long live (all the magic we made)

Second Year

Quidditch tryouts happen on a Sunday, and Maya is more than ready. She's been gunning for a position on the team since that first Potions lesson where the professor mentioned Quidditch. The team captain takes one look at her and sends her to where the Seekers are lining up. Maya has to put her foot down, say she's trying out for the Beater position.

The team captain almost laughs, she can see it, and she narrows her eyes at him before hiking her broom over her shoulder and stalking to join the Beaters. It's a Cleansweep Seven, bought after her mother saved for an entire year. Her dad was the magical one, but he had left when she was three and never came back, so it was just Maya and her mother. Inadequacy is not a fun feeling, so she tries to avoid it as best she can. It's a lot easier to squash something down when you know it doesn't benefit you.

They get grouped into teams and start practice matches against each other, Maya can tell everyone is expecting her to fail. It's not new, not anymore. With her stature, she would do better as a seeker, but eyesight has never been one of her strong points. Besides, if she didn't take her anger out on something, she was going to get expelled for murdering a fellow schoolmate.

When the first Bludger comes hurtling toward her, all Maya can see is her father's face as she swings the bat with all her might. Reagan Shelby gets sent to the hospital wing for a broken nose and suddenly no one is laughing at her anymore. She hovers in the middle of the field, hefting the bat over her shoulders as the team captain lifts his jaw off the ground.

It's no surprise when she makes it onto the team, replacing Elliot Whitewater who dropped Quidditch for the Astronomy Club, which makes no sense to her but she got his position so Maya has nothing to say. Trevor McGregor, captain of the Slytherin team, hands out their robes, saying it'll magically resize itself when they put it on and for the first time in her life, she feels as if she accomplished something all by herself.

When they get released from tryouts, Riley is the first one that reaches her. Maya is suddenly smothered in robes as her best friend hugs her tight and spins her around and around, shouting her congratulations to the sky. Farkle shows up next, the small Ravenclaw boy that they had both somehow made friends with. He smiles and hugs her as well, and it's times like these that convince Maya that she doesn't need a father. She's got her mother and her friends and that's all that matters.

✨ ✨ ✨

Hufflepuff Quidditch team tryouts happen a week later, and somehow, in some act of divine holiness, Riley makes it onto the team as the Keeper. Maya doesn't know whether to laugh or cry when the team captain tells her that that was the most saves he'd seen out of anyone who'd ever tried out. She doesn't have the heart to tell him that they were probably all accidents. Anyway, Riley's happiness is infectious and Maya finds herself smiling as well when they walk together to the Great Hall for dinner.

Everyone else is more than used to the fact that sometimes Maya slots herself in at the Hufflepuff table. Nothing has been said against sitting at another house's table, and besides, she hasn't been called out yet, after doing it for more than a year. Riley saves her a spot more often than not, and they spend the entirety of dinner stealing food off each other's plates in spite of the buffet spread in front of them. It's one of the littler pleasures in life, Maya thinks, once the desserts have vanished.

The night could go one of two ways. Riley would have some form of essay to write or a chart to fill in and she would go to the Hufflepuff common room as Maya, whining and groaning, walked her there. The alternative was that Riley would have no homework, or Maya talked her out of completing something three weeks in advance because seriously who did that? Then they would race each other up to the Astronomy Tower and throw their cloaks on the ground before falling into, over, under, each other.

Riley would trace the constellations with her pretty fingers and Maya would close her eyes and tell stories or hum a song. They co-exist so wonderfully together that Maya never wants to leave, but she's had more than enough detentions for the rest of her life, and so they always make it back to their respective common rooms just before curfew.

On nights that end like this, with breathless laughter and something more than magic in her fingertips, she can't help but almost remember the smell of honey in the Amortentia.