Amethyst Rosewood and The Joys of Independence by Melissa Nichols (ebooks that read to you .TXT) 📕

"All right, Arcane, I'm up." Amy moaned as she opened her eyes, groping for the curtain. When she felt the fabric, she pulled it aside and sat up. "I'm awake." She yawned, rubbing her eyes.

Opening her eyes, Amy noticed she was the last to wake, which didn't surprise her. She had returned to her bed the previous night, but she had laid awake for hours, listening to the other girls come in and fall asleep. Eventually she had fallen asleep too, but her dreams were different. Darker. Dreams that featured a certain brunette with hazel eyes.

"So much for a better life, huh, Arcane? With Emmaline here, things just got a lot more miserable." She took a deep breath. "Well, I guess it's time to stop moping and get on with it."

Amy stood slowly and pulled out one of the outfits she had purchased at Diagon Alley specifically for the School Games, a simple tank top and gym shorts with her best pair of sneakers. She brushed her hair and put it into a braid, then rolled it into a rough bun and secured it with a hair tie. Standing in front of her mirror, Amy took a deep breath as she absorbed her reflection. On the surface, Amy saw nothing wrong with her appearance except perhaps that the smile she attempted didn't reach her baggy eyes.

"How could it be that one girl was able to change me like this?" Amy complained to Arcane, who looked up from her bath to meow at her witch. "She's completely wiped away the person I was finally growing into, in just twenty-four hours. How am I going to survive?"

Arcane meowed quietly, a somber note in her voice.

"You're right, Arcane. I can't let her affect me like this. 'Sticks and stones may break my bones', but words have only the power I give them. If I choose to believe I'm worthless again, I'll lose the confidence I've gained, and the happiness I finally feel. If I choose to ignore Emmaline, to not let her words change me, then I'll grow as a person and become who I was meant to be." She had started to smile, her voice gaining the confidence she so needed, but then her smile faltered. "It sounds awfully hard. I've listened to her my whole life and it seems she knows me better than I know myself. Can I really change myself so completely?"

Arcane meowed again, seemingly affirmative this time.

"'Nothing worth doing is easy, but that doesn't make it unnecessary.' You're right! I have to do this, for myself. It will be hard, but it will be worth it. I just have to break it down into manageable steps - take life one day at a time."

Arcane meowed once more, loud and celebratory. Amy nodded in the mirror, a slight smile on her face, then she turned away and gathered her purring kitten into a hug. "Thank you, Arcane. What would I do without you?" Amy asked as she made her way outside.

During breakfast, the first owl post arrived. Within seconds of the first owl's screech, the Hall was suddenly alive with flying owls, packages falling, and feathers floating to the floor as the post owls released their packages to their recipients. Rose and Scorpius had packages from their parents with items they had forgotten to pack in addition to their robes from Madam Malkin. Their robes, socks, and tie - and other things if they had ordered them, which Amy had - were finally here, and just in time for the start of classes! Now too excited to eat, the group abandoned their food and opened their parcels and gushed for a few moments. Amy in particular was excited to see her name embroidered into the Hufflepuff robe she would own for the next seven years and its matching tie. Seeing her name next to her House crest was ridiculously exciting and Amy couldn't help but run back to the dormitory to examine each item as she carefully put it away into her trunk.

An hour later, Amy sat on the Quidditch Pitch finishing her stretches, listening to the Ravenclaw HeadGirl wearing a yellow jersey and tags explaining the rules of their game. The other HeadStudents were divided as well. The Ravenclaw and Gryffindor HeadStudents wore purple jerseys matching their purple plastic tags. The Slytherin and Hufflepuff HeadStudents wore yellow tags and yellow jerseys. They stood at the center of the Pitch, lined to face the students but standing inside their team's territories, which held a flag of the opposing color.

The game was Capture the Flag, except - in this version - removing a player's tags meant a one-point gain per tag for the team of the student who claimed the tag, while the flag was worth fifty points. When a student lost all four tags, they were out for the rest of the round and had to sit on the sidelines. The round ended after ten minutes of play, or when a flag was successfully retrieved. There would then be a five-minute break, during which time the retrieved flags were sorted back to the proper team and points would be given. Next, the second round would begin, and the teams would have five minutes for strategizing. Additionally, instead of having both teams prepare offensive and defensive squads, both units would be dedicated to one role. During this first round, the yellow team would defend while the purple team would invade. At the end of three rounds, the points would be totaled, and a winning team would be chosen. Every student on the winning team would get a ticket, which they could use to get their House five free points at any time.

With the game's roots as combat training with focus on teamwork and strategy, students would clash in a pre-determined fashion to ensure no one got hurt. Amy's primary school had taught the students to dance instead of fight, but any simple command was fair game in the grand scheme. Today, they'd be engaging in a mock hand-to-hand battle. There would be no contact permitted, so it didn't matter if they used open hands or closed fists, but they couldn't use their feet. To help it feel like an actual battle, the one 'receiving' the blow had to act as if they had taken it. Additionally, because of the nature of the mock fights, they had to take turns delivering 'blows' - meaning the one 'receiving' had to straighten up and brace before they could deliver their own move. In a real hand-to-hand battle, the blows would connect, and the force would affect how the receiver moved and where they fell. Without the contact, multiple blows on one turn could not be allowed.

At the end of her speech, the Ravenclaw HeadGirl lifted her wand and bubbles holding colored tags appeared, floating down so the students could grab them. Amy grabbed hers and hastily put it on while the speaker dismissed the teams to confer with their team captains. The HeadStudents split and moved into the farthest corners of their territory, where each had a chalkboard set up. Amy and Rose hastened to the purple side.

The captains had a basic strategy given the large number of students who were playing, but they were smart. They decided to have ten of the heaviest seventh year students - acting as guards - on the team surround the three fastest students. The guards would block the yellow team's players from getting to the runners, who would run through the field, grab the flag, race back to the purple's side, and plant the flag in its stand. Everyone else would run in first to engage the opposing team's players, arranged by year from oldest to youngest. Their goal was to occupy as many of the yellow team as possible so there would be fewer opposing players to attack the guards, thus ensuring the guard's and runner's safety. Additionally, the guards would be surrounded by thirty students, who would engage the opposing team's players so the guards wouldn't have to. These forty-three players would make their move halfway through the round, to give the other students time to penetrate the other team and occupy them.

The flag was small enough to be carried by one person, but the captains wanted three runners so the flag could be passed from one runner to another in case of attack. In this way, the flag would always have a runner to be passed to and would surely make it to its home territory.

The captains also discussed how to fight an opponent. Essentially, the best time to grab a tag was when the opponent was pretending to receive the blow. This meant the purple team's tags would be vulnerable when the purple student pretended to be hit, so the captains advised them to anticipate which tag the opponent would go for and then twist their hips away to keep that tag safe but do it in a way that made the move look natural.

Amy's head buzzed with all the rules and intricacies she had learned, but she did her best to remember the most important ones. No contact hand-to-hand battles, no kicking, aim for the tag after delivering a blow, anticipate and twist away in a natural way.

After five minutes of strategizing, the teams met at the center of the Pitch where their territories bordered. Being a first year, Amy had found a spot near the back-center of the throng, close to one of the thirty protecting the guards. The guards, runners and their thirty protectors had been situated in the very center of the purple team. Amy breathed deeply and worked the ball of her foot into the grass, settling into a crouching stance. She focused her eyes ahead on the sea of yellow, waiting for the whistle. When it sounded, she tensed her legs and waited for the line ahead of her to begin moving. When they did, she took off running.

It didn't take long before she had crossed into yellow territory, but no one came forward to challenge her yet. Seeing the area around the thirty dropping, she moved to a patch where the thirty had weakened. Thirty paces from the flag, an older student in yellow came up and touched her shoulder, thus challenging her. She stopped and faced him, keeping in her crouch. They stared each other down for a moment, then she lunged forward with a punch. He reacted, turning his head and arching his back theatrically. Amy took that moment to swipe with her other hand and fasten on a tag. With the ease of ripping aged Velcro, the tag came off and Amy tucked it into the waistband of her shorts as he straightened up and saw his tag hanging from her hips. Now it was the other student's turn, and he moved for a punch with his left-hand crossing to his right side, so Amy turned her head and - seeing his left hand begin to move to the hip closest to him - she took a half-step back on her left foot then her right, acting dazed. She straightened and was relieved to see he hadn't gotten her tag.

Her turn again, she targeted a tag and punched straight at his face. He leaned backward, exposing his chin as if he had taken the blow. Amy used that moment to swipe out with her left hand and grab the tag. The older student straightened and saw he had lost another tag and Amy watched as anger flooded him, his face turning red, as he gritted his teeth. He pulled back his left hand - he must be left-handed - as far back as it would go then let his shoulder snap forward, bringing his arm around. If Amy had been any slower, she would have been hit, but she had decent reaction time for her age. Seeing the open palm, she waited until