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EVERY DAY FROM THEIR LOSS AGAINST Slytherin, Nia booked the Quidditch pitch for a solid three hours until dinner. Gruelling drills to improve their aiming, their speed, their stamina, their flying strategy consistently burnt through their willpower, built new muscles in place of the holes left in their confidence after their humiliating show of incompetence the previous week.
Session by session, hour by hour, the tension stretched honey-thick. Sawyer's intolerance of her teammates grew exponentially, not because they were being unpleasant, but because they'd taken on some unbearably pseudo-positive outlook on their chances. The newfound determination to improve and beat the odds at their next match had been borne of a pathetic desperation to prove that they weren't dead last at every probable outcome. What reality looked like to Nia, Sawyer couldn't fathom. Optimistic wasn't the word she'd use to describe the Hufflepuff captain as much as delusional. How she expected Hufflepuff to trounce Gryffindor on Friday remained a mystery Sawyer didn't bother wrapping her mind around. Nia bought every ounce of Sawyer's effort and cooperation with a bottle of butter beer and the absence of Madam Hooch's supervision from their practice scrimmages.
Still, Nia's organised drills had nothing on Oliver's. In a way, his maniacal, tunnel-vision obsession with Quidditch paid off. While Nia's drills were tiring and persistent, Oliver's could somehow turn even the most placid person in the world both suicidal and homicidal. While Nia shouted encouragement to her players, Oliver pushed and pushed his to their breaking points with cutting critique and acerbic commentary. Despite the ugliness his drills seemed to evoke within every person, the results spoke volumes. Hufflepuff players had nothing on Gryffindor's; especially with Harry Potter as their newest establishment on their team. There was a reason why no one took the yellow-clad team seriously.
By Friday, when their determination hadn't worn off even with the gradual onset of nerves before each match, Sawyer was forced to question her team's sanity. Were they too caught up in the fabricated illusion that they could beat Gryffindor or were they just pinning all their hopes on the best-case scenario? As she strapped on her Quidditch uniform, straddling the bench in the locker room which buzzed with a palpable excitement the rest of the team seemed to share, Sawyer found she couldn't understand how they could discuss their chances as though they weren't about to be dealt immediate failure by nature.
"Don't forget," Nia said, warning edging her tone, a knife's edge flashing in her eyes as she regarded Sawyer with pursed lips, "you give us your game, the butter beer in my bag is yours and so is the guarantee of Violet's spot on the team."
Sawyer flicked her a cool look, but didn't waste her breath on a response and Nia knew better than to demand for an answer. Before Madam Hooch called them all down to the pitch to meet the opposing team, Nia gathered the team at the mouth of the entrance to the pitch. With their hearts in their mouths, they took a minute to soak in the thunderous racket of the crowd out in the stands, the deafening swarm of noise beating in tandem with their heartbeats, the house spirit in splashes of colour, of a thousand feet pounding up a stampede.
