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By the way, is it strange that the fact that last chapter was exactly 2010 words is exciting to me?
But it's not any more - thank you Kitty Bridgeta for remembering
I hope you like this chapter! The first of my attempt to write Quidditch tryouts.....
Chapter Ten: Your Time Is Coming, Don't Be Late
Albus tries out for the Quidditch team - 7th September 2018
Albus tried to swallow down the nervous feeling in the pit of his stomach. He would have preferred it if nobody knew he was going to try out – but that was pointless. After all, with practically his entire family on the team, they would all know anyway, so his friends might as well know.
They'd been back at Hogwarts almost a month, and second year still seemed a lot like their first. True, they were no longer the youngest students in the school, which was definitely a plus.
Watching the first-years adjust had been strange too. On the train, Lysander had mentioned a tiny student – presumably a first-year – noticing the Slytherin crest on his robes, and then giving him a dirty look.
Hours later, that same tiny student was being sorted into Slytherin, where Lysander made sure to welcome him with a wide, shark-like smile. Albus didn't remember looking quite so dishevelled as all these first-years did when he was Sorted, although most of that evening was a blur.
He did remember the entire adventure beforehand, although a small part of him had expected to forget, given that it apparently hadn't actually happened. Professor Longbottom had explained what had happened to the first-years before being Sorted, presumably, as Professor Adams had only welcomed them, rather than giving a speech as she had the previous year.
Louis Weasley had become the first Weasley to be Sorted into Hufflepuff, to the delight of that House. Louis, a happy-go-lucky sort, hadn't seemed to mind and although Lia had promised to keep an eye on him, Albus doubted that that would be necessary. Hufflepuffs were the welcoming type, and if Weasleys had managed in Ravenclaw then they would survive in Hufflepuff. It was when they started turning up in Slytherin that you would really know that things had changed.
Some of the second years had been disgruntled at the loss of the Inter-House Common Room as a place exclusively used by their year, as the new first years began to appear there too, showing every sign of repeating the friendships that the second years had sprouted between the different Houses.
No new members of staff had joined, nor any new ghosts. He'd happily greeted Nearly Headless Nick, who seemed resigned to being a ghost forever – both the Grey Lady and the Bloody Baron had moved on several years before. Although nobody truly understood how being a ghost worked – even ghosts themselves – people speculated that it was either the discovery of what had led to their deaths or the destruction of some part of the Hogwarts building that had let the two 'pass on', whatever that meant in spectral terms. They'd been replaced as Ravenclaw and Slytherin ghosts by two ghosts from the War. Anthony Stretton got on quite well with the Ravenclaw ghost, who was in fact his namesake – Anthony Goldstein.
Less was known about the young woman who was the Slytherin ghost. Blood-stained and scarred, wearing plain black robes, nobody recognised her and if the professors knew, they weren't telling. There were various rumours, each more far-fetched than the last. But in the end, that was the point of ghosts – who among them knew why Sir Nick had been made Nearly Headless, after all?
Professors had launched back into their lessons with frightening enthusiasm, and Albus knew that he was already behind on his homework. But homework could be done another day. Quidditch tryouts could not.
He reached the pitch. It was bright sunlight, although there was a definite chill to the air. Glancing to the stands, he saw that all of his friends had turned up to support him, and grinned, waving back to Lia as she waved at him.
All of the team were there.
Tall, dreadlocked Fred, Captain and Keeper. As a sixth-year, he was the oldest student in the team.
Dominique was only a year younger. Playing Chaser, she was everything Victoire hadn't been. Her strawberry blonde hair mimicked Bill rather than Fleur, although she did have her mother's long, leggy frame. She was a Prefect, although it was a mystery to all of them exactly how – while Victoire had achieved top grades in every subject, Dominique was only really scraping by. She didn't seem to mind her little brother not being in the same House as her, particularly since Louis didn't play Quidditch.
Roxanne was also a Prefect. Her hair wasn't quite as dark as Fred's, and had a reddish gleam to it in the sunlight. She too played Chaser, and got on very well with her cousin Dominique, despite the age gap of a year.
Lucy and Molly, (for some reason, nobody ever said Molly and Lucy) were the Beaters. They were already on their brooms, chasing each other or a ball, it was difficult to tell. Inseparable and indistinguishable, they had together had more detentions than the rest of their family put together – although James came close. Their grades, however, weren't all that bad, considering how little effort they seemed to put in. It had always amused Al's Mum, and Ron, that Percy had ended up with the twins who seemed the female versions of Fred and George.
James was only a year younger than the twins. The third Chaser on the team and only the second boy, he, like Albus, had been able to try out for the position as soon as he entered second year.
They were the only ones on the pitch, however. Although there were a few spectators, there were no other students there for try-outs.
Albus waited uncomfortable. Dominique, friendly as ever, caught his eye and winked sympathetically. She clearly wanted to come over and reassure him, but that wouldn't seem fair. It was going to be tough as it was to have an impartial try-out, without worrying about whether Albus got in, or if they would be seen as biased if he got in. There were already a few accusations of nepotism - it was impossible to avoid it when every Weasley of this generation to pass through Hogwarts had played on the Quidditch team. The fact that the Gryffindor team had claimed the Cup for the last four years, however, stopped most of the grumbles.
Five minutes passed. Ten. Fifteen. Scorpius and Aisha walked down to the bottom of the spectators gallery and beckoned him over. They started up a conversation, although Albus was feeling too nervous to contribute much.
Half an hour after the try out was supposed to begin, Fred finally came over.
"Um, it looks like you're our only recruit," he said awkwardly. It wasn't hard to work out why – everyone knew that Albus was trying out, and people probably expected that they'd never get a fair chance against him.
"Oh." Albus managed.
"So I guess we'll just have you fly a few laps….catch a ball." Fred shrugged. "We've all seen you play, we know you're good. We just have to pretend that we haven't."
Albus nodded. Fred blew a whistle and the rest of the team mounted their brooms and kicked off. Albus looked pale.
"It's alright," Aisha said encouragingly.
"You'll be great," Scorpius added.
He nodded in thanks, feeling too nervous to compose coherent sentences. Straddling his broom, he followed his family.
It was disastrous.
Fred had decided to see how many goals the Chasers could score against him before Albus caught the Snitch. Now, Fred was an amazing Keeper. But he was also having to watch Albus and the Chasers were almost as good, especially Roxanne and Dominique, who worked so well together that they could almost be sisters.
And the score still reached sixty points before Albus even made his first grab at the Snitch. It wasn't spotting it that was really the problem – alright, he did glance at the audience far more often than he ought. But even once he'd seen it, he'd find himself making elementary mistakes – wrenching the handle of the broom to the left or right far too violently or forgetting to keep his toes up and having his feet slip off the supports of the broom, leaving him unbalanced and his legs dangling in the air.
The few times that he managed to reach the Snitch, he forgot everything he'd ever known about leaning to the left, holding on with your knees or anything else and just grabbed for it.
Finally, with Fred's shouted and repetitive instructions still ringing in his ears and the score at one hundred and seventy points, he caught the Snitch.
Unfortunately, that would have been far too late in a real match, even if the opposing Seeker had been as useless as him and hadn't caught it first.
Well?
Do you think it's mean of me to make Albus too nervous to fly properly?
Did you like the chapter? What do you think of the other Weasleys?
Let me know.....
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