When everyone had a flying apparatus of some description, Potter stood in front of them and blew his whistle loudly.
"On my mark, I want you all to hold your hand over the alleged brooms and say 'up' in a loud, firm voice. And it's got to be loud and firm, these things can smell fear. I know that doesn't really help you be less afraid…" He chuckled and a few students joined in, but most, including Harry, simply stared at the broom in paralysing uncertainty.
Harry swallowed and tried to steady his nerves, the way he did when Dudley tormented him. Compartmentalise. Imagine good things. Focus on good memories. Memories like…like the little girl in the train station.
When he thought about her, Harry felt his face break into a smile in spite of everything. Silly, he supposed…
"Right then, flyers!" Whistle.
"Up," said Harry. The broom rose an unsteady inch or two before collapsing back down. He ground his teeth; Coach was giving him a look of scorn mixed with amusement, and Malfoy stood holding his broom and smirking.
"Up!" he repeated. This time it got a whole foot off the ground. Don't be afraid. Command it firmly. You can do it. Third time's the charm. She had a gap where she'd lost a tooth, and bright brown eyes.
"UP!" The broom leapt from the ground and he seized it in relief. Granger was still trying to 'clever' hers into submission, and Longbottom obviously preferred the safety of the ground (a fact he communicated quite well to his stationary broom). At least Harry hadn't been the last one to…
"Snape!" shouted the coach. "Explain why it took three tries."
"I beg your pardon?" Harry tore his gaze away from Hannah Abbott, who had tears in her eyes as she frantically commanded her broom to do something besides shiver a little.
"Why did it take you three tries to get that broom off the ground?"
"I…I don't know, sir," Harry said. "Should it not have?"
Everyone was staring at him now, even the Granger girl, and Malfoy and his gang looked as though they might explode with pent-up laughter.
"I got it though, sir," he said, displaying the broom in his hand.
Coach gave him a look as though he simply weren't worth a reprimand and turned to help Longbottom. Harry felt his ears turn red and his cheeks burned.
"It's all right, Harry," whispered Ron, whose broom had flown up and hit him in the face on the first attempt. "You did heaps better than some of these others. It usually takes a lot longer."
Coach began to give further directions and Harry determined to focus. He shut down all other centres of his brain and stared at his broom. He directed all of his heart and soul toward the rules. Hold on with your knees, not your hands; steer with your hands, wand hand in front; feet pressed back against the bristles…
("You're holding your hands too far up, Malfoy; your steering can't be any kind of accurate."
"But this is the way I've always done it. For years."
"Well then the way you've always done it for years is wrong. Hands in, shoulders down.")
…shoulders down, bend over to go down, pull broom up to go up; grip tight to go faster, take hand off to go slower, pull the broom like this to stop it entirely…
"Snape!"
Harry looked up. "I can't possibly be doing anything wrong this time, sir."
Potter glared at him. "All right, clever clogs. Why don't you give us a demonstration? Kick up a few feet into the air then come back down."
Kick off, hard. Keep broom steady. Lean forward slightly to come straight back down. He nodded and focussed.
Whistle.
Up. One foot, two feet, three feet. Lean forward to come down again, remember what he said about looking where he was going.
"Well, for goodness sakes, lad, you don't have to look as though the world depended on your making a safe landing! Right then, everyone, same exercise. Building muscle memory now; at some point this'll all be as easy as walking. Build muscle memory. More you do it, easier it gets, right? On my whistle. Three, two…"
But Longbottom, terrified of being left behind, kicked off hard and flew twenty feet straight in the air.
"Oy!" Potter, apparently without thinking, grabbed a nearby broomstick and sped into the air, just as Longbottom toppled off his broom. The Coach grabbed Neville in one arm and the broomstick in the other and carefully navigated back to the ground.
All the students except Harry began to applaud. Coach grinned, straightened his robes, tapped his glasses, and bowed with exaggerated care. Neville was sick in the bushes.
"Snape," said coach, turning on Harry, "you were standing next to Longbottom. What'd you do to his broom?"
"What? Me? Nothing!"
"Right. Thought he'd make you look good, did you?"
"I didn't…"
"Another ten points from Gryffindor, Snape." The unfairness of this rendered Harry absolutely speechless. "Longbottom, you all right?"
"Sorry, coach," Neville muttered.
Potter grinned and helped him up. "No matter, Longbottom. Happens to the best of us. My first game of sixth year a bludger came hurtling down and caught our Seeker on the ear and she went over just like that."
Appreciative gasp. "Blimey! What happened, sir?" Ron asked.
"Well, me, I was across this very field when it happened." He pointed to a spot on the distant horizon near three vertical hoops. "The game had been neck and neck for an hour and the other team managed to pull ahead by thirty. I'd just scored another goal when I heard her shout, way over at the other end," pointing again. "Never flew so fast in my life after any Quaffle. It was one of those windy games where the playing just keeps getting higher and higher; we must have been, ooh, a hundred feet up, and she was just clinging on with one hand and the hem of her Quidditch robe and she was swinging like a paper lantern, and…you lot don't really want to hear this," he said, but he was grinning.
Several people exclaimed. Ron clutched his broom like a teddy bear.
"Well, lucky for me she stood out, in her red Quidditch robes, I must have burned the skin on my palms clean off clinging to that thing. I wonder if I still have that old broom somewhere—they weren't like the new ones, all shiny; you got splinters just from looking at them sometimes. But obviously I couldn't let our Seeker just fall and anyway" he winked "she was awfully pretty. It felt like ages before I got there, but someone said it was just three seconds—across this whole big pitch in three seconds flat!—and I was able to grab her arm and sling her up onto my broom just as the hem gave way. Almost didn't catch her broom that time, and as it was it was missing a few bristles, but she swung back on like a trooper and caught the snitch two minutes later." He sighed reminiscently.
Harry wanted to follow Neville's example and be sick.
Eventually the coach managed to remember they were having a flying lesson and resumed teaching them how to fly; a lot of his lesson seemed to be on the muscle memory theme, getting them to do the same thing over and over again. By sheer willpower Harry got through all the tasks allotted. He fell off twice, but by the time class drew to a close he was sure he was as good as any of the rest—he was also sure that he and Coach Potter were destined to be enemies.
Coach reprimanded him seven times, in front of Gryffindor's head of house who had come down to watch the lesson. He took a further five points from Gryffindor on Harry's account. He told two more Quidditch stories, mostly illustrating how Harry was doing something wrong. And he gave everyone a five minute free-time at the end except Harry, who he instructed to spend the time correcting some miniscule flaw in his broom handling. Build your muscle memory doing it right, he said.
At free time, most of the students just zoomed around and around the pitch in circles, the way ice skaters do right after they've stopped clinging to the wall, but Malfoy bored of that very quickly and decided to swoop really close past the heads of the few students still on the ground. He nipped by Granger, who was attempting to help Harry by reading him tips, and caused her to drop Quidditch through the Ages. She complained loudly in Potter's direction. Coach, who was judging a makeshift race, merely called down "Come on, Granger, get airborne and he can't bother you anymore."
Malfoy, triumphant, then targeted Neville Longbottom, who gave a squawk and tumbled over backward.
"Leave them alone, Malfoy," said Harry, looking up from his broom.
"Gonna make me, Snapey?" sneered Malfoy. "Ooh, what's this?" He swooped again, snatched something off the ground near Neville, and soared away. "It's ickle Nevvy's Remembrall from his dear old granny!" he crowed, holding it up. It shone in the afternoon sun.
"Oh, no," said Neville, who looked as though he were going to be sick again.
"Give that here, Malfoy," Harry said quietly. A few people nearby stopped what they were doing to watch.
Malfoy smiled nastily.
"I think I'll leave it somewhere for Longbottom to get—how about up a tree?"
"Give it here!" Harry yelled, but Malfoy had taken off toward the edge of the pitch, and by now hovered level with the topmost branches of an oak.
"Come and get it, Snapey!" he called.
Harry cast a quick glance toward Coach. He had a feeling any appeals to that quarter would be met with more flippancy.
He grabbed his broom.
"No!" said Hermione. "Coach told you to work on your…"
Harry ignored her. Shoulders down, wand hand in front, concentrate…
He jerked up in the air, too fast. He wasn't a natural like Malfoy or even Weasley, but if he focussed, if he carefully placed his hands and angled his body to tenths of a degree, if he remembered every command and correction…
At some point, all this will be as easy as walking, Potter had claimed. Yeah, right.
There. He was doing it, he was flying. He didn't allow himself to revel in the sensation, though; he lowered his head and sped off after Malfoy.
"Give it here," he called, "or I'll knock you off that broom!"
"Oh, yeah?" Malfoy sneered.
Harry leaned forward and gripped the broom tightly in both hands, and it shot toward Malfoy like a javelin. Malfoy only just got out of the way in time; Harry managed to manhandle around a hundred and eighty degrees and held steady. Muscle memory. Build muscle memory.
More people had started to watch. A few people were clapping. Malfoy looked very slightly worried.
Harry gripped the broom handle again and hunched over. This time as he whizzed past he clipped the edge of Malfoy's robe and it tore. "Oy!" yelped Malfoy.
Harry spun, calculated, concentrated, checked, and zipped forward a third time, actually catching Malfoy's shoulder and sending him flailing for a second. By now everyone except the racers and the Coach had their eyes riveted on the two boys.
"Want to risk another go, Malfoy?" Harry asked, poised to make his final shot.
Malfoy didn't. "Catch it if you can, then!" he shouted, and he threw the glass ball high into the air and then streaked off.
Harry saw, as though in slow motion, the ball rise up in the air and then start to fall, pulled inexorably by gravity…
And somewhere deep in his subconscious, memory stirred.
Catch, Harry…
And then he wasn't thinking at all and the broom went down like a streak of lightning into a steep dive—wind whistled in his ears, mingled with the screams of people watching—he stretched out his hand—come on, Harry, catch!—a foot from the ground he caught it, just in time to pull his broom straight, and he toppled gently onto the grass with the Remembrall clutched safely in his fist.
How on earth…?
"HARRY SNAPE!" shouted two voices at once.
Harry looked up and saw both Coach Potter and Professor McGonagall bearing down on him; one diving from the sky and the other racing across the ground. They both arrived at the same time.
"Snape—" Coach said.
"Harry—" began Professor McGonagall.
"If you don't mind, professor, I gave Mr Snape very specific instructions—"
"And you can punish him in a minute. Right now, he's to follow me."