Chapter Text
Harry flew high up in the air, doing little flips and tricks as he soared around on his broomstick. It was well after classes had ended for the day, the sun slowly beginning it’s decent downwards as the moon started to make its appearance. It was quite the warm spring day, and having been in class all day, Harry didn’t want to waste the unnaturally warm weather. So after dinner, he’d rushed up to the common room, grabbed his gear, and ran out to the quidditch pitch. At first he’d thought about inviting Ron along with him, but then decided against it. In times like these it was nice to be off by himself. It helped him to think, clear his mind of all his troubles and worries of the day. He could concentrate on the red orange sky, the puffy clouds above, and evening his breathing as he went in for another intense dive on his broom. There was no snitch to catch, no bludgers to avoid, just him and his broom.
Or so he thought.
“Oi, Potter! What are you doing? Practicing your crash landing?”
Harry abruptly pulled up on his broom to glare down at the blond headed Slytherin below him. Of course Malfoy would follow him out here. “What do you want, Malfoy?”
“Well, considering this is the quidditch pitch, I thought I’d play some quidditch,”
“By yourself?”
“I don’t really need anybody else to help me catch the snitch, now do I?”
“Clearly you do,” Harry muttered under his breath. “In case you haven’t noticed Malfoy, I kind of want to be alone,”
“What? Sick of your adoring fans crowding around you constantly?”
“I didn’t realize you were such a huge fan Malfoy. Don’t tell me you followed me all the way out here to ask for my autograph,”
Malfoy scoffed, but Harry could see a faint blush start to fill his cheeks, even if he was floating several feet up in the air. “As if,”
“Then what do you want? A picture? A lock of my hair? Or maybe one of my old dirty socks?”
“Gross, Potter,”
“You’d be surprised,”
Malfoy shook his head. “Whatever, Potter. Not all of us here are under some delusional spell that makes us worship the ground you walk on,” he said, before turning and starting to make his way back up to the castle.
Harry frowned, watching him leave. “Wait!”
Malfoy stopped in his tracks, turning around to face Potter with a raised eyebrow. “Potter?”
“Where are you going? I thought you wanted to play quidditch?”
“I thought you wanted to be alone. Why, miss me already?” he added with a smirk.
Harry rolled his eyes. “You wish. But I wouldn’t turn down a game of Seeker?”
Draco stood, staring at Potter with an expression Harry couldn’t quite place. The silence dragged on, and Harry was about to tell him to just forget it, when Malfoy let out a heavy sigh, and mounted his broom.
Harry tried his best to fight back a smile. “Best two out of three?”
---
“You’re such a cheater, Potter!”
“Am not!”
“That’s the third time in a row!”
“So?”
“So it’s a foul!”
“Is not! That’s totally a legal move!”
“Yeah, if you’re playing quidditch in a barn! That move would most certainly get you disqualified in a real match!”
“You’re just mad because I can pull it off better than you can,”
Malfoy scowled. “Potter, anything you can do, I can do better,”
“Let’s see you try then,” Harry said smugly, with a sweep of his hand, indicating Malfoy to take a shot at it.
Malfoy huffed, clearly displeased with the turn of events. Harry knew there was no way he was going to back out of it. The challenge had been thrown out there, and now there were only two options. Either Malfoy takes the challenge, therefore either succeeding or failing miserably, or he calls Harry a bumbling idiot for the fiftieth time today and lets it go, giving Harry even more ammunition to ridicule him with.
And that’s assuming he successfully does the dive.
Malfoy glared at Potter for another few seconds. “You’re an idiot, you know that?”
“Are you going to do the dive or not, Malfoy?”
“If it’ll shut you up,”
“Then please, by all means,”
Malfoy gave another heavy sigh as he closed his eyes and mentally prepared himself. Harry flew a couple feet away as to give him some room. “Want me to demonstrate it again?” he asked politely with just a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
“Knock it off Potter!” Malfoy replied, eyes still tightly shut.
After another minute or so of Malfoy just sitting there on his broom, Harry began to frown. “Seriously Malfoy, if you don’t feel comfortable, you don’t have to do it. I was just messing around,”
“I’m going to do it, okay? Just...I need a second,”
“Seriously, it is a pretty dangerous-”
“I said I would do it, and I’m gonna do it, just be quiet for five seconds Potter, for Merlin's sake!”
Harry raised his hands up in surrender, not that Malfoy could see the gesture. A few moments later and with a couple more deep breaths, Malfoy opened his eyes and began to sink into a nosedive to complete the trick Harry had been showing off all night long.
He started off easy enough, Malfoy dipping his broom down as he increased his speed, before making a sharp right turn, doing a bit of a loop, and then pulling up again, before executing another loop on his broom, and then pulling up to level his broom again, before making another sharp turn and doing a bit of a twirl. Harry had to admit, it was just a bit impressive to see, even if it was Malfoy performing the trick. Harry even started to clap, when out of the corner of his eye, he caught the snitch the two of them had been neglecting to catch. Harry seized the opportunity to race for it while Malfoy was properly distracted.
“See! I told you I could - Potter, you get back here!”
Harry let out a barking laugh as he went into a dive of his own, sinking down to catch the snitch. Malfoy was a little behind, but not by much, as he angled his broom upward to try and catch the golden ball first. Harry was worried they’d collide into each other as Harry was still increasing his speed and Malfoy looked as though he had no intentions of slowing down anytime soon either. Harry knew neither one of them was going to pull away first, even if this was just a silly match just for fun. The two of them were way to competitive, and pulling away ment admitting defeat, and while neither one of them wanted to get hurt, catching the snitch weighed higher on the list than a scraped knee or a sprained elbow.
Harry was approaching fast, arm reaching out to try and clasp the snitch in his hand. Malfoy was coming up too, arm outstretched, fingertips just barely touching the whizzing ball before him. Almost there, almost there, Harry kept chanting in his head as he willed his arm to stretch just a little further.
“I got it, I got it!” Malfoy was chanting out loud as his hand began to curl around the snitch.
Harry gritted his teeth, straining against his broom, trying his best to stay out of Malfoy’s way, but attempting to maybe, just maybe, smack his hand out of the way to grab the snitch for himself.
Time seemed to slow down as the two began to fly past each other on either side of the snitch. Harry knew he either needed to pull up out of his dive, or swerve to the other side in order not to hit Malfoy. He also knew that if he did either of those two things, the snitch would surely be his, and Malfoy would never let him hear the end of it. He could practically see the smirk that was beginning to form on the smug blond’s face, and Harry wanted to desperately wipe that expression off his face.
Malfoy had his tongue sticking out in concentration, he could feel the snitch’s wings fluttering against the palm of his hand.
In a last ditch resort, Harry swung his arm out as he began to pull away, hoping to either move the snitch out of Draco’s way, or to completely redirect Malfoy’s hand from closing around the snitch.
This caused two things to happen. Number one, it did absolutely nothing to stop Malfoy from grabbing the snitch, because honestly, Malfoy’s hand had already been wrapped around the shimmering ball, and unless Harry was willing to snatch the ball away from him, it would have been no use regardless. It did however, have the effect of knocking the Slytherin completely off balance, and before Malfoy even realized what was happening, he was falling into a rapid descent on his broom, and with only one hand to guide his broom, was approaching the ground faster than usual.
Harry had enough time to pull out of his dive to notice what was happening, but by the time his brain could process what exactly was going on, it was too late to try and stop it from happening. Malfoy hit the ground hard. Harry quickly descended to the ground and was off his broom in an instant, running towards Malfoy.
“Malfoy! Are you okay, say something!” Harry said, rushing over, and rolling Malfoy off of his broom and onto the hard ground.
Malfoy groaned. “That,” he said, coughing quite hard. “Was most definitely,” he said between another fit of coughing. “Was a foul,”
Harry laughed nervously, looking the blond over. “Are you okay?”
“Mentally?” he asked, holding up the snitch with a smile. “I feel fantastic! Physically...not so much,”
“I’m so sorry,”
“I told you you’re an idiot,”
“Can you stand up?”
“Maybe,” Malfoy went to push up off the ground, but fell back over with a yelp. “Or not,”
“Oh no,”
“Well, good news is my legs aren’t broken,” he said, wiggling his legs around.
“And your arm?”
The arm in which he caught the snitch with seemed to be fine, if not a bit bruised and a bit stiff to move. The arm he’d been using to try and steer the broom, however, wasn’t looking all that good. He tried to move it several times, but each time he tried, he groaned, and Harry could tell he was trying to fight back tears. “I think it is most definitely broken,”
“This is all my fault,”
“I know...because you’re an idiot,”
Harry could appreciate Malfoy, even with a broken arm, trying to rile him up, but now wasn’t the time. “Okay, I’m going to wrap my arm around you, and help you up. Then I’m taking you to Madam Pomfrey,”
“By all means, lead the way,”
So Harry bent down and wrapped his arm around Malfoy’s backside, and helped heave him up off the ground. Malfoy’s balance was a little off, but together they made their way up to the castle little by little. Harry hadn’t noticed how late it had gotten, the sun having set some time ago, as they approached the castle in the moonlight. A part of Harry was aware that it was way past curfew and that they were sure to be in a huge amount of trouble, but another part of him pushed that thought aside. He could worry about detention later, right now he needed to get Malfoy to the hospital.
Upon arriving at the hospital wing, Harry didn’t even have time to say anything, Madam Pomfrey appeared at the sound of their footsteps and immediately dragged Malfoy away and propped him up in one of the vacant hospital beds. Harry took a seat beside him as Madam Pomfrey began to fuss over him, asking Harry what had happened to the poor boy.
“This wasn’t due to another duel between the two of you, now was it?” she asked with a scolding look, as if she was talking to two five year olds and not to responsible-ish teenagers.
“No, ma’am,” Harry started to explain, but Malfoy beat him to it. “Potter had been out flying on the quidditch pitch when I spotted him out there. He asked me if I wanted to play a game or two of one on one quidditch. Potter started showing off some of the tricks he’d learned on his broom over the summer, and when I went to try and execute one of the dives, I ended up falling over and crashing,”
Harry gave Malfoy a frown and a look of that is most definitely not what happened, but Malfoy decided to ignore it for now. “I wanted to challenge him, prove that I could do those tricks just as well as he could. It’s my fault I got hurt,”
Madam Pomfrey gave them both a disapproving look, but nodded, returning back to giving Malfoy several potions. “This will help with the bruising dear. You too, Mr. Potter, drink up, I see you’ve earned yourself a few scratches as well,” she said, passing him a vial of an unknown liquid as well.
“Always up to trouble, I see,” came a familiar voice, and Harry turned around to see Professor Snape standing in the doorway, Professor McGonagall not too far behind. “Tell me, why is it, whenever Draco is involved in something, you, Mr. Potter, are never too far behind?”
“I-”
“Leave him alone, Severus,” Malfoy said with a roll of his eyes. “He didn’t do anything,”
“But I-”
“Quiet, Potter!” both Snape and Malfoy hissed at the same time.
Harry shut his mouth.
“Someone better do some explaining,” McGonagall said.
“The two of us were out flying,” Malfoy said. “Potter over there was showing off all of his fancy tricks, so I thought I’d show him one of my own to shut him up. Clearly, that didn’t go as planned,” he said, indicating towards his now bandaged arm.
“And why were you two out after curfew?” The Head of Gryffindor asked.
Harry opened his mouth to speak, but Malfoy once again beat him to it. “I challenged him. I was upset about the loss between Gryffindor and Slytherin last Saturday and wanted a rematch. So I met him out on the field after dinner and we played a game or two. And then he started showing off all his fancy diving skills, and I just wanted to prove that I could do it too,”
“So once again, you two let your ego get in the way of making proper decisions?” Snape stated. It wasn’t really a question.
Harry continued to stare at Malfoy with a look of I can’t believe you’re covering for me, what are you up to?, but nodded anyways to Snape’s questioning. “Yes, sir. We were just trying to have some fun but got just a little too carried away,” Harry said, giving Malfoy what he hopped looked like a sincere apology.
“Detention,” Snape said to Malfoy, but he was eyeing Harry when he said it. “This weekend. You can cancel quidditch practice as you’ll be grading potions essays with me,”
“The same goes to you, Mr. Potter,” McGonagall said. “You can help me clean up the Owlery.”
Harry and Malfoy both shared a look, but nodded in agreement, seeing as they couldn’t really argue with their head of houses.
“Feel better soon, Mr. Malfoy,” McGonagall said as the two turned to leave the hospital wing. “And do try to get along from now on…” she said, before disappearing.
“You’re all set!” Madam Pomfrey said as she dapped away at the last scar on Malfoy’s forehead. “Should be good as new by tomorrow night!”
Malfoy sighed in relief. “Well that’s good,”
Harry looked sheepish. “I really am sorry,”
“For not catching the snitch or breaking my arm?” Malfoy asked, but surprisingly there was no bite behind it. In fact, there were tiny traces of a smirk on his lips.
Harry began to smile too. “I’d have caught the snitch if you hadn’t of been cheating,”
“Me? Why, Potter, I-”
“Okay you two!” Madam Pomfrey cut in. “That’s enough for one day! Off you go, Potter, Malfoy needs his rest,”
Harry didn’t much feel like arguing, so he stood, told Malfoy to feel better, and then left the hospital wing, suddenly feeling very tired.
--
The next morning found Harry being interrogated by his two best friends. He’d managed to sneak into his dorm last night unnoticed, and promptly crawled into his bed and fell asleep. He’d woken up a bit late, and upon realizing that his dorm room was empty, rushed out of bed, threw on his clothes for the day, and made his way out of the common room and down to the great hall.
“Where were you yesterday?” Hermione asked, clearly having been worried sick. “We couldn’t find you anywhere!”
“Yeah, mate, what gives?” Ron asked, stuffing some toast into his mouth.
Harry shrugged, not wanting to beat around the bush, but also not wanting to cause his two friends too much alarm. “I was hanging out with Malfoy,”
“Hanging out?” Hermione asked.
“Malfoy?” Ron choked.
Harry shrugged again. “Yeah, after dinner, I went out flying and he caught me out there. He had wanted to do some practicing on his own, and I actually felt kind of bad, so we played some one on one quidditch for a while,”
“And Malfoy is in a cast because?” Hermione asked, indicating across the hall to the blond who was indeed eating with his left hand as his right was all bandaged up.
Harry blushed slightly. “I, uh, well you see-”
“You didn’t, did you Harry?” Hermione asked, tone and face disapproving.
“What, break his arm? Merlin no! We were having a one on one quidditch match, and in an effort to get him to not catch the snitch, I tried knocking his hand away, but I ended up throwing him completely off balance,”
“So, you pushed him to the ground?” Ron asked, torn between looking concerned and amused.
“Not intentionally...but yes. But I feel horrible about it!” he said to the look Hermione was giving him. “I walked him back to the infirmary and made sure he was okay before Madam Pomfrey kicked me out,”
“And is he okay?” Hermione pressed.
“She said his arm should be good as new by the end of the day,”
“So how much trouble did you get into?” Ron asked.
“Just weekend detention with McGonagall,”
“For breaking Malfoy’s arm?” Hermione asked surprised. “Surely I thought she’d give you at least a week's worth! Possibly even two.”
Harry shook his head. “That’s the thing. Malfoy didn’t blame it on me,”
“What?” Ron asked, clearly having been caught off guard, his spoon full of porridge half way to his mouth. “Why not?”
Harry looked across the hall and locked eyes with Malfoy. He had this weird expression on his face, something halfway to a smile. But then he nodded his head and looked away. Harry shrugged. “I haven’t a clue,”