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Bumping into Neville
Author: Hermione Granger
Date: 04-15-12 13:00
Her arms laden with packages and shopping bags, Hermione navigated the busy, cobbled street, not yet finished with her errands but almost. She headed in the direction of The Leaky Cauldron but turned into Scribbulus Everchanging Inks where she bumped into none other than Neville Longbottom.
"Hi, Hermione!" Neville exclaimed.
"Hi, Neville!"
The last time they'd seen each other had been over a month ago at Harry and Ginny's wedding at the Burrow.
"Do you need help with all that?" Neville asked, taking in everything she carried.
Hermione shook her head. "It's not necessary, but thanks. I cast featherweight charms on everything. I suppose I could put an extension charm on one of these," she said, indicating one of the shopping bags she carried. "That way my arms won't be so full."
Neville smiled. "You always think of everything."
Hermione smiled back. "Not always." She shifted everything in her arms and asked, "How's Hannah?"
Neville's smile only widened. "She's great! Really great, actually. She's started working on the administration side of things at The Leaky Cauldron. I wouldn't be surprised if she takes over one day."
"That's wonderful!"
"Yeah, I'm really proud of her. So, how's Ron?"
"He's doing well. Keeping busy with work."
"And Harry?"
"The same." His period of administrative leave had ended at last. Hermione knew that Harry was glad to be back at work. He'd been itching to return for absolute ages.
"Do you see Luna much?"
"I'm afraid not," Hermione replied, frowning slightly. She'd last seen Luna at the wedding too. Everybody seemed busy all the time with work, school, and just life in general. "We should plan a night out together sometime. All of us. Maybe dinner some evening?"
"That sounds like fun. I'll talk it over with Hannah and see what night is good for us."
"I'll do the same with the others," Hermione said.
"Speaking of Hannah, I'm supposed to be meeting her," Neville said, holding up a shopping bag. "She sent me on an errand."
"She has you well-trained, I see." Hermione grinned.
"Yes, well, the things we do for love," Neville replied, also grinning. "Talk soon?"
"Definitely. Bye, Neville!"
"Bye, Hermione!"
He exited the shoppe and headed for the inn, while Hermione went deeper into the quill and ink shoppe to pick up what she needed.
It's Not Easy Being Green (Jade & Olive)
Author: Emerald Green
Date: 04-15-12 13:05
There's a brief pause in the match when Jade's bat comes apart, one chunk of it flying off to pop her in the face. She doesn't have any splinters in her hand or face but the piece catching her on the cheek did leave a gash. Jade hopes that if the cut ends up leaving a scar, which is doubtful she knows, that it will be a cool kind of scar and not the sort people paste fake smiles on, pretending not to notice it all the while inwardly cringing at the sight. With a new bat and a bandaid (Jade isn't sure she'll ever get used to calling them plasters) slapped on the cut to hold it for the time being, the match resumes, Slytherin currently in possession of the quaffle. Though her cheek throbs a little it doesn't not slow Jade in the least. Besides, if some can play with cracked or broken bones, she can certainly play with a little cut to the cheek.
As Alexa moves the quaffle across the pitch, Jade is coming up on a bludger, earning herself the evil eye from Basil for getting to it first. Or maybe he was just looking at her normally. With Basil Wynbourne, such things are hard to tell. Hauling her bat back to hit the bludger, she smiles sweetly at him to let him know that older and larger than her he might be but Jade is not intimidated. Basil's eyes narrow more and his frown deepens. Jade blows him a kiss and flies off, trying to decide whether to follow the bludger she just hit or go after the other one.
Basil zips by on his way after the one Jade just hit so just to annoy him further, she follows along. As she's now spotted Alastor and Mark vying for the other bludger, this works well enough. She'll get to this bludger that much quicker plus irritate Basil in the process. It's win win.
Basil gets to the bludger just before it reaches Alexa. He intercepts and redirects it to Deak. Jade shoots past him to do much the same. It nearly clips Deak but Jade is able to stop it by reaching her bat far in front of her and tapping the bludger off course. Shifting her broom position slightly, she then aims for Mason who's just accepted the quaffle from Alexa. As she hits the bludger, Jade thinks about something that's crossed her mind a few times. She has no idea what others would think but she would personally like to see them with numbers or letters on them or slightly different colors; just something that would help distinguish bludger 1 from bludger 2. It doesn't matter, not really, but it's one of those things that she'd still like to see.
As this thought is crossing Jade's mind, Mason passes to Olive, who then almost immediately has to swerve to avoid a collision with Basil, who has one of the worst glowers she's seen him wear in a long while that is not directly related to his cousin, and Olive's friend, Julietta.
A pileup with Basil narrowly averted, Olive narrows the distance to the hoops Beatrix is vigilantly patrolling. Like the other Slytherins, Olive is not at all pleased with trailing Ravenclaw. As determined as she is to brings Slytherin's score from 10 to 20, Beatrix is just as determined to keep Olive's team right where it is. When Olive throws, Beatrix is able to get her entire body in front of the quaffle, catching it close to her chest. The Ravenclaw keeper puts it back into play with a pass to her cousin Ramona.
Ramona immediately goes for a longer pass to Jack but Mason is able to intercept. He tosses the quaffle to Alexa who in turn sends it right back to Olive. She sets up to throw, sending the quaffle to her left, aiming not for hoop furthest from her but for the far side of the center hoop. Beaxtrix misjudges, moving farther to her right side than needed. The quaffle gets past her, and Slytherin finally has its second goal of the match.
With the score now at Ravenclaw 30, Slytherin 20, it's Deak with the quaffle. He makes a long pass to Jack who hustles it back in the direction Gus awaits. He doesn't get very far when Mark gets him with a bludger, allowing Mason to steal the quaffle. Mason shoots away, zooming at high speed towards Beatrix. Hoping to catch her unprepared for such a rapid turn around of possession, Mason throws the quaffle. Beatrix is still able to stop the ball, batting it away using her broom. Olive and Ramona both go for the rebound, each getting hands on it at roughly the same time. They jockey their brooms about, fighting to prise the quaffle away from the other.
Neither is able to do so before a whistle blows. They have what Olive would call from her Muggle background and knowledge of basketball, a jump ball.
(Ramona) The Quaffle
Author: Griet
Date: 04-15-12 13:30
The whistle sounded shrilly, but Ramona refused to give up the quaffle until she felt Olive's hands slacken around the red ball. Coach Krum flew over to the pair of them and held out his arms for the quaffle. The girls reluctantly passed it over to him and then formed a circle over his head, with the other chasers falling into position beside them.
Coach Krum threw the quaffle high into the air, but it was neither Ramona nor Olive who got their hands on it this time. In fact, none of the chasers did at first.
In his enthusiasm to stop a Slytherin chaser right off the bat, Alastor whacked one of the bludgers in their direction, only to make contact with the quaffle. It was knocked sideways and had all of the chasers scrambling after it. There was a good deal of accidental locking of broomstick handles and scraped hands and arms from the bristles.
Mason was the first to recover the quaffle, but not because he'd been nearest to it in the circle. He'd been facing the right way and had had a straight shot in the scramble to catch it before anyone else could.
Mason immediately arced around and searched for an opening. Alexa and Olive were both free at the moment, but it was to Alexa that he threw the quaffle. Ramona darted across the ball's path, however, and intercepted it. Almost immediately she felt a bludger whoosh past her face, but luckily it had either been aimed badly or she'd gotten out of range just barely enough to avoid injury.
She saw Olive close in on her and quickly passed the ball to Deak. Deak held onto the quaffle for a mere second before tossing it overhand to Jack. When both bludgers targeted him, he shot the ball forward to Ramona, who had just entered scoring range. She didn't even judge where to throw it best. She simply propelled her arm forward and let the quaffle fly.
Gus stopped it with a firm catch and shot it at Mason, but Ramona batted the quaffle away before he could get a firm grasp on it. Jack scooped it up and attempted a score, but this time the quaffle bounced off the rim of the hoop. He caught the rebound and made to attempt another score but at the last second threw it sideways at Ramona. She barely had it in her hands before she shot it forward, straight through the center hoop.
Now Ravenclaw was winning, 40-20.
(Gillian) New Beck on the Block
Author: Beck
Date: 04-15-12 15:13
Gillian Colley sat in the staff box next to her half-sister Ariella and her brother-in-law Lawrence and watched the Quidditch match between Ravenclaw and Slytherin progress. Not long ago, she and Ariella had made arrangements to see whether or not they were, indeed, related. Ariella had seemingly always known it, but Gillian had always believed her father to be Fredegar Fiske, not Tobias Beck, a name she'd never even heard of until she'd first met Ariella at St. Emrys.
Now that she knew the truth, that she was another daughter of Tobias Beck, who'd had three daughters with his wife and two from extramarital affairs (that anybody knew of, at least), Gillian felt like she'd finally found where she belonged. In the time since learning the truth, she'd met all of her new family.
Not surprisingly, everybody had been suitably shocked to learn that another Beck child existed. What surprised Gillian was how welcoming the Becks were, despite the circumstances of her existence. She'd feared feeling like an outsider, like an unwanted burden on the family, but she quickly learned that she was anything but.
Gillian felt that she identified with two of her new half-siblings the most: Ariella, because she was the one she'd met first and whom she looked like the most, and Katherine, who was the other child born out of wedlock. Gillian and Katherine had had a very long talk about what it was like being the newest members of the family, excepting the in-laws, of course.
Hearing Katherine talk about what it had been like to first join the Becks made Gillian feel all the more better about her own situation. She only wished that she could have met her birth father. Katherine had the same regret.
Ariella had known her father, but he had died when she was very young herself.
"Are you enjoying yourself?"
Gillian turned to Ariella and nodded. "Yes, thanks for inviting me."
"No problem. We'll have to get you to come when Hufflepuff plays."
"Hufflepuff was your house, right? Both of yours?"
"That's right," Ariella said.
"My school in New Zealand didn't have houses. It's much smaller than Hogwarts," Gillian said.
"The school I went to in Australia was roughly this size," Lawrence explained, waving his hands to encompass the whole of the Hogwarts grounds, "but we only had two houses. We were assigned randomly rather than by character as is done here."
"It's interesting how each school is different," Gillian mused.
Ariella nodded. "I know what you mean. We got to see a few different ones when I was a student here. There was this competition called the SAT…" And she went on to tell her new half-sister about the Scholastic Aptitude Tournament and how the participants got to visit different schools, which led to talk about the recent IQT, of Interscholastic Quidditch Tournament, in which the whole school had gotten to visit other schools for the different Quidditch matches.
Alliteration
Author: Harry Potter
Date: 04-15-12 16:17
The desk in front of him so mounded with piles of files and loose parchment that the desktop cannot be seen, Harry sits staring, wondering if stories he heard as a child of Purgatory are true.
Purgatory.
Filing duty.
No difference really.
Harry's done filing duty in the past. When Euphemia Smythe-Jones was Minister of Magic, he'd been reduced to file clerk. That was a little boring but tolerable.
Upon returning to work when his suspension ended Kingsley has had Harry buried in the bowels of the Ministry. Normally, that would mean working as an Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries or doing something court related. Being a file clerk for the courts would be a little boring but, like his previous stint as file clerk, it would most likely be tolerable.
Minister Shacklebolt has Harry in a large, musty room with stacks of even mustier parchment and folders. Kingsley's been having some of the older, lesser used portions of the Ministry cleaned. All this paperwork is from forgotten file cabinets, from the drawers of desks in offices not currently in use or desks moved to one of the many storage rooms around the vast Ministry complex, from behind pieces of furniture where they'd fallen and been forgotten, and even a large stack found in an air duct where someone long ago had stuck them rather than filing them or sending them to be filed. There are also stacks upon stacks of parchment needing to be put into order and filed from when someone created a strong wind in a department thirty years ago after being made redundant. The loose parchments were gathered up and someone meant to straighten them out but somehow they got stuffed into boxes and stuck into a closet where they sat until the not quite spring cleaning urge came over Kingsley while Harry was off on honeymoon.
Harry's job is to sort through it all, organize it all, make sense of it all, see that it all gets properly put away in the correct department.
It would be a large task for anyone but for someone wanting to get out and work on cases, make a difference, get criminals off the street, sitting in a room with not even a tiny faux portal giving the illusion of a world beyond is excruciating sitting and sorting for hours on end.
And dusty.
And deadly dull.
After reordering the disorganized pages of three thousand pieces of parchment enumerating reasons why proper de-gnoming techniques should be mandatory for all witches and wizards falling under the British Ministry of Magic's pervue, Harry would dearly love to locate one Chuck Heaver and after upchucking on him, see how far he could be chucked using the techniques outlined on page one of the document. While it's true Harry did not have to read each of those three thousand pages, there was something mind numbingly hypnotizing about the fact that Mr. Heaver could find that many reasons to enumerate the benefits of his proposal.
Also, Harry was just that bored.
The door creaks open and very sweet and extremely ancient Lettie McBride shuffles in. "Have more for you, Harry. Where should I put them?"
"Oh, just anywhere, thanks. Lettie, why are you working on a Saturday?"
"I volunteer."
"Oh, uh, interesting. And nice. That you would volunteer."
"I am quitting early today. I've a hot date and it will take me hours to get ready." She gleefully winks at Harry, bids him a good afternoon, and leaves him alone once again. He has no idea if she was joking or not.
The new stack Lettie left starts sliding and in the effort to stop a domino effect avalanche of equally precariously perched parchment, Harry notices for the first time there is a desk placard. Using a spell to stabilize the stacks, he slowly prises the placard free.
Phillip Phelps
Philharmonics
Harry had not even been aware that the British Ministry had offices dealing with philharmonics. Did there used to be a Ministry orchestra? Is there one now? Ginny and Hermione have always accused Harry of being grossly ignorant of the immediate world around him, like how he hardly knew the names of students not in his year at Hogwarts unless pointed out to him. Hmmmm, or maybe this Philharmonics business was or is something in the Department of Mysteries. They study time and death and all sorts of other things so why not music?
Sitting at the desk, feet propped on it, placard in his hand, Harry uses his wand to change the wording on the placard.
Phoebe Phipps
Philanthropic Hhilatelist
Quinten Quarles
Queue Quipologist
Kyle Kellogg
Kenspeckle Kairomonephonomist
Harry goes through the entire alphabet, making handy use of the pocket dictionary Hermione once gave him and more than a few times tacking on -ologist or -onomist where it suited him, whether it was an actual word and/or occupation or not. By the time he's gone through the alphabet twice, Harry decides he's worked hard enough to go on and take his lunch break a half hour early.
Refereeing
Author: Viktor Krum
Date: 04-15-12 19:06
Viktor's friend Stan Stanislaus had asked if he could assist refereeing a Hogwarts match or three, wanting more experience as he's thinking of making a shift from player to referee. He and Viktor hover close to each other talking while watching clock during a time out called by one of the teams. As the seconds remaining in the time out tick down, the two part, Stan with the quaffle, handing it over to Ramona as players take up positions.
No sooner has Ramona thrown to Jack then Viktor is blowing his whistle. "Foul! Snitchnip by Green of Ravenclaw!"
The seekers had thus far not spotted the snitch and as far as Viktor knows, no one else had either. Then, just as Ramona was passing to Jack, Jade not only spotted it, she'd inadvertently touched it and it came in a split second that Viktor just happened to see. Only seekers may touch the snitch during official match play. Possession of the quaffle is turned over to Slytherin, the team being all too happy to gain more time with the red ball in hopes of narrowing Ravenclaw's lead.
Alexa accepts the quaffle from Viktor, throwing it to Mason, who throws to Olive. The three Slytherin chasers move in close together, rapidly passing the quaffle back and forth, working it from the center of the pitch in Beatrix's direction. A bludger comes uncomfortably close to Viktor on its course to hit one of those green and silver clad chasers. Referees do sometimes get hit, usually by accident though sometimes not. It's one of the hazards of Quidditch. At least he doesn't have to worry about angry fans sending Stan or him to a far corner of the world after the match ends.
He passes the stand where he'd knows Marjani is sitting, eyes reflexively checking if she's still there. She's had a touch of the flu but before the match when Viktor quizzed her on how she's feeling and wondering if she should skip attending the game, Marjani had given him one of the few genuine smiles she's displayed since Theodosia died, replying, "I'm fine, Mum, really I am."
He'd rolled his eyes at being called Mum and summoned an added blanket for her to bundled up in, reminding her that if he thinks she should get back in, he will make it an order. She'd just smiled again and very cheekily said, "Yes, Mum, whatever you say."
After assuring himself Marjani appears to be fine, Viktor's eyes go next to Zuberi. He's sitting in the next set of stands over from the one Marjani is in. Viktor has no words for how thankful he's been that Zuberi has not handled his anger and grief over Theodosia's death the same way he did their parents' death and Theodosia taking the job here at Hogwarts. He's not sure if that's a sign of Zuberi's growing maturity, his understanding that such behavior was destructive and hurtful and pointless, or a combination of both. He does know that Zuberi's having such a good friend in Karamoh has helped.
All this takes place in the span of only a few seconds, Viktor's attention back fully on the match, mentally chiding himself for even that long. In a sport as fast moving as Quidditch a few seconds can be huge.
Of Blankets, Couples, Colds and Losing
Author: Adina Blackwood
Date: 04-16-12 00:42
The morning had dawned overcast and snowy, which would make the Quidditch match hell for those flying so high above ground level, for once Adina was quite happy to not be on the team this year. However, she was not so sure how much more of the cold she could take right now.
Bundled neatly beneath a large blanket, cuddled with Arthur they shared a large thermos of hot chocolate and charmed bag of popcorn to keep it all warm and buttery through to the last kernel. "I seriously do not think I can stomach much more of us losing like this. The cold bothers me less than the team out there," she muttered under her breath, knowing that most of her house was irritated that Ravenclaw was stomping them into the ground.
Arthur shot a quick glance at Cornelia who looked like her head was about to explode if they did not close the gap soon. Before either she or Arthur could say anything a gust of wind blew through the stands making people huddle up a bit more. Adina rested her head against Arthur's chest, sniffling slightly, and desperately hoping that she wasn't getting sick though she already knew the answer to it.
"I think I might have to head inside soon. Am not feeling all that stellar," she murmured into his ear, before letting her head rest against his shoulder once more. She had started feeling kind of off yesterday morning with a slightly scratchy throat and some sniffling but hadn't thought anything of it.
"Come on, we'll get you inside and we can cuddle by the fireplace and if you need to we can go to the Hospital Wing to get you checked out by Madame Pomfrey." Arthur said, and for once he was thankful that they were by the stairs. He helped her up, leaving her wrapped mostly in the blanket and then guided her down the steps and toward the castle just as the wind blew a dozen or so flurries of snow across their path.
They ended up cuddling in front of the fire, and Adina had fallen asleep with her head on Arthur's shoulder no sooner had they settled on the sofa. He figured that he'd wake her before everyone came in from the match and take her up to the hospital wing from the Slytherin common room, and unless Madame Pomfrey made her stay in the hospital wing for a day or so, would see that Whitney or Kida got her to her room.