Written for the Hogwarts Writing Club Competition for the prompt 'unit'. Word count: 530.
For my grandfather, avid sports fan and overall awesome man. Three days ago, the world lost a bit of its lustre.
Cricket!AU. Muggle!AU. Australian!AU.
The midday sun shone down on the cricket pitch like a spotlight pointing her to her destination. Ignoring the smell of manure that had permeated the park for as long as she could remember, Lily made her way over to where her father was standing in a huddle with the teenage boys whose cricket team he'd volunteered to coach. The seventeen-year-old watched on fondly as he regaled them with plans and strategies, punctuating his points with robust hand gestures.
Two of the boys spotted her and did a strange shuffle-nod-wink thing, but her father didn't appear to notice their clumsy attempt to catch her attention.
"So this is where you spend all your time nowadays," she teased him when his lecture dipped into a momentary lull.
Her father turned around at the sound of her voice. "Lily. What are you doing here, sweetheart?"
"You missed a signature on the application," she explained, raising the stapled documents and pen in emphasis, "so Mum asked me to run it over."
"There were way too many lines to sign on this thing," he grumbled, before sighing and adding, "Boys, why don't you go for a jog? Keep in line. If you let anyone fall behind or pull ahead, you'll all get laps. When you're on that pitch, you are a unit, and you need to learn to act like one. There will be no more showing off like there was last time."
The boys groused under their breath, but they promptly got into formation and started to jog across the field.
"There was a problem last time?" Lily asked as she handed the paper and pen over to her father, indicating where the unfilled space was so he wouldn't have to search for it.
"Yeah. Most of them were good sports, but Sirius and James – the haughty-looking one and the one with hair like a windswept llama – were determined to show off to the point that it almost lost the team the game." She snickered at the description as he leant down to use his knee to support the paper. A few seconds later, he straightened back up and continued, "See over there? I - SIRIUS! JAMES! STOP SABOTAGING YOUR TEAM!"
Sure enough, Lily noted, the two boys who had been trying to get her attention earlier appeared to be purposefully messing up the exercise. The rest of the team were running in a straight line, but they kept dropping back or pulling ahead so that the others had to constantly adjust their speed as well. "I'll say," she agreed.
"Well," he commented, "James seems to have taken a liking for you. Maybe you should come to the next game and make some comments about teamwork to try to keep him in line."
Lily rolled her eyes, but a quick glance at the joggers revealed that the boy in question did indeed appear to be looking over at her quite a bit. Still, instead of gracing his observation with a response, she said, "But you said we shouldn't come until you'd gotten the hang of coaching again."
He scoffed. "We're still rusty, but you'll be waiting forever if you wait until we're perfect."