JAMES POTTER AND THE VAULT OF DESTINIES

       'Well, it's your funeral, mate. Go for it.' With that, he kicked off himself, merging with the rest of the class.

       'You aren't serious,' Ralph asked in a low voice. 'Are you?'

       'Do they even teach flight at that poofy European school of yours?' one of the Werewolf students called out, grinning.

       James set his face into a resolved frown, lifted his right foot and planted it onto the beam of the skrim. It bobbed slightly but remained steady.

       'He's going to try it!' a girl yelled. 'He'll plummet like a stone and bury himself in the field! Maybe he'll take some of those Werewolf upperclassmen with him!' She laughed shrilly.

       Ralph raised his own foot and placed it awkwardly onto the tiger-striped skrim. 'I can't help feeling like this is a really bad idea,' he muttered to himself.

       'Buck up, mate,' James said. 'At least it wouldn't be our first sport-related disaster.'

       Ralph glanced at him. 'Last time I saved your bum. Who'll save us this time?'

       'Maybe we can save each other. Or maybe this time we won't need any saving.'

       'So how do we do this?' Ralph asked, swallowing hard.

       James shook his head. 'I think,' he said, steeling himself, 'that you just don't think about it.'

       Before Ralph could respond, James drew a deep breath, coiled himself, and kicked off.

       'Wait!' Ralph called out, but James was already gone. The skrim dipped sharply off the end of the platform, with James ducking low over it, and then, miraculously, it bobbed upwards again, wobbling wildly.

       'He's doing it!' a voice announced incredulously. 'So far, at least. Look at him dance!'

       'James!' Wood cried from across the bright distance. 'That's a skrim! What are you doing?'

       'He's fine!' the Werewolf boy called, grinning meanly. 'Look at him! He's a natural!'

       There was a smattering of laughter. James struggled to keep his balance on the skrim as it bobbed and slithered beneath his feet, zigging out into the middle of the course. The field swayed far below, looking ridiculously distant and unforgivably hard. He gasped and nearly lost his balance. Instinctively, he closed his eyes, shutting out the sight and concentrating instead on keeping his balance. Amazingly, it worked. The skrim leveled out and ceased its terrible wobbling. James drew a deep breath, bent his knees a little, and relaxed his shoulders. Slowly, he slitted his eyes again, keeping them raised and refusing to look down. The line of broom-borne students strung out ahead of him, most looking back with curiosity and surprise.

       'Well, I'll be jiggered,' a fellow Bigfoot named Norrick announced, smiling. 'Look at you, James! You're doing it!'

       'He'll go over the side like a brick any moment now,' the Werewolf boy called, his grin faltering.

       James didn't feel like he was going to go over the side, however. In fact, the more he relaxed on the narrow beam of the skrim, the more he thought he understood the way the unusual broom worked. Unlike normal flight, operating a skrim was all about how he angled his feet and maneuvered his center of gravity. These were skills that had come naturally to him on the football field. Maybe the same thing that had made him good with the football would make him good at flying a skrim. Cautiously, he experimented with leaning forward, accelerating slightly. He angled around the student who flew in the rear, passing somewhat nervously. The student was a girl from Pixie House, her streaming blonde hair tied in an immaculate ponytail. She frowned at him with disbelief.

       'No passing, please,' Oliver Wood called from the opposite end of the course. James glanced aside at him as he flew, slowing slightly.

       'Beginner's luck,' the Werewolf boy proclaimed, looking back at James over his shoulder, his eyes narrowed. 'Try that during a real match and see what happens.'

       James ignored the boy. He glanced down at himself, surprised at how well he was doing. Some part of him had suspected that he might actually be able to manage himself on a skrim. He hadn't known why, but now he thought perhaps he did. Potters were born flyers. He'd never understood it before, but then again, he'd never been given the opportunity to fly like this before. It felt perfectly natural, as if the skrim was simply an extension of his own body. Experimentally, he tried a little shimmy, and felt the board carve effortlessly back and forth beneath him, cutting the wind like a knife. He began to speed up again, passing the Werewolf boy.

       'He's gonna lap you, Pentz!' another boy called from across the course. 'The newbie's gonna show you up!' There was a hoot of laughter.

       James saw the look in the boy's eye a moment before the grey-gloved hand lanced out. The Werewolf boy, Pentz, meant to smack the skrim as it passed him, knocking James off balance. Instead, his hand missed cleanly as James tilted his ankles, dodging momentarily out of the boy's reach. Both of them blinked in surprise. Pentz's face turned ugly, and he lunged out again, meaning to catch the end of James' skrim. James feinted away again, marveling at how easy it was. Pentz was growing furious. He lashed out again, lunging on his broom, and nearly rolled it over as James dipped down and away, grinning.

       'Come back here!' Pentz hissed.

       'Be careful,' James replied. 'I'd hate to see you make a crater on the field. But then again, maybe you'd take out some of your housemates on the way.'

       'No passing,' Wood called again. 'This just a warm-up exercise, everyone.'

       James glanced around once more, peering over his shoulder to see where the professor was.

       'That's right, Cornelius,' Pentz growled. 'You can pass me when you're on your way to the dirt.'

       He lunged out once more, this time with both hands. His fingers closed on air, however, as James dodged up over the boy, and Pentz did roll over this time. He scrambled to grasp hold of his broom as it slewed back and forth, arcing out of the line of flyers. James swooped over Pentz easily, picking up speed. All around, students began to respond, laughing at Pentz as he struggled to right himself on his broom, but James barely heard them. He hunkered lower on the skrim, still accelerating, and threaded through the flyers, now passing them one at a time.

       The pure pleasure of flight was intoxicating. It filled him from head to toe, tingling like secret magic. This time, however, it wasn't wizard magic. This was the pure and simple magic of discovering some innate, hidden talent and finally, wonderfully, finding the means to exercise it. He leaned forward over the skrim, driving it onward, following the line of flying students, beginning to swerve through them like pylons. He didn't hear Professor Wood calling out to him, nor did he hear Zane's hearty whoop of encouragement as James passed him, still accelerating.

       This is what my dad felt, James thought happily. The first time he sat on a broom and took it up into the sky, this is what he felt! It makes sense to me now! Now I understand the feeling!

       A nearly absurd sense of pride and delight welled up inside James, flooding his heart and tingling all the way down to his toes. He couldn't bear it any longer. Gently, instinctively, he leaned forward. The skrim sped up, and this time James didn't hold it back. He leaned into the wind and dropped out of the rings of the Clutch course, angling out in a wide arc over the grandstands. Students peered up at him as he whooshed overhead, leaning so far over the flat of the skrim that he curled his fingers over its tip, baring his face into the thundering force of the air. He couldn't bring himself to remain in the confines of the stadium, not when there was so much open air out over the rest of the sun-washed campus. With a whoop of joy and a wild lean, he spun off between the grandstands,