Liac had spent the summer honing his skills both in and out of the metal charm shop. Although his siblings had not been happy to be his guinea pigs for his Quidditch drills they were more than happy to take the morning off if that meant they got to skip out on their chores. Two defeats weren't too good on his record so he wanted to make sure that at least by next year they could start off with some promising new drills.
After dinner he spent the remainder of the evening writing out the announcement to place on the bulletin board in the common room. His calligraphy was absolutely atrocious so it took him a few tries to write out the message in a print he thought was suitable. Once it was done he bounded downstairs to place it on the bulletin board. Wanting to make even more of a statement, he took out his want and cast a spell on the letters to give them a little glow and hopefully catch the eye of students in the morning. Feeling quite proud of himself he stepped back and admired his work.
I want YOU to join the Teppenpaw Quidditch Team!
Teppenpaw Try-outs
Please sign your name, year and desired position below if you are interested in joining the team. No experience needed, and walk-ons are welcome!
Try-outs will be held on Saturday afternoon at 4pm on the Quidditch Pitch.
Happy with the result, Liac smiled to himself. Although he was a little nervous if they would have enough players to form their own team as he would have liked for Teppenpaw to have their own team separate from Crotalus. At the same time, though, he somewhat hoped for a combined team since Arne was likely joining the Crotalus team. How could he not want to play with his cousin? Liac then wrote his name in the first slot:
Tobi had watched Liac make the sign-up sheet for the Teppenpaw Quidditch team, but he had been really too tired to follow his enthusiastic cousin down to the commons to sign-up. Quidditch wasn't his thing and he really only played to help Liac make a team (getting to see Uzume Shinohara outside of class on a near daily basis was only a perk) though last year that hadn't really turned out well at all. He wondered if this year Teppenpaw would get enough players to justify making their own team and what that would mean for Crotalus.
The next morning, however, as he passed by the sign-up sheet which Liac had so carefully constructed and obviously used spell work to finalize, caught his eye and his feet dragged as he walked over to look at it. The sheet was short and simple, to the point. And there were no names listed except for Liac's. His hand reached towards his school bag for his self-inking quill, hesitating slightly as it reached the feathery tip.
He looked over his shoulder and saw that his cousin hadn't yet left their room yet--since Liac had been up so late the night before it was Tobi's turn to go down to Cascade Hall and save seats for them while Liac got to sleep in. Then, full of guilt for hesitating, Tobi pulled the quill out and reluctantly put his name down, his tidy scrawl underneath Liac's, and went down to find seats for breakfast.
Another year, another Quidditch signup staring him in the face. Jake still wasn’t entirely sure why he always came back. The first year he played, Marcus had somehow tricked him into trying out for the good of the House. Then last year, it had seemed there wouldn’t be enough people, so once again, he took the bullet. Although perhaps that metaphor was a bit strong; he didn’t dislike Quidditch. It was just that athletics were really not his thing.
Riding the bench last year as alternate had been a-okay with him. Maybe it was a bit unusual, since he was older than most of his teammates on the field, but whatever. Jake was probably a better cheerleader than athlete anyway, although his narrow frame and quick broom did make him a formidable Seeker. He had liked practicing with Uzume, and as fun as it might have been to play, he was glad she had never been seriously injured or anything to require him to step in.
This year, he hoped to actually get to play against her. The odds were low that Crotalus could fill a team, but Jake was hopeful both they and Teppenpaw could support themselves. At least, he hoped either both or neither of them could; he didn’t know what would happen if Teppenpaw was fine (which they nearly had been last time) and Crotalus fell short.
These thoughts all came to him as he gazed at the signup sheet. In his ever-advancing handwriting, Jake added his name. Only the Reinhardts had been by so far, but he planned to check back every so often. He expected to see Andrew and Ginger come back, and he was optimistic about first year involvement as well.
Before he had begun his first year, Andrew had heard people talk about Quidditch and his cousins in South Carolina so much that he’d secretly expected to have a hidden talent for the game despite having hardly ever been allowed on a broom before school. When he was in his first year, he had discovered that if there was a genius for Quidditch in the Carey family, it was all in the South Carolina branch, which was too distant from his to have much in common with it. That wasn’t really surprising, since his and Arnold Carey’s last common ancestor was so many ‘greats’ removed from them that Andrew couldn’t even remember how many of them it had been off the top of his head, just that it had been right before the family split up into different branches, but it had been a little disappointing.
Unlike his perpetually pessimistic older brother, though, Andrew didn’t like being disappointed and had shrugged it off pretty quickly. It had helped that they had been able to put up a pretty good fight against Aladren. They had lost, but they hadn’t been disgraced the way they had against Pecari, and that was good enough for him, or had been. This year, he really thought the Teppalus team, if it formed again, would win at least one game, though he hadn’t mentioned that to Mal. Andrew was optimistic, but there were limits, and he knew Mal would make fun of him if he was too optimistic in front of him.
When Liac put up the sheet for Teppenpaws, then, he went to it as soon as he saw it and signed up right away as Andrew Carey, Second, Chaser. Then, on second thought, he added or Any to the end. If any of the first years really wanted that slot, he’d switch around as needed just to get the team off the ground. They had come so close to doing well last time, so if they kept improving as much as they had between the Pecari and Aladren games, they might even be better than Arnold’s old team someday.
After the Pecari game last year, Ginger had been certain she would quit Quidditch at the end of the year. In fact, if Teppalus hadn't needed a Keeper for the game against Aladren, she probably would have quit right then. But they had needed a Keeper so she'd stuck around out of obligation, and, well, she still hadn't done well, but she had at least done better, and she'd even had an older Keeper offer to show her some tricks and help her practice, so here she was, quill in hand, standing in front of the Quidditch sign-ups again.
If anyone had signed up for Keeper, she probably would have walked away and let them have it, but nobody had. In fact there were no new names on the list so far, which meant, unless Crotalus brought in new blood, Teppalus was still going to need all possible hands.
With a sigh, and the hope this year would go more like the Aladren match than the Pecari one, and her teammates would continue to be understanding that she really didn't have the competitiveness most of the school's players seemed to possess, Ginger added her name to the too-short list once more.