Snape nodded his thanks as he looked down at the well-wish. Unaccountably, his hands on Harry's tightened, but not like the way they did when he was trying to give his son some encouragement. This grip, Harry thought, was more like shock.
"Where did you find that glass?"
Well, that certainly answered the question of whether Snape knew about his family crest. "It's just a glass... but Hermione found the crest for me in a book on family histories."
Snape nodded again, his dark eyes turbulent. At least it wasn't with anger, but Harry still had the feeling he'd managed to deeply upset the man.
Whatever the matter was, though, it could obviously wait, for Snape was going back to the form of the ceremony. He touched each plant in turn, his fingertip stroking softly over the leaves and flowers, then murmured, "Well chosen, Harry."
Harry couldn't help but blush at the next part, but it was part of the ceremony, so he went ahead and did it. Balancing the well-wish on one palm, he used his free hand to lift each of Snape's hands to his lips, where he brushed a gentle kiss across the knuckles. Then steeling himself, he reached up on tip-toe to try to kiss his father's cheek.
Harry wasn't tall enough, though. Snape had to bend down a little to make that work.
Draco had stood up, but been absolutely quiet throughout, Harry realised as he stepped away from their father. It made for a nice change. When he handed Draco the well-wish, the other boy looked like he might burst into tears. Harry tried to act like he hadn't noticed that as he gave a slight bow and then stepped back.
Pulling in a long breath, Draco swallowed once or twice. "Thank you, Harry."
"You're welcome."
"Oh, some of these are very good wishes," Draco said as he touched a finger to each plant, the way Snape had done. "Nettle, plantain, sarsaparilla, alyssum, Echinacea..."
Now who's the show off? Harry wanted to ask.
Draco apparently had too much reverence for the ceremony to wish to mar it, but now that the formalities were over, his perpetual bad mood began to come roaring back. "I must say, Harry, alyssum's a bit of a rude wish, don't you think?"
Harry shook his head, determined not to be drawn into a fight. That didn't mean he wouldn't answer truthfully, of course. After his talk with Snape--and maybe after the one with Ron in the hall, too--he felt like he didn't have to hold back so much. "Alyssum's a perfect wish for you," he told his brother, his voice a bit dry. "You really do need to learn to moderate your anger. You know, impulse control?"
Draco gave him a thin smile. "And the sarsaparilla's nice, but most probably unnecessary. I already do have plenty of money. Or will, when the goblins finish setting up their greedy little fee schedules, or whatever it is they're doing to hold things up."
"It's a wish for love, Draco."
"Oh." Draco's eyes were glittering by then, never a good sign. "Well, Harry, if you choose ambiguous plants your wishes can be misread. If you had grown up in a proper environment you would know that."
"If you'd been raised by people with manners instead of your damned stilted politeness--" Harry broke that thought off and just waved for Draco to get on with it.
"Let's see, nettle for protection, Echinacea for strengthening spells... those are both solid wishes, if a bit common," drawled Draco. "But this is quite unusual. And really perfect for me, I suppose. Plantain for snake repelling." He laughed, clearly liking that last wish so much that he couldn't find a thing wrong with it.
"Those are very well chosen wishes indeed, Harry," said Snape from where he was still standing by the Floo.
"Oh yes, a very good first try," added Draco, his voice gone so smarmy that Harry wanted to hit him. "But five, you know, that's almost an insult. If I didn't know how ignorant you were of wizarding culture, I'd be hurt you didn't make any more wishes than that."
Harry'd had enough of being talked down to. "But five was all I could do," he explained, hiding his smile. Draco might be a know it all when it came to plants and their properties, but he'd missed Harry's special surprise, hadn't he? "Because all the wishes stand for something else, Draco. Something with five letters."
Draco stared at Harry suspiciously, then snapped his gaze down to the plants. "Alyssum, sarsaparilla, plantain, Echinacea, nettle," he murmured, clearly turning that over in his mind. "Oh. Well that's pretty rude of you, isn't it?" he suddenly snarled. "I happen to think I already am fairly eloquent, thank you very much! How dare you march in here with a well-wish that's nothing but an implication that I can't even speak properly!"
"What?"
"Aspen," Draco snarled. "Your nasty little collection of plants spells aspen! Which, as any properly educated wizard knows, is a wish for eloquence--"
Harry rearranged letters in his head. "Oh. No... well, it does spell that but it also spells something else."
Draco eyes blazed as he thought that over. Harry knew the exact moment when he'd got it at last; those silver eyes of his lit up with another kind of light. "Oh," he said, his voice all at once so soft Harry could barely hear it. "Snape."
"Yes." Harry smiled, and then Draco did as well. A real smile, nothing like the sarcastic awful ones he'd been sporting earlier.
"It really is a very nice set of wishes you came up with. I... I wish I hadn't been so..." Clearing his throat and looking away from Harry, Draco began to stare at the fire in the Floo instead. "I suppose you're right and I do need to work on moderating my anger. I don't know why I'm so angry, really. Well, I do know why I hate Slytherin but I really don't know why I should feel so angry with you half the time..."
"Half the time?" Harry gently mocked.
"Most of the time," Draco admitted, blinking. "I... well it didn't help that you were off having so much fun with all your friends all week, and I was stuck down here alone."
Harry thought better than to say he'd been deliberately staying away. "I'll have more time to visit from now on," he settled for explaining. "Now that the well-wish is done. I had to figure out the whole thing twice, see, once I thought of making the wishes into an acronym for your new name."
Draco smiled again. Still sincerely, though it was a little bit tired. Like he hadn't been sleeping much either... or maybe like he'd done way too much sleeping over the past few days. "That was really very clever."
"It goes with the crest," said Harry, glancing back at their father. His dark eyes were giving nothing away, but there was no mistaking the reaction he'd had upon first seeing the emblem. As Draco lifted up his well-wish to look at the tumbler more closely, Harry went on, "Snape family crest."
"Really?" Draco studied the shifting colours. "There's more than one branch of Snapes, I think..." For once, he was simply giving information rather than pointing out how much Harry didn't know. "Are you sure this one is for our family?"
Our family. Now that was nice.
"Pretty sure," Harry admitted. "I compared facts in a couple of books and it seems like it is."
Harry wasn't going to say any more on that matter, but Draco didn't have quite his wealth of sensitivity. "Severus? Do you know?"
Snape's lips twisted as he came forward and took the glass from Draco, his fingers tracing over the outline of the crest. For a long moment he stared at it, clearly lost in thought, before slowly answering, "Yes, I know."
"And? And?" Draco's voice was lilting with excitement, sort of the way it had been on Christmas morning. All Harry could think was that shedding his Malfoy roots really did mean a lot to his brother. More than Harry had realised. Much more.