“So, what have you been up to here, Harry?”

The open-ended question, posed to him by Hermione, was the first one that Harry had to think carefully about answering since his friends had turned up—for an hour or two, it had felt almost as if Harry had never been bitten; as if things were back to normal.

Almost.

Now, at a dinner Harry was trying not to eat without drawing attention to the fact, he had to stop and think through his answer properly before he spoke. His first thought had been to tell her about Snape’s advanced strategy to keep him in line, and have a good moan about the greasy git—but then he would have to explain why Snape had cast the leash in the first place, which would lead to questioning why he had been in Knockturn Alley.

So Harry, feeling uncomfortable at the thought that he was going to have to get used to lying to his friends—or at least, omitting certain facts—edited his answer thoroughly, so it sounded like all he had done was browse and do homework.

“Harry, dear, are you not feeling well?” Mrs Weasley said after he had finished, giving him worried looks. “You’ve hardly touched your food.”

“I’m fine,” Harry said quickly, and shovelled in a mouthful of chocolate pudding to please her. It was sumptuous, and he looked longingly down at his bowl, but he didn’t dare have any more. Not unless he wanted to be ill on the train tomorrow.

Fortunately, everyone was shortly distracted by the discussion over how they were getting to King’s Cross the next day, and nobody noticed that Harry hadn’t eaten any more. By the time the meal had finished and Harry had gratefully escaped to his room, he was famished, and gulped down a vial of blood before sorting out his luggage.

-

Harry had something else to occupy his mind that night; and he was strangely grateful, despite what it was. So, a mass murderer was after him. Logically, he knew Black couldn’t be worse than Voldemort—right? But for some reason Harry couldn’t explain, he felt more scared than he knew was rational. Why?

Forget it, he told himself. It’s just late and you’re tired. Things will look more in perspective tomorrow.

The next day, however, Harry felt the same. In spite of this, he put on a brave face when he informed Mr Weasley he knew, and attempted to keep it when breaking the news to Ron and Hermione.

Harry didn’t get much of a word in after that for a while. His friends worried over Black, then the subject of Hogsmeade came up. Harry admitted he couldn’t go, but didn’t bother to correct Ron when he suggested sneaking out. The Diagon Alley leash was quite clearly gone, but the moment Snape caught up with Harry, he knew the man would be re-casting it.

That was a thought. Harry zoned out while the others bickered about Crookshanks. Snape had to actually get to Harry to cast the leash, right? Well, maybe if Harry could avoid him until he found out what he needed to know … Of course, that meant hoping he wouldn’t have Potions first thing.

To be on the safe side, maybe he should stay up that night, and try and get some answers. Harry had sneaked into the Restricted Section once before as a first-year, and it hadn’t gone well; but … well, what other choice did he have?

“You’re not eating?”

“Not hungry,” Harry mumbled as he passed Hermione her Cauldron Cake.

“But—”

“What about him?” Harry nodded towards the sleeping Lupin, hoping to distract her.

“Yeah,” Ron said, “looks like he could do with some food.”

Hermione turned her attention to the new teacher, and Harry sighed, hoping he had dodged another bullet. Unfortunately, he was hungry; and he also knew the moment he took out a blood vial, Hermione would guess what it was. He was going to have to wait until after the Feast, and hope his stomach didn’t growl audibly in the meantime.

-

When Harry walked into the Great Hall with Hermione, he noticed a lot of people whispering and pointing to him. He still felt very shaky—probably a combination of the Dementor and hunger—and when he saw his reflection in one of the goblets, he realised he looked awful. His attention was caught as Dumbledore stood, and finally, he felt calmer—probably the calmest since he’d been Turned.

After the announcements had been made and the Feast began, Harry tried to throw himself into conversation to draw attention away from the fact that he was eating a lot less than normal. It was difficult, faced with the array of mouth-watering foods, to remember that he could no longer heap anything he wanted on his plate, and he tried to select the foods he enjoyed the most and savoured the taste, resisting the temptation to try and quell his hunger (which he knew wouldn’t work, and just make him ill tomorrow). At least so far today he had only had the one piece of chocolate.

He, along with Ron and Hermione, were eager to talk to Hagrid, but Harry was nervous about going near Snape yet. But since Snape’s attention seemed to be focused on sending Lupin filthy looks, he dared to venture to the teachers’ table after the feast with them, and congratulated Hagrid on the teaching appointment before being shooed away.

-

Harry waited until he was certain the other boys in the dormitory were asleep before slipping out of bed and donning his Cloak. He had butterflies in his stomach, which had nothing to do with the fact that—as was normal now—he was still hungry after his real dinner.

He had formed a backup plan in case the Restricted Section failed. But the backup was incredibly risky; and if it didn’t pan out … he had another idea, but that was going to be impossible with the Dementors out there.

The library after dark was just as creepy as he remembered. Harry let himself in and headed straight to the Restricted Section, hesitating before he stepped over the rope. Like the last time, he was sure he could hear the books whispering to each other about the intruder.

Harry scanned the book titles for anything even vaguely related to vampires. Moste Potente Potions … Dark Magical Theory … A History of Necromancy … Vampirology …

Aha!

It wasn’t the only vampire book on the shelf. There was a whole set of them, all written by someone called D. O. Apprang:

Vampirology: Soulless and Sentient?

Vampires: A History of Bloodshed.

Vampires: Why Wizards Should Be Worried

Vampirology: The Hidden Evidence

Vampires and Werewolves: What to Do When Someone You Know is Bitten

Harry’s eyes widened at the last one. Finally! Granted, it was him that was bitten, not someone he knew—but that didn’t matter, right? This was what he had been looking for!

Hoping against hope that none of them would scream, Harry prepared himself to run, and carefully levitated the most hopeful book off the shelf.

Nothing happened, so he did the same for all the others, packing them in his empty schoolbag. He could still hear the other books whispering, a lot louder now; he moved to the other side of the room, sat down at a table and, at arm’s length, opened the What to Do book. He needed to know if it held the answers he needed before he retired to bed.

When nothing horrible happened, Harry flicked quickly to the contents page, running his eyes down it for any mention of food, blood, feeding … anything even vaguely related. When that didn’t pan out, he turned to the introduction.

Many a wizarding family has been torn asunder by The Bite. Werewolves and Vampires are both created from humans by the bite of another—

“I’m still human,” Harry whispered, but this time the protest was half-hearted.

—and it is vital to know how to act should such an unfortunate event occur.

Although I have lumped these two creatures together, there are different approaches to take for each, which I have detailed more clearly in later chapters. The first and most important thing for you to be aware of is that a werewolf cannot be a danger until the next full moon. The vampire, on the other hand, Turns the night the bite is received, or the next one if the bite occurred in daylight.

Either bite should be immediately reported to the Ministry of Magic, but a new vampire should be avoided or, if possible, restrained, until officials arrive. These days, vampires are no longer automatically hunted, but have to be tagged by the Ministry. Hunters are only sent if the vampire is deemed to be too dangerous, which most of them are.

It should be emphasised that your friend, or relative, or whomever received the bite, will still appear to think and act as they did as a human. DO NOT be taken in. A vampire is no more than the shell of—

Harry slammed the book shut, eyes prickling, and a chillingly familiar voice said, “Who’s there?”

Snape appeared in the doorway, his wand aloft. Harry swallowed, and silently placed the book back in his bag.

“Whoever you are, you’re in very deep trouble,” Snape snarled to the room. He didn’t move from his spot, and Harry had squeeze nervously around his teacher, for once grateful he was so skinny, in order to escape into the corridor.

Well, that had worked out well. There was no point trying to put the books back—besides, they could still hold information that could be useful—but Harry doubted he would find the answer to the blood question in there. Since Snape was still standing in the library, Harry figured he wouldn’t have a better chance to put Plan B into operation.

He hurried as quietly as he could down to the dungeons, and into Snape’s stores.

He’ll kill me if he catches me, Harry thought, but the thought that he could die anyway if he didn’t find a source of blood was enough to fuel his desperation.