"If your life or safety is in danger, or Draco's is, you may interrupt me during a class. Otherwise," Snape leaned close, his hawk nose menacing at close range, "do not. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir," Harry muttered. "My mistake. I thought you would care."
"I cannot leave students unsupervised to see to a snake, Harry. Not even your snake."
Harry crossed his arms and looked away. "Right. Got it."
Sighing, Snape ran a hand through his hair. "So, the magic. Go fetch your wand and try a few spells."
Harry'd done that already, but he wasn't feeling too charitable towards Snape, so he didn't say a word, other than the obvious ones: Lumos, Incendio, Wingardium Leviosa, and so on and so forth. He even did an Expecto Patronum, though that wouldn't have worked even if his magic was back, as he wasn't concentrating very hard on a happy memory. He couldn't. He was too irritated with Snape.
Anyway, none of the incantations worked. Not a single, solitary one.
Draco only made it worse. "Harry," he said, following him into the bedroom where the Gryffindor boy was putting away his wand, "She's just a snake. You can't expect Severus to endanger his students--"
"Shut up," Harry snapped. "I don't want to talk about it, all right? Everything's perfectly clear to me."
"At least yesterday you had a reason to sulk--"
"Shut up."
At that, Draco wisely did.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Harry was tempted to skip dinner again, but he had a feeling that Snape wouldn't be nearly so tolerant a second night in a row. Besides, he was hungry, so cooping himself up in his room was a bit immature. Even he could see that, mad as he was at Snape.
The meal was a rather tense affair, but only as far as Harry was concerned. Snape seemed perfectly content to chat with Draco, discussing why a camouflage potion would have different effects on a cold-blooded creature. More than once, Harry knew a strong urge to mouth off that Snape was a cold-blooded creature, wasn't he... but he managed to resist the impulse. He didn't particularly want to lose points from either of his Houses, though come to think of it, he wasn't sure Snape would resort to points if he wanted to punish Harry. He might make him clean cauldrons or something, Harry silently fumed.
Dessert was something creamy, sweet, and burnt called crËme brulÈe. It looked a bit off-putting to Harry's eyes, and when he first scooped up a spoonful, he was tempted to describe it as slimy and refuse to eat it, but Draco made such a face of ecstasy with every bite that Harry couldn't resist trying it out.
Shite, it was almost delicious enough to drag him out of his foul mood. Almost.
Snape hadn't touched his portion, preferring instead to nurse a glass of something Riesling. After Harry had finished his serving of the creamy burnt custard, Snape drew a letter from a pocket and passed it across the table. "This came earlier. How would you like me to respond?"
A bit surprised by the question, Harry unfolded the parchment sheet and read:
Dear Professor Snape,
I am sure you know by now that Ronald Weasley and I came down yesterday to visit with Harry. We were very surprised to hear that you had adopted him. I am afraid our reaction tended to rather upset Harry. I wanted to apologize for that. I wish Harry only the very best and would never want to cause him any distress.
That said, however, I feel I must mention a few things to you. No doubt you will say that none of this is my business and I am quite out of line. I beg to disagree. You appear to be friendly with Harry these days, but I have been fast friends with him for five years, so I consider that his welfare is my business and I am not being presumptuous when I point out that you may not know him well enough to really understand the complexities of his personality. How could you? You have spent most of those five years being deliberately vindictive and cruel to him. I do know, of course, that you have also been instrumental in safeguarding his life at times, but you also made his life a misery much more often than you saved it.
Is it not therefore rational to suspect that if Harry has grown fond of you, he must be doing it for less than sound reasons? I don't know all the details, but that so-called family of his definitely excluded him from what the rest of us would regard as normal family life. He's been burdened since he was eleven with not only a fame he doesn't embrace, but the knowledge that many in our world wish to annihilate him for something he did as a baby. It can't be healthy that you were one of their number, once. And yet now he's calling you "father" quite adamantly. Doesn't that strike you as strange?
I respectfully suggest that perhaps Harry has become fixated on you because after his horrible recent experience with the Death Eaters, he had no one else to turn to. If you think about matters, you'll realize this must be the case. After all, good intentions aside, you were instrumental in helping hurt him terribly during Samhain. It is not normal for you to be the person he appears to now most trust. It can only be that during that vulnerable period afterwards, while he was no doubt in excruciating pain and utterly dependent on you for everything, he formed an unhealthy bond with you. This adoption is sealing that bond legally, but because the bond itself is unsound, so too is the adoption a poor idea.
I understand that for the present, for you to be Harry's father is actually quite advantageous, and of course I'd never deliberately endanger him, so I'm not suggesting you change your legal status at this time. But please, don't encourage him to grow any more attached to you than he has, already. It isn't good for him to regard you as his father when really, you're just the person who happened to be there when he needed someone.
Sincerely,
Hermione Granger
"Are you going to take points from Gryffindor?" Harry asked when he'd read the letter twice through.
Snape shook his head. "I don't appreciate her sentiments, but I do recognize them as sincerely and politely delivered. My question stands. How would you like me to respond?"
"Uh... well, just don't hex her," was all Harry could think to say.
An impatient noise catching in his throat, Snape observed, "Harry. If I'm not going to take points, I have no plans whatsoever to chastise the young lady."
Harry thought a moment. What did he want Snape to do about Hermione? "I suppose you could write her back and explain why she's wrong. I mean, I tried to explain but she wasn't about to listen to me, not when she thinks I'm completely deluded."
He expected Snape to refuse. After all, it wasn't quite the done thing for teachers to write to their students. Snape, however, merely said, "Very well," and summoned a parchment and quill. He spent perhaps five minutes mentally composing a reply, then wrote it without appearing to hesitate or scratch out anything. "Would you like to see?"
Still a bit irked, Harry groused, "Would you like me to see?"
"I'm indifferent," Snape replied, his black eyes unreadable. "Do as you wish." Standing, he left the table and headed toward his office where he no doubt had essays to mark.
"He deserves better from you," Draco complained, using a spell to banish the dishes to the kitchen. "There wasn't even anything wrong with Sals. How would you feel if he'd left his class and then you found out that somebody had to be sent to the hospital wing as a result?"
Draco had a point, and Harry knew it, but it still didn't sit right with him that Snape had yelled at him for using the Floo. He hadn't even been happy that Harry's magic had been enough to work it. "Just let me read the letter," he grumbled, pulling it close to study the long scrawls that made up words.