Here I am again on Crotalus Commons

Captain Alistair Johnson

October 12, 2016 4:09 PM

Quidditch Sign-ups! by Captain Alistair Johnson

Alistair was rather sorry to see Isaac Douglas go when it came to it. The older boy had never contributed much to the team and certainly never seemed all that enthused about playing Quidditch. In fact, he hadn’t even been that good, but at least he had been there and he’d been reasonably reliable. Isaac’s graduation opened up a spot on the team and that was always a slight worry for Alistair, simply because he had worked so hard to get Crotalus to the point that they were at now and he didn’t want to lose it so soon.

He had paid full attention, as he usually did, to the first years’ sorting with a vested interest in who was sorted into his house. The numbers of new Crotali this term were quite low but on the plus side they were all males, which tended to bode well for Quidditch as there was no stigma or controversy attached to boys playing. All he needed was for one of them to show an interest and if they all turned out to be one huge disappointment in that respect, surely at least one of the little eleven year olds could be susceptible to a little persuasion?

Making the sign-up sheet had originally been important to Alistair, simply because it was one of his duties as captain and he wanted to take all his responsibilities seriously. The longer he had spent as captain (he was now in his fifth year of the role), the more focused he had become on the actual training. Of course, he had been very keen about that from the start but in the past, although he would never admit it, there had been something very appealing just about barking orders at his peers. As he had developed and matured, his interest in improving his teammates’ skills had grown and become more and more serious.

He was more than a captain; he was a coach.

Teaching some young children over the summer holiday had really brought him to such a realisation. His dreams of becoming a professional Quidditch player were looking bright, at least he thought so, but at the same time he was starting to care more about the development of players that were nowhere near his league. He wanted his team to do well, not only because winning the Quidditch Cup meant so much to him but also because he would get so much personal reward from seeing the team he had worked so hard on having that kind of success. Each player’s success was also his own, although obviously nothing would ever compare to the goals he wished to accomplish as a player himself.

Alistair knew the importance of making the sign-up sheet stand out so that it would force people to look at it and thus hopefully consider joining, but at the same time he was not a garish person so he tried to find a happy medium. He wrote in a blood red ink and made the word “Quidditch” much bigger than the rest of the text because that was the key word on the parchment, outlining it with silver and then drawing a little snitch that he charmed to fly around the edge of the page.

The Crotalus Quidditch team is seeking new interest!

Step up and join your house in competing for the Quidditch Cup! Provide your name, year and preferred position below. Try-outs will be held at 10.00am Saturday on the Quidditch Pitch - so be there!

For further details or any questions or concerns, please see Captain Alistair Johnson.

He signed his own name and details at the top of the space left: Captain Alistair Johnson, 5th year, Chaser. He had been playing the position of Chaser at Sonora for four years now because not playing his initial desired position of Seeker was a sacrifice he’d had to pay in order to play at all, but the older he grew the more of a concern this decision became because it greatly affected his future.

Subthreads:

Here I am again by Makenzie Newell

Seeker or Chaser by Winston Pierce

It seems I am needed once more by Sébastien Évreux

...I can't believe I'm doing this. by Simon Mordue

Growing up by Daniel Fintoc

8 Captain Alistair Johnson Quidditch Sign-ups! 306 Captain Alistair Johnson 1 5

Makenzie Newell

October 12, 2016 5:13 PM

Here I am again by Makenzie Newell

A half of a glance at the notice board and she saw it. Alistair Johnson, with his large print and blood red ink, as anything but subtle with the sign up sheet. Makenzie walked over to it with mild curiosity, just checking to see how the team was filling out so far, but without any real intent to sign up again herself. Most of her reasoning for playing last year had been as an act of self-depreciation, to make people question her at least a little, and therefore view Araceli better by comparison.

But the thing was, she remembered idly, nobody had really seemed to care. Evidently the stigma about girls--namely purebloods, obviously--playing Quidditch had diminished far more than she’d realized. Makenzie knew it was lessening every passing year, sure, but she had expected some repercussion from a source other than her crabby younger cousin. Mostly, people had been confused about why now, as a fifth year, was she only just beginning her athletic career. No one cared that Miss Newell played Quidditch, just that Makenzie did.

It was nice, belonging to a group like that, pressing herself into a unified force. She had once considered her family to be such a force, but their unity had broken down when it really mattered. Obviously, a school sports team was nothing so serious as that, but Makenzie had a knack for overanalyzing, over complicating. Maybe she deserved to, though. Deserved to hang onto anything that resembled a family that she could find, in the wake of the disaster within hers.

Moreover, to her own surprise, she had discovered she was actually pretty decent at the game. And it was hard for anyone, she thought, to simply walk away from a natural talent. She had good instincts to move toward the ball, could sense which way the opposing Chaser might go. She wasn’t terribly coordinated yet (she still recalled the shot she had blocked essentially with her face, her pinnacle moment of gracelessness), but she hoped maybe that would come this year.

This year.

She was signing up.

Makenzie Newell, she printed in her neatest handwriting, dotting her “i” with a heart. Sixth year, Keeper.

12 Makenzie Newell Here I am again 291 Makenzie Newell 0 5

Winston Pierce

October 12, 2016 5:16 PM

Seeker or Chaser by Winston Pierce

Winston woke in his new bed, and got up, still drowsy but ready for his first day of classes. He used the toilet, brushed his teeth and hair, and got dressed. He cleaned his glasses and clipped on his pocketwatch that his father had given him. Only then did he notice the time and realize it was only three a.m. He glanced over at his roommates, still asleep in their own beds by all appearances, and felt a momentary rush of relief in his decision earlier not to wake them (which, in truth, had been in large part motivated by the desire to have the bathroom entirely to himself while he got ready).

He flopped back on the bed, still fully clothed, and stared at the ceiling, willing himself to fall back asleep and for his watch to skip forward to a more reasonable hour. Neither happened. He continued to inspect the ceiling - eventually beginning to count the ceiling tiles just to prevent death by sleepless boredom - but when he checked his watch again, only three minutes had passed.

Seconds dragged on. Winston tossed over onto his stomach in the hopes that a new position would bring slumber. It didn't. A paltry five minutes had passed now since he first noticed the time. He started going over his genealogy lessons, figuring that if anything could put him to sleep repeating the names of long dead ancestors ought to do the trick, but he was wrong. 3:17.

With a small moan of frustration, he got up and changed back into his pajamas. That didn't help he drift off either. 3:21.

He got out the book of poetry his parents thought he should read to improve his cultural education. His eyes burned, his brain wandered, ignoring the words his internal narrator was trying to read off the pages, and instead began to worry that lack of sleep would make him clumsy and stupid for his first impression on his teachers and many of his classmates. 3:36.

He put the useless book of poems away and flopped back on the bed, covering his face with his pillow, half inclined to smother himself into unconsciousness. Given his luck so far over the last 24 hours, though, he'd probably end up killing himself by mistake and that was not a part of his seven year plan. 3:38.

He got up again and went down to the common room. Curfew was doubtless still in effect, so he couldn't leave for the gardens to walk off his insomnia, but he could quietly do laps around the couches to burn off some excess energy so he could hopefully sleep again. Besides which, he was still in his pajamas so leaving Crotalus wasn't really on the table anyway.

It was on the third lap around the darkened commons that movement on the bulletin board caught his attention. Oh! Quidditch!

He found a quill on one of the coffee tables and a jar of ink on one of the bookshelves, and used the two items to add his name to the list.

Winston Pierce, 1st year, Seeker or Chaser

His father had played Seeker, and as his sister couldn't play Quidditch with him, practicing with a snitch was as close to playing as he'd been able to do by himself at home. Plus Thaddeus had been a seeker, so Winston couldn't let his father's rival take all of the glory of the position without at least trying to match him. But even Thaddeus had needed to play Chaser before the spot opened on his House team, and Winston suspected with Seeker being as important as it was, somebody else already had it. So he added the position logically most likely to have openings just to get his foot through the door.

This done, he returned the quill and ink to where he found them and headed back up to bed, feeling like he had accomplished something and now he could rest.

At 3:52a.m. Winston closed his eyes and slipped back into dreamland.

1 Winston Pierce Seeker or Chaser 370 Winston Pierce 0 5

Sébastien Évreux

October 20, 2016 5:29 AM

It seems I am needed once more by Sébastien Évreux

To Quidditch or not to Quidditch? Now that was the question, and the answer was not one that Sébastien knew. On the one hand, there were definite perks to being part of the Quidditch team. You were automatically cooler (or so Bastien thought), one of the top sporting students at Sonora, and he liked the sense of importance that being on the team (and, more importantly, being needed for the team to exist) gave him. However.

Bastien did not know what the new intake would be like at Quidditch. What if they were really good? What if he was no longer needed on the team? The problem wasn’t that they might be better than Bastien – of course he would never think that, it simply wasn’t true (it really was true and ugh ok he knew it) – but what if Alistair Johnson suddenly decided to replace Sébastien? He couldn’t allow that to happen. It simply wasn’t the done thing, replacing Sébastien Évreux, and he wasn’t sure if he was willing to run that risk.

It was for this reason that Sébastien delayed looking at the sign-up sheet, preferring to temporarily ignore the problem rather than dwell on the risk of being replaced by somebody better. However, when he finally decided to scope out his opposition, the signup sheet wasn’t as full as he thought it would be. Maybe he was still in with a chance? Maybe - and this would be even better - he would be needed once more to complete the team?

The chance of having a grateful Alistair Johnson appreciating his commitment to the Crotalus Quidditch team made up Sébastien’s mind. It flattered his ego to think that perhaps there would be no Crotalus team without him.

Sébastien Évreux, 2nd Year, Beater

9 Sébastien Évreux It seems I am needed once more 350 Sébastien Évreux 0 5

Simon Mordue

October 20, 2016 9:03 PM

...I can't believe I'm doing this. by Simon Mordue

Simon had known from the school literature that each of the Sonora Houses had a Quidditch team, but he had shoved that information to the back of his mind, forcing himself to assume it didn’t apply to him. The teams would surely, after all, be full of older students, older students who would neither want nor need a first year among them. Eventually, he knew, some of them would leave school and he would have to deal with the fact that he was not naturally inclined to athletics, but…eventually. By then, he might have grown tall and strong and into a proper heir for Father and might want to join the team. Anything could happen before ‘eventually.’

It did not take him long after arriving at Sonora to realize he had been wrong about the teams, or at least the Crotalus team. Professor Xavier had mentioned something, he thought, about the teams having openings, but Simon hadn’t thought much about it at the time and hadn’t thought much about it again until an older boy descended on him and seemed to think he ought to join up at once. At some point during the conversation, Simon had realized this boy was the captain, Mr. Johnson, and then he had begun to sweat.

A captain was an authority figure, someone with much more power and influence around here than Simon had. A captain was someone who could make Simon miserable, as it happened, no matter what – if he didn’t do what Johnson wanted, Johnson could make things difficult for him, but if he did and wasn’t good at it, Johnson could do that anyway, if Winston didn’t. His roommate seemed perfectly agreeable to Simon so far, but he had, Simon had noticed, been the second person to sign the Quidditch sign-up sheet, Simon didn’t even know when he could have gotten to it. Simon’s wonderful plan to just ignore something he found inconvenient had begun to shake as soon as he’d realized Winston had somehow gotten there, and Mr. Johnson was now kicking it along the path to total collapse.

He wanted to make feeble protests about it being his first year and needing time to settle in and learn magic, but then he realized that would make him sound like he wasn’t a confident, strong, powerful wizard, the sort of person who deserved to inherit his father’s position as head of the family. He had thought desperately for something else he could use, but the only thing he had been able to think of in time was Mother, which would make him sound like a mamma’s boy and would do him no favors. Therefore, shortly afterward, with no idea how it happened, Simon found himself carefully writing his name - Simon Mordue - his year - First Year - and, at the end, with the position he would have chosen denied to him by someone much older already having her name down for it, Any.

16 Simon Mordue ...I can't believe I'm doing this. 369 Simon Mordue 0 5

Daniel Fintoc

October 21, 2016 1:13 PM

Growing up by Daniel Fintoc

Daniel had found himself surprisingly disappointed when Gwen didn’t join him in his house but instead got sorted into Teppenpaw at the Opening Feast. If there was anyone in his family he thought had a chance of going anywhere besides Pecari it was Gwen and if there was anyone who had to go and be unique like him then he wanted it to be her. But he thought she’d enjoy being in Teppenpaw anyway, where she would have a roommate (unlike him), and Gwen was sociable like he was. Chuck was sociable too, of course, but in a slightly different way it seemed.

Besides his interest in his cousin’s sorting, Dan had also paid attention to the first years to actually be sorted into his house. All boys, he noted with unexpected glee, and it was then that it occurred to him that maybe he was spending too much time in Alistair Johnson’s company. Not that there was anything wrong with the Crotalus captain and he was certainly a good role model, but Daniel had never anticipated he would become particularly invested in the Quidditch team. Sure he wanted to be as good as he possibly could and that was (partly) why he dedicated so much extra time to receiving the high quality training that Alistair undeniably had a gift for giving. And one of the best things about being part of a team was the social element, even if there were a few players who’d been on the team that Dan had to admit wouldn’t give the time of day to a kid his age.

Yet here he was, checking the sign-up sheet with a mixture of anxiety and excitement. Crotalus had lost Isaac but surely one of the first years would join? That question was answered quite quickly but then it had occurred to Daniel that not all previous players might stick with the team, something he thought rather a shame and showed them to lack of team spirit to say the least. Alistair had made this team and he’d given so much to it that it didn’t seem fair to just drop out.

Fortunately two of the three first years had saved the day, although Daniel knew full well that his captain might have had some choice words of encouragement for this to happen as he had done successfully with Sébastien Évreux last term and himself before that. Dan didn’t like to think on this too much, however, because he’d come a long way from his initial indifference to the only sport supported by Sonora. Some might even call it fierce loyalty and he wasn’t quite sure when this had developed, but he was dreaming things he’d never before imagined that he’d dream.

The Crotalus knew that realistically he was only an average player but he knew he could still get better. Daniel was only in his third year and he had another three years of coaching from Alistair, and who knew what would happen after that...

Daniel Fintoc, 3rd year, Chaser

He wrote his name on the sign-up sheet, sticking to the position he knew because he still had so much more to get out of it. It didn’t escape his notice that Makenzie was one of the returning players but for the first time her name just didn’t do it for him.

8 Daniel Fintoc Growing up 333 Daniel Fintoc 0 5