Chapter 4
At 5.30 Saturday morning I found myself being shaken awake by Angelina.
"Quidditch practice, get up!" She whispered.
"Woh, Wood was serious when he said dawn on the pitch!?" Angelina smiled pityfully at me.
"Welcome to the world of Wood Quidditch!" Alicia said, coming into view.
"Wait, how come you're up, you could have a sleep in!" I asked her.
"Oh no, you see according to Wood, we can't let on that we have a new chaser, so I have to look like I'm still the chaser!" I looked at her as if I had just heard the daftest thing in the world. Guess he does take his quidditch pretty seriously!
"But why do we have to train so early, it's Saturday, we have all day?" I asked as I dragged a pair of shorts, a tank top, hoodie and some trainers on.
"So no one can see you train, as I said, welcome to Wood World!" Alicia said as we walked down to the common room where the twins appeared to be mock sleeping, snoring and drooling on each other.
"Morning!" We greeted them before sleepily walking towards the quidditch pitch, my nimbus 2001, over my shoulder.
When we arrived Wood was already out on the pitch waiting for us, his hair all ruffled and an angry look on his face.
"You are all late!" He shouted as we neared him. I giggled at the "angry" captain and my teamates looked at me like I was crazy! What, he looked amusing when he was all angry like, espec ially when it was uncalled for. I looked at my watch and found we were actually right on time, so I walked up to him and checked his watch.
"Nope, your watch is fast." I said giggling.
"Oh right, I forgot I set it 2 minutes fast." He blushed as I gave him a puzzled, you're crazy look through my giggling which I think was the reason he started laughing. After we managed to control our giggles we mounted our brooms and started to warm up. After the warm up I was fully awake and realised that this was when I was supposed to impress my teammates and the captain of course, so I put quite a bit of effort into training. Three hours later I ended up covered in mud due to trying a tad too hard to catch a dropped quaffle and ending up rolling around in the mud broomless, although my pride kicked in and I kicked it through the hoop from the ground! It was one of those moments when you cant believe you actually just pulled that off, I was in disbelief as I retrieved my broom and the rest of the team landed beside me.
"That was awesome, how did you do that?" Fred asked.
"Pure chance, I think. Would that actually count in a game though?" Everyone shrugged and looked at Wood, expecting an answer.
"Erm I dunno, I guess it would, don't think there's a rule against scoring from the ground as long as you're within the boundries. Guess we're done for today guys, good job!" We all just shrugged again and headed for the showers.
"Hey Jess." Someone called as I arrived in the dressing rooms, it was Wood.
"Hi dude!" I replied as I began gathering my shower stuff.
"Erm, just wanted to say, you did really well today, well not that you wouldn't have played well, I mean you're a professional and all, of course you were going to be good, but well done!" He kinda ranted at me. I giggled at him again.
"Dude, since when do Hogwarts pay wages to quidditch players?" He looked confused.
"They don't."
"Exactly, then I'm not a professional, so stop with the professional stuff, I'm just a normal player, I had to play with a professional team cos my school didn't have a team." I said with a half smile cos I didnt mean it in a harsh way.
"But they took you from the youth team and turned you into a professional cos you were good enough!"
"Well yeah, but I dont like been known as 'the professional', it kinda adds a lot of pressure!" He shrugged and nodded.
"Wait, how did you know that I started as a youth and got promoted?" I asked, just remembering I hadn't told him that. George took that moment to interrupt.
"Well you see Jess, since Oliver here doesnt want to waste his two questions per day, he's been asking everyone else all about you!" I laughed and headed for the showers.