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Zed had not always been part of this wonderful and magical world. He grew up amongst the muggles, plain and ordinary; just Zed. He did not know any other way and so it did not matter.
He longed to break free through, there was only so long you could wander the repetitive streets of London before things were getting ordinary. And Zed did not like ordinary things one bit.
But he ended up being lucky.
One day a woman in emerald green robes stood in front of their door. His mother had hesitated about letting her in, but after saying that she was able to explain why Zed had had some utmost peculiar accidents without even knowing the boy, she let her in.
“Thank you dear,” the woman said with a Scottish accent as she was handed a cup of tea, “I suppose I should introduce myself, shouldn’t I? My name is Minerva McGonagall and I’m a professor at Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry.” His mom had almost kicked the witch out at that moment.
“I know you know that strange things often happen to mister Zedaph and I’m here to explain those things while also offering him a place to learn.” This was when his mother lost her cool. His mother had always been overly protective of him because of their father who had left them when he was younger. He had no memories of the man, but he was kind of glad he did not by the way his mother described him.
“Magic is not real. I’m only asking this once; please get out of our house before I make you.” But the witch did not even flinch.
“I understand that this is hard for you Miss Plays, but this is for Zedaph’s own benefit. If he does not practise his magic on a regular basis, awful things will happen.” But this only angered his mother even more.
“I don’t care about whatever you preachers have to say! We’re not a part of the church and we have no interested!” The woman nodded, but continued.
“I see you’re not convinced. Let me show you.” The woman grabbed a stick, which was probably her wand, and waved around a bit. His mother scoffed and even Zed was having a hard time believing it, but then their beige couch suddenly turned the same emerald green as the robes of the witch.
A month later he was running through a red train on his way to Scotland. He had just met another first year and together they had been searching for a place to sit in, which they found in a rather hilarious way.
They had just opened another compartment and went to ask if they could maybe sit here, but then the train decided to make a turn and threw them on the floor of said compartment. The brunet boy sitting in it burst into laughter at the sight of them laying on the floor, before inviting them in. Not like they weren’t already in the compartment but…
The boy introduced himself as Impulse and Zed went to stand up to shake his hand, but the train turned again and he fell back, on top of Tango.
He never knew someone could laugh this much, but Impulse proved him wrong with his melodic laughter and tears in his eyes. Hogwarts did not know this yet, but it would have to watch out for this trio.
Aside from the very and extremely safe experiments ZIT often did, Zed had his own little thing; the Zedvancements. He had a diary full of fun things he wanted to try out of which he got the inspiration in his classes.
(It kind of went like this; “And what you must never do…” and then Zed scribbling down another idea.)
Today’s Zedvancement was making his own wings.
He had been at it for weeks now, doing as much information gathering as he could about muggle and magical physics, as well as asking his fellow team ZIT members about their experiences with brooms. But it was finally finished now, he had his own pair of wings. The only thing left was to get the dang things to actually work. And for that he needed to do some testing.
He took them to the most logical place he knew; the owlery, and began strapping it to his back, making sure they were real tight so they would not fall off mid-flight. After that he perched himself on the windowsill of the owlery and took a few deep breaths. Then he made the mistake of looking down, it would be a ten metre fall if they did not work, but Tango had supplied him with slowfalling potions for if things went wrong.
He was ready.
Zed launched himself off the windowsill and activated the wings by pulling on a cord.
But they did not activate and he was falling quite fast now! In his panic he forgot to drink the slowfalling potion and plummeted towards the ground. He vaguely heard someone shouting but then he hit the ground and it all went black. Luckily he did not feel any pain.
He woke up a day later to the stern face of his headboy, Xisuma stood at the end of his bed with his arms crossed.
“You Gryffindors, always getting into trouble,” he said, “You were lucky one of your friends was nearby.” The man huffed and then began checking how his legs were moving, which hurt. A lot.
“You’re lucky, everything managed to regrow how it’s supposed to. You’ll be stuck here for a few more days though.” Zed nodded in understanding. Yeahhh, he had been lucky. Did not stop him from succeeding as soon as he got out of the hospital wing though.
“You have some visitors by the way. They would not leave, even when I told them to.” Xisuma sighed and waved them in with his hands.
“ZED-!” “WHAT IN MERLIN'S NAME WERE YOU THINKING!” Ah, Tango and Impulse. Tango pulled him in a hug while Impulse sat himself in a chair and grabbed his hand. Impulse was not one for physical touch.
“You would not believe how scared I was when I saw you falling off the owlery man. Gave me quite the scare.” Impulse lectured.
“Did you not drink the slowfalling I gave to you?” Tango questioned and Zed shook his head.
“Nope, I was falling pretty quickly.” With that Tango gave him a slap on his head. “You were meant to drink them before taking off you idiot!”
In the end, they could all laugh about it, but for his next few attempts the two were close by, not letting him out of their sight. And guess what? He managed to pull it of after all.
The elytra was born!