice. The others stepped over their brooms (while I just tried not to look stupid), and we shot into the air as one. Formation flying was a small part of quidditch practice, but it was something we'd all drilled at. We swooped down over the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff crowd and then shot into the air to hover at the end of the pitch where our fans were. "Another great team, the greatest opponents our heroes have ever fought, RAVENCLAW!" Whatever else Lee had said—after McGonagall had shook his shoulder—was lost as the Ravenclaws and Slytherins in the crowd showed their support. The Slytherins surprised me, I didn't think they'd cheer quite so loudly for another team. Zooming around the stadium with some impressive patterns to their maneuver, Ravenclaw's team took up their position at the other end of the pitch. Hooch spread her wings and pumped them, pulling herself into the sky and flying a little circle while she waited for Oliver and Eliza to approach. Eliza O'Leary was the only female quidditch captain in the school, and though she'd often shown that she wasn't that great at magic, she'd led a strong Ravenclaw team for her final year. A beater on her team, she'd been seen to make some stunning (literally) plays. The crowd went quiet. "Alright! I want a—woah—a good, clean game from both of you. Ends were chosen yesterday, so all you have to do is put forward your chasers first." Hooch looked to be having the time of her life, and even though she wasn't half as steady as those of us on brooms, she didn't seem to mind flying in literal circles around the two captains. The As and Katie flew forward on their brooms, while two boys and a girl from the Ravenclaw team flew up opposite them. "Your beaters next!" Fred and George flew forward, leaving me on my own. When all four beaters were in the center, Hooch called for the seekers and keepers. Seconds later, with the keepers zooming back to their defensive ends, Hooch blew her whistle and released the balls. "Hey, Harry." A guy brought his broom down beside me. With the snitch still locked up, we had little to do. The only problem was, I didn't know his name. "Intense game today, right?" Was it a psych out? If it was, he was really good at acting genuine. "Uh, yeah. Sorry, I haven't caught your name." "Cian Murphy. I just wanted to say good luck." Having met enough Irish students to know at least two other kanes, I knew that it wasn't the right spelling for it. "Yeah, you too." I leaned back as much as I could and aimed my broom for the sky, then used my lighter weight to shoot upward faster than Cian could have hoped. High over the pitch, the sound of the crowd was lost to me, but somehow I could still hear the shouts of the players. Katie was really doing work. She wasn't that big body wise, but she continually put herself between the As and whoever was trying to take the quaffle—she even took a bludger with a glancing blow off her upper arm. Alicia and Angelina might as well have been two sides of the same coin. Somehow they always knew where the other was and where the quaffle was. They were passing and moving the game forward at every opportunity, and between them accounted for almost every point we got. George had broken into laughter when he and Eliza had gone for the same bludger and the best they'd managed to do was send it nearly three feet into the ground. He cackled like a maniac but moved like a missile to Fred's side to double-team the remaining bludger. While it would have been great to just sit up here and watch the game, that wasn't how we'd win. I watched when Hooch released the snitch, and it was instantly out of sight. Scanning around, my heart froze when I saw Cian start moving. It wasn't hard to work out where he was going and—as I pitched forward in a dive—I pointed to the snitch which was just behind and above Hooch. "The snitch!" I had no hope of getting to it before Cian, but I heard Fred shout something that almost sounded like—I pulled back and stalled my broom as a bludger went flying through the spot my head would have been if I'd kept going. It whistled past Cian too, but he seemed focused on the snitch. Unfortunately for Cian, the snitch was the target of more than just him. The bludger slammed into the snitch and drove it through the wall at the bottom of the stands, but while the snitch seemed lost to sight, the bludger came zooming for the nearest target. Eliza barely reached Cian before the excited bludger could make contact, and beat it away with her club. There was something amazing about her—the way she flew—that had nothing to do with the broom she was riding. Eliza was fast. Faster on her old Barn Shaker 200 than my Nimbus could be even with my reduced self taped to it. "That's a foul!" The voice that shouted was Eliza's, not Hooch's. "Come on, ref, you can't interfere with a snitch!" Hooch glided down to Eliza and circled around her. "That wasn't a Snitchnip, Miss O'Leary. No one touched the snitch!" I could see fury in Eliza's eyes. She looked up at George with something approaching deadly malice. I missed what she mumbled, but she pulled out her bat and zoomed up into the sky. Shaking my head, I launched upward too and cast my eyes around for a sign of the snitch. I saw Cian, and if I didn't know better he looked scared. Honestly, given the weight and malice in a bludger, I couldn't blame him. The bludger that had been driven into the pitch finally dug itself loose, and it looked angry. The thing almost seemed to want revenge on George and Eliza, because it took off in their direction. Not for the first time I wondered how effective a remote control bludger—like what Dobby had used on me—would be when battling another wizard. All you'd have to do is program it not to want any part of you, and it would be a hilarious distraction for a wizard lacking a bat. The rest of the game had devolved into a constant chess game. Both sides were getting the ball regularly, but each time either tried to get a goal someone would yell snitch and everyone would look around. It was 30-50 our way, and the game seemed to be one of those low-scoring ones that would—in any normal season—be terrible for both sides. There seemed to be a thudding in my heart, and the world slowed down. Cian was looking up at me, and I was looking down at the snitch hovering just above his head. Curling my glove into an impromptu fist, I turned my Nimbus into a dive and willed it faster and faster. Cian was frozen staring at me, almost as if he expected me to actually punch him with the glove. At the last second I snapped the glove open, but the snitch realized it'd been spotted and took off. I blew by Cian and was in close pursuit of the golden ball. To my shock, the angry bludger came speeding my way but curled back around to chase back at Eliza and George. Ten feet. Five feet. One foot. I would have jumped forward to grab the snitch, but being taped to my broom made that impossible. Instead, I had to rely on speed and my skill with the Locomotion charm—something I'd been getting a lot of practice with. Focusing my mind to close the glove, I felt the give of it—the snitch held within. "GRYFFINDOR WI—" The shout from the magical PA—Lee Jordan's voice coming back into full focus—was cut off as a red beam of magic lanced through the air and sliced one of the towers clean off the stands. I knew that magic. I'd been burned by that magic. It wasn't easy to control somebody implicitly, let alone a thousand ponies. Ginevra Molly Weasley was learning on the job, so to speak. First and foremost she had completely ground down Peter Pettigrew's free will to the point he had none. Just existing in the same head as the man made her feel dirty by association. 'I can do this.' The army of King Sombra took a step together. It wasn't completely synchronized, but then that was something she could work on. They took another step, and a thousand hooves crashing into the ground at almost exactly the same time was quite the effect. 'I can do this!' This was the easy part. Ginny's head was filled with plans and counter plans. She had more ponies under her command than there were students and teachers at Hogwarts, and she wanted to ensure the count of both didn't decline. That's why Sombra had told her to do this, she knew, he wanted enough time to be bought so that he could find the Heart, and Ginny didn't want anyone to get hurt during what was to come. So she marched her army forward—headed to Hogwarts. It hadn't been a full week, and already using a human body felt wrong to Ginny, but she wasn't prepared to undermine the last of Peter's humanity—as much of a shell and a farce as that had been to the man—at such a crucial stage. Marching ever closer, one sound was somehow louder than the stomping hooves of her army. They're playing quidditch! The realization changed everything. Ginny tossed out her plans to fight the school in an open field and instead sought to corral all the students and teachers within the quidditch stadium. 'This'll be perfect. I'll just keep them from leaving the stadium by surrounding it!' Ginny watched the game play out in the sky above the quidditch pitch, and hoped the players were all too caught up in the game to notice the army surrounding them. Ready to start the attack, Ginny froze when she heard Harry's name shouted as the commentator called that he almost had the snitch. A shiver ran through her—figuratively of course—as she heard that Harry was inches from grabbing the snitch, and when Ginny heard he'd caught it, she smiled. 'Attack.' She didn't shout the word into the heads of the ponies. The thought was more a mental decision that this is where the stand starts. 'I'm starting,' Ginny projected toward Sombra. 'Good. Trust your instincts and do what you must. I know where the Crystal Heart is.' Sombra's mental tone was warm and charged with potential—he knew it was his student's time to shine. Ginny felt a little thrill of excitement as one of the helmeted ponies used their magic—at her command—to slice through one of the towers of the quidditch stands. Sombra would win, of that she had no doubt, but if she could keep the stadium trapped, she'd be able to keep everyone safe. The magic the helmets could deploy was limited in its nature. It was always destructive, but Ginny had worked out a way to make a shield with it. One pony could make a shield big enough to hold one pony. 'Again. All the towers!' Her will reached out to the helmeted ponies and, one after another, the spires of the quidditch stands fell—cut at their base and on an angle so they would fall away from the stadium. When the last of the towers fell, Ginny directed the final spell herself. Pulling magic from all the ponies gathered around her, Ginny siphoned it and rebuilt it into an inward-facing shield and cast her spell. Shield spells were a common enough pattern that the power flowed easily, but at the scale she made it the burning-red magic slowly stretched over the stadium and pitch. While a few wizards and witches on brooms made it out from under the dome before it sealed, Ginny wasn't too worried. She had thousands, and even if a few escaped—a few escaped. She could catch them later. Biting her lip—or at least making Peter bite his—Ginny almost faltered. She looked down at the hands of the grimy old wizard and remembered his memories. This was the right thing to do. A crash behind her broke Ginny from the moment of reverie. A blue pegasus, unhelmeted and free, stood behind Ginny. "Look, we might not be super well-known up here, but you should probably know we're going to kick your butt unless you stop." 'Who are—' Ginny had to pull her mind back from just thinking the words and marionette Peter to ask, "Who are you?" There were six of them all together. Two pegasi, two unicorns, and a pair of the lesser ponies, at least by Ginny's estimation. "Princess Celestia sent us. My name's Twilight Sparkle, and these are my friends Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and Fluttershy. Please, stop all this so we can talk." Delighted that someone would actually talk before needing to resort to rainbows, Twilight spoke with a passion that conveyed her desire for a bloodless settlement. "You don't have to do this." "You don't understand!" Ginny felt the spells of witches and wizards testing her barrier from within, but she'd expected that. Looking at the six ponies, she managed a smile that she hoped Peter's face wasn't twisting into some horrid expression. "I'm doing this to protect them from King Sombra. It's safer like this." The words coming from the older human before her confused Applejack somewhat, they didn't sound right. "Twi, I don't think somepony's playing us straight here." "She speaks funny," Pinkie Pie said. Twilight nodded to her friends then turned back to Ginny—who was still wearing Peter like a puppet. "We're going to stop Sombra. Will you get—" "No!" Ginny began pulling more magic from the ponies and weaving it into more shields. One. Two. Both the pegasi were trapped. Three. One unicorn didn't even put up a struggle. When she tried to trap the second unicorn, they disappeared. "I'm doing this for your own good! He told me I can save everyone!" Applejack was having none of what the crazy human was saying. Shoving herself into action before another of the red domes could come around her, she stopped at the one holding Rainbow Dash, turned, and coiled her muscles. Pony magic was more than just unicorns and fancy spells. In Equestria, all creatures lived and breathed magic. Applejack had spent her life so far refining how her body channeled magic to a physical perfection few could match. As her muscles squeezed down and compacted, she was pouring magic through her body in a hurricane toward her rear hooves—though she had no conscious knowledge it was magic. Ginny snarled as one of her shield spells shattered into dust under an onslaught she'd scarcely expected. She'd discounted the regular ponies as not worth her time, but now she could see they might be even more dangerous than the pegasi. "Just let me help you." "Hi!" Pinkie Pie was right beside Peter, looking up at the man standing before her. "Look, I know you think this is helping, but the only thing that really helps in this kinda mess is working together." When another of the barrier spells shattered, Ginny felt the onset of a migraine creeping up on her. She spun around to deal with the pink pony first, only for Pinkie to slip out of sight. When she spun back to instead deal with the pony releasing the others, she was just in time to see their rear hooves lash out and shatter the barrier around the yellow pegasus. With the third of her spells shattered, Ginny's mind was dealing with a another jolt of backlash, and this one threw her focus enough that the big shield holding all the wizards and witches contained failed. Lifting Peter's hand to his head—her head—Ginny felt something move around her legs, shoving them, and causing her to fall forward. "G'night, sugarcube." Applejack had delivered such a blow to several annoying creatures to make them take a nap, and she had a knack for judging just the right amount of buck to do the job. Since Rainbow Dash had done the work of bringing Ginny's head down to her level, Applejack delivered the perfect buck. 'Those aren't just witches and wizards!' Ginny's mind was ringing, but she was safe and sound back in Sombra's head. 'I tried, but they were—' King Sombra worked his way through the tunnels. Something was blocking his apparation magic now, so he was forced to take things slowly. 'Shhh, Ginevra, I expected this. Reach out through me and regain control of your army. Prove to me your friends are worth saving.' Ginny focused herself—easier now she didn't have to puppet a body, and did as instructed. She pushed herself out and through Sombra and felt a cloak of his power bathe her form. She felt solid and sure of herself again, and reached back to grab up the helmeted ponies again. 'This isn't over. I can still save you!'