The Last Black (Hermione Granger x Male Reader) Vol.2

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Valentine's Day

On Valentine's Day morning I was holding try-outs for a new seeker after kicking Malfoy off of the team for his appalling behaviour after our last match. There was nowhere near as many people trying out for the seeker position as there had been the beater position, which I guessed made a lot of sense; you really needed to be a certain size and frame to play seeker – light and slender. The quidditch pitch was damp from the previous night's rain and completely desert, apart from myself and the four members of my house who were trying out: Daphne Greengrass and Blaise Zabini from the year below me, and Matthias Yaxley and Bridgett from my own year. I hadn't even needed to try very hard to persuade Bridgett to try out, she had begun to get friendly with the Ravenclaw captain, Roger Davies, and wanted to know more about quidditch, so she had something to talk about with him.

"So, I'm just going to run you all through a drill," I explained, "it's pretty simple; I release the snitch and you'll take turns catching it – quickest person gets the spot."

"Easy," Yaxley said arrogantly as he made to mount his broom.

"Then you can go first," I shot as I released the snitch from the crate of quidditch balls. I clicked the start button on my stopwatch and glared at him. "Time's ticking," I said, raising an eyebrow whilst tapping the stopwatch. Yaxley kicked off of the ground whilst muttering curse words at me. Apparently, I wasn't being 'fair'.

For someone so confident, Matthias Yaxley was incredibly slow on a broom, and whenever he took one arm off to grasp the snitch, he began to wobble uncontrollably. It took him over a half hour to finally catch the snitch, by which point myself and the others were quite fed up with waiting.

"Thirty one minutes, forty six seconds," I tutted once he had returned to the ground.

"Only because you started the timer before I'd took off!" He argued.

"Seekers need to think and react fast, perhaps you're too dense to be on this team," I fired, raising an eyebrow. Yaxley gritted his teeth and stormed off of the quidditch pitch.

"This is bullshit anyway," we could all hear him complain as he trudged away in the direction of the changing rooms.

"Greengrass, you're up!" I smiled. I had high hopes for Daphne, her sister was after all a pretty spectacular beater. My hopes were confirmed when Daphne caught the snitch in a matter of sixteen minutes. She dismounted her Cleansweep Eleven with a sheen of sweat on her forehead, and her blonde hair rattled by the wind. "Sixteen minutes!" I exclaimed, patting her on the back, "if you want to wait till the end and find out if you've made the team you're welcome too, but I know everyone has plans today so I'll find you later and let you know if you want," I told her whilst she wiped at her forehead with the sleeve of her robe.

"I'll stay I think," Daphne smiled, going to stand beside Bridgett, whom she had been talking too whilst Yaxley had been flying – I think they'd been discussing broomsticks.

"Mount your broom Zabini," I instructed, and he did as I said. Blaise was a tough-looking fifth year who hung around with Malfoy a lot of the time. He never seemed to cause as much trouble as him though, thankfully. He seemed to me however to be a little conceited. Nothing ever seemed to please Blaise Zabini. I could not even recall ever seeing him smile.

The snitch was released, and Blaise shot up into the air on his Nimbus 2001. Up in the air though, Blaise seemed thoroughly confused. Even down on the ground I could see the snitch zigzagging through the air a couple feet from him. In the end it took him twenty-one minutes to catch it and seeing as though Daphne had caught it in a shorter time than he had, he left without so much as a 'goodbye'.

Bridgett was now fiddling with the shaft of her Twigger 90, which her parents had sent her for Christmas in an attempt to 'bring her back into the fold'. It was an impressive broom, but why they would send her a broom when they knew she had no use for one back then baffled the both of us. "Reckon you can beat Greengrass?" I smirked at her as she mounted and tied her hair behind her head in a tight ponytail.