The Fifth House: Galegold

"How did you do that?" Harry asked as they waited for the teacher to arrive in the castle grounds for their first Flying lesson.

"Do what? Be more specific; I do many things every day of my life," Soisen replied.

"How did you make Professor Flitwick fly around the classroom standing on his book? It's like he was surfing like a Muggle!" Ron exclaimed behind him, waving his arms in disbelief. "And I can't believe he gave you another twenty points for that!"

"Wait, do you know what surfing is?" Soisen looked at Ron strangely.

"My dad told us about it, me and my brothers. It's when a Muggle stands up on a board over the sea, right?"

"Sure, let's go with that," Soisen didn't want to have to clarify every Muggle thing that happened, so he left Ron with that idea.

"Good morning, students!" Professor Hooch greeted everyone as she adjusted her gloves and took her favorite position to start the lesson, having everyone in her field of view.

"Good morning, Professor Hooch!"

Each student stood with a standard broom provided by the school to their right. Following the instructions, they all shouted "up!" to make the broom rise, although with varying degrees of success.

Potter and Malfoy succeeded on the first try, Hermione's broom seemed hesitant, and Ron's broom gave him a whack on the nose, resulting in laughter from everyone. Soisen achieved his success on the first attempt.

After Neville's disastrous handling that almost resulted in disaster, Professor Hooch warned no one to touch the brooms as she escorted the unfortunate Neville to see Madam Poppy in the infirmary.

"Wow, what do we have here?" Malfoy retrieved Neville's Remembrall from the grass.

"Give it back, Malfoy!" Harry couldn't help but jump forward, making demands.

"What if I don't?" Malfoy tapped the ground and rose with the broom in the air while swinging the Remembrall up and down. "I'd better leave it somewhere safe, like the top of a tree."

Harry mounted the broom and soared up, ready to chase after him.

Before Malfoy could firmly grasp the Remembrall that was falling into his hand, it flew off and landed in Soisen's palm, to everyone's bewilderment.

"What?" Soisen looked at the students staring at him, wondering how he had done it. "We're wizards, and in case you've forgotten, we just had a lesson on levitation charm. Am I really the only one who thought of this?" he looked around with an expression of disbelief. "Don't tell me you left your wands in your common rooms and didn't think they could break their necks in this dispute?"

The Gryffindor students looked at each other uncomfortably, and the Slytherin students finally understood what had happened. The truth was that everyone wanted to see the show, and no one thought to intervene to mediate.

"What's going on here?" Professor Hooch looked angrily at the two students who were in the air, just as she had forbidden.

Hermione stepped forward to clarify the situation, and after confirming the story with those present, the professor deducted twenty points from Slytherin for ignoring her order and another twenty from Gryffindor for their recklessness.

"As for you," Hooch looked at Soisen with gratitude in her eyes, "since you managed to prevent these two from possibly killing each other in a bad fall, forty points to Galegold!"

"Thank you, Professor Hooch," he thanked without showing much emotion.

The points were completely irrelevant to him since they didn't provide any real benefit, and they were just a way to encourage competitiveness between houses, often leading to extreme animosity. Furthermore, Dumbledore's blatant manipulation to distribute points as if they were drops of lemon and Snape's obsession with deducting points from any Gryffindor in his class took the fun out of the supposed fair competition between houses.

The House Cup? Since he couldn't take it to his own house and it was only displayed, it was as good as nothing in his eyes.

"Thank you, Soisen; Harry could have gotten hurt chasing Malfoy," Hermione approached him and thanked him. "I could have waited and told the teacher, but no!"

"It doesn't matter, Hermione, kids are kids for a reason," he replied.

Soisen couldn't care less that Harry's talent with the broomstick wasn't revealed, and he didn't join Gryffindor's Quidditch team this year. What he was going to do was capital-S Stupid, and he had barely exchanged a few words with the kid; they couldn't even be considered friends.

"Why did you do that?" Ron approached with a disgruntled Harry and looked disapprovingly at Soisen. "It was just a Slytherin about to kiss the dirt, Harry had everything under control!"

"Really?" Soisen looked at him with a questioning expression. "Then tell me, shouldn't I have intervened considering the possibility of a child falling off a broom several meters from the ground, most likely ending up with a broken neck in an instant death that no medicine in the castle could prevent?" he asked. "Because it's clear that apart from me, everyone seemed to have forgotten the levitation charm."

Harry paled a bit when he heard the vivid and very possible repercussion of his impulsive actions.

Was flying so dangerous?

But before, he felt some kind of thrill when he was rising from the ground on the broom… it couldn't be that bad, right?

Ron raised his hand with his finger extended and tried to refute, but after several seconds of trying, he only shouted in exasperation and turned around with a flushed face while Harry gave him what he could deduce as a look of gratitude for the help before following him.

Malfoy was about to approach with his two cronies to teach Soisen a lesson, but seeing Harry and Ron leaving like that after exchanging words with him, he realized that it wasn't that he was helping Potter, but that he simply cared that both sides wouldn't hurt each other for real.

So, in his infinite generosity, he let the matter pass and turned around, leaving Crabbe and Goyle wondering why they were coming back without doing anything.

Where were the promised punches?