The One With All The Slytherins

Chapter 30: Year 3

Today is the day. The day of the Yule Ball. Astoria had gotten up at the same time I did, at the crack of dawn, but neither of us had expected each other to get up so early so we were both utterly surprised to see the other awake. She said that she had to start getting ready for the ball but it wasn't for over twelve hours so I told her to go back to bed for a little longer. Of course, she didn't listen to me and started to put her dress on. I rolled my eyes..

Harry, Ron, and I had agreed to practice Quidditch for a little bit this morning. I hadn't told Astoria where I was going, since she never would've let me go, with the dance being today and all, so I made a promise to myself that I'd be back with plenty of time to spare to get ready. Besides, with Harry and I going together, it wasn't a big deal anyway but he was a champion so we needed to be there a tad bit earlier than everyone else. Knowing me, though, that most likely was not going to happen.

I met the two boys down on the Quidditch Pitch at approximately seven o'clock with Fred's broom that he had let me borrow just for today. Ron had George's and, of course, Harry had his own. They were all a little beaten up but not so bad where we couldn't ride them for a few hours.

Harry had snagged some of the balls from Katie Bell, the Quidditch captain at the time, even though there was no Quidditch this year but that was part of the fun of this. We could practice Quidditch and nobody could stop us because it wasn't an actual game. We did have to be careful not to hurt Harry, though, since he was one of the Hogwarts champions. Now that I thought about it, this was actually a really stupid idea.

"Ready to get your ass beat, losers?" I said. I usually wasn't a morning person- that was Lainey- but today was my day. It was going to go perfectly. I had my friends, I had a date, I had the dance. Everything was all good to go.

"Yeah, sure. Whatever," Ron said lethargically. I rolled my eyes at him, mounting my broom.

"Let's go," I demanded.

"Wait-what are we even doing?" Harry asked quickly as he scrambled to open the box where the Quaffle, Snitch, and Bludger were.

I stared at him stupidly. "We're going swimming."

"Whatever," he sneered at me. I stuck my tongue out at him.

Harry got the three balls out of the case and released the snitch at the same time that we mounted our brooms so we could meet them in the air and start playing. Ron was shakily trying to get on his broom but Harry and I were already up in the air, battling for positions.

"I call seeker," Harry called out loud.

"I wanted seeker!" I whined.

"You can be chaser. I think you'd be good there," he told me, slowing down so that we were at the same height. Ron was still on the ground.

"Why?" I argued.

"I dunno. You have more of a chaser's build. Small, quick."

I had a feeling that he was just bullshitting me and that he actually just wanted me to leave him alone so that we could play a game. It wasn't going to be a realistic game; We didn't even have enough people for one team- Hell, the Slytherin team had more reserves than this.

Ron finally got confident enough to hop on his broom and meet us in the air. He was still a little shaky but I knew he'd get the hang of it. Harry was yelling orders at us to follow him and to stay in line and teaching us how to catch, throw, or hit the certain balls. I had made many sexual references on multiple occasions that Ron had found utterly amusing but Harry yelled at me everytime.

I started regretting coming out here with him and I think Ron did too. Even Snape had been more fun than him- But I knew that if I ever told Harry that, it'd break his heart so I kept it to myself. I knew he enjoyed bossing us around so we just let him do it. He'd always wanted to coach the Quidditch team anyway...He would've made our dad proud.