Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Joey Jenkins was picked for the 1994 English national Quidditch team, he felt like his heart was taking flight.

It was a horribly cliché comparison, he knew. His favourite teacher from primary school would have said he could have done better. But it really was the only way to describe it, and anyway, he was a professional Quidditch player, not a writer. And he wasn't just any professional Quidditch player, either. Apparently, by someone's reckoning, he was one of the best professional Quidditch players in England. He was going to play on the national team. He was going to play on a team that wasn't the Cannons. He was going to have a chance to win.

Almost as soon as that thought crossed his mind, he felt ashamed. He loved his teammates, he truly did. He loved Maryam, their even-tempered Keeper and Captain; Evangeline, the Chaser with a penchant for terrible puns; Yuki, their Seeker who always seemed serious but who loved to play with the reporters who never knew if she was joking or not; Manraj, his fellow Beater and partner in everything from Exploding Snap on the team bus to home and cat ownership... None of them, on their own, bad at Quidditch. As a unit, they were one of the friendliest and most cohesive teams in the league, Joey was sure. A lot of teams brought in terrible people for the sake of winning games. The Cannons didn't. Management had realised sometime in the mid-1950's that nothing they could do personnel-wise was likely to change their luck. Possibly, nothing short of illicit Felix Felicis could do that. So they focused more on personalities, and giving the fanbase as much as they could in the form of books, contests, interviews, and charity events. And their fans bought into it, continued to support them even though the point of Quidditch was, ostensibly, to win.

So he felt ashamed, a bit, for being so excited about leaving Chudley periodically for the group-phase matches. But the feeling lessened when every Cannon had slapped him on the back the first practice after the team had been announced and told him they were all proud of him, that they always knew he was one of the best Beaters in Britain, and it vanished altogether when a little girl came up to him after a match against Appleby and said, while he was signing the orange hat she held out for him, that she was so excited, someone from her team was going to play for England.

She had a lisp. It was adorable. And she was looking at him with pride like he hadn't seen since before his mother had died.

In that moment, the thing Joey wanted most in the world was to be worthy of that pride.

~

Playing on the national team felt like flying. Although, given the nature of the sport of Quidditch, that was perhaps to be expected.

The group phase of the competition, which played out over two years, was a breeze. Chin, from the Tornadoes, was their Seeker, and Joey very much enjoyed being able to protect her instead of sending Bludgers her way every chance he got, as he was used to doing. Given time (which it was Joey and his partner Crossley’s job to provide with their bats), Chin was easily one of the most amazing seekers Joey had ever had the pleasure of seeing in action. Perhaps not on the level of Viktor Krum yet, but in a few years, Joey was sure she'd be leading the Tornadoes straight to the top of the League.

It was when the sixteen teams that made it through the group phase congregated in Dartmoor that things started to get tricky. From the first few minutes of the first game, Germany was terrifying. The game went on for nearly twenty-three hours, which was longer than any game Joey had ever been a part of, and he was so tired near the end of it that he couldn’t understand what Chin could possibly be doing sneaking closer and closer to him, until she reached behind his ear and then, like the kind of muggle magician that he had been amazed by before he received his Hogwarts letter and learned about real magic, showed him the little golden ball flapping against her fingers. Joey lowered his aching batting arm instantly. It was over, and they had, just barely, won.

After that game, Joey had the fleeting thought that he couldn’t imagine another win ever feeling as good as that one. The joy mixed with the utter exhausion in his bones and brain and buoyed him up, in a way that felt like he was soaring, light as a feather, above his own body.

~

Losing to Transylvania 390-10 in the quarterfinal felt like falling, falling, falling. Watching the championship slip through their fingers as the Transylvanian chasers slipped past Robson, Mohindra and Cunningham and the Quaffle slipped past Walker and through the goal hoops again and again and again. When the Transylvanian seeker caught the snitch after only thirty minutes he was sure he could feel the whole team sag, and he was fairly certain it was more from relief than disappointment.

After every game they had won, they hadn't been able to move for people slapping them on the back and offering to buy them drinks, to come back to their tents and party. It had been impossible for Joey to slip away after only two hours, the way he preferred to when the high of a match had worn off and all he wanted to do was fall into bed and sleep.

Tonight it was easy. The crowd of English supporters had begun slinking away from the stands around the time Transylvania had scored their twentieth goal and had mostly dissipated by the time Joey and his teammates were making their way off the pitch, broomsticks over their slumped shoulders, beneath the mob of Transylvanian players hugging each other, still in the air.

When he got back to his tent after the match, a stately horned owl was perched on his bedpost. Joey untied the scrap of parchment on its leg and read the message as the bird flew out the open window.

I have Firewhisky. Probably a lot less than when I sent this, but you’re welcome to share what’s left. Also I start playing Gideon Crumb’s solo album at full volume at ten o’clock sharp. -GJ

Drinking and listening to angry bagpipe music with Gwenog, like they used to do after losses when they played together at Hogwarts, was a much more appealing prospect than either crying himself to sleep or eating his way through his entire emergency supply of chocolate frogs, as he had previously been planning. He put on a hat, grabbed his cloak, and headed back out into the night.

~

Hitting rock bottom with Wales' star Beater didn't feel anywhere near as bad as he would have thought. Probably he would have thought about it as a sad, but not entirely novel display of two adults quietly waking up with the worst hangovers of their lives and vowing never to touch Firewhisky ever again.

It actually felt like being escorted into what amounted to a cell in the Magical Law Enforcement Patrol tent, falling asleep with his head pillowed on Gwenog’s well-muscled calves until seven o'clock in the evening, being informed that they were being fined 30 Galleons each for attempting to transfigure Ludo Bagman into a bumblebee after first making him uncomfortable by prostrating themselves at his feet and begging his forgiveness while addressing him as 'Our Lord Brutus', and then performing a (somewhat subdued) impromptu waltz upon learning that Uganda and Transylvania had both been eliminated from the competition while they were sleeping.

Well. That was just the final stumble, really. Rock bottom, Joey was fairly certain, was the photo that made it into the Evening Prophet along with the predictable article by Rita Skeeter. His hair was a mess. He could already feel Manraj's disappointment.

~

Getting back to work after the World Cup wasn’t something Joey was looking forward to. The Cannons themselves had been great since he returned to Chudley. Manraj had even told him that he wouldn't get the lecture about basic grooming magic until Halloween, which meant that Manraj was probably going to do his hair for him before the team party, rather than leaving him to fend for himself and then surreptitiously charming it into place on the way to the venue, as usual. But Joey had read in the Daily Prophet that Walker had gone back to Puddlemere United to a chorus of boos and vicious chanting, and numerous people from Tutshill had written in that a Seeker as incompetent as Chin had no place on Plumpton’s old team. He knew neither of them deserved that kind of treatment, but he couldn't help feeling that he would deserve to be jeered for daring to show his face again.

When he made his way onto the pitch with his teammates and heard the sound of the crowd roaring, louder than he’d ever heard at any League game, he was sure they were voicing their displeasure. But then Ben and Max pushed him forward, out of the little knot of players and into a spotlight, and the sea of orange got even louder, and he felt his face burning. They were cheering. For him. He flapped his hand to quiet them down, got on his broom and kicked off before anyone could indicate he was supposed to make some kind of speech. They had a game to play.

~

The Cannons lost, and it hurt, but it was a soft, comforting ache. More like muscles the day after a hard-fought game than his heart being crushed under the weight of England's disappointment.

As they were getting ready to pile into the team bus, the little girl who had been at the Appleby game marched right up to him. Joey opened his mouth to apologise, but before he could get any of the words out she said, “I’m sorry you lost, Mr Jenkins. I made you this so you’d feel better.” She handed him a picture that she had obviously drawn herself. It showed him wearing orange, hitting a Bludger and smiling wide, and a figure that could only be her, cheering him on. Across the top were the words "I'm glad you're back Mr Jenkins", written with what he could tell had been great care, even though the letters slanted up and got smaller toward the right of the page.

For one terrible second, Joey thought he might be about to burst into tears. But the feeling passed, and he was able to say, "Thank you. I love it. Hey, d'you think you could sign it for me?"

She agreed, took Joey's marker (which she found fascinating) and used it to scrawl love, Elise along the bottom of the page before her fathers told her than Mr Jenkins had to go with his team now. She waved to him as they walked away and he waved back before tucking the picture into his bag and running for the bus.

The earth felt wonderful beneath his feet.