... Crimson Ties ...

4. A Game of Chess

When Harry woke up, it was to a throbbing pain in his head.

He hated headaches.

In general, not just the Voldemort-induced ones. Those could only be called "aches" with a fistful of sarcasm anyway. An entire new level of nasty, was what they were.

Either way, headaches. Not fun. They make gathering thoughts difficult on good days, never mind on bad ones.

Keep them away from him please.

Especially on the days during which he has to work on less than half of the usual amount of sleep.

Be it as it may, it was on that aspect of the night past that Harry blamed the fact it took him quite a few moments to remember what happened during the night. And that it took him few more minutes after that to convince himself that, no, he had not dreamed any of it up.

He reasoned with himself that his imagination was not that good.

And well, the bite mark on his forearm spoke volumes on the reality of the night's events also.

The mark...

When Harry looked at it, he could see that it had all but healed already. At the same time he could also see that it was to be one of those unfortunate wounds which were going to leave a scar.

It likely had something to do with the nature of it in the first place.

'A note to write into my copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: "Vampires like marking their territory. Bastards.".' the teen thought to himself as he got out of his bed, his moves sluggish.

'As if bonding to one was not enough.'

He did not want to think of the bonding aspect too much.

'As if being tied to Snape of all people- of all vampires-... of all inhabitants of the wizarding world was not enough.'

The world had never been too fair on him.

'How did offering to help get turned around so bad?'

Harry had already realised that everything turned out of norm around him quite some time ago. Even then he could not help but think: 'Why me?'

...

If Harry were to repeat Headmaster's words, it was a blessing in disguise that it was Easter holiday.

It being holiday meant they had time to form a plan. They did not have to make do with immediate decisions, which could turn around on them due to being underprepared. They could not afford for their moves and countermoves to not work.

It being Easter holiday also meant that there weren't many people around.

'Not to mention that what with it being early spring still, it is cold enough to justify wearing a sweater.' the Gryffindor added after a bit of inner thinking.

'No one needs to know I'm using it to cover up residues of being a vampire's chew-toy aside from getting away from cold, right?' Harry snorted to himself.

Then an image of Snape chewing on a dog's squeaky toy with his vampire teeth appeared in his mind.

It was hilarious.

Thanks to it Harry arrived to the Great Hall in much better mood than he had been in when he was leaving the Gryffindor tower.

It was also only then that his brain started functioning well enough for him to realize that neither of his best friends were in Hogwarts for the hols. It could be counted as another advantage that they weren't.

Harry sent an apologetic thought their way for thinking that.

Ron and Hermione - or only Hermione, being the more perceptive one - would have noticed something was off. Nevermind the fact that Ron would have been aware of his absence from the dorms for most of the night.

In that aspect there was Seamus Finnegan, of course.

He was one of the eight Gryffindors - Harry included - who stayed for the holidays. He was also the only one out of Harry's dorm mates.

Seamus could have heard. Theoretically speaking... But if there was one thing known about Seamus Finnegan, it was how deep a sleeper he was. He was the type that once asleep no amount of noise could wake him up. There was even a memorable night with fireworks - unsurprisingly made by the Weasley twins - that spoke for the fact.

Seamus had been the only one who hadn't been woken up by the explosion that echoed throughout the entirety of Gryffindor tower at one in the morning.

'Yeah, no real danger from there.' Harry surmised as he looked at his fellow Gryffindor who was digging into his breakfast.

Letting his look slide from the Irish boy, Harry looked around the Great Hall. He was almost alarmed about how few students were there.

'What is it with this year's Easter that made so many people go back home?'

After how many people stayed during the Christmas holidays, it was... strange.

A lot of parents left their children in Hogwarts for the Christmas because of the additional protection. Why not use said protection again?

With his musing, Harry almost did not notice when the morning post started coming.

It was maybe because of the glaringly small number of the owls which reflected the number of students.

Read: very few.

On a normal day there were about fifty owls which carried the Daily Prophet alone.

When Harry looked at the birds that flew in, the overall number did not even come close.

As he started eating his breakfast, Harry knew it was the Daily Prophet that he had to worry about that morning anyway. He had an obvious reason for that.

It was almost funny how those who unrolled their copies of the Daily Prophet behaved.

First they stared at the paper stock still, then shot a look at the teachers' table. Once they realised there was no Headmaster or Potions Master there, their eyes widened and turned back to the paper. It got even more of a comical value when the people around them ended up being in much the same state in a matter of moments.

After they peeked in their friends' copies, that was.

They took what the paper said, added the absence of Snape and the somber mood the teachers at the table seemed to be in... And came to a conclusion.

The gasps echoing through the hall were more than telling.

The Hogwarts students realised that what was written in the paper had to be true.

At least partially.

Or at least the basis of it.

Harry knew what he would see even before he had the chance to borrow Seamus' Prophet. It would have been enough only to see the bold headline taking over a good quarter of the front page.

SEVERUS SNAPE, MURDERED BY YOU-KNOW-WHO?
Written by Rita Skeeter

'If only they knew.' Harry couldn't help but think as he saw the title.

It took Harry only a glance to see that the Headmaster thankfully had some say in the creation of the article... Though maybe article wasn't the best word to use. Skimming through the pages, Harry saw that it was most of the issue that dealt with the death of Severus Snape.

The centrepiece of page two was a statement about the man's "death" made by Albus Dumbledore.

'Well. By him or someone must have gone there as a very convincing doppelganger... One who even has the same pattern of speech.' Harry thought when he read through it, some passages catching his eyes more than the others.

"Severus Snape was not only teacher, but also a dear friend of mine..."

'Snape as someone's friend? Well...'

As soon as that thought entered Harry's head a wave of sadness crashed over him.

'Mum.'

He went back to reading before the wave took its chance at drowning him.

"If there was one thing I and a lot of others knew about him, it was that he had always been good at what he did. As such he was very specific about the ingredients he worked with, meaning if he could, he gathered them himself. It is more than unfortunate that the ones responsible for his death knew his habits so well. Knew them enough to expect him on the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest when he was doing just that."

'Really, Headmaster?'

He still felt a bit thrown out of his axis.

Affter reading the interview, Harry only skimmed the continuation. He quite wanted to see what others had to say on the matter.

Of course Albus Dumbledore was not the only "informant" the Prophet had.

Moves and countermoves.

Voldemort must have made someone slip a word or two into the right ears. He wanted to make his warning clear and the article was full of allusions to the fact.

For those not aware of Snape's role and those who did not take an active part in the conflict, it was a general warning.

For those who worked against Voldemort on a much closer level, the warning rang more true.

The way the message was gotten across made Harry lose his appetite. Especially when the paper started discussing the gory details of Snape's "death".

Be it as it may, given how more than just a few people started speaking to their friends... Given how green around the gills some of them were...

It seemed to work.

When a House Elf appeared, asking for his presence in the Headmaster's office, it surprised no one. As did the fact that Harry left the Hall after the Elf disappeared.

The Gryffindor knew it was the time to take his place on the chessboard.

He only wished he knew which chess piece he was going to be.

I'm not dead?

First of all Happy New Year! May it be better than the one before for all of us.

That aside, I hope you enjoyed the chapter, even though it mostly works to set ground for the following part. (Which is getting longer and longer and you'd have to wait until after my just starting exam period for it if I kept the two together). Love you all!

See ya~ ( "-.-)/