Queerditch Marsh (1/3)
Title: Queerditch Marsh
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG
Genre: Drama/Comedy/Friendship
Characters: Gertie Keddle, multiple OCs, an ancestor of the Weasleys
Pairings: none
Disclaimer: I do not own or lay claim to anything related to Harry Potter.
Summary: One summer, a group of six teenage witches and wizards created a new game. Gertie Keddle wrote about it in her diary, unknowingly providing the only historical document about the creation of what would become the most popular game in the wizarding world: Quidditch.
Queerditch Marsh
By Spectral Scribe
---------------------------
Part I
“Tuesday. Hot. That lot from across the marsh have been at it again. Playing a stupid game on their broomsticks. A big leather ball landed in my cabbages.”
-from the diary of Gertie Keddle, 11th Century
In a damp stretch of nettle-filled ground called Queerditch Marsh gathered the group of six friends. It was summer, hot and muggy in the marsh, their choice location for relaxing away from their families. These six often filled their summer days sitting on the rocks and assuaging their boredom with creative wand games.
Today, Aberly Quigg, the appointed leader in creating games, was lying in the shade of a tree, out of ideas. His eyes were fixated upon the pretty Pernilla Pennyworth, who sat on a nearby rock with her skirt splayed around her, chin propped up by her hands. Her soft blonde hair framed her thin face.
Aberly was not the only one smitten by Pernilla: Derwin Oliver, the dark haired Slytherin, was currently leaning against the tree, eyeing her from behind. In that same tree, on a low branch, sat Kip Weeslee, comfortable as a red-haired monkey. On the other side of the tree, Myra Snelling, too, sat on a rock, frowning; none of the boys, of course, paid her mousy brown hair and plain features any mind. The last of the group was Rowan Duffy, sitting on the ground against the tree on the opposite side of Derwin. He looked as though he would rather be somewhere else-reading or preparing his summer schoolwork.
“I’m bored,” Myra sighed from her perch. “What about a game?”
“Can’t think of anything,” Aberly replied with a sigh, turning his gaze to the cloudy sky.
“What about our broomsticks?” Myra continued.
Aberly lifted his head slightly from the ground. “You want to play a game on broomsticks? Creaothceann or the like?”
Myra rolled her eyes. “No, not that rubbish game. I meant what about going for a fly.”
“Who will pay me a knut to swing off this branch and land beyond that rock there?” Kip asked, legs on either side of his tree branch, pointing to a rock some three meters off.
There was a general grumble of negation, as no one had any money. Kip looked somewhat disheartened, but he gripped the branch above him and swung himself off anyway, landing just shy of the rock and rolling until his face and clothes were patched with dirt.
“Ye could have broken yer head,” Rowan pointed out in his thick Irish brogue. Kip stood and dusted himself off, and everyone else ignored the comment. No one listened to Rowan. He was Irish.
“Well, what about our broomsticks?” Myra persisted, nodding to the heap of broomsticks lying in front of the rocks and tree.
But everyone listened to Myra almost as little as they listened to Rowan.
“What about a ball game?” Pernilla suggested with a smile.
Everyone, of course, listened to Pernilla.
There was a general murmur of assent until Kip piped up, brows furrowed in confusion: “A ball game on broomsticks?”
“No, you tedious fool, pay attention,” Derwin scoffed, crossing his arms.
Aberly sat up, a telltale look on his face-the faraway gaze that told his friends that ideas were afoot. “Why not?” Blinking, he glanced around to find that everyone was staring at him. “Why not a ball game on brooms?”
Derwin opened his mouth, but apparently could not come up with a decent rebuttal. Everyone frowned and furrowed their eyebrows and tipped their heads to the side in thought, apparently attempting to come up with some reason why it was a preposterous idea but unable to think of a single one.
“A new game on brooms,” Aberly continued, thinking aloud. He was now standing with his hands out in front of him, a sparkle in his hazel eyes. “I’m not talking Stuntshumps, that’s too much like Muggle jousting. I’m talking an actual game on brooms with a real ball-not a dragon bladder or the sort.” He started to pace from the rocks to the tree, hands still raised in front of him as though he were already holding a large ball between his inward-turned palms.
“That’s it? Throw a ball around on a broom?” Derwin shook his head and pushed off the tree, swaggering over to stand by Pernilla’s boulder. “We’ll need teams.”
“Your competitive desire to win at everything isn’t very attractive,” Myra said with a smirk.
“You are not very attractive,” Derwin countered dismissively. “We need goals. Each team wants to get the ball in the other team’s goal.”
“While protecting their own,” Aberly added, stopping in front of the tree and staring up at its branches. It came to a fork where the trunk split into two large boughs in the shape of a V. “This will be a goal. One team will try to get the ball between these branches, and the other…” He trailed off, turning to gaze across the marsh where another clump of trees and bushes resided. “The other team will try to stick it into that tree yonder.”
“I can already tell I’m going to be rubbish at this game,” Kip wilted as he stared across the marsh.
“And what about the teams?” Pernilla asked with a toothy smile.
Aberly blinked and pulled himself back to reality as he gazed at her smile. “Three against three? What say… Kip, Pernilla, and I on one, with Derwin, Myra, and Rowan on the other?”
Instantly there came a flurry of objection from the opposing team. They three shook their heads and protested in unison, with raised voices:
“Why should you pick the teams?”
“I don’t want to be with Derwin, he’s a foul toad, he is!”
“I refuse to play yer game, someone’ll git hurt, and ye can bet yer knuts and sickles it’ll be me!”
Pernilla crossed her legs daintily on the rock, smoothing out her skirt. “I like the teams.”
The quarreling three stopped, gave a general sigh, and stopped talking.
“Right. Now we just need a ball,” Kip cut in during the moment of silence.
“I have a ball,” Aberly offered. “What say we meet here tomorrow. I’ll bring the ball, and we can set down rules.”
“Wait!” Myra cried out as they all nodded in agreement. “We need a name!” They all stared at her. “Well, we shan’t simply call it ‘that ball game we play at Queerditch Marsh,’” she complained.
“Right. You work on that,” Aberly told her as they started for their brooms. Aberly mounted his beside Kip, who lived just next to him on the other side of the marsh. Waving goodbye to their friends, the two took off into the air. Unfortunately, there was a high wind, which caused them to buck a bit in their seats and grimace in pain as the wood cut into their nether regions. Broomsticks were not the most terribly comfortable means of transport.
They landed in front of their houses. “Derwin’s going to seek revenge for not being placed on a team with Pernilla,” Kip commented lightly as he dismounted.
“Let him try.” Aberly straightened up his broomstick and leaned on it like an especially tall walking stick. “Pernilla doesn’t fancy him.”
“Do you reckon she fancies you?” Kip asked.
Aberly glanced back in the direction of the marsh. “I hope so.”
---------------------------
The following day, as the sun rose to its midpoint in the sky, the group of six had once again gathered at their favorite spot on the marsh. They each stood with their brooms in hand, and Aberly had also acquired a big leather ball from his home. “I’ll place the ball here, on the ground. We start in the air, and the first person to get the ball will be able to pass it to a teammate, and from there we’ll try to throw the ball into the goal for a point,” Aberly explained, dropping the heavy ball by his feet.
They mounted their brooms and rose into the air, the two girls adjusting their skirts around their brooms. “On my count,” Aberly announced, looking around at his five hovering companions. “Three, two, one!”
Speeding towards the ground, they all made a dive for the ball, but Derwin arrived first, swiping it into his arms and shooting back into the air. Derwin was quite an expert flier. He wound around the opposing team, who tried to block him from their tree. Aberly backed up until he was right in front of the goal, between the two split branches, but Derwin feigned left before darting around Aberly’s right, throwing the ball easily into the goal.
“I believe that would be a point for my team,” Derwin pointed out as Aberly dug through the thicket of branches to retrieve the ball.
“I daresay it wouldn’t hurt to pass the ball,” Myra complained.
Aberly’s team had the ball now. He worried at first, as he tried to juggle the ball with one hand still on his broom, that he would drop it, but once he had the balance figured out, it felt natural. He passed it to Kip, who dodged around Myra and passed it back to Aberly, who flew under Rowan before passing it up to Pernilla, who looked simply delighted to have the ball in her hands. She threw it toward the tree, and it sailed past Rowan, who had doubled back to block the goal, and into the branches.
Pernilla let out a cheer. “Did you see that? I got us a point!”
“Yes,” Aberly replied a bit breathlessly. “You were perfect.”
As the ball went back to the other team, Derwin got his hands on it and immediately flew straight at Aberly, who was blocking his way again. Their shoulders collided, sending Aberly spinning off to the right and Derwin wobbling slightly as he continued toward the goal. Gripping his left shoulder, which was now pounding with sharp pain, Aberly turned his broom the rest of the way around so that he could see the action.
Derwin heaved the ball toward the tree, but Kip darted out in the last moment and snatched the ball from the air, tucking it under his arm as he flew back down the marsh. Derwin remained stationary in the air, and only Aberly, who was still shaking out his shoulder, saw him pull out his wand and point to a rock on the ground about the size of his head.
Instantly, the rock went zooming through the air, straight for Kip. Aberly opened his mouth to shout a warning, but it was too late; the rock collided with Kip’s arm, forcing the ball out of his hands, and he went spiraling toward the ground right after it.
Everyone (except Derwin) followed him to the ground.
“Are you hurt?” Myra asked as they swarmed around Kip, who was now lying on the ground clutching his arm and gritting his teeth.
“Oh no, I feel quite pleasant,” he retorted. “Merlin’s trousers, that hurts!”
Sure that his friend would be all right, Aberly turned away from the group to Derwin, who had landed and now stood away from the rest, inspecting his fingernails. Dropping his broom, Aberly whipped out his wand and marched over to him, fury boiling in his blood.
“You filthy scoundrel, you could have killed him!” he shouted, stopping a meter or so in front of Derwin with his wand raised.
“Calm down. I wasn’t about to bludgeon him to death, it was only to stop him from scoring,” Derwin replied coolly, as though his logic were quite sound.
Aberly balled his free hand into a fist, forcing himself not to curse the other boy. “Myra was right; you are a toad.”
Derwin’s tranquil demeanor cracked, his face scrunching up in anger at the insult as he took a step closer to Aberly. “And you are a doxy-brained son of a hag!”
“You base, cheating rogue!”
“Useless flobberworm!”
“Beetle-headed spawn of a house elf!”
By now they were both shouting, their faces red and separated by only a short distance, wand tips almost touching the other’s cheek. This was when Pernilla appeared between them, prying them apart. “Derwin, what a dreadful thing to do!” she cried out, rounding on him, hands on her hips.
“Nobody ever said it was against the rules,” he countered, finally lowering his wand. “I was only playing the game.”
As Derwin started towards Kip, presumably to see how he was doing, Aberly saw his chance. The other boy’s back was turned, he had a clear shot… without stopping to think it through, he raised his wand and shouted, “Tarantallegra!”
His legs jerking out from under him, Derwin was pulled to the side, away from Kip, dancing uncontrollably. His legs kicked up and down, and he had to hold his arms out to either side to stop his wild motions from tipping him over onto the ground. “Aberly!” he bellowed, reaching around for his wand.
But Pernilla immediately lifted the jinx with her own wand, turning her wrath onto Aberly, who could not help but smile at the small bit of discomfort he had caused his former friend. “Aberly Quigg,” she snapped, fury sparkling in her blue eyes. “That was a cruel, nasty trick, to hex him while his back was turned! Honestly, I haven’t a clue what’s gotten into you both. You used to be great mates. What happened?”
Derwin, who was panting from his sudden workout, glared daggers at Aberly, whose heart suddenly plummeted to his feet. He wasn’t about to tell her why they argued so much of late. Luckily, he didn’t have to; Kip was rising to his feet, shaking his arm out. He walked over to Derwin and clapped a hand on the dark-haired boy’s shoulder. “Well played, mate.”
Aberly allowed his mouth to drop open in surprise.
Kip continued, “We should add it to the rules, bewitching rocks to attack the other team. They’ll have to dodge around them to get to the goal.” He grinned, becoming animated now as his idea sparked into words. “What say you?”
“It sounds dangerous,” Pernilla murmured skeptically.
Kip laughed. “We shan’t fly into a dragon’s mouth; they’re only rocks. Besides, a game’s no fun without a bit of danger, eh?”
Giving Kip a friendly punch on the arm (after which Kip blanched and grabbed his bruised bicep), Derwin nodded his agreement. “Splendid idea.”
Aberly finally closed his mouth, unable to get over his shock that Kip had assented to have a rock magically hurled at him.
"Back to play, shall we?" Kip suggested, retrieving his broom from the ground.
Continue...
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG
Genre: Drama/Comedy/Friendship
Characters: Gertie Keddle, multiple OCs, an ancestor of the Weasleys
Pairings: none
Disclaimer: I do not own or lay claim to anything related to Harry Potter.
Summary: One summer, a group of six teenage witches and wizards created a new game. Gertie Keddle wrote about it in her diary, unknowingly providing the only historical document about the creation of what would become the most popular game in the wizarding world: Quidditch.
Queerditch Marsh
By Spectral Scribe
---------------------------
Part I
“Tuesday. Hot. That lot from across the marsh have been at it again. Playing a stupid game on their broomsticks. A big leather ball landed in my cabbages.”
-from the diary of Gertie Keddle, 11th Century
In a damp stretch of nettle-filled ground called Queerditch Marsh gathered the group of six friends. It was summer, hot and muggy in the marsh, their choice location for relaxing away from their families. These six often filled their summer days sitting on the rocks and assuaging their boredom with creative wand games.
Today, Aberly Quigg, the appointed leader in creating games, was lying in the shade of a tree, out of ideas. His eyes were fixated upon the pretty Pernilla Pennyworth, who sat on a nearby rock with her skirt splayed around her, chin propped up by her hands. Her soft blonde hair framed her thin face.
Aberly was not the only one smitten by Pernilla: Derwin Oliver, the dark haired Slytherin, was currently leaning against the tree, eyeing her from behind. In that same tree, on a low branch, sat Kip Weeslee, comfortable as a red-haired monkey. On the other side of the tree, Myra Snelling, too, sat on a rock, frowning; none of the boys, of course, paid her mousy brown hair and plain features any mind. The last of the group was Rowan Duffy, sitting on the ground against the tree on the opposite side of Derwin. He looked as though he would rather be somewhere else-reading or preparing his summer schoolwork.
“I’m bored,” Myra sighed from her perch. “What about a game?”
“Can’t think of anything,” Aberly replied with a sigh, turning his gaze to the cloudy sky.
“What about our broomsticks?” Myra continued.
Aberly lifted his head slightly from the ground. “You want to play a game on broomsticks? Creaothceann or the like?”
Myra rolled her eyes. “No, not that rubbish game. I meant what about going for a fly.”
“Who will pay me a knut to swing off this branch and land beyond that rock there?” Kip asked, legs on either side of his tree branch, pointing to a rock some three meters off.
There was a general grumble of negation, as no one had any money. Kip looked somewhat disheartened, but he gripped the branch above him and swung himself off anyway, landing just shy of the rock and rolling until his face and clothes were patched with dirt.
“Ye could have broken yer head,” Rowan pointed out in his thick Irish brogue. Kip stood and dusted himself off, and everyone else ignored the comment. No one listened to Rowan. He was Irish.
“Well, what about our broomsticks?” Myra persisted, nodding to the heap of broomsticks lying in front of the rocks and tree.
But everyone listened to Myra almost as little as they listened to Rowan.
“What about a ball game?” Pernilla suggested with a smile.
Everyone, of course, listened to Pernilla.
There was a general murmur of assent until Kip piped up, brows furrowed in confusion: “A ball game on broomsticks?”
“No, you tedious fool, pay attention,” Derwin scoffed, crossing his arms.
Aberly sat up, a telltale look on his face-the faraway gaze that told his friends that ideas were afoot. “Why not?” Blinking, he glanced around to find that everyone was staring at him. “Why not a ball game on brooms?”
Derwin opened his mouth, but apparently could not come up with a decent rebuttal. Everyone frowned and furrowed their eyebrows and tipped their heads to the side in thought, apparently attempting to come up with some reason why it was a preposterous idea but unable to think of a single one.
“A new game on brooms,” Aberly continued, thinking aloud. He was now standing with his hands out in front of him, a sparkle in his hazel eyes. “I’m not talking Stuntshumps, that’s too much like Muggle jousting. I’m talking an actual game on brooms with a real ball-not a dragon bladder or the sort.” He started to pace from the rocks to the tree, hands still raised in front of him as though he were already holding a large ball between his inward-turned palms.
“That’s it? Throw a ball around on a broom?” Derwin shook his head and pushed off the tree, swaggering over to stand by Pernilla’s boulder. “We’ll need teams.”
“Your competitive desire to win at everything isn’t very attractive,” Myra said with a smirk.
“You are not very attractive,” Derwin countered dismissively. “We need goals. Each team wants to get the ball in the other team’s goal.”
“While protecting their own,” Aberly added, stopping in front of the tree and staring up at its branches. It came to a fork where the trunk split into two large boughs in the shape of a V. “This will be a goal. One team will try to get the ball between these branches, and the other…” He trailed off, turning to gaze across the marsh where another clump of trees and bushes resided. “The other team will try to stick it into that tree yonder.”
“I can already tell I’m going to be rubbish at this game,” Kip wilted as he stared across the marsh.
“And what about the teams?” Pernilla asked with a toothy smile.
Aberly blinked and pulled himself back to reality as he gazed at her smile. “Three against three? What say… Kip, Pernilla, and I on one, with Derwin, Myra, and Rowan on the other?”
Instantly there came a flurry of objection from the opposing team. They three shook their heads and protested in unison, with raised voices:
“Why should you pick the teams?”
“I don’t want to be with Derwin, he’s a foul toad, he is!”
“I refuse to play yer game, someone’ll git hurt, and ye can bet yer knuts and sickles it’ll be me!”
Pernilla crossed her legs daintily on the rock, smoothing out her skirt. “I like the teams.”
The quarreling three stopped, gave a general sigh, and stopped talking.
“Right. Now we just need a ball,” Kip cut in during the moment of silence.
“I have a ball,” Aberly offered. “What say we meet here tomorrow. I’ll bring the ball, and we can set down rules.”
“Wait!” Myra cried out as they all nodded in agreement. “We need a name!” They all stared at her. “Well, we shan’t simply call it ‘that ball game we play at Queerditch Marsh,’” she complained.
“Right. You work on that,” Aberly told her as they started for their brooms. Aberly mounted his beside Kip, who lived just next to him on the other side of the marsh. Waving goodbye to their friends, the two took off into the air. Unfortunately, there was a high wind, which caused them to buck a bit in their seats and grimace in pain as the wood cut into their nether regions. Broomsticks were not the most terribly comfortable means of transport.
They landed in front of their houses. “Derwin’s going to seek revenge for not being placed on a team with Pernilla,” Kip commented lightly as he dismounted.
“Let him try.” Aberly straightened up his broomstick and leaned on it like an especially tall walking stick. “Pernilla doesn’t fancy him.”
“Do you reckon she fancies you?” Kip asked.
Aberly glanced back in the direction of the marsh. “I hope so.”
---------------------------
The following day, as the sun rose to its midpoint in the sky, the group of six had once again gathered at their favorite spot on the marsh. They each stood with their brooms in hand, and Aberly had also acquired a big leather ball from his home. “I’ll place the ball here, on the ground. We start in the air, and the first person to get the ball will be able to pass it to a teammate, and from there we’ll try to throw the ball into the goal for a point,” Aberly explained, dropping the heavy ball by his feet.
They mounted their brooms and rose into the air, the two girls adjusting their skirts around their brooms. “On my count,” Aberly announced, looking around at his five hovering companions. “Three, two, one!”
Speeding towards the ground, they all made a dive for the ball, but Derwin arrived first, swiping it into his arms and shooting back into the air. Derwin was quite an expert flier. He wound around the opposing team, who tried to block him from their tree. Aberly backed up until he was right in front of the goal, between the two split branches, but Derwin feigned left before darting around Aberly’s right, throwing the ball easily into the goal.
“I believe that would be a point for my team,” Derwin pointed out as Aberly dug through the thicket of branches to retrieve the ball.
“I daresay it wouldn’t hurt to pass the ball,” Myra complained.
Aberly’s team had the ball now. He worried at first, as he tried to juggle the ball with one hand still on his broom, that he would drop it, but once he had the balance figured out, it felt natural. He passed it to Kip, who dodged around Myra and passed it back to Aberly, who flew under Rowan before passing it up to Pernilla, who looked simply delighted to have the ball in her hands. She threw it toward the tree, and it sailed past Rowan, who had doubled back to block the goal, and into the branches.
Pernilla let out a cheer. “Did you see that? I got us a point!”
“Yes,” Aberly replied a bit breathlessly. “You were perfect.”
As the ball went back to the other team, Derwin got his hands on it and immediately flew straight at Aberly, who was blocking his way again. Their shoulders collided, sending Aberly spinning off to the right and Derwin wobbling slightly as he continued toward the goal. Gripping his left shoulder, which was now pounding with sharp pain, Aberly turned his broom the rest of the way around so that he could see the action.
Derwin heaved the ball toward the tree, but Kip darted out in the last moment and snatched the ball from the air, tucking it under his arm as he flew back down the marsh. Derwin remained stationary in the air, and only Aberly, who was still shaking out his shoulder, saw him pull out his wand and point to a rock on the ground about the size of his head.
Instantly, the rock went zooming through the air, straight for Kip. Aberly opened his mouth to shout a warning, but it was too late; the rock collided with Kip’s arm, forcing the ball out of his hands, and he went spiraling toward the ground right after it.
Everyone (except Derwin) followed him to the ground.
“Are you hurt?” Myra asked as they swarmed around Kip, who was now lying on the ground clutching his arm and gritting his teeth.
“Oh no, I feel quite pleasant,” he retorted. “Merlin’s trousers, that hurts!”
Sure that his friend would be all right, Aberly turned away from the group to Derwin, who had landed and now stood away from the rest, inspecting his fingernails. Dropping his broom, Aberly whipped out his wand and marched over to him, fury boiling in his blood.
“You filthy scoundrel, you could have killed him!” he shouted, stopping a meter or so in front of Derwin with his wand raised.
“Calm down. I wasn’t about to bludgeon him to death, it was only to stop him from scoring,” Derwin replied coolly, as though his logic were quite sound.
Aberly balled his free hand into a fist, forcing himself not to curse the other boy. “Myra was right; you are a toad.”
Derwin’s tranquil demeanor cracked, his face scrunching up in anger at the insult as he took a step closer to Aberly. “And you are a doxy-brained son of a hag!”
“You base, cheating rogue!”
“Useless flobberworm!”
“Beetle-headed spawn of a house elf!”
By now they were both shouting, their faces red and separated by only a short distance, wand tips almost touching the other’s cheek. This was when Pernilla appeared between them, prying them apart. “Derwin, what a dreadful thing to do!” she cried out, rounding on him, hands on her hips.
“Nobody ever said it was against the rules,” he countered, finally lowering his wand. “I was only playing the game.”
As Derwin started towards Kip, presumably to see how he was doing, Aberly saw his chance. The other boy’s back was turned, he had a clear shot… without stopping to think it through, he raised his wand and shouted, “Tarantallegra!”
His legs jerking out from under him, Derwin was pulled to the side, away from Kip, dancing uncontrollably. His legs kicked up and down, and he had to hold his arms out to either side to stop his wild motions from tipping him over onto the ground. “Aberly!” he bellowed, reaching around for his wand.
But Pernilla immediately lifted the jinx with her own wand, turning her wrath onto Aberly, who could not help but smile at the small bit of discomfort he had caused his former friend. “Aberly Quigg,” she snapped, fury sparkling in her blue eyes. “That was a cruel, nasty trick, to hex him while his back was turned! Honestly, I haven’t a clue what’s gotten into you both. You used to be great mates. What happened?”
Derwin, who was panting from his sudden workout, glared daggers at Aberly, whose heart suddenly plummeted to his feet. He wasn’t about to tell her why they argued so much of late. Luckily, he didn’t have to; Kip was rising to his feet, shaking his arm out. He walked over to Derwin and clapped a hand on the dark-haired boy’s shoulder. “Well played, mate.”
Aberly allowed his mouth to drop open in surprise.
Kip continued, “We should add it to the rules, bewitching rocks to attack the other team. They’ll have to dodge around them to get to the goal.” He grinned, becoming animated now as his idea sparked into words. “What say you?”
“It sounds dangerous,” Pernilla murmured skeptically.
Kip laughed. “We shan’t fly into a dragon’s mouth; they’re only rocks. Besides, a game’s no fun without a bit of danger, eh?”
Giving Kip a friendly punch on the arm (after which Kip blanched and grabbed his bruised bicep), Derwin nodded his agreement. “Splendid idea.”
Aberly finally closed his mouth, unable to get over his shock that Kip had assented to have a rock magically hurled at him.
"Back to play, shall we?" Kip suggested, retrieving his broom from the ground.
Continue...