Author's Note: This chapter is now FINALLY up! Let me know of any writing errors in the 'Review' section below.
Chapter 11
Flubbed Flying Lesson
Year 1 - Hogwarts Castle - Earth
Over the following week, Harry was slowly becoming acclimated to his new surroundings, both inside and outside of the castle. The lessons he'd had with Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, as well as a dumpy little witch named Professor Pomona Sprout (who was Head of Hufflepuff House), had all been quite intriguing. But it was Potions classes, however, that had come off as rather unpleasant and distasteful to him. For it wasn't the lessons themselves, but rather, the person who was teaching them that was the problem: Professor Severus Snape - Head of Slytherin House.
Snape was a rather thinly-built man, with sallow skin, a large hooked nose, and yellow uneven teeth. He usually dressed in flowing black robes which made him resemble "an overgrown bat" as both of the Weasley twins would say. He also had shoulder-length, greasy black hair which framed his face in curtains, as well as curling lips and dark, penetrating eyes that resembled tunnels.
At the start-of-term banquet, Harry had gotten it into his head that Professor Snape disliked him from the very moment he had laid eyes on the young Padawan Learner. And by the end of the very first Potions lesson, the little boy knew almost immediately that he'd been wrong. Severus Snape didn't just dislike Harry - the Potions Master absolutely hated him.
The class that everyone had been looking forward to, though, was Defense Against The Dark Arts, which was taught by a pale young man with a twitching eye. He looked very nervous, and the students all noticed that he had a rather awkward stutter when he spoke.
"G-G-G-Gather round, c-c-class," he said shakily. "M-M-My name is P-P-Processor Quirrell."
While the initial start of the first Defense Against The Dark Arts class seemed promising enough, all of the students soon began to realize that the Professor's lessons on the subject had turned out to be a bit of a joke. His classroom smelled strongly of garlic, which everyone had said was to ward off a vampire that Quirrell had met in Romania, and was afraid would be coming for him sooner or later, when Harry had asked why that was exactly.
The turban, which Quirrell was apparently always wearing, had been given to him by an African prince as a thank-you for getting rid of a troublesome zombie as he had told them, but the students weren't sure they believed his story at all, due in part of the fact that when Seamus asked eagerly to hear of how the Professor had fought off the zombie, Quirrell immediately went pink and began randomly spouting-off about the weather outside.
Easily, the class that all of the students had been dreading was History of Magic; taught by a ghost named Professor Cuthbert Binns, who had died in his sleep while resting comfortably in an armchair that was situated in front of a crackling fireplace in one of the staff rooms of the castle.
On the last day of their first week of classes, Harry, Ron, and Neville all found their way down to the Great Hall for breakfast without so much as getting lost even once, as the three boys had by now managed to successfully navigate their way from the Common Room to the main gathering area of the school after ruffly four days of trial and error. Though, many other first-year students were still having trouble finding their own way around the place, and Harry offered to help them whenever possible.
While eating their bowls of porridge, Ron looked at Harry and was just about to ask him a question, when suddenly the mail arrived. Harry and many of the other first-year students had gotten used to the way in which the mail had come by now; as about a hundred or more owls had swooped into the Great Hall each and every morning at breakfast, without any sort of warning from either the Professors, nor the Headmaster, or even the older students for that matter, and circled the four tables until they saw their respective owners, before dropping letters and packages onto their laps.
Hedwig hadn't brought Harry any mail or packages so far, which Potter fully expected since there wasn't really anyone on Earth who knew him at all, apart from Hagrid, the Weasleys, the Lovegoods, and the Longbottoms, of course. But the little boy was certain that none of them knew him well enough to be sending him anything as of yet. On this morning, however, he would come to find out just how wrong he was; as Hedwig had gracefully fluttered down in-between the marmalade jar and the sugar bowl, and promptly dropped a note onto Harry's empty plate.
Tearing it open, Harry read the note, which said in a rather untidy scrawl:
'Dear Harry, I know you get Friday afternoons off, so would you like to come and have a cup of tea with
me around three? I want to hear all about your first week. Send us an answer back with Hedwig.'
'Hagrid.'
Upon reading the note, Harry asked if he could borrow Ron's quill for a moment, to which Ron obliged. And after quickly scribbling a short reply message down on the back of the note, Potter then sent the note off with his owl back to the half-giant's hut straightaway.
At around five minutes to three, Harry left the castle and made his way across the grounds over to Hagrid's hut. Ron, Neville, and the Patil twins had all asked the young Padawan Learner if they could come with him, and Potter happily obliged their request to do so.
Just as the lot were swiftly approaching the front steps that lead up to the doorway, they all suddenly stopped in their tracks and looked around them as well as up towards the sky, while the front door to the hut casually opened wide and Hagrid himself ventured outside of his lodgings, curious to know what was going on: as a distantly loud dooming noise was immediately heard from somewhere high above them.
Harry thought it sounded very much like a sonic boom going off, given what Josh had told him about Earth and it's vast history (as well as many other things about it) over the course of the last month and a half that they'd gotten to know each other while at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. But the young Jedi also told Potter many more rather curious and fascinating things concerning Earth (and none of it concerning the Wizarding World in any way), which he had both discovered and learned about in the last twelve years of him "growing up all over again", while they were staying at the Burrow.
And, speak of the devil, Varner all of a sudden appeared from practically out of nowhere and landed a solid three-pointer only but few yards away from the half-giant's hut. He was once again clothed in his Jedi robes, tunic, and boots, with his lightsaber hanging from his utility belt.
The kids all promptly turned to look in the Jedi Knight's direction just as he straightened into a upright standing position.
"Hey, Josh!" exclaimed Harry a bit surprised. "What are you doing here?"
"I came by to see you about something, Harry," the young Jedi Knight answered as he casually strode over towards the small group. "Is it alright if I come in with them, Hagrid?"
"Of course, Josh. You're most certainly welcome to come inside," replied Hagrid. "I was just about to make some tea."
Josh smiled warmly. "Thanks, but I'm afraid I won't be staying long," he replied bluntly.
Harry looked directly at his "mentor" disconcertingly. "What? Why not?" he asked in a rather unsettling tone of voice.
"I'll tell you once we're inside, Harry," said Varner as he gently nudged both Potter and the other children into the hut.
A few minutes later, Josh sat down with Harry and explained to him that the Jedi Council had contacted him with an urgent message to return to Coruscant and the Jedi Temple at once: stating that it had something to do with an attempt made on Senator Padmé Amidala's life, and that fortunately for her, the move to assassinate the Senator had failed. But the Council didn't yet know who was behind it.
Upon hearing this, Harry got a peculiar look on his face as if he had heard that name before. And when commenting to Varner about the name sounding familiar to him, Josh revealed that Padmé Amidala was one of the people whom the little boy had encountered when the Jedi had taken Potter back to Coruscant with them as a baby a decade earlier, along with two other youths named Anakin Skywalker and Kitster Banai.
"I was going to tell you about both Anakin and Padmé right before-" the Jedi Knight started to say, before suddenly being cut-off by Harry.
"No. No, it's much more than that," Potter interrupted abruptly, causing Varner to silently mouth "…you interrupted me" while rolling his eyes in annoyance. "I feel as though I…"
Suddenly, the little boy's vision warped and shifted as the hut around him faded and was instantly replaced by the sight of three very young people looming directly over him, one of whom was a young girl clad in red; her legs tucked firmly together underneath her while sitting on the floor, and the other was a little boy with sandy-blonde hair. The third individual was yet another little boy with black hair that he didn't quite recognize as well as the other two occupants in the strange room. And although he didn't rightly know either of them, there was still something which was oddly familiar about the little boy and young girl who appeared nearest to him, yet he couldn't figure out what or why.
The three individuals were all smiling down at him and Harry instantly got the sensation that he was being held by someone, and almost immediately saw that it was in fact the young girl who was holding him within her arms like a…baby. He suddenly realized that he was experiencing a Force Vision of when he was a baby, and that this was actually Padmé Amidala herself who was cradling him in her arms. The other two individuals must have been Anakin Skywalker and Kitster Banai respectively, both who's names Josh had mentioned only a moment ago.
About a moment later, the Force Vision began to swirl and fade away as Harry found himself standing in Hagrid's hut once again, though not before Potter had thought that he had distinctly heard his little toddler-self exclaim the words "Mama" and "Dada" to both Padmé and Anakin while glancing up at both of them.
"Harry! Harry!" Josh exclaimed while lightly shaking Potter back to his senses. "Are you alright?"
"I… had a vision. It was a vision of those three people - Padmé, Anakin, and Kitster - whom you just spoke of," said Harry in stunned bewilderment.
Before anyone could say anything more, Josh suddenly heard a small beeping noise emanating from somewhere on his utility belt. Upon excusing himself from the others, the young Jedi Knight quietly stepped outside of the hut for a moment, while Harry in turn began to explain what exactly he had see and experienced within his vision.
"Blimey, Harry!" exclaimed Hagrid in a shocked tone of voice from the moment he'd heard what the little boy had said concerning what his toddler-self had uttered to both Anakin and Padmé in the vision. "Why would you say something like that? Especially to people whom you've never met. Lily and James are your mum and dad, not-"
"I- I know. I know, Hagrid. I know," said Harry while holding up his hand, promptly stopping the half-giant from speaking any further. "I just can't for the life of me figure out why these things are starting to happen, is all. I mean, first the Sorting Hat acting the way that it did, and now this? I really need-"
"Harry!" Josh called from the other end of the hut, just as a door was heard closing. "Harry, I gotta go. Master Yoda just contacted me from the Temple. They're wanting me back there asap. Now, I know that you've got your schooling at Hogwarts to focus on, but I also know that the Council granted me permission to further your lessons in Jedi training, so I brought this along with me just in case you might need to use it as an alternative method of study and practice for your training."
Varner then reached into his robes and extracted a cube-shaped device which was blue in color; immediately holding it out in his palm for Harry to see. And as the others slowly gathered around in awe and wonder upon noticing the strange cube-like object, Potter looked up at his "Master" in total surprise.
"What is it?" asked Ron quite curiously. "Harry, what is that thing? It looks…weird."
The object suddenly began to rise up into the air out of Varner's palm, and then steadily moved towards Harry's outstretched hands, before it gently lowered down into the little boy's cupped palms.
"It's a Jedi Holocron," answered Harry. "Sort of a learning tool for Jedi at the Temple on Coruscant. Although, as I understand it, the Holocrons inside Temple Archives are only meant for Jedi Masters."
"That is correct, Harry," Josh asserted directly. "The ones at the Temple are strictly meant for Jedi Masters only. But this - this is my own personal Holocron that I created while we were on Coruscant. I want you to study it's teachings carefully while I'm away."
Harry nodded understandably. "Yes… Master."
Josh smirked at the little boy's response, and then turned to walk towards the front door of Hagrid's hut, only to promptly turning back around again; reaching inside his robes a second time as he did so, thus retrieving a skeleton key which was partially similar in design and appearance to the one which Varner had used on the Weasley's garage door lock just days earlier.
"Oh, and you may need this also," he stated casually, while holding up the key for Harry to take from him. "I made it for you to use whenever you needed to get from one place to another instantaneously. Just…don't use it if and when you absolutely don't need to. Clear?"
Harry nodded again; excepting the key from the Jedi Knight and stuffing it carefully into his school robes for temporary safekeeping until it was time for him, Ron, and Neville to all go back to the boys' dormitory for the night after supper. And before doing so that very evening, while all of the Gryffindor students had a bit of free-time left on their hands to do whatever they wanted after classes, yet before heading off to the Great Hall for mealtime and then directly to bed thereafter, they all gathered around in the Common Room, curious to see what it was that Harry had brought back with him after returning from Hagrid's earlier in the day.
"What is it, Harry?" asked Dean rather eagerly.
"Please show it to us, Harry!" declared Seamus with near-overwhelming excitement while gently bounding up and down on his tiptoes. "Please! Please! Please! Please! Please!"
"Alright, everyone," said Harry with a small laugh at their restlessness. "Settle down now."
The young Padawan Learner then proceeded to reach inside his robes and slowly extracted the Holocron. Everyone's mouths dropped wide-open all at once in total awe and wonder upon seeing the blue-colored box for the first time. All except for Ron, Neville, and the Patil sisters, since they themselves had seen the cube earlier that day when Josh had presented it to Harry shortly before the young Jedi had left to go back to wherever it was that both he and Harry had come from.
A moment later, the box suddenly began to levitate up into the air out of Harry's hand: the four tiny triangular-shaped corners of the cube seemingly detaching themselves and steadily moving out away from the main part of it as they gently rotated continuously in mid-air, and almost immediately a gigantic shimmering image of what looked like the whole of the cosmos, which was primarily glowing a dim bluish color with many other colors representing various cosmic and planetary bodies intertwined within it, appeared directly over their heads.
"Wow!" exclaimed Ron in sheer amazement upon looking upwards at the star map. "Is that what this… thing does?"
Harry smiled. "It's a holographic image of this galaxy, Ron," he stated to the redhead. "Through the Force, the Jedi are able to take mental images of things they've seen, people they've met, places they've visited, along with many other things, and store that information and knowledge directly into these boxes. They can even mentally record other stuff such as messages from themselves that are meant for someone else to hear into the Holocrons too."
"Can you do that, Harry?" asked Dean.
Potter shook his head. "I'm afraid not, Dean. Only a Jedi Master would possess the skills needed to do something like that. Although, there have been a few Jedi Knights, such as Varner apparently, who do seem to have the skills that are necessary to accomplish that feat."
Over the next couple of hours, Potter sifted through the Holocron, slowly explaining things about the Force, the Jedi, and several other tidbits of info to the other students, while also being careful to only recount basic areas of knowledge that the others could both grasp and understand. But the little boy was also especially careful and very cautious not to delve into any areas of information and knowledge that would most certainly be otherwise considered strictly forbidden to any and all Padawan Learners, such as himself; information and knowledge that Harry was absolutely certain was embedded deep within the Holocron.
The following day, which was the first Saturday of the first weekend of school for the students, Harry decided to spend it studying the Holocron as much as he could. Some of the other students had even politely asked if they could participate in the lessons alongside him, as they were still very eager to learn many more things from the cube-shaped device, to which Potter obliged their request, but on the very strict condition that he alone would be the one to choose which subjects to study and learn from.
Sunday was also more of the same, though on this particular day, Harry chose instead to study more of the subjects which applied to Hogwarts schooling, rather than Jedi training. And he had also encouraged the other students in Gryffindor to study as much as possible, especially if they had any chance at all of winning the House Cup this year for Gryffindor House at the end-of-term banquet; a special event which Potter had learned about while overhearing a few students from Slytherin talking about it.
Over the following week, Harry had been anticipating what it was going to be like to fly on a broomstick since he had looked at the class schedule for the upcoming week, and saw that the first flying lessons would be starting on Thursday with Madam Rolanda Hooch out in the courtyard. But when he noticed who would be participating in the class along with all the other first-year Gryffindor students, he groaned.
"Typical," said Potter a bit darkly, more to himself than to anyone else around him who had also groaned when they too had noticed who would be participating in the first flying class listed on the schedule for the upcoming week. "Absolutely typical. Just what I've always wanted. To make an utter fool of myself while learning how to fly on a broomstick in front of Malfoy and the other first-year Slytherins."
Several students who had been standing close beside him unanimously agreed on that fact, but Ron who had been standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him, gave Harry a encouraging look.
"You don't know that you'll make a fool of yourself, Harry," the redhead expressed reasonably enough. "Anyway, I know for a fact that Malfoy's always going on and on about how good he is at playing Quidditch, but I bet that's all talk."
Ron was most certainly right about one thing though; Malfoy did seem to blabber on quite an awful lot about how much of an expert he was at flying, and that he didn't need to be taught some pathetically dull and pointless flying lessons. He would then tell long boastful stories that always seemed to end with him narrowly escaping Muggles in large flying vehicles called helicopters. And he wasn't the only one ether: as Seamus told it, he'd spent most of his childhood zooming around the countryside on his broomstick. Even Ron himself would tell anyone who'd listen to him about the time he'd almost collided with a hang glider in mid-flight on Charlie's old broomstick.
Everyone from wizarding families talked incessantly about Quidditch, and frankly… it was beginning to get on Harry's nerves.
When the day finally came for them to begin their flying lessons with Madam Hooch, all three boys headed down to the Great Hall for breakfast as usual and met both Parvati and Padma in one of the adjoining corridors that lead directly to the grand chamber; greeting one another casually as they walked towards the huge entry doors to the hall. Several moments later, while everyone was quietly eating their breakfasts, the mail arrived.
Harry hadn't received anything apart from Hagrid's note the week before, something that Malfoy had been quick to notice, of course. And Malfoy's eagle owl was always bringing him packages of sweets from home, which he opened gloatingly at the Slytherin table.
"Didn't Malfoy get the message about not stuffing his face like that?" asked Ron irritably. "Especially considering what happened the last time?"
After watching Malfoy for a minute or two, Harry shook his head disappointingly. "I guess not," he replied with a distasteful sigh under his breath.
Just then, a barn owl swooped down and brought Neville a small package from his grandmother. He opened it excitedly and showed everyone at the Gryffindor table a glass ball which was the size of a large marble. It appeared to be full of white smoke.
"It's a Rememberall!" explained Neville eagerly. "Gran knows that I sometimes forget things, but only on occasion - this tells you if there's something that you've forgotten."
Shortly before three-thirty that afternoon, Harry, Ron, Neville, Parvati, and the other first-year Gryffindors, along with everyone of the first-year students from Slytherin House, hurried down onto the front steps of the castle, where Madam Hooch (who had short gray hair and yellow eyes like a hawk) was waiting for them on the grounds for their first flying lesson.
It was a clear, breezy day, and the grass rippled underneath their feet as they made their way down the sloping lawns towards a smooth, flat lawn just on the opposite side of the grounds which lead directly to the Forbidden Forest, whose trees were swaying darkly in the distance.
Hooch promptly blew a loud whistle that was hanging around her neck, thus causing all of the students to immediately halt in their tracks where they were all standing, as she had been carefully observing that several of the Gryffindor and Slytherin students were pushing and shoving one another as they walked along, with some of them trying to get ahead of the other as they forced their way towards the front of the assembled group. She then sharply instructed them to form into two separate rows, each facing the other.
"Good afternoon, class," she addressed most firmly, once all of the students had done as they were advised. "Welcome to your first flying lesson. Well, what are you all waiting for? Everyone step up to a broomstick. Come on now, hurry up."
All of the students did as they were instructed to do. Harry glanced down at the broom next to his foot. It was rather old and worn, with some of the twigs sticking out at odd angles.
"Stick your right hand over your broom," called Madam Hooch at the front, "and say 'Up!'"
"UP!" everyone shouted, the moment they all put their hands out above their broomsticks.
Both Harry and Neville's brooms jumped into their hands instantly, but theirs (along with a small number of others) were only some of the few who did. Ron's broom had promptly wacked him right in the nose without any warning, while Parvati had almost managed to get her broom up to where she could grab it before the broom fell back down onto the ground again, but after a couple more tries, Parvati finally succeeded in calling her broomstick to her hand.
The Professor then showed all the students how to correctly mount a broom without sliding off the end of it, before walking up and down each row to both assess and correct the way in which the students were gripping their brooms. And Harry and Ron were both delighted when she told Malfoy that he'd been doing it all wrong for years.
"Now, when I blow my whistle, you kick off from the ground, hard," said Madam Hooch. "Keep your brooms steady, rise a few feet up off the ground and hover a moment, then lean forward slightly and come straight back down. On my whistle - three - two - one!"
Professor Hooch blew her whistle, and Neville, being so excited to start flying, inadvertently shot straight up into the air like a bullet being fired vertically upwards out of a gun; as he had forcefully pushed off the ground with his feet a little TOO FAST…and hard.
"Come back down this instant, boy!" the Professor shouted.
Neville, suddenly realizing what was happening (as he had noticed that the ground was quickly falling away) jerked the broomstick forward; angling the end of it downward to halt his rapid ascent.
"Oops," he uttered worriedly to himself before… WHOOSH! The ground that was so very far away down below him, suddenly expanded in size and the amount of distance between both him and it closed within seconds.
"Oh, yeah, he'll fly alright," exclaimed Malfoy with a chuckle to the other Slytherins, while amusingly watching the incident unfold in front of his eyes. "Just like a rock."
All of the students in Slytherin House, aside from Pansy Parkinson, began laughing quite rather madly like hyenas at the scene above them, just as-
**WHAM!**
A loud thud was instantly heard by all, followed by a nasty crackling, and Neville was suddenly laying face-down in a heap on the ground.
"Neville!" yelled both Harry and Ron in alarm as they immediately rushed over to see whether their friend was hurt or not.
"Both of you, out of the way!" Madam Hooch shouted as she quickly hurried over to check on the little boy's condition. Harry and Ron both backed away from Longbottom immediately in order to let the Professor examine him for any potential injuries. "Oh, dear, it's a broken wrist," she muttered, before discovering that he had also broken several bones in his arm in various places.
Harry and Ron looked at each other in absolute shock at what they had just heard as the Professor gently lifted Neville up onto his feet.
"Ow!" cried Longbottom, as he promptly slumped back down onto the ground in pain. "My ankle!"
Potter immediately came over to his friend's side. "Here, let me help with that," he offered kindly. He then crouched down low to the ground and examined the boy's ankle. "It's seems to be a really bad sprain, is all."
Upon slowly putting his hand on Neville's ankle, Harry used the Force to nullify enough of the pain so that his friend could at least partially walk (or rather hobble more-less) on his feet, so that Madam Hooch could gently escort him directly to the Hospital Wing.
While Potter was doing that, however, unbeknownst to nearly everyone there, Longbottom's Rememberall had subsequently fallen out of his robes and landed in the grass.
"None of you are to move while I take Mr. Longbottom to the Hospital Wing!" the Professor warned sharply to all of the students, before slowly and gently taking Neville to the castle. "Understand? You leave those brooms where they are! And if I see even a single one in the air, the student riding it will find themselves out of Hogwarts before they can say 'Quidditch.'"
No sooner were the two of them out of earshot than Malfoy burst out laughing. "Did you see his face?"
Once again, all of the other Slytherins (except for Parkinson) joined in, as they too began laughing hysterically.
"Look!" said Malfoy, who darted forward the moment he'd spotted a bright glint of something flashing nearby, close to where Neville had landed. The Rememberall glittered brightly in the sun as he held it up for everyone to see. "It's that stupid thing that Longbottom's gran had gotten him. I bet if the fat lump had given this a squeeze, he would have remembered to fall on his fat ass."
"Give it here, Malfoy!" yelled Harry as he strode up to his rival, upon noticing that Draco had Neville's Rememberall in his hand. "Now!"
Malfoy turned around to look his rival square in the eye, and smiled nastily. "No! I think I'll leave it somewhere for Longbottom to find - how about - up a tree?"
The blonde-haired boy then immediately leapt onto his broomstick and had taken off like a shot. He hadn't been lying: he could fly well.
"Come and get it, Potter!" he called while circling around the branches of a large oak tree that was nearby.
Weighing his options, along with the warning that Madam Hooch had given just minutes earlier, Harry left his broom on the ground where it was, and immediately bolted straight for Malfoy simply by harnessing Force Speed, followed by a mistimed Force Jump that caught Malfoy completely off-guard; as the Padawan Learner meant to simply snatch the Rememberall from his rival, who ducked at the last second, thus causing Potter to land on the broom and accidentally pushing Draco slightly forward.
Suddenly, without any warning, the broomstick that Draco (and now Harry) were both on, began zipping and zooming wildly in the air this way and that as it steadily made it's way directly towards the treeline… of the Forbidden Forest.
