The afternoon after the Herbology lesson was the most glorious weather he had seen at Hogwarts so far. It would have been a wonderful day to hang around outside with Ben and Hiccup, watching Toothless practise his flying. Instead, Toothless was still in a healing coma in Hagrid's cabin, Hiccup and Twigleg were in the hospital wing, Ben was visiting Twigleg, and Fishlegs was visiting Hiccup. Harry had tried to visit his friends as well, but Madam Pomfrey, the matron, said they were each allowed only one visitor, so as not to tire them out.

Instead, Harry sat in the Slytherin Common Room, drawing get-well cards on folded pieces of parchment. Hardly anyone else was there, apart from Draco holding forth to Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle about Quidditch, how unfair it was that first-years weren't allowed to be on the house team even though he'd been flying ever since he was a toddler knocking his house-elf over with his first baby broom, how he could get Marcus Flint to give all three of them places on the team next year, with himself as Seeker and Vincent and Gregory as Beaters, once he had bullied his incredibly rich father into buying the entire team new brooms, and on, and on. Harry tuned him out, the same way he did when Dudley was prattling about his favourite computer games that he never let Harry take a turn on.

'What's the matter, Potter?' Draco raised his voice, realising that Harry was ignoring him. 'Bet you've never even been on a broom, have you?'

'Maybe.' Harry couldn't remember, but he did remember climbing astride Aunt Petunia's vacuum cleaner when he was a little boy, urging it to fly and crying with frustration when it wouldn't move, so perhaps the little boy he had been then had remembered being an even littler boy who had ridden flying brooms? 'I've flown on a motorbike,' he said.

'Motorbikes? They're just Muggle machines. They don't fly,' sneered Draco. His friends laughed sycophantically.

'Yeah, that's what my uncle said, too,' said Harry. ''Cos he's nearly as stupid as you are.'

'You wait,' said Draco. 'Wait till next Thursday, and you'll see what I can do.'

Harry didn't think that waiting nearly a week just to watch Draco showing off was much of an enticement, but it seemed that nearly everyone was excited about flying. By dinner-time, Ben was back from his vigil in the hospital wing, sombre because Twigleg still hadn't regained consciousness. Ron Weasley was trying to cheer him up by explaining to him about Quidditch, and Harry and Icicle came over to the Gryffindor table to join them, Icicle to help with the Quidditch lecture, and Harry just to be with his friends and away from Draco. Ron and his younger sister had, like Draco, been flying for as long as they could remember, though in their case they had borrowed their older brothers' brooms while their brothers were away at Hogwarts. 'Everyone says Ginny's sure to be on the Gryffindor team, like Charlie and Fred and George,' he said. 'I bet I don't get in.'

'Bet you do,' said Icicle. 'I did, and I'd never even seen a flying broom until I came to Hogwarts. It's in the family.'

Harry said nothing. At his old school, he had been good at PE because he was quick and agile, but nobody had ever picked him for playground games, because Dudley punched them if they did. And here, if he was chosen to be on a team, everyone would say it was just because he was famous. Either way, he couldn't just succeed on his own merits.

'My gran wouldn't let me near a broom,' said Neville. 'She says I'm too clumsy and I'll probably kill myself if I tried it.'

Harry narrowed his eyes. 'She let your insane great-uncle keep on trying to murder you on purpose, but she wouldn't let you play with a broom in case you got hurt?'

'Great-uncle Algie's not insane! He just – has high standards,' said Neville, blushing furiously.

Hiccup cupped a hand to his ear. Unlike Twigleg, he had recovered enough to be released from the hospital wing, and Madam Pomfrey said his hearing would come back in a day or two, but in the meantime he carried a notebook so that people could write messages to him.

Fishlegs wrote: 'They're talking about a game called Quidditch. It's probably a bit like Bashyball, but with flying on brooms. They're worried that they won't get into the teams.'

Hiccup said, rather out of sync because he couldn't hear the conversation, 'No-one ever wanted us for teams, either. The teacher kept going on about how useless we were.'

Harry wrote, 'Yeah, I got that at my old school, too. It'll be different here.' He hoped it would. He realised that he was starting to feel a bit excited about flying lessons, after all – even though he would be in the Gryffindor-Slytherin class, and wouldn't be there to see how the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs got on.

Now that he was looking forward to learning to fly, the weekend, and the rest of the week, dragged on. By Sunday afternoon, Hiccup's hearing was back to normal, and Toothless was almost fully recovered and back to being his usual mischievous, annoying self. However, the other teachers had agreed with Professor Snape and Professor Sprout to impose a 'no pets in lessons' rule.

On Monday morning, Hiccup came down with Toothless on his shoulder as usual, and the two of them hurried through breakfast. 'Aren't you supposed to leave him in the dormitory?' Hermione asked.

Hiccup rolled his eyes. 'Toothless would cause chaos if I left him in the dormitory unsupervised! No, Hagrid offered to look after him while I'm in lessons, so I need to take him there now. Come on, Toothless, do you want to fly? It'll do you good to stretch your wings.'

'W-want a ride,' grumbled Toothless, snuggling inside Hiccup's robe. 'W-wings still hurt.'

'Anyone want to come with us? Harry? Fishlegs? Ben?'

'I can't,' said Ben. 'I need to see how Twigleg is doing, first.'

'Is he awake now?' Hiccup asked.

'Yes, but he's still very weak. Madam Pomfrey says he's allowed to read, but only if someone's there to turn the pages for him. She doesn't want him tiring himself out clambering all over books all day.'

'Harry?'

'No, I've – got an essay to finish,' Harry lied – not that it was a lie that he needed to finish the punishment essay Snape had set him, but that wasn't the reason for not going. Hagrid was a Gryffindor, and Gryffindors – apart from Ben, who was friendly to everyone – didn't make friends with Slytherins.

Over the next few days, the group of friends took turns to visit Twigleg in the hospital wing and bring books for him to read. Unlike Hiccup, he hadn't been deafened by the mandrake's screaming; on the contrary, it had made his ears even more hyper-sensitive than usual, so that Madam Pomfrey had to keep his head swathed in bandages to protect him from being overwhelmed by background noise. There were dark shadows under his eyes, and Harry suspected that at the moment his eyes would have been red with exhaustion even if they hadn't been naturally that colour. Even when sounds from outside were muffled, he complained that the sound of the mandrake screaming for help kept echoing in his head.

'Screaming for help?' Harry wrote on a notepad when Twigleg told him this. 'You mean mandrakes talk?'

'Yes, of course,' Twigleg said. 'This one was only a seedling, so it didn't have a very big vocabulary yet, but it knew enough to shout "NO!" and "SAVE ME!" and "DON'T EAT ME!"

'So you can speak mandrake language?'

'I can't pronounce it very well – especially the language they use undersoil. But I can understand it. My creator used to grow them. After Nettlebrand ate him, there was no-one left who was interested in harvesting the mandrakes, so they grew to maturity, set seed and had seedlings of their own. There was quite a colony of them by the time I left.'

'What do they talk about?'

'The weather, mostly. The look of the sun on their leaves, and whether they can see any shadows that might mean a predator approaching, or feel vibrations in the soil that might mean a gnome tunnelling towards them. Gossip about which boydrakes are courting which girldrakes. Worrying about the safety of their seedlings. Nothing very intellectual.'

'But – they're people?'

'Of course.'

Harry wondered about this. After Toothless's accident, Professor Sprout had explained to the class about why it was important to pay attention to safety instructions, and how next year, they would be learning to grow, harvest and cook mandrakes so that potions made from them could be safely drunk. She seemed to think they were just a crop, like potatoes. Did she know that mandrakes could talk? Or had the mandrake's screaming made Twigleg so ill that he was delirious?

Madam Pomfrey chivvied him out before he could ask any further questions, and after that he was kept busy with the afternoon's lessons, including, finally, the first flying lesson of term. As he and the other first-year Slytherins filed out to join the Gryffindors on the lawn, on the opposite side of the castle to the Forbidden Forest, he waved to Ben, but Ben was busy reassuring a despondent-looking Neville, and didn't see him.

'What about in winter?' Neville was asking. 'By December, it'll be nearly sunset by the time we start the lesson.'

'We'll have had more practice by then,' Ben said cheerfully. 'Flying's more exciting in the dark. When I was travelling with Firedrake, we always flew by night. Anyway, Madam Hooch won't let us get hurt when we're practising.'

He reached into his robes, fingering something silvery that hung on a chain round his neck.

'What is that, Mr Greenbloom?' called Madam Hooch. 'Are you wearing jewellery in a flying lesson?'

'Just my locket,' said Ben. 'A – a friend gave it to me.'

'Is it from your boyfriend?' jeered Draco. 'Who is it? Potter? Hiccup the Useless? Or the homunculus? That little creep's way too old for you!'

'It's none of your business!' retorted Ben.

'No, Mr Malfoy, it doesn't concern you,' said Madam Hooch sternly. 'But no-one is to wear jewellery in flying lessons. It's too easy for it to get damaged, or catch on a tree and strangle you. Take it off at once, boy! And that goes for anyone else wearing dangling ornaments, too.'

Nobody else was, so everyone's eyes were on Ben as he took off his locket and laid it carefully on the grass. Ben noticed that it had an engraving of a unicorn on the front. Perhaps it had been a present from his parents? Or was it from a dragon's hoard? Though from what Ben had said, Firedrake didn't sound like the sort of dragon who was interested in hoarding treasure.

'Come on now, everyone by a broomstick,' called Madam Hooch. 'Now, stick your right hand over your broom and say, "Up!"'

Harry's and Ben's brooms leapt into their hands at once when they gave the command. Draco muttered, 'Call this a broom?' at which the battered old broom nearest him gave his legs a slap with its bristles before allowing him to catch hold of it. Draco, seeing that most the Gryffindors were bursting out laughing, hurriedly sought to distract their attention. 'It's no wonder the steering's all out on this thing – it's the sort of rubbish even a Weasley would be ashamed to own,' he said loudly. 'It just needs to learn who's boss, that's all. What's the matter, Longbottom, does yours know you're afraid of flying after your uncle chucked you out of the window, or is it just that you're a Squib? Magically bounced, indeed – I bet you just fell into a tree and had to climb down like a Muggle…'

Neville's broom vaulted suddenly into the air, taking him with it as he grabbed hold of it and hung on by his fingertips before his brain caught up with his hands and realised that this wasn't where he wanted to be. As if the brain could read his thoughts and guessed that he suddenly didn't want to fly after all, it dropped suddenly, and Neville, not bouncing at all, collapsed onto the muddy grass in a heap.

Ben ran to him at once. 'Are you all right?' he asked. 'Can you hear me?'

Neville managed to mumble, 'Yes.'

'Do you know what happened?'

'Yes. My broom decided to start flying, then decided to stop.'

'Is anything broken?'

'I'm okay!' said Neville hastily, and not very convincingly.

'Neville, it's all right,' said Ben gently. 'You don't need to lie. We know you're not a Squib, and I wouldn't let anyone harm you even if you were. But if you're hurt, you ought to see a Healer. Can you stand up?'

Neville got to his feet, admitted to having a bruised wrist, all right, probably sprained, but it wasn't anything serious.

'Can you wiggle your fingers?' Ben asked suspiciously. Neville couldn't.

'It looks broken to me,' Ben said

'To me, too,' said Madam Hooch. 'Don't worry, Madam Pomfrey can sort that out with a quick spell – shouldn't even need a Skele-gro potion. Come on, boy!'

Neville clung to Ben with his good hand, refusing to let go, and Madam Hooch reluctantly allowed Ben to accompany him to the hospital wing. 'None of you is to move until I get back!' she called over her shoulder as she went. 'Don't touch those brooms, or you'll be out of here, either on the Hogwarts Express or in a body-bag!'

'Okay, I was wrong,' admitted Draco with a snigger. 'Greenbloom's boyfriend is definitely Longbottom. The name's a dead giveaway, right? I bet there's a picture of him in the locket.' He made a grab for it.

'Leave it alone!' shouted Harry. Draco, the locket clutched firmly in one hand, leapt onto a broom and soared off into the air. Harry, mounted on his own broom, chased after him.

This was wonderful! This was even better than his faint memories of someone (Hagrid?) carrying him on a flying motorbike. This must be like Ben's experience of riding Firedrake – not that a broom was a living creature like a dragon, of course, but this one seemed almost alive.

'Give it here!' he called.

'Oh, I'll just leave it somewhere safe,' sneered Draco. 'How about – in a tree?' He glanced mockingly at the nearby oak tree beneath them, dangling the locket mockingly as if about to toss it in among the branches.

'Give it here or I'll knock you off your broom!' shouted Harry.

'No!' called Ben, now running back to the training ground. 'Just leave him! I can get it back later!'

'Oh, yeah, the oak tree's too easy – you could climb up that,' Draco admitted. 'Better make it the Whomping Willow, don't you think?' He circled around, trying to get enough height to soar over the castle to the willow tree on the far side which attacked anyone who touched it. 'Your precious locket'll probably be smashed to pieces as soon as it touches a branch!'

'Don't you dare!' shouted Harry, but then he was distracted by something else. Heat. His broom was on fire. Was Draco trying to kill him? His broom was cracking into cinders under the heat. He was going to fall…

He didn't fall. Instead, he leapt clear of the broom and soared through the air, snatching the locket out of the hands of the astonished Draco, and hovered gently down to the ground. He didn't exactly bounce, the way Neville had described, but just stood on the ground as if he had planned this all along, holding out the locket to Ben.

And then there was a shout behind him. 'HARRY POTTER!'

Harry spun around, to find himself facing Professor Snape.

Author's note: I don't know if Draco's taunting Ben with the accusation of being gay sounds a bit out-of-place here. Wizarding culture doesn't seem to be as homophobic as Muggle culture (Rita Skeeter knew that she wasn't going to shock readers with 'Dumbledore was gay!' but that 'Dumbledore was friends with Gellert Grindelwald!' was guaranteed to get a reaction). But in my experience, 11-year-olds are usually embarrassed when someone accuses them of fancying anyone, regardless of whether they're accused of liking boys or girls.