Jinx Not-So-Malfoy

Chapter 9..... right?

Hello.....

Guess what?

I'm being a witch from Hogwarts for Halloween! I got my costume yesterday. It's pretty epic. :')

I wasn't too nervous about flying lessons. I had riden a broom thousands of times before, but I wasn't flaunting my stories like Draco was. He kept on saying how he almost got caught by muggles thousands of times.

"He's all talk." I grumbled to Hermione one afternoon. "He's never even been seen by a muggle."

Hermione was seriously nervous about flying. Neville was just as nervous.

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.

My brother and I often got packages from home, filled with chocolate frogs and Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans. Malfoy usually flaunted them off, teasing Harry about his lack of letters. I tried to share mine with them, but Ron thought they were poisoned. Hermione gladly shared my sweets with me.

Today, Neville recieved a 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.

"It's a Remembrall!" he explained. "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..."

The ball suddenly turned red.

"You've forgotten something... " I murmered quietly. Neville was trying to remember what he'd forgotten when Draco, who was passing the Gryffindor table, snatched the Remembrall out of his hand. Harry and Ron jumped to their feet. I had a feeling that they were half hoping for a reason to fight Draco, but Professor McGonagall, who could spot trouble quicker than any teacher in the school, was there in a flash.

 "What's going on?" She asked.

"Malfoy's got my Remembrall, Professor." Neville said. Scowling, Draco quickly dropped the Remembrall back on the table.

 "Just looking." he said, and he sloped away with Crabbe and Goyle behind him. I loaded my spoon with jelly and shot it at the back of his head. It hit him and he turned. He glared at Harry and Ron, then his eyes slipped to me. I waved the spoon in the air and smiled at him. He shot his worst glare at me and stormed out of the Great Hall.

Harry grinned at me. I grinned back.

At three-thirty that afternoon, 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 their feet as we marched down the sloping lawns toward a smooth, flat lawn on the opposite side of the grounds tothe forbidden forest, whose trees were swaying 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.

The teacher, Madam Hooch, arrived. She had short, gray hair, and yellow eyes like a hawk.

"Well, what are you all waiting for?" she barked. "Everyone stand by a broomstick. Come on, hurry up."

I looked down at my broom and scowled. It must've been and Cleansweep 3, maybe 4. I couldn't tell.

"Stick out your right hand over your broom," called Madam Hooch at the front, "and say 'Up!"