"As you wish," Snape merely replied. "Harry, if you should for any reason need me, do not hesitate to shout through to the Burrow."
"All right." He watched his father Floo away, feeling a little bit glum about the whole matter. Maybe it was Ron's attitude rubbing off. Or maybe, he reflected, it had more to do with the fact that Snape could get out of the dungeons whenever he wanted. Harry was glad for his father, but he knew more than a niggle of jealousy that he didn't have the same freedom, not even now that he could Floo.
But that, too, was up to him. He just had to get his magic back.
Correctly interpreting Harry's motion toward the wand in his pocket, Draco shook his head. "No," he said. "Not more practice, not until you eat."
"What are you, his mother?" Ron erupted.
"No, I'm his friend," Draco coolly replied. "What are you?"
"Shut up."
"Let's just have dinner," Harry broke in, trying to distract them. He really didn't want to have to firecall the Burrow to report that the other two boys were dueling, or something. "And then I'll work on Lumos again."
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From the look on Ron's face, Harry thought that the other boy probably wouldn't have stayed... except for one thing. He knew he had to be there when Snape Flooed back in from the Burrow. Otherwise, the Potions Master just might report the matter to his parents.
Harry was fairly sure that Snape wouldn't do any such thing, of course, but perhaps it was for the best that Ron believed it. At least that way, he didn't leave.
Dinner with just Ron and Draco had been more than a bit uncomfortable, silence alternating with careful civility... but at least both the other boys had refrained from coming to verbal blows. Harry was grateful for that, even if Pass the salt, if you'd be so kind didn't make for scintillating conversation. Straight away after dessert, Draco had announced that he had a potion to brew. Harry knew for a fact that wasn't true; it was just Draco's way of escaping the strained atmosphere. But since Draco's barrage of slightly superior comments really tended to grate on Ron, Harry thought it was just as well that Draco backed off to give them all breathing room.
Harry Flooed the plates away and then, standing in the middle of the living room, tried to imagined magic flowing through him and out his wand. He remembered what the wild magic had felt like; he tried to put himself back in that same condition, only this time with himself in control of the surge of power. "Lumos!" he insisted, imbuing the incantation with pure confidence. Nothing for it, though; his wand remained nothing more than a stick in his hand.
A stick that still filled him with the warm glow of magic wanting to be released.
Ron glanced up from the dining room table, evidently tired of determining how a drop of thestral's bile would affect each of five different potions.
Harry gave him a slight smile and just kept on. He was tired of hiding in his room to practice magic alone, as though it was some shameful hobby or something. So what if he didn't have so much talent for it, just now? That was a problem he was going to solve. It certainly wasn't anything to be humiliated over, and he shouldn't have acted like it was.
I'm going to get a Lumos going even if it kills me, he said to himself again, his lips moving with the words as he cast one failed spell after another.
Sals wandered out of her box, slithered across the floor, and wound her way up his leg.
"Hey," Harry said, scooping her up off his hip. He kissed the top of her little head, and gave it affectionate scratch, gratified when Sals arched her neck in response. He'd been so focused on magic practice for the last few days that he hadn't been making much time for Sals, he realized with a little twinge of guilt.
"What is Harry doing?" Sals asked, her tongue flickering out to lap at the sore spot on his wand hand. Ouch.
Motioning for the snake to curl around his wrist, Harry explained, "I'm trying out a myssstery-talk." Spell, he'd meant to say, but some things just didn't translate well into Parseltongue. Strange how he could think one word and yet hear it emerge as something else.
Sals circled his wrist a few times before settling in. "Myssstery-talk?"
Hmm, Sals never really had understood the whole concept of magic, though of course she realized that she'd never met another man-boy who could talk with her. She thought that made Harry special, and when he'd tried to explain before that Snape and Remus were wizards too, even though they couldn't talk to her, Sals had just gotten confused. "Yeah, it's a myssstery-talk for making light," Harry explained, thinking hard what to say. He tapped his wand very gently against her little snout. "This is a ssspecial kind of ssstick. If I wave it right, and say the right words, I should be able to make things happen that don't usually happen."
"Things?"
"I should be able to make it glow," Harry explained. "I used to be really good at it, but lately the ssstick hasn't been working so well for me."
Sals frowned slightly. "How can a ssstick glow? Harry puts it in the fire-cave?"
The Floo, she meant. Harry shook his head. "No, it's nothing to do with fire."
"Show Sssals?"
"I can't." Harry thought a moment and sought Ron out with his eyes to be sure he'd say the next bit in English. "Ron, how about you demonstrate a Lumos for Sals here? She's curious."
Shrugging, Ron pulled his wand as he stood up to oblige.
Sals made a hissing noise that didn't translate at all; Harry supposed it must be the snake equivalent of a gasp. Crawling her way down Harry's hand, she stretched out full length on his arm and poked her head off the end of his hand, the better to peer at the glowing wand. Ron looked a bit wary, but at the snake's clear interest, he stepped closer so she could get a good look.
"I want to see Harry put sunlight inside wood," Sals softly urged.
"I've been trying," Harry lightly grumbled, "but all right." He stretched his arm out again, taking up his most determined stance, pointing his wand toward the granite wall ahead. "See, I hold the myssstery-ssstick out, and call up the myssstery-words inside myself. I have to believe in the words, and say them meaning them, and then all I'm supposed to have to do is say an old, old word for light." Lumos, he tried to add, but even though he felt himself saying the word, he didn't hear it come out. Weird. Well, maybe he couldn't transform Latin into Parseltongue.
"Word?" Sals prompted.
"Uh, I don't know it in snake language," Harry admitted, readying his wand again. "But it's sort of like demanding, Light up!"
A bright beam of energy, more like a bolt of lightning than mere light, surged from his wand. In that same instant, Harry was flung backwards, the force of the spell propelling him straight into the granite wall behind. For a moment he thought he really had been struck by lightning, but the brilliance pouring from his wand didn't flicker away like lightning. Slumped against the wall, he squinted against the incandescent coppery ray and felt just a momentary surge of joy that the blinding light was, indeed, coming from his wand.
At least, he thought it was. His head had knocked against the stones so fiercely that stars filled the whole frame of his vision. Funny, he thought, his brain feeling like it was thinking in slow motion. I never really believed that people actually did see stars when they took a hard blow to the skull...
Or maybe those stars were from the brilliant wand light. Raising his wand a bit, he blinked a few times trying to clear his vision. Oh crap! The beam streaming from his wand was burning everything in its path! A smoldering streak scorched part of the floor across from him and the lower part of the wall dividing the living room from his father's office.