Hitchin' a ride on the bandwagon on Quidditch Pitch

Jennifer Z

April 19, 2006 8:01 PM

Might as well join the bandwagon (Crotalus team) by Jennifer Z

While Jennifer, like all people, had her gifts, leadership had never been one of them. She was very good at following directions and at keeping herself out of trouble, but, in her mind, that was the extent of her talent in that area. Even so, she waited for her team on Sunday looking (relatively) calm and poised, and managed to keep her shaking unseen by the others.

"Welcome to the first practice of the year," she said with a smile as soon as the six others arrived at the field. "For those of you who don't know me, although I hope most of you do, I'm Jennifer. Or Jenny. Or Jen. Or whatever else it is that you guys feel like calling me," she added with a resigned laugh.

"Now, I understand some of you haven't played before, so today will be mostly about getting use to your positions or, if you have played before, helping the ones who haven't. Now, I assume everyone knows the basics of quidditch?" She paused for a few moments then, when no one said anything, she continued.

"Now, the first thing we're going to do today is some basic drills. Chasers, get up in the air and just practice some passing and figuring out how to work together. If you manage to get that down before I call you back over here, than work on some shooting." She watched them go off with the quaffle. They had a great deal of potential, really. Personally, she thought working with Chrissy might be the best thingfor Geoff. He had such a horrible image of himself, and, whileneither of them was obese in any way, seeing someone else who wasn'ta stick and did well would be good for him. She greatly hoped that Chrissy hadn't lost all the skill she had had before.

Turning back to her beaters and her keeper, she waited for a few more moments, pondering. She knew some of the basic exercises that beaters could do, but that was about it as far as her beater knowledge went. She had no idea how to recognize if they had a form mistake, or why they were having problems if they were. Quidditch books, lovely though they may be, just didn't have that kind of specific detail. She could have asked Jake for a bit of advice (he being the only one of the other house's beaters that she knew at all), but that would both have been so awkward, and would have seemed so desperate on her part that she couldn't deal with it. And, of course, the fact that he could always refuse.

So this was the only option left to her. She sighed, looked at the two girls, and said, "I'm only going to release one bludger for you two right now, for both your and my sense of security. I have great faith in your potential, both of you, but I don't think you could handle two bludgers in your first practice. So I'm just releasing one, and I want you two to try flying around and trying to aim it when you hit it. If you can't manage that yet, then just try to keep it from hitting the others. We have so few people right now, it would be a bad idea to injure any."

Again, she waited until they had walked off, before turning to Earl. “Now, I know you probably want to go work with the chasers right now, and I will let you in a few minutes. I also know you like beater the least of the positions, and I’m sorry. But, on this team, you have the most idea out of anyone what some of the common mistakes beaters make are, and you’re going to be able to spot them that much better than anyone else. So, if you could go watch them for a while and critique them, I would greatly appreciate that. Then you can go back to being keeper.”

As the last of her team went into the air, Jennifer turned back to the captive bludgers and the snitch. She sighed a bit ruefully as she regarded the small golden ball, but much as she’d love to go and chase it for a while, she had more important things to do. She released one of the bludgers, and then followed her players into the air to watch them.
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Subthreads:

Hitchin' a ride on the bandwagon by Earl Valentine with Gwen Carey, Lila Gringe, Earl

*sigh* the dreaded pract by Chrissy Mathers

0 Jennifer Z Might as well join the bandwagon (Crotalus team) 48 Jennifer Z 1 5

Earl Valentine

April 20, 2006 11:24 PM

Hitchin' a ride on the bandwagon by Earl Valentine

Crotalus's first Quidditch practice of the year, and Earl couldn't wait to get started. Even though his first choice in position was taken, he was still a pretty good keeper. His only problem at the moment was his practice during the summer. Sure he had looked through every issue of Which Broomstick? that he got his hands on, but the Valentine's lived in a predominamtly muggle area of Los Angeles. Earl's only practice was the week the family had flown (by airplane) to Greece to see his aunt and cousins.

Earl's hopes for an extreme practice with a quaffle were dashed when Jennifer announced his role during this practice.

"Help withe Beaters?" Earl almost whined, though hopefully not loud enough for Jennifer to hear. Instead he answered her with a moody "'k, Jen" and picked up his broom to follow the the two beaters...both girls and one he was still angry at.

Great...more girls. Like I don't fill my daily quota already. Earl thought as he stood in front of the two girls. Gwen was acknowledged by an icy glare (Earl was still mad at her for what she had done to Asher), while the first year was a complete stranger to him excluding the few times he had seen her in the commonroom or in Cascade Hall.

"Umm...okay. Yeah," he began lamely. "I'm Earl Valentine, in case you either didn't know or forgot, and I'm supposed to help you with your technique even though I'm the Keeper." Earl turned back to where Jennifer had just released the bludger they would be using.

"And there it goes...the bludger." Earl stopped, not sure how to start this.

"Okay, just go for it for a few minutes and I'll tell you what you're doin' wrong." Without waiting for the girls, Earl jumped on the broom he had pulled from the school Quidditch shed and launched himself about six feet into the air, missing the rogue bludger by a hair.

"You guys can start now!"\n\n

0 Earl Valentine Hitchin' a ride on the bandwagon 67 Earl Valentine 0 5

Chrissy Mathers

April 22, 2006 1:30 AM

sigh the dreaded pract by Chrissy Mathers

Chrissy was clad in her Quidditch gear as she made her way down to the pitch. The season was starting up soon and this was their first practice. She felt bad for Jennifer. The girl hardly spoke up around her friends, how on earth was she going to lead an entire team? Not that Chrissy would ever ask the girl simply because she didn't what to fry her nerves, but she couldn't help thinking it.

She waited quietly as Jennifer addressed the team. Every year it was always the same. Introductions, talk about what Quidditch is, run some drills. Same old same old. But their team was different. She looked around at all the new comers, glad that Lily was on the team with her and one of the chasers. She figured the two of them would work well together considering they got along greay. But she didn't know the other chaser and deducted him to be the first year boy having remembered Earl from the year before.

"Right." Chrissy replied to Jennifer before grabbing up her broom and a quaffle. "Let's go." She said to the other chasers, hopping onto her broom and taking off into the air. Once she reached a reasonable distance off the ground she stopped and waited for the other chasers. "Here Lily!" Chrissy called out, tossing the quaffle her way.\n\n

0 Chrissy Mathers *sigh* the dreaded pract 0 Chrissy Mathers 0 5

Gwen Carey

April 22, 2006 10:36 PM

Want some more broken bones? by Gwen Carey

Gwen's initial reaction to her placement on the Quidditch team had been complete certainty that she was going to die. Courage wasn't something she possessed in droves, or even drips, most of the time, and there was the tiny fact that she was a thin-limbed female to consider. She couldn't remember exactly why she had signed up for Quidditch in the first place, had only remembered doing it a day and a half after the fact, but she could recall that she'd been in an odd mood when she did. Apparently, 'odd' meant 'suicidal'. After a few minutes, she'd had the thought that at least her father would be rid of her without any image-damaging action on his part, though the manner of her coming demise might make him break one of his superstitions and curse the dead.

She'd carried on in that vein of thought right up to the entrance hall, but no further. By the time she reached the Quidditch Pitch, cracking a few skulls seemed like a fine thing to spend an hour or so doing. Morgaine, her nosiness equalled only by her abilities at not being noticed, had caught wind of her joining Quidditch and had been waiting on the stairs to light into her about disgracing the family by acting like a boy and some other nonsense she didn't seem able to make sense of herself.

Normally, Morgaine taking the moral high ground would have been answered by a laugh, a pat over the head, a 'never you mind, sugar', and a quick resumption of whatever she'd been doing. She had already opened her mouth to do exactly that when, abruptly, every bit of frustration or anger or hurt or anything else of the same or similar nature she'd ever felt towards the other Carey had come crashing to mind. She didn't recall who had started shouting first, but they had both started throwing the punches where they hurt. Though guilt was already starting to lace its way through the fury, Gwen did recognize that she'd made some progress. She was able to force a smile at Jennifer and keep her expression more or less neutral as she took her place near Lila instead of crying or smashing things or both. Bless Aunt Rosamund and her "we're-better-than-all-of-them" lectures.

She had to funnel a little more effort into keeping herself politely attentive when Jennifer explained what she and Lila were to do. She was more than relieved they were only dealing with one of the Bludgers - meant she only had a fifty percent chance of being the unfortunate soul who became one of the first school-level Quidditch deaths in centuries or however long it had been - and, though skeptical of how honest Jen was being, appreciated the whole potential aspect of it. That wasn't the problem at all. The problem was that their aim was to not hurt any of the other team members. Though thinking about hitting the Bludgers at Pecaris when the season proper began (Connor was just going to have to get over it, Morgaine's inclusion had been making her rapidly less and less charitable towards his House) did make her feel somewhat better, she still had enough logical sense to know she would probably be more guilty than furious by the time Crotalus took on Pecari. There was nothing she could do about it, though, so she forced another smile and nodded.

Smile and nod. Had she taught Lila or Connor the importance of that one manuever, or had it been forgotten or put aside as something she'd thought they'd already know? Keeping up with one had definitely been easier than keeping up with two, especially when the one hadn't been utterly essential because of a connection to her family. She took care to walk beside Lila rather than behind or in front of her as they approached their designated area of the field. "Well," she said, as brightly as she could manage, "This should be interesting." She half-wished she'd said fun when she saw Earl Valentine approaching. The irony would have been enough to make Alasdair laugh.

Blurry images tried to flit across her consciousness, all of them concerning the last time she'd heard him laugh at that damn Banquet, but she refused to see them. No weakness.

She responded to Earl's glare with a honeyed, plastered-on smile that contrasted sharply with her own distinctly ice-free glare. She would have made it cold and disdainful, but she was still too angry at Morgaine, at her father and all other relatives, at herself, and at all her old ex-friends. Maybe she could hit the Bludger straight towards her fellow former revolutionary and pretend it was an accident. She knew for a fact he'd broken bones before, so he'd survive. Most likely.

No. She was not going to try to land Earl in the hospital. That was too insubtle to consider. It showed clearly that she still held a grudge over his part in betraying her, and it made her seem like her father. She wasn't like him. She wasn't going to allow herself to be like him. Rosamund had told her they were better than the whole rest of the clan put together, and Rosamund was her superior. She had to believe what Rosamund told her was true. She had to act like she was better than Alasdair, like she had more dignity than getting even via violence. That this completely violated the long-held tradition of patriarchial superiority was conveniently ignored.

"I never would have worked that one out myself," she said upon being told that the black ball was a Bludger, deadpanning so that only a little sarcasm - enough to be noticed - slipped through as she hoisted her broom. "There's so many balls that fly around on their own trying to kill people that my poor liddle brain couldn't figure out which was which." She'd laid the accent on as thick as she could, the odd mix of Savannah and Madison accents with what Lila St.Martin had dubbed the dumb-trash-with-money tone back in the day when they were friends. Once Earl had flown off, she gave her fellow gravebound Beater an apologetic look.

"Sorry about that, dahlin'. He and I...don't get along. He's one of the rifraff who stabbed me in the back last year." Perhaps the oddest thing about the speech was that Gwen believed every word of it was true in spite of her equally strong belief that she'd gotten what she deserved. She had never even considered that being both the wronged and the one in the wrong wasn't the usual order of things. It made sense to her. "If I try to start beating him over the head with the club, Li, take it away from me, okay? Just kiddin'." She shot another glare in the direction of the shape in the air that was Earl when he told them they could start. "Good luck," she said, then kicked off, beginning to think once more that this would be the death of her.

The Bludger headed straight towards her, and it was pure instinct that made her bring the bat up and swing at it. She heard a cracking sound at the two objects made contact, saw the Bludger propel itself away from her, and felt something in her wrist shift as the whole went stiff and assumed a sensation similar to numbness. She tried to hit it with her shaking other hand, hoping to reverse whatever had happened, and tried not to think about how close she'd just been to having her nose broken. Oh, yes, this was going to be the death of her. She heard herself laughing at the thought, the edges of her teeth rattling against each other ever so slightly. Adrenaline wasn't a drug she thought she was going to like; it made her feel too close to hysterical. There was a part of her that wanted to make another swing at the Bludger already. \n\n

0 Gwen Carey Want some more broken bones? 63 Gwen Carey 0 5

Lila Gringe

April 24, 2006 9:02 PM

I get the feeling he doesn't. by Lila Gringe

As far as insane things to do went, playing a position called beater in a game called Quidditch was pretty high up on the list. Given, Lila had only a vague idea of what a beater did- aside from what ideas her imagination could derive from the name of the position. When Earl had explained what Quidditch was, he hadn't explained what the positions were so much as mentioned them, and thus her imagination was running wild. She wasn't generally fanciful, but when one's going to play a game in the air, on broomsticks, in a position called beater, it's hard not to be fanciful. All the way out to the Quidditch Pitch, she'd been wondering what on Earth she was supposed to be beating- and whether it would be able to beat her back.

Upon her arrival to the Pitch, Lila's worries weren't at all quelled- on the contrary, just the word 'Bludger' made her more worried. 'Bludger' sounded uncomfortably close to 'bludgeon,' and that really did not bode well for either her or Gwen's chances of surviving this Quidditch practice. Neither did Jennifer's comment about them having very few people and it being a bad idea to injure any of them. That didn't just make her more nervous; it also reminded her that if anyone got hurt at this practice, it was likely to be her fault. Oh dear. If not for her honed ability to cover up how she was feeling, the Crotalus would most definitely be looking just the way she felt: supremely anxious and more than a bit sick to her stomach. Fortunately, she did have said ability, and thus looked only as nervous as she thought she ought to be. Which wasn't, really, all that nervous. There was a very large gap between how nervous she was and how nervous she ought to be, in Lila's opinion at any rate.

Well, at least there was only one Bludger to worry about. Only one of anything that had the name 'Bludger' was probably better. It was only logical. She managed a faint smile, still allowing the tiniest bit of nervousness to show. It would be odd if she wasn't nervous, right? Nervous. She was only getting more nervous, now that Jennifer's speech was over and she and Gwen were walking to where they were supposed to. There were so many things that could go wrong- she could lose control of the Bludger thing and get other people hurt, she could get herself hurt, she could turn out to be positively awful at Quidditch . . . But this was a waste of time. It didn't help, it didn't make her less nervous. So she told the nervous voice to shut up. It didn't. What if she managed to get herself killed? What if- No, she thought firmly. It. Was. A. Waste. Of. Time.

Fortunately, Gwen was talking, meaning Lila could focus on what the older girl was saying instead of her frantic worrying. Interesting. What a word. Vague, and with just the connotation to fit the situation perfectly: she'd guess Gwen was at least a little nervous as well. Of course, that conclusion was only supported somewhat by the use of that particular word: anyone not nervous at the first Quidditch practice of the year was either overly confident or stupid. She didn't think the other Crotalus was either. "Interesting," she agreed, "although interesting isn't the only word that fits. Potentially dangerous works just as well." It was the best word, though. As far as phrases went, potentially dangerous would fit well enough. She wasn't being very optimistic, but that didn't matter. Hard to be optimistic at the moment.

She wanted to wince at Gwen's comment in response to Earl's telling them which ball was the Bludger. Obviously, Gwen didn't think well of Earl, and the feeling was probably mutual. And that was another possible explanation for Gwen's choice of word a few moments ago. Lila was becoming more and more certain that this practice would be just what Gwen had said- interesting.

Her thoughts were confirmed a moment later, when the older girl explained briefly the history between herself and Earl. Again, Lila wanted to wince. This practice was going to be just marvellous. Balls that 'fly around on their own trying to kill people,' a boy Gwen obviously didn't get along with . . . and flying. Not exactly a combination conducive to, say, a long life. If the Crotalus team ended the practice short three players, her ghost wouldn't be very surprised. Of course, that was assuming she actually became a ghost- not something she really had time to think about at the moment, however interesting the topic might be. "I'll try to get to you before you injure him too badly." She managed another smile, mounting her 'own' borrowed-from-the-school broom, and then added "You too," before kicking off as well.

Oh. So that was what Beaters did. Somehow, Lila wasn't at all surprised. It made sense. So they'd keep two of those things away from their team. The next thought came unbidden: Probably towards the other team, as well. Okay. Easy. Sort of. Maybe. By some stretch of the imagination. She found herself grinning, though, after Gwen successfully hit the Bludger. Wait- maybe not completely successfully. The older girl was doing something with her hands- Lila wondered for a moment if Gwen had gotten hurt. But the other Crotalus was laughing, so whatever it was couldn't be too bad. Unless Lila had gone mad and somehow was mistaking some expression of pain for laughing. Unlikely.

Her turn. Suddenly Lila was feeling even more like she was going to be ill. Attempting to quell the feeling, she raised the- rather heavy, she noticed- club, and whacked the rapidly approaching Bludger as hard as she dared. Immediately she went jittery, trembling all over. And her hand hurt, too. She switched the bat to her other hand, keeping a careful eye on the Bludger- it was going in the opposite direction, now, so that was good, right?- and attempted to shake out her hand. It still hurt. Marvellous.\n\n

0 Lila Gringe I get the feeling he doesn't. 0 Lila Gringe 0 5

Earl

April 27, 2006 6:38 PM

And you would be right, Lila. by Earl

This may get ugly. Earl thought as he saw Gwen and Lila zoom into the air and the former whack the bludger hard towards Lila. If she somehow figured out how to aim that at him, she'd be deadly. He'd already broken quite a few bones the previous year.

He was surprised, however, when Lila actually made contact with the bludger. She had seemed like the type of person who had never even heard of Quidditch let alone played it. But she had hit it so awkwardly that the bludger had darted off to the side flying just a few feet from where Earl stood poised in the air.

"Holy Sh--I mean, Wow!" Earl cried out watching as the bludger zoomed around the pitch after Lila's shot. "That was good. You really hit them hard." He stopped, not really knowing what to say next. They were girls, but he still knew that Gwen Carey could have him chopped into bits and served for lunch if she got too carried away. Still Earl figured that Quidditch was more important than Gwen's mental state and told the truth.

He decided to avoid Gwen's gaze, as it unsettled him, though he wouldn't admit to it. This was a better way of dealing that to have it out with a crazy girl, in mid air with a heavy bat. Earl wasn't the brightest crayon in the box, but he knew that this girl was trouble.

"You two can hit," he called out as he flew closer to the beaters, eyeing Gwen's bat. "But you're not aiming at anything. Umm...try hitting the bludger into the nearest hoop next time." He swerved to the right narrowly missing the flying bludger and hoped that one of them was going to smack the thing into a hoop today.
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0 Earl And you would be right, Lila. 0 Earl 0 5