Not for a thousand galleons PV Tesla Stone Finished

Tes could hardly contain her excitement, bouncing on her toes as she waited for the order that everything was safe, and she could call her broom up. She always looked forward to flying class as one of the few classes that was outside, and therefore not a struggle for her to enjoy or pass. They'd been doing relatively simple flights so far, but that didn't stop her from practicing on the training pitch in her free time after class. She wanted to get on the quidditch team somehow, after all!

That meant that she was confident that today would be a breeze despite the difficulty increase, and all she'd need to do was enjoy herself. They were sharing the flying "classroom" with Slytherin today, and Tes took a glance over at everyone there as they were finally allowed to call their brooms to their hands. She hesitated as she noticed a girl standing a few students down from her gripping her broom with a white-knuckled grip that stood out stark against her brown skin. Was she not feeling well? Tes didn't want to embarrass her by calling out to the professor for help if nothing was wrong, so she decided to just keep an eye out and make sure the girl was doing okay.

As everyone went to take to the skies and Tes's heart itself soared with the desire to follow them up, she glanced back at the girl. She wasn't joining the rest of her class in their ascent. Tes hesitated, legs already tensed to leap and soar and fly! Shoulders slumping, she sighed. As she looked closer she could see the girl was shaking and barely holding back tears. Tes couldn't just leave anyone like that, despite her desire to feel the freedom of the sky.

Sidling over until she was standing next to the girl using a goofy side-step waddle with the broom still between her legs, Tes said softly, "Hi there, I'm Tes." She tilted her head slightly to she was more firmly in the girl's field of view, "What's your name? You doin' okay?" She wanted to settle into the broom and let it hover and hold her weight, but she didn't think her own comfort would be doing her any favors in soothing her classmate. She couldn't hide the way she confidently held it, but at the very least she wouldn't rub it in that she was excited to be here.

Mahlioz jumped when someone spoke to her. She had not realized she wasn't the only one still on the ground. Looking up, she saw a short-haired blonde Hufflepuff, who introduced themselves as Tes. Their name didn't help the fact that Mahlioz had no idea what their gender was. It was nice to have the roles reversed, for once.
The Slytherin wondered if this person was like her, terrified of heights and incapable of mounting their broom. But after a light glance, she could tell that was not the case. They held their broom with such ease and confidence that it was rather obvious they knew what they were doing. So... why were they still on the ground?

With a small tilt of their head, they asked Mahlioz what her own name was, and whether she was doing okay. Ah. That explained it. She was pitying the Slytherin. Unlike most people, Mahlioz didn't really mind pity - she wasn't so proud that she felt like no one could ever feel bad for her. But it made her slightly guilty that this person pitied her so much that they weren't getting on their broom and flying away. It really was that obvious, how incompetent she was.

"Um - hi, I'm - I'm Mahlioz?" she said, cursing inwardly at the fact that she'd said it like a question. Honestly, she'd gotten better at introducing herself over the year, but she was in such a stressful situation that her old shy self had come out to say hello. "And, er..." Was she doing okay? No, not really. But she couldn't tell this Tes that, could she? It would make everything infinitely more awkward.
"I... I guess so?" she ended up saying. "I just..." She looked away, slightly embarassed. She just what? She just couldn't fly? She was just pathetic? She just couldn't manage to mount the stupid broom and get up there with the others? She'd never had to talk to anyone about this before, not like this. "I don't know." That much was true. "I can't do this." She felt the tears burn at her eyes again and was thankful she'd had the insight to look away. Maybe Tes wouldn't notice.

Tesla mouthed the girl's name to herself, trying to memorize how it was said. Mah-lee-oz. It was a fun name, and Tes was thankful it would be easy to remember. She unfortunately couldn't enjoy the name or tell Mahlioz what she thought of it, as she realized the error in her question as she hesitated before stumbling over her words. Obviously the girl wasn't okay, and was trying to put up a brave front. The second Tes caught a glimpse of tears in her eyes as Mahlioz tried to look away, she fixed her eyes on the sky above them where students were zipping by.

She picked her feet up off the ground, swinging them slightly to maintain a relaxed and open posture and not tense up in response to Mahlioz's distress. "That's okay, there's plenty of things I can't do," Tes glanced over slightly, checking on her out of the corner of her eye, "Do you remember Transfiguration, when we had to turn a snail into a teapot? I think we had the class together, because I remember you got it on the first try!" Tes laughed slightly, shifting to tuck one leg into her chest to sit in an awkward position on the broom, perched slightly sideways. "You wanna try just floating with me for a bit? I'm sure you've done that before, and you won't be any higher than you are now," Tes gave Mahlioz a chance to respond and act if she chose, carefully keeping her eyes up and body relaxed to keep the pressure off. "Anyways, you got that spell so quickly it was like a miracle! I couldn't believe it, you made it look easy. I think you've done the same in almost every transfiguration class, as far as I can remember. That one really stood out to me though, because boom! You had a teapot! When I tried it, though, I just couldn't get the poor snail to change at all." Tes glanced down at her broom, smiling slightly and blushing a bit in embarrassment. Struggling in classes made her self-conscious, but it was only fair with her seeing Mahlioz like this. She angled her hips and lifted up higher by a few inches, glancing over to see if Mahlioz would follow her up without noticing. "I actually ended up having to come in after class to try again in my own time for that one. Some of the older students in Hufflepuff tried to help me, but I'm just hopeless at some spells. I eventually got it and didn't fail, but it certainly isn't my best grade in that class!" Tes didn't exactly have a plan for where she was going with her story, but she was hopeful that reminding Mahlioz that there were things she was good at, and that flying wasn't the worst thing in the world, would help bring her out of her own head.

Mahlioz was more than surprised when Tes decided not only to keep talking to her, but also to try to cheer her up. The Hufflepuff was on their broom now, swaying a little like the NPCs in Reltyl's video games. Mahlioz wasn't sure why she was thinking of Reltyl right now, but it helped calm her down a little. That, and Tes themself. They were talking to her about Transfiguration, and they were right to do so. Transfiguration was Mahlioz's favorite subject here at Hogwarts, and though she wasn't sure how Tes had guessed (maybe it had to do with the fact that the Slytherin was rather good at it in class), it was great to get her mind off brooms and onto more theoretical things.

Mahlioz felt slightly guilty, because Tes had obviously noticed her before in class, but she'd never given them a thought before. She did recognize them though, probably from one of those classes. Nodding a little, she didn't say much, too nervous and introverted to agree verbally. Between remarks about Transfiguration, Tes asked whether she wanted to just float around first.
Mahlioz glanced down at the broom she was holding. It was nothing, really - just floating around. Nothing at all. She nodded again, slowly, before mounting the broom tentatively and hesitantly lifting her feet off the ground. She did not like this feeling. She felt like she could roll off to one side and fall at any moment - and she was only a meter off the ground! But Tes was talking to her again, and she forced herself to look back at them.

They were complimenting her, and she couldn't help finding it ironic - the talented one, complimenting the pathetically scared of heights one. But it did make her feel better, a little. She smiled shyly, giving a quiet "Thank you." She listened as they finished off their story, nodding a little. Though she had not noticed it yet, she was slowly but surely getting a little bit higher up every second, and feeling more and more okay. "That's okay though, what's important is that you practiced it and got better, right?" It took her a second to realize she could flip the sentence around onto her. But it wasn't really true. She wasn't getting better. Was she?

Looking down, Mahlioz realized that the two first years were quite a lot higher up than they had started. Her eyes widened, her heartbeat quickened, and she lurched forward in panic. Though she'd started feeling better over the past few minutes, all of that was reversed now that she'd looked down. She clutched the broom handle with all her might, thinking - knowing - she was going to fall. The magic would fail. She would slip. The broom would flip her over. Whatever it was, she would end up on the ground. Oh god oh god oh god oh god- Scrunching her eyes closed and panicking like there was no tomorrow, Mahlioz had completely forgotten Tes was even there. It didn't matter, though. They would probably leave, sick of how pathetic she was.

Tes could easily tell that Mahlioz was not comfortable on her broom, despite her willingness to float alongside Tes. It seemed like it was all the other first year could do to keep her eyes on Tes and off the ground, and Tes found herself eyeing the tense line of her shoulders and the white knuckled grip on the broom handle. That wasn't going to help her stay on her broom if anything went wrong. She relaxed alongside Mahlioz as she shared her classroom story, relieved that her distraction seemed to be working. It worked so well as to have Mahlioz ask her a question, and Tes smiled slightly mischievously, responding, "Totally! I'll probably never be as good at spellcasting as a lot of students, and I have to try a bit harder in certain classes. Sound familiar? We all have our things that we're good at," Tes shrugged loosely, rapping a knuckle on her broom with a firm tapping sound, "and some things we're not so good at. It is what it is!"

Her hopes were dashed when Mahlioz seemed to finally realize how high up they'd been inching. It wasn't high enough to actually hurt them if they fell, but Tes had spent enough time doing what she liked to call "laying really still in bed until her ribs stopped aching after falling off of a horse or broom" to know it still wouldn't be a soft landing if either of them toppled off. Professor Lin likely wouldn't even let them hit the ground in the first place, their sharp supervision and focus on safety made sure of that.

All that didn't change the fact that Mahlioz's hunched forward posture, focus on the ground, tight grip, and closed eyes all meant that the likelihood of her falling off was actually a lot higher than Tesla wanted to admit. Her broom was tilted downward, her seat was too stiff and pushing her off balance, and her forward posture meant that on a faster and newer broom, she would've been flying straight into the ground in a second. Thankfully, the school brooms were slow and safe, and while it was wobbly, it was more of a float downwards than a plummet. All the same, down was not where students should be flying with their eyes closed. Tes jerked forward, nearly toppling off her own broom as she overbalanced to lean to the side, wrapping a hand firmly around the front of Mahlioz's broom handle.

Tesla didn't want to tell Mahlioz that she was going to crash if she didn't relax. Instead, Tes quietly worked to even out Mahlioz's broom, moving so she was almost pressed against the girl's right side and slightly below her, so she could easily catch her if she did topple off while using her own broom to stop their descent. They were moving slowly enough it wasn't a hard or complicated maneuver at all, but Tes still focused to make sure that Mahlioz wouldn't be startled, doing her best to avoid touching her while she was so caught up in her own head. Softly she said, "Hey, Mahlioz. You're okay, but you kinda gotta open your eyes. I won't let you fall, and we'll go ahead and land in a second, but you can't go closing your eyes when you're on a broom. Besides, we're just floating, remember? We're not going anywhere." Tes did her absolute best to keep any of her own stress from creeping into her voice, but she couldn't help but feel guilty for Mahlioz's distress as the one that kept inching them ever higher.

Their conversation had been going well, to a point where Mahlioz was even able to speak pretty easily, and she'd even smiled, however weakly. But she'd had to ruin all that progress just by looking down. Now here she was, death-gripping her broom with her eyes shut so hard they were starting to ache. Her brain, being absolutely terrified, wasn't exactly working properly, but a small part of it was still telling her that it was a little stupid to close your eyes while maneuvering the very thing you were sure was going to kill you. She didn't listen to that part of her brain.

She wasn't sure when she realized that Tes was pressed against her, but one moment she was in her head and the next Tes was suddenly pulling her out of it. Distantly, she heard them say something over the loud and terrified mess that was her thoughts. But she couldn't pay attention - she was going to die, what was more important than that? Though they were slowly descending, to her it felt like a steep cliff, falling down at light speed, to become a pancake. She was going to die, she was going to die she was going to dieshewasgoingtodieshewasg-

She was not going to die. In all honesty, she wasn't sure what it was that got her to open her eyes, but they snapped open, and with them, her thoughts quieted. She could hear what Tes was saying. They weren't going to let her fall. They were just floating. She would be okay. She wasn't going to die. They were going to make sure of that.
Only by repeating this anthem over and over again in her head was Mahlioz able to finally stop trembling. She did not make the mistake to look down again, but instead just concentrated on Tes. They were still here. That in itself amazed her, the fact that she'd broken down twice already and this person was still here, helping her. Maybe that meant she wasn't a lost cause. Maybe that meant there was a chance she could make it on a broom.

It probably would have looked slightly weird to someone looking at the two of them - two people on separate brooms, one of them pressed against the other, not moving at all. The only way Mahlioz could find to stop herself from having a panic attack again was by looking right into Tesla's blue eyes. One stable thing there. Once her heartbeat had calmed down enough that she could breathe properly, she managed to let out two words: "Thank you..."

Tes's heart was in her throat as Mahlioz continued to panic, feeling guilty and worried for the Slytherin. She hadn't meant for them to get so high, and she hadn't realized how scared she'd get! Just because her excuses were reasonable didn't change the fact that this person still needed her, and it was her responsibility to fix what she'd done.

Finally she seemed to calm down a bit, and Tes had never been more relieved in her life to see green eyes finally opening and looking at her. A smile curled on her face, shoulders slumping. She kept eye contact, wanting to make sure the other girl was truly calming down. "Anytime! I'm really sorry I took us up so high. I didn't mean to scare you. Let's move a bit lower, okay? We're almost to the ground anyway!" Tes glanced down at the ground less than ten feet away, "Heck, too much lower and we'll be dragging our toes in the grass!"

Tes tentatively pulled away, careful to make sure Mahlioz wouldn't topple over or overbalance without her there to make sure she wasn't going anywhere. She slowly drifted downwards, humming softly and watching carefully, ready to help Mahlioz if she needed it. "Sorry for getting all up in your bubble, too. I really didn't mean to get that close, but you were just veeeery slowly drifting downwards, and I didn't want that happening with you closing your eyes and all," she tilted her head thoughtfully, "You know, your green eyes are super cool you! They really pop. I've got blue eyes like my momma, but my mum has really nice hazel eyes that look super cool in the sunlight."

Tes looked down, double checking that she wasn't going to outright land on the ground. She was close, but still far enough away her feet weren't touching. If Mahlioz wanted to get off she could, but Tes didn't want to make that call for her. Especially because she likely wouldn't be getting back up today if she got back on the ground.

When Mahlioz was little - probably six or seven - her sister, Hyltwis, had plopped her on the back of her broom and flown her around the garden. Hyltwis had always loved flying, and, though the two sisters didn't share very much in terms of personality, Hyltwis had probably been hoping this particular hobby would be different.
It, of course, was not. Mahlioz screamed and cried and clutched onto her sister's broom until she could no longer feel her fingers. Hyltwis had given up in less than two minutes. And that had been that. Mahlioz had never really thought of it again.

Because you didn't need brooms. She was a half-blood, she might learn to drive a car one day. And even if she only lived in the wizarding world, she'd be able to apparate when she was of age. Brooms were unneeded, and it wasn't until Mahlioz had walked into Hogwarts for the first time that she had realized perhaps she should have prepared herself. Whether she believed they were unnecessary or not, she still had a class to pass. And she'd spent pretty much every single lesson on the ground so far, telling herself she would never, ever be able to do this.

But now Tes had come along. Walked into her mind without Mahlioz noticing, and somehow gotten her on her broom, off the ground, without screaming her head off. That was improvement if Mahlioz had ever seen it! She'd thanked them already, but really she wanted to do it again, thank you thank you thank you they had no idea what they'd changed for her.

And even so, here they were apologizing for getting her so high up, and for scaring her, and for getting into her personal space. Somehow Mahlioz managed a smile, because of how kind they were being. She sort of felt bad for keeping Tes down here, and so low, too, but also she was too thankful to feel very guilty about it.
They suggested moving a little lower, to which Mahlioz nodded - and then regretted it, because it unbalanced her slightly, but she caught herself. As they floated downwards and Tes apologized (which Mahlioz didn't understand - they had done everything right, in her opinion), Mahlioz tried to stay focused on the fact that she was okay, she was balanced, she was going to survive.

"That's okay," she said quickly, when they had gotten low enough for her to speak properly. "Seriously, you h-have nothing to ap-pologize about." She didn't often stutter anymore, but being on a broom brought her childhood habits back again. She wanted to say thank you again, and again and again and again, but she felt like that wouldn't be of any use.

It seemed Tes wanted to change the topic again, to get Mahlioz's mind off of the flying stick she was sitting on, because they started talking about her eyes. "Oh- thank you," Mahlioz said, rather surprised. She'd had her eyes scrunched shut for so much of the time they had spent together so far that she was amazed Tes had noticed their color. "That's cool," she added when Tes told her about her moms' eye colors. "My siblings' eyes are blue too - though way darker than yours." Now that she was no longer thinking of her broom, she could concentrate on appearance, and she noticed something. "I like your bandana."

Tes's brow furrowed as Mahlioz stuttered, hoping that she hadn't scared the other girl into not being able to speak, despite her assurances that Tes had nothing to apologize for. "If you say so," she said hesitantly, not wanting to drag things on and remind Mahlioz of her terror, but still feeling drowned in guilt. "I really didn't need to take you up so high. That was my fault," Tes glanced down, both to avoid having to look at the other girl in her guilt for just a moment to collect herself and to see how close they were to the ground. Nearly down to landing, if she was being honest.

That meant it was easier for her to change the topic, hoping to bring Mahlioz back out of her shell from before they'd flown too high in the air. "That's so cool! I'll have to meet your siblings sometime. I'm the only child, but that's okay! There's still plenty to do around my home, so I'm never bored. I bet your home is bustling if you have siblings! How many?"

She glanced down at her bandana on her wrist and reached up to touch her head, realizing she didn't have her second bandana tying her hair back as Mahlioz complimented the one she was wearing. She'd learned that lesson the first time she'd launched into the air and her hair bandana had blown away, never to be found again. "Oh, thanks! she answered, double checking the knot was tied securely and smiling a bit awkwardly, "It was a gift from my mum! She got it for me when we found out I was in Hufflepuff, so I could have yellow to match my robes! I have one for my hair too, but it'd be gone in an instant if I'd been wearing it." Her smile easily transformed from strained at the reminder as to why she had no choice but to wear the bandana, into a grin at the bright yellow she always got to wear. "I think that's the best part of being a Hufflepuff, I just love the color yellow so much, and now I get to wear it every day!"

Tes glanced around, noticing that some of the other students were beginning to drift closer to the ground. "Oh, it looks like class will be over in a bit! I'm not sure we'll get an O for that flying by any means, but an A is still passing! That way it'll match the rest of my grades," Tes leaned over to elbow Mahlioz, grinning cheekily, "You'll have to help me in transfiguration sometime! It might take a miracle, but I bet you could help me get an E in that particular lesson!"

Tes set her feet on the ground, preparing to get off her broom once more students had landed. She was disappointed she wouldn't get to fly around at carefully observed speeds, or do any of her normal flying activities, but meeting someone new more than made up for it. "You should be proud of yourself! You flew today! Up and down and that's about it, but that's still way better than nothing!" She reached over to pat Mahlioz on the back, maybe a bit too enthusiastically as she nearly toppled off her own still hovering broom, despite her feet being planted.