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 talks. He didn't like the out of control feeling he had when Snape maneuvered him into saying more than he wanted, nor the sick churning in his gut when he felt like the git was prying plasters off his carefully hidden wounds and exposing them to the air.

So he was almost pleasantly surprised when, after taking his first sip, Snape said only, "Tell me about the Sorting Hat."

"What?!"

"You mentioned once that the Sorting Hat had a different idea about where you belonged. I am curious as to what you meant."

Harry stared at him for a long moment, then shrugged. What could it hurt? "The hat wanted to put me in Slytherin. I didn't want to, so it sorted me into Gryffindor instead."

With cup halfway to his mouth, Snape froze, and his dark eyes were wider than Harry had ever seen them. "Why, pray tell?"

Sighing, Harry admitted, "Well, Hagrid told me all wizards who'd ever gone bad came out of Slytherin, and I had just learnt that day that my parents were killed by a Dark Wizard, so I didn't want to become like him." It was hard, very hard, to keep every thought of that monster shielded under the thick layer of stone, but if he didn't, he was going to crack up, no lie.

"And besides, Malf--" He sucked in a breath, feeling acutely dizzy. The room tilted, and sweat coated him as he strained to reach the stone. He was going to vomit, he really, really was . . .

"Breathe, Harry." The voice was so close he could feel the air move on his face. "Take one breath, come on. Breathe in."

He struggled to obey, but his gut hurt, and he pressed his hands to his stomach and heaved all over the floor. He drew a breath, but only so he could retch again. The stone, he had to reach the stone with this memory, or he would hurl up his intestines next. He scrabbled towards it, in the morass of memory that clung to him in the darkness. He barely registered the whispered, "Scourgify," nor the continuing encouragement from nearby to "Just breathe, dammit," as his fingers at last found pitting on the stone sized for him to grip, and he shoved the latest horrors away and underneath the gray slab.

And then he breathed.

Choking on sour bile until someone -- Oh, yeah. Snape -- handed him a glass of water to wash out his mouth, Harry pressed a hand to his eyes. He hated this. He hated Snape, and tea and stupid, sodding memories and, and everything!

The glass was very smooth under his fingers, and he gripped it tight, wishing Snape would just go away and leave him alone.

"All right now?" Snape asked, and Harry almost threw the glass at him.

"Yeah, I'm great. Thanks for asking."

Silence greeted his sullen words, and he chanced a look up. Snape was frowning -- big surprise there -- but didn't seem to be angry, just . . . concerned?

"Really," Harry said, trying to move it along. "I'm okay now."

"Today's episode was much shorter than yesterday."

"Oh yeah?" Harry didn't really want to know, but he was a little curious. Morbidly, one might say. "How long then?"

Snape regarded him coolly. "Yesterday, almost half an hour before you recalled where you were. Today, only fifteen minutes."

"Well, good. By the time classes start again, I'll only be crazy for a minute or two every day."

"You're not crazy," Snape said, and his frown deepened.

"Coulda fooled me." Harry took a long swig of water, which helped alleviate the burning in his throat. "Look, could we not talk about this anymore?"

"Of course." Snape's lips curled in his ever-ready sneer. "But you will finish explaining to me why you did not wish to be sorted into my House."

Harry took an experimental breath. He just had to remember that Draco was not his father. Okay, he could do that. He let the breath out and stared into his half empty glass. "I met . . . Draco when I was getting fitted for my first robes, and he was a lot like my cousin, Dudley, going on about how he'd get a broom at school if he pestered his parents enough, even if the rules said he couldn't, and then he was making fun of Hagrid, who, like I told you before . . ." His throat closed and he couldn't continue.

"Bought you your first present. I remember."

"Er, yeah." Harry shook his head and stuffed the memory away. "So, Ma -- Draco was certain he was going to be sorted into Slytherin, where all good non-Muggle-raised Wizards should go, since 'the other sort' didn't even deserve to go to Hogwarts. And after he said a couple other nasty things, I decided I didn't want to be there at all if there was any way I could help it. So I let the hat put me where it wanted, so long as it wasn't your House. I didn't need to be hated at a new school, too."

"I see." Snape had returned to his own seat, Harry saw, when he looked up again, and had his hands laced together on the table top. "I assume you have realized by now that not all 'bad' wizards come from Slytherin."

"Well, yeah. Like Pettigrew."

"Yes." Something had changed in Snape's eyes, and Harry couldn't put a name to it. "Likewise, not all Slytherins are going to go bad."

"I know that." He didn't bother to add the 'now,' as he was sure Snape heard it anyway.

"Mm." Snape leaned forward and held Harry's gaze until he had to look away, then just as suddenly, leaned back in his chair. "I think you should have let the hat put you where it wanted to."

"Oh yeah? Why?"

"For one thing," Snape drawled, "we might have avoided much of the . . . unpleasantness between us. As your Head of House, I would have been personally responsible for your welfare."

Harry snorted a laugh. "As it was you took on a lot. You saved me from Quirrell during my first Quidditch match, and from Remus when he turned into a werewolf. And from . . . you know."

Snape nodded. "Still, had you been in Slytherin, I might have been better able to temper my--"

"Hatred? Disgust? Or your mind-bogglingly, all-consuming loathing of everything Potter, coupled with the desire to see my head brining in your lab?"

"Indeed." Snape's lip twitched again.

Lifting his own eyebrows, Harry gave him as much of a cheeky smile as he could muster. "Yeah, that would've been nice."