Six Months Earlier

The conversations started high above the clouds. It felt safest up there to the both of them – things were more natural up there, there was room for clear-headedness and straightforward conversation (again, this was unfamiliar territory for Draco, but he was enjoying cautious exploration of the world outside the Slytherin Rulebook).

It started at one of the early matches. Qudittich was still being played because Quidditch. had always been played and likely Qudditch always would be played, no matter who won the impending war. It was safe to say that no one's heart was in the games anymore, however, not even the two Houses with the most emnity between them, who should have been anxious for any opportunity to display their superior prowess on the pitch.

Things were getting too serious now, the world was all too real. The games they played these days were better kept indoors, behind curtains, alone with one's people. Chess in the common room and staring contests at mealtimes. The bright outdoors was starting to look more and more dangerous.

The team captains fared the same as anyone. It was clear that Harry was playing because Harry was expected to play, and Draco was playing because to not play would signal to the world that Harry had outwilled him. Thus gridlocked, each trudged out to the field with a heavy heart.

Unbeknownst to both, Hermione had surrounded each of them with protection spells. Ron was similarly guarded. The rest could fend for themselves, she thought tiredly, wishing it were all over.

When they started the match on a bright fall day to the half-hearted cheers of a distracted crowd, only one of them was hoping for a civil conversation at 500 feet. The other was hoping to do his duties and pack it in for the evening – go back to other plans.

The snitch led the two Seekers through some low-ranging cumulus clouds and suddenly they were hovering face to face above the break in the moist, white fog. Harry never got tired of looking down from his broomstick at the lands spread out beneath him, and Draco knew this and counted on the brief pause he would take when they breached the barrier of the cloud cover. At that moment he struck with a "Silencio" and hooked his broom right ahead of Harry's, blocking out the sky.

"We have to talk," he said, and Harry struggled against the spell and jerked his broom upwards, flying an angry circle around his counterpart and digging for his wand. Draco was faster.

"Truce, Potter," he yelled over the wind, his voice unfamiliar without its classic sneer. "We talk here or we talk down below. And it's a different talk if we do it down there." Something broke inside him as he said this, and his eyes when he looked at Harry were unguarded, vulnerable, blue as the surrounding sky. A twinge of pity became a surge and Harry spun his broom around to meet Draco head on and spat out the word "talk."

"We have to keep busy," Draco said, and they continued to circle and feint as Draco poured out his story, half a mile above the unsuspecting crowd.

He knew things, he said, and Harry had it in him to smirk, even as he inwardly acknowledged the truth in the statement. Draco had called Goyle a poofter for years before Goyle took up with Nott.
It would begin to rain in half an hour's time, Draco continued. Spring would come late that year and Voldemort would lose. He'd known this since birth but any struggle would have been futile until he was of age. Which had occurred at 8:13 am that morning.

Neither of them ever told anyone about the rest of the conversation. Seven minutes later, Draco descended from the sky, clutching the snitch. Harry followed, looking suspiciously undefeated. Twenty three minutes thence, it began to rain.