Drarry One Shots

A Complex Game of Chess (Part 2)

It had been a difficult year for Severus Snape. That almost didn't need iterating. Being Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry wasn't all it was cracked up to be, not when you had two lunatic Death-Eaters on the staff who were running wild and happily dishing out Crucios instead of taking House points or giving detentions. The rest of the staff were quietly heading towards an insurrection and he wasn't privy to their manoeuvres because no one, unsurprisingly, trusted him an ounce any more. Not that the trust had been sky high before but killing one's predecessor didn't exactly enhance veneration and candidness from one's peers: it was certainly a guaranteed way of eradicating any hope of comradery.

It was a lonely place at the top.

Hogwarts had become a sombre and depressing place under his governance; the staff were wary of him; the students were petrified of him and were cowed by the oppressive institute the school had become. That is all but one student because Neville Longbottom seemed to be a one-man rebellion and causing a suitable number of headaches. No one quite seemed to know how he knew his way around the school so well and managed to almost disappear at times, only to reappear on a different floor on a different side of the castle in front of half the staff and students just as something happened for which he would be undoubtedly responsible. And he would be, undoubtedly, blamed and punished too. The visual appearance of bruised and beaten young man was a testament to his defiance of the Carrows' reign of terror. Severus reluctantly admired the boy for his tenacity, if not his damn-right stupid bravery at times. Especially as Neville appeared to be entering a phase of seeing how many Crucios he could handle per hour as he blatantly taunted the Carrow siblings in between playing truant, hiding a growing gathering of Dumbledore's Army in the Room of Requirement, and smuggling the more traumatised or at-risk students and younger children out of the school with the aid of Aberforth Dumbledore. Of course, Severus wasn't supposed to know that but even if his Heads of Houses didn't quite report absent students from the school to him, he was well aware that there was now a distinct lack of Muggleborns in both class and common room. He neglected to raise the issues in his staff meetings of either Neville's underground militancy or the missing students.

In between unrestrained lunatics and insurrection and living in constant atmosphere of fear, he'd had the Dark Lord's temper tantrums to deal with. And that invariably meant being on the end of a Crucio or two himself. At least it meant Harry was ever-evading capture and slowly achieving their end-goal.

And then there was the constant tug at his magical core, the constant niggling feeling of Harry's life being in danger. Those tugs lessened and increased to varying degrees but remained a persistent presence. At least nothing reached the strength of that night he'd rescued Harry from the Dursleys. Not even when the Trio had broken into the Ministry, or when Corban Yaxley had nearly caught them, or when they broke into Gringotts. The only time the tug in his core spiked anywhere near as bad was when the Snatchers finally caught the Trio the previous month and took them to Malfoy Manor. But Bellatrix was always going to be the volatile unknown in that situation and Draco was instructed not to give his position away unless absolutely necessary. As it was, Narcissa had held him back and hadn't betrayed her son yet.

Severus's only reprieve from the constant strain were his talks with his godson and he was grateful they had each other. But they still had to be very careful. Walls had ears and Hogwarts had too many fucking portraits and ghosts that liked to eavesdrop and spread gossip. It didn't help that Draco was nearly hysterical with worry over Harry. The incident at the Manor had nearly broken him. There had been no mention of such but Severus often wondered about his godson's exact feelings for the Chosen One. He had his suspicions. And he suspected the feelings were reciprocated but both had held back the previous summer. It all seemed so pointless and heart breaking, given that Harry knew he would ultimately have to...