Sparks Fly || A George Weasley Story

Year 5: Don't Freak Out

Juniper's POV:

The great hall was bursting at the seams with students standing or sitting around, already eagerly chatting about what the day would bring. Of course, they probably weren't talking about today specifically but the weekend which is when all the houses would be holding tryouts for any open team positions. Hufflepuff wasn't in current need of any replacement players, but if I remembered correctly, Wesley was due to graduate in the next year or two and we'd need a new keeper. Gryffindor is also in need of a new keeper when Wood graduates this year.

But either way, everyone was always excited for tryouts because that meant that the first game of the year and the trips to Hogsmeade weren't too far off. September was the stale month where we were simply supposed to get used to being back at school and focus on reading our new textbooks and familiarizing ourselves with the material for the year. October was when games started most times, if nothing got in the way, and then Hogsmeade trips began around the same time. As time went on, trips down to Hogsmeade got less and less exciting, but it was an excuse to get away from the castle for a few hours.

Looking around the room over my morning pumpkin juice, I could see spaces in between students blocked by the open pages of this mornings copy of the Daily Prophet. Nobody has been able to put them down since they were the only newspaper offered by the school and we were all hoping to keep up with what was known about Sirius Black's whereabouts. There were dementors at every entrance, but he'd gotten past them once before, what's stopping him from doing it again.

Why would Sirius Black want to come to Hogwarts? It was obvious that this had something to do with Harry, everything always had something to do with Harry somehow. I couldn't fit together an explanation that made sense, but my gut was telling me that I was right, and that was enough reassuring for me.

I turned around, busying myself with reading the front page of the Daily Prophet that Heather had held up in front of her. She was busy with Rita Skeeter's newest gossip column and I knew that she was searching for ideas for her own columns in Hog-Gossip which would come out some time next week after tryouts. The quidditch sections had been quite popular, especially among those that didn't have the best memory and couldn't remember dates and scores that easily but still wanted to be apart of dinner conversations.

This year, I would be taking on most of the school related articles because Heather was overwhelmed by all of it last year. She would focus on gossip and relationship news. My articles would be on teachers, the upcoming tests (O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s), and any sort of chocolate frog card trading. It seemed like it might be a lot to handle, but I was sure I could do it. It would help me keep my mind off of George and Derrick for a while any way.

Heather slammed her newspaper shut before I got to the bottom of the page and handed it to Tamara who would check the more boring adult sections of the paper before we either gave it to someone who hadn't read it yet or threw it away.

"I was reading that," I said, throwing a piece of toast at Heather.

"It's not like it's anything new or interesting," She sighed, "If I wanted to waste twenty minutes reading something, I would have done my homework last night. All it talks about is how no one has seen Black since his last check in at Azkaban."

"You should really do your homework," Tamara said, licking her thumb and turning the page.

"It was just some light reading for one of the classes I had yesterday, I don't remember which one it was," She said, "But it's not like they check if you've read it or not."

"She has a point," Robin said, running a hand through her messy red hair, "If it was like an essay or something, then maybe we could scold her for not doing it."