Flying High

Flying High

Chapter Seven: Severus Snape's refereeing

After the Christmas break, Oliver seemed to be even more fanatical about Quidditch than ever, he was working the team harder than ever. Snow had been replaced by endless rain…but even that couldn't put a dampener on his high spirit, he could see the Cup and boy did he want to win it. The Twins complained twice as much as did most of the team, but at least Harry wasn't disheartened; the others including myself had all come accustomed to his fanatical behaviour whereas this was all new to Harry. If we won the next match against Hufflepuff we would overtake Slytherin for the first time in seven years, and that was something I wholeheartedly wanted to see, this was definitely looking good for our chances of winning.

"Will you stop messing around!" Oliver yelled it was getting close to the Hufflepuff match and to say Oliver was stressed was an understatement, we'd only just found out the Snape was refereeing the match…which just made life a lot harder. The twins had been messing around throughout practice; they kept dive-bombing each other and pre-tending to fall off their brooms. "That's exactly the sort of thing that'll lose us the match! Snape's refereeing this time, and he'll be looking for any excuse to knock points off Gryffindor!"

"Snape's refereeing?" George spluttered through a mouthful of mud, after Oliver had announced that he had really fallen off his broom and onto the muddy and slightly water logged pitch below. "When's he ever refereed a Quidditch match? He's not going to be fair if we might overtake Slytherin."

We all landed around George and so began a flurry of complaints off of the team, sure enough confidence in overtaking Slytherin had dwindled thanks to the greasy haired Professor of Potions and that's all we needed at this moment in time.

"Everyone just calm down!" I shouted trying to stop the onslaught of doubt and complaints, there was nothing we could do to change the referee all we could do was play a fair clean game to the best of our ability so as not to give Snape the chance to award Hufflepuff any penalties.

"It's not my fault." Oliver stated, "We've just got to make sure we play a clean game, so Snape hasn't got any excuse to pick on us."

Harry left the pitch after practice finished, the rest of us hung back for a couple of minutes like we always had done…especially when it came to down to making sure that Oliver didn't kill himself by exhausting himself.

"Think we'll be ok, you know with Snape refereeing?" Katie asked as the three of us entered the female changing room, Hufflepuff had a good team and we had managed to beat them on many occasions but having Snape referee would make it more difficult. We would have to make sure every part of our play was perfect and we didn't make any silly fouls to give Snape any fuel for making our lives difficult.

"We'll be fine; we'll just have to make sure we don't make any mistakes." Angelina replied it was easier said than done, one slip up could cost us the match and even the Cup and I knew Oliver was dwelling on that. Stressing out was not going to go in our favour, we all needed to stay calm and positive and surely we would be winning that Cup.

"And stay positive about it. Last thing we need is to go into the match all miserable and negative." I added they both nodded, making me think they were not entirely convinced. "If we go into it with a negative attitude, we're going to come out of it with a negative result and that's just what Snape and the Slytherin team want, to make us lose and to make sure we don't win the Cup!"

After we were all changed we headed out of the room, Angelina and Katie headed back up to the Castle with Fred and George while I waited for Oliver…which could take all evening. I found him looking over his strategies, his hand moving ever so slightly as if he were going to change the plan but then pulling back and scratching the back of his head thinking it over again.

"Oliver, you need your rest as well." I stated as I walked into the room he shook his head, "Changing the plan now is not going to help us."

"I need to make it perfect, we need to win this match Hannah, we don't we may as well kiss the Cup goodbye." He grumbled rubbing his forehead and leaning back in his chair for a second before returning to his strategies.

"Come on, we need to back at the castle, if you need to change something change it up there please! It's cold and it's raining, and I'm freezing!" I groaned pulling on his arm, but he wasn't budging. Snape being the referee was really playing on his mind, if he couldn't find a positive outlook for the match, the rest of the team definitely wouldn't.

"You go on ahead, I'll only be a couple of minutes." He mumbled flipping through the book and occasionally sighing and rubbing his forehead. But I wasn't going to just let him sit here all night and come to Transfiguration tomorrow morning half asleep, I mean McGonagall out of all the Professors understood that Oliver was fanatical about Quidditch and wanted to win, but that didn't mean she took it easy on him.

"If I leave you here now, you won't come back up to the Castle all evening and you may even miss tomorrow's lessons, now what kind of friend and Co-Captain would I be if I let you do that?" I questioned trying but failing to drag him out of the chair by his arms.

"The best friend in the world." He joked finally getting up out of his seat and picking up his book of strategies. He was always the first one to practice and the last one to leave, even when he first joined the Gryffindor team he'd be the first one there and the last one to leave Charlie didn't even stay as long as he did.

"Even the Captain of the team needs his rest, now Mr Wood let's go." I stated pulling him out of the stadium and up towards the Castle, well half dragging him in the rain I swear he was walking slowly just for fun. "Oliver stop walking so slowly! I'm getting soaked!"

"If you say so." He chuckled gripping on to my arm before he took off into a run dragging me behind him, I stumbled through large muddy puddles this was much worse than walking slowly through the rain. I swear I could hear him laughing as he pulled me, most likely purposely, through the larger puddles.

"Oliver stop running!" I shouted however this was an even worse idea than asking him to hurry up. He abruptly halted running which made me slam into him. However he'd chosen to stop in a rather large puddle and at some point had let go of my arm…so instead of just the water splashing up from my feet hitting the water, I ended up falling into the puddle. "Oliver!"

"What? You told me to stop." He said with an innocent look on his face, however that didn't last long and he burst into a fit of laughter as he looked down at me. I was soaked to the bone; I may as well have gone swimming in the lake.

"It's not funny!" I grumbled as he doubled over. "Help me up!"

"You should have seen the look on your face." He chuckled as he offered his hand, which I took and he pulled me up. I looked down, my skirt, jumper, and robe were all completely soaked, and my shirt was probably beginning to soak up some water from the jumper as well. I glared up at Oliver. "Aww come on Hannah, I was just having a little fun."

A little fun? Well I'll show him a little fun! He offered his hand to help me up and as I took it and he began to pull me up I dragged him back down. He came crashing down into the puddle, his face was a picture of confused and slightly annoyed.

"Hannah!" he yelled as I laughed as he began to get up out of the puddle dragging me up with him, he was more than slightly annoyed now but he still wore an amused smile on his face. "Now the both of us are completely drenched, best we get inside or we'll catch colds."

He dragged me into the main entrance of the castle before dragging me up the stairs all the time I was just laughing my head off, which earned us some rather odd looks off of all the other students that were around. Eventually we made it up to the Gryffindor Common Room; the drawback of being in our house was that the dorms were up so many bloody staircases that would always change the wrong way when you really needed to be somewhere.

"What happened to the two of you?" Percy asked in his Prefect tone of voice, which was authoritative and slightly condescending. We must have looked a right sight, both completely drenched and laughing, which Oliver hadn't been doing up until we reached the Common Room.

"It's raining Perce; we were always going to get a little soaked out there. But Miss Stockley here ended up in a puddle and dragged me into it." Oliver explained as he took of his jumper and began ringing it out and moving over to dry off by the fire.

"He caused all of it, nothing was my fault." I added which made Oliver snort, not a very charming thing to do.

"Like hell it was my entire fault."

"Well if you hadn't insisted on staying after practice, then we wouldn't have been out as long in the rain. And if you hadn't have gone running full pelt towards the castle and then halt suddenly, then I wouldn't have landed in a puddle." I explained by this point Percy must have had enough and excused himself to go and do his duties as a Prefect. "So yes, Mr Wood it is your entire fault. And now if you'll excuse me I'm off to change."

The Hufflepuff Match arrived in no time at all; the team had been training hard since coming back off of Christmas Break. Oliver still hadn't de-stressed after finding out Professor Snape would be refereeing the match and it made training session all the more stressful. Winning this match would give us an even greater chance of winning the Cup this year, all we'd have to do was win the remaining match against Ravenclaw.

"Don't want to pressure you, Potter, but if we need an early capture of the Snitch it's now. Finish the game before Snape can favour Hufflepuff too much." Oliver stated this wasn't going to help with Harry's nerves of playing again; it pretty much made the entire outcome of the game rest on Harry's shoulders. And the backfire of that plan could cost us the game; sure an early capture of the Snitch would mean the game would go quicker and give Snape less chances of awarding Hufflepuff penalties, but if we didn't score enough and Hufflepuff were able to score a lot then the game could fall to Hufflepuff no matter how many points we gained from the Snitch.

"Do your best and hope we win." I added to Harry clapping him on the shoulder, he still seemed rather nervous but at least maybe if we did lose he wouldn't think that everyone on the team blamed him, not that everyone would blame him.

"The whole schools out there!" Fred shouted he was peering into the stadium, I doubt this would help Harry's nerves, at least it was his second game and at least it wasn't going to be as brutal as the Slytherin game. "Even - blimey Dumbledore has come to watch."

"Dumbledore?" Harry asked it wasn't a very rare occurrence, but still it wasn't every match that Dumbledore would be up in the stands watching…maybe it had something to do with the last match and the problem with Harry's broom, maybe Dumbledore believed someone had jinxed the broom after all it was rather odd that a brand new Nimbus 2000 would behave in such a way, it was the best broom around.

The game began as it always did; Snape released the bludgers and the Snitch before climbing onto his broom and releasing the quaffle. Angelina gained the quaffle and headed towards the Hoops followed by Katie and I and shortly followed by the Hufflepuff Chasers, Angelina scored gaining us ten points, Hufflepuff gained possession and we followed their Chasers up to Oliver and our Posts. I was just short of our posts when I saw George hit a Bludger directly towards Snape…oh George, we'd talked about this, we needed to make sure our play was clean so to avoid all penalties against us. A penalty was awarded to Hufflepuff getting the game back on equal grounds, play progressed until I spotted Harry dive and streak pass Snape before holding his hand up in a fist, he'd caught the Snitch.

"We won!" Angelina cheered as we entered the changing rooms once more.

"All we have to do now is win against Ravenclaw and the Cup is ours." Katie added.

"And that isn't going to be an easy game." I stated after quickly changing out of our Quidditch robes and back into our uniforms we met the rest of the team and ventured back to the Common Room where the whole house would be celebrating.