And before Ella could sneak off and grab some snacks and possibly find out what was wrong with her keeper and chaser, Professor James was here with a trophy. A trophy! Ella suddenly became very aware of how some of her teammates looked and she felt very defensive. Like, Professor James understood that lots of the sad feels had to do with the things going on at the school, yeah? This wasn't them being poor sports at all because they weren't. Not even a little. And Professor James was brilliant and kind and smart so she had to know this. She really had to.

The sixteen year old smiled a little as she headed over to the woman, observing her and thinking of Max a little too. She really wanted to talk to him about the stuff going on here, tell him about her first term as Captain and hear what he thought about it. He always made her feel better when she had doubts. He really did.

"Hello, Professor." The blonde greeted as cheerfully as she could, giving James a genuine smile as she reached for the trophy. "I...this is beautiful. Really." Her very first trophy as captain and it felt good.

BLINK.

"A speech? But I..." Ella's green eyes widened a bit as she whispered back, not knowing what to say. She, Ella Bishop, wasn't good with words! She was horrible. Hugs! Hugs was what she was good at. Why couldn't she just hug everyone in the room? Would that work? ...Probably not. GULP! "I'll...try."She'd try for Professor James. Nodnod.

Ahem.

"Erm, guys?" She started off, trying to get everyone's attention. The blonde shuffled a bit and glanced down at the trophy, hoping it'd give her some clue where to start. Instead, she just saw her reflection in the shiny bronze and bit her lip. She looked as nervous as she felt. Gah! get it together, Bishop!

"I just wanted to say that I...I had such a great time being your Captain this term and I feel so strongly about what we did as a team and how well we worked together to accomplish what we did..." Was this making sense? "It's just...You're all brilliant, each and every person on the quidditch team and if I didn't say it enough, I'm sorry. You're all so talented and even more importantly, you're all great people. We didn't win every game this term but even the losses were okay because we won and lost together. No matter what happened, we dealt with it as a team and I just...I'm really proud of that and proud of you." Ugh. She was getting emotional and she really didn't want to cry. "This trophy might be for third place but for me, having a team like you lot, well that makes this feel like first." First place, that is. Ella really did feel lucky. She was also a bit teary and she had a bit of a lump in her throat so she turned to Professor James and bit her lip. Was that good enough?

Oh wait..she had one more thing! "And for the rest of you badgers, thanks for supporting us and showing up to cheer and just being awesome Hufflepuffs. It means a lot to all of us."

There. Now she was done.