flustered
—— 1983 summer ——
"Fancy flying out there today, Sykes," she heard a voice behind her say. She was at the back of the entrance hall in Bodmin Moor stadium, hefting the door of the broom cupboard open with her foot as she studied its contents for a quick splintered broom fix. The result of a bludger attack courtesy of the voice's Beater partner, in fact.
Twisting her head, she regarded Seth Wadcock coolly, gathering he'd just come from the changing room himself as he was no longer in his team robes. Arista didn't bother to wonder why he was lingering, as she was still clothed in sweaty purple robes and had just had her spirits thoroughly trounced in a long performance review by her mother. Her sour expression must have been quite evident, as Seth rolled his eyes. "Don't fret, Princess, I'm not asking you out on a date."
"I wouldn't care even if you were," Arista smiled saccharine-sweet at him.
He hefted his bag up to his shoulder and cocked his head at her. "Although while I have you here—"
"You don’t," she sang, facing the cupboard again.
"—you owe me another W.Q.W. seminar."
She shuddered delicately, remembering the abomination that had been the last one. "I owe you nothing of the sort."
Stepping nearer, he crossed him arms. "I think you're being a little unreasonable. Last time wasn't as bad as you—" Listening to him with only half an ear, Arista picked up on a much more troubling sound further down the hall. Once footsteps sounded closer and closer to where they were standing, she grabbed Seth by the scruff of his robes and hauled them both bodily into the cramped cupboard, banging the door shut.
"Well," he drawled, "I've got to admit, Princess, I didn't think you had it in you, but I have been known to inflame—"
"Shh!" she ordered, flapping her hands at him as she peered through the crack between the door and the frame.
Arista had heard Catriona McCormack's unmistakable voice just around the corner, but she wasn't sure who was accompanying her. Surely not Miles, not after—well, everything, but—no, the dulcet tones of their most esteemed manager, Mr Oglethorpe, revealed him to be following Catriona like a faithful lapdog. The snatches of conversation Arista could hear were of a thorough dissection of the match by Catriona (more than one comment directed at her, no less!), and Oglethorpe furiously tripping over himself trying to appease her. Arista bristled.
"Who are we hiding from?" Seth mock-whispered as he craned his head above hers and looked through the crack as well.
Scoffing, Arista hastened to say, "We are not hiding from—" but stopped as she recalled exactly where they were and how they had ended up there. She turned back to the view with an indignant sniff. "Catriona McCormack."
Seth gave a murmur of understanding, and she could feel him step a little bit closer, bracing a hand on the wall for balance. "The prestigious old alumna, eh? I've heard she's a right bitch."
"She's—" Twitchy as Arista was feeling, she couldn't really defend Catriona, not when she'd called the witch much worse and was currently hiding from her in a broom cupboard with her opponent. "Well, yes, she is." She added primly, "But I don't approve of that sort of language."
Although she couldn't see his expression, she suspected Seth was grinning at her. "Duly noted," he said, his voice just devoid enough of teasing to make her suspicious. As she turned to glare at him, Seth's face was illuminated just enough by the light spilling in from the crack to see his sly but somehow inoffensive smirk. It was both appalling and unfair how nice his eyes were, and Arista couldn't help but notice that the two of them were awfully close to one another, and though you could not pay her money to admit it, or anything, she just might— "I would so hate to offend you," he said in a voice that sounded very low and hoarse as he looked down at her, and so she leaned in closer, almost involuntarily, and—
Arista jerked her head back and turned around, feeling her cheeks flush uncontrollably. Hopping hippogriffs, she'd nearly just kissed him. It wasn't her fault that he was an unfortunately, strangely, somehow dynamic wizard, and just because she felt flutterings in certain parts— "I can't stand her," she whispered abruptly in a choked voice. Seizing the distraction, she continued, "She's almost worse than my mother, who is prowling around the stadium as we speak—"
"Your mum could walk in on us?" Seth asked. "Well, if that isn't the fastest way to lose a stiffy, I don't—"
"A—what!" Arista shrieked, whirling towards him. With a strangled intake of air, she rather violently assailed him with the most convenient weapon her hands could locate: her broom.
"—OW! It was a joke, I was joking—" but Arista was too busy smacking him with the business end of her broom to listen or care. "One more, and I am going to take that thing away from you," Seth warned in a low voice, reaching his hand out to pluck the weapon from her decidedly deadly grasp.
Tossing her hair back out of her face, she snarled, "Just try! I am so—tired of you—and your—GIVE IT BACK!"
They tussled quite furiously for a minute, and Arista was just getting it into her head to use her teeth, when all too suddenly, the sound of footsteps and voices echoed far too closely to their cupboard. Just as she made to relinquish her hold on the broom and spring away, Seth's hand fastened around her wrist and the door to the cupboard was wrenched wide open.
"Ah."
Catriona McCormack stood outside with Oglethorpe just behind her. Her flinty gaze swept from the top of Arista's dishevelled hair to her flushed face and rather mussed clothing, all the way to her arms, which were locked around an also flushed and panting Seth Wadcock. No one spoke for a millisecond that honestly stretched into eternity, before Catriona's expression morphed into a polite sneer. "So sorry to have interrupted," she said snidely, slamming the door shut.
For a heartbeat, Arista just stood there, truly expecting the floor would choose this very second to open up and swallow her whole. When the moment passed and she was sadly still standing, she leapt into a flurry of action.
"No!" she shouted, throwing herself at the door. "No, it's not—I don't—!" Her hand groped blindly for the doorknob, but it wouldn't budge. "Oh, no." Arista rattled it viciously before banging on the door, fully in a panic. "No, no, no, no! OPEN! SOMEONE—OPEN THIS—" But even if there was someone to hear, her wails were drowned out by the sound of uproarious laughter. Her wand—she needed her wand, which she'd—dropped—how was this even possible?
"I hate you," she hissed at Seth, who was currently leaning against the door, incapacitated in his mirth. Picking up her abandoned weapon, she whacked him with it as hard as she could manage. "HATE!"
"You're the one who dragged us in here," he pointed out, barely putting up a token resistance as he was still racked with the occasional chuckle.
She deafened them both with a primal scream.
scared
—— 1983 fall ——
They had been neck and neck for the snitch.
From her circling above, Arista had seen Broadmoor peel away out from his crawl along the other end of the stadium in a dive towards midfield. She was further away, but she was faster. Spotting the Snitch was sheer luck, it was all in the catching that the real skills lay. Sometimes the parasitic approach was the fastest way to get results. The players that also knew this approach tried any amount of feinting or diversions to distract or derail her, but she was an unparalleled flier.
As they raced head on for the little gold ball, she'd honestly thought Broadmoor had it. Just for a moment. She was fast, but perhaps not fast enough, perhaps she had disastrously misjudged the distance. Her only hope to regain ground was that he'd fear they would collide and neither of them would get the snitch, and hopefully begin to pull back. She angled her broom to increase her speed.
Just a bit further, just a bit further… Arista could see its wings. Their hands must have been within three feet of one another when she saw Broadmoor suddenly rear up.
And then… Arista saw him crumple, she saw the bludger rebounding from his back, but her hand was already reaching out for the snitch. She was watching everything in slow motion, but it was as if she had no control over her body in that moment as it prepared to roll to her left to avoid colliding with him. Even as Arista watched him fall down, down, down, as she rolled mid-air, she could feel her fingers curl around the fluttering body of the snitch.
The crowd had already been in an uproar, but the ending of the game only elevated their excitement. She did not see, hear, or feel any of it as she slowly spiralled to the ground, still clutching the struggling ball within her gloved hand.
Once on her feet, Arista slipped out from the bustle and excitement of her rowdy team-mates and rowdier crowds, and headed straight for the changing rooms when she already began to feel her lungs failing her.
How she remembered the way there, she would never know, but she walked unseeingly from the field to the Pride's changing room in the Exmoor stadium, telling herself she was fine. She knew what this was. This was a panic attack. She had had them before. Arista was not actually back on the field. She had not just plummeted more than a hundred feet from her broom. There were no bits of broomstick jammed into her back.
Closing the door behind her and resting against it just for a moment, she winced. There was no reason for there to be a burning back there. She'd felt only twinges in the last few months. But memory was a powerful thing, and her mind was shocked into hotly focusing on the ugly network of scars that spider-webbed along her spine.
Gritting her teeth, she stumbled forward to the rows of lockers. A cold shower. All she needed was a cold shower, and possibly a strong drink. Two strong drinks. She would be fine. She was fine. Arista took a deep breath and began to unlace her gloves, but her hands were shaking too hard for her to grip with them. "No," she groaned, screwing her eyes up tightly as her hands squeezed into fists. "No, no."
It had come out of nowhere.
Arista was used to being fouled. She learned quickly that escaping the bulk of the damage was in her best interest, and relying on her quick senses and fancy manoeuvring saw to that. But she had earned more than her share of bruises, broken bones, and nasty unseatings.
It hadn't been much of a match. The Wanderers weren't playing to their strengths that day, and had already fallen quite behind. She didn't know their actual score, but Arista doubted whether or not even catching the snitch at this point would win them the game. It was easy scoring for Pride, and she liked that. The Wigtown Seeker was on the other side of the pitch, in the fray of the game, but Arista knew better. She drifted in large circles from a high vantage point above the other players, spiralling slowly down towards them and then up again. As she neared Pride's goals, she caught the tell-tale glimmer of gold towards midfield, fluttering high above, and so she set off for it.
She was rocketing up toward the snitch one minute, and the next she was falling. It had happened so swiftly, she hadn't even felt the impact until the plummet had begun. Two bludgers from opposing directions. One missed her, though the force of its impact cracked the handle of her broomstick in two, and the other half fell away. The second bludger, however, found its target squarely in the small of her back. There was a loud crack, and Arista had been knocked off her broom, hurtling straight for the ground.
There hadn't been a chance for anyone to do anything. Not many people saw the bludgers on account of an impressive goal being scored. She'd even had a hand on her broom in an attempt to pull herself up, but it snagged over the splintered end and she dropped the broom in reflex. She fell the rest of the way like a stone, 'til she met the ground in a deadly crunch and lay utterly still.
"Sykes!" she could hear in the distance. But Arista was too dazed to comprehend it, lying there on the ground with legs twisted at strange and unnatural angles, and her back on fire until she couldn't feel it any more, feel any of it any more. She stared blankly upwards, not even noticing as the referee and the team managers, her team-mates, and the others gathered in a ring around her before the Medi-wizards could break them apart. "Sykes." Footsteps pounded closer, and unpleasant oaths were sworn. She couldn't even feel her legs, she couldn't feel—
Slap!
With a start, Arista gasped deeply for breath, choking and shuddering as she swayed on her feet. Were it not for Miles clutching her shoulders in a death grip, she would have wilted straight to the floor.
"I thought you said they were better," he said gruffly, releasing her only marginally as she coughed.
"They were," she said scratchily, looking dazed. "I mean, they had been, but that was—it was exactly like when I had—" Arista swallowed thickly and her head lolled to the side. Speaking about it would only bring back a stronger memory. Instead, she asked, "Do you think he is going to be all right?"
For one brief second, she could see hesitation flit across his eyes. "He'll be fine," Miles replied abruptly. "Besides, he got us the snitch, no?"
Others might have taken that for the callousness it sounded like, but she understood how it was meant. The taunt grounded her. Re-focused her. Reminded her she was not lying on a cot and being restrained by Medi-wizards. There were no more hard months of rehabilitation ahead of her. No uncertainty if she even could be rehabilitated.
"I got us the snitch," she corrected numbly.
He nodded once in a curt fashion and released her, backing away. "Yes, you did."
Confident that the worst was over, and it was, Miles stepped into the other row. She knew she didn't have long before her other team-mates filed in, and she didn't want them seeing her like this. But her legs turned to jelly once more, and she couldn't help herself slowly sliding down against the lockers. She looked blindly at her hands on her knees, where little half-moon welts rose on the palm from when her immaculately manicured nails had shredded it.
"I got us the snitch," Arista repeated hollowly.
