I Think I Need a Sunrise (Mickey)

[Deleted]

October 30, 2026

The past few months had been yet another test of her mental health, and Claricia was tired of it. Just when she had started to think that she had gotten over the worst of the explosion, Hogwarts had gone up in flames. She hadn't even been there; she had only heard about what had happened to the school, yet that had been enough to send her on a downward spiral. It made her feel worse that she had gone from captaining one of the best teams in the British and Irish Quidditch League to… what? A retired Quidditch player and current scout who couldn't get her life together and put her glory days in the past? That was what it felt like sometimes.

Having been invited to the Samhain festivities that were taking place, Claricia wasn't sure if she really liked the idea. She didn't want to talk to the dead; she was haunted by them even without their being ghosts or whatever they were supposed to materialize as. It seemed like a nice gesture to at least show up, though, given that the holiday was a Druid celebration. (On that note, there probably wouldn't be any Dementors lurking around, though Claricia just couldn't picture the whole thing as an especially happy occasion.)

She kept her distance from the bonfire as it was lit, standing back from the crowd that had gathered around it for warmth. After pulling a flask of firewhisky from an inside pocket of her cloak, she took a swig.

michelangelo tiberius mclaggen

[michelangelo tiberius mclaggen]

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Samhain was definitely not something he'd participated in before, but it came as another team bonding exercise. It was always one of those, to be fair. That was the only way he could be pulled out of his usual haunts or his flat aside from Quidditch related ordeals. The manager knew exactly what he was doing when it came to setting these sorts of things up. They always turned into rowdy booze feats or late night clubbing. Sometimes it was fun. In this instance, Mickey wasn't sure if he wanted to drink or if he wanted to take in everything going on around him. He was intrigued by the festival, which was only in its first day - of three. The team was busy for the next two days, so getting everything he could out of tonight was sort of how he wanted to approach it. And if they ended up back here again for next year? Then he could get trashed.

Supposedly all that was happening tonight was a massive bonfire, welcoming spirits back. He wondered if that was meant to be more of a 'in the memory of' or if throngs of ghosts were about to appear out of the ground. Which would be fine as long as they didn't pass through him. Every time that happened when he was in school, it felt like he'd walked through a deep freezer filled with invisible spider-webs. Very few things were more uncomfortable than having phantasmal tendrils pulling at you.

Stepping away from the bonfire as it started to roar to life, Mickey found himself circling the outer edge of the crowd. The team had sort of dispersed, though he wasn't really looking for any of them. Being able to even tell who was who as the light from the flames fought against the shadows of the growing night was impossible unless they flicked the right away. Weirdly enough, that was how he spotted Claricia Freund. Formerly an opponent on the Wimbourne Wasps until the incident during the Championship permanently retired her. Having been there himself, Mickey found it hard to blame her for choosing to do so.

"Is the view better from out here?" Mickey asked as he raised a hand in greeting to the former Wasps Captain. Had she held on for another year, this interaction would have been on the pitch between the two of them in their respective leadership positions. Instead it was at a bonfire for an ancient Gaelic festival.

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[Deleted]

October 30, 2026

"Is the view better from out here?"

Claricia, recognizing the voice, glanced over to see Michelangelo "Mickey" McLaggen approaching her. Despite her temper on and off the pitch, she didn't mind that the kid had come up to her. Even though she wasn't about to admit it, she also sort of liked that she didn't have to stand there entirely on her own. Having the company of another Quidditch player was also better than the possibility of ending up stuck in a conversation with some overzealous fan or something. It wasn't that sort of occasion, though that didn't mean that some weird person wouldn't pop up out of nowhere, motivated by the fact that there was a large public event.

Part of the reason why Claricia remained back from the crowd, she realized, was probably a holdover from what had happened during the last Quidditch match before her retirement. If this bonfire were to turn into a mass casualty event, then she would have an easier way out. She wasn't sure if that made the view better, as McLaggen had asked. It was what it was, and she shrugged her shoulders. "Yeah, I suppose?" she replied to him after swallowing the liquor in her mouth. She didn't really want him sharing her flask directly, though; it was nothing personal.

michelangelo tiberius mclaggen

[michelangelo tiberius mclaggen]

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Off. That was the only way Mickey could describe any of the few interactions he’d had with Claricia in the past year. But who could blame her? There were plenty of players in a similar situation, and none of them had been in the air when it’d happened. And it wasn’t their team either. He hadn’t understood the viewpoint of being a Captain until he was given the position himself, and now saw how such a thing could call for a feeling of responsibility even when there was nothing that could have been done. Injuries off the pitch, accidents that were unavoidable. A ‘mishap with fireworks’. The meetings that the Bats management had conducted with the entirety of the club – players and staff alike – after the fact had mentioned that some of their contemporaries would be struggling with this for a long time. Survivors guilt, essentially. He didn’t want to diagnose Claricia with something that he knew very little about, but she was definitely different than she had been prior to the accident. Hell, even he lost it for a few months before the start of the next season. His way of forgetting about it was through a bottle. He’d managed to cut it off once practices started up again, but he understood a little bit about what could be going on.

“You’re scouting now right? I imagine that means getting to travel a bit more this year than normal now that the students are all spread out.” Mickey had thought about this quite a bit since the announcement had been made over the summer. The current Hogwarts Quidditch players were going to get valuable experience playing against international players, something that only ever happened at the professional level. Typically these kids were good to. They leaked into the league often, and always had different play styles than whatever was currently considered the most efficient way to play. Seeing that ahead of time at the amateur level would be unbelievably beneficial to the next generation of players. Snagging a few of them for next season was something the Bats absolutely needed to do.

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[Deleted]

October 30, 2026

McLaggen asked her if she had been scouting, and Claricia nodded. That had been her plan before the explosion had happened, and she knew that she would have been even more of a mess the previous season if she hadn't had something to do with Quidditch in her life at all. She was so used to being on the pitch that it still felt strange to be retired. She wasn't even forty; she still had years left of some career before she would be of actual retirement age, and she'd rather take a blow to the head from a Bludger than end up retired to some desk job.

"I imagine that means getting to travel a bit more this year than normal," McLaggen added, "now that the students are all spread out."

"…Yeah," Claricia nodded, though her tone wasn't exactly one of someone who was thrilled about that prospect. The job required some travel anyway, but it would be a hassle in the upcoming season, especially when she doubted that the students would be performing at their best. She hated traveling by Portkey; it made her feel sick to her stomach every time, but Apparating to countries she'd never visited wasn't an option. At least Durmstrang was familiar territory, not that she had been a good fit there before winding up at Hogwarts. If any of the Hogwarts students imagined themselves to be the next Victor Krum, though, maybe they had gone there. And then there were the Americans with their Quodpot obsession, though they had their own Quidditch league over there, too. If anybody had gone all the way to Mahoutokoro, she thought, she really wasn't looking forward to that.

Scouting was supposed to be the better option to playing—less stress, for one thing, and more time to enjoy herself at events, apparently. "Anyway… How have you been, McLaggen?" she wondered, hoping that things had been going better for him than they had for her.

michelangelo tiberius mclaggen

[michelangelo tiberius mclaggen]

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He knew when to stop asking questions when he wasn't getting anywhere. Traversing Claricia's life wasn't going to move the conversation along at all. If anything, he was imposing on the moment she had alone. He could blame not being able to read her face on the fact that it was pitch black out, but probably also should have known better before approaching her. At the same time, he couldn't completely ice her out. She was still integral to the league and the sport, and having a friendly rapport with the scouts meant getting better intel on players down the line. A lot of the players had lost a little bit of themselves that day, and the constant slugging that fate seemed to have it out for their community the last couple of years still hadn't fully stopped. There was no reason a player needed to feel on edge while in the air during a match, but he hated having that gut twisting worry before every start that something bad could happen again. And people would be hurt because they came to watch his team. He understood, in a way. Losing teammates and friends was different though.

"I'm Captain now," he responded. It was an enormous responsibility, and one he had been waiting to take on for a few years now. Ballycastle had gone through multiple roster changes since he was brought on, and now he was the last bastion from his early years. It logically made sense to have the Keeper as Captain, and the new players were willing to listen to him bark at them when he got the chance. Bringing up such an important promotion in front of Claricia seemed unfair, especially because she probably already knew that. "The team could be a tad better though. Our new Chaser and Beater work well together. So that's something to look forward to." Mickey was hard of hearing in one ear, not blind, and definitely wasn't unobservant about their closeness. New recruits always got along well because they were sort of in it together. He'd been the same way when he was drafted at the same time as a Chaser, who had unfortunately washed out of the league. It was ultimately none of his business unless it affected their playing, which he hoped wouldn't happen. "Hopefully we can secure some actual wins this year. Our offense has been lacking the past couple seasons."

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[Deleted]

October 30, 2026

Mickey McLaggen as the captain of the Ballycastle Bats wasn't something that Claricia had ever pictured, but it also wasn't her decision. Of course, there were probably plenty of people who had never imagined that she could have been the captain of the Wimbourne Wasps, but she had been. How successfully she had held that role was debatable, in her eyes at least. She still felt as though she'd failed in that department, but that wasn't a conversation that Claricia wanted or needed to have with Mickey. Instead, she nodded her head a little at his news as he kept talking.

Despite his captaincy, Mickey said that his team could be better than they were, though it wasn't all bad. "Our new Chaser and Beater work well together. So that's something to look forward to," he explained. "Hopefully we can secure some actual wins this year. Our offense has been lacking the past couple season."

"Yeah," Claricia replied. Every new season was always a gamble. It wasn't just about the players on one's own team; every other team's players—and how well they played together—also mattered. "Your new Chaser and Beater, they're both from Hogwarts, aren't they?" she asked. She was pretty sure that they were, and her first thought was that she didn't want Mickey to make the same mistakes as she had made.

michelangelo tiberius mclaggen

[michelangelo tiberius mclaggen]

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What the Bats really needed was for all of the pieces of the puzzle to click into place perfectly and for every other team to keep trying to force corner pieces where they didn’t belong. Usually it was the other way around, and he was typically left as the only defense. Mickey didn’t enjoy looking at statistics in that manner, but it was exhausting as a Keeper when he spent all game, every game the same way. At least he was getting recognition as a mad man in front of the goal posts, making ridiculous saves multiple times per match that other Keepers would get maybe every other game. That had to happen in order for his own stock not to fall too much. He knew he wasn’t the best of the best in the league. That was reserved for the players that ended up on the national teams, which he wasn’t even close to yet. Probably because the Bats had sucked several years in a row now. His save to score ratio was ridiculously high though. For every goal he was stopping three or four, even in the matches where they were getting blown away. That had to amount to something. All he needed was a quality defense to protect him and an offense that could put the other teams on their toes. He hated being the free win team.

“Yeah, classic Gryffindor-Slytherin rivalry too,” Mickey commented. “It’s funny. We spend all our time at school hating each other on the pitch and always trying to one-up one another. And then once you get to this level-” he shrugged, “-it doesn’t really matter anymore. I think the competiveness of it will help breed better teamwork between them. It’s certainly helped me in the past.” Even on the professional level, having an old rival join the Bats had helped make him a better player and teammate. At the end of the day, it was their work. They had to be cordial with one another even if they used to hate each other’s guts on the pitch. The best Chasers he’d played with were the same ones that knew every quirk of his defensive strategy and absolutely pissed him off. Learning from that and growing as a player was what it was all about. He hoped the same would happen with his rookies. Hell, it looked like it was already happening.

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