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"Talk"

'Thinking'

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Chapter Start

Harry loved the feeling of the wind racing acrossed his face as he soared through the sky; and while his Firebolt was a great broom he was starting to like flying with a Striker Unit better. It just felt like he was interacting more with the air in a Striker then when he was sitting on a broom, and most Strikers could easily outrun most brooms.

Out maneuver them to, once you got used to the controls. Strikers were maneuvered by moving your legs around to change the direction of the thrust, along with your upper body to change the center of gravity and the airfoil of the body. In many ways it was like skating according to Hermione; which from what Harry had seen of people skating sounded about right.

It had been a week since Harry had soloed and he and Lynette were now allowed to fly on their own as long as they stay close to the base and didn't do anything too crazy. They had also traded in the Fire Moth's for a pair of more powerful Harvard IIb's. Their days devolved into cruising the skies over the base, racing, aerial Hide n Seek/ Tag in the clouds and seeing who could pull off the wildest aerobatic moves the Harvards would handle.

Hermione on the other hand spent the week working with Adolfine and Wilma to get her fear of heights under control. They were making progress but it was slow and shaky most of the time. Adolfine had even brought up the possibility that Hermione might be better off in one of the new Land Strikers; but Hermione wouldn't even consider it.

"I'm sticking with Harry, even if it means getting over my fear of heights!" Hermione had growled.

The sound of a radial engine interrupted Harry's moment of contemplation and forced him to break hard in order to dodge a diving Lynette's tackle attempt; then he reversed his turn to go after his girlfriend, only to find that she hadn't tried to turn with him but instead had dove away to gain both distance and speed before zoom climbing back up to a higher altitude to make another pass at him. Harry felt the smile on his face get grow larger as he started spiraling upwards as well; Lynette was steadily improving as a flyer and Harry now needed to put in actual effort to win their little games.

Which Harry considered being a very good thing if they intended to fly on the frontlines together. Harry knew that Hermione would never be a spectacular flyer but he was sure she could become a competent one. And with how good of a flyer Lynette was becoming he was confident that the two of them could cover Hermione's back.

Harry looked up from his musings to see that Lynette was now above him again and diving in for another pass. Harry flew right back at Lynette, meeting her charge with one of his own, and at the last second swerved to the side to avoid Lynette's grasping arms. Then Harry kicked over into a dive himself and chased after his girlfriend. Lynette saw him coming and took evasive action, angling for the nearest cloud and pouring on the power.

When Lynette dove into the cloud Harry diverted hard. It would foolish to chase her into the cloud were she could easily change course and jump him. Unfortunately for Harry he underestimated just how fast Lynette could slam on the brakes then accelerate and allowed himself to drift too close to the cloud. Lynette burst out of the cloud, made a hard turn to zero in on her target and rugby tackled her boyfriend so hard that the air was knocked from Harry's lungs and sent the two of them tumbling through the air for a hundred or so feet before they could regain control.

"I WIN! I WIN!" Lynette cheered as she hugged Harry around the neck.

"Yes you finally won one" Harry snarked only to have Lynette cuff him acrossed the head.

"Quiet git or no bath time for you" Lynette growled at him playfully before cuddling up to him again. The two just drifted along for a few moments enjoying each others company before Lynette happened to look down.

"Hey Harry? What's that?" Harry rolled over so he could see what Lynette was talking about. About a kilometer below them a red and brown blot was cruising along just above the tree tops at a fair speed. Harry squinted at the blob for a few moments before a large smile threatened to tear his face in half and he started a gentle dive to catch up with it while pulling Lynette along behind him.

"Harry!?" Lynette asked as she was pulled along. Harry just looked at her with his face splitting smile and said 'Hermione'. Lynette had to process that for a few moments before it clicked and soon Lynette was the one dragging Harry along as she steepened the dive towards her friend. Harry smile and released Lynette's hand so they could both maneuver more easily and followed her down.

They leveled out about five hundred feet above their bushy haired friend and just cruised along behind her. If Hermione noticed she gave no indications otherwise and kept her focus on what she was doing. After about fifteen minutes or so Harry and Lynette noticed that Hermione had led them back to the training hanger and was lining up for a landing.

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It wasn't a spectacular landing as Hermione bounced a couple of times but she still got herself on the ground in one piece and guided her Fire Moth into its cradle before dismounting. Poor Hermione never got the chance reach the ground though as a pair of cheering idiots zoomed in, one ten feet over her head while the other slowed down, lowered itself to her level and snatched her off the top of the striker cradle and started spinning her around happily despite her protests.

"YOU DID IT! You finally flew on your own!" a female voice cheered right next to her ear, telling Hermione that it was Lynette spinning her around. Hermione filled her lungs to really lay into her busty friend when someone else slammed into them, knocking all the air from Hermione's lungs and nearly knocking her and Lynette over.

'And that would be Harry' Hermione thought in annoyance.

"Alright you two I think you've tormented Hermione enough" Adolfine said with an amused grin while Wilma was laughing nearby. Lynette and Harry both had sheepish grins on their faces as they lowered Hermione back onto the ground, and were then smacked over their heads for 'being overenthusiastic gits!'.

"Hermione we will spend the next few days getting you caught up with Harry and Lynette before we move on to the next stage of training" Adolfine addressed her three students.

"And what is the next stage of training?" Harry asked.

"Formation flying, Gunnery and Dogfighting Tactics" Wilma said with a grin.

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It ended up taking a week to get Hermione approaching the level comfort in the air that Harry and Lynette felt and everyone agreed that she would never totally get over her fear of flying, though Hermione did agree with Harry that flying with a Striker Unit was better then the broomsticks that she'd learned on.

The next stage of their training started with Gunnery and Lynette finally found something that she had Harry and Hermione beat at hands down, and that was before she added the Bishop family talent to the mix. The three had been issued M-1 Carbines to learn on and Lynette was soon hitting targets at or even beyond the max effective range of the weapon without much effort. Harry and Hermione learn fast but would happily admit that they couldn't compete with Lynette's skill on the range.

Formation flying became an exercise in increasing Hermione's confidence in her own flying skills while teaching all three of them to work together and communicate.

Dogfighting became and all new experience for the three trainees. Even though Harry and Hermione had take a combat class at Hogwarts (Defense Against the Dark Arts) it was nothing like being hunted by the two expert dogfighters that were Adolfine Galland and Wilma Bishop. Harry found himself drawing more on his Quiddish training in avoid bludgers, following the flow of the game and hunting the golden snitch then anything that his DADA teachers had ever taught him, and Lynette found out that good long range accuracy didn't mean much when your enemy was always in your face.

Hermione probably fared the worst during this phase of training as her lower then average flying skills were barely up to the task. For this stage of training they'd been issued orange painted Lewis light machine guns that only fired paint rounds, which wouldn't cause any real damage but still stung like hell if they hit.

They had also started to learn how to produce a magic shield, which Hermione and Lynette quickly mastered shields and moved on but Harry had some problems; It wasn't that he couldn't produce a shield or that it wasn't strong enough (Harry's shield was actually much stronger then Hermione or Lynette's) he just had a are time holding them together and constantly complained about how his shield was always trying to fly apart on him.

But this was a minor problem that Harry was easily able to work around, and soon Harry was considered the best dogfighter of the three, the only one capable of going one on one with Adolfine or Wilma.

This was a good thing because soon things were going to change.

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Chapter End.

Sorry for the wait and the shortness of the chapter, I got distracted for a while.

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