Yours, Fred | f. weasley x reader

Chapter 4: The New Gryffindor Chaser

In November of your fourth year, you stood in the Quidditch changing rooms and stared down at your shaking hands.

Today was your first official match as Gryffindor's newest Chaser, having successfully completed tryouts in September, and you were playing against Slytherin, a notoriously strong team. And as if the day couldn't get any worse, it was a horribly cold day and if your hands weren't already shaking from the nerves coursing through your body, they would've been shaking because of the chill seeping into your bones.

"Alright, Y/N?" Oliver Wood asked you as he and the rest of the team walked into the changing rooms. The team consisted of you, Angelina and Alicia as Chasers, the twins as Beaters, Oliver as the Keeper and Captain, and Harry as the team's Seeker. You were relieved to be close with your teammates already and it made getting up early to practice a bit less painful, but that didn't do much to calm your anxiety now as you stood waiting for the match to start.

You nodded slowly, "just nervous, that's all."

He nodded in understanding and then patted you on the shoulder reassuringly, "that's normal for your first match, but just do what you've been doing in practice these past few weeks and you'll be fine. You've trained hard, Y/N, remember that," then he walked away to speak to Harry who was standing awkwardly by the tent's entrance.

You had trained hard for this, ever since the tryouts at the end of September you'd been practicing almost non-stop. You'd always been fast on a broom and you picked it up very quickly in your Quidditch class in first year. But this time around, you hadn't been given much of a choice but to work harder, and that was when you came to the realisation that Oliver Wood was intense when it came to Quidditch.

You sat down on the bench to finish lacing up your Quidditch boots and you were immediately flanked by your friends. Alicia and Angelina sat on one side, while Fred and George sat on the other, "how are you feeling, Y/N?" Alicia asked you.

You sighed loudly and turned to look at the two girls, "I think I could throw up, to be quite honest with you."

"Please wait until after the match if you can, Y/N. Or even during the match and you could aim for that idiotic Malfoy kid," George said and then he leaned across Fred and patted your knee sympathetically.

"You're a fantastic Chaser, Y/N, you'll smash it. Don't let your nerves get the better of you," Fred said quietly, more to you than to the group, and he bumped your shoulder gently with his.

You nodded and then Oliver clapped his hands to get your attention and the team stood up around him. The twins looked at each other and sighed, "here we go," they said, and you didn't understand what they were complaining about until Oliver launched into his peptalk, which was more of a speech, and by the end of it you were suddenly looking forward to the match starting.

"Alright, Harry?" you asked a few minutes later as you moved to stand next to the younger boy. He nodded, "I'm fine, I still can't believe they have bloody Malfoy as their Seeker."

Things had been tense ever since you all woke up at the crack of dawn to practice one morning, only to be intercepted by the Slytherin team who had written permission from Snape to use the pitch to train their new Seeker, Draco Malfoy. Both teams had sized each other up in the courtyard and you remembered the twins menacingly, but casually, swinging their Beaters' bats onto their shoulders, as if to remind the other team that they had them, and were willing to use them if necessary.

As if things weren't bad enough, the realisation that Lucius Malfoy had bought new brooms for the entire team had made you and the rest of the Gryffindor team livid.

Ron and Hermione had seen the confrontation beginning to unfold and joined the group, and while Malfoy had taunted the Weasleys, Hermione had bravely pointed out that they at least didn't have to buy their way onto the team, unlike him. This only made Malfoy angry and he'd insulted her, causing Ron to whip out his wand and attempt to jinx the Slytherin boy on his broken wand, which had backfired on him. Since that day, things had been even more rocky with the Slytherin team than they had been before.