The noise of a throat being cleared belatedly reminded Harry that Draco and he had an audience. Well, one besides Snape, but he was used to watching them squabble.
"The family dynamic here is quite something," announced Marsha Goode. Her brown eyes were steady as she assessed all three of them. "I realise that you two are classed as Slytherins while Harry is a Griffinbore--"
"Griffinbore!" Draco slapped a palm against his thigh, he was laughing so hard.
"Gryffindor," Harry corrected, glaring briefly at Draco. "And yeah, that's true. But I was almost sorted into Slytherin, so it's not like I'm that left out."
Dr. Goode smiled and nodded, making Harry feel as if he was being humoured. "We'll leave that aside for the moment, I think. I have another concern, this one far more immediate. Draco, you mentioned being poisoned recently? Can you tell me the circumstances surrounding that?"
"I... uh..." Draco's cheeks flushed. "Well, it's complicated."
The therapist smiled again, this time with so much empathy that Harry wondered what she'd suffered in her life, to want to become a trauma specialist. "It always is, yes. You said the poison was in a fairy cake... I'd just like to know, did you realise the cake was tainted before you ate it?"
"Well, yes, but it's not like you're thinking," Draco hastened to explain. "I'm not suicidal. I'm the opposite, whatever that is. I want very much to stay alive and healthy."
"Then why did you deliberately consume poison?" The therapist shook her head. "Your father told me why he wanted you to receive counselling, you understand. I know about your attempt to poison your classmates at Hogwarts. Now, guilt is a strange thing that can take even stranger forms--"
"I'm not suicidal!" Draco exclaimed. "I only ate it because--"
"Because?"
Pursing his lips together, Draco refused to answer.
"I asked him to," Snape spoke into the void, his deep voice clearly startling the therapist. Or maybe it was his words.
"You... asked him to," she repeated, deadpan.
"Yes." Snape's black eyes bored into hers. "To help him learn remorse. Dr. Goode, I've no doubt you won't understand this given your background, but the world the three of us inhabit is often a world of extremes. Sometimes punishment must be as well."
Draco nodded, clearly eager to do everything he could to help Snape out of an awkward situation. "Yeah, like the time I was turned into a ferret for casting hexes."
The doctor's mouth dropped open. "Your father poisons you and turns you into a ferret."
"No, the ferret thing was a teacher. Actually, he was a spy of the Dark Lord come to make sure Harry won the TriWizard Tournament and we only thought he was a teacher--"
"Too much information, Draco," Snape softly averred. "Dr. Goode... I've a feeling you'd like to speak with me alone. Shall I ask my sons to wait in your antechamber?"
"Yes, please," she said rather weakly, though Harry had a feeling his father was in for a stern lecture once impressionable adolescent ears were out of the way. He wished he had a pair of Extendable Ears with him.
It turned out he didn't need them. Snape was more than willing to discuss his private conversation once they were walking back toward Privet Drive. "The good doctor chided me rather endlessly," he casually disclosed. An exaggeration, since he'd been holed up with her for less than fifteen minutes.
"And what, you cast Obliviate to shut her up?"
"She's hardly likely to be able to help you if I make her forget salient facts, Draco."
"Well, there is that..."
"She told me that were we under the jurisdiction of Muggle law she would be ethically constrained to report my offence, as she termed it--"
"¿ la Granger."
"Something like that yes," Snape dryly admitted. "However, she also admitted her vast ignorance of wizarding standards. The ferret example was actually quite helpful. She's now under the impression that discipline in the wizarding world is, as she put it, a different kettle of fish."
"What a quaint Muggle turn of phrase," drawled Draco.
"So she settled for merely berating me," Snape concluded. "I had to promise not to poison you again, Draco. Or you at all, Harry. Also, I'm admonished not to punish you by means of transfiguration."
"I should have complained about excessive lines," said Draco in a thoughtful voice.
"Yes, well you'll have ample opportunity to complain about whatever you wish in future, each Wednesday evening." Snape briefly patted Draco's shoulder.
"She doesn't still think I'm suicidal, one hopes."
"No, I managed to dissuade her on that account." Snape turned to Harry. "Draco's sessions are by necessity private but the good doctor wished me to convey that she is more than willing to counsel you should you feel troubled in any way."
Harry shook his head. "I'm doing all right."
"You're certain?"
"He's just showing me up again, Severus." Draco made a face. "He's the strong, stoic type who can do without help."
"Uh... maybe not," said Harry, for they had just then turned back onto Privet Drive and he was looking at the construction in progress at Number Four. An eerie skeleton of a house standing in the moonlight. Harry shivered.
"You needn't go look at it if you've changed your mind," Snape quietly said against his ear.
Harry fortified himself with a breath. He shouldn't be so shocked, after all. The house had been insured; it only stood to reason that it would be re-built. "I want to look."
At that hour, nobody was about. Harry wandered through the first floor, the floorboards creaking under his feet. Dudley had mentioned something about wanting to sell the property, Harry remembered. He wondered who would buy it, wondered if they would have children who would climb the trees in the backyard. The trees had survived the Death Eater attack...
Harry stood staring out the space for a window, his gaze fixed on the tree he'd scrambled up when Ripper would chase him. Would the family who came to live here have an orphaned nephew to take in? Would they treat him as their own?
Snape and Draco had been silent, letting him wander Number Four on his own, but when Harry stood so long looking out at the yard, Draco came up behind him and tapped him lightly on the shoulder.
"Harry."
"I know, time to go." Harry sighed, leaning on the unfinished wall as he turned around.
"No, that's not it." Draco made an uncertain gesture with his hand. "I wanted to say... it must have been awful growing up here."
"Well, it's not a manor, if that's what you mean."
"No, I meant..." Draco's silver eyes caught a ray of moonlight and shined. "With Muggles all around, and nobody who could understand you. Nobody who even tried. Cut off from your rightful place in our world... it must have been rough."
"It was rough." Harry sighed and turned his face away. "But not because of that. I didn't know I was cut off, you see. I didn't know why they didn't understand me, not until Hagrid came for me. But I knew they didn't love me. I mean, I knew they couldn't, and I knew that the reason for that was that something was wrong with me."
"Not wrong."
"Yeah, of course." Easy to say, Harry thought. He'd been telling himself for six years that his travesty of a childhood had been their fault and not his. He even knew it was true. But sometimes, it was still hard for him to believe that.
"Come with me," Draco said. "I want to show you something."
Harry frankly couldn't imagine what Draco could have to show him. Harry was the one who'd grown up here, after all. And while this new floor plan didn't exactly duplicate the old, it was largely similar.
One thing was different though. And Draco had noticed, though Harry hadn't. Perhaps he'd been trying not to see.
Draco gestured to the staircase and smiled.
"There's no cupboard under the stairs," said Harry, his breath catching. Where one should be, there was instead another flight of stairs leading down into a cellar. Rough framing for a door would conceal it someday, but that hadn't been completed yet. "I bet Dudley insisted."