𝐆𝐄𝐓𝐀𝐖𝐀𝐘 𝐂𝐀𝐑 [g. weasley]

chapter five

CHAPTER FIVE

IT HAD STARTED AS A CALM SATURDAY, and we were sitting in the Great Hall, having breakfast, when Cassius suddenly said, "I'm trying out for Keeper today."

     "Really?" I blurted out with excitement while Adrian coughed on his pumpkin juice. "That's great news! I'm sure you'll get in."

     "As long as you don't suddenly go for Chaser, I'm sure you'll do fine, mate," Adrian commented as he wiped his face. "But, seriously, stay away from the Chaser spot. That's mine."

     Cassius snorted at the blue-eyed boy's reaction, yet his back remained slouched and his lips a tight line. "'course, I know how much you love that place."

     My eyes drifted to the black-haired boy setting side chuckles to his lips, talking to the Slytherins who had heard him, offering early congratulations. Then, the breakfast was over, and Cassius had barely touched his plate. His arrogant posture was crumbling like pieces of rocks with each step to the Quidditch pitch.

     "Wish us luck, Daph," said Adrian as we were to part ways; I to the stands and them to pitch.

     "You don't need it." I gave them a thumbs-up, and we departed to our ways.

     I sat at the stands, and then the first years crowded around me, their inexperience blooming under the clouded sky of the Quidditch pitch. Then a few of the second years. And before the boys were up in the air, a few more Slytherin posed on the bleachers, waiting eagerly for their friends to paint the grey clouds to the House colours.

     The Slytherins stood in a perfect line, made of twelve boys, each looking stiff against Marcus Flint, the captain. He was looking for only two new players, Keeper and a Beater, yet he enjoyed continuing the tradition of putting all the spots on the line, an odd way of flexing muscles, to prove to the rest that they already had the best.

     Then Flint blew his whistle, and green and silver boys were up in the air, soaring around the pitch, creating emerald shapes of spheres.

     "There you are, Daphne."

     The sound of my name snatched my attention in a moment of a breath, and I saw the girls daubed in green and silver robes. The taller one carried her head high, black hair drooping down her cheekbones, and the raven of her eyes held a mirror to her heart, blinding and desperately cold.

     Yet, Phoebe Parkinson spoke sweetly, sourly, and her stare, dark and avid, held all the bitterness the blonde next to her did not. "And I was beginning to think you bailed on us."

     And, for once, Phoebe Parkinson was right. I had purposely ignored them on many occasions all through the years. They bore no thoughts of me, and I none of them. Anyone with enough wits could see that Phoebe Parkinson's only interest was my name and the influence it carried, like a curse drifting from one child to another. A sky filled with names, of children, the product of that once great dynasty, the Blacks, now trimmed down to one last heiress.