"What?"
"Never mind," Harry said, waiting until Draco had gone into the bedroom and closed the door. "He means he'll try."
"Things are very strange down here."
"Yeah, tell me about it," Harry agreed, leaning back. "I bet all families are like that, though."
Ron gave him a doubtful look as he drew his wand to clear the table and Accio over his school bag. "Family?"
"Well, Snape is my dad, you know," Harry pointed out.
Ron began setting books, quills, and parchment out. A sneering expression settled on his face as he challenged a bit belligerently, "Well, seeing as he's your dad and all, think you could go ask him why Ingrid's fifth principle doesn't apply to weather charms? 'Cause I just don't get it."
Harry thought briefly of agreeing, but then had another idea. "Why don't you ask him?"
"Yeah, right. He gives me detention if I so much as look at him wrong."
"When's the last time he gave you any detention at all except one where you have to come down here?" Harry pressed.
Ron's brow furrowed. "Hmm. Um, I don't know. A while before that whole lines garbage."
"You were very rude to him," Harry pointed out. "Look, I didn't think he reacted so well to that, but think about what you said. What if someone had come up and accused you of... er, touching Ginny like that?"
"That's different!" Ron exclaimed. "Ginny's my sister!"
"Yeah, but I'm his son," Harry tried to get across.
"Not really," Ron muttered.
"Yes, really."
"Whatever."
Harry gave it up, for the moment. "Anyway, I think you should just go ask him about Ingrid's fifth principle, all right? You are down here to be tutored, aren't you?"
Ron crossed his arms, a mulish expression settling onto his features.
For a while there, Harry had thought Ron was making progress... Well, actually he was, but it wasn't quite there yet, so Harry gave in to a depressing impulse to bribe him into talking to Snape himself. He didn't want to be a go-between, after all. Ron needed to learn for himself that Snape wasn't such a monster. Maybe that would help him come around, finally.
"Remember, the sooner he declares you caught up in your subjects, the sooner you can stop coming here," Harry prompted. "Go on, go ask him your question. He won't bite, I swear."
Sure enough, that did the trick. Definitely, Ron didn't do subtle.
Shoving back his chair, the other boy stood up and marched to the door, looking for all the world as though he were steeling himself to face a dragon or something. Harry repressed an urge to loudly sigh as he gathered his own books and things and settled in at the table.
He'd criticized Draco for eavesdropping, more than once, but Harry knew he wasn't above it himself, on occasion. This was one of them.
A knock, timid at first, and then a veritable pounding as Ron's nervousness spilled out.
"Enter!"
Snape sounded pretty irritated, Harry thought. Uh-oh. Maybe this wasn't such a capital idea... In the end, though, he was proud of his father. True, the man had been snappish and more than a little brusque, but that was just his personality. He hadn't gone out of his way to insult Ron, though he had seen fit to ask in sardonic tones if it was a Gryffindor trait to ignore the alternate readings.
"I read them," Ron defended himself.
"Thoroughly?" Snape drawled.
"Uh, no," Ron admitted.
"Consult them again," Snape advised. Ron was already half-way through the door he'd left open--Harry hurriedly turned around so it wouldn't look like he was trying to hear--when the Potions Master added, "If you are still confused afterwards, return."
Ron flopped down into the chair opposite Harry and dragged out some crumpled parchments.
Harry knew he should probably just stay quiet, but he couldn't resist. "See, that went all right," he had to point out.
"Yeah, well he could have just answered my question," Ron grumbled, adding in a lower tone, "But at least he didn't take points, so... yeah, all right."
Smiling, Harry returned to his own study of weather charms.
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Coming Soon in A Year Like None Other:
Chapter Fifty-Nine: Lumos
Comments very welcome,
Aspen in the Sunlight
Chapter 59: Lumos
http://archive.skyehawke.com/story.php?no=5036&chapter=59
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A Year Like None Other
by Aspen in the Sunlight
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Chapter Fifty-Nine: Lumos
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Harry was determined on one thing: he was going to do a Lumos even if it killed him. He'd had enough of just sitting around waiting for things to happen to him; it was time he took charge of his own life and his own destiny, he thought. It was just like with the seer dreams. He could wait for them to happen and let them control him, or he could decide he'd stay in control no matter what.
Besides, if something horrible was going to happen to keep him away from his father, Harry was damned if he'd face it without his magic. He was going to get his magic back so that he could help Severus if need be.
Must be my saving-people thing, Harry thought, but for once, he didn't cringe at the phrase. That was just part of who he was, he decided. And maybe accepting who he was would help him finally get his magic back.
He started spending hours each day practicing, and this time, he didn't let repeated failures deter him. He tried Occlumency again to help with the spell, tried immersing himself in his dark powers in the hopes that they would flow free once he was reaching down inside them with his mind. He raised his wall of mental fire, and when that didn't work, tried to see inside himself a blinding light, instead. He pictured himself casting Lumos, casting a ray of light so pure and brilliant it blinded everyone around.
Visualizing his powers didn't seem to unlock them, but Harry kept right on trying, day after day after day. It no longer bothered him to have Draco see him fail. Draco wanted him to succeed; Harry was certain of that. The Slytherin boy had no more good ideas on how to make the magic flow, but that was all right.
Harry's instincts were screaming inside him that the solution to his problem lay inside himself. That it was up to him, him and no one else, to get the magic to pour out through his wand. Nobody else could solve this for him, he just knew it. Not anybody, not even his father.
Strangely enough, there was a certain comfort in that. Harry supposed that was because he'd spent so many years learning that it was stupid to depend on anyone besides himself. He was trying to unlearn that now; he did trust his father, after all. But too long in one mindset had... oh, he didn't know.... damaged him, maybe. He wanted to change right along with his family situation; he wanted to let himself depend on others.
But some part of him just couldn't, not yet.
And maybe that was why he'd had so little success with finding a path into his magic. He hadn't been looking for one, not really. He'd been waiting for Remus, or Draco, or Snape to tell him what to do and how to do it. But that wasn't going to work, not when the deepest part of him had apparently decided to reject all their tutelage, all their advice.