A/N: I got a little excited about this chapter, and seeing as I made you wait so long for the last one I thought I'd post it early.
Next chapter is almost finished, and definitely kicks up the fluffy level.
_
Chapter Twenty-Five
Freefall
Ginny:
The air whistles by her ears as she flattens herself against her broom, half rolling as she ducks and weaves through the oppositions defences.
Somewhere from her left there's a shout, and a thwack as a bludger is sent careening in her direction. She dips the nose of her broom down, hears a loud whistle or air skate across her head, and resumes her rush at the goals.
Blaise Zabini is guarding the goal posts. He winks at her. She shoots his a wicked grin, rolls to her left and, with a deft flick of her wrist combined with a sudden sharp turn, she smacks the tail end of her broom into the quaffle, sending it spinning off to the right end of the goals—where Zabini isn't guarding.
It goes through. She smirks, sending Zabini a return wink. He shakes his head, but offers her an impressed smile. The score lights up 80-40 to Gryffindor. The crowds are cheering—most of the stands in favour of Gryffindor—and somewhere above her she hears Harry's familiar whoop of delight.
She looks for him as she returns to her place, adrenaline rushing in her ears, and finds him several metres above the game—his usual go to when observing for the snitch. He waves at her, but by the time she's waved back, Malfoy is there.
Harry's gaze shifts, his grin never fading as he retorts to something Malfoy has just said. Malfoy just shakes his head, his own smirk firmly in place as he leans forward.
Despite what she knows, it's still bizarre to see them like this. Casually chatting above a game of Quidditch, each as relaxed as the other. That relaxation filters down into the rest of them. For the first Slytherin versus Gryffindor match, there's been far less aggression than there usually is.
Ginny isn't sure how many of the other players have noticed Harry and Malfoy's casual bickering high above the game, interspersed with the occasional bout of areal acrobatics.
So far the snitch has remained elusive, but the boys dart through the game every now and then, throwing the rest of the players into chaos and laughing all the while, spreading a sense of calm and enjoyment through the field.
Ginny and her fellow chasers race back and forth between the goal posts.
'Keep it up Gin!' Ron shouts after she scores her third goal, pumping his arm to cheer her on, and Ginny feels a glow of pride.
A glow that only bubbles further to life as Ron defends two quaffle throws in a row. He grins wide and calls out to the Slytherin chasers,
'Nice try mate, but you'll have to hit harder than that!'
'Just you wait til the next round Weasley!'
And Ginny marvels at the lighthearted banter that flows between the players that, only a year before, would've been at each other's throats.
The snitch flickers up passed her face, darting across the sky and she spins, almost giving chase but catching herself just in time. She glances up, sees Harry and Malfoy's heads swivel in her direction at the same time, and in a flash they're both flattened over their brooms making chase.
Out of the corner of her eye Ginny sees a Slytherin chaser make a break for Gryffindor goals. She stops watching Harry and Malfoy dipping and diving through the sky and races off to guard her end of the pitch.
Out of no where, Harry shoots across Ginny's path.
'Sorry!' he shouts, the words whipping away from him as he twists sharply to the left and dives hard after a flash of gold.
Ginny shakes her head, watching as Malfoy comes up from below, attempting to cut Harry off. He calls something—she can hear his voice but not the words—and Harry laughs in response, doing a quick spin mid dive, almost in reply to whatever Malfoy said. The snitch changes course, rocketing skyward.
Harry, mid-roll, throws his broom around, spinning in a dizzying 180 turn and racing off after the snitch. Malfoy curses, flicks his broom sideways and makes chase.
That, of course, is when it all goes to hell.
Conner hits a bludger from below, aiming for the Slytherin with the Quaffle, who dodges just in time to avoid getting a broken leg, and the bludger shoots passed, high up into the air.
It curves upwards and out. Straight toward Harry and Malfoy, looping back around in their chase of the Snitch. It's too close and too far. It's too close to the boys for any of them to do anything. Too far for Ginny's shout of warning to make any difference.
Malfoy has swooped up and around, while Harry carves a soft curve through the sky from below. He's laughing, and Malfoy glances down at him, but his smile vanishes. His eyes go wide. He throws out a hand. Turns his broom hard right and down, straight into Harry, shoving them both into a roll just as the bludger reaches them.
Crack!
They go tumbling. One over the other, a mess of limbs and broomsticks and Ginny can't tell whose been hit or where; only that—from the sound of that bone-breaking crack—one of them has.
She flattens herself on her broom. On the other side of the pitch, two beaters—one from Slytherin and one from Gryffindor—push their brooms to the limit. But none of them are going to get there in time. Ginny throws her weight into her broom and wishes Fred and George were still here. She tries to judge where they're going to fall, but she's never been very good at predicting trajectory of a falling body.
Harry and Malfoy become untangled. Harry's eyes are open, and a surge of relief rushes through Ginny when she realises he's still conscious, that he hasn't been hit—a relief that is swallowed up by fear when she sees his broom tumble away from him. He twists in the air, arms outstretched, searching. His fingers brush the handle, once, twice, three times. On the forth, his hand locks around the broom.
He gets it under him, but instead of stopping, instead pulling up out of the nose dive he's in, he flattens himself and rockets downwards.
'Draco!'
But Malfoy doesn't hear him.
Ginny and the Beaters are still too far away. Harry is pelting toward the ground, pushing his firebolt as fast as it will go, but it's not fast enough. Flailing through the air trying to catch his broom had slowed his fall. Unlike Malfoy. Malfoy, who was just dead weight in the air.
'Draco!'
Harry's shout is desperate and scared and Ginny's heart is in her throat, but she's still racing toward them, still trying to get there in time.
Harry reaches out.
They're so close to the ground. Malfoy is falling head first, Harry's hand brushes Malfoy's leg but it's not enough to grab hold. They're going to hit the ground, they're going to—
'No!'
Light, blinding and white, erupts in front of her and Ginny cries out, pulling up to a stop. In the absence of the wind there's a sudden quiet. So she hears the splash that follows the blinding flash.
Splash?
She opens her eyes and her jaw drops.
The pitch, the entire pitch, has been transformed into a lake.
Harry, still pointed at the ground—the water—tumbles away from his broom, his eyes rolling back, to fall into the water with a soft splash.
'What the hell?' says Peakes—the Gryffindor beater—staring down at the water in shock.
They're all in shock. The rest of their teams—in various stages of pursuit—staring down at the now lapping water. The water Harry and Malfoy have sunk into.
Ginny's adrenaline spikes up another notch as she watches Harry sink into the water. Without thinking, she slips sideways off her broom.
'What the hell are you doing?' Peakes yells at her and she hangs by her hands off her broom, her feet brushing the water.
'They aren't conscious!' she takes a deep breath—not knowing how deep the water is—and drops into the water.
Cold slams into her, and it's all she can do to keep hold of the breath in her chest. She can taste salt on her lips, but she braces herself and opens her eyes. They burn instantly, but she squints against the salt water and sees Harry floating in the water just feet from her, his heavy quidditch gear dragging him down.
She grabs at his arms and, her lungs burning already, kicks madly for the surface.
Her head breaks through the water with a gasp, and she pulls on Harry, struggling to draw his sodden weight up from the water.
'Weasley!' It's Goyle, his arm outstretched as he hovers just above the water. 'Give 'im here.'
Taking another deep breath, Ginny braces herself and pushes up, pulling Harry as far up out of the water as she can manage, shoving herself down beneath the surface in the process.
All at once, Harry's weight is pulled free, and she comes up spluttering. Goyle, with Peakes' help, has hauled Harry out of the water, and already the two are peeling away toward the stands.
There's another splash to her left. Zabini's head breaks the water, shaking his hair out of his face as he gets his bearings.
'Over here,' says Ginny, paddling to the spot where she can still see Malfoy. 'Careful, the water stings.'
Without waiting for Zabini to reply, she takes a breath and ducks back under the water.
Malfoy is heavier than Harry, but he's also been in the water longer and the adrenaline racing through Ginny's veins helps her reach for strength she doesn't have.
Her lungs are burning, her capacity for holding her breath has never been very good. She's going to have to let go. She needs air. But she's scared. If she needs air…she twists in the water, turning to face Malfoy, she holds his face in her hands and—unsure if it'll work—presses her lips against his, blowing what little air she has into his mouth.
She doesn't know if it'll work, but she desperately needs to breathe. She lets him go.
Zabini passes her as she kicks for the surface, and a pinprick of relief assuages her guilt. Gasping at the air, she sees another hand reaching out.
'Ginny!'
She coughs, shaking her head. 'Not yet,' she rasps, and turns to dive back under.
She meets Zabini just below the surface, grabbing at Malfoy's free arm to help pull him up. With two of them, it's much easier, and they break the surface a moment later.
'Take him,' she gasps, barely able to keep herself out of the water.
As she blinks away the salt water, tears helping to clear away the awful sting in her eyes, she sees that it's Ron and Katie who have Malfoy. Ron glances back over his shoulder at her, worry in his face, and she pulls a tired arm out of the water to wave at him, trying to reassure him that she's okay.
In truth, she's so tired she's not sure how much longer she can keep treading water. She's not had a lot of experience with swimming, and the task is harder than she'd thought.
'Here,' says Zabini, reaching out for her. 'Hold on to me.'
'I'm fine,' she says.
She squints around the pitch, searching for a place she can swim to and get the hell out of the water.
Zabini sighs. 'No, you're not,' he says, and grabs at her arm.
At first she resists him, but her gear is weighing her down, and she really is exhausted though they haven't been in the water that long. Zabini turns in the water, looping her arm over his shoulder and around his neck, so that she's pressed against his back.
'Gin!' Dean is racing toward them.
He's gotten an extra broom from somewhere, and he draws to a stop above them and holds out the spare broom.
'Can you reach up?' he calls.
She stares up at the broom. Her arms feel heavy just at the prospect, but Zabini shrugs his shoulders, glancing over at her over his shoulder.
'C'mon Weasley,' he says, flashing her a grin. 'You're not gonna let one more push get the best of you, are you?'
Irritation spikes. Along with determination. In response, she braces her arms on his shoulders and uses him to push up out of the water. Surprise lights his face. Right before he's dunked under the water.
The push is all she needs. She reaches up and latches onto the broom. Dean holds it steady, making sure she doesn't drag it back down into the water with her. She tries not to groan, but she gets her other arm over the broom and somehow, somehow, manages to clamber back on the broom.
Zabini sputters beneath her, and she shoots him a tired grin, offering him a hand as he brushes water out of his face.
'I'll get him, Gin, you get to the stands,' says Dean, shifting his broom into her path.
She's too tired to protest. Leaving them to it, she turns her broom and searches for a place to land. By the time she gets to the stands, Harry and Malfoy are already gone.
'Ginny? You okay?' asks Ron, hurrying over to her as she all but topples onto the platform.
'Yeah,' she pants. 'Are they?'
Worry flashes over his face. 'I dunno,' he says, glancing back over his shoulder. 'They've gone to the Hospital Wing.'
'Were they at least breathing?'
Ron nods. He frowns at her, pulls out his wand and contours a thick blanket, wrapping her up in it.
'Gin,' he says, and he's looking out over the lake that now encompasses the entire pitch. 'What the hell happened out there? What happened to the pitch?'
She shakes her head. All she can think to say is, 'it was Harry.'
'Harry…did this?'
'Yeah,' she says.
'That's insane.'
She looks out at the water, thinks about how deep that water was that she couldn't even touch the ground. 'Yeah,' she says.
'Why?' asks Ron, looking back at her in complete bafflement.
She looks at him. At her brother. Best friend to the boy who lived.
She thinks about the last time they were at odds, and how absolutely, pig-headed and stubborn he was. She can't fathom how he'll react. She doens't know how to tell him.
'Isn't it obvious?' says Zabini, dragging himself off the back of Dean's broom with a tired smile. 'He did it to save Draco.'