What Goes Up PV Alphonse Touissaint

♕- After classes, Sept. 23rd, 2025 | Flying, Hogwarts -♕

To label the eldest of the Toussaint twins a "scholar" would be a far cry from truth, and probably would garner a few chuckles and snickers in response from him and peers alike.

Those who didn't know the Haitian international transfer student wouldn't have reason to suspect otherwise unless they had firsthandedly experienced the obnoxiously boisterous personality behind his calm expensive glasses-wearing disposition. He had sunk a healthy portion of yesterday evening in Hogwarts' library—head down and books open—analyzing strategies and self-evaluating his own performance after licking his wounds. Yesterday's game was no mere routine Quidditch spectacle—it was a tournament of King of the Hill; without the ever-elusive golden snitch, the modified rules permitted Alphonse to dabble in the two positions the Toussaint played rather well from his tenures at Castelobruxo and Ilvermorny. Disregarding the game's outcome, the pubescent teen recognized his own flawed technique in both the Chaser and Beater positions from a lack of practice as well as some newly discovered quirks from riding his prized Silver Arrow, and would immediately take to the skies once the final class of his schedule dismissed for the day.

Alphonse loathed academics more than anything, yet Flying class would be forever exempt from this notion. The newly-dubbed Gryffindor found Hogwarts' Flying class to be relatively easy opposed to Ilvermorny's version of the curriculum. Aside from its unchallenging nature, the art of flight would always be more interesting than most subjects in his eyes, because it was simply procedural memory—attuning your body and broom to maneuver with the air currents. But what the Gryffindor enjoyed most was the dangerous pursuit that Alphonse often and willingly teetered on the edge of, if it meant to feel something.

Life was riddled full of uncertainty and changes as was broom-flight, so Alphonse had once heard his Castelobruxo instructor say. For the young Toussaint boy, he would never be relieved or bestowed the proper time to acclimating to the rapidfire of transitions in the Toussaint-Fleischer household or his various expulsions. But in those chaotic times layered with pain, bred his adoration for flying where his time and efforts forged skill over time. Flight granted the teenager a gratifying sense of liberty no matter where his tumultuous journey brought him. No matter how weighted Alphonse's troubles wore down upon him, on the back of a fast broom, the Haitian boy was untethered from both gravity, peril, and fears—he was completely and undeniably free.

Owing to an insatiable fascination and equal parts of a privileged wizarding upbringing, Alphonse devoted most of his pubescent life experimenting with loaned brooms to weed out his favorites from the fold, discover their individual quirks, and see how they performed in different environments such as the grim Scottish highlands.

Despite the woeful and dreary clouds that threatened strident storms over Hogwarts that day, it would be no excuse from getting reps in. It was not the first time the Haitian boy would take air amid storms after much practice within the rainforests of Castelobruxo, and it certainly would not be the last. Perhaps now it was the flutterings of adrenaline that had yet to wane within from the high-octane clashing of rogue bludgers and beater bats that made Alphonse refuse to quit despite the obvious hazards.

Worse case scenario, should anything go awry during his solitary flight, the boy packed his waterproof backpack containing a towel, jacket, and bruise paste.

His eyes fell on the rolling storm clouds and the subsequent rainfall that showered across the land, but what caught his interest was another flyer several yards away. Instinctively, Alphonse mounted his Silver Arrow and bolted not a moment too soon with exhilaration at the thought of likeminded company. Heavy droplets pounded as a solitary comet soared through the air, his brown gaze minimized to pinpoints from the rainwater that enveloped him. Slowing to a calm hover in the air, his eyes searched for the other student who had taken to the air, but was abruptly distracted by a series of grumbling thunderclaps and darkened whisps that shrouded his visibility.

Where did they go? Had Alphonse's eyes deceived him?

Further ahead, a sudden whip of lightning cracked across the open air. His dark eyes flashed with excitement from the electricity in the air—the charged air a palpable thing that rattled his core and set his hairs on end. Such excitement soon waned upon the sight that crossed his vision next: Matthew plummeting from the high heavens.

There were no words or thoughts—only a crippling fear that seized his heart and ate at his psyche.

Wasting no time in launching his Silver Arrow to its top speed despite the heavy rainfall that practically blinded him now, Alphonse had been impressively fast to retaliate against his friend's impending doom. His eyes closed and prayed to the gods—prayed hard—that it wasn't too late. That Alphonse wouldn't see yet another dead body belonging to a friend.

Suddenly, an agonizing impact struck Alphonse's stomach and ribs and left him gasping and choking all the same upon colliding into what the Haitian assumed was Matthew's body. His eyes were sealed shut from the heavy downpour and fingers gripped the mass tightly, and attempted to steady his wobbling broom and maneuver them closer to the ground.

He had somewhat sloppily succeeded in rapidly approaching a lower and safer altitude, and just when safety began to feel assured, the Gryffindor was taunted by another crack of electricity that rattled and ripped through the air from a few feet behind his broom's tail. The blast made his ears ring, his vision disoriented, and his singlehanded grip on the water-drenched broom slipped.

And suddenly, they were airborne.

Still clutching Matthew's smaller frame in his arms in a desperate attempt to absorb the fall impact, the two boys barrelled onto cold damp, and cruel earth in a crash landing.

——mentions. @Matthew Campbell
——notes. ---

Date: September 23rd

Adrift in a timeless expanse, a place where the regular laws of time and space no longer applied, a boy knew he was surely going to die. It was in no way the first time but there was only so long one could stave off the scent of death. He had been born with it after all.

Still as he plummeted off that abyss into the next world the whole sky slowed, the thumping of his heart performing a melody of his life. Matthew in a dream-like state no longer looked upon the dark glum of stormy skies, instead he shut his eyes accepting that his hubris had destroyed him. An inability to accept help, a mind too fragmented by rejection and hopelessness to believe he deserved it. He was entirely responsible.

Yet as his eyelids shut over for what would be their final time, darkness could not take him. Matthew began to see flashes of light, like stars in a clear horizon. Moments of his life that burned brighter than any darkness, moments of joy, of perseverance, moments he could hardly remember. In that mesmerising star scape he saw the face of his mother and father. The brief moment she held him in her hospital bed, her face already betraying her condition. Pale as spirit she would soon be, yet smiling with unconditional love.

She would soon welcome him home, they would reunite and all the pain of her loss would begin to heal. The melody of his heart, faltered under the thought of it until suddenly it regained its awareness and the world once again came crashing down. The bitter autumn air practically cut through his body as the velocity of his descent took hold. Like Icarus he had simply wanted to fly, to be free, and it would be his end. Like Icarus, he would laugh, a shrill madness nestled in the sound.

But the pain came earlier than expected and not half as agonising. Matthew's back took the impact side on and he felt the wind knocked out of him as he winced in pain. The heavy downpour still lashing against his face he opened his eyes ever so barely and through the haze of cloud and rain he found himself nestled in the gripped embrace of another. Someone determined that he would not fall today. Yet the collision had not been kind to either boy and as pain wrought through them it was only a matter of time until gravity forced their hands.

Thus the world once again began to fall away only now they were together, drawing as closely as possible so that they might condense the impact, that they might protect one another. Matthew had come to terms with mortality a long time ago, but only his own. If Alphonse suffered from his immature compulsions he would never forgive himself. But time would not offer Matthew another moment of hesitation, there would be no peace to cradle the pain.

Two bodies struck the drenched ground lashing them further with the cold solid impact and flinging them apart.

Matthew flew off to the left tumbling uncontrollably and before long he lay limp on the ground. Entirely unmoving.

For a moment it felt like the Haitians boys heroics had all been for nothing, that death had robbed yet another friend from him far before his time.

Until a cough ripped from the corpselike body and despite the agony Matthew rolled onto his back. There was not a single inch of him that didn't feel aflame despite the bitter cold that engulfed them. The young snake knew what it felt like to be burned, to almost lose yourself to flame, but this kind of pain was not a real blaze. It was as if his body had collapsed in upon itself, that each and every muscle was bruised and begging for mercy. It was near unbearable. But he was alive.

Eyes flying skyward his mouth ripped out a sound of pure pain. An excruciating scream that rivalled the lightning's own temper. Then his eyes caught a glimpse of his angel. of Alphonse. The boy who always seemed to be his rescue, his aid, and better yet, his friend. Though tears were now drenching his already soaked face, he manged to just about splutter some words across to his companion. "Of course it was you, one of these days you're not gonna be around you know." What followed was a morbid kind of laugh, one that drew from the pain of his body but made light of it.

A trick he had learned long ago to mask the fear.

Interacting with @Alphonse Toussaint