The Freedom of Flying

The Beginning of Third Year

I walked through the Hogwarts Express looking for my two best friends in the whole entire world, Fred and George Weasley. It took me a while but eventually, I found them huddled over a pile of sweets.

I entered the compartment as quietly as possible and then yelled at the top of my lungs, "LOOK OUT! FILCH IS COMING"

Fred and George both jumped so high in their seats I couldn't help but burst out laughing as I went and sat next to Fred.

"How was you guys' summer?" I asked. I was sort of curious about their summer but I honestly already knew what they did because of all the letters that they sent me.

George smiled and looked at Fred before leaning towards me. "We heard."

"And we can confirm" Fred added.

"That Harry Potter is starting Hogwarts this year!' George explained.

"Seriously?" I was shocked, "I hadn't heard anything about The Boy Who Lived since the incident all those years ago. I had assumed he went into protective custody should Lord Voldemort try and finish what he started."

"I know!" Fred was nodding his head enthusiastically. "I couldn't believe it, the Harry Potter, the Harry Potter is going to be in the same year as my dimwit of a brother."

I caught sight of Oliver Wood coming towards our compartment. "Guys, Wood is coming. Better hope you practiced over the summer if you don't want to die at practice."

Fred laughed and shook his head at me. "Oh Lia, don't you realize? Now that Wood is captain, we are going to die."

The three of us were still laughing when Ollie walked into our compartment looking incredibly confused. I befriended Ollie last year when I made the quidditch team. He had helped me practice before tryouts and I started calling him Ollie and despite his protests, it just stuck. It was really just Fred, George, and I who called him Ollie, everyone else either called him Oliver and/or Wood.

"Gonna let me in on the joke?" Ollie's Scottish accent was really coming through.

I noticed since my first year at Hogwarts that every time Ollie comes back from a break his Scottish accent becomes more clear. It was kinda adorable because his Scottish accent would become more pronounced at certain times.

"Well, Ollie..." Fred began. "We were just discussing how excited we are for you to become captain."

"Yea, it's the beginning of a new era." Added George.

I couldn't stop laughing long enough to add anything. Ollie just rolled his eyes and sat next to George.

"I spent all summer planning out new strategies and what we could do to win now that Charlie is gone." Ollie just started talking about quidditch. "We need to find someone good to our seeker now that Charlie is gone. Hopefully, we'll find someone. Otherwise, it's me as Keeper, Fred, and George as beaters, Lia, Alicia, Katie as chasers."

I groaned. "Great, now you two got Ollie started on quidditch." I rolled my eyes and stole a chocolate frog from Fred's pile of candy. "Now that's all he's gonna talk about. He's not gonna shut up now."

Ollie just glared at me before continuing his previous thought. "I've devised a plan to make up smart, faster, and have better reflexes. We are going to start a tough training regiment and I've been thinking about setting a curfew for the team."

George shot up at that. "Curfew?"

Fred said, "Ollie you can't! George and I have plans!"

Ollie and I both rolled our eyes with him saying, "Playing pranks? Look, I don't care what pranks the three of you play as long as it doesn't interfere with quidditch. I need to lead this team to victory if I want a shot at playing professionally."

Suddenly the compartment door slid open. All of us looked up to see a young girl, probably a first year by the way she looked.

"Has anyone seen a toad?" She asked. "A boy named Neville has lost his."

We all shook our heads. With Fred and George struggling not to laugh. They had told me the first time we met that they thought toads were the most useless of magical pets, that even Ron's rat Scabbers was more useful than a toad.

"Oh, very well." She said before exiting our compartment.

I looked out the window and noticed that we were getting close to Hogwarts. I stood up, "I'm going to go change into my robes, I'll be back soon, you guys should change too. Don't want to be too late and have to be like Flint."

Marcus Flint, the captain of the Slytherin quidditch team. Last year he fell asleep on the train and didn't get changed before we arrived at Hogwarts. Professor McGonagall wasn't too pleased and had docked Slytherin 20 points.

I was excited and I hoped that Harry Potter would be sorted into Gryffindor. It would be so cool to have someone like him in our house, plus I had seen his father was a talented seeker and hoped that maybe he had passed the skill onto his son. Even though I make fun of Ollie for being so competitive, I did really want to win.

After quickly changing into my robes, I headed back to the compartment to find that everyone had changed as well. For the last bit of the journey to Hogwarts, everyone was silent, lost in their own thoughts. Fred and George thinking about pranks and most likely Ollie thinking about quidditch. I was excited and nervous to start my third year, it would be the first time that I would be allowed to go to Hogsmeade and I was super excited. It took me almost all summer of helping out around the house to get my parents to sign the permission form, and I hoped that it was worth it. 

With the peaceful scenery passing quickly by, I slowly started drifting off until Fred started to hit me in the arm telling me to wake up. 

"Bug off Fred, leave me be." I groaned. 

Laughing, Fred said, "Come on, everyone else is getting ready to leave. We don't want to be late, and I'm starving."

Looking up, I could see that Fred was right. George was standing outside our compartment and Ollie was gone. I didn't want to but I got up and walked with the twins off the train and we began the last trek of the journey.