Do I Make You Proud?

The windows flew open shedding light on sleeping Olivia Wood. She winced and pulled her head back under the covers, wishing secretly that her father would let her sleep, just five more minutes.

"Up and at 'em," called Oliver Wood, already dressed and holding his broomstick. "We've got a great morning ahead of us. Plus perfect weather conditions. Get up and put on your gear."

As he left the room, Olivia crawled out of bed and pulled back her light brown hair into a pony-tail. Then she began to pull on her Quidditch robes. She dug through her closet looking for her pads. Finally she found them, put them on, and then headed downstairs.

After she forced down a large breakfast, she got her broom off of the porch. She walked outside and found her dad floating lazily in their backyard. She mounted her broom, kicked off, and flew over to where he was.

"What first?" she asked with a yawn.

"Well I thought we would start off with some broom sprints," he said taking out a stop watch, "three...two...one...GO!"

Olivia leaned forward and shot off towards the woods about 75 yards behind the house. The sun beating down on her, she quickly rounded the tree her father had already tied a small red flag around. She tore off the flag. Panting, she raced back to her father, throwing it at him as she passed.

"Good," he called, "You've improved by about eight seconds."

"Hooray," she thought to herself sarcastically.

"OK, now lets do some drills, I'll throw the Quaffle and you catch it."

"Yippee."

He flew to about 50 feet off the ground while she stayed at about 15 feet. He first launched the Quaffle a few feet to her right, next to her left. She rolled her eyes as he praised her catches. This continued for about 30 minutes, at which point she had dropped only two passes.

As her father went into the house to get a Snitch, she sighed thinking of the fun she could have been having. One of her best friends, Rose Weasley, was having a sleep over at her house. When she had asked her father if she could go he had asked if it would interfere with her Quidditch training. At that point she had given up on going and simply tolled him to forget about it.

"Here we are," he said flying back up to her height, a small golden ball in his hand. He handed her a blind fold which she instinctively put on. She waited for him to release the snitch.

"Three...two...one...GO!" he shouted. She ripped the blind fold off and began looking for the Snitch. This was her least favorite part of training. She had only succeeded in finding the Snitch twice so far in the past three years of her daily practice. The only days they didn't train were on weekends, on which they would go over different strategies used by her father's old teams. (The Weasley Wrangle, in which the two Beaters would fly side by side with one of the Chasers who would take the ball directly into the scoring area, at which point on of the Beaters would hit the Keeper with a bludger leaving the goal open of the Chaser to score. Another one was the Chaser Charge, where all the Chasers from one team would play man-to-man defense until the other team was forced to make a bad pass, therefore gaining their team the Quaffle back once more.)

Olivia's thoughts drifted back and forth from Quidditch to Rose's party until at last she saw a hint of gold floating just over her father's head. He seemed to have spotted it too and began to fly in another direction as though trying to throw her off course. She zoomed to where the Snitch had been but it was no longer there.

***

After hours of begging her father to end the training session, more drills, and narrowly escaping Bludger hits, she was more than happy when her father said they were done.

She climbed off her broom ran into the house, changed back into regular clothes and sat down at her desk. She took out a quill and some parchment, and began to write.

Rose,

How are you? I am so sorry I couldn't come to your party. Maybe I can convince Dad to let you come over to our house for my birthday in three weeks. I'll ask my parents over dinner tonight. Anyway I hope you had a great time. I just got done with today's training session and it was so horrible! I am sweaty and tired and I want to go back to sleep. Some days I wish I could just tell my dad how I feel about Quidditch. I hate it so much, but since he was a professional and since he would just ignore me anyway I don't want to hurt his feelings. But it does get really annoying going out there everyday and listening to his criticism. I don't know if I should tell him or not, what do you think? Oh and since it was your birthday, did you get your Hogwarts letter? I hope you did! I can't wait to get mine! Well I have to go now, See you later!

Yours, Olivia