Russia vs England
Eugene Dent paused and took a deep breath before entering the British team locker room. He had just exited the customary captains-referee meeting before their match against Russia.
The Russian captain terrified him. He’d heard things about Vladimir Solokov but nothing had prepared him for how frightening the Russian Seeker and captain was in real life.
He shook his head to get rid of the image of the sharp-eyed, hulking Russian Seeker. His own Seeker would look miniature beside Solokov and Dent sincerely hoped it would not come to a jousting match for the Snitch. To make things worse, they had to come to northern Russia to play the bloody match. They’d been in the country for two weeks now. He was sick of it. They all were. And it was goddamn cold.
But he had a plan. He’d spent days devising it and ensuring it would work. Hell, he even had a Plan B. An actual Plan B. It wasn’t everyday you actually had a Plan B.
Everything had to work out just right.
Dent banged open the team room door and glared around. Everything looked to be in order. He could go ahead with Plan A.
“Malfoy!” he barked at the blonde witch, “stop fidgeting and save your energy for the game!”
Natalie froze before continuing to fidget and squirm. Dent shot a look at Ricky Webster, who winked.
“She needs a good shag,” remarked Webster with a supercilious smirk. “That always calms me down the night before a game.”
“Ricky,” warned Dent and Leonard Cadwallader leaned over in fascination.
“A good shag, you say?” asked Caddy. “Does it actually calm you down?”
“Every time,” bragged Ricky and he looked over at Natalie. “You should’ve come to my room last night, beautiful. You wouldn’t be so bloody nervous today.”
“I have a boyfriend, idiot, how many times do I have to remind you?” she ground her teeth and glared at him. “And you have a girlfriend!”
“A boyfriend who we’ve never seen?” taunted Ricky. “What is he doing this time — still traveling? You can stop lying, beautiful. We all know traveling is code for he broke up with you.”
Natalie leapt to her feet and made to charge across the room at Ricky and that was when Dent stepped in. He hastily wrapped his arms around her and pulled her away from a smug Ricky Webster.
“Let — me — kill — him!” she grunted as he struggled to drag her out.
“You can’t, it’s game time, we gotta beat Russia,” he panted, already sweating from the effort required to wrangle her after him. It felt like he was wrestling a tornado but he managed to get her out onto the field, the rest of the team following at a safe distance.
She stopped trying to murder Ricky when one of the Pottingers shoved her broom into her hands and the match began. The referee blasted his whistle, the teams hopped into the air, and the balls were released. Dent guarded his goalposts with care, studying the arena around them.
It was a closed match, which meant limited tickets had been sold. It was still early in the Cup run and the general public usually did not care about the opening rounds — unless their team won. Tickets that were sold were customarily bought by the other teams to watch their possible competition. Dent thought this was all the better — there would be less distractions from an unruly audience.
His eyes found themselves glued to his Seeker. As he watched her rise through the air, gaining that bird’s eye view she was so fond of, he could feel her burgeoning energy. All the way from his goalposts. He shivered, but a grin slipped onto his face. So far Plan A was on track. . . .
Natalie was going to kill Ricky Webster. Stupid Ricky Webster. Always boasting about his “veela girlfriend” who, if she was actually real, had been cheated on hundreds of times by Team Slut, Ricky Webster.
And you know what? While she was at it, she’d kill Leonard Cadwallader. The bloke was a complete idiot. Like an actual idiot. Stupid, boring “Caddy” as Dent liked to call him-
But speaking of Dent, she’d kill him too. Stupid Dent and his stupid obsession with her and she knew that he knew Ricky infuriated her and yet he hadn’t done anything about it-
“Shit,” she muttered, blinking for a moment as she realized she was hundreds of feet in the air, in the middle of a Quidditch match. An important Quidditch match. A Quidditch match, which, if they lost, they were out of the running for the ultimate prize. A Quidditch match against Russia.
Stupid Russia.
She shook her head and looked around the arena. The Pottinger triplets were dominating at the moment, with Ricky and Caddy doing a fair job at antagonizing the Russian Beaters. Studying the game play, she frowned. She couldn’t seem to find the Russian Seeker.
A feeling behind her darkened her senses and she turned her broom around. The seventh Russian player cruised directly towards her. She stared at the Russian Seeker. He was huge, bulky, and muscled, with dark hair and dark eyes that seemed to bore into her soul.
She blinked, momentarily intrigued, and attempted a Legilimency prod into his mind only to break eye contact immediately. All he was doing was imagining her with her robes off.
Natalie sneered as he flew by — a little too slow for it being the middle of a Quidditch match.
He just raised an eyebrow and said in a thick Russian accent, “you vill lose.”
The statement had her seeing red as she trembled on her broom, her blonde braid started crackling and her skin tingled like a thousand candles were being held to it.
“No, we bloody won’t!” she screamed after him, leaning forward on her broom and shooting around the entire stadium for a quick lap.
Her muscles were alternating between trembling and taut. Her entire being was spinning. First they were playing Russia. And then Ricky had pissed her off. And then Dent hadn’t done anything about it. And then the Russian Seeker had eye-fucked her — and then proceeded to say that they would lose.
And yeah, maybe Ricky was right and if she had a good shag last night she wouldn’t be on the verge of what felt like imminent explosion.
But she hadn’t even seen her bloody boyfriend since she set fire to the basement of her Irish mansion. That had been October first. It was now October thirty-first. Thirty days ago, exactly. It wasn’t that long. . . .
And no, they hadn’t “broken up” or anything. They were busy adults with busy lives.
She was playing for the British national team and had been in cold-as-fuck Russia for the past two weeks. When they weren’t scampering around the globe in pursuit of that ticket to the Cup final, Dent was practicing them from dawn till dusk on the field, off the field, on the field, off the field. Sometimes they all passed out in the locker room together, just to wake up the next morning and do it all over again.
And her uncle, Caractacus Burke, had obviously discovered that he had the most charming wizard to ever walk the earth working for him. Occasionally, he wrote her to gloat about the newest item her boyfriend had managed to wheedle out of a hard-nosed customer for some ridiculously low price, only for Burke to resell it at three times that. He would then proceed to wish her luck on the national team and ask when she would be dropping by the shop for a visit.
It wasn’t like they were normal, average, ordinary young adults with normal, average, ordinary jobs and normal, average, ordinary ambitions who could go home at the end of each normal, average, ordinary day and have a normal, average, ordinary dinner and share the normal, average, ordinary events of the day.
That sounded bloody awful anyway.
“The game, the game,” she whispered to herself as she flew another lap. Her mind howling to itself, her broom felt slippery beneath her, like it wanted to buck her off. She shivered, not just from the cold Russian air.
“Focus,” she hissed — they had to win. If they lost, they were done. If they lost, there would be no shot at winning the Quidditch World Cup. If she blew it all for the team, for the entire country, just because Ricky Webster had pissed her off, she would never forgive herself. All of Britain would never forgive her. And then Ricky Webster would really be dead.
Her face felt wet. She raised a hand to find tears freezing on her cheeks in the frigid wind. Seriously? She was gonna bloody cry over this? Unbelievable.
She squinted as everything seemed to swirl around her. She had to find the Russian Seeker. So long as he hadn’t caught the Snitch, it was still anyone’s game.
He was barrelling towards her again. What the hell? Why was he always coming directly at her? If he was going to undress her with his eyes again, she might hex him. She always kept her wand on her arm during games. It would come in handy one of these days. Maybe that day was today.
Natalie hastily wiped the remaining tears from her eyes. She didn’t want the stupid Russian Seeker to see her crying. He’d probably laugh and say something like “see? Made you cry” in his absurd accent. And then she’d have to hex him. Or maybe punch him. He looked like he deserved a good whack in the face. Her boyfriend would definitely agree with her. . . .
Unnerved by the Russian Seeker’s rapid approach, she pulled her broom up and away from him.
But he followed.
This was the dodgiest Quidditch game she’d ever played. He continued to follow her up into the air, his dark eyes wide and unblinking, looking directly at her. She didn’t know what his strategy was. Sometimes Seekers would tail the other Seeker during a game, but this was bloody mental. He was glaring directly at her as if she was the Snitch-
The Snitch.
The Snitch.
He wasn’t flying towards her. He was flying towards the Snitch. Which had to be right near her-
A flash of gold out of the corner of her eye just as her senses prickled. She lunged for the tiny gold ball, feeling the fluttering of its translucent wings on her fingertips — only to be knocked aside by the heftiness of the Russian Seeker.
She yelped — and he pushed her out of the way as if she weighed nothing, nearly knocking her down to the pitch. She managed to recover her balance on her broom just as the Russian Seeker wrapped his fist around the golden Snitch.