She arrived a bit late to the party, having been distracted by a book that she had been reading, which was nothing new for her of course. Her gaze rose to see the others up in the air and she had to smile, loving the comradery between the different houses and years that she saw up there. Charlie had no interest in joining the game, far happier to be on the ground in this case, although she did rather love flying on her broom... just not for Quidditch. Smiling and waving to all of them, should they be looking, she took a seat on the ground with a few other spectators to watch the makeshift game.

"You could be if you got a new broom!" Teased Merry. Tim would never get on the Ravenclaw team flying that. Nobody in Slytherin would be caught dead flying something that looked like that. At best it needed a good polish and twigs straightened. At worst ceremonial burning. Merry could say worse but she was not here to be nasty. She was here to blow off steam. Have fun. Be a prefect.

She saw a figure pop up in the stands."Hey!" Meredith yelled. Cupping her hand about her mouth. "If you are not flying you can keep score. That is ten for my team!"

“Lend me the galleons!” Tim laughed, watching the older witch swoop away on her superior broom. He had scooped up the ball and was ready to launch it back out.

“Aki! Catch!”

Akira smirked as Tim called her Aki, glaring at him as he threw the ball, with a lean she raced towards the ball so that she might meet it and grabbing the ball, although holding it was soon proven to be a problem.

After all the ball was sort of...big. And she only had two arms, one had to remain on the broom.

She stopped in place so that she might adjust her grip and holding with the ball, giving a groan as she did so as she wiggled and moved about all over, starting to mumble annoyances under her breath.

Aoide felt a little better when the birthday girl headed off to enjoy the haphazard game of quidditch with the muggle balls. She didn’t want Akira to spend her birthday trying to help Aoide fly a broom, just because Aoide was a first year. Being alone so high up did make her take a big gulp of air though.

Tim, Akira’s girlfriend threw the ball to Akira who raced towards it at such speed Aoide gasped. Then suddenly she stopped, and revealed that she wasn’t that much better at keeping balance and keeping hold of a ball simultaneously, either!

“I think I’m better at eating cake than playing quidditch at the moment.” Aoide exclaimed, motivated by the fact she did actually want to eat something, and that the ground seemed an altogether safer place to be!

Ivy was running late. She had spent ages choosing how to wrap Akira's present[1] In the end she had given up and asked Heather her big sister. Heather did it with a flick of her wand. Magic! Ivy could not wait to be that good. But this meant she was missing the quidditch fun. Quidditch was very important to Abbotts!

"Happy birthday Akira!!" Yelled Ivy. She looked right at home on the school broom. Holding the pink gift tight in her fingers. It kind of looked like she was going to throw it at the Ravenclaw!

1.	Ivy has made Akira a hair clip decorated with a tiny broomstick from real tiny twigs. It looks better than you might expect from a first year.