Chapter Text
“But it’s such a safe bet,” Harry whines.
“Uh-huh,” Remus replies from behind yesterday’s Daily Prophet, voice dripping with scepticism. Harry can’t see him, but he can practically hear the singular eyebrow raise. “Regardless, I hardly think we should be using your experiences in another dimension for gambling. Besides, since when do you suffer from a lack of funds?”
Harry ignores his question and turns to someone who has, in the past, been more susceptible to his amazing ideas. “Sirius! It’s only for some extra pocket money—it’s hardly gambling.”
Sirius grins at him around a mouthful of toast and proceeds to be absolutely no help whatsoever. “You heard your godfather.”
Traitor.
“Kiss-arse,” Harry mutters, ignoring Sirius making kissy-faces at an oblivious Remus.
His bad mood doesn’t last for long. How could it? The Quidditch World Cup is only a few short hours away and he's been looking forward to this day all year, ever since Sirius gifted them all tickets last Christmas.
Soon enough, he goes back to practically vibrating in his seat with excitement, eyes repeatedly darting out the window to watch the dark purple sky pinken at the edges.
It’s criminally early, but it’s going to be an all-day affair, and their portkey is scheduled to leave in forty minutes somewhere across the field from their house.
Somehow, time seems to both crawl to a complete halt and race for gold, and it takes them forever and a mere moment to bid Kreacher goodbye after breakfast before setting off across the field, straight into the sunrise.
Awaiting them on the ground is a cracked, non-descript white mug, and Harry lunges forward to pick it up. He cradles it between his palms and rushes back a few steps to join his godfathers, triumphantly waving the currently inactive portkey in the air.
“It’s here, it’s here, I found it! C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, we can’t miss it!”
Had he been paying more attention, he would have seen his godfathers gazing at him with fondness and amusement in equal amounts.
“You know we could simply Apparate if we were to miss it, right?” Sirius ruffles his hair. With a hiss, Harry jerks back, one hand fervently patting down the mess Sirius just made. He’d spent over five minutes (practically a lifetime) trying to tame it earlier and doesn’t appreciate his godfather’s clear disregard of this.
“Fine, then miss it,” he says, glaring daggers while still patting at the back of his head, “see if I care.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sirius says, batting his eyelashes. “Did I ruin your look?”
“Sirius, how could you?” Remus gasps in an overly dramatic fashion, clutching at his chest. “You know he’s seeing his friends for the first time since summer term let out. Seeing Draco for the first time in over a month!”
(Harry’s cheeks definitely do not pinken. Nor do his ears heat. Of course not. Why would they at a casual mention of his best friend? That’d be ridiculous.)
Harry points an accusing finger in Remus’ direction. “People calling you ‘the nice one’ don’t really know you.”
His godfathers laugh and finally reach out to lay their hands over the cracked mug, and it’s about time too; seconds later, the portkey activates and whisks them away.
Harry almost sticks the landing.
Harry imagines what the camping grounds must probably look like from above; like seeing ants crawling all over a hill. There are people absolutely everywhere, every inch of the field occupied. Irish and Bulgarian flags wave proudly in the gentle wind, joined by several other nations’ though they aren’t as prominent, and more languages than Harry could possibly identify float on the air, innumerable voices joined by laughter and joyful shouts despite the early hour.
It’s amazing.
He struggles to soak up all the sights but not for lack of trying—his head swivels around like an owl’s, eyes almost as wide. His godfathers amble along right behind him, clearly also infected by the enthusiasm all around them.
There are posters plastered everywhere, most depicting the entire Irish team flying in and out of sight, but almost as many of Viktor Krum blinking and scowling, arms crossed where he sits hovering on his broom.
They’re nearly at the stadium when they finally find their campsite, and Harry can’t help but let out a low, impressed whistle at the location, making Sirius preen self-importantly.
“What good is all that money for if not to secure a decent spot? It’s the World Cup,” he argues, taking out his wand to set up their tent.
Remus hums in amusement. “Utilities? Potion ingredients? Harry’s school supplies?”
Sirius snorts, flicking his wrist. The tent unfolds and springs up proudly before them. “You say that like we’re poor, dear.”
“I thought it was gauche to talk about how much money you have?” Remus asks innocently.
“Ah!” Sirius snaps his fingers in mock-realisation. “That must be why they disowned me.”
“They didn’t, though…?”
Harry laughs to himself and ducks inside the tent, looking around. It’s huge; three bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room and a whole (empty) library for some reason. There’s a faint smell of lavender in the air, and Harry thinks absently that it beats new-tent-smell, at least.
Or old-tent-smell with a dash of eau-de-cat, for that matter.
“Sirius,” Remus sighs when they enter the tent. “The three-bedroom? Really?”
“What? Isn’t Dean staying with us?” Sirius turns to Harry. “You said Dean’s staying with us, right?”
“Yes,” Harry says slowly, “but he hardly needs his own room for it. We could just share.”
Sirius waves an unconcerned hand. “Pfft. Of course the kid gets his own room. Speaking of, when’s his portkey due?”
A quick glance down at his watch, Harry replies, “An hour from now. I figured it would be better to be safe than sorry.”
“So responsible,” Sirius coos, looking seconds away from ruffling Harry’s hair again. He ducks out of the way pre-emptively. “Didn’t we raise such a responsible young man, Moony?”
Unfortunately, Remus gets dragged right into the nonsense, never one to miss a chance to embarrass Harry.
“We sure did! Such a kind-hearted, thoughtful gentleman,” he coos in the same way Sirius had.
Harry barely restrains the urge to flip them both off, settling for rolling his eyes. “You two suck.”
Thankfully, he’s too busy stomping off toward his bedroom to notice the leer Sirius shoots Remus.
Despite his best intentions, Harry is running back toward the entrance a few minutes later than he’d planned. He’d gotten so caught up in a feat of impressive aerial acrobatics by some of the Irish fans that he’d completely lost track of time. When he finally skids to a halt behind the poor muggle who owns the campgrounds, Dean is busy moving one step behind in line to buy time, looking slightly anxious.
“Dean!” Harry waves frantically to get his friend’s attention. The look of relief on Dean’s face when their eyes meet makes him feel all kinds of guilty, and he silently vows to make it up to him later. He sticks his hands in his pockets and waits until it’s Dean’s turn, where he pays the small entrance fee and then hurries toward Harry. They greet each other in a typical teenage mix of hug and wrestle, before breaking apart with a laugh and moving back the way Harry just came.
“Seriously, I’m so sorry I’m late.”
“It’s fine, Harry, I just figured it’d be better if I hung back in line instead of trying to find you.”
“Good call, this place is insane.” A cackling Bulgarian fan flies over their heads, shouting something incomprehensible as he corkscrews away in a cloud of red and black dust. “…case in point.”
Dean laughs. “Honestly, it reminds me of what I saw at the FIFA World Cup. Less magic obviously but somehow just as insane.”
Dean had, loudly, been looking forward to the football world championships the entire spring semester. At first, he was simply excited about watching it on the telly (especially as it was held in the US), but when he’d returned from the Easter hols, he’d been near tears telling them his mother had surprised him with tickets—‘the best birthday gift ever’, as it had thenceforth been known.
“I still can’t believe your mum managed to get you tickets to that! What was it like? Tell me everything!”
Dean happily obliges, chattering the entire way back to the tent, barely pausing to breathe.
“And Bulgaria actually came in fourth! They’re having such a great year in sports, considering they’re in the final in Quidditch too!”
Harry laughs and agrees, wondering whether they’ll come in second this time around as well, or if they might clinch the gold despite his experiences.
“We’re back!” Harry calls out as they enter the tent to find Remus making tea in the kitchen, and Sirius already somehow knee-deep in Irish merch.
“Hi Professor Black, Mr Lupin, thanks for having me,” Dean chirps happily, striding forward to shake Sirius’ hand when he manages to disentangle himself from the ridiculously large pile of merchandise.
“Happy to have you, Dean,” Sirius assures him with a grin, foregoing last names since they’re not on school grounds. Then, he proudly adds, “and that’s Professor Lupin, I’ll have you know.”
Dean gasps, eyes going wide.
Harry nearly starts jumping up and down where he stands, unable to quite contain his excitement at the reveal he’ll get to have both his godfathers at the castle this year.
When Professor Sanderson had announced his resignation at the end of last semester, Remus had been the first (after some heavy-handed encouragement from Sirius and Harry) to hand in an application to Professor McGonagall. Even though the position had been held by the same person for years, there was still the widespread misconception that the DADA teaching post was cursed—resulting in Remus having zero competitors.
Harry is convinced he would have gotten the job regardless, but Remus wasn’t quite as confident. To hear him tell it, Professor McGonagall had been hesitant to have him join the staff due to his lycanthropy—a worry alleviated by Snape, of all people.
‘Severus actually… vouched for me?’
Remus smiles gently and shakes Dean’s hand in greeting. “No need to call me Professor just yet, Dean.”
“But you are, yeah?” Dean exclaims. “What position? Oh! It has to be DADA, right!?”
“Indeed,” Remus hums.
“Wicked!” Dean nudges Harry with an elbow. “Guess this means you’ll have to be extra well-behaved this year, huh?”
Harry snorts. “Bold of you to assume they wouldn’t help me plan a prank should I want pull one.”
“For legal reasons,” Sirius says, clearing his throat, “that is a joke and completely unfounded in reality.”
Silence falls over the tent. Only the muted sound of revellers outside fills the space.
“…you totally would though.”
Sirius grins.
After picking through Sirius’ mountain of Irish merch (apparently, he’d just grabbed the first seller he saw and cleaned them out) it becomes evident that he, somehow, didn’t get Omnioculars.
“Get enough for all of us.” Sirius drops a small pouch of galleons in Harry’s extended hand. “It’s gonna be difficult to tell what’s going on without them.”
Harry nods seriously, which is difficult considering Sirius is wearing a large, green pointy hat with dancing shamrocks. “On my honour, it shall be done.”
They salute each other. Sirius accidentally knocks his hat to the floor. Dean snickers. Remus smiles fondly from behind his cup of tea.
“C’mon!” Harry drags Dean outside, back into the chaos, immediately almost getting trampled by a crowd of Irish fans. They dodge out of the way at the last second, waving off the apologies, and then make sure to disappear into the crowd when one of them appears to recognise Harry.
None of that, thank you.
After securing four Omnioculars, they aimlessly wander the campgrounds instead of returning to the tent. They run into several of their schoolmates, but none that they’re all that interested in chatting with, so they keep moving.
They stop momentarily at the Weasley campsite to greet the twins and Ron—who Harry is friendlier with than in first year, but nothing like in his original dimension—and Harry does his best to ignore Ginny’s starry-eyed glances.
While Harry remains fond of the Weasley family as a whole, it’s more due to who they are here, not what they meant to him once upon a time. That Weasley family feel more like a dream and have for years now.
After a cuppa, Harry and Dean say their goodbyes and keep moving, and when it’s nearing noon, they’ve completed a full circuit of the campgrounds. Stomachs growling, they head back to the tent the opposite direction from where they first set off.
Which is, of course, when they finally stumble upon the Malfoy tent.
Harry could smack himself in the face for his own stupidity.
There are no Malfoys about, but the giant, honking family crest on the tent flap (on a tent that looks more like a mansion even on the outside) leaves no doubt who it belongs to.
So, as any reasonable teenager would, Harry cups his hands around his mouth and shouts Draco’s name.
It doesn’t take long before the tent flap gapes open, and the whirlwind that is his best friend crashes into him.
Laughing, Harry wraps his arms around Draco.
(Who smells like sunshine and cinnamon and something so Draco that Harry can’t help but inhale deeply.)
“Harry! Finally, Cousin Sirius said you went to buy Omnioculars ages ago when I went to find you! Where have you been!? Hi, Dean!”
“Heya, Draco,” Dean replies, grinning widely when Draco slowly loosens his grip around Harry’s neck and steps back. “Good to see you.”
They hug too, but less intensely, and Harry immediately shoves down his own pleased reaction because that’s ridiculous.
(Okay, so maybe he has a teeny tiny insignificant crush on his best friend. Whatever. It’s fine. Harmless! It’s not like he’ll ever act on it. That’d be weird. Right? Right.)
“We just toured the grounds really,” Harry says, then jingles the little bag with Omnioculars in Draco’s face. “And bought these.”
“Oh?” Draco peeks inside the bag, nodding approvingly at what he finds. “Good choice, I got the same ones—that rewind feature is gonna be epic.”
Knowing what he does about the match—regardless of whether it’ll end up the same or not—Harry eagerly agrees. “Can’t wait to see what Krum does!”
“Krum? What about Lynch?” Dean sounds as if Harry has just declared his undying love for Voldemort.
“Lynch is good, don’t get me wrong, but he isn’t on Krum’s level,” Harry says, and Draco nods solemnly next to him.
“The Bulgarian team is kind of rubbish, to be honest.” Draco shrugs. “Sure, they’ve made it this far, but if they win—and that’s a big if—it’ll be all because of Krum.”
Harry gestures toward his best friend and nods furiously. “Exactly!”
The smile he receives from Draco in return is blinding and warms him from the inside out.
(Because apparently that's a thing now. Because why not complicate things for himself?)
Dean makes a disgruntled, but amused sound. “You’re the Quidditch experts, I guess.”
“It’s not that we’re experts—”
“Yes,” Draco interjects smugly, “yes, we are.”
Harry rolls his eyes. “Sure, two years on a house Quidditch team doth experts make.”
In second year, Harry had easily secured the Seeker spot on the Hufflepuff team, with Draco joining as a Chaser.
“Doth?” Draco echoes, grinning. “Look at you, Harry, using your big words for once.”
Harry flicks him loosely on the forehead. Draco winces despite Harry not putting any sort of strength behind it and pouts, rubbing at the spot.
“Hey, ow?”
“Don’t be a baby. Is Theo here?”
(Daphne had already told them in no uncertain terms she had no intention of attending the event, and she'd talked Hermione into coming over to her house instead of tagging along with the boys.)
Draco’s expression sobers and he shakes his head. “No. His dad didn’t want to give him permission. Mother tried talking to him, and when that failed even Father gave it a go, but…” He trails off on a shrug.
Harry sighs, deflating slightly. He still has no idea how to deal with the fact that Theo’s dad is such an arsehole. The best he’s been able to do—other than earnestly offer Theo a place to stay, which had been laughed away—is make Sirius and Remus aware that not everything is as it should be at Theo’s, and he knows Sirius has spoken to Theo several times over the years, offering a listening ear and someone to talk to should he need it.
Still, though. “That sucks. I hate that he has to miss this because his dad is a wanker.”
“He is a wanker,” Draco agrees, scowling. It isn’t the first time they’ve had this same agreement. “But we’ll get Theo some merchandise and Mother promised to record the game on her Omnioculars for him, so he won’t be completely out of the loop, at least.”
“Speaking about me instead of to me, Draco?” Narcissa steps out of the tent, sunlight making her pale blond hair glint golden. She’s smiling, eyes crinkling at the corners when she sees Harry and Dean. “Hello, boys.”
“Good day, Mrs Malfoy.” Harry bows over her extended hand. Dean does his best to follow suit, having witnessed the greeting a couple of times by now. “How lovely to see you.”
“I believe I have told you several times by now to please, call me Narcissa,” she tuts, mildly admonishing. “We are family, are we not?”
(Yeah, that’s a weird one to wrap his head around. He still hasn’t, to be honest. But in all fairness, neither has Lucius Malfoy, which he makes abundantly clear whenever they’re in the same room.)
“Right,” Harry agrees, then adds, “Narcissa.”
She nods, pleased. “We were just about to have lunch; will you join us?”
“We should probably—”
“Sirius and Remus should be here any minute as well.”
Harry grins. “Then how could we possibly refuse such a generous offer?”
Dean smothers a laugh in the crook of his arm.
Draco rolls his eyes.
The purple carpeted stairs up to their seats seem endless. When the crowd lulls to a halt somewhere midway up, their group gratefully seize the opportunity for a breather.
As if it’s an orchestrated ambush, Harry suddenly finds himself shaking hands with a beaming Cornelius Fudge and being introduced to the Bulgarian Minister for Magic in the middle of the stairs, blocking the path completely.
“Sir, it’s very nice to meet you both,” Harry says, ignoring the Bulgarian Minister’s frantic babbling and pointing at his scar, “but I think we’re holding up everyone else—”
“Nonsense! The line hasn’t moved for a while now,” Fudge chortles, waving an unconcerned hand.
“Minister, how do you do?” Lucius Malfoy suddenly pipes up, the first words he’s willingly spoken all afternoon.
“Mr Malfoy, hello, hello!”
“Have you met my wife, Narcissa? And this is our son, Draco.” Lucius’ hand comes down onto Draco’s shoulder in a proprietary way that makes Harry’s nose involuntarily wrinkle.
“Ah, yes, of course, how do you do?”
Another round of introductions is conducted with everyone standing on different levels of the stairs, and Harry is baffled that people around them aren’t complaining about the hold-up.
“Oh, and here’s the man of the hour,” Fudge eventually chortles, waving another man up the steps.
It takes Harry a moment, but he eventually recognises the Head of Magical Games and Sports—Ludo Bagman. He is far more subdued than Harry can remember ever seeing him, none of his counterpart's flair or rambuctious aura.
Maybe this one doesn't have a gambling problem? Or maybe he has an even bigger one?
“Hello,” Bagman says with a small smile that doesn’t reach his vacant eyes. “Minister, I do believe we need to keep moving; I am commentating, after all.”
Harry frowns. Thankfully, Bagman’s comment is the one that finally manages to disperse the small crowd, and everyone keeps going their separate ways, with the Malfoys heading up to the Minister’s box with Fudge, the Bulgarian Minister and Bagman.
“Finally,” Sirius groans, echoing Harry’s thoughts, when they manage to duck into their own part of the stands.
The box is nice and empty so far, with plenty of comfortable seats facing the golden-hued stadium. They’re nearly at the top, and when both Harry and Dean exclaim over the great seats, Sirius’ annoyance evaporates, replaced with a similar look of delight.
“We’re awfully high up,” Remus comments, a hint of nervousness to his voice as he carefully glances wide-eyed over the edge. “Are you sure it’s safe?”
“Perfectly,” Sirius assures him with a quick clap on his back.
Their box eventually begins to fill up with people Harry doesn’t recognise, and fortunately, they are all too excited about the impending match to recognise him.
They entertain themselves with watching the billboards and the crowd using their Omnioculars, until a loud voice rings out across the stadium.
“Ladies and gentlemen… welcome! Welcome to the final of the four hundred and twenty-second Quidditch World Cup!”
Harry whoops and cheers and claps along with the rest of the spectators.
The only thing that could have made this experience any better would have been to share it with his best friend. But at least Draco is here, close by, and they’ll be able to see each other after the game.
“And now, without further ado, allow me to introduce… the Bulgarian Team Mascots!”
Krum catches the Snitch after two separate Wronski Feints, both of which the Irish Seeker fell for, hook line and sinker, straight into the ground.
Ireland still wins, though.
“We should have let him place that bet,” Sirius mutters to Remus out the corner of his mouth.
Remus just laughs.
Late that night, tucked into bed in his own room of the tent, Harry yawns widely and idly reflects that the day had been an extraordinary one as he burrows further into his pillow.
Then the screaming starts.