Flight Risk

Why he was in this shop, he would never know. Guenevere had said something about looking at something or whatever. The poor boy was out of his element, brooms were something he didn't want to have any part of. He had a terrible fear of heights and he was scared of the day he would have to learn how to fly on a broom. The boy went white as he looked through a quidditch magazine. An article had caught the scared boy's eyes. It was about a player who had fallen off his broom while playing quidditch. He gulped and threw down the magazine. It landed on the floor. He didn't want to pick it up again but it was rude to just leave it there. He snatched up the magazine and put it back where he had found it.

He decided to stay away from the broom and the magazines. He tapped his toes and hugged himself. He wished Guen would just hurry up! He was so uncomfortable in this place and it showed. He nearlu jumped out of his skin when someone spoke up. He let out a loud squeak then blushed brightly.

"Nanna what's that?" Lucie asked as she pointed at a shop window. Her grandmother shook her head at the girl. "How would I know my girl? Now we really should be getting to that bookshop before you go missing again." Nanna tugged at the eleven year old who continued to stare at the display of brooms. It really was odd to see brooms sold in a shop which attracted all sorts. Not just people who wanted clean homes. Kids weren't into cleaning products around here were they?

Her grandmother sighed. "Change of plan. You go in there and find out." Lucie look struck with fear at such a suggestion. "Go in there on my own? You want me to ask someone in there questions all on my own?" The older woman shook her head. "Lucie ask someone your own age. It will be good practice for when you go to school. You'll be meeting them some time. It may as well be now as later."

Lucie could see her grandma was not going to budge and turned to the door with a sigh. She pushed it open and blinked a few times as she tried to adjust to the sights of not just brooms but odd balls and bats too. Not baseball and well she wasn't sure what to think of the other displays. She caught sight of a boy all on his own who looked like he might be her age. She bit her lip. She could do this right? Of course she could. The girl swallowed as she walked up to the boy. "Excuse me. Could I..." She didn't get any more words out when he squeaked and jumped. At that Lucie jumped to and then wasn't at all sure what action she should take next.

The girl looked around out the window and saw Nanna looking in from the outside. There would be no help from that direction. Lucie was on her own. She returned her attention back to the boy. "Um sorry about startling you. I just wanted to ask you something."

He hadn't meant to jump and cause a scene. He looked down to avoided the eyes of the people that were watching him. The place just gave him such the creeps that made him uncofortable just being there. "It's not you that scared me," he admitted in a small voice. He brooms nd the thought of flying on them just made the hairs on his arms stick up. "The brooms are the things that scare me.'

To a muggle or muggle born it would have sounded weird. Before he was adopted he would have been confused over someone being afraid of brooms. It wasn't the brooms that scared him, it was what they could do. He looked back up and made eye contact with the girl. "Sounds silly doesn't it? Being afraid of flying?"

"I wasn't?" Lucie asked. She looked around at the brooms which looked pretty harmless. The flying pictures looked a little weird to the muggleborn and she thought it was probably trick photography. Yes. That's what it was. Otherwise this aspect of real magic versus what the books she read said of it would make them the same. And so far nothing was. Well there was the cauldron on her list which hadn't been bought yet. "They look fairly harmless to me," she said. "What can be so scary about something which sweeps a floor?"

Now she was floored and she looked up at the poster of the person dressed in a pink uniform sort of thing and flying a broom. "That...that's not a trick?" she asked weakly. "Oh. Um. Well I don't think it sounds silly to say you're afraid of flying. I'm afraid of riding a bike. Now that's silly because they stay on the ground." Flying though...now it was apparently a reality of the strange school she was entering...had caught her imagination in a very different way to riding a bike. She wanted to try it. No training wheels and all.

She must have not know anything about how brooms flew or how easily you could fall off a broom. "You fly on brooms," he explained. He dreaded the day they would have to learn to fly on brooms. He'd probably fall if he didn't pass out first. He would be the person to faint just by thinking about flying and how high up the broom could go. His stomach turned just thinking about it, his legs were beginning to feel like jelly again. "I don't really fear the brooms, just what they can do. Heights scare me."

He looked over to the poster she had been looking at. "It's real," he said after turning back. He couldn't look at it for too long without gettingna sick feeling. "That's not silly, I don't even know how to ride a bike. I've never been on one." He had been from home to home which made it hard to have a normal life. He was only eleven and he had seen more than he wished he had. "No one ever taught me."

Lucie was still having trouble getting her head around the idea that brooms really were flown by witches. She hoped that it didn't mean that the fantasy world of cackling old women with warts on their noses was also true. She did not want to end up with a hook nose and warts and turn people into toads. Except perhaps her brothers. They were toady enough and could do with a fully formed toad look.

She sighed and shook her head. "It's silly where I come from. Everyone around me can ride a bike. Everyone but me. I'm just lucky my best friend is willing to walk to and from school with me instead of riding her bike." Only that wouldn't happen anymore because Meral would be travelling to and from school on her own. Probably on her bike because she no longer had fraidy cat Lucie with her anymore.

"No-one's ever taught me how to fly. Do you think I'll get to learn how to fly at Beauxbatons." She hoped so but then she remembered what the boy said about heights. "Oh. If they do will you have to learn too?"