Let's Remember It All
CHAPTER TWO - Flying
"I'm going to learn to fly." Hermione announced to the world at large.
Harry grinned and said, "Good one." Ron dropped his spoon, spattering cornflakes all over the table and Ginny raised one eyebrow.
"I'm serious!" She protested. "I mean, you guys make an effort to be interested in what I do in my spare time, so I figured I'd return the favour."
"But, Hermione, you hate flying. You hate Quidditch. You even hate broomsticks!" Harry said.
"Well, I can change that. Come on, guys, I know I've been a rubbish friend lately, and I said some things I didn't mean, so I'd like to make more of an effort. And I'm going to do that by learning to play Quidditch." She finished, looking around at her rather stunned audience. Ron, however, was shaking with silent laughter.
"I'm sorry," he said, brushing a tear away from the corner of his eye. "It's just… you're Hermione Granger."
"Well observed, Ronald." She replied, drily.
"But you don't fly!" He exclaimed. "You belong on the ground, just like… I dunno… gnomes belong in the garden!"
"I guess I'm a gnome that got into the house. Thanks for the support guys." She said, angrily, storming out the portrait hole in the general direction of the Quidditch Pitch.
O O O
He needed to be alone.
He needed to vent.
He needed, for a few short hours, to feel free, and that he was in control of his life.
The only time he ever got that feeling of freedom was when he was flying. So that's what he needed to do.
Fly.
O O O
She arrived at the Quidditch Pitch rather sooner than she had expected, and so she stood in the middle, staring up at the stands, unsure of her next move.
When a shadow moved across the sun, she glanced up to see a distant figure flashing across the sky, the light glinting off what Hermione knew to be his blond hair.
'Oh.' She thought. 'It's him.'
She watched him for some time before deciding that she could reach that height, and so she fetched herself a broomstick.
O O O
Malfoy noticed with annoyance that someone was on the pitch watching him. 'Dammit,' he thought angrily. 'Can't you see I want to be alone?' Determined to escape civilization, he flew higher.
O O O
'Okay. Come on, Hermione, pull yourself together. It's a twig. You've seen Harry and Ron do this a thousand times. It can't be that hard…' Gingerly, she lifted one leg over the broom and tightened her grip on the wooden handle. 'There. That wasn't hard, was it? No. Now, let's fly.'
"Broomstick… I want you to fly. Please?" She added as an afterthought. "It never hurts to be polite," she murmured. She felt the broom quiver slightly, and a curious sensation ran through her body – like she was totally weightless. Hermione didn't think she liked it very much.
'Right. I didn't fall over. Good start. Now, for the other leg.'
With trepidation she raised her other foot ever so slightly, so all her weight was resting on the heel of her left foot. Hermione closed her eyes tight and took a deep breath. She lifted he foot off the ground…
And stayed there.
Opening one eye, she looked down to see both her legs stuck out straight in front of her, and she was hovering about a foot above the ground. 'Hurrah! I did it!'
O O O
"Bravo, Granger. You managed to get your know-it-all arse of the ground. How does it feel? Surely the mud in you is weighing you down. Is that why you're staying down there?" Malfoy had watched with amusement as the girl down on the pitch mounted the broom agonizingly slowly, and then sat, suspended in the air, looking for all the world like a clown at a circus.
She looked up at him, her eyes squinting into the sun, a look of humiliation on her face.
The boy crowed in delight. "Oh, but Granger, this is brilliant! I can do something that you can't! Stay right there while I go and get the whole school to see this." He turned in the air, and was just about to fly back to the school and do exactly as he said when he heard it.
Her voice. He had heard it a thousand times before, when it was telling him where to go, or insulting him, but he had to admit; he had never before heard it saying something like this. It was a frail sound, swallowed up by the chasm that hung between them, yet it sounded like she was singing, and the notes floated to him on the calm breeze.
He had expected her to tell him that of course she could do it, but she wasn't a show-off like he was, so she didn't zoom around at 3,000 feet at 100mph like he did. But no.
All she said was, "Please don't."
He twisted his body round so he could see her properly. "Scared, Granger? Scared of loosing that reputation of yours? Scared of letting the world know that the Gryffindor princess can't do something?" He taunted, determined to let her know that he was in command.
"Yes." She replied, so quietly that had Malfoy not seen her lips move, he would have dismissed the sound as the leaves rustling in the wind.
He turned his broom away from the castle and ascended slowly, and began to fly away. His head was spinning. There was no way that the girl down there was Hermione Granger. He didn't know who she was, but he didn't like the way she affected her.
He needed to clear his head.
O O O
She didn't know what had just happened, but she knew she wanted to get up there, and look as free as he did.
"Higher, please." She said, her voice ringing with the authority that belonged there. The broom rose, high above the trees and carried on up, soaring among the birds and feeling the wind whip her hair behind her. 'I love this!' She thought, a smile spreading from ear to ear.
"Granger, what in hell are you doing?" A voice called down from above her.
She was higher than she had intended to be.
Too high.
She could see the castle, the Lake, and the Qudditch Pitch, but she was high. And Hermione Granger does not like heights.
O O O
"What in hell is Granger doing up there?" Malfoy muttered to himself, spotting the curly-haired girl flying dangerously high.
For a second it occurred to him that he could hex her off her broom, and that would be it; he would have completed what he had been ordered to do.
But he banished the thought with a shake of his head. He wasn't a murderer, and he wasn't about to let anyone die – even if that someone was an insufferable know-it-all. He bent low on his broom and sped over to her.
O O O
'Don't look down. Don't do it, Hermione, don't look down. Look at the sky… the clouds... the mountains on the horizon… Anywhere but the ground.'
Hermione's hazel-coloured eyes watered with the effort of keeping themselves level.
'You can do it, don't look down. Right, tell the broom to go down.'
"Broom…" She paused and took a deep breath. "…d-down." She stammered in a quiet voice. But the broom wouldn't go.
O O O
"Dammit, what in hell is she doing?" The blond-haired boy pressed lower on her Firebolt.
O O O
She looked down.
She screamed.
She fell off her broom.
O O O
"Shit!" Malfoy yelled as he saw her fall. He jolted as he realised what was happening, and broom hesitated.
The hesitation cost him everything.