The morning of the first year Gryffindor and Slytherin flying lessons dawned bright and brisk. Harry and Pansy had not been able to fend off Draco and Blaise when the two boys realized Harry had never flown before.

They sat on either side of him, giving him one tip after another, as Pansy sat across from them and attempted to look sympathetic. It wasn't working very well, Harry noted as she utterly failed to hide her snickers behind a muffin as Blaise attempted to show Harry how to properly grip a broom, using a sausage as an example.

"D'you get it, Harry?" Blaise was saying as he tried to force Harry to hold the sausage. "Here, give it a try."

Pansy hid her face in her hands and giggled helplessly.

"It's alright, Blaise, I think I've got it down," Harry said, pushing the sausage away carefully. Blaise shrugged and took a bite out of it instead.

"Are you sure?" Draco asked from his other side. "Do you remember what I told you about how to go faster and slower?"

"Yes, Draco," Harry answered, shooting a warning glare at Pansy, who was waiting eagerly for him to say it. "I remember. It's in the hips." Pansy snickered uncontrollably, and Harry glared at her again. "I'm sure the teacher will tell us all of this, you know."

"But you should know it all beforehand, Harry. You don't want to look like you don't know what you're doing," Blaise said reasonably, ignoring Pansy's hopeful offer of more sausage.

Harry grinned and said, "But I don't know what I'm doing."

"You will if we tell you." Draco informed him. "And besides, you shouldn't let other people know when you have a disadvantage." He turned up his nose and said, "It's not very Slytherin."

Harry figured, what with the way he'd not asked them about the whole 'Boy-Who-Lived' thing, that he was already acting Slytherin enough, but once again, they didn't need to know that.

"Alright, fine," Harry said, taking a bite of his eggs. "But lets have a break now and eat. If you try to tell me any more, I don't think I could bear it."

Pansy laughed and said, "Astronomy Tower!"

"Exactly," Harry grinned, saluting her with his goblet. Blaise and Draco looked between the two of them, confused.

"You had to be there," Harry explained, and they nodded and went back to their food, still discussing the lessons.

"Alright, everyone stand by a broom, go on then."

Harry and his friends quickly picked the best brooms, and Harry grinned at Hermione, who stood across from him. She looked as though she quite liked the idea of keeping her feet on solid ground. Dudley stood next to her, and appeared to be having similar thoughts.

In fact, Harry noted at least one or two other Gryffindors that didn't look at all eager to be standing next to a broom today.

"I thought Gryffindors were supposed to be brave," Blaise whispered, clearly having noticed the same thing. "I mean, look at Longbottom."

He pointed discreetly at a round faced boy a few brooms down from Hermione, who looked to be quaking in his shoes. Harry cast his mind back and recalled that this was the boy who'd melted his cauldron on the first day.

"Pitiful," Draco whispered from Blaise's other side. Blaise nodded in agreement and Harry shrugged.

"Now, stick your hand out above your broom and say, 'up!'"

"Up!" Harry and everyone else in the class yelled. Harry was pleased when his broom jumped immediately into his hand. Across from him, Hermione's broom had given a sort of lazy shudder and rolled over. Dudley's broom hadn't moved.

"Here, Harry, remember what I showed you at breakfast?" Blaise asked, demonstrating his grip on the broom. Harry grinned at the sausage-related memory and mimicked his grip.

"Up!" Hermione demanded, and finally her broom shot up into her grasp, nearly knocking her off her feet. Dudley had given up long ago and had simply reached down and picked it up.

Madam Hooch, the flying instructor, was now walking around, correcting people's grips. When she reached Draco, she adjusted his hands and said, "No, hold your hands a bit closer together."

"I've been doing it like this just fine for years," Draco informed her in what Harry had come to think of as his 'snooty pureblood' voice, purposely moving his hands back.

"Well then you've been doing it wrong for years, lad." Madam Hooch recorrected his grip once more and moved on.

Draco fumed at her departing back and gripped his broom his way again, hard enough to make the thing start twitching in his grasp. "I do it just fine, you old hag," he muttered darkly as Blaise and Harry nodded loyally. Vince and Greg grunted in agreement as well, and Pansy just snickered quietly.

Then Hooch was telling them to take off at her whistle, rise a few feet above the ground, land again, and so on.

"Three, two, one…"

Longbottom, who apparently had hearing problems, took off before the whistle even touched the teacher's lips. He rose rapidly with a shout of alarm, almost thirty feet in the air, before his broom seemingly bucked him off and he fell to the ground with a thud.

Harry winced. That had to have hurt.

Madam Hooch rushed forward, leaning over the boy before helping him up and setting off toward the castle. As she led him away, she called over her shoulder, "All of your feet are to stay firmly on the ground. If I find out that any of you was riding a broom, you'll be out of Hogwarts before you can say Quidditch!"

Draco waited until she was out of sight before mounting his broom. Blaise copied him and said, "Harry, come on! We'll show you a few moves before she gets back."

Harry was torn. "But we'll be in trouble. You know the Gryffindors will tell on us."

Draco considered this, then yelled, "Hey, Weasley!"

A red headed boy ambled over and gave him a look. "What do you want?"

Draco smirked at him and examined his fingernails. "Bet you can't do a Sloth Grip Roll."

Weasley seemed incensed. "Of course I can!"

"Bet you I can do it better than you, then."

Weasley turned slightly red and mounted his broom as well. "We'll see about that!"

"Ron, no!" Hermione said, marching over when she saw Ron about to take off. "You'll get in trouble!"

He gave her a condescending sort of look before turning back to Draco. "You don't tell, we don't tell."

Draco nodded curtly, and they both took off into the air.

Blaise nudged Harry with a smirk. "What was that about the Gryffindors?"

Harry still felt a little torn, and Hermione wasn't helping.

"Harry, you'll be in terrible trouble," she said sternly.

Blaise raised an eyebrow at Harry, who looked between the two. "Just a few seconds, Hermione?" he asked. "I promise I won't go very high."

Hermione kept her stern face for a few more moments, but Harry's pleading doe eyes soon won her over. She sighed and said, "I saw nothing."

"Of course you didn't," Pansy said, pulling her away from the boys. "We were discussing Charms. All the way over here. We couldn't possibly have noticed a thing."

She pulled a slightly bemused Hermione toward the group that had followed Hooch toward the castle. They were milling about a few meters away from the doors, waiting for her to come back.

"Harry, come on!" Draco yelled from the sky. Blaise had already taken off too. Harry sighed and mounted the broom like they'd shown him before pushing off and soaring into the sky.

It was the most amazing thing ever. Blaise whooped and Weasley nearly fell off his broom as Harry came to an abrupt halt smack between him and Draco.

"This is great!" Harry yelled enthusiastically. Draco grinned at him.

"Told you!"

"Harry!" Blaise yelled, flying closer. "Are you sure you've never been on a broom before?"

"Never!" Harry shouted back, racing through the sky around them with ease. "Must be all that brilliant advice you two gave me!"

"Look!" Draco called, pointing at something shiny on the ground. "What d'you think that is?"

Harry, still caught up in the heady rush that he'd felt upon takeoff, immediately dove toward it amidst a chorus of surprised shouts from his two friends and Weasley.

"Harry, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Blaise hollered after him, but Harry was too focused on the shiny object to care. He neared the ground and pulled up hard on his broom, skimming the grass with his toes, before bending down and snatching it up from the grass. He landed and found that Draco, Blaise and Weasley were flying toward him, so he waited patiently, examining his prize. It was a small glass ball.

When they landed, he held it up and asked, "What d'you think it is?"

All three boys were staring at him, silent. Weasley's mouth was hanging open.

Harry was feeling a bit uncomfortable. "What?" he asked.

"You lied to us, didn't you?" Blaise asked, sounding hurt.

"Lied to you?" Harry repeated, confused. Why did Blaise think he'd lied to them?

"You said you've never flown before!" Draco said accusingly.

"Well I haven't!" Harry was slightly baffled. "That was the first time I'd ever been on a broom!"

Weasley snorted, and Blaise glared at the intruding Gryffindor disdainfully. He opened his mouth to say something scathing, only to snap it shut again and pale slightly. Before Harry could turn around to see what had shocked his friend so, a voice spoke behind him.

"That was quite the performance, Mr. Potter."

Harry froze. It was Professor Snape. He turned around to face the professor with a sinking feeling in his chest. He was going to be expelled and have to go back to the Dursleys and Dudley would come home every summer and taunt him and probably use magic on him and turn him into a frog and…

"Mr. Potter, have you heard a word I've said?"

Harry started; he'd been so caught up in imagining his dismal future that he hadn't even heard the professor speak.

"I'm sorry sir," he stuttered, looking up at the professor unhappily. Professor Snape had a slightly irritated, yet calculating look on his face.

"I asked you if that was your first time on a broom."

Harry nodded dumbly, aware of Draco and Blaise's worried presence at his back, along with that Gryffindor that had been with them.

"Follow me, Mr. Potter. I will deal with you three later."

As Professor Snape turned on his heel and swept away, Harry turned back to his friends and received two worried, apologetic looks in reply. He waved helplessly at them and noted that Weasley looked rather green at the prospect of being 'dealt with' later.

Professor Snape led him into the school, walking rapidly. Harry had to nearly run to keep up with him.

"You will have detention for a week," Snape said suddenly. Harry started, thoughts of expulsion exploding like confetti.

"I…I'm not being expelled, sir?" Harry asked hopefully.

Snape snorted. "It wouldn't be very Slytherin of me to expel you at this point."

Harry blinked, wondering how on earth Snape had gotten that idea into his head. Not that Harry was complaining, of course.

"You are to understand that what you did was a direct violation of rules, Potter," Snape said, leading him down into the dungeons. Harry nodded quickly, before realizing Snape couldn't see him.

"Yes, sir."

"You are in no way above the rules, is that understood? You are just another student at this school, and you will be treated as such. If I find that you are getting a big head, I may rethink your punishment."

"Yes, sir." Harry couldn't imagine ever getting a big head. You had to be good at something to be arrogant about it.

"Having said that," Professor Snape turned to face him suddenly, just outside the entrance to the Slytherin common room. "You will now be playing as a reserve on the Slytherin Quidditch team. Incitatus."

The wall slid open and Snape led him inside, saying, "Flint!"

Marcus Flint rose from the table he'd been sitting at and strode over.

"Yes sir?" he asked, eyeing Harry curiously. Harry kept eye contact. He knew him well enough, and he was going to be one of his reserve players. He wanted to see Marcus' face when he found out.

"Potter is to be on the reserve team. Test him out for the different spots. Seeker especially."

Marcus looked at him again, suddenly much more interested in the little first year. "Yes sir. Next practice?"

"Why don't I write you a pass for the field tonight?" Snape suggested with a smirk.

Marcus grinned and said, "That would be perfect, sir."

Professor Snape pulled out a quill and parchment and scribbled something down, rolling it up and sealing it before handing it to Marcus.

"Enjoy," he said shortly, before disappearing.

Marcus turned his attention back to Harry, who was remembering precisely what a Seeker was. He sized Harry up, walking in a circle around him, before nodding and saying, "Snape's right, you're a Seeker. Let's hope you live up to his expectations."

"Expectations?" Harry asked curiously. Marcus nodded.

"Snape must think you're really good if he put you on reserve in first year," Marcus explained, leading Harry back to the table he'd been sitting at. "Especially since it's you."

Now Harry was bewildered. "What does me being me have to do with it?" he asked.

"Well, you're the Boy-Who-Lived and all," Marcus said absently, pulling out some kind of roster and adding Harry's name to it. "Everyone else favors you because of it. He wouldn't want to look like a starstruck git."

"Oh, right." Harry had nearly forgotten about that.

"So clearly, we're having practice tonight. You'll use one of the extra Slytherin brooms. The school brooms are rubbish. I've got to go tell the rest of the team. Welcome aboard."

And with that, Marcus disappeared through the common room entrance.

Harry sank down into one of the chairs by the fire and tried to calm down. He'd thought he was going to be expelled, and instead he was on the Quidditch team. Reserve, yes, but still.

Wow.

Draco and Blaise tore into the common room at that point, spotting him by the fire and rushing over.

"Harry, are you alright?" Blaise asked worriedly. Draco stood behind him, awaiting Harry's answer anxiously. "Did Professor Snape really expel you?"

Harry looked up at them, standing by his chair, out of their minds with worry. He smiled.

"No, I'm not expelled."

Draco practically fell into his chair with relief. "Thank god," he sighed. "How did he punish you then?"

"I've got a week of detentions," Harry said slowly, watching them carefully.

Blaise winced. "Tough," he said sympathetically.

"Yeah," Draco agreed. "Wanna play chess?"

"Sure," Harry said, suppressing a grin. "But I can only hang around with you guys until seven."

"Detention?" Draco asked, pulling a chess set out of the side table.

"Nah, just Quidditch practice."

Draco dropped the chess set.

"What?!"

"What are you talking about?"

Harry finally allowed himself to grin. "I've got a week of detention, and I'm a reserve on the Quidditch team. Seeker, I think."

Blaise and Draco stared at him in awe.

"You're kidding!" Blaise accused, grinning like a mad man.

"Nope, not kidding. We've got practice tonight. I don't know what I'll be doing, but you guys can come if you want."

"This is too bloody awesome," Blaise said with a whoop. "You're on the Quidditch team! Brilliant!"

Draco laughed and punched Harry on the arm. "And you just let us sit there, thinking you'd gotten in huge trouble! Harry, you're such a prat!"

Harry laughed with him, and helped Draco pick up all the chess pieces, who were making it quite clear that they hadn't appreciated being dropped at all.

Harry, Draco, and Blaise spent the remaining time until Harry's practice alternating between losing at chess (Harry) and casually mentioning Harry's new position on the team when passing Slytherins could hear them (Draco and Blaise). Harry couldn't stop smiling, and Draco and Blaise grinned whenever they looked at him. Harry could already tell he was going to love Quidditch.

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