Sealed With Lies by Alexannah
Summary: Snape puts Harry under a magical leash to keep him out of trouble. But unbeknown to him, Harry has been turned into a vampire, and the leash is causing far more harm than good. Terrified of losing his friends, Harry would rather starve than risk the truth coming out.
Categories: Teacher Snape > Professor Snape, Misc > Keepers of the Snitch Main Characters: .Snape and Harry (required), Dumbledore, Hermione, Remus, Ron, Sirius
Snape Flavour: Snape is Angry, Snape's a Bully, Snape is Controlling, Snape is Desperate, Snape is Mean, Overly-protective Snape, Snape is Stern
Genres: Angst, Drama
Media Type: None
Tags: Alternate Universe, Runaway, Spying on Harry! Snape, Vampire!Harry, Vampires
Takes Place: 3rd summer, 3rd Year
Warnings: Suicide Themes, Violence
Challenges: None
Series: None
Chapters: 21 Completed: No Word count: 32255 Read: 127355 Published: 03 Feb 2015 Updated: 22 Jun 2015
Itchy Fingers by Alexannah

On his way to Snuffles’ room, Harry passed Crookshanks, and another cat. His thirst seemed to grow stronger as he laid eyes on them, and he thought with alarm that he was really in trouble if he was starting to think about feeding from people’s pets. He was desperate, but knowing how devastated he would be if someone killed Hedwig, determined to never be that desperate.

Feeling fainter, Harry slid down the wall and tried to get his breath back. Walking around Hogwarts had never been the easiest task—it was just so big—but nowadays it really seemed to take it out of him.

“Are you all right, Potter?”

Harry’s eyes snapped open. Professor McGonagall was standing two feet from him, concern in her eyes.

“Yeah … fine, Professor,” he tried to say firmly.

Her mouth twitched, and he thought he detected sympathy, but his eyes were drawn to something on the ground next to her. A large cage, filled with white rabbits.

His mouth started to water and his heart began to beat very quickly. It was an effort to tune back into Professor McGonagall’s words. “… not at Hogsmeade, Potter.”

“Huh?”

She frowned at him, looking less sympathetic. “If you’ve got nothing better to do than sit there feeling sorry for yourself, maybe you could assist me carrying these to my classroom?”

Harry wasn’t certain he had the physical strength, but he couldn’t miss the opportunity, and he knew she wouldn’t like it if he refused. “Yes, Professor.” He got carefully to his feet, and upon her instruction took hold of one end of the cage whilst she took the other end.

As they made their very slow way to her office, Harry wondered why he hadn’t thought of this before. Pets were off-limits—but these weren’t pets, exactly. Hogwarts brought in animals for the students to learn spells on—no teacher (well, except maybe Snape) would ever use a student’s pet in case something went horribly wrong. These creatures were destined solely to be, well, lab rats.

Harry counted the rabbits as they went. Twelve. They would hardly last him all of winter, but maybe if he got his hands on the replacements as well …

You’re jumping the gun a bit, he thought. How are you going to get your hands on these?

“Professor,” Harry asked, with difficulty for lack of breath.

“Yes, Potter?”

“Why’ve you brought these in right before the holiday?” The timing seemed rather odd to him.

“They were supposed to be here a week ago for a specific lesson,” she replied, irritation in her voice.

“Oh.”

Professor McGonagall checked her watch. “I have to go; I have to be in the Three Br—I mean, I have somewhere to be. Out, please, Potter.”

Through his muddled mind, Harry somehow got an idea. As he left the room, he stuck a screwed-up bit of old parchment in the strike plate. Professor McGonagall, fortunately, didn’t notice. Once she had swept off down the corridor, Harry tried the door.

It worked like a dream. The lock hadn’t gone in, so all he had to do was push the door open.

Now, though, he faced the problem of getting a large cage of rabbits all the way to Snuffles’ room. Unnoticed.

Harry pulled out the map, and whispered, “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.

The ink lines spread over the parchment again, forming Hogwarts. Harry checked the ground floor for people—there were too many ink figures in the area to risk it.

Except …

There seemed to be nobody outside. Nobody at all. Well, there was a bit of a blizzard outside. Perhaps Harry could take advantage of this.

He opened one of the windows wide, and—with difficulty—levitated the cage out of the window onto the snowy ground outside. He climbed out of the window himself, closing it behind him, and slowly dragged the cage around the castle.

The cage was rectangle rather than square, and Harry compared the height and width to Snuffles’ secret door. It might just about fit. Hoping he was right, and after checking the map again, Harry opened it up and pushed the cage through.

He didn’t dare use the door himself, knowing it would probably be classed as ‘out of bounds’ and therefore the leash wouldn’t allow it, but walked back around to the front doors and made his way there that way.

Once he finally got to the room, Harry collapsed on the floor from exhaustion. After a few minutes to catch his breath, he crawled over to the cage of rabbits waiting for him. He opened it up and took one out, turning his back on the other eleven pairs of eyes in order to eat. He felt bad enough about it.

“Woof?”

It was startling to hear how human Snuffles could sound sometimes. Harry couldn’t help but smile as the dog emerged from the passage, staring at the cage.

“It’s okay, they’re no-one’s pets. They were just going to be Vanished or something in class.”

“Woof!” Snuffles allowed Harry to hug him, and settled down on the floor, panting. He had brought no animals, and his fur was full of snow. Harry gently brushed him off.

“Here.” He handed Snuffles the dead, drained rabbit, and the dog dug in hungrily. Harry figured he probably hadn’t eaten all week either.

“We’re a right pair, aren’t we?” he murmured, and Snuffles put his head in Harry’s lap. Harry scratched him behind the ears and he let out a contented sigh. “Don’t worry, boy. We’ll make it through till spring.”

“Woof.”

-

On their way back to Hogwarts, Ron and Hermione were in near silence, pondering what they had heard.

They both bitterly wished the teachers had noticed them in the pub. When they had started telling Rosmerta the story, both Ron and Hermione had frozen, curiosity stopping them from leaving or drawing attention to themselves. But the revelations had left them feeling hollow and hurt on Harry’s behalf.

Ron was the first to speak. “I say we don’t tell Harry.”

Hermione nodded in agreement. She could only imagine what he might do with the information. Go after Black, maybe. And get himself killed in the process. No … this story was staying strictly between them.

-

“Irma sent me to ask you for the Apprang books.”

Severus sighed, deliberately keeping his back to Pomona as he finished stirring the next batch of Wolfsbane Potion. If he didn’t want to be sacked for giving the werewolf a substandard concoction, he needed to get it right.

This happened every term. Since some of the staff—all right, mostly just Severus—were in the habit of ‘borrowing’ books from the library out of hours, the result was that occasionally, a title or a few would be missing from the shelves without a record of where it went. Irma usually waited a week for it to show up again before adding it to the list of Lost Books that was kept on every notice board of the castle. At the end of every term, she demanded all the lost books back from the staff on pain of … well, so far nobody had pushed her. Mostly they were in Severus’ possession.

“I haven’t got any library books,” he said when he was able to pause in the brewing long enough to answer.

“Er … are you sure?” Pomona said, sounding as timid as some of her students. “It’s just … I’ve asked the rest of the faculty already. And they were from the Restricted Section.”

“I don’t have them.”

“You couldn’t just take a peek, in case you forgot? Irma says they’ve been missing since the beginning of the year. The titles are—”

“I don’t care what they are; I don’t have anything by D. O. Apprang. Never did, never will.” Severus suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. Why would he want to read that crap? It wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.

Pomona paused. “Oh. Well … if you don’t have them … it must be one of the students.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Severus muttered, reaching for his next ingredient. “Thieving little—” He paused, a light suddenly flicking on, and he performed a quick stasis spell so he could face Pomona, focusing his attention on her properly. “When did you say these books went missing?”

“The first night of term. Why?”

Oho. Potter. It had to be. The little sneak had been in the Restricted Section before he went to Severus’s stores. Well, he would greatly enjoy this.

“Oh, no reason,” he said, trying to sound off-hand. “I was just surprised Irma hasn’t started breathing fire about it by now.”

Pomona laughed with him.

-

Word quickly spread that twelve white rabbits had gone missing from Professor McGonagall’s office, but not many people seemed to be very bothered about it. Professor McGonagall, when Harry next saw her, seemed confused but resigned to the fact that she was going to have to order in more. Everyone else seemed to find it rather amusing, and there were various rumours circling over what the perpetrator had wanted them for.

Everyone except Snape.

Harry could feel the scrutiny whenever they were in the same room over the next few days. He did his best to ignore it, but to Harry’s horror, after several days Snape called him into his office for ‘a word’.

“So, Potter,” Snape said as Harry approached his desk. “What has our most famous kleptomaniac been up to this time?”

With an awful feeling about where this was going, Harry tried to blink innocently at Snape. “Sorry sir?”

“Don’t play the innocent with me. Professor McGonagall admitted you were the last person to be in the vicinity with the rabbits, apart from herself.”

“But I left the room with her, and I don’t have a key,” Harry said honestly. “How could I have taken them? What would I want with a load of rabbits anyway?”

“I don’t know, Potter—yet. But I am watching you and you mark my words, once I have found out what you are up to, your Hogwarts career will be over. Is that clear?”

“Crystal, sir.”

“Now get out.”

To be continued...


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