Flying
An abandoned house, Unknown
25th September 2003
“Can you fly, Harry?” Luna suddenly addresses me, and it jolts me from a nice inspection of a length of necklace with rather thick chains from some kind of shiny, silvery metal, which I have just spotted round the mum’s neck as she’s just fished me away from my pile of lute and back up high in her arms. The necklace is weighed down by the biggest, smoothest, shiniest, most magical pearl I know, as I found out when my fingers managed to snag it out of its hideout beneath the mum’s treasureful jacket, but now it slides back into place with the accompaniment of my disappointed huff.
“Of course I can, Lu,” I grumble, throwing the speaker a confused look, a little vexed by the disruption to my current fun. “Youngest Seeker in a century and all.”
Grinning, she flicks the tip of her wand with a finger, and the tip of my nose tingles with – suspiciously – a very similar sensation to being flicked at with a finger. “Timeout, harry?” she sing-songs.
I scowl at her, for both offences, although it’s hard to maintain it, instead of laughing at her quirks and the reminder about what she said before everything went awry – well, more awry than it already had.
“Do not play with your elða yet with my child, young one,” the mum rebukes, although in a far gentler fashion than Aunt Petunia would say to anybody who would physically tease Dudley into scowling like me. “We are yet to investigate what has happened to uncover this hitherto-unknown survivor,” she flicks a glance at the baby resting peacefully in their holder’s arms nearby, “and to return my child to me. Until then, the use of elða on and around the children might prove dangerous for them and everyone else.”
“All right, Auntie,” Luna replies easily, as though we grew up together and she’s just addressing my mum indeed, her pseudo-aunt. My heart unexpectedly aches on this thought – this perception, this imagination – even though the mum’s possessiveness and newly hinted-at reluctance to part with me have just been revealed, tweaking my instinct for freedom from anyone’s rule.
So, to divert this ludicrous feeling in my traitorous heart, “Why did you ask me about flying, Lu? You did comment on that Quidditch match…, and you did see me fly, multiple times.”
Luna’s grin widens. “Because you’ve been acting like a magpie, Harry,” she says simply. “I’ve been wondering why you didn’t use your magpie form to fly and avoid that root, or to scout ahead for us here.”
`Magpie…. Oh.`
I look down, scowling fiercely at the things I’ve unearthed from the depths of the mum’s many pockets, which must have some nifty Undetectable Expansion Charm because the pockets didn’t bulge at all and I couldn’t detect anything emanating from them. All the disparate items formed a large, neat pile that occupied the whole of my lap, and now they’re scattered on the mum’s much larger lap, after she has so unceremoniously lifted me up into her arms.
Then I transfer my scowl at my quirky, playful friend and, in the snootiest voice I can manage, respond with, “If I were a magpie, I wouldn’t have spent so long trudging after you or fallen into that hole. I wouldn’t have bothered learning to fly a motored hang-glider, too.”
Recognition, surprise, askance and a sliver of amusement not of my own bleed into my mind, not only from the mum, but none from my friends. I force myself to ignore the odd reaction of the natives – (It must be the natives, by dint of deduction and elimination.) and choose to continue the charade by raising my eyes in the imitation of Draco Malfoy’s most brattish manner when Neville chimes in with, “If you chose to live in the Wizarding World, you could have spent however much time in the air with your broom, instead of that contraption.”
“With the remnants of Riddle’s rabid retinue and the unpredictable number and location of the even more rabid fans?” I drawl in reply, borrowing Hermione’s long-winded lecturing mode. “At least nobody is going to shoot me out of the sky for any reason in the non-magical world – if I take care not to go into war zones! And if you call a motored hang-glider a ‘contraption’, then what would you call an aeroplane?” Then, after a pause, “You know, I’ve been preparing to learn how to drive at least a single-seat pioneer aeroplane for some time now. I might even be able to fly into space with some modifications and Bill’s help.”
I may have overdone the manic persona, probably, judging from how disturbed and alarmed Neville and the natives look, and how gleeful Luna is.
But then the mum breaks the awkward, strained silence and my own alarmed perturbation on thinking of what might make my quirky friend gleeful, and the said alarmed perturbation turns into a chill-down-my-back, face-palming “Uh-oh” moment, as she demands in a voice several octaves higher than her usual pitch, while hefting me under my armpits to be at a level with her rounded eyes, “Shot?! Out of the sky?!! Rabid…?!!!”
“…Followers of someone who was always after my life since I had been a baby?” I offer to her weakly, nervously. “And, erm, erh, people who… like me… for accidentally – and stupidly dramatically – defeating him…?”