"Shut up!" Harry screamed, stung by the criticism. "You are jealous! You said it yourself, when you ran into trouble Snape helped get you emancipated, but me he adopted! And you can't stand it, that he passed you over and chose me, can you?"
"He chose you, yeah!" Draco shouted back. "And I dealt with it! But it makes me want to sick up that after that, you keep choosing Weasley! Fuck, Harry! It's like he's all that matters to you!"
"And what matters to you, Malfoy? Money! Yeah, that's right. Money matters and that's about all that does!"
Draco clenched both his fists. "How can you say that? I lost a shiteload of money coming over to your damned side in this war, Potter!"
"Big effing deal when you knew you'd have a big pile left!" Harry accused. "I know about your trust account, the one you have nominal control over even now. Yeah, money matters to you. You just about choked when you thought I was giving my vault to Snape! And even when you knew I was just giving him control of it until I'm grown, you told me I was off my rocker!"
"Yeah, because that was bloody stupid of you!"
"You think so because your money is all that matters to you!"
"That's not true! Look at where I'm living, look at what I've chosen! Severus knows--"
"I'll tell you what Severus knows," Harry interrupted in a deadly cold voice. "He knows you'd choose money over him in a flash, Malfoy. Why do you think you weren't adopted, too? The casewitch wanted things that way. She practically demanded it. And Snape said no."
Draco blinked in shock, almost seeming to wilt before Harry's eyes. "He... he did not," the Slytherin boy weakly asserted. "You're... you're making that up."
"He said he knew you'd rather have your mountains of Galleons than him for a father!"
"Harry!" said a shocked voice from behind him. A voice that was cold, clear through.
Turning, Harry saw his father highlighted by the dying flare of the Floo. Caught up in the vicious argument, he'd never heard the roar of the flames.
Harry cringed, wondering how much Snape had heard. He wasn't left to wonder long. "Five hundred points from Gryffin--" the Potions Master began to roar.
"No! Stop!" Draco cut him off, blond hair flying as he rushed forward. "Don't take points! Half of them will come from Slytherin!"
"True," Snape acknowledged, lowering his wand, but only for an instant. "Well, well. An interesting dilemma. However, as Mr. Potter is not the only Gryffindor who has seriously displeased me this evening, I do believe a solution is at hand," he growled, glaring at Harry. "Five hundred points from Gryffindor on behalf of Ronald Weasley!"
Furious that Snape would involve Ron like that, Harry sniped, "That's a bit like ten thousand lines, isn't it? Do you even know any punishments that aren't laughably excessive?"
"So you're laughing, are you?" Snape scathed, disgust lacing every syllable. "I've misjudged you, it seems. How dare you say such things to Draco!"
"How dare I tell the truth, you mean?"
"Your truth, not mine," Snape retorted. "Did I say he'd choose money, Harry? Did I give him a choice?"
"You didn't give him a choice because you knew what he'd choose!"
"I didn't give him a choice because that was best for him, you simpleton! I care about Draco too, or has that conveniently escaped your slipshod memory?"
Simpleton, not idiot child. That stung. But Snape wasn't through. "Moreover, information about Draco's trust was private, arising in the context of a confidential interview! You knew I expected you to respect that! Now you not only bandy it about, you attribute to it motives I certainly never intended it to have? You have betrayed my trust!"
"He called me stupid!" Harry defended himself. "He said I didn't deserve to be your son!"
"At the moment, you are being stupid!" Snape harshly announced. "And you don't deserve to be my son!"
Harry stood rooted to the spot, something in him dying with those words. "Professor--"
"No!" Snape shouted, taking a step forward, his eyes glaring daggers. "Don't say another word. What you have told Draco is indefensible, absolutely indefensible!"
"But--"
"Get out of my sight," Snape ordered in a markedly calmer tone. To Harry, that was all the more frightening. Yelling and blustering he could take; Uncle Vernon used to do it all the time. But this deadly cool voice, coming from a man who sounded like he genuinely didn't care if Harry lived or died... this was worse. Much, much worse.
Harry nervously cleared his throat. "Professor?"
"Now, Harry. Out of my sight. I don't wish to see you."
Ever.
The word hung between them, unsaid yet tangible, the past months shattering under the force of it.
Harry went to his room and slammed the door, then got into bed and buried himself under the covers.
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Coming Soon in A Year Like None Other:
Chapter Fifty-Four: Out of Sight
Comments very welcome,
Aspen in the Sunlight
Chapter 54: Out of Sight
http://archive.skyehawke.com/story.php?no=5036&chapter=54
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A Year Like None Other
by Aspen in the Sunlight
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Chapter Fifty-Four: Out of Sight
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Get out of my sight.
The words haunted Harry as the hours wore on that evening.
Get out of my sight.
He kept thinking that Snape would relent at any moment, would come in and... well, do something. Assign a punishment. Yell at him. Talk, so they could get past all this. But he didn't. He left Harry completely alone.
After a while--it must have been past midnight by then--Draco did come in, but all he did was storm past Harry's bed and into the bathroom. Harry heard the rush of water, but no singing, not that night. And then Draco was stalking his way back through the room, his wand angrily flashing through the air as he charmed all the lights off. He almost slammed the door--almost, but not quite--and then Harry was alone once more. Draco, evidently, was back to sleeping on the couch.
Morning seemed a long, long way off.
At some point Harry must have slept, but he woke up remembering nothing but the hours of staying awake. He knew it was morning only because Draco's enchanted picture frame was showing a view of daylight over the lake.
A bit unnerved that even after a night's sleep Snape still hadn't come to see him, Harry hurriedly washed and dressed, then poked his head just a little bit into the living room to see what Snape or Draco might be doing. It was Saturday; his father should be home.
Nobody was in sight, though. Not even Draco.
Then Harry heard voices coming from behind the closed door of the Potions Lab. A bit relieved, he realized that Snape and Draco were merely working on something together. That often happened. Harry had tried to join them a few times, but he'd been bored beyond belief. He might have earned an Outstanding on his Potions O.W.L, but that was just from sheer hard slogging--and a burning desire to prove the Potions Master wrong after five year of ridicule in class, he acknowledged. O.W.L. or no, he just didn't have the innate fascination for the subject that the other two shared.