A/N:
Title: That Post is a Keeper!
Written for The Houses Competition, Year Two, Round Two.
House: Hufflepuff
Year: 5th
Category: Drabble
Prompt: Diagon Alley
Wordcount: 496 (Google Docs)
Thank you to Aya and esmeraude for the beta reading!
So's I'm standing here, lit like a pipe, glowin' warm under the glass. I shine so bright that I think I'm the sun for a bit, you know, like I'm flyin'. Until the sun actually comes out.
A lamppost in Diagon Alley, that's what I am. It's an alright location if you don't mind 'em owls from the Emporium staring all day. Because right across the street, there's the Quidditch shop.
If you want the truth, I've always wanted to fly. I look at the movin' photographs of all 'em players zooming around the sky, and I think to myself, 'that's the good life'. Soarin' like a Hippogriff above the crowds, takin' it all in.
I'm always gassed up fer crowds. Come August, there's hundreds of 'em black robes, teaming around like minnows in a barrel. They never look up, always heads-down in their packages.
Mebbe that's why I'd love to fly. People's always lookin' up at the players. Watchin' them soar.
One day the whole Chuddley Cannons team strolls through the Alley. A few pass right under me. They don't look up or nothin', just like the rest. But it's after hours, and I'm all fired up, makin' their shadows stretch all the way across the cobblestones.
Anyway, they go inside the Quidditch shop, and I can see 'em hefting Bludgers, trying on the weight of them. Mounting brooms, and trying out practically the whole shop. I feel like I'm the only one who sees all this, because them owls are sleepin' and most of the Alley shuts down at dusk.
Then it happens. A bludger comes crashing through the window, like a bat outta hell, headin' right for me. I dodge left, then right, but I'm rigid so it's all in my head and the bludger is going a mile a minute, then 'BAM'.
All at once, the weight of the world is perched on my shoulders. I'm done for. Like a dementor-sucked husk. I'm flat, black and broken.
The owls wake from the noise and stare right at the thing, heavy and thick, crushin' my mantle and valve. A sweeper wizard comes. I hear the clackin' broom and the clinkin' glass in the blackness beneath me. The Cannons call out an apology from the Quidditch Shop, but it's for the sweeper wizard, not for me.
The Keeper crosses the street. He takes the ladder from the sweeper wizard and climbs up. He removes the bludger from where my light used to be.
His gloved hands give me the shivers. I'm suddenly flyin'.
When the Ministry sends wizards with ladders to give me a new topper, I still feel like I'm flyin'. I don't come down neither 'til I'm all lit up again. If you ask me, which nobody does, I think I'd be a good Keeper. I caught the bludger that night, and I think I'd catch a whole lot more if I had the chance. In my mind, I'll be flyin' forever.