The Perfectionist
By Mykerinos
Chapter Six: Practice time
Being a prefect, Hermione had no
trouble getting herself to the Quidditch field in the mid of the night.
Walking into the direction of the dark figure standing in front of the
gate, she looked up at the sky. It was cold, but fortunately it wasn't
raining.
She had been having an odd feeling
all day about tonight. But then again, it was very odd indeed. Harry
and Ron had almost fainted when she had told them about why she had skipped
Herbology.
"Good night, Professor," she greeted.
Snape nodded curtly, and turned around
to push open the heavy doors of the gate. Hermione entered, glancing up
at Snape as she passed. His permanent scowl, his greasy hair, his yellow
teeth, his terrible attitude... Why would this man want to enter a figure-flying
contest, something so unlike him?
The news about Hermione entering
the contest with Snape, had spread very fast. She was now being stared
at in the hallways, and people kept asking her how she had done this. Colin
Creevey had offered his camera for her to take pictures of Snape practicing
on his broom.
She smiled. Actually, she wondered
herself too how Snape on a broomstick would look like.
"What are you smiling at, girl?"
Snape then growled, and Hermione quickly dropped the smile.
"Nothing, sir," she said, and cleaned
her throat quickly. A frightening thought crossed her mind. "You have
brought
brooms with you, haven't you?" she asked, afraid there had been another
misunderstanding.
Snape gestured his hand to some broomsticks
lying in the grass. Hermione gave a relieved sigh. She waited until Snape
had closed the gate again, and then walked over to the broomsticks, where
she got one broom pushed into her hands.
"Alright then," Snape drawled. "First,
we'll test how good you are at balancing. I don't want you to fall off
your broom in the mid of the contest," he said grimly, and Hermione felt
like he wouldn't even allow her to fall.
"Get on your broom first," he ordered,
and Hermione did so. The odd feeling that she had been having all day now
had become a dreadful feeling of something terrible that bound happen.
"Now fly to the other side of the
field,," He got on his broom himself too, and took off into the dark night
sky. Hermione did the same, and tried to catch up with him. He wasn't flying
fast, fortunately, and if this was the pace she had to follow, perhaps
she could even manage to keep up!
She glanced up at Snape. He didn't
look awkward at all on a broom. He actually looked quite charming, his
black robe billowing behind him, the wind causing it to whirl even more
than normal.
"Put your feet on the broom," he
demanded curtly, Hermione snapping out of her thoughts, and she tried to
do so. Leaning forward, she pulled up her feet that had been swinging in
the air.
"Get up,"
Hermione frowned, wondering how she
was going to do that. The wind howled in her ears, blowing right through
her thin cloak and robes. She cursed herself for her sweaty hands. Soaring
in the sky on a broom was bad enough, without having sweaty hands and a
Professor with a temper flying next to you.
Holding on to the broom as tightly
as she could, she put the heels of her shoes on the stick, and tried to
push herself up. But her nerves made her not careful enough, and having
put too much weight on her unstable feet, her right foot slipped away,
and she fell.
BHWAM.
She landed on her left arm, and let
out a small cry of pain. Biting the tears back, she opened her eyes to
see Snape jumping off his broom to walk to her.
"That was an extraordinary flip trick
you did there, Miss Granger," he commented, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"Think you could do that again?"
Hermione clasped her hand to her
right arm. "It hurts... I think it's broken,"
"I wouldn't be surprised if it is,"
Snape drawled. "You fell from a good 20 feet. Now, get on your broom again.
I'll show you--"
"Sir!" Hermione interrupted him.
"I said it was broken. I can't fly this way!"
Snape gave an exasperated sigh. "Fine,"
he said finally, and muttered a spell into the direction of the broom.
Immediately it got transfigured into a stretcher. Relieved she didn't have
to continue Hermione crawled onto it. A moment later she floated before
her extremely irritated Potions Master.
Despite the situation and the pain
in her arm she had to giggle. This was just too weird.
TBC