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/-wujy

Chapter Ten – Poetry In Flight

"Hurry up, everyone. Each of you stand next to a broom."

Madame Hooch was an elfish woman with yellow eyes and gray, fly-away hair, and she was looking at Whitney as she said this. Whitney—whose stomach was somewhere round her knees at this point—was standing next to a broom, looking helpless. She keeps looking at me. Why does she keep looking my way?

"Right!" Madame Hooch, shouted, snapping her attention to all of the students. She reminded Whitney of referees from public schools who shouted at games all day and couldn't help but shout all the time out of habit. "Put your right hands out over the brooms next to you and say, 'Up!' Be firm, now. Show the broom who's in charge."

Whitney swallowed to calm her nerves and said more to herself than to the broom, "How about you're in charge? That sounds like a better plan. I mean, after all, you're the one with the flying experience. I can trust you not to glide into a tree, can't I?"

She hadn't really expected the broom to do anything other than roll over lamely like Hermione's was doing, but the broom slowly rose from the ground until it met with her hand. Whitney's cheeks flushed and she felt a sensation of what must have been pride. She smiled slightly, but Ron was looking at her funny.

"Talk to inanimate objects often, do you?" he teased.

Whitney smiled bashfully and said, "Sometimes they're better listeners than people." Remembering the Sorting Hat, she added, "Sometimes they're better talkers than people, too."

Ron only rolled his eyes at her and breathed, "Barmy."

Made Hooch blew her whistle to get their attention and mounted her broom to show them the correct way to do it. Whitney copied the teacher, gripping the broom so tightly that Madame Hooch had to help her pry her fingers from around the handle. Whitney nodded nervously, sure that her grip now was no longer tight enough to keep her from sliding off the end when she finally got to the flying part.

"Now, kick off the ground," Madame Hooch said. "And kick hard. You can hover a little now, then nudge forward on the end of the handle to go back down." She demonstrated before waving her hands at the students and telling them to try.

Before anyone had a chance, however, Neville's broom started floating away. Panicking, he forgot how to get back down and the broom rose higher, jerking sporadically as it carried its unwilling passenger up. He was level with the second floor windows when he slipped sideways off the broom and came crashing down to the ground with a crunch that Whitney recognized.

She walked quickly over to him at the same time as Madame Hooch, though she kept her distance and only said, "H-He broke something. I-I heard it."

"His wrist," Madame Hooch agreed, seeing its odd angle. "I'll have to take him to the Hospital Wing," she said, gathering him up.

"Any one of you so much as touch a broom while I'm gone," she said, shouting out over all of them, "you'll be expelled before you can say, 'Quidditch.'"

Whitney, still clutching her broom, glanced down to see a small, round sphere. She picked it up from the ground and looked at it. It was filled with white smoke and seemed to glow a little. She started to walk over to Ron when Draco stopped her and quickly snatched the ball from her hand. "What's this, then?" the boy asked, looking mischievous.

Whitney, however, was faster than Draco expected and plucked it from his grasp, retreating further onto the grounds. Draco snarled at her.

"It's Neville's," Whitney said, but she knew that wasn't the point. She simply couldn't think of anything more intelligent or… intimidating to say to make Draco back off.

Draco advanced, waving at Crabbe and Goyle for them to stay back; he smirked at her. He obviously thought he had this one. Whitney looked around at her classmates, but they were all watching the scene unfold. Hermione looked like she was about to go and call a teacher, but no one else seemed to know what to do.

"Why are you doing this, D-Draco," Whitney stammered. Her voice was harsh and low and she was clutching Neville's trinket to her chest for all she was worth. "I haven't d-done anything to you and… and neither has Neville."

"Give it here, Potter," Draco said, reaching for her and ignoring everything she was saying.

She jerked back, feeling trapped, but Draco lunged forward and wrenched the glass ball from her hands, knocking her to the ground in the process. She landed hard on her backside, knocking the air out of her lungs painfully. He walked away toward the Slytherins who were chuckling, but stopped when Whitney choked, "Give… give it back, M… Malfoy."

She was on her feet again, looking unhappy. It had taken every ounce of courage within her to spit out Draco's last name and it wasn't nearly as venomous as she had intended. It sounded more like a child swearing for the first time—awkward and a little half-hearted.

Draco's eyes narrowed at her. He didn't seem to like being called his last name any more than she did.

"Oh, this?" he asked, holding it up so that it glinted in the sunlight. "Nah," he said. "I think… I'll leave it in a tree for Neville to find later." He smiled and grabbed his broom, sailing off.

Draco knew how to fly. He rode his broom as though it were part of him. If Whitney hadn't been so completely upset at him, she might have thought his skill on a broom beautiful. As it was, she only disliked him more for it.

She watched Draco, debating whether he would have time to lose Neville's… whatever-it-was before she had time to get a professor.

"Don't you dare," Hermione said, looking at her with disdain. "Don't you even think of going up there after him. You'll get us all in trouble."

Whitney's lips partly slightly in shock as she turned to look at the other girl. Whitney hadn't even considered flying after him. Her mouth clamped shut, lips forming a line of determination. But now she was. She scowled at Hermione.

"I'm getting… pretty tired of people me what to do," Whitney said before mounting her broom carefully and kicking off from the ground, leaving Hermione to glare indignantly at her.

The ascent was the worst part of the experience. Whitney's stomach didn't seem to approve of leaving the ground, so she flew up seemingly without it, unsteady and wobbly on the awkwardly-shaped broom. It was uncomfortable and nauseating and terrifying.

And then she was in the air.

When Whitney discovered that she could steady herself by wrapping her right ankle around the base of the broom, she righted herself and the sick feeling in her stomach turned into pure, unadulterated adrenaline; it went straight to her head. She remembered the feeling of flying on Hagrid's motorcycle—exhilaration and freedom. She almost forgot for a moment that she was in the air for a specific reason. She trained her sights on Draco, who looked at her with surprise.

"Give it back, Malfoy," she said again. Her voice didn't shake when she said it this time, though her face still wasn't quite as stern as she was trying to make it.

Looking at her with a kind of disappointment, Draco shouted, "Catch it if you can, Potter." He threw bauble straight up into the air and made for the ground as quickly as his broom would safely take him.

Whitney watched the sphere as it soared up, peaked at the top of its arc, and then began falling toward the ground again. A ludicrous thought crossed her mind. I can catch that. I can… I can catch it.

Getting too excited, she gripped her broom too tightly and it jerked to the side uncertainly. "Sorry," she whispered. "Just go, go, go. Please, go!" She relaxed her hold and the broom glided at her touch.

Whitney dove after it the ball as it fell past her in the air. At first, it was quite alarming how quickly the ground was coming up to meet her. Then, she discovered that it was much less horrifying if she focused on the ball instead of the ground. It almost made the ground seem further away. Whitney reached her hand out for the ball and counted down the inches between it and her fingers as she gained on it.

Five… four… three… Almost there… Come on!

Whitney's hand clenched around the ball and she forced herself to quickly refocus on the ground, which was surprisingly closer than she remembered it being a moment ago. Instinctively, she jerked up on the handle hard before she became a permanent fixture in the lawn and tucked-and-rolled off of it. She turned end over end on the grass, holding the offending trinket close to her chest, unharmed but a bit shaken.

Whitney smiled a little vaguely as she sprawled out on the ground, looking up into the sky. She was a little dizzy from her summersault and barely heard the shrill voice behind her screeching her name. Her name being shrieked, however, was a very familiar sound, so Whitney snapped up immediately and turned to face Professor McGonagall, trying to fight her initial urge to fall to her knees in tears and promise she'd never do it again.

McGonagall seemed to sense Whitney's fear, so her tone was a little softer when she spoke, though her face was just as livid. "Come with me. Now," she commanded, grabbing Whitney by the shoulder and pulling her along. Whitney had no choice but to go where her Head of House led.

"You. Could. Have. Broken. Your. Neck."

The words were punctuated with hisses from behind the professor's teeth, but they were still loud enough for Draco to hear; he flashed Whitney a smug smile which she barely noticed. Her brain had gone into a hibernation mode. She auto-piloted beside Professor McGonagall all the way into the castle, but her head was busy elsewhere, trying to talk itself out of desperate frenzy.

"Never in all my years…" Professor McGonagall was muttering to herself as Whitney silently went crazy.

She's going to send me home! Oh, God. Ohgodohgodohgod. She felt tears threaten to push through her strong exterior. She's going to send me back to the Dursleys. What was I thinking? How was that possibly a good idea? It's over! Oh, God!

Whitney didn't even look up when Professor McGonagall stopped and collected an older student who walked with them into a nearby empty classroom. She was so far withdrawn that it took several tries before Professor McGonagall could catch her attention.

"I'm so sorry!" Whitney said immediately as she looked up at the professor, who had clapped her hands directly in the girl's face. "I-I-I don't know… I just did what… P-please don't s-send me home."

"Got 'er in a right way, din't ya, professor?" the older student asked, looking bemused.

Whitney looked confused for a moment, but began to relax when she saw the expression on Professor McGonagall's face was now more impatient than angry. Whitney cleared her throat and tried to straighten herself up.

"No one's being sent home, Miss Potter," Professor McGonagall said. "At least not today." Her tone held an unspoken warning. "This is Oliver Wood, Gryffindor's Quidditch captain," she told Whitney, then turned her attention to Oliver.

Professor McGonagall held her hand out to Oliver and dropped something into his hands. It was the ball that Whitney had caught earlier.

"She caught that after a fifty-foot dive," McGonagall said, and Oliver's face lit up almost instantaneously. "I'll speak with Professor Dumbledore to see if we can find some way around the first year rule," she told him. "We still have no Seeker, so we'll forfeit otherwise."

Whitney simply waited in confusion for someone to tell her what was going on. She looked at the boy unsurely as he beamed at her. "Brilliant," he said, without explanation. "Just bloody brilliant."