summer, not . . . not about what happened later.

But I'm not going to write about that, Snape! Do you hear me!? So you can quite reading this stupid, idiotic journal. I'm fine! You just leave me alone!

Who does he think he is, anyway?

So. The chief ingredients in Garroting Gas are powdered graphorn, leech juice, rat spleens and crushed scarab beetle. The main ingredients in Gregory's Unctuous Unction are scurvy grass, flobberworm mucus, and Jobberknoll feathers. . . .

Twenty minutes passed, but Harry didn't close the journal right away. Instead, at the end, he scribbled, Why's it all got to be so hard, anyway?

He stared at the sentence, then crossed it out and slammed the journal closed. He would not get all self-pitying and woe-is-meing, and he would not fucking cry again, ever! He didn't care how much Snape bullied him, or didn't.

'Professor?' he asked, turning from the desk. 'Can I go flying today?'

Snape looked up at him from his own book, but didn't say anything immediately.

'Please?'

'Very well,' the professor said at last. 'I suppose you'll be even more useless in our lessons if I don't indulge your need for outdoor time. But we'll be having tea afterwards.' His lips gave an almost imperceptible twitch. 'If I am not unduly indisposed.'

Was that supposed to be a joke? Harry frowned at him. Surely he wouldn't joke about almost dying! Again, he though, remembering that Snape had make the jest about Harry's transcript, too. Maybe Snape was just naturally all over giggly about death or dying.

Harry could almost understand that. If he didn't laugh about some things, he would surely scream instead. Oh, sure, events like taking on that troll first year, or even sliding the sword from the Sorting Hat during second year, weren't funny at the time. But now? Now he could look back and laugh. Sort of. How daft was it, after all, that he'd fought a basilisk, which outweighed him by a million stones and had poison fangs to boot, with just a pointy bit of metal? Even if the creature had been blind? He knew better than most, now, that being blind didn't make you helpless.

Not entirely, anyway.

Mercilessly shoving thoughts of that under the stone, he nodded. 'Okay. If I don't kill you, we can have tea afterwards.'

Snape lifted an eyebrow, and his mouth did that twitchy thing again -- maybe he was developing a tic? -- before he rose and put aside his book. 'My broom? I don't imagine you were able to catch it, too.'

'No, sir. But it came through the Floo when you were doing potions in your lab yesterday. I think Dumbledore found it.'

'Ah. And you put it where?'

Harry tilted his chin over towards the bookcase closest to the door. 'In the corner.' He stood and stretched, working the kinks out of his shoulder from where he'd bruised it the other day. 'It's not a bad broom, sir. But it's got nothing on a Firebolt.'

'So I discovered.' Snape took up the broom and peered at Harry. 'Just so there are no misunderstandings, you are to remain within the confines of the pitch on the horizontal, and to go no more than twice the height of the goal posts, in the vertical. Am I clear?'

'Yes, sir.' He hesitated, then, 'Can I use a snitch from the school stores? I'd just like to practice. It's not really playing Quidditch, just . . . just chasing the snitch.'

Snape pursed his lips. 'I think not.' He held up a hand when Harry was about to launch into protests. 'Not this time. Even practice snitches may not stay within the parameters I have set for you. And I must be at least able to see you to protect you.'

Harry gritted his teeth and managed -- barely -- not to argue anyway. He knew the professor was right. Didn't mean he had to like it, though. Then he latched on to one of the things Snape had said. 'Not this time, you said. In the future you'll let me?'

'I will discuss the matter with the Headmaster.'

'But you--'

'I will discuss with him, Potter. I will not make you false promises.'

That stopped him. Snape was like that. He didn't promise things he didn't know he could hold to. It was one of the things Harry actually appreciated about the man. That and the fact that he always treated Harry like he was a person, even if just a childish, arrogant person, and not just a famous scar.

'Yes, sir,' he said again, and went to get his broom.

Flying was brilliant! Sometimes, like lately, it was the only thing worth getting out of bed for, and the best part of everyday. It was like . . . breathing, but breathing laughing gas, because he couldn't hardly keep the smile from his face when he was in the air, broom tucked between his knees, soaring over the world with the wind in his face and no one to trouble him at all.

Keeping his promise to remain in the -- purely arbitrary, he thought -- confines Snape allowed was difficult, but he managed, and nothing could choke all the fun out of flying. Not even Snape's hovering, nor his occasional snipes to 'Check your speed, Potter!'

Too soon, it was over, and Snape actually sneered at him -- it was disturbing how comforting seeing the sneer was -- when he said Harry could have as much time in the air each day as he spent working on his journal beforehand.

Harry groaned, but he still had more than half the alphabet of potions to get through. He could make that stretch an hour or more tomorrow, easily!

Back inside, while Snape made tea, Harry sat at their customary table and fidgeted. He truly detested these

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