Of all the annual Hogwarts Quidditch matchups, the most popular is without a doubt Gryffindor vs Slytherin. The longstanding and frankly meaningless rivalry between the two houses is never better displayed than on the Quidditch pitch. It didn’t matter whether you were even in Gryffindor or Slytherin, the guarantee of an entertaining, dramatic match was enough to draw the biggest cheers from the crowd.
And this year’s matchup was one for the ages.
Everyone knew the captains of the Gryffindor and Slytherin teams were dating each other, and had been since last summer. But it had all came to an end on Valentine’s Day, just three days before the highly anticipated match. They’d had a massive argument in the middle of the annual Valentine’s Day celebrations in the Great Hall, which had very nearly ended in a duel. Needless to say, the atmosphere surrounding the two captains was tense in the lead up to Saturday’s match. And by the time the day of the match arrived, the atmosphere was electric.
Electric not just because of the death stares they had been shooting each other every chance they got, but because there was literally an electrical storm brewing by breakfast. This didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits though - Quidditch was played in all weather conditions, to the horror of the Muggleborn first years. And nobody’s spirits were higher than Jae’s that morning, who had put on a very large bet on the outcome of the match. An outcome he was very confident in. General consensus among the student body was that the match would end when the exes finally had it out on the pitch, and end in a cross-team punch up. The question was when?
“55 minutes!” Jae announced , slapping a hand down on the railing in front of him. “YES!”
“How’d you know it wouldn’t take an hour? Or 45, or even 50 minutes?” Ben asked, squinting down through the rain at the red and green blurs against the muddy pitch.
“Oh you know,” Jae crossed his arms, marvelling at the quickly escalating fight. “A combination of studying match stats, weather, psychology, and gossip from our resident Pollyanna.”
“Now imagine if you’d applied that level of dedication to your schoolwork!” Freyja raised her voice above the din from Jae’s other side.
Jae rolled his eyes and made the blah-blah-blah gesture with his hand. “Imagine if you weren’t such a buzzkill.”
“I’m imagining really hard.” Freyja replied dryly, and started making her way down from the spectator stands.
“Where you going, daddy long legs?” Jae shouted after her.
Freyja slowed her pace on the stairs and turned around. “To get Barnaby. If he’s caught fighting again by the professors, he won’t be able to play the next match.”
“Oh shit, that reminds me!” Jae hurried along and overtook Freyja on the stairs. “If I let Charlie get too beat up down there, his beloved is gonna hex my knees off!”
(December 24th, 2000 . Mooloolaba Beach, QLD, Australia)
After having to work the previous Christmas, Freyja managed to get a few weeks off in December this time round. And decided to make the most of it, by taking Frankie and Jacob along for a holiday to the Sunshine State. Something of a Young family holiday, if you will.
March 1988, somewhere in Hogwarts in the middle of the night
It was much easier to move around the castle at night. Away from pitying eyes and those staring with morbid curiosity. Duncan had only been dead a few years, and as such was the youngest ghost in Hogwarts - a novelty among both the living and the dead, and yet not feeling as though he belonged to either. That being said, he would rather be in the company of the dead - at least they treated him like a normal person. With the exception of Moaning Myrtle, who he avoided like the plague in both life and death.
Yet it was the living that really got under his skin. On the whole, he resented every last one of them. Going about their lives as if they had all the time in the world, not knowing how good they had it. And by keeping his distance from them, by staying in the Prefects’ Bathroom, it was easier to avoid slipping into a feeling more corrosive than resentment. Envy. Envy of their friendships, their life dramas, their adventures, the mischief they’d get up to - while he could only ever be a spectator. He couldn’t even really get up to proper mischief with Peeves, only able to watch as chaos descended. He wanted to be part of something, really part of something.
Like the group of students he was now watching with narrowed eyes, no doubt sneaking off somewhere they weren’t supposed to go. It was the sort of troublemaking that he might’ve done with Jacob and Olivia when he was alive, but would now never be able to experience again. He’d never again experience that rush of adrenaline from doing something you weren’t supposed to. Because nobody cared what you did when you were a ghost.
