At three-thirty in the afternoon, the weather looked as though it had been custom-made for a flying lesson.
A breeze drifted over from the Forbidden Forest, carrying the scent of grass and damp earth as it swept across twenty neatly lined-up broomsticks on the lawn.
The brooms looked quite ancient; their handles were polished to a shine, and the twigs at the tail ends of some had frayed outward, trembling slightly in the wind.
Flins stood at the very tail end of the Slytherin line, quietly following his classmates to the flat patch of grass.
The Gryffindor students arrived not long after.
Flins caught worried glances from Harry, Ron, and the girl named Hermione Granger.
Madam Hooch stood at the front of the line with a whistle hanging around her neck, hands on her hips, calling out sharply:
“Well, what are you all waiting for?
Everyone stand beside a broomstick.
Come on, hurry up!”
The moment those words fell, Harry and Ron moved at the same time, stepping up on either side of Flins.
A few Gryffindors noticed the gesture, though they didn’t show any strange expressions; instead, a couple of them gave a brief nod in their direction.
At the same time, Flins caught Draco’s expression darkening abruptly out of the corner of his eye.
Draco stood in the front row of the Slytherin group, complex emotions flashing in his gray eyes.
Flins pulled his gaze back, turning over his observations of the past few weeks in his mind.
Compared to his other two roommates who had long since stopped minding him, Flins could occasionally catch Draco throwing looks that seemed to stop short of speaking, as if searching for some kind of balance to “start talking again.”
Snape had called him greedy.
Naturally, what he needed was a compromise—one that didn’t violate his own stance while avoiding a complete tearing of ties.
And Draco, it seemed, was trying to find that compromise as well.
“Extend your right hand over your broomstick.
And say—’Up!'” Madam Hooch called out from the front.
“Up!” twenty voices chorused together.
The broom beneath Flins sprang into his palm almost the instant the word left his mouth, resting steadily against his fingertips.
He glanced sideways; Harry’s broom had jumped up with the exact same crisp motion, and Harry clearly looked pleased with himself.
Harry turned to look at Flins, his mouth curving into a smile, though that hint of joy quickly faded into hesitation and guilt:
“Hey, Kyryll.
Lately…
are the Slytherins isolating you?”
Ron hurried over as well, lowering his voice with the remorse of someone who had just found out:
“Yeah, if Hermione hadn’t told us, we wouldn’t have even noticed…
Did those jerks give you a hard time?
Harry and I will help you out.”
The broom in Flins’s hand was still vibrating softly.
Without turning his head, his eyes dropped to the broom shaking back and forth on the ground by Ron’s feet, and he said in a flat tone:
“It is nothing major.
Merely a minor conflict of perspectives.”
He paused for a beat, then added: “Besides, do I not have two good friends like you?”
Before Harry and Ron could answer, Madam Hooch’s whistle rang out ahead:
“Now, when I blow my whistle, you kick off from the ground, hard—keep your brooms steady, rise a few feet, and lean forward slightly to come straight back down.
Listen for my whistle—three—two—”
Before “one” could leave her lips, a sudden cry of shock broke out from the crowd.
Neville Longbottom’s broom had already carried him straight up into the air.
His face turned bright red as he gripped the handle with all his might, looking like a ragdoll tied to a runaway kite as he shot higher and higher.
“Come back down, boy!”
Madam Hooch shouted from below, but Neville had already reached nearly twenty feet, and the broom was still rocketing upward out of control.
Flins calculated the height; if he wanted to, he could leap up right now and haul the person down.
Only…
He glanced at the surrounding young wizards and felt a bit hesitant about their capacity to accept such things.
Obliviate seemed like a decent option—he turned the thought over in his head, remembering Lumine calling it an extremely handy memory-wiping spell.
Before he could settle on a foolproof plan, Neville slipped right off the broom.
Flins stepped out from between Harry and Ron, cast a quick glance to measure the fall trajectory and landing spot, and sprang forward with a few fast, clean strides.
Flins caught Neville securely just an instant before the boy hit the ground.
The boy in his arms still had his eyes squeezed shut, shoulders hunched into a tight ball.
After a long moment—presumably because the expected agonizing pain never arrived—Neville cautiously pried open his eyes.
Panic still lingered in the depths of his pupils, but as he took in his own situation, that terror slowly began to drain away.
Flins looked down at him, speaking in a flat tone:
“Mr.
Longbottom, if you have been frightened, perhaps a couple of glasses of water would help?”
Neville blinked, his lips moving before he managed to squeeze out a faint, nasal-toned whisper:
“Th…
thank you.”
Madam Hooch and the other students had already sprinted over to them.
She bent down, anxiously checking the state of both boys: “Oh, children!
Are you both alright?
Catching someone from a fall like that could easily get you injured!”
She inspected Flins and Neville from head to toe, confirming there were no broken bones or bruises, before the worry in her eyes slowly gave way to sheer amazement, as if she had only just realized what the scrawny Slytherin boy had pulled off.
“No, I still need to take you both to the hospital wing.”
She pulled Flins and Neville up without room for argument, turning to issue a stern command to the rest of the students on the lawn:
“I am taking them to the medical bay, and none of you are to move!
Put your broomsticks back where you found them, or before you can even say ‘Quidditch,’ you’ll be thrown out the front gates of Hogwarts!
Come along, dears.”
Neville clutched tightly to the hem of Flins’s robes, following closely at his heels as they walked away.
His eyes were unusually bright, lifting to look up at Flins every few steps, his lips moving several times before he finally murmured softly:
“You…
you were amazing just now.
Thank you.”
“Think nothing of it.
It was merely an insignificant trifle.”