Letter for Anne Wright on Aladren Commons

Wally the Great Horned Owl

June 25, 2005 11:40 AM

Letter for Anne Wright by Wally the Great Horned Owl

It was morning when Wally the Great Horned Owl arrived in the Aladren common room. It carried with it a letter, as usual. Humans seemed to love to send letters to each other. He certainly liked delivering them. But this morning the Aladren common room was empty. Wally would have liked for a human to be there, humans usually gave him treats when he delivered a message. But there were places to go, letters to deliver. The owl dropped the letter to the ground, and flew off, oblivious to what the letter labled To:Anne Wright, Aladren First Year From: Coach Cooper said.

Dear Anne Wright,
It is my pleasure to inform you that you have been made captain of the Aladren house quidditch team. Congratulations! Your duties as Quidditch captain will include scheduling team practices, devising plays, and working with your teammates. Your first job as captain will be to get at least enough players to form a full team. If you have any questions, please feel free to see me at the Quidditch Pitch. Good luck!
Coach Cooper\n\n

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Anne Wright

June 25, 2005 5:21 PM

Shocked with a side order of delighted by Anne Wright

Anyone looking at Anne Wright as she entered the Aladren common room would have stereotyped her an Italian-descended art geek by her looks and getup, with her flowery pink skirt, green top, and messy bun of hair. It would take someone who both knew her and shared a dorm with her to realize the reason for this highly uncharacteristic ensemble: She had woken up late and had grabbed clothes out of her drawer at random and never got finished pulling her hair through the ponytail holder when she had been outside earlier. She had skipped dinner so she could go back to sleep before the other girls came in for the evening. She hadn't slept well the night before because of her recurring dream about mirrors, so she was more than looking forward to a little rest.

She was halfway across the common room when she noticed what looked like a letter that someone had left on the floor. Bending over, she picked it up and started to toss it on one of what she referred to as the House coffee tables when she noticed that it was addressed to her from Coach Cooper. She wanted to have an Alice in Wonderland moment and say 'curiouser and curiouser', but repressed the urge. Why on earth would the flying and Quidditch coach write to her? And why would the letter be on the floor of the common room? She opened it with something almost like dread. The only piece of mail that meant something good for her she had gotten all year was her acceptance letter from Sonora.

She read the letter once and didn't take in a word of it. Something in her brain refused to process the news that Cooper had sent her. There was no way it said what she had read, so it didn't connect. Blinking, she reread it. No way. There was no way that she, a reclusive first year who all but lived in the library, had been named Quidditch captain, but she had. She clapped a hand over her mouth but was unable to completely repress a muted shriek of delight. Forget sleeping, she wanted to go out dancing. She actually executed an awkward sort of twirl right then and there, not caring if anyone was around to see or not. She was the Aladren Quidditch captain, impossible as it seemed. If she was dreaming, she was going to do something violent to whoever woke her up. She landed in one of the armchairs, half-overcome with giggling.

She took a minute to try to level her head back out, but it was difficult to do when she was this excited. She couldn't remember the last time she had been like this. Anne scanned over the list of duties. If she was going to keep the job she had somehow gotten, then she was going to have to do all of this and do it well-better than well, if at all possible. The main three seemed closely tied in together...it was the fourth that would be done first that might prove problematic. She could, of course, hold anyone she could get ahold of at wandpoint and force them to join the team or yell an announcement from on top of a table, but that wasn't the way to get people who actually knew how to play. She had been checking the sign-up list whenever she passed it and they still needed a Keeper and one Beater, both jobs that required some training, to have a full team.

Geoff is going to be so jealous he'll have kittens, she thought, imagining the look on her oldest friend's face when he found out and giggling again. He hates it when I do anything he can't. It never occured to her that such behavior might not be exactly that of a best friend; although Anne was usually a good judge of people, her vision was a little blurred in the matter of Geoffrey and the rest of the Laynes. She would think about recruiting effectively while she wrote to tell him and Lena about her unexpected good fortune, that's what she would do. Having long since forgotten about turning in early, she pulled two sheets of parchment and a ballpoint pen out of her bag and began to write, her usually neat handwriting a loopy scrawl from excitement. She really did need to put her head back on before someone found her so worked up. She knew that she would be able to see all this from a better perspective and work on the problems of her new job when she calmed down, so it would be a good idea to start winding down. Pity the logical part of her brain had gotten in a fight with the excitable part.

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