The War Hammer of Hogwarts - Harry Potter

Harry's a Prodigy

Harry: Great, just what I always wanted.  To make a fool of myself on a broomstick in front of Malfoy.

YN: You don't know that you'll make a fool of yourself.  Anyway, I know Malfoy's always going on about how good he is at Quidditch, but I bet he's full of it.

Malfoy did talk about flying a lot.  He complained loudly about first years never getting on the house Quidditch teams and told long, boastful stories that always seemed to end with him narrowly escaping Muggles in helicopters.  He wasn't the only one, though.  The way Seamus Finnigan told it, he'd spent most of his childhood zooming around the countryside on his broomstick.  Pieck's dad was a pro at one point, so she had been allowed to fly with him as a kid.  Even Ron would tell anyone who'd listen about the time he'd almost hit a hang glider on Charlie's old broom.  Everyone from wizarding families talked about Quidditch constantly, though I'd never seen the appeal.  Sure, I liked watching it.  But I never really wanted to fly around hundreds of feet in the air trying to play a combination of soccer and baseball while balancing on a stick.  Ron had already had a big argument with Dean Thomas, who shared our dormitory, about soccer.  Ron couldn't see what was exciting about a game with only one ball where no one was allowed to fly.  I'd caught Ron prodding Dean's poster of West Ham soccer team, trying to make the players move.  Neville had never been on a broomstick in his life, because his grandmother had never let him near one.  Although I felt she'd had good reason, because Neville managed to have an extraordinary number of accidents even with both feet on the ground.  Hermione Granger was almost as nervous about flying as Neville was.  This was something you couldn't learn by heart out of a book, not that she hadn't tried.  At breakfast on Thursday she bored us all stupid with flying tips she'd gotten out of a library book called Quidditch Through the Ages.  Neville was hanging on to her every word, desperate for anything that might help him hang on to his broomstick later, but everybody else was very pleased when Hermione's lecture was interrupted by the arrival of the mail.  Harry hadn't had a single letter since Hagrid's note, something that Malfoy had been quick to notice, of course.  Malfoy's eagle owl was always bringing him packages of sweets from home, which he opened gloatingly at the Slytherin table.  A barn owl brought Neville a small package from his grandmother.  He opened it excitedly and showed us a glass ball the size of a large marble, which seemed to be full of white smoke.

YN: Is that a bomb?

Neville: It's a Remembrall!  Gran knows I forget things, this tells you if there's something you've forgotten to do. Look, you hold it tight like this and if it turns red... oh.

His face fell, because the Remembrall had suddenly glowed scarlet.

YN: Uh, buddy?  I think you forgot something...

Neville was trying to remember what he'd forgotten when Draco Malfoy, who was passing the Gryffindor table, snatched the Remembrall out of his hand.  Harry and Ron jumped to their feet, probably half hoping for a reason to fight Malfoy, but I was faster.  I grabbed the ball out of Malfoy's hand, handed it back to Neville, and smirked at Malfoy.

YN: Gonna have to be faster than that, ferret boy.

Harry, Ron, and Pieck burst out laughing as Malfoy sulked away with Crabbe and Goyle behind him.  At three thirty that afternoon, Harry, Ron, the other Gryffindors, and I hurried down the front steps onto the grounds for our first flying lesson.  It was a clear, breezy day, and the grass rippled under our feet as we marched down the sloping lawns toward a smooth, flat lawn on the opposite side of the grounds to the forbidden forest, whose trees were swayed darkly in the distance.  The Slytherins were already there, and so were twenty broomsticks lying in neat lines on the ground.  I had heard Fred and George Weasley complain about the school brooms, saying that some of them started to vibrate if you flew too high, or always flew slightly to the left.  Our teacher, Madam Hooch, arrived.  She had short, gray hair, and yellow eyes like a hawk.