spectator fall 2025 racing Heated Onlookers

The sun had no right to be so warm in October. Cade shaded his eyes with one hand as he made his way up to the crowded stands, his scarf slung loosely around his neck and the blue and bronze banner rolled under one arm. The wooden steps creaked beneath his boots, sticky with old toffee and broom polish. Somewhere below, the teams were already taking practice laps.

He found an empty spot halfway up, close enough to feel the rush of air when a racer banked too sharply, but far enough to see the entire track. He settled there, breathing in the scent of grass and sun-warmed robes. The warmth was almost summery, and a few students had shed their cloaks entirely, laughing as they waved house pennants.

Cade unfurled his banner, the fabric catching the light in a shimmer of bronze letting: GO EAGLES! He had streaks of blue paint across his cheeks, unevenly applied in a rush by the dormitory mirror that morning. He leaned forward on the rail as the announcer's voice boomed through the stands, heart thudding with a thrill he hadn't expected-- half pride, half pure excitement.

It struck Cade, as he leaned forward over the railing, that this was his first broom race. He'd passed the Quidditch pitch countless times and heard the cheers drift through the grounds, but he'd never stopped to see the tracks. Now with the roar of the crowd, he began to understand. It wasn't just flying, it was combat. It was almost like watching a dueling club match, but the danger was multiplied tenfold. One mistake here meant not a lost point, but a fifty foot drop.

His gaze caught on a familiar flash of hair, @Dealla Prince, streaking forward on a silver handled broom, and behind her, felling two snakes was @Pericles Dralt. Cade blinked, a little startled. He felt a grin tug at his mouth. It was strange seeing them both here. In his first and second years, he'd stood beside them on the Dueling Club dais, trying to learn their tricks and admiring their poise. Now they were out here, flying like the eagles they were. He thought a little wryly, that maybe this sport wasn't so different after all, just a battlefield in the sky.

The morning was so strangely hot for late October, Aly realised as she slid into the stands at the broom racing track for the first race of the year. Ravenclaw was taking on Slytherin, just as she had the week prior on the Quidditch pitch, and Aly couldn't help but hope for an eagle victory - especially since her two best mates, Dee and Peri, were on the broom racing team. She hadn't brought a banner or anything, just her smiley self, all decked out in Ravenclaw blue to cheer on the other two members of her little trio.

When Peri looked up into the Ravenclaw stands, he had just missed her; Aly saw the white-haired face turn away from her just as she took her seat. She waved anyway, and would continue to do so any time either of her besties happened to glance in her direction, peppering her excited hand-flapping with shouts of thrill like "Go go go, Dee! You've got it, Peri!" and "Fly, eagles, fly!" (with the occasional "Slytherin eats nogtail dung!" thrown in there, for an homage to a certain Durmstrang student with whom she had watched this very race play out a year prior).

The race started off with a bang - and, by a bang, Aly meant four of the six snakes being instantly grounded from Peri's and other eaglets' well-placed spells. "Nice job there, mate," she couldn't help but whisper under her breath, leaning forward on the wooden bench in a luckless attempt to see better (as if the three inches would assist with being closer to the action). The curly-haired seventh-year student whooped when the announcer, one of the Gryffindor captains (@Della Barfield), mentioned that Dralt and Prince were the only two to make it out of this bottleneck first obstacle unharmed - as fun as racing was to watch, it was always so nerve-wracking wondering if she would be visiting the two of her dormmates and friends in the hospital wing rather than their shared dormitory after the event's end.

But despite being unbruised, Peri and Dee weren't in the lead quite yet. That honour went to Wyatt Starkey, whom Aly recognised as having been her wine-acquiring Knockturn Alley partner-in-crime from the previous New Year's Eve. In another life, or in another House matchup perhaps, Aly would have been rooting for Wyatt, who seemed to genuinely be quite a nice fellow; here, however, her loyalties lay elsewhere, in the two birds who had been her shoulder to lean on in every bad moment since they were all just thirteen. She watched, biting anxiously at the corner of her thumbnail, as Peri reached the end of his flight for the moment, then Dee, and then Wyatt just a few obstacles ahead of the sister she'd never had.

Merlin, this was already going to be a big race, Aly could just tell. For now, all she could do was sit here, continue cheering, and hope the dice rolled in favour of Ravenclaw.

Open to any interactions | October 26^th, 2025 | outfit in banner (R cardigan) | #C47DDB
lovely & charmer affect everyone | sta 10, eva 14, str 5, wis 19, arc 7, acc 16
mentioning @Pericles Dralt, @Madhup Hexum, @Wyatt Starkey, and @Dealla Prince

Cade only noticed her because the crowd shifted, someone leaned aside, a banner dipped and there she was. @Aly Salinger. Ravenclaw's Quidditch Captain. Seventh year. Practically a legend. She stood a few rows down, braced against a railing, shouting encouragement into the warm October air as if the racing team could actually hear her. She looked completely at ease in the roar of the stands, the picture of House spirit.

Cade blinked and leaned back slightly, surprised he hadn't noticed her before. Of course she'd be here; broom racing was practically a sister sport to Quidditch. His eyes flicked back to the ensuing race, Starkey still in the lead, but his mind was still musing about the seventh year. It wasn't that she was intimidating, though she was in that impossible older-student way. It was something else. She wasn't watching like a coach or a captain, she was taking in the race like a fan. Like someone enjoying the thrill of it. Cade hadn't realized he'd missed feeling that connected to other Housemates until now.

The racers zoomed onward, shooting across the tracks in a blur of robes and bristles. The stands thundered with cheers. Cade joined in automatically, the sound vibrating in his ribs, warm and alive. When the burst of shouting died down for a breath, he caught himself glancing her way again. Should I? Hm... Maybe? She'd think I'm interrupting. Or weird... It wasn't often he saw older students outside the common room, especially ones who seemed approachable. She'd be gone in a year. This was the kind of moment Cade always told himself he would take and then never did. A chance to make more friends. And wasn't he trying in his own awkward way to be braver this year?

Cade swallowed. All right, go. Worst case, she ignores you. Best case, you make a seventh year laugh once before she forgets your name forever. Thats... something.

So he shifted his banner underneath his arm, steadied his footing on the narrow wooden steps and dropped down a couple rows. Each bench creaked underfoot, and he ducked past waving pennants and a floating string of enchanted paper birds someone had charmed in team colours. The warmth of the day pressed against his back as he reached the side of her row. Hesitating just long enough to make himself annoyed at his own nerves. He cleared his throat."Um. Hi," he managed, offering a smile. "Is this spot taken?" He gestured to the bit of bench beside her.

Before anything else interesting could happen in the race, suddenly there was something happening in the stands, instead. Aly was just in the middle of shouting a particularly exciting chant about the shade of green that Slytherins wore being reminiscent of a specific bodily fluid - accompanied with various "Caw, caw, Ravenclaw!"s thrown in - as she jumped to stand and leaned against the front railing, waving a balled-up fist in the air. If Slytherin was going to put up a fight against her beloved House, and her beloved friends, she was sure going to do her best to distract them from the stands - as lovely as she'd been known to be, it surely wouldn't be too difficult, right?

The ending words of the chant had just left her mouth when she heard the creak of the wooden floorboards beside her. Her hand instinctively grabbed for the railing - something about the swaying of the spectator benches as her fellow students cheered, booed, and jumped for their respective teams had always unnerved her, lest the entire rickety structure collapse beneath her unsteady feet - but it wasn't just a normal groan. No, someone was there, speaking to her. Asking if the spot beside her, a spot that was very clearly empty, was taken. Offering a nervous, tentative smile. He seemed sweet; eager, shy. Reminding Aly very much of her own self when approaching someone new.

Well, the Ravenclaw seventh-year was nothing if not friendly - and she recognised a familiar situation when she saw one. Aly returned the smile, congenial and warm. "Sure it is! By you. C'mon, join me - as long as you're cheering for Ravenclaw," she joked, a teasing lilt slipping into her voice. "Last year I had to deal with far too many Slytherin fans in my vicinity. Be nice to be surrounded by fellow eagles, for once." Her eyes darted down to the banner tucked underneath the boy's arm, a large bronze thing tinged with blue, and that combined with the cerulean smears across his pale cheeks were enough to confirm a kindred spirit.

Leaning back from the railing and taking her seat once again, Aly kept a watchful eye on the race, but allowed herself to turn partway to take a look at her new watching companion. He looked to be about her age, but wholly unfamiliar: dark hair and eyes, and a lanky porcelain frame covered in freckles not unlike Aly's own. He certainly wasn't a seventh-year - the Quidditch captain might not have been friends with every person in her year and House, but she certainly at least knew their faces. A sixth-year, perhaps? One she had just so happened to manage several years at this school without bumping into? "I'm Aly, by the way," she offered up, holding out her hand for a shake. (Recently she'd gotten more used to holding her hand out palm-down, awaiting a kiss from the elder pureblood snobs she'd spent her summer around, but she realised last-minute that her hand was the wrong way and switched it to sideways-facing.) "Seventh-year, Ravenclaw. Care to share your name?"

Open to any interactions | October 26^th, 2025 | outfit in banner (R cardigan) | #C47DDB
lovely & charmer affect everyone | sta 10, eva 14, str 5, wis 19, arc 7, acc 16
mentioning @Cade Darkbound
Aly being called "practically a legend" made my day!

Cade slid into the seat beside her, the boards warm beneath him and vibrating faintly with every fresh burst of cheering. Aly's friendliness hit him with the force of a gust of broom-wake, unexpected and a little overwhelming. Seventh years had always occupied a distant, sun touched elevation in his mind's eye. They were the type of students one admired in passing but never spoke to unless spoken to first. And yet, here she was, offering him a seat and a joke. He released a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, relaxing into a shy grin. "Oh, definitely Ravenclaw," he said, lifting the banner a little in proof. "Promise."

Aly turned to him with her hand outstretched and Cade straightened on instinct, awkwardly mirroring the motion, his own hand a touch cold even in this fine weather. "I'm Cade," he announced. "Cade Darkbound. Fourth year." Her handshake was confident, warm, and he felt ridiculously grateful she'd corrected the angle of her hand before he'd had to figure out what to do with it. Eerily, it reminded him of the many debutante balls Peggy had dragged him to. He raised a brow without meaning to, curiosity sparking. He released her hand and, while keeping his expression neutral, let his eyes skim her features. She was considerably easy on the eyes, the athletic build he'd noticed before, the confident posture, and her easy humor... That all fit what he'd expected from a Quidditch Captain. But now he saw other markers, the faintest traces... She carried herself with a razor edged sort of poise.

Not every pure-blood acted that way, but some tells were hard to scrub out. Interesting, he thought, the corner of his mouth simpering. He couldn't help but try to understand people, he liked assembling clues and mapping out how they fit together.

She turned her attention back to the races, though she kept herself angled toward him enough that he felt like he was part of the conversation rather than just brushing its edge. Cade would turn his own midnight eyes back to the course before them. But his throat tightened for a moment with something unexpected. Guilt. A small, sharp pang of it. He was suddenly, acutely aware that if he hadn't been taken out of school, if he hadn't disappeared from Hogwarts, from the dueling team, from the castle entirely, he might have known Aly earlier. Might have trained with her, or at least seen her around enough to make this particular interaction less strange. He swallowed, forcing the thought aside. She didn't know his absence and she didn't need to.

Still, it sat stubbornly in his chest, a crooked stone he couldn't forcibly dislodge. He had missed so much, faces, names, and the way people moved through each other's orbits. @Aly Salinger should have been someone familiar by now, someone he'd nodded to at breakfast or waved at across the common room. Instead, he was meeting her for the first time in late October like he'd stepped back into a world that had happily gone on without him.

"Um-- sorry I haven't introduced myself before," Cade added, rubbing a thumb along the edge of his banner. "I took... a bit of time away from Hogwarts." It wasn't an explanation, not really, but it felt like a small apology for arriving late to everyone's story.

Cade Darkbound. Aly mulled the name over in her mind for a moment, as if she were turning over a shiny object in her hands, trying to examine it from every which way. Yes, she could not remember ever meeting a Cade or even hearing about one, further confirming that the two Ravenclaws had never met. Surprisingly, he introduced himself a moment later as a fourth-year, and Aly's eyes widened in surprise; he looked older, and Aly would have guessed that he was around her age. A sixth-year if not in seventh. Mayyybe a fifth-year who had a growth spurt. But fourth? Fourth-years were supposed to be smaller, younger than this one; Aly could hardly forget her own fourth year, tinged with death and disappointment, all at the precious, tender age of fourteen. Three years had passed since she had been pulled out of Hogwarts at the Christmas holiday, missing the entirety of her spring semester, spending her fifteenth birthday locked in a tower much like a certain Muggle princess in a fairy tale, only to return to her beloved school just in time for end-of-year examinations... and promptly get her lights knocked out by the very best mate for whom she was here to cheer on. She felt that she had perhaps looked younger than this boy in front of her when all of that went down.

Her confusion was easily cleared up, although replaced with tinges of pity and understanding, when Cade went on to explain that he had taken some time away from Hogwarts, just like Aly herself had done. The curly-haired teenager had been able to return to the academy to take her final exams and move on to her fifth year with the rest of her classmates. It seemed, unfortunately, that Mr. Darkbound here had not been granted the same luxury by whatever force had caused him to leave Hogwarts for a while. Probably longer than Aly had, if she were to guess - it would explain why he looked to be around her age whilst still having to deal with Wiggentrees and Episkey. She offered him a knowing, sympathetic smile, one cheek pulling harder than the other to create a sort of I-get-you lopsided effect. "Don't you worry one whit about it. We've all had our time away," she told him, trying to remain upbeat and cheerful despite the flood of memories that still - three years later - was always so hard to wash away whenever it came rushing into her mind. At least she didn't cry immediately now - so perhaps time did heal some wounds, if gradually. "I missed some of my fourth year, too. And look! You've introduced yourself now, so no harm done." Her smile became less pitying, more real. "So how old are you, if you don't mind me asking? You don't look fourteen, that's for certain."

The dark-haired boy was rubbing a thumb over the corner of his banner, and Aly ducked slightly, angling her torso and head whilst scooting a smidge closer so she could see what he had written upon the canvas. "Go Eagles," she read aloud with an even brighter grin. "Go Eagles indeed!" The Quidditch captain turned to shout the exact phrase from Cade's banner, only for the words to falter in her mouth as she saw what had happened whilst the pair had been chattering away. Three of the Slytherins who still remained at the starting line had remounted their brooms, ready to rejoin the race; unfortunately, one problematic and familiar snake had gotten even further. Aly balled up her fists instead, leaping once more to her feet and leaning against the railing; a stray breeze picked up some of the looser curls that framed her face, allowing them to dance as the wind lifted them up and away from her freckled cheeks. "Oh, come on, Wyatt! Get him, Peri!" But alas, no amount of cheering could save Peri's doomed spell, and Wyatt dodged it with ease. Aly groaned, even though she clapped for Dee's spell and shouted words of encouragement to her other best mate; plopping back down next to Cade with a huffing sigh, she muttered, "I swear, if Starkey takes this race for the second year in a row, I'm never speaking to him again."

Open to any interactions | October 26^th, 2025 | outfit in banner (R cardigan) | #C47DDB
lovely & charmer affect everyone | sta 10, eva 14, str 5, wis 19, arc 7, acc 16
mentioning @Cade Darkbound, @Pericles Dralt, @Wyatt Starkey, @Dealla Prince