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It was a cold night. The sun had long slipped behind the Forbidden Forest, leaving only a bulging moon and speckled stars to cast down their glow. Frost crept along blades of grass and coated the last of the burning autumn leaves. It was the kind of night that held a mystery, vast and unknowable—
“Madaraaaaa,” Hashirama’s voice interrupts Madara’s musing. He turns on the slippery stone steps, watching as a hunched-over Hashirama peers out the tiny door. It’s one designed for house-elves but rarely used by creatures with more magic in their veins than blood. Why use a door when you can apparate at will? No matter the initial design flaw, the small, subtle door’s position right next to the kitchen—and the Hufflepuff common room—makes it the perfect place for Madara to sneak out. A secret he generously divulged to Hashirama, he might add.
“Get out here, you’re letting the light out! Someone could see!” Madara hisses, moving to grab Hashirama’s arm and tug him free. Hashirama whines but lets himself be pulled. The wooden door swings shut, and Hashirama immediately crowds his space, sticking his mittened hands under Madara’s robe.
“Do we have to do this tonight? It’s freezing!” Hashirama is little more than a green and yellow lump in front of him. He’s wearing his heaviest winter robes, a green wool beanie that Madara’s grandmother knitted for him, with both his Slytherin and Madara’s Hufflepuff scarves wrapped around his neck.
“It’s November, you big baby. It hasn’t even snowed yet!” Madara says as he pulls his wand free and points it at Hashirama. After a quick Focillo, Hashirama slumps against him with a sigh. “You know it’d be even more effective if you’d cast it on yourself.” Hashirama and his weird resistance to magic irritated Madara on the best of days and enraged him on the worst. At least it made him a fun opponent to duel.
“Not the warming charms. You’re better than I am at those.”
“You’ve had thirteen years to practice, and you’re still terrible,” Madara grumbles, but there’s no anger in his words. He is rather good at warming charms or anything related to fire. Even if he wasn’t before Hogwarts, after meeting and befriending Hashirama last year, he’d have to be with as many times as he’s been dragged down to the Slytherin common rooms to heat Hashirama’s pajamas, his pillows, his mattress, his frumpy socks, and any number of random objects. “Besides, it was you who wanted to harvest moon lily seeds, remember?”
Hashirama has a new idea to cultivate them that Madara barely understands. He doesn’t get plants; Hashirama is the sole reason he has a good grade in Herbology. The only thing Madara knows is this: moon lilies are hard to find except by broom, and Hashirama is the worst flier he’s ever seen. On the rare occasions he could get the broom off the ground, he always crashed trying to land again. It drove Professor Ashura crazy.
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I want it to be this cold…it’s bad enough getting on a broom without my mouth freezing shut.”
“Oh, what a terrible thing to happen…” Madara says under his breath and darts out of Hashirama’s reach when the other boy tries to jab him. With a snicker, Madara steps down to the thin dirt path and starts toward the broom shed in the distance. Hashirama whines again, but follows after him. “You remembered to bring the map, right?”
“Of course I did.” It takes a moment, but Hashirama finally manages to dig it out of one of his innermost pockets and shake it open. Map is a generous word. The Forbidden Forest is, well, forbidden, so there are only rough outlines of it on Hogwarts’ maps available to students. Despite that, Hashirama and Madara have both been under its shadowy branches enough to get a rough layout, especially of the areas closest to the castle. Together, they managed to piece together a few key landmarks—the suspiciously deep pond, the weird skeletal tree, the rock Hashirama swears looks like his great, great, great grandfather—and combine them into a working map. On this specific version, Hashirama has circled a few locations Professor Nekobaa mentioned had the right conditions for the moon lilies to grow. They liked marshy grounds, circular clearings, and plenty of moonlight. By day, the plants would wither into dust but glow a bright purpley-blue by night, according to Hashirama’s book. The only other issue is that their light is only visible from above.
Madara takes the map from Hashirama and gives it another once over, despite having already seen it a dozen times. Hashirama’s complaining aside, they’ve been planning this for weeks. Even as good a flyer as Madara is, flying a broom in the Forbidden Forest won’t be fast or easy. They’ll have to make good time to search all the marked spots before sunrise.
They round a curve in the thin dirt road, and the boom shed appears before them. The closer they get, the stronger the smell of wood and wax becomes. It’s a comforting smell, the same one that clings to Mother’s Tengu uniform even under the sweat. An Alohomora gets the lock to pop open, and then they’re in. Hashirama watches warily as Madara steps into the shed, his eyes immediately on his broom.
“Do you have to get the Yajirushi?” Hashirama whines as Madara reaches out his hand. The broom trembles faintly, nearly leaping from its spot. “Use one of the old Comets instead…”
“I’m not going to go zipping through the Forbidden Forest, Hashirama,” Madara says, ignoring him and plucking the Yajirushi from its place. The black broom practically purrs in his arms, every stick meticulously combed, the silver plates perfectly polished.
“Could have fooled me…”
“I am not! We need a broom with meticulous precision, capable of tight turns and quick adjustments,” Madara says, puffing up. All of Mother’s lectures about various brooms, their strengths and weaknesses, bubble up on his tongue. This has nothing to do with the fact that Madara was banned from the Quidditch team–unfairly, the falcon dive was a respectable move practiced by elite professional teams, Headmaster Hagoromo obviously had it in for him–and he hasn’t been able to ride his Yajirushi, or any broom, as nearly as much as he’d like. Nothing at all!
Hashirama eyes him dubiously but doesn’t complain when Madara exits the broom shed, the Yajirushi cradled in his arms. He does start to whine when Madara holds it and gives a gentle flick of his fingers before releasing it. The broom, dignified as ever, hovers in the air, refusing to touch the ground.
“We’re getting on it now? Can’t we wait until we’re in the trees…” Hashirama asks, twisting his mittens together and already looking green.
“You want to wait until we’re in a dark, cramped space before adjusting to the broom? You’ll be casting anti-nausea charms on yourself until daybreak. Come on, we’ll go slow until you get used to it,” Madara says and straddles the broomstick.
Looking like he regrets ever getting out of bed, Hashirama slowly approaches the broom and awkwardly swings one leg over it. His mittens come up to clench at Madara’s shoulders, and after a long minute, and several deep breaths, he finally says, “Ok.” With a gentle tug from Madara, the broom rises a couple of feet in the air, and they start cruising toward the Forbidden Forest.
“See? You’re doing fine. We won’t even go high enough for you to frost over,” Madara reassures. None of the high altitude drops he used to beg Mother for where they’d plummet in a perfect imitation of a falcon before pulling up.
“...I guess that makes me feel better,” Hashirama says. He shifts slightly and peers down at the ground below them. He pulls back just as quickly, hunched against Madara’s back even though they’re only going a little faster than someone with a sprinting charm. “Madara…you’ll catch me if I fall, right?”
“Sure, if we’re up high. I could grab you from this height, but you won’t hurt yourself.” Especially not with Hashirama’s constitution. He never got hurt or suffered weird magical effects. Not even the mislabeled brittle bones potion did anything when Sota Hagoromo swapped it out. Hashirama didn’t even get a fracture, but Madara’s never seen Professor Indra’s face turn that shade of purple before…
“Promise?” Hashirama’s voice is barely a trembling whisper. It’s enough to make Madara stop the broom and peer back at him. What he sees has Madara swing around until they’re facing each other fully.
“Hashirama…are you scared of heights?” Madara asks slowly. The thought is nearly incomprehensible, but it would explain a lot…
“Kinda? I fell off a broom when I was little,” Hashirama says, his eyes meeting Madara’s, then darting away. Madara arches a brow. “It was stupid. Butsuma bought me a training broom when I was eight because all good wizards know how to ride one, right? He told me to wait until the morning, but I was too excited and I didn’t listen. I don’t know if the broom was faulty or…or if my magic interfered with it, but I got on the broom and it went up. And up and up and up and up. I couldn’t control it and I slipped off. I don’t know how high it was, but I fell at least the height of the Astronomy Tower. I didn’t have a wand so I couldn’t even try to slow down. I landed in some marshy ground that broke the worst of my fall…but I had over twenty breaks from the impact. The medi-wizard said I was lucky to be alive, but her healing magic was nearly useless, so I was wrapped up like a mummy for months. Butsuma was furious, especially since it took me so long to recover. He said if I had to delay starting Hogwarts, he’d make sure I’d never forget it.”
“Uh,” Madara says, eloquently. Inside, his mind is a mess, trying to remember every single conversation he’s ever had with Hashirama involving flying. Just how bad did he stick his foot in his mouth without realizing there was a serious reason why Hashirama was terrible around brooms?
“Stop it, I can see you freaking out. I want to get used to flying, but I…lock up around brooms. Even the training brooms in class, which I know have been spelled properly, even against my magic,” Hashirama says, absently fiddling with the broomstick’s handle.
“Well…you could have said something. If it…if I made you uncomfortable...” With a sinking feeling, Madara realizes exactly how much he’s talked to Hashirama about brooms, Quidditch, plummeting from the tallest heights…
“You don’t make me uncomfortable! I like how passionate you are about flying! I was just worried you’d think it was lame that I lost control of a broom and now I’m all nervous around them and can barely fly,” Hashirama laughs, a fake little self-pitying chuckle.
“That’s stupid, Hashirama,” Madara says, scowling at him. “You had a serious accident; there’s nothing lame about that.” That’s not enough. Admitting to the accident was serious. Hashirama trusts him, he wants to make sure he won’t suffer another fall on this broom with Madara. “Look. I can’t undo what happened in the past, but you’re never going to fall like that with me around. I’m the best flier in our generation. I’ll catch you, no matter what.”
“Best in our generation, huh?” Hashirama asks. There’s a wobble in his voice and the sheen of real tears in his eyes.
“Of course! It’s not bragging, it’s a statement of fact.” Madara dares Hashirama to challenge him; he has all the evidence of his claim on the tip of his tongue. Instead, Hashirama gives a wet laugh, real this time, and wobbles forward on the broomstick, trying to hug him. It’s incredibly awkward to hug someone on a broom. Madara knows this from intimate experience as well, with Mother and his brothers. Nevertheless, he scoots forward too and wraps one arm around Hashirama’s shoulders, the other braced on the broomstick to hold them steady.
The warming charm is already fading. Madara barely holds back an eyeroll, but focuses as hard as he can and flicks his fingers to renew it. Hashirama’s not crying, not quite, but he is trembling and there are suspicious hiccups forced from his chest.
“Thank you, Madara. I really…really appreciate it. Appreciate you.” After a minute, Hashirama speaks and reluctantly pulls himself away. Unshed tears clump in his lashes, but the smile that stretches his lips is genuine. Madara huffs, a hot blush staining his cheeks, and swings himself forward on the broom. Hashriama burrows into his back, arms locked around Madara’s waist this time and his chin on Madara’s shoulder. Because he’s feeling magnanimous, he doesn’t push Hashirama away.
Instead, he urges the broom forward between the first trunks of the Forbidden Forest. The gloom overtakes them completely. Hashirama tenses against him for a moment before slowly relaxing. Madara has the route in his mind as they duck around branches and trees, more careful than ever to control the broom and make it a steady flight. They’re still too far away from the first location, but he swears there’s the faintest purpley-blue light in the distance.