Lesson 1

I ran out of the house into the back yard, eagerly imagining how I was going to soar through the air and conquer gravity. I swung my leg over the broomstick and shot an impatient look towards the house.

A few moments later, my uncle swaggered into the backyard with a broomstick slung over his shoulder. My father followed closely behind.

Uncle John said, "Not so fast. If we're gonna do this, we do this the proper way."

I raised my left eyebrow in response and questioned, "Is there a wrong way to get onto a broom?"

He laughed and said, "Put it on the ground, stand next to it and command it to your hand."

I vaguely remember this tradition from the books, but I always thought it was rather stupid. Why would you set a broom on the ground only to tell it to right back to your hand in the first place?

I shot Uncle John an unimpressed look and replied, "that doesn't seem necessary; I already have the broom in my hand."

Father interjected, "There is a good reason for this, broomsticks have many different charms and spell layered into them. One of the simplest is rising to the owner's hand when called."

His face brightened as he continued in what I called dad's lecture mode, "As a broomstick gets older, there is a chance that some of the charms and spells wear off. A good rule of thumb is calling the broomstick to your hand. If it works, then the broom is most likely fine. There have been plenty of wizards who hopped on an old broomstick and climbed into the sky only to fall when the charm stops working. That's why you should always use the command before getting on a broom."

I gulped and thought to myself. What the hell? You mean that one of these might just fall out of the sky? If I'm going to take off into the sky, I want a little bit more of a guarantee than most likely.

I set the broomstick on the ground and said, "But this is a new broom, so it should be fine. Right?"

Uncle John chuckled mischievously, and claimed, "Not being 100 percent sure it's gonna work is half of the fun of flying."

"It'll be fine," my father soothed, "Now reach out with your hand and tell it to come up."

A picture formed in my mind, I imagined the broom rising on my first command, just like Harry did, then I would soar through the air like a bird, the skies would be mine to command.

I reached out and said, "Up." The broomstick did a convincing job of playing dead.

After carefully nudging the broom with my foot, I looked at my dad and said, "You were right, we should always test a new broom before trying to find out if it's defective, this broom is obviously broken."

Uncle John started laughing at me. "What," I defended, "It's clearly broken."

Dad walked over and put his hand on my shoulder to comfort me, "It can take a while to get the hang of this, let's try again.

I decided to give it another try and said, "Up?"

"You're asking the broom when what you need to be doing is telling the broom what to do," my father explained.

"Maybe he just doesn't have what it takes to be a wizard," Uncle John mocked.

Closing my eyes, I reached out and commanded, "UP!"

Instantly, the broom rose up and smacked my hand, with a grin on my face, I shot a victorious look at my uncle.

Dad smiled at my expression and said, "Now hop on the broom, but don't kick off the ground yet."

I carefully followed my dad's instructions, determined not to have the same type of flying experience as Neville did.

"Good," dad praised. Coming up next to me with his broom, he continued, "Now what I want you to do is gently kick off with your feet.

The broom rose into the air after I made a small motion with my feet, I shot him a nervous look as I hovered a few feet off the ground.

Dad shot me an encouraging look and said, "Very good; now I want you just to get used to being off the ground."

After a few minutes, I questioned, "I thought that this would be more uncomfortable, I can't really feel the broomstick; it feels like I'm sitting on a cushion of air."

Uncle John replied, "That would be the cushioning charm coming into effect, many wizards use brooms to travel long distances. Putting all of your weight onto a stick for a few hours would be extremely uncomfortable."

My mother poked her head out the window and shouted, "Henry, I need you inside for a moment."

Before heading inside, my dad turned and said, "Don't do anything until I get back."

I thought to myself gleefully, watch out world, now that I conquered gravity, there is no stopping me now. In response to my lofty thoughts, the universe decided that I was getting a big head, so it decided to play with me for a bit, and I began slowly rising into the air. I yelled towards my uncle, "WHY AM I GOING UP?"

I made a hopping motion trying to force it back down to the ground, but was unsuccessful in doing so, if anything that made it worse.

Uncle John sarcastically answered, "You're going upward because brooms are designed to fly in an upward fashion."

Keeping a death grip on the broom, I retorted, "That isn't very helpful."

"Who said I was trying to be helpful?" Uncle John replied with a Cheshire cat smile.

After I got the broom to stop rising around 20 feet off the ground, I shouted, "How am I supposed to get down from here."

"You know how birds push their babies off trees to teach them to fly?" "FLY BABY FLY!" Uncle John mockingly yelled while flapping his arms.

It had never occurred to me before this moment, that my uncle was crazy, hell maybe my whole family is crazy. I mean, who thought that giving me a broomstick when I was five and leaving me to the tender mercy of a crazy uncle was good parenting.

I decided to pull out the big guns, "I'll tell my mom," I threatened. For some reason, my threat only made him laugh harder. Unknown to me, inside the attic, the rest of my family watched me flail about in the air.

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"I feel like we should have told him that the bluebottle broom has an anti-falling charm put on it," Camille whispered to her husband while watching from the attic window.

"He'll be fine, once he gets over his initial fear, and starts controlling the broom" Henry comforted, "Besides, this is how our dad taught us how to fly, and everything worked out just fine."

Camille tore her eyes off of her son floating in the sky and challenged, "Then why aren't you out there doing it."

Henry smirked and replied, "Because while I'm sure Alex will one day look back at this fondly, he has an incredible memory, and he sure knows how to hold a grudge."

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In the sky, after a few minutes of panic, the initial fear began to leave me, and I began to appreciate the view. Well, this isn't so bad, I thought to myself.

Seeing that I had somewhat calmed down, Uncle John shot up next to me and said, "That wasn't so bad, right?"

On the inside, I swore that one day I would have my revenge, and replied with clenched teeth, "Yeah, it's not so bad."

"Alright, alright, I'll show you how to control it. Broomsticks are controlled in two different ways. First, is direction, you use your hands and push the end of the handle where you want to go. To go up, pull back, to go down, push down, and to go left or right pull in the direction you want to go." Uncle John explained.

"What if I just want to stay level?" I quickly said.

He replied, "That's the easy part; just let go, you're not gonna fall off if you do. The cushioning charm supports your entire lower body, so balance isn't an issue."

I had to send multiple commands to my fingers before they would loosen; it was like they didn't believe my uncle's words.

After I removed the pressure on the broom it immediately stabilized. "Like this?" I clarified.

He continued, "Good, now speed is even easier to control. If you want to go faster lean forward, the lower you lean, the faster you go, and to slow down, all you have to do is sit back up. Now, let's take it slow and do a few laps."

I learned a valuable lesson while flying. If you fly around with your mouth open, be prepared to swallow a bunch of bugs.

After the flying lesson, I stopped and hovered around 100 feet off of the ground and admired the bird's eye view of the house grounds. The red three-story brick estate was an impressive sight. In the back was a large glass greenhouse that I knew better to enter, inside were many of the plants that mom used in her potion-making. Some were relatively harmless, others were aggressive and could do a lot of damage if given a chance.

In the front was a rarely used dirt road that leads to a paved road. A large iron gate prevented anyone from entering our property uninvited. On both sides of the gate was a large stone wall that stretched off in the distance.

"Enjoying the view?" John called out to me.

I nodded and pointed to the sea of trees and asked, "How big is the Fawley property?"

"Around a thousand acres or so, your grandmother's house is on the other side of the forest. This land has been our family's land for over a thousand years."

He continued, "One of our ancestors was paranoid about a raid from the newly established ministry of magic, and so he made the whole property unplottable and set all sorts of concealment spells on the walls. Supposedly he built himself a vanishing tower where he could bunker down out there somewhere. When your dad and I were younger, we spent many hours looking for it, but we couldn't find it; maybe you will have better luck."

I swore to myself that one-day, that magic tower would be mine. I could already picture myself in the tower doing powerful magic and cackling madly.

"All right, that's enough for today; you still have a party to look forward to." Uncle John informed me.

After heading inside, mother told me, "Go upstairs and get ready for your party, I invited many of our friends over and they will be bringing kids your age to play."

"But I don't want to hang out with other kids, they're so annoying," I responded.

Mom and Dad looked at each other with concern in their eyes and had a nonverbal conversation. "It will be good for you, it's time you met kids your age who aren't family. We are concerned that you don't have any friends your age to play with, this will be a good chance to meet some of the fellow wizards and witches that you may end up at Hogwarts with." Dad replied.

"Fine," I gave in, not wanting my parents to continue to worry about my lack of interest in hanging out with children my age.