A/N: Yeah…it's late…sorry… but anyway. Read on.
***
Rachel hung in midair, straddling her Silver Arrow. The goal hoops were behind her and Fiona was in front, with the Quaffle and a grin. Fio tossed the Quaffle, which fell miserably short and had to be rescued by a sneering Mandy Hall.
"Come on, Fiona, you have an arm!" she called, throwing the ball to her twin. "Show her, Missy."
"Really, hurry up!" Rachel yelled. "I'm getting absolutely no practice this way, and it's not fun…"
Mandy, dropping to the side, shouted back, "Quit whining, baby."
"I'll get you for that one," the Keeper whispered to herself, switching her attention to Missy, now bearing down, Quaffle under her arm. At the last possible second, Missy swerved to the right and down a few feet, attempting to toss the ball up and through the right-hand hoop.
It was a simple job for Rachel to skid over and grab the Quaffle with one hand. With a smirk, she dropped it to Mandy, twenty feet below.
"Wipe the smile off your face, Keeper," yelled Fio. "Girls. H-A-F, now!"
The three of them formed an arrowhead, Mandy front and center. Missy and Fio hung to the sides. "Plumpton when we get there," Mandy hissed. "I go up, toss to Missy, Missy scores."
"We hope."
Fifteen feet away, just outside the scoring area, the arrowhead dissolved. Mandy zoomed up ten feet, Missy drifted down, and Fio flew, screeching shrilly, at Rachel.
"Oh, ha-ha," said the Keeper sarcastically, and flew around her. The Quaffle barreled up, on a direct course to her own stomach, and stopped there in her hands. "Relatively nice, but as the tryouts are individual, you'll have to lay off on the togetherly things. Try a few penalty shots from center pitch. Missy, you first."
"Why me?" Missy demanded, pouting."
Rachel glared. "Because. I said so."
Missy nodded, scared, and retrieved the Quaffle. She flew back as far as she could, assuming it was at least the distance between the starting circle and the goal area. When Fio whistled sharply, between her two front teeth (unfortunately gapped), Missy kicked up her broom and rocketed towards the goals. The Quaffle flew out of her hand.
With a move that almost flung her from her broom, Rachel threw herself to the left. The Quaffle, though, had other ideas and sailed over her body and neatly through the left-hand hoop.
"Not so far, Rachel!" yelled Mandy. "Missy, good job. Now get your butt back here and gimme the Quaffle!"
Missy obliged, grinning. She had beat her own Keeper, supposedly best in the League. Well. She'd shown them.
Meanwhile, Mandy grabbed the bright red ball and drifted to Missy's starting point. When there, she carefully smoothed her hair and made sure her blond ponytail was secure, tossed her head a few times (glancing at one of the boys from the other team, who gave her a filthy look and went back to swinging his Beater club), and posed for a second.
"Come on, Mandy, they still don't like you," Rachel bellowed. "Get your mind back to the pitch!"
"I'm collecting myself!" Mandy shrieked back. Very suddenly, she accelerated her Nimbus Two Thousand. Rachel tensed, watching carefully.
Before she was even in the scoring area, Mandy flung the ball. The Keeper watched it lazily, and a second before it reached the hoops, stretched one hand and caught the Quaffle.
Fio yelled, "Don't throw that early! It was dead obvious which one you were going to!"
Mandy pouted like a three-year-old. "I'd like to see you do better!"
"Then you will! Rachel, throw it here."
Rachel smirked, nodded, and tossed the Quaffle to the small brunette. Fio turned with a flounce—how was that possible on a broom? Rachel wondered—and drew back.
Unlike Mandy, she went straight for it—zoom, she was streaming up the pitch (their third of it, anyway) like lighting. And within ten feet of the goal, Fio drew back to throw, took careful aim—
Just as fast, Rachel slid around her and plucked the Quaffle out of Fio's single-hand grip. "Ha, ha. And I'm not even outside of the goal area, either," said the Keeper.
"Yes!" Mandy shouted. "At least I can aim faster than a snail!"
Fio's hazel eyes filled, and her lower lip trembled. Shoulders shaking, she dropped to the ground. By the time her feet touched the pitch, she was sobbing like a baby.
Rachel stormed back to the goals, and scowled fiercely at a sparrow flying by. "Why is my team composed almost entirely of wimps and idiots?" she demanded of the universe in general.
It didn't answer.
***
"EM, GET YOUR EYES OFF THAT GIRL!" A Muggle softball came careening towards Emerson's head, forcing him less than six inches from decapitation. He swung wildly with his bat, sending the softball…somewhere else. To tell the truth, he didn't know where it went.
"Darn it, Em, that nearly took your head off," Wendy said, zooming up and looking apologetic. "Sorry."
He shrugged, taking a few deep breaths for recovery. "S'okay. Just…where's the softball?"
She pointed, grinning. One of the froshies on the Mouse team was laid out flat on the ground, hat somewhere ten feet away. His broom was on the ground nearby, but he was almost certainly unconscious.
"Oh, royal crap," Emerson muttered. "I killed someone already."
Wendy smirked. "He's a Seeker. So at least he didn't screw with Beater tryouts." She looked at the Mouse boy carefully. "And I don't think he's dead." A sidelong glance at Emerson. "Yet."
He gulped. "Thanks a lot."
"You're welcome a lot."
"Excuse me!" Yolanda shouted shrilly from across the pitch. Wendy and Emerson looked around, confused, and found the Seeker about fifteen feet above the ground. "My broom's gone funny. Like, it'll start sparking or something? But only when I do this." Yolanda pulled up on the handle, the standard steering direction for an upward slant.
A cloud of gold sparks and thick gray smoke, visible from at least a hundred feet, shot out the end of her Shooting Star 17.6. Ironically.
Emerson smacked his own forehead. "Damn, damn, damn…why's all this have to happen to me…"
"You're special," Wendy said gravely, one hand on his shoulder. "Remember that, Em. You're very special."
"And you can go jump in a lake."
"I'd rather not, thanks."
"Take your broom with you."
Wendy looked perfectly scandalized.
***
Six small, gray-clad shapes dove to the ground, surrounding their fallen Seeker.
"What on earth?" Jill breathed. "Sam? Are you alive?"
The skinny blond boy stirred, groaning.
Phoebe glared over at the blue-robed team in the field segment next to them. A Chaser had just flown into the center goal post, but that was secondary—two of them were hanging around fifty feet in the air, heads together and pointing.
"It's them," she muttered. "I swear they took out our Seeker on purpose."
"So that means we don't have a chance of all getting on," Tony said with a shrug. "Look, if one of them gets Seeker, there are still six of us. Six to one?"
Jill stamped her foot and immediately yelped—the ground was hard from a few rainless weeks. "Damn," she muttered, hopping around a few times. As soon as she recovered, she finally said, "Look, Tony, I don't mean to burst your bubble—"
"Betcha you do," Phoebe whispered.
"Shut your trap," Jill returned regally. "But anyway. Tony, I've been watching them, and they're really good. Our Beaters are nothing to them. And our Seeker's out. And, Caitlin, no offense, but…"
Sensitive brunette Keeper Caitlin Willard sniffed loudly. "It's all right. I know you think I'm horrible." She blinked rapidly for a few seconds, threw her broom to the rock-hard ground, and fled, sobbing.
Phoebe stared after her. "Has anyone but me entertained the idea that the universe has got it in for our team?"
Several others nodded. "Crap."
Whoever said that was a genius, Phoebe thought vengefully.
***
Phoenix Anders checked her watch, fumbling slightly because of the clipboard held in her right hand. After that girl had gone off crying, and that boy had been dragged to the clinic, and that other girl had stopped hexing innocent sparrows, and the other one, the blond spongebrain, had gotten a replacement broom… well, ten minutes had passed. Half an hour was officially up in…three, two, one…
PHWEEEEEEEP. The silver whistle between her lips sounded shrilly.
"Dear God, it can't have gone that quickly!" bellowed the melodramatic Siamese cat-boy.
"Well guess what, lackwit, it did," screamed the sparrow-hexer.
"You've got feathers in your hair, Rachel…"
The girl screeched piercingly and raked her hair with clawed fingers.
Shouted another, "And now you look like you've got fleas!"
Rachel desisted, looking miserable, and sank to the pitch.
The other teams were already on the ground, and looked at Flamel's Fighters with amusement. For a gifted school's team, you'd think they could respond to simple commands like "come down"… You could hear the stifled giggles, see the little glitter of superiority in every eye, and as good as smell the triumph at catching the local geniuses in a human moment among the simpleminded idiots.
Phoenix grinned nastily, staring at the Fighters. Promptly, the teams around her began making faces behind her back, sticking out their tongues and crossing their eyes…it was horrendous. Of course, as soon as Tony noticed the Rally was doing the same thing, he made all the Mice stop—it would be a horrible travesty, to be joined in anything with the enemy teams.
By the time the Fighters settled, the Rally had calmed down. Anders turned and began to speak.
"Well then. As I said before, Chasers will go first. The nine of you—I think, unless if anyone else has decided to desert? No? Just nine? All right. The nine of you—will—" Suddenly, for no reason at all, she looked annoyed, glared down at her clipboard.
Anders thought, appearing extremely peeved. Then, she tore the top sheet off her clipboard and muttered, "To hell with that. If that stupid League forces me…should let me do it my way, dammit…" More loudly, "A change of plans. There will not be individual tryouts."
The three Fighter Chasers turned and glared at Rachel, who whispered sharply, "Well, excuse me for breathing!"
"You're excused," Anders said absently. "Fighter Chasers, stop. I've just now decided to change the procedure, and unless if your Keeper possesses the Inner Eye, she is not responsible for whatever it is you're wasting energy on being angry about."
Fio, Missy, and Mandy stared at their shoes.
"Anyway," the small Quidditch witch continued. "The procedure is thus—a tournament of games among the three of you, excepting Seekers, to fifty points. I do not want to be kept here overnight, which is why the Seekers will not be participating. So. Rally plays Fighters, half-hour break, Fighters play Mice, half-hour break, Rally plays Mice. And then we all go home."
The teams glanced suspiciously at each other, trying not to look like they were glancing suspiciously at each other. A rather difficult thing to pull off.
Yolanda, that blond spongebrain, raised her hand. "Like, the Seekers? When are we going to try out? Like, after the tournament? Or what?"
Phoenix thought for a second. "That will be considered in due course," she finally deliberated, regally as a queen. "Trust me, you will be tested."
The blond girl subsided, as satisfied as one could be on that kind of a non-answer.
Silence reigned for a moment. The Mice clutched their brooms tightly.
"Well?" Phoenix demanded. "What are we waiting for? Fighters, Rally, in the air! Seekers, go over there."
Pet and Yolanda marched off to the section of the stands Phoenix had indicated, carefully not looking at each other. Until—
"Guess we're it, then?" Yolanda said quietly. "That's kind of weird, you know?"
The junior looked down his nose at the blonde. "I do not understand the oddity of the situation. Even if I did, that doesn't mean there's any bond of…companionship… between us."
Yolanda, looking affronted, sat quickly and stared fixedly at her broom.
Pet sighed and settled into a seat much farther along the row. Sophomores. They were such idiots. Especially the girls.
He looked up when a sharp whistle blew. That nasty elf-witch person had started the first match. Well. This would be fun.
***
Only half an hour later the Fighters and Rally sank to the ground, the former looking elated and slightly malicious, the latter appearing furious. It was easy to figure who had won.
Of course, there were exceptions, Pet reflected, after allowing himself a very brief smile at his team's victory. Those two, in Rally blue, were joking around and grinning. On closer inspection, he found they both carried Beater's bats. Perhaps…
Pet glanced at his team. Three Chasers, two Beaters, and— "Damn it."
Rachel, it appeared, was still alive and conscious, but had received a Bludger to the head (fortunately, though, the Keeper and the Bludger had been moving to the same side, so it wasn't quite as horrible as it could have been), and currently sat on the ground, clutching her head and swaying dizzily.
There was no way she'd recover in half an hour.
So that would explain why those Beaters were so overjoyed. Almost killing his star Keeper…well, he'd…
"Oh, that's just mean," growled the blonde Seeker. "When I get down there, I'm gonna yell at Em so bad he's not gonna know what hit him. Wendy, too. That's just mean." She glanced at Pet, for some reason.
Pet glared back. "Congratulations. Anti-team feeling. Marvelous."
The girl stared back at her broom, and began counting twigs in the tail of it. Anything to avoid this superior idiotic junior. Thinks he's on top of the world. Stupid cat.
Rachel, down on the pitch, clutched her head and swayed tipsily without noticing she was doing so. Mallets seemed to pound her head from the inside, centering on a five-inch bruise that she knew would be forming under her hair. Evil Bludger. Malicious Beaters. Ow, ow, ow, her head!
Mediwizards were scurrying over, carrying wands, potions, and even Muggle cooling packs. You have to admit, she thought slowly, those Muggles got along extremely well without magic…those ice packs were an innovation…best thing since sliced bread…ow…cranium…in astronomical levels of pain…
At about that point, she flopped on the ground, consciousness having fled. Maybe they'd wake her up in time for the game, she thought, somewhere between last thought and first dream. She hoped so.
***
A/N: Right then. All done with this chapter. Reviews are always appreciated, hint hint…
~Flamewing, who has been hit by a massive case of writers' block quite suddenly, and apologizes in advance for the lateness of the next chapter…