A/N: Lots of review, thank you all for reading. Review responses for this and all my stories can be found in my forums. Thank you for reading.

Chapter Seven: Flying

"Pay attention, class!" Professor Hooch snapped impatiently. "Girls, silence!"

This was the first time since the sorting that the girls and boys had class together, and Harry found himself staring at his female classmates with a mixture of fascination and abject terror. He kept having visions of them swooping down at him like harpies, kissing him and sucking out his magic until there was nothing left but a dry, desiccated husk.

"Shut your yaps, runts," Hooch's assistant for the day, a Slytherin prefect named Marcus Flint said. Flint was not just a prefect; he was captain of the Slytherin Quidditch team.

"Now, as we have discussed this week, there are four common means of magical travel," Hooch said, speaking loudly to be heard by everyone. "The first is Apparition. The second is the Floo network. The third is Portkeys. The fourth is on a type of magical vehicle. This fourth means has a near infinite amount of variety in it—one can charm nearly anything to move by magic—from Muggle automobiles to an animal, magic or otherwise. The Knight Bus is an example of that. And there is a very good possibility that if you have imagined it, someone, somewhere, has put a charm on it and ridden it, no matter how outlandish. However, the most popular object to enchant is the traditional broomstick. This is primarily because broomsticks were readily available to the witches who had most need of them and the wood and straw retained the charms better. We continue to use brooms today mainly as a tradition—there are better ways to travel, but just as Muggles still ride horses for leisure and competition, so too do we use brooms for leisure and competition."

Hooch walked between the large line of twenty seven girls and the smaller grouping of thirteen boys with her yellow eyes paying peering intently at each. She only stopped at the end of the line because of a lone figure walking toward her, tall and thin in black robes.

When he got closer, Harry was able to make out the long nose and short-cropped black hair of the head of Slytherin, Severus Snape. "Professor Hooch," he said with a formal nod to his own elder wife.

"Professor Snape, come to scout again?"

With a smirk, the head of Slytherin said, "One can always hope."

"Indeed." Hooch spun and said, "Everyone hold out your dominant hand over the broom next to you and say 'Up'. Do so now!"

Harry did not just feel the magic in the broom respond—he saw a colourless slither of it snap up to the palm of his hand as he said the word, followed by the broom itself. "Whoa," he said, grinning madly.

Around him, he saw others struggling with their brooms Neville's broom sent out the tendril of magic, but it seemed to have missed his hand somehow, while Hermione's broom (across the wide path Hooch insisted on between the girls and boys) didn't send anything out at all. Only a few kids had any luck—Harry saw with no small irritation that Malfoy's broom had come as easily to him as Harry's. Snape also noticed.

"If the broom has not come to your hand, then reach down and pick it up," Hooch said. "Flint, did you see who had responses?"

"Aye, Professor," Flint said with a toothy grimace that might have been a smile. "Malfoy, Potter, Nott, Bones, Goyle and Finch-Fletchley, over here."

Harry was surprised when three of the girls crossed the path. One was the tall girl with dark hair and a slightly long face and a pretty, petite nose whom he recognized from Muggleborn Orientation. The other was another pretty girl with copper-coloured hair and a wide, oval face. The third was quite possibly the ugliest female he'd ever seen. Gregoria Goyle towered half a head over Finch-Fletchley, who was several inches taller than Bones, and was so broad of shoulder she looked more mannish than any of the boys.

She also appeared to have the shadow of whiskers on her upper lip, which made Harry shudder as he joined them.

"Alright you lot," Flint said, "I'm a Quidditch team captain and my team won the Quidditch cup last year, so I know what I'm talking about. You got picked because you got an immediate response from the broom. That means you've ridden before."

Harry opened his mouth to protest, but stopped short at Flint's glare. "Now, rules—no touchy-feely shite. Can't stand ickle firsties touching each other. Gives me the creeps, see. Alright, everybody get on their broom and in the air."

Flint said "Up" and his own broom snapped into his hand; in a single casual motion he had the broom between his legs and his body in the air before Harry could exhale. He saw Malfoy do the same, with the same economy of motion, and ground his teeth. He glanced at Susan Bones and Justine Finch-Fletchly—the two girls smiled shyly before they did the same.

Goyle grunted something that might have been insulting, but Harry couldn't quite make it out. Not to be out done, he placed the broom between his legs and stood there, waiting for something to happen.

"Is there a problem, Mr Potter?"

Harry turned his head and saw glowing black eyes peering at him from over the arch of a long nose. Snape was still a young man, but Harry could see the cold, blue power boiling in his chest, arms and legs. "I'm not sure what to do, Professor," he admitted.

"Not sure what to do, Potter?"

"I've never been on a broom before, sir."

One elegant black grow rose up. "And yet the broom responded to you. Either you are the most extraordinary wizard in the planet, or you're lying."

"I was raised by my Muggle relatives, sir, I'd never even heard of magic before this summer!" Harry insisted.

"So I've heard," the professor said with a sneer. "Well, if you want a hint, Potter, you must wish the broom to move."

Harry very, very much wished the broom to move, if just to get away from the wizard looming over him. The broom, absorbing not just his magic but the rushing intent behind it, responded accordingly.

Harry shot into the air like a cannon ball. He did not even have time to scream as he clutched desperately at the haft. Behind him, he heard Flint scream, "Potter, what the bloody 'ell are you doing?" but he was moving too fast to look back. Instead, he clamped his legs around what felt like a much thicker body than the thin broom handle and realized he was actually sitting on a charmed surface rather than the wood itself.

Then he blinked and saw he was a foot away from slamming into the Quidditch stands. With a half-articulated scream of terror, Harry pulled left not just with the haft, but with his will and magic, all three working together with instinctive self-preservation. In the grounds, Hooch watched with a gaping jaw as Harry threaded the intricate puzzle of the Quidditch stand supports at several kilometres an hour beyond the broom's maximum speed, screaming the whole while.

"What did you do, Severus?" she finally said as her husband moved to her side.

"The boy claimed never to have ridden before," Severus said.

"And I'm a bleedin' Veela," she muttered. Placing her wand to her throat, she cast a Sonorus spell and shouted, "Potter, get back here now!"

The boy in question somehow threaded his body and broom through a window of wooden supports perhaps two feet square at full speed, pulled up, corkscrewed around and shot toward them. "How do I stop this thing!" he screamed as he shot past without slowing down.

"You wish the broom to stop!" Hooch shouted back.

Suddenly the broom stopped. Unfortunately, Harry was going a hundred kilometers an hour when it did, and he, as a consequence, did not stop. With another terrified scream he flew off the suddenly stationary broom and flew through the air on a parabolic course that took him right into the pond behind the gamekeeper's hut.

"Perhaps the boy wasn't lying," Snape allowed with a smirk.

Hooch looked at him and said, "You are a bastard sometimes, you know that?"

"Indubitably, my dear," he smirked at her as he started back to the castle. "Have fun with the boy. Remind Minerva first years are not allowed to play."

"And she'll remind you that she can make exceptions," she said. "And it'll serve you right at that."

Still smirking, Snape continued walking away.

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

Harry did not know how to swim—why would he? Learning to swim would mean he had been allowed to learn swimming in the first place. So he floundered in a pool a foot deeper than he could stand, gasping and coughing, until a rough hand grabbed the back of his robes and lifted him out of the water like a wet kitten.

He dangled in the air until he came to face a massive head covered in thick, dirty black hair. In the midst of the hair were two small, gleaming black eyes and a massively bulbous nose as large as Harry's fist. Then he realized the head alone was large as he was, and screamed in terror.

The giant screamed right back and dropped him before falling back in the pond with flailing arms The massive wave his fall caused carried Harry to shallow water where he was able to find his footing and scrambled out, shivering in the morning chill as he did so.

"What'd ya dun that fer?" the giant growled. He picked himself up out of the water. "Jus' trying to 'elp and all!"

"I'm sorry!" Harry said. "You scared me!"

"Saved yer, more'n like!"

"Oh, well, yes, thank you," Harry said, remembering his manners.

The giant stared at him a minute, before smiling that huge, terrifying smile filled with black-edged, yellow teeth. "Blimey, you're 'Arry Potter, aren't yer?"

"Er, yeah."

The giant walked through the pond as if striding through a puddle, and offered a hand as large as Harry's head. "Rubeus Hagrid, gamekeeper."

"Nice to meet you," Harry said, still trying to absorb what it was he was seeing. The giant man had a magical core—it was surprisingly small, but it was there bubbling away in his chest. However, his magic also seemed a lot more dispersed than in other people he'd seen, shimmering over his skin and body like a second set of clothes—a set which hopefully didn't smell nearly as bad as what Hagrid actually wore.

"Well, I see Professor Hooch waving, so you'd best get back to class. Yer Da told me the secret to brooms, if yer wanna know. Just pretend the broom ain't there t'all; like yer can fly on your own, and yer go wherever like yer wanna go. Broom'll take yer there."

"Oh, okay, thank you." Harry turned to leave, but stopped. "Wait, you knew my dad?"

"Well yeah!" Hagrid said with another frightening smile. "He and those friends o' his came out all the time. Made rock cakes and have tea together, we did. Maybe yer can come out some day."

"Oh, well, sure, that'd be nice," Harry said. "Gotta go!"

"Right, off yer go then!" Hagrid said, shooing him toward the flying lesson.

Harry saw that his broom was right where he left it on the far edge of the practice field by the Quidditch stand. Just out of curiosity, he said, "Come". He grinned in surprise when the tendril of magic snapped out across the distance to his palm, followed by the broom itself. He lost the grin when the broom slapped painfully into his hand. "Ouch!"

"Mr Potter!" Hooch shouted when he arrived. "What do you think you were doing?"

Behind her, all the other students were laughing at him. Harry felt his cheeks glowing and wanted to shrink in on himself. "Sorry, Professor," he said softly.

"Why did you take off so fast?"

"Professor Snape said I just needed to want the broom to move."

"And?" she said, exasperated.

"I wanted it to move away from him real fast," Harry clarified.

She stared hard at him, until he noticed a quirk in the side of her mouth where she was fighting her laughter. "And your aerial ballet?"

"I didn't realize it would stop so fast. I'm sorry."

"Never mind," Hooch said with a sigh. "Mount your broom."

Harry did as instructed. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small golden ball with wings. "Catch this five times, and you'll pass full marks from the flying portion of the class without another lesson."

She let it go, and with a whoop Harry shot after it. He was still in the air when Professor McGonagall arrived just minutes later. "Rolanda, I heard an interesting rumour regarding one of my Lions."

"He's caught the bloody practice snitch four times," Hooch said dryly.

"Four times!" McGonagall said. "How long have you been drilling him?"

"Ten minutes."

"Got it!" Harry screamed from the air before shooting down from two hundred feet in a second. He pulled the broom up a foot from the ground, dismounted while still in motion, and ran toward Hooch with the ball in his hand. "This is brill! Can I do it again?"

Behind him, Flint had taken over the class, though most of them were staring at Harry.

"Sev also wishes to remind you that first years cannot play," Hooch said.

"We'll see about that!" McGonagall huffed. "I want that cup back, thank you very much. Mr Potter, congratulations on passing your flying lessons. With me, please."

"Yes, Professor!"

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

"I just don't understand it, Lily was pants at brooms," Professor Flitwick said at the end of an interesting staff meeting. "In fact I was always under the impression that Aethers did poorly in magical transportation as a whole."

"The boy threaded the Quidditch stands better than I could," Hooch said. "I doubt Gwenog Jones could have done better, and she'd likely agree. If I didn't know better, I'd say the boy was lying about never flying before."

Beside her, Severus Snape snorted. "As would I, until I saw him nearly kill himself because he did not know how to properly stop."

"Sev, you're being mean," his second wife and one of the youngest staff members besides Charity, Aurora Sinistra, said, though she too was smiling gently.

"Perhaps," Snape allowed, not showing any remorse. "Regardless, the boy is a first year, Minerva. Surely you don't mean to expose him to upper years? Especially given the attention he has already received?"

"And what, pray tell, do you mean by that?" Minerva asked.

"Madame Zabini has already proposed a contract for her daughter Blaise and Mr Potter," Dumbledore said in a light tone. "To be effective upon their fourteenth birthday, with a permitted usage clause at any time prior to that."

"She didn't!" McGonagall said, aghast.

"Oh, she did," Snape said, "and then only because she knew we would alert authorities if she proposed the contract for herself. Nor is she the only one; she's just the most blatant."

"You know how the locker rooms are," Hooch said. "What if he comes up and grabs that promising girl you wanted to start—Johnson was it?—like he did Damples that first day? The girl is still a Third Year—how do you think she would respond? She'd slap him silly!"

"No," Burbage said from the end of the table. "More than likely she would snog him until he was blue and bond him on the spot."

Beside her, Dulcetta Orkin, the second Muggle Studies professor for the even years, snorted. "I've heard there's a line of girls wanting to do just that."

"From what Elfaba told me, you're likely both right, Charity, 'Cetta" McGonagall said. "I'm a bit old to have had much of a reaction, but it felt almost as if the boy was touching my magic itself, and it was not an unpleasant feeling at all."

"That just proves the point," Hooch said.

"He wouldn't be the only exception, though," Flitwick noted. "I was planning on filing an exception for a talented second year of mine, and I know Severus was out there to look at the Malfoy boy. Minerva, I know you were also going to ask for a second year exceptions for that second-year girl who impressed Rolanda last year."

"All the exceptions are girls," Hooch noted.

"I am going to seek an exception for Mr Malfoy next year," Snape said. "However, I do so knowing that he was brought up in wizarding traditions and knows better than to allow himself to fall into an untenable situation. Potter does not."

"I'll ensure he has a separate changing room," McGonagall said, a little shaken by the discussion. "I would have had to do that anyway. Wood has already recruited the Weasley twins who are third years. I'll make a point of pairing Harry with Fred Weasley. But one way or the other, I will have Potter on my team."

"Well, if I have learned nothing else after sixty years of working with you, Professor," Dumbledore said, "is when not to argue. File your exceptions, all of you, and they will most likely be approved."

"I still don't understand where this talent comes from," Filius said again. "Lily could barely even sit on a broom!"

"While it is easy to see Lily in his behavior and responses," Dumbledore said, "one must not forget that his father was also an astounding flier, and to this day holds the record for most goals scored in a game. After all, he is his father's son as well."

Snape frowned but said nothing. Across from him, Professor Quirrell tugged at the end of his ridiculous turban. Unlike the others, he wore his veil, but instead of making him look normal, it had the opposite effect. Quirrell was, without doubt, the most handsome man at the table and spoke with a casual ease and confidence. "So when can we expect to see the young prodigy in action then?"

"The Quidditch season begins on the first of November," Hooch said.

"I look forward to watching the young man play," the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor said smoothly. "After hearing so much about him this week, it should be an adventure."

"Of course, you won't have him as a student for another few years," McGonagall said, "but he's shown he has a good mind on his shoulders. You could come to dinner in the Great Hall any time you wish to meet him."

"Or, if you wish a more intimate environment, my class," Burbage said. At the amused looks from her colleagues, she blushed prettily. "I simply meant to say that Mr Potter will often take his afternoon study in class with me to talk about the week, or discuss his work."

"An enticing offer, Ms Burbage, but at this time it's best for me not to speak to him. You all know how I like to test my incoming students," Quirrell said. "The test loses something if they get to know me beforehand."

"Meaning you like to scare them," Sinistra said, frowning.

"Consider it a practical lesson in Defense," Quirrell responded with a smile as smooth as his voice.

"Yes, well, anything else to discuss?" Dumbledore asked. "No? Then thank you for your time, and please let me know if you need anything."

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

To Harry's everlasting shock, Burbage's Ordering Potion worked. Harry read through his maths text book on Sunday night, and realized with a sense of shock that he actually remembered it all. He could not say for sure he understood it, but he remembered it. Hunching over, he started working on the problem, his brows furrowed in concentration.

The other boys knew about the potion—of course Harry told them, but in the context of something the girls already had. That provided all the impetus the boys would need to get the potion for themselves, along with a lot of grumbling about how unfair it was that the girls got a head start that the boys didn't. Except for Neville, who simply said, "Girls always get the head start."

His statement killed the grumbling, replacing it instead with a rather sober contemplative silence as the boys truly thought about what Neville's statement—and the truth behind it—meant.

Whatever the circumstances, Harry found his second week of Hogwarts much, much more bearable than his first. The only class that really gave homework was Muggle Studies, and then simply because they were covering so much at once. However, as a result of the potion, Harry found he retained more of what he read, which meant he was able to read through prep faster. The potion did not make him smarter, he didn't think, but it definitely helped him remember what he read through.

He also found himself looking forward to Muggle Studies every day. Although Professor Burbage treated all students equally in class, Harry couldn't help but imagine some extra warmth in her eyes whenever she looked at him. He certainly felt the same for her. Of course, their schedule was so tightly controlled that he did not have a chance to really expound on those feelings, but he thought it was probably the best. Whenever he thought a teacher might like him in the past, something always came along and ruined it—usually the Dursleys. This way, he was able to maintain the illusion that, at least to Professor Burbage, Harry Potter was special.

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Author's Note: Very special thanks to Teufel1987, JR and Miles for beta reading. I appreciated the Brit picking this time around!