InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "ah luv yew cupcake!"

algernon (algol) wrote in bw_history,
@ 2010-05-29 00:37:00

Entry tags:

! 1933

WHO: Algie Longbottom and Hopper Jones.
WHAT: The First Meeting. Sounds like a porno.
WHEN: The summer of 1933.
WHERE: Near Portsmouth, Hampshire, England.
STATUS: Complete.
RATING: Makes Rainbow Brite look like Kill Bill. (G)

Hopper Jones could very easily have been described as a dog: he was loyal, loving, and most importantly, loved to play fetch. Granted, his sister knew better than to refer to it as 'fetch' because that would be simply demeaning, but fetch was exactly what they were playing -- he was too young to play any kind of real Quidditch, but he failed to realize that she was too old to play anything else. Hopper was also like a dog in that he's incredibly stubborn; no matter how many times Calliope told him that she was busy and had to prepare to start Auror training soon, he insisted that they do something because she just got back from school and he was bored, so she took to throwing the Quaffle as hard as she could. He would happily chase after it, retrieve it, bring it back, and so the whole process would start again. Fetch.

The problem was that Hopper was kind of tall and skinny for his age, as he always had been, and thus, also kind of clumsy, which meant that when he went chasing after the old red ball after one particularly hard throw, running as quickly as he could (which was surprisingly pretty fast -- long legs for his age and, well, he was definitely a scrappy kid), Hopper tripped over something -- his own feet, probably -- and came tumbling to the ground. Naturally, he was relatively disheartened; he definitely could've reached the ball at that point had he successfully jumped instead of falling, but now the beat-up Quaffle went soaring into the lawn across the street, nailing some kid in the forehead.

With a look of horror, Hopper pulled himself to his feet and dusted himself off, darting over to the victim of his failed catch. "I'm SORRY!" he cried once he thought he was within earshot, "I didn't MEAN to miss it! REALLY! Are you OKAY?"

One would think Algernon Longbottom was one of the most adventurous kids on his street. It was not unusual to see him darting in between fences, running across neighbors' yards (angering said neighbors in the process), getting dirt and dust all over his clothes, and making his mother worry that someone was going to bring him home hurt, crying, or guilty of some other childish folly. Sure, Algie liked to strike off on random adventures. He always managed to force his little brother Mortimer along whether he wanted to or not — they played games such as see-who-fell from-the-tree-first, who-started-to-cry-and-ran-home-to-their-mother, or a rousing game of pelt-the-other-with-a-quaffle. And although their mother chastised him most days for getting a simple scratch on the forehead or a particularly nasty bruise, it was never negative. It was always "live and learn" to Algie because he learned that diving into a thorn bush was never a good idea and trying to tackle a tree was never a good proposition.

But today was not any other day. He had been particularly glum after getting a dark look from his mother for getting dirty for what seemed like the fortieth time that day, so what did Algie do? Head outside again, of course. Algie had grabbed an old broom and quaffle from inside the house. By the time he reached the front yard he had thrown the quaffle onto the grass in favor of trying to kick off into the air with his broom. His father had demonstrated how to ride a broom and Algie, being the little daredevil, wanted to show his dad that he could get into the air before he came home. So there he stood, feet planted firmly on the ground, in a crouching position on the broom. What did his father say again? Breathe and kick off the ground, tell the broom you want to—

He felt a giant weight on his forehead. It was a slight and sharp, tingling sensation. Within seconds, he was flying. Albeit in the completely wrong direction. Algie fell backwards to the ground and the world suddenly felt like a liquid dream. His head swam as he tried to catch his breath, hands grabbed the grass at his sides before he pulled himself up. It took a couple of seconds before he began hearing voices. At first, it felt like a crowd was speaking to him but as his head righted itself, the voices began to ebb into one voice. His first thought: Mortimer had managed to pelt him with a quaffle and they weren't even playing that game. Second thought: He was going to get punched. But he noticed the boy in front of him and it was not Mortimer. "Er," he looked up to the boy. "I'm fine!" He let out a small unamused laugh between holding his throbbing head and getting to his feet. "Who threw it?" Whoever did throw it was going to get beat up.

"Are you SURE?" he asked, obviously concerned, because he was pretty sure that even though this other kid was shorter than he, he could definitely beat him up if he wanted to and, like most people, Hopper really had no interest in getting beaten up... ever. "My sister threw it, and she's like... really, REALLY old, so she throws hard, but I don't think she meant to hit you and I'll bet she's really sorry, even more sorry than she is OLD, and I'm sorry because it's MY fault, because I should've CAUGHT it, so..." he trailed off, partially because he'd managed to run out of breath after saying that entire phrase on just one breath and talking practically at twice the speed of light.

Unfortunately, Hopper still didn't know if the other boy was planning to kill him for indirectly and accidentally hitting him in the head and... knocking him off his broom, or something, which Hopper now looked toward with wonder, all fears washing away. "Wait, you can FLY? REALLY? But I thought you had to go to SCHOOL to learn how to fly and stuff and -- wait, hasn't anyone TOLD you that you can't DO some stuff, like FLYING stuff, around here, because there are people who aren't supposed to kn------wait a second!" He was rambling again, but he stopped, eyes wide with shock when he realized that this other boy had to know how to do magic in order to be able to fly. Hopper didn't even know there were other magical families near by!

"You can do MAGIC?" he whispered, albeit rather loudly, voice filled with anticipation and surprise.

"No, I'm not." is what he was thinking of saying. "Yeah, I'm fine!" is what he managed to croak instead as he rubbed his bright red forehead softly. The other kid was taller by a few inches, he looked imposing but the fast conversation said otherwise. "Your older sister?" he said, looking across the way for any sign of her. "She has a good arm." he grumbled to himself, looking towards his dropped broom with a frown. He picked it up and held it next to him like a battle standard, canting his head to one side as the other boy stared at him. Or his broom. Either way, once he exclaimed about flying, Algie puffed out his chest in mock ego. "Flying? Oh yeah, flying. Pssh, I can fly circles around my house." He did a mock circle with a finger in the air for effect. In truth, Algie could only hover at best or at worst just crouch in anticipation of finally getting into the air someday.

He was finally relaxing, since most of the pain in his forehead was going away. "Magic! Yeah!" he managed a dangerously low whisper as he bent forward. "Don't let anyone hear you, uh..." Algie didn't even know the boy's name. "Uh, I'm Algie. Algie Longbottom!" He put out a hand, as he had seen his dad do it once so he wanted to see what the fuss was all about.

Okay, so maybe the other boy wasn't planning to punch him or something. That was a relief! Hopper even emitted a small breath of air to relax after trying to steel his nerves against the potentially oncoming beat down. "Yeah, she wants to be... oh, SHOOT. An ORA or something like THAT," he explained, scrunching up his nose while trying to remember what it was that his sister was planning to become. But as Algie elaborated on his flying abilities (or lack there of, but Hopper didn't know that), Hopper's expression continued to grow with amazement. "You must be a GENIUS or something. Can you do it? Right now? Fly around the HOUSE, I mean? Show me!" Honestly, Hopper very well could have been a kid in a candy store. Not only had he just learned that there were, in fact, other families around who were... abnormal in the way that his family was, but apparently, he'd just met some kind of weird magical prodigy. Best day ever, right?

Except Hopper's attention span kicked in again, fortunately for Algie, who wouldn't have to explain why he actually couldn't fly. When Algie stuck his hand out, Hopper blinked at it for a moment, before remembering that he'd seen his father do the hand think with other people before, and so he took Algie's hand and shook it. "I'm Hop--" he paused, mostly because he was confused by how simple Algie's name was and thus didn't know if he should use his nickname or his full name, never mind the fact that he still hadn't gotten to pronouncing his full name right quite yet, "--per. Jones. Hopper Jones." Friends! Hopper was beaming so much that he was practically glowing.

"Ora?" he said, contorting his face into a grimace. It sounded familiar, but Algie couldn't place the word. "Weird thing to be. Is it a dangerous job, being an Ora?" He half-shrugged, instead looking to the broom when Hopper mentioned his flying skills. "Uh. Uh, maybe another time! I think I broke it." he said, throwing it unceremoniously onto the floor with a thud. "My mom would KILL me if she caught me flying around the house." Which was the absolute truth, since Hemera was already perturbed about her son's adventures that day. But this was another adventure in itself! Algie had managed to find someone just like him. A wizard. Who lived across the street no less. Sure, his rapid fire sentences dizzied Algie's still-ringing head but Hopper seemed nice enough.

"Hopper?" he repeated as their hands shook, all of a sudden interested. "Nice to meet you, Hopper Jones!" He smiled, trying not to sound too amazed that someone would name their son Grasshopper (or so he thought), but he couldn't hide the fact that he was still shaking the boy's hand. In an up-and-down, awkward, and dramatic motion. Algie could not resist any longer. "... Is your name Grasshopper?"

"I THINK it is. She'd have to hunt down BAD PEOPLE and stuff like that, but she'd be good at it, I bet!" There was no doubt that Hopper had a great deal of pride in his sister -- in most of them, in fact, except Demeter because she was a bully -- but then, it was also evident that Hopper thought that every single person was somehow absolutely fascinating. At least, every person he'd met, which truthfully wasn't many because his mother thought that he was a walking, talking hazard to the Statute of Secrecy. (If the last five minutes were any guess, yes, he certainly was.) He'd already moved past the subject of Algie's flying around the house, though, mostly because he still felt incredibly guilty about hitting him with the Quaffle, and thus didn't bring into question his refusal to fly.

"Gosh, no!" he laughed at the insinuation that he'd been named after an insect, trying to discreetly pull away his arm, as it was starting to gain that numb, weightless feeling from all of the shaking. "No, my whole name is--" another pause; he couldn't allow himself to mispronounce his name in front of a new friend. That would be entirely unacceptable! "--Hoplodamus." Oh, good, he'd gotten it right! Granted, he had to pronounce it rather slowly (at least, slowly for Hopper), but at least he'd managed to say it right.

"That SOUNDS FANTASTIC. I think my mum does something like that too." he said, stroking his chin and thinking thoughtfully to himself. "Something about being a Roarer? I don't know." Algie dismissed it away with a hand in the air, instead going over to pick up his own Quaffle and the broom again (he had not seen the guilty Quaffle anywhere around him). "Ho-- Hoplo-- Hoplodamus!" he muttered, trying to get it right. He inwardly sighed, since his own name was a mouthful so, to be fair, he went with the nickname. It sounded easier to pronounce. "Do you want to come in, Hopper? I am sure my mum has fresh biscuits!" His stomach grumbled for effect. "Tell your sister to come too! They can talk about being Roarers or Oras or whatever."

Algie did not wait for an answer. He forcefully dragged his new friend by the arm, taking him up the porch and into his house.