It wasn't that bad, really. Almost everything I actually did, I liked. I liked flying on my own. I liked reading in the library. I liked refereeing okay, even though there weren't any games in March or April. I liked flight club, mostly. I had liked giving flying lessons when there was a decently-sized class.

Tracking down Podmore and Bright, on the other hand, was less fun.

Bright actually wanted to try, and humored me by doing so Tuesday after Easter. She took off in the wrong direction entirely—seriously, how does being eleven (maybe twelve, I wasn't sure) excuse the fact that you don't know which are the right goalposts? After getting herself turned around, she somehow managed to perform even less well, ploughing into the ground at the end of her first trial. No new bruises, thankfully. A few of the older kids at flight club were easier to tell apart by their bruises than their faces. Just a few, though—there were these identical twins that had only come once or twice. I was a teacher, I had to be good at knowing kids by their faces.

Podmore was harder to track down. I sent him a few more owls, yet he ignored them among the torrent of birds over breakfast. Were there really even fewer students overall in the Great Hall, or was that just me? Maybe people were just too busy cramming for their own good.

At flight club, a lot of the students wanted to play with Bludgers. I wasn't sure that would be a good idea—they were mostly third- and fourth-years—but came up with a new idea; people would take turns tossing the soft balls towards each other, and the others would hit them in the air with the Beaters' bats. There were significantly more bats than kids, so the lines got long and the kids got restless, but their excitement to hit the balls farther than their classmates' outweighed their impatience. A sixth-year hit one the longest distance, almost halfway from one set of goalposts to the other. I gave her a Chocolate Frog.

When I finally caught up with Podmore, it wasn't outside or even in the library, just passing in the hallways. He didn't see me.

I figured I had to try. "Er, hello."

For a change, he didn't run away or shuffle off with his head down. Instead, he just smiled at me. "Hi!"

"Do you want to take your test today?"

"No," he said, still grinning. "And I'm not going to want to take it again, so you can stop asking."

"You're right," I said, trying to sound upbeat as well. "I can stop asking. But I'd prefer to stop because you've passed the test."

"Well, I'm not gonna," he said, "and if you were gonna call the Carrows on me you'd have done it by now, so there's nothing you can do to me. Anyway, I'll see you." And with that, he took off calmly down the hall.

Call the Carrows on him? Flying tests weren't required for passing to the next year, and since it sounded like they cast Unforgivable Curses on students, there's no way I would have gone to them about that kind of thing. It almost sounded like he was praising me for not doing something I'd never considered, which felt a little bit like overkill, but I wasn't going to push it.

The infuriating thing was, he was right. There really wasn't anything I could do for him—well, except dock house points, but it didn't even feel like he was breaking rules or anything. He did see me around, giving cheeky grins when he noticed me. At least he was smiling, which was a change—he really had been happy when he'd first gotten on a broom, but was pretty sulky ever since.

I kept thinking of flight club as my real job, even though it really wasn't—but, short of the fourteen players involved, no one was able to muster much excitement for the forthcoming Slytherin-Hufflepuff match for the glory of third place out of four. So, I thought up new games—the Beaters' bats idea had gone over well, so kids paired off in twos and took turns hitting the balls back and forth to each other. First on the ground, then a couple kids tried in the air, over longer and longer distances. It got to be a very good thing that we hadn't used the actual Bludgers.

On the plus side, having kids get pelted and knocked off their broom kept the line moving quickly. There really weren't that many bats, even if the crowds were thinner.

Wednesday was my patrol night. Again working on the principle of "better to have it but not need it" than the other way around, I brought a library book that time. It claimed to be information leaked from Unspeakables, but looked like a lot of rubbish—what would the Department of Mysteries want with models of planets floating around, when you could walk right into Diagon Alley and pick them up there? Still, it was old enough that it seemed likely to have information from Brady Curtis' era, so it was worth a shot.

And, once again, I didn't have time to read it. Nothing happening in the castle that I could tell. By that point things had calmed down and I was starting from the bottom again. When I reached the hallway I'd camped out in a few months before, I paused, half-convinced I was hearing voices. The tapestry seemed to sway forwards a little, then recede.

"Hello?" I tried to call, but barely any sound came out. Not because I'd been cursed or anything, just couldn't bring myself to yell. It was stupid, I told myself, I'd just psyched myself out.

Interest in Beaters' bats continued unabated at flight club. A few kids had picked up how to toss the balls and swing the bats at them, without needing someone else to throw to them, and were now attempting to see who could hit one through a goalpost from the farthest distance. As this all but required the ability to fly no-handed, unless they found someone to throw to them, only the most agile were able to manage at all, and most of them couldn't get very far out. Meanwhile, the others kept practicing playing catch on a broom. They seemed to be into it—maybe they could come up with more games on their own. And if it kept going year after year, then it'd be a real extracurricular thing, the kids leading it themselves.

Of course, then I'd have even less of an actual job.