"Thanks." Hug. "You're really good."

Hug.

"Want to go get lunch?"

"Yeah. Food sounds really good right now."

Then to food!

Anathema seems to have bounced back pretty much entirely by the time they reach the Great Hall.

It's really early, still - the earliest lunch is served - so there's not a lot of other people around. Which means no one to really care if Anathema puts her feet up on the bench.

Ellie certainly doesn't.

Good.

They still have time to study before Flying, even after lunch - maybe they can study Potions a bit, actually, since they might have to teach themselves for a little while...

As much as they can, anyway. Ellie read the book, but a lot of it is just practice actually chopping and pounding and mixing stuff up.

Hm... Yeah. Well, if Snape's still a problem next week they can ask the school medi-witch or one of the upper years or Professor Reynolds, maybe...

They'll see if it comes to that.

Yeah.

In mean time: books, and then flying!

Exciting.

There's some tension with the Slytherins, but not much, and mostly from the Ravenclaws - Mandy seems to have pulled the Slytherin muggleborn aside before class started to have a quick whispered conversation with her -

Anathema, it turns out, adores flying, completely ignoring the Professor telling her to slow down please, Miss Canta (though the Professor doesn't seem too pressed about this).

Ellie won't have any trouble controlling her broom, either, unlike a lot of their classmates.

Flying is a lot of fun. She doesn't even really need a teacher, everything just seems instinctive.

Anathema swoops close to her -

And taps her on the shoulder.

"Tag! You're it!"

-Oh, it's on.

Anathema gets a second and a half to get away before Ellie comes rocketing after her.

Anathema flies away cackling at the top of her lungs.

Neither of their brooms are very good, but Anathema's is a bit less bad and has a speed edge - but she's reluctant to go too far from their exasperated Professor (or she's invented some kind of boundary rule, it's hard to tell with her) - so Ellie can shave off distance when she tries to turn.

Ellie is very good at judging precisely how much speed she needs to lose to make a given turn, and after a round and a half of the loosely-defined 'playing field', executes a spinning maneuver that lets her reach out a hand and smack Anathema on the shoulderblade.

She laughs - and pivots to chase Ellie.

Ellie gets very fancy with her twists to keep Anathema off her back.

Anathema has the power of speed and recklessness on her side, which more than makes up for being clumsy on turns. She whips into a turn a few minutes after Ellie tagged her, drifts, and then barrels into Ellie - just barely avoiding actually destabilizing her.

She gets a tag in, though.

Oof.

Well, if they're playing dirty...

Then they can get up to quite a few stunts before their Professor's calling them down - class is nearly over, apparently.

Aw.

"You two might want to join a flight club," their Professor says, clearly amused. "Perhaps even the Quidditch team, next year."

Anathema giggles. (They'd both done far better than their classmates, admittedly.)