"McCoire Squared! Good to see you two made it to tryouts!" Davies was dressed in his practice robes while a clipboard and quill floated nearby. "I hope detention with Snape went okay?"
"Oh, yes sir! Twas a breeze after that toothbrush enchantment you taught me. I could chat with Snape all evening about potions. But sir, I have to wonder: that enchantment seemed all bespoke. Like — someone has had experience with mucking out cauldrons during detention in the potions lab?"
Davies cleared his throat and Liam laughed. "Yes. Ahem. Well, let's just say that we Ravenclaws need to stick together in times of academic distress! Someday you'll pass that enchantment along to another young troublemaker! Now, look smart you two. Get over there to those tables and pick out some robes and kit!" He turned to the clipboard and said: "Mark off McCoire and McCoire."
Colin and Liam picked through the heaps of equipment dumped onto the long tables along with the other prospective quidditch players. Liam found a bat and some gloves and a couple grubby sets of robes. Colin found a likely looking broom under the heap and was using it to poke the pile, just in case some random creature or a Weasley twin decided to pop out for a bit of fun. Morag tried to find some robes that didn't look too shabby.
"I don't think they clean these things, do you?" she said, despairing of finding anything other than filthy, or at least grubby. She also found some gloves and a helmet.
Colin looked over her robe selection. "I don't think they bother to clean the blood out of them when a player dies on the pitch."
Morag's face screwed up in disgust. "Ew. Colin! You're so gross! Anyway, don't you boys think you should pick out a couple helmets?"
"Helmets! Bullocks. What do we need those for?" Colin asked.
"We've never worn helmets yet, right?" said Liam. Colin nodded. "We turned out okay! Anyway," he picked one of the poor tatty leather devices up. "This one's all bent and torn. I don't think it did much for its previous owner, Morag. I might actually be better off without."
"Suit yourself! It's your brains that'll spattered all over the pitch." Morag shrugged and stalked off to chat with some of the other kids before the event got started.
"How do you put it on, anyway?" asked Colin, finding a less destroyed helmet, just in case.
Liam laughed and held the helmet in front of his crotch. "I should get one of these for Angus!"
"Alright you lot, get out on the pitch and mount your brooms! Enough horsing around out here!"
"I've got a bad feeling about this, Liam," said Colin as they looked at their brooms lying on the grass. All the players and most of the prospective players were already in the air.
"How hard can it be, crow breath?" said a passing Slytherin student. "Don't you two birdbrains know how to say 'up'?" She was tall and had a mean look about her as she shoved her way between the twins and stepped on Colin's broom bristles.
"Hey! Come back here and pick on someone your own size!" shouted Colin.
"Git," said Liam as the girl turned her head to laugh.
"She's got a point, you know," said a second year Hufflepuff boy. "Up!" he cried and his broom rose swiftly into his outstretched hand. "See? I'm Myrddyn, by the way."
"Pleasure," said Liam unenthusiastically from his perch on his own broom. Myrddyn mounted his broom and watched as Colin tried to raise his broom. It wasn't working.
"Up," he said. "Up!" he cried. "UUUPPP!" he yelled.
WHACK!
"Ow! That hurt!"
Liam laughed as the broom handle smacked Colin on the forehead before falling to the ground again. The Hufflepuff tried to stifle his snickering. "Shutupliam," he muttered.
"Myrddyn! Come on over here with the rest of us!" He turned his broom around as Colin kept yelling at his own broom. He spurred his broom forward and almost immediately swerved into a barrel roll to avoid the collision. Colin screamed in terror.
"YAAAAAIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE!" Colin's broom decided at that moment to swing up and Colin caught it by the stirrups. It took off like a missile and shot right in front of Myrddyn's surpised face, Colin in tow, twisting desperately to avoid hitting the younger boy. It turned suddenly and rocketed into the air high above the pitch; then turned sharply to the right and headed for the goal hoops. It sped for the lower of the three hoops where the Gryffindor team were gathered.
"YAAAAAAAHHH! WATCHOUTWATCHOUTWATCHOUT!" Colin's broom careened towards the prospective chasers as they tried out some basic manoeuvres. Colin had managed to hook one leg over the stirrup which caused his broom to belly forward. They turned to see what the commotion was, but it was too late! Colin managed to wrench his broom straight, but this flipped him so that he was now flying upside down, dangling from the stirrups by his knees.
The closest Gryffindor chasers screamed as Colin's broom bristles whipped by their faces, tugging at their hair.
"UFF!" Colin's body slammed into the quaffle that one of them had just caught, and the force of the blow sent her hand flying up in a wide arc that caused her wrist to knock into her forehead.
"Showoff!" the third chaser shouted as Colin zipped towards the goal.
"ACK!" Colin turned just in time to see the hoop looming before him. He tried to twist himself upright, but only managed to flip his broom back to front, so now he was flying backwards, bristles first, but at last he managed to flatten himself against the wood.
"CLANGNG!" a bell sounded that a point had been scored, and indeed Colin had flown straight through the goal hoop, quaffle in hand! But his broom didn't much seem to like flying backwards, and with a violent wrenching motion, it rotated about and shot straight up into the sky again. Colin dropped the quaffle and grabbed the stirrups like handlebars. Unable to right itself, the broom shot straight up towards a Gryffindor player who had been lazing about watching the Slytherins at the far end of the pitch.
By now, everyone on the ground and many of the players in the air were watching as Colin sought to wrestle against his broom. Screams and yells came from all around the stands and several people tried to cast spells or charms to subdue the runaway broom or incapacitate its pilot.
"POTTER! DUUUUCK! POTTERRRR!" Colin tried to yell as the broom corkscrewed out of control again. Harry wasn't paying any attention. His eyes were on Draco Malfoy.
When Harry did at last register the faint screams of Hermione and Ron far below and more insistent screaming close by, he looked up only to find an array of straight and sharp broom bristles closing in on him! "DIVE POTTER DIVE! FUCKING BROOM!" Colin wrenched on the broom stirrups with all his strength, but still the broom flew straight towards Harry Potter! At the last moment, Colin dropped from the broom! The weight of his body pulling on the stirrups caused the broom to tip violently. At the very last second, the broom began it wild end over end careering. Harry watched as Colin's form dangled from the stirrups down below and was thrown outwards and upwards as the centrifugal forces of the broom's rotation caused it and its flier to flip up and over Harry's head without ever touching him.
As the broom jerked around, struggling to overpower Colin's attempts to get it to fly right, he heard Colin's red shifting voice call back: "Bloody hell Potter I warned you to dive!"
Harry blinked. He'd never seen anyone fly a broom that way before. He wasn't sure what to make of that crazy manoevure either: did that boy just risk jumping off his broom to avoid hitting Harry, or did he just not know anything at all about flying?
Colin's broom accelerated to a terrifying speed and he watched helplessly as the length of the pitch flew by far below. Again, Colin managed to get properly onto his broom, but controlling it seemed to be out of the question. It clearly had a mind of its own! Oh shit! Colin thought. "DRACO! WATCH OUT!"
His broom was aimed straight at Draco Malfoy's head! Draco looked up as he heard his name being called, but froze with fright. Colin wrenched on the broomstick and fought against the stirrups as the distance closed! Fifty yards! Forty yards! There was no time. Can brooms even fly this fast? Colin grasped the broom handle and jumped up from the stirrups. He balanced himself on the stick. It was rather smaller than the cabers he was used to, but he thought a stick is a stick, right?
Draco watched as Colin slammed first one foot then the other on the broomstick in an effort to bring it under control.
Thirty yards! Twenty yards! Colin got the broom to belly forward again, which caused it to slow down appreciably. He was now surfing the broom, but at a ridiculously precarious angle and still way too fast. He knew that if he slowed too much, he'd fall off; but if he didn't slow, he'd end up slamming into Draco's chest.
Ten yards! He jammed his left foot onto the bindings and the broom nosed up precariously! It slowed dramatically. And Colin could just begin to feel gravity itching to take over again.
Five yards! Colin leaned into the broomstick, the toe of his Doc Martens just barely hanging on to the bristle rim. The broom stopped at last, its tip a mere quarter inch from Draco's eye. Colin wavered a bit and the broom shifted. He reached out to steady himself on Draco's shoulder. "Er. Hey Draco! You okay? I tried to stop sooner, but —!" Colin said.
Draco's mouth hung open. "Colin?" Draco's eyes never left the tip of the broom. "Um. Your — broom —" They both watched as the nose slowly, deliberately, and maliciously began to nose down.
"Uh oh," said Colin. As the broom levelled, Colin slid back into a seated position. "I don't know what's wrong with this broom. Honestly, I wasn't trying to hit you!"
"Um. Actually, you were brilliant. You came close, but didn't collide. You know," he said as Colin's broomstick kept nosing down despite his efforts to right it. He shrugged. "I wouldn't have minded much if, you know, you'd knocked Potter off for me?"
"Draco! You know I — YYAAAAAAIIIIEEEEEE!"
The mad broom hooked its stirrups around Colin's ankles and dropped, plummeting towards the pitch with Colin stretched out behind it. It accelerated even faster than before, Colin was sure. He watched as Draco Malfoy tipped his own broom into a dive, chasing after Colin as he sped towards the pitch. Somehow he managed to disentangle his feet from the stirrups that had just tried to trap him, and he got back up on the stick and tried to stall it again.
Colin watched in horrified fascination as the green of the pitch flew up to meet him, and all the blues and reds and greens and yellows of people's robes looked like coloured gems scattered over a green cloth. Liam was racing towards him on his own broom, but was too far away. He locked his eyes on his brother's. He saw the tears in Liam's eyes and knew there were tears in his own.
Colin had managed to slow his broom, but still some thirty or so feet in the air, it twisted with a last act of pure malice. Colin dropped! Instinctually, he relaxed. The soft turf would embrace his body soon enough. And just before it did, he saw the broom shake as with cruel laughter. And then it turned and dove straight for him!
An instant before he hit the ground, he heard the terrified screams of the other students. The broom slammed itself into his chest, under his right armpit. He could feel the wood rip through his flesh and tear apart his muscles. At last the broom buried itself in the earth of the pitch; Colin's legs struck the ground and he was pretty sure the cracking sound was one of his legs breaking.
"UFF!" Colin's body was thrown to the ground at last, sliding along the length of the broomstick and all went black.