The following teams will take the pitch in the Borders Riverside Quidditch Classic, and will vie for honor and glory — and the Delta Cup — on Saturday, May 19, 2007. We expect the Borders Riverside Quidditch Classic to be a community event, as well as a popular spectacle in Woldenberg Riverside Park in the heart of the French Quarter. Come join us for one of the magical world's most storied Quidditch traditions!
Alivan's Winged Lions | Betas Anonymous Punctuation Pixies | Borders Potion Masters | Knight 62442 Werewolves | Owl Appreciation Society Fighting Owls | Pontchartrain Pirates | Shrieking Shack Marauders | Whimsic Alley Sea Serpents
Borders Riverside Quidditch Classic Teams
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Owner: Alivan's Master Wandmakers Players
Chasers: Rosales (35), Stephanie (08), Pyne (77)
Beaters: Trelawney (96), Sabrina (07)
Keeper: Warlockz (99)
Seeker: vikehi (24)
History: GREAT SCOTT!
Finneas Alivan — who once had a quite ordinary and predictable existence, thank you very much — found he again had his cousin Mirabella to thank for some new preposterousness. Ever since he discovered that old trunk in his Devonshire home, and foolishly used the key his dratted cousin had sent to open it and find those magic wands, his quiet life had taken quite a turn toward the peculiar. Now one of the world's foremost master wandmakers, Finneas preferred to handle only the bookwork and employed two very trusted colleagues. He quite adamantly refused to become involved in any more outlandish goings-on now that he was well over 80! His parakeets kept him quite busy enough!
Finneas again looked askance at the barn owl hooting impatiently on his tidy kitchen windowsill. The bird, causing quite a racket, seemed inclined to stay precisely where he was until relieved of his burden. Finneas looked closer: was that a scroll on the bird's leg? Finneas sighed and donned the gardener's gloves that he kept for tending his ferns. No point in getting pecked.
Dear Finneas: My darling cousin, it is with great excitement that I relay this wonderful news! Our family has acquired — though some rather dubious means, I might add — a Quidditch team! Sadly, I am unavailable to claim title. You simply must go to the Old Hag's Pub in London at noon on Saturday in my stead. My warmest regards, Mirabella. P.S. You will need to tap the door of the Curious Cat Yarn Shoppe with one of our marvelous wands to find the pub.
Finneas sat down heavily in his favorite chair, quite horrified. What was a Quidditch? What would he possibly want with a team of this strange Quidditch? Though he had always loved a good mystery, Mirabella was almost too much to handle by himself! Finneas tried to remember to breathe.
Of course, he was quite prosperous due to Mirabella's meddling. Finneas knew that, if not for Mirabella, that old trunk with its hidden magic wands would still be locked — and he never would have established Alivan's Wands. And his ferns did seem to grow better now that he kept a wand in the house. Finneas nodded slowly. He would go to the Old Hag's Pub and acquire this Quidditch for his cousin. And then he would come straight back home for a cup of tea.
Saturday dawned bright and clear. Finneas's parakeets chirped cheerily as he carried his maps, his lunch and his favorite traveling hat out to the car. The drive carried him to London far faster than he wished to go, but he tried to whistle a little tune along the way — despite being quite dreadful at whistling.
As soon as he entered London, though, his worry heightened. He wended his way through the many pedestrians, nearly losing his hat in the process, and found the Curious Cat. Trying desperately to ignore the looks of the elderly ladies inside, Finneas took his best wand out of his coat pocket and tapped on the door. Instantly — and much to Finneas's dismay — the Old Hag's Pub, seeming quite dirty and disreputable, pushed the Curious Cat aside and stood there, daring him to enter.
And enter he did. Only to find that a Quidditch, if you will, was a proud and noble and impossibly dangerous sport played by loud, crude, daredevil wizards. Finneas claimed the title to the team, scrawling his signature across the many pieces of parchment as quickly as he could, and fled the company of the players and the wealthy owners who encouraged them.
Finneas did drown his sorrows in strong tea upon his return home, but that didn't change the parchments he had hidden in the back of a drawer. The Alivan family had acquired a Quidditch team — through methods that Mirabella herself called "dubious" — and he didn't know what to do with it.
In the years since, the Alivan's Winged Lions, named for the most ferocious beast Finneas Alivan could imagine, have had on years and off years, though they've always been quite boisterous. Their luck seems to be improving of late, though, and certainly the new brooms that Finneas has been reluctantly developing from wand trees seem to help. The Winged Lions supporters can only hope that those brooms prove to be as much of a roaring success as Alivan's Wands have been in the wizarding world.
Great Scott, indeed.
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Owner: Betas Anonymous Players
Chasers: gnrlmanda (21), Twinkie (20), Millicent (23)
Beaters: KT (18), timelady (77)
Keeper: BKSY (42)
Seeker: Voldemort (11)
History: During the Middle Ages — precisely when, no one has been able to determine — several surreptitious individuals formed an even more surreptitious society: the Zemai Kollons. The society dedicated itself to the exploration and celebration of proper grammar, and had a fairly dull history for its first several centuries. In fact, the only break from the doldrums of writing periods and quotation marks was when the society managed to hold its meetings in drawing rooms complete with those little tea cakes.
All good things — and thankfully, all boring things — must eventually come to an end, though, and one day a powerful sorceress named Strima Conxiousnis infiltrated the Kollons, if only to determine what someone was doing running around in the high heat of summer wearing a full horse costume surreptitiously under his cloak. Strima was terribly angry when she discovered that she had breached a grammar society, and not even a grammar society that was hiding secret encoded battle plans — just a grammar society secretly named Betas Anonymous with a rather silly love of quotation marks. She ensorcelled the members of the society, and prevented them from ever writing more than one consecutive apostrophe again. ("Ha ha," she chuckled evilly. "Never again shall they write a quotation mark — or proper dialogue!") Even more dastardly, Strima reasoned that the last thing a bunch of comma-lovers would want was a Quidditch team, and she cursed them with one.
Strima, of course, was right: The last thing the Kollons wanted was a Quidditch team. (They did discuss it for a rather extended period, though, and "writers who abuse commas" was a close second.) They screamed, they cried, they tore at their hair (and each others' hair, though that was somewhat disruptive), but Strima would not undo the curse. A Quidditch team she had decreed, so a Quidditch team it was.
Luckily for the Kollons, however, Strima had not required that the society members play Quidditch themselves. The Kollons put their heads together — except the horse's head, which they made wait outside — and decided to recruit a Quidditch team at once, just to get the whole wretched curse out of the way. Luckily, players flocked from far and wide.
The Betas Anonymous Punctuation Pixies got off to a rough start, since most equipment suppliers are reluctant to take punctuation in trade. They improved, though, over the centuries, especially once the Kollons figured out that costumes did not, in fact, improve gameplay. At the very least, the players had greater success at Quidditch than the Kollons did as editors; several centuries of novels in the region are rife with quotation mark errors.
In more recent years, the Pixies' success has been somewhat capricious. Their trademark "sting-and-bite" attack is still quite successful, and luckily, their rampant broom-stealing, though much maligned by opposing teams, has continued unchecked by either referees or league officials. Dynamia Wright, the star of the team for the past several years, has unfortunately decided to move on to the Russian Rabid Borzoi (who are paying her a scandalous amount of money), and disgusted fans are hoarding their pixie dust for the next great player. In the last couple years, the Pixies have participated on the Mud and Blood World Quidditch Tour, and are proud to say that, even if they haven't won the most matches, they've certainly been the dirtiest.
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Owner: Borders, Inc. Players
Chasers: Sherry (09), Tank (30), Wells (24)
Beaters: kary (13), Lachrymosa (42)
Keeper: Andromeda (73)
Seeker: JG (18)
History: Once upon a time, or alternatively, in 1971, two brothers opened a Borders bookstore on the University of Michigan campus in the fabled town of Ann Arbor. From their meager 800 square feet of space, they bravely helped students obtain the texts required for the strange world of college — and from their earliest days, their focus on their community lured neighborhood customers looking for more than just a good book. The brothers were in for a surprise, though, for soon after their store opened, the community turned out to be more diverse than they could have imagined.
When an usually odd student entered the store one evening, just before closing time, the brothers very nearly requested, ever so courteously, that Denny Davis return another day. The brothers' commitment to service prevailed, however, and they stayed to help Denny secure books for his upcoming literature examination.
But Denny's book list was like nothing they'd ever seen: The Old Wizard and the Sea, Catcher in the Gillyweed, Of Mice and Magicians, Pride and Petrification, The Sound of the Furies, and Dracula (A Cautionary Tale). The brothers sent him off with a copy of Dracula — over his protests that all booksellers should include a complimentary clove of garlic — and anxiously began searching out the additional titles.
As the brothers procured books for Denny, more strange requests came flying in — sometimes quite literally, as owls delivered orders with a hoot and the occasional feather. Against all common sense, but believing the cash register receipts, the brothers admitted that they had accumulated many wizarding customers. The shrewd businessmen put aside their endless questions and began carrying a special magical interest section in their store (on an unmarked shelf, to avoid confusing the non-magical folk). Business boomed, and the brothers busily expanded their stock of wizarding media to include Incredibly Long Playing Albums, international wizard periodicals, and the odd bit of parchment.
Of course, the brothers read most of the books they stocked, and they found one book, Quintessential Quidditch, particularly fascinating. They thrilled to tales of flying brooms, noble players and treacherous fouls. Through they knew well the dangers of playing with magic — after all, the Brothers Grimm were a perennial bestseller — when Denny next came in to pick up the latest Rolling Bezoar, the brothers cornered him and asked to watch a match.
Denny hemmed and hawed. He did play occasionally with his potions club, but they were an acerbic bunch and perhaps not entirely fit for polite company. Still, Denny agreed to speak with the "potion masters." After a bit of haggling, and quite a bit of pleading, the bargain was sealed. Little did the brothers know how significantly that handshake would change their lives.
The brothers were the only spectators at that match. The Potion Masters, clad in red and white, took to the sky in rather ungainly fashion, given that almost all wore cauldrons as protective helmets. The Potion Masters played a team passing through on their way to the Canadian Quidditch Catch-All, and lost 450-10. It didn't matter, though — the Borders brothers were hooked, and against all probability and sense, Quidditch became part of the company's culture.
Today, Borders' and Waldenbooks' 1,300 stores carry a large selection of Quidditch books, not to mention a vast array of non-Quidditch magical books and music. The Potion Masters, now featuring a number of Borders employees, began enjoying astounding success once executives convinced the players to discard the cauldron helmets. In 1995, so many articles appeared hailing the team's victories (and recounting the players' rather caustic remarks about their opponents) that the company went public to distract the over-curious non-magical media. The company again used its business to conceal its Quidditch team in 1997 by launching its international operations in Singapore, where many of the Potion Masters were dominating the World Cup.
Ten years later, the Borders Potion Masters have entered the Borders Riverside Quidditch Classic. (Borders' executives have promised that "absolutely no favoritism, not even style points, will be afforded the Potion Masters.") The brothers, unfortunately, will not be in attendance, and officials hope that fans have not adopted the brothers' favorite pastime: pelting opposing teams with pages ripped from dreadful literature.
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Owner: Knight Family Players
Chasers: Slappy (06), Gabster (25), ASHKABOB (44)
Beaters: Elbrun (24), clanmalfoy (23)
Keeper: Hak (42)
Seeker: Lupin (04)
History: In the summer of 1942, Justin Knight, who had just finished his second year at L'Université des Arts Magiques, traveled to Ireland to attend an elite Quidditch camp for promising young players. Justin represented L' Université admirably and even caught the Snitch during the final exhibition match, earning him a handshake from Niamh O'Donnelly, the coach of the Irish National Team, herself.
Unfortunately, Justin's skills also caught the eye of a less scrupulous observer, the dreaded Liam Kavanagh. That night, as Justin gathered his equipment from the locker room, Kavanagh attacked. The next few moments are too gory to relate in polite company, but let it suffice to say that Justin's quick use of the Tooth-Melting Hex allowed him to escape the vicious werewolf, very narrowly, with his life. It was the 24th of June, 1942: 62442.
Upon the newly-bitten Justin's return home, the Knight family discovered several unexpected werewolvian habits, from the slightly annoying scratching of the furniture to the completely problematic monthly change. Over the course of the summer and the ensuing decades, the family, through much trial and error and endless mumbling about "that dreadful howling racket", found that a werewolf's propensities could be controlled with a dose of just the right potion at just the right time. (In fact, the Knight family research contributed much to our knowledge of potions that can control, if not cure, the effects of a werewolf bite, and the family hopes that a cure will be shortly forthcoming, due to some very promising research of late.) With the appropriate potions, a healthy diet, and a trip to the planetarium, Justin learned that the moon was nothing to fear.
Sadly, however, for Justin, L' Université des Arts Magiques strictly forbid poltergeists, ghosts, merpeople, gnomes, trolls, goblins, werewolves and other non-human people from attending its classes, due the "unmanageable risk factor", as Headmaster Wallingham indelicately put it. Justin appealed to the Executive Council of Educators, and his aunt Jennifer, herself a former standout novelist and Keeper for Zodico, gathered signatures and local wizarding community support, to no avail. The Council upheld the rule, citing safety reasons.
Frustrated by bureaucracy and oppression, and inspired by the Knight family's decision to home school Justin "because we're smarter that that bunch of faculty crackpots anyway", Jennifer decided to form a team outside of the school where Justin could play Quidditch. She placed an ad in Julian Jewell's "Jewelled Wands" store in the French Quarter — and players came out of the woodwork. Boys and girls, men and women alike, werewolves all, whose schools or leagues had forbidden them from playing for fear of the legalese in magical liability waivers. Jennifer began to coach them and the Knight family provided advice on useful potions, allowing the team members to keep on an even keel and on their brooms.
The Knight 62442 Werewolves began winning matches in their second season, and by the third, Justin was leading the team to victory after victory. By their fifth year as a team, the Werewolves were invited to join the Bayou Quidditch League, over a storm of protests by players' mothers, and by their seventh year as a team, L' Université des Arts Magiques had adopted the Knight family's potions and began allowing student werewolves back in school. The Quidditch equipment room far below the school bears a plaque in Jennifer and Justin's names in honor of their relentless work for change.
Luckily for the Knight 62442 Werewolves, the Borders Riverside Quidditch Classic will be held during a sliver moon. Still, the trademark "Awoooo" howl that serves as the team cheer is certain to strike fear into the hearts of the opposing teams.
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Owner: Owl Appreciation Society Players
Chasers: Janusa (07), Hill (88), Eddy (77)
Beaters: Tom Riddle (21), Mulvaney (99)
Keeper: Becker (09)
Seeker: Freya (69)
History: Millennia ago, a great warrior walked in the darkness. Known only as He Who Hears, he brought fire and flame, shadow and darkness to the countryside. He sought those he deemed unworthy and they feared his wrath and his vengeance. Even more, they feared the fierce race of fighting owls that he had bred for sharpness of beak and talon and instilled with a rampant bloodlust.
As was inevitable, the Emperor soon brought the full force of the Imperial Wizarding Army to challenge the great warrior. Battle after battle raged, the clashes of swords and the thunder of destruction causing the populace to flee in terror. The owls fought with a viciousness that drove the soldiers to their knees, and He Who Hears who delivered killing stroke after killing stroke. Unable to slay the great warrior, the Emperor ordered his frayed Army to drive him from the Empire. The Army bitterly tossed the owls over the border shortly thereafter.
He Who Hears suffered greatly in exile. He traversed the length and breadth of the mountains, seeking food and shelter, though never solace. The parliament of owls, pecked ragged with the sharpness of beak and talon, trailed behind, and He Who Hears despaired.
In the depths of the mountains, though, another great warrior found He Who Hears. The two fought for a full day and a full night, not for glory or honor, but for the thrill of the battle. The combatants would have fought to the death, except that, despite causing the mountains to rumble and the sky to crack, neither could best the other. The two finally ceased the fierce battle and instead sat down companionably to a rather meager dinner.
In the days that followed, rumors traveled swiftly throughout the land, and one by one, those who fancied themselves great in combat came to test their mettle and their steel against the warrior who lived in the mountains. None, however, no matter their strength, their guile or their determination, could beat He Who Hears — though many continued to attempt the unachievable feat. He Who Hears, sensing great potential in their perseverance, began to amass an army of his own.
As more and more warriors joined his band of fighters, He Who Hears grew happy. He trained his men into an elite force and restored his bloodthirsty owls to their former glory. Again, people ran screaming before his shadow. Again, the Emperor feared his fury. And for the first time, He Who Hears triumphed over the Imperial Wizarding Army.
After conquering the land, however, as He Who Hears reveled in his victory and took joy in his parliament, his fighters grew restless. Lacking an enemy, the fought each other, bouts during which many ribs were broken and the blood flowed unchecked. As the mountains began to crumble from the destruction, He Who Hears again despaired — and resolved to find his men a new focus.
His mind turned to Quidditch, and Quidditch it was. Inspired by the flying owls and urged to destruction and victory, preferably in that order, by He Who Hears, the warriors played Quidditch like the Empire had never seen. Indeed, wins and losses were somewhat academic — as was the score — but broken bones were gleefully counted after every match.
The Quidditch team of He Who Hears achieved great success. When not keeping the Empire a shambles, the Quidditch team, known as the Ferocious Minions of He Who Hears, destroyed the competition. If people were too terrified to mention that this was because opposing teams flat refused to take the pitch after seeing the Minions warm up for matches by throwing rocks at each others' heads, He Who Hears did not mention it either.
In the last few centuries, the Ferocious Minions of He Who Hears have had great success, but only when officials have allowed them to play. Due to officiating consensus, the Minions have changed their name to the Owl Appreciation Society Fighting Owls, which is generally felt to be less intimidating, though admittedly, officiating crews have not yet found a method of keeping opposing teams on the pitch. Indeed, their hands are quite full attempting to convince opposing players that fleeing on broomstick is far superior to running across the pitch screaming. The Bayou Quidditch League, however, in all its wisdom, has seen fit to allow the Fighting Owls to play in the Borders Riverside Quidditch Classic, and opposing teams can only hope that the Owls are unable to recognize and avoid the Mississippi River.
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Owner: World Confederation of Pirates and Ninja Players
Chasers: Gidget (08), Loup (09), Captain (01)
Beaters: Amber (67), Rennie (04)
Keeper: Meru (13)
Seeker: LD (50)
History: In 1692, the wizarding world was in an uproar. Following the lightning-quick passage of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy in response to the Salem Witch Trials, the wizarding world effected its famous retreat from Muggle society. Never have instruction manuals on warding been so popular, and never has the world seen so much seismic activity as wizards cast Unplottable Spells. One resulting earthquake ravaged Jamaica — the wizarding world's central outpost for British expatriates in the Caribbean — and in the melee, eleven ladies, bored with their lives of leisure, fled Port Royal in the mass exodus of expats, prostitutes, naval forces — and pirates.
Lady Elizabeth Wilkinson's maid, Ruby, assisted in their escape, for Ruby was not only the cousin of pirates, she was a witch. Ruby's magic transformed the noble ladies into...rather less noble ladies of the night and she led them through ruined Port Royal to board the brigantine Dragon's Flight. Ten leagues out, to the dismay of the crew, the ladies produced an astounding bevy of weapons from within their corsets and commandeered the ship. They sent the crew to watery graves, and the Dragon's Flight became the world's first all-female pirate ship.
Captain Wilkinson and her ladies proved competent sailors, showing that all those dinners spent listening to their husbands' commanding officers were not wasted in the least. They set sail for the coast of Venezuela, intercepting three passenger ships along the way. After taking the female children hostage, Ruby discovered no less than six young witches, and the Dragon's Flight also became the world's most feared pirate crew.
The years passed in a tumble of rum, brawls and mutinies — captaincy of the Dragon's Flight changed twelve times in 1703 — and the pirate witches stopped in Caribbean ports quite frequently. Mostly they took in the sights (and the liquor houses), but despite the great many varieties of rum and the many swarthy barmen, life at sea bored the ladies nearly as much as their past lives had. To quell their resulting mischief, Captain Josefina Valdez took an idea from one of the British witches and created a Quidditch team. Quidditch over the open sea was a perilous game, and the pirates soon learned that dropping the Quaffle resulted in a stroll off the plank to retrieve it. The ploy worked, at least until Captain Valdez realized that she had a full-fledged Quidditch team full of rapacious pirates — and set sail for the 1775 Quidditch World Cup in Bermuda.
At the Cup, the pirates were incensed to find they were specifically excluded from entry, being neither a country nor "upstanding citizens of the Wizarding Worlde." They considered a takeover of one of the smaller countries — Slovakia, perhaps, or Lichtenstein. Captain Valdez saw little sense, however, in commandeering a landlocked country, and denied her crew the chance to be arrested by the Wizarding Law Enforcement Division.
Instead, the pirates set sail again, heading back to their roots in Port Royal, but were distracted en route by the lure of a new settlement in America: la Nouvelle-Orléans. Recently surrendered to Spanish rule, it was an ideal base for the witch-pirates and their Quidditch team. Abandoning the high seas, the ladies anchored in Lake Pontchartrain, where the Dragon's Flight remains to this day.
With time, the Bayou Quidditch League began to take the pirates seriously as a team even though they always seemed to smell strongly of rum, and in 1894 allowed them to take part in the Borders Riverside Quidditch Classic as the Pontchartrain Pirates. They have not been asked to return until now.
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Owner: The Shrieking Shack
Players
Chasers: WizardRock (05), notmonica (18), Renee (42)
Beaters: Brittany (44), Myrtle (07)
Keeper: NO CISSY (95)
Seeker: Kristina (26)
History: Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away called Arizona, a witch named Stephanie decided to take over the world.
This, of course, sounds very dramatic. "Take over the world?" you say. "Are you serious?" My dear reader, we've never been more serious in our lives. Let us repeat: a witch named Stephanie decided to take over the world.
Moreover, she's quite nearly accomplished it.
She's had help, certainly. She never could have infiltrated the Muggle "internet" without help. That would be absurd. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
After deciding to take over the world, Stephanie, twirling her hair absently around her wand, realized that there was rather a lot to it — plots to be hatched, enemy protocols decoded, gear purchased. (Stephanie was very excited about gear, particularly night vision glasses.) She couldn't just put her life on hold for this. She had school! A dog! A violin!
At once, Stephanie went about recruiting partners for her plot. Mishey signed on immediately, as did Tracy. Addison's mother, though, made her wait until she was of age to join the conspiracy. ("Absolutely no uprisings, coups or mutinies in my house, young lady!") Once Cindy was in, Ebony and Natalie were as well. And with those six, Stephanie began to scheme.
The seven explored their options thoroughly, considering and discarding the usual: secret tattoos, alternate identities and anything involving hippogriffs. They even briefly considered becoming unregistered Animagi, but in the end that turned out to be a rather lot of work, and was therefore abandoned. After many late nights of pizza and root beer, the seven finally hit upon the perfect plot: the Muggle "internet."
We can hear you from here, dear reader. What is this "internet"? A weapon? A spell? What have the Muggles been cooking up when we're not looking? Well, dear reader, the "internet" is, well, the "information superhighway." If that doesn't make any sense, ask your children. We're quite sure they're "surfing" it right now while your back is turned.
Yes, the Muggle "internet." What better, given Tracy's obsession with the thing? With their magical skills, they could infiltrate the Muggle internet and take it over! They'd control Muggle communications — and wizards wouldn't know until it was
too late! The seven went to work at once, constructing a "website" grander than anything the world had seen. Given the world's fascination with this "Harry Potter" hogwash — as if that goblin should have been telling that Muggle author tall tales of boy heroes and half-human villains — they quickly decided to create a website devoted to all things Harry Potter as their front. The news, the challenges, the discussions and the games would cover up their true purpose — and cover it admirably. And for every Muggle who visited their site, the seven would install a "cookie" in the visitor's computer that, when triggered, would magically turn the visitor into a rat. It was brilliant! The seven went to work constructing their website at once, naming it The Shrieking Shack to draw in unsuspecting fans.
The Shrieking Shack was an instant hit. Its breadth of services, timeliness of reporting, and quality of challenges proved very popular with fans. It included everything from QuidditchPitch TV to a WizardCast, and the number of Muggle visitors increases by the month. The seven sit at home nights, watching their hit counts and cackling with their imminent success.
The seven are, however, an impatient conspiracy, for no matter how quickly their hit counts rise, it can never be fast enough. Eager to carry out their nefarious plot, they've devised an even more dastardly plan: advertising. The seven explored their advertising options and decided that a Harry Potter conference would likely have many Muggles who could be convinced to visit The Shrieking Shack. "Phoenix Rising", to take place in New Orleans, seemed a useful target, especially as it was coming up in mere months. The seven hissed "Excellent" and contacted the conference's organizers.
The Shrieking Shack Marauders will take the pitch as part of the Borders Riverside Quidditch Classic on May 19, 2007. Tournament officials doubt their success due to the team's very recent formation. Of course, tournament officials have no idea what the true objective of the Marauders' entry in the Classic is.
And we can but ask you, dear reader: Have you visited The Shrieking Shack?
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Owner: Whimsic Alley Players
Chasers: Mikey (25), Lovegood (05), Black (12)
Beaters: Black (22), Black (13)
Keeper: Rossi (18)
Seeker: Tink (02)
History: The history of the Whimsic Alley Sea Serpents starts far earlier than any other team in the Bayou Quidditch League. In fact, it extends back to the founding of Phoenix Wands in 426 B.C. The wand shop did respectable business among Athenians, but as Athens had been ravaged by plague only three years earlier, business was not what it could have been. When the shop was on the verge of closing its doors, local merchant Stavros Georgios snapped it up, and due to Stavros's undeniable charm, Phoenix Wands soon thrived again.
Stavros Georgios's descendants traveled throughout the world, changing locations and names with the trends of the time, all the while building a worldwide empire of magical enterprises. In the early 1400s, Sinclair Greene acquired Pilcher & Botts Confectioners, which still is a premier provider of magical candy, and in the latter part of the century, Sebastian Groom added Habber & Dasher, a wizard uniform manufacturer. Today, family heir Stan Goldin has brought together the family's businesses under one roof as Whimsic Alley, and added schoolbooks, wizard fashions, and other magical items to the collection. Of course, it should be no surprise that Mr. Goldin would want to next acquire the most magical item of all: a Quidditch team.
The challenge, of course, was that Mr. Goldin's magical empire occupies the sunny streets of Santa Monica, California, an area known for its startling lack of interest in any sport that isn't quintessentially American. When Mr. Goldin began seeking a Quidditch team in the 1990s, Quodpot was all the rage, the periodic explosions swaying the palm trees. Nowhere, however, could Mr. Goldin find a local Quidditch team. His consultations with the state's magical games authority dashed his hopes, as they assured him that "Soccer will prosper in California long before Quidditch gains a foothold against Quodpot — and have you seen anyone at a soccer match lately?"
Mr. Goldin, not being a frequenter of soccer matches, thought the magical authorities rather easily discouraged and put his formidable business mind to work. He scoured the shores of California, from San Diego to San Francisco, looking for amateur teams, without success. He traveled the deserts and the mountains, the hills and the busy streets of California's great cities, still without success. Everywhere he went, though, he heard the explosions of Quodpot and gritted his teeth.
Determined to expand his empire in this particular way, Mr. Goldin considered other means of achieving his goal. He stood on the Santa Monica pier, the Ferris wheel lights behind him, and contemplated the horizon, knowing that the solution lay before him.
And it did. For as Mr. Goldin contemplated the Pacific, a flyer like he'd never seen zoomed into view, followed closely by a simply enormous serpent of the sea. He knew, of course, as everyone over the age of three did, that such serpents lurked in the shallows of the Pacific, drawn there by the vast numbers of Muggle tourists. Never, though, had he ever seen someone so foolish as to taunt the creatures. Or so skilled.
The flyer clearly had command of the situation. He deftly avoided the serpent's jaws, twisting serpent's prodigious length in knots and he flew around and through its loops. Around and around, until not only had the serpent collapsed, exhausted, into the sea, but Mr. Goldin had to sit down on the pier. That was the answer: create a Quidditch team from the local flyers, the magical equivalent of the Muggle surfers that braved the depths.
Shortly thereafter, the Whimsic Alley Sea Serpents were founded, much to Mr. Goldin's — and his accountant's — satisfaction. Through an endless chorus of "Dude!" and "I'm jonesing for some Snitch!", the Sea Serpents soon began winning, and winning often. Lacking proper Californian teams against which to show off, the team toured the Pacific Rim, soon demonstrating their madcap skills to many Japanese and Filipino teams, all of whom soon adopted the Serpents' prominent Californian lingo.
Now, the Serpents have expanded their list of opponents to include teams across America, though they still prefer the Pacific Rim circuit, with its frequent upheavals of nature that "always keep matches interesting, man." Their skill has been unmatched, when measured over the last fifteen years, and Mr. Goldin smiles with satisfaction when he considers the part of his magical enterprise that almost never was.