Cynthia MacLanley

1848: The Beater's Daughter

Donovan MacLanley, a large man with a wild beard of Saxon-gold, swung the small Cynthia in front of him onto the thick oak shaft of the broomstick. She was bundled in so many layers of fuzzy wool, dyed in shades of red and black, that only her sharp blue eyes and an unruly tuft of yellow hair showed.

"Ye ready, me lass?" her father asked. He held her tiny, six-year-old hands around the broomstick underneath his own.

"Aye!" she called, nodding happily.

"'Old on tight, 'tis a windy day!"

Donovan pushed off the hard ground, raising the broomstick two, five, ten feet up in the air. He held it there, steady. "'Ow are yeh doin'?" he called.

"Go on, Papa!" she squealed. "High'r! Fast'r!"

"Ooh, yeh've asked fer it, Cyn!" The father smiled broadly and shot the broomstick up, swerving into a left-hand turn and snaking back and forth a hundred feet above the ground.

"Wheeee!" Cynthia shouted out. Donovan laughed heartily, the wind whistling in his ears and did a loop-the-loop.

"Papa!" she cried, "can I lif' up me hands?"

He moved his hands from hers and saw that her little hands were white-knuckled fists on the broom handle. Carefully, he held onto her torso. "'ell, go on, then!"

Her father was now doing slower laps, about fifty feet from the ground, but their speed was still a constant howl in their ears. First one tiny hand, and then the other, unwrapped from their hold, and carefully, carefully, Cynthia released her grip on the handle. Once she got used to holding onto the broomstick with her legs, she cautiously began to raise her arms away from the shaft. Soon, she was waving around her arms, shouting "BAM! WHAM! Take tha', yeh Bludders!"

Donovan laughed again, and, making sure she was secure, sent the broom into a tight corkscrew. At first, her screams were of surprise, and maybe a hint of terror, but he knew that they had quickly turned into ones of delight when she began to giggle uncontrollably. "Yeh're flyin', me lass! Yeh really are!"

"DONOVAN ANGUS MACLANLEY!" came a piercing scream from the other side of the moor. Surprised, he put his hand to his eyes, and made out the dot to be his fretful, shrewish wife, Elfrida. He quickly brought the broom down to ground level and stopped it close enough to Elfrida to see her face screwed up into an angry red knot and her wand clenched in her fist.

"Mama!" greeted Cynthia. Donovan picked her up and stepped off the broom, putting his daughter to her feet. She wobbled, a little nauseous, and clung onto his blue plaid robes. "Mama, did yeh see me? I was a-flyin'!"

"Aye, I saw yeh, me angel," Elfrida said to her child sweetly. Readjusting her black, hawk-like eyes to her husband, her face and manner instantly changed. "Donovan, what're yeh doin' to the poor child? What'd we say abut flyin'?" she demanded.

"'The lit'l un isn't teh be flyin' 'til she's o' Hogwarts age'. I kno', I kno'. But she's such a bright lit'l un, Elfrida! Yeh should've seen 'er up there!"

"I saw 'er up there, an' I didn't like it!" shrieked Elfrida. "The poor thin' hangin' on fer dear life!"

"She wasn't hangin' on, she didn' even hold the thing fer a while," countered Donovan. "Yeh mark my words, she'll be a Quidditch star when she does get ter Hogwarts."

"I 'ant to be a Beater, like Papa," said Cynthia meekly, half hidden by tartan.

"Oh, well, i'n't that just fine? She wants to be just like 'er Papa," said Elfrida cruelly, glaring at Donovan. "No 'onder she'll not do 'er chores an' help out aroun' the house, just like her Papa!"

"Cynthia, yeh best be getting back ter the house. Go on, now," announced Donovan, freeing her from his robes and sending her off to the house behind Elfrida. "Do yeh have to be speakin' like that in front of the lit'l un?" he asked his wife softly.

"Oh, I'm just getting' started, Donovan MacLanley!" she warned sharply.

"Elfrida, yeh can't stop talent like Cynthia's got -"

"Talent? Yeh call flyin' around on a stick o' wood with yer friends talent?! An' how do yeh know what she'll be like from un lit'l flight?"

"I kno', Elfrida! I've got a knack fer this kind o' thing! She's really improvin' -"

"IMPROVIN'!?" spat Elfrida, raising her wand menacingly to her husband's bushy beard.

Donovan knew that this was going to take a while to explain.