Scowling, Malfoy quickly dropped the Remembrall back on the table.

“Just looking,” he said, and he sloped away with Crabbe and Goyle behind him.

At three thirty that afternoon, Harry, Ron, and the other Gryffindors hurried down the front steps onto the grounds for their first flying lesson. It was a clear, breezy day, and the grass rippled under their feet as they marched down the sloping lawns toward a smooth, flat lawn on the opposite side of the grounds to the forbidden forest, whose trees were swaying darkly in the distance.

The Slytherins were already there, and so were twenty broomsticks lying in neat lines on the ground. Harry had heard Fred and George Weasley complain about the school brooms, saying that some of them started to vibrate if you flew too high, or always flew slightly to the left.

Their teacher, Madam Hooch, arrived. She had short, gray hair, and yellow eyes like a hawk.

“Well, what are you all waiting for?” she barked. “Everyone stand by a broomstick. Come on, hurry up.”

Harry glanced down at his broom. It was old and some of the twigs stuck out at odd angles.

“Stick out your right hand over your broom,” called Madam Hooch at the front, “and say ‘Up!’”

“UP!” everyone shouted.

Harry’s broom jumped into his hand at once, but it was one of the few that did. Hermione Granger’s had simply rolled over on the ground, and Neville’s hadn’t moved at all. Perhaps brooms, like horses, could tell when you were afraid, thought Harry; there was a quaver in Neville’s voice that said only too clearly that he wanted to keep his feet on the ground.

Madam Hooch then showed them how to mount their brooms without sliding off the end, and walked up and down the rows correcting their grips. Harry and Ron were delighted when she told Malfoy he’d been doing it wrong for years.

“Now, when I blow my whistle, you kick off from the ground, hard,” said Madam Hooch. “Keep your brooms steady, rise a few feet, and then come straight back down by leaning forward slightly. On my whistle—three—two—”

But Neville, nervous and jumpy and frightened of being left on the ground, pushed off hard before the whistle had touched Madam Hooch’s lips.

“Come back, boy!” she shouted, but Neville was rising straight up like a cork shot out of a bottle—twelve feet—twenty feet. Harry saw his scared white face look down at the ground falling away, saw him gasp, slip sideways off the broom and—

WHAM—a thud and a nasty crack and Neville lay facedown on the grass in a heap. His broomstick was still rising higher and higher, and started to drift lazily toward the Forbidden Forest and out of sight.

Читайте також:

<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
He had been looking forward to learning to fly more than anything else.	\|	Madam Hooch was bending over Neville, her face as white as his.

Не знайшли потрібну інформацію? Скористайтесь пошуком google:

Генерація сторінки за: 0.003 сек.