Blood Leads the Blind
Part 1 - I Didn't Do It
by Meimi

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Disclaimer: Harry Potter and so forth obviously belong to J.K. Rowling and whoever, besides Warner Brothers, own any rights to it. No infringement intended.

Spoilers: Up to the third book, at the very least.

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The school year had only started a few weeks earlier, so it was expected that not too many students in the Gryffindor's common room were worrying themselves with studying just yet. In fact, no one expected any of them to be studying very hard yet, all save one. This particular young witch, by the name of Hermione Granger, was rarely seen without her nose stuck somewhere in a book. Strangely enough, she wasn't reading at the moment, though there was a rather large open book laying on the table in front of her. Instead, her attention was directed towards her companion who was reading a recent issue of Quidditch World and doing his best to pay as little attention to her as possible.

"I don't see why people insist on there being such a distinction between wizards and warlocks," Hermione rambled on, her voice growing more impassioned the further she tried to explain her point of view, "I mean, everyone insists on calling male magic-users as wizards, yet they're also warlocks. But who uses the warlock term anymore other than in titles? So why is it that female magic-users are just witches?"

"Don't have a clue," Ron Weasley mumbled distractedly from behind his magazine.

"There is no female opposite of wizard, and you don't see anyone referring to a woman as a wizard," Hermione continued, unconcerned with the fact that Ron was only paying half-attention to her. "It's always witch, and the opposite of witch is warlock. So why do men get the option of being called wizards when all women have is witch? It doesn't make sense."

"You could always call yourself a wizardess," Ron stated vaguely before he stopped for a moment to actually think about what he'd just said. "No, wait, that sounds kind of stupid. Nevermind."

"Exactly my point," Hermione said, looking proudly over at Ron as if he understood what she was getting at. "There is no female opposite of wizards. It's not fair and it sounds awfully sexist to me."

Ron blinked in confusion as he lowered his magazine. "What exactly are we talking about Hermione?"

"Why, Women's Liberation of course, Ron," Hermione said matter of factly as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Ron blinked some more. He was still terribly confused. "You look pretty liberated to me," he offered lamely.

"Why thank you Ron, but that's not the point," Hermione said, for once ignoring the possible spark that would ignite one of their usual arguments. "Most of the world has realized that women are equal to men in all things. Don't you think the magic-using community should acknowledge this as well?"

"Uh... I guess," Ron stumbled over the words as he wondered just what Hermione had gotten into. Looking around the room helplessly for anything that he could use to change the subject, his mind grasped upon their missing friend. "What do you think's taking Harry so long? Practice usually doesn't go this late."

Humming to herself as she glanced around the room, Hermione said, "I don't know. Maybe they're learning some new strategy or whatever you have to do to play Quidditch."

"Don't be dim," Ron said as he looked suspiciously at her out of the corner of his eye. "I know you've talked about Quidditch before. And you know everything that's ever been written in a book; surely you've read more than just one book about how you play Quidditch."

Hermione smirked at the almost compliment. "Maybe..." She didn't have much chance to say anything else as their missing companion slid in through the portrait hole and stalked over towards them. Harry's expression could only be described as thunderous, and Hermione was almost surprised that he didn't have an accompanying storm cloud hanging over his head. Something bad had happened, no doubt, and they were about to hear all about it.

"Hey," Harry said shortly in greeting as he plopped down in the big armchair beside Ron. Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back against the chair's thick upholstery and sighed in annoyance.

Ron and Hermione looked at each other worriedly before returning their attention to their friend. "Hi Harry," Hermione ventured carefully, "is something wrong?"

"Yeah, what happened?" Ron burst out, not one to tiptoe around the matter.

Remaining as he was with his eyes still closed, Harry answered sourly, "Malfoy."

"Not that bloody-"

"Oh dear-"

Ron and Hermione said both at once, both stopping at the same time and casting each other a glare. Frowning, Hermione began again, "I hope you didn't-"

"I have detention tomorrow," Harry said, answering the question before Hermione could even finish it.

"Oh great. Who caught you?" Ron asked in mild disgust.

"Snape," Harry replied flatly.

"Oh no," Hermione moaned as she began to massage her forehead with her right hand. She felt a headache coming on. "How many points did you lose?"

"Just twenty," Harry said, raising his head and finally looking at his friends.

"You're kidding." Hermione gawked at Harry in disbelief.

"No way! Is he sick or something?" Ron asked as he joined Hermione in gawking at their friend.

"No," Harry told them, the corners of his lips twitching up as he fought back an amused smirk. "Dumbledore was passing by in the hallway. I think he was trying not to look bad."

"Well, that's something at least." Hermione leaned back in her chair, crossing her fingers together over her stomach before looking back at Harry with concern. "What are you supposed to do for detention tomorrow?"

"Report to Filch after classes with Draco," Harry grumbled as he closed his eyes again and dropped his head back onto the chair.

"Sounds like it's going to be a wonderful night tomorrow," Ron muttered darkly. He leaned back in his chair as well and glared up at the ceiling, fantasizing about the many ways he'd like to see Draco Malfoy suffer for ridiculing them constantly and getting them into trouble.

There was very little conversation between them after that. Harry kept going over the confrontation in his mind and just kept getting more and more annoyed at himself for reacting so badly to Malfoy's usual idiocy. Hermione returned to her book about certain breeds of magical felines after giving Harry a quick concerned glance. Ron kept fantasizing about all the awful things that could happen to Malfoy, though eventually he ran out of ideas and decided to start reading his magazine again.

It was quite unusual for the trio of friends to be so quiet around each other. It was so unusual in fact, that the other Gryffindors kept looking over at them strangely as if expecting them to do something bizarre any minute now. Strangely enough, the three said nary a word until it was time to head to bed and gave each other their usual good nights before parting for their own dormitories.

Harry trudged up the stairs to their floor with Ron following a short ways behind him. He wished the night were longer so it would be that many more hours before he had to go to see Filch tomorrow. Maybe Filch would actually torture him this time. Actually, he wouldn't mind it all that much as long as Malfoy got tortured too.

Chuckling silently to himself at the possibility of watching Filch torture Malfoy, Harry quickly divested himself of his robes and clothes and pulled his pajamas on. "Night Ron," he called out as he climbed into bed.

"Good night Harry... and try not to get yourself killed tomorrow. I'd be very put out if I had to explain to Mum about how you got murdered by the caretaker," Ron murmured as he curled up under the covers of his bed.

"I'll try my best, but no promises," Harry snickered as he took his glasses off and set them on the side table. Shaking his head at the fact that he was finding humor it what was probably going to be a horrible day tomorrow, Harry rolled over, closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

~*~

He knew he was dreaming the instant he opened his eyes. He wasn't quite sure how he knew this; he just did. This particular dream was a bit different than his usual fare. It was solid, felt more real than the others, yet at the same time it felt like a wisp of smoke that would fade away at any moment. It was all very strange.

He 'awoke' on a thin, bare strip of ground that wound its way through what appeared to be a forest. It must have been a game trail of some kind because it wasn't clear enough in places for people to be walking along it regularly.

Sitting up, he looked around him in curiosity and noticed that the feeling of strangeness wasn't the only odd thing here. The trees looked weird. There were pine trees and regular trees but they didn't look like anything he had seen before. The pine trees had enormous needles that looked almost like sabers, and the regular trees looked like black and white birch trees that were photo negatives of each other. Beneath the trees were a myriad amounts of ferns with wavy fronds and others with stiff leaves that made them look like some sort of cactus. They were all sorts of colors: green and red and purple and blue and some that apparently glowed in the dark because it was night time and they had soft halos of white and yellow lights around them. He wondered briefly if any of this stuff actually existed in reality, or if it was just something his imagination was concocting at will. Surely there wasn't anything like them in Britain.

A sound trickled from further down the path and he realized it had been completely silent before then. That made everything even stranger, forests were rarely silent even when the animals were frightened of something. The wind, at the very least, creaked with a welcomed tendency through the trees. However, that hadn't been happening here and it still wasn't. All that he could hear was that new sound. It was a familiar sound to him, one of falling water.

Shrugging to himself, he climbed to his feet and headed off in the general direction the sound seemed to come from. Maybe the sound would lead him to the reason he was having this dream. Then again, maybe the source of the sound was the reason he was having this dream in the first place. Hmm, what was unique about water that would have him dreaming about it? He wracked his mind for an answer as he ducked a few low hanging branches, but after a few minutes of thinking about it he still didn't have a clue.

He didn't have much longer to think about it he discovered as he ducked several more branches and discovered he had arrived. His destination was a decent sized clearing in the forest with a perfectly circular pond centered in the middle of it. The sound of falling water that he had heard was apparently created by a thin waterfall that seemingly fell out of the sky and into the pond.

The clearing, in and of itself, would have been strange enough were it not for the figure of a man who stood at the very edge of the pool. This made the entire thing even stranger because, even though the man had his back to him, he could easily recognize who it was. He could never mistake the familiar black robes and the greasy, black hair as anyone other than Snape. What the nasty Potions Master was doing in his dream of all things was a question that brought up some very unappealing ideas.

"Well?"

He froze at the cold, even toned question. Surely he hadn't been noticed yet. Still, it was Snape after all and he wouldn't put it past the man to have made a potion that allowed him to see around the back of his head. It was awfully disconcerting to think about though.

"Come over here," the Potions Master commanded without turning around. "You can't see anything by just standing there under the trees like an idiot, Potter."

Harry blinked in amazement at the sound of his last name. He hadn't actually thought about his own identity, asides from the fact that he lived in Britain, for the entire dream up until now. That really was strange, he usually had the knowledge of who he was beat into his head constantly by everybody. And even if somebody wasn't gasping out the dreaded 'It's Harry Potter!' then all he had to do was look in a mirror and see his unmistakable scar proclaiming to everybody in the vicinity that 'Here's Harry Potter!'. Sometimes, like now, he very much disliked being 'Harry Potter'.

"Yes sir," he muttered sourly and trudged unhappily over towards the one professor of his that utterly hated his guts.

"Now then, Potter," Snape began as Harry stepped up beside him. He almost sounded as if he were amused by something. Gesturing down at the pond, he continued, "Can you tell me what that is?"

Harry chewed on his bottom lip as he looked down at the water and then blanched at what he saw. Lurking just beneath the surface was what looked like enormous serpentine coils of some snake-type reptile. The coils were covered in glittering scales of midnight blue and sky blue that curled together to create a mind-bending pattern that would most likely make someone rather sick if they looked at it for too long.

"Uhm, is it a giant snake sir?" Harry asked, carefully keeping his voice meek just in case Snape felt like being snappy, which was usually always but that was neither here nor there.

"No, it is not a giant snake," Snape said sardonically. He then shook his head as if he were wondering why he even bothered. "Try again."

Harry stared over at his professor, taken aback by the fact that the snarly Potions Master hadn't yelled at him yet. This dream really was getting terribly strange. Giving himself a shake of disbelief, he turned his attention back down to the pool. It had to be a snake of some kind, surely it couldn't look like that and be something else. Then again, he was forgetting that magic tended to be quite misleading. But still, as far as he could guess with the little information he had, it was at the very least a reptile.

As he gazed down at the coils that flexed under the water, Harry was reminded of another gigantic serpent he had been unlucky enough to run across. The basilisk, however, had been a bright, poisonous looking green instead of a sickening pattern of blues. That didn't mean basilisks couldn't come in different colors of scales though. Grimacing at the possibility, he asked, "It's not another basilisk is it, sir?"

"No, not nearly as dangerous. Or perhaps, it is simply smart enough to hide just how dangerous it is," Snape said, tilting his head to the side as if pondering upon something. After a few moments, he finally looked down at his student and added, "It might as well be though, it basically wants the same thing from you that Slytherin's pet did."

Harry took an unconscious step back as he finally got a good look at the Potions Master's face. It was much the same as always, with one very disconcerting difference: the irises of Snape's eyes were glowing a soft emerald green. They were almost the same color as his, though his eyes most certainly did not glow in any sort of fashion.

This dream was no longer strange, it was flat out bizarre.

~*~

Harry went over the details of the dream he had had the night before as he walked down to Filch's office, dragging his heels the entire way. Hermione had been nice enough to take his books back to the Gryffindors' tower for him after their last class, which he was quite grateful for, but he still had to go down for detention. He wasn't looking forward to it. Anybody in their right mind wouldn't be looking forward to it. So to distract himself from thoughts of what Filch had in store for him, he poked around at his memories of the dream.

It had been nothing short of bizarre, especially because he could remember it quite clearly even now. He rarely remembered much of anything about his dreams, unless of course they were visions and he doubted greatly this one had been such. He had never seen or been anywhere that looked even vaguely like where he had been in the dream and certainly Snape would never be quite so... patient with him.

There was another possibility though, the dream could have been some sort of divination to warn him about the future. Unfortunately, that would mean he had to interpret all the little nuances of it and well, he really sucked at that sort of thing. He definitely wouldn't go to Trelawney for help either. She'd just use it as an excuse to predict his death again; not that she didn't do that already every time he had to attend her class.

Basically, all he had managed to do was think himself back to square one where the dream was concerned. He was almost at Filch's office too, just one more hallway and then he'd be there. This was going to be ever so fun. Why couldn't Malfoy keep his mouth shut for once? Why couldn't he not lose his temper over something so stupid in the first place?

Coming round the corner, Harry's trudge slowed to a near crawl. Filch's office was directly ahead, and standing right in front of it was a sneering Malfoy. Lovely, even if Filch didn't torture them, Draco would probably make sure that the entire time they had to spend together in detention would be torture for him. Still, asides from the typical sneer, Draco didn't look all that thrilled to be there. In fact, he looked almost... scared. A scared Draco tended to be harder to deal with than a superior-feeling Draco though.

"Well well, look who decided to finally show up," Draco drawled in dark amusement as he spied Harry. His tone was off, something he failed to notice, and thus he sounded almost squeaky in the empty hallway. "Don't tell me the great Harry Potter is afraid of a lowly squib."

Harry frowned at the barb, but under the circumstances decided to not be too snippy. "You ought to be careful about that Malfoy, calling people names was what got you into trouble in the first place," he said nonchalantly as he reached over and knocked on the caretaker's office door.

"Hmph, I dare say it was more likely your temper getting the best of you again when I was just stating the obvious," Draco said and rolled his eyes. Was Harry imagining things, or was Draco actually taking comfort from their usual sniping at each other. No, couldn't be...

Both of the boys took an instinctive step back when the door flew open and Filch stepped out snarling, "This had better be- oh, it's only you two." The caretaker's look of outright fury melted into one of heavy distaste as he stepped off to the side and gestured within. "Well come on, the less time you spend in my office the better. And don't touch anything!"

The two boys filed silently into the room, Draco attempting to hold onto his smirk and Harry trying to, at the very least, look brave. Harry ignored all the things cluttered around them in the room, he'd been here before after all. Draco's eyes darted around, briefly glancing over everything. He didn't look all that impressed. Not much of a surprise there, very little ever impressed him.

"Now then," Filch said as he stepped behind his desk and studied them with hooded eyes, "I was looking forward to dragging out some of my old... toys to try out on you. Unfortunately, something by the name of the seventh years has come up." Grimacing, he turned around and grasped two long wooden handles that were leaning up against the wall. They looked sort of like brooms. "As loathe as I am to it, I'm simply giving you the task of sweeping the south courtyard clean for your detention."

Draco blinked in outright confusion as he took the broom Filch imperiously handed to him. "But sir, isn't the south courtyard just mostly gravel?" he asked hesitantly.

"Yes, it is," Filch answered, smirking with something almost akin to pleasure. Of course, they'd be out all night 'sweeping' the gravel until one of the professors took pity on them.

"But sir, what about dinner?" Draco persisted, unwilling to let the matter drop. Being alone with Potter for a detention he knew he didn't deserve was bad enough, but he definitely didn't want to have to suffer through it with an empty stomach.

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about dinner," Filch said as his smirk turned into a nasty sort of grin, "You'll be too busy sweeping to bother about hunger. Now get out!"

Both Harry and Draco blanched at Filch's venomous yell before quickly staggering out of the room, doing their best not to trip over their work brooms. A deceptively even-tempered Filch was even scarier than a usually thunderous Filch. Well, at least they weren't going to be tortured. That was something.

"Dumbledore is insane to keep that madman around," Harry heard Draco mutter as they headed off towards the south courtyard.

Sighing wearily, Harry said, "I'll have to agree with you there."

"Maybe if I talk to my father about it," Draco continued. Either he hadn't heard Harry or just felt like ignoring him.

Harry wasn't feeling too charitable and snapped, "Is that all you can think of? Because every time something's not going your way you threaten to run off to your father. Can you not do anything for yourself? Does he have to fix everything for you?"

Draco stopped cold, an ugly sneer working its way over his face. Then, as if a switch had gone off, his face smoothed out into a patronizing smile. "At least I have a father," he said sweetly.

Harry gave him a stony glare and walked passed him. "Go die," he growled as he stalked off down the hallway.

"You first," Draco called out as he followed after Potter in what could only be described as good cheer. Maybe he wouldn't speak too badly of Filch to his father.

Harry deliberately ignored Malfoy as they walked out into the south courtyard and started 'sweeping'. It wasn't exactly the easiest thing to do since Draco kept flinging barbed insults his way. It was made even worse when word got around about what they had to do for detention and several other Slytherins joined Draco in insulting him. Thankfully, Professor McGonagall showed up and ran them off to dinner an hour later, threatening dire consequences on any student she found lingering behind. Harry hoped fervently that she would come back later to order them to bed, disapproving glare or not. He didn't want to spend all night doing something that was completely futile.

Another half hour passed after that, maybe longer, Harry wasn't really sure how long it had been, but it had been a decent amount of time after Malfoy finally shut up before he looked up and found a certain someone watching him. Snape stood at the far end of the covered stone walkway skirting the main keep. He was near the doorway, and thus shrouded in the lengthening shadows brought on by dusk, but it was unmistakably him. Even though Harry couldn't see Snape's face, for some unknown reason he just knew the man was staring at him. Why?

After several tense moments, Harry was rather grateful to note that at least Snape's eyes weren't glowing green like they had in his dream the night before. It wasn't much of a comfort, but at least it was something. It was at that point when Harry finally noticed that his scar was itching, not burning or being painful in any sort of way, just itching. After a few more minutes, he decided it was quite maddening and reached up to scratch at it. When he lowered his arm, Snape was gone... and his scar still itched.

This was really rather odd, first he had that bizarre dream and now his scar was bothering him. Admittedly, it usually hurt when it was warning him of something, but maybe this wasn't something terribly bad, just something weird. That wasn't much comfort to him either though. Speaking of comfort, the stars were starting to come out and no one had come to fetch them yet. Surely they wouldn't have to stay out 'sweeping' all night.

"This is all your fault you know," Harry heard Draco hiss from across the courtyard. It was more of an annoyed statement than a question.

"If I'm remembering correctly, I wasn't the one who started throwing insults about just how many mudbloods the Gryffindor house had and just how suspect it was that said smeared house happened to be my house," Harry said, his tone turning almost to ice as he spoke. He really didn't feel like getting into it with Malfoy at the moment.

"Well, it's only the truth," Draco drawled, the smirk on his pale face showing clearly even in the dim light of night time. "Your mother was a mudblood, after all. Terrible family she had too from what I gather. I'm sure she was loathe to associate with muggles after her difficult childhood with such a terrible family. I don't see why you do."

"Shut up Malfoy, I really don't want to discuss this with you. Nor do I ever want to know how you found that out," Harry said icily. Why didn't someone come and get them? Preferably before he ended up killing Malfoy.

"My father was interested in your family before... well, before certain events. And he liked telling me all sorts of things for bedtime stories," Draco continued on nonchalantly, perhaps unaware or all too aware of Harry's building temper.

Harry resisted the urge to snap the broomstick he held within his hands, it was a close thing too. Way to announce that your father was involved with the murder of my parents, Harry thought bitterly. He really wasn't surprised about it though. Lucius Malfoy seemed the type to always want to be involved in murder. Harry wondered darkly if all the Malfoys shared that particular trait.

"Nothing to say Potter?" Draco asked snidely as Harry turned his back to him. It was just as well, he was starting to get bored of needling Potter tonight. He wanted to be back inside, climbing into his bed and going to sleep. It was just like Dumbledore to show up at the most inopportune time. He knew Professor Snape would have let him off just fine for pestering Potter if the Headmaster hadn't shown up. His father was going to be quite disappointed when he heard about this. And he would; his father knew everything there was to know.

Harry ground his teeth together in the effort it took not to go over there and beat that smirk off of Malfoy's face. At times like this, he sometimes wished he was as unrestrained about such things as Ron was. Ron wouldn't have put up with this. But no, he didn't want anymore detentions on top of this one. He could ignore Malfoy for the rest of the night. He could.

Reaching up again, Harry scratched at his scar and decided it was a blessing in disguise. At least with it itching him to death he had something else to focus on than Malfoy. It really was maddeningly itchy though. He wondered what itching could possibly mean. Maybe he could talk to Dumbledore about it sometime. Or maybe not, he thought faintly as the itching instantly morphed itself into a spike of agony spearing directly into his mind.

Draco looked up sharply as he saw Potter stumble slightly with one hand clamped to his forehead. Oh no, if Potter thought he was going to get out of detention by pretending his scar was hurting him, he had another thing coming. If he had to stay out here in the dark doing something as ridiculous as sweeping gravel around for no other reason than Filch being a stupid squib and Dumbledore having atrocious timing, then Potter was going to suffer through it with him.

Harry barely noticed Malfoy stalking over towards him, probably to give him a piece of his mind again, when he heard something that made everything else very inconsequential. The agony in his head just flat out stopped at the sound of distant hissing.

' there it is '

' it's a mammal '

' so warm '

' not for long '

Snakes. Serpents of some kind. He could hear them. Did this have something to do with that dream? Ignoring Malfoy, he stared up at the Hogwarts battlements. The hissing had sounded like it was somewhere high up above him. But where?

"Listen Potter, I don't know what it is you're up to, but don't expect me to let you get away with it," Draco said, trying his best to sound as much like Professor Snape as he could manage. Growling as Potter just ignore him, he continued on doggedly, "You're going to serve out this despicable detention with me if I have to... have to... have to handcuff you to me!"

Draco vaguely heard some odd twanging sound at the end of his tirade before Potter fell back against him and they both collapsed onto the ground. "What the-?" he snarled as he looked up at the boy sprawled across him like a dead weight and then he just stopped. Sticking up out of Potter's left shoulder was the wooden shaft of a deadly looking arrow. And Potter was starting to bleed on him.

"Oh fuck."

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Say hello to the first Harry Potter fanfic I've ever written and the beginning of my writing exercise for the summer. It's a bit of an experiment to teach myself how to write with some regularity, and my HP plotbunnies were the only ones open-ended enough for it. There's not much Snape here in the beginning, but have no fear, there will be much more of him. He's my favorite character, after all. Also, while I'm a big fan of slash I don't have any planned for this fic as of yet. Maybe some subtext but that's about it right now. Whether I put any real slash in is up to whether the plotbunnies breed something or not. Eheh.

As for the use of any type of British-ism, I lay the blame completely at kkscatnip's feet. She wanted to beta. If they actually work and make sense, praise her. If they're screwed up and aren't appropriate, blame her too.

And yes, I like my run-on sentences from hell. I insist on them being of a proper size to kill things with. *EG*