Chapter 11
KATIE'S POV
After we had helped everyone with the sword fighting we decided to do some training ourselves including using our powers. Of course we had to be careful or Percy and Thalia would have knocked the castle down. We made sure that they didn't fight one another so everything didn't end in disaster. I managed to wrap Connor in vines so many time but he only got me with one of his pranks once.
After the week had finished, it was finally the Christmas holidays. We were all staying in the castle over Christmas and so were the golden trio and Ginny. The first week passed quickly, full of present wrapping and stolen kisses here and there. When Christmas Eve finally arrived, all the boys were so excited that it was impossible to make them sit still for more than 1 minute. When it finally got to much for Hermione she suggested that they all go play quidditch, at this Percy, Nico and Thalia (who was acting exactly the same as all the boys) immediately paled and sat down not even fidgeting. I always thought that it was strange that the daughter of Zeus was scared of heights and wondered if she could fly like Jason if she tried. Jason then jumped up and ran around and round begging for someone to teach him how to play.
GINNY'S POV
On Christmas Eve, we were all attempting to wrap Christmas presents when Hermione of all people, suggested that we go play Quidditch. Half of the exchange students then immediately stopped fidgeting but there was one that got ridiculously excited. We all decided to head down to the Quidditch pitch and me, Harry and Ron were going to teach whoever wanted how to play. Leo, Jason, Piper, Connor, Travis, Calypso, Reyna, Clarisse, Katie, Chris and Frank wanted to play (though Frank was a bit nervous about the broom staying up). Harry went and got them all brooms whilst me and Ron tried to start explaining the aims and rules. Barley any of them were listening and finally I ended up yelling, "SHUT IT!!" They became a little quieter but it looked like they were used to being yelled at, I started again. "As there are over 700 fouls in Quidditch, I'm not going to tell you them all. Basically there are seven players in a team, a keeper to stop the quaffle," I held up the quaffle, "from going into those three hoops; three chasers to try to get the quaffle into the three hoops past the keeper; two beaters, they have to try to make the chasers drop the quaffle before they can shoot, they have bats and send either of these to balls," I pointed to the bludgers, "In to the path of the chasers; and finally, the seeker, the seeker only has to worry about this, the golden snitch, they have to catch this, catch this and the game is finished, this is worth 150 points." Harry came back with the brooms and said "So, now that you know what to do we need to split into teams, we'll even out between the teams as we are the only ones to have played before." After much bickering, most of which seemed to be in a different language, or maybe multiple as I'm pretty sure I heard, Latin, maybe Greek (though I can't be sure, I never learnt it), French, Spanish and one language that I had never heard of; they had split into teams. On one team was Reyna, Calypso, Leo, Connor, Travis and they told us Ron and Harry. On the other was Chris, Piper, Katie, Clarisse, Frank, Jason and they told us me. We all got into the air to play friendly. It was actually quite funny, they were all quite good and they all seemed to know exactly what everyone else was going to do just before they did it. In the end, Harry caught the snitch, though he was very close to Jason catching it even though he was on a much faster broom but, my team won because Clarisse knocked out Leo and Calypso so the only chaser they had left was Reyna; every time she got closer to the hoops Frank would send a bludger towards her. In the stands, Percy, Thalia and Hazel were making Nico do cheerleading whilst Annabeth just watched and laughed. As it started to get late, we all headed into the castle feeling a lot like we knew each other better and very tired. It was a great Christmas Eve.