On Friday, May 1, 1998, I went flying.

I'd found a charm scribbled in an old Quidditch book that purported to double your broomstick's speed, but warned that you had to fly a lot on the broom to get it into shape. I wasn't sure which of the school brooms I'd ridden most, so I settled on my old (well, new) Comet. It was a good thing I hadn't gone too far back—wouldn't want to predate the Comet 310 entirely!

Okay, "settled" on it was kind of a stretch. It was still riding funny, but hey, that was enough.

It was about midmorning when someone else joined me. "Hello? Could I—oh! Excuse me, Professor."

I nodded in acknowledgment of Burke the announcer, riding his Firebolt out towards the pitch.

"Mind if I practice?"

"Of course not, go ahead."

With that, he began shooting a practice Quaffle through hoop after hoop. I rode, but more slowly, keeping an eye on his form. He was good, but on his own there was no way for him to really show off his form like he had against Ravenclaw. Probably good enough to play professionally, but I didn't remember his name from the league. But maybe he was young, and still had lots of time.

"Practicing for tomorrow?" I asked, as I flew another lap.

He nodded. "And yourself?"

I laughed. "You could say that."

"Your broom veers off-course." Okay, on second thought, maybe it was a good thing he wasn't that talkative as a commentator—I think I'd have gotten pretty annoyed if he'd been criticizing my form.

"I know. I won't be riding this one tomorrow."

"Good."

I rode, and he shot, for a while more, until I got hungry. "You understand the game very well," I had to point out as I left—sure, there was really nothing I could do about Hitchens' commentary, but his at least stood a chance of improving. "That game against Ravenclaw, you played excellently."

His face lit up; then, a little embarrassed, he said, "Thank you."

"When you're commentating, feel free to...add a little more insight, help everyone else follow what's going on."

Then he looked offended, and made no effort to mask his emotions. "My job's not to help everyone else!"

"Is it? I'm new here. What is your job?"

"To...commen...tate. Well, it's for people who don't know the game very well, they don't care if I don't say that much."

"It never hurts, is all I'm saying."

"Of course it hurts! It hurts me if the other teams who are going to play Ravenclaw next pick up on something I said! You understand, don't you?"

"Yeah," I said.

I did understand. Quidditch is important.

After lunch, I thought about going back and casting the charms right away—surely that had to be enough, I'd ridden that broom hours upon hours for practice. Although, technically, most of those practices hadn't happened yet, so maybe they wouldn't work. But as I was standing around, trying to make up my mind, Bright showed up.

"Oh. Hi, Mr. Wood," she said. "I...I guess I'm ready. But after class, I have History of Magic now."

"Ready?" I repeated.

"To take my test. Unless it's too late, I really don't mind—"

"No, that's wonderful! Come out whenever you're ready!" I tried not to sound too eager. It must have worked, because she just nodded and left.

So then I pretty much had to go back to the pitch and wait. I flew and flew, subconsciously compensating for the veering, and really zoned out. To the point where it was just the flying, that mattered, not the broom, not even the person on it. Oliver, Fergus, I could have been anyone.

I guess at some point Burke went inside because I remember thinking it would have been awkward for Bright to take her test with him still there, but by the time she showed up, he was gone. "Okay," I said, trying to sound encouraging.

"No time limit, right? Just as slow as I want?"

"Of course."

"Okay."

She took off tentatively, not getting off to as fast a start as she usually did, and hovered low for a while, then slowly climbed a bit higher before plateauing. She coasted forward, weaving side to side quite a lot but never dipping up and down.

At the end of the pitch, she gained a little altitude. Maybe it was so she'd have room to drop on the turn, because she looked very unsteady there, but she stayed on the broom and came back. Then the second lap, by which time I was kind of holding my breath, but she got through. Very slowly on the outgoing trip, more quickly and confidently on the way back, but she did it.

"Well done!" I said. "Now get Damian Podmore out here, eh?"

"Damian doesn't like flying. He's scared he'll get hurt like his mom."

"Excuse me?" Podmore sounded like an old Pureblood name, but I didn't know any members off the top of my head.

"His mom got hurt. A while back. So he's kind of nervous now."

"Oh." Well, that made sense. "Thanks for letting me know."

She shrugged coolly. "By the way, I'm not coming to your broom thing."

Did she mean flight club? "That's fine."

She left—I was about to follow and sign her form, before I remembered I had a spell to test. Tapping the end of the broom three times quickly with my wand, I shouted, "Celereo!"

There was a brief smell of smoke, and then—nothing. I took off on it, just to see what it would do—and found myself clutching the top end and kicking at the ground as the bottom end snapped off entirely.

Sighing, I picked up the broken halves and headed for the castle before I forgot to sign off Bright's paperwork. Once I'd slipped that under the Headmaster's door, I went to get a late dinner.

Twenty-eight out of twenty-nine first years passed. That wasn't that bad, particularly if Podmore had extenuating circumstances.

I tried casting Reparo on my broom, once I got back up to my room. It seemed to put the pieces back together, although given how poorly it had flown before I wasn't too confident. I hadn't planned to use it the next day anyway, and that certainly did nothing to change my plans.

Slytherin versus Hufflepuff...probably a one-sided win for the former, at least on paper, though given how bad their Seeking had been maybe not. The final was what we were all really looking forward to, of course. Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw. They would be tied for first going into the last game of the season, both with two wins and goal differentials of two hundred ninety. Ravenclaw had two decent victories, while the thumping Gryffindor had delivered Hufflepuff canceled out how close they'd been against Slytherin.

Yes, I yawned, that would be a good game, winner take all...but first came Slytherin-Hufflepuff, and before that, I needed sleep.