Merry Christmas Eve everybody! As my gift to you I shall post a chapter simply because I can't post one tomorrow. I hope you like it. Thanks for reading! I hope you have a lovely holiday season. I can't wait for the new year. Thanks for all the support.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Harry Potter...unfortunately.
Chapter 14: Lessons from Draco
I laid in the center of the Quidditch field staring up into the cloudy sky. The weather had gotten worse and for it not to be raining made today nice. Sure it was cold, but we have jackets for that and right now I was wearing the one Zach gave me. It didn't just make me feel guilty though, about not believing him and being too obnoxious to admit that I was wrong (that's right, I just admitted I was being annoying), but right now it was just a matter of how I did it. It's not like you can walk up to someone and be like, you were right and I suck. You wouldn't say it like that exactly, but it's basically what you ment. I, luckily, had enough time to think about this while waiting for Draco to arrive for our lesson, but he was late…4 hours late. Multiple times I was going to get up and leave, but then I reminded myself that there was no where inside the castle that is more private than this, and at this moment, I really liked private.
"Get up, come one." I heard shouting from one side of the field. Sitting up, I saw it was Draco, but I wasn't going to take orders from him. "What are you waiting for?"
"Well, I was waiting for you." I said.
"And now I'm here." Draco gestured to himself. "Now get up."
"Four hours." I reminded him as if he didn't already know. "You are four hours late."
"Time flies when you get lost in your thoughts." Draco said. "Hurry up, I'm meeting Pansy for dinner."
I finally did what he said and mounted my broom. Before he even told me to, I kicked off the ground and headed up wards to the of the stands.
"Auden, stop." Draco yelled to me and I spun.
"Fine what do you want me to do?" I asked, flying over to him.
It turns out he wanted me to do a warm up ride around the grounds. Following him closely behind we took all sorts of short cuts that made me work harder at remembering what to do at what corner. I could already tell Draco was a better teacher than Fred and after 20 minutes flying around the grounds, I took another 40 minutes doing an obstacle course until I got it perfectly and under 5 minutes. I got a short break before I took another loop around the Hogwarts grounds and eventually raced Draco, each time he won, but I made significant progress.
"Not bad Pendergast." He told me as we hovered in mid air in the Quidditch field. Someone had taken a seat in one of the sections of the stadiums with their broom, probably waiting for us to be done, but I tried not to pay attention to them. "You need to work on moving with your broom so my thought was to throw bludgers at you and you have to dodge them as you make your way around the field following this flag." He said and a small red flag appeared in the air. "Then we can wrap up, sound good?"
I nodded and got myself ready for it, knowing from what I was taught about Quidditch that bludgers hurt. "Are you sure this is safe?"
"Yes." Draco assured me. "But we'll get you warmed up with flying this way, then start having you dodge them."
I started following the red flag and grew in speed. It was terrifying not knowing when to turn exactly and I don't think my reaction time was the best, but I was getting the hang of it by the time the first bludger flew by me. I only had to move a bit, but even that distracted me from the flag so in the rush to catch up another bludger flew right above me and I ducked. With every throw I narrowly avoided a bludger I fell further behind the flag. In the back around Draco was shouting at me to catch up. I was so caught up in trying to get to the red flag another Bludger was already too close for me to dodge. I grunted as I flew back off my broom. Wind was whipping at my body, and I could hear Draco laughing
. I caught quick glimpses of the person grabbing their broom and running off the stands only to jump onto in and fly straight to me. If this was in a movie I could already imagine what it would look like. There are 3 shots; the first would be the wide shot of me falling and him flying to catch me, but in slow motion of course, we would be small on the screen and it would be silent, the second would be the one of the person flying and the sounds of the wind rushing past his ears, and the third would be of me, falling and this one would be silent. You would see me closing my eyes and the screen would be black. What could wouldn't feel was the warm, strong arms that wrapped around me. Whoever it was, placed me on their broom and we made our way down to the ground. You would see him making a running landing with me in his arms, until he could stop and put me on the ground.
"Auden." I heard him say. "Auden, come one wake up."
I felt him push down on my chest trying to resuscitate me like I was dying. "Calm down, I can still breathe. Didn't they teach you to listen for breathing and check the pulse first?' I asked opening up my eyes. It was Zach. I didn't know whether to be more embarrassed bout my poor flying abilities or the fact I was wearing his jacket even when I was suppose to still be mad at him.
"Thank god you're alright." He said as he wrapped me in his arms.
"One second, buddy." I said. "I need to get comfortable first."
I got up on my knees where he was and then hugged him again. Smell is truly the strongest memory sense and smelling him reminded me on the hot summer days I would escape into the wine cellar and play games of hide and go seek with my dad. The days he sat around drinking his wine in a glass and I sat around drinking my grape juice in my Sippy cup. Zach reminded me of home and even when you get sick and tired of home, in the end you'll want to come back.
"I'm sorry." I said. It felt like the right time to admit I was wrong. Maybe I just need to fall from the sky each time I need to ask for forgiveness. "Sarah told me everything and I was just to stubborn to say anything before this."
"I figured that was the case." He said. His hot breath tickled my ear. "I also figured Draco was going to be stupid and make you do something you couldn't."
"So do you forgive me?" I asked.
"No." He said.
I backed away form him, with my heart sunken. I didn't know what else to say, he just saved my life but still he was mad at me. "Oh."
"I'm joking, jeez." He smiled. I miss that smile so much. I went in for another hug. "Besides you are wearing my jacket."
I laugh a little. "You smell good."
"And you have lettuce stuck in your teeth." He said pointing to the place where it was suppose to be. But as I felt for it, it wasn't there and I realized we are going to have a lot of jokes to catch up on.
"Aw, look at the couple back together." Draco said as we walked over to us.
"Draco, you almost killed her." Zach got up and walked over to him.
"I was going to stop her fall when she was like a foot off the ground, calm down. She needed to learn a lesson." He smirked.
"About what?" Zach's face only got redder as he stepped closer to Draco.
"She doesn't belong here." Draco pointed to me. "She is an American, she should go to her own school."
"Is that why you and Pansy have a problem with me?" I asked getting up to stand beside Zach.
"And the fact you like the Weasely's, but yeah the first one mostly." Draco said.
"I feel bad for you Draco." I said. "I don't know what had made you this way, but I'm sorry for what ever did because this is sad."
And with that I summoned my broom and with Zach we walked off the field to catch up in the weeks we didn't talk.
"I don't need your sympathy!" Draco called after us. "You're the ones who need sympathy cause you're oh so sad. I just want to cry by looking at you!"
As we were walking away, I remembered there was just 5 days left in term. "We should hang out during break." I told Zach, making our way back up to the castle. "You and your mom can come to Healdsburg for Christmas or sometime."
"I was just going to say that." He said.
I looked up at the castle and in one of the windows I could see a tall red head looking down at us, I waved to him, but he just closed his drapes. Things were looking up and they were going to get better.