Future Nostalgia / Harry Potter Fanfic

Flight to the Ministry

Estella guided those who could not see the thestral onto them and then moved to hers. Estella wound her hand tightly into the mane of the nearest thestral, placed food on a stump nearby, and scrambled clumsily onto the horse's silken back. It did not object but twisted its head around, fangs bared, and attempted to continue its eager licking of her robes.

"Okay..."

She looked down at the back of her thestral's glossy black head and swallowed. "Ministry of Magic, visitors' entrance, London," she said confidently.

For a moment, her thestral did nothing. Then, with a sweeping movement that nearly unseated her, the wings on either side extended, the horse crouched slowly and then rocketed upward so fast and so steeply that Estella had to tightly grip its mane and clench her legs tightly around the horse to avoid sliding off. She closed her eyes and put her face down into the horse's silky mane as they burst through the topmost branches of the trees and soared out into a bloodred sunset.

Estella did not think she had ever moved so fast: The thestral streaked over the castle, its wide wings hardly beating. The cooling air was slapping Estella's face; eyes screwed up against the rushing wind, she looked and saw her six fellows soaring beside her, each of them bent as low as possible into the neck of their thestral to protect themselves from its slipstream.

They were all over the Hogwarts grounds, they had passed Hogsmeade. Estella could see mountains and guilles below them. In the falling darkness Estella saw small collections of lights as they passed over more villages, then a winding road on which a single car was beetling its way home through the hills...

"This is sick!" Estella heard Neville exclaim somewhere next to her, and she imagined how it must feel to be speeding along at this height with no visible means of support.

Twilight fell: The sky turned to a light, dusky purple littered with tiny silver stars, and soon it was only the lights of Muggle towns that gave them any clue of how far from the ground they were or how very fast they were traveling. Estella's arms were wrapped tightly around her horse's neck as she flew.

On they flew through the gathering darkness; Estella's face felt stiff and cold, her legs numb from gripping the thestral's sides so tightly, but she did not dare shift positions lest she fall...She was deaf from the thundering in her ears, and her mouth was dry and frozen from the rush of the cold night air. She had lost all sense of how far they had come; all her faith was in the beast below her, still streaking purposeful through the night, barely flapping its wings as it sped over onward...

Her mind was swarming with thoughts as she analyzed her past visions, trying to find out what the veil meant and what secrets it held.

Estella's stomach gave a jolt. The thestral's head was suddenly pointing toward the ground, and she had actually slid forward a few inches along its back. They were descending at last...She could hear one of the girls shriek behind her and twisted around but could see no sign of a falling body...Presumably, they had received a shock from the change of position, just as she had.

And now bright orange lights were growing larger and rounder on all sides. They could see the tops of buildings, streams of headlights like luminous insect eyes, squares of pale yellow that were windows. Quite suddenly, it seemed, they were hurtling toward the pavement. Estella gripped the thestral with every last ounce of her strength, braced for sudden impact, but the horse touched the dark ground as lightly as a shadow, and Estella slid from his back, looking around at the street where the overflowing dumpster stood a short way from the vandalized telephone box, both drained of color in the flat orange glare of the streetlights.

Ron landed a short way away and toppled immediately off his thestral onto the pavement.

"Never again," he said, struggling to his feet. He made as though to stride away from his thestral, but, unable to see it, collided with its hindquarters and almost fell over again. "Never, ever again...that was the worst-"