You can bet that Zoryn Spinnet was pulling as hard as humanly possible. She was the BASE of this operation. Surely everyone knew that. This was HER game. Upper body strength? No problem. That's why scouts were all out for her digits, duh. And no offense to Cameroni, but Zor was about ready to send Slytherin tumbling into mud.

They were putting up a good fight though, she had to admit.

Feeling the rope being tugged in the OPPOSITE direction, Zor tried pulling back with twice as much strength. Her hands were burning already, but giving up was NOT gonna happen. NEVER. Well, maybe. Dependent on how long this was going to go...

And no offense but, if she saw any of the Gryffindors sinking into mud she would absolutely have no problem letting go of the rope and jumping ship all together. Her practice clothes were not meant to be brown. Just sayin.

Anyways.

PULL!!!!! PULL!!! PULLLLLLLLLL!

…….. Why were the Gryffindor’s here? This was there time to practice! Humph.

Standing beside Cameron, behind Patrick, Holly took the time to look over the team - trying to figure out anything that she could use against them when they were pitted against each other later on in the year. Hmmmmm.

She’d been too busy day dreaming about winning yet another Quidditch match, that she’d missed a lot of the conversation - but she [i]did[/d] hear Anna challenging them.

Hah. No one challenged them without them stepping up to the challenge. Right? She eyed Patrick, as if to make sure he knew this too- but he agreed. So all was right in the world.

Well, it would be when they won.

Standing in the middle, aware that she wasn’t big enough to be the first or last person in the team, Holly got ready to tug until her hands hurt and then she would tug some more. She could do one handed handstands, she was stronger than she looked - even if she was still growing.

Taking a deep breath, and trying to press her feet into the muddy grassy pitch floor - she waited for the sign and then she TUGGGGEEEEDDDDD. Going so far as to part-yell as she did it, just to focus herself enough as she tried to take a step backwards. Backwards away from the mud.

That was the plan.

Anna held the rope as Gryffindors and Slytherins got into place, a smirk on her face as she stared at Patrick.

It seemed like all her team wanted to be behind her, which was fine. If they lost, she'd be the first one to fall into the mud, which was fair enough, she thought, as she was the Captain.

It gave her a stronger reason to dig her heels into the ground as much as she could when everyone started pulling. She could feel her feet slipping every now and again while her hands burned as she gripped the rope tighter and kept it from slipping away. MERLIN, that hurt! But it'd be WORTH IT if they WON!

THEY HAD TO WIN!! Especially as Slytherin had beat them in their last match. Their PRIDE was MARRED. Kind of.

The fifth year groaned and grunted and groaned some more as she used all her might to pull the rope towards the Gryffindor side, her feet now mere inches from the pit of mud. "COME ON, GRYFFINDOR!!" She yelled, gathering some strength for one last mighty pull when she felt her team behind her pull the rope with even more force than her. Anna just didn't stumble backwards because she was too busy trying to WIN, and WIN THEY DID!

As she stepped back with her team, the rope firmly in their grip, one by one the Slytherins came tumbling into the mud pit and a grin spread across her face. Heeello, muddy Slytherins! "YEEEEES!!! WELL DONE, TEAM!!" Anna fist pumped as she turned around to face the Gryffindors and high five her teammates that wanted a high five. Merlin, that felt great. Look at all of their opponents covered in mud, HA!

"Your uniform looks much better now!" She told Patrick and the other Slytherins as she dropped the rope and went to stand nearby with her fist on her hip.

Mwahahaha!

OOC: Wooooo, well done, everybodeh! We really liked your posts and it was actually a quite tight result, which is great as it shows y'all put effort into making more detailed posts and so Sarah and I want to thank you for that!

Sarah will move us along to the second task in a bit, so feel free to post reactions (Slytherins, do clean yourselves up if you don't want to stay muddy for the rest of the practice, lol) and whatnot for now

Patrick had dug his heels in to the grass. He was really not a fan of losing and yet he felt his feet moving forward.

Heck no. He did not want to lose to Anna. No way no how.

Just as he was about to yank back he felt the rope pull him forward. Next thing he knew he was IN. THE. MUD. Nah. Not okay. Standing up he wiped the mud off of his chest looking directly at Anna as he heard her say his uniform looked better now than it did before. Well.... it was on. Jumping out of the pit of mud his teammate had suggested he took off after Anna and gave her a big hug wiping most of the mud off of him and onto her.

Smiling wide, "Now that looks like a Gryffindor uniform if I've ever seen one." Crossing his arms over his chest with a nod. Taking a few steps away from Anna he charmed himself some water and air so he could get cleaned up.

"Alright. Well next how about a game of capture the flag?" He waggled his eye brows looking around at everyone. He figured his team would win. Gunnar was agile, Cameron was quick on his broom too. There was no doubt in his mind that he would walk away the winner of this one. "Simple rules. Both teams are chasing after the flag. Whoever catches the flag wins." He knew he had this.

Grabbing his broom he hovered a few feet of the ground. "Flag is over there Slytherin ready?" He waited a second to hear if his team was ready since those pesky Gryffindor's were still dry. "GO!" he hollered hoping that he took the Gryffindors by surprise so they could get a head start.

OOC: Alrighty, good work on the above posts like Ju said you all made great effort in your posts and they were really fun to read.

As for the next task as I said above it's a game of capture the flag. ONLY this time there is 1 flag Everyone is trying to get to the flag. BUT the flag has been charmed to disappear and reappear on the pitch. DO NOT play your character catching the flag. The winner will again be determined by the earlier rubric of how detailed your posts are.

If you're just joining us. Catch up if you want it is always welcome. Or jump right in with the game.

Uh, was this supposed to be happening? Weird twist to be having practice at the same time as Slytherin, but okay. Cordelia didn’t really have the strength required for tug of war, but she tried her hardest. Ultimately her team pulled through, and they won! They didn’t have much time to celebrate though, because it seemed like they would be moving on to the next challenge almost immediately. As quickly as she could, Cordelia glanced at her device that showed the data from her continuous blood glucose monitor to make sure that she wasn’t going too low. All good. Cordelia grabbed her broom and mounted it as Patrick announced the capture the flag challenge. Since she was small and lightweight she could be quite quick and agile on her broom, so hopefully that would give her an advantage in chasing down the flag. As Patrick shouted ‘go,’ Cordelia pushed away from the ground as she ascended on her broom. The air whizzed by as the details of the ground got smaller and smaller until they were indistinguishable. Glancing around the pitch, Cordelia searched for the flag. This couldn’t be any harder than catching a snitch, could it? Flags were much bigger, so it should be easier to find. As soon as she spotted the flag, she leaned forward on her broom and zoomed towards it, doing the occasional dive or roll to avoid colliding with other players who were pursuing the same flag. Gryffindor was going to win this one too!

Was Zoryn satisfied? Very.

She knew they were going to win from the start... But being at the end of the rope was a good precaution incase Anna let them down. Wouldn't be the first time. Just sayin'. As for the look on the Slytherin team's FACES?

PRICELESS.

But no offense, when were they actually going to play some Quidditch? As much as Zoryn loved obliterating other teams, she liked practicing her swing even more. There was a reason why scouts were looking out for her and it wasn't because she knew how to throw Patrick in a mud pit. Unfortunately, however, it appeared as if they weren't done with these silly games. This was all child's play.

While she had been down for tug-of-war, this was rather ridiculous. If anything, it really only put seekers to the test. The rest of them never had to worry about capturing a flighty object. They could've at least thrown some bludgers into the mix to make things interesting. But of course, because she hated losing AND ONLY because she hated losing, the Gryffindor mounted her broom and began flying around the pitch in search of the flag. Which... kept disappearing.

Bloody fantastic.

Capture the...? Okay...

The truth? Abra had never played capture the flag before. Actually, he'd never really heard of it before either, so he hoped that playing it was as easy as it sounded. Just, you know, capturing a flag. And Patrick said the rules were simple, too, so there was that.

After they were done with the rope, Abra dropped it and picked up his broom instead, pausing as he did to flex out his hands and try to rub the strain out of them. He felt quietly confident; it sounded like this capture the flag business had a lot to do with speed and agility, and he had that in cauldronfuls. With this in mind, Abra swung his leg over his broom, kicked off into the air, and sped off in the direction of the flag.

Onward Abra flew, flattening his body against the handle of his broom to make himself as streamlined as possible, putting his all into going flat out and closing down the flag, pretending like it was the golden snitch. One of his hands hovered just ahead of him so that he could make a quick grab for the flag whenever he got close to it.

Um..

Holly didn’t appreciate being covered in mud. Or losing. Especially losing to Gryffindor that ended with her covered in mud. Mud in her HAIR.

Huffing, the second year moved over to her brother in an attempt to help with the mud since she didn’t have a clue which charms or spells or hexes to use to sort herself out… Though… was she allowed to hex the Gryffindor team? Was that allowed??

She assumed it wouldn’t be, so instead of taking out her wand she hopped onto her broom and flew after the flag. It wasn’t like she was going to be any good at this OR catch it… but she leant close to her broom in an attempt to fly faster, get closer regardless. Even if she didn’t catch it, she hoped she could make the Gryffindor’s fight for it.

The flag was theirs!!! She couldn’t lose to them twice in one training session.