Silent Pitch

Shiloh Adlar
Writer, Ravenclaw

The pitch has been rather silent since last I updated you on our activities. The Ravenclaw Quidditch Team recently took on the Gryffindor Quidditch Team minus one of their captains, and this captain is happy to report that the team did not fail her in her absence. Due to unforeseen circumstances, I was unable to play in the match and instead had to watch from the sidelines. A simple injury of hitting my head too hard, when I realized I forgot to do something, left me quite dizzy, and flying on a broom at the kinds of speeds that I do would not be good. The Hogwarts nurse benched me for the game.

Needless to say, snitch was not a complete loss, as the Gryffindor seeker disappeared at some point in the Forbidden Forest at the beginning of the year and never made their way back out. No need to worry, however. Our groundskeeper is dutifully searching for them day and night as the Forest allows.

Instead of our usual practices, due to everyone cramming in a lot of studying before our final exams, which will be happening sooner than we all realized, some of us decided to participate in a fun and relatively new event: a snitch tournament. Members of the Ravenclaw team fared quite well in the beginning rounds with some making it to tiebreakers before the semi finals. Unfortunately, only one of us made it through to that round, and that was me, Shiloh Adlar, seeker extraordinaire. At least I would say that if my inner niffler was not constantly distracted by shiny things on the pitch.

During the semi-final match against veteran Slytherin Quidditch Team player Cody Lewis, I found that I had a hard time paying attention to where the snitch was at. Cody decided, knowing my love of such things, to bring some of the diamonds Tarma, of the Hufflepuff Quidditch Team, stole from me last month. He had them somehow stuck to his uniform, probably a sticking spell of sorts, and my eyes kept wandering over to them glimmering in the light from the sun.

I really should learn to control my inner niffler because Cody found the snitch and grasped it in his hands before I had the chance to even turn my broom around and begin following him again. It was a difficult loss, as now all of Ravenclaw Quidditch Team has been removed from the tournament, but there are still the regular season games to play, and I told Cody that I demanded a rematch with fair play and that meant no shinies whatsoever. He has obliged my request, and I look forward to seeing him at our next match with SQT.

In the meantime, newest member of the team, Maxim Trevelyan has kept up with his flying practice, somehow having more free time in his schedule than all of RQT combined, and after winning the MVP for our last game against HQT, I would expect nothing less. The game was intense with a snitch and quaffle win for Ravenclaw, Pavel, Shadow and Kendra chasing beautifully and Vanessa batting those bludgers as hard as she could swing. Our line of defense kept HQT from scoring too many goals, also thanks to Arielle our fabulous keeper, and our offense kept the quaffle going through those hoops. As for me, Katelin was kind enough to not pull the shiny trick on me, and I was able to stay focused on the snitch for a capture.

As the snitch tournament comes to a close, and we prepare for our next match against Gryffindor, Ravenclaw will continue flying on our brooms, as often as we can fit it into our study schedules, so we can pull off another marvelous victory.