CHAPTER 6:
Quidditch
In no time at all, Defense Against the Dark Arts had become most people's favorite class. Only Draco Malfoy and his gang of Slytherins had anything bad to say about Professor Lupin.
"Look at the state of his robes," Malfoy would say in a loud whisper as Professor Lupin passed. "He dresses like our old house elf."
But no one else cared that Professor Lupin's robes were patched and frayed. His next few lessons were just as interesting as the first. After Boggarts, they studied Red Caps, nasty little goblin-like creatures that lurked wherever there had been bloodshed: in the dungeons of castles and the potholes of deserted battlefields, waiting to bludgeon those who had gotten lost. From Red Caps they moved on to Kappas, creepy, water-dwellers that looked like scaly monkeys, with webbed hands itching to strangle unwitting waders in their ponds.
Christina only wished she was as happy with some of her other classes. Worst of all was Potions. Snape was in a particularly vindictive mood these days, and no one was in any doubt why. The story of the Boggart assuming Snape's shape, and the way that Neville had dressed it in his grandmother's clothes, had traveled through the school like wildfire. Snape didn't seem to find it funny. His eyes flashed menacingly at the very mention of Professor Lupin's name, and he was bullying Neville worse than ever.
Christina was also growing to dread the hours she spent in Professor Trelawney's stifling tower room, deciphering lopsided shapes and symbols, trying to ignore the way Professor Trelawney's enormous eyes filled with tears every time she looked at Harry. She couldn't like Professor Trelawney, even though she was treated with respect bordering on reverence by many of the class. Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown had taken to haunting Professor Trelawney's tower room at lunch times, and always returned with annoyingly superior looks on their faces, as though they knew things the others didn't. They had also started using hushed voices whenever they spoke to Harry, as though he were on his deathbed.
Nobody really liked Care of Magical Creatures, which, after the action-packed first class, had become extremely dull. Hagrid seemed to have lost his confidence. They were now spending lesson after lesson learning how to look after flobberworms, which had to be some of the most boring creatures in existence.
"Why would anyone bother looking after them?" said Ron, after yet another hour of poking shredded lettuce down the flobberworms' throats.
Christina had spent the entirety of September privately practicing both first year spells and hexes as well as her natural powers. It had become increasingly easier to identify these particles that she could manipulate, and she no longer needed an insult from Malfoy or Hermione to conjure up her powers.
Christina and Hermione had come to a truce, as long as Christina didn't disrupt Hermione's studying and Hermione didn't act like a child, they were on speaking terms. However, Christina did like to entertain Harry and Ron when Hermione's back was turned, even Fred, George and Ginny were joining in on the festivities. One in particular Ginny liked, which involved levitating a donut roll full of jam and placing it under Malfoy's bottom while he was adjusting his pants.
Towards the end of September, all Harry, Ron, Fred, George and Ginny could talk about were the upcoming Quidditch try-outs; the former three already members.
"You have to try out, Christina!" Fred exclaimed one morning over breakfast.
"She doesn't know how to fly!" Ron says, mouth full of buttered toast and burnt flecks flying. Christina wipes off some spit and bread bits from her face, "Can't be that hard, right? Lupin says I have a knack for spells." She says proudly.
"It's not a spell though, it's like … a feeling." Ron dazes off, suddenly feeling reminiscent.
"Ron says this from experience." Fred goads.
"He's the new Quidditch seeker!" George kids. Christina, Harry and Ginny are all sniggering.
"Shove it." Ron chucks a piece of toast George.
The morning of the Quidditch try-outs was a cold and dreary day. Harry, Fred and George all promised to give a quick private lesson to Christina, Ron and Ginny who were all trying out. Ron and Ginny, who had spent summers practicing with their siblings, were quick to get on their brooms and start flying around, passing a large ball called the Quaffle. While Fred and George played keep-away with their siblings, Christina stood dejected next to a broom on the ground; it was old and some of the twigs stuck out at odd angles. Harry rushed over at once:
"Having trouble?"
"Not very intuitive, is it?" Christina laughs. Harry smiles, "The way I was taught, is all you have to do is place your hand over the broom." He gestures like so, she follows. "And say 'up!'"
Christina looked at him ridiculously. "Up?"
"Up." Harry nods. Christina shrugs, and looks down at her broom; "Up!"
Nothing happened. Christina felt a pang of defeat while the sound of four Weasley's behind her had the time of their lives.
"That's alright, not everyone's meant to fly." Harry says. Christina felt her face get red and with a defiant huff, she again says, "Up!" and lifts the broom to her hand at once, magic free. Harry mistook it for the real deal and clapped a hand on her shoulder.
"That's it! Nice!"
Christina felt bad, she hadn't done it without cheating, but what did it really matter? She doubted she would even make the team anyway, not with Ron and Ginny trying out as well.
After a rocky start, Christina mounts the broom, still internally levitating her broom off the ground and herself with it. Harry sends her a list of instructions about leaning forward and being confident – all of which do her no good considering she wasn't really flying. However, it looked genuine. They were all fooled. Christina even caught the Quaffle a few times. She was impressed with herself, though a little guilty.
After a haphazard lesson, it was time for try-outs. The team was already put together, this was to just see if anyone would edge out their current members, or their reserve members. Apparently, Gryffindor had lost the Quidditch Cup every year for the last seven years, and this was captain Oliver Wood's final year on the team, and he wanted a win.
The try-outs were relatively abysmal. Only two other students showed up outside of Christina, Ron and Ginny and they were both in their first year. Apparently, Harry had been the only person to join the Quidditch team that young in over a century.
"Alright, we'll warm-up for a bit, then play a mock game! Pair up." Ginny and Ron had already paired up, Fred and George, Alicia, and Katie both tacked on with a first year and Harry very kindly offered to practice with Christina again. It wasn't as bad as before, Christina had solidified the bonds holding her broom in the air, the only difficult part was moving the broom forward with launching herself with it. She thanked the heavens she wasn't afraid of heights.
"You're getting really steady!" Harry shouted her way. Christina laughed. She would've guessed steady was the best compliment she'd receive that day.
While passing the Quaffle back and forth, Christina looked over and noticed Ron having a miserable time on his broom. What had happened?
Harry notices Christina staring, "Nerves." He shrugs. Christina lets out a silent 'ah' and passing the Quaffle back to Harry. Before long, it was time for the match whose rules were described to Christina very roughly. There were seven people on a Quidditch team: three Chasers, whose job it was to score goals by putting the Quaffle (a red, soccer-sized ball) through one of the fifty-foot-high hoops at each end of the field; two Beaters, who were equipped with heavy bats to repel the Bludgers (two heavy black balls that zoomed around trying to attack the players); a Keeper, who defended the goal posts, and the Seeker, who had the hardest job of all, that of catching the Golden Snitch, a tiny, winged, walnut-sized ball, whose capture ended the game and earned the Seeker's team an extra one hundred and fifty points.
Ron was trying out for Keeper, Oliver Wood's position, Ginny was trying out for Seeker, though was really only trying for alternate, and Christina shrugged and went for the chaser position. She was really there for fun anyway and knew her coordination of smacking a ball with a bat, hundreds of feet in the air, was much more improbable than just catching a ball.
Once the whistle had been blown, the Quidditch pitch was a frenzy of brooms zooming through the pitch, Bludgers were released at bullet-speed and the Quaffle was nowhere to be seen. The Bludgers were what terrified Christina the most after hearing harrowing tales of people breaking bones and receiving concussions – not to mention death. Christina had a leg-up up on the others though, while the Bludgers were extremely fast and impossibly quiet, she could sense them disrupting the air around her, whipping around and leaving a ghostly trail of microscopic particles in their wake.
Still, the Quaffle seemed to evade Christina in the sense that she could seem to either steal it or see where it had went. She did however catch a pass from Harry which she used to score against Ron who seemed fine an hour ago and now a complete mess. Even Christina was better than him, and she wasn't even using her broom. As the fake-game continued, Christina got better, while she only stole the Quaffle from Katie Bell once, she felt triumphant. Still – just for fun.
The game ended with the original Gryffindor team playing far better than any of the newcomers and no one got hurt – aside from Ron's pride.
It wasn't until later that afternoon in the Gryffindor common room when results were posted on the battered old bulletin board. Christina didn't even rise from the couch, she instead decided to focus on the Transfiguration paper McGonagall had set for them to be due tomorrow.
"You aren't going to check the results?" Fred asks, staring at her with that coy smirk.
"Oh, to find out I didn't make it? My heart is broken." She kids. Fred and George share a confused look, "Who told you you didn't make it?" George asks.
"Oh, I think the universe did when they heard I rode a broom for the first time today." Christina finishes writing her sentence, 'At Uagadou School of Magic, a school known for its focus on self-transfiguration, students could become Animagi by the age of fourteen'…
"I don't believe this!" Ron shouts from over at the Quidditch try-out results. He stomps over to Christina, Fred and George at a couch in front of the fire. He sinks in the couch with a huff, folding his arms and pouting.
"Might be your first ride, but not you're last!" Fred points Christina's attention over to Oliver Wood who's entering the common room and offering her a high-five.
"Welcome to the team, Bataskill. Potter tells me you're a fast learner!" Christina stands to meet Oliver's height, "I-I made the team-?"
"Of course, didn't you see?" Oliver turns back to the Quidditch try-outs paper to see if maybe someone had stolen it. "Chaser alternate!"
Fred and George start cheering behind her and Christina goes red, "Chaser al-alternate…" She stutters.
"Should Angelina, Katie or Alicia get sick or hurt – all you, Bataskill." Oliver claps a hand on her shoulder, smiling at her proudly and then heads up to the boys' dormitory. Before he disappears from view, Oliver shouts over the entire common room, "First meeting is this Thursday! At the pitch!"
Harry and Hermione who had heard Oliver shouting join her at the couch, Harry greeting her with a hug.
"Congratulations!"
"Thanks…gotta say I'm a little shocked Harry." She says, scratching the back of her head, abashed.
"You scored more than anyone else." Harry shrugs. Ginny coughs loudly behind him, "More than anyone who wasn't going for seeker." He explains. Ginny also didn't make the team…
"So … what am I in for?"
Harry, Fred and George then proceed to describe to her the most exhausting schedule of thrice-weekly practices, Oliver Wood's leadership which while inspirational was also fiercely intense, and the amount of injuries that they receive weekly.
"But Madam Pomfrey is the best." Harry adds quickly after surveying the look of sheer panic on Christina's face.
"Oh, her and the Quidditch teams are like this." George shoes two fingers crossed together, and Christina felt like she was going to faint. She wasn't even flying, she was just using her powers … she had to quit, she had to quit!
The excitement of Christina making the team eventually dies down and she watches one-by-one all her friends retreat to the dormitories. It's not long until she's by herself at the fire, attempting to complete this lengthy paper, only joined by Fred and George who are eyeing her suspiciously.
"Nervous about your first match?" George asks.
Christina jumps at the abrupt end to her silence, "Jesus—what're you two still doing here?"
"Watching you." Fred grins. She rolls her eyes and continues writing. Fred and George now join her on the couch, on either side of her. She tries her best to ignore them, 'Each Animagus bore an identifying mark on their animal form that was caused by some visible trait on their human body.'…
"Why'd you try out anyway?" Fred asks.
"I don't know, I figured there'd be more people." She shrugs.
"Quidditch is dangerous." George warns.
"-Loads of fun." Fred adds.
"Loads of dangerous fun."
Christina pays them no mind, 'This could be physical, like their dental structure, or acquired, like glasses.'
"You must've known getting on the team could be a possibility…" Fred nudges her, causing her quill to scratch a line of ink across her paper.
"Well, I didn't, alright?" She slams the quill down and places her head in her hands, what was she going to do…?
"You're hiding something." Fred says, nudging her again.
"I'm gonna kill you, will you go to bed!?" Christina snaps. Every time they ask her a question, they nudge into her side, rocking her back and forth-
"What'd you do, hex Ron?" George asks.
Fred quickly cans the theory, "No, he's usually that terrible."
"True. What'd you do."
"I didn't do anything." Christina pushes the table forward, giving herself room to escape the twins.
"She lies." George prods. She rolls her eyes again, "What do you two want."
The twins join her standing, circling her like crows over a cemetery, "Well … perhaps if you told us why you're acting like such a bat …" Fred coos.
Christina inhales, thinking about just coming clean, they already knew about her natural powers, and were troublemakers to begin with-
"There—there, she just thought about telling us!" George points at her excitedly. She lets out a groan, caught.
"So, there is something!" Fred is now an inch from her face, staring at her and grinning like a child.
"I hate you both." Christina walks around them and grabs her parchment from the table.
"You love us." George sniggers. Just as she's about to go up the stairs to the girls' dormitory, they block her off, arms folded.
"Ugh, FINE!" She shouts. The twins start rubbing their hands together, ready for the juicy gossip.
"I … I freakin' cheated, okay?" She says quietly, eyeing the common room for any potential students hiding or nosy portraits.
"Cheated?"
"How?"
"Uh, I have no idea how to fly a broomstick, I just made it fly with the … you know …" She levitates a chess board from a nearby table. The twins twisted smiles turn into jaws hanging in awe -
"Wiked."
"No, not wiked! If anyone found out, I'd be expelled, wouldn't I?" Christina says frenzied.
"Probably." They shrug.
"What!?"
Fred places an arm around Christina, walking her back towards the couch by the fire, "Alright, alright, alright, calm down, you nut. We're gonna make this right."
"We are?" George asks.
"Yes." Fred confirms. "You don't know how to fly, we'll teach you. That way you'll be good enough for a match, if you ever even play one."
"You better be making sure those chaser girls don't get sick." George adds.
"Or injured." Fred continues.
"Or expelled." George says darkly.
This was all coming together, Christina could feel her blood pressure lowering as they spoke, "Yeah, yeah, okay. Plus, we practice three times a week." She says, calming herself down even more.
"You're gonna need loads more than that." George says.
"You're also going to need to do us a favor." Fred adds, the sinister smirk back again.
"A favor, why?" Christina lets out a tired sigh.
"To keep your secret, of course!" Fred says.
"I thought I was supposed to love you…" Christina bats her eyelashes to no avail. The twins are already making mental plans, "And you will, after you prank Ginny for us." George joins his brother in the sinister grin.
"After I what?!"
After a lengthy discussion about why exactly they were pranking Ginny, "Our hair was blue for a month." They concocted a, in Christina's opinion, ridiculous plan to scare Ginny in her Charms class. But Fred and George said their help and privacy was contingent on this faulty plan, so, she was game.
The next day, Christina, Fred and George wait for Ginny's class to start. Professor Flitwick taught charms, a small man Christina was informed was not a dwarf, elf, or goblin. After Fred and George sniggered about her being insensitive to his height – their plan took course.
Flitwick was up in front of the class teaching about Entrancing Enchantments, producing purple whisps in front of the entire class while Ginny watched in the back, head on her hand, bored as all can be. Fred and George hand her five stink pellets and she levitates them up from her hand and then let them slink into the classroom. It wasn't hard to navigate the stink pellets blind. Christina works them through the room, and underneath Ginny's chair and into her bag that was seated right beneath her.
"Phase one, complete." Fred says slyly.
"Shush!" Christina elbows him. Phase two involved simultaneously knocking something over, far away, while also bursting the stink pellets in Ginny's bag; leading her classmates to think the noise startled her, and she farted.
"Are you kidding me." Christina said dully the night before.
"It's perfect." George mused.
Christina spots something she could use as a distraction towards the front of the class, Flitwick's chalkboard. How an ancient school of witches and wizards never surpassed using chalk was beyond Christina, but she settled on it for her next move. At once she lifts it from the wall, feeling the weight of the ten-foot chalkboard and drops it on the ground. The class shrieks and as fast as she can, feels for the stink pellets in Ginny's bag, squeezing them tightly so they pop.
"What on earth-?" Flitwick shouts.
"What's that smell?"
Christina, Fred and George run at full speed down the hall and don't stop until there's at least two floors separating them from Ginny. Once they reach a good stopping point, they regard one another and then burst out laughing, sharing high-fives.
"Told you you'd love us." George winks.
"Glad I can be your weapon of mass pranks. Now can one of you teach me how to fly?!"
Fred and George held true to their word and before every practice on the pitch, held their own private practice, just the three of them. Things were slow at first, but eventually Christina could fly, natural power free – just not well. She definitely preferred a mixed approach, doing the most she could sans powers, and then if she was about to slide off the broom, get hurt, or plummet to her death, she'd catch herself with her natural abilities.
Fred and George did the best they could, but nothing could prepare Christina for her first training session in the rain.
"Should we cancel?" Christina asks, looking out just as a flash of lightning strikes the pitch.
"Cancel? Do you think they cancel matches on account of rain?" George says.
"I'm gonna take by your tone, the answer is no."
"On that broom, Bataskill!"
Just as all practices started, no natural powers, just get used to flying, to catching the Quaffle, to zooming down the pitch, etc. etc. They had only a few practices with the Bludgers out, but Christina knew it was a necessary step to actually becoming a good chaser. Flying in the rain was a miserable experience. Freezing cold, wind cutting at your cheeks, but the worst experience of all was that Christina could not sense anything in the rain. Any particles in the air were plummeting to the ground at rapid speed and nothing, no Bludger, could repair the damage the rain had done to her senses.
Christina has the Quaffle in her hands while Fred riding alongside her attempting to steal it. Christina maneuvers out of the way and down the pitch to score. There's a crack of thunder when George bats a Bludger her way and only Fred was smart enough to duck out of the way. The Bludger collides directly into Christina's shoulder, knocking her off her broom and sends her crashing down to earth.
"When will she wake up?"
"Soon, boy! Give her a minute!"
"She'll be alright?"
Christina could hear the voices whispering, but they made no sense whatsoever. She didn't have a clue where she was, or how she'd got there, or what she'd been doing before she got there. All she knew was that every inch of her was aching as though it had been beaten.
Christina's eyes snapped open. She was lying in the hospital wing, or so she guessed. Fred and George, spattered with mud from head to foot, were gathered around her bed. To her left and right were dozens of metal bed frames and returning to her side was a woman in white nurses' robes and a white nurse's cap.
"See, I told you." The woman said, shoving a pillow behind Christina's head, forcing her upright.
"You're awake!" Fred tackles her first, wrapping his long arms around her. She laughs, "Yeah, I'm awake, what the hell happened?"
"Mind your language." The woman chastises.
"Sorry…" Christina mutters. The trio waits for her to leave before divulging in rapid fire speech –
"You fell!" Fred exclaims.
"Had to be over a hundred feet!" George adds.
"What hurts?" Fred asks.
"They said one half of all your bones were broken." George's eyes widen as he says this but Christina was confused. She wasn't in that much pain, "One half?"
"The side—you fell on." Fred explains. He gestures to his right half. George ducks down to grab something from under the hospital bed, "Broom's okay though!" He shows her the school broom she had been using and she has to physically shake her head to someone remove herself from what had to be a dream,
"Broom's okay – I'm sorry, is half of me paralyzed?!" Christina moves both of her hands, both of her legs, everything seemed to be fine. But before any of them can say anything else, the woman comes striding back in,
"Oh, shush, Madam Pomfrey is coming back-" George warns.
Madam Pomfrey approaches Christina's bed and grabs her by her right arm and starts performing the most bizarre of exercises. Rotating fingers and wrists and what seemed like a flexibility test with her arm.
"What happened?" Christina asks.
"Well, you crushed your shoulder blade, broke your humerus, your femur and radius and ulna, your cracked your skill and dislocated your jaw. Your right side, anyway." She says as though this wasn't a big deal. Christina's blood pressures starts rising in a panic, "What's the recovery time?" She manages.
"When you get out of this bed." Madam Pomfrey lowers the hospital bed so that it's only a foot from the floor. Christina continues looking over her non-injured body, "How does that work though? Magic can't fix all of that."
"Told you, Madam Pomfrey is the best!" George exclaims, schmoozing her over. Madam Pomfrey waves him off, "It's really just as simple as: bones would rather be together, than broken."
Christina wasn't sure why, but Madam Pomfrey's words struck her just as the earth had struck her right side. Once she leaves the hospital wing, she rushes off to the library, feeling energized by Madam Pomfrey's words. She takes out several books on human anatomy and healing, reading about how certain witches and wizards were meant to be healers, meant to put bones and blood and tissue back to where it belonged. She didn't realize it immediately, but she felt the push and pull of the molecules in the air, the particles, they would come across one just like themselves and stick together. From basic science, she understood laws of attraction and the general concepts behind attractive forces and repulsive forces but didn't realize that because of her abilities, she was able to physically feel them.
Once the rain had cleared up and the soil was dry again, Christina goes outside to perform some experiments of her own. With her anatomy books, she sits down on a nice grassy section and digs up the grass so that it was just dirt in front of her. She had found that dust was the easiest thing to manipulate and dirt was a close second. It felt like molding clay in her hand, but without her hands getting dirty. Christina levitates the dirt, moves it around, forming it into crude shapes: a house, a box, a ball, a pyramid. She then, separately, levitates a blade of grass. She could pull apart the molecules holding the grass together, so that it looked like a green cloud of dust, but when she tried adding it to the dirt she was manipulating, they would separate, like oil and water. They didn't belong together.
Christina could just feel they didn't want to be together; the grass particles wanted to be with the grass particles and the dirt particles wanted to be with the dirt particles, they wouldn't and couldn't be mixed. And funnily enough, when separating the blade of grass into just its parts, when she let go of what she was doing, the energy of separating them, the blade of grass returned to normal. The particles clasped back together like two magnets. They were meant to be together.
Christina then looks down at her hand and at the anatomy book. Her hand had 27 bones, the carpals and wrist had eight, the palm had five, and the remaining fourteen were found in her fingers and thumb. She takes a measured breath, knowing that if this experiment were to go wrong, she had Madam Pomfrey only a short walk away …
Christina lets out a sigh and looks down at her right pinky. She begins separating the particles in her nail, which she assumed would be the least painful way to test the theory, and then quickly stops. Christina witnesses the tip of her nail dissolve into a cloud of white specks and then the second she stops, it claps back together just as the blade of grass did.
"It works!" She whispers to herself in amazement.
Christina spends the rest of the afternoon testing that same theory on other objects, other parts of her body, more difficult items. The boulder nearby was tougher for her to separate, as though ripping apart a textbook, but it too dissolved into a cloud and only when she allowed it to, swiftly came back together in the same form she had found it in.
By the time it had started to get dark, Christina had disintegrated and reintegrated her anatomy book, her backpack, and most impressively her entire shoe including her sock and foot inside. With enough practice, she'd be able to make herself disappear, or perhaps another person. Heck, with enough practice, she'd be able to fix her own bones, repair her own skin, even repair others.