'How long can you stand the heat?' - Queen, Another One Bites The Dust
The bludger races towards me, narrowly missing my head as my honed reflexes prompt me to duck.
I flip off Ria, who is waving her Beater's bat from the other end of the pitch with Scor.
"OI! AL, STOP PLAYING AROUND!" Of course James only saw me swearing, and somehow missed spotting Ria's attempted murder. My brother may be the school troublemaker (along with Fred, of course), but on the pitch he's got his head in the game.
Even if these are only tryouts.
The sound of singing reaches me from where Ria is clearly thinking along the same lines as me.
"Just a man and his will to survive."
She flies over to join me looking for the snitch by the hoops, and throws an arm around my shoulders.
"It's the eye of the tiger,
It's the thrill of the fight,
Rising - "
"RIA! FOCUS!" Ria winks at me, knowing I gain sadistic pleasure from watching my brother get angry.
She looks at him gesticulating from the middle of the pitch, and shrugs.
"And he's watching us all with the eeeeeye of the tiger."
He zooms over and I catch myself smiling as I watch her laugh, dodging as he tries to whack her with his clipboard.
We fly back to the ground when James signals that tryouts are finally over. He should know that I have better things to do on a Saturday than this. Or more to the point, people to do.
"Okay, guys." He addresses the mass of hopefuls gathered around to see if they've made their way onto the famed Gryffindor Quidditch Team.
"The team is…."
I zone out, certain I'll be Seeker. As much as I know James would love to kick me off the team, I'm the best Seeker there is, and he knows he needs me, to win the Cup.
A few minutes later and Ria is hugging me. "Al, I'm Beater!"
I roll my eyes. "Ri, you've been a Beater since fourth year. You know James would never kick you off the team."
She shrugs. "Some of the tryouts weren't too bad this year."
Is she kidding me? They were all terrible. Except for Lils' tryout to be Keeper. She was practising all summer for it, and I'm happy she's on the team now.
"I'm glad Frank Jones is the new Beater. He can hit the Bludger damn hard." I follow Ria's gaze to a guy standing a distance away from the others. He's a tall fifth-year and literally covered in muscle. Clearly a Muscler.
Scor wanders over. "Good team this year. I didn't think James could possibly replace Smith, but the new Chaser's quite good."
We all look around to see the new Chaser, a tiny wiry brunette third-year who goes by the name of Katie Sinatra.
I snort. "She's the new Chaser?!"
Scor raises a cool eyebrow. "Kid's got the new Firebolt 400. She may be a third year, but she flies fucking fast."
"No man, that's not why I'm surprised. It's just that the Chasers' surnames are now: Potter, Malfoy, Sinatra."
He just looks at me.
"Get it? PMS?"
I crack up with Ria, and pretty soon we're rolling in the mud, laughing our heads off, while Scor looks at us like we're crazy.
"I do not know you two."
And he walks off to shower, with the rest of the team, leaving us lying on the ground.
Ria looks over to me, laughter still in her eyes. "Here, Al, you've got something on your face."
She reaches over to me, and at the last minute sweeps her fingers into the mud and swipes them across my forehead.
"Oh shit's going down now."
I grab her and start to rub mud in her face.
And now we're rolling in the Quidditch Pitch again, attacking each other with mud and laughing at how goddamn immature we are for sixth years.
I pause after making sure her face is covered in mud, and realise that we have moved so that I am lying on my back, with her straddling me.
Even now, she's grinning at me, her sparkling teeth setting a stark contrast to her mud-smeared face and grass sticking out of her hair. Godric, I love Ria Black.
I grab her around the waist and pull her so that's she's lying on top of me, her breath warming my neck and my arms wrapped around her.
I could stay like this forever.
But after a while she pulls away to stand and offers a hand to help me up.
I reach out to take the hand but she snatches it away and runs away laughing.
I am left on my elbows in the mud, staring after her, liking the warm feeling in my stomach.
Three days later and I am walking into the Great Hall with Emma for lunch, after Ghoul Studies.
Ghoul Studies is so shit.
We're learning about poltergeists at the moment, so we spent an hour stalking Peeves.
A whole hour watching Peeves balance buckets of ink on doors. I have bruises on my arms now because Emma had to keep pinching me to keep me awake.
"Oh Merlin, what're they doing now?" Mother Hen, aka Emma, sighs as she spots Ria and Lysander. They're sitting at the head of Gryffindor table. And by 'the head of the table', I mean they're sitting cross-legged on the table, at the end, amidst goblets of orange pumpkin juice and baskets of freshly made bread, blatantly staring at the other students eating.
What the fuck.
As we near them, I catch their conversation.
"Oh hell yeah."
"Totally agreed, babe. His hair is too beautiful. Hey, what about him?"
"Get your eyesight checked, 'cos that's a hell no."
"But those eyebrows are God-given sexy."
"Eyebrows? Honey, look at his face."
"So he has a slight acne problem."
"Forget the acne, he's got a drooling problem."
"But I bet you'd like him to drool over you."
"That's just straight-up disgusting. Ah but look there."
"Oh, yes, man. Check out that hot piece of tosh."
"Hot piece of tosh, really?" I seat myself on the bench next to them.
"Like you've never objectified someone." Lysander frowns at me on behalf of Ria, who is still checking out the guy.
"Too right I've never called anyone a hot piece of tosh."
"Remember Victor Langford. Or as you named him: 'Dat Ass'."
"Ah, DA. Good times, good times." I reminisce about Dat Ass, remembering the time he accidentally spilt chocolate sauce in his lap, so I -
"Al, stop. You've got your 'I'm thinking about sex' face on."
I glower at Emma and open my mouth to say something extremely insulting, like 'Stop being so bleedin' jealous of me', but fortunately Ria cuts me off, seemingly noticing Emma for the first time.
"Hey, Em, what'd you think of that guy?" She points to a tall dark-haired guy who I know to be the Seeker on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. I scowl. Slytherin may be the House that we Gryffindors hate the most, but the Ravenclaws are our main rivals at Quidditch. And I loathe to say it, but the Ravenclaw Seeker is good.
"Em….do you like him?" Ria and Lysander are grinning like Cheshire cats at Emma, who is blushing hard.
Aw, she's too cute.
"N-no." She stammers out, but Ria has already jumped off the table and is jogging over to the Ravenclaws.
I roll my eyes. Ria and Rose try way too hard to set Emma up with guys. And then Sander, Scor and I come along and intimidate the guy into breaking up with her. All because we love her.
"Dude, where's Rose? Wasn't she in Ancient Runes with you?" I turn back to Lysander.
"Yes," he nods wearily (my cousin's company tends to do that to people), "but she disappeared with Jake Bloom just before lunch."
Probably off in a broom cupboard somewhere, if you get my drift.
"What about Scor?" I ask.
"I said that Hufflepuff guy was cute, so Scor's gone to find out if he's gay or not." Lysander nods towards the Hufflepuff table, where Scor is chatting to a very pretty boy.
"Didn't know blond and blue-eyed was your type, Scamander." I raise my eyebrows at him, but Lysander is saving from answering by the return of Ria, with the Ravenclaw Seeker.
She sits down next to me, leaving the only available seat next to Emma. The guy sits down and smiles at Em.
Ria sighs dreamily and nudges me. "Don't they just look perfect together?" she whispers to me. Much as I hate to say it, they do make a pretty couple. His chocolate-brown hair complements her honey blonde hair, and he seems super-responsible like her. If he wasn't the enemy Seeker and we were to let Ems get a boyfriend, this guy would be on my list of potential candidates.
"Guys, this is Quentin Townsend. Quentin, this is Al Potter, Lysander Scamander, and last but by no way in hell least, the utterly gorgeous Emma Longbottom."
Subtle, Ria.
"Hey, my homies. Yo, Sander, his name's Jordan and he's – oh, hey Quen'in. What'cha doin' here?" Scor slides in next to Ria.
"Ria invited me over to have lunch here." Quentin smiles at Scor.
Scor catches Ria's gaze, and flash of understanding crosses his face, and he turns back to Quentin. "So, dude, how's your love life going?"
Godric, he's no more subtle than Ria.
"Er, great thanks." For fuck's sake, what kind of a vague answer is that?
Scor's face tightens slightly.
See, the thing that completely fascinates and annoys me in equal measure about Scor and Ria, is their emotions. I've seen Scor and especially Ria furious before, but whenever they're feeling any sort of negative emotion other than anger, be it sadness or disappointment, they kind of close their faces off. So say if Scor's owl died (he denies any affection for the blasted creature, but we all know the truth), he would close himself off to showing any emotion, and instead make his face unreadable. I think it happens automatically for them now, but it's also what makes them such great liars. They can bullshit their way out of anything. You look into their eyes and they give nothing away. its frikkin' unfair, because I'm a bloody open book. Lysander says I show everything I'm feeling in my eyes, which Ria says is one of the reasons why she likes me, but I hate it.
Anyway, off topic.
Scor quickly steers the conversation back to dating. "Hogsmeade weekend coming up soon, right, Quen? Got a date?"
Is he completely off his rocker? The first Hogsmeade weekend is in October. It's the third week of September.
If I was Quentin, I would have run away from these loons a long time ago.
"No, I don't have a date yet."
Obviously. Who does?
"Aw, Quen, me neither." Ria gives a theatrical sigh. Bitch may be the best liar, but she's a shit actress. "You know who also doesn't have a date? Emma!"
Well you can't get any more obvious than that. Emma is red from blushing now.
But Quentin has clearly not heard Ria's last sentence, because he looks up at Ria eagerly. "Really? You don't have a date? Do you maybe want to go with me then?"
Shit.
Emma stands up sharply and runs out of the Hall.
Dammit, I should have seen that coming. Ria's hot, there's no denying it, and Emma's so pretty, but guys just don't notice her next to Ria and Rose.
Ria gives the oblivious bastard an icy glare. "No. So fuck off."
Scor gives Ria a Look and stays with Sander to talk to a disappointed Quentin (serves him right, the dickhead), but I follow Ria as she races out of the Hall and along the many corridors and stairs to Gryffindor Tower.