That same morning, Daphne and Tracey were preparing in their dorms for their day alongside the other first year Slytherin girls. Dread had come along with them and Daphne had put him on the perch in her room, he was inspecting the room from his position there. There were numerous things to spot here, one girl was talking to a mirror while another one was using her wand to cast a drying spell on her hair.
Harry had been fascinated by everything there was to see since he arrived at Hogwarts. The warm feeling which he had been looking for on his journeys and which he now believed was called magic, was overwhelmingly present in this place. Everywhere he came he felt new sensations that made him tingle. From his position he kept observing everything going on.
The girls would start of their day with their first flying lesson and even though it was early, the weather was already quite warm, so they dressed up lightly. After their flying lesson they would have charms, so they took their books and notes from the previous lessons as well. Daphne called the crow to her shoulder again and they took off.
"Are you looking forward to flying, Daphne?" Tracey asked, while they were leaving the Slytherin common room.
"Well, not really. My uncle Reginald is crazy about quidditch, and he forced me and my sister on a broom a few times. Those were not really the best experiences. I think a witch is better suited to let other stuff fly while she herself has her feet firmly planted on the ground. Sometimes these brooms just seem to have a mind of their own" Daphne answered.
"I am looking forward to it", Tracey said, "I have the feeling I might be really good at it. At home I have rollerblades and we have this local park nearby where there are a few ramps. I can do some really neat stunts. I know jumping and flying are not the same but…"
Before Tracey could continue or Daphne could ask what a rollerblade was, at this point she assumed it was a knife on wheels, they were interrupted by Draco Malfoy catching up with them.
"Don't worry Daphne, I am an excellent flyer. If you watch me closely, I will be able to demonstrate what you are doing wrong. I see that your bird joined you this morning?" Draco cast a suspicious look at the crow.
Daphne remembered her father's advice, better to avoid talking about the incident during the summer holidays and stroke Draco's ego a bit. "Yes, my familiar, Dread, has joined me here, off course he is perfectly friendly to all my nice housemates. I will be grateful for any tips you can provide me, Draco. Tracey, you should really see what Draco can do on a broom, it is quite spectacular." She said while, unnoticeable to Draco, rolling her eyes to Tracey.
Draco beamed: "Well, I would not say spectacular, but I am quite good. You know, a lot of people underestimate the importance of proper hand placement when holding your handle. First you find the balance point of your broom and then you place your right hand a wand's length above…"
"Is that you bird?" Again they were rudely interrupted, a long red headed boy named Ron Weasley caught up with them, they had just left the central entrance hall on their way to the quidditch pitch.
"Yes Weasley, that is her familiar." Draco said "Maybe you can go and find a pigeon in the forbidden forest and get your own friend. Now Daphne, then you put your left hand and place it two fist lengths higher, but you twist this hand to the…"
"Where did you find him?" Ron asked.
Before Daphne could ask why Ron Weasley, and apparently the complete Weasley clan at Hogwarts, was so interested in her familiar, Draco decided again that he was her spokesperson.
"Weasel, can you not find some of your Gryfindork friends to play with? I am trying to explain proper broom handling to the ladies here. So like I was saying, you place your left hand but twist it a quarter turn to the left. Then you put your thumb…"
"That is not how you should hold your handle, you should place your left hand much higher and your right hand should go…." Ron interrupted again, Draco was slowly becoming angry at this point.
"What do you know about broom holding? Your whole family probably owns only one broom that they use for sweeping more than for flying.", he shouted red-faced.
Tracey turned to Daphne and whispered: "It seems boys are quite passionate about holding their handles in the proper way, do you think they practice a lot?".
Daphne smiled and looked away blushingly at that remark, she only knew Tracey for a week and was still somewhat uneasy with the cheeky remarks she sometimes made.
It was with these two arguing boys in tow that Tracey and Daphne finally arrived at the quidditch pitch. Madame Hooch, the flying instructor, had already laid out some brooms and asked them to stand next to one. Luckily the girls spotted a pair that already had occupied brooms next to it, so they were able to ditch Ron and Draco. Dread was still sitting on Daphne's shoulder and was watching everything attentively. Once everybody had arrived Madame Hooch started the lesson.
"Now, I want everybody to hold their dominant hand above their broom and shout 'up'. Focus on your broom while you're doing this and it will jump in your hand."
Daphne leaned over to Tracey and whispered: "That's exactly what my uncle says, but it never worked for me. From what I observed most wizards and witches just bend and pick up their brooms."
Still, she held her right hand over her broom and on Madame Hooch's signal she called "Up!". To her surprise the broom shot up in her hand, not only that, she felt a warm, tingly feeling radiating from her shoulder to her arm. Dread was cawing approvingly. As she had predicted, most of her classmates ended picking up their brooms from the ground, but Tracey managed to get her broom in her hand on her second attempt, like Daphne, she was smiling happily.
The lesson continued in such a positive way. First, they performed some simple exercises until they were finally allowed to fly short distances at low altitude. Daphne was happy, she could not have imagined this before, but she was actually enjoying flying on her broom. But she was not enjoying it as much as Dread, he was simply ecstatic. While she and Tracey where carefully flying side by side, he was flying around them doing all kinds of crazy stunts.
Harry cawed again while he performed a barrel roll over Daphne's head. This day was turning out better and better, he made so many discoveries. This morning there was the great room with the ceiling that looked like the sky and the owls carrying letters, then there were the smaller rooms that held all kinds of little trinkets that felt magical and now his human decided to start flying with him! He wondered when he had started thinking of Daphne, that was the girl's name, as his human. He was a human himself, could he own another human? Or did he belong to her? Thinking too much about this made his head hurt, so he decided to stop worrying about it and attempt a mid-air landing on Daphne's shoulder.
When he had landed there, the girl whooped in pleasure and decided to increase her speed a bit and try out some sharper turns, he leaned in with her through these turns and the two of them shared the exhilarating sensation.
Not everybody was fairing equally well though, a slightly chubby boy had been struggling from the beginning of the lesson. It had taken the teacher some convincing for him to go through the first set of basic flying exercises and it was now his moment to try flying his broom. After taking off he initially started stably flying for a few meters, but when he saw his altitude, he began panicking and shot off uncontrollably in the air. With a high pitched scream the boy started flying in the direction of the lake.
Madame Hooch ordered all other students down and immediately mounted her own broom to start pursuing him. When the boy finally lost control completely, he slipped off and started falling to the ground, but the teacher was able to cushion his fall with a nifty spell on the ground. After an inspection of the boy, she started hovering him behind her while she flew back to the castle. Passing her group of students, she told them to keep their feet firmly on the ground while she was taking Mister Longbottom to the hospital wing.
When the students had gathered and Madame Hooch had left, Draco Malfoy caught everyone's attention by proclaiming: "I am surprised that squib even got high enough in the air to injure himself. And looks like he dropped the remembrall which he was showing off this morning. Whatever shall we do with this?". He was waving the magical ball in front of Ron Weasley. The two boys had continued antagonizing each other throughout the lesson and it seemed like now tensions were coming to a boiling point.
"Better keep our distance.", Daphne nudged over Tracey to go and stand a little further. Meanwhile Ron Weasley had started to struggle with Malfoy to get the ball back. "Give that back, you slimy snake!" he shouted while he was trying to grab at Draco's right fist that was holding the object. Draco was trying to hold off Ron with his left arm while keeping his right arm out of reach, but in a physical struggle the tall red headed boy was no match for him. Ron was finally able to get a hold of the ball and step away from Draco.
Facing Draco, Ron showed the ball to him one more time by holding it between his index finger and thumb. "Look at this, Malfoy, this is Gryffindor property. You better start respecting it or I will…"
The other students never learned what Ron would do in case of further disrespect, because it was this moment that Dread took off, swooped in and grabbed the ball from between Ron's fingers. The combination of physical shininess and the magical energy the ball was radiating, just had become too much for him. Even Daphne was not able to call him back while he was flying away.
It was a seething Ron that turned to Daphne and started approaching her: "I knew it, you Slytherins are all the same deceiving snakes! And you pass this on even to your sodding animals! Oh, we knew we recognized that bird, is that how you pass your time? Sending out your devil bird to steel people's snitches?!"
"Crabbe, get him!" Draco shouted as he saw Ron approaching Daphne and the muscular boy tackled Weasley. A struggle between the Gryffindor and Slytherin boys broke out as everyone started to get involved. When Madame Hooch finally returned to her flying lesson, it had descended in utter chaos. Both Gryffindor and Slytherin lost a lot of points that day.