Harry Potter and the Gift of Memories [Harry Potter Fan Fiction]

Chapter XX: Flying Lessons

After lunch Harry and Neville found themselves making their way to their first flying lesson with the other Gryffindors. They walked through a hall and out of an archway that expanded into a large courtyard. Harry estimated it to be about fifty square meters in total. It was a clear field of green grass with no trees or shrubs of any kind, probably so students wouldn't crash into them while learning to fly, Harry guessed.

He noticed as soon as he and the other lions entered that the brooms they would be using were already there, laid out on the ground in a single file line.

A frown crossed his face as his eyes zeroed in on the condition of the brooms. He had heard from the Weasley twins that the brooms the school gave them to use were in horrible condition, but he had not been sure if he should truly believe them until now. The broom were not just in bad shape, they were horrendous! The wood used to make of the shafts of the broom were scratched and scuffed and looked like they had not been serviced in ages. Several even had large cracks on them that would probably hamper their ability to make drastic course corrections. Many of the twigs at the ends were broken or bent, which from his father's lectures when he would take Harry flying let him know that would affect their aerodynamics. In short, the brooms being used by the school were not only pieces of crap, they were also incredibly dangerous, especially to first timers.

And why? Harry wondered. Why wasn't the school doing something about this? Did they lack the funding to buy better brooms? Or was there some other reason he couldn't determine? Either way, something would have to be done. Children their age shouldn't be using such dangerous equipment.

The Slytherins were already outside, huddling together a ways off. Most of them seemed to be listening to Draco who told everyone that it was travesty that first years weren't allowed to bring a broom, and how much better their Quidditch team would be if he was allowed to join. Harry did notice that while many of the Slytherins were paying rapt attention to the boy, Blaise, Daphne and Tracey looked almost bored to tears.

The three were standing at the edge of the crowd, and while to the average eye it looked like they were paying attention to everything Draco said, he could easily see they were only pretending.

Blaise's expression looked the same as it always did, that being a general look of aloofness and distance. However, Harry could see the hard lines around his eyes. They made him look slightly strained, as if he was just barely resisting the urge to roll them.

Surprisingly enough Harry could not get a read on the pretty blond next to the dark-skinned pureblood. Daphne Greengrass' expression was, as always, colder than a winters night in Antarctica. And yet, while her expression remained the same, her stance betrayed her irritation. Her arms were crossed and she was putting more weight on her right leg than her left, which he had been able to notice through her thick school robes due to the way her figure tilted. The crossing of her arms, her distance, and the stance she assumed were often signs of someone who was annoyed.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Tracey Davis was not masking her boredom at all. Everything from her stance to the annoyed look in her eyes to the way she was nearly scowling at Draco told Harry that she was not at all pleased with the blond boy's bragging.

This did not surprise Harry one bit. He knew that Tracey Davis was not a pureblood but a half-blood. Her father was a pureblood from a minor house, and her mother was a muggleborn that her father married shortly after they graduated from Hogwarts. Given that her father had gone against tradition and was considered the black sheep of his family, it would make sense that he had not taught his daughter much about pureblood traditions and social etiquette.

It made him wonder about just how she and Daphne had become friends in the first place.

His internal musings were interrupted by the arrival of their flight instructor.