Slytherin Dragons

Prologue

Besides the rain, I knew this summer was eager to run me over. Further ahead, from my place on the substitutes' bench, the rain had carved precise hollows in the once glassy green of the pitch. Trails of rainwater, mingled with the soil of a summer's Quidditch season, surged in rills from the border of open ground to the shaded. The runoff was staggering. Shaded, all I had received from the ceaseless battering of raindrops were the terse splashes of thin flicks of water. Against the rain, my broom waited to be used.

I was hoping it wouldn't rain; I can't play too well in it.

The players were smudges of Persian purple and tinted green amidst the walls of overlapping raindrops, and all the time I was hoping the rain would deter the purples' Seeker from finding the Snitch. The crowd was still excited though, considering the game was far from conclusion and by recollection Murray had scored the last goal, putting the team forty points closer to the adversary's. Murray had been marked by the opposing team throughout the entire game; yet with her usual persistence, she was leading assault after assault against the other Chasers. Those Chasers lacked everything - from spirit to solidarity - to the extent that Murray alone was taking them apart.

The purples' still had fighting spirit though. Their Beaters had divided with intent our other two Chasers; Murray was found alone, sometimes shielded, with the Quaffle. As our other Chaser, Diehl, brought the Quaffle into play, their beaters began their efficient cornering. The Bludger dribbled - a diagonal stretch past Diehl at first - and it seemed, even in the vicious rain, obvious it would first swing an easy right at him, then hammer him from behind. He was too slow. And unaware of the threat.

"Diehl!" the coach called from behind me. "Mark the Bludger!"

His voice would've been taken into the noise of the rain. Diehl was surging to avoid the opposing Chaser when the Bludger bulleted him square between the shoulders, at a painful vertical angle. The Quaffle dropped to his marker's possession, and they quickly formed a formation to attack.

"Come on, greens! Don't surrender!"

I watched Murray twist her Nimbus Two-Thousand headlong into the brittle Chaser formation. Leaning forward, the rain cloaked her completely; a union of colours directed my eyes back to the yelling opponents. Murray had the Quaffle supported by the rise of her right arm. The other Chasers were redirecting themselves, in pursuit of Murray as she sped toward the goal.

Wicked.

But the rain hindered her from getting away. I didn't see the Bludger. She didn't see the Bludger. It literally deflected off her face.

Before she even reached the ground, I heard the piercing whistle of the rain-coated referee tug at my ears. The parts of the grandstand, especially the uppermost right, had begun to roar again; the Snitch had been captured, and the players were turning in. I didn't care to check the score. I had predicted it; predestination, Thompson had called it. 270-80. Instead I rushed to Murray as she leveled her broom gingerly down to the ground, bruised heavily than the other members of the team. She let her broom drop into the loose, watery silt collecting at her feet and limped, as if dazed, straight into me.

"Whoa, Anne, steady..."

She slouched onto my right arm, as my left struggled to keep her upright. She still had the Quaffle clenched in her right fists, though now streaked with rain and blood. I half-dragged her to the bench where I had been in observation for the entire half-hour of the match, and helped bundle the oversize of her robes from her sleeve to stem her nosebleed. The rest of the team, similarly dazed, had been left by the coach to wander or gaze across at the purples' celebrating with dry towels and warm tea as he had conversed shortly with the referee.

Noticing Oliver Wood across the distance with no more than relief on his face, I took one of our Beaters' clubs and smashed the crooked leg of the bench with as much force as I could summon.

I had asked the coach if I could play; but with the usual excuses I had been turned down in favour of someone much more experienced. Or so the coach claimed he was. I've been training with the team for six months now, with Anne and Scott, on request from our teams at Hogwarts. I had been wishing for my time on the field, or a substitution in the least, since Oliver Wood's team would be taking us to battle today. And whoa, did we lose.

Not as if I could change that though.

"Enough wasting time," the coach called out, "everyone gather."

In a sorry, drenched circle we congregated around Anne, who was sitting like a dejected hero lost in recollection. The team let their brooms fall.

"It was expected. They had too much of an advantage with their Seeker anyway," the coach mused, to us. "So ten matches played and six more till the season ends. What's our standing?"

"We lost seven," Anne replied.

The coach gave the ghost of a sigh. I could tell he was obviously displeased with all our feeble efforts at claiming the championship this year; he had been with another club the previous season, and they too floundered as like we did. Watching him through the frame made by the shoulders of the team Beaters, he put aside Anne's broom; his actions short of lethargic, he bent over and sat down on the bench with its gnawed leg.

"We can't afford to lose any more games, I'm sure you should know that by now," he addressed us, his words carrying the grim pacing of disappointment. "We'll be missing players once the Hogwarts school term starts... so will everyone else of course, and that should have some bearing on our games. Anne, you did well today... as for the rest of you, if you want to stay on this team, prove to me that you can carve something out of your training, for goodness' sake!"

I sunk back into my own brooding; I'd have no right running against the coach's frustration anyway: the team, no, we, played like crap.

"We have a match back at Sliptyon in three weeks', against Appleby... three players will be missing for Hogwarts... so it'll be down to the regulars to put in same spirit that gave us their game earlier," his eyes skimmed past me holed up between the Beaters' shoulders, "otherwise... you might find yourself replaced by others... who've got enough talent. Get changed, before they complain again."

I tugged at my arm guards and in one swift motion removed them, chucking them to the bench. My legs were still struggling for release under the layers of leather I had buried them under; as I undid them I plucked out my right-hand glove - the one the team had willfully given me - and placed it beside Anne's broom. The coach was collecting the cloaks; everything we wore, save our guards and brooms, belonged to the team. As I swept aside my own dejection, Anne hobbled towards me; she looked pale in the absence of mud.

"I'm going back to Drabchapel. Want me to wait for you?" I asked.

"Yeah, thanks. I promise I won't be long."

I watched her limp into the stands, her battered frame gilding her with the presence of a protagonist. There must be some empathetic beauty in being wounded whilst playing, not that I haven't been equally tattered. Yet, for a spectator - whom I have been degraded into - it gives the must give the wounded player a mark of talent, a scar written with her abilities, that proclaims her to those who can but watch. I would kill to be like Anne, the Ravenclaw team Chaser... there has to be more to my playing Quidditch than just waiting for the rain to cease.

Against the rain, my broom waited to be used. Even the rain decided to maintain its stream of droplets. I laid my hands on my lap, crossed. Some summer.

It'll be my sixth year at Hogwarts, once this week ends. Oh yes, six years in Slytherin too, though I'm as proud of it as I am being who I am. I had thought this summer would be different; I thought it would be some passage into my becoming something better, in Quidditch at least (which would atone for my those grades I can't get to pass). So in all my naïve ambitions I asked for a chance to play for this team, begged my Mom for the time off and in all devotion overlooked all that homework in favour of training. I should've at least evoked some pity for my efforts; somehow they were as the litter from the stands, being washed into hollows in the mud earth by the trickle of overflow.

Some summer. It's as good as over anyway. Once Anne is done we'll accompany each other home: Anne to Drumstile, me to Drabchapel near it. Our conversation will be about the game, and halfway through it'll end, simply because there'll be nothing to say. And we'll be walking under the cap of a silence so contentedly sore, that all I'll think about is home.

And sooner than I know it I'll be home, in my Muggle bedroom, with my Muggle Mom asking about my day and I trying to shut out my disillusion via a pair of earphones connected to the Discman blasting some Muggle music of the same staple mood into my already Mudbloodied mind.

Written by shelter