The question curled Harry's toes. "I think you'd better ask Professor Snape yourself if you want to know things like that."
Darswaithe wrote a longish answer down, his quill moving so slowly Harry wanted to grab it and transcript the interview himself. "How do you feel that he keeps things from you?"
"I don't know that he does," Harry said, not liking the sound of that.
"Have you seen his Dark Mark, lately?"
"What sort of questions are these?" Harry objected, his voice emerging at a higher pitch than he had expected. "Of course I haven't seen it. The Professor is a private person. There's nothing wrong with that. He can still be a perfectly good guardian for me."
Darswaithe stared at him, then wrote another long answer. Probably something using the word defensive, Harry glumly figured. He schooled his expression into something resembling calm, and waited for the next question.
"You mentioned tension, earlier. Would some of that be attributable to the dual role the professor's played here at Hogwarts?"
"Oh yeah, loads of it," Harry answered, trying for a lighter tone. The ready-made explanation helped. It gave him a way to explain away their enmity without getting into how Snape had hated him on account of his name and reputation. That certainly wouldn't make for much of a character reference.
"So how long have you been aware of his true allegiances?"
"Uh... not really until after the Tri-Wizard Tournament," Harry admitted, feeling a bit more comfortable. "So, a year and a half, something like that."
"Since that time, have you ever had any cause whatsoever to doubt his loyalties?"
"No...." Of course he'd blamed Snape for Sirius dying, but he'd been wrong to do so, so he was hardly going to get into that, even if, at the time it had happened, he'd had some dark and forbidding thoughts about Snape and the Order.
"Have you had specific cause to trust him?" The casewizard pressed on, eyes intent, though strangely enough, he was lifting his hand to stifle a yawn.
"Well, yeah. Sure. Of course I have." Harry's comfort began to evaporate, leaving nothing but confusion in its wake. Wasn't this interview supposed to about something other than Snape's Mark and his allegiances? Sure, those were relevant, considering Harry's scar and whatnot, but what about feelings, expectations, anticipated difficulties? What about Harry's own personal history and how it was likely to influence his ability to form relationships?
I've spent too much time reading that damned book, Harry suddenly realized.
"Such as?" Darswaithe verbally prodded him.
"Such as what?" Harry blankly returned. He'd lost all track of the conversation.
"Reasons you have to believe Professor Snape is no longer in You-Know-Who's service, Mr. Potter," the casewizard repeated with impatience.
"Uh, well Lucius Malfoy kidnapped me for Voldemort, who wanted me tortured and burned alive, and Professor Snape--"
"Yes, yes, I know all that," the casewizard interrupted. "It's in your written statement. Please do make an effort to focus. What other reasons do you have to know that Severus Snape is on your side and not his?"
"I don't know what you're asking for," Harry murmured, feeling his whole body tense.
"Information he's passed to Albus Dumbledore about You-Know-Who's activities, for example. Specific information."
A voice rang inside Harry's mind. Your instincts are usually good....
Harry moved closer to the edge of his seat. "Um, you know... I think Draco actually mentioned something about that the other day, but I can't remember exactly what... Just a second, all right?" Moving quickly, Harry stood, walked the few steps to the door, and placed his palm face-down on the wooden panel Snape had spelled for him. The door began to swing open just as Harry saw the casewizard, moving rather sluggishly, pull a wand from a pocket of the cloak draped over the chair. That was enough for Harry.
He sprinted down the hall, calling "Draco!"
The other boy rose from his seat at the dining table just as Harry burst into the living room. "What?"
Harry opened his mouth to explain, but at that instant heard an incantation behind him. He didn't know what the hex was, or what it would do to him, but those instincts Snape had praised had him instantly falling sideways and rolling away from the path of the spell, which zinged past him as a jagged shard of sapphire light. The light licked out as it passed, one vicious tendril nipping at Harry's left foot. Pain exploded in his bones, making him gasp out loud.
The rest of the spell connected with the wall, fracturing the stones and making them smoke.
"That!" Harry shouted, though by then Draco didn't need to be told a thing. He had thrown himself under the moving hex, drawing his wand as he landed, and by the time Harry shouted, Draco was already pointing it at Darswaithe and shouting, "Petrificus Totalus!"
The casewizard froze into a rigid block and toppled over where he stood, his arms snapping to his sides as he hit the ground face-first.
"Stupefy," the Slytherin boy incanted for good measure, then rolled Darswaithe over and made sure he was completely out.
Draco's next order of business was Harry. "You all right?" Then he looked at Harry's face and blanched a bit. "Oh, shite, you're not!" Without missing a beat, Draco flung some powder into the Floo, and shouted for the Potions office. "Severus, get down here, now!" was all he called before he rushed back to Harry's side and gasped, "You can breathe? Heart still beating? That curse has been known to send full-grown wizards into shock. Oh crap, you're losing all color!"
"It hurts," Harry groaned. "Foot feels mashed. Bad. But I've had worse--"
Snape stepped into the room, accompanied by a short, overweight witch with red hair pulled back into a rather unattractive bun, her robes a horrible cherry-red. The Potions Master's eyes swept the scene, taking everything in at once. "Draco," he sharply rapped out, angling his head to the side.
Harry was slow to understand; he just wasn't Slytherin enough. Draco, in contrast, immediately leveled his wand on the casewitch standing alongside Snape. "Your wand," he demanded. "Give it to me."
"Honestly!" she exclaimed, but when Draco snarled, she handed it over. The Slytherin boy immediately charmed it with an anti-summoning spell, then passed it to Snape.
"Now back!" Draco ordered, brandishing his own wand in a way Harry had never seen. The motion almost looked... haphazard, as though Draco might accidentally let a hex slip through if he got any angrier. Since Harry didn't think the other boy's impulse control was that bad, he concluded that it must be a deliberate tactic. Draco wanted the casewitch to think he was about to lose his temper. It did the trick; when he roared, "Over there, in the corner! Move!" she didn't waste any time arguing about it.
Snape had glanced assessingly at Harry before turning his attention to the man downed in the corridor. "Petrificus and Stupefy?" he verified with Draco, then drew his own wand, his eyes blazing, and incanted a long chant to bind the spells so that only his own Finite could end them.
And all the while, Draco kept the casewitch well away from Harry.
Once he felt all danger was neutralized, Snape turned his attention to the boy on the floor. "I'm all right, really," Harry said through gritted teeth when Snape began to pick him up. "Just my foot. I think the bones are broken. All the bones."
Snape laid the boy on the couch and gently spelled away his shoe and sock, then knelt on the floor and pointed his wand at the toes and instep of the injured foot. "Shattered," he clarified, turning his head to the side. "Accio oseo potion. Accio firming balm."