Corbin Michael Finch-Fletchley

( If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism. )

( Class Schedule )

( Private )

[Bexton]

You're less idiotic than I expected. As long as you're not attempting that moronic thing you called a moose kiss.


[Tanner]

I---Why--We--How

I need to talk to you.


[Liam]

You killed your doll yet? [End Private]


Proper hygiene is not that difficult to manage. It is a doll and lacks actual excrement. The smell, however, is revolting. Take care to stay on top of these things. The Common Room gains nothing with the scent of filthy nappies.

( Private )

( Tanner )

( Team Managers )

( Dex )


Tell me something interesting. Anything at all.

[Private--now Dex can also read]

Justin sent my articles to the Prophet. Not sure how he got his hands on them--probably Amelia or Liam--but he sent them off without consulting me first. Not that I wasn't intending to the same thing, but I had wanted to develop a fuller portfolio before putting my name out there. Luckily, he's an idiot, so he at least told me about doing it.

On an unrelated matter, it's rather ironic how Ava finally figures out her feelings for Flint just in time for his relationship-ban. And as much as I'd love to see him choke on his own stupidity and micromanaging crap, I can't imagine the next few weeks are going to go well for Ava. All the same, she needs to figure this out. My ability to consult in these matters is rightfully lacking, but she continues to come to me anyway.

Not to mention Liam's new found source of idiocy.

Oh it is such a joy to be back. [End private]


Congratulations, Poliakoff. You found something to take up your time since your team has no intention of giving you playing time.

[Dex]

That wrapping paper is horrendous.


But that quill is enough that I forgive you partially.



Did you like your gifts?


[Tanner]

Amazing how with all your sister's shortcomings, she still manages to give me coal every year.


[Qamar]

Nice touch. [End Qamar]


Enjoy your season of excess. Excessive eating, excessive time with family, and excessive spending.

In all honesty, I was rather disappointed by the match. It's why I couldn't bring myself to write this stupid thing until now. But I was asked to be an "official reporter" and here I am.


Durmstrang, you should've won.

If you compare the teams on paper, everything seems to suggest that you're the stronger team. You've played together longer than the Frankenstein team Hogwarts patched together, but in the moment, you just fell short. And you've really only got your Captain to thank for it. In the clutch, Dolinskaya missed the Snitch. It would've been the match. Maybe Dolinskaya should try her hand at another position on the pitch, she's clearly not doing her team any favours as Seeker.

The long and short of it is, Durmstrang, your Chasers put up one shy of the number of goals as Hogwarts did--poor showing for the Keepers, I might add--and your Beaters sincerely outplayed ours. Your Keeper faced more shots, your Chasers had higher productivity on their smaller number of shots. You'd be a well-oiled machine if you could find a Seeker worth her salt.

Admittedly, this does cause me to bring up a question that has started to bug me about Hogwarts play. Is Pye just that easy of a target, or are the Hogwarts beaters choosing not to protect her? Either way, it's bound to spell trouble, or perhaps be a big enough risk to cause her to lose her spot on the team. Perhaps Macfusty and Wood have built into their strategy only to protect the productive members of the team.

However, perhaps the Durmstrang team is getting a loss out of the way now, in some misguided hope of that correlating to success down the road. Or perhaps the match was thrown, in some pathetic attempt to smooth feathers over the bloody fucking nightmare of a romance novel the 7th years are attempting to write. The possibilities are endless, and I certainly don't look forward to the next match, which should be so one-sided that it will provide no entertainment whatsoever.

Salem, here's hoping you enjoy your holidays, because you've certainly got nothing good to come back to after the break.

[Private to Dex]

I bloody well fucking tried to talk to her, but she's unbearably stupid. Your friend lacks any sense of self-preservation.

My mind has been elsewhere, so this is coming out a little later than I had expected.

Going into this match, we all knew one team was going to walk away the crowned loser. I must admit, I didn't expect it to be the French. All the fighting spirit you managed to muster against Durmstrang was rather absent in a match that should've been an easy victory. Perhaps you lot can't get it up without proper challenge, or gave the earlier match too much effort, but this really was a poor showing. You've truly earned your win-less season.

Salem, you really are proving that Quidditch is not your sport. Perhaps if we all switched to Quodpot, you'd stand a better chance. The fact that you won--thanks to an astoundingly graceless save by Bexton--is immaterial. Your Chasers were horribly upstaged by their French counterparts and it was all your mousy Keeper could do to try and keep you in it. Subsequently, the score is low, to the point that the match was utterly boring.

As opposed to the first match, where Beaters had such a strong presence, I found myself occasionally wondering if there were Beaters on the pitch at all on Saturday. McKnight's unfortunate injury from an admittedly well placed bludger from one of the Beauxbaton's players, was nearly the team's undoing. I understand she's your captain, Taylor, but you should be able to play without her. Unless perhaps her injury struck a more emotional cord, at which point I suggest having a chat with Audrey. I doubt she'd take well to sharing you with such an attractive rival.

I find myself awaiting the Durmstrang-Hogwarts match, just to have something vaguely interesting to write about. At least those two teams seem to have a better grasp of what it means to go all out and make a statement on the pitch. But maybe they too will be influenced by the lackluster performance of their peers and provide an equally boring championship match. At which point, I feel inclined to suggest that Headmaster Flux is simply trying to play matchmaker. Perhaps he's trying to up the pureblood count in future generations. Hard to know why, but I find myself utterly unable to understand most of his decisions anyway.

On an entirely unrelated note, I find myself curious as to the motivations of our teams' managers. Three out of the four are injured former players. Does it hurt, watching your teammates play (and possibly lose) without you? Do you want to take your spot back? Or are you truly happy standing on the sidelines, letting your teammates take all the glory? It's a rather raw deal, considering you get none of the glory, but a healthy portion of the blame when your team doesn't perform.

[Dex]

Thanks for-- I appreciated--

Lunch was good.

[Dani]

So the American idiot is getting to you too now?

[Tanner]

We need to start plotting round two.

[Li--]

[Liam]

You ask your girlfriend to Warbeck's thing yet?

[Private to Dex]

I--fuck. That wasn't how I wanted things to go.


You just, that damn foreign team manager.



Fuck it. You'll like him better anyway.



[Tanner]

The world would be a much simpler place without women.

[Warded Against HB/HG & Jeremiah & Leo]
I, Corbin Voldemort 2.0, hereby challenge Boy Wonder 2.0. Though ideally I would wait 11 years to come after you, I find myself regretfully short on time, and have thusly been forced to push my plans forward to waiting a mere 11 days. Your days are up, Harry Potter Albus Potter.

To save us the time of numerous battles and stalemates, I have jumped right to the chase of unintelligently splitting my soul into 7 horcruxes (conveniently located throughout the castle), thus providing you the opportunity to kill me without ever having to face me. Do your worst, I am utterly confident in my faulty plan and its ability to best you, Boy Wonder 2.0.

[Tanner]
Let's have a bit of a surprise waiting for the old boy when he tries to break into the dorm room, alright? Nothing too dangerous, don't want Smith and the lot putting me in detention for the rest of the year, though I'd be willing to endure a week's worth.

[Private to Tanner]

Women.

will be

the end

of me.


Nice rhythm to it, right?

Watching the match with Ava was....different. Going to the bonfire with Dex was....not so bad.

[OOC: Attached are these charts and diagrams.

While I am quite sure that all expected the first match of the tournament to be a lively one, I doubt that anyone expected the strand of viciousness that our guests displayed in their first match. Though on second thought, perhaps it was less vicious and more a sign of weakness on the part of the Beauxbatons players.

Beaters, it seemed, were the deciding factor in the match. It appears our lovely Frenchies were simply outmatched by the strength of their Durmstrang counterparts, not only in accuracy, but also in protecting their fellow players from carefully executed attacks. Dani, any of the credit you might have received for taking Kovalenko out of the match was made negligible by the fact that you yourself got hit not once but twice. To make matters worse, neither of you could protect your Seeker.

Dolinskaya, catching the Snitch is all well and good, but there's really no challenge to doing it when the opposing Seeker is unconscious on the sidelines. When you've got all the time in the world, less bodies to deal with, and no opposing Seeker, it's practically become a practice match, hasn't it?

I hope the drunken festivities that accompanied the entirely unnecessary birthday celebration soothed those wounds, my dear French friends. I wouldn't want anything to distract you from your wounded pride.

My socks were stolen. Well, eaten, perhaps would be a more accurate word. By a little grimy thing. I tried to curse it, but I couldn't get near the bloody thing.

Who in the hell decided to create such a miserable little creature?

[Private]

It destroyed my notes. It could've had all my sketches or storyboards it wanted.

But NO. It went for my bloody fucking outlines. I had three separate stories being worked out on those and now they're gone.

Fucking GONE.
[End Private]

[Private to Tanner]

I vote we set some of your worst books on the miserable little thing.

I want payback.

How in bloody hell do you deal with all this goddamn hair? Where can I get one of those bands to get it all out of my face? The string I used is proving to be absolutely inept.

However, in all of this excitement, I've missed the opportunity to comment on the selections for the Hogwarts team. I'm far less interested in those of you who made it than I am in those of you who didn't make it. How does it feel to get one of your precious years of quidditch taken away from you, perhaps at the hand of one of your own teammates?

[Private to Tanner]

It is more than slightly perturbing that I am probably more attractive as a woman than I am normally. Please tell me you have figured out a way to make this all go away.

[End Private]

It truly warms my heart to see that this Multicultural Class is already achieving such excellent results. In no time, all the civilities that all sides have been pretending to possess will dissolve and our true prejudices will shine through beautifully. Nothing motivates rivalry like a thorough sense of contempt and dislike for your opponent. Professor Flux, you've really outdone yourself this time. I'd have a drink in your honor, but no sense getting you all worked up this early in the year.

Regretfully, my other classes have not started off with such dramatic flair. If nothing else, I can comfort myself with the thought that I shall never have to take another Herbology class in my life.

With the tournament looming around the corner, I say we start taking wagers on who will and won't make the cut for the Hogwarts team. Specific players or even the breakdown of how many players will come from each house. Anything goes. Perhaps I can get some fodder for my first article from this.

[Heavily warded private to self]
A boy left watching his sister while his parents are away. When he's not paying attention, the little brat stumbles across a portkey and vanishes. Rather than get the authorities, the idiot child calls in his best friend and they set off on an adventure to get back his little sister before his parents come home. Perhaps introduce an animal character, make the friend a comic character, experiment with rhyme scheme.

And find a bloody illustrator. Maybe Tanner has some ideas. [End Private]

[Private to Tanner]
I need an illustrator.

Join me for a smoke after class this afternoon?

I'm sure we're all familiar with the sentiment that a picture is worth a thousand words. While I personally would beg to question the validity of said statement, let's put that aside and accept the premise for the time being. But pictures of yourselves? I feel the heart of the sentiment is being misconstrued. Unless the message you wish to convey is one of being hopelessly self-centered. But that's hardly first meeting material, now is it? But perhaps you're all to be commended for being so open with your flaws.

However, the new development of the tournament provides me with plenty of fodder for my new found career path: writing opinion pieces for the Prophet. Quidditch is always popular, so this next year will provide me with plenty of experience for the real world once I graduate. Any and all Quidditch players, I formally request an interview.

Naturally, I make no promises about the end result. A good article practically writes itself, and we all know that drama is more interesting than stability. Therefore, accept your interviews wisely, my friends. While I am no Rita Skeeter, I will not reserve judgement for anyone. Be forewarned, I will write about you if the fancy strikes me, even if you have chosen not to sit down and have a little chat. However, having a chance to voice your opinion is better than none at all, is it not?