Chapter 5 Cauldrons and Bludgers
Harry and Hermione were beside Neville in the Infirmary as a very serious Madame Pomfrey worked to infuse the potion that Professor snape administered to Neville into all of Neville's tissues. While Madame Pomfrey hummed happily and forced various magical fluids to ignore various laws of biology, chemistry, physics and good sense through the power of advanced Medwitchery, Professor Snape explained the new reality Neville Longbottom would be living for the next six months.
"Mr Longbottom, for the next six months your tissues are going to be liberating a neutralized Suppressor Toad toxin suspended in enhanced regenerative matrix through your pores. To enable this to be safely excreted from your body, you must use the body's existing structure for tissue purging, with the resultant effluvia that your fellow students will require you to purge before you attend class." Professor Snape intoned seriously.
Harry grinned and translated. "Professor Snape's potion essentially gives you troll regeneration coupled with a potion that locks on to every bit of toxin in your body and draws it into your sweat glands. Either you work until you sweat it all out, and take a good long shower, or you will be a half sized troll in a very tight classroom."
Hermione looked concerned. "Can't he just apply some sort of deodorant?"
"Miss Granger, while I am a certified Potions Master and a pioneer in the field, I could not even conceive of a way to mask the smell of a troll in confined spaces. The traditional answer is to burn the property to bare earth with fiend fire and build somewhere else. Preferably upwind." Snape sneered.
Neville looked crushed. "What am I going to do Harry?"
Harry grinned. "Congratulations Neville, you just enlisted in the Goblin army. If there is one thing I can guarantee about Goblin basic training, it is that you will sweat out every bit of vital fluid you or six generations of ancestors have ever had. You might die, but you will be certified toxin clean and fit for the cover of Witch Weekly's Warlock swimsuit edition!" Harry chimed.
Neville looked at Hermione pleading. "You will be coming too, right?"
Noodle slid seamlessly from Harry's sleeve to Hermione's and coiled around her protectively.
Hermione raised her head and said quite firmly. "Noodle and I will be doing revision by the fireplace, away from sleet, sweat, and the smell of fresh troll."
"$ Why is it the only one with any brains, isn't the speaker? Mouse-Giver is clearly the sensible one. I will stay with her. Trolls and Inferi are the only two things not worth biting. $" Noodle hissed, agreeing with Hermione, and voting by slither.
Harry and Neville set to their early morning routine of run, pushups, sit ups, chin ups and had begun to work on sparring. They had come to know that there were in fact a small number of highly motivated and totally insular senior students who also had early morning workout routines.
Two redheaded Weasley boys, the Griffindor beaters, helped identify one group as the Griffindor Quidditch team. Thus clued in, they soon spotted Cedric Diggory and Adrian Pucey leading groups of the Hufflepuff and Slytherin players, but not the whole team like the long suffering Griffindors.
The break in their workout routine came from the Ravenclaw team, who decided that Hufflepuff first years jogging at the same time they were constituted spying, and hexed them with jelly leg jinx, with warnings if spotted near their run again they would be transfigured into garden gnomes and dropped off in the Herbology greenhouses as decorations.
Walking off the jelly leg jinx, they came to the old Quidditch annex, out of use since the Malfoy's paid for an expansion of the facility, coincidentally the year Lucius Malfoy ran for election to the board of governors. The sounds of battle caused Nevill and Harry to pick up their pace, and jog on wobbly legs to see who was fighting.
What they saw was a very angry looking Milicent Bulstrode with a heavy looking one handed club hammering what looked like a flying bowling ball against a wall. The bowling ball seemed to be enchanted and determined to kill Milicent.
As they jogged after it, struggling to bring their wands up, not that they figured the knockback jinx or stinging hex which was the sum total of their Defense Against the Dark Arts attack training would stop a rogue bowling ball when Milicent shouted "FINITE" and the bowling ball fell placidly to the ground.
"What are you two badgers doing out and about before class?" Milicent asked.
Harry pointed his wand at the currently inoffensive bowling ball and said firmly, "We heard you fighting and came to help you out. Who enchanted that to attack you? Was it Draco?" Harry guessed, naming the only Slytherin he knew who would randomly attack his own housemate.
Neville who was leaning on Harry and trying to catch his breath wheezed out.
"It's a bludger Harry. They always attack players, that's the whole point of a bludger. Milicent was probably just doing beating practice, right?" Neville gasped, getting his breath back and wiping slimy grey sweat off his brow.
Harry blinked. He knew the theory of Quidditch, but it seemed like just another silly thing wizards did for reasons probably having to do with too much time inhaling strange fumes and wand twiddling and not enough time doing productive work. While hitting balls at each other sounded foolish and faintly wizardy, flying through the air at high speeds while enchanted bowling balls were actively trying to kill you, then smashing the little balls of random homicide at your enemy with your own weapons; that sounded like war.
Goblins loved war.
"Can you teach us?" Harry asked.
"Harry, I am out here every day doing whatever beater drill I can to get better because Marcus Flint, the head beater of Slytherin keeps reminding captain Pucey that Slytherin alone has never had a female player. If a dragon wanted to swat bludgers at me with its tail I would buy it a damned cow for breakfast!"
Neville looked concerned. "Harry, me gran won't let me play Quidditch. She won't even let me own a broom."
Harry looked at him firmly. "This isn't Quidditch, this is medically mandated therapy. You have two choices, we just do push ups and sit ups while you stink up close and personal, or we fight like warriors, with clubs, fighting enchanted cannon balls!" Harry cheered.
"Bludgers!" Milicent and Neville shouted, their Quidditch puritan hearts shocked to hear their beloved sport compared to the muggle practice of lofting vaguely aimed bits of iron at each other instead of dueling like sensible people.
"Whatever!" Cheered Harry. Goblins knew wizards were silly, and knew their sports must be even sillier. The idea that they had a hidden form of war, not simply tossing spells at each other, but proper war with weapons that depended on strength and skill, not even on the ground, but in a loose chaotic madness in the sky! Harry's heart fell to his first boyhood love; Quidditch.
For the first two weeks, they played Beater in the Middle with Milicent on the ground between the two, then gradually worked their way up to brooms in hover mode. It was in this hover mode they were spotted by a pair of Griffindor gingers, ever so curious as to why they kept hearing the sounds of bludger and bat at five in the morning in the rain when they already knew where all the House Teams were playing.
"I say Fred, do you see what I see?" Said George.
"Baby beaters George. Two badgers and a snake." Said Fred.
"It's like watching" Started Fred
"a baby bird flapping its wings in the nest." concluded George.
They looked at each other and nodded.
"Never learn to fly that way, Fred." Said Fred.
"Best way is to kick them out of the nest, George!" Said George.
"Either they grow wings," Offered Fred piously.
"Or they pretty much bury themselves." Concluded George practically.
Looking firmly at each other then nodded again. "This calls for a prank then?" They said in stereo.
"Definitely!" They responded to each other, then trotted back to the castle, with mischief, mayhem and a certain intent to do their bit to aid their Quidditch juniors along their path to death or glory, frequently both, in the holy halls of Hogwarts beaters.
Neville noted, when the time came to explain to his Gran how it was, exactly, that he hadn't seen it coming in time to show the slightest bit of good sense, care for his own life and limb, or the heart condition of his beloved Gran, that it was mostly Snape's fault, and thus not something Neville could really have controlled.
It began, as did many disasters, with the potion's rotation. Potions class was a mixed class of Griffindor and Hufflepuff. This traditionally had been an easy class for Snape, as it was only the Griffindor boldness and general academic laxness (the bright were bold enough to be risks, and the dim were lazy enough to be another kind of risk), so Snape had a decades worth of experience teaching him that it was the Griffindor students that would be the source of his problems.
In fact, Neville and Harry found potions to be both a joy and a terror for them. Neville's greatest love was Herbology, and at the lowest level, potions were more about ingredient knowledge than magical power, meaning that Neville was something of an expert in ingredient nature and preparation. His problem was his healing magical channels were giving him about a dozen times more magical power than he had ever handled, and as system was still healing, how much it delivered changed in random surges.
Harry was getting used to his wand. No goblin was allowed to use a wand, as a power focus, it was exclusive to wizard kind, and had finally settled the question of dominance of the surface world. He had the runes of power, the key to amplifying goblin magic to nearly a match to human wizard. Only Professor Flitwick and Harry had ever had both. Flitwick of course didn't have his mother's magic wrapped in a shard of Voldemort's own power added to the mix, so even Flitwick didn't have quite the control issue that Harry had. What Harry did have was extensive experience making goblin potions. While he had no experience imbuing power with his wand, he had been doing potion preparation and cooking for half his life.
In order to neutralize the Griffindorish tendencies of half his class, Snape had his students in a rotation so each Griffindor would work with each Hufflepuff. This hopefully spread the burden of the Griffindors, while exposing them to actual work habits. For both Harry and Neville, this had worked fine, they could do all the preparation and follow the brewing instructions, only requiring their Griffindor partners to add power with their wands at the required points.
Enter Ron Weasley and Seamus Finnegan. Ron was working with a broken wand, and the redhead was refusing to look Neville in the eye as he blushed and muttered almost too low to hear.
"I can't do that bit. You do it." Ron muttered.
Neville, who had spent over forty minutes of non stop prep work on everything from the Acromantula web gland milking (because spiders man, I can't even), to the gentle flaying of the stranger fig roots, because the membranes are required for the potion, but become ineffective if the sap from any of the root veins becomes mixed in, looked at Ron in horror.
"But I have done everything else!" Neville hissed, aware his own power was finally starting to return under Snape's potion and the daily exercises, but with no real consistency from moment to moment, let alone day to day in how much came when he called, his control was problematic.
Ron showed his wand, broken in three places and held together with spell-o-tape. "Look Neville, I had it in my back pocket when I got in a fight with that prat Malfoy. I hit the little git good, but then that great walrus he calls Crabbe tackled me and it kind of got, like this. Every time I try magic, something pretty bad happens."
Neville looked at the wand, and Ron honestly wasn't the sharpest fang in the lion's maw. If Ron, who was honestly pants at potions tried to gently infuse his magic to blend the strangler vine essence and Acromantula silk base, he wasn't sure what would happen. With a nervous hand, he took his own wand and began to infuse his magic, pushing just enough to feel it in his wand, all the while chanting softly to himself "Please don't blow up, please don't blow up, please don't blow up."
Seamus was arguing with Harry. "Look mate, I know it says to slowly infuse for twenty minutes, but I have to hang a wicked piss. If we really give it a good blast, we could be done in like, two and I can go drain the cauldron, what do you say?" Seamus said, pointing his wand at the Secure Bind potion that Harry had worked so hard to keep from disaster. Seamus had been non-stop trying to toss in half chopped ingredients, or toss in two steps together to "help it get a move on", and Harry was at the end of his rope. The potion took twenty minutes of magic infusion to cure because there were three separate plant ingredients whose task was to keep the binding agents solvent, and to give them explosive dispersion once the potion vial was given an activating magic pulse and tossed at a target. If you didn't bind each agent to the other in the potion, it was liable to simply blow up now, at some unknown state of binding. Anything from a dangerous explosion, fire, to being webbed in artificial Acromantula silk that proceeded to strangle you without the force limitation programmed by proper curing, could occur.
"Listen Finnegan, you point that wand at this cauldron and I will feed it to you. It says take twenty minutes because it takes twenty minutes!" Harry hissed. Potions required discipline and care, they were like dragons, useful and necessary beasts that performed perfectly right up until the second you stopped paying attention and they ate you alive.
Taking out his wand, he began to channel the magic through it. This potion goblins could not make because it required far more magical power than a goblin could channel without draining themselves totally. A wand was a power focus, a massive amplifier, for a wand wielding wizard the amount of power was negligible. For a rune enhanced goblin, already amplified, using a second amplifier they were only beginning to understand, it was like trying to walk a curious baby dragon through a China shop with narrow aisles to the meal it could see but not reach yet.
For ten minutes, Harry and Neville managed to cage the twin beasts of their powers, before Seamus Finnegan crossed his legs and decided he needed to pee more than he needed a good mark on this potion and it was pretty close to the light pink they were aiming for. Sliding his wand out under his robes, he poked it against the edge of the cauldron and just…gave it a bit of help.
Harry was meditating, balancing the flood of power against a counter flood of control, letting the slow gentle draw from the potion passively draw power from his wand as its slow and gentle eddied lapped at the edge of his awareness with quiet hunger. Then a brutal wave of power landed in the gentle whirling pool like a drunken teenager doing a cannon-ball, and in defensive reflex, Harry's power lashed out in a jagged bolt a hundred times greater than the trickle he had been allowing.
Harry's potion exploded.
Neville had been sweating as he forced his body to produce enough power to keep the reaction going, while using his will and intent to strangle it down to what he guessed was the right flow for the potion, based on the speed it swirled and the change in aroma to the light peppermint the text promised for a completed potion.
Then Harry's cauldron exploded, and Neville, without really thinking about it rammed his power through the cauldron to Harry's in a reflexive attempt to take control of what was about to blow his friend up.
Neville's cauldron, for the record, did not actually explode. It did achieve an instantaneous acceleration equal to a muggle blunderbuss, before ramming into Harry's cauldron and blasting it into the wall, where Harry's cauldron did indeed, explode.
Where Mr Longbottom's actions arguable saved the lives of Harry Potter and Seamus Finnegan, at the cost of two rather cherished school cauldrons, it must be noted that the contents of both cauldrons failed to make the journey, and the entire Potions laboratory its students, and professor, were indeed blasted with Acromantula silk that indeed had bonded with the stranger fig membrane which it demonstrated by attempting to strangle said students and teachers.
While the class was released to the medical wing and then to lunch, Harry and Neville got to sweat out more of Neville's potion and much of Harry's Acromantula silk strand coverings, by scrubbing the walls, desks, floors and ceiling of Snapes beloved potion dungeon.
It was thus that Harry and Neville arrived at the afternoon flying lesson with Slytherin exhausted, distracted, smelling like trolls, and, most critically, with their problematic magic surging with awakened power.
Adrien Pucey and Cedric Diggory looked on in confusion as they both came to the field where the first years were about to undertake their flying lessons. The note from the Weasley beater twins could well be a prank, they were famous for them, but among the Quidditch teams it was generally accepted that the one thing the Weasley twins took seriously was Quidditch, at least the beater portion of the game. What the dreaded Griffindor duo meant for the Slytherin and Hufflepuff's captains was unclear, but the two decided to wait. After all, while not everything the Weasley twins thought was funny was in fact funny, it was always exciting.
Madame Hootch took the field and told the students to stand by the brooms set out by their names. Hermione was quite nervous, as while Neville and Harry had been doing beater drills on the school's ancient Comet 260's, a child training broom with the very helpful "hover" setting the two boys had been training on with Milicent that disabled the wizard or witches own control of elevation, today they would be rising up under their own power.
Hermione was of two minds on the whole witches and broomstick thing, thinking it a Patriarchal negative stereotype used to demonize female power. This warred with the very real excitement that came from learning both brooms and flying carpets had been exclusive Witch inventions, only later copied by wizards, and represented very real testimonies to female magical empowerment. Added to Hermione's fear not of heights, but of lack of personal control, and the broom flying lesson had her up the whole night before learning and drilling herself in the levitation charm, Wingardium Leviosa. If someone were to fall, she could save them. If she were to fall…..well it was her quiet commitment that she will think about that, and maybe have a good panic attack on the subject immediately after class.
Harry and Neville were too shell shocked from potions to realize their brooms were Clean Sweep 7's, the Quidditch teams competitive brooms, not the Comet 260 student training broom with all the extra safety features.
Milicent Bulstrode was not shell shocked, and was deeply curious as to why her broom was a Clean Sweep 7, something her house would never let a first year, let alone a girl, touch, and why there was a bludger bat in the below broom clip where it rested. Glancing over, she saw every other Slytherin around her had a Comet 260, and no bludger bat, but a glance at the Hufflepuff's showed her the slightly flared forestock of Clean Sweep 7 and the suspicious bulge that hinted at a bludger bat beneath both Harry and Nevilles brooms. She frowned. What in Merlin's bat filled beard was going on?
Madame Hootch in her no nonsense way firmly instructed the students to step up to their brooms, raise their hands and give the command; "Up".
Hermione was attempting to coax her broom like a kitten on a high shelf she would really like to come down, more slowly and carefully than it got up, pretty please. The broom rolled back and forth like it wanted to, but was at least as scared about leaving the ground as she was.
Neville and Harry simply held out their hands and while Neville said "Up" firmly and clearly, Harry more or less said "blerg", but the broom seemed to think that was good enough because both boys felt the broom plow into their hands with punishing force, waking them up from their half daze after potions.
After a few minutes where Madame Hootch coaxed each of the riders to straddling their broom, she gave the next command.
"Your brooms are all set in hover mode, so just let your power flow into them, fill them with the intent to rise. You do not have to worry about rate or height as your broom is in hover mode. Just let your power fill the broom like you would you wand, kick off from the ground like the wand motion for a charm, and give it the intent to rise. Once we have you hovering off the ground, I will begin to teach you the broom motions and mental commands that will allow you three dimensional control of your broom!" Madame Hootch said, as the whole class, for once, seemed to be paying attention.
Neville, who had enjoyed the hover mode bludger practice immensely because he could let his power off leash and not worry about things blowing up, was quite relaxed as he let his power flow free, gave a slight kick to the ground, and thought about flying.
The Clean Sweep 7 was used to a fair amount of power, as competitive Quidditch players tended to be a magically potent lot, but the young Lord Longbottom had been magically pent up for so long his core was swollen to bursting with power, and the mental machinery controlling that power had been so used to forcing through largely blocked channels, that they used quite a bit more force than necessary when the time came to let that power flow.
Neville shot into the sky like a screaming dragon, except a dragon screamed as it took to the air as a warning to others that they were going to die. Neville was screaming in the sure and certain knowledge that he was going to die.
Harry didn't really think. On any other day, he most probably would have. He may still have hopped onto a broom and charged after his friend, but he would insist until his dying day that it would not have been his first thought. He did not, in fact, think.
Harry kicked off from the ground and tore after Neville in the sort of howling charge that his arms masters would recognize as a Goblin berserker charging towards a death he already accepted.
Milicent Bulstrode had a moment to think. Two in fact. One she spent thinking, and the second she spent swearing.
"By Morgana's saggy left tit, if you live I WILL WEAR YOUR BALLS AS EARRINGS!" Milicent swore as she tore into the sky at the best pace the best broom she had ever ridden in her life could reach.
Madame Hootch, long experienced with First Years thought she was ready for anything. When the students topped fifty meters in less time than it took her to scream at the other students to step off their brooms, she decided to revisit her worst case scenarios.
It took her precious seconds as she tore her own Comet 260 into the sky to disable the "hover mode" and the "student basic training elevation limiter" on her broom, so she could reach the insane heights her students had already achieved with no signs of slowing down. It was for this reason that she missed hearing twin Gingers pop up from the end of the field and shout in stereo.
"Bludgers up!" They shouted, releasing two bludger.
"Bludgers up!" They shouted again, releasing two more bludgers.
"Bludgers up!" They shouted a third time, before high fiving and jogging over to the waiting Adrian Pucey and Cedric Diggory.
Cedric blanched, he knew neither of his Hufflepuff's had actually flown a broom before. Goblin's don't have them and Neville Longbottom's Gran's restrictions on her delicate baby boy's life were something of a Light Faction running joke.
"They are going to kill our first years!" Cedric said, ready to charge the pitch and take a broom to initiate rescue.
Adrian grabbed his arm and stopped him. "Give it a second, Diggory. The Weasley's have never actually harmed another student, especially a first year."
They watched a very large bush of brown hair that seemingly had a witch under it someplace march out to the center of the field and point her wand at the sky, like she was planning on blasting the flyers, or bludgers, out of it. What a first year with a wand thought she was doing was anyone's guess, but what was clear is that three of the four flyers had noticed the bludgers soaring at them like the broadside of a British Man-O-War, and the one who hadn't was Madame Hootch.
The bludger hit her clean in the back, blasting her off her broom. As she tumbled through the air, she tried to draw her wand, only to be clipped in passing by a second wave bludger that snapped her arm cleanly and sent her wand spiralling towards the soft green grass she was plunging towards at a velocity that might well not be survivable.
Hermione Granger had a firm grip on her wand, and on her emotions. With a swish and flick, she gave the charm with all the practice a solid night and lunch break could give, and the blind panic she was suppressing gave her magic, if not wings, then at least several hundred legs intent to scamper as quickly as possible.
The last words Madame Hootch expected to hear this life were, oddly enough, given in a very serious alto that sounded less like a spell, and more like some sort of dog training command given to an underperforming Labrador.
"Wingardium Leviosa!" The little first year said, and Madame Hootch found her upside down eyes staring into the very intent expression of a fierce looking Hermione Granger. With a firm and controlled downward motion, Madam Hootch found herself lowered to the turf, and then ignored as Hermione pointed wand and eyes back to the sky, dismissing her teacher as no longer relevant.
Adrian Pucey slid his own wand away, his Arresto Momentum only on his lips with the little fuzzy Hufflepuff girl already caught her falling teacher. He turned to face Diggory and smirked.
"Quite the batch of firsties you badgers have this year. Might be interesting to see how they grow." Pucey drawled.
Diggory was staring up in something between wonder and horror, answering Pucey's comment with his own.
"Bloody hell Pucey, what do you feed your snakes?" Diggory said in something like awe as he watched the battle in the sky unfold.
Milicent had been last in the sky, and that put her first in the line of fire as no less than six bludgers charged towards her. Freeing the bat beneath her broom she turned to face them head on, as no beater wanted to face bludgers from the back if they could help it.
Watching with concern as the bludgers blasted Madam Hootch from the sky, Milicent recalled crying into her pillow swearing she would become a beater this year or die. Turns out, both. With a snarl, she dove into the charging bludgers and swung her bat at the lead bludger with the focus and will to actually nail the lead bludger from the second wave and buy her a critical second or two to deal with the first two waves separately.
The second bludger howled into her with her bat out of position, so she tucked her leg around the broom and spun around its axis, allowing the bludger to pass above her as she ducked beneath the broom. As she came up from the roll, she blasted the incoming trailing bludger from the second wave from underneath, driving it straight up where its momentum would carry it safely past her.
The two from the third wave wove around each other in a deadly spiral, and she knew she would only be able to block one. Tensing her stomach and neck, clamping her jaws tight, she prepared to take the second hit and try to stay on her broom. A fall from this height could be fatal.
As her bat came down in a pear splitter cut, designed to blast the bludger low and force it to trade acceleration for height before it could come round again, she braced for the impact of the second bludger.
The crack when it came was loud, as was the scream. Neville Longbottom screamed as he dove his broom down and blocked the bludger with a classic line drive, blasting it about thirty meters away before it could even come to a stop and begin building momentum towards them.
Milicent had one moment to process the fact that she was alive an unhit before a second crack from above and behind her caused her to spin and see Harry Potter pivoting his broom as he blocked the bludger she had hit first as it came around to hit her again from behind.
Milicent knew that with six bludgers and three beaters they were stuck on the defensive, but they had trained together for weeks now and had actually drilled something like this. Granted, it was with two bludgers and three beaters. No one fought bludger outnumbered. That was suicide. Quidditchcide? Stupid anyway.
"Form a wheel!" The Slytherin girl shouted, and Milicent began to spin sunwise as she and the two Hufflefuffs began the three beater war against a horde of six angry and increasingly frustrated bludgers.
For five long painful minutes, three first years beat six rampaging cannonballs in a musical duel of death far above the ground, as two ginger Griffindor beaters, an amused Slytherin and amazed Hufflepuff Quidditch captains observed the most extreme bludger drill of their young lives.
Madam Hootch finally spotted her wand and with a shouted "Accio wand" caused it to fly to her hands.
Turning to the sky, with her unbroken hand, she pointed to the sky and shouted. "FINITE!" and began blasting the deactivation commands to the bludgers with rather more force than was necessary. The bludgers fell from the sky, and rolled sulkily towards their boxes to be put away.
Turning to the group of senior Quidditch players, she spotted the Weasley twins and fired two full body binds that left them mummified in rusty chains right to their sparkling blue eyes, before turning a very disapproving gaze on the two watching Quidditch captains.
"Secure those bludgers, and if I find out you had anything to do with this, I will have you scrubbing dragon intestines with your own toothbrushes from INSIDE THE DRAGON!" Madam Hootch hissed angrily.
Cedric Diggory and Adrian Pucey observed the two Weasley twins being levitated towards the school and inevitable detentions, noting how many times they "accidentally" fell and bounced off the ground.
"I think Madam Hootch must be feeling the broken wrist, or maybe she just can't cast well left-handed." Cedric offered as he watched the first years trailing after the bound twins and their teacher towards the school.
Pucey chuckled as he watched Madam Hootch flick her and dip the Weasley's in a mud puddle and he quipped. "Yeah, that must be it. Still. The twins have a point. That was some impressive beater work for first years."
Cedric stroked his chin. "Honestly, my pair from last year are doing their NEWTS this year. They told me they are available a little bit to train, but they aren't returning to the team. I was kind of unimpressed with the others who tried out for it last year."
Pucey nodded. "Shame Bulstrode is a girl. Marcus Flint is my senior returning beater, and he is as bad as our first captain was about the whole 'Slytherin knows Quidditch is a man's game' thing."
Diggory turned and looked at Pucey in shock. "You are not going to try her out? She stopped a five bludger strike on her own!" The Hufflepuff said in shock.
"No, it's a shame because I am going to have to listen to Marcus whine all damned year and his voice is like listening to a troll fart in slow motion. I am a Slytherin. We do what it takes to win. Bulstrode may be a good beater this year, but she is a Firsty. That means if I train her up, I can pass a beater just as good as those Weasley morons to the captain who takes over from me in two years." Adrian Pucey said smugly.
Cedric Diggory grinned. "True, but I will have two. Also, I am only third year to your fifth. I get them longer."
The two captains grinned at each other, looking forward to close fought season. They were in school to learn the skills and powers of their future trades, and to make the social and political connections for their personal and family fortunes. Quidditch on the other hand, was theirs. Their own struggle, their own glory. Their own personal war, and the Weasley Twins had just found three little warriors to join it.