Ravenclaw vs Slytherin

By the time that Walter and Sterling had found them in the stands both the Ravenclaw and Slytherin teams were filing out onto the pitch. All four of them abandoned the seats that Augusta had so diligently guarded and leaned out over the stands.

"How bad will it be if Slytherin wins?" Minerva asked Sterling out of the corner of her mouth.

"Depends." He grumbled a low reply, loosening the scarf around his throat, "Slytherin are at the bottom of the table, no points, as long as they don't beat Ravenclaw by more than 280 points Ravenclaw will still be on top of the table. We really need to work on our chaser plays if we want to win this year. Mallory is a good seeker but Ivy and Aubrey are better… even Marigold might be a shade quicker." He admitted under his breath but was spared from criticising his team further as Ravenclaw took to the air and the sea of blue around them roared enthusiastically. The four lone Gryffindor's focused their cheers on the Ravenclaw seeker.

"GO IVY!" they screamed into the blustering wind and when the Slytherin team joined them at playing height they booed heartily with the rest.

The first 15 minutes after Madam Bluster had commenced play had filled the Ravenclaw stands with a kind of hopeful expectation. It would have been difficult for anyone to assume that Anna Lowenstein and Clara Thornton were flying with anyone they hadn't done for several seasons rather than a complete stranger. To Sterling's great surprise, Anna hadn't dropped the quaffle once. Clara had scored twice and Minerva was thoroughly impressed by the reserve chaser and her particular brand of aerial artistry.

However, the promise of a Ravenclaw victory seemed to melt away alarmingly fast when Warren Fletchley fumbled an easy save…

Dwayne Blaxley threw for the right hoop and Fletchley, stranded by the left post, had let it slip past his outstretched fingers.

"Are you kidding?" Sterling shouted in disbelief.

Augusta groaned. Sterling banged his head repeatedly on the barricade and Minerva and Walter swore loudly.

Fletchley had never been the best keeper that Ravenclaw had ever seen. He had always had a tendency to drift over to one side of the goal posts, leaving the other two wide open.

Walter, who was friendly with Warren, had always defended this particular aspect of Warren's keeping as a very clever feint but Sterling was not to be convinced. He adamantly maintained that it was a supremely bad habit that Fletchley was lucky enough to be able to compensate for with his considerable speed and, as a result, considered him a very sub-par keeper. Minerva tended to sit on Sterling's side of this particular argument. After watching November's match against Hufflepuff she would even argue that Warren's poorly thought out 'starfish-with-no-stick' stunt last year had drastically stilted his acceleration and it looked as if his drifting had only gotten worse.

Ravenclaw's composure began to unravel very quickly after that.

Anna Lowenstein couldn't seem to hold onto the quaffle for more than ten seconds at a time, dropping it completely when Blaxley had threatened to collide with her. Minerva had never seen sloppier formations and Clara was becoming so visibly frustrated with both Anna and the reserve chaser that she almost look pleased when a bludger from Marge Bergstrom knocked Anna off of her broomstick.

"Tumble roll." Minerva and Sterling groaned in unison as she they watched Anna crawl off of the pitch from on high.

Now a player short, the chasers' plays dissolved into complete shambles while Warren seemed to have completely lost his head, shooting off in the wrong direction more often than not.

"It's like watching a car crash." Sterling declared in utter disbelief.

Slytherin were 130 to Ravenclaw's 20 and Minerva was watching with her head in her hands when Ivy and Aubrey Thwaites suddenly streaked past the stands in a blur of blue and green.

Augusta leapt to her feet, utterly beside herself as she and Minerva suddenly screamed encouragement over the barricade into the wind. Sterling and Walter had climbed up onto the seats behind them and whooped loudly with the rest of the crowd with their fists in the air.

"She can turn this around!" Sterling leant down to shout over the din into Minerva's ear before he straightened up and bellowed, "COME ON IVY!"

Ivy, long and thin, was incredibly quick but Aubrey had sharp eyes. She had spotted the snitch first which earned a significant advantage over Ivy's build. Equally tall but slightly broader, Aubrey was blocking every one of Ivy's attempts to come level with her. The snitch glinted brilliant gold against the steely grey sky. As the two seekers directed their brooms skywards in pursuit the stands dissolved into hysterics. Climbing higher and higher Minerva thought that they must have reached at least 150ft before she saw the tiny golden ball fly past them back towards the ground. In an instant Ivy flipped over on her broom and rolled around Aubrey and finally pulled ahead. She had her arm stretched out for the snitch as she continued her near vertical dive, Aubrey right on her tail, both plummeting towards the ground so fast they may as well not have had brooms at all.

Several girls screamed at the terrifyingly steep descent and through the resounding cheers egging them on even faster Minerva heard Augusta gasp, "Oh my!"

They could not have been more than 30ft above the ground when one of the Ravenclaw beaters had thrown all of his weight behind the bludger that had rocketed towards his head and had aimed it instead for Aubrey Thwaites.

It would have been better if he had left it.

Aubrey, who had started to gain on Ivy, had glimpsed the black ball whistling in her direction and braked hard.

She swerved off to the side and the bludger slammed into Ivy instead.

Completely caught by surprise, Ivy was thrown from her Comet 180 and fell the remaining 12ft, crashing heavily to the frosty pitch.

Sterling swore and jumped off his seat. Augusta uttered a little scream and pushed her way through the crowd to lean over the stands with her hands covering her mouth. Minerva and Walter watched with dead eyes as Aubrey Thwaites closed her hand around the struggling gold ball.

Leaning perilously over the stands, the four Gryffindor's let out a small sigh of relief. Ivy had not been seriously hurt. She was lying flat on her back, her broomstick a few paces away, a brilliant emerald smudge on the pitch where she had rolled across the frosty white grass upon impact. She was moving, not very quickly or enthusiastically, ever so slowly she brought her arm up to touch her head.

She was down for less than a minute.

Struggling slightly, she rolled onto her front before clambering unsteadily to her feet tripping on her robes as she went. The remaining members of Ravenclaw team who had managed to stay on their brooms had landed quickly when the game ended and rushed over to see if she was alright.

Before they had come within hailing distance Ivy had untangled herself from her robes and drawn her wand.

"YOU IDIOT!" she screamed and it reverberated through the grounds.

From the stands Walter, Augusta, Sterling, and Minerva heard a loud bang and saw the Ravenclaw beater go flying backwards.

She stumbled over her own broomstick, fell, and stayed down. Her arms covering her face.

Scattered laughter was coming from all directions in the stands.

"Come on." Augusta urged, "We should see if she's ok." She looked rather pale and began shepherding them back towards the stairs.

"On the Brightside," Sterling whispered in Minerva's ear so Augusta would not hear, "They only won by 260 points. Ravenclaw are still in the lead."