Illusory § Order of the Phoenix

XXXV. SEE A MAN ABOUT A DOG

✯      ✯      ✯

The forest outside of Hogsmeade was not at all as Antares remembered it. Then again, the last time he had been out here was with Adrian and Vita. By then, it was well past midnight.

It was almost scary the way he had forgotten about the place. He had spent four years enjoying Hogsmeade weekends, plus the three years spent wandering around Hogwarts before that. Things like that are not something you forget, but Antares chalked it up to the stress of the last half-year.

A breath left him.

A half-year, and in just two days, he would be nineteen. It wasn't a significant milestone by any means. His seventeenth birthday was the last big celebration in the family, as was most of his birthdays. His mother preferred small dinners with the Nine, and his Aunt Diana was never in the country.

Sirius' birthday was interesting, to say the least. It was just the two of them and Remus — who surprisingly proved to be a very excited drunk, unlike his uncle, who would become very sombre at random moments of the night. There were times when Antares would be pulled aside (or as aside as he could be in a group of three) by Sirius to have the most sincere, one-sided conversation of his life. Sirius would start by telling Antares how proud he was to be an uncle and how he was the best thing to happen to their family — a notion Antares found a tiny bit grand. And every time he did, Remus would chime in about being his professor and remind him what a 'wonderful student he was.'

Antares couldn't deny that.

They would joke about him being a Slytherin and, in his inebriated state,  felt the need to bring up Andromeda as a constant reminder. Later in the night, Antares and Sirius introduced Remus to their game of darts. They only played one round before Sirius stopped the game, exclaiming that they needed better music than the garbage playing on the radio. Antares didn't think he had ever seen his uncle run so fast, returning with a stack of vinyl and a levitating turntable behind him. Needless to say, they were only half paying attention to the game after that. Remus was sure that he won, but none of them remembered their scores.

Antares couldn't say that he remembered much after that, but he did remember, at one point, they were talking about brooms. Sirius was adamant that the Firebolt he gifted Harry was the best broom for years to come, proudly stating that nothing would ever beat its speed, and while true, Antares' pride as an Australian couldn't let that statement stand.

Even though he didn't fly often, he owned a broom — a custom Falconer IV, in fact. Make no mistake, the Firebolt was a masterpiece, but nothing could beat Antares' broom in the air. The Firebolt had speed, precision and balance, but so did the Falconer IV. According to Which Broomstick? the difference between the two was negligible.

Where the Falconer IV shone was in its braking and acceleration. Topping out at 150 miles an hour, the Firebolt could only be stopped by its built-in braking charm, causing it to drift at such a high speed. The instant acceleration after braking forces the rider to swerve, unbalancing them in the process. The cause: using birch twigs in the broomtail. This is where the Falconer had what you would call an unfair advantage. Intertwined with its hazel twig broomtail were the cut and thinned-out spines of a Ramora.