Rob Parks stood on the pitch with a large chest next to him, holding his broom and dressed in his Ravenclaw quidditch uniform. All of the prospective ravenclaw students were arrayed in front of him, Harriet included. A small selection of other Ravenclaws sat off to one side ready to cheer on their friends. This included Morag and Padma, present to support Harriet and Stephen.
"Right everyone, we're looking to fill in all of the spots this year except for mine: chaser." Rob declared. "So that means we need two chasers, two beaters, a seeker and a keeper."
He pointed to various points on the field and instructed in order, "Those of you wanting to try out for chaser over here, beaters over there, seekers there and keeper over there."
Everyone divided themselves onto the field and Harriet found herself in a group with four other students, all much older than her.
"I'm definitely getting it this year," declared one of the older boys that Harriet thought might have been a sixth year, "Nobody is as fast as me on my Cleansweep eight and it was only sheer luck that Sofia beat me to the snitch last year."
Harriet knew that her school broom, a Shooting Star model, was nowhere near as fast as a Cleansweep; but she was determined to do her best. After all, she didn't lose anything by trying out.
The three other students trying out for seeker were, she thought, at least fourth years or possibly fifth. Two were boys and one was another girl. Harriet was by far the smallest.
Rob Parks came over to them with a small golden ball in one hand, the snitch's wings attempted to flutter against his fingers.
"Right-oh, my future seekers-to-be. Your task will be the simplest one by far… Bring me this snitch!" he said, and threw the snitch up into the air. The gold flying ball hovered briefly for a moment before shooting off up into the air.
The four other students quickly jumped on their brooms and shot off, leaving Harriet standing there unprepared.
Rob lifted an eyebrow at her as she got her Shooting Star under her and lifted up. The feeling of the wind rushing through her hair and past her face was, as always, exhilarating. She spotted the other prospective seekers, none of them appeared to have located the smith and were flying around in lazy circles. As she approached, one of them started shooting off towards the ground at the far end of the pitch. Two others quickly rounded to follow him. The one in the lead was the sixth year that was bragging earlier.
'Oh well,' Harriet thought, 'looks like one of them will get it quickly, but at least I got to get a little bit of flying in.'
Harriet looked towards where they were heading, but couldn't see the snitch anywhere there. The one in the lead was rushing towards the ground quickly, but the other two were gaining on him. Closer and closer to the ground they got, until Harriet thought that they were all definitely going to crash. The one at the back lifted on their broom to bring it to a level just moments before the one at the front pulled hard on his broom. The one following wasn't quick enough and crashed into the ground, skidding along a few meters until he ended up on his back with a broken broom underneath him. The other two didn't escape however, despite their actions to avoid the ground. Almost at the same time as the boy hit the ground, the sixth year in the lead pulled up into the path of the one who had taken earlier evasive action. They crashed together and both of them came off their broom, falling a not insubstantial distance to the ground.
Harriet flew up to the last of the later year seeker prospects, who had noticed the accidents as well.
"Should we go down and help them?" she asked the other girl.
The other girl shook her head and pointed to the scene below, "No. They're already been looked after, see? Rob will appreciate us focussing on the task at hand more."
Harriet nodded and the two of them set to work looking for the snitch, flying circles or figure eights in the sky and scanning all around them looking for the illusive golden flying ball.
Others were in the sky by this point, beaters beating the bludgers and chasers trying to throw the quaffle past the keepers. Rob Parks was flying between the different groups observing them.
Harriet thought that she saw the snitch a couple of times and flew closer, only on both occasions finding that it wasn't the snitch at all. She watched the other girl carefully, in case she spotted the snitch first. The other girl hung close to Harriet, every time she moved the other girl moved too. Thus it was that when the snitch was first spotted, they were almost right next to each other and flying in the same direction. It was the other girl who spotted it first though, breaking off to the right and climbing as quickly as she could. Harriet reacted to the movement by following her and spotted the snitch herself only moments later. It was hovering over one of the stands, but as soon as they got close it suddenly darted downwards, diving along the height of the tower-like stand. The two girls followed, gaining on the golden ball. The towers didn't have their house coverings on them and this allowed the snitch to dart suddenly inwards through the frame. Harriet reacted almost instinctively, expecting the other girl to do the same. She followed the snitch, keeping her head down as close to the tip of her broom as possible in order to fit between the triangular gaps made by the wooden frame. She followed the stitch as it wove in and out of the frame almost as if it knew that she was following it and determined to remain free. A wooden staircase ran up the tower frame, enabling spectators to reach the seats at the top, and the snitch changed directions suddenly to begin climbing again. It followed the staircase, bobbing up and down as if it were actually going up the steps. Harriet kicked off a step to change directions as quickly as possible and then kicked off the frame in order to follow the steps as well. Going up the staircase, following the snitch, required doing one hundred and eighty degree turns every time the staircase doubled back and she had to kick off the walls in order to change directions herself. This caused her to lose a lot of speed, but they were almost at the top and she had almost caught up to the blasted ball. Finally it burst out of the last set of stairs into the open air above the seats and Harriet had her chance, she reached out one hand to grasp at it!
Just as she was about to clutch her fingers around the flying menace, it jagged sideways and she had to almost jump to get it. She felt her fingers close around the metal ball and realised with a start that she no longer had a good hold of the broom stick! She had leant out too far! Harriet's left hand still had a hold of the neck of the broom and her left foot was curled around the broom but her right foot had slipped off and her right hand obviously had hold of the snitch. The broom had lost power without her able to control it and she was suddenly falling! The frame of the stand whipped by as she struggled with the broom and even as she herself began to spin. She unhooked her foot from the broom and then brought it back around with one hand so that it was back in its proper place between her legs. Then she pulled as hard on the broom as she could, up and to one said to pull herself out of the spinning dive that she had found herself in. She knew not to fight the spin, but to go with it and eventually she found herself level once more.
Two meters above the ground.
She looked around for Rob Parks only to see that everyone had stopped. Everyone. They were all just floating there, watching her. Someone began clapping and that caused everyone else to start as well. Including the first years on the ground who were whooping for joy. Harriet blushed at the attention. Everybody had seen what she had done to catch the snitch and everybody had stopped to watch.
Unfortunately, that also meant that they weren't keeping an eye on where the bludgers were and one Ravenclaw was soon knocked off their broom and onto the ground. Thankfully they were pretty close to the ground and he didn't appear to suffer serious injury. But this was enough to stop all of the cheering and Rob flew down to check up on them, calling out to everybody to pay attention to what they were doing.
Harriet flew down towards him, but the other girl, the other seeker candidate flew alongside her to congratulate her. "That was amazing! How did you even do that?"
Harriet shrugged, "I don't know, I just followed the snitch."
"Well, you deserve the position, that's for sure. Who are you, anyway? Are you a second-year?" she asked.
Harriet shook her head, "First year, Harriet Greengrass."
"First year? Well now, you've got to be the youngest seeker in at least a century," the other girl said. "I'm glad you put in a showing like that to get the snitch though, it doesn't make me feel quite so bad losing out to you. I'm Chancy Baum, fourth-year. I'm going to go see if I can get in on the chaser trial."
With that Chancy split off and headed over towards where the chasers were flying around, passing the quaffle between them and taking shots for goal. Harriet flew down to land next to Rob Park and handed over the snitch to him.
"Well done! Harriet was it?" he congratulated and asked, Harriet nodded. "You're a first year, aren't you? I haven't ever seen flying like that, not even in the professional league. That was amazing! You're definitely our new seeker, congratulations."
Harriet thanked him and he told her to go and rest up and enjoy the rest of the day, to get ready for their first training on the coming Monday at Five in the afternoon.
Harriet began walking towards her friends and were soon swamped in hugs and pats on the back.
"That was amazing Harriet!" Morag said.
She was soon followed by Padma who told her that, "I've never seen flying like that, ever!"
Thankfully when they got back to the Ravenclaw Common Room there were not too many people in there as Morag entered first and announced to the entire room in a loud voice, "Get ready to welcome our new Ravenclaw Seeker, Harriet Greengrass!"
The cheering was embarrassing. At least three Ravenclaws then got up and rushed to the bookshelves to look up ages of seekers in the Ravenclaw quidditch teams (obvious due to their questioning of Harriet about her birthday.)
Hermione put them to shame very quickly however when she loudly proclaimed, "Alexander Podfort was one day younger than Harriet and he was a seeker in 1881 for Slytherin."
This resulted in frantic flicking of pages to confirm her statement and it wasn't until one seventh year stabbed his finger at a page in his book and called out, "She's right!" that the impromptu research session ended.
The first years held an impromptu celebration for Harriet and Stephen (despite not securing himself a position on the team) was her loudest proponent.
Daphne and Tracey both congratulated her at breakfast the following morning, though quietly so as not to be overheard by the other Slytherins as did Hew and Cossima in their next letter back to her.