The Semi-Final Match
The English national team stepped onto the Quidditch pitch located in the flat plains of northern Texas for their first practice on American soil, and immediately had questions.
“Where, uh, where are the stands?” asked Ricky Webster, glancing around the wide-open area. Around the Quidditch pitch itself was a patchwork of green and gold fields spreading out as far as the eye could see. Piles of clouds hung low on the far-off horizon like distant mountains. “Where will the audience watch us play?”
“Do they let people watch the matches here?” Leonard Cadwallader’s jaw was hanging open.
“What’s all that rubbish floating about?” Dent squinted at tiny white particles that drifted through the air, encircling the pitch like snow, yet never entering the boundaries.
Seymour Mulciber sighed. He’d accompanied the team to the pitch to answer all these questions, having just met with the American team liaison.
“The stands were put below ground in the 1840s when a tornado destroyed the entire pitch,” explained Mulciber. “On match days they’re charmed to rise up and float around. The ‘rubbish’ are some sort of magical insect that are related to wood lice but native to here, seeing as there’s no trees. Muggles think they’re pollen. Any Muggle that comes near here has an allergic reaction and immediately turns back. Saves them from having to constantly redo protection enchantments around the place.”
“Neat,” said all three Pottingers.
“Ugh,” Natalie groaned and sat on the ground, hugging her broom to her chest. They had arrived in the U.S. last night and she was still not used to the time difference. “Can we just practice or are there any more stupid questions?”
Dent made an offended noise. “Malfoy, I told you to take a Pepper-Up Potion-”
“I had two!” she glared at him through swollen eyes. “They didn’t work.”
“Maybe you’re allergic to the pollen like the Muggles,” said Ricky with a cheeky grin.
Next thing they all knew, Natalie had tossed aside her broom and pounced on Ricky, knocking him to the ground and holding him in a headlock.
“TAKE THAT BACK YOU BLOODY BASTARD!”
“Malfoy!” Dent dropped his broom and lunged at his teammates, trying to pull Natalie away from Webster, whose face was starting to turn purple.
“I. . . joking. . . !” wheezed Ricky, his Beater’s biceps useless with her punishing grip around his throat.
“IT WASN’T FUNNY!” screamed Natalie, trying to both wriggle away from Dent and keep her hold on Ricky. “DON’T COMPARE ME TO MUGGLES!”
There was a bang, and the three players shot apart, landing unharmed on the pitch. Mulciber pointed his wand at each player on the team in turn.
“I suppose it’s a good thing the Ministry is sending a few Aurors to supervise your practice,” he announced, “seeing as you’re liable to kill each other at any moment.”
“Well, that’s just Malfoy,” said one of the Pottingers.
“Shut up, Ted!” shouted Natalie. She climbed to her feet and snatched up her broom, slung herself onto it and shot off into the air. The others watched her rise into the sky until she was just a speck floating far above the opposing goal hoops.
“She got my name right,” said Ted Pottinger, who looked delighted.
“Glad one good thing has happened since you lot have got here,” said Mulciber and he shot a look at the remaining players on the ground. “Aurors should be here shortly. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got an important meeting with Matt Lament about the location of the Quidditch Cup Final. If you’d like to ever find out what we’ll be meeting about, I suggest you get to practice.”
The team had thirteen days before the Semi-Final match. With every passing day, their demeanor grew more and more grave, until it was the night before the match and not a single joke was told between them. They ate dinner together in silence that night. All knew tomorrow decided whether their Quidditch dreams came true or not. One by one, they had drifted off to bed.
Natalie lay in bed staring at the bull’s horns adorning the wall in her room. The team was staying in an old ranch a ways away from the pitch. It had been magically expanded to accommodate them. They each had their own spacious room, though spent the most time in the shared common area of the ranch — or the swimming pool.
Waving her wand, the time blinked at her in the darkness: a few minutes past midnight. The match was at noon tomorrow. She sighed and stared at the bull’s horns until they aggravated her. She flicked her wand at them and they vanished.
The wall now looked too bare, which just angered her more.
“Oh, bloody hell,” she said to herself, swinging out of bed and pulling on the bathrobe that looked like their game robes. Stuffing her wand into the pocket, she quietly stepped out of the room. Getting accustomed to the time difference was child’s play compared to falling asleep the night before the Semi-Final match.
Padding barefoot down the hall, she entered the living room area the team shared and found she was not the only one unable to sleep. Dent sat rigid on the couch, wearing the same bathrobe she did, staring into the last few embers of the fire. A full cup of tea in his hands, evidently forgotten.
“What happened to getting a good night's sleep before the match?” she asked, walking over to the fire and picking up the kettle hanging above it. She gave the captain a curious look as she conjured a cup and poured herself some tea.
“It’s different,” he said, showing no surprise that she also couldn’t sleep.
She dropped onto the floor beside the fireplace and leaned against the bricks. The fire flared up, now more than dying embers. “Because it’s the Semi-Final.”
“Yeah,” he said, his watery gaze not moving from the fire.
They remained in silence for a long time. Natalie slowly sipped tea and studied the shadows from the fire playing on the stones of the floor.
“Hey, Dent,” she finally said.
His eyes flicked over to look at her for the first time. “Malfoy.”
“D’you. . . d’you think any of our matches have been. . . fixed?”
He didn’t answer until she set her empty teacup down and leaned forward. “Dent. . . .”
“No,” he said, meeting her gaze. She read truthfulness within his pale eyes.
“No,” she repeated slowly.
“No,” he said firmly. “I’ve thought about it plenty, what with you being the Minister’s niece and all. Do I think there are a lot of gambles on us? Definitely. But I don’t think our matches have been fixed. Jack Lament wouldn’t have bothered putting together this. . . this mental team just for matches to be fixed.”
Natalie laughed. “I’ve no idea how we work as a team. I punched you in the face our very first practice and if I had a Sickle for everytime Ricky pissed me off, I’d have another fortune from that alone.”
“Yet we work,” said Dent in a fond voice. “We’re a good team made of good players. That’s how we got here.”
“Yeah. . . I guess I’ll miss it when this is all over. Whether it’s tomorrow or August.”
“You’re sappy tonight.”
“You were crying before I came in here.”
Dent glared. “How’d you know that?”
“Just knew.”
He sighed. “Well, most of us will be stuck together after this is over.”
“What?” Natalie stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“Me, you, Caddy, Ricky,” said Dent with a grin. “We all signed contracts to go on to play for the Tornadoes after this train ride — even if it’s felt more like a train wreck sometimes.”
Natalie leaned her head against the bricks and shot him a devilish grin. “You’re stuck with me.”
“I’d like to be stuck with you and also have a World Cup under my belt.”
A sense of gravitas returned between them and they lapsed into silence.
“Hey, Malfoy.”
“Dent.”
“Weather might be rough tomorrow. You gonna be up for that?”
She grinned. “Of course.”
The weather did threaten to turn rough the next day. The sky was an ominous green and violent purple clouds marched along the horizon when the team arrived at the pitch for the match. A stillness seemed to hang in the air, making time itself sluggish.
“Oh good, we’ve an audience,” was the first thing Ricky said when they saw that the stands, indeed, had risen above ground for the match and were steadily filling with hundreds of fans.
“Focus,” warned Dent as they were ushered into their team locker room (which was also underground) by a few American Aurors wearing large cowboy hats.
“I want one,” Ricky said under his breath, eyeing the hats and making Natalie slap a hand over her mouth to prevent herself from laughing. She and Dent had finally gone to bed at three in the morning, when they had started brainstorming countries they would flee to in the event they lost the match. Once they both concluded that they would feel obligated to kill themselves if they lost, they called it quits and got whatever sleep they could. Which had not been much for her. She had mostly just laid in bed, trying to visualize every possible scenario for how she could catch the Snitch today.
The team dressed in silence. Natalie almost left her robes untucked around her wrist guards, recalling how the Snitch had gotten stuck in her sleeve during the Portugal match. Dent had seen her internally debating this and came over to tuck her sleeves in for her with a wave of his wand.
“Something that stupid isn’t going to happen this time,” he snapped.
She grumbled, “you never know.”
“You’ve a better chance of getting struck by lightning.”
“Pretty high chance of that,” she said with a grin, “you saw the clouds coming in.”
“There’s an enchantment around the pitch, it’s impervious to weather.”
“Oh, damn,” she muttered, slipping past him and beginning to pace around the room; underground was the last place she wanted to be at the moment. She could hear the roar of the crowd above, which seemed to grow louder as time passed. The team watched her pace as they sat silently in their stalls, fiddling with their broomsticks and adjusting their robes.
After a few minutes of this, Jack Lament stepped into the room, interrupting her pacing and commanding their attention with a clap of his hands. “Right, so match is delayed for a few minutes-”
“What?” exclaimed Dent, “why?”
“I was getting to that — a funnel cloud was spotted north of here. They want to wait to see if it drops nearby or not.”
“What the fuck is a funnel cloud?” asked Ricky Webster, tapping his bat against his broom. “And if I’d have known the match would be delayed-”
“The start of a tornado,” Jack said loudly and Natalie laughed.
“I thought the pitch was enchanted to be impervious to weather,” she said with a look at Dent.
“The pitch is, not the surrounding area,” said Jack. He sounded incredibly exasperated, with either the team or the Americans he’d been dealing with. “Lots of blokes still arriving for the match are getting caught in the storm.”
“Well,” Natalie sighed, shouldered her broom, and walked past Jack Lament and into the tunnel leading back up to the pitch. “Should be a fun show.”
“Malfoy!” several voices called after her. Outside the dressing room, she found Reginald Harlowe and Bertram Tarold speaking with a group of American Aurors. Two of them had let Harlowe and Tarold try on their cowboy hats. Once they spotted her, they hastily took them off and returned them to the American Aurors.
“Those look good on you lot,” said Natalie as she passed by them.
“Match is delayed, Malfoy!” Harlowe fell into step beside her.
“Yeah, I heard. Something about a tornado.”
“Yeah, so, where are you going? You’re not supposed to-”
“Outside,” she said, pushing on the door leading to the pitch. It swung open and she stepped onto the sidelines of the pitch. Aurors, Mediwizards, and other support staff were swarming the area, behind them were the hordes of reporters, their cameras not yet flashing. Everyone’s attention seemed to be on the sky. Following their gazes, she observed that there was a twisting mass of clouds dropping to the earth just north of the area. A storm raged around it, lightning flashing from cloud to cloud and thunder rumbling, though the roar within the stadium drowned it out.
“You should get back down — oh, bloody hell,” Harlowe shook his head when the rest of the team popped out of the door behind them, Jack Lament panting to keep up. Ricky Webster was wearing one of the American Aurors’ cowboy hats and looked very pleased with himself.
“Blimey,” said Ricky, peering at the growing funnel cloud. He tipped his hat and attempted a twangy American accent. “I do bee-lieve that there’s a tornader.”
Natalie started clapping. “Ricky’s first non-sexual comment, everyone. Thank you, America.”
“Alright,” Dent waved his hands around and snatched the hat from Ricky’s head. “Cut the shit. We’ve still got a match to play.”
“No playing with broken ribs,” called a Mediwizard from the crowd nearby. It was the same Mediwizard from the Portugal match who had tended to Natalie. He was sitting on top of a box full of emergency potions with the Triple I logo stamped on it and was giving her a steely look.
She shot him a sheepish smile as the Triple I logo winked at her. “I promise.”
He did not seem convinced, but Natalie turned away to find Jack Lament.
“When will we start?”
He looked at the funnel cloud, which had rapidly dropped towards the ground and would soon be qualified as a tornado. “They weren’t exactly specific on what their protocols are but hopefully soon.”
“Ugh,” she groaned and let her broomstick fall to the ground, flinging herself down beside it and staring over at the rotating funnel cloud, watching the bolts of lightning jump through the gray wall clouds around it. An unbidden smile appeared on her face. She would have thought it a fabulous sight had it not been delaying the match she had waited so long for. A shiver went through her just thinking about it. This was the match that would determine if they would be heading to the World Cup. . . .
She hadn’t noticed her teammates had all sat around her, just as moody as she was. She glared at the newly formed tornado as reporters started taking photographs of the sitting team — only to be shooed away by a bunch of Aurors.
“Americans are here,” said Dent, tearing her attention away from the storm to spot the opposing team walking out of a door on the other side of the pitch. Like the English, they seemed very annoyed at the weather delay and settled themselves onto the ground to watch and wait.
“We’re twenty minutes past set match start,” said Dent after what felt like three times that. “What’s the bloody hold-up?”
“The crowd is trying to get in through the storm,” said Harlowe. “You mad a lot of blokes wanted to come see you play?”
“No,” said Ricky.
“Yes,” said Natalie.
“When can we start?” demanded Dent.
Jack Lament gestured to where the referee was hurrying towards them. Natalie leapt to her feet and the team did the same, staring at the ref until he reached them.
“We’ve got the all clear,” said the ref with a grin. “Let’s play ball.”
They stared at him, perplexed.
“Let’s what?” asked Dent.
The ref laughed, “let’s start!”
The next several minutes were a blur. The teams lined up. There were announcements. Dent shook hands with the American captain, who was also wearing a cowboy hat. He took it off right after, much to Ricky’s (and, apparently, the audience’s) disappointment. The teams hopped on their brooms and got into position. The balls were released. And the Semi-Final match began.
Next thing Natalie knew, she hovered above the play, eyes darting all over the stadium, searching for a glint of gold against the green pitch or the black stands that had risen into the air and floated around the pitch. The spinning tornado and the continuous flashing of lightning around the area kept catching her eye, but thanks to the audience (and she assumed the enchantments around the area) she could scarcely hear the thunder of the storm. It was the loudest match she had ever played; the crowds screamed, booed, howled, groaned, and shouted every single curse word on the face of the planet in what sounded like half of all existing languages. Sometimes these were accompanied by a player’s name, like when Dent made a nifty save against an American Chaser or when the American Beaters tag-teamed a Bludger and knocked the Quaffle out of the Pottingers’ reach.
The American Seeker was a tiny brunette witch who apparently had a similar tactic as Natalie, and liked to cruise above the match to have a bird’s eye view of everything. They passed each other several times, much to Natalie’s annoyance.
“Hey pretty, storm’s coming this way,” said the American Seeker as they drifted near each other about a half hour into the match. The score was 60-40, England in the lead.
“Is it?” Natalie asked with disinterest, not bothering to look at the other Seeker; it had grown dark from the encroaching storm, reducing visibility so that it was much harder to spot a tiny glint of gold.
“Yeah,” said the Seeker. Natalie tried to recall the American roster Dent had made them memorize. The names and faces floated in front of her eyes until she came to the picture of the dark-haired, dark-eyed Seeker. Her name was Sally Jackson; 28 years old, a graduate of Ilvermorny — Thunderbird house — played in the American pro-league for eight years.
“Do you normally talk to the other Seeker during a match?” she asked. Jackson had come to hover near her and Natalie could feel the other Seeker's sharp gaze scouring her.
“I usually flirt with the other Seeker, but it only really works if the Seeker’s a guy — and speaks English.”
“Unfortunately for you, I’m not a ‘guy’ and I don’t ‘speak English’.”
“You’re English. You’re speaking English, you’ve got a funny accent but it’s still English.”
“No, I’m definitely not speaking English.”
Jackson fell silent, Natalie could feel her bewilderment and grinned to herself.
“You don’t flirt with the other team’s Seeker?” Jackson asked after a moment, following Natalie as she moved to get a different vantage point.
“I usually focus on finding the Snitch,” said Natalie as the U.S. tied the match, to the delight of most of the audience.
“Did you find it yet?”
“Why would I tell you that?” she chanced a look over at Jackson. She was lightly sitting on her broom, staring right at Natalie. Behind her, the tornado loomed incredibly close.
“You were right,” Natalie said, returning to looking for the Snitch as lightning flashed above them, illuminating the entire field below with a stark white light. “The storm is coming this way.”
“A Seeker got struck in one of our earlier matches,” said Jackson, sounding far too amused by this. “We’re in Tornado Alley and it's almost the height of the season. This happens a lot.”
“Struck?”
“By lightning.”
Natalie shot a glance up at the storm. It was bearing down heavily on them now. The tornado started skirting around the audience stands, as if being propelled away by an invisible force. But lightning still flashed in the wall cloud above.
“I thought there were enchantments around the pitch.”
“There are,” said Jackson. “But sometimes they fail if the storm’s too strong and you fly too far. But don’t worry, that moron flew in the wrong direction. The Snitch is always down below. He flew-”
Natalie whipped her head over when Jackson broke off to find the American Seeker gawking upward at something as if astonished. Flinging her own head up, she caught a glimpse of gold before both Seekers were shooting upwards.
Jackson had a slight lead on her, having spotted the gold first. Natalie clenched her teeth and urged her broom onwards, gaining on Jackson when the American Seeker flinched as a loud crack of thunder resounded around them, drowning out the roaring audience below.
The world turned black and gray as they flew higher, lightning their only source of light. Natalie quickly lost sight of the glint of gold and even of Jackson. Muttering under her breath, she slowed, craning her neck to see something — anything.
She heard Jackson mutter somewhere nearby, “I could have sworn I saw-” but a boom of thunder cut her off. It was followed quickly by a spine-tingling scream that had Natalie crouching against her broomstick, shivering as a funny feeling seemed to wrap around her head. The scream sounded far too feral to have come from Jackson. It sliced through the air and lightning forked as if screaming back, accompanied by a howling of thunder.
Trembling with something that didn’t feel like cold, Natalie dropped in the air, eyes scanning the dark masses of clouds. The green of the pitch was just visible below. Jackson’s words rang in her ears. The Snitch is always down below.
Then why had they flown up?
She looked up as lightning flashed, and then down. And she let out a scream that was overpowered by another. The Snitch lazily flapped below her, oblivious to the chaos of the storm above it.
Natalie turned her broom towards it so fast, she almost fell off. Jackson must have spotted the Snitch at the same time. She came barrelling out from Natalie’s left and slammed into her. Grunting, Natalie managed to stay on course as they jostled neck and neck, flinging out elbows and knees to try to slow the advance of the other. Lightning flashed, illuminating the Snitch that would end the match and determine one of the teams who would get to play in the World Cup.
Natalie’s eyes locked in on the Snitch through the darkness. She would catch the goddamn Snitch if she had to throw Jackson off her broom. It seemed to be glowing, beckoning her towards it, begging her to snatch it out of the air. She flung out a hand as it rapidly approached, ready to seal its fate.
And then Jackson seized Natalie’s broom, knocking her off course and forcing her to grab hold of her broom to steady herself.
“What the-” her words were drowned out by thunder that seemed to be everywhere all at once. Natalie jabbed an elbow at Jackson, knocking the other Seeker’s grip off her broom just as they both reached to grab the Snitch — and missed. The tiny ball shot between their hands and rose up, back into the storm.
“Bloody hell,” Natalie swore, shaking free of Jackson and maneuvering her broom back around. The other Seeker remained right behind her as she shot upwards, in pursuit of the fluttering golden ball. It was like a deadly game of cat-and-mouse. The Snitch streaked through the darkness of the storm, buffeted by the winds, always just out of reach as lightning darted around faster than they — and the Snitch — could fly.
With a yell, Sally Jackson rammed against her as she caught pace. Natalie bit her tongue and tightened her grip on her broom, ignoring how bruised she would be from this match. All the American Seeker had done was say stupid things and slam into her.
Natalie swerved, trying to get away from Jackson and following the Snitch as it continued climbing, twirling around in the storm like it hadn’t a care in the world. She supposed it hadn’t. All it had to do was fly about, without a concern for the weather or the fact that visibility was practically zero within the layers of the wall cloud. At least it wasn’t raining. Thunder and lightning danced around them but the rain hadn’t bothered making an appearance yet.
The American Seeker screamed again just as there was a splitting crack of thunder. It seemed Jackson had also done a lot of screaming once they’d flown into the storm. The lungs on that girl. . . .
Jackson followed her again, Natalie rolled on her broom and just missed getting elbowed in the ribs by the American. Lightning illuminated everything for a heartbeat.
Both Seekers let out a scream this time.
The Snitch was right in front of them — shimmering like precious treasure.
And then everything was plunged back into darkness with a shriek of thunder.
Natalie could hear Jackson somewhere to her left, yelling and swearing and flinging her arms out to grapple at where the Snitch had been. She had never been more annoyed by another Seeker during a match, and quite frankly, the American’s actions were giving her a tremendous headache. Some inexplicable impulse forced her to squeeze her eyes shut. Natalie slowly reached out a hand, fingers wide-open as both Jackson and the storm raged around her.
Something cold and hard brushed against her fingers just as there was a deafening whooshing sound that seemed to encircle her, drowning out the howling of Jackson and the rippling of thunder. Lightning illuminated her eyelids a brilliant golden red — she caught a glimpse of every vein that criss-crossed through them like dozens of pathways leading off into the unknown — there was another ear-splitting, feral scream before something heavy hit her from the right, sending her spinning into blackness.