Cherry Lips // s. black

-NOVEMBER. 3.-

"Okay, everyone knows the plan?" Aster asked the team, with no questioning in his sharp voice. The six of them nodded quickly, mostly out of fear, grabbing their brooms and doing some last stretches before whoever was commentating called their team onto the pitch.

Carmilla was grateful that the weather had lightened up a little, enough that the pitch wasn't too muddy and the sky was clear enough to see.

People weren't dressed up that much, as it was the first game of the year and there wasn't that much pressure put on the game. It was Ravenclaw versus Hufflepuff as well, so neither off the other two houses really cared, because the results wouldn't affect them at this point in the tournament.

Still, it looked like most of the students and teachers were there to watch anyway. It's not like the entire school would be there to see Carmilla in her first ever game. 

What were the rules again?

"You good?" Ace whispered in her ear as the navy blue and bronze team walked out into the watery sunshine. Carmilla tried to ignore the sweat pooling in her palms and the way her chest tightened when she saw the crowd around them, just nodding and walking over to where she was instructed to lift off.

Aster and the captain of the Hufflepuff team walked out into the centre of the field, shaking hands with a glare. Then they mounted their brooms, and waited for the final whistle like everyone else.

Carmilla couldn't figure out who the commentator was, she didn't recognise their blurred face, but once the whistle sounded, she shot into the air.

"And they're off! First game of the season folks! Yellow versus Blue!"

Players flew to the spots they were going to begin in, the chasers moving to form the plans Aster had spent weeks drilling into them, the beaters flanking them tightly. Carmilla flew above all of it, scanning the busy field for the golden blur she had come to know so well. It was always a blur. Literally. Even when it was still. 

"The Quaffle is thrown, and Bones is off with it immediately! Bancroft hits a bludger to him, Dodge it ya bloody idiot! ... I mean...." A boy calls out, and Carmilla tries to block out his loud swearing and yelling while she keeps an eye on the two bludgers zooming around the pitch.

Her annoyingly sharp hearing made it hard for her to not focus on the hundreds of people gathered around her, and her poor eyesight didn't help Carmilla search for the snitch, wherever it was.

A pretty girl called Milly Payne was the seeker for Hufflepuff, and the two of them eyed each other warily, swerving around the top of the pitch.

Carmilla didn't know what to do while she waited for the gold to come into sight.

"And Hufflepuff scores! Ten points to zero!"

Ace had been right, the Hufflepuff team were great. It didn't help that the teacher who ran the games was in Hufflepuff, because they got the best training times, but besides that....

They flew around in perfect formations, three steps ahead of the blue team, as if they could read each other's minds.

Ravenclaw was good. Being the 'smart house' helped them with planning and strategies, but they didn't have the connection with each other. The beaters did, they were brothers, and Ace and Carmilla worked like puzzle pieces, but all together it was a bit of a fucking mess.

The 'wit' and 'creativity' they all possessed meant that everyone had different ideas of what to do, and they couldn't exactly stop to have a little chat mid game to re organize their haywire plans.