"Quidditch"

The staff and students at Hogwarts had been on edge for a few days now.

Circi had been avoiding Isabell since the first day of lessons but she received her fair share of gossip from Leslie, the girls in her dorm and Mica in Herbology class. That night, when Draco had to collect her from the Transfigurations classroom and the two excused themselves from lessons to talk and play Snapdragon in the common room all afternoon, the Gryffindor house had to sleep in the Great Hall. The portrait of the Fat Lady, which guarded the entrance to their common room, had been ripped to shreds and- much to the horror of the staff, students and ghosts alike- word spread that the notorious mass murderer Sirius Black had infiltrated Hogwarts.

"So much for the Dementors being here," one of the girls in her dorm, Niamh Spear, a brunette portuguese girl with a distinct irish accent and a tendency to announce her opinion at any given moment, announced that night. They were passing around a box of bertie bott's every flavour beans, discussing the day's events. "I mean, they're scary. And they're meant to protect us. But they can't stop one wizard from getting into Hogwarts? What is the point?" The other girls mumbled agreements and shrugged their shoulders before falling back into finding the nastiest beans.

A week or two later, the memory still instilled terror in the students but a new event was overtaking the terror and replacing it with anticipation and excitement. It was quidditch season and Slytherin were due to face Gryffindor.

In the common room that morning, long before Breakfast was ready, the quidditch team were hyping themselves up. The noise soon woke up the rest of the house and soon enough there were a hundred or so Slytherins running around the common room in their pyjamas chanting 'Slytherin! Slytherin! Slytherin!'.

Circi was one of the last to wake up, the girls she shared a dorm with had shaken her awake but she still spent five minutes taming her hair. Entering the common room, she stood at the top of the staircase adjusting to the news.

"They are astonishingly loud." Circi looked up to find Carmen approaching her in a pair of white slippers, a slip of a nightdress and a slytherin pride scarf covering her cleavage. Circi wasn't sure what to say, awestruck as usual in her presence, and simply nodded before looking back over the common room. She noticed Draco among the crowd dressed in his seeker uniform and chanting equally as loud as the rest of his team. "Circini." Carmen grabbed her attention once more. "I've been meaning to talk to you about Draco."

Although there was nothing wrong with the statement, and Circi had yet to do anything regarding her brother to require such a statement, her heart still picked up. She nodded, mistrusting of her ability to speak.

"Draco and I have been on a few dates and I wanted to check with you to see if that was alright?" Circi's heart stopped beating so fast and she narrowed her eyebrows.

Carmen and Draco? She couldn't see the appeal. Carmen is intelligent, confident and two years older than him. What could a short-tempered, jealous boy like Draco have that she would enjoy?

"Are you sure?" Carmen purses her lips and nods. Circi shakes her head again.

"Draco?" A beat passed between them as Circi thought about it for a moment. She shrugged and mumbled to herself, "everybody makes mistakes." Then, she looks up at Carmen again- the prettiest girl at Hogwarts in her opinion- and nods. "Good luck."

The students in the common space, lit dimly by the fireplace, and even the Bloody Baron (the house ghost who had been crying for silence) fell silent as they finally acknowledge an irritated presence in the room. By the entrance stood Professor Snape in his usual dark robes and greasy hair with a scowl etched onto his face.

"What is going on in her?" A seventh year Quidditch enthusiast whooped despite himself and announced the pyjama party to the potions Professor and even invited him to join. This, despite the Professor's silent and angry disapproval, started another chant. The seventh year led it and it began as a whisper but soon the chant, 'Snape! Snape! Slytherin!', was echoing around them. Circi and Carmen were joining from their space at the top of the girls' staircase. They were ready to retreat to their dorms if the Professor decided to start handing out detentions.

Instead, however, Snape smirks slightly, instructs everyone to be ready for breakfast and leaves the room.

Circi had yet to visit the Quidditch Stadium and, as she approached them with Leslie, the sheer size left her in awe. From their seats at the front of one of the four Slytherin sections, Circi craned her neck to see the rest of the stadium.

Each section sported the designated house colour and flag and a chequered pattern, separated by spectator towers for the staff. On each end of the pitch, an ovular field with sandpits at each end, stood three goal posts and in the centre, Madam Hooch stood with a case. Circi looked around her, spotting her friends from her dorm on one end of the section and waving. The atmosphere was intoxicating and filled her with excitement.

She shivered into her Slytherin scarf as the wind picked up as dark clouds appeared overhead and accepted Leslie's offer to use her binoculars. She looked around, shocked at how closely she could now see the people on the other side of the stadium. She could make out Isabell, Draco's friends and Carmen in one of the other Slytherin sections, and Harry Potter's friends in a Gryffindor section. She recognised the Ravenclaw from the library standing beside Hagrid, the gameskeeper, in a Slytherin section.

But directly across from her, in a Gryffindor section, she found Mica Crane watching her with her own pair of binoculars. The Gryffindor lowered her pair and waved enthusiastically with a smile spreading to her flushed cheeks. Circi lowered hers and waved back, handing the binoculars to Leslie and pointing her out. He wasn't bothered and went back to watching the players' entrance.

It was starting to rain now but that did nothing to dampen the excitement.

First, Gryffindor entered. They flew around the edge of the stadium, the wind buffeting the students in their wake, in a blur of red and gold. The beaters, the Weasley twins they were called, yelled and waved their beater clubs over their head earning a roaring chant from the Gryffindor stands and students in the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw houses.

Then, Slytherin entered. The noise wasn't as loud but the team made up for it, yelling as they made their entrance. Leslie was the first to cheer in their section and Circi joined in the moment she spotted Draco. She clapped her hands and whooped as they flew by them and soon the stadium lulled into an anticipatory silence as Madam Hooch spoke to the two team captains. They reluctantly shook hands, and separated back to their positions.

And on the whistle, the balls were released and the players took to the air. Circi and Leslie watched the quaffle as it was passed between the Gryffindor chasers. The Slytherin keeper left their post and barrelled into the chaser holding the quaffle. While the Slytherins took control of the quaffle and ignored Hooch's foul, the gryffindor chasers were assisting their teammate back onto their broom- the lack of competition allowing Slytherin to score.

Cheers came from the slytherin house while a series of boos filled the stadium but they soon hushed when the bludgers started being beat back and forth between the four beaters.

Circi and Leslie were watching the to and fro-ing eagerly, dismissive of the rest of the game happening. That is, until Circi's vision became blurred as the golden snitch, the size of a gold ball with flittering white wing, hovered in front of her face.

It remained where it decided to hide in her shadow against the stadium and, in the raucous she cupped her hands over her mouth and shouted for Draco. He spotted her and then the snitch, swinging his broom to chase after the ball. As the team's seeker, it was his job to catch the golden snitch and win the game, Close on his tail was Harry Potter, the Gryffindor seeker and notorious for winning the games.

The rain was spitting in their faces, hindering their vision and Circi began to think back to a similar match before christmas. The conditions were the same, it was wet, cold and hard to see...

It looked as though Harry and Draco were chasing each other more than they were chasing the snitch and, when Harry twisted upwards and disappeared into the clouds, Draco decidedly pulled back. As much as Circi wanted to win, she worried for her brother in this weather for she knew he could be quite weak if he wasn't focussed.

The stadium was hushed again, the only noise being the harsh wind, rain against the flags and the players communicating with each other.

And then there was a shout.

It came from the heavens as though a God's slumber had been disrupted. All eyes looked up. The game paused. And then came the screaming.

Circi clapped a hand over her mouth and watched as Harry Potter came tumbling through the clouds, unconscious and broomless. Leslie turned his back to the scene, wincing, as Dumble stood and shouted 'arresto momentum'.

Circi couldn't take her eyes off of the Boy who Lived until he was on the ground. His teammates, Madam Hooch and soon the teachers and Madam Pomfrey were rushing to him. And, despite the students clamouring out of the stadium at the sight of the dementors hovering in the sky, hidden behind the grey clouds, Circi could not move.

She was watching the scene below play out, helpless and glued to the spot.

Someone grabbed her arm. She looked up. Carmen pursed her lips at the horror etched onto the girl's face and hugged her tightly.

"C'mon," she said and pulled Circi from the stadium.

When they entered the common room, Circi gripping to Carmen's hand as if her life depended on it, most of the students around were less worried and more annoyed. There was a lot of 'he's alive' and 'we were winning' being muttered and, on the sofas in front of the fireplace, Draco was complaining loudly to his friends.

He had a couch to himself and was sprawled out across it, playing with a small ball as he complained to Crabbe, Goyle and Pansy who were sat across from him.

"I had it," he was saying, "my fingers were touching it but Potter," he spat the name "knocked me out of the way and chased it higher. There is no way I am dumb enough to go that high."

"Shut up, Draco." Circi stood behind the couch, clenching her fists and trembling in her sodden coat and scarf. "He could have died."

"But he didn't." He turned back to his friends, holding an arm out to Carmen as she sat beside him feeling slightly disgruntled at his attitude. "McGonagall's calling for a rematch but I agree with Snape, it's his own fault and we were winning anyway." Circi smacked her palm against the back of his head.

"You're so mean!" She punctuated every word with another slap and he cowered under her hand. When she was done, however, she left for her dorm room and the comfort of dry clothes.

This time, however, the boys were below the clouds and Harry was on a borrowed broom instead of the latest and greatest he always seemed to have. The match looked promising, Draco was racing ahead with his arm outstretched ready to snatch the snitch from the air.

Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a bludger passed over his head and he lost his balance. He had been supporting himself on the arm he had injured at the start of the year and, in his true dramatic fashion, he made a show of nearly falling from his broom... which left enough room for Harry to speed ahead and take the snitch, winning the game for Gryffindor.

On their way out of the stands, defeated and deflated, Circi and Leslie were speaking to eachother in a low voice and trying to retreat to the castle quickly as the rain poured harder.

Suddenly, through the shower, red and gold waved at them and Mica hurtled towards them, ducking under the robe the two had hitched into a makeshift umbrella.

"Hey losers!" She greeted, as Leslie departed from the shelter and stormed ahead. "Whoo, sore losers." She turned to Circi. "Wasn't that a good game?"

"It would have been better if my brother wasn't so hellbent on seeking attention. Everyone was watching him already!"

"He shouldn't be playing if he can't handle a bludger. Someday soon I will finally convince Hooch to let me try out for a sub for the beaters. I reckon she will because the twins aren't exactly careful and no one really wants to be a beater, they just become one." She grins smugly and casts one last glance at Circi as they reach the castle before breaking away and waving goodbye.

Circi trudges back to the common room in the dungeons, her shoes squelching as she trod water everywhere. There was a threatening pile of sodden shoes in the entrance that would no doubt make their way to their rightful owner at some point or another. She added her own shoes to the pile and entered the loud and warm room. The heat was radiating off of the sweaty players and equally sweaty students as well as the lit fireplace.

Draco was sat in his usual seat with Carmen sat next to him with her arm around his shoulder while they talked to their friends and teammates. Their focus was currently on Leslie who was looming over Draco and pinching his cheek.

"-poor baby." The students around them sniggered when Draco batted Leslie away.

"Filthy halfblood," he mumbled.

Circi threw her arms around his neck from behind the sofa and squeezed him tightly in a playful hug. She swayed him and cooed.

"Don't worry Draco, I'll protect you from the mean first-year." Leslie was smirking and Circi stood up straight. She pulled out her wand and points it at Leslie. "You, Sir! I will duel you to protect the helpless Princess."

"So be it." Leslie produced his own wand. "But if I win, know I have the power to feed him his meals and make sure he gets his milk before bed."

"Saves me a job," Circi smirks. They dance around each other for a moment and Leslie strikes first. He uses the only spell either of them really know.

"Flipendo!" Circi is knocked back, she lands on the ground with a thud and grumbles under her breath. From the floor she repeats the incantation and Leslie falls to the ground. They scramble to their feet only to repeat the incantation and fall over.

They repeated this to the point of boring the older students but it left them in fits of giggles. In her hysteria, Circi forgot the incantation and uttered the wrong one.

"Fli- Flintifors!" Her laughter halted, as did the noise in the room and everyone watched the smile drop from Leslie's face as his body warped and twisted and transfigured into a matchbox. Circi watched wide-eyed from her seat on the floor. "Leslie!" She scrambled to the matchbox, poking it and cringing at the thought of her friend being cardboard. "Draco! Help!" He dragged himself to his feet, collected the matchbox and dragged his sister from the common room. And he had every intention to tell McGonagall and Snape exactly what happened.