To say that Gabriel is nervous would be a gross understatement. He drags his broom presently as if it weighs about twenty pounds more than it normally does, and the agitated look on his face is truly not becoming. Having reached the spot on the pitch it seems he’s been walking to, Gabriel turns to appraise the ‘crowd’. To call it a crowd is surely not an understatement. “Uh, hi,” Gabe greets, scratching a probably-imaginary itch at the back of his head. “Welcome to Quidditch trials,” he says, but stops when he notices that people are still meandering his way. “Um, we’ll just hang on a second,” he says, letting his broom drop to the ground.

Bounding out to the pitch just after Gabriel, Briony looks excited, to say the least. The girl is in rather ragged and perhaps a bit too small Quidditch robes, her broom slung over her shoulder while she comes to a stop near the rear of the group. “We’re going to have the best team ever!” she exclaims to those around her cheerfully, and blows some of her hair out of her face casually, seeming to be used to the phenomenon of hair in her face.

If the Quidditch Captain looks nervous, there is no word for Kelly‘s expression as she approaches, other than possibly ‘ill’. She clutches her broom so tightly her knuckles are white, and her other hand shakes slightly, and she persistently tugs at her hair and bites her lower lip awkwardly. She opens her mouth to greet Gabe and Briony as she approaches, those being the two she is most familiar with, but then silences herself again, closing her mouth again soundlessly before she says something stupid, and stepping back again as though to try and conceal herself, murmuring to herself quietly. “Oh, what am I doing here? Would Gabe even let me on the team? This is stupid.”

“Yeah, so, as far as open positions are concerned, we’re looking for a seeker but, uh, I might take that role myself, so that’d leave… chaser, yeah, and um… one of some other role might like to be a chaser so… so that’d leave another role open,” Gabriel articulates with great trouble. Catching a glance at Briony, Gabe seriously wishes he could just siphon off some of her excitement into himself. Sighing, he continues with, “So if you could just all line up and give me your names, we’ll… Kelly, you’re here?” he asks before thinking better of it.

Oh. Someone’s talking to her. At the sound of her name, Kelly looks up at Gabriel suddenly, fixing a rather venemous glare on him and stepping forward. “/Yes/.” She replies sharply, folding her arms across her chest and very nearly hitting herself in the chin with her own broom. Then, apparently realising that being sharp with the new Captain isn’t a good way to get ahead, she coughs softly and clarifies, “Yes, I am here. I want to join the Quidditch team this year – didn’t I mention over the summer? Why do you ask?” Though her tone is much less snappy, it still has a nasty edge to it.

Preparing to mention that Gabriel already knows her name, Briony‘s speech is halted as Kelly speaks. Touchy, touchy. The girl shrugs a bit and chimes, “Briony Wexler! I just know we’ll get the cup this year, especially if Gabe-y’s the captain!” The girl appears to be beaming with pride at this and sets her broom bristles down next to her, tugging at one of the sleeves to coax it to cover her whole arm.

Stepping back a little, Gabriel starts slightly as he quickly replies with, “Uh, no. What? Nothing! Uh…” such that it almost melts into one odd sound effect. “Well, good luck,” he says after shaking his head and turning his back on her, stooping down to pick up his broom. Truth be told, Gabriel had, in a shocking moment of clarity much after the fact, realized that he hadn’t been mad at Kelly that day over the summer when they’d fought like cats and dogs. He’d been mad at himself! In any case, he tries to clear everything from his mind in order to focus. Stepping into the Quidditch shed for a moment, he comes out dragging a large bag (assumedly stashed there earlier in the day) which appears to contain many balls of various sizes. Judging by the fact that Gabe easily hoists the thing over his shoulder as he mounts his broom and starts to hover, it can’t be very heavy. “Okay, let’s all get warmed up a bit. Two laps around the pitch and meet me in the middle, ok?” He instructs in a tone that, to himself anyways, doesn’t even come close to ‘authoritative.’

“Gabey.” Kelly echoes quietly, shaking her head; she flushes slightly pink as she is instructed to warm up, and she says nothing else to either Gabriel or Briony, mounting her broom and hovering in midair for a moment before beginning the laps around the pitch. Perhaps Gabe isn’t very authoritative, but she intends to do as he instructs for at least as long as it takes to find out if she makes the team. She’s not too bad on the broom, all things considered; while she’s nothing special, she’s fairly steady and her turns at the edge of the pitch aren’t too jerky. Then, two laps later, she returns to the centre of the pitch, still looking slightly nervous and ill, but at least a little better than before.

Not skipping a beat, Briony is up on her broom quickly, one of the first to kick off and make her way around. Her wobbly flight could mean one of two things: Briony is nervous, or else, Briony is uncomfortable in her quidditch robes which are proving to be more and more of a problem as she continues around the pitch twice, coming to hover near Gabe. “Do I have to get off?” she asks, looking down at Gabe as if she really very much wishes for him to say no.

“Okay, good job, good job,” is Gabriel‘s attempt at encouragement, but at least he’s grinning and looks slightly more relaxed. Looking up to Briony, he smiles and shakes his head. “Nope,” he replies. “Actually, can you make your way over to the goals, Bri?” he asks as if he’s pleading for a huge favour. Really, he’s just short of clasping his hands together. “As for everyone else, I need to know what positions and stuff…” he trails off, digging around in the huge bag. He comes up with a few paddles which he tosses to two boys, having uttered, ‘beater,’ and throws out several larger balls. “Kelly?” he asks after most players have received something, even if just a nod in the case of the seekers. “What about you?”

Flushing quite pink – she had been too busy taking offense to answer the question, hadn’t she? – Kelly shakes a little on her broom and offers, “Oh. Right. Beater. Sorry.” She doesn’t quite meet Gabe’s eye as she watches him, and her hands shake a little as she raises them to catch whatever he throws at her. Coughing quietly, she adds, “Gabe? I’m sorry about that fight we had.” As if this is at all relevant to the Quidditch practice. It’s something to say.

“‘Course,” Briony answers with a bit of a scoff, just short of telling him that he needn’t ask. The girl flies a bit crookedly as she again begins tugging at her sleeves and it is several moments before she gets the rest of the way to the hoops. For a moment, she seems rather perplexed as to how she’s to look competent at the hoops — after all, she’s not a newbie anymore — and looks with annoyance at her sleeves. The girl does seem to have an epiphany, however, while she rolls her sleeves up quickly, tucking them up above her elbows neatly.

Whipping his head around to ensure Briony is far enough out of earshot that she is likely not to have heard Kelly’s reference to their fight over the summer, Gabriel sighs in relief. Nodding as he tosses Kelly a paddle, Gabe smiles lopsidedly. “Yeah, uh, I’m sorry too. It’s ok, we’re still friends.” Or, as close to the definition of ‘friends’ that Gabe and Kelly ever were to begin with. “Allllright,” Gabe yells to the group as a whole. “Chasers, I want you to all take shots on Bri. Be fair though, one at a time,” he says, almost protectively. “Beaters, I’m going to be chucking these everywhere,” he says, holding up a bludger-sized ball. “So try to help the chasers out and have them not get hit! Seekers, it’s hard to emulate the snitch very well, so I’m throwing these to you,” he shows a smaller ball to them. “Ready? Go!” he says, immediately throwing a ball at Kelly, snickering.

Instinctively catching the paddle, though upside down, Kelly nods her head in response, offering a small smile to the boy – and almost missing the fact that the first ball is directed at her. “Ah -” she swings for it with her paddle and, though it is most definitely intercepted, and a fairly decently hard blow it is, though she seems to have only limited control over where it is headed and it ends up nearly hitting one of her fellow hopefuls. “Sorry!” She offers, though it is only a token apology, and she flies off in the opposite direction, waiting for another ball to come her way.

As the chasers make their way over to Briony, she begins diving, almost as if she didn’t expect them to shoot quite so quickly. In contrast with her previous year’s tryout, though, she does manage to block most of them, though the occasional one does get past her. At this point, Briony has been thoroughly distracted by her too-small robes, though her hair does provide constant frustration. It never seems to occur to the third year to tie it back.

Laughing as Kelly nearly hits one of his potential chasers, Gabriel begins throwing out balls in their assorted sizes to their corresponding Quidditch roles. The snitch-balls sail quite far as Gabe throws them as far as he can, and they drop quickly. The bludger-balls, though, are quite a bit lighter than the balls they are meant to emulate and are harder to throw as far a distance. Gabriel tries to gain a sound feel for the talents of those auditioning, making mental notes as he goes. He watches in shock as suddenly one of the more burly beater-wannabes whacks a ball hard, sending it in Briony’s direction. “Gaah!” he yells. “K-Kelly! Get that!”

Startled by the sudden instruction, Kelly accelerates after the stray ball, approaching it from more or less right-angles, her bat prepared to swing before she is even close enough. When she does strike out at it, it is a wild hit and not well aimed, though a fairly powerful hit and well and truly no longer headed for Briony. Unfortunately, it also means she has almost lost her balance and takes a moment to recover before she can do much else. “Sorry, Gabe,” she offers, breathing heavily as she rights herself. “Briony, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Briony calls, having stared at the bludger coming her way rather than do anything to get out of its way as she might have during the previous year’s Quidditch season. The girl’s eyes are wide and she waits a moment, missing several quaffles as she does so. “Oh, sod off,” she snaps at a couple of smug-looking chaser wannabes as she shakes her head and returns her attention to the people in front of her. “Get your own Quaffle,” she tells those around her and blocks one of the red balls visciously.

“It’s okay, that was rather good!” exclaims Gabriel, wiping his forehead with his sleeve in an automatic gesture of relief. “You know, Kelly, I thought the last thing I’d want to see is you with a bat, but that turned out for the better, didn’t it?” he jokes. Kid of. Well, at least the thing hadn’t hit Briony. Though, it probably wouldn’t have been too bad even if it had. Gabe had just been overexcited. “Crisis averted!” he updates the group with a grin before Kelly can reply to him, though his eyes are narrowed slightly at the dull-looking beater who misaimed the ball in the first place. Smirking at Briony’s vehemence, Gabe starts throwing balls once more. After some time, the boy is panting with the effort and perspiration is evident on his face. “Uh, okay!” he yells. “Bring it in?” Gabe shouts, almost as a question.

For a moment, Kelly seems unsure of if she should take offense to the crack about her with a bat, though she can’t help but smile as his statements seem largely complimentary. She intercepts two more ‘bludgers’ before she finishes, still largely not well-aimed, but fairly decent hits nonetheless (and none so violently off-course as to cause damage to any existing team members). Finally, as he shouts out his intent to conclude the session, she flies down, tossing the paddle in her hand back towards the bag. “Brought in, Gabe,” she offers, her cheeks still flushed pink, though perhaps more likely now with exertion than embarassment. “And do you know around when you’re going to announce who made the team? Just out of curiosity.”

Batting away another quaffle, Briony doesn’t waste time after Gabe orders them to bring it in. She quickly turns and flies away, not helping the smug chasers retrieve their quaffles, though she does grab one from a nervous-looking first year who drops hers just as Briony begins flying by. “You shouldn’t put those ones on the team,” Briony tells Gabe slyly, glaring over her shoulder, though the two look quite successfully put in their place by Briony‘s attitude, for better or for worse.

Following Briony’s glare over her shoulder, Gabriel thinks he sees who she’s talking about and nods in confirmation. “Okay,” he says, almost conspiratorially, hungry as he is for any help or guidance anyone could offer him, but especially Briony. “Yeah, they look like bad news to me, too,” Gabe notes truthfully to the girl under his breath. As Kelly’s paddle hits the huge bag, Gabriel grins and glances over to her. “Haha, yeah, brought in literally!” he says, not knowing how else to react. If he were honest with himself, he sometimes did subconsciously view Kelly as a ticking time bomb, able to go off at any second. But, she seemed stable enough today. “Yeah, I’ll be posting… well, I’ll just tell everyone…” he trails off and backs up a little to address the whole group. “Um, that was a good trial! I’ve got a pretty good idea of where everyone stands,” says Gabriel with much more confidence than he actually has. “So… as usual, the team will be posted in the common room once I’ve decided for good. Probably next week sometime, and then we’ll start up with practices and all. So, uh, until then, good luck!” The young man smiles, satisfied.

A ticking time bomb? Absolutely not! Kelly nods in response, though perhaps a little put out that Gabe’s response wasn’t to announce ‘I need no time to figure you out! Oh, mighty beating goddess Pantall, I would be honoured to have you on my team!’, and dismounts, clutching her broom with both hands awkwardly, unsure of what to say. “Alright. Do you need any help putting the stuff away? I mean, I was going to meet Charlie right after, but I can help you out if you want…” She shrugs vaguely, glancing at the bag, apparently quite uncertain of what else to add, if there is anything. Silence is weird, to her.

“You want to help?” asks Gabriel with a perked brow as he stares at Kelly. Apart from Bri, the other students have started to disband, sauntering off the pitch in various directions. “Sure, yeah that’d be great,” he replies, getting a slight feeling that she’s sucking up a little. But whether or not she is, Gabe likes it. Yawning, Gabriel drags the bag over to the shed, leaning it so it stands up as well as a floppy bag possibly can, intending to put it inside once it has been refilled completely. Well, this Quidditch trial could gave gone worse! All in all, Gabe is quite happy. “C’mon,” he says once *most* of the balls are picked up (the well-visible ones, anyway), “my dad sent me butterbeer,” he says in a low voice to Briony, waving to Kelly. “Have fun with Charlie… Kelly-Belle.” And he runs for his life back to the castle.

Other Interesting Logs:

• Quidditch: Gryffindor vs Ravenclaw
• Giving Points for Effort
• And Time for a Race, Too
• Gryffindor’s First Practice of the New Season
• Gabriel the Dragon?