Falling

Pairing: Drarry

Universe: Post-Hogwarts, EWE (I mean, I GUESS)

Rating: K

Every time, he remembers the first time. How it felt to do something so perfectly impossible; something so heart-stoppingly easy.

Whenever he thinks of flying, he imagines the smell of the pitch: crushed grass and rich mud. The faint, struck-match scent of charms, and the sweetness of broom polish and leather. Even on a day like today, when the air is dry and crisp and the scent of the earth is trapped beneath a glittering layer of frost, Harry still somehow expects it to start pouring with rain, and his heart leaps at the thought.

His lungs fill with the bright air, expanding to a capacity he didn't know he possessed. He has enough breath in him to whoop with joy - more than could ever be crammed into a cupboard - almost more than it seems it should be possible to cram into one body -

In the corner of his eye a speck of gold flickers, and he snaps himself free from the daydream to plummet after the Snitch. The air wheels past him, fresh as a slap, and then a green shape hurtles in from nowhere and he hears Malfoy's crow of triumph, sees his pale, outstretched hand -

Harry's fingers - tanned even in winter - close over the Snitch a moment before Malfoy's, and he feels the wrench in his wrist as the Slytherin Seeker tries to grab victory away from him. Harry rolls, and kicks, feeling his knee connect with the vulnerable stretch of waist below Malfoy's ribs, and then he starts to laugh because he catches a glimpse of Malfoy's expression: like someone has just force-fed him Bubotuber pus.

"Nearly beat me," Harry manages to wheeze when his feet touch the ground again, grass crunching under his stout leather boots.

The grass doesn't crunch when Malfoy touches down and hops neatly from his broom. Harry has the giddy thought that the grass wouldn't dare, and he's still laughing when Malfoy reaches out and takes hold of his collar. His lips are cold, and his fine hair brushes Harry's forehead.

"Did I?" Draco murmurs. He smells like burnt sugar - like magic - muddled with the polish and leather scent of Quidditch and underlaid with an incongruous mixture of ink and that french cologne that Harry can't pronounce the name of. Harry inhales deeply, but before he has quite realised what's happened Draco is back on his broom, Snitch in hand, and flying back towards the vast blueness of the sky.

"Oi!" Harry yells, but he's back on his broom as well a moment later, and then he's chasing - chasing - chasing - tumbling and falling and diving through the air; just the two of them above the wide expanse of empty moorland.

Even after all this time, he remembers the first moment he truly fell in love with magic. The swooping wonder of flight: the rightness - the yes, this is it. The sense of having waited a lifetime to feel this way - free to fly.

And nobody - nobody - flies like Malfoy.