Humbledore's Army

Okay, for those of you who have ever played and/or seen muggle quidditch, this is most likely a totally pointless article for you to read. However, if you’ve been totally dying to read more of my intense wit and witticisms, then you can suffer through it anyway.

My first introduction to muggle quidditch was this fall when I opened my morning paper (I feel like I am the last specimen of my age group to actually subscribe to print), and I saw my best friend Sunni Ryan. Sunni and I went to middle school together and got into loads of trouble (ha, as if, we wish we were that cool), and I missed the heck out of her. So imagine my delight when I see her riding a broomstick with a humongous smile on her face and a headline of “Quidditch Catches on Like Magic.” I had never even heard of such a thing in actuality, but I’ve been a total Potter nerd since I read the first book at age 4.

Sunni and I went to an intercollegiate match that day between State, Duke, ECU, and UNC-CH. Afterwards, I went to nearly every one of Sunni’s games.

The basic gist of the article was to explain how Quidditch for Muggles (non-magic folk) has spread across the globe. The International Quidditch Association (or IQA), has helped found 400 college and 300 high school teams already. 45 states in the country host quidditch teams.

Furthermore, the Quidditch World Cup isn’t just for wizards and witches anymore. The fourth annual was hosted this year in New York with 757 athletes representing 46 teams.

It’s been a goal at my school for a while now to form a team.

The principal of our school is Dr. Thomas Humble. Not only does his name remarkably resemble the famous Albus Dumbledore of the Harry Potter series, he also looks like him, sans lengthy beard. As such, punny nerds as we are, we have named our principal Humbledore.

So Humbledore isn’t a fan of having yet another club at Raleigh Charter, so we have formed an impromptu group with a tentative name of Humbledore’s Army. It makes sense, seeing as we’re a misfit troop of kids hosting an under-the-table association not approved of by the administration.

For you muggles who don’t know how ground quidditch is played, I have spared you your confusion and I shall list the rules as follows.

There are 7 people per quidditch team.  There are 2 beaters, one keeper, and 3 chasers, and a seeker. There’s also the snitch, but technically he/she isn’t part of the team. Everyone but the snitch must run around the duration of the game holding  the handle of a broomstick that they’re holding between their legs. It’s incredibly hard to do so and to perform the tasks mentioned below:

So let’s start with the beaters.

Beaters have dodge balls (bludgers), and their job is pretty much to beat the crap out of anyone they possibly can. Once hit by a bludger, the player hit has to drop the ball (if he or she is carrying one), and run around the goal post in order to reenter the game.

Got it? Good.

Then there are chasers. The chasers have a soccer ball (the quaffle), and they pass it back and forth down the field to try to pass it through a goal post (hula hoops sprayed gold attached to posts of varying lengths). A goal wins the team 10 points. However, if hit by a bludger, they must drop the quaffle.

Moving on. Keep up.

Keepers guard the goal posts to make sure chasers don’t score. Pretty simple.

Then there’s my favorite.

The golden snitch and the seekers.

Each team has a seeker who runs like heck to catch the snitch. In the book, a snitch is a little golden ball with tiny wings that flutters around the field for a seeker to catch. Obviously, seeing as it’s hard to green screen that sort of thing on a regular basis, ground quidditch uses a person. The snitch dresses in yellow and hangs a sock with a tennis ball inside off the back of his/her pants. The snitch is released first thing in the game when all other players have their eyes closed. Once out of sight, the game begins and the seekers take off after the snitch.

The snitch has no rules or boundaries. I have seen them:

·      Get into a car and drive away

·      Spray silly string in someone’s face

·      Hide in a bathroom the whole game

·      Duck under a refreshment table and dump a water bottle on someone who dares try to approach.

·      Slap someone across the face

Needless to say, I totally want to be snitch.

If the snitch is caught (by pulling off the sock), then the game ends and the seeker wins 30 points for the team. The goal is to know when to catch the snitch, because if one team has 50 points and your team has 10 and the seeker catches the snitch, then the team only gets 40 points and pretty much forfeits the game.

It’s a test of skill, agility, and ability to run around for an indefinite period of time with a broomstick between your legs looking like a complete dork. 

Ask Me

As previously mentioned, I'm taking a writing workshop at North Carolina State University. My first class is poetry, which I've discovered is probably not my area of expertise. The class is brilliant, and every time someone reads a poem, it kind of sort of makes me want to ditch my notebook, Ginny Weasley possessed by Tom Riddle style, in an abandoned girl's lavatory, only Moaning Myrtle wouldn't find it and give it to Harry and Ron and what have you.
But, I'm in it, and I'm working on improving.
We have fun prompts, which the other day was one in which we were given various first lines from poems, and I chose the excerpt from "Ask Me" by William Stafford. I didn't see the piece in its entirety until after I finished, but this is what I came up with:

Sometime when the river is ice ask me

What it is like to wait for you,

As cold and stubborn

And resolute and arbitrary,

And reckless, 

And just plain stupid

As frozen water.

In response I will laugh

And you will melt,

Same way you always do. 

And your lukewarm banks will nourish

Fresh birthed daffodils. 

And I will feel victorious at having broke you down.

But then I realize the patch of river where I stood

Is lost

And so, I continue to drown. 

I think I love you.

Wing Girl Chapter IV

Hey guys, I've been a little less than dutiful at posting frequently over the summer. Luckily, however, I haven't forgotten to keep writing. I'm at a workshop now at NC State for young writers. Yesterday, I read the first chapter of Wing Girl, the novel I've been kind of sort of working on. I didn't get to chapters two and three, but I got a lot of positive feedback on the first portion from the brother Doug, of previous socialite prom queen, Nina. The encouragement persuaded me to post just a little more, and so Doug is back with more from his recent chaotic new lifestyle. Enjoy, maybe?

IV

Doug

I stumble over a stray high-heeled shoe on my way through the door. I drop the bag of groceries in my left hand. Hoping it isn’t the one with the container of eggs, I shout up the stairs in the general direction of my vegetable of a sister. “Nina!”

It was fun the first few days having a roommate. It felt more grownup to be forced in tight arrangements with someone you grew up with when it was your own home instead of when you were young and you had no choice. Lately, however, it had become simply a nuisance.

It’s gotten to the point where I dread returning home, afraid of the catastrophe that waits for me in every square foot. A bra is slung over the wooden backing of a chair, a still vaguely water sodden towel thrown half-hazardly on the carpet, dirty dishes are stacked nearly a foot high by the kitchen sink, and coffee grounds litter the floor, leaving a perfect trail from the freezer to the espresso machine. Even Liza Jane is avoiding the newest addition to our home.

I haven’t heard so much as a creak from the floor above, so either Nina is still asleep, or she had gone out already. A glance at the clock reading 5 makes me doubt the latter.

I climb the wooden stairway and march down the hallway straight to Nina’s room. It’s far worse of a disaster zone than the downstairs. It’s like Nina was a bomb, and the littering of her belongings on the first floor is merely the shrapnel of the aftermath.

The piling of clothes on the bed stirs. I reach towards a corner of cotton sheet gasping for air and yank it back. I uncover a furious face half marred by yesterday’s mascara. Nina claws out in search of the covering with faint whines. I rip off the rest of the sheet and then turn my attention to the covered windows. Pulling one up hard snaps in unwelcome light. The room looks even more disastrous when lit.

Nina shudders to enough cohesiveness to aim a hung-over pillow throw at my head. It misses and instead knocks over an open makeup case on the painted drawers by my elbow.

I whirl around to face Nina, and clamber up to the foot of the bed. She’s pissed, I can see. But I need her to hear me out. “Nina, I’m sorry you were evicted from your place, and you know I’m more than happy to get you back on your feet, but it’s been three weeks now, and you haven’t made any effort whatsoever to find a job or another place to stay.”

Her voice is still scratchy, not quite recovered from last night’s concert. “Doug, I’m almost there, I swear. I talked to the stage manager last night, and he says he might be able to offer me something. I got his number. It’s right there.”

She points to a pile of rubbish on the floor. I uncover a slip of stained paper emitting fumes of alcohol with 6 numbers on it. “Uh-huh, Nina, I don’t think it’s going to work out.”

She gives me a disappointed and befuddled look, and then pulls the sheets back over her head, asleep before her head hits the pillow.