Chapter Ten

The Rights of Trees

Once everyone had settled down into life at Hogwarts, the days seemed to fly by, and soon a whole week had passed since the Chaser tryouts, and it was Thursday again; time for the first full Quidditch practice. James had decided that there would be two practices a week this year: one on a Monday night for forty-five minutes to an hour, to play in a game situations; and one on a Thursday, a full practice to run things and test things, mostly by using drills.

Lily and Mia walked down to the Quidditch pitch with James and Fred, having sat with them at dinner. When they reached the Quidditch pitch, Roxanne and Mary were already waiting for them, and Samuel, as usual, was late. He still hadn't turned up by the time everyone else had changed into their Quidditch robes and was ready to go.

"Alright, we better get started," James said, checking his watch. "I really ought to start telling Sam practice starts half an hour earlier than it actually does, just to have a chance of him turning up on time."

Just as he said this, Samuel came into the changing rooms.

"Josh Young's up in the stands," he said. "Looks like he's preparing to heckle."

James swore. "What is it with him?" he demanded, mounting his broom, kicking off hard and zooming out of the changing rooms and onto the pitch. The others (apart from Samuel, who was getting changed) followed on foot.

Sure enough, a figure was sat up in the stands – a small blob, just about recognisable as Josh. James was rapidly speeding towards him, drawing his wand as he did so.

"Get lost," he growled at Josh as he reached him.

"It's a free country," Josh shrugged. "I can sit wherever I like."

"I'll give you to the count of five to leave of your own volition, and then I'm gonna make you leave," James said. "One..."

Josh laughed. "I'd like to see you try," he scoffed.

"Two... I'm serious – I'll hex you into the middle of next week."

"Try it."

"Three..."

On four, Josh shot a stinging hex at James. James retaliated – although with what Mia wasn't sure, since James was a seventh year, and therefore able to cast non-verbal spells without vocalising the incantation – and soon it was a full scale duel.

"I'm going up there," Fred sighed, mounting his broom and kicking off hard from the ground. The four girls – Lily, Mia, Roxanne and Mary – looked at each other then, as one, rose into the air and followed him.

James and Josh were still duelling, Josh stood in the stands and James flying around him. As Mia and the other girls reached the pair, Fred cast a powerful shield charm between them, which knocked Josh off his feet, and almost threw James off his broom.

"What did you do that for?" James demanded angrily.

"To stop you doing something stupid," Fred retorted. "If he went to a teacher saying you'd hexed him, you'd probably lose the Quidditch captaincy, and he'd love that. Just ignore him, and let's get on with practice."

Reluctantly, James followed Fred and the others back to the ground, where Samuel was waiting.

"Alright, let's get started," he said, a little more sharply than usual. "Passing drills, because we all need quick reflexes. Let's get up to playing height."

The seven of them kicked off and flew upwards until they were level with the goalhoops. They formed a circle at the opposite end of the pitch to where Josh was sat, and James started them off passing the Quaffle around the circle, constantly encouraging them to go faster. After a few minutes of that, James instructed them to skip the person next to them, and pass to the person beyond that.

"Well done, I'm sure you'll win the Quaffle Passing World Cup," jeered a loud, sarcastic voice; Josh had used sonorous to magnify his voice so no one could fail to hear him. James wheeled around in mid-air, preparing to hex him, but instead Fred hit his cousin with an impediment jinx.

"Ignore him," Fred said, in the few seconds where the jinx rendered James incapable of movement, and when it wore off the captain turned back to his team with a look of grim determination on his face.

"Right, now you can pass the Quaffle to whoever you like, calling their name, so they know it's coming," James said, and the drill resumed. After a few minutes, James caught the Quaffle and changed the rules. "Okay, so now you're going to call one name ahead. So, I pass the Quaffle to Mia, but I say 'Roxy', so Mia has to pass the Quaffle to Roxy, and say another name. Roxy!"

Mia caught the Quaffle. "Samuel!" she passed it to Roxanne.

"Lily!" Roxanne passed the Quaffle to Samuel, who caught it, said 'Fred'... and threw it to Fred.

"Imbecile," Josh coughed loudly, but no one paid him any attention. Fred threw the Quaffle back to Samuel, who correctly threw it to Lily, and play resumed.

Mia soon understood why James had them playing this particular game – it required quick thinking, good reflexes, and stellar concentration, all of which were essential when playing Quidditch. After the passing drills, James got Roxanne and Mary alternately attacking and defending Samuel, who'd been instructed to release the Snitch, give it a head-start and then capture it, whilst James, Fred and Lily worked together to try and put goals past Mia. Josh made frequent snide remarks, but no one paid him any attention.

After about an hour and a half, James called a halt, and the team headed back to the changing room.

"Good work, guys," he said, as they all exchanged their Quidditch robes for school robes. "We'll have to work hard, of course, but I see no reason why we can't hold onto the Cup this year – Ravenclaw have lost Toft, so unless they pull something amazing out of the woodwork, I don't see they'll be any problem. Slytherin are two Chasers down this year, so they're a bit of an unknown entity – could be amazing, could be awful; Hufflepuff have still got their front three, but they've also got a new Keeper, so who knows what they'll be like."
Mia walked up to Gryffindor tower with Lily and on the fifth floor, they ran into Matilda.

"What're you doing down here?" Lily demanded. "It's past first-year curfew."

"I was in detention," Matilda said cheerily.

"With who?" Mia asked.

"What did you do?" Lily sighed.

"Professor Duncan, cuz I wouldn't do his test."

"And why wouldn't you do his test?" Lily asked.

"Because it was two pages long, and it was on two pieces of paper instead of just on the back of the first one," Matilda said indignantly. "It's a waste of paper!"

"Surely you not doing the test makes it an even bigger waste of paper..." Mia reasoned.

"I was protesting!" Matilda said. "Non-violent non-cooperation. It's what Gandhi did."

"Who's Gandhi?" Lily asked. "No, actually, I don't want to know. I think you're silly for getting in trouble over a silly 'save the trees' campaign."

"It's not silly!" Matilda said angrily, sparks flying out of the end of her wand. "Trees are super important! Just because they can't talk or tell us how they feel, doesn't mean they don't have rights!"

Lily snickered, and more angry sparks shot out of the end of Matilda's wand.

"You can laugh," Matilda said, "but two hundred, even just one hundred years ago, people thought black people weren't real people – that we didn't have thoughts and feelings like you white people, and so no one thought we should have any rights, just like no one thinks animals and plants and TREES! should have rights! And when I found out about the Wizarding World, I thought maybe it'd have a better idea about proper conservation and a sustainable land ethic, but it turns out you're even worse than the Muggles!"

With that, she stormed off up the corridor ahead of Lily and Mia, and was soon out of sight. Lily and Mia exchanged glances. "What the hell was that?" Lily said eventually.

Mia shrugged. "A very angry whirlwind? I didn't know she was so into all this environmental stuff."

"Me neither," Lily said. "First 'plants shouldn't be kept in greenhouses' and now this! Why did I have to get the difficult one?"

Mia secretly wondered whether Professor Longbottom had given Lily Matilda, aka 'the difficult one' as a little sister because Lily herself was 'the difficult one', and he hoped she'd grow up a bit. However, knowing Lily as she did, Mia was sure her friend would take the comment the wrong way, so she said nothing and just shrugged.