Drawing in a deep breath, Ron seemed to steel himself for something as he lifted his face to meet the Potion Master's eyes. "I owe you an apology, sir. A sincere one, this time. I'm very sorry I didn't understand about you and Harry. I mean, I didn't really think you were... uh, doing anything... er, you-know, with him, but I also didn't think you... um... cared about him." Defensive, Ron babbled, "How could I? You've spent years making us all think you hate him--"
"Oh, I most certainly did hate him," Snape freely acknowledged.
"Yeah." Ron thickly swallowed. "Well, anyway, I can't think you do, now. I mean, when you stepped out of the Floo I was sure there was going to be hell to pay for the damage to your office. But all you saw was Harry... you still haven't even gone in to see what can be salvaged, have you? And that's not even counting--"
"That will be enough, Mr. Weasley," Snape drawled. "Your apology is accepted."
"That's not counting what?" Harry pressed.
Unaccountably, Ron blushed. "Um... well you wouldn't calm down until he held you, Harry but the thing that really got me was... um..." He chanced a quick look at Snape. "He... er, sang to you."
"You sang to me?" Harry asked his father. It sort of reminded him of Devon, of hour after hour of stories. Maybe Severus had sung a bit to him there, too.
Snape raised a challenging eyebrow. "I hummed."
Ron made a telling face, but didn't contradict his teacher. "I'd better get back," he mentioned to Harry. "People will be wondering where I've been all night."
Narrowing his eyes, the Potions Master announced, a trifle harshly, "You may state that Harry was ill and needed company. You may not share any information about his magical state. Is that clear?"
Harry furrowed his brow. "Doesn't Voldemort already know everything anyway?"
"As one can't be certain of that, I see no reason to offer him aid."
Draco gnashed his teeth. "I say we Obliviate Weasley and be done with it."
"There will be no Obliviate," Snape lightly sneered as he turned an assessing gaze on Ron. "Mr. Weasley has managed to keep his own counsel before in matters regarding Harry. I believe we can rely on him to do so again."
That wasn't what Draco wanted to hear, as was obvious from the Slytherin boy's crossed arms and hard silver eyes. When the Potions Master merely gazed impassively back, Draco muttered something under his breath and stormed from the room. Ignoring all that, Snape spoke to Ron. "A word in private before you go, Mr. Weasley, if I may."
Ron glanced at Harry, no small amount of alarm in his eyes, but then he stood up, shrugging. "All right. 'Bye, Harry. I guess I'll see you tonight as usual, eh? You get some rest until then."
With that, Ron was smiling briefly and leaving the room.
"Harry, I believe your friend is correct; the best thing for you would be more sleep," Snape said, spelling out the lights as though to underline the suggestion. "When you have rested, you and I will work out a way for you to practice magic without risking hearth and home, is that clear?"
"Yeah, clear as Lubummum," Harry murmured, slumping back down into the pillows and closing his eyes.
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Sleep, though, was hopeless. Harry tried for about an hour before concluding that he was just too keyed up to relax. Or maybe it was the light in the room. Snape had spelled off the glow that usually emanated from the stone walls, but he hadn't done anything about the enchanted picture frame. By the time Harry gave up, it was showing a view of the Dark Forest.
The sight only reminded him of why he couldn't sleep. Was Parseltongue the entire answer to his magical problems? A dark power to unlock dark powers? He didn't like that, he really didn't. But what else could explain the night before? He remembered trying to say Lumos to Sals and realizing that the word had emerged without voice, remembered thinking that Latin must not translate. But then, why should English rendered into snake-language end up being magical? Regular English wasn't... well, not usually, he amended, thinking of the Marauders' Map and the Point Me spell, among other things.
Unable to bear it for a moment longer, Harry hopped out of bed and reached for his wand. When he picked it up, he felt that same surge of warmth and joy flooding him, the one he'd felt in Ollivander's. That hadn't meant anything before, though. Could he incant with it again? Something in him had to know, and had to know right then.
Of course he wasn't daft enough to try another Lumos, but what harm could there be in, say... Wingardium Leviosa? He just wouldn't try to levitate anything that might break, and then that would be all right.
Shaking a bit, Harry slipped his pillow out of its decorative sham, then set it on the floor and backed away. Wand at the ready, he tried the charm in English first... just in case. When nothing came of that, he realized he'd have to try it in Parseltongue. Sals was nowhere around, though, and he was hardly going to go looking for her, since that would only have his father wondering what he was up to. Remembering how impossible he'd found it to speak Parseltongue without a snake image to look at--or at least an invisible snake to hold--Harry hurriedly sketched one out on a scrap of parchment. Then, looking straight at it, he said Wingardium Leviosa and heard nothing emerge. Good enough; it meant he was definitely speaking snake language.
So it was definite: he could not transform Latin into Parseltongue; he could only transform English.
Now, for the charm... Harry set the snake drawing on top of the pillow, then backed up, pointing his wand. "Lift up!" he said, hearing it emerge as English though it must surely be Parseltongue, focused as he was on the drawing of the snake. He might as well have said nothing, though; the pillow didn't move an inch. "Levitate!" he tried, though he heard that come out using the same two words, Lift up. Hmm... this was a little harder than he'd thought, Harry realized, sitting down on the floor to ponder the problem. "Raise," he said next, chin on hand, wand held rather carelessly by then.
Maybe, he had to think of a way to get Wingardium as well as Leviosa into the incantation. And what the heck did Wingardium mean, anyway? He couldn't translate Latin to English to Parseltongue if he didn't know what the Latin stood for in the first place, could he? Not that Wingardium sounded particularly Latin to him, anyway... "Guard your wings and lift up!" he hazarded a guess, only to see the pillow vibrate softly as though trying to obey. Interesting. He tried a few more combinations of words, his gaze firmly fixed to the snake drawing, and finally settled on saying what the charm had always seemed to mean to him. "Take wing and fly!" he commanded, his voice still pitched low, moving his wand just as he'd learned all those years ago.
The pillow flew up off the floor with such speed that Harry could hardly track it, but there was no mistaking what happened next. A muffled thump as it smacked into the ceiling, the fabric rending in a hundred directions at once from the impact. Then feathers and scraps of wool were raining down all around him, coating every surface in the room.
"Oh shite," Harry swore, shaking his head. He suddenly had an image of his father coming in and just glaring. Without even thinking, he waved his wand around to perform a Reparo spell, only realizing afterwards that right, regular incantations were no use. Dropping to hands and knees, he sifted through mounds of white, fluffy feathers until the snake drawing was visible again. "I repair you," he told the mess all around. Hmm, nothing. Well, with the other charm it had been incanting what the spell meant to him that had worked, not some literal version of the Latin words. So.... "Like new!" he hissed.