Quidditch sign ups on Aladren Commons

Francesca Wolseithcrafte

June 05, 2015 8:04 AM

Quidditch sign ups by Francesca Wolseithcrafte

The letter on her desk from Coach Olivers wasn’t a surprise - in fact, she had considered putting up the sign up sheet before dinner, seeing as that opportunity had presented itself, where in previous years she hadn’t had the chance. Her hand had been stayed by the fact that it wasn’t the normal order of things, and thus felt like a potential transgression. Having got the letter, she was glad she had waited - it would have made no difference. No one would have known but her. But it would have felt like things had gone in the wrong order.

That said, she had prepared the sign up sheet in advance, wanting to make sure that it was more than a scruffily written piece of notepaper. The poster was framed with blue and black, with an Aladren hawk in each of the top corners, and a pair of crossed broomsticks between the words ‘Quidditch’ and ‘team.’

Interested in joining the Quidditch team? it asked. Please sign up below with your name, year group and desired position. All ages and experience levels welcome. Tryouts will be held next Saturday at 12 noon.

Francesca Wolseithcrafte, 7th Year, Captain/Chaser.

Once the poster was up, her only other duty was to inform Leo of his promotion. When she had a chance, she approached him.

“Congratulations,” she offered, “Coach Olivers thinks the same way I do, and has recommended you to be assistant captain,” she wanted him to be clear that she had wanted him too, and wasn’t just following orders. “Assuming you want the job that is. You seemed to do it well with Umland last year.”

OOC - as Coach Olivers’ letter stated it arrived in the evening, this post is set after the Head of House speech. It is having to go up before because of deadlines and timezones.

Subthreads:

Two! by Clark Dill

Three by Leonidas Bennett

Four. by John Umland

Five. by Jack Spencer

Sixth by Theodore Wolseithcrafte

And a seventh! by Louis Valois

13 Francesca Wolseithcrafte Quidditch sign ups 250 Francesca Wolseithcrafte 1 5

Clark Dill

June 05, 2015 10:47 PM

Two! by Clark Dill

Clark headed up to the common room only a little bit ahead of the group of first years and Professor Pye. He was sad to see Professor Yu had not returned, partly because he had genuinely liked her and partly because Headmaster Brockert appeared to think Pye was a good replacement for the Aladren HoH. Professor Pye hadn't been a bad teacher, of course, he was obviously quite knowledgeable, but Clark found him to be a bit . . . strict, he supposed, was the nice way of saying it. Not exactly the sort of person Clark really wanted in his psuedo-parent-substitute role.

Bad enough he had Oliver as his roommate. Aladren was getting kind of unfriendly.

He stuck around the common room for a little while, not quite willing to go up to his room until he was ready to go directly to sleep, thereby avoiding any real interaction with Oliver. The delay gave him the dual advantages of actually getting to hear Pye's Head of House speech - nothing particularly surprising in it, unless you counted the fact that Pye was being almost . . . human as he addressed the first years - and see Francesca put up the Quidditch sheet already.

Despite him and John Umland being the only non-purebloods on it, the Quidditch team was his House's saving social grace as far as Clark was concerned, as they were a team first, and he was never made to feel like they didn't want him there. Not like Oliver. So he wasted no time in adding his name beneath Francesca's.

Clark Dill, 4th year, Seeker

The fact that he was still flying undefeated might have had something to do with their acceptance of him, but Clark felt pretty sure, barring any major Seeking disasters, the rest of the team would chalk up a loss at this point as a stroke of bad luck rather than redefine his previous two years' worth of games as merely lucky catches.

Besides, he had a new broom this year! He was really looking forward to putting it through its paces now that he was away from the neighborhood muggles that made flying it at home tricky if not outright illegal.

1 Clark Dill Two! 277 Clark Dill 0 5

Leonidas Bennett

June 05, 2015 11:16 PM

Three by Leonidas Bennett

For four years, Leonidas Bennett thought he and his roommate had gotten along as well as could be expected for Aladren boys, and certainly a lot better than some of the years below them. Because of that history, he did not think that the outcomes of the prefect and Quidditch assistant captain decisions were going to drive either of them to beg John Umland to rent out half of his room, which was an option he really thought Clark Dill might be wise to go ahead and start considering. He did, though, think there was a decent chance that the first week or so of school this year would be more awkward than any week he and Theodore had each first started getting used to having a roommate, and he had spent the summer not looking forward to dealing with that at all.

To do his bit to smooth it all out quicker, Leo had made a point of looking pleased and clapping when his roommate became prefect at the Feast, though he wasn’t sure Theodore had noticed his grace in defeat while talking to Clark Dill. Not a bad move, Leo had finally decided. When the Careys had been in charge, Leo had, he still believed, had both Clark and John dumped into his lap because the Wolseithcraftes had been in favor with the Careys and the Bennetts had not, but the Careys were gone now and who knew what would replace them? If a lot of the first years were opposed to girls playing Quidditch, the Wolseithcraftes might have to accept strange bedfellows just to keep from having to decide between either having no team or Francesca declaring herself too busy with Head Girl stuff to effectively captain it.

It was, he had silently admitted to himself as he helped himself to seafood salad, possible that his older brother was right and that Aladrens really did lose their minds over Quidditch. Even the Careys had been civil to Clark and John when they needed them to keep the team running, and the Careys were old-school. Leo’s uncle was still in assisted living more than a decade after crossing Morgaine Carey, but Jay and Anthony had both stooped to making reasonably nice with John Umland and Clark Dill, at least whenever Anthony was forced to deal directly with them instead of making Leo do it. That might say more about the value of the Quidditch cup than Leo really wanted to think about.

In the common room, he was not sure if he was surprised or not when Francesca approached him and opened the conversation with ‘congratulations.’ It had been possible, but he’d expected Theodore to get that one, too. The Careys had always kept it in the family, after all, and he’d expected the Wolseithcraftes to follow suit.

“Thank you,” he said to the compliment on his sort of success with John. “Though it helped that he already knew a little about Chaser tactics,” he added, smiling politely and giving some credit back to her, not least because he didn’t want anyone thinking of John as Leonidas Bennett’s protégé. He did take some pride in John's improvements, but being perceived as too close to John seemed as politically suicidal as admitting that he considered John’s sister kind of hot. “Still, I’m happy to accept,” he concluded and offered her his hand.

That just left signing up formally, so he did - Leonidas Bennett, 5th year, Assistant Captain/Beater - and only remembered after the fact to hope that Francesca had already mentioned his promotion to her brother and that Theodore wasn’t going to find it out from the sheet. That would be a great way to keep things awkward even though the available positions were now distributed evenly between them.

0 Leonidas Bennett Three 269 Leonidas Bennett 0 5

John Umland

June 08, 2015 4:02 PM

Four. by John Umland

There hadn’t been much he could do to practice archery over the summer (the community association had this strange aversion to projectile weapons flying around the neighborhood, and his mom had an even firmer one to them flying around the house), but John had tried to keep up his Beater skills as best he could with a baseball bat while he was at home. It hadn’t been the same, but he didn’t think he had lost much, if any, of the ability he had spent the last year developing unless it was in the flying department. He had flown a bit over the summer, too, but only when they spent a week at his great-grandparents’ cabin. He had gotten in a good bit of flying-and-hitting-things-at-the-same-time practice with levitated rocks while they were out there, but it had been early in the holiday, so he was already planning to spend some time on the Pitch before try-outs just to make sure his feet were still figuratively under him when they literally weren’t.

At the Feast, John’s interests had been in Head Girl and who would become prefect in his House, so he was a little surprised to find the sign-up list and find that it hadn’t been put up by a guy named Carey. He had no objection to that state of affairs, it was just different. Then he saw that Leonidas had gotten Assistant Captain and made a note to congratulate him when he saw him. A year ago, approaching him for a purely social interaction would have sounded like a good way to get himself into trouble, but he was surprised to realize that the thought of initiating conversation with either of the fifth years was not one which made him particularly uncomfortable now.

Next year it would be Clark, and then…John blinked, more startled than he had been by his belief in his social skills by far, as he realized that after that, if he and Clark managed not to get kicked off the team in favor of pureblood first years that long, it would most probably be him. John Umland, leader of men (and hopefully some women). Who would have ever imagined that? He could just imagine the laughter such a proposal would bring at home, and was still shaking his head as he signed his name beneath Clark’s.

John Umland, 3rd, Beater.

16 John Umland Four. 285 John Umland 0 5

Jack Spencer

June 10, 2015 12:09 PM

Five. by Jack Spencer

After the glorious feeling of winning last year, Jack was looking forward to playing with his house team again. He had tried to play as often as he could during the summer in hopes of improving his skills. This time he hoped he could be a bit more useful than the last couple matches. When he saw the sign-up sheet, he was ready with a quill in hand. Adam would be the captain for Pecari this year and Jack wondered how it would have felt being a part of his brother's team. He liked it this way better, playing for another.

Jack Spencer, 2nd year, Chaser

He'd written down his desired position after a slight hesitation. There was no other position he particularly coveted, but there was a part of him that wanted all the glory of the Seeker. He was small enough, being only twelve, and he didn't know when else he would have the opportunity to play such a position when he was as tall as he hoped to be. But, in any case, he'd played the position of Chaser before and he wanted to get better at it. Playing different positions on the whim wouldn't help them win.

40 Jack Spencer Five. 299 Jack Spencer 0 5

Theodore Wolseithcrafte

June 11, 2015 11:19 PM

Sixth by Theodore Wolseithcrafte

Theodore was genuinely glad to see the assistant captain badge go to Leonidas. It gave each of them a little power, thus hopefully meaning there wasn’t any bitterness between them. He hoped Leonidas was happy with the role, and saw it as an achievement and not a poisoned chalice. That was the only way in which this could go wrong - if he saw it as being ‘lumped with’ something, whilst Theodore was given a free pass by his sister. He had never been sure how enthused his room-mate was about Quidditch but he came back year after year without any sense of family pressure to do so, as far as Theodore knew. Hopefully he was, therefore, less of a reluctant leader than Theodore himself would have been, and maybe even an enthusiastic one.

He had offered his warm congratulations to his room-mate, and all that was left to do was sign himself up for another year. It wasn’t really in any doubt that he would.

Theodore Wolseithcrafte, 5th year, Keeper.

The only differences this year, he supposed, were that he might be taking shots from one of his sisters, whilst receiving direction from one of the others.

13 Theodore Wolseithcrafte Sixth 270 Theodore Wolseithcrafte 0 5

Louis Valois

June 15, 2015 6:16 PM

And a seventh! by Louis Valois

The Head of House speech contained some new information for Louis. He wasn’t thrilled at the idea of having to share a room, but supposed that was only to be expected at a boarding school. No doubt he would be sharing a room with Seven Greyscale, but he’d have to wait and see if there were any other Aladren boys in his year. He hoped there wouldn’t be too many others, as he valued his personal space quite highly.

After listening to the Head of House speech, Louis went over to the announcements board. He quickly located the Quidditch sign-up sheet, noticing that there were already six names down.

Louis had been debating whether or not to sign up for Quidditch ever since he had received his school letter. He’d learnt how to fly at a young age, practising with the best equipment (his father wouldn’t buy anything less), and he liked to think he was reasonably competent. He loved the freedom of flying and how, once he was in the air, nothing else seemed to matter. Louis had less experience of actually playing Quidditch – a lonely childhood didn’t lead to many full games – but had practised throwing and catching, and had reasonably often roped in the children of his father’s friends for a mini game with just a keeper and a chaser. For this reason Louis decided that chaser was the best position for him to go for (and luckily the only unfilled position on the team at the moment!).

Louis Valois, 1st Year, Chaser

9 Louis Valois And a seventh! 314 Louis Valois 0 5