(thank you @oldschoolslytherin and @snekyeggs and anonymous for donating!)
On one hand, Draco is excited about their first flying lesson, because flying is brilliant. On the other hand, their first lesson is sure to be incredibly boring, because it’s basic stuff like getting a broom to listen to you and not falling off. Still, flying is flying.
Both the Gryffindors and Slytherins are assembled on the field, and instead of talking to his friends in Slytherin, he finds himself in the unenviable position of having to reassure Hermione, who looks like they’re somewhere truly terrible, like history of magic, rather than a flying lesson. “It’s easy,” he tells her, “All you have to do is not fall off. Right, Neville?”
Neville jumps then looks down at his shoes. “O-oh. Um. I’ve never f-flown before.”
Draco’s not thrilled with his stutter. They’d been working on that. “Neville! Why not?”
He shrugs. “I’m clumsy. Gran said I’d c-crack my head open.”
Bloody hell. “Didn’t your uncle push you down the stairs to see if you were a squib and you just bounced down like you were made of rubber?”
“Yeah,” he answers, looking a little green at the memory.
“Then why would you crack your head open if you fell off your broom?” he demands. He’s aware that’s not exactly how it works, that possibly his wandless magic wouldn’t save him if he’d fallen on his head, but it’s the principal of the whole thing. He turns to the rest of the Gryffindors. “You’ve all flown, haven’t you? Not you, Harry, obviously.”
Harry looks offended at that for some reason, which, really, he was raised by muggles, why would he have flown before?
Ron, Dean, and Lavender nod, but Seamus and Parvati shake their head. Great.
“Well, don’t worry about it,” he says, turning back to Hermione. “I’ve been flying for years and it’s not that hard. You’ll be fine.”
“Indeed she will, Mister Malfoy,” Madame Hooch says from right behind him, and he only doesn’t jump due to his cousin Luna thinking it’s the funniest thing ever to hide behind things and try and scare him at family dinners. “Now, everyone stand next to a broom, put your dominant hand over it, and say Up! Be very firm!”
“UP!” says a chorus of voices. Every broom on the Slytherin side rises smoothly into their riders’ hands. His, Harry’s, and Ron’s do the same, but Dean, Seamus, Lavender, and Parvati have to say it a couple more times to get their brooms to float begrudgingly into their hands.
Neville’s just turns over sullenly and Hermione’s doesn’t react at all.
“You have to be firm,” he hisses. “The broom can tell if you’re scared, so you can’t let it know. If you could stop being scared, that’d be good too, but lying about it might be easier.”
“You should worry less about your classmates and more about yourself, Mister Malfoy,” Madam Hooch says, her eyes narrowed in disapproval. “You’re holding your broom with the wrong hand. Have you been doing that incorrectly for years as well?”
His face burns and he goes to switch hands, but Hermione says hotly, “He’s left handed! You said to summon it with your dominant hand, not your right hand. If you’d wanted him to summon it with his right hand, that’s what you should have said.” It’s easily the rudest Draco has ever seen her be to a professor. She scowls and puts her hand over her broom. “Up!”
It jumps promptly into her hand this time, probably afraid that if it didn’t, she might yell at it too.
“Yes, well,” Madame Hooch says, suddenly not looking at him, “very good, Miss Granger. Mister Longbottom, if you would.”
He swallows, pushes his shoulders back, and says, “Up!”
There’s a moment when nothing happens, and then the broom slowly rises into his hand.
Draco doesn’t cheer because that would be kind of lame of him, but he smiles when the other Gryffindors do.
Then they’re just hovering a couple feet off the ground which, boring, but he can kind of see the point of it when half of his house seems unsteady on their brooms. Except, of course, something goes wrong.
They’re only supposed to be a couple feet off the ground, but Neville keeps rising.
“Mr. Longbottom!” Madame Hooch shouts, “Stop that and get down here!”
Neville panics and grabs the front part of his broom, pushing down, which is of course is the worst thing he could have done. It sends him shooting upward way too quickly, and Draco rushes after him. He doesn’t think about it, he just goes, and he’s familiar enough with a broom that he can maneuver it thoughtlessly. He’s nearly up caught up to Neville, already reaching out a hand to steady his friend’s broom, when Neville loses his balance and falls.
The one thing Draco had told him not to do!
He dives for him, but the gravity is faster than he is, and Neville is screaming. He grabs the handle of his broom tightly in one hand and jumps off his own broom, reaching out to grab Neville’s hand. He feels Neville’s shoulder pop out when he catches him, but there’s not much he can do about it. He’s holding both his and Neville’s weight with just one hand, and it’s pretty much all he can do not to drop him as they gently float the last dozen or so feet to the ground.
It’s not until Neville is standing and Draco’s feet touch the ground that he can hear everything around him, that he hears his classmates shouting or notices Madame Hooch’s pale face as she looks Neville over, prodding delicately at his shoulder. “We’ll have to go to Madame Pomfrey for that dear, nothing for it, come along now.”
He should have caught him sooner.
Neville offers him a watery smile and says, “Better my shoulder than my head, Draco. Thanks.”
“Your gran may have had a point,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. Actually, his shoulders are kind of sore too, but not enough for him to go to Pomfrey about it.
“Mister Malfoy,” Madam Hooch says, and great, he’s going to get a lecture about flying when he wasn’t supposed to, “thirty points to Gryffindor.”
He’s still blinking in confusion when she turns and shuffles Neville towards the castle.
Everyone is staring at him, and usually he loves being the center of attention, but not like this. Blaise throws something into the air and catches it again. “Longbottom dropped this. Fancy a game?”
Draco’s confused for a moment before he sees it’s a Remembrall, one of Neville’s gifts from his grandmother that seemed to cause his more grief than not. He grins. “Oh, yeah. Definitely.”
“That doesn’t belong to you!” Ron says crossly.
Draco rolls his eyes. “We’ll give it back. It’s not like he’s using it right now, is he?” And actually, if they manage to accidentally break it during the game, all the better. It’ll give Neville one less thing to worry over.
“We’re not supposed to fly without the instructor here to supervise,” Hermione says disapprovingly, because nothing gives her as much joy as ruining his fun.
He nods seriously. “That’s true, but consider this – Hooch isn’t here and it’ll be a great practical learning experience. Also, she never said that, you just know that because you read Hogwarts, A History, so it doesn’t count.”
She doesn’t seem convinced, but doesn’t continue arguing, so he’ll count that a win.
“Slytherins versus Gryffindors?” Theo proposes.
No, because he can already here all the snide comments he’ll get from his housemates about him being on the wrong team. And he wants to win, and all the Slytherins have way more flying experience than the Gryffindors. “Girls versus boys.”
“No way!” Pansy says. “That’s not fair. There are nine of you and six of us.”
“I’ll sit out,” Vinny volunteers instantly. He hates flying. “I’ll be referee.”
Hermione is clearly pissed that that hadn’t occurred to her.
“And I’ll play on the girls’ team,” Draco says. “Then it’ll be seven against seven. Okay?”
Pansy narrows her eyes, then says, “Okay, deal. Rules?”
Blaise tosses the Remembrall into the air again. “Let’s play catch. You can’t hold the Remembrall for more than five seconds and no spells while we’re in the air. Winner is whatever team has the Remembrall when Hooch gets back. Getting caught breaking the rules is an automatic loss.”
Hermione looks pleased at the last bit at least.
Hermione and Greg are hovering on the perimeter just in case it comes their way, but aren’t interest in chasing it, which is fine because the teams are still even. It quickly becomes clear that this is mostly a competition between him and Harry.
Draco’s the best at throwing it, but Harry’s scarily good at catching it, especially considering this is his first time a broom. Harry always catches it if anyone but Draco throws it, so the girls’ strategy just becomes getting it to Draco and then flying way wider than anyone else can throw. Obviously he feels bad that Neville got hurt, but it’s way more fun than the typical first flying lesson, although unfortunately they’re all a little too good to drop the Remembrall and not have someone catch it, so that part of his plan doesn’t work out.
Vinny had been on the lookout for Madam Hooch, so he hadn’t noticed a tabby cat sitting on the sidelines.
Draco blames him when McGonagall makes Harry the youngest seeker in a century.
He’s only a little bit mollified when McGonagall says she would have offered Draco a chaser position if one had been open.
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