Chapter Nine: Broomsticks (sans Bedknobs)
1) Never astride the broom.
2)Technically, a Witch is always a lady, except when circumstances dictate otherwise.
3)Take an easy, graceful sideways position.
4)Now, to start up the broom, your basic formula: lakipo nikrif scrumpet leetch.
-Instructions accompanying broom, from the Emelius Browne Correspondence College of Witchcraft.
-Bedknobs and Broomsticks-
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Cedric and Tonks had been waiting, though Ernie and Justin had both gone to bed, when Harry finally returned to the Sett in the wee hours of the morning. He had given them a brief accounting of their run through the corridors and galleries of Hogwarts, though he left out finding what was awaiting those who entered the Forbidden third-floor corridor on the right-hand side. They had grinned when he told them about Parvati's horoscope, and Tonks had fallen out of her chair when he told them Hermione's reaction to their night-time activities.
Harry was so tired after his late-night adventure that he didn't hear his alarm go off the next morning, and thus found himself one of the last Hufflepuffs in the Great Hall which was, thankfully, no longer glowing. The rest of his House was as eager as he was to see what their prank had wrought. Harry slid into the open space between Justin and Susan and felt around the underside of the table for the magical rune Allie had sketched there.
"Well?" Ernie hissed from across the table.
Harry didn't feel anything from the rune, though he was sure he was sitting in the right spot.
He ducked under the table quickly just to check.
It was indeed the right spot.
He started to prod the rune with the tip of his wand before he remembered Allie's warning about how it would only work once. After a moment of thought he conjured some yellow sparks that blasted into the underside of the table. The rune glowed briefly, then the glow faded leaving the rune as it had been before.
"Looks like they didn't try to prank anyone today," he said, sticking his head back above the table.
Justin glanced around the hall. "You're clear," he told Harry.
Harry wiggled back up into his seat as the other first years kept watch.
"Well that's disappointing," he said.
"You do remember that the thing we did last night will only work if they do something to the food, right?" Ernie asked his friend.
The look on Justin's face said quite clearly that no, he hadn't thought of that "Do you think we can taunt them into doing something?"
Harry shrugged and started to reply, but someone said "Look!"
Suddenly everyone in the Great Hall was watching the owls arrive with the morning mail, and in particular six very large screech owls that were carrying a long, thin package. They flew over the Head Table, banked into a right turn, and swept low as they flew down the Hufflepuff table. The owls released their load in front of a cluster of third-years, and the package skidded down the table, disrupting platters of bacon and pancakes, upsetting pitchers of pumpkin juice and milk, and nearly tipping jugs of syrup, before finally stopping in front of Harry.
He started to reach for it when a screech from overhead made him pull back and look up just in time to see another owl, near the ceiling of the Great Hall wing-over. It plummeted towards the table, punching through the flock of owls that were flying about the hall at a lesser altitude in a fair impersonation of a dive-bomber going through a cloud.
It screeched again, the vocalization distorted as it both approached and gained in speed. At the last possible moment it frantically pulled out of its dive, a letter in a parchment envelope burying itself corner-down in Harry's stack of pancakes. For a moment the owl looked like it was going to crash as it zoomed down the table, often below eye-level of the students sitting at it, before it desperately began to flap its wings and gain altitude.
"Let me guess," Justin said dryly. "That one's called Stuka."
"How can you tell? I didn't see a name tag," Ernie said.
Justin shook his head. "The stuka was a kind of…" he paused, then shook his head again. "Never mind, Ernie, it's a muggle thing."
Hedwig, who had come down from the owlery to nibble at Harry's bacon, made a disgusted sound.
"Of course they were showing off," Harry said. "Not every owl can be as good-looking at you."
His owl's head snapped around.
"You were a bit obvious," Harry told his owl. "Bacon?"
"Harry…" Susan said slowly as the owl took the offered strip of bacon, "are you, I mean… Are you actually having a conversation with your owl?"
"Of course not," Harry said. "Owls don't talk, everyone knows that. Hedwig was just being really obvious about what she was thinking." The owl in question glared at him and he said, "What? You were."
Hedwig gave him another glare, then launched herself into the air and flapped away.
"Anyway," he said, "no, I can't talk to owls. I can talk to snakes, though."
The table around him hushed as though hit with a silencing spell and Harry belatedly remembered Allie's warning about letting people know that particular fact.
"What?" Justin asked, not the only muggle-born that looked confused at the preternatural silence that had eclipsed their table. "What is it?"
After a moment Ernie made a disgusted sound and shook his head. "That joke was in really poor taste, Harry."
"Joke?" Justin asked.
"I'll explain later," Ernie promised his friend as conversation at the table began to pick up again.
"You know," Susan said. "I almost believed you there for a moment. Ernie was right. It really was in poor taste."
"I—" Harry began, but he stopped and shrugged. He hadn't meant it as a joke, hadn't even really been thinking about it when he'd said it. And warned or not, it didn't stop him from feeling slightly hurt by his friends' reactions.
He pulled the letter out of the pancakes. Written on one side in big block letters was:
READ ME FIRST.
Harry turned it open and found the envelope was sealed with a wax seal of a yellow badger on a black background. He slit it open with a butter knife and pulled out the parchment inside.
DO NOT OPEN THE PARCEL AT THE TABLE
It contains your new Cleansweep 6, but I don't
want everybody knowing you've got a broomstick
or they'll all want one. Samothrace Capper will
meet you tonight on the Quidditch Pitch at
seven o'clock for your first training session.
Professor P. Sprout
Head of Hufflepuff &etc.
Harry had difficulty hiding his glee as he carefully refolded the letter and passed it to Ernie.
"A Cleansweep 6," Ernie said, reading the letter. "That's a right good broom, that is." He started to say something more, but hesitated.
Justin wasn't so discreet. "Want to go to the Sett and open it up?"
"Yeah," Harry agreed.
With what seemed like two-thirds of Hufflepuff, or at least his year, following him, Harry got up and made his way across the hall. He was stopped short of the doors to the Entrance Hall, however, by Ron.
"I saw the owls," Ron said.
"The entire Great Hall saw the owls," Ernie huffed.
"That's a broomstick, isn't it?"
"If you promise not to tell anyone, I'll explain," Harry said.
"Gryffindor's Honor," Susan said seriously.
Ron's eyes flicked to the girl, and then he slowly nodded. "All right, Gryffindor's Honor."
"Good, c'mon," Harry said as he grabbed Ron's arm and propelled him through the doors of the Great Hall, "I don't want to do this here."
They managed to get halfway across the Entrance Hall before they were stopped again, this time by Crabbe and Goyle. Malfoy seized the package from Harry and felt it.
"That's a broomstick," he said, throwing it back to Harry with a mixture of jealousy and spite on his face. "A year of detentions not enough, Potter? You'll be in for it this time for sure. First years aren't allowed broomsticks."
"A gross misunderstanding," another voice cut in before Ron could jump to Harry's defense.
"Padma?" Harry asked.
"Hullo, Harry," Padma said. She turned to Malfoy, her expression cooling. "You'll find, Malfoy, if you bothered to check the rules, that first years aren't allowed flying brooms."
"What are you talking about?" Malfoy demanded.
"What am I talking about?" she asked. "You're the one saying that Harry's been assigned detention for the rest of the year by Professor Sprout. You don't honestly think she's has that many plants that need to be repotted, do you? You are aware that detentions usually require manual labor without the use of magic, are you not? Brooms charmed to resist being enspelled are not exactly commonplace items inside of a magical castle. If I were Harry I'd have avoided opening it in the Great Hall in front the entire school too."
Malfoy started to reply, but Professor Flitwick appeared at his elbow, "not arguing, I hope, boys? Ladies?"
"No," Malfoy said. "No, not at all, Professor." He gave Harry a look of unholy glee before whirling around and striding away.
"Yes, well, perhaps the rest of you should be off to your classes?" Professor Flitwick suggested.
"Yes, Professor," Harry said.
Flitwick nodded once and started to walk away.
Harry allowed himself a sigh of relief that he quickly strangled as Flitwick turned back around.
"And Mr. Potter?"
"Sir?" Harry asked.
"Congratulations." This time when he turned he walked away whistling a jaunty tune.
"Morgana," Padma muttered darkly. "Next time make sure Allie's around to do that kind of double-thinking."
"You know?" Harry asked.
"I was there the other day, Harry, remember?" Padma asked crossly. "It wasn't exactly hard to figure out when you got off. Of course none of the rest of my year-mates in Ravenclaw have figured it out yet, but I'm firmly of the opinion that is says more about them than it does me. The upper years, of course, don't believe us at all. Say we're exaggerating the catch." She made a sound of disgust.
"What do you know?" Ron asked her, then, before she could answer, he turned to Harry. "You don't really have detentions for a year, do you, Harry?"
"Of a sort," Harry admitted. He led them down into the corridor that led to the Hufflepuff common room.
"We'll wait here and make sure no one overhears," Ernie said.
Harry dragged Ron and Padma down the hall a little further. "Yesterday in flying lessons Smith picked up Neville's remembrall," he told Ron, fishing the device out of a pocket and handing it over.
"We were wondering where it had gone," Ron said. "It fell out of Neville's pocket during his accident and Malfoy picked it up. We, uh…"
"Got in a fight," Padma said. "My sister told me."
"Yeah," Ron said, the tips of his ears turning pink. "We tried to look for it later but couldn't find it."
"Smith threatened to leave it someplace high up, and when I went up after him he tried to throw and smash it against the castle. I, uh, caught it."
"After a truly spectacular fifty-foot dive and plucked it out of the air about a foot above the flagstones," Padma told Ron.
Harry shrugged. "Anyway, the guy Hufflepuff has as seeker would really prefer to be playing chaser, but since they don't have anyone else to play seeker they've been stuck."
"Until now," Padma said.
"Until now," Harry amended.
"No way, seeker?" Ron asked. "Blimey, you must be the youngest Hogwarts Quidditch player in—"
"About a century," Padma and Harry finished together.
"So that really is a—" Ron nodded at the package.
"Yes," Harry agreed. "Cleansweep 6."
"That's a good broom," Ron said.
"I have to get to class," Padma announced.
Harry nodded. "Us too. I'll see you later?" he asked Padma.
"Of course."
"I, uh, guess I'll see you later too," Ron said before turning and shuffling down the hall after the Ravenclaw.
Harry hurried to his dorm room and ripped the paper from the broom and spilled it out onto his bedspread. It lay there; all glistening varnished wood shaft and thick ruler-straight tail made of long twigs. On the shaft, near the very end, inlayed with gold, was written CS-6S.
He stared at it a moment longer, then bolted for class.
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They day passed in a disjointed blur that left Harry thankful for History of Magic and Quirrel's Defense Against the Dark Arts because he knew that he could not have gotten through Potions without making some dreadful mistake that would have resulted in painful, and probably humiliating, injuries that may very well have been uncorrectable. By the time lunch rolled around Ernie and Justin had given up trying to talk with him, and he completely missed the utterly malicious smile of welcome Argus Filch gave him after the meal.
At dinner he allowed himself a few bites for show, then disappeared into the Hufflepuff Sett just long enough to retrieve his broom before heading for the pitch.
There were the expected team locker rooms (each team had their own, clearly identified with the House colors and mascot) and a large ring of tall stands. Inside the stands, the pitch itself was a long oval with ends that narrowed sharply, at each of which stood three spindly poles topped with hoops that reminded him of the plastic things muggle children used to blow bubbles.
Not sure where he was supposed to go he went to the Hufflepuff locker rooms first. He didn't know what to expect, but he certainly wasn't expecting to find a modern muggle locker room with metal lockers fitted with combination locks and perfectly laid tiles and fluorescent lighting. What he found was a room lined with large, old-fashioned, wooden lockers. The wood had been sanded smooth and stained, but they were so old that the wood had turned a rich dark brown and was satin soft. Each locker had a name, a position, and a number stenciled on it.
The floor was tiled, but not with a boring pattern of one or two colors. Instead an incredible mosaic was set into the floor like something out of an ancient roman bathhouse like he'd seen on a video in primary school, but the pattern was of a Quidditch game. The expansive pitch was a vibrant green beneath him, and the sky was a perfect blue above. Stands filled with screaming fans curled around the walls so that the lockers stood out like luxury boxes. Players were caught in mid-game flying across the walls, floor, and ceiling.
It was the first image Harry could remember seeing in the wizarding world that wasn't moving. Instead the image shifted depending where one stood in the room so that the game changed with the viewer's perspective of it.
Harry bent down and ran his hand over the floor tiles, and was unsurprised to find that the floor was perfectly smooth without any indication of seams between one piece of polished stone or glass and the next. The lighting was bright and constant, and he looked around but couldn't find a source.
Further exploration revealed a shower room much like those in the dorms, another room with tubs for soaking in hot or cold water, and a long room filled with old exercise equipment including a stationary bicycle, a rowing machine, and what he suspected was an antique mechanical horse that had been charmed to operate on magic.
At the end of the locker rooms nearest the pitch was a largish room filled with comfortable chairs set on several tiers. At the front, filling the bottom tier and maybe a third of the total room, was a model of the pitch. There was another door in this room that he couldn't open, but suspected that it led to female lockers as there had only been boy-names on the lockers he had passed by. Old pennants, uniform robes, and award plaques lined the walls. A wooden rack to hold brooms near a large double-door was empty.
Harry pushed this last set of doors open and found himself walking out onto the pitch where ten people already stood waiting.
"Harry!" Thrace called him over. "Right on time. What did you think of the locker room?"
"It was nice," Harry said. "Uh…was that actually a—"
"Mechanical horse?" Thrace asked. "Everyone asks about those. All I know is that they were here before Professor Sprout was. Fully operational too… if you're into that sort of thing.
"I know I introduced you to the primaries," she continued, "but I didn't get a chance to introduce you to the Reserves yet. I was hoping to get a new seeker earlier, as it was we had to really shuffle our starting lineup.
"So you know me and Cedric, and Nym."
"Tonks," came the flat response.
Thrace grinned at the older pink-haired girl who'd helped Harry the night before. "We're the starting Chasers, and Cedric is next year's prospective Captain. Mortimer Montgomery and Casper Adams are both fourth years and starting Beaters. Winifred Meles, Fifth year and starting Keeper."
"I'm just in it for the fun," the girl said. "That's why Ced's next year's Captain, he wants to do this stuff professionally."
"That's the hope at any rate," Cedric said.
"Francis Scott," Thrace continued, indicating a girl about the Weasley twins' age, "is our utility reservist. Our specialty reservists are Dustin Smythwick, Beater."
A large boy with a square jaw nodded mutely to Harry.
"Leland Walther-Higginbotham," Thrace continued, indicating another boy barely older than Harry who was wearing a muggle t-shirt with RMMC over a heraldic device that Harry didn't recognize, but featured what he now knew to be a manticore and what looked like a muggle rifle crossed with something that reminded Harry of a spindle with oddly flared ends, "is our reserve Chaser. And finally Lucille van Pelt is our second reserve Chaser."
A vaguely annoyed-looking girl with black hair, maybe two or three years older than Harry, gave him an impatient nod.
"No reserve Seeker?" Harry asked weakly.
"Me," Cedric said. "Some of our primaries double as reservist, so I'm reserve Seeker, Mort's a reserve Keeper, and Winnie is a reserve Beater."
"Don't call me Winnie," the Keeper growled. "It's 'Fred.'"
"And now that introductions are over, a basic outline of the rules, if you remember from earlier?" Thrace asked.
"Three Chasers on a team, try to put a ball, the quaffle, through the hoops on the other side of the field. Each team gets a Keeper who tries to prevent the other team's Chasers putting quaffle through our goal-hoops. There is a pair of balls, bludgers, charmed to knock people off their brooms and each team gets two people, Beaters, who try to protect their team and get the bludgers to knock the other team's people off their brooms. There is one very small, very fast ball that is called the golden snitch and that flies around the field. Each team gets one person, the Seeker, who tried to catch the snitch which ends the game and gets the capturing team 150 points," Harry said by rote.
"Excellent," Thrace said. "Let's all get airborne and take a few laps. Harry, you never flew before the other day?"
Harry shook his head.
"Okay then, you follow along after Cedric. Mort, Casper, you have your wands? Good, you follow after them just in case. Maybe we'll do a spot of racing once we're warmed up if you feel up to it."
"Cedric?" Harry asked.
"Yes?" the older boy asked.
"Well, you mentioned a Cleansweep 6, and that's what I got, but it says CS-6S on the handle," Harry said, pointing to the broom.
Cedric nodded. "Hold a moment, Thrace," he called over to the Captain. "Different players need different capabilities in a broom, Harry. Beaters, for example, need a nice and stable broom so that they can use both arms on their bats if they have to. Keepers don't need a really high top speed because of how close together the hoops are, but they need a really fast acceleration so they can move between them quickly.
"Cleansweep began marketing charm packages that tweak a broom to emphasize various capabilities, such as for Keepers, or Beaters, or general racing, or a number of other things. The base CS-7 is still a better Beater broom, the charm package just makes it more so. The Seeker package emphasizes speed, acceleration, and maneuverability, things like that, but it isn't as stable a platform so I wouldn't take both hands off it until you have some experience."
"Oh," Harry said. He mounted his broom, and at Cedric's nod he kicked off and flew up until he was nearly to the level of the goal hoops to join the rest of the team.
"Hey, Harry, come back down for a second," Cedric called up to him.
Startled, and a little hurt, Harry let his broom settle back to the ground.
Cedric got on his own broom, facing Harry. "Can you do that again, slowly this time?"
Frowning in concentration Harry gave the ground a little kick and rode up into the air.
Cedric whistled softly.
"What?" Harry asked.
"Do you always do that?" Cedric asked. "Hold the shaft level while you ascend or descend?"
"Um…I guess so, I mean I don't think about it, I just…want to go higher and so I do," Harry said. "Why?"
"Because most people have to pull back on the shaft a little or press it down a little to change altitude like that," Cedric said.
"Oh."
"There's nothing wrong with it, honest," Cedric said. "It's just a really impressive bit of flying. There's no real advantage to it, but it looks flashy because most people find it difficult to do." He waved to Thrace and the seventh year started the team off on a slow circuit of the pitch.
The second and third loops were done at a much quicker speed, and the fourth done at a still faster pace. Cedric, showing off his own ability, rolled inverted to Harry, which Harry just had to try and found that his broom held him comfortably secure to it despite gravity. The older boy laughed, pushing his broom into a half-loop that Harry followed, and then followed him again as Cedric pulled his broom handle-straight up and began to accelerate out of the stadium.
Cedric began to spin slowly around the long axis of his broom, which Harry gamely mimicked, but spinning in the other action. Cedric finally stopped, hanging in the air, so high up that Hogwarts was barely the size of a post-card. Harry felt a brief moment of panic and started to slide off the back of his broom, but Cedric grabbed the back of his robes until he could find his seating on the broom while it was perpendicular to the ground.
"Did you notice that you matched my timing on the spins perfectly?" Cedric asked curiously.
"No," Harry said, looking warily at the ground.
"Not uncomfortable?"
"A little," Harry said.
"Probably a good sign," Cedric judged. "Any problems holding it perpendicular?"
"For a moment," Harry said. "Not now. I thought I'd slip off the back end, and then I was. Once I realized that the broom wouldn't let me unless I thought it would…" he shrugged.
"You ready for something a little trickier?" Cedric asked.
"Like what?"
"Like a vertical fall, maintaining orientation of our brooms, slowing at the last moment to come to a perfect landing?"
"What's the worst that could happen?"
"You could fall and Mort and Casper could miss the catch and you ground-dart hard enough that all the magic in St. Mungo's can't save you," Cedric said seriously.
"Why not?" Harry asked, sounding considerably more confident than he felt.
Cedric grinned, then promptly slid backward towards the ground.
Harry frowned. How, exactly, did one make a broom go back—
The bottom dropped out of the sky as his broom abruptly began to fall.
He struggled with his broom for a moment, trying to accelerate backwards, then realized that he had a perfectly capable source of backwards (relative) acceleration and all he really had to do was hold on and keep the broom vertical. Laughing he added a bit of a right-ward spin. Feeling a bit more secure than he really should have for a person with less than an hour of actual flying time, he pulled his hands off and held them above his hands in the classic look-Ma-no-hands gesture.
He managed to hold it for three seconds, for five, but then his broom tipped back on its topside and entered what a muggle would have called an inverted flat spin, and a wizard a maple-seed twirl.
The broom held Harry securely to it, but it didn't do anything to stop gravity from pulling blood towards his head. Nor did the broom do anything to help Harry with the sudden vertigo caused by the sudden assault on his inner ear. He didn't have enough experience to have the muscle-memory instincts get out of the situation he was in, and while the Sorting Hat hadn't been wrong about his intellect he was far more interested in the practical use of knowledge rather than knowledge for knowledge's sake. For someone who would often find himself in life-and-death situations this was not a small thing, but in this situation it left him unable to coldly and logically reason his way out of his current predicament…and the deleterious effects on his senses was only compounding his problem.
He had, in rapid succession, three thoughts. The first was roughly 'oh shit, I'm going to die'. The second was 'I don't want to die'. The third was something vaguely along the lines of 'I don't feel so good'.
Harry lunged for his broomstick's shaft, and not only didn't manage to get it but added an uncontrolled wobble to the spin. He remembered Dudley sticking his arm out the window on the ride to the zoo, and how while going fast the air made his chubby cousin's arm go up or down depending on how he held his hand. Harry tentatively pulled his hands 'down' from where they were dangling 'above' him and slowly reached out—
Only to nearly have his arms ripped from their sockets as the centrifugal momentum pulled them 'away' from his body and added a half dozen spins around the long-axis of his broom to his problems before he allowed them to dangle again and found himself restored to his former set of circumstances. Still, he learned that his hands could change his set of circumstances.
He pulled his arms 'down' again, forcing them down along his sides to keep them from sticking out any further than he had to. Finally he managed to grip the shaft of his stick slightly in front of where he was sitting on it. Keeping a firm grip because he was not at all sure he could get it again if he lost it, he began to slowly work his grip forward on the shaft.
It wasn't as far forward as he would have liked, it certainly didn't feel natural—or at least what he thought natural should feel like giving his current situation—but it was what he had to work with. Harry pulled the broomstick back into his body as hard as he could.
The good news was that he was no longer in a flat spin. The bad news was that the new angle made the inverted vertical spin feel even worse. Harry fought against the nausea, plenty of time for him to be sick after he dug a three-foot crater into the dirt.
Still, it had given him an idea, and he continued to pull back on the stick. As the axis of the spin changed slowly from his body towards the long-axis of the broom, the spins became more and more unpleasant as his body—and his head in particular—sped through increasingly large circles.
He shot through the air occupied by the rest of the team in a more or less vertical dive that reminded him unpleasantly of the dive-bombing owl at breakfast. Three or four colored lights that he assumed were spells meant to catch him all missed. Harry leaned into the spin, counteracting it, then went too far and ended up in another spin before he countered that one as well and steadied out after two more spins in the first direction.
The Quidditch Pitch was far too close for comfort but the center point with its big chalk double-rings where he assumed the quaffle would be released was a nice aiming point so he pulled back and suddenly he was right-side up and not spinning at all. Now if only could slow down.
If only he would slow down…
Now would be a good time…
Harry managed to think one last rude word before the ground slammed into his feet with jarring force that lifted him off his broomstick. Nothing seemed broken, or even badly hurt. He managed two staggering steps before the world lurched under his feet and slammed into his hands just before he became reacquainted with his dinner.
"Harry! Harry, are you all right?"
Harry finished what he was doing at tried to roll away, but arms pulled him to his feet.
"Harry, speak to me."
"Urk."
Hands let him go as lunch made its second appearance.
"Move back, give him some room. Cedric don't you dare try picking him up again."
Tonks knelt in front of him. "Don't try getting up yet," she advised, handing him a bottle or water.
"Urgh?" Harry managed to make it a question.
"Don't try standing until the world stops spinning," the pink-haired seventh year advised him. "Believe me, I've been there and it never ends well."
Harry managed a sound that was vaguely affirmative, and after several moments of struggle got the cap off the bottle to rinse out his mouth. He got more of the water on himself in the process, but it was a small price to pay.
Feeling somewhat clean again he decided that Tonks' advice was the best way to go and crawled away from the sick before collapsing onto his back.
"Merlin, Harry," Cedric's madly grinning face was thrust into his sight. "That was so. Bloody. Awesome."
"You almost got him killed!" Thrace screeched. She turned on Cedric. "Do you have any idea the amount of parchment work I would have had to do if he'd managed to kill himself? Not to mention the number of forms required in order to fix a first year-sized hole in the pitch? That was insane!"
"I know," Cedric said, still grinning. "An maple-leaf twist with not an hour on a broom and he manages to make a perfect landing."
"Perfect?" Thrace screamed. "Perfect!"
"Ignore them," Tonks advised Harry as the seventh year rounded on Cedric. "How are you feeling?"
"Alive," Harry said honestly before giggling, the idea seemed incredibly funny. "'m alive!" he proclaimed before breaking into laughter.
He never knew how much parchment work he saved Thrace by distracting her before she attacked her Chaser. Thrace turned away from Cedric to where Harry had lapsed into hysterical giggles.
"He's cracked," Thrace said mournfully.
"He'll be fine," Tonks told her.
"Can you do that again?" Cedric asked.
Harry looked up blearily at the older boy until Tonks returning his glasses brought Cedric mostly, but not quite, into focus. Or rather Cedrics, there now seemed to be three of them. "Go 'way, Ced, don' wanna talk to you righ' now," he said. Then added, "Prob'ly a good thing I got a Seeker broom. Don' know if I coulda stopped it' if it weren' so maneuverable."
"If that hadn't been a 6S he never would have been able to get into one by accident in the first place!" Thrace seethed at Cedric.
"A Nimbus he could have," Cedric disagreed. "Late model Comet, maybe he could have. A standard Cleansweep 6—"
"What do you mean you couldn't stop it?" Tonks asked.
"Fallin'," Harry grunted.
"Harry," Tonks said slowly. "It's a broomstick. It doesn't do a blessed thing unless you want it to."
Harry blinked at her.
"The only reason it was falling was because you thought it was, or should be, falling," the seventh year explained in the very slow voice—but without the poisonous tone—Professor Snape used when he thought someone was being particularly stupid. Since she wasn't glaring at him Harry decided that while the lecture was meant for him, the tone was meant for someone else.
"Do you need to go to the Hospital Wing?" Thrace asked Harry before he could reply to Tonks. She'd turned away from Cedric, argument clearly finished.
"No!" Harry said sharply.
"Yes!" an unfamiliar voice said from somewhere above, er…past him in the direction of his head, said.
"Madam Pomfrey," Cedric said.
"Diggory!" the stranger said sharply. "Getting started early on your newest team-mate, I see."
"I didn't—it wasn't like that!" Cedric protested.
"I just bet it wasn't!" the witch spat. "This-this-this…insane sport and all the reckless people playing it. Sooner or later one of you people will break something that I can't grow back, just you wait and see!"
A witch appeared in Harry's vision. She wore robes that managed to convey the sense of both a nurse's smock and a doctor's coat, and a large white…hat thing that looked sort of like an abstract swan.
"Harry Potter," she said. "Why am I not surprised that you are making your way to my infirmary sooner rather than later?"
"Madam Pomfrey, I presume?" Harry asked, enunciating very carefully.
"My reputation precedes me, no doubt," the witch said. "I had hoped you would make it through your first month, Mister Potter, before you saw the need to grace my hospital wing."
"I don't need to go," Harry said, still speaking carefully. The spinning seemed to have eased and he was back down to only one Cedric.
"Oh no? Then what are you doing lying on the ground rather than trying to kill yourself playing this crazy thing you people call a sport?"
"Jus' resting a moment," Harry said.
"I can just imagine," she said witheringly. "Just give me a moment and I'll conjure up a stretcher for you."
"I can walk," Harry said quickly.
"No, you can't," the nurse-witch said. "That's just shock talking. It would be a wonder you didn't shatter a leg—two legs!—what with that landing. Why, you could have broken your spine, the way you went to the ground. Or maybe you only severely concussed yourself…"
The ground seemed to lift Harry up, and then he settled on something softer, but just as firm as before.
"You, Mister Potter, are going nowhere until I've had a chance to check you over proper in my hospital wing. You will be staying overnight. And if you have any foolish ideas about sneaking off, be rest assured that I will find out and will take measures to make certain of it."