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It’s two in the morning, the library’s candles are burning low, and Dan still doesn’t understand his Potions assignment. Twenty inches on historical use of lacewing flies? He’s barely mustered half that, even after getting Phil to help him sift through every book on the subject they could carry. He regrets taking fifth-year Potions already.
He sighs and stretches, and Phil mumbles something half-asleep and unintelligible from where he’s been draped over the side of a couch for the last forty minutes.
“Hey,” Dan hisses, prodding at Phil's leg. He snuffles a little in response to the contact, but otherwise ignores him. Dan rolls his eyes and tries again, tapping Phil's head with his wand this time, and a tiny spray of golden sparks alights on the back of Phil's neck.
He jerks upright. “Hmm?”
“I’ve given up on the essay, I think we should go to bed.”
Phil blinks at Dan with sleep-softened eyes. “Wasn’t it-” he yawns, interrupting himself, “-wasn’t it due tomorrow morning?”
“Yeah, but it’s not getting any further tonight. I’ve rewritten that paragraph about the importance of the phase of the moon eight times by now, and I think it might somehow make less sense than it did before. I’ll scribble something down at breakfast and hope Snape doesn’t completely murder me.”
Phil eyes him with mild suspicion - Dan tries to look convincingly dedicated and potions-loving and definitely not planning on squandering all their hard work - but can’t quite maintain it through another yawn.
“Alright then, if you’re sure.” He stretches, his back cracking unhealthily, and drags himself to his feet.
Dan stands up too, his scroll and quill shoved untidily under his arm with the only two books that ended up actually being helpful, and together he and Phil make their way into the corridor and out from under the glaring eye of Madame Pince.
“So what position have you decided on?” Phil asks. They’re walking down to the Quidditch pitch for tryouts, and Dan feels more jelly-legged than he’s been since he was an unsorted first year.
“I’ve, ah. I’m not- I’m not really sure?” He fiddles nervously with the footrests of his broom, brushing a nonexistent speck of dust off the burnished bronze. “I don’t think I can aim well enough for Beatering, and I like Seeking - I really like it, I really like it, you know how much I talk about it - but I’m a bit tall to be properly maneuverable, y’know? I mean, what Seeker breaks six foot two? Maybe I could Keep - I guess I could Keep - I mean, I’m big enough for it - but I’m so uncoordinated oh my god why am I doing this why am I doing this-” He’s babbling, he can feel it but can’t seem to stop it, and as his pace falters his grip on the broom becomes knuckle-whitening.
“Hey. Hey.” Phil knocks his shoulder against Dan’s reassuringly. “You’ll do amazingly. I know it. You care about this more than anyone else there, and I’ve seen how much you practice when you think nobody’s watching. It’ll get you there, there’s absolutely zero doubt in my mind.” Phil grins, seems to consider something for a fraction of a second, then wraps his arm around Dan’s waist and squeezes - what is he doing, oh my god does he know what he’s doing oh god please never let go runs inanely through Dan’s mind - and Dan hopes desperately the little grin that’s suddenly burst onto his own face doesn’t look as silly as it feels.
“I, er-” -his voice cracks a little, and he coughs- “thanks, Phil. I- Thanks.”
“Well, that and my amazing coaching skills of course,” Phil adds with fake smugness, retracting his arm a little awkwardly and shoving it back into his own pocket. Dan’s laughing as he punches Phil in the shoulder, nervousness quietened but not forgotten, but he feels the loss of the contact like a distant toothache as they continue down the hill, pink-faced.
“The Arrows? Your family goes for the Appleby Arrows? Christ, Phil, I may have to disown you.” They're making their way back from Hogsmeade, puffing clouds of warm breath into the white winter sky as they cheerfully argue about Quidditch teams.
“I said my family went for the Arrows, not me!”
“Yeah, but that just means you have traitor blood.” The snow swirls around Dan as he stops walking and throws a hand over his eyes in mostly-mock horror.
“Northern blood,” Phil retorts, walking backwards to keep Dan in view. “They can’t help it! They’re genetically attracted to blue and silver! It’s instinctual!”
“I, a simple Montrose Magpies fan, you, a blackguard from the house of Appleby - ‘two houses, both alike in dignity’, etcetera-” Dan catches the blank look on Phil’s face and stops dead. “Phil. Phil. Don’t tell me you don’t know Shakespeare. Even I know Shakespeare.”
Phil shrugs, still walking backwards. “Is he a Muggle writer or something?”
“Phil oh my god-”
“Hey! Listen, you didn’t even know who Beedle the Bard was when you got here, so.” He sticks his tongue out and dodges the spray of snow Dan laughingly kicks at him. “Fair’s fair.”
Quickening his pace to match Phil's again, Dan furrows his brow. “Wait, if you’re not an Arrows guy, then who do you support?”
The wind whistles past them. Phil looks vaguely guilty for a second. “Wimbourne Wasps.”
“Oh God.”
“I switched because I liked the buzzing people do when they watch them.” Phil claws his hands and scrunches his nose. “Bzzzzz.”
“Oh God.” Dan hides his face in his hands.
They’re crowded into the too-small secret space behind the one-eyed witch statue’s hump, giggling and giddy, sharing swigs of the Firewhiskey Phil somehow managed to convince his brother to smuggle to him. Dan is flushed pink - due entirely to the enchanted alcohol burning its way towards his stomach, he tells himself, certainly not because Phil's head is on his shoulder and Phil's hand is brushing Dan’s and Phil's body heat is seeping through two layers of shirt and warming Dan from the outside in.
Phil's nose is crinkled in mock-fury as he acts out the telling-off he got from McGonagall for charming his homework to squeakily sing the Weird Sisters at top volume, his other arm flung perilously close to Dan’s face, while Dan rests his head on his own bent knees and laughs in all the right places. The tiny birds and frogs he sketches absentmindedly in the dust of the passageway with the tip of his wand cavort around their feet, and Dan thinks that this is maybe the happiest he’s felt in his entire life.
They’re sitting on the grass by the lake, watching the giant squid stretching lazy tentacles towards the sky and soaking up the mid-May sun, and Dan can feel the unspoken question lying heavy in his heart.
What’s going to happen to us next year?
“So - excited for the Wizarding Wireless Network?” He tries to sound upbeat, and hopes desperately that Phil can’t hear the traitorous undercurrent of sadness and jealousy, of take me with you.
No such luck. Phil shoots a sideways glance at him, edges a little closer. “I’ll write you - every day, I’ll write you, you know I will, and Floo you if I can get permission from Dumbledore.”
Dan forces a laugh. “You don’t have to do that- I mean, I know you’ll be busy, it’s fine, and I’ll have NEWTs to worry about anyway, and-”
“No, Dan-” -and suddenly Phil has covered Dan’s hand with his own, is peering into his eyes urgently- “-this is important, I’m not going anywhere.” He pauses for a moment, then corrects himself. “Well, I’m leaving Hogwarts, but I’m not leaving you. You… you know that, right? I wouldn’t- I couldn’t-”
Dan shrugs jerkily. Phil is very close and very earnest, and Dan is magnetized, couldn’t look away if he wanted to. “I just…” He breathes a shaky breath. “Wanted to give you an out? I guess?” A sort of grin twitches at the edge of his mouth. “Just in case, y’know.”
Phil shoves at his shoulder and huffs a laugh, but doesn’t move away. “As though I haven’t had plenty of opportunity before this, you idiot.” His voice is warm and fondly frustrated, and Dan feels something in his heart unfurl and soften, some hard nub of insecurity melt away. “We’ve been best friends for four years, how could you think I’d just run off and forget you-”
Dan finds some burst of courage within himself, figures it’s now or never, does the only thing he ever thinks about doing with Phil so close and so bright and so open - he darts forward and presses his lips to Phil’s. Their noses bump together, a little clumsily, and Dan freezes when he feels Phil’s unresponsiveness.
Phil’s eyes are wide and shocked when Dan leans back a little.
“Is that…” Dan licks his own lips nervously. “Are you-”
But before he can continue, Phil blinks, grins, and swoops back in, and it’s so exactly the way Dan has spent way too many guilty hours imagining that for a lightningstruck moment he wonders whether he’s really awake. Then he’s swept up in soft and warm and that sweet and mildly musky scent that’s all Phil, and it feels like he’s hovering a half-inch above the grass with joy. His head is twisted around awkwardly but his free hand is in Phil’s hair and Phil’s is on his hip, and he can feel Phil tugging him closer and sense Phil’s every breath on his lips and he’s kissing Phil and Phil is really kissing him and it’s like melting, like fireworks, like sunlight is streaming into every nook of his heart at last.
Their teeth click together, and they break apart, grinning and flushed, hands still unwilling to let go. Dan can feel his pulse in his ears and his throat and he can’t imagine being happier than this.
“Does that reassure you?” Phil tries and fails to raise an eyebrow, and Dan tries and fails to hold in a laugh.
“I hate you.”
“Sure.” Phil’s hand is still curled possessively around the crest of Dan’s hip. It feels like a constant, like something that’s been there forever. Like home. Like a promise.
Later, as the sun sinks behind the castle, they lie back on the grass, shoulder-to-shoulder. Phil’s hand nudges Dan’s thigh, and Dan fumbles to grab it without looking, and they lie there together, staring into the blue infinity of the sky.