It's Dan's first Quidditch match, and he's up against one of his best friends – Chris, the Gryffindor captain. He's got two more of the best people by his side however, and Phil helps calm his nerves while PJ stops Chris from 'accidentally' pushing Dan off a cliff.
~
The cold, North wind whistled through the forest, slipping in like ice water through the minuscule gaps in Phil's clothes he didn't realise he had. The centimetre of exposed skin between his sleeves and his gloves burnt cold, and his nose was red-raw. What few leaves that had decided to hold out through the winter were shivering on their branches. Phil's feet crunched on the thin layer of frost that sparkled on the forest floor under the light of Dan's wand.
"I'm going to fall off my broom." Dan said matter-of-factly.
"I've got a spell for that," Phil said, his teeth chattering. "I've been practicing. I'll stop you and plop you straight back on before anyone even notices. I'll be watching you the whole match just in case. Promise."
"What if I crash into the stands?"
"I'll move them out of the way. Then modify everyone's memories so they forget."
"What, the entire school all at once?"
"And the staff."
"Good." There was silence for a few more minutes bar their footsteps and the soft slip of winter air through bare branches. "Are we far enough in yet?" Dan asked.
Phil squinted through the trees, straining to pick up the pinpricks of lights in the castle windows. "Not sure," he said, "too dark. So probably yes, as I can't see the castle."
"We can fly low. Probably the only good thing about flying in the winter. No leaves on the trees so you can go right up into the canopy to get a better view." Dan shifted his broom off his shoulder and mounted it, shuffling forwards to make room for Phil. He was very grateful for Phil's warm arms around his waist and his hot breath in his hair.
Phil squeezed tight and Dan kicked off gently, raising them a few feet off the ground and starting forwards. After a few near misses, they switched so that Phil was the one holding the light and Dan could focus both hands on keeping them steady. It was harder with two, and harder still trying to go so slowly. The broom wanted to fly light and free and fast, and was clearly not impressed with Dan's manoeuvring as they worked their way through the trees.
Tomorrow, Dan would play his first ever Quidditch match for Slytherin. To make matters worse, they were up against Gryffindor. The rivalry could not have been more intense, nor the pressure more tangible. And then there was the matter of being pitted against Chris Kendall, one of the warmest candles burning in Dan's heart. Truth be told, Dan was glad it was Chris as opposed to, say, PJ. If it came to knocking PJ off his broom in order to achieve a victory, Dan really wasn't sure he'd be able to do it. Chris on the other hand, well. Dan wouldn't go as far to say he deserved it, but it would be quite a rush to knock that annoying little grin off his face for once, and then wave the snitch in it afterwards.
Chris was a joker. It was their first match, not the final decider of the season, and the banter was mostly light-hearted. Chris cared about Quidditch perhaps more than anything else in the world (except maybe PJ) and had they come up against each other in the final then maybe the threats wouldn't have been so empty. They were both glad for the way the matches had been drawn this year, even if it did mean Dan's first match was the one that worried him the most.
"You know," Phil said as they broke out into the starlight, skimming the tops of the trees with their toes. "Chris checked out a book of poisons from the library this morning. PJ confiscated it before you came down to breakfast. I think he was planning on reading it while staring pointedly at your porridge."
"That's sweet of him," Dan muttered, trying to make out vague black shapes against the purple sky to get his baring. "He was carrying a knife around yesterday. Or it might have been a rubber chicken. I'd turn my back and when I turned back around he'd be hurriedly shoving it back into his robes. You know, as if he'd got it out but I'd turned round too quickly. It was pretty convincing, actually."
"Just be thankful he didn't actually break your hand that time on the stairs."
Dan smiled, leaning back a bit as they levelled out to fly straight and steady. Phil turned his face to rest his head against Dan's back and gaze out into the night.
"We can't stay out too long," Phil murmured. "You need to sleep."
"I don't know that I can. This is probably better stress relief."
"I can knock you out, if you like." Phil offered.
"I might take you up on that." Dan chuckled. "You'll stay with me tonight, right?"
"Of course. What do you take me for?"
"I'm scared."
"I'm sure Chris is too. Don't believe his swagger for one minute."
"He's done it before though." Dan sighed. He took one hand off the broom handle to thread his fingers through Phil's at his stomach.
"He had to do it for the first time though, too. He was scared. I know, I was there. But he didn't fall off and he didn't crash into the stands. They won, actually." Phil rubbed his thumb against the back of Dan's hand soothingly.
"He's better than me."
"I don't know much about Quidditch, but I don't know if I believe that. I reckon you'll give him a run for his money. And he's had a lot more practice than you. He wasn't better than you when he played his first game, that's a promise."
"Really?"
"Really. I don't know Quidditch, but I'm not blind enough to miss talent. You're good at this, Dan. You really are. I know you think you're not very good at any of this. At magic. At being a wizard and living in this world. But I think your biggest problem is yourself."
They dipped down into a valley and for a moment the moon was obscured by the black crest of a mountain. The river below them was a ribbon of silver.
"It's because people are good at things," Phil carried on, his chin resting on Dan's shoulder and his words falling gently into Dan's ear barely a murmur above the quiet hum of the night. "You see people being special. And you can't do what they do, and so you think you're not.
"You see someone create incredible things with just the flick of a wand and all you can think is 'I can't do that. I'm not as good at that.' But that's the thing about magic. It's all in your head, sort of. It exists just by thinking it up. People who've grown up with magic, they just expect it to come to them. To flow through them. Because that's normal to them. And so it does.
"I think it's your own belief that you can't do it that's stopping it. Because like, in order to make a spell work you have to think very clearly in your head 'this spell will happen'. Except you're thinking 'it probably won't happen because I'm not good enough' and so it doesn't. For you to make your spells work you have to battle that part of your head, and that's why you find it so difficult. You're swimming against the tide. Struggling and fighting every step of the way and all you can see is everyone around you floating along with the flow, barely lifting a finger to keep moving and learning and progressing."
Below them, the river opened suddenly into a loch, smooth and flat and blacker than the night around it; reflecting the sky and creating constellations that rippled in the moonlight.
"I don't know. Maybe I'm talking rubbish." Phil continued. "But maybe I'm not. Maybe it's because you're a muggleborn, you see it as something you don't have naturally. You feel like everyone's had a head start so you'll have to work really hard to catch up. And you think it's going to be difficult so therefore it is and you're holding yourself back.
"But Quidditch is different, you see flying as something anyone can do and therefore something you can do and that's why you're good at it. Because you're smart and you're talented anyway, but with flying you can believe that you are. It's not something you can learn from a textbook, so you never thought you'd have to try."
Dan was silent for a moment, watching the river dip in and out of sight as it was covered and uncovered by trees. He wasn't sure what to think really, only that the world was so, so beautiful at night with the soft hues of blue shadows and matte purple and deep velvet and a thousand shades of grey; and that he loved Phil Lester with all his pounding, burning heart.
~
The changing rooms were heavy with the stench of sweat and tension and apprehension. There was a lot of slapping of shoulders and bundling into each other. Clammy bodies hugged one last time, before the doors were flung open and they filed out down the narrow passageway and onto the pitch.
The roar of the crowd seemed a lot louder from down here. Dan could see Chris on the other side of the pitch, leading his team out with a fist raised in the air in appreciation of the cheers from the scarlet stands.
Flint, in his robes of green, showed his own appreciation by raising a middle finger and leading a booming jeer from the Slytherin supporters. Dan's stomach twisted itself into knots as he looked up at the heaving, bustling, colourful (and more importantly full) stands. There were a lot of people. A lot of faces. A lot of eyes, many of them probably curious about the new Slytherin seeker. Their names were announced booming across the stadium and he was acutely aware that this was the most people ever to have known his name.
He wondered how many of them were now seeking him out. Daniel Howell? That wasn't a name they'd ever heard before. Who was he? Dan doubted any of them recognised him. Even walking through the corridors he'd always tried to make himself inconspicuous and unnoticeable. He didn't want to stand out. But now he was standing out by choice in front of a crowd of thousands. He gulped. Then he mounted his broom. Then a whistle blew, and he was shooting through the air with the wind in his face and a thousand more faces a blur in his peripheral.
This was what he did. This was what he was good at. He'd done this a hundred times before, he just had to ignore the spectators and focus on the game. And then Chris Kendall shot past him making an inappropriate hand gesture and blowing a raspberry and suddenly he knew he was going to be okay.
~
"Gryffindor score! Ten points to Gryffindor!"
Slytherin were twenty points behind, but it was a close match with the lead bouncing back and forth between the two teams. Ben had withstood a brutal assault of shot after shot that had left the Slytherins disbelieving, but then he'd let in a penalty and one of the Gryffindor chasers had dropped the quaffle at a crucial moment. As for Dan, he was circling above in a cautious loop parallel to the Gryffindor seeker. They were watching each other as closely as they were scanning the sky, waiting patiently for a flash of gold against the grey clouds.
Many feet below them, Slytherin scored a sly goal and Ben turned a roll of frustration mid-air. Dan pulled his gaze away from the action. He couldn't afford to get distracted.
He wondered if Phil was staying true to his word, watching Dan's every move. Distractions.
The Gryffindor seeker had been circling the same small section of the pitch for a while now, and Dan wondered anxiously if he thought he'd seen something. Should he drift over? Or was this a decoy? Maybe the other seeker had spotted the snitch in Dan's section of the pitch but knew that he'd never make it in time if he made a dart for it, and so was trying to lure Dan away. Or maybe Dan was being paranoid, maybe the Gryffindor seeker too was getting distracted and spending longer than he'd meant to on that particular circuit. Dan hovered for a moment, performing a slow and steady scan over the whole pitch from grass to clouds.
Captain Flint didn't have much faith in Dan's abilities. The Gryffindor seeker was something of a prodigy, and as such Dan had been instructed just to tail him the second he started to worry. Flint's tactics were not subtle. Ideally, Dan would knock the other seeker out of the sky long before he'd got anywhere near the snitch, but Dan had flat out refused. He wasn't really big enough to be knocking anyone off their broom, let alone someone as fast and agile as a seeker.
Dan dropped down a few feet. The snitch wasn't in the upper quarter of the pitch – there were two seekers up there, one of them would have seen it by now. He could afford to go looking, as long as he didn't let it get past him on its way up. He'd have to take it slow. If it got above Dan it would be easy pickings for the other seeker.
He narrowly avoided a bludger as it whistled past him en-route to the Hufflepuff stands and then was stopped and deflected by- who did that? Was there a teacher getting paid to bounce back any projectiles and keep the spectators safe? Or was there a spell keeping the action confined to the parameters of the pitch? Dan wasn't sure, but he did know he was getting distracted again.
He was now almost within the bubble that contained the main body of the activity, and was forced to shimmy aside to make way for a bundle of chasers hurtling through the sky as they tussled for the red ball. He wondered if Chris was one of them, but stopped himself from looking.
If the snitch was in amongst all this it was going to be near impossible to find, but Dan couldn't afford to wait for it to come to him as Gryffindor were building on their lead.
And then suddenly there was a streak of red in the corner of his eye and he was wheeling around mid-air and rocketing violently forwards in the same direction as the Gryffindor seeker. He could see the snitch now, and it couldn't have been further from either of them. He was fighting to keep his eyes open against the stinging wind. Had this been a cartoon his cheeks would be flapping furiously, and it certainly felt like his skin was being ripped from his face. Dan wasn't sure he'd ever flown this fast in his life.
He was closer. The Gryffindor had taken a risk hoping Dan wouldn't see him in time, and it wasn't going to pay off. The glint of gold was streaking away from him almost touching the grass in the bottom corner of the pitch, but he was gaining on it fast. He was going to get it. They were going to win.
But of course the two seekers hadn't gone unnoticed. The match had been completely abandoned, all the players converging on that one corner of the pitch – the Gryffindors to try and block Dan and the Slytherins to try and stop them.
Flapping robes and clumsy bundling. Dan had lost sight of the other seeker completely. He weaved desperately through the throng of bodies. Players were crashing into their own team mates in all the confusion and panic.
He ducked under a chaser and rolled over just in time to avoid a Slytherin beater swinging his bat wildly into thin air. A pair of scarlet clad feet nearly kicked him in the head and now he'd lost the snitch too, still shooting frantically forwards.
He could see the Gryffindor seeker now. He'd manage to get through the scrum faster than Dan and now they were nearly neck and neck. Dan had a feeling neither of them could see the snitch, but to pull away now would be fatal should it be just around the corner.
Sunlight reflecting for a split second off something shiny. With all his might, Dan heaved his broom handle upwards and shot vertically towards the clouds. There was the snitch, its tiny wings fluttering so fast they were a blur, and there was his outstretched hand closing over the cold metal.
The roar that went up from the crowd was deafening. Dan had to admit, as far as Quidditch finales went that one was pretty good.
~
Dan lounged drunkenly across Phil's lap, fighting off a bout of hiccups. The party was all but done, the floor sticky and the air thick with floating streamers. Phil was pulling green glitter from Dan's hair and grinning stupidly.
"Everyone knows who you are now."
"I know," Dan mumbled. "It's terrifying."
"You say that, but you had the biggest beam on your face when they were carrying you round the stands. You were like the sun. Sun child. I wish I'd got a picture. I want to bottle up that smile and keep it forever."
"Well, I guess it's not so bad. This fame malarkey." Dan said modestly, and Chris threw a cube of cheese at him.
Chris was still sulking in one corner of the Slytherin common room. He'd been in the Gryffindor tower most of the evening, commiserating with his teammates and his house, but PJ had finally dragged him down to the party. Admittedly, it was a bit strange. While Dan was one of his best friends, Chris was also the captain of the team the celebrators had beaten.
"Beginners luck." He muttered darkly. "You didn't even see the snitch yourself. You just got lucky because you happened to be slightly closer. We so nearly had you."
"Sure." Dan grinned widely. He rolled himself off Phil's lap and crawled across the floor to nuzzle his face into Chris's side and wrap his arms around the Gryffindor. "You still love me though, right? Even though I totally beat your ass?"
Chris rolled his eyes. "I put up with you. Love is a bit strong."
"It's your own fault, really. You forced me to try out. I wouldn't have done any of this without you." Dan said, his voice muffled by the fabric of Chris's muddy Quidditch robes.
Chris smiled a little and returned the hug. "And you did me proud. Who'd have thought it, eh? Weirdo loser fourth year. Star of the match. You're not completely useless after all."
"Thanks."
"Any time."
PJ, feeling a little left out, launched himself at the pair and enveloped them both in a bear hug, joined almost instantaneously by Phil.
"Since we're getting sentimental," PJ said, ruffling three heads of hair and giving Chris's head a pat. "Now's probably a good time to mention you're sitting in a puddle of sick."