Draco's face flushed pink. "How humiliating. I need a keeper now? I can't be trusted to behave?"
"You just need some company, I think," Harry chimed in. He was about to add that he'd be mental, too, if he was facing what Draco was... but at the last second, he decided it wouldn't help to say that. Jumping up, he glanced into the small cottage's sole bedroom. "Hmm, one big bed again? Did your transfiguration from before come undone?"
"Oh, please, Potter," Draco sneered. Harry could tell it was an act, though. Deep down, Draco was pleased and relieved that he'd have someone to talk to for a bit. "Unlike you, I'm actually quite skilled at transfiguration; my spells don't just fall apart! I had to do something to practice with that wand. Can you blame me if I thought it might be nice for a change to really stretch out--"
"You could have practiced using the wand on the charmed box," Snape pointed out, waving toward the table where it still sat. "I told you the spell, but I gather you haven't bothered to eat? You're to rectify that while Harry and I return to Grimmauld Place to get the things he left there."
"You could leave him here so I have some company during dinner," Draco wheedled.
"I have a few things to say to him," Snape explained.
Draco made a face. "Things about me?"
"Things about him," the Potions Master coolly corrected. "We will be some time."
Harry didn't like the sound of that, but he didn't fool himself that he had much of a choice. "See you in a bit, Draco," he said, standing when Snape made an impatient gesture.
"Yeah..." Draco stood up and made his way over to the table. "Thanks, Harry, Severus."
Snape seemed about to say something, but whatever it was never found voice. Instead, he beckoned Harry to walk outside with him. Without a word, they Apparated back to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.
"Thanks for deciding I could stay over in Devon," Harry murmured before pushing away from his father's embrace. "I think that'll be good for Draco. It's too bad you can't join us. It was great there at Christmas, the three of us together. Well, after Draco and I worked out the Samhain thing."
"Assuming recent events do not completely change my plans, we will spend some time in Devon this summer," Snape assured him. "All three of us together."
"A family, like Dumbledore said. You know, I think he's starting to come around--"
"Professor Dumbledore," Snape interrupted. "And yes, I know it's been a long while since you heard me insist on his proper title. I begin to think I've made an error in judgment with you. Sit down."
An error in judgment.... An image of the unadoption dream flashed through Harry's mind, but he pushed it away as he sat down in one of the armchairs nearby. Snape seated himself in another one, but first he pulled it to face Harry, tugging it so close that when he did sit down, their knees nearly touched.
"Do you think Professor Dumbledore is beginning to view us as a family?" Harry tried again.
"I think he has realised at least that he might as well accept matters," Snape explained, steepling his fingers and looking at Harry over the top of them. "I also think that you are trying your best to direct the flow of this discussion. I did not bring you here to discuss the headmaster."
Harry leaned back, away from those piercing eyes. "Right, you wanted to discuss me." He was about to ask if he would have to write lines alongside Draco, something like I will not attempt untested wanded magic alone again, but at the last moment he realised that it wouldn't be too Slytherin to remind his father about the way he'd changed that picture frame into a viewing wall. "Um, so what about me?"
"Oh, surely you can guess," Snape drawled, leaning forward yet further, his eyes piercing Harry's. "Considering the context? And what I just said about an error in judgment?"
Harry slumped slightly. "Oh. Yeah, I can guess. Respect."
"Indeed."
"I said I was sorry--"
"No, you said you guessed that maybe you should not have spoken to me thus." Snape's fingers tautened, the steeple they were forming about to fly apart from the stress. He looked as though he was having trouble speaking, or perhaps deciding what to say, Harry thought, an impression which was confirmed when the man practically spat, "Do you have any idea what would have happened to me had I ever spoken to my father like that? And what would have happened had I had the temerity to apologise with words like guess and maybe?"
Finally, a real detail about Snape's childhood, his family... and it had to come in a context like this. Maybe that was the only way, though, Harry reasoned. "No, I don't have any idea," he quietly admitted. "I can't possibly have any idea, because you don't much talk about things like that."
"And why do you think that is?"
Harry could feel his neck growing hot. "Well, I figured out a while ago that your childhood must have been about as bad as mine."
Snape just stared at him.
"All right, worse," Harry sighed. "What does this have to do with respect, though? I'm sure you must know that I respect you one hell of a lot, Severus. You've been through awful things, but you've overcome them. If I didn't respect you I'm sure I couldn't really have made you my father where it counts. I don't mean on the adoption papers."
"You show in many ways that you deeply respect me, Harry," Snape admitted, dropping his hands to his lap as he leaned back. "Sometimes to an excessive degree. But that's another conversation. This one is about a concept you appear to have difficulty mastering: public respect."
"It was so bad of me to point out that you've really misjudged Remus?"
"To point it out, no." Snape narrowed his eyes. "To point it out when we are not alone, yes. And that is not even considering the way you ordered me to apologise, as if you indeed were the father and I the child. This fact may escape your attention, but for all that Albus is a friend of many years' standing, he is also headmaster at the school where I am employed. Your behaviour caused my employer to speculate, in my presence, that I was no more mature than a toddler," he sneered. "Is that your idea of respect, then?"
"I'm sorry!" Harry blurted. "I am, all right? But Remus doesn't deserve to be treated the way you keep treating him."
"And I do not deserve to be treated the way you keep treating me!" Snape countered, raising his voice. "We have discussed this before, Harry."
"Look, just because your father never let you speak your mind doesn't mean that you and I have to follow the same rules--"
Wrong thing to say. Definitely, the wrong thing. Harry knew that much from the way Snape's lips curled in disdain. "Merlin's blood, Harry! How dare you imply that I have taken my father as some sort of model! I do let you speak your mind. In the privacy of our own home, I let you say any stupid thing you like to me, and you know it! I am not like my father!"
"All right, all right," Harry backtracked, holding up his hands.
But Snape wasn't finished. "My father did worse to me than the Dursleys ever did to you," he continued, fingers now curling into fists on the arms of the chair. "I will not discuss the details; you have nightmares enough already. But you would do well to leave my father out of any discussions you and I conduct."
"Yes, sir," Harry murmured, a little taken aback. What had the man done to Snape?
Shaking his head, Snape conjured a small glass of something and began to sip at it. When a smell reminiscent of liquorice wafted across the short distance to Harry, he thought it must be Galliano. He wasn't sure what to think about that. He was driving his father to drink? That was a pretty awful thought.