Harry Potter and the Sticking Broom

Chapter 9: Helas, j'ai Transfigure mes Pieds

When Harry and Ginny reached the Quidditch pitch on the village green, they saw that three of the teachers were in a group, under the goalposts that were furthest from the High Street. Harry could tell, even though his hood impeded his vision and the distance was substantial, that one of these teachers was Professor Flitwick. Madam Hooch was in the centre of the pitch, hovering between Professors McGonagall and Sprout. The Flying instructor was shouting in her usual cheerful, yet commanding, tone. "Sorry I'm a little late. I needed to track down some more championship grade Quaffles. Seems the Slytherin team didn't return all their kit when they got bumped out of finals contention." She dismounted her broom, unhitched a string bag from her broom handle and slung the bag over her shoulder.

Professor McGonagall took Madam Hooch by the arm and, talking softly as they went, led her towards the same corner of the field where Ginny and Harry were pretending to take their evening constitutional. Professor Sprout was following closely behind her colleagues. Quickly, Ginny did an about-face and made for the nearest spectator's bench. Harry, stumbling on his robes, followed and sat beside her. The two students were sitting very silent and still when, to their horror, the three teachers took a seat on the bench next to them.

"What do you mean, can't fly?" Madam Hooch was boisterously inquiring. "Can't fly fast? Can't fly high? Can't fly straight? I can fix them all, you know, but we'll need to narrow his problem down. Then we'll get him started on the right drills."

"It's a little more basic than that," said Professor Sprout nervously.

"But he was the keenest of any of the staff to volunteer. Said he dreamed of hitting Bludgers at the students. That's why I thought you could show him the ropes, Sprout," Madam Hooch explained. "What's he like with a bat?"

"Oh, wonderful, wonderful," Professor Sprout enthused. "I don't think I've ever seen a Bludger hit more ferociously. With an arm like that, he could play for the Falcons!"

"Except for the fact that he can't fly," Professor McGonagall interrupted bluntly.

"Not at all?" Madam Hooch asked with incredulity.

"Well," Professor McGonagall began. The acting headmistress looked uncomfortable as she sat to attention on the wooden bench. It was apparent that she had some unpleasant news, which she would really prefer not to impart. "Argus never had a formal education. We might have to consider his suitability for this type of sport," she explained.

Professor Sprout appeared to understand the importance of these words immediately and looked completely shocked. "Maybe we need to get somebody else," she said.

Madam Hooch was less easily put off. "Nonsense," she pronounced as she banged her broomstick into the ground. "Besides, there isn't anybody else. Sinistra's up all night watching comets, Vector reckons he'll be grading O.W.L. papers down in London till the end of term. Poppy has to be on hand to do the first-aid and the rest all flatly refused."

"But if he can't fly - " Professor McGonagall began.

"I've never met a wizard, man or boy, that I couldn't teach to fly." Madam Hooch replied with confidence. "Don't worry about it, Minerva. I'll have him zooming over the middle goalpost before the night's over." She reached into her bag and handed McGonagall a Quaffle, before adding in a businesslike tone, "Perhaps you ladies could use the hoops on the far end to practice blocking and scoring. I'll set Filius after some practice Snitches. Then Mr. Filch and I will have a flying lesson."

The trio of witches rose and went back to the playing field. When they were out of earshot, Ginny stopped holding her breath and let forth a torrent of giggles. It took a minute or two for her to regain sufficient composure to say, "George told me Filch was a Squib once. But I thought he was just being mean, because Filch confiscated his Screaming Yo-yo."

"No, it's true," said Harry, who had seen the evidence. He wondered whether Kwikspell offered a correspondence course in flying.

Madam Hooch had now returned to the centre of the pitch with Professor Flitwick and was pulling a small box from her pocket. She let the practice Snitches loose and Filius Flitwick took off after them with great enthusiasm. However, before too long Harry could tell that the Charms teacher was beginning to lose his focus. The little man did a loop-de-loop with his arm outstretched as one of the Snitches flew past. He decided he enjoyed that mode of flying so much that he was soon looping all over the playing field, regardless of where the Snitches might be. Then, he took a liking to flying upside down and covered much of the pitch in this way, flying low and reaching down to pick dandelions as he went. Harry reflected smugly that, unless Flitwick could pull off some fluke maneuver, like a Plumpton Pass, there was no chance that the teachers' team would be catching the Snitch in the tournament.

Ginny and Harry scoffed in whispers at Professor Flitwick's Seeking prowess. Meanwhile, Madam Hooch returned to the far end of the Quidditch pitch where Argus Filch waited. Harry really wished he had his Omnioculars, because it was very difficult to make out what the teachers were all doing down there. In fact, Harry and Ginny couldn't even decide who the third teacher flying about the hoops with Professors McGonagall and Sprout was, other than that it appeared to be a witch. Every now and then, the pair heard Madam Hooch shout the word, "Up," with authority, and Mr. Filch repeating the word with increasing anger, but the caretaker's broom appeared determined to stay on the grass.

Just when Harry had made up his mind that they would need to walk further down the field to take a closer look, Filch shouted, "Up!" with such fury that he possibly could have been heard back at Hogwarts. To Harry and Ginny's surprise, Filch's broom then shot into his waiting hand.

Filch mounted the broom quickly and Madam Hooch began to yell, "Push off with your heels!" However, shout as she might, Filch (who was now jumping up and down energetically) ultimately remained earthbound. The sound of distant, yet heated, debate suggested that this was frustrating both teacher and pupil. Finally, Madam Hooch strode to the middle of the pitch and, turning to face Mr. Filch again, blew her referee's whistle.

"What's she doing?" Harry asked.

"Not sure," Ginny said. "Maybe she wants to try a running start. That's how Dad taught me to fly."

"That's not how Madam Hooch teaches flying," Harry reasoned. He was squinting now, because the sun was low on the horizon, and was quite incapable of telling what Filch was attempting to do.

"Running starts are normally only for little kids," Ginny explained. "You use them if you don't have enough power to command a broom to elevate in the usual way." At these words, Madam Hooch blew her whistle again.

Argus Filch commenced his run down the pitch, with his broom between his legs. He reminded Harry of a child (albeit a cantankerous and grizzled child) on a hobbyhorse. Every so often the Flying teacher would blow her whistle again and Filch would attempt a jump, but each time he would crash back down to the ground, not always landing on his feet. Harry found himself smiling broadly at the spectacle, but it was all too much for Ginny, who doubled over laughing and clutching her stomach.

A few of the residents of Hogsmeade had ventured out in the comparative cool of the early evening to relax at the village green. A young family walked past Harry and Ginny's bench. The mother was pushing a baby in a pram while the father walked the family's Kneazle. The couple stopped and whispered to each other. Then the father, who was a tall earnest young man with sandy brown hair, approached Harry with a concerned look on his face.

"Lad," the young father said quietly, "I hope you don't mind me asking, but is your grandmother all right? Do you need help?"

At first, Harry was confused. How did this young wizard know Harry's grandmother? Harry was certain all his grandparents had died years ago. Then he realised Ginny was the object of the young couple's concern.

"Er, she's fine, really," said Harry, which seemed to set Ginny off in even greater convulsions of laughter. She let out a little howl and hid her face in her hands.

"It just that, er -" Harry stammered. The young man's pet yowled and strained impatiently at its leash. Harry thought quickly before continuing. "She used to have a Kneazle just like that one. It died. She misses it a lot."

"Oh, how sad," said the kind young man. Harry wished he would go away.

"Yeah, it was trampled by a winged horse," Harry said. Ginny turned and buried her face, wet with tears of mirth, in Harry's shoulder. Reluctantly, Harry participated in her charade by patting her on the back and comforting her.

The young man said with great sympathy, "I'm so very sorry." Then, not wishing his Kneazle to be the source of further anguish, he walked back to his wife and child.

Ginny kept her face hidden until they were all gone. She then shifted back along the seat, so that she was once again sitting a respectable distance from Harry. Her face was very wet and very red and she still had to bite her lower lip to suppress her laughter. With determination, she looked away from the Quidditch pitch, so that she would not be provoked into another fit of the giggles by the sight of Filch, on his knees in the centre of the ground, brutally punishing his uncooperative broom by thumping it into the turf.

Looking back in the direction of the town, Ginny was the first to notice the arrival of Professor Snape. She let out a small gasp and then quietly warned, "Here comes trouble."

Hogwarts' Potions Master was flying low but swiftly. It had been years since Harry had seen him on a broom, and even then it had been very briefly. Professor Snape had refereed the shortest Quidditch match in the history of the game at Hogwarts, when Harry Potter had caught the Snitch in record time. This had so annoyed Snape that, in a rare lapse of decorum, he had spat on the ground. The memory still made Harry smile.

But something was different about the way Snape was flying now. He seemed to be bent much lower against the handle of his broom, which was obviously not the school broom he had used as a referee. Snape was a tall, thin wizard and the broom he flew had such a long, dark handle that he seemed to blend in as he lay flat along it. However, when he reached the middle of the pitch, where Madam Hooch was attempting to calm Mr. Filch, Snape sat upright again. Madam Hooch was less than pleased to see her colleague.

"Severus, you're very late," she called up to him.

Professor Snape said something, which Harry and Ginny could not hear, to the flying instructor. Madam Hooch replied, a little crossly, "Well, now you're here we might as well put you to work. Our Keeper's going to need a lot of practice. How do you feel about scoring with Sybill for the rest of the evening? Use the High Street end goalposts." She threw Professor Snape another Quaffle from her bag, which he caught with ease.

Once again Snape's response was inaudible, but as he turned and flew past the two students to the High Street end of the pitch, it was apparent from the grim set of his thin mouth that he did not relish the prospect of scoring with Sybill.

"Trelawney?" Harry asked, shaking his head in disbelief. Professor Trelawney hardly ever climbed down the silk rope ladder from her tower classroom. Harry had never contemplated that the third witch on the pitch could have been his Divination teacher. "She's never even played Quidditch," Harry said.

"I'll bet Snape hasn't, either," Ginny said.

But Ginny was wrong. On Madam Hooch's instruction, Sybill Trelawney flew at a sedate pace to join the Potions Master. She swayed from side to side and bobbed up and down on her broom as she flew, gripping the handle in a panicky way, looking like a glittering but apprehensive dragonfly. When she had calmed herself sufficiently to remain stationary in front of the hoops, Severus Snape began his onslaught.

Snape not only knew how to play Quidditch, he knew how to play it ruthlessly. Flying low and with the Quaffle tucked tight against his chest, he stormed the goalposts and launched the ball through the centre hoop. With enviable speed and accuracy, he circumnavigated the hoops and retrieved the Quaffle before it hit the ground. He then zoomed back out of the scoring area and commenced another charge. This was repeated many times, with Snape varying his angles of approach and scoring in each of the three hoops in turn. Every time Snape scored, Professor Trelawney's response was exactly the same. Shaking on her broomstick in front of the goalposts, she waved her hands above her head so that her many bangles clattered and exclaimed, "Oh, my!"

Harry and Ginny were quiet and unable to move during Snape's performance. This was not because they were transfixed with awe, although Harry begrudgingly found himself admiring the effortless way Snape turned and dived after each goal. The two students were actually keeping very still because, each time the Potions Master retreated from the scoring area, he turned his broom to face Harry and Ginny and flew to within ten metres of them. The Potions Master's black eyes flashed with fury each time he faced the students and he flew so close that Harry noticed a small vein at the side of Snape's mouth throbbing unpleasantly.

Then, Snape turned and charged to the goalposts with a ferocity that was astonishing. Professor Trelawney hid her face in her hands and squealed as the Potions Masters drew to a halt a metre from her. Harry thought he was going to throw the Quaffle down the Divination teacher's throat, but instead Severus Snape turned his broom abruptly one hundred and eighty degrees and threw a reverse pass over his right shoulder. To Harry's amazement, the Quaffle shot through the centre hoop. Involuntarily, Harry breathed, "Wow!"

Professor Trelawney was absolutely flustered by this display and, when she had finished screaming, she cried out, "My goodness, I didn't see that one coming!"

"And you call yourself a seer!" Snape snarled. He then flew low, over Harry and Ginny's bench, muttering to himself, "I have no time for this." While Sybill Trelawney wrung her hands together, Hogwarts' Potions Master departed the Quidditch pitch.

"He's heading back to the town. Look, he's diving at the High Street," Ginny said with urgency. "Quick, let's follow. We need to get a better look at that broom." Apparently she had been thinking along the same lines as Harry. Could Professor Snape be flying the Sticking Broom?

Harry and Ginny were an ungainly sight as they ran back towards Hogsmeade's shops - a young wizard tripping over his unfashionable and too large robes and a stout witch whose stuffed vulture hat slipped to one side, at a peculiar angle, as she jogged along. When they reached the High Street, Ginny stopped in a doorway and tried, as discreetly as possible, to adjust her disguise. Harry peered from underneath his annoyingly floppy hood, searching for Severus Snape. Zonko's, Gladrags Wizardwear and Honeydukes had all closed for the evening. Harry couldn't see Dervish & Banges, which was at the end of the road, but that distant part of the High Street seemed completely quiet. A worker was using a bucket and mop to wash the owl droppings from the perches outside the Post Office's windows. The only establishment that was still doing a brisk trade, given the late hour, was the Three Broomsticks. The pub was crowded and noisy. Harry could hear a group of revelers inside the Three Broomsticks singing a raucous drinking song about dragons.

Harry also noticed an unusually long and dark broom tethered on the broom rack outside the pub. Ginny, who had finished adjusting her hat, saw it too. The two students cautiously crossed the road and loitered a little way from the broom rack, whispering to each other.

"I've never seen a broom like that," Harry said. "Not even in Which Broomstick? magazine." The shape was entirely distinctive, as though an ordinary broom had been taken and stretched so that handle and bristles all appeared unnaturally long and thin. The colour of the wood was also strange, much darker than the ash or even the mahogany handles Harry had come to regard as normal.

"I've never seen one, but I bet I know what it is," Ginny said. "We need to get close enough to read the handle."

They passed the bright and lively windows of the hotel. Within, Harry could see a large wizard standing on a table singing Men of Harlech in a booming baritone. The singer's back was turned to the windows, but there was something familiar about his thickset frame. Harry also checked through the windows to see if Professor Snape was inside. To Harry's relief, the Potions Master was not in the front bar.

Ginny stood beside the weird broom and appraised it, "Well, it's really old. The maker's mark is worn off. But it's a Nimbus all right, look at the way the hand grip tapers."

Harry could see that the end of the broomstick was worked to an oval shape, exactly the same way as the handle of his old Nimbus 2000. He was impressed with Ginny's broomstick expertise. But then, Harry expected that Ginny had spent her whole life listening to her brothers discuss such details. She was now standing over the rack, craning her neck so that she could discreetly look down the strange broom's shaft. This was no mean feat while balancing a stuffed vulture on her head. Then she crouched low and checked the bristles.

"There's been some customising done," Ginny determined, then she stood up again. "The handle's been lengthened, which is saying something because this was a very long broom to begin with. And there's been some sort of invisibility enchantment - or maybe just a Disillusionment Charm - placed on the bristles. But it's nearly worn off." Harry was amazed at how authoritatively Ginny was speaking. She continued, "I can't be sure, not without the maker's mark. But I'm pretty certain this is a Nimbus 1200."

Harry's newfound respect for Ginny as a broom aficionado vanished. "There's no such broom," he said shortly. Harry knew for a fact that the Nimbus Racing Broom Company had produced model numbers 1000, 1001, 1500, 1700, 2000 and 2001. He had never heard of a Nimbus 1200.

Ginny looked a bit hurt by Harry's rebuff. She frowned and stubbornly retorted, "Yes there is. Charlie wanted to buy one second-hand from a man in a pub once. Mum and Dad were dead against it."

"I've never heard of it," Harry replied, just as stubbornly. "It's not in Quidditch Through the Ages. I've never even seen one advertised in Which Broomstick?"

"Well, you wouldn't see it advertised because they haven't made them for ages. They stopped long before we were born. And they made precious few of them. I don't think any Quidditch teams ever used them, so why would Whisp put it in his book anyway?" Ginny said angrily.

"It doesn't sound like much of a broom then," Harry said.

"It was the most powerful broom the Nimbus company ever made. Charlie said it could go faster than the 2000." Ginny was now quite openly annoyed. "Mum was really worried. She said it was the sort of thing the criminal element would ride."

Harry snorted. The whole story sounded ridiculous. But then again, "the criminal element," was the sort of expression which Mrs. Weasley would use. "Well, if it was so fast, why didn't they make more of them?" Harry asked.

Ginny stopped looking cross and smiled, as though she was recalling a particularly happy memory. "Nobody could steer it, especially at any sort of high altitude. In the end, Dad went along with Charlie to take the broom for a test fly. Dad said Charlie hurtled clear across three fields and ended up falling on top of a cow."

Harry had to admit the thought of Gryffindor's illustrious Quidditch captain being thrown off his broom into a cow paddock was fairly silly. He smiled back at Ginny. But then he observed, "If that broom is a 1200, Snape handled it pretty well."

"Brilliantly," Ginny agreed.

Harry was just about to ask Ginny how she could tell the broom had been customised, when, on the other side of the street, the worker outside the Post Office stopped mopping. He called to his workmate inside, "All clean out here. Is that last owl ready to go yet, Jim?"

From inside, a voice replied, "Nearly ready. The professor's just finished scribbling his message now." Harry and Ginny backed away from the broom rack and stood in the doorway of The Three Broomsticks. Within the pub, the revelers had become even noisier. Harry could now see the backs of three burly wizards who were standing on the tables, brandishing tankards of mead. The crowd was cheering as the trio sang a bawdy song about a maiden and a badger.

A moment later, Professor Snape emerged from the Post Office, holding a large black and brown owl. Snape had already tied a letter to the owl's leg. He held the bird aloft and commanded, "Vitesse!"

As the bird soared away, the professor's gaze fixed on something across the road. With a malicious gleam in his eye, Snape crossed the street and came straight towards the Three Broomsticks. Ginny and Harry both kept their heads very low and hurried into the pub. They pushed their way through the crowd, hoping to hide in the main huddle closest to the singing wizards. However, Snape also entered the Three Broomsticks and walked directly towards them.

Expecting a confrontation, Harry turned to face Snape. To his surprise, the Potions Master was not looking at him, but at the three singing wizards. In a withering tone, the professor said, "Mr. Bart? Mr. Tubbs? Oh, and I see Mr. Rhys-Jones is entertaining us tonight, too. What an unexpected pleasure."

Two teenage witches, whom Harry recognised as Hufflepuff's Chasers, stood up. A pair of younger boys stood behind them. One of the girls spoke. "We're here too, professor. It's Melchior and Balthazar's last day at Hogwarts. We wanted to give them a bit of a send off."

"So, we have the rest of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team in the audience? How loyal of you," Professor Snape continued with a sneer. "However, I am afraid there will be no encores, ladies and gentlemen. You will all accompany me back to Hogwarts at once."

After Snape departed with the disgraced Hufflepuffs, Harry and Ginny felt no desire to linger. The sun was setting and the pair ran most of the way back to the Shrieking Shack. They left their disguises in the parlour and scurried down the length of the tunnel. Harry lost count of the number of times he bumped his head. While they were running, Harry recalled the order Snape had issued to the owl.

"What does 'vitesse' mean?" Harry wondered aloud. His voice echoed down the tunnel.

"It sounds like French," Ginny's voice replied from the darkness ahead.

When they reached the comparative safety of the scullery, Harry asked, "Do you know any French?"

Ginny confessed that she didn't really. "Bill knows some. He was practicing it over Christmas - reckons he's going there this summer. He taught me how to say helas, j'ai transfigure mes pieds."

"What does that mean?" asked Harry.

"Alas, I have transfigured my feet."

Stealing through dimly lit corridors back to Gryffindor Tower, Harry thought that, of all the unexpected information Ginny had shared with him that evening, this last remark was the most useless.