The sun pierced my gaze as I rubbed my eyes. "Audrella! Go check the list I saw Ari put it up about an hour ago." called Twyla from the other side of the dorm. "You didn't wake me up?" I called the nerves bubbling in my stomach. "Sorry.., I didn't want to wake you. You were up talking to Sadie for a while last night." I raced out of the room before she even finished her sentence. The common room was empty which wasn't all that out of the ordinary for a saturday morning. I was quite scared to see the list, there wasn't too much competition but it would be amazing to make the team as a first year. I scanned the list over and over again. Maybe I had missed it? I definetly made the team right? My name wasn't there. Shoulders drooping I left dragging my feet all the way to the Great Hall.

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All through breakfast I just sat there dragging my fork through my food. "Auds" Mage poked me in the stomach with his wand. "Stop making that frowny face, it'll freeze like that." "Leave her alone would you Mage." grumbled Azziz giving Mage a good kick in the shins. "Settle down Ellowette." I turned towards the voice. "Audrella! Just the person I needed to see." Ari sat down smiling. "Oh come on Ari I have a first name you know." said Azziz. "Nope, Ellowette number two, you don't, not when you don't come out for the quidditch team. That includes you Ellowette number three" retorted Ari looking at Mage. "Why do I have to be Ellowette three?" whined Mage. "Cuz Ethan beat both of you for the title of first Ellowette." replied Ari, turning to me she said "I want to discuss the quidditch team, I know I cut you from the team but I would like you to at least practice with the team. You could be an alternative if anyone gets hurt." I immediatley perked up "Really?!" I exclaimed. "Yeah! You play well for a first year and you can play almost any position if needed so you are the perfect player for alternate. Practice at 5 on the field, see you there." She got up and walked back to her friends at the end of the table.

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I walked down to the pitch with Sadie and Rowan, a fourth year who plays chaser. In my dissapointment of getting cut I didn't even realize Sadie made it! We got down to the pitch and changed quickly. Ari asked everyone to go around introducing themselves, their position and the year they were currently in. "Ari, I am team captain, I play chaser and I am in sixth year." to the left of her, "Bastien, keeper, third year" he whispered. "Danny, beater, fifth year." he announced, smiling at everyone. "Sadie, seeker, sixth year" I looked up embarassed about my position. "Audrella, alternate, first year." "Annalise, chaser, second year." I recongnized her immediatley, she had played last year with my brothers. I had seen her talking to Leo getting off the train last year. Mage said she was nice but not much of a threat on the qudditch pitch. To the left of Annalise was someone I knew well "Evander, beater, fourth year." I knew him too well. He was friends with my brothers, he used to come around the house often years ago. They had a big falling out the previous year, Mage and Leo despise him and Mage always seems to end up in detention by hurting or bothering Evander. I looked up again to see everyone mounting their brooms, the last chaser, Easton was already up in the air flying in loops. Practice was over fast, Ari split us in to groups depending on our positions and I rotated through the groups. The chasers were working on deking out Bastien. I was working with the beaters who Danny was making fly around in complicated manuvers to improve our stability and speed on our broomsticks.

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After calling in quits the whole team went back inside. I knew we were all thinking the same thing. The team was okay, the players were average but overall we just couldn't figure out how to work as a team. By the end of the practice even Danny was frustrated and he seemed to have an everlasting patience with the team. I crawled into bed thinking that we would need to practice during every spare minute we had to be ready for our first game. The schedule was going to be posted at the end of the week we had to hope we didn't face the best team first.

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Ari gave me a task to do while everyone was practicing today, "Hey, Audrella. Do you mind doing me a favour? I am gonna go through quidditch plays with everyone but Hufflepuff and Slytherin both have practices on the field today. Do you mind watching and seeing what were up against?" I gave her a suprised look. "Were allowed to spy on the other teams?" I asked. "Well it doesn't say that we can't and we are gonna need all the help we can get. I will catch you up on quidditch plays later this week." As the rest of the team settled in to the common room for a long quidditch conversation I checked the reservation board in the Great Hall to see when the practiced. The Slytherin team was practicing in a couple hours and Hufflepuff hadn't booked the pitch until 6pm. I ran back up to the portrait hole to get Twyla. "Hey, wanna go visit the house elves, or we could play gobstones." I asked when we exited the common room. She held up a sealed letter. "Can we go to the Owlery first? I have to send a letter to Eric." she rolled her eyes. "Yeah, lemme grab some paper I guess I should write home to my mom and dad." I ran back and grabbed some paper and a pencil. "What does Eric want?" I asked feeling bad that he kept sending her owls. "The usual, befriend your teachers, stop getting detention, listen to me, I know best, try out for quidditch, join dueling club. You'd think that because he graduated from Durmstrang he would stop pestering me because he has no idea what Hogwarts is like but he seems to have his mind set on making me his little clone." she answered sighing. " Sorry about him, maybe because he is working in Bulgaria he won't bother you this much?" "Nope, he keeps reminding me how its his brotherly duties to make sure I am on the right path or something like that." She said opening the owlery door. "Well my parents have pretty low standards for me. They just want me to pass but I guess thats what happens when you have four odler brothers. " I said trying to get her to smile. We finished in the owlery and went and hung out by the lake throwing pebbles seeing who could reach the farthest. "I better go." I noticed the time rushing to get to the pitch in time. "Fingers crossed these teams aren't stellar." I whispered to myself.