Chapter 17
"What is it about a quidditch match that makes people so nervous? I mean, honestly, it's the same as a scrimmage during practice only with more people watching, yet somehow it makes everyone really nervous to play in a real game."
"Yeah, sure, you say that Lily, and yet you're playing around with your food, tapping your foot ceaselessly, and you keep scratching your arm." Remus pointed out.
I stuck my tongue out at him and fiddled with my food some more, scooting my eggs from one side of my plate to the other, then mixing them with my bacon and then trying to extract them from the bacon. I realized what I was doing and threw my fork down in frustration. "Alright, fine, so I'm nervous too, I guess nobody's perfect." I crossed my arms over my chest and sighed.
"You should eat, we're in for a long game, we'll need our strength." Becca said.
"Yeah, easy for you to say, you're always hungry."
"What? I prefer snacking continuously to eating three big meals, what's wrong with that?"
"It's not healthy."
"Yeah? Well at least I'm actually eating, you're too busy playing with your food and Rebby looks like she's going to throw up."
"It's called being nervous." Rebby said quietly.
"I'm nervous too, I just channel my fears and nerves into something more useful."
"And where did you learn to do this?" I asked her.
"I told you, I took some martial arts lesson's this summer, and I also joined this yoga group. I didn't stick with either very long, had to come to school and all, but I did stay long enough to learn how to center myself and focus my emotions."
I raised an eyebrow at her. "How very Zen of you" I rolled my eyes and looked at my watch. "It's time to get down to the field."
James, Rebby, Becca, Sirius, Makenzie, Will, Rach, Win, Remus, and I all stood up and headed down to the quidditch pitch. When we reached the stand Remus wished us luck and went to sit in the stands and read while he waited for the game to begin. The rest of us went down to the locker rooms to get suited up for the match.
By the time everyone was dressed we could hear the cheering and yelling of what was probably the entire student body out in the stands, waiting restlessly for the match to begin. James gestured for us all to gather together and began to make his first pre-game speech.
"I'm not very good at the whole inspirational speech making thing, so I'm going to make this short, sweet, and to the point. We're good; I know we're good, they know we're good. I know we can do this, that we can beat them. More importantly, you all know we can beat them as well. Now let's go out there, be confident, kick some butt and walk away with a victory for Gryffindor!"
"Yeah!" everyone yelled in response. Yeah right. Not good at making inspirational speeches my foot.
"Remember, be confident, we can do this, but don't underestimate them." James gave us all a confident look then turned and led the way out to the pitch. We lined up in order of our positions: the Captain first, next the other two Chasers, then the beaters, then the Keeper and the Seeker. After them came our back up players. We could hear the announcer from inside the dressing rooms. First he called the Slytherine team out, naming each of them in turn and their position. "Alright everyone, mount up!" James called. We all climbed onto our brooms and waited for our team to be called as well while the announcer gave some statistics and back ground information of the Slytherine team players.
"Now for the Gryffindor Team!" The announcer yelled, and all nine of us took off onto the pitch, circling it once while the announcer, whose voice, now no longer muffled by the walls of the dressing room, sounded awfully familiar. "We have James Potter, the team Captain and Chaser, Lily Evans and Rebecca "Rebby" Miller, also Chasers; the Beaters, Sirius Black and William "Will" Windstorm; the Keeper, Makenzie "M n' M" Meissner; the Seeker, Rebecca "Becca" Burns, and the substitute players, Windara "Win" Windstorm and Rachel "Rach" Phillips. The new faces on this team are Makenzie, Will, and Win, the old ones, you know of course from their winning season last year." I glanced over at the teacher's box where the announcer was and realized why the voice was so familiar and why the announcer knew all of our nicknames; it was Remus. That sneaky little fuzz ball had gone and signed up for the announcer position and hadn't told me, or anyone else by the surprised looks James and Sirius gave him when we came to a stop in the center of the field. Remus continued to give statistics on our team as we waited for the referee, Madame Twiggins, to fly up to us to review the rules. After reminding us to play a clean game, glaring at the Slytherines as she said it, she flew back down to the ground and released the bludgers and the snitch, then throwing the quaffle up in the air and blowing her whistle simultaneously, she started the game.
"Here we go, ladies and gentlemen, oh, and the Slytherines too—"
"Lupin, stick to the game!"
"Right Professor McGonagall, sorry about that" Remus apologized "Lily comes up with the quaffle for Gryffindor, but Sanders steals it, that's got to be a foul" Remus paused then said "I'm sorry professor, it just slipped. Anyways, Slytherine has the quaffle, they're taking it down the field, Sanders passes to Wrigley, Wrigley sends it back to Sanders, she shoots, but she's blocked by Meissner! Some applause people! That's M n' M Meissner's first save of her career! What, Professor? Well I just thought she deserved a little appreciation, that's all… well I know it's not really relevant to the game Professor… but Professor… fine Professor, I'll 'stick to the game'… yes Professor… well I would but you keep talking to me… right, sorry about the tone Professor, it'll never happen again…" while Remus argued with Professor McGonagall over how to announce the game, I was busy looking for the snitch while Lily, Rebby, and James were scoring twenty points for Gryffindor in quick succession and Sirius and Will were playing ping pong with a bludger before sending it at a Slytherine Chaser.
I looked around the pitch again. No snitch over there… no snitch over there… oh, hey, look, a shiny gold thing that looks like a snitch… too bad it's really a gold watch… oh look! Now ithat's/i a gold blur that belongs to a snitch! I took off in the direction of the middle of Gryffindor stands where the snitch was doing a figure 8 over the heads of a few students.
"… Professor, I just told you I won't do it again, I— Hey! It looks like Becca's seen the snitch!" I heard Remus shout to the crowd.
I made a bee line for the snitch, not even glancing over when the Slytherine Seeker joined me in the chase. I was ahead of him by a good five feet and gaining. When I was only ten feet from the snitch, it moved, shrieking straight up into the sky. I changed direction quickly, nearly hitting Peter, who the snitch had been circling apparently, in the head with the tail of my broom in the process.
The Slytherine seeker didn't pull up fast enough, resulting in his crashing head long into the Gryffindor stands right on top of Peter, Max, and a few of Max's friends. This cause the formation of an angry mob of Gryffindor fans who proceeded to chase the Seeker down, and do who knows what with him. I'm not sure how I felt about it. I mean, there was no more competition, good for my prospects of catching the snitch, bad for the level excitement in chasing down the damn thing. Also, the guy had probably gotten beaten the crap up, good because he was a snotty ingrate, bad because a lot of Gryffindor supporters and Gryffindors were likely to get detention and points taken from our house for it. The fact that Peter was now a crumpled pile of pain didn't influence my feelings in either direction, though I did feel some sympathy for Max and his friends.
I followed the snitch a good thirty feet higher into the air before I was able to reach out and brush the end of it with my fingertips. It tried to get sneaky on me and dive down suddenly, but I picked up a few new moves this past summer that enabled me to out wit it. For the record, it's a lot harder to outwit a snitch than one would think.
As the snitch curved away from me and down, I, instead o f following it in the same direction, flipped backwards, allowing myself to float in midair for a moment before urging my broom down towards the snitch and catching it as it entered its downward dive.
My one regret in doing this was that none of my friends, save Remus, saw it, and it was probably the single most spectacular catch I've ever made. Other than Sirius of course…. Maybe…
The referee blew the whistle and the Gryffindor fans flew into massive celebration and cheering, believing us to have won the game. Of course, they were correct, so their cheering was well founded. The final score of the game was Gryffindor 190, Slytherine 40. I am proud to say that my catching the snitch won us the game.
Of course, the 4 goals made by our Chasers while I was flying around playing tag with the snitch helped as well. James scored twice, Rebby once, and Lily once. Lily also made a spectacular pass to Rebby that involved catching a pass from James, spinning in circles like she was a drill and flinging the quaffle to Rebby while still spinning. The quaffle was in the hoops before the Slytherines figured out that Lily didn't have it anymore. Our beaters did some serious damage to the Slytherine team as well, breaking at least two arms and a leg with a few well placed bludgers aimed by Sirius and Will.
I landed on the field on the Gryffindor side and was immediately attacked by Win and Rach who ran over from the substitute player bench to congratulate me. The rest of the team flew down as well and we all basically ended up in this giant group hug bouncing up and down with excitement. At some point someone tripped and we all ended up sprawled on the ground. We weren't on the ground for too long as the psychotically happy fans pulled us up and carried us all into the building on their shoulders.
On the way to the Gryffindor Tower I saw a couple of interesting things. First, a small group of people in red and gold chasing the Slytherine Seeker around the side of the quidditch pitch back towards the field. Second, one minute Sirius was on top of the shoulders of some big strong guys who were carrying him in next to James. The next minute the big strong guys were gone and there was a mass of girls with too much make up, really small skirts, and the tiniest shirts ever imagined carrying him. Then he was gone. This was probably not a good thing, but I simply rolled my eyes and made a comment to Rebby about hoping Sirius got around to switching over his Will to me as his sole inheritor, seeing as he was probably either being crushed to death by people or snogged to death by about eighty or ninety Fan Girls. I'm sure this should have upset me in some way, but really, I've come to terms with the fact that he's gloriously hot and that it's not his fault if, when mobbed by that many girls, he is forced to cheat on me. I mean honestly, if I was carried off by a bunch of good looking guys to be snogged senseless, I would hope that Sirius would understand the lack of free will in the situation. The last amazingly funny thing I saw on the way in was, when the group of people put us all down, James running up to Lily in his excitement and giving her a big hug, lifting her from her feet and spinning her in circles. What's amazing about this you ask? The fact that after James finished hugging her he kissed her, quite passionately may I add, in the middle of the hallway for a good two minutes. Still don't know what's amazing about this? Well, since you're obviously slow today, I'll tell you.
She kissed him back.