A sly grin curled Dobby's wrinkled features. "Oh, now Harry Potter is giving Dobby orders more like what Dobby used to get, back before Harry Potter freed Dobby! Harry Potter is plotting, eh? But Dobby is happy to be helping! Dobby is trusting Harry Potter!"
One snap of his fingers, and Dobby was gone in a sparkling shower of silver dust.
Plotting? Harry almost laughed as he bit into his sandwich. At least Dobby knew him well enough to know that his plots would be benign. Or maybe he approved because he thought Harry was plotting against Draco... well, either way, he knew Dobby would do as he has asked.
When he was done eating, Harry lay back on the couch. He was horribly tired, which stood to reason, but he didn't think he could sleep until his father came home and told him how Draco was doing. Or at least, until Dobby arrived with some news....
Before he knew it, a hand on his shoulder was gently prodding him awake.
Harry opened his eyes to see Snape leaning over him. Shaking his head to clear it of bleary thoughts, Harry sat up. "Is Draco all right? I mean... he seemed more than a little unsettled when he left here. He probably needs some food and rest too..."
Picking up the ice Harry had left on the table, Snape pushed it into Harry's hand and gestured for the boy to use it.
"Sorry," Harry apologised. He kept forgetting about the ice, and wondered why that was. Maybe he just had too much on his mind? "Um... so did you get Draco settled in, you got him the wand and all that? It is possible to start a fire without using magic, you know."
Snape sighed. "Draco's more dependent on sorcery than you are. In some ways your experience with those Muggles is an asset." With that, he was hanging his robes and withdrawing a folded wad of parchment from a trouser pocket.
The Marauders' Map.
The map they'd relied on to condemn Draco. They'd thought him a murderer.... but he couldn't have pushed Pansy out of the Owlery, let alone have snuck down the stairs or run out onto the grounds. He'd been senseless the whole time! So had someone impersonated him? But no, the map had led Snape straight to his unconscious body! And what about the wards? What about--
Harry stopped asking himself questions when his father sat down next to him and began to speak, slow deliberation in every word.
"You may well hold your brother's life in your hands," Snape heavily announced. "And this may be the key that frees him."
"It... it lied," Harry groaned, feeling awful as he took it in hand. The dots swarming over the surface looked hideous to him, now. "I thought that was impossible! I thought the map was perfect. It sees through Polyjuice, it knew that Moody was really Crouch! It's always been dependable, it knew all along that Scabbers was Peter Pettigrew--"
"It knows, I suspect, more than it chose to show," Snape interrupted, reaching out a hand to still his son's shaking shoulders. "Understand me, Harry. I intend no disrespect; I can understand why you trusted the map. James helped make it, and Lupin, and Black. Three wizards you've put your faith in, in one way or another."
"Not Wormtail." Harry grimaced.
Snape waved his free hand in a contemptuous arc. "He was useless in school. But the others... Well. The map is an impressive work of magic, to be sure. But something is wrong with it, and it is up to us to fathom out precisely what."
"I don't even know how it works..."
"Nor I," Snape admitted. "But we are going to find out what it is concealing, all the same."
"How?"
"Let us begin," the Potions Master decided, "with you telling me every last thing you know about this spare bit of parchment."
------------------------------------------------------
Author's Note:
A number of people are asking me to email them when A Year Like None Other is updated. Alerts ARE available, but you will need to join the Yahoo group for the story in order to receive them. Please click on my author name, aspeninthesunlight, near the top of the page, to go to my profile page. Instructions about joining the Yahoo group are there.
Chapter 70: Pride and Prejudice
http://archive.skyehawke.com/story.php?no=5036&chapter=70
------------------------------------------------------
A Year Like None Other
by Aspen in the Sunlight
------------------------------------------------------
Chapter Seventy: Pride and Prejudice
------------------------------------------------------
Spare bit of parchment...
Harry glanced up to meet his father's eyes. "Um, so I guess you know already that this is the parchment that... um, insulted you that time. And you obviously know who made it... I don't actually understand much at all about it. I wish I did, wish I could explain how it could possibly have made Draco look so guilty, or why..." Looking away, Harry gave a heavy sigh and adjusted the position of the ice against his sore eye.
Leaning forward, Snape took the map and spread it out on the table, then with a sparse gesture conjured a glass of water and motioned that Harry should drink it. "You're no doubt still a bit woozy from breaking out of Petrificus. I'll give you something to help you sleep in a few moments."
"All right," Harry agreed, draining the glass and setting it down next to the other dishes. He briefly considered banishing them, or levitating them over to the Floo, but his magic still felt so depleted that he decided not to bother.
Snape seemed to realise what he had in mind. "Better all around not to risk staining the map," he murmured, waving his wand to clear away the mess. "I will be in contact with Lupin as soon as Albus can arrange it. For the moment, however, you are my sole source of information. So... instead of lamenting what you don't know about this parchment, tell me what you do know."
"Well, I know how to work it, is all." Shrugging, Harry detailed, "You tap it with your wand and say, 'I solemnly swear that I am up to no good,' to make it show itself. And then you tap it again and say, 'Mischief managed' to wipe it clean." A sense of how much things had changed suddenly swamped him. Not only was he telling Severus Snape the secrets of the Marauders' Map, it hadn't even occurred to him to hesitate.
Snape 's eyes went dark with remembrance. "Mischief managed... now that does sound like something James Potter would have thought amusing."
"I haven't used the map to play any nasty tricks on anyone," Harry objected.
"No? You weren't the miscreant who pelted Draco with mud that time in Hogsmeade and then came back with this in hand?"
"He started it," Harry defended himself. "And as for my... er, as for James--"
Snape waved a hand through the air as though to erase something. "I wasn't casting aspersions with my mischief managed remark. Your father liked alliteration; that was all I meant."
"You're my father," Harry retorted, furrowing his brow. "What's alliteration, anyway?"
Snape's dark eyes assessed him in a way they hadn't for some time, leaving Harry feeling like a potion ingredient again. But then Snape seemed to put off whatever he had been going to say in favour of merely explaining, "Alliteration. Repeated sounds. We seem to be drifting from the point." The Potions Master studied the map, checking the position of a few dots, including his and Harry's. "This does seem to be highly accurate... have you never seen it err before?"