Nov 28
4:15pm

"Bother and bother."

Xiomara Hooch sat astradle her trusty old Willow Whip about twenty feet above the ground.  She'd been flying slowly at this height above along the dense treeline for about ten minutes.  A broom had gone rogue and drifted off into the Forbidden Forest.  Staying out of the woods was not simply a school rule meant to organize students into orderly rows and keep them in their proper pens and corrals.  The Forest was foreboding to anyone with a sense of self-safety and an interest in seeing the next Christmas.  Even a grown witch with remarkably agile broomskills was hesitant to enter the woods on a cold, overcast afternoon when the sky was already beginning to darken.  In a Forest which had recently harbored an unregistered werewolf and less recently, a violent quintaped.

"Bother!"

Well, she didn't want to just leave the broom out there.  It was a student's broom and she'd promised him she'd do what she could to get it back to her.  It was a very expensive new broom, an early Christmas present and the last thing Hooch wanted was another group of students getting bold and searching the woods for the broom.  For something silly like a broom.

That sort of silliness was reserved for Hooches.

She sighed in the chilly wind.  This was a buddy system situation.  She turned her broom and began to glide back to the castle, having no idea which professor she'd be able to find who'd join her in her snipe hunt. Then she saw him.

"Mr Shepherd!" she called, hoping her voice would carry in the wind.

Shep paused in currying a Thestral and squinted into the darkening sky.  The equine fidgeted under the heavy brush strapped to his hand and nudged him with a fanged muzzle, obviously wondering why he'd stopped.

"Ho, there!" he called, his voice booming into the wind.  "Friend or foe?"

His hair was tied with a leather thong at the nape of his neck, stirring only slightly in the breeze.  He wore brown breeches but his suspenders were slung down about his waist rather than up onto his broad, pink, thermal-clad shoulders.  His beard, on the other hand, whipped about as if the wind would take it clean from his face when he looked up to spy his visitor.  He wiped a hand down his chin and slapped the Thestral on the rump to let it know he was finished.  It nickered and then wandered off in search of small rodents to tide it over until dinner.

Brushing his hands on his trews, he glanced past the figure on the broom into the darkening sky.  It was going to rain, soon.  He could almost hear the rumbling in the distance.  "Bad time to fly!" he called as an afterthought.  "Come on down, if you want a cuppa," he offered amiably.

When he shouted back, Hooch began a zippy descent, perhaps more spry a dip than one might have expected of a witch of 90.  But this was Hooch.  She'd flown in the war, so she was at home on a broom as anywhere else.  In the past, she realized, she'd had no occasion at all to speak with Mr Shepherd.  Both she and he were peripherals to the castle and the daily school business, so that was no surprise.  She just hoped that having no previous acquaintence would not be a stoppage for being very inconvenienced this evening.

"Friend, friend!" she declared coming to a stop by the big, shaggy wizard with the American accent.  "And I'm no weather-witch but I think you're right about today."

She shrugged her cloaks on tighter about her shoulders.  A thestral had trotted off and she looked quickly away.  Thestrals always reminded her of the causes she had to see them. Instead she tried to smile, but she had to speak plain in this weather to be heard well.

"Look, if you're not busy, I've got a pressing errand that I can't really accomplish alone.  I know you and I haven't had the opportunity to become friendly, but perhaps this could be our chance.  A student's lost her broom in the woods and it's either I make a daring effort to go in after it or I'm sure they'll be some overblown, misadventured student cause to liberate it."

She raised and eyebrow, hoping he'd gotten to know the Hogwarts students well enough to agree about their options. 

"Would only be bloodshed then, and letters home."

Shep would have offered a hand in assistance when she hopped down from her broom, but she fared well enough despite the wind and Shep himself was well-acquainted with Iron Britches in women-- and highly respected both the britches and the women.  So rather than seem overly chivalrous (until she knew him and discovered that he held doors for women and men alike because, "It's only fittin'-- I'm biggern anyone,") he smiled his tolerant smile and chuckled when she explained her errand.

" ' Make it sound as if it's Gryffindor shenanigans," he replied sympathetically.  "Or is it?"  He squinted at her against the rising wind.  "No bloodshed, though.  Night like tonight, the letters will read, 'MIA.'  Not sure whether the reg'lar critters would leave you anything to identify, either.  Some of them clean the blood up after.  Tidy little ecology, the Forest has.  Waste not, want not."  Now, why was he being macabre?  He shook his head and smiled apologetically.  "I'll get my broom."

Normally, he would have gone into the Forest to curry the thestrals, but Shep had intelligence and a healthy sense of self-preservation.  Perhaps the infamous Rubeus Hagrid might have waltzed into the Forbidden Forest during a storm in his hayday.  Despite his abnormal size, however, Shep was no giant but a simple human Wizard.  Some of the critters (especially those that came out in storms) had "magicks" of their own and his human skin wouldn't bounce these attacks as giant skin did.  So, aware that a storm was blooming on the horizon, he'd chosen to call the thestrals to him rather than to go more deeply into the forest in search of them.  It was simple enough to do: he used the same sequence of whistles that called them to the school to haul the carriages.  They were happy to oblige.

So as fate would have it, he was not only near his own cabin when Madam Hooch spied him, he was near the broom leaning against its front porch railing.

The thing was massive-- as big around as the flying instructor's upper arm, he speculated, and nearly as long as Shep himself was.  The thick hay (in place of straw) blossomed out from its behind like a giant, chaotic mushroom, or a Southern Belle's ballgown.  The handle was rough-hewn.  Though he'd taken the time to whittle it smooth and carve handgrips to match his mighty paws, he'd left it undecorated.  The lumps, bumps, whorls and textures natural to the wood made it pretty, in his eyes.  He'd charmed it himself-- double charmed it, in fact, to make certain it would carry his weight.

As he stepped aside, turning toward the cabin, the broom was easily apparent, leaning against the stair rail, one hay stem poking curiously through as if observing them.  "Accio broom!"  He stuck out one ham-hand and it struggled free of its perch, zooming across the intervening space to smack resoundingly into his hand.  He smiled with satisfaction: unlike most large people, Shep loved to fly.  He'd come to it late (broomsticks weren't precisely something one wanted to be seen riding in the "neighborhood" where he grew up) but he'd made up for his childhood lack by practicing for half a century... chasing starlings.  Starlings were quite possibly the only "critter" Shep had no sympathy for.  Running them ragged as they ran the other birds ragged was pleasant.  The American Crows found the pursuit uproariously funny, cawing raucously during the chase and even  helping him (which was where he learned the trick in the first place).

Ah, good.  He was as friendly and straightforward as everyone said of him.  Xiomara appreciated that.  She found people like him easy to bear because she could feel certain that there was no subtext lurking taught behind his teeth.  He said what he meant and meant what he said and that was just what Hooch believed was necessary to get things done.

She smiled with genuine warmth when he commented rather darkly about the chances students might fare in the woods alone tonight.  It was clear he agreed and, not only that, he'd be just the one to find the wayward broom and avoid their own adventure in the process.  As new as he was to the post, he seemed to take to the job and his Forest naturally.  He was from the world, but looked as natural here in remote Scotland as any thistle or rocky outcropping.

"We'll make short work of this, I'm positive, Mr. Sh-"

She stopped short when he summoned a log to himself and looked as if he meant to straddle it as a broom.  In all her years she'd never seen its like! It looked like an overgrown prop, a giant replica of a broom as if someone hadn't ever seen one before and was crafting it out of rough description. 

She didn't hide her astonishment, and regretfully, she couldn't hide her skepticism.

"You don't mean you fly with that!  It's giant, Mr. Shepherd.  What's the make?"

As appalling as the broom was, Xiomara Hooch's curiosity was peaked.  Where did such an artifact come from?

Shep grinned sheepishly, leaning the broom against his shoulder so that it looked somewhat less massive in relation to his own height and bulk.  It was only six feet long, after all, and significantly more slender than his arm.  In comparison, it was almost dainty.  He didn't quite meet her eyes as he pulled a pair of work-gloves from his pocket and shoved his hands inside, preparatory to flight.

" 'Make?'  I can't rightly say.  Whittled it as a youngster and it's served me this long without fail."  She seemed astounded that it even flew.  "It's... ah... not purty by any means, but it gets me from here to yonder."  And then he had the shameless response to blush.  "Ma'am-- I weigh purt-near seventeen stone.  I'd break that dainty girl of you'rn like a twig."  His blush burned deeper under his beard, which had become scraggly over the past couple of weeks and needed a trim.  "No offense," he added as he realized his embarrassed confession might be taken as criticism.

He'd been shifting his weight from foot-to-foot slightly like a schoolboy caught by the mistress.  Now he straightened a bit though he still ducked his head and took hold of the broom handle in one massive, gloved hand.  His fingers wrapped easily around its shaft, even over-lapping, which illustrated how unusually long every bit of him was.  Though he'd added bulk in his later years so perhaps did not look as tall as he had when he was a slender youth, his hands would still span a dinner-plate without effort.

Xiomara Hooch crossed her gloved arms over her chest and maintained her expression of pert criticism.  The old witch had seen thousands of different types of brooms in her day, in every shape and size and for every widtch and breadth of rider, but she had never seen anything like this before.

Part of her found it bluntly irreverent! She was a broom lover and revered the art.  She found as much joy in the supple curve and smoothness of a broom shaft as the finest art or the softest lover.  A broom was a work of art.  A joining of sublte scultpure and powerful magic.  But this peice of Shepherds' - it was goliath!

But she could see that her severe interest in this artifact was putting him off and that's not at all what she wanted.  He was a good man and had clearly set about to solve a problem.  Perhaps not... gracefully, but perhaps in a perfectly individual and wonderful way.

She softened her features and opened her arms to her sides. 

"You mean to say you made her, Mr. Shepherd?"  she asked, even referring to the broom respectfuly in the feminine. Now there was the slightest bit of passionate interest in her yellow eyes.  She'd never made a broom before, although she'd always wanted to.  To combine the features she'd always wanted into the perfect broom for her lifestyle - to have it crafted just for her size and shape and this climate.  Merlin! It was her old school-girl fantasy.  But custome brooms were incredibly, incredibly rare.

"You constructed the broom and enchanted it yourself?"

'You constructed the broom and enchanted it yourself?''

Shep raised both shaggy eyebrows until they nearly disappeared into his hairline, and shifted the grip of his dragon-skin gloves on the broom's handle.  It was shiny and smooth where his hands settled, as if from a half-century of use.  "That I did."  He nodded amiably, though still a bit nervous from her censure.  He cleared his throat.  "In the backwoods, they'se accustomed to hangin' witches," he said with a thick drawl.  "Broom's a dead giveaway.  Ma wouldn't have none of it in the house."  He grinned lop-sidedly.  "Galleons were scarce.  Only way I could fly, back then, was t' make my own and hide it away slickern snot whenever she snooped around..."

His eyes got a faraway cast and a wicked gleam, as he remembered his youth.  He'd been a scalliwag and a whippersnapper-- or so his mother told him repeatedly when she lit out after him with her wooden spoon.  Rules were made to be broken, back then-- and it didn't hurt that his mother was a Muggle and his grandfather actually encouraged him to practice his Craft whenever he could slip away unnoticed.  The broom itself was a reminder of simpler days-- better days-- and just thinking of it reminded him of hot cinnamon-baked apples (the only way to eat crabapples, except in jam, since they were so hard they had to be boiled before you could even skin them), the mildewy smell of the leaves in the forest in autumn, after the rains and before everything froze, and the bitter, licorice-y smell of horhound candy his grandfather always brought home from market, after he hauled in the harvest... It sat in a bowl at the center of the table, tantalizing and off-limits, unless Grampa himself took pity and offered a piece...  Sometimes, it lasted well past Christmas.

"T'ain't difficult," he told the old witch.  "The whittlin's the hardest part, and findin' the proper wood for the handle, and twigs what like to fly.  I reckon I'd do it differently, next time around."  He eyed his old broom critically, even though it pained him to do so.  A thirteen year old had chosen hay, since twigs slender enough were hard to come by.  Now, he knew exactly where to get them-- but it wasn't easy.  Even if his childish self had realized the trick, he still wouldn't have used them.  Shep had been a lazy git, as a child... more interested in napping on the river-bank to fishing like he was supposed to.  Of course, that was pretty much every kid, if he had the leisure to manage it.

Xiomara was surprised, but attributed his statement to quaint... country... American understatement when he told her that broommaking wasn't difficult.   Perhaps it wasn't for him, but it certainly wasn't an afternoon children's craft.  Well not anymore.  A common broom could be enchanted, but not in the way they were made now.  Making a quality travelling or Quidditch broom required, well, it required an expert.  And plainly, Mr Shepherd had found himself, in one way or another, in possession of that expertise.

She really wanted to see him astride it, see that broom in the air.  But he seemed put off about talking too much about it, probably to do with Xiomara's harsh initial evaluation.  She certainly was blunt, and certainly blunt about brooms.  It was a privilage she awarded herself, being 93, but in this case she might have used a little more gentleness.  Mr. Shepherd was new and it didn't serve courtesy to insult a wizards' broom right off the bat.

She sighed and fastened her cloak more tightly around her.  "I have to say I'm impressed.  The more I look at it, the more it make perfect sense to me.  A broom should fit the rider and none can fit better than the one made for yourself," she declared with a tight smile.

"Shall we aloft? That battered Nimbus went off that way.  Probably went down in that stand of willows just about a hundred yards in."

If it was at all possible, Shep's eyebrows rose even higher when the old woman suggested they ride.  Her curiosity and their conversation had delayed them, somewhat, and while they spoke the wind had risen.  His eyes followed her finger as she pointed the way.  The willow stand in question was out of sight, hidden mainly by conifers but even their hulking height couldn't be seen in the growing darkness.

He harumphed when she invited him aloft.  She had chutzpa, he'd give her that.  He felt the first splat of rain on his nose and considered.  "Kint be more than a horklump around there, this far out.  Hags like gloomy weather, but they hate rain.  Probably safe enough," he told her doubtfully, holding a hand palm-up to feel another splat.  He made his decision suddenly, tipping his broom at a 45 degree angle and hoisting a leg over it-- without proper etiquette, which she might notice, since she trained riders.  He should have told his broom, "up" and waited for it to rise before mounting.  On the other hand, most brooms were frail compared to their riders.  Shep had experience with this particular broom, knew it could rise even with his weight, and that it wouldn't suddenly bolt away.  "Up!" he boomed, once he was astride.

It nearly unmanned him.

That's what he got for showing off.  With an "Oof," and a blush, he stifled the typical response when a broom suddenly rises up into a man's crotch unexpectedly (though his eyes bugged slightly with the effort).  When his breath returned a second later, he favored Ms. Hooch with a rakish (if slightly pained) grin, hoping she didn't see it-- or hoping to distract her from comment.  "Last one in's a rotten egg," and rose so swiftly to the height of the trees that he was nearly a blur.

There he stopped and hovered politely, giving her the advantage of his handicap, since she was a little old lady and clearly couldn't outfly him to their destination...

Hooch might have been swayed to wait until early morning to retrieve the broom, if the caretaker had offered any argument or shown more than his scanty hesitation.  She'd certainly not go in alone, but she had more than enough confidence that the two of them, both experienced witch and wizard would be capable enough together.  But Mr. Shepherd seemed to have talked himself into it.

But she was not ready when he mounted up with ursine grace and then challenged her to a race.  A race! Of all the things she'd never have expected today it would be to be challenged to a broomstick race by a man twice her size riding something resembling the trunk of a tree and the destination being Hogwarts's Forbidden Forest as a rainy darkness was falling.

She watched him with visible surprise when Mr. Shepherd plummeted into the air and to wait just at the treeline. 

And then her face broke into a smile that hadn't been seen at this castle in a very long time.  It wasn't her controlled, mothering sort of smile for the first years, it was a giant grin that reached her nearly-yellow hawk's eyes.  That hungry look that made her feel young again.  Young like the Xiomara Hooch who had broken the record at the Caerphilly Classic in 1938.  Young like the witch who'd dodged aeroplanes and explosions to deliver messages from York to London and back again during World War II. She'd even flown the English channel during that war.

She mounted her broom in the proper way, calling her old broom to her hand, then slowly lifting her leg astride.  She pulled her goggles back down over hear face and then got moving.  She skimmed along the ground for just a few yards before she raised the front of the stock and zoomed up with startling speed and clarity.

She whizzed past her waiting companion, passing him close enough to speak the words, "You're on, Mr. Shepeherd," before zipping off over the woods. 

She took her time preparing for takeoff, stopping to lower her goggles, and Shep smirked smugly... then suddenly she was not only abreast of him but past.  'You're on, Mr. Shepherd.'  With a look of startlement, he thrust one leg down, as one would kick a motorcycle (or a mule) into gear, and leaned into his broomhandle at the same time.  He closed on her, but he couldn't quite pull ahead.  His broom was fast, but she was not only lighter, she was more experienced.

Chalk one up to the old lady, he thought, but not only was the wind howling in his ears too loudly to say it so she could hear, but he suddenly realized she would take it as a challenge...

An augery nearly slapped him in the face, and in its wake a peal of thunder so loud his teeth rattled.  Damned birds, he thought to himself, and pronounced the "e" in "damned," even in his own mind.  But it served to confirm his suspicion that they were in for a heck of a storm.  Augeries never came out, except in the wake of a storm.  Nuisances, otherwise, except that their feathers repelled ink, so they were useful in certain crafts like batik... He supposed scriveners used them to clean up spills.  And they kept the fairy population down...

Before he knew it, the willow stand came into view.  "Down!" he shouted and, just in case she couldn't hear, pumped his fist into the air, flattened a palm and made a planing gesture toward the ground.  They might have to walk back, if the weather didn't improve.

Hooch looked back a couple of times to see that Mr. Shepherd hadn't overtaken her, and she felt the tiniest squeak of true pride at having won.  It was a feeling that had driven her for a long time, the thrill of winning even a small wager or race, driven her through some long distance races and had pushed her ever onward in those dangerous times of war over England.  But the most whelling of emotions for this tiny little race was contented diversion.  The weather was amazing; this witch loved a storm.  And to race with a fellow broom enthusiast, even for fun, even at their 'puttering' old ages was a true treat and she was getting caught up in it.

But the sight of the willow grove whipping madly below them damped some of that thrill-seeking fevers.  She heard Mr. Shephered shout and came about to follow his descent. Above the tree line, she might confidently claim dominion.  Below it?  Mr. Shepherd was their truest guide.

The first raindrops hit them on their descent, and for a moment, it seemed they were both consumed with the tricky manuevering of finding a hole in the boughs and limbs, all blowing around furiously.  Xiomara found her opening, and had her wand out and lit well before her feet touched the cold wet earth, nearly grown over in every place with roots and shrubs. 

She shone her wand around, and of course the missing broom was no where to be seen.  That would have been far too lucky.  But she did see Mr. Shepherd, his long hair looking absolutely raggled.  She pointed at her own head, indicating he had something caught up in his hair.  "Feather?" she asked.

"I'd tell you the variety of broom we're looking for, but well, I would be very happy to collect any broom we might stumble upon," she said wryly.  "I've always have a feeling the centaurs snap them."

Like crotchety neighbors who deflate wayward soccerballs out of spite.

With a short of shrug, Xiomara Hooch lifted her wand straight in the air, its tip still lit, and firmly commanded in a loud voice over the wind, "Accio Zephyr!" 

It was worth a shot.  Unfortunately, it was never as easy as that to summon lost things.  And whether it was her voice that caused it or some broom stuck in some thicket, the rustle and cracking of movement reached their ears from some location out of site, but certainly deeper into the woods. 

She raised her eyes at Mr. Shepherd.  "A place to begin?"

The wind had, indeed, caught the willow grove and whipped it madly about-- making it difficult for Shep to find an opening to land which wouldn't result in his looking as if his old mom had set about him with her wooden spoon...  He didn't relish their lash.  He'd felt willow switches often enough in his erstwhile youth to know exactly what he'd like to avoid in his old age...

But Xiomara was already descending-- either more experienced at these sorts of landings or less cautious than he.  Perhaps she hadn't had an overzealous mother.  Or perhaps she'd been the child who was never switched (either because she was always good or because her parents were of the modern variety who believed stern words were enough-- lots of those, nowadays, though they were more scarce when Shep was a kid and less common, surely, when Madam Hooch enjoyed youth).

Whichever it was-- naivety or bravery-- she found her opening and landed, lighting her wand as she touched ground, for which Shep was grateful since it lit the way for him-- spearing through a second opening in the boughs so he knew precisely where to slip through.

He landed and grunted when she pointed out he had something in his hair.  He pulled it free automatically, expecting a leaf and at first he wasn't disappointed.  Then he realized it was the green feather of an augery and he grunted again, pocketing it.  Maybe he had no use for it, but someone might.  He supposed it might come in handy, if he spilled his bottle of ink while writing his resignation letter to Hogwarts...

Nah.  They can't get rid of me that easily...

He waited as she tried summoning the broom.  He grinned lopsidedly when she suggested that centaurs would snap a broom if they found it.  "They won't send it back tied with a bow," he agreed.  "I take it you've lost more than one broom in the woods?"

The broom, of course, refused to materialize out of aether.  To be expected.  In Shep's experience, the inanimate often proved perverse.  How much more perverse would he be, if he were a broom that had to put up with not only the bumbling of first year students, but with the abuses that were the lot of "school brooms," not even given the respect of a properly owned broom?

When the shrubbery rustled, his eyebrows shot up curiously.  "Well, now," he drawled, opening his old work jacket to fish out a Mason jar.  It danced cheerily with bluebell flames.  He screwed off the lid and tipped it toward the shrubs in question.  "Fetch," he said simply, and the tiny, dancing flames shot out to root around in the undergrowth, zapping whatever was hiding, there...