If Quidditch games were won on effort alone, the Chudley Cannons may well have topped the British and Irish League every year. Unfortunately for Ronald Weasley, President by walkover of the Chudley Cannons Fan Club since the previous president was arrested on May 3rd, 1998, Quidditch games were largely scored by one player of each team's abilities to catch a small golden ball, with the occasional input of the rest of the team working significantly harder to score largely irrelevant goals. These two parts were where Ginny Weasley's new team had historically run into difficulties, and she was determined to help solve one of those two issues, even if it was the one which had very little bearing on the game's outcome. The evening after she signed her new contract, she had vowed to Harry in no uncertain terms that she was going to be the first to arrive and last to leave from every practice, and she would not rest until the Chudley Cannons managed to win a game that season. After gaining a reassurance that the comment about 'not resting' was a hyperbole, Harry agreed to do everything in his power to help her keep the oath.

And so it was that at just before 5:30 on the morning of her first practice, Ginny found herself dragged from a beautiful dream by a series of teasing kisses down her back. While she was certainly happy to be woken this way at a reasonable time, say 12:30, she was decidedly not happy at this specific moment, and as such decided to focus all the 'not happy' she could muster at being interrupted in the middle of Dream Harry's workout straight onto the apparent source of the issue, who happened to be the much more real version of Harry and whose lips were still steadily making their way towards her backside. She had, of course, conveniently ignored the fact that the only reason she was being woken up at this hour in the first place was that she had asked him to do so, but to her sleep deprived brain it seemed perfectly unreasonable that Harry had actually done as she'd asked.

"Uuuuurgh, Haarreeee. Lemme sleep," She blinked at him as furiously as she could, hopefully conveying the extent of the fury he would be facing for waking her up if she weren't so groggy from being woken up. "Youuu were about to start doin pullll upps."

Unfortunately for her soporific viewing of Dream Harry's abdomen, Real Harry was either much too brave or much too foolish to respond properly to the clearly murderous intent of her lethargic slurring. Chuckling was not nearly the effect she had been going for, and if she were in any state to be casting Bat Bogeys she would have made sure he was very aware of that.

"I'll do all the pullups you want later, Gin, but you need to get up for Quidditch practice."

His words caught in one of the few active portions of her angular gyrus, which, after a few moments of figuring out what exactly a Quidditch was and how it could ever be worth missing out on her fiancée's imaginary body, drew itself into a frenzy as it stressed to the rest of her brain just how important it was for it to get up RIGHT NOW. While most of her grey matter responded with suitable urgency, the paraventricular nucleus, ever the contrarian, argued very fervently that sleep was far more important than anything else it could be doing, and cracked off a series of incredible yawns to prove it. Nevertheless, the paraventricular found itself outvoted, and was left to grumble to itself as Ginny, with almost no help from Harry, dragged her still-sleepy body upright and took the steaming cup of coffee her fiancée offered.

By the time Ginny had taken a quick shower, dried and dressed herself, realised her jersey was on backwards and dressed herself again, and stepped out of the door, it was just gone 6 o'clock, an hour before her practice began. She took the opportunity to apparate to the stadium side-along with Harry, a slower and more complex affair than standard apparition with the distinct advantage of providing a fantastic excuse for Ginny to wrap herself around her partner. She felt the familiar squeeze before they landed with a soft crack in the Chudley Stadium.

Seeing as they were nearly an hour early, the field was completely deserted and likely would be for a considerable period. After a few moments of thought in which she briefly considered dragging Harry back to the flat or down to the changing rooms for a far more intimate warmup, Ginny sighed and started to jog laps around the pitch. She was slightly surprised when Harry joined her rather than watch from the stands as she had expected, but if he wanted to provide some eye candy she wasn't about to take a Hippogriff by the wing. He kept pace with her warmup for nearly half an hour, before giving her a reluctant kiss goodbye as he headed off to work.

By the time the rest of the team arrived, Ginny was thoroughly awake, something she sorely regretted a few hours later as she watched one of the beaters collide with the goalposts for the third time in barely ten minutes. If she were still groggy perhaps she could have explained away the sheer incompetence on display as some perverse nightmare, but in her state of energetic alertness every fumbled quaffle, missed bludger and lost snitch was painfully real. At least Harry wasn't here to see the time she'd almost knocked the keeper from his broom with her particularly frustratedly thrown quaffle, or she had a feeling she would have endured months of teasing over following in George's footsteps. On the other hand, it would have been nice to have somebody to share a good moan and groan with every time the seeker hurtled across to the wrong side of the pitch in search of some imaginary glint of gold, when Ginny could clearly see the snitch fluttering leisurely over the stands. By the time the coach blew the whistle for the end of practice, Ginny finally thought she understood how Harry had felt in his year as Quidditch Captain. At the very least, it was some relief that she hadn't quite had to trade a concussion for that nugget of wisdom, however close she had come to flying straight into a bludger just to get out of the rest of the horror show of a practice. Her vow that the team would win one game that season might need some rethinking. Perhaps they could hope for a draw.