Summer with Siri: Quidditch

*** Black Manor

"Hello Harry."

Harry looked up to see his nervous looking godfather.

Sirius Black had only partially regained his roguish handsome look. He still retained it, but the years in Azkaban had seriously taken a toll on him. He was no longer quite the man who Harry had seen in Hagrid's album.

"Hello Sirius." Harry nodded to the ex-convict.

"I… uh… I see you've met grandfather." Sirius finished lamely.

Harry nodded and smiled.

"Yes, Lord Black teaches at Hogwarts and tutors me personally along with my friend Hermione."

Sirius grinned, "Well it's no time to be studying now, let's get you on a broom!" Sirius exclaimed loudly.

Harry smiled, "I play for the Gryffindor Quidditch Team."

Sirius grinned widely, "Ah! Chaser?"

"Seeker." Harry corrected.

Sirius looked him up and down, "You have the build for it." He admitted and then grinned proudly, "Only your second year and already in the team! That's even quicker than your father, he got on in his third year."

Harry smirked slightly.

"I got onto the team in my first year."

Sirius' jaw dropped, "But you're the youngest in like a hundred years! Sweet merlin, we have to get you on an amateur team."

Harry looked slightly puzzled, "Amateur team?"

"You didn't think that Hogwarts is all the Quidditch that under 18s play, did you? There's lots of amateur leagues, In Britain there's the British Amateur League, which has 8 clubs. The top two get to compete in the European Amateur League." Sirius explained.

Harry looked excited, "Oh, what's the minimum age, and when are the try-outs."

"Minimum age is 12, you just about make the cut, though players don't usually get on until they're 14 or 15. However, the try-outs for different teams are at different times but most teams usually do their pickings in the first week or two of summer to try and pull in the new talent, which is mostly from a few of the smaller schools that have better sports programs than Hogwarts, though a couple players from good 'ol Hoggy usually get in too."

Harry nodded, "Do you think you could get me a list of the teams that have try-outs?"

"You betcha kiddo!" Sirius grinned.

Harry found Sirius to be a fun-loving person, who brought out the enthusiastic part of him.

Sirius in turn found Harry to be almost the model godson… almost.

"You don't prank enough!" Sirius exclaimed after listening to Harry talk about his life.

*** Next day, Black Manor

Arcturus had him wake up at the normal time and Harry did his physical exercises while admiring the Black estate then moved on to battling Arcturus.

Harry did possibly better than he ever had before, physically pushing Arcturus on the back foot for a short period of time with some furious spell-casting with a shield-piercer following up, that forced Arcturus to generate a huge amount of elemental magic to pull himself out of the tight situation and gave Harry time to push him again with his sword as well.

Arcturus ended it with a huge wave of water that was simply too powerful for Harry to dispel and washed him against the wall where he slumped, exhausted while Arcturus merely looked like he'd barely broken a sweat.

As Harry got up slowly, panting hard, he saw his Godfather with his jaw on the floor.

"Wow!" Sirius said awed.

"Good Morning Sirius!" Harry said cheerfully as he chugged a pepper-up.

"Hey Prongslet." Sirius responded, still slightly awed by his godson's performance in the duel.

"Did you get the try-out times?" Harry asked conversationally.

"Ah, yes." Sirius responded, taking out a few papers from his pockets, it seemed that he had got a full information booklet for the British Amateur League.

Harry read through the thing. It seemed that the teams were just subsidies of the British Major League teams and the first three teams to have try-outs were the Caerphilly Catapults, the Chudley Cannons and the Pride of Portree.

"I'll take you for the try-outs!" Sirius proclaimed.

*** Caerphilly Catapults home ground

"Hello, prospectives! I am the assistant team manager for the Catapults, and I'm in-charge of our junior team entirely. Since there's so many of you, we'll divide you into positions and have you perform individually against our current junior first picks." A tall broad man, who Harry knew to be Assistant Team Manager Cromwell said, smiling kindly at the nervous children standing in front of him, aging from 13 to 17.

Harry followed the small line of people trying out for seeker and met the Catapults' junior seeker, something Harris, Harry vaguely remembered.

"Heyo guys, last year, I was the opening seeker, I've dropped out of Quidditch for my NEWTs but 'ol Cromwell convinced me to hold tryouts for you kiddos, we'll be picking three seekers, opener, sub and a third in case of injury, who will be on call in case of emergencies but not officially training with the club." He announced, then held up a snitch, "Whoever catches this first, gets ten points on the board."

Harry kicked off into the air, he had 13 competitors, including the likes of Cedric Diggory and Cho Chang from Hogwarts, who Harry remembered as the seekers for Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff.

Both were good but not as good as Harry.

Harry whizzed around the field, methodically searching for the snitch while keeping an eye on the other players.

Finally spotting a glint of gold, Harry dropped into a ridiculously fast nose-dive and plucked the snitch out of the air, within 15 seconds of finding the elusive golden ball.

The exercise was repeated four more times, out of which Harry caught the snitch twice more, with Diggory and a guy called something Thomson picking up one each, leaving Harry leading the points with 30 while the other two had 10 each.

"For the next activity, you will each go through a course individually while 50 bludgers are hit at you, the number of bludgers that you dodge is the number you get, you can get up to 50 points on this.

In this activity, several people were knocked out by not being able to dodge and getting hit in the head almost immediately, leaving about 5 people contesting.

Harry himself managed a respectable 43, losing out to Thomson who snagged 45 while Diggory lagged behind the two at 29 but Chang caught up a bit by dodging 41 times.

"Very Well, the last activity involves speed racing, whoever makes it through the obstacle course first gets 50 points, second gets 40, third gets 30 and so on."

Harry excelled again, loving the opportunity to speed fast and do stunts, rolling over to avoid obstacles and taking the dives dangerously close to the ground, coming in first, beating out Diggory by about 7 seconds.

Finally, the players were left to freshen up while the picks were decided.

Finally Cromwell came out and announced the picks, since most of the main players had been retained from the previous year, only two people were selected for most posts except seeker.

"For first seeker, we pick Harry James Potter." Cromwell announced smiling.

"For second seeker pick, we take Cedric Diggory, and for emergency seeker, we pick Donald Thomson."

*** End of Chapter.