Chapter 10: The Blessing that is Levitation
Tom had made a full recovery in a week, and was back to being his usual apathetic, obscenely intelligent self in no time. Rosie had actually tried to persuade him that learning to fly a broom wasn't really an important aspect of being a wizard, but Tom was dead-set on figuring it out. Some days, when she didn't come to find him in the library or his room as early as he would have liked, he would come and seek her out himself, order her into her quidditch attire, and drag her out onto the field so they could get started.
Rosie suspected that his enthusiasm had less to do with their (very, very slowly) blossoming friendship and more to do with the fact that flying a broom was one of the first real challenges he'd faced in his life. She had lessons with him nearly every day - she knew exactly how smart he was - and she suspected he'd been the same in the school he'd attended while he lived at the orphanage. It must have been exhausting to go all those years being in classes that were below his ability level, and to be forced to mingle with people that were more interested in goofing off than learning.
Learning seemed to be his favourite activity, Rosie noticed. Whenever he could he would surround himself with books from the Malfoy library, consuming them with such delight and hunger in his eyes that Rosie couldn't bring herself to care that she had inadvertently given the Dark Lord a head-start in his magical education. More than once she had walked past his bedroom door and heard him practicing spells within, probably using their mother's wand, which was still guarded against Rosie's use, but not against Tom's. After all, Tom hadn't tried to kill anyone. Yet.
Rosie comforted herself with the thought that, while that her mother may have trusted a future serial killer more than her own daughter, she was actually doing said daughter a favour by keeping a wand away from her: she had inadvertently forced her to become very good at wandless magic. Although Tom probably could have picked up on wandless magic quite easily if he'd tried. He had been using it consciously, without knowing it was magic, since he was six, apparently.
Friggin' prodigy.
Much to Rosie's amusement, however, Tom was an utter failure when it came to quidditch and, really, all things involving broomsticks. She'd left him alone with her broomstick once while she had gone to fetch them water, and he'd wound up with a lump on his head because the thing had attacked him. They'd spent weeks - weeks - never going more than two feet off the ground when they flew, and he'd never improved. It was almost impressive, the extent to which he absolutely sucked at flying.
Tom had finally lost his patience with his slow pace (and Rosie's repeated giggling fits), and had ordered her to just keep an eye on him and catch him with a well-placed levitation charm any time he fell. With that in mind, they'd begun zooming all over the field like idiots, her practicing her long-distance Wingardium Leviosas more than she ever had before, and they had eventually progressed to actually playing two-man quidditch.
In fact, Rosie's handicap of having to constantly prevent Tom from falling to his unpleasant and painful demise very evenly compensated for Tom's complete lack of flying skills, and their matches actually turned out to be quite fun as long as Aurora never caught them at it.
However, while Tom and Rosie started getting along on their own time, he was still as incorrigible as ever when it came to those awful tea parties. Flaunting his parselmouth abilities like some sort of circus performer, acting all innocent and being his usual intelligent self so the girls would shower him with compliments… It was thoroughly repugnant. Rosie didn't even know how he managed to keep making appearances at these events: they were supposed to be tea parties! For girls!
Augusta's crush on Tom hadn't faded, but now that Tom and Rosie got along a bit better, and Tom had stopped trying to sabotage their friendship to make Rosie miserable and steal Augusta's trading cards, Augusta came over more often to play. She and Rosie had rekindled their friendship, as Rosie had always been the forgiving type, and Tom often joined them to play Chocolate Frog Card War for hours on end. Augusta was scared of snakes, thank goodness, so Tom didn't bring his pet snake Hisspffthsssffsdfpwelknxsdcv, or whatever it's silly unpronounceable parselmouth name was, with him when they hung out together. Rosie wasn't really scared of it, but she didn't necessarily feel comfortable with Tom going hiss-mode on her when she was in his presence. It reminded her that he would grow up to be evil, and besides, who knew what he could be talking about with that thing? She'd have to get him to teach her parselmouth someday, if that was even possible.
Christmas break rolled around with a thick layer of snow that prompted Rosie to purposely botch her Levitation Charms every now and again just to watch Tom fall face-first in the snow - only when he wasn't too far from the ground, of course. Abraxas came home boasting that he had been invited to join the "Slug Club," a term Rosie vaguely remembered from the memories she'd gone through in Dumbledore's pensieve. Abraxas explained that it was an "elite club" formed by the potions master who was, incidentally, Head of Slytherin House. Apparently only the best and brightest were allowed to join, and it was extremely rare for a third-year like Abraxas to be invited.
Their parents had commended him for it, Tom had said merely "Congratulations" in a rather bored tone, no doubt thinking he'd make it in by the beginning of second year, and Rosie had told Abraxas that "Finally! Your effort in brewing all those love potions has improved your abilities in potions class!" And then she'd congratulated him properly, of course, even if the "Slug Club" sounded less than appealing to her.
Of course, Theodosius Greengrass had made it into Slug Club too. He was a year ahead of Abraxas, but he still seemed to think it was just about the accomplishment of a lifetime. Rosie overheard him bragging about it when he, Egnatius and Quentin were at the Manor one day over break, and on different occasions throughout the break when other people were present.
That boy was really and truly the bane of Rosie's existence.