“Fair warning,” Silver mutters, snuggling herself into Hermione’s warm wings during their first ‘papa tango club’ meeting of the year. All five Professors had turned down the invitation, so it’s still just the three of them. “Dad decided to get me onto the house Quidditch team.”
“Oh?” Harry asks, reaching her head forwards a little to peer around Hermione. “How’d he do that?”
Silver sighs. “He bought the team new brooms. Nimbus Two Thousand and One, came out last month.”
“Two thousand and one?” Hermione asks, tilting her head.
“Isn’t that a better broom than ours?” Harry asks.
Hermione smiles. “Oh, probably. We’ve only got two thousands, after all. But it probably means nothing for us.” Her smile becomes a grin. “Especially after that visit with the Weasleys.”
Harry lets out a snort of laughter. “Yeah, especially after that.”
Silver tilts her head. “What happened at the Weasleys?”
“They wanted to play Quidditch,” Hermione states. “They had a few brooms, too. Ron himself had an old Shooting Star he’d ride- and it was so slow he’d often be outstripped by passing butterflies!”
Harry nods. “While Hermione here has figured out how to control her pegasus magic, I’m not there yet- so any broom I rode outperformed itself. I mean,” he smiles at Hermione, “so did every broom she rode, but not nearly as much. We stopped when I mounted the Shooting Star and rainboomed it.”
Silver lets out a snort of laughter. “Oh, yeah. So I guess, since we don’t exactly want to rainboom during a Quidditch match- as impressive as Hermione’s was last year- the specific broom doesn’t really mean anything to us.”
“Not really,” Harry nods. “I mean, it felt different than my Nimbus, and I couldn’t get it to corner quite as sharply, but it didn’t hurt my speed- nor ability to spot the balls.”
“You know, I wonder if Rainbow could Rainboom on a twenty-oh-one without having to hit the mesosphere first,” Hermione wonders, tapping her chin with one hoof.
“The mesowhat?” Silver asks.
Harry tilts her head. “Wait. Isn’t that… something to do with the atmosphere?”
Hermione nods. “Yep! The mesosphere. That’s how high she took me for falling lessons, forty kilometers up. The highest my broom could take her.” She glances at the ceiling. “You know, I kinda wonder how high I can fly.”
“I, Professor S. Snape, give the Slytherin team permission to practice today on the Quidditch field, owing to the need to train their new seeker,” Marcus Flint reads.
“You’ve got a new seeker?” Wood asks. “Where?”
Draco steps out from behind the rest of them, waving a hand dismissively. “I am sorry about this,” he begins. “I keep telling them I don’t need training, but nobody’ll listen.”
Hermione rubs her chin. “I’m willing to bet Professor Snape hasn’t seen any Quidditch games since his Papa Tango.”
“Probably not,” Fred states.
“Pretty sure that happened during the summer,” George continues.
“How would it change anything if he did?” Wood asks, confused.
“Easy,” Hermione continues. “His Papa Tango, ah, went like mine did.” She taps the radio clipped to her Quidditch robes.
“Ahh, that makes sense,” Draco nods.