The Styles of Flying

Harry felt someone staring at the back of his head.

He was used to people staring, of course. People stared for various reasons, reasons Harry knew, and some time ago, Harry had become used to it. What he was not used to was Draco Malfoy staring at him.

And Draco stared.

Draco's eyes didn't shy away. He was not self-conscious in his staring. Draco stared with the deliberation of a Slytherin and the intentness of a Malfoy, of someone who more often than not got what he wanted. He just…stared.

By the third day, Harry was spoiling for a confrontation. He wanted an explanation, even if he had to throttle it out of Malfoy. Archenemies didn't stare at each other. That wasn't the way it worked.

The opportunity presented itself Thursday afternoon, just before dinner.

Dusk was falling, and the grass and stone was slippery from the rain. Harry, Ron, and Hermione were on their way back to the castle for dinner from a long visit with Hagrid when Harry suddenly muttered a curse.

"I have to double back," he sighed. "I left Herbcraft at Hagrid's."

"We'll wait," Hermione offered, but Harry waved them on ahead.

"No, I'll catch up."

It started drizzling again, and Harry picked up his pace as he jogged lightly to Hagrid's hut and retrieved his Herbology textbook. He was hurrying back to the castle when he saw the whirling figures over the Quidditch pitch.

Quidditch season hadn't quite begun yet, so practices were informal and relaxed affairs without uniforms and other trappings. From this distance, Harry couldn't make out any of the faces, but the sizes of a few of the players and the way one person in particular flew tipped him off. The Slytherin team was training.

Harry had an eye for talent, and he easily followed one figure as he dodged, dove, and drove forward with a speed Harry knew stole the breath. The natural fluency of the movement, the sheer talent - it burned at Harry and overwhelmed him. Harry was so in love with this beautiful poetry of movement and flight that he could forget for a moment who the flier was. The flier cut clean lines through the air, his build the lean and streamlined body of a Seeker.

Harry checked his watch, a new replacement from Lupin for his seventeenth birthday. Dinner would start in a few minutes. Harry switched directions and headed for the Quidditch pitch.

One of his players flew up to inform him that it was dinnertime, and Draco gave him an irritated dismissal. One by one, the Slytherin team dropped from the sky to the ground and hurried for the broom shed and then the shower room.

A few more laps, Draco decided, and he put on a burst of speed.

This was nice, he thought absently. This speed was nice, and what it brought was nice as well. The raindrops that lashed at his face and made his vision blur. The wind that stole his breath. His numb fingers locked in a grip around his broom. The sogginess of his oxford shirt. The cold that stung his cheeks.

He was on his third lap when he saw a familiar figure with untidy black hair standing far below him, and he came to such a sudden stop he thought he might've dislocated his shoulder.

And then he dropped like a controlled bludger, his heart pounding, the blood rushing to his head, his fingers slipping on his broom -

He landed hard and almost fell to his knees. He staggered a few steps before regaining his balance.

"What the hell are you doing here, Potter?" Draco spat.

Potter's glasses were wet with rain, and the water seemed to magnify his eyes as he blinked owlishly at Draco.

"I want to have a word with you, Malfoy," he said calmly, hands in his pockets, shoulders shivering slightly from the onslaught of rain.

"You already are," Draco pointed out, quelling all traces of suspicion and rage from his voice. Seven years after their first meeting, and Potter still rankled him with just his presence. Funny, but Draco had never seen it that way. That way. That Potter was the only person who could slip behind his guard and break his calm by just being there.

Now that Harry was there, and now that he had Malfoy in front of him, he wasn't sure what to say. He hadn't exactly rehearsed lines. Harry was wet, and he was cold, and he was hungry, and all his anger and irritation was gone, and Harry felt awkward.

Malfoy was still glowering at him expectantly.

"I want to know why you've been - er - that is, I noticed you - you've been staring at me," Harry finished firmly, thoroughly flustered. "And I want you to stop."

Malfoy flushed red beneath his pale skin, made even paler by the cold. "I most certainly have not been staring at you, Potter. You're delusional."

"Yes, you have," Harry insisted, feeling even more foolish. "I can feel it, you know," he added irritably.

"Oh swell," Malfoy said, giving Harry an impatient look. "I'll remind myself to beware of Harry Potter's incredible power for feeling invisible stares. Just another weapon in your arsenal?"

"Shut up," Harry told him tightly. His hair was becoming plastered to his head, and he wanted to leave. "You have," he said. "You're not a good liar, Malfoy. Not as good as you fly, anyway."

Oh, bugger, Harry told himself quietly, mortified.

Malfoy arched an eyebrow at him. He looked far from pleased. "And that's a joke, is it? Mocking me? Your before supper sport?" His lip curled. "Potter, I don't give a damn about what you think. You're a Gryffindor, that's for sure, through and through, and that is not a compliment. You think you're better than me?"

Malfoy said this all very quickly, voice rising in volume until at the end, he swallowed and seemed to exercise some control in tempering his tone.

But as it was, the derision in Malfoy's voice, combined with that sneer, made Harry's temper rise as well.

"I didn't say that," he said shortly. "I didn't say I was better than you. And," he added, cutting Malfoy off, "I don't think it."

"Bullshit," Malfoy said, slate grey eyes, the color of the wet rain, narrowed and hardened. "You have the gall to tell me how I fly."

Something in his tone made Harry eleven years old again, and his wand was in his hand and he hissed, "Accio Firebolt!"

His Firebolt slapped his palm, and Harry gripped it hard. Malfoy was watching impassively.

"Still got that Snitch you were practicing with?" Harry asked tersely.

Malfoy held out the Golden Snitch in response. As they both watched, the Snitch unfurled its delicate wings and began to flutter its impossibly quick rotation. Malfoy let it go.

"First one to get it," said Harry, and took to the air like a bullet shot vertically without waiting for Malfoy's answer.

Draco threw a leg over his broom, and he hadn't even clambered on before he took to the pouring sky. He was smoldering with something, the competitive streak in him turning sharp and glassy and cutting him to ribbons from inside, mingled with the grim determination of a Malfoy that no one should beat him.

Draco had shot up high like a just released bludger testing the boundaries of the Quidditch pitch, and now he spiraled away, falling to a more reasonable height for spotting the Snitch.

Draco knew he was good. He had the shape for Seeking, for flying. But he wasn't untouchable in his flying. And he knew that as well.

Harry lost track of what he intended to do, for he was lost in the perfection of his body meeting air and wind and sky. His talent for flight was the most defining trait inherited from his father, more so than the perpetually messy hair. Hermione had found him a picture of his father diving for the Snitch, and, she pointed out, Harry's flying was decidedly reminiscent of James Potter's style of flying, if not a near imitation.

Harry wasn't sure what he had been born for. To defeat Voldemort, to lead his peers, to save lives. That might've been his purpose. But his body had been born to the sky, the broom, the art of flying.

He arrowed around the pitch with pure, driving speed. The air flowed and streamed like cool water over his skin, a balm upon a chapped boy. He liked the way his breath was snatched away, and it was a battle between him and all this empty space on all sides of him, a fight to breathe. He flew like he was chasing down a tomorrow that might never come, like he was hunting down the enemies in his past that had slipped away from him.

He felt his mind slip into the easy calm that was so familiar, and everything suddenly had a startling clarity. He remembered why he was there. Malfoy. The Snitch.

They had started out flying with so much barely suppressed anger, just barely contained rage, that the end was rather anticlimactic.

They spotted the Snitch at the same time. In the beginning, they had herded each other tightly, flying at each other's heels, elbows knocking and fighting for space, but in the end, they had drifted apart, swallowing up the space for flying instead of hunting.

Now, at opposite ends of the pitch, the Snitch was caught between them. Draco saw it first. Harry had whirled, some sense, some instinct causing him to turn. Perhaps he heard Malfoy speeding through the air, and he heard the change in falling rain.

Harry fit his body through the space between the rain and wind and air and flew to meet him. He was very surprised at what happened next.

Potter was faster, Draco realized, but not by that much because Draco had the head start. As he closed in on the Snitch, eating up the feet, Potter drawing nearer at an alarming speed, Draco flung himself mindlessly off his broom, his hand grabbing at the tiny, golden Snitch and seeking holding purchase with his other hand.

He collided with Potter in midair, and then he was falling. He managed to grab something - Potter's foot? No, the Firebolt. Draco had tilted it dangerously and unexpectedly, his weight hanging off the front of it, and the ground hurtled up at him before Potter's reflexes saved them both, and he managed to straighten out the path of the broom.

When they both dropped to the ground, Potter took off his glasses and wiped them on his wet shirt, not achieving much.

"That was a bloody stupid thing to do, Malfoy," he said.

Draco's knees were shaking, and he tried not to notice. He held the Snitch limply in his hand. "I got the Snitch."

"You could have cracked your skull," Potter stated matter-of-factly.

"I didn't." He dredged up a smirk. "The great hero Harry Potter saved me."

"It was a reflex. What if I hadn't been close enough for you to grab onto?" he demanded.

"I knew you would have been there," said Draco. "I knew you would have gone forward faster when you saw me jump."

Harry went still, and he hardly noticed Malfoy retrieve his wand from his back pocket and summon his fallen broom.

Malfoy was still examining his broom for any snapped twigs when Harry took two splashy steps forward and kissed him, pressing cold lips to cold lips. Harry's heard was pounding, and he couldn't decide whether it was from the exertion or from what, but then Draco's mouth moved beneath his and Harry knew.

The promise and possibility weighed heavily on Draco as he crushed Harry to him, letting his broom fall back into the mud.