Draco was sitting at the square dining table, parchment laid out before him, bent over low with a quill in his hand. But there were no books anywhere at hand, so Harry didn't think it was schoolwork that had the other boy occupied.
"I'm pretty sure Severus meant for you to do your lines after dinner," Harry exclaimed. "Not all day long."
Draco leaned back in his chair, shaking his wrist a bit as though to loosen it. "As if I'd spend the whole day writing how I'm not a Gryffindor." Picking up the maple wand laying nearby, he tapped the parchment and whispered a drying spell, then stood up as he brought it over to show Harry. "What do you think?"
Harry stared at the drawing, which showed a bare arm holding a wand. Inked across the back of the wizard's hand was a snake coiled to strike. A rather ugly snake, but of course that wasn't the point. Harry didn't have to ask what was.
"You're thinking of a tattoo?" he asked, feeling a bit sick at the thought. He didn't like being marked. Not by anything, not even his famous scar, but at least that could be hidden behind his hair most of the time. This would be out on display for everyone to see. It would have to be, if it was going to always be in full view for Harry.
Harry shivered. He couldn't help it; the idea, not to mention the image, reminded him too much of the Dark Mark.
The Slytherin boy wasn't slow to pick up on his mood. "I know, it's not your dream come true," he murmured. "But Harry, we have to do something. You're about to go back to classes. Too many people at Hogwarts want you dead, and the way you can't incant unless a snake is in sight... it makes you too vulnerable, don't you see?" He shook his head, his eyes deeply troubled. "I don't want anybody else able to get around you the way I did."
It wasn't lost on Harry that this was proof, as if he needed it, that Draco did care about him. Draco just wasn't ready to call it love... and for all Harry knew, it wasn't. But it was certainly something.
"Harry?" Draco shifted on his feet.
Right, the snake tattoo... "You're one of the privileged few who understand how much I need a snake," Harry pointed out. "I bet everybody else will think I can speak Parseltongue at will."
"I bet," Draco raised his voice, "that in short order, everybody else will realise something odd is going on. Come on, Harry. Like it or not, using Parseltongue in class is going to draw every eye to you! How long is it going to be before the other students notice you glancing at your crest every single time you try to cast a spell? It's going to be pretty obvious how to shut off your magic!"
"You think a snake tattooed on my hand is going to make it less obvious?"
"It's going to be obvious anyway. I think the tattoo will keep you alive. Look, it could be in Gryffindor colours. Like Sals."
"Colours aren't the point." Before the other boy could reply, Harry held up a hand. "I agree that glancing at my crest all the time has its drawbacks, so what about.... hmm, a ring with a little snake carved in it? Isn't that better? Just like with the tattoo, I'll naturally be looking its way when I want to cast, but a ring would call much less attention to itself."
"A ring can be summoned right off your finger; a tattoo can't."
"I'll ward it with stay-put charms. Wanded ones," Harry insisted. "The thing'll be practically welded to my finger. But see, the thing is, we could come up with a reason why I have the ring. I'll say Severus said I had to wear it to remind me that my father's Head of Slytherin and that I'd better not lose any points from his House, something like that."
"Hmm. You might be right," Draco said. "The tattoo would be a good deal harder to explain. People would probably think of some rather nasty parallels with Severus and his mark, now that his Death Eater past is all out in the open." He abruptly flicked the wand he held and incanted Incendio; the parchment began to burn. "Just make sure you don't set foot outside the dungeons without the ring glued to your finger. Severus has enough to do, trying to get me out of trouble."
"Speaking of which," Harry said, wondering where to start. Getting Draco out of trouble was likely to be quite a feat, considering everything involved. Funny, all that effort to make sure the Petrificus in his wand could be explained as having nothing to do with Pansy... and now it was a moot point since nobody could make the wand give up its secrets. But things were better this way. Now, there was no reason to let the Aurors know that Draco had ever hexed him. The fact that Draco couldn't be forced to take truth serum simplified things considerably, not that the situation that remained was simple.
"All right, listen carefully," Harry said after he'd taken a minute to think it through. He wished he could tell Draco the whole truth, but with their father so adamant that Harry's hex-breaking remain a secret... "Ron and Hermione came down while I was under Petrificus. They got worried when nobody answered the door, so they sent Ginny off to tell Severus something was wrong. He Flooed down at once and broke me out of Petrificus. So far, so good, but this is where it gets complicated. Severus and I answered the door and I sort of... um, let it slip that I was afraid you'd run up to the Owlery. Sorry about that. Anyway though, later on we worked out a story which'll cover why we didn't answer the door and they had to send Ginny off. You and I were working on deafening potions, see? And we made them too strong, so we couldn't hear the magic doorbell. Severus found us both down there. That's what Ron and Hermione are going to tell Ginny, so that's the story you and I have to tell, got it? You never left the dungeons at all."
"That's going to make sense, considering my burn," Draco said, frowning. "Or do we not mention that?"
"Well, I thought that this way we could ask Severus to heal it." Harry waited until Draco had nodded to tell him the rest. "There's one thing I'm not so sure about, though. Pansy's letters. Do you think you should mention those? I suppose if you do the Aurors might want to read them... but if you say there aren't any and somebody else in Slytherin has already said otherwise, that could be a problem."
"They'll be blank by now, anyway." Draco gave a long, deep sigh, his eyes taking on a dull grey cast. "Her letters always went blank after a few hours..."
Personally, Harry thought that made it all the more likely that Pansy had been playing some game of her own, but Draco was upset enough already. "It'll be all right," he said instead.
"She's dead, Harry," Draco countered, blinking as he looked out the window. "How can that be all right?"
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Snape arrived while they were still eating breakfast, but waved away their offers of tea and toast. He had a decidedly strange look on his face as Harry went over the cover story again, explaining how the situation with Draco's wand meant they could neglect to mention any hex to the Aurors, and how that meant that they didn't have to admit that Draco had ever left the dungeons.
"Just making sure all three of us have our stories straight," Harry finished, just as a horrifying thought occurred to him. "Oh, no. You said last night that the headmaster would decide when to tell the Aurors about the amulet... has the headmaster already mentioned it to them? If they know he's been burned from being right with the conspirators then there goes our story about how he never even left the dungeons--"
"Albus Dumbledore is a bit more cagey than that, Harry."
"Well, check with him even so before we get too deep in lies to back out," Harry worried aloud.
"A wise precaution." Snape nodded, then turned to his other son. "Are you feeling better, this morning? No chance you will overdose yourself again?"
Draco bristled. "You can take your Calming Draught away with you for all I care."