A/N: Hey, all, sorry about the hiatus! I was doing Camp Nanowrimo in April, and it left me with no time to write anything else. Rest assured, I still want to continue this story, and I hope you continue to read and enjoy it! Thanks for your patience!

Review Responses:

Guest (1), it's not going to turn into Gryffindor bashing, no worries there. Right now, it seems that way because Slytherin and Gryffindor are rivals, and Al's still in the stage where he's very impressionable, and is basically getting the Slytherin side of the rivalry (Rose is hearing similar things about Slytherin from Gryffindor), but since she's not our POV character, we don't get to see them much. However, I can't promise that Al and James won't start bashing each other as they grow up, as befits sibling rivalry.

Guest (2), thanks! I don't think anyone would disown Al for being in Slytherin, considering Harry basically just said it was okay in the epilogue of the books. Although since the Gryffindor vs. Slytherin rivalry is still strong (and there are still Dark elements in Slytherin House), some concern is expected, lol.

ScarletAvenger, thanks! I felt like the adults would be a little more removed from the rivalry and would be able to keep a more level head about it (it definitely seemed more important to the students in the books than to those that were already graduated, although it was still important to some of them).

JeanAndBilius, thanks! Glad you enjoy it!

BuzzyBeeForever, thanks, I'm really glad you like it! Some members of his family will definitely be able to get over it sooner than others (I'm thinking the older Weasley cousins will have an easier time than the younger ones, but hopefully it won't take too long).

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. If you recognize the name/can find it in the Harry Potter Wiki, it's not mine.

CHAPTER THREE

The First Flying Lesson

The first few weeks of term passed quickly, and before long, Al found himself settling into a routine. He tried to take as much time as he could to spend with Rose and his cousins, but as homework started intensifying, he found himself spending more and more time studying. There was so much to learn about magic, and before long, Al's head was spinning. He had no idea how James and some of the older students seemed to be keeping up so easily.

It was one chilly morning in September, while he had his head down in The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1, trying frantically to find more information for Professor Belrose's essay that was due tomorrow, when he heard Leander get up from the arm chair next to him, the other boy leaping to his feet and turning towards the common room entrance.

"Whoa," he said. "I think something's going on by the bulletin board!"

Al blinked, looking up. He had been staring down at his essay for so long that it took his eyes a while to focus, but there were indeed several students clustered around the bulletin board. He blinked, realizing that they were mostly from his year. Circe and Gisela were at the front of the crowd, Circe's hand clasping Gisela's protectively, while Scorpius and Rheia watched from a distance. He looked over his shoulder to tell Leander that, but Leander was already running, darting towards the bulletin board. His eyes widened as he reached it, and he looked back in excitement.

"Al! Tristan!" he called. "You need to see this!"

"What is it?" asked Al, already capping his ink bottle carefully and laying down his quill.

"Flying lessons!"

Al got up, walking over to the board. Sure enough, a notice had been posted saying that flying lessons for first-years would start that week, and that Slytherin first-years would be having theirs on Thursday afternoon.

"I can't wait!" said Circe excitedly, her voice cutting through the chatter. "Ah, I haven't flown in so long!"

"Wait until you see me fly," said Leander, grinning. "Mum says I'll make the Quidditch team for sure."

Circe huffed. "As a mascot, maybe," she said.

Leander scowled at her. "You take that back, Rosier."

"Make me, Nott."

Tristan nudged him in the side, drawing Al's eyes away from the budding argument. "Your brother's on the Gryffindor team, isn't he?"

Al made a face. "Don't remind me," he said, looking back at the board. He felt a smile come onto his face in spite of himself, his mind flashing back to his last summer before Hogwarts, to memories of flying in the paddock near the Burrow, the wind in his hair as he played a quick game of Quidditch with Rose and the others. It had been fun, aside from that one moment where he was half-convinced James had tried to knock him off his broom.

"Um…" said Gisela, sounding uncertain. "I've never flown before. Is it…hard?"

"Oh, right!" said Circe, blinking at Gisela as if she had forgotten that the other girl was there. "Of course you've never flown before! Don't worry though. It's really easy. We'll show you!"

"We've allflown before," said Rheia, speaking up for the first time. "My sister taught me how when I was seven. I'm pretty sure everyone from a pureblood family can fly."

She said it with a sweet smile, but the words didn't seem to improve Gisela's mood.

"My brother taught me how to ride a bicycle," said Gisela, looking away. "But…um…I guess it's not the same, is it?"

Circe shot Rheia a glare, releasing Gisela's hand to wrap an arm around her shoulder. "You'll be fine," she said. "It's loads of fun, and there's lots of people who've never flown before. We'll help you, right?" She looked around at the assembled group meaningfully. Al found himself nodding quickly, along with Leander and Tristan.

"I'll help teach you if you want," said Al.

"Oh, hey, that's right," said Leander, blinking as if he had only now noticed that Al was there. "Bet you're not bad on a broom either, are you, Al?"

"Um—I'm alright, I think," said Al, feeling slightly embarrassed. "I've been flying for a while, but I'm not as good as my parents."

"Oh, that's right!" said Circe, her eyes widening as if she had only just remembered something. "Al, your mum played Quidditch professionally, didn't she?"

Al nodded. "For a little while," he said. "She was—uh, Chaser for the Holyhead Harpies."

"That is so cool," said Circe. "The Harpies are my favorite team!"

"Really?" Leander muttered. "I would never have guessed…"

Circe ignored him. "Hey, you don't think she's still in touch with any of the players do you? Do you think I could get their autographs? Because that would be amazing—"

Behind him, Scorpius let out a snort of derision, turning and walking away. Circe trailed off mid-sentence, frowning as he watched him. Conversation stilled, the others looking up to see what had happened. Their eyes lingered on him until he disappeared behind the door to the boy's dormitories, the silence broken only by the steady sound of the waves lapping against the glass.

It was Leander who broke the silence, scowling after Scorpius. "No wonder no one can stand him," he said. "The way he acts, you'd think he owned the school."

Al frowned, but said nothing, turning back to the others. The conversation quickly resumed, and before he knew it, his homework was forgotten, lost somewhere in the back of his mind as the conversation shifted to the Quidditch World Cup coming up that summer, and he was made to recount his experiences at the last one, when he and his family had gone to Patagonia to watch Bulgaria play Brazil.

The week passed faster than he expected, and the next thing he knew, he was walking with the other Slytherin first years out onto one of the lawns, the anticipation of flight making him giddy. He wasn't the only one. Most of the other first years he'd meet could only talk about flying lessons all week, even among the Slytherins where, as Rheia had pointed out, most of them had flown before.

They arrived at the meeting place to find the Gryffindors already there, standing on the opposite side of two rows of broomsticks that had been laid out on the ground. Rose, who was deep in conversation with a first-year girl that Al recognized as Ava Piper, looked up just in time to give him a hesitant smile. He returned it, frowning at the looks of open hostility coming from some of the meaner looking Gryffindors. Judging from the way Leander, Circe, Rheia and Scorpius were glaring back, the feeling must have been mutual. Thankfully, the arrival of the flying coach, Madam Vanity, seemed to put a stop to that. She paced between the lines, looking over the class before quickly matching students up to brooms.

Al stood across from Rose, watching as Madam Vanity walked between the lines one last time, giving them a few final instructions.

"Now," she said. "I know some of you have probably flown before and feel fairly comfortable on broomsticks, but I'm not going to put up with any nonsense from anyone on this first class. You'll do what I say, when I say it, or you can turn in your broom and head right back into the castle. Is that clear?"

Al and the others voiced their assent, and before they knew it, Madam Vanity had them calling their brooms up into their hands. Al's shot into his almost eagerly, as did Leander, Rose, and Scorpius's brooms. A handful of others were having trouble. Tristan's broom hovered slowly up into his hand, as if it was trying to make up its mind about it, and Rheia's broom lifted itself a few inches off the ground before doing a sad little flop and rolling back over. She looked down at it, biting her lip in embarrassment, and tried again. Near the end of the row, Gisela's broom quivered before slowly rising to meet her hand, and she closed her hand around it, looking pale.

Within a few moments, everyone had managed to pick up their brooms, including a stout Gryffindor boy who had tried to pick his broom up off the ground when Madam Vanity wasn't looking.

"Mount up," she said, giving them one last look.

Al sat astride his broom readily, keeping his feet planted on the ground and waiting for further instructions. It was hard, when all he wanted to do was kick off the ground. The broom seemed to hum with energy beneath him, as eager to get back up into the air as he was. He looked over at Rose, seated across from him, and his cousin flashed him a quick smile, the same sort that usually preceded a race. He waited while Madam Vanity moved among them, correcting their grips—apparently Leander's was too ham-fisted, and Rheia was holding on too lightly, as if she was afraid of her broom—before the flying instructor made it back to the end of the line.

"Alright," she said, "On my signal, we'll kick off the ground and try hovering in place. Students have gotten injured here in the past, so do this step slowly. Ready? One. Two. Three."

At the count of three, Al kicked off the ground, letting the broom rise a few feet. There were some startled shouts as others did the same, first-time flyers struggling to hold onto their brooms, but nothing bad happened. Madam Vanity had them hover and land a handful of times to get them used to the sensation, then finally gave them some freedom to fly around and try maneuvers themselves, provided, of course, that they stayed within a few feet of the ground. The lines dispersed into a cloud of slow-flying students, like a swarm of incredibly lazy flies, and Al floated his broom sedately over towards Rose, drawing up beside her.

"Nice day for flying, isn't it?" he said, looking up at the cloudless sky.

Rose grinned in reply, shaking her long red hair out of her face. "The wind's nice," she said. "Kind of makes me wish we could go a little higher."

"Right?" Al said, looking up at the sky.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Madam Vanity pass them, shooting towards Ava Piper who had a death grip on her broom. James had been telling all sorts of stories about how he'd flown laps around the others his first flying lesson at Hogwarts, but Al wasn't seeing how that was possible now, unless James had spent the next several nights in detention. Still, it felt great being on a broom again, even if they couldn't fly very far. He turned towards Rose, about to tell her so, but looked up sharply, as something blurred at the edge of his vision, a crash resounding from the other side of the lawn.

His eyes widened, and he zipped over there to have a closer look. A pair of students were lying on the ground in a tangle of limbs, both Slytherins. Rheia Carran, still unsteady on her broom, had swung wide and collided, it looked like, straight into Scorpius Malfoy. The former was already beginning to sit up, her face burning with embarrassment as Madam Vanity leaped off her broom and moved to help Scorpius.

Scorpius's pale face was even paler than usual, and he was gritting his teeth in pain, one of his hands wrapped tight around his arm. Al dismounted quickly, Rose behind him. The two of them hurried to join the knot of concerned students clustered around the scene.

"Let me see that, Mr. Malfoy, let me see," Madam Vanity said, leaning over Scorpius and frowning at the arm. Her brow furrowed in concern as Scorpius pulled away from her, keeping the arm clasped close to himself. "Might have broken something…" she muttered. "You should go to the hospital wing."

"Scorpius—," Rheia began, her eyes wide. She cast them around the crowd, looking past Scorpius at Circe and Gisela, who had gotten off their brooms and were watching with concern from behind him. "I—I didn't mean—."

Scorpius turned towards her, gray eyes narrowed into a glare. "You'd think, Carran, that a witch from a pureblood family would know how to control a broomstick."

Rheia gasped, shrinking back as if she had been burned. A wave of angry muttering passed through the crowd, and from somewhere to Al's right, Leander bristled.

"Now, wait just a minute, Malfoy—," he began, fists clenched, but Tristan, sensing trouble, quickly stepped in front of him to block his path.

Scorpius ignored him, getting to his feet. "I can walk to the hospital wing myself," he said, eyeing the crowd with some hostility.

"I don't doubt that," said Madam Vanity, "But you better go with him, Mr. Lynch. Just in case. I'm not sure we need any more accidents."

Tristan's eyes widened, but he nodded quickly, falling into step beside Scorpius. The rest of them watched, stunned into silence, as the two figures disappeared into the castle. Madam Vanity turned towards Rheia when they had faded from sight.

"Are you hurt at all, Miss Carran?" she asked. "If you're not, we should continue with the lesson. The rest of you, back on your brooms. I still have twenty minutes to whip you into shape."

Al swung himself back onto his broom, staring morosely at the spot on the ground where the accident had happened. Beside him, Rose quickly mounted up and kicked off the ground, rising a few feet into the air. She frowned in the direction that Scorpius and Tristan had disappeared off to.

"How mean…" she said, pursing her lips in disapproval. "I don't know how you can stand sharing a dormitory with that Malfoy, Al."

Al said nothing, rising up into the air beside her. He wasn't sure about it, but he thought he had seen something in the moment before the Rheia and Scorpius collided, something that had caught his eye. A second before impact, Rheia Carran was swaying unsteadily on her broom, but it wasn't Scorpius that she was about to swing into. Scorpius had been several feet away, moving in a lazy set of figure eights when Rheia first began to move.

No, Al thought, increasingly certain. Rheia hadn't been anywhere near a collision course with Scorpius.

But she had been about to slam right into Gisela Flynn.

"Don't know why you're so worked up about it," said Dominique Weasley, in the middle of an increasingly tense game of Exploding Snap with Molly and Freddie. "People get injured in flying class all the time. You should ask Professor Longbottom to tell you about his first flying class. If you ask me, Malfoy breaking an arm is just karma."

"He could have been nicer about it, though," said Rose, frowning as she paged angrily through the book she was reading. "He didn't have to be so mean. That poor girl was almost in tears."

"Reckon it's pretty hard to be nice when your arm's been broken, though," said Freddie, quickly tapping on the deck with his wand as a pair of identical cards showed up.

"Well, I guess that's true," Rose muttered, frowning down at her textbook. "But still."

"If you ask me," said Molly, which clearly nobody had, "Flying classes are just too dangerous in general. Half the students in the school don't need them, and those that do should just get one-on-one coaching. It's much safer. Oh!"

The last exclamation was accompanied by a puff of smoke and a crack as the deck exploded loudly, causing Freddie and Dominique to draw back. Molly coughed, waving some of the smoke away from her face. Al frowned from where he was also looking through his homework, saying nothing.

It had been a sunny day, so Al had found himself taking his things and going out to work on homework by the lake. On the way there, he and Rose had run into Molly and Freddie, which had somehow led to them finding Dominique playing a game of solitaire under one of the trees that ringed the lake. They'd gone to sit with her, and Dom hadn't chased them away.

Dominique was in her fifth year and older than all of them, but Al liked her. She didn't seem to think she was too 'cool' to spend time with her younger cousins, which Al privately thought was because Dominique was cool enough that she just didn't care what anyone else thought of her. Over the summer, she had dyed bright purple streaks into her long silvery hair that had almost driven Aunt Fleur into fits, but she had taken Al and Rose out for ice cream while they were all shopping for their school things, which, thinking back on it, had probably been because it gave her an excuse to get away from her screaming mother. She broke a lot of rules, and Molly disapproved of her because of that on general principle, but it was widely agreed by both Al and James that among all the Weasley cousins, she was the most 'fun'.

She tapped the cards with her wand as Freddie started pounding on Molly's back, the deck reshuffling itself.

"You're just mad because you fell off your broom," Dom pointed out.

"I did not!" said Molly, turning about as red as her hair. "I just—tripped a little, that's all."

"That's not what James said," Freddie said, grinning at her.

"That's because James lied," said Molly, scowling at Fred.

"Where is James, anyway?" asked Al, looking around.

"Quidditch practice," said Dominique, with a shrug. "Him and Louis both, or did you not notice the gaggle of girls making their way to the Quidditch pitch?" She rolled her eyes, clearly not amused by her brother's popularity as she flicked her wand, directing the deck to settle back onto the ground to start another game. "Honestly, between James's bragging, Louis's admirers, and Victoire's endless 'Head Girl'-ing, I'm beginning to think you had the right idea, Al."

She gave him a wink.

Al slipped off to the Slytherin common room quickly after dinner, the Potions essay he and Rose had been working on still fresh on his mind. Rose had until Monday to work on it, but it was due tomorrow for him, and Dom and Freddie had distracted him with another game of Exploding Snap before he could finish it. He only had a few more inches left to write on Potions though. If he hurried, he could get it done early and still have time to rest tonight.

He rounded the corner that led to the entrance to the dungeons, well ahead of the other members of his year, and paused as he noticed someone coming towards the dungeons from another corridor. It was Scorpius, rubbing at his freshly-healed arm. He frowned at Al as he caught sight of him, quickening his stride.

Al took a deep breath and hurried to catch up, drawing up beside him.

"Scorpius," he said.

Scorpius didn't look up.

"I know what you did!"

That made Scorpius pause, looking over his shoulder at Al. He slowed but didn't stop, continuing to walk towards the Slytherin common room. "What are you talking about, Potter?" he asked.

Al took a deep breath. "I know that you were just trying to help Gisela," he said. "I saw it happen. The whole thing."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Scorpius, but he looked away, the frown on his face as telling as if he had admitted it outright. "Carran crashed into me. Everyone saw it. For all of her bragging, she can't even fly a broom in a straight line." He snorted in derision.

Al persisted. "But she wasn't going to hit you," he said. "She was going to hit Gisela. I don't know why you don't just tell people that, instead of letting everyone assume that you're some—some kind of git who doesn't care."

"I don't care, Potter," said Scorpius, coming to a stop in front of the wall that led into the common room and turning to face Al. "Why would I care about some—some Muggle-born girl? And for the last time, can you stop talking to me? I'm not your friend. I'm never going to be your friend! Do you understand? Salazar." The last was said as an afterthought, directed to the wall behind them. It opened with a soft hiss, and Al followed Scorpius into the common room, scarcely aware of the other Slytherins beginning to file in around them, coming from dinner.

"I don't understand why," said Al. "I mean, you're not a bad person. So why do you insist on making everyone think that you are? It doesn't make any sense!"

"How do you know I'm not a bad person?" Scorpius challenged. "You don't know anything about me. You don't know anything about Carran, or Nott or Lynch or Rosier or whoever it is you hang around with. You don't know anything about any of this. You just think you understand things, and that's what makes you so insufferable! You think you know everything, but you don't, and I'm not going to get sucked into your little fantasy—"

The two of them were cut off as a high-pitched screech reverberated through the common room, coming from one of the girls' dormitories. Al ran towards it without thinking, his heart jumping into his throat. He threw open the door, heedless of the fact that Scorpius was running behind him, wand out.

The two of them drew to a stop, staring at the scene in front of them.

Circe stood with her back to them, facing the room, her hands on Gisela's shoulders. Gisela was trembling. The room in front of them looked like any other dormitory room, except for the fact that one of the beds had been destroyed, the curtains slashed and burned with magic, the silk sheets torn apart, and the stuffing ripped out of the pillows and yanked viciously out of the mattress. Scrawled over the bed, in red paint and big block letters, were the words:

GO HOME, MUDBLOOD.

YOU'RE NOT WELCOME HERE.