“This is just what I’ve always wanted,” Hailey mused, as they walked out the massive front doors with the rest of the first-year gryffindors. She gestured towards where the Slytherin first years had already gathered on the lawns. “To make a fool of myself on a broomstick in front of the snakes.” She giggled.
Silver rolled her eyes, but it was Ron that spoke first. “You don’t know that you’ll make a fool of yourself,” he told her.
She shrugged. “Well yeah, I suppose, but what else should I expect? I mean…” She grinned at Silver.
“It means that any surprises will be pleasant surprises,” Silver answered. “Speaking of which, Dad taught me to fly years ago, so I’m not expecting much of anything to happen for me.” Except, she didn’t say, the difference in how it felt to fly as a girl than as a boy- but she hadn’t told the other two girls that she hadn’t always been a girl, so they didn’t need to know that.
“I’m more worried about the limits of our strength,” Hermione muttered. “I mean, what if I lose control and manage to fling myself a hundred feet in the air without my broom?”
“You won’t,” Silver assured her immediately. “They’ve been teaching students like us for decades, they know exactly how to keep that from happening. Hay, they’ve never even had any deaths during Quidditch games, even when players got knocked off their brooms a couple hundred feet in the air!”
Hermione took a deep breath. “Oh, alright,” she muttered.
“Up!”
Hailey’s broom leaped straight up into her hand as soon as she gave the command.
Hermione’s broom snapped up into her hand so hard Hailey heard one of the twigs snap from the force, even though Hermione hadn’t closed her hand yet.
And Silver’s was much more sedate, jumping almost casually up into her hand.
Lots of other students didn’t have nearly as good of results, though. Neville Longbottom’s broom, for example, did absolutely nothing whatsoever.
Finally, Madam Hooch showed them how to mount their brooms without sliding off the end. Silver, as it turned out, had been doing it wrong for years.
“Come back, boy!”
Neville had kicked off before the whistle, and was in an uncontrolled climb, rocketing straight up.
They watched as he climbed… then fell off his broom, and landed with a sickening crack.
“Um,” Hermione muttered, as Madam Hooch bent down to examine Neville.
“... Er, I… I guess I was wrong,” Silver answered her. She looked at Hermione. “But you still shouldn’t need to worry about that.”
Madam Hooch eventually helped Neville to his feet again, after mentioning a broken wrist. “None of you is to move while I take this boy to the Hospital Wing,” she ordered the rest of the class. “You leave those brooms where they are, or you’ll be out of Hogwarts before you can say ‘Quidditch’!”
Hailey looked down at her broom, still held in her hand- then sideways at Hermione, who was also still holding hers.
No sooner had Madam Hooch gone out of earshot than Theodore Nott, a Slytherin that had verbally abused Hailey and Silver at every opportunity, snatched something out of the grass. “Oh, it’s that thing he had at breakfast!”
Hailey looked. It was Neville’s Remembrall, which he had excitedly shown to the Gryffindors around him at breakfast. Theodore had happened past while he was doing so.
Hermione stepped forwards, broom still in her hand, and held out her other hand. “Hand it over,” she commanded. “That’s not yours.”
Theodore raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?” He snatched his broom off the ground and kicked off, rocketing up to fly level with a nearby treetop. “Why don’t I just hide it in this tree for him to find?”
“I said hand it over,” Hermione ordered.
He let out a snort of laughter. “Well then come and get it, sissy!”
“Oh, you-!” Hermione began- before she kicked off herself, almost before mounting her broom. He hadn’t targeted her as much as he had the other two, but he had realized that she didn’t respond well to insults.
Hermione shot into the air, looking almost exactly like a homesick meteor, before coming to a dead stop hardly ten feet in front of Theodore, facing him. “Hand it over,” she ordered.
He let out a gasp of surprise.
Down below, Hailey raised an eyebrow at the sudden flood of fear going through his form… then cupped her hands to call up to him. “Do it, coward, before she knocks you out of the air!”
He gave a forced laugh. “Like a sissy could-!”
Hermione leaned forwards, and shot straight at him.
He only barely dodged in time.
Hermione came to a stop and turned sharply to face him again.
He took one look at her, squeaked in fright, and steadied his broom. “Well then, catch it if you can!” He threw the remembrall straight up in the air, and shot for the ground- where he crashed into it fairly gently, but still hard enough to hurt.
Up above, Hermione watched the tiny glass ball soar up, then start to fall. She shot down after it, caught it, and leveled off- just in time to slam headlong into Ron at full speed.
Several Gryffindors dodged out of the way as the two tumbled- but Silver didn’t, instead crouching down to catch them both.
“Ow,” Ron muttered, while Hermione scrambled off of him.
“You okay?” Hailey asked, crouching next to him.
Ron sat up out of Silver’s arms. “I think so,” he muttered. “Nothing feels broken, at least.”
“Hermione Granger!”
It was Professor McGonagall, marching rapidly across the grounds.
“Uh oh,” Silver muttered.
“Well, at least you didn’t fall off your broom and…” Hailey muttered, then scowled as she remembered something.
After all, she, Hermione, and Silversong were technically princesses… and so had the authority to demand she not be expelled, in theory. But would the instructors let her use that authority without telling people about it? Especially Dumbledore?
Hermione shuddered, finally dropping her broom on the ground.
“Never, in all my time at Hogwarts-! How dare you! Might have broken your neck!”
“Maybe Ron’s,” Silver muttered, low enough McGonagall wouldn’t hear it, “but not her own, no.”
Hailey went completely silent as she noticed McGonagall’s emotional spectrum. She was filled to overflowing with shock, anger, worry, and… pride? Like she was somehow glad Hermione had done that, despite being absolutely furious at her for it?
“Follow me,” McGonagall commanded Hermione. “Now.”
“Having a last meal, sissy?” It was Theodore Nott again, talking to the back of Hermione’s head at dinner. She had just finished telling Hailey, Silver, and Ron that she had instead been promoted to Quidditch seeker.
Hailey put a hand on her shoulder and turned to look at Theodore. “You’re a lot braver now that you’re on the ground with your little friends,” she told him. Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, who had been supposed to be Silver’s bodyguards in Slytherin, had instead become Theodore’s.
The two ‘brainless gits’, as Silver liked calling them, cracked their knuckles threateningly.
Theodore swelled with indignation. “I’d take you on alone anytime,” he spat. “How about tonight, wizards’ duel- wands only, no contact.”
“Uhh,” Hailey muttered indecisively. She certainly didn’t want to participate in any such duel, but wasn’t sure if it would be worth getting Theodore in trouble over it.
“What’s the matter? Never heard of a wizards’ duel?” Theodore asked.
“Of course she has,” Ron spat, turning right around in his seat, which happened to be at the end of one of the benches. “I’m her second. Who’s yours?”
“Huh?” Theodore asked briefly, glancing between Ron and the girls; he had evidently considered Ron a non-entity. Then he looked at Crabbe and Goyle, sizing them up. “... Goyle,” he said slowly. “Midnight in the trophy room, then, that’s always unlocked.”
Hermione waited for the Slytherins to get out of earshot before she looked up at Ron. “What is a wizards’ duel?”
“And what do you mean by ‘you’re my second’?” Hailey asked.
Ron shrugged. “Well, the ‘second’ is there to take over if you die,” he informed them. “Which won’t happen, none of us knows enough magic to do more than throw sparks at each other.”
Hailey let out a snort. “And why is that important?”
Ron looked at her. “Well…” Then he blinked, looked at his food, and looked back up. “Wait, you were going to refuse?”
Hailey shrugged. “Wasn’t sure if I wanted to accept it or not,” she told him. “But I certainly won’t be attending. I’m sure it’d be fun, but it’d also be just asking for trouble.”