The sky on Thursday afternoon was a clear, deep blue, with a few wisps of cloud hanging lazily overhead like drifting feathers.
On the broad lawn in front of Hogwarts Castle, two rows of worn flying brooms lay neatly arranged—veterans awaiting inspection, every last one of them with a broomstick that had seen better days.
Madam Hooch, with her short grey hair and sharp, hawk-like yellow eyes, stood before the assembled first-years. Her voice was crisp and carried easily across the open air.
"Extend your right hand over your broom and say clearly: Up!"
Up!" Dozens of voices rang out together.
Henry's broom, an old relic with a slightly loose broomstick, rose smoothly into his palm on the command without unnecessary wobbling.
He noticed that Draco's broom shot upward almost before the word had fully left his mouth, and a smug expression crossed Draco's face accordingly. Neville Longbottom's broom, meanwhile, gave a pained twitch on the ground and went still.
"Up! Up!" Neville's voice climbed toward panic, his round face already sheened with sweat. The broom finally leapt—and slammed heavily against his chin before clattering back to the ground.
Several Slytherins scoffed. Draco showed his teeth in a grin, then seemed to remember something and pressed his lips together.
Madam Hooch proceeded to demonstrate the correct way to mount without slipping, and how to push off cleanly at takeoff.
"When I blow my whistle, kick off hard, hold the upward lift for a few feet, lean forward slightly, and touch back down. Clear?" Her yellow eyes moved across each face in turn. "On my whistle. Three—two—"
Neville, in his anxiety at being left on the ground, slammed his foot down the moment she reached two.
"Come back, child!" Madam Hooch cried, but it was already far too late.
Neville launched skyward like a cork from a champagne bottle: twelve feet, twenty feet. Henry squinted upward, watching the stout figure sway violently, his fingers clamped so tightly around the broom handle that his knuckles had gone white.
The broom lurched and spun in erratic arcs, entirely beyond any semblance of control.
"Merlin," Pansy murmured, her hand going to her mouth. "He'll break his neck." There was no mockery in it—she sounded as though she genuinely meant it.
Draco tilted his head back, watching with bright, curious eyes, as though observing a particularly unpredictable experiment.
At thirty feet, Neville's face had gone the colour of chalk. The broom lurched sideways and he began to slip, first losing one hand and hanging from the side of the broom, his legs kicking uselessly in empty air.
"Hold on!" Madam Hooch called up to him, but she was an older witch and could not get to him in time.
Henry watched Neville's remaining hand begin to give way, finger by finger losing their grip on the handle. His mind completed the calculation in an instant.
He kicked off from the ground.
His takeoff was clean and immediate, the broom rising through a smooth arc, his robes snapping behind him in the wind. His eyes did not leave the falling boy.
Neville lost his final grip and let out a short, sharp scream as he began to drop.
Henry adjusted direction, the broom cutting a sharp zigzagging line through the air as he closed the distance fast: twenty feet, fifteen feet. He could see the raw terror on Neville's face.
He made a choice that was not, strictly speaking, a cautious one—throwing the broom sideways and holding it nearly horizontal, his left hand anchoring the handle, his right arm reaching out.
"Grab me!"
Neville's flailing arm found Henry's wrist and seized it on instinct. In the same moment, the broom he had been clinging to fell away entirely. He cried out as the drop began.
Henry gritted his teeth, using the momentum of the fall to swing his broom hard, pulling Neville's weight onto it with him.
The students on the ground had been standing rigid, craning on their toes, barely breathing. When it became clear that the rescue had succeeded, the lawn erupted.
It would have been the ideal moment for a triumphant fanfare.
The Slytherin students in particular threw their hands above their heads, jumping and cheering toward Henry as though welcoming a returning general. He appreciated the sentiment while privately thinking that the display was perhaps a little much.
He guided the broom down in a slow, controlled descent. Neville's feet touched the grass and he folded immediately into a heap, panting hard, his whole body shaking.
Henry dismounted with a steadier bearing than the situation perhaps required.
There was a vivid red mark around his right wrist and his shoulder throbbed with a dull insistence, though his breathing remained even despite the fine beads of sweat on his forehead.
"Mr. Longbottom!" Madam Hooch rushed over, her face pale. She checked him quickly and found nothing beyond scrapes and considerable shock.
"And you." She turned on Henry, her yellow eyes carrying the specific expression of someone who has just had ten years taken off her life. "Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? You might both have been seriously hurt."
"He was more than thirty feet off the ground, Madam Hooch," Henry said, his voice entirely calm for someone who had just conducted a mid-air recovery. "If I hadn't intervened, he would have broken something at the very least, and quite possibly far worse."
Madam Hooch opened her mouth, then closed it again, and let out a long breath.
"You acted bravely, and your judgement was sound. Ten points to Slytherin." Her tone made it clear the bravery and the recklessness were, in her view, the same thing.
She turned her attention immediately to a shallow cut on Neville's wrist, a scrape from the broomstick during the struggle.
"I'm taking him to the hospital wing. Everyone!" She raised her voice sharply across the lawn. "Not one foot off the ground until I return. Anyone who goes up in the air will be expelled before they've finished their first game of Quidditch. Is that understood?"
She paused and looked back at Henry. "You'd best come with me as well, Mr. Welsh."
She put her arm around the still-trembling Neville and helped him toward the castle.
Henry fell into step behind them. As he passed, his eye caught the Remembrall lying on the grass where Neville had dropped it.
He did not pick it up. Instead, he gave it a casual sideways kick that sent it rolling toward the Slytherin side of the group.
This was part of the plan.
Getting Potter onto the Gryffindor team would make his own path onto the Slytherin team considerably more defensible.
Draco, after Henry's conversation with him over tea, might be inclined to leave Neville's Remembrall alone—but Potter was another matter entirely.
Harry had already turned down Draco's offer of friendship, and Draco could not stand having that particular reminder walking around in front of him. He would not be able to help himself.
Children placed their pride above almost everything else.
And beyond that, it gave Draco another opportunity to see the consequences of acting on impulse rather than judgement.
What was the expression? A win all round.
By the time afternoon classes had ended, a particular kind of animated energy had taken hold of the Slytherin dungeons.
News of the flying lesson had spread rapidly, collecting embellishments with each telling.
"I heard Potter nearly hit the ground going after the Remembrall!"
"Henry actually caught Longbottom with his bare hands? From what height?"
"Did you see Professor McGonagall take Potter away afterward?"
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Mission accomplished, extra chapter incoming.
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