Ananke was filing her nails as she sat in the announcer box with a certain Ravenclaw, waiting for the match to get underway, but in the meantime she filed her nails and idly chatted into the speaker, letting her mellow voice carry over the stands, "And today we have a match between Slytherin and Hufflepuff. I will be your shot of realism today while Mr. Todd will be your overexcited teenager," the witch seemed more interested in her nails than the all too garish child sitting next to her.

Then the players filed out into the field and the Divination professor barely glanced up at the players as she let her voice drawl over the speakers again, "...Right, anyway, Let's hope for a good game--and if not a good game, a good night's rest spent at Madame Nadge's Hut," and at that her tone picked up with a clip of pure enthusiasm.

   

• “- Which we’re all gonna need after this match,” piped up the fourth year beside her gleefully  innocently. At fourteen and counting (and no obvious improvement in sight), even Connor himself knew he was a dubious choice; too often he ran his mouth a mile a minute without a care in the world. Worse things had left it without the help of Logorrhea.

Ananke stopped filing her nails for a moment to cast a disinterested stare to the boy at her side.
 
   

• He met her look with a sheepish grin. However, this was one of the few times he had no intention of proving that right, and so he leaned forward, blue eyes gleaming as he peered down into the field. “And it looks like the pitch is set and Madam Hooch is preparing to release the snitch!" he cried, as a familiar figure confronted the trunk. From this distance he couldn’t see every move, but-
   
  How couldn’t anyone not see those familiar shapes rise in the air? "And the game is on!" he howled, fist pumped above his head as the players took to the air.

The red-headed witch hardly needed to look up as the young Hufflepuff seeker dove across the pitch in vain, searching for the search, "And Miss LeJean seems to be pulling a rather rookie move," Ananke's voice was short and unamused, "by following something that's already gone." Then she actually looked up and surveyed the game as the Slytherin beaters began to corner the bludgers, "In the words of our American visitors, 'If it were a snake...'"

   

• Meanwhile, Connor was half-out of his chair as he strained to look, completely engrossed with another section of the field. Off in that corner, a Hufflepuff Chaser had caught the quaffle—only to fall off his broom with an audible THWACK! “Ooh!” he hissed, wincing with sympathy, as the boy hit the ground. “And Slant smears Sellaphix across the grass...!”

Landis cared for his students like some people admired the cunning and beauty of wild beasts: preferably at a distance, and possibly from behind glass. He held for them a healthy dose of suspicion, a certain smugness, and a mercurial pride. While they frequently annoyed him, it was considerably less than the students of every other House annoyed him. He was, though loathe to admit it, pleased to be their Head. So though he did not care much for Quidditch - though he did in fact find most sports to be a colossal waste of time - Landis was nevertheless at the game, firmly ensconced in the staff section, wearing Slytherin green.

It was just how things were done.

Fortunately, it promised to be a quick game. Most everyone knew it, and several of the staff exchanged sympathetic glances when Hufflepuff took the field. Upon returning from speaking to his team Sandusky had actual tears in his eyes, which left Landis frankly aghast. He had not realized this game meant so much to him. Yes, the outcome was inevitable, but there was no need to get soppy about it. There would be other matches.

The idea of addressing his House before the game started did not occur to him, and likely never would. Unlike Hufflepuff's substitute team, his students were big girls and boys. They did not need coddling or the holding of hands. If Landis had even tried, they would be understandably disturbed.

He watched them critically in the air, eyes tracking like a hawk. Some staff were overly enthusiastic (Trishna); on the edges of their seats they groaned or cheered. Landis did neither. He did clap, though, smiling broadly at Slytherin's first goal.

Lexi bounced impatiently in her seat, feeling all out of sorts. She's traded in her house colors for a whole lot of yellow and black. Her scarf, her necktie, the paint adorning her cheeks; she looked like a Hufflepuff! But have you ever seen a lion hide behind a badger? She didn't think so.

She saw Alice walked out and gave a friendly cheer as the little girl took off into the air, "Fly Puffles, fly!" She screamed it loud and proud, even if she was a bit envious of her friend out there on the Quidditch pitch.

She sat back down, and again looked at herself. There was wayyyy too much yellow, but this was all for Alice. She just had to keep saying that, this is for Alice. This is for Alice. This is for Alice.

"You can do it Alice! You can do it!" She screamed, beaming proudly at her friend.

Dessa squirmed beside Lexi, craning her neck to see Alice walking onto the field and kicking off from the ground. "Whoo! Go Alice!" she hollered. She laughed a little, then looked at Lexi beside her and laughed a lot.

She had come to this game because she loved Quidditch, and because she loved Alice, so why not watch both at once. However the situation became more complicated when she'd realized that it wasn't a Gryffindor game, and she couldn't simply wear her house colors and chant lion-related cheers. No, she simply had to wear the colors of the team she was cheering for which was, in this case, Hufflepuff--or, when she thought about it, anyone who beat Slytherin.

She leaned over to Lexi and shouted to be heard above the din of the cheering crowd. "All dressed up like a Puff, I feel like I'm in disguise!"

"DEFENSE!" Leopold bellowed from the stands.  "DEFENSE!"  Unless the Hufflepuff team put up a spirited defense and protected their green keeper, Slytherin would outscore them to the point where it wouldn't matter if Heliotrope found the snitch.  They were clearly outmatched and brave as they were, his team was going to get slaughtered.  It didn't do anything to diminish the pride he felt in them.  He would sing their praises until the end of time and when the game was over, win or lose, he intended to treat them all as if they'd won the Quidditch World Cup.

Spotting a figure in yellow speed up to meet Figaro, Connor snatched up his mike again, the golden horn clutched in a red-fingered grip. “An’ now Edevane joins th’ party!” he trumpeted, scrambling forward in his seat to get a better look. “Just in time fer Sellaphix t’ make his throw. Will Roh-Ballentyne intercept-?

“She doesn’t!” A wave of boo’s—and cheers—rose from the crowd as the female Chaser sped away, the coveted red ball safely in her hold. “An’ now Hufflepuff’s got possession of th’ ball! Edevane’s goin’ straight fer the hoops-” with Slytherin’s Beaters oh so conveniently too far away. His hold on the horn tightening further, Connor leaned forward again, his free hand inching closer and closer to the opposite edge of the desk. “She’s preparin’ t’ throw—ooh, Keeper Tawse’s caught th’ quaffle!” The boy tsk’d loudly into the mike. Beside him, Ananke pulled out a paper to grade. “Better luck next time, maybe-”

-Or not. Despite himself, the Ravenclaw groaned, torn between pity and laughter. Of all the people to catch it- “Li’s got hold of th’ quaffle now—an’ lookit her go!”

Blue eyes espied the Hufflepuff tailing her in vain; this time their owner grimaced in real pity. You could give Hufflepuff all the tinkly ‘A+ for Effort!’ stars their Head hearts desired, but in the end only actual goals mattered.

Leopold was almost hoarse with yelling encouragement and advice to his team, not that they could hear him above the roar of the crowd.  He almost fell out of the stands when Alice finally remembered that she was padded against the bludgers and risked being hit to block one of the Slytherin shots. 

Slytherin was taking Hufflepuff apart like a well oiled machine but as the game went on, the Hufflepuffs were starting to develop a rhythm.  They were still being stymied at every turn but Slytherin was beginning to have to work to make sure they continued to shut out the Chasers in yellow and black.

Leopold barely even noticed the Slytherin chaser's impact with the ground.  Even if he had been able to communicate the fact that the Slytherin had an injured chaser, the Hufflepuff team was too green to take full advantage.  Their only chance was to put pressure on her by sheer coincidence.

"Look!"  somebody called out, pointing towards the sky.

Leopold looked up and took a sharp breath as he saw Heliotrope dropping like a stone, heading for the Slytherin rings like some predatory flying fish.  Please see the snitch.  Please see the snitch.  Please see the snitch....

It would only take a few seconds to tell but to everyone in the Hufflepuff stands, those seconds seemed to last an eternity.

Heinrich winced as the Slytherin team suddenly seemed to wheel about as one well oiled machine and converged on the tiny Hufflepuff Seeker.  Given the long odds, he'd dropped half a dozen  galleons on the untried Hufflepuff team.  He'd played with the numbers and if Hufflepuff won by a hundred points or less, he's clean up.  If the game ended on this play, it meant that the little mermaid had to catch the snitch but Figaro had to miss.  If Heliotrope managed to weather the storm and catch the snitch ( sort of like picking out a single fish out from under the noses of a handful of hungry sharks, which was something he figured merfolk had experience doing) and Figaro scored (unlikely but possible) it meant the Badgers would win by over one hundred points and Heinrich would lose a small fortune.

Still, to see Figs score against the towering arrogance of Slytherin might just be worth the loss.

"Come on Figs!"  he shouted.  "Sink one for the Gipper!"

Silvia perched on the edge of her seat, not excited so much by the score--though there was a certain smug assurance in seeing Slytherin sweep the badgers--but the sheer glory of the swirling, diving, pirouetting  antics of the players nearly had her on her feet when Hufflepuff's seeker made her move.  Blood pounding in her ears, she tried to follow as the Slytherins wove in and out of each other and saw the bludger racing towards LeJean--would it hit her? 

After a near lifetime of listening to the games over the Wireless, Silvia was riveted.  It was like she'd been smelling the bacon for years and she still couldn't get enough of it now that she could actually taste it.  And she didn't just follow the game with her eyes: as she sat, hands squeezed bone-white in her lap, her body twitched and swiveled as if she were actually in the air with the rest of them.  She nearly jumped out of her skin as Strelnikov slammed into the Hufflepuff boy, knocking him out of the way of the bludger's path--Silvia'd completely forgotten the boy had the quaffle!  She gave a wordless shout of wild glee, expecting to see the large red ball change hands there.

If snakes zipped through the air like wing-less dragons, twisting and winding around each other like heads of a Hydra, as they took out little Hufflepuffs with deadly, relentless efficiency—then, as far as Connor was concerned, that was Slytherin’s Quidditch team in a nutshell.

For the last several minutes, they had been decimating their hapless opponents, showing everyone how little they cared about taking advantage of certain players’ inexperience, or lack of focus; again and again the green team scored, until the fourth year was reduced to shaking his head as he churned out commentary (“An’ Hufflepuff has a lucky break at last! Good on ya, Hunter!”) frequently riddled with sympathetic groans (“Well that ended pretty quickly…”). The match, so far, was proving to be both spectacular and downright painful – like an impending trainwreck of massive proportions – and it was all he could do to not fall out from the commentators’ stand, clutching at its edge as he’d curse the sky black with his swears.

Kitty’s assault, in particular, had been truly amazing; it wasn’t often one could see her in action like that, zeroing in on a luckless Hufflebutt with such ferocity that he really couldn’t have helped that “An’ Li’s claws have come out!” from escaping, a mixture of awe and glee coloring the words. (“Lejean’s fishbutt is cooked!” miraculously, had not.) Then, Slant – that fit sixth year who hung out with Naomi so much – and Naomi herself had swarmed in, like a vicious pair of Siamese twins, and then Strelnikov had made up a third and had gone after Sellaphix like a bullet. That the weird-looking second year had come out alive at all – after pulling a few crazy maneuvers that reminded Connor rather strongly of spider monkeys – was just… wow. Wow.

And then the whole mess had turned up the snitch.

He had winced when the Slytherin finally took a spill (“Y’ don’ see that every day…”) but rallied quickly as she’d taken back to the air amidst the sharp whistle of Hooch and the crowd’s booing; elsewhere, Figaro had just delivered a surprising blow to one Slytherin Chaser’s face (“An’ now Sellaphix checks Strelnikov in th’ face! Foul!”)—which ended in yet another nasty collision and the sharp sound of the whistle.

And Sellaphix still wasn’t done. “Guess that elbow hit harder than it looked,” Connor tsk’d in sympathy when the Hufflepuff successfully intercepted the pass. Even from where he sat, he could see the Chaser touching her face gingerly.

But, there was still time—and from Figaro’s hurried glances, the Ravenclaw could see that the older boy knew that, too; a Chaser without cover was a dead one. However, until then, Connor diverted his attention elsewhere, to that one pair who could make or break the game for either of the teams. “Looks like Harper’s found th’ Snitch!” he crowed excitedly as green and silver zipped after gold, the Seeker’s speed belying fierce intent. “This is it, folks, this is it-”

And then… it wasn’t.

Connor had, quite literally, actually gone gobsmack-speechless as the scene unfurled before him. To his own ears, shock had sucked in all sound, that the whistling sound of high winds, fast brooms, cackling bludgers and boisterous crowd combined seemed far, far away. She did not-

But she had. A tongue of ugly green had licked out and curled itself around that tiny, golden ball.

He sucked in a deep, shuddering, vacuum of a breath.

“Foul!” Connor roared into the mike, fury and outrage spilling into the field with unforgiving abandon and turning those tired-looking eyes a bright, blazing blue. “LeJean’s taken out ‘er bloody, soddin’ fishwhip! Stole it right outta Harper’s hand-” Anger turned those thin, freckled cheeks splotchy; his Quidditch fan soul positively smarted at the move. Because, what the hell! What the honest, bloody hell! You didn’t do shite like that in Quidditch. A guy might cobb and blatch and bumph and flag, but Quidditch was sacred!

He held the mike in a white-knuckled death grip. “What the hell, Hufflepuff! Foul foul foul-!”

   

Leopold gripped the railing so tightly with both hands that his knuckles were turning white.  He could hear Connor Todd screaming but his words were making no sense to the head of Hufflepuff.  His eyes were fixed on the two Seekers, one older and experienced, the other younger but a born hunter.  He couldn't make out what was happening but he knew who he wanted to win the exchange.

"HUFFLEPUFF!!" he screamed out.  "Hufflepuff for the win!"  Let Connor rant.  It would just show his elemental bias.  His desperate, thrown together team might have just  managed the impossible and beaten the Slytherin juggernaut.  It would be a stunning upset.  It would be unprecedented.

It would be perfect.

|Announcer|

Ananke happily let Mr. Todd narrate the rest of the game--with 2nd year Hufflepuffs crashing into the pitch and Slytherin flying patiently and expertly, the game seemed rather predictable. And as Mr. Harper had his fingers around the snitch the game seemed won--that was until Miss LeJean did something very outrageous and--as Mr. Todd colorfully put it, unsportsmanlike and most likely earning a foul.

However the Ravenclaw boy said it too colorfully.

As stand erupted into outrage and cheers Ananke suddenly lowered her hands to her lap and turned to towards the counter to face the pitch. She lifted her hands and elbows again and leaned on the counter, and, with that one movement, Connor Todd's voice suddenly came to an abrupt halt though the boy still seemed to be moving his mouth--unaware of a clever Silencio spell that had just been cast on him.

"I'm sorry, it seems Mr. Todd has lost his voice," Ananke's voice then calmly drawled over the speakers, "So, to continue, while exciting and edgy, Miss LeJean has done at least one thing wrong here--and it is that she used a piece of kelp as a means to catch a snitch, which is on par with giving her an extendable net or letting someone use their wand to stop a bludger."Ananke's voice was light and crisp as she made the comparisons, and while they were harsh they seemed to have the intended effect she wanted as the stands seemed to calm into a hum of murmurs before she continued.

"The real problem here, however, is that if Mr. Harper touched the snitch first, then Miss LeJean is due for a harsher penalty--one that is up to the discretion of Madame Hooch." The stands seemed to quiet down and hold their breath then, as they awaited Madame Hooch's decision on the matter. Was the game over? Would the snitch be thrown back in play? Would Kelp Whips be deemed illegal? Who knew? Ananke's main concern was that a certain Ravenclaw boy would be having detention with her after the game.

Angie was perched on the edge of her seat behind a pair of overeager first years. Well, it wasn't to say that Angie wasn't overeager too, she loved Quidditch! She'd be out there on the field right now if it wasn't for the Broom Sickness she had. She wished with all her heart that it would go away so she could get back on her broom.

"Come on team! Who do you think you are!" She yelled, "Let's go Hufflepuff!" She cheered, clapping her hands in the air.

Okay, maybe she was being way too hopeful about it all, but she just really wanted her team to win.

Her face fell though as the final plays of the game were made, Heliotrope obviously making a grave mistake and Hooch announced the final standings.... Slytherin for the win. Angie slumped in her seat. Well gosh darn it all.

"I protest!"  Leopold bellowed.  "Where was the foul when they ganged up on my Seeker?"

His poor, brave team had lost.  They had come so close, twice even.  In the end Slytherin had used their superior teamwork to shut down his Seeker.  What could have been a miracle turned out to be just the predictable outcome.  Hufflepuff had lost.  Let their Head of House bluster until he was blue in the face, rant until he was out of breath, he could change nothing.

He hadn't really expected any other outcome but he had held out a the faintest ray of hope.  His brave, brave team had gone into this knowing that that they were facing long odds.  They had given their best and had come so close.  They had stood up to the giant and had not blinked. 

He'd have to seek out professor Morgan of course and congratulate him on his skilled and disciplined team of course.  They had played an exemplary game.  Just because Hufflepuff hadn't won didn't mean that he should be rude about it.  He would congratulate his team for their hard work when he got the chance.  For now, there was something he needed to do.

"Well played, professor Morgan,"  he called out to the Head of Slytherin.  "I wouldn't be surprised to see your team take the Quidditch Cup this year."