"Normal snakes aren't out and about on a fine winter's day," Snape reminded him, just a touch of sneer in the answer.
"Could we dash back and get Sals, then? Or if you've got a quill, I could sketch something on my hand--"
"Oh for pity's sake!" Draco shouted. "Look at my cloak."
Sure enough, the Slytherin crest did the trick. When Harry commanded his powers using Parseltongue, lightning shot from his wand, lightning that kept pouring forth instead of dissipating as a bolt normally would. It blackened and scarred the bare earth, but this time, prepared for the force of the blast, Harry had planted his feet in time to avoid being thrown backwards.
"Now Nox," Snape instructed.
Harry had heard in class that Nox meant darkness, or maybe night; he couldn't remember. Neither one of those words worked, however. Then again, his Parseltongue spells had worked before only when he'd used words to indicate how he'd always thought of the spell. "No more light," he tried, smiling when the lightning bolt streaming from his wand abruptly disappeared.
His father had been right; he wasn't cold any longer. The magic streaming through him had solved that problem, so much so that he shrugged off his robes and tossed them aside. No doubt his Lumos didn't warm the others the same way, especially in the out of doors, but they could always cast charms if they needed them.
Snape spelled the ground to extinguish the smoldering embers left from the experiment, then glanced approvingly at Harry. "So. You merely need to brush up your Latin translations, apparently--"
"Not exactly," Harry interrupted, then explained that what he had said hadn't precisely been Nox.
The Potions Master frowned. "You'll need to produce a personal spell lexicon," he decided. "One by one you'll need to go through the spells and charms and curses you've learned, determining how to produce each with your new powers. This will take some time."
Harry frowned. "Um... I was sort of hoping I could start going to classes again on... um, Monday?"
"Give yourself a few weeks to become adept at the use of your dark powers," Snape advised.
"A few weeks!"
"Yes." Snape speared him with a look. "The part of me that is your father would prefer you not resume classes at all, Harry. It is dangerous, more so than you likely realize. What do you think Albus and I do at all those teas, but analyze the continuing threat from Slytherin?" He shrugged, then. "However, you need to become a fully trained wizard, and it won't happen in isolation from your peers. You will take up residence in the Tower when you begin classes again."
Harry grinned. "Thanks, Dad. But don't worry. I'll visit plenty."
"You'd better," Draco sourly put in. "And you'd better remember what I told you."
"Which was?" Snape prompted.
"Harry knows."
The Potions Master glanced over them both, but let the matter drop. "Now that you know how to stop and start the spell, we'll see if your power levels are more acceptable without a wand," he advised Harry.
By then it was nearly dark. "Um, shouldn't we be getting back?" Harry objected. "Ron'll be wondering where we've gotten to."
Snape looked down his long nose at him. "I must say," he fairly smirked. "Mr. Weasley is not the only Gryffindor who doesn't 'do subtle.' Why do you think I spoke with him in private this morning?"
Harry actually hadn't thought about that at all. He raised his shoulders to say so.
"I have released him from any further detention."
That made sense, Harry realized. Ron had apologized, after all, and what was more, he'd admitted that Snape was doing all right as Harry's father. Really, there was no reason left to make him come down. Still... "Great. Now I won't see him for weeks," he grumbled, noticing rather glumly that Draco looked pleased by that notion.
"Wandless," Snape drew his attention back to the lesson.
"I don't want to," Harry muttered. "It's... too weird. Besides, it reminds me of the robe-and-mask incident." Even as he said it, though, a deep twitching in his palm and fingers told him that his body wanted to perform wandless magic even if he didn't.
"It is not weird," Snape scoffed. "The average wizard would give his wand, literally, to possess such an ability."
"Yeah, well the average wizard might also think it'd be great to have the Killing Curse bounce off his head, but I hate this scar!" Harry shouted. "All I ever wanted was to be normal, and I made a lousy Muggle because I wasn't, but almost the moment I found out I was a wizard I found out I wasn't a normal in this world, either! My name marks me as much as this scar, and it's just getting worse and worse! Parselmouth, Azkaban escapees supposedly hunting me out, Tri-Wizard Fiasco, getting my own godfather killed, and now this!"
Draco had been watching silently for some while, but at that, he stomped across the field to Harry and abruptly pulled him into a hard, harsh embrace. "You stop being a prat," he hissed in his ear. "You made a lousy Muggle because you weren't one, you bloody great idiot, and if you want to talk about a name marking you, at least yours marks you for greatness! You don't know what it is to be ashamed of your father, do you? Ashamed of your name!"
Harry had struggled at first, but talk of fathers had him going still. He did know what it was to be ashamed of one, though he couldn't explain much about that unless he betrayed Snape's worst memory. And that just wasn't in the cards. Gripping Draco back, Harry quietly talked in his ear: "Severus is your father. Now who's the bloody great idiot?"
"You are, whinging on about being normal! If you were normal, you'd be dead several times over by now, and the rest of us would end up slaves to the Dark Lord, so forgive me if I don't care to attend your pity-party!"
"If you're quite through insulting one another," Snape coolly inserted, reminding Harry that the man could hear a cauldron bubble at a hundred paces, "perhaps Harry can attempt a wandless charm before we all freeze to death?"
"Fine," Harry muttered, shaking Draco off and stepping a safe distance away. Habit had him brandishing his wand even so, until an Expelliarmus from Snape snatched it from his hand. Resisting an urge to say something about that, he stretched his arm out before him, fingers splayed, and reluctantly asked, "How is this supposed to work, exactly?"
"Most wizards have to perform near-perfect Occlumency just to concentrate enough to make the magic flow," Snape explained, raising his voice over the breeze. "I somehow doubt you are going to experience the same difficulty. Just look at Draco's crest, and say your charm."
Glancing to the side to get the snake into view, Harry miserably whispered at his fingers to light up.
And they did. Well, three of them. His thumb and pinky finger appeared normal, but the others were glowing ever so slightly, the light barely perceptible, but definitely there. Still, it wasn't anything like the brilliant Lumos that Harry had seen Snape's wand produce.
"Great," he scathed, striding over to show his father and brother. "With a wand I blast holes in walls, and without one I'll end up tripping. This is about the most pathetic Lumos I've ever seen!"
"Ha. You haven't seen Longbottom's, then."
"Quiet, Draco." Snape took Harry's wrist in his long fingers, and turned the boy's hand this way and that to examine the light. "Go back where you were, extinguish it, and incant with more feeling."