The next week began a class Lina and Harry had a hard time fitting into their world-view: flying.
"Why do you suppose they use broomsticks?" Harry asked.
Lina shrugged. "Wands, broomsticks, potions, they like having tools."
"Yeah, but broomsticks?" Harry asked again.
"Tradition, Inverse," a teacher Harry hadn't met said. "I am Madam Hooch, your flying teacher. Flight is one of the simplest, most practical means of travel to a wizard. Centuries ago broomsticks were among the few muggle objects big enough that wouldn't attract too much attention."
"But surely now that isn't the case," Harry objected, remembering Aunt Petunia's vacuum cleaner. And these wooden, unpainted brooms were rather archaic.
"Somewhat," Hooch agreed easily, "but nothing else has caught on the same way."
"So it's marketing," Lina said. "Wizards think you should fly brooms, so the broom-makers don't have any reason to do something else."
"Exactly. Now if the two of you would head to the grounds, class will begin as soon as I find out what Peeves did with all my teaching brooms."
The Inverses made their way to the open grounds where Gryffindor and Slytherin were gathered. Malfoy was still boasting about his flying, Neville was struggling with his Remembrall (which stubbornly refused to be any color but red), and Ron was having another go at Dean about soccer.
Malfoy spotted them first. "What?" he asked in overblown astonishment. "You're going to learn to fly a broom, Potter?"
"Inverse," Harry corrected. No one paid attention.
Least of all Malfoy, who continued on, "I would have thought that backwater hedge magic of yours would just explode you into the air."
If Malfoy had expected praises for his cleverness, he was sorely mistaken. Crabbe and Goyle laughed loudly, but the rest of the Slytherins seemed a tad gunshy of taunting Lina. Harry smiled slightly; Malfoy either believed Lina's magic was mere fireworks or he had a deathwish. They didn't get a chance to find out, however, as Madam Hooch was back with an armful of old, ratty brooms.
"Alright settle down. Everyone take a broom and line up with the broom on the ground next to you," she called impatiently. In moments the class was arranged to her satisfaction. "Now, stick your hand out over your broom and very clearly call UP."
Harry looked down at the dilapidated broom and decided there were more foolish things he'd done in his life. "Up!" he yelled, along with the rest of the class. Harry's broom flew neatly into his hand. Lina's reared up mightily and nearly walloped her in the face. Hermione, already getting a reputation for deciphering spells quickly, barely managed to get it to roll over. Malfoy was the next to gain his broom, then Ron, a few more, and finally Neville managed to get his broom in his unsteady hand.
Hooch then went down the line, demonstrating the proper grip. Malfoy was humiliated that he had been doing it wrong, but doubtless would boast loudly how his style made him faster or something later. When everyone was ready, Hooch instructed them on how to take off, hold steady, and then descend. "Ready? On my whistle, rise a few feet, hold it for a moment, and come down gently. Three – two –"
But poor Neville panicked and kicked off early. He rose far too high, Hooch shouting at him to come down, until finally he slipped and fell a good twenty feet. Harry winced at the landing – the loud CRACK told him all he needed to know about Neville's wrist. Sure enough it was broken, and Hooch hurried him off to the hospital wing. "None of you is to move!" she roared. "If I see one broom in the air, you'll be on your way out before you can say 'Quidditch!'"
Once she was gone Malfoy doubled over with laughing. "Did you see his face? The fat idiot looked like he was going to die from shock!"
"Shut it, Malfoy," a Gryffindor girl snapped. After a moment, Harry placed her name. Pavarti…Pail? No, Patil. A Slytherin girl called Pansy teased her for standing up.
Malfoy interrupted. "Look!" from his bent-over position he had spotted Neville's Remembrall. "It's that stupid thing Longbottom's gran sent him!" He picked up the crystal ball.
"Give that here, Malfoy," Harry said with quiet menace, walking up and sticking out his hand. He rather liked Neville.
Everyone around them stopped talking. Lina frowned. Malfoy grinned evilly. "No," he said shortly. Then he was on his broom and gaining altitude. "I think I'll leave it somewhere safe for Longbottom to find." The Slytherins laughed and Harry's scowl deepened. Malfoy clearly knew exactly what he was doing on that broom, bad grip or no. "What's the matter, Potter? A bit outside your reach?"
The blood was pounding in his ears, drowning out common sense and patience. He had to take down Malfoy, and he had to do it now. Hermione's books on Quidditch told Harry all he needed to know about the potential speed a broomstick, even these old ones the Weasley twins derided, were capable of. Levitation was out of the question. Even if he had mastered the raywing, he'd need the threat of magic to cow Malfoy. The broomstick in his white knuckles (he was dimly aware of pain radiating from his overtight grip) was the answer. He mounted the broom and kicked off.
The broom rose to the occasion. Compared to flight by spell the broom was sluggish to react and the pressure between his legs would take some getting used to, but the sheer effortlessness of it made him laugh. There was almost no drain on his reserves! None! No wonder Hooch said flying was practical!
Harry tightened up on his broom and leaned forward. He rocketed at Malfoy like a bom di wind had fired him out of a barrel. The utterly shocked Slytherin brat had barely enough time to roll out of the way. Harry pulled back and around, his broom not exactly stopping on a dime but it was good enough. "Give it, Malfoy, or I'll blast you off your broom!" he challenged.
Malfoy was many things, but stupid wasn't one of them. He seemed to realize that Crabbe and Goyle were far below, and that Harry might have as many surprises as Lina did. "Fine," he said sharply. He coughed to get rid of the nervous shrill. "You want it? Then catch it!" And he hurled the ball with all his might.
Harry had no intention to let Malfoy win. He leaned on his broom and shot forward again, this time angling down. Everything he knew about pulling speed out of a levitation spell flashed through his head. He flattened out over the broom, pulled up his knees, narrowed his profile. He angled down more sharply, surrendering to gravity to build up more speed until he was forced to level out. He could swear he could feel the grass tickling his knuckles. There, the glittering Remembrall was ahead and just a few feet from the ground.
Three feet.
Two feet. Harry reached out.
One foot!
"Levitation!" Harry roared, leaping off the broom and killing his momentum. He hung in the air, his feet a good twenty inches above the ground, head and shoulders yanked back as if he had grabbed a rope to arrest his momentum and his feet had kept on going with his broom, which wasn't far wrong really. The Remembrall was grasped firmly in his fist.
As for the broom, well, it was a glorious wreck against the castle wall, which was closer to Harry than the ground was. Harry's heart skipped a beat as he looked over the splintered broomstick and pondered what would have happened if that had been his face.
"He caught it!" Ron yelled. A great cheer went up among the Gryffindors, a cheer that died as quickly as it began.
"HARRY INVERSE!!" Harry's heart skipped another beat at the raging voice of Minerva McGonagall. Flying against orders, destroying a school broom, brawling with a classmate, oh this was going to be bad.
Lina frowned at McGonagall as she strode past the assembled students, gathered Harry, and departed without a word to any of them. McGonagall had treated them at arm's length so far, but this was different. The raw emotion in her voice wasn't like Snape's rage…it was more like Flitwick's exhuberence. McGonagall was…happy?
There was a tug on her robs. She turned to look at Hermione. The bookworm had stars in her eyes. "If I get permission, will you teach me that spell he used?"
Lina groaned. She barely heard Ron and Malfoy get into an argument over what was about to happen to Harry.
Harry looked at the older boy, Oliver Wood, with confusion in his eyes. He was glad to see the feeling returned in them – as opposed to something more akin to cold calm certainty. Harry didn't want someone that big being certain about him when he was in deep trouble. But even that niggling fear was just nerves; McGonagall would never condone brutality as a punishment, unless Harry had seriously misread her. And more importantly, he had caught Gourry's eye in the hallway. If this did turn into some kind of brawl, one good yell and Harry would have reinforcements and then they could get out of this madhouse.
But that was not to be. McGonagall, still flustered, managed a smile. "Wood, I have found you a Seeker."
Wood's jaw dropped and he stared at Harry, absolutely delighted. "Are you serious?"
"Absolutely," McGonagall answered. "Incredible bit of flying. He caught that Remembrall from a fifty foot dive." She frowned slightly. "His stopping needs work. He used a bit of sorcery to stop himself, but the broom crashed into the wall."
"Hmm. I'm not sure if that would be a foul or not," Wood admitted.
"Madam Hooch will need to rule on it, but I hope we can teach him to brake properly. That was merely your first time on a broom, correct, Inverse?"
Harry was glad to have been asked a question, as it would give him a chance to ask his own. "Yes it was, but what is going on? Am I being punished? What's a Seeker?"
"Have you ever seen a game of Quidditch, Inverse?" Wood asked.
"Wood is the Gryffindor team captain," McGonagall explained.
"Oh," Harry said, putting that together. Hermione had been reading about that when she was trying to get her head around flying. "That's that broomstick sport, right?"
Wood nodded and smiled. "Seeker is one of the positions on the team. You have to fly fast and catch a small, fast, hard to see ball."
That explained a few things. Harry had, after all, done exactly that not five minutes ago. Oh the sport was probably more complicated than a game of aerial 'catch' but if they were hard up for a Seeker…"But I'm not allowed to own a broom," Harry pointed out. "And the school broom I had could barely stop at all."
"You're also not supposed to have a snake," McGonagall pointed out. "It's just a matter of signing the right forms and having a good enough reason. Quidditch is a perfectly good reason to have a broom." She grew stern. "Now I'm putting a lot of faith in you, Inverse. Practice hard, or I will change my mind about punishing you." She smiled again. "Your father would be proud. James was a Quidditch player himself. A chaser, I think."
Harry blinked. It hadn't really occurred to him that his parents, his birth parents, had gone to this school. The man and woman he thought of as his parents were on another world entirely…suddenly Harry felt a hollow place in his heart, a place he hadn't felt since he lived in a cupboard under the stairs of his Aunt's. A hollow carved by a man who called himself Lord Voldemort. He felt it, a rough hole in the place where his family should be. There was mortar on the edges, a thick layer of love that bore the name of Inverse and smoothed the rough edges, but now he keenly felt the empty place that should have born the name Potter.
He swore to practice long and hard. It was very important that he learn this thing his father loved.
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(Posted Thu, 18 Aug 2011 06:46)
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