Nervous sweat was dripping from his brow. He mounted his broom in the tent, before anxiously flying out into the crowd of people gathered to see him. They were gathered to see him win, and that was definitely going to happen.

She wasn't nervous at all. He was a first year; who was he kidding? She proudly and somewhat triumphantly, as if she'd already won, mounted her broom, not caring if she ever rode it again, because she was getting a new one – when she won.

They met at the middle of the field, Madam Hooch being the only thing standing in the way of ripping each other's heads off. They both waited on the edges of their brooms, waiting for the long-anticipated whistle that would send them flying through the air, each to their opposite goals. The amused flight instructor released the Golden Snitch, cueing them to pursue it.

It skillfully and trickily made its way through the stands, dodging their wild figures. Once one of them grabbed it, the face-off was over. The game was over. The try-outs were over. The other one's life was over.

To him, it didn't really matter. They were cousins, after all. Is he won, he would walk right on up to her, give a huge hug, and congratulate her on job well done. It sounded good in his head, but everyone knew that that all sounded terribly unrealistic. He wondered if it would be as easy to do then to think…

For her, it was life or death. Sink or swim. New broom, or get made fun of for losing to a first year, let alone her cousin. She knew his weaknesses from playing and practicing with him in the summers before he had come to Hogwarts, and she was going to do whatever it took to win the match. She wouldn't go down without a fight.

Both of them had different approaches to catching the tricky golden ball. Freddie went right after it, chasing it wherever it went. The good thing about that was that she stayed on top of it the whole time, never letting it out of her sight. However, she could easily run out of breath, and not have enough energy to carry on.

Albus on the other hand was very conservative and strategic in his attempts to catch it. He hovered from afar, and pinpointed the exact location before choosing to dive after it, possibly knocking Freddie off her broom in the process…The good thing was that he would definitely have enough oxygen to breathe right on through, but he could also miss a great chance of getting it, with Freddie on top of it all the time.

Quidditch was, indeed, a very tricky game.

By this point in time, about two or three minutes into the first round, Freddie was zooming along on her Nimbus 4000, trying to catch the Snitch, her arm poised straight out in front of her. Albus was making a rather large circle around Freddie, waiting for the right moment when he could throw her off guard, and pounce. He caught a golden blur of speed out of the periphery of his right eye. He dove for it, cutting Freddie off, but it was too late; it had already passed both of them, heading up the other side of the stands.

They both took off faster than the speed of light, until they were flying side by side, so close their shoulders were touching, bumping each other in hopes of knocking the other off of their broomstick. Freddie sped up a little bit faster and was fully ahead of Albus, now trying to air-surf on her broomstick. She followed the snitch down towards the bottom of the stadium and was eye-level with it. She reached out for it, and thought she had almost had it, when, out of the sky swooped Albus. He was hovering not three feet above his cousin and the prize, and he promptly descended, proceeding to snatch the snitch directly from Freddie's grasp.

This had been taking place so far down in the pitch, that people in the stands were craning their necks over the edge of the railing to get a better look at the show. They had no idea what was going on, and many of them had abandoned trying to watch, and just waited for the action to rise to the top again. When the two of them flew up again, everyone automatically jumped to their feet, in hopes that the match would continue. But Albus continued flying, all the way up, out of sight of everyone. He did a couple of quick little circles around the pitch, and came back down to the ground, holding the snitch high for all to see.

Rose and Scorpius were the first to notice that his odd behavior was as a result of him getting his hands on the ball. They jumped on their chairs, causing a rapturous applause to ripple through the stadium, until everyone was standing on their feet. James ran down the flight of stairs with a couple of his friends, including Rose and Scorpius of course, and onto the field. They lifted him high above their shoulders, chanting various little limericks they had made up to support the team's new Seeker.

"Wait." It was the first word he had spoken all day, to anyone. He had been silent at breakfast, and all the way down to the pitch, and he had finally won. They were on their way to celebrate, and he wanted to wait one more second. He didn't think it seemed fair that everyone was happy except for his favorite cousin. He hopped off of his throne on James and Shane's shoulders, and skipped over to Freddie, who was skulking towards the back of the procession with the professors.

"Hey, Fred. Good job; you put up a real great fight."

"Yeah," was all she said, clearly depressed. Her chest felt like a boulder had been dropped there, and someone, a heavy someone, was perched on top of it.

"Listen, I'm really sorry. We both wanted to be on the team equally as bad. But, now…I just don't want you to be mad at me for winning."

"Me? Mad? Why would I be mad?"

"Because you just lost to a first year; your little cousin."

"Yeah, I did. But, that just means that it wasn't meant to be. Me being on the team, I mean."

"Yeah, I guess. So, Fred, you're not mad at me?"

"No. I'm not mad. Congratulations buddy," she said, rather proudly in fact. She bent down to allow him on her back for a piggy back ride, first giving him the biggest hug in history. Although not many words were spoken, Albus knew that everything was going to be okay between the two of them. "Hey, now Uncle Harry's gonna buy you a new broom, right?"

"He is?" asked Albus incredulously.

"Yep," came a voice from behind him.

"Dad! Mom, Lily! You guys made it!" he shouted running towards them, being enveloped in his father's arms.

"Great job, sweety," Ginny commended. "This is for you, from all of us. Even – "

"ME!" Lily shouted. "I used the Knut that I been saving to buy from Uncle Georgie's joke shop, but I decided you was more important," she said proudly, Albus choosing to brush off the grammar mistakes (A/N: No, I'm not an idiot! Those grammar mistakes were on purpose!).

"Let's go have some lunch. We got permission fro McGonagall to take you all to The Three Broomsticks. You can come along too, Freddie," said Harry, obviously proud and happy that is son was following in his footsteps.

"Cool! Let's go!"

The family walked off in the direction of Hogsmeade village, Albus calling to his brother to join them. After James had caught up, they raced the whole way to the pub, and stayed there all day.

I know, what a bad ending. But, my other half has been bugging me to post, and I was banned from the computer yesterday (yeah, don't wanna go into that). But, hope you enjoyed the face-off, and are happy with the outcome. We've known for a while that Al was gonna win, but we kept it a secret! Luvya

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