A few days later, Halley was sitting sandwiched between James and Sephy at the Gryffindor table, along with Peter. It was dinnertime, and the reason why Halley was feeling so sandwiched was because that evening, the Gryffindor Quidditch tryouts were taking place.
"I will hex you, Derwent, if you don't come tonight" Sephy threatened.
"Hex me, then" Halley pouted. "Orson will want to play his last year, and I'm not going to attempt to sabotage his chances."
James then positioned his wand almost lazily underneath Halley's chin.
"Last chance" he warned. Halley shook her head and refused to budge.
"Langlock" James said simply.
At that point, Remus, Samantha and Sirius bustled in, Samantha with an armful of books, Sirius with a satchel slung over his shoulder, and Remus with suspiciously pinkish fingers.
"What happened to you?" Sephy asked the young werewolf, who bit his lip awkwardly.
"Acromantula blood" he sighed. "Bit tricky to strain."
"Persuaded Halley to try out for Quidditch yet?" Sirius asked James, as Halley, now with her tongue glued firmly to the roof of her mouth by James's langlock hex, glared murderously at them all.
"Take that as a no" Remus laughed, as Halley narrowed her eyes into slits and pouted.
"It's a good thing we decided to get everything from Slughorn, in the end" Samantha sighed, dumping her books down beside her as she sat. "It's a lot less stressful having everything to hand."
"And we did only take the bare minimum" Sephy agreed.
"Let's hope Slughorn doesn't work out what we're up to" James sighed, smirking at Halley, still hexed.
"It's Slughorn" Sirius laughed. "When does he ever notice anything?"
"True" Samantha sighed, looking a little happier and tucking into a helping of shepherd's pie "When's Quidditch tryouts tonight?"
"Six" Sephy replied, through a mouthful of lasagne she had just piled onto her plate.
"Halley, you should go try out" Sirius tried to reason with the still-stuck-silent girl. She looked petulantly at him, but he carried on regardless.
"It'll be good for Gryffindor to have a new Keeper. Orson's tactics are getting a bit worn thin. People aren't as scared of him anymore. Anyway, you might not even get in..."
"Pffft!" James scoffed, flapping a forkful of carrots at his best friend. "Halley Derwent not get on the Quidditch team? Sirius, you're mad!"
"She is very good..."Remus put in, agreeing with James.
"Yeah" Sephy added. "Remember that time we were all over at James's for Easter, and we entered that local tournament? Smashed their heads in, we did. Halley didn't let in a single goal. From anyone. Even that retired guy from the Chudley Cannons had a crack at her. Nobody can get a Quaffle past Halley Derwent!"
Halley was blushing now despite the Langlock hex, and as Remus muttered the counter-curse much to James's annoyance she quickly brushed off all of Sephy's proclamations.
"They were all really bad teams, Seph. Like, really bad-"
"Like a team full of me's bad" Samantha chipped in helpfully, to chuckles from around the table. Samantha's strengths certainly were not on a broomstick, and in their friendly Easter Quidditch games that fault had come rather spectacularly to light (They had essentially been playing with two Chasers).
"Let Orson play his last year" Halley reasoned. James sighed.
"Alright. But if we lose this year, Slytherin will be unbeaten for a decade. And I'm blaming you, Halley Derwent, if that happens."
Halley pouted at him.
"I might try out next year" she said stubbornly. "That's all you're getting."
"Come on, Porcupine" James called, sticking a sausage roll in his pocket and clambering up, Sephy behind him, snaffling an apple from the bowl.
They ate their snacks on their way down to the Quidditch grounds, chatting along the way. They had changed before dinner to save time, and as they got their brooms out of the storage they were the first ones there.
"Do you think Halley'll ever play, Potter?" Sephy asked, as they walked out onto the pitch. It was getting to sunset, and the shadows were growing long, the stands around the two teenagers bathed in gold.
"Well" James sighed, leaning philosophically on his broom. "Nashville's in his seventh year now, too, isn't he? They'll need a new captain next year. And, assuming we both make the team, which I'm sure I will, that gives it a 2 out of 7 chance of it being one of us two. We can just put her straight on the team, then. Fly?"
"Sure" Sephy smiled. "There's a bag of tennis balls down by the store. I can hit them, and you can catch them."
"Standard Beater-Seeker drill" James smirked, whipping out his wand. "Accio ball-bag!"
The bag of balls soared from the store and landed neatly in James's hand. Sephy waved her own wand, and a Beater's bat rocketed free and nearly hit her in the face.
"Nice try" James said mockingly. "You'll be better with practice, Pompadour."
Sephy scowled at him and kicked off, bat in hand. James kicked off from the ground also, and the two of them circled in the air, James throwing the bag of balls to Sephy, who hung them on the end of her broomstick.
Sephy then pulled a ball free and, as James circled away to a sensible distance, whacked it hard towards him with all the force of a small girl who had been an excellent Beater for two years prior.
"Sheesh, Pterodactyl!" James yelled. "Hve you been working on that swing or have you been working on that swing?"
"My parents took me to America for a bit of the summer!" Sephy shouted back, smacking another ball slightly short of James, who had to dive to catch it.
"We were staying with Muggles!" Sephy added. "And they taught me how to play baseball!"
She slammed another tennis ball flat hard at James's head, and he ended up having to duck out of the way.
"Could you not aim it at my face?" he yelled. "I'm supposed to catch them, not stop them killing me!"
"Sorry!" Sephy giggled, swerving right a bit and aiming for the stands to James's left. He darted off after it, catching it neatly and pulling up short before he hit the stands. Sephy shrugged praisingly before smacking another one high and to her own left, sending James speeding the other way to catch it. They carried on like this for another fifteen or so minutes, before a piercing whistle brought them both back down to earth. The current Gryffindor Quidditch captain, Jake Nashville, a slightly squat, toughly built seventh year Beater with a face not too dissimilar to a monkey's, was standing amongst a small gaggle of potential team members, and all of them were watching James and Sephy as they floated meekly down to earth.
"Well?" Nashville said, briskly and concisely, as despite his slight Neanderthal look he really was remarkably clever. "Shall we get started? Chasers first."
James rolled his eyes at Sephy, and the two of them retired to the stands, brooms in hand, to sit quietly together and ruthlessly judge all of the Chasers that attempted to try out for the team.
"Who's the little one?" James muttered to Sephy. "Looks like a second year."
"It is!" Sephy exclaimed. "I think it's Luke French's little brother. You know, the sixth year?"
"Props to him" James snorted. "But he's not got a chance. Not against Bleu and the Carter twins."
He did of course, mean Colton Bleu, the sixth year who seemed to be soft on Halley, who had taken the previous year off Quidditch to work on his OWLs. The Carter twins were two tiny little fourth-year girls who both reminded Sephy a bit of a waif. They looked like they'd snap in half if the wind blew too strongly, but the reality was that they were both solid little pebbles, and slightly scary sometimes too, as when the eldest twin, Sadie, had taken a Bludger square to the arm the previous season, breaking the bone and almost making her fall off her broom, the younger, Florence, had played the end of that match so ruthlessly that Gryffindor had won by almost one hundred and seventy points even though the other team (Ravenclaw) had caught the Snitch.
"Good to see Bleu back" Sephy smiled, perhaps not as warmly as she could have. "Shame about old Jonesie, though."
"He's doing the right thing" James assured her with a wry smirk. "I mean, some people obviously need two attempts to pass their NEWTs."
Sephy punched him.
"Jones is still the best Chaser ever. He worked so well with the Carters last year. And Bleu the year before" she pointed out, snubbed.
"Shame he's not as good academically as he is at Quidditch" James said smugly, but when Sephy whipped her wand out he sobered up-a little.
They watched the Chaser trials keenly, and laughed as the Carter twins dominated everyone, and marvelled at Bleu's seemingly newfound swerving technique.
"Bloody brilliant, that" James commented to Sephy, as the cold wind whipped their hair around their faces. "I don't think he's been successfully tackled once."
As he spoke, though, one of the Carter twins rather violently tackled Bleu, shoving him so hard that he couldn't swerve, and as he was forced to drop the Quaffle that he was carrying, the other twin scooped it up from below.
"I stand corrected" James added blandly, to snickering from Sephy.
"Those twins are ridiculous" she sighed. "I don't see how we're going to lose this year."
As they watched, Nashville seemed to call the Chasers down from the air, and then opened a box of Beater's bats while the Chasers, tired, trailed off.
"You're up, Pterodactyl" James sighed pensively, leaning forward on the stands "Go give them hell. And don't aim over here."
Sephy snorted and grabbed her broom, scrambling down the stands and out onto the pitch with about six other potential tryouts. Nashville was a Beater, so that was one spot gone, but looking at her competition Sephy couldn't help but feel slightly confident. She put her broom down and whipped her hair into a high ponytail, before taking a bat out of the box and testing its weight.
"Have we been given new bats?" she asked Nashville plainly, as she swung it about a few times.
"Funnily enough, we have" Nashville replied, smiling down at his previous team-mate, as she was even smaller than he was. "It seems McGonagall doesn't want Slytherin to be unbeaten for a decade, either."
Sephy wiggled her eyebrows and steadied her broom in one hand, and her bat in the other. She wasn't about to get complacent.
Over in the stands, James was once again marveling at how tiny Persephone Cardale really was. He could see her chatting to Nashville, who in himself must be under six feet tall, and Sephy barely reached his shoulders. She also looked tiny compared to the six monstrosities standing next to her trying out for Beater. All six were taller than Nashville, and all six were probably sixth or seventh year boys, James reckoned, and, sadly, all six seemed to have forgotten who out of the seven of them had been an excellent Gryffindor Beater for two years prior. But, he reminded himself. Sometimes being a Beater wasn't to do with height and muscles. Sometimes, James smirked behind his coat sleeve, as three Bludgers were let loose in the arena and the seven potential Beaters shot up into the air after them, sometimes it was to do with being a small fifth year girl named Persephone Cardale.
Crunch. James winced as Sephy slammed a Bludger hard at one of the more cumbersome of her opponents, seemingly knowing he wouldn't be able to move in time and from his place in the stands he saw the spurt of blood from the boy's face.
Sephy wasn't playing fair.
She dipped gracefully to the left, allowing a shot from one of the other boys to fly wide, before spinning and arriving alongside it, changing its course towards someone else's face with a crack of her bat. James sighed, as the first boy floated down to earth, holding his bleeding nose. Nashville offered him a big tissue and sent him on his way, although James swore even from his far off viewpoint that the Gryffindor captain was smirking.
Sephy dominated the trial, nobody, it seemed, could get a Bludger at her, and even if they did, she usually sent it right back at them before they could dodge away. When she touched down at pitch level again, panting a little, Nashville came over and shook her hand jubilantly.
"Good show, Cardale. I don't think there's much doubt I'll see you at practice" he grinned. Sephy grinned back, dropping her bat in the box and shouldering her broom, strutting back over to James in a way only Sephy Cardale could. James smirked at her as she settled back next to him on the stands.
"Not bad, Pincushion."
"Shut up, Potter, I was fantastic and you know it."
"Do I?"
Sephy punched him again.
Seeker trials were next, and in Sephy's opinion, it was surprisingly close. There was a young third year boy who seemed to be pretty nifty with a broomstick, and even James had to admit afterwards that the kid knew his stuff. But James, being bigger and with longer arms, still appeared to put on the best show, and then he and Sephy put away their brooms and began their trek back up to the castle, leaving Nashville to find his Keeper without their constant critique. It was beginning to get dark, and the two of them strolled into Gryffindor common room to find the rest of their gang had claimed one of the windowseats, and had teamed up, boys against girls, in a game of Wizard's Chess.
It was an even match when James and Sephy arrived, but after about half an hour of heated tactical discussion and intense mass destruction, Samantha managed to direct a couple of lone pawns to box in the boys' king, and the little white pawns had great fun smashing the big red king half to death.