Chapter Text
The dormitory was still when Harry and his friends finally managed to slip inside. His lungs ached, his legs burned, and his mind refused to settle. He had half expected the room to be lit by an angry professor’s wand, McGonagall perched on one of the couches, waiting to catch them. Instead, it was frighteningly quiet, and only the sound of wood crackling from the fireplaces in the common room kept the group grounded.
Ron and Neville stumbled towards the stairs past him, both red faced and out of breath, both looking equally worn out. Neville was trembling so badly he nearly tripped on the rug. Ron caught him with a muttered curse and helped him up the stairs. Neither spoke to Harry, for that he was glad, they didn’t need to, he knew things would be different.
Harry sat on the edge of one of the couches. He stared down at his hands as if waiting for another dangerous outburst. His skin still prickled where the sparks had flown out of him, wild and uncontrolled, hitting Goyle with a force that had sent him flying.
He hadn’t even cast a proper spell. It wasn’t anything he had practiced in Charms or learned from a book. It had just… exploded.
Every time he blinked he saw the look on Malfoy’s face when Goyle hit the cabinet. Shock, then rage. Every time he blinked he saw the burn on Goyle’s shoulder, smelled the stench of scorched cloth.
Harry pressed his palms over his eyes and sat very still. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to be sick or cry.
The sound of soft footfalls pulled him back. He lowered his hands to see Hermione slipping quietly onto the couch. She was still in her dressing gown, hair loose and untidy, her face pale with worry.
For a long time neither spoke. The silence was heavy, broken only by the occasional older student passing by. Harry wanted her to scold him, he almost begged for it, but she didn’t. She sat with her hands folded neatly in her lap, watching him out of the corner of her eye.
At last, she said softly, “Are you all right?”
Harry gave a hollow laugh. “I don’t know. I didn’t mean to..” His throat tightened. “Hermione, I didn’t mean to hurt him.”
“I know,” she said quickly. “I know you didn’t. But Harry, whatever that was, it wasn’t normal. You need to be more careful.”
He stared down at his wand again. “I couldn’t stop it. It was like something inside me snapped. He was going to hurt my friend....” He gestured helplessly.
“The thing is,” Hermione said, her voice tense, “that’s not how it’s supposed to work. Magic takes control and practice, focus too. It isn’t supposed to just burst out.” She hesitated, her fingers curling in her robe. “Harry, has this ever happened before?”
He bit his lip. “Maybe. I don’t know, never like this.”
Hermione exhaled. “You just need to understand yourself better. That’s the whole point of a school like this.”
Harry wanted to believe her, but the memory of Goyle crumpling to the floor twisted in his stomach. He muttered, “Everyone looked at me like I was dangerous.”
“That’s because they don’t understand,” Hermione insisted. “And Malfoy will twist it to make you look worse than you are, but that’s just what he does. You can’t let him win.”
Harry glanced at her. “You’re not scared of me?”
Her eyes flashed. “Don’t be ridiculous. Why would we be scared of you?.”
Harry had an answer, but didn't dare say it.
The silence returned again, but this time it wasn’t quite so suffocating. Hermione shifted closer on the couch, her shoulder brushing his. “You were brave, standing up to Malfoy,” she said at last, her voice gentler. “Even if it was reckless. He’ll never admit it, but you scared him.”
Harry huffed. “I don’t want to scare anyone.”
“Then prove it,” Hermione said. “Prove it by showing control. Learn faster, practice harder, show him you’re better than him. That’s how you win, Harry. Not by playing along with him.”
Hermione gave Harry a small, encouraging nod before slipping away to her own dormitory.
The next morning passed in a haze. Harry felt as if he hadn’t slept at all, though at some point he must have drifted, because he woke to Ron tugging the blankets off him and groaning about breakfast. Neville still looked shaken, though he forced a smile when Harry caught his eye.
Classes gave them no rest. Professor McGonagall’s lecture on transfiguring beetles into buttons might as well have been in another language for all Harry absorbed. His mind kept circling back to the trophy room, to the crackle of his wand, to Goyle’s groan. He nearly turned his beetle into a half melted lump of iron before McGonagall caught him.
Hermione kept throwing him pointed looks whenever he drifted off, but she didn’t speak of it in class. It wasn’t until later, when the others had gone ahead to dinner and the two of them lingered behind in the library, that she finally nudged him back to conversation.
“Do you think Malfoy will tell anyone?” she asked in a whisper, setting aside her quill.
Harry frowned at the table. “Probably not, he shouldn't have been there either.”
Hermione bit her lip. “We’ll have to be ready if he does though. We’ll keep our story straight, that it was an accident, that no duel actually happened. We were in the trophy room, yes, but it was just talk. You didn’t cast anything.”
“That’s not what happened,” Harry said quietly.
“I know,” Hermione admitted. “But truth isn’t always what matters to people like Malfoy.”
Harry slumped back in his chair, staring at the high shelves of books. “Feels like he’s always one step ahead.”
“Then we’ll take two steps,” Hermione said stubbornly.
Her certainty eased some of the weight pressing on his chest. He managed a small smile. “You think we can?”
She looked at him as though it were obvious. “Of course.”
They stayed in the library until Madam Pince shooed them out, and by the time they joined Ron and Neville in the common room, the air was far less tense. Ron was hunched over wizard’s chess, brow furrowed, muttering about strategy, while Neville waited for his turn. Hermione pulled Harry into a chair by the fire, their earlier conversation folded away for now.
For the first time in days, the talk turned ordinary. Ron boasted about how his knight had flattened Neville’s bishop in two moves. Neville shyly mentioned that Professor Sprout had praised his work with puffapods. Hermione launched into a miniature lecture about the theory of magical exhaustion until Ron groaned and begged her to stop. Harry laughed, and it felt strange but good to laugh.
The morning sky was brighter than usual. Harry woke before the rest, with a kind of restless anticipation that made sleep impossible. He dressed in his school robes and spent the rest of the morning rereading pages from the Broomflight Basics book they were given, while the first of many flying classes loomed over the day.
Hermione looked up from her own stack of notes. “You’ve read that same paragraph three times,” she said, half teasing, half mothering.
Harry grinned awkwardly. “Just making sure I don’t accidentally crash and die.”
“You’ll do fine,” she said, though her voice held its usual edge of anxiety. “It’s only basic flying.”
“Exactly,” Ron said from his bed, already pulling on his shoes. “Basic. You get on, kick off, and don’t fall. Simple.”
Hermione’s expression said otherwise.
By the time they reached the training field, the rest of the first years were already gathered. The grass still glistened with dew, and two neat rows of school brooms lay flat on the ground. Madam Hooch stood before them, tall, sharp featured, and commanding in her dark grey robes. Her yellowed eyes flicked over each of them.
“Good morning, class,” she barked. “Take position by your broomsticks. No one mounts until I say so.”
Harry’s stomach twisted with a mix of nerves and excitement. The broom beside him was old, its handle nicked and splintered, the bristles uneven, but something about it felt alive under his fingertips, faintly thrumming.
“Hold out your hand over your broom and say, Up!”
A chorus of voices followed. A few brooms jerked half heartedly, most didn’t move at all. Hermione’s broom rolled lazily to the side, refusing to obey. Neville’s broom wobbled before leaping up and into his hand while Ron’s shot straight into his palm, they both grinned proudly.
Harry glanced down at his broom. “Up,” he said.
It too sprang cleanly into his hand.
“Excellent reflex, Potter,” Madam Hooch said, passing by. “The rest of you, try again!”
Hermione frowned at her broom as if sheer will might make it cooperate, she looked more nervous by the second. By the third attempt, her broom gave a pathetic lurched into her hand, and slowly the pink in her face faded.
“Mount your brooms,” Madam Hooch instructed, pacing between the rows. “Grip tight, lean forward, and when I blow my whistle, you kick off gently and hover a few feet off the ground. No racing, no showing off, and no going higher than I say.”
Harry swung a leg over the broom and felt the strange weightlessness take hold. The handle felt right in his hands, the bristles quivering beneath him as if eager to soar. He stole a glance at Hermione, whose knuckles were white, and at Neville, who was already shaking.
A dozen brooms lifted, wobbled, tilted, the field filled with squeals and startled laughter. Ron hovered confidently, grinning from ear to ear. Hermione managed a nervous half metre of air before clutching at the ground again.
Neville, however, kicked off far too hard and his broom rocketed upward.
“Neville!” Hermione cried.
Harry’s heart jumped into his throat. Neville was rising fast, higher and higher, his legs clamped tight around the broom as if he could squeeze it into submission. The broom began to buck, jerking side to side.
“Come back down, boy!” Madam Hooch shouted, but Neville was beyond hearing.
For a heartbeat, Harry froze, the sky swallowing Neville’s terrified shouts. Then something in him snapped, again. Before he could think, before fear could stop him, Harry leaned forward and kicked off.
The ground vanished beneath him.
Wind tore through his hair as the broom surged upward, eager, instinctive. The motion felt natural, like something buried deep in his bones had remembered how to move. He steadied his balance without realizing he was doing it, angling toward Neville.
“Neville!” he shouted.
Neville’s broom gave a violent twist. One of his hands slipped.
Harry leaned forward harder, pushing the school broom faster than it had any right to go. He didn’t even notice the gasps from below, the shock of a first year breaking the rules. His only focus was on Neville’s terrified face, the hard grip that was slipping second by second.
“Let go!” Harry shouted, desperate. “Just let go! I’ll catch you!”
Neville’s head whipped toward him, eyes wide and wet. “I- I can’t!”
The broom gave another violent lurch.
Without thought he acted. He reached one hand forward and jerked his broom sideways, swerving underneath Neville just as the other boy lost his hold.
Neville dropped with a yelp, not a fall from the full height, but enough to make Harry’s breath seize. He caught Neville’s sleeve, the weight nearly pulling him off balance, and for a heartbeat they both dangled in open air. The brooms wobbled violently, Harry tightened his grip, muscles straining, and somehow managed to level them out.
But not before they hit the ground in a rolling heap.
Neville groaned. Harry gasped for air, blinking through the shock. The class erupted into noise, shouting, laughter, disbelief.
Madam Hooch was beside them in an instant. “Good heavens, are you two all right?”
Neville nodded shakily, though tears streaked his dirt smeared cheeks. His wrist hung limp.
“Broken wrist,” Hooch muttered. “Up you get, Mr. Longbottom. I’ll take you to Madam Pomfrey.” She turned a sharp eye on Harry. “And you, Potter, don’t move a muscle. When I get back, we’ll have a long talk about what ‘no showing off’ means.”
Harry opened his mouth to protest. “I wasn’t showing off, I was trying to...”
But she was already striding away, half carrying Neville toward the castle.
The moment she was gone, the rest of the class swarmed closer.
“Brilliant!” Ron said, eyes wide with awe. “Absolutely mental, but brilliant!”
Hermione looked torn between pride and horror. “You could have died,” she hissed, brushing dirt off his sleeve. “Or fallen off, or both!”
“I didn’t,” Harry said weakly. His head was still spinning. He hadn’t meant to break the rules. It had just… happened.
From somewhere behind the group came a familiar drawl.
“Trying to get yourself expelled already, Potter?”
Draco stood a few paces away, arms crossed, that smirk curling at his mouth. Crabbe and a more quiet than usual Goyle sniggered behind him.
Harry’s jaw tightened. “Neville could’ve been hurt worse.”
“Oh, of course,” Draco said mockingly. “Our little hero, flying to the rescue. Shame you couldn’t keep him from breaking a bone.”
Harry glared, but the fight night still lingered in his memory. He turned away instead, gripping the broom tightly. The last thing he needed was more trouble.
“Leave it, Malfoy,” Ron said, stepping up beside him. “You’d have pissed yourself before leaving the ground.”
Draco’s eyes flashed. “Careful, Weasley. Wouldn’t want you to fall off your broom and ruin your second hand robes.”
Hermione stepped between them before Ron could answer. “You’re pathetic,” she said coolly. “He saved someone, and all you can do is sneer.”
Draco’s smirk faltered for half a second before he turned away, muttering something to his friends.
Harry let out a long breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. His hands were still trembling slightly. The broom beside him looked harmless again, nothing like the streak of wild motion it had been moments ago.
Madam Hooch returned not long after, her expression unreadable. “Potter,” she said. “With me.”
Hermione started to speak, but Harry shook his head. “It’s fine.” he muttered.
They walked in silence across the courtyard, Hooch’s boots clicking sharply against the stone. The sound echoed in the empty hallways as they entered the castle. Harry’s stomach twisted further with every step. He imagined detentions, point deductions, maybe even letters home, though the thought of the Dursleys caring enough to punish him seemed laughable.
When Hooch finally stopped, it wasn’t outside Dumbledore’s office or any of the classrooms. It was McGonagall’s door.
The older witch looked up from her desk as they entered, spectacles low on her nose. “Madam Hooch,” she said briskly. “Is there a problem?”
“There was an incident during the flying lesson,” Hooch said. “Potter took off without permission.”
McGonagall’s eyes flicked to Harry, sharp and assessing. “I see.”
Hooch’s tone softened slightly. “However, it was to stop another student from falling. The boy would’ve been injured far worse otherwise.”
McGonagall’s expression changed, almost imperceptibly. “Did he now?”
“Yes. I thought you should know,” Hooch said. Then, with a faint smirk, “He handled the broom better than any first year I’ve seen in years.”
McGonagall’s eyebrows rose. She stood, smoothing her robes. “Thank you, Madam Hooch. I’ll take it from here.”
Harry watched as the flying instructor nodded and left, leaving the office suddenly very quiet.
McGonagall regarded him over her glasses. “You realize,” she began, “that what you did was exceedingly dangerous.”
“Yes, Professor,” Harry said quickly.
“However,” she continued, her voice softer now, “I also realize you may have just saved a classmate from a far worse fate.”
Harry blinked. “I didn’t really think about it, I just-”
“No,” McGonagall interrupted, and for a fleeting second, he thought she almost smiled. “I imagine you didn’t.”
She turned toward the door. “Come with me, Potter. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Harry hesitated. “Am I in trouble?”
McGonagall didn’t answer, but the faintest twitch of amusement tugged at her mouth as she strode out into the corridor. “That remains to be seen.”
Harry followed Professor McGonagall through the corridors, still trying to read her expression, but she was impossible to decipher. Her robes swished softly with each step, her posture straight and purposeful.
He half expected her to lead him to Dumbledore, or worsee. But she said nothing, and that was worse.
Finally, she stopped before an unmarked door near the base of one of the towers. She rapped sharply twice, then pushed it open without waiting for an answer.
The room beyond was cramped but bright, filled with broomsticks, leather pads, and a faint smell of polish and grass. A boy in older Gryffindor robes looked up from where he’d been repairing a broom handle. He had a square jaw, strong shoulders, and an expression of intense concentration that broke into curiosity when he saw them.
“Professor McGonagall?”
“Mr. Wood,” she said briskly. “I think I’ve found you a Seeker.”
Harry blinked. “A what?”
Wood looked equally baffled for a moment, then his eyes widened. “Him!?”
McGonagall nodded. “He caught another student mid fall during his first lesson. Showed remarkable control for someone who’s never flown before. Madam Hooch tells me she’s rarely seen a broom respond like that for a first year.”
Wood’s disbelief quickly turned to excitement. “Never flown before, and he managed that?” He stepped closer to Harry, studying him as though he were a rare creature. “You’ve got a good eye then? Natural balance?”
“I guess so,” Harry stammered. “I didn’t really think about it, I just… went.”
“Went,” McGonagall repeated, a faint note of amusement creeping into her tone. “A succinct summary, but accurate.”
Wood grinned. “You’ll do. Definitely. Haven’t had a real Seeker since Charlie Weasley left, you’ll make up for it, I bet.”
Harry blinked again, still not following half of what was happening. “Seeker?” he echoed. “What does that mean, exactly?”
Wood’s grin grew wider. “The most important position on the Quidditch team.”
McGonagall gave him a look. “All positions are important, Mr. Wood.”
“Yes, but the Seeker’s the one who catches the Golden Snitch,” Wood said, still focused on Harry. “Fast, sharp eyes, good instincts. You end the match when you catch it, and win us a hundred and fifty points while you’re at it.”
Harry felt his mouth go dry. “I don’t even have my own broom.”
McGonagall’s tone softened slightly. “That can be arranged. First years aren’t normally allowed their own broomsticks, but I believe an exception can be made for… extraordinary circumstances.”
Harry didn’t know what to say. He’d spent his life being told to stay quiet, stay out of the way, that he was lucky to even have what little he did. Now this stern professor was talking about exceptions and teams and things he’d never imagined being allowed.
Wood seemed to sense his hesitation. “You don’t need to decide right now,” he said, still grinning. “But we’ve our first match in November, and if you’re half as good as Madam Hooch says, you’ll be training before the month’s out. Welcome to Gryffindor, by the way.”
McGonagall glanced at the clock on the wall. “That will be all for now, Mr. Wood. I expect discretion.”
“Of course,” Wood said quickly. “Not a word.”
As they stepped back into the corridor, Harry finally found his voice. “Professor are you sure? I mean what if I mess up?”
McGonagall’s lips pressed together, but her eyes were unusually kind. “Every student worth their wand fears failure, Potter. The question is what they do with it. Plus, Quidditch is in your blood, your father was on the team too.”
Harry thought hard about that. There was joy in the idea that he could make his father proud, and fear in failing at yet another thing.
When they reached the main staircase, McGonagall paused. “You’re dismissed, Potter. And for future reference, try not to make a habit of frightening your professors.”
Harry managed a shaky grin. “Yes, Professor.”
She gave the faintest twitch of a smile before turning away, her robes swishing out of sight around the corner.
The idea of playing Quidditch, of flying again, but not without getting in trouble filled him with a strange, giddy energy that he didn’t know how to contain.
When he finally made it back to the common room, Ron and Hermione were waiting, both of them leaping up when they saw him.
“What happened?” Ron demanded. “Did she expel you?”
Hermione’s eyes darted over him. “You look happy?”
Harry couldn’t stop the grin that spread across his face. “Not expelled,” he said. “She wants me on the Quidditch team.”
Ron’s jaw dropped. “You’re joking!”
“No,” Harry said, still grinning, still a little dazed. “She took me to meet Oliver Wood. I’m going to be Seeker.”
For a heartbeat, the common room seemed to glow. Ron let out a cheer loud enough to turn heads. Hermione’s look of worry gave way to something else, pride, maybe, or disbelief.
“Your on the team?” she said, astonished. “But first-years never-”
“I know,” Harry said, his grin widening. “But she said they’d make an exception.”
Ron clapped him on the back so hard it nearly knocked him over. “Blimey, Harry. You’ve done it now! Wait till everyone hears!”
Hermione frowned slightly but smiled all the same. “Just promise you’ll be careful. You’ve had enough near death experiences for one week.”
Harry laughed. “I’ll try.”
The fire crackled in the hearth, throwing warm light over their faces. He sat down with his friends, the hum of conversation rising again around them, and looked toward the window, toward the sky outside, somewhere out there, the Quidditch pitch waited.