InsaneJournal

"This is bollocks," Gwen announced bitterly, scuffing at the dirt with her foot.

It was two weeks until the final game of the season and barring the untimely mass murder of the entire Ravenclaw team, Slytherin was going to land atop of the standings – again. Once was bad enough; after Gryffindor's crushing loss last season, she'd spent the entire year goading the opposition with promises of annihilation, confident in her ability to single-handedly outscore them all. The snitch might have been worth 150 points, but what really distinguished the top of the leaderboard from the bottom was goals. Gwen could think of no better position than Chaser to make the serpents regret their victory. She was a phenom, after all.

Unfortunately, their fearless leader lacked the same dedication to their support, (recklessly?) attempting to balance NEWTs and Quidditch. To Gwen, his split attention was positively unconscionable. What business did he have being Captain anyway? It wasn't like he was going pro. She might have only had three years of official Quidditch under her belt, but she'd been practicing with one of the greatest players to ever live since she was yay high. She'd known it would be her future a long time ago – and if they ever gave her a bloody chance to show her stuff, the Harpies would take one look at her and ply her with broomsticks.

"If he cared at all, he'd be out there this second, trying to devise some miracle comeback." The odds were astronomical, but at least they'd go out with their heads held high.

Brutus shrugged. He didn't like losing, either, but he didn't get as worked up about it as Gwen did. Maybe it was just that, as a Beater, he didn't have as much to do with the actual scoring as she did. Or maybe it was just that as long as he was doing alright out there he didn't worry much about how the rest of the team was doing.

"It's not just him," he pointed out. "The rest of the team could be out here too, with or without him. Like us." He finished tweaking the alignment of his tail twigs and threw a leg over his broomstick. "Beat you to the goalpost," he suddenly said, kicking off before Gwen had a moment to respond. Getting a head start was his only chance of actually beating her.

If there was one thing that infuriated her more than purist rubbish, it was Quidditch players who didn't take their sport seriously. Quidditch was her life. To watch others shirk their duty in the name of schoolwork, romance, or general laziness was a severe test of her threshold for tolerance. She had half a mind to drag them out to the Pitch by the ear. Merlin knew it would have served them right, given how avidly they'd pursued a spot on the team at the expense of less talented, but more dedicated individuals.

What spared them from such an unenviable fate was not mercy, but distraction. Never one to turn down a test of her skill, she deserted the ground for the sky, strong thighs tightening around the the broomstick as she crouched down to straighten her form and increase her speed. Before long, she was even with him and in danger of nosing ahead. He may have had the benefit of a head start, but Gwen was confident in her ability to compensate for the advantage with her superior speed.

Brutus glimpsed her coming up on him in his peripheral vision, and he gripped his broomstick tighter, bending low and trying to get that extra burst of speed. She was faster, and her size was to her advantage, but he wasn't above trying to use his to his advantage, and he steered himself in her direction as he accelerated, aiming to edge her out and pull ahead, knowing that if they bumped he'd recover best.

Mindful of Brutus's proximity and the danger of a crash, Gwen put her ingenuity to use. A sharp roll spun her upside down, successfully swooping beneath him to evade a collision that was undoubtedly intended to knock her off her broom. Unfortunately, when she swung right side up again, she overshot. Misjudging her velocity, she found herself holding onto her broom for dear life from below, ponytail pointing toward the field as she muttered a series of disgruntled expletives under her breath.

When Gwen disappeared from his peripheral vision Brutus was confused, and even risked losing some speed to glance over to where she once had been. He looked to the other side then to see Gwen in her precarious position, and he let out a triumphant laugh as he put on one more burst of speed and shot ahead to the goalpost. "Alright, Morgan?" he called ahead as he quickly looped around and flew back toward her, ready to lend a hand or just watch with amusement as she struggled to right herself.

The urge to brood was strong, but Gwen grudgingly accepted the offered hand, albeit mostly because she didn't want to risk embarrassing herself in his presence. She'd had enough humiliation for one day, thank you very much. "It was a clever try," She insisted stubbornly, firm in her belief that she'd have beat him to the goalpost in a whirl of grace if she'd pulled it off. Even with her obvious failure, however, her chagrin was relatively short-lived. It wasn't like he'd mocked her to Wales and back. Besides, what was the point of being an athlete if not to take risks? You'd never win if you played it safe, however numerous the misfires it took to get it right.

"Mmhmm," was all Brutus said, letting his skeptical expression do the talking for him, then took off for another loop around the goalpost, halfway round making an attempt at Gwen's barrel roll himself. He didn't pull it off with any grace to speak of, and there was a long moment when he was definitely afraid he was going to be stuck upside down himself, like a pig on a spit, but he managed to swing himself back upright. Beaters were rarely called upon to execute the flashier maneuvers, so Brutus felt justified in looking smug. "So d'you want to run some drills or something?" he asked. Without his bat and bludgers he never really knew what to work on, and their captain rarely bothered pushing him out of his comfort zone.

Gwen rolled her eyes at his blatant grandstanding. So what if he could manage it? Not only did he have the advantage of not performing the move mid-race, but his bulky frame made it much easier to execute without falling prey to the force of his own speed. Needless to say, she wasn't all that impressed, but that also meant she wasn't irritated him for mirroring her move. Brutus was a show-off, Rufus was a charmer, and Moody was a delinquent. What else was new?

"Why don't you give Keeping a shot?" She challenged him, casting a glance over her shoulder at the Quidditch equipment below – namely the practice Quaffles. "Merlin knows O'Rourke would never expect it of you, but he hasn't got an ounce of strategy in that boring head of his."

"Keeping?" Brutus repeated, sounding doubtful. "What strategy is that, bore Brutus to death? If that's your strategy I'll take O'Rourke's, thanks." He was antsy, wanting to keep moving, and he started flying in circles around her as they talked. "Come on, let's race again or something. I'll let you win this time," he added, with an obnoxious grin.

"When I'm Captain, you'll learn to appreciate the wisdom of my strategy," Gwen retorted confidently, head held high and proud. She couldn't quite pull off the snob look, however, and soon met his grin with a smirk of her own. "Then we're in agreement. I'll let you lose." Without a word, she zoomed toward the opposite end of the field, deliberately taunting him with fancy loops and rolls when she could have easily flown straight for the hoops and beat him by a mile.

“When you’re—?” was all Brutus managed to sputter before Gwen took off. He hovered, dumbstruck, for a moment before bending low and racing after her. The thought of Gwen as captain—as his captain--had never crossed his mind, but admittedly, he’d never really given this much thought before. Brutus didn’t think ahead much, in general. So it wasn’t that he’d been counting on being captain himself, particularly, but… Gwen? By the time he caught up to her at the other end of the pitch, she’d soared past the hoops already, and he had an uncomfortable stitch in his side from bending so low in racing position. He made a face as he sat up and put his hand to his side. “You think you’ll be captain?” he asked, when he’d caught his breath, his tone somewhere between baffled and oddly accusatory.


Immensely pleased with her ability to lollygag and still beat him to the post, Gwen flashed him an unrepentant smile. Triumph radiated from her very core, bolstering the confidence that had prompted the declaration of her imminent promotion to Gryffindor Captain. It was wishful thinking, to a degree, but she whole-heartedly believed that she'd displayed the proper leadership qualities in her three years on the team to warrant the title. When he reached the hoops with strange expression on his face, she said as much.

"Of course I do," She answered him matter-of-factory, casually hovering at his side. "They won't pick someone straight from tryouts, and when it comes to strategy, I'm the best we've got."

Brutus's expression was as stormy as hers was sunny, and his scowl only deepened when he realized that what she said was true. She was better at strategy. He put more thought into his plays than most people gave him credit for, and his marks in Flying & Quidditch were-- well, far and away better than any of his other classes-- but Gwen sort of had a way of looking at the bigger picture that sometimes escaped him. But if he were captain, he would learn. His role wouldn't just be to go out there and beat the hell out of some bludgers, it would be to help everybody, to make the whole team better, to be a leader. And even though he'd never really thought about it much before, suddenly he wanted it so hard it hurt.

"There's more to being captain than strategy," he countered, none too quick with his response. "There's-- you've got to be able to make everybody listen to you, and do what you say. I could do that." Even to him that sounded weak, but he stubbornly stuck out his chin and gave her a challenging look.

"You?" If Brutus was surprised by her declaration of intent, she was doubly so by his. Was he serious? He was a great Beater and had the potential to be a marvel on the professional (and even national) stage, but the words "captain" and "Brutus Scrimgeour" flowed together about as well as oil and vinegar. She thought it so absurd, in fact, that it took her a few seconds to realize that he wasn't joking.

"You're going out for Captain," She repeated, trying not to look as dubious as she sounded. "You are going to lead Gryffindor to our first Quidditch Cup victory in years."

Her expression wasn't unfriendly, but her skeptical words cut him deep, and they hurt all the more coming from Gwen, who knew him as well as anybody-- or at least he'd thought. Why didn't anybody ever give him any credit? Why was that apparently such a ridiculous idea, Brutus Scrimgeour, Quidditch Captain?

"Why not me?" he asked plaintively, before realizing he might not want to hear an answer. "I know just as much about Quidditch as you do. I work as hard as you do. I'm as good as you are. And you really think you can control a whole team of blokes like me?" He lifted his chin defiantly again, but this time there was almost a hint of a threat in the gesture.

Had Brutus stopped with his oddly earnest lament, Gwen would have been hard-pressed to give him an honest answer. As far as she was concerned, there were a dozen reasons why Brutus was a poor fit for Captain, but she didn't honestly want to hurt his feelings. She supposed that was always the dilemma when a close friend asked you for a critique; did you lie to spare their feelings, or tell them the truth in the interest of remaining honest and trustworthy?

It was therefore a great mercy that Brutus tipped the scales for her. By becoming cocky, defiant, and borderline insulting, he made it very easy for her to spell it out for him. "You're a good, knowledgeable player, but you don't work half as hard as I do," Gwen replied bluntly. "You don't log as many practice hours, you aren't as focused on the Pitch, and you haven't got a level-enough head. You're right; I can't control a team of blokes just like you, but I don't have to. There's only one bloke exactly like you, and that's you."

This was usually the part where somebody got punched. Nobody talked to Brutus like that, made him so angry he was shaking, he was literally seeing red, and escaped without a black eye or a bloody nose to show for it. Nobody except for his sisters, and, apparently, Gwen. He gripped his broomstick so tightly his knuckles went white and he just glared at her, his words failing him, like they always did. He just wanted to throw something back at her that would hurt just as much, and he couldn’t come up with a damned thing. Except, finally, “I won’t be on any team with a girl for a captain.” He gave her one more defiant look before giving his broomstick a jerk, spinning to face away from her and fly for the ground, with all the maturity of his fifteen years.

Honesty, apparently, left something to be desired. Gwen hovered stock-still in shock as Brutus snarled the words and flew off, stunned by both his parting words and the severity of his reaction. Good-natured ribbing was a natural part of their friendship, but he had never subjected her to outright venom. Though she thought herself entirely in the right to point out his weaknesses after he'd provoked her, she couldn't deny that his insinuation had struck her dead in the heart. Brutus might have been a bit of a brute, but was their brute. As her fingers unconsciously curled tighter around her broom, she wondered what hurt more: the implication that she was ill-suited to be his captain, or the fear that his swift departure was a sign of things to come.