"What the hell is this, Potter, eh? I told you no!" Draco cast a fierce silver glare towards his father. "Didn't I tell the fool no? Well, didn't I? You were there! And look at what he's gone and done!"
A tinkling sound reverberated through the room as Draco flung the key against the stone floor.
"Harry," Snape said, the name that time used in warning. But then, as though something else had occurred to him, the man turned to Draco. "It's not what you think."
"Oh, good," sniped Draco. "Because what I think is that the rich boy is showing off again, rubbing it in my face how much he's got to give and how much he must think I need it, as if I can't live without money, for Merlin's sake, as if I'll just wither and die from the lack of it! You don't think I have a backbone, Potter? You don't think I've lived through worse than this, such as Lucius putting out a fucking contract so my own House mates will be only too delighted to kill me--"
"Shut up!" Harry finally shouted. "God, Draco, just shut up! I don't know whose key that is or where it came from, all right? You might try asking a couple of questions before you start leaping to conclusions, you know!"
"Oh, some conclusion! Just last night you were only too happy to treat me like a charity case!"
"Well, you set me straight, didn't you? You wouldn't take Sirius' money if you were starving in the street! Not too Slytherin, if you ask me!"
Draco narrowed his eyes. "Well, neither am I any longer! And what's this rubbish that you don't know a thing about any key? Gringotts keys don't just appear from thin air!"
Harry took a breath, wishing he hadn't said that thing about Slytherin.
Snape summoned the key with a whispered, wandless spell and caught it between two outstretched fingers. "This isn't Black's, Harry? You didn't ask Albus for it so that you could find it in your room and help your seer dream come true?"
"No. I didn't even know I'd be allowed in my room, did I, until I got down here this morning." A sudden suspicion began to glimmer in Harry's mind. "Oh, that's why you relented, isn't it? Things got worked out this morning and you knew it was going to go through, and you remembered I had to be in my room if the seer dream was going to happen exactly the way I dreamed it!"
Snape inclined his head. "I should actually have thought of that last night. However, I in no way anticipated that Lucius' posturing would cause Family Services to so abruptly reconsider their earlier refusal of my application to adopt Draco."
Harry nodded, that awful suspicion hollowing out a bleak place inside him. "Oh. I... yeah, I understand. And I'm all for the adoption. I think you know that? So, all right, you had to make an exception to your new rule. I get it."
"From the sound of things, you don't," Snape quietly remarked. "In retrospect, forbidding you access to your room was a trifle harsh, especially as I do wish you to regard yourself as welcome here. I simply didn't know what else to do at that instant."
"You didn't know what else to do." Harry was a bit stunned that Snape would admit such a thing.
"I had rather a lot on my mind." Snape quirked a small smile. "I think you know that."
"Yeah, otherwise you'd have just thought of taking away the frame, even if it is Draco's and not mine."
"Taking away that broken mirror appears to have accomplish the same end."
Harry tried not to flinch as he asked in a worried tone, "You didn't banish it or anything, did you? And don't let the house-elves think it's rubbish, all right? 'Cause it's not."
"I've boxed it and put it away," Snape said, studying Harry carefully. "As it had obviously been broken for some time I thought you must have a reason for keeping it."
"How could you tell..." When Draco gave him an incredulous look, Harry blushed. "All right, magic. Some of us weren't raised around every last obscure spell, you know."
"What reason can you have for keeping a broken mirror, though?"
Harry couldn't help it; that time he did flinch. What if Snape didn't want to keep it once he knew it used to be a way to contact Sirius? He might think it was unhealthy for Harry to hang onto a thing like that. And that wasn't why he was keeping it, anyway. He knew well enough that the mirror couldn't reach beyond the Veil. "Sentimental value," he said, hating the way his voice croaked. "Sirius gave it to me. D- don't throw it away, all right?"
With a muttered oath, Snape took two steps forward and reached out both his arms, gathering Harry close, one palm pressing the boy's cheek against the soft, black fabric of his waistcoat. "I have been too harsh if you can think a thing like that of me."
As long fingers carded carefully through his hair, Harry was horrified to find himself on the verge of tears. He knew that his father loved him, after all. He'd known it even when the man had been shouting at him and telling him to go up to the Tower and stay out of his room. This touch now... it shouldn't mean so much.
But it did, so maybe his nightmare had upset him more than he'd thought.
"Perhaps," Draco said after a long, silent moment, "one or both of you could explain this business about my frame?"
Harry pushed away from his father and blinked hard to get himself under control. "Um, remember how we got to watch that Quidditch match on it, and then we--"
"You watched the hearing," Draco at once surmised.
"Yeah, but I had to combine magical artefacts to get it to show the inside of the castle and..." Harry looked his brother in the eye. "I broke it. Sorry..."
"It was showing the Whomping Willow when I went into the room--"
"That's all it shows. I think because that's what it was showing right before I messed with it. It's... stuck, or something. I suppose I could try to fix it--"
"I think not," said Snape, his tone hard but not so much so that it sounded hateful. "The two of you now have an animated depiction of the willow, and the frame will be put to no further use, and that is the end of that. Draco, I trust you will assist me in this matter?"
"How am I supposed to keep Potter here in line? Combining magical artefacts..." Draco gave a shudder that didn't look in the least theatrical, for once. "Do you have any notion how dangerous that is? And you, down here all alone! A fully trained wizard wouldn't combine artefacts without researching the matter first, Harry, and he'd make sure he had help in case things didn't go as planned. But not Harry Potter, oh no. He feels free to just let fly with dark powers!" Silver eyes narrowed. "That was the jolt that shook the whole castle, wasn't it?"
"Uh, no, actually, that was me trying my best not to incinerate Lucius--"
"You could have melted the whole castle with all of us in it!" Draco glared, his eyes like chips of frozen silver as he returned his gaze to Snape. "Yes, I'll assist you. I'd rather the frame be destroyed than end up having to watch another horrid funeral after Harry goes too far and lets the damned thing turn him into wizardspace!"
"You watched Miss Parkinson's funeral, Draco?"
Harry kept his voice mild. "Yeah, you weren't objecting so much then, were you now?"
"Because you'd done it before!" cried Draco, baring his teeth. "You said you had! You can bet I'd have objected if you'd started impromptu mixing random magic in!"
Harry didn't think so; he thought Draco had been so desperate to see the funeral that he'd have risked anything. But there was no point in saying so. "I won't do it again," he quietly assured his father and brother. "I'll be good."
"Yes, you will," agreed Snape in a rather dark tone. He was thinking of the mirror, Harry was sure. He'd probably never see it again. Or not until he was twenty-one or something.