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Date: April 23, 2001
Status: Semi-Private (Luna, Adam, Pepper, Wensleydale, Brian; ask if you'd like to join in?)
Setting: The Manor Grounds
Summary: Luna teaches the Them how to play Wizarding games. Hijinks ensue.

Luna stood at the back of the Manor, near a rather tall hedge that she had charmed to that height. Next to her, an open wicker box held two sets of Wizarding Chessmen, a dozen packs of Exploding Snap cards, an inflated pig's bladder and a battered, old, second-hand Quidditch chest. Next to that lay four brooms. It was strange how she had found most of this equipment at a second-hand bookshop, except for the broomsticks, of course. She'd gotten those from a friend of her father's. They weren't the best brooms, but they were servicable.

"Good boy, Fido!" Luna shifted her broomstick to her other hand as she reached into her pocket for a treat and threw it at the footstool.

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"Hi there, Luna," Brian said, sauntering up with a grin. "And Fido. Sorry I don't have any...er...footstool treats."

He looked at the array of equipment and grinned even wider. "Is all this gear for just one game?"

Adam came around the corner with Wensley in tow and froze as he found Brian and Luna. These must be the supplies for the games, but would Brian and Wensley both stick around and play? He hoped so. It was awkward having to break the Them up into pairs. They were meant to be four! And where was Pepper?

"Hi, Luna, Brian," he said as cheerfully as he could manage. "Didja get all the stuff then?"

Wensley had been following directly behind Adam when he froze, and consequently ran into him, bouncing off his friend's back.

"What? Oh." He reddened a little, but waved at the group that had already gathered in front of...were those broomsticks? He had thought that Adam was kidding when he said they would be flying. "Hello, everyone."

"Hi," said Luna. "Don't worry, he can find his own treats too."

"I've got lots more, actually, but I thought for basics we might start with Swivenhodge. Or there's Chess, too. Or Exploding Snap. Or since there's four of us now, we could play Beat the Beater." Well, that was what Fred and George had called it.

"I see that," Brian grinned. "Must be real useful when he fetches your slippers, you've got a footstool right there."

Brian was naturally drawn to the more violent games. "Beat the Beater? That sounds dirty..." his voice trailed off just a bit when he really registered who was right behind Adam. Wasn't gonna let it get to him. Not this time.

Laughing at Brian's joke and hoping he stayed in a joking mood, Adam said, "Well, I dunno about chess on such a nice day... Which game is the flyin' one?"

Luna just smiled and said to Fido, "Sit. Good boy."

"Both Swivenhodge and Beat the Beater use broomsticks, if that's what you mean." There were other flying games, but those necessitated the use of a wand, and Luna wasn't sure if Wensleydale or Brian were up to that. "Swivenhodge involves hitting this pig's bladder," she said, pointing to said pig's bladder, "over that hedge at each other."

Swivenhodge was kind of like Muggle tennis, really, but Luna wasn't to know that. "Beat the Beater, on the other hand, is actually more like Quidditch practice than anything else, but it's rather fun to play - everyone gets to be a Beater, and we have to hit each other with the Bludger."

"Well, you know me and my proclivity toward hittin' things," Pepper said on approach, wiping mud on her trouser legs. She glanced sideways at Adam. "But I keep hearin' all this talk about flying broomsticks. When do I get to see it?"

"Well. Now, if you want to." So saying, Luna sat astride her broom and rose up a few feet in the air.

Adam stared. And then a big, wide grin spread across his face like the rising of the summer sun.

"How do I do that...?"

The surreptitious look he'd meant to shoot Pepper about Brian and Wensleydale was forgotten in the face of flying broomsticks.

It was Luna's turn to stare. Suddenly she felt incredibly happy - even more so than usual. What wouldn't she do to keep that smile on Adam's face?

"For starters, you could concentrate on telling your broomstick to fly for you." Luna came back down to the ground, and motioned to the four broomsticks lying on the grass. "It has to rise up of its own accord first."

"These broomsticks are sentient?" Wensley felt a strange sense of deja vu, as a vague memory of purple bubbles flitted through his mind and just as quickly flitted out. Slightly troubled, he frowned at the broom at his feet.

Adam listened carefully, then eyed one of the brooms. "Fly, broomstick," he said, and it lifted easily off the ground because Luna said it would and Adam believed her.

"Cool!"

"Well, yes. I wouldn't quite put it that way, but yes. They can react to your command - how else would you control them?" If she'd known that Adam had invited Wensleydale, she wouldn't have bothered with casting the Memory charm on him. As it was, she was feeling a little guilty. "Go on, try it."

"Oh, that's wonderful!" Luna gushed sincerely. "That's one of the signs that you'll be able to handle your broomstick really well."

Pepper was suddenly busy glancing back and forth between Brian and Wensley, which was probably a good thing or she might have laughed at Luna for gushing at Adam like that, no matter how sincere she was. As if people didn't do that over Adam often enough-

flying broomstick. Actual flying broomstick. Brilliant.

"All right, fly, you," Pepper said, pointing to one of them. And it started a little slower but eventually worked, not so much because Pepper had believed it from the start, but because there was no way Adam was going to be able to do something that she couldn't pick up just as easy. She'd spent most of her childhood seeing to that.

There was Wensleydale. There was innuendo. Adam had even told him he did his best not to handle his broomstick at all if he could help it.

Fuckin' hell. They really weren't kids anymore, were they? But they sure didn't feel like grownups either.

Brian looked at the broomstick. Well, if footstools could move of their own, why not... "How about it then?" he said to the broom, feeling only a little silly (it was hard to feel too silly with Luna around).

It twitched a little. Too polite, Brian supposed.

"Get up, lazy!" he said. The broomstick rose, just a little.

There was really no doubt that he wouldn't be able to handle his broom well. (What innuendo?) And it seemed that Adam had enough belief for all of Them. Not like that was much of a surprise, either...

He swung his leg over his broom, emulating Luna, and jumped off the ground to hover there a few feet off the ground.

"C'mon, Wens! Let's go, Pep! Hurry, Brian, you tell that broom! It's brilliant!" Adam grinned at Luna.

"What now?"

Sometimes when you were stuck between being kids and being grown-ups, it was fun to pick one or the other for an afternoon and not worry about it. Adam had made his choice.

"Catch!" Luna threw, in rapid succession, four bats at the Them. Picking up a stick, she transfigured that into another bat, and picked up the Quidditch chest, which was shaking alarmingly. "Fly as far as you can - I'm gonna let the Bludger out, and you have to hit it away from you." She paused. "You probably don't want to let the Bludger hit you."

Pepper's broom bucked for a second after she mounted it (innuendo? what-...yeah, okay, so that was funny), but it seemed to sense her mood; one furious glare set it right. She caught her bat, suddenly impressed with how well Luna had managed to set this up when she seemed so flighty most of the time.

Fly out far. Which required moving in a specific direction. "Er, before you let the, the whatchamacallit out... how exactly do we direct these things?"

Luna might be eccentric, and a tad flighty, but she needed organisational skills if she was going to find rare and endangered animals in the wild, wasn't she? The innuendo, however, was flying straight past her.

"Why, you activate the respective charms on the broomstick, of course." Luna's voice came out slightly blurred and breathless, as she struggled to hold on to the Quidditch chest.

Brian yelped with shock and glee as his broom rose suddenly and wildly. It was more comfortable between his legs than he'd thought it would be. Oh hell, he just had a dirty mind and there was nothin' for it.

The ground whirled away. It felt amazing. "This is brilliant!" he shouted. "Now what?"

Wensley's insides threatened to leap out his mouth and back to Earth where they belonged, as he rose twenty feet in the air. What might have been a yelp was ripped from him by the wind, and he paled considerably, no small feat considering his already sun-deprived skin.

"Yes, now what?" He echoed Brian as he gripped the broom, knuckles bone-white.

"Now I let the Bludger out." Opening the chest, she unlocked the restraints around one of the Bludgers, which promptly shot up into the air. "And we play." The Bludger careened wildly, clipping Luna's broomstick on the way up and causing it to go into a spin. "Whoops."

Brian's guts lurched as it looked for a moment like Luna might fall.

Brian whirled around to watch the Bludger, almost too late.

Adam took to flying like a duck took to water.

'All you have to do is learn how to play it, and then it's just easy,' he'd once said. It was still true.

"You gotta feel it, Pep an' Wensley," he called. "Trust the broom. I won't let you fall. Watch out, Brian!"

As Brian dodged the Bludger just in time, Adam had his bat out and gave it a great whack in Pepper's direction. He'd have been fine with just flying around, but this was fun, too.

Luna managed to right herself, and flew up to settle next to Wensleydale.

"Is he the one you were talking about?" she asked him, motioning towards Brian.

I won't let you fall. That was pretty much the way of things, wasn't it? Even for all the little stuff. Which was why it was good to see Brian and Wensley there together, really.

Of course, happiness over that was short-lived as a great speeding ball was headed right toward her face. Think of it like it's cricket practice, something in her head told her, and she swerved to one side, putting herself in a better position to bat the thing away from her. It set her spinning, since her control on the broom was not spectacular yet, and she nearly dropped the bat when her hands flew to the broom handle. "Somebody watch out for it!" she shouted, laughing all the same.

Brian watched Pepper dodge and weave, unfazed, as the ball headed straight for her. She was a wonder, that girl.

That ball was flying around too fast and too hard to give Brian a chance to dwell on the unbelievable thing - he was flying. He was really, really flying. He didn't know if the broom was magic enough in itself, or if it was something Luna was doing, or it was Adam being Adam--what mattered was, it was real.

About time all the weirdness was just fun for a change.

Wensley aimed a crack at the black ball flying towards him, hitting it back towards Pepper. Adam's declaration that he wouldn't be allowed to fall had helped a great deal, and he was even comfotable with a few shallow swoops every now and then. Luna's appearence by his side, though, nearly knocked him off his broom again.

"What? Oh." He massaged his elbow a bit,looking at the handle of his broom. "Yeah, that's him."

"Well, go on, then," Luna said, nudging Wensley. Then she swooped off, making a loop-de-loop in the process.

Content that his friends seemed to be having a good time and sure the ball wasn't coming in his direction for the time being, Adam took a minute just to enjoy the wind in his face and the sun on his back as he flew around. Catching sight of Luna, he tried a loop-de-loop as well, turning it into a barrel roll at the end. That was deserving of a victory holler, right?

Well, he could holler all he wanted. Wouldn't change the fact that Pepper had sent the Bludger straight for him. "Oy, Peter Pan! Watch your rear!"

Laughing, Adam went into a steep dive, the ball following close behind. A few feet above the ground, he hauled on the front of the broom, spun around, and whacked the Bludger with the bristles, shooting it off into space.

Was that a whoop? I do believe it was...

Almost immediately, however, the Bludger turned back, this time headed for Luna. At the last moment, she swiped at it with her bat, tumbling backwards in the process and sending it towards Brian.

God damn, but it came at you fast! Wound up on eagerness and adrenalin, Brian whacked the Bludger hard and wild, with such a violent crack that the recoil knocked his broom almost into a collision with Wensleydale's.

Wensley felt his broom twist in the air, throwing him sideways; he grabbed on for dear life with his hands and knees, somehow righting himself in time to see (as much as his skewed glasses would allow) the cause of the disturbance. "Sorry," he choked out, not exactly sure what he was apologizing for - being in the way, perhaps.

Righting his broom proved easy enough, but righting what Brian's gut had done when he saw who he'd nearly broadsided was another matter.

"Sorry for what, mate?" he muttered, flushing red. "Not your fault." Hm. That applied to more than one situation. Brian managed a hangdog smile before hurtling away after the Bludger.

Adam dodged the Bludger, cast an eye over Brian and Wensley, and shot off to Luna's side like he'd been riding brooms all his life.

"Thanks, Luna," he called. "This is amazin'. I can't believe I'm really flyin'. I always wanted to, you know..."

"You're very welcome," said Luna, turning to Adam from watching Brian and Wensley. "I'm glad to have friends."

"Oh hey, look out!" Luna swerved as the Bludger swooped down on them.

Looking faintly stunned - whether it was because Luna had no friends, or because a heavy ball was shooting at his face, it wasn't really clear - Adam dove. When he'd nearly reached the ground, he pulled up hard, popping back up like a cork in a bathtub and grinning from ear to ear. "I'm glad you do, too," the young man managed before having to dart away again.

Luna pulled her broomstick up as she heard the Bludger whistle away from her. It was fun. Suddenly, she realised that she missed Hermione, Ron, Ginny and Neville, and in a way, Luna was happy about that. She wondered if they missed her too. Then she got to wondering where Harry was. She hadn't seen him in a while - she was sure that he would have fun playing anything to do with Qudditch.

Maybe she could ask Wensleydale about whether he'd seen Harry around - after all, Harry was supposed to be working in the restaurant.

((I figure I'll rethread in case Luna and Adam want to continue talking without the flow getting interrupted? ~_^))

Pepper veered off toward Brian as discreetly as she could, bat still held at the ready. Hopefully that would be enough to save her, should the ball come at her quick.

"How's it goin'?" she asked hopefully, glancing swiftly over in Wensley's direction, trying to be as light-handed about it as possible (which for her, unfortunately, didn't work much).

((Er, we declared this thread done (http://community.livejournal.com/madprophets/242213.html) last week 'cause no one was posting... Do you want to revive it?))

((Heh, figures. I'm really sorry, I was a little lost on it, for some reason and wasn't sure when to jump back in. It's totally up to everyone else. I'm thinking if we wanted to revive it, it might help to have some sort of outline of how we want it to go? That way it'll be easier to play it toward some sort of conclusion or goal. I think that's part of why I fell behind.))

((Yeah, I don't think it ever really had a point - just to let Them have some fun. We can plan something else if you'd like, though, to move things along.))

((Ooh. Well, for me, this thread was basically for Luna to touch base with everyone again, so that's finished... I'm game for any other plans, though.))

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