Harry flopped down on the couch, completely bored. He had excused himself from breakfast, leaving Ron to Hermione, and found himself with an entire Saturday of potential boredom. Normally he had something to do, an essay or something, but today he found himself with no school work at all hanging over his head.
Draco, who was sitting in a chair across from him, didn’t comment on his state of boredom, if the blond even realized that Harry was in the room. His head was bent over some parchment of homework, an open book lying on the armrest of the chair.
Watching Draco calculating some angle—or something that looked like an angle… whatever it was it was some form of Arithmancy—from where he stood, Harry thought of something to do with this free Saturday afternoon. He turned back into the bedroom and sought out a small box from the depths of his trunk. He hadn’t tried out the practice snitch he’d gotten at Christmas yet. Grabbing his Firebolt in the other hand, he headed back into the other room.
“Draco, let’s go play Quidditch.”
Draco looked up with a look that clearly stated that Harry was approaching insanity.
“Come on! It’s a beautiful day and I have no homework.” He pointed at the Arithmancy (or whatever it was) with the handle of his broom. “And I bet that isn’t due until Friday, knowing you. So let’s go outside.”
Draco sat back against the chair. “And suddenly seeing two rivals playing a semi- friendly game of Quidditch will look normal to everyone else in Hogwarts?” he drawled.
Harry pouted trust Draco to find some problem with his idea. “We’ll find some place that they can’t get to then.”
Draco thought for a moment.
“Come on, I want to see how I do against a Veriae.” Harry was almost begging.
A slow smile played with Draco’s lips. “All right, you’re on. Meet me at the edge of the Forbidden Forest in ten minutes.”
Harry followed Draco through the Forbidden Forest down a path that he had never been down before…if it could truly be called a path. It seemed, though, that Draco knew exactly where he was going, and in a few minutes the two boys had reached an overgrown clearing that was only a little smaller than the Hogwarts Qudditch pitch. Sunlight splintered down through an overgrowth of leaves, turning the grass a golden green color.
“Not bad.” Harry murmured in appreciation.
“I used this clearing when I was learning how to fly.” Draco offered in explanation.
“So you can fly with only your wings now?” Harry asked. “I see you didn’t bring your broom.”
“My wings have reached their proportional size. They’ll continue to grow as I do, but there won’t be any more drastic changes. So, yes, they’ll support my weight in flight.”
Both boys removed their outer school robes, draping them over a nearby tree branch. Harry then began fiddling with the practice snitch’s controls.
Practice snitches worked exactly like real snitches, except that one could restrict where they went. It wouldn’t do, after all, to be chasing the snitch all over the Forbidden Forest itself. Harry estimated the size of the clearing, thinking there was maybe 1/8 difference between the clearing and the Hogwarts Quidditch pitch.
Draco met him in about the middle of the clearing, holding a practice bludger. Practice bludgers were controlled the same way as practice snitches, but you could also set how hard they would knock into you.
“I set it to be reasonably annoying.” Draco smirked as he let it go. The bludger arched out of sight, into the treetops, but both boys could hear it moving over their heads.
“Ready?” Harry held out the snitch.
“Always.”
Both boys let the snitch go. Harry then mounted his Firebolt and kicked off the ground as Draco leapt upward, wings extending as he did so.
Almost instantly the bludger arched down through the leafy canopy and whizzed by Draco’s ear. It headed for the ground and then arched upwards to follow after Harry for a while as he tried to evade it.
Harry had never considered how absolutely wonderful beaters were, as when there was no way to deflect the bludger. You had to evade it until it got bored of you and went after the other player.
“This is ‘mildly annoying’?” Harry yelled to Draco after the fifth time he had to evade the bludger.
“Yes. We could set it worse if you want.”
“No, this is fine.”
Hermione was buried in the library, all of her course books (and even some that weren’t required for the courses she took) spread out over the table in front of her. She was writing furiously, working on some study guide, and Ron approached the table with some trepidation. She had been working since the end of breakfast and it was now late in the afternoon. Even Hermione would need a break after that.
“Umm…Hermione?” Ron asked quietly.
Hermione made some sound of acknowledgement, her hand never stopping the furious speed that it was working at.
“You know, you’ve been working since the morning, and it’s about four right now…” a nod was the only thing that let Ron know she was even listening to him. Somewhat more boldly than he felt, he continued, “And anyone would need a break after that…so I wondered if you…might want that walk now?”
The writing slowed and stopped. Ron braced for a lecture on how work was more important, blah blah, and was surprised when Hermione put down the quill. The admonishment he’d been waiting for turned out to be a smile and a “That sounds like a good idea. Let me clean this up, and drop my books off in the dorm, and then we’ll take that walk.”
As Hermione began to put her books back into her bag, Ron blinked in amazement. Not that he was complaining though.
Harry ducked under the bludger and twirled into the greenery above the clearing, successfully losing the annoying thing. Of course, now he couldn’t see where he was because of the leaves and dove back down…right into the path of a rather large tree limb.
“Watch out!” He heard Draco yell and he pulled on the handle of the Firebolt in an attempt to swerve out of the way. It wasn’t enough.
The air seemed to shift around him, and he was pushed under the branch. He could hear Draco hiss as one of his wings scraped the underside of the branch and both boys fell towards the ground and landed in an undignified heap. They rolled, Harry losing control of his Firebolt, which skittered away a few feet before coming to a standstill. Harry braced his arms against the soft grassy ground to fight their momentum and the two stopped with Harry’s arms on either side of Draco’s head, their legs entangled in the soft grass, Draco’s wings spread out on the grass around them, and his mouth a few inches above Draco’s own.
Harry froze, his eyes locking on the silver-gray pools that were looking up at him with no trace of a sneer. Just looking.
The clearing, the forest itself, was silent, waiting for what would happen next. Slowly, as if fast movement would break the stillness, one hand rose to caress the nape of Harry’s neck, pulling him down slightly as Draco’s body rose underneath him. Their lips met in the silence of the clearing. Harry relaxed and, leaning into the kiss, turned chaste more passionate.
Draco’s wings, silken curtains of night, came up to wrap around Harry’s body in a way so similar to his dreams. Draco’s mouth began to explore his neck, trailing wet kisses down to his collar bone before returning to Harry’s mouth again.
Harry’s fingers trailed down the sharp aristocratic jaw line and down to the nape of Draco’s neck to tangle in the soft platinum strands. His mouth followed his fingers to Draco’s ear, pausing to whisper, “Is this you or the Veriae?”
Silver eyes caught his own. “Both.”
“Good.” And any other words Harry might have said were lost to Draco’s mouth on his own.
Chapter 26: Eye of Newt and Slips of Yew
Harry couldn’t contain a smirk rivaling Draco’s patented one when the Daily Prophet belatedly began to report the attacks. By now it was obvious that they were Death Eater attacks. One of the more recent ones had been the destruction of a small muggle town and the Dark Mark had been prominent in the sky. No one could pretend now, that they were just freak accidents or technical malfunctions, at least not in the Wizarding World. Still, as the number of attacks grew, the students began to get visibly tense and edgy. Parents began writing more often, just to check that their son or daughter was safe and to say that they themselves were safe. Whispers in the halls about the attacks became louder as students wondered whose family would be the first to be attacked.
Draco woke to a strange numb sensation in his left leg and realized that he couldn’t feel anything lower than his thigh. Blinking blearily in the dim light, he attempted to sit up only to find that he couldn’t move much in that way either. The cause of this was the other person in the bed, who was still sleeping soundly, his arms wrapped around Draco’s torso and his legs wrapped around Draco’s left leg.
“Potter,” Draco gently pushed Harry. No reaction. “Harry.” He tried again.
Harry muttered something that he couldn’t understand into his stomach.
“Harry, I need you to unwind yourself from my left leg. I can’t feel it any more.”
With the effort of one who was more asleep than awake, Harry rolled slightly to the left…the opposite direction of what Draco had been aiming for.
