After the War

Chapter 27

Friday Afternoon

Ginny watched her figure carefully in the mirror while she tied a band around her hair. She wore last year's Quidditch uniform and straightened the striped shirt so that it was wrinkle free and nodded to herself before grabbing her broomstick and slinging it over her shoulders. With a deep breath she marched out of the Gryffindor Head Girls dorm at the top of the stairs and circled her way down towards the Common Room.

"Good luck today! Harry and I are going to watch so we'll see you after," Hermione said after sidestepping Ginny on her way up, her arms full of books that she was reading previously. She nodded and gave a quick smile (it was all she could manage to not upset the butterflies in her stomach) while continuing down the spiral. She ignored the shouts saying who would be at the try-outs and hurried onto the pitch, reveling in the crisp fall air.

She kicked off of the dewy grass and soared into the hazy gray sky, making a few quick laps around the pitch for the sheer pleasure of it. Besides, she already brought out the case of equipment from the shed and only a few students could be seen starting to make their way onto the pitch. She could feel her nose grow red in the cold and her heart lifted away from the rest of the world. Racing across the pitch left her nerves behind and her confidence flooded back through her body. She knew what she was doing. After watching the birds just cresting the forest trees and the lake glistening in the distance with a smile, she flew back to the grass and landed nimbly as the few students slowly grew into a small crowd.

While they waited for the last to join, Ginny took to scanning the stands with a hand braced against her forehead to block out the glare, looking through the few faces in the mostly empty benches, unknowingly searching for a mass of untidy black hair. Finally, she spotted it in the front row in the middle of the pitch, leaning over the railing next to who could only be Hermione. She smiled at him, even though she knew he was much too far away to see. But, she just couldn't seem to help it. At the sight of him, her confidence builded again and nodding to herself, she turned towards the loud students before her.

"Shut it!" she yelled without warning, forcing the students to immediately stop their chattering and turn towards her with a collective startled jump. "All right, thanks for coming. As you can probably guess, I'm going to need a keeper, a seeker, two beaters, and two chasers for the team this year. Since we didn't have a team last year, all spots are open, so... good luck. I'm going to start with picking the chasers and keepers, so can anyone trying out for those two positions step forward?" Seven students came forward and split into two groups for the two positions. After a quick explanation of what was going to happen, Ginny kicked off the ground again and soared towards the side of the pitch to watch.

The first chaser approached the first keeper and threw five quaffles at the hoops, three of which soared through; then, the second keeper replaced the first and the same chaser threw another five. It was pretty clear who was the best out of the four chasers considering only one of their quaffles made it through the hoops and another only made it in with the worst of the keepers trying out. So, Ginny flew into the clump of four students and made her decision, doing her best to feel no remorse at the two students who flew down to the grass dejectedly and shaking their heads.

Then she flew towards the clump of three keepers waiting by the hoops and announced the top two choices. The third keeper didn't look surprised by her decision and thankfully, accepted it without a fight and left for the stands to watch the rest of try-outs. "All right, since you two saved almost the same number of goals, I'm going to throw eight quaffles for each of you and whoever saves the most will get the spot, okay?" They both nodded and shared a nervous glance once Ginny turned to grab a quaffle from her newest chaser, and as she soared back to the center of the field, she couldn't help but see a smiling Harry watching the try-outs progress.