Disclaimer: Somewhere, probably in Britain at this moment, there is a woman named J. K. Rowling. She has written a series of books about a boy named Harry Potter. I am, for the time being, borrowing the general idea of her books to write a story about a girl named Elinor Crawley. I don't own anything you recognize from Harry Potter, and I own everything that you don't recognize from anywhere else.
Chapter 2: Quidditch Notes
I must admit that neither my mother nor I were surprised. However, my father was a different story. He first went through denial, and then anger, and finally a mildly tortured form of acceptance. I was sorry for him, but even more so for myself.
I was put into a strictly Muggle middle school, as my family believed that when fate declared one a Squib, there was nothing one could do to change it. News of the quickly emerging Squib-help-owls and courses were only muttered in passing by wizards on the dark side of Diagon Alley. Squibs were not beings that any decent witch or wizard wanted to associate with.
No one except my immediate family ever knew that I was a Squib. I still acted like a proper young witch; appearing with my family at Diagon Alley during the summers and occasionally buying the odd trinket or scroll of parchment to keep up appearances. I told Midgie that I was going to a different school, and she naturally assumed that I meant Beauxbatons or some such. I never had the heart to correct her. My Muggle school, St. Catherine's, was a fairly nice place. I fit right it. Coming home to my seemingly Muggle but actually wizarding family made me feel like I was living two lives. Things got rather hard to keep straight: it was Puddlemere United with Raymond and Newcastle in class. I made quite a few friends, although they rarely came over to my house and often inquired why I wore bright blue and black scarves. There was a frightening incident at my twelfth birthday party – Dad accidentally spilled some Floo powder in the fireplace and flew off to someplace in Hogsmeade. My mother and I had a terrible job reassuring the girls that he was a magician (how little they knew!) in his spare time. Later on, I casually dropped a hint about the "secret door behind the fireplace," which took care of the remaining doubters.
Most of my friends were fascinated with the odd baubles that I tended to carry around with me: my Remembrall, which I identified as a chemically altered snow globe, and some of the treats from Honeydukes, which I passed off as a byproduct of Mum's craze for health food stores. Meanwhile I continued to pore over both old and new spellbooks (mainly Ray's old texts) in hopes of somehow discovering that I was magical. I dabbled briefly in the fads and interests that swept through my school, but found the music rather boring after the Weird Sisters and couldn't be bothered to show more than a polite curiosity in Muggle movies. At times, my discomfort over being a Squib crept through the cracks of my busy life and I settled into depression. Mum and Dad responded to this in two ways: respectively, piano lessons and Quidditch.
Mum was a musician at heart, though she had more strength in her little finger than musical talent. It had always been her dream to make me a musician, but my impending witchliness took precedence. My parents had been betting a lot on their children's magical abilities, and thus had only given us a brief Muggle elementary education. I took the piano lessons from a Miss Brown, a young college graduate who also taught voice. I knew nothing at all about the instrument, although I could read music fairly decently. I had learned to play the recorder as a child.
My piano playing progressed rather slowly – I eventually learned that for the first year, I played at about the level of a six-year old child – but my passion for Quidditch grew rapidly. Of course I knew about Quidditch since I'd grown up in a wizarding family, but I wasn't that big on it. Dad had always been a fan, and he decided that the only way to relieve me of my depression was to buy tickets for every possible League game he could get. The more expensive ones, against the rest of Europe's teams, Dad steadfastly ignored. He believed that the British and Irish teams were the best in the world.
I had been to a few games with Raymond before, but that had been when I was much younger. I recall that the first time Dad came home with the depression-curing tickets, I was studying.
"Elinor," he said, slinging his briefcase (Dad was a saleswizard, and a profitable one at that) onto the kitchen table, "Guess what I've got!"
"No idea, Dad," I said, looking up from my homework. It was a Wednesday evening, and I had an essay due the next day.
Dad reached into the pocket of his overcoat and drew out several flimsy orange pieces of paper. "Look here, Elinor!" he said, trying to drag my attention away from my neatly-written essay. I glanced up and frowned.
"Aren't those…" I began, and Dad quickly finished.
"Tickets to the Cannons' game!" he cried excitedly. "Tonight. Against the Montrose Magpies. There's no doubt about who'll win, but it's still a Quidditch game!"
"Dad," I told him gently, "I've got homework. And I still have to practice the piano. Miss Brown keeps getting annoyed when I make excuses."
He looked bitterly disappointed. "It's an evening game, Elinor. It won't be that long – only a practice, really. And afterwards they let you down onto the pitch."
I sighed. I could tell that Dad had gone to a lot of trouble to get hold of the tickets. I closed my books with a snap and stood up. "Right," I said brightly, "When shall we go?"
Little did I realize how much I would enjoy that game. The Magpies won, 640 to 90 points, and the Chudley Cannons were allowed the honour of showing the spectators about the Quidditch Pitch while the Magpies did victory loops overhead. I followed Dad as he dashed from hoop to hoop and admired the neatly trimmed grass, taking the occasional sip of my Butterbeer. It was a rather small pitch, which didn't really matter as the game was for charity. Dad and I had taken the train out of London to a deserted patch of grassland, where the pitch, disguised as a large barn, awaited us. The trip took about six hours there and another six back, but I didn't mind.
It was the first time that I ever realized Quidditch players had personalities. I felt terrible for the Cannons as they moped around, pointing out the boundary lines and explaining how the Snitch was bewitched. I felt a thrilling sense of victory as the Magpies swooped down over our heads, hurling insults at the pitiful orange-robed losers. I suppose I was rather impartial back then, though the majority of the Quidditch crowd, including my own Dad, seemed to be cheering for the Magpies. I wondered if the Cannons would perform any better had they more fans, or even better advertising. I, like every other wizarding child, knew that they had lost almost continuously for the last century.
When the Magpies finally landed, Dad dragged me over to congratulate them. So did most of the other remaining spectators. We ended up being shuffled over to one side, near a team member who was pulling off his gloves and eyeing the rest of the spectators with a palpable disgust.
"Sir," gushed Dad, "What an amazing win!"
"Hmm? Thanks," mumbled the man, turning and walking away. That was my first meeting with Mr. William Axeworthy, team beater and future Keeper. He would be famous in a few years, although no one realized it.
"Go get his autograph!" Dad said, pushing me forward.
"I haven't got a quill or paper –" I protested, but Dad shoved a small, red and gold bound book into my hand along with a ballpoint pen. I caught the title of the book out of the corner of my eye: Quidditch Autographs.
I walked those few steps to Mr. Axeworthy feeling terribly embarrassed. I was still very happy from watching the game, but I could sense that the man did not want to be bothered. A nagging sense of guilt prodded at me as I cleared my throat, but part of that guilt seemed very excited.
"Er… excuse me, sir?" I asked nervously.
Mr. Axeworthy turned around and glared at me as I held the autograph book out. "Could I have your autograph, please, if you don't mind?"
He snatched the pen and book out of my hands and flipped it open. Before he started scribbling, I noticed the expanse of white parchment that lay clean and un-written upon. The book was a gift from my father to me!
"Who shall I make it out to?" grunted the Quidditch player.
"Elinor Crawley, please," I said.
"There," he shoved the book and pen back at me. I took hold of them quickly, and he must have noticed how nervous my manner was, for he softened a little.
"Sorry," he said. "I've had a bad day. My daughter got into a fight at school."
"Oh," I said. "Sorry about that."
"Don't worry," he told me. He crossed his arms and stared down at me, frowning a little. "Did you enjoy the game?"
I nodded. "Though," I said more hesitantly, "I think I know why the Chudley Cannons haven't done very well."
"And why is that?" he asked, looking amused.
"Everything – their tactics – they do is so obvious. They haven't got any confidence in themselves and so they resort to the most boring, well known strategies. I guess," I added, remembering that this was a pro-Quidditch player I was speaking with.
To my great surprise, he did not laugh at me. "Interesting," he said thoughtfully. "You sound like you could have a future in Quidditch."
I gaped at that, and then Mr. Axeworthy turned around and continued walking across the pitch to the locker rooms. "Thank you!" I called out breathlessly, and then I ran back to Dad.
"The Magpies are so personable," Dad said cheerfully. "They'll always talk to you."
"Hrmmm," I mumbled, thinking about what Mr. Axeworthy had said. "Thanks for the book, Dad," I said, only half paying attention to what I was saying.
"You're welcome," he replied, and we slowly walked out of the pitch and down to the train station.
It was on the train ride back that I made one of the most important and long-lasting decisions of my life. Since I was a Squib, I had never really considered learning to fly a broomstick. The possibilities of what could happen to unmagical me if I ever got in a bad situation were too frightening. Plus, I had a feeling that bewitched though the brooms were, they didn't respond that well to Squibs. So, I made up my mind that although I could never play Quidditch, I would learn about it. Tactics, strategies, positions, the names of all the teams in the world – I would be an expert.
Eight years and two hundred and four Quidditch games later, it wasn't surprising that I knew everything.