Work Text:
“Okay, your left hand should be in front of your right, unless you’re left handed. Are you left handed? I should know this, shouldn’t I?”
“Charlie, I know how to fly a broom!” you said to your boyfriend who stood beside you running his hands down your arms and spine, adjusting everything about your posture as you floated on his Comet just a few feet in the air.
The training grounds were empty on the weekend and Charlie had said he had a surprise for you. By surprise you had hoped Charlie meant a picnic or a stroll through the grounds hand-in-hand. You had not expected a lesson in the basics of broomcraft several years below your education.
You had only been dating a few months, so short that you still often found your cheeks heating the instant anyone asked you about him. When he touched you, the hairs that lined your body stood in attention. And even just seeing him across the classroom made you smile and lord help you if he looked at you in return. You basically died inside every time he sent a wink your way. Even now, hearing him laugh at your teasing, the soft melody of it rumbling from deep in his chest until it escaped his lips, made you sigh with love for him. Only a few months, sure, but what was forever but a series of a couple months all strung together?
“Not the way we’re about to,” he said with a shake of his head.
Before you could process what was going on, Charlie opened a small box from his pocket. You watched as the golden orb fluttered around you, indecisive, before shooting off in a high arc over the castle wall. And just as you watched the speck disappear beyond the stone, you felt a push upon the brush-end of your mount and soon an arm was wrapped around your waist and you were blasting forward towards the wall of rock just in front of you.
You had enough time to let out a scream, to move one hand to dig your claws into your boyfriend’s forearm that held fast across your belly. You closed your eyes expecting an impact, but none came.
You blinked open and all you could see where fluffy white clouds dusted with grey on their bottom edges. You were pressed hard into Charlie’s chest, enough to feel the belly-laughs you knew were erupting from him, even if you couldn’t hear it through the roar of the wind around you.
Charlie leveled out well above the castle, the expanse of lake and countryside gorgeous below you, like a landscape painting of pristine Scotland. You felt your heart rate begin to slow as the beauty of the earth below and the man behind began to fill your mind.
“Do you see it?” Charlie asked right into your ear, so warm you couldn’t help but lean into it.
“See what?” you managed to respond.
“The snitch, silly!”
“Um, am I just looking for something gold?” you asked.
Charlie snuggled into your back, nestling his chin against your shoulder as he began to scan the skies.
“Not exactly. You’re mostly looking for movement, somewhere there is change where there shouldn’t be. Sometimes I even find if I unfocus my eyes, just stare at a point, I’ll notice it more quickly. Obviously, that leaves me open to bludgers, but sometimes you get desperate.”
You closed your eyes as he spoke, taking in his advice. After a moment, you opened your eyes and found the peak of Gryffindor Tower off in the distance. You stared at the point atop the cupola and waited as the scenery slowly blurred.
After a few minutes of hovering with the soft wind ebbing your body back and forth against your partner, you saw it. Without a word, you pointed to a spot beyond the owlery, and immediately Charlie had you darting.
You had never moved so fast in your life. You clung to Charlie for support as he expertly guided you around corners and bends, drops under bridges and lifts over courtyards. And next thing you knew, you were balancing on your hand, leaning forward at Charlie’s command, to catch the snitch within your fingers.
As you felt the wings flutter again your palm, Charlie slowed. Only as the wind died down could you hear his laughter and his cheers. As you slowed to a hover just over gardens of Hagrid’s hut, Charlie’s second arm came around to hold you tight.
“That’s it, Y/N! Simply brilliant! That’s why I love you so. You trusted me and you followed your gut and you’re just amazing!”
He gave you a second squeeze at the last word, but the air had already left your lungs. The broom dropped unceremoniously from underneath you but Charlie’s hold kept you steady.
“You— you love me?”
Charlie stiffened. His arms loosened as the tension grew between the two of you.
“You said you love me,” you prodded again.
Charlie breathed with all the nervous energy he had, “I did, didn’t I?”
“You did,” you said as you pulled yourself fully from his embrace. You could feel your heart constricting and the tears coming.
“Not how I wanted to say it, but nonetheless true,” he whispered as he reached for your hand, pulling you to face him, “I love you. I love you so much. My love,” he emphasized with a rub of his calloused palm across your cheek. “My brilliant, perfect, wonderful love.”
You bent forward and planted a soft kiss upon his lips.
“My kind, brave, beautiful love,” you said when you pulled away. You weren’t sure who smiled first or biggest but it didn’t really matter. The words were out there now and you were certainly going to say them every day from now on, especially if it earned you the kind of time-stopping kisses that Charlie was providing with every utterance, each more passionate than the last, until you had to stop at risk of missing dinner, something Charlie simply wouldn’t allow.