Harry looked up at his father, whose black eyes were glimmering with something like sympathy, but the rest of the man's features were carved in resolution. Harry couldn't stop a sigh. First the map, and then his cloak, and now the mirror as well. He was starting to feel like every last memento of James was being methodically stripped away from him. Harry didn't think Snape was doing it on purpose... after all, the man didn't even know that the mirror had probably been James' half of the matched pair.
Maybe I should tell him, Harry thought.
But what would be the point in that? Snape did know that the invisibility cloak and map had belonged to James. That hadn't gotten them returned, had they? And anyway, maybe Harry deserved to lose access to them for a while, if his experimental spells had been as dangerous as Snape and Draco seemed to think.
It would be nice to be trusted though; it really would.
"Well, now that's all cleared up," Draco said a bit waspishly, "perhaps we could get back to the mystery key. What was that about Harry dreaming it?"
Harry turned back to his brother. "I saw this key in a seer dream. The dream where I was getting unadopted, except it turned out I had it backwards and it was about you being adopted."
"How could you mix up those two things?"
Harry scratched a bit at his head. "I don't know anymore. It all made perfect sense at the time--"
"It most certainly did not. I told you I would never repudiate you." Snape looked over at Draco as well. "Nor you."
Draco didn't reply to that, though Harry thought he did look pleased.
"So whose key then?" mused Snape after a moment. Holding it up to the light, he turned it this way and that. "There was no note with it? No indication whatsoever as to who sent it, or why?"
"No---"
"Shite," Draco suddenly exclaimed. He'd been crushing the envelope in one hand, but all at once he relaxed his fingers and pressed the envelope flat between his palms to smooth it out. "I bet I know what's going on."
"What?"
As the other boy lifted the envelope to his lips and whispered to it, Harry felt a sense of dÈj‡-vu surround him. He'd seen that before, hadn't he? Draco sighing and softly talking to a sheet of paper... but the paper had been floating in the air that time, not held tight in his hand...
The letter from Wiltshire, that was it, Harry thought. The letter from Narcissa. Draco spoke to it, and it gave him no reaction...
This time, though, the moment Draco finished speaking his incantation, writing began to scroll itself across the envelope. Writing Harry had seen before.
Narcissa Malfoy's writing.
Draco's hand was shaking as he started reading. He didn't even appear to notice when Snape took him by the arm and gently guided him to sit down on the couch.
"Merlin," he finally breathed. "I... you know, I was going to be mature about the money thing. I really was. You were going to be impressed, Harry. I had it all planned out."
Personally, Harry thought that Draco calling him a fucking imbecile over the whole vault thing was less than impressive. "What are you talking about?"
"My mother." A low laugh rumbled in Draco's throat. "Sweet Merlin, she can plot circles around Lucius when she sets her mind to it. She's just not often willing to. But she did, for me."
By the end there, Draco sounded like he was in raptures.
"Perhaps you could elucidate." Snape raised an eyebrow and simply waited.
"Oh, right. Sorry." Draco began to read out loud:
Dragon my dearest treasure, if you are reading this it means that your father's schemes have borne bitter fruit and you have been expelled from school. No doubt he has already informed Gringotts that your vault should revert to the family estate. Lucius has ways of tracking even my separate finances, so I dare not oppose your father directly by offering you any portion of my own holdings. But I have no wish to see you destitute, and by happy coincidence, my great-uncle Walpurgis has suddenly taken ill and died. You will recall that he had kept himself entirely out of the war that was raging when you were born.
Draco turned the envelope over and began reading the back.
When you first defied your family heritage, I was distraught for I could foresee nothing but tragedy ahead for you Dragon my treasure. I went to my uncle, whom I had not seen for many years, and told him you had turned your back on us, as he had once done. I had hoped he might be willing to do something for you, but I fear he did not believe you were sincere, my Dragon. He thought the whole tale some plot to entrap the Potter boy. But I knew that a personal letter from you would convince him--Walpurgis always did fancy himself a fine judge of character.
Flipping the envelope over again, Draco read from the front:
Thank you for writing to him as I asked. I know he never replied, but he did do something for you. He made you his sole heir, Dragon my treasure, and appointed me executor, and so I have sent you the key to his vault, now yours. There is more money in it than you could spend in a lifetime, but I still do hope you will use these resources wisely and well. I know you do not believe I love you, Dragon my treasure, and after my public stance I suppose I cannot fault you. But you have indeed been in my thoughts all these many months, and I have done what I could for you. What good would have come of my defending you openly? Your father would have had me slain, and then you would have had no mother to plead your case to Walpurgis.
I do love you, Draco, and I always will.
Narcissa Black Malfoy
Harry didn't know what to say to all that; he was a little bit embarrassed that by the end, Draco was clearly struggling to hold back tears.
"May I examine it?" asked Snape as he sat down alongside his son.
Draco swallowed twice before he answered. "Yes. But it can't leave my hands, Severus, or the writing will vanish and won't ever come back. It's a special charm my mother uses on her very private correspondence."
Nodding, Snape leaned over to read the writing on the envelope through, his dark eyes thoughtful. Each time the Potions Master glanced at him, Draco turned the envelope over so the man could continue reading.
"That's quite a charm," Harry couldn't help but say. "The front side has two different parts of the letter charmed onto it, one beneath the other."
"My mother's quite a witch." Draco's voice glowed with pride. "And now we know why she didn't simply use owl post to deliver that other letter."
"True," commented Snape. "Of course you knew at the time that she was plotting something, as I recall."
"Yeah, but I thought she was plotting against me, Severus."
"I don't understand," said Harry.
"House-elf magic," Draco explained, his resentment of house-elves so strong it came through even despite his euphoria. "Once Slubby had been invited in, it gave him a means to get back in so he could leave me this key. I suppose the blood wards would have kept him out had he meant you any harm--"
"A house-elf can break into any place where he's once been welcomed?" That didn't sound right.
"No, but he's a Malfoy elf, isn't he, and here I am a Malfoy, and I was the one who let him in--"
"But I thought you weren't a Malfoy," said Harry. "Draco Snape?"
The other boy flushed and looked away. "True. But that was only finalised today, right along with the adoption. Blubby probably snuck in last night when I still was a Malfoy."
"Draco--"
"What, Severus?" Draco huffed slightly. "What? He probably did, you know!"