The Marauders: Year Seven Part Two

Never Been a Keeper

James woke up before the sun had risen. His eyes simply popped open and he was staring up at the blurry mass that was the velvety ceiling of his four poster. It was silent in the dormitory. He stretched, aching his back and letting out a groan as his muscles loosened. He rolled over and got his glasses from the night stand and put them on.

He dressed as quietly as he could, shaking out his quidditch uniform and knotting up the flying boots. He grabbed his broomstick, and a roll of parchment from his desk - his planned playbook - and slipped out the door without disturbing any of the others.

Downstairs in the common room, he was sneaking to the portrait hole when he heard, "Psst! Hey! James!"

He paused and looked back at the couch and found Ollie sitting there, also dressed in his uniform, clutching his broom and looking rather pale and anxious. James smiled, "Hey, how's our seeker?"

"I'm alright," Ollie said, but his voice was only half as confident as he wanted it to be.

James said, "Well you're doing a lot better than I'd done in my first big game like this.... C'mon we'll head out to the pitch together."

James and Ollie walked through the corridors and out onto the grounds, down the path to the pitch, carrying their broomsticks over their shoulders. James could feel Ollie's eyes following him, and knew that Ollie was trying to match his pace and the way he carried his broom. It made James a little self-conscious in a weird way, knowing that Ollie was trying to be like him, but he remembered when he did the same thing chasing after Derek Bell. He smiled to himself at the memory of it, and walked a little taller, proud to be someone else's Derek.

At the pitch, Ollie sat on the bench grooming his broomstick with one of the kits Madam Hooch had laid out in the locker rooms, and James got to work copying his plays onto the boards, doing his best to keep them tidy and readable, but smudging it at little with his wrist just the same. By the time the others on the team had made their way to the pitch, Ollie's broomstick was as good as new and James had gotten all of his plans copied out and prepared himself to make the final rallying speech.

The other team players gathered around him. They could hear the Slytherin team as they passed by the Gryffindor locker room doors toward their own locker room, shouting and chanting as they went:

Slytherins, Slytherins
Hogwarts Quidditch Champions
Ready to play, ready to score
Ready to crush Gryffindor
Slytherins, Slytherins
Hogwarts Quidditch Champions

"They'll be singing a different song later on," James reassured the pale-looking Gryffindors gathered around him. "And even if they aren't, they can't sing a song of pride in themselves quite as well as we can. Remember where we came from, what a janky mess we were in at the start of the season? Remember how nobody thought we could do it when we announced our team and how we proved them all wrong? We're in the running for the bloody Quidditch Cup! From the rough start to the top of the stack. We're an amazing team, and whether we win or lose today we DESERVE that cup. We've worked the hardest of any house for this, to make the team dynamics as strong as they are. You lot win in my mind whatever the score out there is today."

Several of the players surrounding James clapped, and the younger, inexperienced students faces were red with pride.

Out onto the pitch they spilled, the sun blasting down from over the sky. The stands were filling up still, one of the lower-year exams having just let out back up at the castle, so a lot of late comers were arriving now, excited to be out in the sunshine instead of stuck in the Great Hall filling out questions. James searched the stands for Lily, Remus, and Peter, and spotted them in one of the boxes, waving and cheering. Lily was wearing a t-shirt magicked with James's number and name upon it with Gryffindor color streamers in her hair. Remus held up a pennant with a roaring lion emblazoned upon it, and Peter had magicked paint upon his face in the Gryffindor colours and upon his head was a golden cap with wings spouting out of it so that his head looked like a snitch.