As much as I love the books, I regret to say that all of Harry Potter belongs to J K Rowling. This includes all of the characters except for Ryua (who's mine) most of the places, and an awful lot of the spells. Oh, and if you see something that looks like one of your stories, I'm really, really sorry. I don't mean to plagiarize. I've just read a lot of really cool fanfics, and they melt into my brain, but I'll try not to use any of it. Tell me if I do, okay?
Quidditch
Ryua woke up to Millicent's snoring. Ugh, at least Pansy's quiet, she thought to herself. Ah, well, she wanted to get up early anyways. Although she knew it wouldn't do any good, Ryua had taken to shadowing the Slytherin Quidditch team. She envied the players, with the seven Nimbus Two Thousand and Ones her Father had donated to the team, the time they were allowed to spend outside in the sun and open air, and most of all, just being allowed to fly. Ryua was a junkie on flight. If she couldn't do it herself, then she'd watch others on broomsticks, even if it made her ache with longing.
Pansy rolled over, also woken by Millicent and saw Ryua changing into her warm robes. "You can't seriously be thinking of going out to watch practice again? It's too early, and it's not like anything exciting ha-ha-happens anyways..." Pansy said as she tried to stifle a yawn. She was not one of the early risers of the world.
"You don't have to come, Pansy." Ryua was trying to be a little nicer to Pansy, and it was definitely easier when the other girl was too asleep to be prissy. "Just go back to sleep, okay? It's a Saturday, so you don't have to get up unless you want breakfast."
"Okay," Pansy mumbled, face already back in her pillow. Ryua gave a small grin at her dormmate's sleepiness, picked up her cloak (with Parsyl already around her shoulders, of course) and walked out the door. Sure enough, it was just the crack of dawn by the time Ryua got to a window, and the brisk breeze woke her up the rest of the way. The team was already on the pitch, which was good for Ryua. She could find a spot without being seen by the chauvinistic players, who seemed to think even the presence of a girl watching quidditch was bad luck.
Sheltered from the wind and player's eyes, Ryua watched from a bench in the shadow of the main bleachers as they started in on their drills. I think Bletchley's getting worse, Ryua thought to herself. The boy couldn't catch the quaffle if it were magnetically attracted to his hands. He really was awful. The Slytherins' main advantage was their brutality, size, and aggressiveness. Draco was easily the most nimble of the seven, and he was no Victor Krum. Ryua avidly watched all of the players' drills, but especially the keeper's. She was always able to envision exactly what she could do to guard those hoops, and from sneaking out occasionally to practice the drills on their brooms, knew she was more competent at it than Bletchley. She also had a feeling she could seek better than her brother, but it wasn't exactly likely she would get a chance at either position.
She was wrong.
The day of the first quidditch match started off with Flint bellowing through the entire Slytherin common room. Ryua pulled on her housecoat and walked out to see what the fuss was all about. Crabbe and Goyle were pulling Bletchley along by the elbows, apparently up to the hospital wing. She thought this for a very simple reason; Bletchley was retching, green, and looked all round sick. Flint was absolutely furious, demanding of all of his players, "What the blazes am I supposed to do now? We play in less than two hours, and I AM MISSING A KEEPER!" He was getting violent now, a few sleepy first years ducking back into their rooms as he began to throw random textbooks and kick the furniture.
"Flint. Flint! HEY FLINT!" Draco yelled from behind a couch, "Relax, will you? I know someone who can keep for the day."
Flint froze in the midst of shredding Encyclopedia of Toadstools and whipped his head around to face his seeker. "What? You have someone? Is he any good?"
"Yes, very." Draco stepped gingerly out from behind the couch.
"And he's ready to play?"
"Well, I'll need to shrink Bletchley's robes a bit to fit, but it shouldn't be a problem. You'll have your keeper by game start." Draco patted his quidditch captain on the shoulder, directing him back to his dorm. "Now, get changed, and for Merlin's sake, have a shower. The fact that you smell on the ground might carry over and you'll stink at quidditch."
Ryua giggled at that, and went to change into her own robes. When she came back into the common room, however, Draco was still there, tapping his foot impatiently. "Well, it's about bloody time! Come on, we have to get you sized up for these robes, and smuggle you into the change room before Flint catches a girl on her way to the pitch!"
"Wha- Draco, you were talking about me? But, I haven't been on a broom in..."
"Oh, stop that," Draco was measuring and frantically shrinking burly Bletchley's robes to fit Ryua's drastically different frame, "I've seen you sneaking out to the pitch at night, and I've noticed you down in the stands during practice. And anyways, you could out-fly Bletchley with your hands tied behind your back. Here, go put this on, and meet me in the entrance hall in five minutes." He threw the now much smaller set of quidditch robes at Ryua and rushed out the door. Ryua snapped out of her daze and turned quickly back to her dorm room, shedding her cloak as she went. It took her all of 90 seconds to get into her robes and pull her hair back into a sleek ponytail, and was on the way to the entrance hall before Pansy or Millicent even registered her presence.
Draco was there waiting for her, holding a stack of toast. "My, aren't we excited? Here, eat this on the way, we can't have Flint see you until it's too late to change his plans."
Ryua grinned through a mouthful of toast and marmalade, "I'm just so giddy. D'you honestly think this will work?"
"Well, if it doesn't, I'll be out of a quidditch position, and Father will disown us both if not kill us when he finds out, at least if you do badly. So eat the rest of your toast, I can't afford you fainting halfway through the match."
When Marcus Flint walked into the Slytherin changerooms and saw Ryua holding a broomstick and wearing quidditch robes, he nearly started bellowing again. Luckily for Ryua and Draco, Lee Jordan had just started to announce the Gryffindor team, and it was too late to do anything about it. They flew out to their positions when called by Jordan, Ryua gliding easily to her center ring. She was ecstatic. The air was crisp, with almost no breeze, the light was clear, but the clouds prevented glare, and most important of all, she was flying. Hovering on a Nimbus Two Thousand and One, sixty feet above the ground, every nerve, every blood cell, every muscle in her body feeling wide awake, completely capable, and utterly alive, Ryua was the happiest she could ever imagine. The people in the stands were an unimportant blur, the other players as clear as if they were right in front of her. Madam Hooch threw the quaffle up in the air, and the game was on.
Flint took the quaffle, passed it to Puecy, who got smashed by a bludger and dropped it. It was scooped up by a blonde Gryffindor chaser, and Ryua suddenly tensed. Her knees and feet hooked onto her broom, and her hands loosed the handle slightly, ready to catch the quaffle. The chasers passed it back and forth, up, down, behind, left, and without warning, straight towards Ryua's left ring. Without even thinking, her knees twitched, sending her broom smoothly to the side, her hands reaching out to snatch the bright red ball three feet from the goal. She whipped around, slinging the quaffle out towards Flint, who, although looking a little surprised she could catch and throw it, sped off towards the far goalposts. Ryua scanned the rest of the field, seeing Draco gliding up above, and Potter darting around an awful lot more. Oh, there was a bludger after him. Hey, shouldn't it have let him be by now? She snapped back to her own position long enough to club the quaffle out of her goal zone, and focused back up on the seekers. Even if she wasn't experienced yet, she knew bludgers should go in the direction a beater hits them, but this one kept circling back. Oh, well, one less for her to worry about. Ten minutes later, the Slytherins had scored sixty points, and Ryua had made sure Gryffindor never got above zero.
The clouds had just started to spit rain, a cooling sensation to counter the hot adrenaline surging through her body. Ryua had thought she was best at Potions. Well, that was over now. Quidditch was her best talent by far, and she was never going to give it up, regardless of what Father said. Flint woudn't be a problem, he wanted to win more than keep an all-male team, and Ryua had quickly become one of the best players on the team.
Unfortunately, whoever catches the snitch gets 150 points. Her dratted brother had missed the snitch hovering on his head, and Potter managed to grab it with his left hand, falling to the ground in a dead faint. Which wasn't actually much of a surprise, considering that bludger had broken his right. Ryua glided down with the rest of the team for Flint's lecture. Draco caught the brunt of it, obviously, and when Ryua asked what she was supposed to do now, Flint just looked oddly at her, saying "Well, you're going to show up every morning for practice, or I will send Professor Snape in to get you, after which, you'll wish you were never born."
"Don't show up late for practice, got it." Ryua walked happily off towards the castle, still running off an adrenaline high, even though they hadn't won the match. Harry Potter, on the other hand was now looking at his limp (and I mean completely limp) arm, feeling rather terrible, even though they had won the match.
