Ring, meet my hat. Hat, ring. on Crotalus Commons

Captain Charlotte Abbott

January 19, 2011 3:45 AM

Quidditch sign-ups! by Captain Charlotte Abbott

As had happened last year, it was only the first morning of the school year, the first time since early summer that she woke up in her dormitory, the Charlie felt it was time to put up the Quidditch sign-up sheet. With graduation each year it usually left a hole in each of the teams as players got old and moved on, but in Crotalus' case there had been no students older than Charlotte herself. Therefore the only new team members she was looking for were ones to replace those who hadn't pulled their weight last year. She hadn't been impressed with either of the Beaters when she'd been hit by a Bludger in their championship game, and there was no way Miya was making it back as Kepper, since Charlie'd had to pull in a random sub hours before the final game (who had actually played pretty well so she couldn't really complain).

The sign up sheet was a large piece of parchment, and Charlotte had used dark red ink to draw attention to it from other items posted on the noticeboard, and it didn't hurt to show some House pride by using the color. She had fairly neat hadnwriting, but had used a dicta-quill for that extra professional-looking touch. There wasn't a great deal of writing on the notice, but it all looked neat. It read,

CROTALUS QUIDDITCH SIGN-UP

Write your name, year and preferred position(s) below to be considered for this year's team. Try-outs will be held Friday at six pm. School brooms will be available if you do not have your own. Any questions, see Charlotte Abbott or Marissa Stephenson.

Then, just in case any new players signed up who weren't aware of what positions were available, Charlie wrote in her own handwriting, in black ink, 'Charlotte Abbott, 6th year, Chaser.' It was the first name there (obviously, because she had only just stuck the sign up) but hopefully it would be the first of many. After being beaten by Aladren in the finals last year, she was more determined than ever to beat all the other teams to the Quidditch Cup this term.

Subthreads:

Securing My Position by Renée Errant

I am not the droid you're looking for by Nic Sawyer

Ring, meet my hat. Hat, ring. by Topher Calhoun

Here again. by Marissa Stephenson

Signing up. by Samuel Bauer

0 Captain Charlotte Abbott Quidditch sign-ups! 0 Captain Charlotte Abbott 1 5

Renée Errant

January 19, 2011 5:05 PM

Securing My Position by Renée Errant

Renée waited quietly on the stairs for Charlie to leave before bounding forward and practically lunging at the sign up sheet, gripping an ink bottle and quill tight in her hands, eager to put her name down. Dunking the tip of the brightly colored feathered utensil into the ink, not noticing the drip drip drip as it spilled onto the carpet, she hastily scrawled her name directly underneath Charlie's.

renée errant, 2nd year, and treasured chaser

Grinning to herself, she stepped back to admire her own name, but frowned suddenly at the thought of someone else (besides Sam of course) trying out for chaser. She didn't think she could stand being replaced. Though her enthusiasm for the sport was relatively new to her (she had only really signed up to impress her older brother), ever since she had helped win that first game against Teppenpaw she had become passionate. 'And ain't nobody gonna mess with my passion.' She walked away, imagining herself tall, tough, and with a bit of a natural swagger as if she was like one of those cowboys her muggleborn father's parents insisted she see. Making her way back to her dorm room, she crossed her fingers before falling onto her bed. 'I hope I make it back on.'

0 Renée Errant Securing My Position 0 Renée Errant 0 5

Nic Sawyer

January 21, 2011 1:01 PM

I am not the droid you're looking for by Nic Sawyer

Last year, right before the final Quidditch game, Nic Sawyer had walked into the common room at exactly the wrong moment. Somehow, he'd found himself shanghaied and drafted guarding the Crotalus goals with no prior training at all. There had, fortunately, only been one attempt on the Crotalus goal that game and Charlie had batted it out of the way before it got to him, so he hadn't been given an opportunity to embarrass himself.

If that happened again, though, he wanted to at least have some clue about what he was doing. He wanted to be seen as good at sports, if not necessarily a team player, and Sonora didn't exactly offer a plethora of other sporty choices.

So he stood in front of the sign-up sheet, and tried to decide how committed he wanted to be to this. His options for preferred position were 'keeper' and 'back-up keeper' but if he didn't claim keeper straight up and somebody else came down sick and he was the only alternate on the team Charlie would probably try to make him play a different position.

He didn't want to play any other position but Keeper.

Nic Sawyer, 3rd Year, Keeper

1 Nic Sawyer I am not the droid you're looking for 165 Nic Sawyer 0 5

Topher Calhoun

January 23, 2011 12:07 AM

Ring, meet my hat. Hat, ring. by Topher Calhoun

Growing up in a city didn’t provide a lot of chances to play Quidditch, but there were a few protected parks, and Topher thought he was at least good enough to be an alternate for the Crotalus team. Not the most glamorous position in the world, or one anyone was going to jump all over, but as good as a first year was very likely to get. It was too bad, but it was also a starting point. It was like starting to read books with one simple action sentence a page and then graduating to chapter books. Almost everyone had to start small, and then be patient. Because patience was the key.

Or that was what his mom said, anyway, and Topher had seen evidence. When he did things without thinking about it first, or waiting a little while after the thing that gave him the idea, or while he was feeling emotional, he was more likely to end up in trouble, and that wasn’t the idea. The idea was to do what he wanted and not get in trouble, and without all that stuff about changing one’s desires. So he could make a good argument for patience, too, even if he wasn’t going to go as far as his mom had planned to and name a kid that if it happened to be a girl.

If he was going to be completely honest, he was more than a little intimidated by the captain and the assistant captain – whatever that meant – both also being the prefects, but he wasn’t going to admit that to anyone, up to and including his mom. Realizing it actually gave him more of a reason to sign up. He could not just not do something because he was scared of who the leader was when he didn’t even know if the leader was a threat or not. Charlotte and Marissa had yet to do anything to him, and the school had put them in fairly people-oriented positions. There had to be reasons for that.

So, before breakfast one morning, he did his best to stroll casually across the common room, took out a quill, and, still trying to look like he knew exactly where he was and had every right in the world to be there and what was it to anyone else in the room, signed his name on the list in imitation of the captain: Topher Calhoun, 1st year, Whatever’s needed.

If he was going to be the alternate anyway, and therefore at the bottom of the group hierarchy, it was better to be as agreeable to everyone else as possible, even if he really hoped he wouldn’t have to be the Seeker or a Beater. Seekers attracted severe injuries like books attracted Aladrens, and the straightforward aggression of the Beater only suited him when people made comments about his family life and refused to be politely corrected.

0 Topher Calhoun Ring, meet my hat. Hat, ring. 192 Topher Calhoun 0 5

Marissa Stephenson

January 23, 2011 11:14 PM

Here again. by Marissa Stephenson

When she had been named Assistant Captain in the first place, Marissa had known she was in deep trouble, but she had bit her tongue and resolved to go on with it because really, what else was she supposed to do? She couldn’t just let everyone down like that, especially when they’d been having less than their best year ever anyway. And it hadn’t gone half-bad; she hadn’t been able to beat Jera Valson in the finals, but they’d gotten to the finals, and that was something. Still doing okay in her classes despite all had transcended being something and moved into the realms of the miraculous.

She had not know, at least consciously, that she was going to become a prefect, and that the shift in years meant Charlotte would graduate just in time to hand the team over to her in her RATS year.

She had been so worried about passing her CATS that the rest of the future had just failed to register, and now she was panicking. She’d taken her first credit exams over the summer and was still waiting for results, Mama and Daddy had already decided which ones she was going to take next and were talking about writing into Sonora to see if they could arrange something for the handful that could probably only be gotten in May, and now she had prefect things to do and she was going to have to choose RATS. And then take them.

The only conclusion was doom. That was just it. She was doomed.

She couldn’t think like that, though. She had to really believe that everything was going to be okay and that she could handle it. As long as she did that, one way or another, she would handle it. One step at a time. Like formally signing up again.

Marissa Stephenson, Fifth, Seeker

16 Marissa Stephenson Here again. 147 Marissa Stephenson 0 5

Samuel Bauer

January 23, 2011 11:44 PM

Signing up. by Samuel Bauer

It meant spending even more time with his roommate, who was very large and liked to loom and apparently had some of the rich chicks fighting over him this year and was likely to have some serious ego going on from that, but Sam never considered dropping Quidditch. Not only was it good to have a legitimate excuse to drop his studies every now and again and fly around for a while, it also kept Mom happy. She had picked up the idea of extracurriculars being man’s best friend from his stint in Muggle school and still seemed a little annoyed with him for not being in at least the maximum two Concert acts last year.

He got why she was like that, he was going to need serious scholarshipage if he went to college, and college was the best way to get out of apartments the size of theirs, but if that worked out for him, he didn’t think it would be because he was on a sports scholarship. It would be academics and work study. He was a pretty good Chaser, he guessed, nothing for the team to really complain about, he thought he might even have a shot at captain after Marissa graduated, but he was also pretty sure he wasn’t pro level. And he was okay with that. It was just that he was increasingly not sure if his mom was okay with that. She wanted him to be the very best at everything so much that he was starting to wonder if she was processing that he just wasn’t.

Still, worries for the future, and he wasn’t dumb enough to tell her if someone outscored him at something, so all was well in Sam-land as he began third year and went to sign up for Quidditch again.

The list wasn’t filling up very quickly, but nor was it going so slow that he was worried about not filling it at all. Though, as he reminded himself again, that wasn’t his problem, it was Charlie’s and Marissa’s. He just couldn’t help but think of things like that, and worry about them. He recognized Renée’s name along with Nic’s and the two captains, but it seemed they had a first year, too. Topher. Kind of weird, but considering that the new likely-Keeper’s real name was Nicodemus and one of the other Chasers’ last names was Errant, he figured the new guy would fit in better than plain old Sam Bauer did in that way at least. How good he was at Quidditch was, again, Charlie and Marissa’s business, but satisfied that he wasn’t automatically aligning himself with a losing cause, Sam signed his name to the list.

Sam Bauer, 3rd, Chaser

16 Samuel Bauer Signing up. 163 Samuel Bauer 0 5