March 20th, 1891 - Quidditch Pitch

Miss Gamp was practicing her flying, and she wasn't very good. Sirius had not been watching her for long &mbsp; five minutes had passed, maybe, since he'd left the locker room with his (new!) broomstick to conduct some of his own practice. She wasn't very far off the ground, either. Was this all for their Showcase of Living History, or did she just enjoy being bad at things?

Rather than say anything or announce himself, Sirius sat on the grass and watched her with his own broomstick laid across his lap.

---

On the very long list of behaviors and activities Great Aunt Jessamine didn't condone in a lady was, of course, quidditch. Well, quidditch wasn't actually on the list, flying on a broomstick was and so by extension quidditch technically was forbidden. However, Hesper didn't imagine she'd feel much better about playing quidditch on a flying carpet if such a thing was practical which it very much wasn't. As Hesper was quickly coming to realize, however, what Great Aunt Jessamine didn't know wouldn't hurt her.

Generally speaking though, Hesper towed the line and accepted her great aunt's rules, it was simply easier to minimize the rule breaking so that she could make sure nothing got back to her. Until now she'd had no incentive to break the rules and try flying. She had to prove to Sirius the group that she was as capable as any of them. Also she didn't want to make a liar of herself, granted she had already told the lie but if she learned to fly really well they didn't need to know that she'd been lying at the time.

The trouble was the most natural person to ask for help from was Sirius and she definitely couldn't ask him to teach her how to fly because she'd first have to admit that she couldn't and that was how she'd gotten herself into this situation in the first place, now it was even worse because there was a lie on top of it. She was determined to teach herself based on scraps she remembered from the limited flying she'd done last year and every school quidditch match she'd ever watched. How hard could it be? It wasn't as though there was anything overly complex about it, there were no buttons or cranks she needed to see to at certain times. It'd probably be instinctual after she got comfortable simply being in the air.

Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It didn't help at all that she felt so self-conscious about it, she'd tried to sneak onto the pitch when few others would be there but it was a Saturday so everyone and their owl was there. Then she realized the more people there were, the less attention she'd get... Unless she was so awful everyone stared at her. The moment her feet left the ground for the first time she felt a horrid mixture of elation and dread. Elation because she was actually flying (barely, but for her yes) and absolute dread because she felt suddenly so lost and overwhelmed by it all. It was entirely possible that she could lose control and without an instructor she was way more likely to do so. She needed to be bold enough to try but not so bold that she lost control and ended up so wounded that someone had to write to her great aunt.

For now she was just trying to practice height. If she was confident she could fly high as well as get herself back to the ground again then maybe the odds of accidentally killing herself would be significantly lower than they currently were. It was this she was practicing when Sirius found her. She was getting a little higher every time she left the ground again, it looked rather ridiculous to watch kind of like she was jumping in very slow motion but she too focused to think about how she looked anymore. At least she was until she finally spotted Sirius. She'd made it just over seven feet off the ground when she saw him.

Hesper stared at him as the embarrassment and shock hit her. It was so bad that she didn't notice her broomstick was still rising until it dawned on her that he was starting to look smaller. Oh no. "Down! Go down!" The broomstick might respond to 'up' but it apparently didn't know the word 'down' and if it did, it didn't care for the way she said it. Now she was starting to panic, she wanted to call out for help but she was going to look even worse now in front of Sirius and she was so mortified already. He'd just been sat there, watching her for who knew how long and probably holding in laughter at how terrible she was at it or else he was annoyed at her for lying and risking the group assignment. It was at least rising slowly, or rather it had been until she'd started to panic which seemed to energize it. Tears started to prickle in the corners of her eyes and it was a very small comfort to think that she was now too high up for Sirius to see it if she cried.
""

---

Hesper caught him, and Sirius watched with the same clinical interest as her broomstick continued to go up in its wavering straight-up path. He could have continued to watch longer, could have stayed here and waited for her to figure it out — except the further up her broomstick got the less sure he was that she would be able to get down at all. He sighed and clambered to his feet. "Up," Sirius instructed his own broomstick, which obeyed him nearly immediately.

He got on it and shot up to where Hesper was, a speedy diagonal until he was only a few feet beneath her. They were up higher than Sirius liked to be for casual flying, and he doubted very much this was on purpose.

"Hello," he said from below her. He had not really planned what to do once he was up here, either.

---

As soon as Hesper realized he was getting on his broomstick she scrunched her face up, stubbornly determined not to cry. It was one thing to be embarrassed by her inability to fly but she didn't want to be embarrassed about crying in front of him too. She focused hard on the thought that drifting up into the stratosphere would at least save her from having to admit she couldn't fly and she'd lied about it.

Thankfully by the time Sirius reached her she was able to unscrew her face and not be crying. "Hello." Her voice was shaky and betrayed how close she'd been to crying but she hoped it was lost in the wind. His arrival in the sky made Hesper feel a little safer albeit more embarrassed. She tried to will her broom downwards but that was either not how flying worked or her broomstick didn't like her. She felt awkward but what was one more uncomfortable emotion when she was stupidly high up in the air? Hesper wasn't afraid of heights but she might be after this.

---

Sirius leaned back on his broomstick, causing it to steady in the air. At least the broom Aunt Ella had gotten him was still very good at this height, otherwise he would have been a little nervous — as it was, the broom was so new and so attuned to being ridden that Sirius was able to focus more on Hesper, and her shaky voice and the way she was higher-up than amateur flyers should be.

"Do you know what you're doing?" Sirius said; his tone was more curious than it was mean, but he wished he had said something else as soon as the words spilled out of his mouth.

---

Hesper felt herself flush with embarrassment. She'd known it would've been pretty obvious from the moment he saw her practicing but she hadn't expected him to just call her out like that. Well, he wasn't exacting calling her out but that was how it felt to her. "I most certainly do!" she retorted, her voice almost cracking at 'do'.

She tried to prove the point by changing direction and it worked a little better than the last time she'd tried to change course but rather than swerve to the side, the broom stopped rising and then turned 90 degrees so that Hesper was sideways in the air. "See?" Her voice came out strangled from the effort of keeping herself from falling off. She'd meant to say that after she'd glided to one side but that clearly wasn't happening.

She tried to urge the broom back to an upright position but it decided she wanted to fly forward now but very slowly. She pursed her lips as she clung on for dear life and flew towards him. "Good day, Sirius." She said this as the broom slowly flew her over his head and beyond.

---

Sirius flinched sympathetically as Hesper's broom turned sideways; his own broom lowered itself a few inches in response to the motion. He watched her grip on, glanced at the ground, glanced back at her. He turned his broom around to follow her from a foot or so behind.

"You're going to fall if you're not careful," Sirius warned, "Because you don't know what you're doing."

---

She hadn't really expected him to take her 'good day' seriously, she didn't actually know what she had expected his reaction to be though. She was glad that he wasn't able to see her face though, gone was the threat of tears and in its place were a pair of very red cheeks. She was already embarrassed but then he'd called her out so directly that it made her angry too and maybe being the wrong way up was a contributing factor too but it certainly wasn't the most pressing one. "I told you, I know exactly what I'm doing!" she snapped back imperiously which was rather impressive in itself considering she was sideways and thus not in a position to be imperious about anything.

Her flushed cheeks weren't the only side-effect of her emotional state, however, her palms were starting to grow sweaty and her grip on the broom was growing more and more difficult to maintain. Not to mention she'd been gripping on for so long already that her weak little arm muscles were already tiring from the exertion, as were her tightly clenched fingers. If she could just somehow roll the broom back so she was upright again... "And I'm not going to fall. I'm practicing for when I need to fly sideways." Hesper was pretty sure there would never be a time in her life when she would need to fly sideways and certainly not at length but she had committed herself to this lie now she couldn't just back down now. If she was lucky she might accidentally figure out how to fly somewhat properly before she fell off and get to save face and her life.

---

"No you're not," Sirius said, because it was an obvious lie and he wasn't going to act like it wasn't. He continued to follow her from a little below, so that if she fell he could — what? He didn't know the spell to stop her motion, so it wasn't like he could be particularly helpful. Maybe he could just yell loud enough that an older student would see her fall and stop her. Hm.

"You need to use your center of mass to swing the broom back up," Sirius pointed out, as if this was not a great issue to him, although he really didn't want to see her fall. "For what it's worth."

---

"Just because you're on the quidditch team and I'm not doesn't mean I don't know how to fly just as well as you, Sirius Black!" If she hadn't been so focused on concealing her growing panic whilst desperately to heed his advice, she probably would have had the presence of mind to stop herself from snapping at him as much as she did. The broom was starting to right itself finally but at the last second rolled back. Her hands lost purchase on the handle of the broom and she found herself dangling upside down like a fruit bat, her legs the only thing keeping her from plummeting to her untimely death. She made an odd squealing noise that ended in something like a hiccup; her scream caught in her throat as she accidentally inhaled a gulp of very cold air. She choked and spluttered and in the meantime her leg muscles started to relax.

She realized what was happening just in time to save herself from falling off, but not in time to stop her robes from coming loose from where she'd had it tucked around the broom. This was why Great Aunt Jessamine had forbidden her from flying broomsticks. "NO!" She grabbed the lower half of her robe and tried to hold it up to where it was supposed to be. "Don't look at me!" she shouted at him, her face bright pink both from being upside down and the embarrassment. She had plenty of layers on but he didn't need to know what they looked like. Merlin's beard the whole school didn't need to know either. This was definitely going to be the worst day of her life and it might even be the last day of it too!

---

She was so stubborn that she was going to fall off her broom out of spite, and Sirius was not sure he could do anything about it. Maybe he should just land on the ground and find the flight instructor and they could deal with this? She was so bad at this that Sirius could not even think of a proper way to explain. He could not ever remember being uncomfortable with flying; Mr. Pettigrew had given him his first practice broom years before most students started learning and Sirius had taken to the air like a fish to water.

And then she was dangling by her legs and holding her robes to her, and Sirius did not want to look at her clothes nearly falling and instead looked at her hair. She could die like this. He darted forward on his broomstick and without even thinking of it, grabbed onto her arm with one hand. At least he'd be holding onto her if she fell, this way.

"I can steer us to the ground," Sirius said, a little sternly, although he was — frankly not sure that would work. "Or you can wait to fall. Whichever works better for you."

---

Hesper didn't realize he was flying toward her until she suddenly felt him grab her arm. She was startled but thankfully not enough to lose her grip and plummet to her death. She was more embarrassed than she thought she'd ever been in her entire life and she was 12 years old!

She pursed her lips and furrowed her brow at him. For a split second she felt the telltale prickling sensation in the corners of her eyes but she blinked and it was gone. "You look quite ridiculous upside down." Of course she knew she was the one that was upside down but it made her feel a little better deflecting some of her embarrassment onto him. Her broomstick lowered itself so gradually Hesper didn't notice until, "I can see up your nose!" It stopped almost as soon as she said it.

---

Sirius probably would have laughed at her if he wasn't so convinced she was going to fall to her death fairly soon, so instead he bit back a smile. He frowned again when her broomstick stopped lowering. He adjusted his grip on her arm. "Wait," he said, "Try to relax again. Not your legs, but — emotionally." If she got a little lower, he might be able to flip her broom over the right way himself — and then getting her back to the ground would be much less of a serious problem.

---

She wished she could relax her legs, they were trembling with the exertion of keeping her airborne. "I'm already relaxed," she lied, noting her arms were also growing tired and shaking a little. Despite the lie, Hesper was actually starting to feel more calm or to be more accurate, lightheaded and a little bit woozy. "Just like a bat." Her broom resumed its gradual descent again.

The embarrassment she felt was starting to ease which had to have helped. "I can fly, you know, truly." At this point it was stupid to insist that she was hanging upside down on purpose but that didn't mean she had to admit she was as inexperienced as flying as she actually was.

---

"Yeah, you can fly, and I can play the harp," Sirius said, a little snarky. By now she had descended enough that he could move one arm to her shoulder and place the other on the handle of her broom, holding the broom in place. "I'm going to flip you back over on the count of three, alright? One, two —"

(That he could have waited until they were closer to the ground to attempt this had not occurred to him. That he was touching her shoulder also had not occurred to him. As she got more relaxed, Sirius became more tightly-wound and stressed out, and he was not sure what to do to dissipate it.)

---