Quidditch
“Snape just told me, we got the times I wanted,” Ginny flopped down next to a group of sixth-years at the Slytherin table during lunch, “apparently we are the only team that have made a request to book.”
Bletchley just gave her a high five as an answer without breaking his focus from the fifth-year girl he was flirting with. “Nice, Gin!” Adrian said as he looked up from his potion book to smile at her.
“Excuse me?” Montague spoke up from Bletchley’s side.
Ginny gave him her most innocent smile, “Yeah, I figured we should get an advantage by keeping up the training for next year’s Cup!”
“And just who do you think you are that can decide anything?” Montague voice was cold, she had anticipated this reaction though and was ready.
“Someone had to do it, and Professor Snape seemed to be ok with it.”
“You little scrubber, as if anyone would take you seriously.”
Ginny managed to keep from flinching at the insult. Now they had the attention of the whole table, or at least it felt like it. She did not like to flee from a battle but she did not want to force the other guys to pick a side – she would not risk any of them backing out from the team. Standing up to walk up to her friends she tried to keep her mind empty as she pretended not to have heard and just gave a cool smile “I have to go tell the others. First practice is tomorrow Thursday, seven o’clock sharp – don’t be late guys.”
The next day Ginny was down at the quidditch pitch a good hour an hour before practise began. She was more nervous than ever. Even more than for the try-out the year before. Had she taken on more than she could chew?
Mentally she went through the plan for the practise. Warming up by some laps before getting into the game by a time-limited pick-up game. She had prepared a couple of seeker exercises as well as a few for the beaters together with Aiden the night before. For the chasers she wanted to get a first try at testing out White’s Wheeze that she had found during the summer. Ginny thought to herself that Alex would appreciate the history of it afterwards. Hopefully it would get some energy to her, she had seemed far away since the summer. Still just being on in the air always brought out Alex’ extrovert side. Then some basic drills before ending with a small game. It should be easy enough. She just hoped that the team would show. Malfoy had not given a her an answer, just shrugged, though she had seen him talking to Montague the night before which did not bode well. Davies had made up for it in enthusiasm though, practically jumping with joy at the prospect of getting back on his broom. Living in a muggle suburb it did not sound as if he had had any chances to fly during the summer.
“Ginny!” It was Aiden with his dormmate Jack Samuels, the reserve-keeper, and fifth-year beater-colleague Anthony O’Flathery in tow. Ginny waved back to the boys, giving them a grin filled with self-confident that she did not really feel on the inside. After them Alex showed up with a bouncing Ethan Davies, who was clutching what looked like a brand new Cleansweep Ten. Ginny felt her stomach do the all too familiar turn of pure envy. By great effort she managed to hide it though, and greeted the younger boy with the same self-confident smile that she had given the others.
“Hey,” a soft voice said next to her, “I’m sorry it took so long, Ethan had lost his glasses again,” Alex had come up to her. Ginny felt her hand touching her shoulder fleetingly and instantly felt better. Filled with a more authentic self-confident Ginny turned to the small crowd of Slytherins gathered on the pitch. Counting to a full dozen Ginny realized with a triumphant feeling that everyone except Montague had showed up from the remains of last year’s team.
“Nice to see you all, I was thinking to fly the Troll before doing a ten minutes warm-up-game. The player who first catch their counterpart gets to choose one of the teammates for the warm-up-game. Pair up!” Before she even had finished the sentence the first players were up in the air, guess she was not the only one eager to get back on a broom.
“Guess it is you and me then,” Alex smiled at her, the first true smile Ginny had seen from her since before the summer, mounting her broom, “catch you soon!”
Ginny straddled her own broom as the last person in the team and flew upwards to the opposite side than Alex had. The rules of Troll were straight-forward, start on each side of the pitch, fly in the same direction – the person catching up wins. When all players were in their positions Ginny pulled up the whistle that Flint had sent her, together with the drills and practise plans that she had asked for, and blew it. Ginny felt the wind in her hair as she laid straight against the broom. This was life. One lap, two, she passed a couple of her teammates, looking back she could see Alex gaining on her. One side of her wanted to blame the broom but the other side of her knew that Alex would beat her in this kind of competition even if she was on an old Oakshaft. She could only press everything she had and hope against hope that one of the others would catch their pray first. Though they might be to even paired up. On her eleventh lap she felt a teasing tug in her braid and rolled around on her broom to glare at her best friend before blatching her.
“You should have known you were chanceless,” Alex said matter-of-factly as if she was not fighting to stay stable on her broom after the hit, “blow that whistle now and admit defeat!” Ginny did.
“Weasley!” Bletchley called, “did I misunderstand the rules when I tried to catch O’Flathery before he got me?”
“What? No?” Ginny realized her mistake directly after she spoke the words.
“Soooo, then you actua-”
“Shut it Bletchley!” Ginny cut him off, wise of experience knew to cut him off as early as possible.
“Or what, are you going to give me laps little miss Captain?” Bletchley smirked at her.
“What if I am?” Could she even? She was not really Captain, was she? What would she do if she tried to make any of them run laps and they said no? Beg?
“Ouch!” Ginny yelped; Aiden soared by grinning at her after giving her a surprise tackle that had sent her spinning almost a full round around the broom before she got it back under control.
“Weasley, you do realize that you giving anyone laps for antagonizing and making jokes on the captain’s expense would be the definition of hypocrisy after last year?” Ginny laughed back; he had a point. And gave her an easy out while turning Bletchley’s taunt into him acknowledging her as captain in front of everyone. Between Aiden and Alex this almost-captain stuff might be possible.
“Alert the Prophet! Lestrange said something true!” Bletchley turned his smirk towards Aiden who flipped him off.
“Adrian! Looks like you are on my team, Cassius gets to endure Gin!” Alex ignored the bantering of her teammates and called out to Pucey who gave her a thumb up.
Ginny rolled her eyes and called back, “Your loss!” before taking a look around at their teammates, “Samuels, Derrick and Bole, you can join those tossers. Malfoy, Davies – come down here, I got some drills for you to start on.” Ginny gave the seekers their instructions before they shot up in the air up above their teammates who was preparing for the warm-up-game.
Warrington came up next to her, “I think he would have”.
Ginny looked questioning on her teammate.
“Run those laps. If you asked,” Warrington added before shooting up towards Bletchley, Lestrange and O’Flathery who had gathered around the eastern goal posts. Ginny grabbed the Quaffle before following. Everyone, including herself it seemed, always underestimated Warrington’s intellect just because he was silent and built like a small mountain. All up in the air, Ginny flipped her wand starting a ten-minutes-timer and let the bludgers out before blowing the whistle.
Adrian was still easily the best chaser on the pitch, Ginny had to admit. He made it look like a children’s play the way he outflew the well-placed bludgers and handled the Quaffle. Nevertheless, Ginny and Warrington’s experience of playing together almost every practise last year made up for Pucey’s superior skills and made the chasers evenly matched. The person having improved the most during the summer though, Ginny realized, was Aiden. She felt almost relieved that she did not have any games this year to pick a starting team for, he was easily better than both Derrick and Bole – and she could not image the seventh-years handling that gracefully.
Effortlessly lobbing their fourth Quaffle past Samuels, Ginny started to speed back to get ready for defence when she heard a scream far above her. Davies was dangling from his broom by his arms. “Merlin’s pants, Malfoy?!” Ginny speeded against her classmate to help him up. Malfoy was hovering a few yards away smirking. “Ethan, what happened?” Ginny asked as she was close enough to get Davies back on the broom.
The younger boy shrugged, “we were just messing around. Sorry, we’ll keep to the drills.” Ginny did not really believe him but left the seekers to get down to the game again.
“Draco blagged him,” Alex whispered furiously to Ginny when she got close enough. Ginny nodded, she had guessed something like that, but did not know what to do. Especially since Davies was playing it off as a joke. The game went on a couple more minute before the timer erupted into a small firework, signalling that the time was up.
“Good job everyone!” Ginny started.
“Aren’t you going to acknowledge that Miles made it into a winning team?” Adrian smiled innocently at his classmate.
“Miss Captain, are you going to let him deride me?!” Bletchley asked mock-indignant.
“Eh, yes? Spares me the trouble!” Ginny rolled her eyes, one could not believe this was NEWT-students, before continuing. “Chasers, I want us to try the White’s Wheeze. Bletchley, Samuels – I’m thinking you can take turns playing defensive chaser with one of us so we can go three-on-three?” Hearing no protests Ginny continuing with suggesting drills for the four beaters to try out. Aiden knew every one of them of course – after having helped her to come up with which to go for and written quite a few of them, but she was not sure how the seventh-years would take it if he went over them in command, they probably had a hard enough time with her.
After half an hour she blew the whistle, gave the seekers and beaters new suggestions on what to practise before she changed to practise feints with the chasers and keepers. Mostly they practised some that Flint used to drill into them last year, pieced out with some new ones she seen at the World Cup and some Adrian had come up with during the summer and shared with her earlier in the week. Between them Ginny felt content that they could figure most of the technique out. Suddenly Alex grabbed her arm to get attention, “Look!”, Ginny looked up. Something was going on with Malfoy and Davies again. Ginny flew towards them, getting close enough to hear the end of the yelling.
“As if I would ever listen to a filthy little Mudblood spawn!” Ginny heard Alex gasp behind her through her own shock. Yes, she had heard from Ron that Draco had called Hermione that awful word, but she had never heard it herself. Her anger bubbled up and she felt her hand go towards her wand.
“No,” Alex whispered, “not like that.” She was right of course, if Ginny wanted to be Captain, she had to deal with this without going into a wand fight.
“Malfoy!” Both seekers turned against her, Davies bright red in the face – hard to tell if he was blushing or just furious – and with a haunted look in his eyes. Malfoy had his trademark smirk on, one she never really had had so maliciously directed towards herself. “Get down on the ground and start running.”
Malfoy snorted, “As if.”
“Either than or you get of the pitch, I won’t have any blood slurs on my pitch.”
“Your pitch?”
“My pitch.” She thought she managed to keep her voice low and even. She really was not as sure of herself as she tried to sound. The team had gathered around them and she tried to not look at anyone but Malfoy as she fixed her gaze on him and spoke as even and cold as she could. “It is really simple. You either do as I say, or you get out of here.”
The silence around them was deafening. It felt as eons of time had passed when he finally spook up.
“Not as I would want to play with Blood Traitors and their likes anyway, Montague was right.”
Ginny watched him silently as he submerged, jumped of the broom, and left the arena without a backward glance. She felt as if her whole body was shaking. Only Alex’ hand on her arm and the expression of shock on Ethan’s face gave her the strength to speak again. “What are you looking at? Back to the drills!” Amazingly everyone did as she said.
The atmosphere was different the rest of the practise. Kind of subdued Ginny thought that the jokes from before were as if blown away. They did the drills without questioning though, which, Ginny had to admit, was more than she had dared to hope for. On the other hand, she had not thought she would scare a player away halfway through first practise.