Word Count: 912

Practise Makes Perfect

"Sweet Merlin, can't you do anything correctly, Johnson?" Cormac McLaggen yelled at Angelina Johnson seconds before the two of them even set a foot on the ground. They were doing a last minute Quidditch Practice, as their Seeker, Harry Potter was currently lying in the Hospital Wing after some accident that was somehow connected to the forbidden corridor.

Neither the Chasers nor the Beaters liked him, but they had to acknowledge Oliver's point: Better him than no Seeker at all.

"Yes, actually. You have seen the goals I make fly-by and I've seen your jaw drop more than once. And, contrary to certain other, non-permanent members of the team, I neither forget my position nor that I am not the Captain," she deadpanned.

"Yeah." Alicia landed next to her. The other members of the team—Katie, Oliver, and the Weasley Twins—were still in the air, but it could only be a matter of seconds until they, too, arrived at the scene.

"Angelina knows what she's doing. If you had not distracted her, she would have made that goal. But no! You—a Keeper who is replacing a Seeker because literally no one else wanted and dared to try to replace Harry—tried to explain her what to do!"

The Weasley Twins were moving to either side of Angelina, emphasizing their Beater's Bats.

"You think Madam Pomphrey would get him back on his feet in time for the game?" one of them—Fred? George?—asked the other.

"Yes, but Oliver might murder us for keeping him from practising with the dolt," the other—George? Fred?—replied.

"Are you sure? I mean, he can't play without Beaters either..." Twin #1 trailed off.

Angelina looked at McLaggen and was relieved to see him unusually pale. She wished she had brought her camera.

Though it seemed like Alicia did. The other Chaser had always a considerable amount of thing in her pockets under various charms.

"Let's just ask him," Twin #2 proposed. "See, there he is!"

Indeed, Oliver and Katie were sprinting towards him.

Before anyone else could react, McLaggen tried to blame everything on the twins who, surprisingly, let him talk before proposing their idea.

"No one is hurting anyone here," Oliver ordered, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Aw, but Oliver," Twin #1 tried to argue.

"No. We need to improve if we want to win this year's Quidditch House Cup. We need to practise until we're perfect. We need to work like a well-oiled machine. McLaggen, don't distract other players of our team. Concentrate on the Snitch. Chasers, don't let yourself be distracted. You never know what might happen. Remember our first game of the year? Who's to say something like this doesn't happen again? You need to stay focused. Beaters, your job is to stop the other team from scoring, not to stop our Seeker from catching the snitch. Did everyone understand that?"

He looked them into the eyes one by one and they all replied affirmative, some more and some less enthusiastic.

"And you, Oliver, need to work on having a reserve Seeker on hand," Katie joked.

"Yeah, that's a pretty dumb idea," Fred agreed.

"Especially since our Seeker is Harry Potter," George added.

"What are you talking about?" Oliver questioned. "This worked fine so far."

"Really? Then why are we working with McJerk over there?" Angelina asked, pointing in McLaggen's direction.

The boy in question looked quite insulted, which might have been reasonable if Angelina had not been stating a fact, Alicia supposed, but she was wise enough to keep her thoughts to herself.

Out loud, she explained the problem to her Captain who seemed to have some sort of tunnel vision set on Harry. "Let's face it, Harry's likely to be injured or otherwise unavailable again, so it would be better for us if we were to have a permanent reserve Seeker that actually trains with us."

"That's right," Twin #2 agreed.

"Come to think of it," Twin #1 added.

"That might be a good idea for every position," they chorused. Alicia was convinced that they practised that, there was no way this was natural.

"You're right," Oliver finally realized. "After all, then we will not have an adjusting period, no matter if any of our players is otherwise occupied. We'd all know each other's strengths and weaknesses and how to strengthen or cover them respectively."

"Exactly," Katie approved, grinning like the madwoman Alicia had decided roughly a year ago she was.

"I am going to need to prepare so much and there are only three days left-"
"Whoah there," Angelina interrupted what was sure to turn into a page long speech. "You can do that next year. Right now we need to focus on our current problems." She glanced at McLaggen. "Or rather: our current problem. Then you have all the time you need to be ready in September with a full training regime for twice the number of people and everything."

"But-"

"No arguments, don't get ahead of yourself. This is our final game of the year in case you forgot. We need a perfect team if we want to win the Cup and have even a remote chance of winning the House Cup," Alicia ordered, because damn, she wanted these Cups. Her brother Marcus in Slytherin had not stopped smirking in the last month or so and she would not be able to stand that much longer!

Oliver grinned.

"Well then I guess we'll have to practise, because practise makes perfect."

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~Marvelgeek42