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Chapter III: The Master of Trickery

Bright skies, soaring albatrosses,

Sensations of salty seawater spray;

Digging your toes into the sand,

Knowing that beneath water lays life.

A hand quietly slipped a photograph back into the album, but not before the poem was silently read.

In contrast to the merry atmosphere propagated by the surreal picture of three grinning teenagers buried under golden sand, reality was much darker. It was dusk, approaching twilight, and the moon shyly moved her crescent smile behind a mass of gloomy clouds. A sudden urge to sprint away from his current position overtook the boy who was clutching the navy blue album, but his legs refused to move. They, like the rest of his body, were transfixed, and for a while, he half sat, half knelt on the ground by the lake.

The distant hooting of a nocturnal predator sent a jolt of electricity down his erect spine. His left hand, which had laid by his side, closed on a jagged rock, and, with a profound roar, the teenager hurled it into the still, black waters. His bleary eyes watched, half dimmed by a substance which he would not acknowledge as tears, as the rock sunk into the dark fathoms of the lake. It all happened as though he was viewing life through a kaleidoscope; there was no big picture, only thousands of miniscule, individual ones.

His mind tried its best to piece the shards together.

……

There was detention. Surely there was detention? He was, after all, given more detentions in a week than any Slytherin would have gotten in a decade and a half.

There was the usual 'Who the heck do you think you are, Potter?' talk. Harry's brow was furrowed, and thought lines creased his otherwise youthful visage, as he struggled to recall what had been said.

There was….

There was….

His chest tightened. Somewhere, someplace, his named was being called. Initially, Harry dismissed the sound waves that resonated against his eardrums as hallucinations, but as the voice was accompanied by desperate footsteps, he knew that he was not succumbing to lunacy.

Then again, lunacy would have been a kinder fate.

A huffing, flushed boy dropped to his knees before Harry, and was immediately engulfed by a sense of disgust and embarrassment. Where had he seen that scene before, where a panting human knelt before another figure?

……

"My condolences," rasped Snape, as he stood up, wand directed at the ashen-faced teenager before him. "I am deeply sorry that you are such an asinine numbskull. Had you given me a different answer………"

Harry's eyes ran wildly, his mind already calculating the coordinates of the room, the arrangements of the furniture, and how he could use the desk to deflect the Memory Charm. At the height of desperation, Harry dropped to his knees. Perhaps, he thought, as shame crept up his cheeks, this is the best way to dive under his cursed desk.

But shock had clearly stunned Snape.

"Kneeling, Potter?" he inquired softly. "Have you no pride?"

He could tell that Snape was disappointed. The man was obviously expecting him to put up a fight, or at least attempt to tackle the Potions Master, just as Snape himself would have done if he were in Harry's position.

"What is pride," countered Harry, "If no one will remember this in a few minutes time?" His lips trembled, as he attempted to impersonate the appearance of a grovelling minion. The desk was so near. An inch more…..

But he had forgotten one thing, and it was the fact that Snape himself was once a Death Eater. Between the both of them, it was clear who was more skilled in trickery.

Forced, pretentious laughter resonated against the walls like the sickening laugh of a man doomed to embark on a journey to the land of no return.

"Stay where you are, son."

Son? White hot hope ignited in Harry.

"Father?"

Snape steeled his heart, and reinforced his decision with determination. It's for the best, he told himself. At least the boy would be content, even if it were for half a minute.

"Yes?"

It was frightening, how a single word could fill Harry with euphoria so raw that every fibre in him actually shook. Snape had said 'yes'. It was all over. They would work together, spend countless hours devising strategies to defeat Voldemort. But what mattered was that they would work together.

It was then, when the spell hit him like a javelin, piercing deep into his torso. It was not the spell that cut deep into his flesh, but the realisation that he had been tricked. That Snape had given him hope, but with strings attached.

That he would not even remember that moment.

………..

"Yes, Neville?" asked Harry disinterestedly. He was still trying to place his angst and consternations, though the emotions churning in him only made things all the more convoluted.

"Here," panted Neville, "this."

In his hand was a scrape of paper.

"Couldn't this have waited?" asked Harry, but it was just an empty statement. He knew, by the hurt eyes that stared back, that it couldn't.

"You told me to give you this, if you didn't return to the Common Room in two hours," sulked Neville. "Apparently, a 'matter of life and death' is turning out to be something that 'could have waited'."

Harry gave a half-smile. "Sorry."

The 'scrape of paper' broke the kaleidoscopic conundrum that had haunted him, and, after what seemed like an eternity, the jigsaw was finally completed.

Harry Potter,

If you're reading this, while feeling utterly lost, then your plan has failed. To put it short, Snape doesn't want you knowing that you're his son. Yeah, you're his son. Get over it. When you first got the letter from Lupin, which I presume to be incinerated by now, you were in denial. Then you looked in the Mirror of Erised, and it confirmed your worst nightmare. Finally, you took the last step by confronting Snape himself. But this means that he has either succeeded in convincing you that the letter was a hoax, or, that cunning bastard has administered the Memory Charm. I suspect the latter, and don't say that you didn't expect it. I know that I did. What you should do now, is lay low. Don't tell him that you know, and the only way to conceal your newfound secret is by mastering Occlumency. Be better than it than the man himself. I guess this should provide an incentive for you to start practicing. Good luck, to myself.

From,

Harry 'Prongs' Potter.

…………..

A/n: End of Chapter 3! Would you please leave me a review? Criticise it severely, if you must. If not, just tell me that you've been here!