The brunette sighed as she tapped her nail on the desk, glancing quickly at the watch on the thin band around her wrist. Even though she knew it would tell her that the person she was meeting for an interview was more than 20 minutes late, it still caused a twinge of irritation.

Tapping her nail harder as if that would make the time go by faster, she mentally reviewed her questions for the interview. Sports was a new beat for her, but she supposed dating a Quidditch captain made her a prime candidate for the topic. Her mind wandered as she kept tapping, until she felt her nail give a little more than it should.

"Damn it," she muttered, examining the now broken nail. Her roommate had just done them for her on the night they got back to school, so of course one would decide to break right before an interview. Grabbing her wand from near her elbow the girl prodded at the nail, trying to think of a charm that would help repair it, or at least smooth out the now jagged edge of her French tip.

"I can see you're really dedicated to this interview."

Bryony mentally cursed as she heard the drawl of Marcus Flint, but smoothed her face over with a smile as he walked toward the table in a study room of the library.

"Marcus, good to see you. Nice summer?"

The Slytherin Quidditch captain snorted as he took a seat. "Let's be real Clarke, neither of us want to be here, so let's not waste our time on pleasantries."

What a great way to start the season, Bryony thought, trying not to roll her eyes as she got down to business anyway, quickly setting up her annotation quill.

"Marcus Flint, Slytherin Quidditch captain for a third year, Chaser and currently in his eighth year of school." He rolled his eyes but didn't comment as her electric blue eyes tracked the quill, making sure the recording spell was working properly, before turning to the man across from her. "So, last year, the Slytherin team came out with new brooms and a new Seeker, but only got to play Gryffindor during the actual season, when you came home with a loss. What's your plan as you take the field with a still relatively inexperienced team this year?"

"That's utter tosh and you know it," Flint said, leaning forward instantly. "We outplayed that team for every inch of that game and shouldn't have lost. If we would have been able to actually play, we would've flattened all the teams."

"What do you mean you shouldn't have loss?"

His nostrils flared out a bit at Bryony's question which made her smother a smile. "Draco should have seen that damn snitch! It was floating right above his head. Us Chasers were destroying them and had it in the bag."

"Is that something you would chalk up to inexperience of players or lack of experience as a team, since you did swap out your Seeker just weeks before the game?"

"There were some logistical changes made, but that didn't hurt us as a team. It made us better."

She nodded, narrowing her eyes the slightest bit. "So with Draco injured and possibly out for most of the season, what are the plans for the team? Will you be having another tryout before your match with Gryffindor?"

"We will not be having another tryout."

"Meaning the other members of the house won't have a chance to make their case for the team?"

When they walked out of the room almost half an hour later, she could see Flint's shoulders were still tense from her questioning, but she finally let her smile slip out as she hiked her bag on her shoulder and started making her way toward the TowerTimes newsroom.

The witch ran through the interview in her mind as she wandered up the stairs of the Astronomy Tower until she was one level down from the top. She trailed her fingers along a line of constellations that was carved into the wall so subtly that if you didn't know it was there, you might miss it, a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.

Bryony pulled out her wand and tapped out her own personal pattern of the constellations which granted her access to the newsroom: Capricorn for her birthday, Corvus, associated with a raven due to her being a Ravenclaw, and then her personal favorite, Monoceros, which represented the unicorn. The wall separated a moment later, letting her in to the room which was already buzzing as the staff worked to get out their first edition of the year less than a week after classes started.

TowerTimes published on Wednesdays and Sundays every week during the school year, and just on Wednesdays if enough staff stayed at the castle over the holidays. In its third year, the paper had a decent readership among students and staff. Adding a sports section was one of the ways they planned to up readership, and Bryony had been one of the staff members assigned to the beat.

She made her way back to the newly designated sports section to start building her story, smiling at Henry Brown, the Gryffindor seventh year who was already seated at the shared desk. To ensure fairness, the girl was going to cover Slytherin and Gryffindor teams throughout the year while Henry tackled Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. The blond ruffled his hair as he flipped through his notes, his eyebrows scrunched together in concentration.

"Your boyfriend has a good head on his shoulders for Quidditch, but wasn't much in the way of quotes," the Scot informed her as she dropped her school bag at her feet, sliding in to her own side of the desk. "Lots of plans, but I'm not sure any of these are actual sentences."

Laughing lightly, Bryony reached down to grab her notes out of her bag. "Want to trade? I got to talk to Flint today."

As the two traded notes, the brunette grew slightly uncomfortable. While she had honed her skills as a reporter over the past two years on the staff and knew she was a strong writer, Henry's father worked on staff at Seeker Weekly and he knew the sport inside and out. His notes, although they were a bit disjointed which was fitting for Cedric, had annotations on them already on ways to start the story and notes of previous games to pull up records for from the library.

"Quick recommendation?"

Bryony looked up, and smiled slightly sheepishly at him. "I'm all ears."

Henry ran through her notes with her in the same way he had put his together, underlining the key parts and using different color inks to highlight the parts from the interview that would mean the most to an avid sports fan who would read the story. When she sat back with the parchment in her hands, a rough draft of a story was already spinning in her mind, so she pulled out a new piece and started to work.

"When is your interview with Roger?" she asked after building a couple paragraphs.

"Tonight. And you have Wood on Tuesday?" Bryony nodded as she kept writing. "That'll be a tight turn, but shouldn't be too bad. Thankfully Wood's a pretty bright bloke."

"Would you believe he hasn't said two words to me in all four years we've been at school together?"

"Considering you're fraternizing with the enemy, it isn't that surprising."

Grinning as she fiddled with the necklace Cedric had given her for their two year anniversary, the brunette dropped a period at the end of her final sentence. "Or it has something to do with the fact he doesn't know I exist."

"You're off your head if you believe that. It's pretty hard not to notice you around the halls."

Bryony tossed him an eye roll over her shoulder as she took her parchment over to the copy editing desk and dropped it into the bin. She then meandered her way back to the sports desk, looking up at the calendar hanging over them and sighing mentally. On top of her prefect duties, they were supposed to meet with the captains of their assigned teams at least once every other week to catch up on practice and actually attend practice at least once a week. They had to coordinate photographers to capture art for their stories, the schedules of the players so they can get interviews for monthly wraps and previews, game recaps and standing reports the editors wanted in every issue….

"I'm screwed," she murmured, dropping back down into her chair.

Henry grinned and tossed a spare bit of parchment at her. "At least you're getting some action."

Bryony let her jaw drop in pretend offense and tossed the parchment back before they both started laughing, the brunette relaxing into her seat as she studied the schedule.

Sports reporting, new prefect duties, a boyfriend who was a first-time Quidditch captain with new prefect duties himself plus having time to eat, shower and study with O.W.L.s coming up at the end of the year… Fifth year was already shaping up to be exhausting.

Despite the cheerful thoughts, she reached into her bag to pull out her Runes book and dive into the homework Babbling had assigned on the first day of class.

A/N: Hello, and welcome to my first story on Fanfiction! I know it may not be what you were expecting when you opened it, but I'd strongly encourage you to keep reading. Everything will be explained in time, so hopefully you can sit back and enjoy the ride. Also, feel free to message me if you have any questions!