Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/888522.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Harry_Potter_-_J._K._Rowling
  Relationship:
      Harry_Potter/Original_Male_Character(s)
  Character:
      Harry_Potter, Original_Male_Character(s)
  Additional Tags:
      Character_Turned_Into_Vampire, Male_Slash, Swearing, Sexual_Content,
      Child_Abuse, Oral_Sex, Hand_Jobs
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-07-18 Updated: 2013-08-17 Chapters: 26/? Words: 42738
****** The Allurement ******
by Iliketowritesometimes
Summary
     Afraid his uncle was going to hurt him, Harry runs away to Diagon
     Alley to stay there for the remainder of the Summer. Little does he
     know that one simple burst of accidental magic and one late night
     stroll will have changed everything he's ever known and everything
     he's ever been.
Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: Vampire!OC/ Harry Potter (Male/Male), Ideologically
     sensitive themes, swearing (mostly minor), sexual themes and acts,
     mentions of physical & emotional abuse
     IMPORTANT NOTE: This work is hosted on FF(net) under a different
     penname ("whats up with jeremiah"). It is my original content/ work
     and is thereby not plagiarized. Little changes have been made from
     the original work.
     - Reviews are encouraged and welcome! Flames are welcome, but not
     encouraged. :)
***** Chapter 1 *****
Harry didn't know which was worse: the perpetually dry condition of his hands
from all the scrubbing or the constant layer of sweat on his skin from the
heat. On one hand, the dry soap that had been neglected to be rinsed off
chaffed on his palms but, on the other, the sweat provided an unrivaled
greasiness that made his scalp crawl.
Both had their merits yet, at the moment, arteries swelling and skin blistering
and head broiling under the torrid heat of the sun, the only thing he could
think of was how much he hated Aunt Petunia's garden. Her stupid garden. With
stupid begonias. And equally stupid avens, marigolds, sunflowers, and thorny
roses. All sweltering and stewing like fried fish. Not unlike himself, dressed
awkwardly in a long sleeve shirt that stuck to his back and bent over the
ruddy flowers.
Yes, the sweat was most definitely worse. At least when he scrubbed the dishes
he could take quick swigs from a sink brimming with gloriously cold water. Cold
water: a phrase which was both foreign to him, the hose, and the watering can.
Hot sun and grubby soil and stubborn weeds were, nevertheless, intimately
familiar. Along with hot, undrinkable water.
It was times like these when the only thought that rebounded in his head was, I
can't wait for school to start.
A thick voice with the consistency of mustard rang in his ears, "Boy!"
Harry turned his head with a dazed look, rubbing at his brow and guarding his
eyes from the sun.
Vernon, who looked as plump and sausage-like as ever, glowered at him and
tightened his tie until it receded under his chin, "I am going to gone until
later this evening, now, I don't want any funny business to occur while I'm
gone, if you give Dudley or Petunia any trouble-"
"There will be consequences, I know," the boy recited, shoulders drooping as he
rubbed at his calloused fingers.
He sniffed and grappled onto a scuffed briefcase, "What will you do when..."
"Strictly chores."
"Yes," the man grumbled, which was as close to praise as he ever got before he
allowed Harry to turn his attention back to the begonias.
Hearing the key clink into the ignition and the dinky little car rumble away
down the street, the boy sipped from the mouth of the hose and staggered to his
feet.
Things were much better when he kept his head down and his hands busy; even if
it meant pruned fingers and a drenched forehead, it also meant a lot less
bruises.
Wiping off his shoes on the doormat, he ducked into the house and scrambled
into the kitchen.
Aunt Petunia looked up at him with pursed lips from the kitchen table, her ring
finger and thumb pinching onto a crisp magazine page poised in mid air.
"Ma'am."
She blinked, "Yes?"
"Can I have a glass of water?"
"May I," she coughed.
"May I have a glass of water?"
Her eyes narrowed into fine points, she searched Harry's face with flaring
nostrils, "One small glass."
The boy immediately scrambled to the cabinets, hesitantly grasping a medium
size cup.
"Smaller."
He let an inaudible sigh and put a small cup under the faucet, downing it
abruptly and looking back at his aunt with a silent question. He was so very
thirsty.
"I suppose so."
She was especially generous this afternoon and the rest of the evening, it
seemed; she had even let him adjourn to his room. He had spent the rest of his
day reveling at the sight of the sun sinking below the hills and flipping
through old textbooks he had hidden under his bed.
As the early evening had hit, a soft breeze had rolled in through an open crack
in the window and grazed his back, making the text blur into a wash of
unreadable gray, and he dozed.
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhp
Footsteps plodded up the narrow wooden steps.
Meaty arms thumped on his door, "Freak, open up."
Raucous laughter and his eyes opened.
"Shit," Harry cursed under his breath, rubbing at his scalp and saying louder,
"What is it that you want Dudley?"
"Yeah, come on, open up," another boy said with a hic and, judging by the mouse
like quality of his voice, Harry could only conclude it was Piers Polkiss,
"Where's the entertainment?"
Deciding it was best to get it over with, the boy pushed himself up from the
bed and spun open the handle, "I don't have anything for you."
Dudley shoved the door open farther, making Harry stumble back and glare at
them, "What is it, don't have any ten-year-old's to shove around?"
His jaw twitched, "No, but we have you, freak."
"Don't take after your father, Dudley, it's unbecoming," he spat.
The other boys blinked, looking confused, "At least I have a dad."
Harry's blood stirred, "What did you say to me?"
"I said, at least I have a dad," he taunted, grinning, "That wants me, too."
"Mine didn't abandon me."
"Oh really," the boy laughed, spinning around the room, "I don't see him
anywhere."
Piers stumbled back and put his hand to his mouth, "Oh, wait, look, he's here!
Look!"
"Don't talk about what you don't know which, unsurprisingly, is a lot of
things," he growled, "In that case, maybe you shouldn't talk at all."
Dudley shoved him, spitting, "At least I know what it's like to have people
care about me."
Harry saw red and, this time, when Dudley grasped onto his arm to shove again,
his magic zapped and sent the boy slamming to the other wall. Piers staggered
violently, not bothering to give the boy one last look before bolting out of
the room and down the stairs.
It was the mousy, high pitched screech which forcibly dragged Harry out of his
thoughts and sent him spiraling back to reality.
He stumbled towards Dudley, shocked, and when he saw the swell of red tinting
the creme wall from Dudley's head, the only sound in his ears was a high
pitched ring.
He sunk to his knees like melting vanilla ice cream, digging his fingers into
the other boy's wrist and exhaling in relief at the steady thump, thump, thump,
thump.
Vernon was going to kill him.
No, worse than kill him, let his existence linger on for days like the string
of a harp being pulled until-pop- he broke.
Oh, no. No. No, no, no, no, no.
Please, no.
Merlin, no.
Harry staggered to his feet and grasped his wand from a loose floor board,
stepping in and out of his open doorway like a water bug trying to break the
surface tension. He glanced timidly at the unconscious Dudley before rushing
down a narrow hallway and narrow steps. Thump, thump, thump, thump.
He had barely registered the sensation of the warm wand in his hand, or the
feel of his feet colliding against wood than linoleum then grass and, at last,
sidewalk.
Plod, plod, plod.
He couldn't, he wouldn't be there when Vernon got home.
He had to go somewhere and, with that in mind, the boy sprinted several blocks
before slowing to a halt when his need for oxygen overpowered his adrenalin.
Diagon Alley, he'd stayed there in third year, why not now?
It'd be perfect.
Pop-
He smiled at the sound of the Knight Bus.
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
***** Chapter 2 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this work
     Warnings: swearing, non-graphic violence
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhp
It was a miracle, that was the only thing he could call it, and for the first
time, Harry thought that maybe, just maybe, fate wasn't such a cold-hearted
bitch.
When the Knight Bus had pulled in with a pop, not only had the boy just
realized that he'd put on the one pair of pants that had spare galleons in the
back pocket from that one trip to Hogsmeade back in April, but he noticed that
he had the exact fare he needed to board the bus.
And there he was, staring at an all too knobby and seedy looking Stanley
Shunpike, with relief blooming on his face like Aunt Petunia's morning glories
in Spring. He clenched the two galleons and forty-three knuts, exactly forty-
three knuts, not forty-two, or forty-one, reveling at the feel of the cold
forgotten metal webbed in lint.
Miracle, a miracle, a small one, yet nonetheless, it had to be a miracle.
The young man spat onto the concrete and leaned slightly out of the way,
gesturing vaguely inside before ripping the galleons from his hands, "You're in
luck, get on."
That had marked the beginning of his days in Diagon Alley and, clenching onto
the bus seat for dear life, he couldn't imagine what would happen if he didn't
have the fare.
Timidly denying the offer of hot tea midway through the ride, it was only
fifteen minutes or so when the driver had stopped with a jerk and sent him
barreling into the seat in front of him. He was left reeling at the gleam of a
'LEAKY CAULDRON' sign right outside the window.
The next hour consisted of having Tom, the landlord, help him through the brick
entrance, him traversing to Gringotts' and back, dumping thirteen galleons in
his burly hands and finally- finally- renting a room to fall into bed.
His last thought before his head hit the dust-caked pillow was that Vernon was
probably going to destroy all his things. It left him with a sharp ache in his
chest when he remembered the only things that ever meant something to him were
in his trunk: the invisibility cloak and his photo album.
The two things left by his parents.
It meant everything to him.
He had to get it back sometime.
Merlin, he hoped the man would wait.
But after what happened to Dudley...
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
The next morning he was forced out of bed not by his own will but by a screech
that very clearly resembled that of Aunt Petunia's.
He opened his eyes, rubbing the last remnants of sleep from his vision, and
stared puffy-faced at the white feathers that lingered in the right of his
vision. He rubbed again, blinking, and then heard a soft hoot.
The sheets pooled around his legs as he jolted upwards, "Hedwig!" he smiled,
wondering how she had found him, "Smart girl."
Her talons dug onto the bed post and the remarkable bird rubbed her beak onto
Harry's hand, cooing at the compliment.
After that, he had managed to drag himself out of bed despite the lurking
tiredness making his head fuzzy and jumped into a cold shower, only dressing
and heading downstairs when he felt suitably awake.
The wooden floors were wide and worn down and it seemed the durability of them
was quickly disappearing despite the use of magic to keep them from caving it
but, nevertheless, it had a homey feel that reminded him distinctly of the
Burrow. Along with that, the varnish was scuffed and rubbed off in some places,
leaving not only the stairs but the walls having areas of faded brown patches
that looked and felt like the lining of an old tweed jacket. All of this left
him taking very slow, deliberate steps with his arms grasping onto the
railings.
A maid brushed past him with a stack of towels, not at all deterred by the run
down state of the Inn, "No need to look so nervous, dear!"
He flicked his hair over his scar and rearranged his glasses, realizing someone
might recognize him, and padded downstairs to get breakfast. Immediately after
he sat down, his face was met with a menu and only a few moments after that a
plate and silverware appeared with a pop, clunking onto the table, and joined
with pumpkin juice, salted avocado, steaming sausage and scrambled eggs.
It was the best meal he'd had in a long while and, in fact, the quality of it
reflected the contentedness he felt over the next few days.
Each morning after that he'd wake to the sound of the singular maid padding
across the floor and knocking softly on the door, then greeted with a superb
breakfast, after which he'd go out to Diagon Alley and meander through the
shops. He'd managed to buy all of his required books and new, quality robes and
clothing, often splurging on one thing or another which he ultimately forget
when stuffed under the bed in his rented room.
Then he'd mill around for a while, flipping through strange texts that were
stuffed near the back of Flourish and Blotts' and coated in dust, since it was
the only thing to do until lunch or dinner.
This was how he had managed for days, reading and eating, until a hunger for
adventure had infected him once again one late afternoon, the same hunger that
had made him jump onto a broom for Neville's Remembrall in first year, the same
hunger that forced him through forbidden corridors and hidden passages and
otherwise dangerous places.
He didn't know what it had caused it so suddenly, making his eyes to stop mid-
sentence and even forget to dog ear the page before flopping it onto the
bedside table. Maybe it was the gradual setting of the sun, or the vaporous
chill that hovered in the air, or even the faded word catalyst in the middle of
the page, but as abruptly as the feeling had come on his coat was on and he was
out the door.
It was only when he was tapping the bricks with his wand that Tom's voice
hovered in his ears and made him stop, "Going somewhere, Longbottom?"
Harry leaned back, blinking, and remembered that was the alias he had chosen
for himself.
Maybe it wouldn't be such a good idea to be going out this late...
But that had never stopped him before.
"I'll be back soon," he said.
Tom leaned over from the counter, "Alright," his face shriveled in thought,
"Just be careful."
He nodded and, right then, he was in Diagon Alley, watching the groups of
people huddle and diminish the longer he walked and the closer he got to the
shadier edges.
Before he knew it, the sun was sunken below the dinky shops and then pocketed
between the rolling hills in the distance.
The chill grew, the buildings getting progressively darker and more cobbled the
farther he went.
And the dark was not just in mere color, but like a wafting, mute specter that
prodded him by the elbows and dug itself into his tonsils. It pervaded him,
teasing, chilly, and made his arms pulse.
It was only when he passed Borgin and Burkes that he paused, realizing how far
he had went.
The sun was now only a sliver, like a fingernail receding into the distance.
He should get out of here. He really shouldn't be here. And it was with that
realization that the hunger for adventure had dimmed considerably, making his
muscles tense and causing him to turn the other direction.
He really should get back to the Leaky Cauldron.
Harry shielded his face and pointed it down to the cobblestones, his shoulders
tucking inwards at the odd clinks and cackles that filled the air.
A gaunt old woman grasped him by the arm, pulling him back, "You want to buy a
pretty locket now, boy?"
She pulled it up by the chain, swinging it back and forth like a pendulum,
causing the silver and green to bounce off the remaining light.
"No thanks," he tittered, trying to pull away.
"But your eyes, your eyes go so well with this, so very well," she laughed,
digging sharp nails into his arm.
He shoved at the woman and shuffled backward in the other direction, "I said no
thanks."
Harry stumbled back and then forward when a door right behind him creaked open,
sending three staggering men out into the street.
"You givin' 'im any tro-uble, n-now, Gretchen?"
The boy could taste the alcohol sullying his words and he reeled as one of
them, indistinguishable from the last, grasped onto his shoulder and rubbed at
the back of his neck.
"You 'ave pretty eyes, I'll give ya a knut if ya kiss me on the cheek," he
pointed at his stubble caked in dry vomit.
Harry pulled away but his cohort gripped at his other shoulder, "I'll give ya
one more nut than that," he chuckled, grinning sickly at the innuendo.
The boy stumbled forward, feeling his wrist being tugged at with greasy
fingers, and he watched in barely concealed horror as the last sliver of light
fully disappeared and cloaked Knockturn Alley in a sheath of dark.
"C'mon, now, no need to be so mean," the third one laughed, "Then again, I like
'em w-when they struggle."
Harry let out a rasp, struggling for his wand until it was pulled out of his
pocket and rolled down the street by one of the men.
He wrenched himself forward only to be shoved back by one of them into the
other two's arms, "The on'ly wand you'll need is mine."
And it was right at that moment, squeezing his eyes shut when one of them
clawed at his collar, that he heard a voice as gentle as honey-soaked air yet
as threatening as an animal ready to pounce waft into his right ear, "Step away
from him."
As the arms pulled away the boy opened his eyes and gazed up at the man; he was
imposing, a little more than six feet tall, towering above the drunken, squat
figures with dark, curly hair poking out from under a hood.
Even from under the clock, Harry could tell the man had a sinewy yet lithe body
like a thick piece of grass arching its back in the breeze.
"We was jus', jus' wanting some fun," the third one justified, stepping back
with his hands up.
The tall man glowered at them, slowly guiding his own hand to the small of the
boy's back, "Make sure that it does not occur again."
Far from wanting to rush away, the boy tried to dig his back even closer to the
warmth that coursed from the man's hand through his body.
He lead Harry away from the men, blinking from under his hood with a slow,
concealed grin, "It is a tragedy that one such as yourself has to suffer such
indecencies."
"Thank you so much," the boy gasped, swallowing, "I don't know what would've
happened if you hadn't shown up."
The man seemed to ignore him for a long while until he spoke again, eyes just
as soft and golden as his voice when they rested on his face, "What is it that
you are doing out here at this time of night?"
He swallowed the thick saliva in his mouth and stared pointedly at the ground,
"I didn't realize how late it was getting and where I was heading."
The man tapped at his chin, sending the boy to look up at him again, and he was
instantly enthralled by the supple, pale face framed by curls. So engrossed in
the long neck that widened out into a strong chin, shallow cheeks, and pale
lips, it was several moments until Harry turned away and glanced timidly at the
alleyway he was approaching.
"I'm sorry, I have to be going," he tried to slide away from the warm palm on
his back, coughing, "but thank you once again."
As suddenly as he had said that, he was tugged into the narrow alleyway, "I'm
afraid you're not going anywhere."
"What?"
It felt like the ground was rustling underneath his feet.
"You have such a rich scent, I've been smelling you for days and it's been
driving me insane," his pushed Harry against the wall, "It's a shame I have to
ruin such a pretty neck..."
"What are you talking about?" the boy griped, "This isn't funny."
The man put his thumb up against Harry's jugular, watching the vein puff up
with a swell of blood just underneath his skin and rise up to his face with
red, "But I am very hungry."
Those golden brown eyes that looked like crisped mangoes glinting in the sun
turned a ruddy brown, and it was the last thing the boy saw besides the gleam
of sharp teeth that instantly accompanied a sharp pain in his neck.
***** Chapter 3 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: minor swearing
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
It had been three days, three intoxicating, miserable days. Three days with the
scent dancing in his nose and teeth and taste buds, three days of it tickling
the back of his throat, permeated in the air like a bottle of fine wine being
opened. Three days of feeling like there was a hot branding iron scalding his
esophagus, and three nights of stalking the alley with nothing, nada, ne rein,
no owner of that scent.
That, that, smell which had managed to be all at once titillating and
torturous, teasing and pervading him endlessly.
If anything, it enraged him, made him tremble in pleasure and gutless fury
that, for the first time in a long while, he was confronted with something that
he wanted.
And, oh, he wanted that scent. He wanted the owner of the scent, to mark him
and bite him and to drink all of his succulent juices until nothing was left
and his bones were mere dust, to tear through flesh and marrow and have the
scent be apart of himself.
He wanted it.
No, needed it. Needed it like he had needed nothing before. He needed this
succubus that made the nerves in his gums prickle. And it had all begun on that
one fateful evening he had stalked Diagon Alley, scented the human, and left
unable to find him, only to come back the next morning with nothing to show for
it.
He had left the palace, of all things, and this was the first time that he had
not entrusted his servants with the task of catching him food.
The situation was, after all, much too delicate, and the prey much too
enticing, for him to give up the hunt.
Each morning for three days he would return, empty-handed, and crumble like a
shriveled coat into his chambers, unable and unwilling to go to sleep when that
scent tickled him. That damnable, wretched, and succulent scent. Each night
he'd stalk the alleys and and streets, not finding him, because that damned
human was everywhere in the air and in his nose and yet nowhere to be found.
That is until the fourth night, the fourth night he'd dedicate to finding his
prey, the fourth night he left the palace, and the forth night he'd be
searching. It was both a fourth night and a first night, the first night he had
felt the anticipation of the hunt reach a crescendo in a very, very long time,
and the first night that he'd find that human.
And the moment he made it to Diagon Alley, evading royal guards and inattentive
servants, the vampire could feel something special and luminous and exciting in
the air that night. He had let the pounding in his teeth guide him and, on this
night that was both a fourth and first, he had found him.
He was a boy wandering to places he had no business being. Pale with a dark mop
of hair, eyes like sprouting foliage, and a figure that made him want to do
more than just find a quick meal.
He was, by no means, gorgeous, but there was something about him that had
resonated with the man. A gracefulness that existed despite his awkward shuffle
and hunched shoulders, a smooth quality that rivaled his own. It was a boy who
had seen many things, perhaps too much, yet moved in spite of it.
And, oh, that smell. The scent that trailed in the air like a garland expanding
everywhere, like the richness of simple pinot noir to a drunk beggar; it was
almost too much to not rush out and drink the fine wine right then and there.
So he had just watched, all at once both able and unable to do anything at all
but see and memorize the texture of his skin and hair and neck. That long,
languorous neck.
He stalked after the unnamed boy, ducking, weaving through shops and counting
the hairs on his head with each step he grew closer.
It was mere minutes after that in which the boy was accosted by three urchins,
fondled and teased and writhing under their disgusting touch. Blood stirred in
the vampire's gut, teeth aching to claim back what was rightfully his.
That boy was his.
His to be eaten, fondled, touched, and claimed. His for an eternity.
So, he had taken his meal back, in a position to kill the three men yet not
doing so because he wanted more than the boy's body, he wanted his trust. If
even only for a moment. How odd.
A few quick words and the vampire placed his hand on his back, leading him, and
almost trembled at the sensation of warmth coursing through his palm. Warmth
from the boy, the warmth of too much hot blood tackling against veins and
arteries.
He had loved the thrill of the chase, one he hadn't felt in a long time and,
unknowingly, wanting to see the green depths of the boy's eyes, he had used his
allure. He wanted, needed, to be noticed by his meal- to captivate.
Those eyes trailed over him, green glances spreading like the growth of a
meadow over his neck, chin, nose and lips. And then- they looked away. They had
the gal to look away, to resist him, when he had the right to own those eyes.
"I'm sorry, I have to be going," the boy said, "but thank you once again."
Rage, that struck him blindly, suddenly, and murderously, roared in his gut,
making his teeth ache.
How dare he, how dare a mere human look away from him, the Vampire Lord. Resist
his allure like it was a pesky fly.
And so he had taken his meal, shoved him into an alley, and finally, on the
fourth night, ate.
It was on this very night, the fourth night, and a first of sorts, that one
very unexpected thing had happened. One thing which had not occurred within the
vampiric society for hundreds of years.
The boy did not die.
Unknowing of this, the Lord stalked away, leaving his supposedly dead prey in
the alleyway.
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
***** Chapter 4 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
His eyelids pulsed, corneas gleaming like white crescent moons and thick
eyelashes barring his vision, before closing again.
Merlin. That was the first thought he had when he woke up, roundly followed by,
what the hell did I do last night?
His whole body ached fiercely, tendons and ligaments slow-roasting over a fire
while his nerves coiled like snakes winding their way over taut muscles.
It didn't help much that his bed was so stiff and oddly gritty. Like his skin
was sandwiched against sandpaper.
Cold, very cold and windy. Maybe he left open a window, or a maid did to cool
it off last afternoon. But he didn't remember doing that, or seeing his window
open.
In fact, there was a whole lot he couldn't remember. Like what he did last
night or, for that matter, what he did yesterday at all; he couldn't even
remember leaving the Leaky Cauldron. Or getting back.
No. He didn't remember returning, or waving to Tom like he always did when he
stepped in through the brick entrance, or hearing the gruff "Nice to see you
back", or stepping into the shower and falling into bed.
His hand brushed gingerly over the surface he laid on, recoiling softly at the
harshness of it, and Harry's mind sped.
Maybe he rolled off of the bed last night. He would move to look but, Merlin,
he was tired.
He probably didn't get a good sleep, what with him being on the floor and all,
and that would explain why he ached too.
Something squeaked in his ear and, thinking it was the door, Harry bobbed his
head to the left, hissing sharply at the sensation in his neck. He brought his
arm up to it regardless of the tension lacing his bones and gingerly probed the
skin.
There was a dry, crumbly, crumbly something gauzed over his neck that felt like
old paper but less thick. As he felt more, half blinded by the heaviness in his
eyelids, he felt two distinct pricks parallel to each other.
His hands felt more harshly, trembling and frantic, trailing over the scabbed
edges.
And his eyes faught against his eyelids, perching them up back into the
sockets, both desperate and unwilling to see.
His vision grew slowly less blurred, making out the straight edges of concrete
and the grayness of bricks... bricks covered in, in, in a something, something
that he couldn't quite make out until...
Until one dot, one little dot on the white mortar between two bricks blearing
bright in the middle of his eyes, gleamed like a neon sign.
Red, not red, but a distinct brown-red, like blood exposed to oxygen.
Blood.
As that word pulsed very vividly in his brain, Harry's eyes nimbly trailed off
the dot, watching at the dots grew in size, until they sliced over the bricks
like fat long loogies, and then... and then... everything, the bricks, the
muddy ground, his neck and hands and face and clothes were slathered in the
stuff. Slathered in the cold, dried red that pulsed like a hot, wet thing in
his head.
He couldn't help it, he whimpered and his body jolted up, shuffling back to the
opposite wall as best it could, and he stared at the blood caked like old icing
on a pastry.
And then as fast as the blood had once been rushing out of two pricks on his
neck, disjointed little memories flooded into his consciousness.
The word catalyst on a dried old page, and then he left- left the Leaky
Cauldron, and, Tom?
Had Tom been... yes, yes he had. And then walking, night, men, three of them?
What had they done?
Asked him for directions maybe, or- doesn't matter. And then, another man.
Yes, another man. Pulled him away, and he thanked him-what for, though?- and
the man's eyes were as luminous and golden as wheat fields in Tuscany. And
then, they weren't; those eyes were brown. Brown like dried blood.
Then there was an alley-where he was now-why was he here?- and then that man,
with his brown-red-golden eyes, and pain. Pain like screws drivers dropping
from thirty feet up and driving two cold spikes into his neck. And throat. His
blood fountaining outwards.
...Nothing.
Harry felt for the two parallel holes in his neck, gasping at the sensation of
throbbing underneath his fingers.
Did that man bite him?
He gasped, twisting in revulsion, and he felt his stomach turn.
He needed to get out of here.
Right now.
The sight of blood mixed with dirt and stone and empty firewhiskey glasses
shattered on the ground was too much.
Much too much.
Staggering to his feet, he realized that blood was all over him too; on his
clothes and skin even dried on the tips of his eyelashes. People couldn't see
him this way.
He scrambled for his wand, feeling the wood in his back pocket with a relieved
sigh, and encanted 'Scourgify' so much so that his skin started to chaff as if
covered in a find layer of dry hand soap.
With that he had stumbled out of the alleyway and into the streets, tipping
drunkenly back into the small crevice between two buildings at the blinding
sunlight.
Rubbing at his eyes, he stepped back in the street and averted them into the
ground, wondering blankly at why the sun felt so peculiarly hot today. Like it
burned his corneas.
His long, hot, and tired trek back to the Leaky Cauldron was was just that-
long, hot and tired. As well as comfortably blank as the pain in his muscles
and neck outweighed his ability to think about what had happened.
It had allowed him to avoid questions such as, why had that man bitten me?
And especially: What does it mean?
By the time he had reached the brick wall, vision fuzzy and his head
unpleasantly achy, he felt ready to collapse on his rented bed and curl up for
days.
If he was lucky, then no one would know he had been gone at all.
This, unfortunately, was not the case, seeing as how the moment he stepped into
the dinky, moth-eaten place, every eye had immediately zipped to him.
Tom looked up from the dusty countertop, blinking and immediately stopping the
harsh scrub and then, moments later, he clapped a big, burly hand onto his
shoulder, "Where have you been, lad?"
Harry opened and closed his mouth, eyes wavering over the man's shoulder and
looking at the messy sign plastered to the wall that read:
'Missing:
Neville Longbottom
A student at Hogwarts, fairly short with dark hair, may be wearing glasses and
solid-colored clothing. Pale.'
"How long have I been gone?" the boy was startled at how thick and raspy his
voice was.
"Three days," the man said, "At first I'd thought you'd left so you didn't have
to pay for the extra days in the room, but you left your stuff here and didn't
come back. Thought you coulda been dead."
The boy reeled, "Three days?"
"Merlin, you're pale, where've you been? We should get you to Mongo's..."
"No, no, I'm fine! I was spending time with," his tongue hung on the edge of
his gums, "my uncle, down at Fortescue's; he came into town and, you know, I
didn't realize how much time had gone by."
"You shouldn't have left so suddenly, shoulda told me where you were going! You
almost just gave me a heartattack, walking in like the dead."
Harry smiled sheepishly, face faltering, and Tom ripped the Missing sign off
the wall while walking back to the counter.
"And you're sure you're okay?"
"Yes, sir," the boy nodded, and staggered up the stairs before Tom called him
back.
"Oh, some people were looking for you while you were gone," he said, "Some
professor at Hogwarts, I think, didn't mention your name though."
Harry nodded, continuing up the steps with a grimace, and fell into bed the
first chance he got.
He could think later.
***** Chapter 5 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing, ideologically sensitive material, minor sexual
     themes
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
It was a shame. An absolute shame. When Harry had awoken, he didn't even have
the comfort of getting those blissful, short seconds where it would appear
everything was normal and that nothing had happened to him.
He would've loved to wake up thinking about the inevitable discouraging glances
one of the maids-Cassa-would give him if he decided to indulge in treacle tarts
for his regular breakfast.
Or about how the Inn could really increase their profitability if they took
some time to refurnish the place.
Perhaps even awake thinking on how he could finish that summer essay he was
still stuck on, about the fluidity of state changes from a liquid to a solid
for transfiguration.
Thoughts about food and economy and- trans... transublimination..
transsubstatantionalism- or whatever in Merlin's name it was- would've been a
luxury.
Instead he woke up from his already fitful sleep with the head-smashing thought
of: I've been bitten in an alleyway.
It was proudly accompanied by the unwelcome, yet nonetheless eager, memory of
last night. Or more specifically, four nights ago, or however long he had been
comatose.
Maybe he would've awoken peacefully, with a fleeting relief that it had only
been a dream, if he hadn't felt the dull pulse of his pricks just underneath
the surface of his throat. It was an achy heat that radiated out from the bite
and drummed over only the right side of his neck.
I've been bitten.
Oh, Merlin.
Who would do that?
Harry slid out of bed, padding soundlessly into the bathroom while poking the
surface of his skin slightly above his shoulder blade.
This isn't going to look pretty, was the last thought he had before his eyes
beamed at the crooked mirror dangling a few inches above the sink. And it was
with that he found himself tumult violently backwards, bashing his right
shoulder into the shower directly behind and hearing it vibrate underneath him
with a smack.
He barreled forward, hissing at the stinging response that zapped from his
shoulder to pricks in his neck, and was re-met with his reflection in the
mirror when his arms dug back into the side of the sink and his head stopped
four inches from the glass.
He was perched frozen, eyes unwillingly trailing over the tinged pink of his
throat that was gradually appearing more swollen, until the two narrow,
precipice like holes cut into his vision.
His hand wavered back and forth, wondering if it was a good idea to feel the
holes as he bared more of his burning neck to the mirror.
It was odd, seeing one side of his neck to be a washed red, but the rest of his
neck and skin to be so taut over his bones that it was stretched white.
It could get infected. It could be infected already.
It was another persons' saliva that his blood was now bathed in.
But what person would do this?
What human would do this?
The word human lit like a candle in his brain, the wax of it seeping to the
base of his skull and weeping down the back of his throat. It calcified in the
bottom of his stomach.
More than just would've, what type of human possibly could've done this? The
two pricks dug very deeply down into his throat, as if someone had decided to
puncture the skin with long screws and remove them.
No ones' teeth were that long. And it wasn't like an animal bit him- Harry very
clearly remembered the warm hands grazing lightly at the small of his back that
night. The brief twitch of pale lips into something resembling a smile. And the
eyes that sent strands of honey wheat tickling his face when they looked at
him.
Harry shrugged off the tightness brewing in his lower stomach, turning a lively
shade of red and looking at the rustic faucet below the mirror.
Admittedly, he was attractive, but of course the boy only felt an, uh,
appreciation of the elder man's looks. It was just as if he was looking at a
beautiful vase; the vase was pretty but there was no way he could feel any
sexual attraction to it.
He liked girls, like Cho, or whatever. He didn't like men.
Besides, that man had bitten him, how could he feel anything at all for a
man...
If he could even be called a man at all, Harry thought, his stomach violently
revolting at that thought the moment it sunk in.
He gagged into the sink and covered his mouth, thinking maybe he was going to
vomit but ending up only dry heaving.
Not a human at all.
"Then what?" the boy shot back, mumbling to himself.
It was then that his ears perked up at the sound of a hand lightly knocking on
his door, "Mr. Longbottom?"
He staggered out of the bathroom, ruthlessly tucking away the thought of what
was human- and- not human when his head peeked up from the bathroom doorway.
"Yes?" he called.
There was a pregnant pause on the other side of the door before the maid said,
"Breakfast," and walked to the next door of the adjoining room in the hallway.
It was then that he decided to drench himself and his stinging neck into the
shower. He spent an excessively long time dunking his ears evenly between the
jets and watching as it cascaded down the drain, reveling in the feeling of
hearing nothing but the rush of water.
An hour later his hair was semi-organized into a damp, curling mop and the
pricks in his neck concealed by a light bandage and high-collared robes.
Overall, he looked a little peaky but more presentable than when he walked in
last afternoon- like the dead, in Tom's words.
As if nothing had ever happened at all, he ducked out of the rented room,
glided through the halls and down a large staircase, and perched himself down
in his usual spot.
The next moment, as always, a menu popped in the air right before him with
faded letters and scuffed edges. He had long since gotten used to it enough
that he didn't address the booklet as sir, or ma'am, or say please (which had
always made the other maids laugh) when ordering his food.
It was directly after he had ordered buttered toast with a side of avocado and
the menu popped away that he felt a swap at the back of his head.
He ducked, craning his head to meet angry, red-rimmed eyes.
"Do you have any idea," the maid glowered at him, "How worried I was?"
Harry blinked, reeling, "I'm sorry."
"If you were-" she started, breathing starting to waver, "If you were, then you
would've thought maybe, just maybe, it was a stupid idea to leave for days
without saying a single word!"
The women, Cassa, tugged at the heavy stack of towel in her hands, "Think for
once."
A moment later his food appeared and clanked down onto the table and that was
when she swiftly spun the other direction.
The boy blinked once again, he had barely even known her. He'd only been here
for- what?- a little more than a week.
Still, he couldn't help but feel sediments of guilt whirl in his throat which,
combined with debate in his head about the bite, effectively made him stop
eating at the first bite.
After he had clunked the toast back to the chipped plate, he stepped up and
determinedly moved towards to the brick entrance to Diagon Alley.
He didn't have time to keep himself occupied with, well, thoughts of the maids
and what he did wrong.
He needed to find out who-or what, more exactly- had bitten him.
It was then that Tom waved him over the counter after glancing surreptitiously
to the left and right, "Longbottom, come here."
He ducked his head over to the man, watching him continue to circulate between
a series of activities like scrubbing at cups or at the counter or waving to
certain visitors on the other side of the room.
"Now, you aren't going away now, are ya?" he muttered, looking
uncharacteristically agitated when his already thick jaw tightened.
Harry rubbed guiltily at the back of his neck, coughing, "I'll be back in a few
hours."
The wrinkled man sighed, sending his nails raking through his close-cropped
hair, and peered over Harry's shoulder at a distant point on the opposite wall,
"I'm sorry about Cassa."
"It's fine, sir," the boy said.
"No, ya see, she had just lost her boy- her son- and husband, I don't know if
ya knew him- Blacke Crawford- he was a pretty famous auror, and you know how
dangerous it is being in that profession and," the man paused heartily, looking
as if he was trying to articulate the indescribable, "Anyways, after that she
didn't have anywhere to go."
Harry nodded.
His hand dug so strongly with the rag into the surface of the he was cleaning
the boy thought it could shatter at any moment, "You're the nicest visitor
she's had in a while, and after losing her family like that-" he swallowed,
"She needed someone to care for."
The boy felt his head lower despite the response of his neck, and examined the
worn ground under his equally worn shoes.
"I think you remind her of him- her son, that is," he murmured, "You look a lot
like 'im, from what I've heard from the other maids."
There was an ensuing silence between them, his throat and the innkeeper's
battling against an odd tightness.
"You take care of yer'self, Neville, and if someone's hurting you-" the man
stopped, shaking his head as if he had just said something stupid, "Well, just
keep yourself safe, if not for yourself then for her sake, at least."
The pounding in Harry's heart matched the pounding in his neck and he gulped
uncomfortably, finding himself unable to say that no one had hurt him, "I'll do
that, thanks, sir."
The elder man nodded at him and gestured towards the brick entrance, allowing
him to go.
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
***** Chapter 6 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing, descriptions of pain
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
The moment he had entered the dinky little book store, Flourish and Blotts, he
seriously considered just going back to the Inn to crawl up in his rented bed.
He didn't feel up to the challenge of wading through pages and pages of books
to find what he was looking for, not today. Or any day, for that matter.
A ten minute walk would've cleared his head of what Tom told him, he had
thought right before leaving through the brick entrance.
Unfortunately, this was not true. A ten minute walk out in the blaring hot sun
had only worsened the heaviness in his chest and the constant thrumming of his
bite. A ten minute walk now held a new connotation to him, meaning his feet
would sink into the cobble stone as weighty as the thoughts in his brain
spiraled downward. It also meant the sensation of hot resin pouring into his
bite and slickening his gut.
The book store was not much better, either, seeing as how the light would
filter in through the expansive and thin glass covering the walls and pelt hot
hail at him.
Harry edged closer to the shelves, wiping at his sweaty brow and grimacing.
Why was he even here anyways?
It didn't make much sense to him; the bite most likely meant absolutely
nothing. The only thing it said was that he had been attacked by a mad man.
They didn't have a book on that sort of thing.
Relieved, he backed away from the shelves, lingering hesitantly at the doorway
when he started tapping the doorknob.
But...
He tapped, each finger falling successively on the reflective surface and
making the old knob twitch.
What if it does mean something?
That's what he was here for, right? To see if the bite had an answer and then
fix it, like he always did?
This isn't a normal bite, he told himself, swallowing thickly at the admission.
It wasn't. It pounded, day and night, constantly. He didn't know how deep it
went past the skin, but he could tell it was pretty far- can a human do that? A
human bite looks like twenty little curved indents, and this was only two very
deep ones.
It's not normal.
Harry felt his gut revolt at the word, a little Vernon sitting on his shoulder
and shouting it into his ear.
He tapped again at the knob, nibbling on the gums of his lower lip.
"Is there something you're looking for, sir?"
Harry superstitiously brushed his hair over his scar, spinning around and
giving a faltering smile at the cashier who blinked back him behind a pair of
large round glasses.
She looked almost like a Trelawney, yet far lass bug-like than he was expecting
by the sound of her voice.
Decide, quickly. Run from it or confront it. Are you a Gryffindor or not?
"I'm looking for a book about," he paused, squinting at the window gleaming in
sunlight, "About dark creatures, if you have it?"
She tilted the glasses over the bridge of her nose from over the counter, "Any
book in particular?"
"No, not really," Harry replied, mouth opening and closing as if to justify
himself, "I'm new to the subject and don't really know what to look for; summer
essays can be a real pain, you know?"
The woman let her shoulders loose as if they'd been hung up by ropes, laughing
nervously, "Oh, thought we had a dark wizard on our hands there for a moment."
She spent the next thirty minutes introducing him to the laughably small
selection of books that existed in the very back, darkest corner of Flourish
and Blotts. Compared to the other shelves, with perfectly lined, dusted and
polished looking books, the section was full of worn binding and covers gritty
with webs. It was later when he opened the books that the missing and yellowed
pages became readily apparent. Hermione would've had an epileptic fit.
"You're sure this is all of them?" Harry asked, flopping a barely legible
Creatures of Dark Magic into his own hands that sent little plumes of dust and
mites into the air and him into a small coughing fit.
She scratched at the back of her neck, fiddling with her glasses, "This sort of
thing doesn't attract customers," she reddened at Harry's look, "Not that- not
that, that's what I'm only here for! I work here because I love books,
learning, yes, but..."
He gestured haltingly at her, "It's alright, I just don't think I'll find what
I'm looking for with only these."
Her voice went down to a conspiratorial whisper, "I shouldn't be telling you
this, seeing as how you're only a boy, but, well, if you really need to find
books for your essay," she stopped for a moment, "Knockturn Alley has a lot
more than this about creatures- but don't go down there without an adult, you
hear? It can get dangerous, especially at night."
"Trust me, I know," he grumbled under his breath, panicking for a moment until
he looked at her expression and realized she hadn't heard.
"Is that all you need?"
He nodded, "Yes, thank you."
She scurried back to the other side of the bookstore when the bell rang back on
the counter, and Harry was finally left alone.
He realized he felt a lot less sick now, especially when the sun couldn't reach
over the particularly tall shelf that, instead, sent the light trailing over
the wall rather than the corner he slunk into.
He sat on the floor with crossed legs and perched the book he was holding on
his knees, reading over the chapters entitled Ogres, Black Ghosts, Dementors,
and, before he knew it, he had spent a solid hour reading, his position
gradually turning more lazy and wilting as he leaned his back against the
shelves and rested his head on his hand.
He skimmed over chapters, blindly and unseeingly gazing over dull sections and
flipping constantly back to the Table of Contents. That is, until he saw it.
His eyes glazing over the words Chapter 8 followed by a colon and then, about
two inches down from that, was the simple word: Vampire.
The holes in his neck let out a hot, particularly painful pulse the moment his
eyes were about to skate right over the word and suddenly it had popped out to
him.
He felt for the holes, index finger softly trailing over the scabbed edges of
the bite before he took a nauseating breath of stale air.
You've already been over this, his head told him, there's no way you could be
bitten by a... a... that's crazy.
And yet he had already known that the word meant something, something perhaps
crazy, yet something that was perhaps equally as true. He fingered the crisp
edge of the page, swallowing at the tightness in his throat, and started
reading.
Vampires are one of the few known Dark Creatures that have not yet been
eradicated by the Ministry of Magic. Unlike the other creatures featured in
this book, such as Dementors, who are only around to this day because of their
service to Azkaban (refer to page 125); Vampires still circulate throughout
Magical Britain and collective niches of Egypt because of, first and foremost,
their noted intelligence, secondly, their physical power, and lastly, because
of their forceful alluring and attractive powers (as theorized by Gradwin the
Great, refer to page 345).
The man that Harry had met a few nights ago lingered in the forefront of his
head, just as vivid and warm as he had been that night, and the boy scrambled
to flip another few pages until his eyes landed on another valuable block of
text.
Section Three: Use of Charms
I. The Problem of Evidence
Another speculative difference between Vampires and other Dark creatures
includes their ability to use a an entirely wandless, dark magic power dubbed,
by some experts, as The Allure. There is much argument within the field of
Vampiric Studies if such a power exists, the issue both a polarizing and lively
debate that Professor Gradwin the Great, House of Leold founder, calls: "One of
the most supremely astounding and well-evidenced collective feature of the
Vampiric Society which any great thinker would consider true," (Gradwin, 34).
Other thinkers of the era are skeptical of the evidence of The Allure,
remarking that "only witness testimony has provided the shocking lack of proof
to promote such an outrageous claim," (Delicorian, 27). No magical traces or
remnants of the entirely kinetic, so-called wandless magic have remained in any
Vampiric encounter within the casualties.
II. Witness Testimony
The few and far in between witnesses who have ever managed to miraculously
escape a Vampire encounter without getting bitten unanimously agree that they
have felt the effects of The Allure (refer to the Alberta-Duhrer case on page
367).
Symptoms that witnesses recall include:
-unshakable sensations of lust for the Vampire attacker
-pulsing heat coursing throughout the body from when the attacker has skin
contact
-unable to look away from the eyes and/or face of the Vampire attacker
Harry felt an even more pronounced sensation of nausea well up in his gut. This
wasn't true. This couldn't be true. He skipped a few more pages, eyes landing
randomly on a particularly crinkled one.
Section 5: Consequence of a Vampire encounter
I. First Scenario: Escape and Means of It
Harry skimmed even more.
II. Second scenario: Bite Victim
In a Vampire's teeth exists a lethal poison comparable to that of a Rinogerous
Snake in its prime, sixteen times over, and the chemical composition infinitely
more deadly. Where there have been survivors of a Rinogerous bit, there has
never been a recorded human in history who has ever, in any time, any place,
culture, or any condition, that has survived a Vampire bite.
Harry's jolted when his knee bashed into the shelf he was resting his back
against, eyes wide the more he read.
As seen in test rabbits, as the concentrated poison sets into the bloodstream,
it only takes a matter of thirty seconds or less for the victim to completely
die. There is no surviving a Vampire bite, which make them, not extinct and
currently thriving as of yet, one of the most, if not the most "dangerous dark
magic creature to ever exist within the Magical and non-magical realm",
(Cornaro, 345).
The only case of a surviving victim is within Vampiric mythology, (refer to
page 373).
Harry quickly and blindly flipped to that page, eyes resting dead set on the
half-ripped page, and he started reading what he could.
Section 10: Mythology- Subsection of Culture
I. Vampiric Belief Systems
One of the most prominent belief systems of the Vampiric society, widespread
and accepted as truth by many in those observed by the Ministry of Magic and
Foundation for Creatures Assoc., is the belief in a so-called Kindling.
The translated mythological belief goes as such:
When the turning of the age occurs,
when the foes threaten to destroy Us,
One- A Kindling to the Fire- shall rise up,
Once human, then Turned
The prediction of a "future time yet unseen" goes on to describe-
The holes in his neck pulsed, hot and red and unfathomably painful as the
sensation wracked through his body. The page was torn in half right then and no
more could be read. Frantic, the boy flipped and looked for the missing half,
scouring the shelf with his eyes before dizzily rising to his feet.
Stop, this is stupid. Utterly idiotic. No one has ever survived a Vampire bite,
it's not possible.
The boy calmed just slightly.
That's just a stupid book, it means nothing. Nothing.
And yet he still found his hands looking for the missing half, and his heart,
as well as the pounding in his neck dismissing what was clearly... what
obviously had to be reason.
Fifteen minutes later, holding back the questions bursting from out of his
head, he stumbled out of Flourish and Blotts, raised his collar just slightly
over the bites and nimbly dragged himself back to the Inn.
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
***** Chapter 7 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing, sexual themes
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
He stumbled blindly back to the Inn much the same as how he'd gotten to the
book store, passing sardine-packed shoppes and cobbled streets, and feeling the
full force of the sun.
Yet this time something felt much different than before.
Maybe it was the sun's more acute position in the sky. Or maybe it was a hazy
sort of a quality in the air. Maybe it was the puce-tinted clouds that hung
like dumbbells strung up to a ceiling. Or maybe it was him, and what he knew,
and most of all- most of all- the crisped and fuzzy edges and slightly faded
letters he'd imagine to be on the missing half of page number 373.
He hated how the text had stopped abruptly, just like that- The prediction of a
"future time yet unseen" goes on to describe-
Goes on to describe what? What exactly?
He found his fingers itching to sprint back and tear that library up binding by
binding until he found it. And yet, on the other hand, he felt his stomach curl
at such a thought, curl at the thought of finding the page and finishing it
because, deep down, very, very deep down, he knew it just had to be something
about him.
The parallel holes in his neck pulsed with a renewed energy, as if to say:
'yes, it has everything to do with you'.
He both wanted to know and didn't want to know, and the conflicting feelings
sent his brain into another hurtling head ache and his stomach even more slick
with nausea.
It was a relief when he finally reached the stout brick wall, deciding that
cuddling up in a bed for another twelve hours didn't seem like such a bad
thing. However, the second he stepped into the Leaky Cauldron he was greeted
with a shocking sight.
All had seemed normal at first glance- the air was just as musky and stale as
before, the tables were the same gritty, perpetually uncleaned texture, and the
walls were covered in trailing webs. The sense of normalcy continued until his
eyes had following the dots of sporadic spiders and crumbling wall panels, and
a familiar sound made him stop.
It was the sound of a voice, a voice strict and disciplinarian enough that the
moment he had heard it, his back straightened and his eyes shot downwards to
the floor out of habit. He knew that voice too well and when he shook himself
out of his confusion, the boy whirled his head around.
His eyes pounced to the man who hadn't yet noticed him. He recoiled immediately
at the sight of black robes and greasy hair.
Snape.
And at the sight of the man, he had abruptly backed into the corner between the
brick entrance and the Inn. He stood there for several moments, only edging his
head closer to hear what the man was saying when he was sure that he hadn't
seen him.
The professor was speaking with a tired looking Cassa, mumbling in such an
unusual waspish and hushed drawl that the boy could only make out a few words
he was saying.
"...Seen him?... Hogwarts... ran away... idiot boy"
Harry hunched down and peeked his head even more over the edge of the walled-
off corner to see what was going on.
She was nodding politely, struggling with a large pot of hot soup that smelled
so pungent he could tell it was Split-Pea even from this distance. She lifted
the heavy thing and rested it along the side of her hip like how one might hold
a baby if they were talking on a phone.
Her brow twitched in irritation for only a moment as she gripped with more
difficultly the large pot, "A boy, hmm? The one that went missing a while ago?"
"Yes," his expression became, if possible, even more dour.
The maid smiled at him blankly for a moment, continuing her waddle to the
counter and setting it down with a relieved sigh. Snape followed the woman
whose eyes sweeping back and forth when she was able to turn her back to him.
The boy didn't know if he had just imagined it, but he could've sworn she had
given him a slight nod to where he was. At that signal he retreated even more
into the corner.
"Can't say I have," she lied, "He used to be here all the time, but I haven't
seen him around since he went, you know, missing."
The professor didn't say anything, and the boy could only imagine that he had
given her one tight nod.
"He was a sweet boy too; would you owl me when you find him, sir?"
In the next minute Harry heard a strangled sigh, muddled footsteps and the
whoosh of a floo place.
"You can come out now," Cassa informed, shaking out her arms.
It was a minute until he stood and shuffled out of the corner, whipping his
head around to see if the man was somehow still there.
"Thank you," the boy said, stifling the lump in his throat, "thank you."
If she hadn't lied to him, then Harry had no idea what would happen. A
harangue, yes, but he'd also likely be shipped back to his relatives. He
shivered at the thought.
She smiled politely much like how she had smiled at Snape, "Well, I wouldn't
want that man to be looking for me either."
He nodded, still feeling dizzy and weak despite how much his heart was thumping
against his rib cage.
She quickly returned to her cool demeanor, "Are you going to tell me or Tom
what's going on?"
Harry shook his head, dismissing himself to his rented room and rubbing at the
bite that pounded along with his chest.
He crawled in bed despite it only being early afternoon, tired and justifying
the laziness with the fact that he'd done too much thinking today.
It was only a little while until he started dreaming.
More than anything else, Harry loved those gleaming pair of eyes, and whenever
they paused to give him a long look, it was as if soft velvet meadows crawled
up the small of his back and came to tickle the base of his neck. Those eyes,
those eyes were the perfect eyes framed with rows of dark lashes.
It was those eyes that had made him forget about the three men and the old
woman he had seen earlier, it was those eyes that sent a pleasurable rush of
blood to his groin.
Harry broke away from those eyes hesitantly, vision trailing down to a thin,
pointed nose that further dropped down into pale pink lips. There was a tap at
his chin as soon as his eyes slid down the man's strong neck and to his
collarbone, and he was forced to look up again at the color of ripe mangoes, "I
have something to say to you, my dear."
The boy straightened up, bringing his face closer to his right ear holding back
several dark, curly locks.
A soft breath lingered over his throat and made it pulse pleasantly, long
fingers feeling the texture of his cheek as if riveted before moseying to his
neck. Gently yet firmly, those fingers squeezed at his jugular. Those eyes
tickled his neck, pinned to the swell of blood below the skin like rushing
white rapids, before the man leaned forward and brought his mouth to Harry's
neck.
The boy giggled as the man's warm, large hands traveled away from his neck and
rested at the base of his stomach, gently rolling his abdomen right above his
belt buckle. Unwittingly, he bared more of his neck to those soft kisses,
feeling the man's leg rub in between his.
He let out a breathy moan, the man pressing his hardness against-
Harry awoke with a gasp, twisting himself hard against the sheets and feeling a
brief disorientation before remembering he had taken a nap. What added to his
confusion was the blanket of darkness that covered the entire room; he had
obviously slept past sunset, and with this in mind he started clumsily
untangling himself from the sweaty sheets.
It took him a moment to realize how tightly his crotch was pushed against his
jeans, and he groaned lightly when he inadvertently rubbed himself against the
pillows. Lost in the haze of pleasure, he pushed himself even harder against
the sheets and felt oddly turned on by the stickiness in his boxers. It was
when he started unzipping his jeans and letting them sink below his hips that
he remembered just what had turned him on in the first place.
He flinched, pulling his hand away with a flaming red face as he remembered the
strong, lean body pushing against him. His eyes grew half lidded, tongue
peeking out of his partially opened mouth when another dose of pleasure
funneled straight to his groin.
And then he recoiled once again, zipping up his sweat dripped and sticky jeans
despite how uncomfortable they were before heading straight to a cold shower.
He could never like someone who attacked him, never. That'd be like falling in
love with Voldemort!
And he liked girls, no matter what the pounding of his bite told him.
***** Chapter 8 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing, sexual things
     (a/n) There is a dream sequence at the very beginning of this
     chapter. Thanks to all the readers, reviewers, subscribers, etc!
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
The vampire knew full-well the human was not the most attractive young boy,
looking oddly lanky and unkempt. He was much too thin and gawky and hadn't yet
grown out of the childlike quality to his face and body that receded into the
bagginess of his clothes; his forehead was perpetually scrunched in a sort of
agitation, and they too receded under choppy bangs.
That's also likely why it was the strangest sort of sensation when he laid his
eyes on the boy, and felt it. He felt drawn to it. Drawn to the unrivaled
silkiness of black hair that dawdled until curtaining down over small ears,
drawn then to the greenness of his eyes that led to faintly convex cheeks.
Those cheeks then scurried to a supple and faintly feminine curve defining his
jaw line, running to an even softer neck.
And when his eyes halted at the collar of his robes, the vampire felt the
immediate need to take those clothes off and look at what was underneath.
The next thing he knew his own hands were sliding over the boy's back and
calculating the surface variations, like the long spine dipping in and out of
the skin, the curvy, delicate little waist, and suddenly strong hips he longed
to dance over with his fingertips.
It was perhaps the most rewarding experience he had even known when he felt the
boy writhing against his hands, little green eyes encumbered when they found
the courage to meet his own, and the vampire could have sworn he had almost
felt his own lips twitch.
And then, right then, those eyes dropped from his own, to his nose, lips, and
swept over his collarbone. The vampire stifled the irritated growl rising from
the very base of his throat, and tapped the boy's chin firmly upwards, "I have
something to say to you, my dear."
The boy straightened up immediately and brought himself closer to the vampire,
the obedience pleasing the elder man infinitely.
He faced the boy more frontally, letting a wavering, warm breath coat the boy's
throat for a moment, and sliding his hands slowly over his body. He leaned
forward, poking at his jugular and watching the blood rise, letting his tongue
spill out of his mouth at the pulsing of his member when the boy bared more of
his languorous neck.
His hands trailed more confidently over firmly over the boy's body, slipping
from his lower back to the base of his abdomen and rolling the soft tissue
under his fingers.
For a moment, he had thought about biting the offered neck, nearly groaning at
the thought of how sweet it would taste, yet decided instead to leaving
feathery light kisses at the base and collarbone, noting the beauty marks
dotting the surface.
He felt the boy's hardness pressing against his own when their two bodies grew
closer together, making him push forward and place his leg in between the boy's
legs, rubbing softly against him and hearing a pleased moan-
The vampire awoke, eyes instantly adjusting to the darkness as his pupils
flared outwards and encompassed his entire iris. The mahogany frame of his bed
creaked when he slipped out of it, sliding to the floor on all fours and
tensing as if ready to pounce.
It was late night, the taste of it approximately midnight, likely 11:52, and
peculiarly chilly for a summer evening- twelve degrees Celsius.
He narrowed his eyes, turning completely still and silhouetted enough that he
could have passed as a piece of furniture. That is, if his eyes didn't reflect
the available light and gleam an ominous yellow.
He shifted inaudibly, vision sweeping from one object to another, resting
intermittently from one wall to another.
Nothing.
Nothing moved besides the constant swinging of the pendulum inside of his
grandfather clock on the farthest wall.
He ascended to his feet, realizing that there were no intruders, and even if
there was than the Palace Guards would have swiftly killed them the second they
tried to set foot into the building.
How curious it was, he would have sworn in Circe's name that he had seen a boy-
He blinked, mind flooding with decaying memories of green eyes, hair, and
kissable collarbones. He shuddered at the pulsing just under his abdomen. He
remembered that boy, he killed that boy himself. With his own two teeth.
There was no possible way the boy would have been in His room, having intimate
tête-à-tête with him; he was dead!
A realization thrummed in his head; a dream. It was only a dream. He almost
staggered back in surprise.
How many years had it been since he'd had a dream? Fifty, a hundred or so? And
he ended dreaming about a lowly human? About food? He had lusty thoughts about
a dead, average-looking human?
Yes, average at best. Average looking hair and constantly quirked eyebrows,
average looking lips and pointed nose that had a small freckle slightly to the
left of its bridge, average looking neck and average looking collarbone that
slithered down to an average looking, white expanse of chest-
The Vampire Lord immediately recoiled, shivering when he became cognizant of
his own... of his own... désir; lust!
How utterly disgusting! It made him want to retch that he was even still
thinking about a human for any other use than a quick meal. How could his
wretched mind have prioritized a boy so much that he ended up having his first
dream in who knows how long?
Why, the last dream he had was prophetic about the revival of a vampire hunting
movement by the Tsar in the Russian Empire! And that wasn't half as vivid as
this dream!
How curious. It was almost if that human was somehow, someway, important. Yet
how? And why did the nebulous entity that seemed to forewarn him of certain
events feel it was necessary to impart this to him? The human was dead,
whatever was going to happen earlier, if it even meant something at all, wasn't
going to happen now.
Strange.
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
***** Chapter 9 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
For most people, August went by much too quickly, and the moment the First
clocked in, a mad frenzy would settle like silt over the students. August was a
countdown of sorts- the last month until school started, the last month of
blithe freedom, and the last month to pack in another vacation to some exotic
land.
For Harry, the month had trickled by slowly. The month marked the passing of an
lurching stream roller trying to get uphill with no traction. It was a month
without momentum, a month without motion, and a month with a singular beacon
that loomed unnoticed in the distant horizon. The only resemblance his August
had to his fellow students' was the countdown, but that too felt like grains of
rice trying to pass through too small a funnel.
In the past, August's had always been a series of questions. Firstly, will the
bruises have enough time to heal before the start of term? Secondly, are there
enough cauldron cakes hidden underneath the floorboard to last the month? And
lastly, will I make it?
Now, even without him stuck to the Dursleys' side like a parasite, he still
thought of August in terms of those questions. The only way he could justify
his unnecessary hoarding of food, the daily check for dark purple spots dotting
his arms, and surreptitious glances he threw to possible escape exits whenever
he entered a room, was by dubbing it mere force of habit.
He didn't know why this month made him feel so spineless and itchy, but it
always felt like there was a static-quality to the air and that the clouds were
always lined with dark rims. August was the type of quiet that occurred before
thunder would break out.
Yet, despite his looming paranoia, life in Diagon Alley passed as normally for
Harry as it always did, sometimes approaching yet never quite touching the
first few, peaceful days in which he had arrived. He would wake up, get ready,
greet the maids, eat, stop by a book store and peruse, before going back to his
rented room to count the holes in the ceiling; starting the whole cycle over
again the very next day.
Nothing deviated from what it was supposed to be, and that made it easy for
Harry to forget. It made it easy for him to wash away in routine, and ignore
the increasing frequency of the pounding in his bite, ignore the headaches that
threatened to cripple him when he stood outside in the sun for too long, and
ignore his decreasing appetite.
It will go away. It's okay. Nothing's happening- those were a few of the
favorite phrases his head would dish out whenever he felt the inclination to do
something about it.
It was only made slightly harder when the maids would approach him,
scrutinizing the lines in his face, and wringing their hands in their aprons,
say: "You look so sick, maybe you should be staying in bed!"
And he would say, fighting against the lingering horror in the back of his
mind, "I think I've only got a little cold."
Some August days, when the clouds looked more heavy than others, and zapping in
the air felt more pronounced, Harry would take a moment to entertain the idea
of slinking back to Knockturn Alley- just for a little while- just to see if he
could find the book he wanted. And it would only take another second for his
mind to shoot that down, saying he shouldn't entertain silly ideas about a
Kindling and vampires!
He had gone through the thought pattern every morning and evening, like it was
a scheduled routine, and it was a pleasant reprieve one morning when he had
been awoken by something banging against the windows and not by those thoughts.
He had slumped forward into a sitting position, rubbing at the last remnants of
sleep in his eyes, and dozily padded to the window on the far left wall.
Pulling the curtains back, he was greeted by three owls carrying multiple
parcels a little too heavy for them.
He opened his window wide, letting a very small one- who he later realized was
Pig- in, and the rest came trailing after.
It took a full three minutes to untie all of the letter bedecking their legs
and when he recognized the handwriting he waved each of them out of the window
and away.
The first one was in terse handwriting,
Harry,
You better tell an adult where you are RIGHT NOW! I swear if you're just going
on some sort of completely idiotic adventure than I'll never talk to you again.
Everyone is worried about you, including me, you idiot! Do you have any idea
what you are doing? Even Dumbledore can't find you!
Please, please, Harry, at least respond to this letter so I know you're not
missing or dead!
Hermione
Harry swallowed tensely, pushing the letter aside in favor of the next one.
Harry,
Hey mate... mom's super worried about you and stuff; can't get anything done!
Where are you?
Dumbledore came to... to where Hermione and I am at, uh, right now, you know I
can't talk about it... anyways, I think I heard something about you being
missing. Or whatever.
Please, tell us, tell me, where you are... you have no idea how ballistic
Hermione is going right now. If she knew you were safe maybe she wouldn't have
destroyed my chess set.
At least reply, I want to hear all about what adventure you're leaving me out
on!
Ron
The boy sighed.
Harold Potter,
Hey! Fred here, where are ya, I just wanted to know how you wer-
George says hi
Give me back the pen, Forge
You got it, Gred
What sort of super scheme-ery and prank-ishness are you holding out on us?
Yeah! Tell us
Where you
are
and what you
are doing
-Also, don't be surprised if mum handcuffs you to her own arm when you get here
Gred and Forge
The other letters he received, each one getting progressively more cringe-
worthy than the one before, were from various members of what they called The
Order, but by far the worst letters to read were Mrs. Weasley's and Sirius'.
Not only did they succeed in making a colossal guilt weigh on his chest like
gathering sediments, but they had almost, almost, made him bring a quill to a
clean piece of parchment and jot a note just to say that he was okay.
It was when a curious Hedwig poked her head over the perch and blinked at him
with curious eyes that Harry rethought that strategy. If Dumbledore and his
'Order' got wind of it, they could potentially find him and cart him back to
the Dursleys'.
It was a small chance but he couldn't risk it. Unsurprisingly, it was that
train of thought which later kept the gnawing desire to venture back into
Knockturn Alley at bay.
It wasn't until the very last week of August that thoughts about shady
bookstores had reentered his head.
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
***** Chapter 10 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing
Harry had spent the last day in Diagon Alley within the Leaky Cauldron, his
activities ranging everywhere from sloppily reorganizing his trunk to crawling
back in his rented bed and pulling the sheets over his head.
It was a hot, musky sort of day, being humid enough that the moisture of the
air made him want to seep through the cracks in the floor. It negated any sense
of the excitement he would've felt by going back to Hogwarts, and he had
completely forgot about the rusticated stone walls, the rolling pastures that
disappeared in the horizon infinitely, and the secret magic that crackled in
the air. Especially when he thought his friends.
How angry would they be with him? He had wondered, cosying even further into
the sheets despite the abominable heat; how long would it be until Hermione
would talk to him again? Would she ever forgive him?
He nibbled on his lip, drowning seamlessly under the liquid mercury of his
thoughts when he thought about Snape, Dumbledore, Remus, Sirius and Mrs.
Weasley. The wet oxygen didn't relieve this feeling, instead only agitating the
heaviness of his chest and his insurmountable laziness.
Harry could just imagine it- twiddling his thumbs at platform 9 and 3/4 with
the sun beating down on him- and Mrs. Weasley would be there, too, with hunched
shoulders and crossed arms, tapping one pudgy foot forward when she rushed Ron,
the twins, and Ginny in.
The boy dozed from the warmth under the covers, feeling slightly uncomfortable
as the heat bordered on becoming stifling, and further wondering what would
happen.
And she'd stop, and see him with tired eyes, reeling because she couldn't
believe it, and there he'd be, close to passing out and only able to give her
one long blink, before she'd give him one bone-crushing hug and proceed to slap
him on the side of the head. Telling him he was an idiot , an absolute fool,
for making her and everybody else worry- without even giving a note of
explanation! She'd cross her arms again, scrunching her sleeves in her clenched
fists, frowning in red hot hate, and she'd tell him he was a freak and, oh boy,
he was going to get it- he was going to get it this time- for what he did to
Dudley, that freak!, for what he did- and she'd punch him and freak, freak,
freak- and- teeth and-
Harry jolted up from out of the covers, rousing himself from half-consciousness
and slipping out from his bed. He rubbed at his chest, taking a slow, deep
breath to calm himself and shake from his musing. He was sure she'd never do
that, or any of his friends, no matter how mad he made them.
His eyes settled on the analog clock hanging crookedly on the far wall, vision
resting along the lower rim of the glass frame before slowly piecing together
the time. It was one, and he had yet to leave the room.
He then proceeded to get dressed, throwing on whatever he could find from his
trunk and packing the rest without folding them. He glided in the wide halls,
no longer deterred by the questionable state of the Inn and, as per usual, sat
down until a menu appeared and, five minutes later, a full meal.
Fried red kidney beans topped with a hearty helping of sauteed mushrooms and a
small cup of what smelled like Earl Grey tea. It took him a full minute to pick
up his fork, shoveling gently at the beans and digging into one, hovering the
utensil around his mouth and shuddering at the smell. He slopped it back onto
the plate, choosing instead to wait until it would start to appear appetizing.
He didn't know how long he sat there waiting, tapping his fingers along the
cracked ceramic edge of the cup and finding himself able to drink it only
because the flavor was so bitter and mute that it didn't make him automatically
queasy at the thought of it.
Harry searched through his memory, trying to convince himself that yesterday he
had eaten a particularly big meal, yet not finding it within himself to
continue that lie.
His disinterest in food was starting to become dangerous. At least at the
Dursleys' he ate whenever he could, and could feel consoled at the fact that
his physical state was not caused by himself.
The boy frowned. He was not hungry for food.
The bite on his neck pounded.
He found himself wanting again. His head thrummed along with it, the smothered
desire within himself to know, to find out, his very nature that refused quite
plainly to stifled- the fervent and unstoppable heat of curiosity- made him get
out of his seat and leave the meal, growing cold, still on the table.
He needed to go to Knockturn. He needed to find out what was happening to him.
Yet he stopped right at the brick entrance, wavering backward and patting the
flame within himself once again, regaining his mind if only for a moment.
There was no way he could do that. He was rushing into things without thinking
about it first, and that's what got him into trouble in the very first place.
If he went back, there's no telling what he'd see this time which he may or may
not be able to escape from. The boy had met three drunkards and an insane old
lady on his first visit, along with that man, and even him coming out alive
could have been the triumph of luck. It would be equally plausible to meet
something even more deadly than on that night.
Think, Harry, think. And so he leaned back, out of the way of the brick
entrance and padded back to his room to nap until the next coming morning. He
could always look in the Hogwarts' library if he needed to, and that would be
much safer than heading to Knockturn for a page he didn't even know existed.
Harry clenched and unclenched his fist. Maybe tomorrow would be better. Maybe
he'd be hungrier tomorrow.
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
The next morning was a frenzy of activity, not only by himself, but by what
seemed all of Diagon Alley. Even the normally cool-headed Tom seemed on edge
when Harry bolted down the stairs, making the stairs click-click-click when his
packed suitcase banged against the edges of the wooden steps, and the boy could
have sworn that if he payed a little bit more attention he would have seen the
elder man jump.
But, he only saw it in the very corner of his eye, and so did the rest of the
occupants when they scurried to leave or clean and bounce out through the brick
entryway. September 1st hailed a new era not for just students, yet for what
seemed all wizards.
The boy stepped forward, digging for galleons out of his pocket and dumping
them nervously onto the counter in front of the man, waiting for him to count
them.
He made no motion to count and stretched out his shirt, cupping the money with
the large cloth and funneling them into a bucket behind him, "It's been a
pleasure having you, take care of yourself, will ya?"
Harry nodded dismissively, heading whirring back and forth to see if he could
find the time, and he looked indecisive, "Tell Cassa I said bye, and that I'll
visit sometime soon."
The elder man nodded one single jerk of the head, watching him immediately spin
the opposite direction and out of the Leaky Cauldron for the first time since
he had arrived.
When Harry made it out the door, he paced quickly to a less crowded and less
noticeable corner of Muggle London, fiddling with the lint on his robes and
whispering confusedly, "I'm a stranded wizard; Knight bus..."
A moment later it appeared, so much more searingly red that he blinked rapidly
just to get the after-image out from his head, and a familiar Stan Shunpike
waited by the entrance, "Fare is...," he paused, continuing to chew on some
sort of pungent taffy, "Ey! I know you, you were, you were 'ere in July,
right?"
Harry nodded, peeking his head over the man's shoulder into the bus, before
giving the man two galleons, "Can I go in now?"
Stan nodded with pursed lips, gesturing grandly just like how he had last time
Harry was on the bus; yet the boy had barely remembered it because last time,
he had been too shaky to truly notice the man's actions.
"Where to?"
He stepped on, this time gripping even more tightly at the edge of his seat and
avoiding any incidences of slamming his face into the window, "King's Cross,
please."
The bus zipped through narrow streets, "Hogwarts student, I suppose?"
The boy nodded, ignoring the ache that had set in his bones, which he had
blamed on his bad sleep.
Sooner than he would've liked, he was shooed out of the bus, watching it
disappear with a vague frown, and mustered the energy to dodge through large
crowds of people with his empty cage and bursting suitcase.
He was met with a brick column between nine and ten that looked smaller than he
had remembered and ran right through it onto an even more busy platform 9 and
3/4.
The train had not yet allowed anyone on.
He put his trunk down and sat atop it, straddling Hedwig's empty cage between
his legs and awkwardly resting his chin on top of it. Briefly, he closed his
eyes, getting lost in the sway of people and meaningless chatter, until he was
abruptly pulled up so harshly his sense of balance was thrown aside.
Someone had grasped his arms and opening his eyes, he stared blinking at a
fuming Professor Snape. There was a long, pregnant pause that seemed to
continue between the both of them, the elder man frowning dourly, one corner of
his upper lip raised in contempt, before deep-set black eyes pierced through
his own like he was being strung on a kabob.
Harry blinked rapidly in a futile effort to throw off the man's gaze,
"Professor..."
The man examined his pale face, not allowing him to get another word in when he
gripped the boy's arm even harder, "Don't you dare speak to me, Potter, I will
allow no excuses as to your inherent idiocy. Do you have any idea how long
Dumbledore, his allies, and myself have been forced to find you and drag you
back like a mindless puppy?"
He swallowed.
"Not only have you drawn away our attention from more important research," the
man paused, subtly catching his breath, "But you have led many of your friends
and mutt into believing you may be dead. At this point, your arrogance and
stupidity astounds even myself, seeming to have broken a barrier of ignorance
that I had, prior from now, not known existed."
The man's shoulders raised and lowered quickly as if he had just taken some
heaving breath, the redness of his usually sallow face speaking volumes of his
anger. He looked like a thin and more articulate version of Uncle Vernon,
especially considering the way he grasped at the boy's arm.
The boy opened his mouth, wanting to get his word in.
"There is no way you could possibly have an worthwhile or riveting excuse as to
your act of brazen stupidity, so I will not allow you to speak for the duration
of the train ride and, since you seem to have no conceivable way of staying
where you're supposed to be," the man audibly gritted his teeth, causing Harry
to twitch, "You will be under my surveillance until you get to the Welcoming
Feast, and further until your Professors and I can be assured you won't take
any more vacations."
He was dragged onto the train and knew instantly that, with the sun beaming
straight through the train windows and a timid looking Hermione, following by
Ron and his siblings, that he was in for a very long ride.
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
***** Chapter 11 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing,
HpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
Harry blinked, raising his face to the surface of the window, to look out an
uncertain Hermione trailed by Ron, Ginny, Fred and George, despite the
uncomfortable heat and pain that rose to his face.
The girl was leaning forward and back, every now and again taking cautious
steps forward and rising to the tips of her toes to scan the heads in the
crowd. Ron followed her lead, sometimes tapping at her arm, pointing towards a
specific black-haired person, and disappointing everybody when that chosen
person turned around.
The five would flit like hummingbirds from individual to individual, stopping
to briefly question fellow Gryffindors and lean their heads in really closely
to hang onto the every word. Many shook their heads, others shrugged their
shoulders and some would squint their eyes and narrow their focus for a second-
making Hermione especially more attentive- before mouthing 'No, I haven't seen
him'.
At one point, Ron had excitedly grasped her arm, giving a particularly toothy
grin before the both of them rushed off towards a stocky, black-haired boy that
had glasses which took up his full face.
Harry pushed himself even more against the window, blinking with a growing
sense of terror when she hugged the unknown boy from behind, likely thinking
that it just had to be Harry.
As he had expected, the boy violently recoiled, turning towards her with a
scrunched brow, and firmly planting his square rimless glasses over a very
pudgy nose. A very pudgy nose and brown eyes that weren't Harry's own.
Ron stepped forward, shrugging and mouthing something along the lines of, "We
thought you were someone else."
Through the window, even with sun tilting directly in his burning eyes, and
casting a yellow, washed-out glow on the whole station, he could see her. Her
back was faced towards him and with all too startling clarity, he watched as
she took a hesitant step backwards, shoulders dropping like dead stones, and
then heaving up and down like the line of a heart monitor measuring the pulse
of an old, dying man. Her shoulders sped, trembling for a very long few
seconds, before they flatlined and the heart monitor would let out a long,
drawing and cold beep. And in his metaphor, the old man would be dead.
He pulled away when he couldn't withstand the pain of the sun any longer and,
if he were entirely honest with himself, the weightiness of his guilt. And yet
her trembling and, at other times, complete stillness repeated over and over in
his head as if branded onto his pupils.
In an after image that glowed in his head, he could imagine her stepping even
farther back from the boy, her smile disappearing like smoke from an open jar.
Ron would step forward, pat her back in an odd attempt to either console her or
get her attention.
The boy would mutely prod her, trying to get her to continue to scan the crowd,
but she wouldn't and for the first time since she had entered the station, her
eyes would sink to the ground as a corpse did in water.
The twins and Ginny would catch up to her, asking if she had found him, she
would shake her head, and Fred would attempt to get her to laugh. She would
have none of it.
This time, Harry's eyes burned from something separate from the sun, and he
blinked rapidly when his vision started to blur over. He supposed it was a
little bit of a miracle that Snape either didn't notice or didn't feel the need
to comment on it.
He shut his eyes, slinking even farther back into his own seat and entertaining
the possibility of rushing out the train, shaking her by the arms and letting
her know he was alive. He paused, waiting awkwardly until Snape's eyes met his
own, pointing out the window of the compartment, "Can I?"
"No," the man immediately shot down, with the briefest twitch of his lips.
The boy didn't feel like arguing and remained silent, even though both tasks
were against his very Gryffindorish nature.
He rested against the seat, feeling with every molecule of his very being that
it was wrong, and the next time he shot straight up was only a minute or so
later when he heard footsteps through the narrow halls of the train and the
repeated word: "Harry."
Their voices were muffled, "Has anyone seen Harry Potter?" And as they got
closer to his own compartment, he sat up straighter and more frozen in his
seat, peeking his head nearer to the door to listen to the sounds.
Snape regarded his pleading look, the man pursing his lips and forcing his way
out of the compartment while shutting the door behind him.
The boy put his ear all the way up against the door, trying to seize every
word. He heard Snape tap impatiently, imaging that he was gesturing towards
himself at the boy's friends with a look of supreme irritation.
He heard footsteps and, not a moment later, frantic questioning, until
Hermione's voice shushed them all- "Is he with you, sir? Is he?"
The man didn't say anything, yet Harry could imagine that he had given her an
impatient nod.
As soon as that silent admission was made, the boy could feel the immediate
relief in the atmosphere; "And he's okay?"
"Yes."
Relieved chuckles broke out; "Can we see him, Sir?"
It sounded like Ron's voice, but Harry almost reeled violently in disbelief at
how sugary and polite it sounded.
The floor of the train creaked when the man stepped back and, suddenly, before
the boy even had time to stand up and prepare himself, a rush of people huddled
into the compartment and crushed him instantly.
If took a moment for his churning brain to realize that he wasn't being
attacked and his body was not being crushed in a trash disposal, and an equally
long pause to understand that the sudden and clawing arms that covered him
were, in fact, quite simply, in short, hugging him.
His face swelled with heat and guilt and happiness, and he was suddenly no
longer bothered by the claustrophobia and the heat, "I'm okay, guys, I'm okay."
Hermione held him at arm's length, examining his thin nose and green eyes and
assuring herself that it was actually him, "Where were you?"
That was the first thing she said.
The boy swallowed at the tightness of his throat, letting the words froth out
of his mouth, "I was in Diagon Alley."
The rest of the occupants frowned, yet Hermione looked perhaps the most
confused, as if she wasn't able to process what she had just heard, "What?"
Her voice was strained like someone without a mouth trying to talk, and the
compartment was so quiet and still, that he could hear the roar of chatter and
the drop of a needle in the two adjacent compartments. He barely had time to
take a breath, opening his mouth again only to be interrupted.
"You were in Diagon Alley? All this time? This whole time while Dumbledore,
everyone," she paused, dropping her voice to a whisper, "The Order, was looking
so hard to find you- and that's where you were? And that's where no one could
find you? And that's where you were- safe? And ignoring us?"
Nobody spoke.
Hermione's shoulders trembled, raising very high against her neck as if pulled
up by two strings, "How could you be so stupid? And so inconsiderate? How could
you do that to me? Why?"
She was waiting for his reply, and Harry's eyes roamed from face to face,
looking and feeling profoundly lost in a place he thought was familiar, "Can we
talk about this later? Please? Please, not now."
No one moved forward except for Ron, who rested his hand briefly on the girl's
shoulder even when she tried to shake it off. He gave her a long look, and in a
whisper, as if Harry wasn't there, he said: "'Mione, I think it has to do with
Them; you know," he paused, mouthing what he said next, "His relatives."
She blinked at him, the weight of his words not sinking in until she looked
back at the boy, anger replaced with something else entirely. She frowned,
brows knitting together, "Oh, Harry."
A red, rapid heat rose to the boy's face and he looked down towards his feet,
pulling up the collar of his robes at her searching look, and everyone else
seemed baffled by the exchange.
It was then that Snape chose to rush everyone out of the compartment, not
including Harry himself, and this was met with very strong protest until the
professor threatened them with a full month of detention.
As the train took off towards Hogwarts, most of the ride was awkward and tense,
excluding a small exchange between them that occurred at what seemed an hour or
so later.
"Who are them?" the man had asked deliberately.
The question was so unexpected that it took the boy a full minute to understand
what he was talking about, "None of your business, that's who."
"Your arrogance precedes you, Potter, a trait shared by your equally mediocre
father."
The boy swallowed, standing abruptly, "Don't say a word."
Snape spelled a lock on the door, quirking an eyebrow in question.
"I'm not a kid, I don't need a lock! Or a supervisor!"
Narrowed eyes and a mutinous look, "Do you have short term memory loss or are
you just daft? By the looks of it, both. Do you not remember your little
expedition?"
"Don't talk about what you don't know," Harry sat back down, huffing in a
conspiratorial way as the countryside rolled along and the tufts of smoke from
the train darkened the sky, "I left for my own purposes."
They hadn't talked again after that.
***** Chapter 12 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing,
HpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
The Welcoming Feast went by just the same as it did all other years, he sat by
his friends at Gryffindor Table, Neville trailing along behind them, the
professors all sat in their respective places, the regular speeches were given
welcoming the new and old students, and all the same classic dishes were on the
table.
Yet, something felt different, and Harry couldn't place what it was. Maybe it
was how his friends kept throwing furtive and concerned glances to him- which
wasn't that much different from last year, since they had always been
suspicious about his 'treatment' under his uncle, yet this time, his professors
had also joined in the act. It was unnerving, the moment he had walked in with
Snape in tow, trying unsuccessfully to slink away to his table until halfway
through the hall, they had all stood very tall to look over him, including
Hagrid who had made the empty dishes rattle across the whole dining table.
Harry had at least expected this sort of reaction, after all they were apart of
the 'Order' that Dumbledore and Snape had alluded to, and they likely knew of
his missing status, yet he couldn't have expected that they'd remain tense and
watchful over the duration of the feast.
Whenever he dared to throw a look back, he could tell and even feel how hard
they were clenching their dinnerware, especially McGonagall, who had squeezed
the knife so tight it looked like her fingers were going to burst under the
pressure.
He had quickly looked away when his eyes curiously traveled up to her face, not
even managing a sheepish look at the tightness of her brows that rivaled that
tightness of her grip.
Aside from the unnerving and, at times, irritating, looks, the feast had also
presented some deeply foreboding differences. Dumbledore had started his yearly
speech, interrupted with a nasally 'hem-hem' and the man had confusedly, yet
affably, stepped down, waiting for the source of the noise to speak.
Uhm-wedge, Uhmbrick, Umbride- it seemed, whatever her name was, had stood, the
blaring pinkness of her outfit making Harry blink several times, with a voice
that had a similar honeyed characteristic. A very bitter honey.
"Thank you, Headmaster, for those kind words of welcome, and how lovely it is
to see your bright, shining faces all looking up at me..."
That made Harry stop listening altogether, cringing at the sound.
It was later when the food appeared, steaming and delicate and rich-looking,
that Harry nonetheless found the numerous sticky rice cakes, ham and pork and
all the meats under the sun, asparagus with a smattering of hot butter, plain
toast, and treacle tarts- even treacle tarts- very unappetizing. The smell was
unsavory, if not downright rotten, and yet it wafted all around him and drowned
the room in the same stench that made him shake with nausea.
It was with superior control of the mind that he managed to not outright clamp
his hand to his mouth and gag into it, instead coolly patting at his face with
the napkin only managing to choke down a plain, burnt piece of toast.
He needed to eat real food, he needed nutrients, that's what his brain thought.
Yet somewhere deep down in the very depths of his mind, somewhere that instead
acted on instinct and didn't know the meaning of rationality, somewhere his
mind pulsed with a different thought and a different feeling. And that was the
part of him that spoke, almost inaudibly, yet definitely there: It's not human
food I want.
It made his leg twitch upward and hit the table, rattling the dishes on it, and
make everyone give him an irritated look before going back to their food.
He was changing, and he knew it. He was changing very quickly. And he didn't
know how, but he knew it was for the worse.
The infinite hole in his mind spoke again: soon.
He had to stop it.
He couldn't even remember how the rest of the feast went.
HpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
The first week passed on just as usually as the four others he had in his
history of being a student, sluggish and yet exciting, but this year it was
without it's usual spark. This year he didn't feel that sense of security he'd
always had when distancing himself from the Dursleys', which was the main
reason he'd grown fond the towering turrets and scuffed portraits that extended
above his head infinitely. Or so it seemed, at least when he was in first year.
This was supposed to be a week that would reaffirm in his mind that he had made
it, somewhat unscathed, that he was here and he didn't have anything to worry
about until the summer months would reapproach like a looming storm cloud.
However, now it was different, a feeling that had not disappeared and stuck
with him ever since the Welcoming Feast. The problem was no longer outside the
castle, and outside the barrier made by the thick stone slabs, the problem was
right beside him and right within him.
The problem was his friends and their questions, rushing right to his side as
if attached at the hip, and they would say: "You said we would talk about it,",
and "Are you okay?", and the most irritating question that would ultimately
follow, "And you're sure you're okay?"
The problem was the professors and the inscrutable looks they would give him,
as if trying to solve a particularly difficult puzzle.
And most of all, the problem was himself. Something was happening to him.
Something was changing within himself; it was a problem that, at some points,
lingered on the horizon and at other points, whispered in his right ear. Yet at
both times, he knew it was there.
One evening, he had awoken in the dorm room, not able to fall back asleep, and
he decided to burrow himself into the little niche with the window that, like
many other things, seemed a lot bigger when he was eleven.
The hills were silhouetted in blackness, and his eyes trailed along the
delicate curve of the rolls and hilts that dotted the land- land that would
rise and droop as if it were the stomach of a sleeping giant.
The blades of grass at the very top of the hills would meet with the sky, deep
blackness touching a lighter, more gray shade intermittently dotted with stars
like pinpricks through a sheet of fabric.
He loved it there, in the niche almost too small to fit him, he loved it a lot
more than how he used to drag a night table to the window with creaky, broken
black bars, and stand on it, trying to peek his small head to the little crack.
The roofs of the cookie cutter houses would always obstruct the night sky,
clashing at odds with it, because such a building was meant to keep the night
out, and even then he could ever see much.
At Hogwarts, it was the opposite, the foundation breathed the very essence of
the night, letting it seep through cracks and unlit dorms and through windows
so thin and tall that they almost didn't exist. And there were no lights, and
the only thing that could ever get in the way of the stars was the wispy little
clouds who also loved the night.
And now, hunching his head and letting his breath fog over the glass, he
realized with startling clarity that it had changed to. That the niche was too
small to support himself anymore. And the night now welcomed something
different from peace.
His bite pounded faster and with more pain than it usually had.
He curled into himself, stepping down and back to his bed to pull the red
curtains over his four-poster bed, falling into a restless sleep interrupted
only a few hours later.
The Vampire gingerly patted the boy's waist, long arms encircling him and
resting his chin atop his head, "And you're ready?"
"Yes, yes, I am," Harry said, his voice a breathy whisper into the man's chest
as he tried to step backward into the darkness, yet the arms burrowed him even
farther into the vampire, "Please."
"Careful, young one, do not let your teeth think for your brain," the man
warned, "Control yourself, savor your meal."
The boy felt his teeth pulse and expand as the vampire gently prodding the scar
on his neck, the smell of a human making him try to push away from the man who
only responded by gripping tighter.
Harry was pushed back and turned towards the cobbled streets, his body
lingering just barely over the edge of alleyway, "Which one smells the best,
little Raven?"
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
***** Chapter 13 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing,
See the end of the chapter for more notes
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
It was 1:40 am and four seconds, approximately a balmy fifteen degrees Celsius,
and within one-hundred kilometers, there existed a few hundred suitable meals
which the vampire could order his servants to retrieve for him. If he so
desired, that is.
However, it was a particularly odd evening for him, this evening at- now, 1:41
am and thirty or so seconds- he felt quite dreary and unusually exhausted.
He sniffed the air again, wondering if his senses proved wrong and that it was
perhaps 5:00 am, or some other time that would justify his tiredness. Alas,
they were never wrong- he was never wrong- and yet he sat, wilting in the
cushions like grass without water, and dozing as he read the confidential
report about the recent skirmishes along the borders of the Czech Republic.
Fueled, of course, by the surge in population of his kind.
Official royal duties were never seasoned to his liking, yet this too could not
account for the exhaustion pressing against him. And neither did it account for
the other changes which had been rapidly redefining his character and
temperament, as of late.
He clicked the sharp point of his teeth together, gritting softly, and moved
his chair over to the expanse of window just behind his head and forgetting the
report that laid on his desk.
The night was as deep and black as any other, burgeoning with life that
threatened to teem over the hills and encroach on his territory, and so quiet
he could hear his eyelids meld together whenever he blinked.
It was an alive night, a night that should have electrified him, a night he
should've sensed the pulsing of each individual heart in the valley, and a
night he should've been indulging in.
And yet he was tired and achy and bored, and felt as if a piece of himself was
missing and yet to be found. He was not hungry, or thirsty, or penniless,
without tasks he could be doing, or even without the night; and yet he longed
for something more. He longed for a sensation that was palpable, like a sort of
invisible steam that would collect on his skin, that he could feel, that he
knew with every fibre of his being was there, yet he had no way of catching.
And he didn't even know what it was, but the ache of yearning had existed ever
since that Night, with the boy.
The vampire sunk further into his chair, running a hand busily through his
curly locks, and blinked half-lidded at the stars.
The night had changed, it had left him bereft. Or, maybe it was him who had
changed.
He couldn't help how his head slumped against the armrest, and how he fell into
a deep, yet quickly interrupted sleep.
His fingers laced themselves in the boy's hair, encircling his arms around the
boy's waist greedily, and placing his chin over the top of his head like a crow
looking for danger, "And you're ready?"
"Yes, yes, I am," the boy said, breathing with a husk against the vampire's
chest, and trying to detach himself gently before the man only pulled him in
father in a fit of possession; "Please."
"Careful, young one, do not let your teeth think for your brain," he
admonished, "Control yourself, savor your meal."
The man continued to grasp him with multiple calculations going off in his
brain, considering the probability of risk to what was his and strategically
mapping out the safest routes his young one could take in order to suitably
displace harm.
The boy pushed away, toeing the line between the alley and the cobbled streets
before the vampire asked, "Which one smells the best, little Raven?"
The moment he awoke, his consciousness was attacked with information. 3:13 am
and five seconds. Seventeen degrees Celsius; no, incorrect, still fifteen
degrees Celsius; minor causal shift in atmospheric pressure resulting in
increased bodily temperature without true change in heat.
His gums pulsed, teeth shredding through the soft tissue with such force it
caused him to flinch backwards and propel himself out of the seat. He dropped
to the floor on all fours, deliberately scaling and pausing, spitting at the
acrid taste of his own blood in his mouth and feeling his pupils dilate to
encompass his entire iris.
He was fully energized.
The very moment he had let in the first inhale of breath, the smell had almost
overwhelmed him so greatly to the point he staggered onto his back.
That scent, that scent, the subtle scent of the sepals that peeled from not-
quite-blooming roses in early May, the fragrance of cinnamon and crushed
rosemary, the most familiar smell on earth-
He knew it. He knew that smell.
He had smelt it before.
And now, it was there, ready to greet him once more with it's delicate,
sanguine taste. It was that smell of, of-
A disjointed memory went off in his brain, holding still for a moment, before
clicking to another scene.
Pale, flickering lips, and black hair, long and thin body, scrunched brows; a
fourth night and a first night, three drunk men and bright green eyes-
Him. That boy.
The vampire jumped to his feet in a flurry of activity, letting an instinctive
and guttural growl escape up out of his throat and through his mouth, pacing
forward and unlatching the window in order to get a stronger whiff of the
scent.
"Au nom de Circé," he growled, puncturing the windowsill he underneath his
hands, "Pas du tout! Merde, merde, merde!"
It wasn't possible, there was no way, this had to- it just had to be- a
different scent. This couldn't be the same boy, such a thing is not possible!
He took in another breath, cataloging new sensory information; 3:16 am and
thirty-five seconds, fifteen degrees Celsius, cold winds gathering along the
East, not likely to rain for another week- he stopped, feeling his teeth pulse
at the scent. The scent he had smelled before and taken.
It was impossible! It was entirely impossible and yet, the scent was telling
him otherwise, and the scent was never wrong.
That boy, that boy, could it be? Could he be alive? Could it be...
The Kindling.
His brain clawed at the thought, bringing the possibility to the very front of
his mind and examining it roundly. The very word threatened to tear at his
seams, just how likely was it? Such a story was mere mythology, he knew, and
yet...
The man tore straight across the other side of his study, dumping books from
off the shelves in a feverish haze, and scanning the titles to look at any
worthy information.
He let out a deep call, laced with irritation, and only a moment later a timid,
blinking servant rushed into the room.
The other man bowed deeply, smiling with a twitch, "Your Majesty," the man
said, "What is it that you require of me?"
"J'ai besoin d'un livre," the vampire muttered to himself, regarding the
servant with a deepening expression, "I need a book! A book about The Kindling,
now! Get it for me!"
The servant swallowed, taken aback by the murderous threat that trembled in the
voice of his Lord, and nodded before bowing deeply and dashing off in a frenzy.
The vampire stamped the books with the heel of his boot, pacing the room as
tried to stifle his anger and wandlessly slamming the window behind his desk
shut.
This boy, this infuriating boy, that drove him wild, that drove his mind and
his chest to the brink of insanity with that sweet scent and those wide green
eyes; that boy who had resisted his Allure more casually than a fly, that
damnable boy whose skin smelt as fresh as if it had been unclaimed, that boy
who plagued his mind and his dreams so unassumingly-
His thoughts were interrupted only moments later when the servant knocked and
entered, looking out of breath yet forcing himself to take slow exhales,
"Sire," he began, "I retrieved this from-"
He was interrupted when the vampire hastily grabbed it, flipping through the
text, "Leave."
The servant nodded, bowing, before he left the room without bothering to ask if
there was anything else his liege required.
The vampire hastily traced his eyes down through the contents, murmuring under
his breath and perusing to the section in the back of the book, entitled: 'The
Kindling Returned'
When the turning of the age occurs,
when the foes threaten to destroy Us,
One- A Kindling to the Fire- shall rise up,
Once human, then Turned
Half his kind, Half Our Kind
Scent sweeter than roses,
Bonded forever to the Turner
The Kindling will rise
The Kindling will save Us
The man bowed his head over the text, shoulders drooping, and he reminded
himself of wax dripping off a lit candle.
At first glance, it was implausible, and it certainly felt so, yet- keeping in
mind the thousands of years the Vampiric race has existed, wouldn't the
probability that the time he existed in now, or any other time for that matter,
in which a Kindling or some other fated savior would appear, be inevitable?
Probability all depended on the statistics of humans bitten per year and in
just magical Britain alone, that figure would be at very least a couple
thousand, a significant cut of the population. Would it be too preemptive to
assume at least one of the bitten would, at some point in human history,
survive it?
However, if the destiny of said human is predetermined, and the general time of
the bite also fated to happen, then that leaves no room for probability to
exist within the scenario at all. Assuming such a savior does exist, or will
exist, then it certainly wouldn't be too conclusory to state that of all eras
in Vampiric history that 'The Kindling' would be needed now.
The continuing violence going on as of late, attacks along more than just the
borders of the Czech Republic, but widespread anti-Vampiric movements occurring
in Egypt, the Balkan states, the sub-African continent, and not to mention
Britain, would warrant it.
This includes not just formation of opposition by magical humans, yet muggles
alike, who are too becoming more cognizant of the existence of vampires. True,
muggles who think vampires exist, as of this time, are thought of as crazed yet
it could be only a matter of time until full-throttle movements to decimate
vampires are launched by big non-magical governments.
While it wasn't as much as a threat in the fifteenth century when such attacks
were promoted, now it could be with the mind-boggling expansion of technology
that rivals the power of wizards themselves. Muggles have created weapons
causing mass destruction, able to threaten the lives of millions, and that
could surely destroy all of the vampire existence.
A visible shiver wracked his body at such a thought.
If there was any era in which a Kindling would arrive, it would be now, in
perhaps the most volatile and dangerous era there was as of yet. And maybe,
just maybe, he was the one to have caused the development of such a fated
Savior.
If only...
The man blinked, glancing out the window and plopping the text on his desk when
he realized that the sun was sure to rise soon.
He could think on it later.
He took a deep breath.
He would find that boy.
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
Chapter End Notes
     (A/N)
     1) Au nom de Circé: in the name of Circe...
     2) Pas du tout! Merde, merde, merde!: No way! Shit, shit, shit!
     3) J'ai besoin d'un livre: I need a book
***** Chapter 14 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing,
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
"Which one smells the best, little Raven?"
The only thing Harry could register in his head was the feeling of sweat and
pain. Big, fat droplets coated his scalp and chest and legs, coating it so
thoroughly that, the moment he awoke, the boy thought that maybe he had been
drowning.
And pain. Pain so fiery and constant that he couldn't even find the source of
it, because it ached everywhere, in every tangible region of nerve and bone and
tendon and muscle, it roasted; a violent civil war set on the shore of his
bloodstream. A body both accepting and rejecting itself.
His lids rejected the very notion of his eyes fluttering open and, when they
finally did, it was only by clasping his palms deep into his mouth that he
stifled a scream.
That was when he felt it, felt two, hard pellets in his mouth and spat them
into his open hand, squinting and feeling them and, realizing with a deep,
shuddering cough that they were his teeth.
His teeth.
Trembling fingers felt for the two parallel, empty spaces in his mouth, and
when they did, they squeezed gingerly, only to fling right back out of his
mouth.
Terrible, sharp pain. Something, something- it- something was forcing its way
out of his gums. Two hot screwdrivers forcing nails right out of his teeth.
The pain and sweat mingled into each other, their boundaries becoming
indistinguishable, until sweat felt sharp and pain smelled musky.
For the first time since he awoke, Harry took a deep breath, and that was when
he smelt it.
He sniffed, not sure of what soft scent had been wafting in the room, and
suddenly the smell of- of- decaying leaves and compost and pine trees and
Bluebells; the smell of bark right after it rained, that was so tender and soft
that he cut into it with his fingernails; of Spring just beginning to break out
through Winter; overwhelmed him.
It was so strong and tangible that he thought, if he just reached his arm out,
he would've been able to touch it, and feel thick branches, the soft pattering
of rain over his skin, and the delicate petals of a Narcissus.
And he did reach out, trying to feel what he'd imagine being the forest, to
imagine a figure above him with dark curls and wheat-yellow eyes, and was
surprised when he couldn't feel it.
So surprised that, firstly, he couldn't feel the forest and, secondly, he had
been thinking of that man, that his head was catapulted straight back into
reality and sweat and pain which he had nearly forgotten.
Despite the pain, he had longed for that scent, longed for the owner of it so
fully and so completely that Harry thought it would be a crime if nature didn't
break its own laws and bring that man to him.
He laid rigidly, not able to fathom the thought of moving out of bed and
wondering, as reason and awareness eluded him, if the scent was emanating just
on the other side of the curtain.
Yet, when he pushed the curtain downward, he was struck with an empty view of
Ron's bed right next to his own.
"Tomorrow," the boy promised to himself drowsily, fully understanding the
whispered statement at the moment yet, in the morning, not having a clue of
what he had been trying to tell himself.
He forced himself to sleep, shutting his eyes and letting the war in his body
and head fully drain him of the resources that consciousness would demand.
All the while, the smell of earth guided him.
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
Through the rest of the night, feverish and sick, the boy drifted in and out of
consciousness, never really aware whether he was awake or not or somewhere in
between in a limbo state that most Eastern philosophers spent their lives
trying to get.
All he could piece together, in those blithe and confused moments of more-
awake-than-asleep, was a ringing discomfort and limbs mingled in between sheets
and cold wetness and his mouth letting quiet profanities slip out past their
borders.
The one sensation that lived right in more-asleep-than-awake and more-awake-
than-asleep and limbo was the throbbing of his gums where two pointed teeth
were beginning to emerge.
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
When he finally woke up, it was to the sound of rustling and tired
conversation.
Ron was the first to talk, voice gritty with phlegm yet still quite boisterous,
"Do you 'spose Harry's gone to the Great Hall already?"
No one replied except for Neville, "I would think so, he's usually the one to
wake us up."
Harry hoped greatly that no one would slide open his curtains- he didn't think
he'd have the capacity to deal with doing anything other than curling into
himself even farther, let alone get up and act normal.
"Yeah," the other boy agreed, pausing, "I'm just gonna check."
He tensed, hearing footsteps approach closer and, glancing up from the sheets,
saw fingers curl around the curtain fabric and get ready to yank them open.
The boy didn't so much as breathe; hoping, praying, that somehow he'd turn
invisible without his cloak on.
And then, more footsteps from a different source, and a quick knock on the
door.
Those fingers uncurled from the curtain and without warning a- a- prefect, no,
a Head Boy, it sounded like- bounded in, breathless, "The Headmaster has got an
announcement to make, everyone report down to the Great Hall immediately."
Harry heard more rustling, probably everyone hurrying to put the rest of their
clothes on and fix their hair into a semblance of neatness, until he heard
steps out the dorm.
It was after five minutes of hearing nothing except beads of sweat roll down
his skin, that he allowed himself a deep sigh of relief, "Thank Merlin."
That was so close, was all he could think, dizzy with relief; and he should
know because he'd often had great deals of experiences that were close.
It was with great difficulty that he scooted to the left side of his bed and
opened the curtain, hissing at the daylight and feeling a far more pronounced
pain than was usual, yet finding it bearable.
He then shuffled to the the dormitory bathroom, leaning against the frame and
making sure it was dead silent before he allowed himself to drift in further.
When he leaned against the porcelain sink, patting cold water on his hot face,
his eyes drifted to the mirror and he almost couldn't believe what he had seen.
It was himself, trembling so much he almost couldn't meet his own eyes, yet
recognizing the flushed face, pale lips, and wet mat of hair.
He cupped cool sink water into his hands, vividly reminding himself of being at
the Dursleys' and hunched over a hose, and probed it over his sore gums, almost
moaning at the sensation of hot pain pooling out of them and into the water
before he allowed it to dribble down his chin and patter on the edge of the
porcelain.
The water was pink.
He cautiously lifted at his upper lip with a shivering hand, examining the
redness that was either from irritation or caked blood in his mouth, vision
sidling to the two empty spots that interrupted the rows of otherwise perfectly
intact teeth.
Weak knees almost collapsed underneath him, ears not recognizing the hiccoughs
and short, painful whines as his own until several moments later.
He was becoming It, he was becoming one of Them, what bit him.
Not human. He wasn't going to be human anymore. Or, maybe he wasn't even that
anymore. Maybe he was already it. The one thing that made him at least a little
bit normal, the one thing he shared with everybody else- gone. Just like that.
The moment he thought there wasn't enough oxygen in the bathroom, and that it
was hopeless, and that he would lose everything- he was just as suddenly
caressed by the scent.
The forest.
Okay. Okay. It's okay, really. He could never hope to be normal now, but it
wasn't all bad, was it?
Harry regarded the corpse in the mirror, wondering how he was going to get
through the day.
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
***** Chapter 15 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
Harry hunched over the sink, shivering as more droplets of water ran down his
face and not exactly understanding why because he felt unbearably hot.
Whatever he chose to do, he had to decide quickly.
The boy wondered seriously about just going back to the dorm and curling up
until he fell back asleep. It would be so simple for the first thirty minutes-
until, that is, Potions would start and he would both be causing a frantic
search for him and then a consequent month of detention for skipping class.
And when they did eventually find him, seeing as that his own bed was not a
particularly suitable hiding place, they'd also get full view of how bad he
looked. Fevered and sick and glassy eyed, not to mention with missing teeth.
But just what was the other option? What else could he do? Harry examined
himself in the mirror, blinking with a slow and dopey frown, and wondering if
he was as flushed and sweaty as he thought he looked.
Hell, the moment he opened his mouth he'd be carted off to the Infirmary; if
not St. Mungo's.
Either way they'd probably find out about him, and what was happening to him,
but at different times.
The boy put his face up towards the mirror, resting his forehead on it and
leaning his abdomen against the edge of the porcelain; taking care to inhale as
the scent of forestry lingered in the air.
Glamour charm.
Harry roused himself from against the fogged mirror, head perking up
inscrutably at the thought. Could it work? Could he really pull it off for a
whole day until he was allowed to slump back into the dorm, and no one would
notice a thing?
Surely they would, surely they'd see right through it, with the way his hands
trembled and with how labored his breathing was. If he barely had the energy to
stand then how could he find the energy to use that sort of magic and keep it
up all day?
The boy shifted himself, leaning his weight against the linoleum plastered over
the castle stones and allowing his body to slide right down to the floor.
You've used glamour charms in even worse conditions than this, Harry thought,
red face darkening in what he thought was either shame or horror or a
combination of both.
It was true, over the Summer he'd always acquire a multiplicity of bruises from
a number of sources he'd rather not disclose. In public, anyways.
He'd had some experience and, not to mention, talent at the particular charm;
it wouldn't really be too much to use it now when he really needed it, right?
No one ever suspected a thing when he had used it before.
Harry coughed.
Well, yes, they did, but they never could see any proof and then a week would
go by, maybe two, and they'd all just forget about it! They always did.
It could work, it worked on countless scrapes he'd had before, it worked when
he was on the brink of exhaustion; so, why not now?
With that in mind, he dug through his robes to find his wand and, scrutinizing
the color in his face, cast it before moving to his forehead and touching up
the weak areas.
The most tricky area to glamour was his teeth; he'd only ever had experience
working with skin, but after some careful charming of the gums they looked
almost just like normal.
When he was finally done, he emerged from out the common room and slunk down to
the Great Hall; vaguely remembering hearing something about an important
announcement.
It must've been pretty important, considering that nothing like having a Head
Boy go from dorm to dorm has ever happened before just to make sure everyone
heard it.
The closer he approached, the more silent he realized the Great Hall was from
beyond the thick oak doors, and only Dumbledore's voice rang out to him, making
a few words intelligible; "Be watchful... professors will be looking out..."
For some reason, it made his skin itch, yet he quickly dismissed the sensation
when students began streaming out from the Great Hall and heading to their
first class.
Whatever it was, it probably had to do with an intruder in the castle; he'd
made a similar speech when he thought Sirius was here in third year. Harry
couldn't help but feel a pervading sense of wrongness.
The boy teetered on the stairs uncomfortably, looking over the heads of the
crowd for Ron and Hermione, but stopped when he started feeling exhaustion pool
in his legs and decided to just make it to Potions.
Once he had made it, he situated himself the nearest to the back that he could
get and Neville quickly took the seat next to him, scratching at his ear and
looking down at the stained desk, "You wouldn't mind being partners today,
Harry?"
"It's no problem," he said, quickly adding, "Do you know Dumbledore's
announcement was?"
Neville blinked, "So you weren't there."
"I slept in and no one woke me up."
"Wait," there was a pause, and Neville's entire face scrunched as he started
fiddling with the quill on his desk, "Then how did you know there was one in
the first place?"
Harry stilled, lying smoothly, "I heard people talking about it on the way to
class."
The other boy lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, "Word is that
Dumbledore thinks a dark creature-"
A deep, bass voice cut through all the conversation in the room, "Silence!"
The boy couldn't help the inquisitive look that remained on his face long after
his head snapped to the front of the room, making Snape comment wryly on his
lack of brains, and with that the class was shoved into the regular motions.
The professor gave a short lecture, stressing certain pages in the book and
ending with the usual remark: "Only a dunderhead could possibly mess up this
potion," throwing a look towards either Neville or Harry himself, and lastly
motioning everyone into action.
The boy tried to stir himself from his seat, and felt his vision whirl until he
sat back down again, "Neville, do you think you could get the ingredients?"
He nodded, scurrying to the other end of the room and toting his book in hand,
taking so long that everyone had sat back down except for Neville as he
continually took things and put them back.
By this time, Hermione had spotted Harry and dug an elbow into Ron's side,
pointing and giving the boy a questioning look.
"I slept in too late," he mouthed, shrugging his shoulders with a fake
sheepishness.
Ron grinned widely, "Sorry."
When Neville got back, the boy immediately set to putting the burner under the
cauldron, and they began.
Neville readily took the role of telling Harry what to add and at what times,
uncomfortably checking and rechecking the cauldron at regular intervals.
Meanwhile, Harry was resigned to dicing Monkshood with hands whose trembling
grew more pronounced with each task, and by the end of the lesson he almost
missed the cauldron entirely when trying to pour in finely powdered Daisy root.
The boy shivered at the chill from underneath his robes.
"Hey, are you feeling alright?"
"Yeah."
It was much too cold in the Dungeons, and it was a relief when he was dismissed
to Transfiguration.
He was, of course, flanked by Ron and Hermione the whole way- who both
chattered about one thing or another he had no interest in hearing at the
moment, yet nodded and laughed in the right times.
Every now and again Hermione would give him a look that almost made him think
she could see through his glamour entirely, which continued not only when they
were traversing from floor to floor but right all through McGonagall's class.
It only managed to tire him more.
The class somehow seemed even more long and unbearable than Potions as he tried
to stifle the shaking throughout the entire lesson. This was while not only
Hermione but the Professor would throw him looks. They were much too observant
for their own good, he thought.
Halfway through the class, the lecture had stopped and the students were
instructed to practice phase transitions from a liquid to a solid and back
again.
Finally able to speak with Hermione, Harry leaned in and asked, "Hey, what was
Dumbledore's announcement about?"
She stood straighter, readying her lecture mode, "Really, Harry, you shouldn't
be skipping breakfast; my mum told me ever since I was little that if you don't
then you won't perform well!" she crossed her arms, "Anyways, Dumbledore thinks
that, well..."
"What?"
"The Headmaster thinks a dark creature of some sort entered the school last
night, and is telling everyone to be cautious and keep an eye out," she
informed, pursing her lips and giving him a long look, "And not go looking for
it."
A very bad feeling grew in Harry's chest; a gaping, black hole, "What do you
mean? How does he even know?"
Hermione tapped at her chin, glancing sideways as if to remember some forgotten
detail, "He said that the wards around Hogwarts had alarmed him that something
dark had just appeared in the school," she said, "Which makes no sense because
there are anti-apparition wards placed by the Headmaster himself."
A dark creature? How? He wanted to ask more questions but McGonagall had come
round to their side of the room, so he turned dutifully to his work.
Holding his wand and casting the spell at various angles, mindlessly trying to
get it to work, he considered more of what she told him.
A dark creature. What kind was it, anyways? And how could it just 'appear' in
the school? Dumbledore's a strong wizard, his anti-apparition wards couldn't be
broken by just any creature.
Appeared... just like that. Poof.
It must be something that was already inside the school to begin with...
something that...
Harry's wand clattered to the floor, the echo of wood against stone inaudible
to everyone else except for himself.
Clack-
It was the echo of dawning horror; as loud as a jet engine exploding in his
head and just as scalding.
Oh, Merlin. No.
He was the dark creature that had appeared in the school last night.
***** Chapter 16 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
I'm a dark creature, Harry thought, I must be.
He supposed it should have been obvious before; he had known he was changing
for a long time now. And yet, it wasn't. It was an insidious, niggling little
piece of information that hadn't even occurred to him until now.
His wand rocked along the stone ground, rolling with what seemed a deliberate
slowness until it burrowed into the little mortar indent; resigning itself to a
motionless that mimicked Harry's own.
How hilarious. How darkly ironic. How twisted. Gryffindor's 'golden boy', the
Boy-Who-Lived, the 'Savior', the 'Chosen One' to fight for the light- Harry
Potter- was a dark creature.
The boy who has to fight against the epitome of dark, Voldemort, now dark
himself. How could fate possibly find a way to make the situation more comical?
It was Hogwarts' wards that had recognized him, that were trying to out him to
the Headmaster in order to protect the other students.
Hogwarts thinks that he would hurt other people, other students, and so does
Dumbledore.
And Hogwarts was home.
The one place where he knew he belonged, the one place where he could feel
safe- was turned against him.
How laughable.
Harry's chest tightened.
Harry wondered what the Headmaster would do if he knew what Harry was. Would he
kick the boy out of the school? Would he send Aurors to hunt him down?
What would the students do? His friends?
Just how deep did his darkness go to set off the wards; was it brimming just
past the skin, laced in the muscles, the tendons, the nerves- was it all in his
head, or was it in his very blood?
Harry's breathing faltered, the air itself starting to shiver and solidify in
his lungs, and as suddenly as he looked at the stones beneath his feet, he was
just as quickly struck with the unfamiliarity of it.
The secret magic that tingled all throughout the castle pervaded him, the
stained glass resembling nothing he had seen before, and he felt the memories
decay. He couldn't tell whether it was himself or if the castle was avoiding
him, somehow. Either way, he felt like a foreigner among the Amish.
He stifled the lump him throat, swallowing thickly and bending down to pick up
his wand, casting spells fruitlessly because his mind was elsewhere.
He had barely registered it when the class was dismissed and it was only when
Hermione elbowed at his side that he started packing up his things, lurching
into the hallway.
The moment he got out of the door, Hermione took a moment to look at his face,
"Harry, are you feeling alright?" she asked, narrowing her eyes, "You look
flushed!"
Harry stopped, nibbling on the edge of his lower lip, "Hm? Really? I feel
fine!"
The glamour must be wearing off.
If they saw his teeth...
He needed to reapply it, quickly.
"I'll see you guys in the Great Hall! I need to talk to Flitwick about, my, the
essay he assigned."
As he started traversing up the steps, he felt a tug at his robes, and was met
with the girl's defiant glare, "That's it! You're going to the Infirmary!"
The boy tightened under her searching look, feeling twitchy, "What? Why?"
Hermione gripped even harder at his robes, dragging him down several steps back
to her level, "You- you run away to Diagon Alley, without a word, and you don't
tell us why, you're not eating right, you always look like you stayed up all
hours of the night and... and now you, you don't look okay, you never look
okay, Harry!" she blinked rapidly, voice a rasp, "You look really sick!"
The boy threw Ron a pleading look, and he just scratched the back of his neck,
resigned, "She's right, you know."
His voice was a low, irritated whisper, "What are you trying to say to me?"
Hermione clenched and unclenched her fist into Harry's robes, balling them up
in her hands, and looking down at the staircase as if to gather strength before
looking back up, "Oh come on, you must know, everyone's thinking it! I've
always thought it, but you're just so- you're just so bloody," Ron let out a
quiet gasp, "So bloody stubborn that you won't tell anyone about what those
people do to you!"
"I haven't a clue what you're talking about," Harry said.
"We're your friends," she said.
"Let me go."
"I want to make sure you're okay first."
This was bad. This was very bad. If she took Harry to the Infirmary then
Pomfrey would find out and tell Dumbledore. And Dumbledore would- he didn't
know what Dumbledore would do, "I'll go to the Infirmary on one condition."
She threw Ron a private look, the two having a silent conversation, "Okay."
"That you don't go with me there."
Hermione took a breath through flaring nostrils, "And you promise you'll go?
You swear?"
The boy nodded, feeling guilt turn his stomach.
The girl looked at her hands still balled up in Harry's robes and, after a few
moments, withdrew them, "Okay, we trust you," she said, "We'll see you later."
The two receded to the Great Hall, sometimes giving him looks as if to see
whether he'd disappeared or not, and once they had turned a corner, the boy
rushed to the nearest bathroom.
When he looked in the mirror, he immediately set to work, touching up the
flushed skin and working with the glamoured teeth again to make them more solid
and real looking. It was strange how quickly the spell was fading; in his
earlier experience it always lasted at least a full day.
Of course, he was more exhausted now than when he usually cast the spell.
Looking much better than when he had walked in, Harry made his way to the Great
Hall to greet his friends, sitting next to them at an empty spot.
"Pomfrey gave me a," he paused, "Pepper-Up Potion; it helped a lot, really," he
said to their questioning looks.
Hermione pursed her lips out of habit, "Well, you do look a lot better, I
suppose..."
When the tension dissipated, Ron started chattering loudly about the Chudley
Cannons, remarking that they were sure to win the next game against some
Scottish team or another because, sure, they had recently been having a bad
streak yet the new beater was really starting to warm up to his position and-
He stopped listening at that, thinking maybe in a little while things would go
back to normal, and this thought marked the rest of his day passing without
incident.
He sat in Flitwick's class dutifully, mastering the art of looking as if he
were actually listening, and letting his mind wander for the rest of the lesson
before scuttling to History with Binns'; finally heading to the common room,
finishing the work he absolutely had to before using the excuse that Pomfrey
said it would be best if he got some sleep to get rid of his "nasty cold".
As he flopped into his four poster bed, pulling the curtains shut with one hand
and feeling inexplicably happier than he had all day he was suddenly reminded
that he had the rest of the week to churn through before it would be the brief,
weekend reprieve.
Four days. He could get through four days, right? That was nothing.
He groaned, remembering that Fred and George thought it absolutely crucial he
take advantage of the Hogsmeade weekend in order to meet with him to test their
products for a new shop they wanted to start- Wizarding Weasley's Wheezes-
Weezard Wheezing Weasel's- Wheezes' Weasley's Wizarding-
He almost laughed, the line of consciousness blurring over the more he dozed;
that was Saturday, at least. Saturday was a long time away.
The Scent lulled him to sleep.
***** Chapter 17 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing,
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
He was going to kill that boy when he found him.
It would surely be what that little runt would deserve, distracting him from
what he should ultimately be focusing on. He should've been providing his
undisclosed attention to the warbling between the Balkan states; he should've
been reflecting on the inclusion of some new bureaucrat in Magical Germany who
was redoubling the efforts to force 'dark creatures' out of the school systems!
He should've been passing out decrees, rallying his people, or whatever he was
supposed to be doing.
How sad, it wasn't even close to how his thoughts wandered these days. Too
often he'd find himself browsing through a confidential report, too quickly
lose his guise of concentration, and then swerve to the window behind him,
staring out at the stars like a damned Romantic!
It was utterly unseemly. Not only of himself, but of that... that scent. That
rich scent that fermented like grapes in the air, that scent that trailed after
him like a lost puppy wherever he went, that scent that drove him mad with
need.
These actions were not decorous, not proper, nor was it fair to his people, for
a ruler such as himself to be doing such. And yet, despite these protestations
that plodded around in the back of his head, he caught himself doing the very
same thing this night without so much as a spare thought to the untouched
papers on his desk.
It was an early Monday evening, roughly 11:21 pm, with a slight chill
permeating the room- twelve degrees celsius. It was an especially dark night,
he thought, even though he had no such basis for thinking that with any sense
of rationality.
And, of course, ever faithful, was the scent that dogged his breaths.
That boy.
He'd have to find him, he knew, and yet he was struck dumbly with the question
of how.
The scent was growing stronger. It was crazing him, making him think- dare he
admit- strangely human things. Not to mention, feel, very human things.
Feelings he'd rather not admit. Feelings someone such as himself should not
have the vaguest clue even existed. Feelings of need where such acute desire
had never existed before, feelings of extreme impatience where before he would
have waited dutifully for hundreds of years, feelings of other types that he
was too prideful to admit. Even to himself.
These things, these thoughts and distractions, should've been entirely foreign
to him. But they weren't, and that- that- is why he would have to wring that
boy's pretty neck when he found him. Perhaps only figuratively but one can
always dream.
First, though, the vampire would have to find him.
But where?
He could be anywhere by now, and the man would be damned if he decided to
follow some scent trail like a dog.
That boy could be within the farthest corners of the world by now. Absolutely
anywhere.
The man swallowed at the tightness in his throat, letting his hands course
roughly through his hair and his back hunched almost imperceptibly.
Think; think!
If that boy could be from some distant plain, then why would he traverse all
the way to Diagon Alley where the man had found him?
It is plausible he could be staying with relatives he had known yet,
considering that he had been trailing completely alone in Knockturn Alley-
almost certainly underage-, wouldn't they have gone with him?
The small village is nothing but shops and Inns for those travelling or as of
yet displaced from their common residence, and only a small few actually
decided to settle there.
The only worth that the shabby location has is to supply robes and school
supplies, within the less shady portions of Diagon Alley, that is.
School supplies.
The vampire's head perked up, his elbows moseying back to their respective
armrests.
A boy that young must still have a magical education. Right? He didn't look
poor, nor was he homeless ruffian, surely he went to a school.
The most proximal school to Diagon Alley would be Hogwarts. The other ones,
Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, were, he supposed, entirely dismissible considering
that the boy had a British accent and didn't have the burly Northern look to
him.
Not from what he remembered. And he didn't forget anything. Especially about
the boy.
His mind wandered, hands toying with the rings on his fingers and sliding
against the chair, and he wondered quite seriously if that boy had a name to
him. Maybe something like Adrian or Austin- common British boy names of this
time period- yet he quickly dismissed them because such names sounded much too
harsh for that soft face; he'd never quite liked 'A' names, either. He didn't
much like Chris, too generic, or religious names either- like Seth or Donovan.
Maybe a Cecil, that was a suitable moniker, or Elijah; Damian would suit his
black hair. Vince, Hudson, Harvey or even Ha-
The vampire blinked, growling gutturally, and wondering why he had been
thinking of such useless things.
He couldn't afford to waste his time like this; he had to find the boy and...
and... well, he wasn't sure what yet, but he knew that once he was taken care
of then things would go back to normal!
Hogwarts- the word repeated in his brain.
It was a small chance, yet the only lead he had.
Yet the wards around it, the wards around it were so strong there was no way he
could possibly penetrate them without maiming himself. Perhaps fatally.
It was too risky and likely impossible, not to mention, the man didn't even
fully know if the boy was there!
The boy would have to come out of those wards on his owns, assuming he was
there.
How many months away until the school got out? There was no way he could wait
so long.
At the thought he felt a deep, painful weight in his chest- yet another common,
foreign sensation he had been feeling recently. He couldn't place what it was,
yet avoided it as much as he possibly could.
The feeling manifested itself into anger, a feeling infinitely more comforting
and familiar to him; how dare that- that boy do this to him. Make him this
irrational and sappy being he no longer knew! How dare that damn boy reduce him
into some sort of warbling mess, that could barely concentrate! Who would have
the gall to do this to him except for some incompetent, idiotically brazen
human?
How dare a mere human would make him want. Want for anything when he had
everything and that human had nothing- absolutely nothing- compared to him.
He pulled himself together, breathing sharply through flared nostrils.
Hogwarts. That boy could be there, right now, breathing and sleeping or eating
and doing homework. Just a few hundred miles away with only stone and wards
keeping him from the man.
The only thing he remembered about the damned school was that students were
almost banned from going to Hogsmeade a few years ago because-
The vampire jolted fully from his seat so fast as if to be nearly invisible.
That's it.
That's his chance-
He let out a warning growl, making five servants immediately enter his study,
bowing lowly.
"Your Grace," the first one said, stepping forward and still bent low to the
ground, "What is it that you require?"
"Get me all the information you can on Hogwarts, about when the students are
allowed to visit Hogsmeade this year," he ordered, "It is imperative."
Five low bows and the servants skated out of the room.
A small chance.
Small, but there.
HPhpHpHPhpHP
***** Chapter 18 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing,
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHPhpHP
The rest of the week passed by just as slowly and painfully as Harry had
anticipated; his actions revolving around going to class, turning in a slew of
substandard work, and then clocking in very early in the evening to finally go
to sleep, ignoring Ron's protests about "one final game of Wizarding Chess".
Fifth year had finally started in what Professor McGonagall called, "the full
swing of things", and as if a button had been pressed, every teacher had the
simultaneous sentiment that the students were naturally ready for an
exponentially heavier load of work.
It was not made better by the persistent pain and exhaustion that would start,
like a closed capsule, burrowed at the back of the base of his skull and, would
release upon consciousness and cloud his entire body in an aching haze.
Each day, in and out, his capacity to both hold up the glamours and a
conversation was trickling by like water out of a strainer- leaving him, by the
time he was finally allowed to drop into bed, bereft and practically half-dead.
He supposed his friends could see he was looking worse every day; sometimes
they'd give him these long looks and, without asking, take his books away from
him with the simple explanation, "Let me carry that for you."
At first, it was only Ron and Hermione, but now, Neville and Luna had taken
apart in the game too, telling him wryly that: "Oh, it's so cold in here!" and
following it up with, "Maybe you'd like a heating charm Harry?", that or Luna
would blink at him and say, "Wrackspurts like stained glass. You should stay
away from stained glass, Harry."
The boy would take it with barely a nod, and it would happen so often that he
scarcely recognized when it did. He supposed that was the scariest thing for
them: that he was not his regular stubborn self when he ought to be ripping his
books back from their hands, and saying, "No thanks, I'm fine."
When the days passed, he'd cross it off in his head, imaging he was locked in
his bedroom at Privet Drive and scratching little tick marks on the walls that
would count off the days until he could leave.
All he had to do was make it the weekend, right?
That was what he kept telling himself that, somehow, by the weekend, everyone
would get better. Everything would be okay. The pain would stop, the exhaustion
would stop, and he could pretend to be normal again.
He didn't know how he knew it, but he did, and he could scarcely imagine the
idea that it wouldn't stop.
When the pain stopped, then the changes would stop. The pounding in the bite on
his neck would stop, the Scent would stop getting stronger and maybe even go
away, and his new teeth- well, he didn't know what they looked like at the
moment- wouldn't be ripping through his gums.
Even more than the pain, Harry thought that the changes were the most scary
things to imagine. The pain was nothing but a mere side effect of him changing;
the pounding in his bite signified his transformation, the new teeth were for-
he gulped- for his recently acquired tastes, and the Scent-
The Scent was for-
He didn't know what it's purpose was yet. It wasn't a regular smell, it wasn't
the smell of Aunt Petunia's pungent and disgustingly fruity perfume, because it
wouldn't go away. And he wouldn't get used to it; it was not something that
ever escaped his notice because it was as if every passing moment he was
smelling it for the first time.
He could only hope that it would go away too.
All in all, the week was a slow, dull, and painful affair, and he almost
couldn't believe the surreality of it when Friday afternoon passed. Part of him
thought it would never happen.
Needless to say, he spent the latter part of the day half-dozing in the common
room and engaging in a game of Exploding Snap with Ron.
He had stayed in the common room long past after everyone had left, tired of
spending half the night staring at red drawn curtains and decided instead to
look at the empty fireplace from his position on the couch cushions. Not
necessarily because it was interesting to look at, yet more so because that's
where his eyes rested.
Harry leaned forward, staring more deeply into the ash pit that didn't even
have a stack of wood in it yet because Autumn had only just barely made its
mark in the school year. He wondered if he would be able to get out of going to
Hogsmeade tomorrow.
Part of him said that he could easily do it; he'd just make some sort of excuse
about a detention or 'prior obligations' and, even if his friends thought he
was lying, they'd realize he needed the rest and go without him.
He really could use the sleep.
But...
That was the other part of his head; the other side of him that began every
sentence with "but", only existing just because a part of himself liked the
feeling of being contrary.
Most of the time, it was a lingering voice that he barely recognized, yet at
the moment it seemed especially strong.
But, he felt like he should go, for some reason, despite how tired he was. He
couldn't even really tell himself why he had to or why it would be the better
decision than having a cosy Saturday in his bed.
Besides, wouldn't Fred and George be pretty disappointed if he didn't show up?
They've been meaning to talk to him for some time.
Something about going to Hogsmeade just seemed like the right choice to make,
and so he did. He dozed in the common room for another thirty minutes, wavering
in and out of consciousness, before slumping to the dorm and formally falling
asleep- being awoken in the morning by Ron, who tugged him out of bed, and only
taking the time to put on fresh robes and a pair of shoes before waddling
unceremoniously outside.
He then met up with Hermione, Fred and George, and the five of them took off-
chattering all the way about stopping at Zonko's, or how Honeydukes was
obviously one of the many priorities, and how they couldn't miss out on a hot
glass of butterbeer.
But first, they'd have to stop at a nice little diner- what Harry would later
realize was Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shop- and chat about super important business
plans.
At that point, he had regretted going, yet the contrary part of him still
maintained that something was special about going to Hogsmeade this Saturday.
And so the four of them bustled into the bright-pink, saccharin-sweet tea shop
to take a quiet booth in the very back, which was unsurprisingly a semi-
circular booth with a heart-shaped back. Everything, of course, was covered in
frills and little doilies that, prior to then, he didn't know was possible or
even ethical to make so 'ultra-girly', in Hermione's words.
Ron dropped his voice to a whisper when one of the waitresses strutted past,
"Why are we here-"
The waitress spun back to them, fiddling with a number of pink pens and a small
notepad, "What would everybody like?"
Hermione was the first to order, looking at the menu with a grimace, and
saying, "Oh-La-La Lovely Lavender, please."
"I'll have the same thing," Ron said, followed by Fred and George who couldn't
resist ordering 'Hot Cup of Love' with completely straight faces, and finally
Harry who settled for 'Kissy Kamomile'.
As she walked away, Fred leaned in and said, "This is the only place where we
can find some privacy-"
"Don't want anyone stealing our ideas," George finished, "Which are absolutely
brilliant."
Hermione just rolled her eyes, leaning back into the seat, and Ron asked them
about their so-called genius inventions. The two of them, of course, went into
a long narrative about some Puking Pastilles or Fever Pills- or-
Either way, Harry wasn't really interested; the more his mind wandered off, and
the more the bright pink of the tea shop imprinted itself on his cornea, the
more uncomfortable he became.
At first he had thought it had something to do with the seating, that the
leather seat was uncomfortable and coarse and that it was poking uncomfortably
into his back. Then, when the tea arrived, he thought maybe it was the honey
and sugar that was making him feel nauseous and achy.
He twist and arch his back, considering a combination of positions that would
make him feel better or relieve the pressure that was building up in his bones.
As the topic moseyed back onto the shop they were planning on having, either in
Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley, and Ron made a sarcastic remark of where they were
going to get the money, Harry continued to feel worse.
Well, maybe it was because it was too warm in here, he thought, or maybe the
smell of fat pastries were making him queasy.
He shouldn't have come here-
The contrary part of his mind denied that and, as suddenly as it did, the boy
felt a pervading chill shoot up his spine. The unexpected chill almost made him
jump up from his seat, but it was roundly followed with a fevered rush in his
head, what he thought must be a vague chill, and a pounding in his neck that,
for some reason, reminded him of that Night-
As if he had completely forgotten some crucial fact, Harry felt scenes and
memories assault his eyes, washing out the glaring pink and replacing it with
blackness-
There was a warm hand resisting on the small of his back, goading him forward
with an unrivalled gentleness and replacing the chill of the evening with a
constant warmth.
His eyes looked up, traced along that superior jawline and looked into yellow
cast eyes; how strangely beautiful.
And then- a brimming cruelty, a cruelty he was comfortable with-
An alley.
"Hey, what do you think-"
He was pushed into an alley and the man had traced along his neck with a soft
thumb, pushing; Harry felt his blood pulse frantically through his body, as if
it were trying to escape.
The moon glinted on exposed teeth-
Searing pain.
"Harry? Ha-arry?" Fred called out, and suddenly the pink returned, along with
an arm waving in front of his face.
The boy blinked, confused and shivering, "Huh?"
"What do you think? Do you like the concept?"
He had no idea what they were talking about, yet nodded nonetheless, "Yeah, it
sounds great."
His neck pounded so hard it felt like his whole body was moving with the force
of it.
And just as suddenly as Fred turned to Hermione, the boy was struck was The
Scent just as quickly as the memories-
He sniffed the air, overwhelmed with the power of it, and with or without his
own volition he immediately stood, "I'm, uh, I need to go to the bathroom."
He left before he could see their inquisitive looks, and spun out the door of
the tea shop, scrambling like a madman when The Scent became stronger.
He weaved through people, sometimes forcefully pulling apart large crowds,
making them tumble over or give him some harsh looks, but he paid no attention
to it, passing so many thin shops and gray stones and cobbled streets and
crooked avenues he didn't know where he was.
But he knew where he was going.
The force of the pounding bite drummed through his neck and into his head,
becoming a long, drawing and ricocheting drum beat that felt like it was going
to split his body in half-
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
Feet hit stone, then dirt, little tufts of grass and flowers, stone again-
Thump, Thump, Thump-
It was at once terribly painful and yet exciting, both exhausting and yet more
invigorating than anything he had ever felt- or smelled- or heard- or tasted-
Sharp teeth ripped through gums and glamours, two long sharp points, and he
kept bolting down the streets.
The Scent, the Scent was just right around the corner...!
He felt something hook around his waist- an arm, maybe- and just as abruptly he
was pulled into the claustrophobic space between two unidentified buildings,
scratching and hissing and all at once a tangle of limbs that were his own and
another's-
He opened his eyes to find himself blinking at a pair of yellow irises, a thin
nose, pale lips and dark curly hair and as soon as he registered who it was,
those lips were colliding into his own.
Hands explored skin, pinching, pressing, feeling, sliding and grasping so hard
as to leave bruises, grasping everywhere and nowhere all at once until he
wasn't sure whose hands were touching him and he could have sworn they were so
close that they were a singular entity-
Still, it wasn't close enough.
The Scent.
The Scent.
This was the owner of The Scent.
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
***** Chapter 19 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing
See the end of the chapter for more notes
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
Harry's eyes fluttered open and then closed, his need for the other man
outweighing his need to breathe, and when those lips pulled away from his- for
a mere second- only then, had he allowed himself a ragged and strained gulp for
air.
It was like he was drowning, that man's body covering his own, their proximity
making both of them swelter under the heat, dripping with sweat and threads of
saliva; yet those hands still grabbed for each other blindly, undeterred,
pulling robes and shirts and pants and doing everything in their capacity to
reach skin.
He couldn't think, he couldn't breathe and yet he liked it- liked the way their
teeth nipped at each other's lips and gums and tongues, liked the way their
nails scratched at each other and that, when he whined at a particularly harsh
slash, the other man took care to gingerly rub at the sore skin.
And-Oh, Merlin- that taste, the sweetest taste on earth- the taste of their
sweat mingling, of hot skin and stewing shoulder blades under lips, it made
Harry groan.
The man broke away, leaving feathery kisses along the outer rim of his mouth-
gently exploring, the boy arching his neck at the contact when those lips
trailed over his neck and licked passionately at the bite-
-No.
"Stop..." Harry moaned, still blithely leaning into the man's advances yet
trying to think through the haze of heat and love, "Wait, wait-"
The vampire stilled along his neck, feeling the pounding of blood right
underneath the thin flesh, and those lips slowly retracted until the boy met
yellow eyes for the second time.
They stared at each other for a long time, faces flushed and sweaty, an
unbroken thread of saliva webbed between their chins, and only Harry's strained
breathing filled the silence.
As the heat trickled out of the alley, the boy pushed away violently, writhing
against the hands placed firmly along his waist, "This is wrong; this is so
wrong!" his throat was a rasp, terrified green eyes looking up, "You- you're
that man who... you..."
"Yes," the vampire said, making Harry shiver in equal parts pleasure and fear,
"I bit you, if that's what you were wondering."
"Why are you here? How? What, I..." the boy paused, catching his breath and
pushing his back against the opposite wall as far as he could, "I don't even
know your name!"
"Auguste," he smirked, wiping the saliva from Harry's chin with his thumb and
ignoring the flinch, "Like the emperor."
The boy struggled, trying but failing to detach those arms from him, and he
couldn't tell whether it was the vampires' own strength that kept him pinned or
his own secret unwillingness to run away from the elder, "This- you attacked
me, you- this isn't right. And you're, you're, a man- not a girl," he
shuddered, "Let me go!"
"You're not going anywhere," he said calmly, gripping more firmly around the
boy.
Harry tried to propel himself into the street, arching against strong arms,
"Let- let me-"
He only clamped tighter, drawing the boy in even more and, whispering under his
breath, "Why I don't just snap your neck, I'll never know..." and saying even
louder, "I will tell you everything you want to know if you just stay still."
"I don't need to know anything, especially not from you!" the boy muttered in
violent irritation.
At this, the man drew Harry into his chest, fully encircling those strong arms
around the boy, soft mouth nibbling gingerly on his ear before he started to
speak, "Go ahead, tell me that you're not curious. Tell me you don't feel it
like I feel it," his voice was a lusty and private whisper, "Tell me you can't
feel it- the closeness- that you can't feel my breath over your skin, that you
can't feel my hands on your back, and that you can't smell it- that scent- and
you can't taste it when your tongue grazes my own-"
Harry's breathing hitched as one hand slithered from his back and into his
trousers, not even struggling to get through the boxers. It toyed with his
hips, dipping in and out, slithering even more until it circled around his
inner thigh- and suddenly, almost unexpectedly, started stroking up and down
his- his shaft; a thumb pertly grazing over the tip.
"Rien que de penser à toi m'émoustille," the vampire whispered in his left ear;
the boy having no clue what he was saying, yet the words sounding so aroused
and sibilant he felt a wet stickiness already forming on the other man's hand.
Those hands toyed with the stickiness, drawing it over his entire length,
coating him in until he started rocking to the touches.
As soon as he felt the final, hot surge of pleasure brewing in his gut, and he
was certain he could repress it no longer, that hand retracted from out of his
trousers, making the boy whine unintentionally, "Please."
"You will be a good boy and listen, yes?" the vampire asked.
Harry gave a brief, wavering nod.
"Yes, I bit you that night," the man grasped the boy even harder into his
chest, waiting for the struggling to pass, "But you were- you can scarcely
comprehend how good you smelled, it would not even pass through your human
brain that you were so inconceivably desirable, and yet, so attainable- that
night you walked into Knockturn, how could I resist such a delicious dish that
was mere feet from me?"
Harry said nothing to this.
"You wouldn't stop teasing me with that rich, delicate scent," he said, "I was,
understandably, angry- and when I saw those men handle what was mine..."
"No one owns me."
"I found you, I had a right to you," the man explained simply, "At least in my
society- regardless, you drove me insane, and I was hungry and that was it."
Harry remained silent, feeling the vampire's heartbeat against his own chest.
"But something happened, something expected," he said further, "I presume you
know what?"
The boy breathed the smell of dark, leafy canopies, "I lived."
"Precisely," there was a pause, "And that's why we're here."
"How did you find me?"
"Through deductive reasoning," he said, "I remembered you as young, with a
British accent- what other reason would you have for being in Diagon Alley than
going for school supplies, even if you did go looking in the wrong places? I
presumed, quite simply, that you attended Hogwarts and then it was only a
matter of catching you while you weren't under the protection of the wards."
The boy remained evermore silent, letting the man think his reasoning was
right, "Who are you?"
The vampire blinked, until he realized that the boy meant what his personage
was rather than a name, "I am a Lord of sorts, I suppose, much like the human
notion of a King-" he continued at the boy's gasp, "But instead of ruling over
land, I rule over the entire species," he breathed, "Now it is your turn."
"I'm Harry," the boy said, shouting at the man's look, "Harry! Just Harry; I
don't know, I go to school and, well, I learn, and I have friends and I'm
normal."
Auguste quirked his eyebrows, "Alright, Just Harry, Just is an odd first name
but I suppose-"
"No, no, no," he laughed despite the surreality of the situation, "My first
name is Harry."
Silence ensued, until the boy spoke again, "What am I?"
"You are just like me," the elder man said.
A tremble, "You mean I'm-"
"Yes," a nod, "You are a vampire."
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
Chapter End Notes
     Notes:
     1) Rien que de penser à toi m'émoustille, = 'Just thinking about you
     tantalizes me.' (very rough, not literal).
***** Chapter 20 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing,
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
"Yes," a nod, "You are a vampire."
It was funny how those words hit him. It was funny how, sandwiched in between
the wall and the other vampire, those words still shocked him.
He didn't even know why, but he supposed the laughter that seemed to swell up
along with the terrible pit opening up in the middle of his chest was due to
the irony of his shock. He had known it for a long time, known ever since he'd
visited Flourish and Blotts- somewhere inside of himself he had always known.
And yet, he was blinking in shock, blinking at the words he'd always known were
there yet couldn't believe were said.
Maybe it was because he'd spent so long swallowing that statement from out of
his throat and into the deepest recesses of himself; he'd internalized it for
so long that actually hearing the words- especially from one other than
himself- left him reeling. Or maybe it was because he hadn't wanted to believe,
because he was spending the longest time trying to deny that he was anything
other than normal; this train of thought, of course, had occurred long before
even being bitten.
Harry felt oddly empty to have that piece of him, that piece that always
screamed 'normal!' at him, just gone.
At the moment, he couldn't tell whether it was a good thing or not, and in an
effort to block out the thoughts and the sounds from the adjoining street, he
burrowed himself into the elder man's chest; stifling his breath and his tears.
A hesitant hand patted his head, interlocking fingers into his hair and
ruffling; Harry supposed he must be mad to be taking comfort in the one who
started it all in the first place. But for some reason, he couldn't help but
trust the elder, trust that he wouldn't be hurt by the other vampire.
How odd.
How very, very odd.
Stifling the burning in his eyes, the boy hiccuped, sucking in a trembling
breath of air from the man's shirt, and the sound was followed by silence for a
while, until the other said: "Shh, shh."
They stayed like that for a while, gently swaying, and while his body was
comfortably on the ground and in another's arms, his head was lingering on the
edge of a deadly precipice.
His ears perked at the sound of his name right out on the street, "Harry!", and
he pulled away from the man, leaning his ear pointedly out of the alley.
"No time for Hide and Seek, Harold!"
Obviously Fred and George.
He pulled more away from Auguste, looking hesitantly up at him and down at the
street where he could make out the sound of approaching footsteps, "I need to
go, I'll..."
The man only stared at him with a daft look on his face, tugging more at the
boy's shirt, "What are you talking about?"
Harry blinked, looking more neutrally at the other and detaching himself from
the arms hanging limply over his waist and edging to the street, explaining it
as if it were the most simple concept in the world: "My friends are looking for
me, I don't want them to worry."
There was drawn silence, Auguste regarding him carefully and pausing as his
mouth opened as if he was trying to say something exceedingly difficult for
him, "What if you get hurt?"
Harry didn't stifle the dawning confusing from his face, "I'll be back soon, I
swear," he said, "I can sneak out of Hogwarts tonight and we'll meet right back
here-"
The vampire grabbed his wrist firmly, a possessive gleam in his eyes, "Are you
mad or just insolent?"
"What?"
"Those are humans," he spat, growling.
Harry said nothing to that statement, "Listen, let's just meet back here and
we'll work it out, okay?"
When the boy started tugging again, Auguste tightened, loosened his grip, and
then retightened, the two looking at each other, until he loosened his hands
again, "And you swear this to me?"
"Yes," Harry said, adding at the unsure look on the vampire's face, one that he
was sure never passed over the man's expression, "I will be alright."
He let go, the boy poking his head into the street and looking at a pacing
Hermione, tense Fred and George, as well as Ron, and when he was sure none of
them were looking his direction, he stepped out into the street.
He wavered back and forth, wondering on how to approach them, until Hermione
looked up from the cobble stone and blinked at him; making Harry wave at his
friends when, one by one, they ran up to him.
Hermione was the first to make it to him, her strides long and purposeful,
until, completely unexpectedly, there was a stinging, sharp pain on his right
cheek.
It almost made his ears ring hollow, not able to decipher what the girl was
screaming at him, until he realized with a perturbed blink that she had just
slapped him.
"You... you... you're unbelievable, Potter!"
Harry could only stare at her, rubbing at his cheek, and being reminded clearly
of once in third year when she hit Malfoy.
Fred and George quickly caught up, half jogging, with Ron trailing behind and
wondering if he should say something.
The girl stared at him for a long while, chest heaving up and down with a
strong effort for air, yet she only breathed through flared nostrils.
He swallowed, "When I said I was going to the bathroom," and he paused,
wondering, yet quickly dismissing, the idea of telling them what the truth was,
"There were two people snogging in the men's room at Puddifoot's; I went
looking for a different one, is all."
"What on earth took you so long?"
The boy rubbed at the back of his neck, staring at the ground, "The bathroom I
was going to use- well, me and the cashier got into a fight; he said I could
only use it if I bought something, so... yeah."
The girl took a small step backwards, "Okay," she said, lips pursing and mouth
moving with great effort, "I was wrong, it's just- you've been disappearing too
much this year. I shouldn't have hit you."
Harry examined even more closely the cobbled stones underneath his feet, not
wanting to hear yet again the explanation of what Grimmauld Place was like
without him- Sirius ready to break down, from what'd he heard, and Mrs. Weasley
just as likely to snap. Even Remus, the most cool-headed man he'd ever known,
was caught pacing and nibbling at the edges of his nails. He already felt
guilty enough, and it made him think that maybe he should've just told them
where he was all along back in the Summer.
The guilt was not made better by hearing the mumbled apology from Hermione and
the admission that she was "wrong", because he knew it was very hard for her to
say that and because he was equally aware that the whole thing was his fault.
Fred stepped forward, clapping a burly hand on his shoulder, "Well, I suppose
we should be heading back," he sighed dramatically, "And I was so looking
forward to a hot butterbeer, my dear Harry."
"I guess it's all your fault," George added, fake-weeping into his own hands
and shrugging wryly, "Harold, you always ruin everything."
He was thankful that the twins couldn't see his darkening expression, the frown
and terrible shuddering of his chest; they were right. He was always messed
things up- whether it was by pulling Begonias from the garden rather than
weeds, or by making everyone worry about him.
He heard Vernon's voice ring in his head, 'Stupid boy!'.
He mustered a fake smile, heaving his shoulders in fake laughter along with
everybody else, and, starting to feel nauseous from what he thought was the
sun, the five of them pooled back into Hogwarts only thirty minutes later.
When he got there, he played Exploding Snap with Ron, worked up a strained
conversation with a still-cool Hermione, and worked on some essays in an effort
to distract himself.
It was later that he slumped in the common room and to the bathroom, starting
to brush his teeth that when he opened his mouth he noticed his canines-
The toothbrush clattered to the sink, toothpaste still frothing in his mouth
even after he spat it out; at first it hadn't been noticeable, but when he
looked more closely it seemed obvious-
His new teeth had grown in.
He swallowed thickly, grimacing at the taste of badly flavored mint, and
examined the very sharp edges of his upper canines. It was with a shudder that
he remembered talking and smiling with his friends- even without his glamour on
at all- showing proudly off the new teeth.
The new teeth that were meant for-
That were meant for-
He felt queasy. He would never do that- never- not to another person. He'd
rather starve.
They weren't that noticeable, his friends mustn't have noticed at all- or they
would mention something to him. In fact, they were the same size as his last
teeth, just as pronounced, yet clearly not of the same shape.
He picked up his toothbrush, calmly leaving the bathroom and slipping into the
dorm, closing the curtains around his four poster bed.
It took awhile for all the others to step into bed and even longer than that
for them to stop talking and fall asleep, but Harry was thankful for the time
to process what had happened.
Soon after that, there was the sound of steady breathing and soft snores,
except for Ron, who always snored loudly, and it was only then that he allowed
himself to quietly sneak out of bed and down stairs, heading from there to the
corridors with the Marauder's map in hand and stuffing himself through a secret
painting passage.
As he shuffled through the dank tunnel to Hogsmeade, he started thinking.
Some part of him believed that none of it had actually occurred, that it was
all in his head.
But why on earth should that mean it's not real?
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
***** Chapter 21 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing, violence themes
See the end of the chapter for more notes
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
Lifting up a wooden slab that brushed just over his head, Harry peered out of
the crack, examining the quiet, dusty little wooden floor.
He readjusted the hood over his head, it was only when he was entirely sure
that he couldn't hear anything that he finally allowed himself to crawl out of
the secret passage and into the silent Honeydukes' back room.
It was just as he had remembered it the last time he had been there in third
year- with cardboard boxes strewn over the room and caked in a thick layer of
dust, dank air permeating throughout the room. Probably, Harry supposed,
because the small rectangular window on the left wall was never opened.
The boy leaned forward, taking delicate and paranoid steps that still managed
to upset the rotted wood, and he tensed automatically whenever it produced a
rather loud creak; he would feel much less vulnerable if he still had his
invisibility cloak. Which was still with the Dursleys, if not destroyed
already.
It made him shudder to think that he'd forgotten his things; every material
possession that he had ever valued was in that trunk. He'd never been brave
enough to sneak back into Vernon's home, anyways, so he supposed thinking about
it was useless anyways.
And now, he was left without his cloak.
The boy gulped, fiddling with his robes and looking at the worn wood beneath
his feet for only a moment before looking back up, stepping forward
determinedly.
Nonetheless, he wasn't here to think about those things. Or a photo album, for
that matter.
When he made it to the adjoining door that led out into the main candy aisles,
he put his ear up to it, stifling the sound of breathing by sniffing through
his nose and instantly, without even listening at all, he knew. There was no
one at the shop.
He didn't know how, or why he'd had figured it out so suddenly, yet he just
knew and that was all there was to it. And with that knowledge came new
information that sent his head spinning when it all streamed into his
consciousness at once: 11:44 pm and thirty-four, no, fifty-seven seconds;
thirteen degrees celsius, with a cold wind beginning to blow along the East
approximately one-hundred kilometers, three- maybe four- sleeping occupants in
a flat just one acre away, one of which would serve as a suitable-
The boy gasped, pivoting backwards, and clutched at his head- wondering
momentarily if there was an intruder in his own mind.
When the strange new sensation passed, he spun around, looking in all
directions, yet the lot was silent all except for himself.
That was odd.
He decided to think about it later.
Harry opened the door and nimbly trailed through the shop, still cautious, and
then out into the street where he allowed himself to be louder.
There was no one else he could see that was outside; it was very strange, yet
he supposed that since the whole village was constructed because of the influx
of students, that would make sense. Still, it was a tad eerie.
He rounded a few corners, lurking over the edges of buildings, and took rights
which he later thought must've been wrong; there were instances he had niggling
doubts about where he was going and, furthermore, what he was doing.
And yet, the only moments when he paused, an inscrutable look or hesitation on
his face, was when he wasn't quite sure where he was going.
He knew he had to meet this man here, even though he was dangerous, even though
his intentions could surely be very bad, even though he could only be using
Harry; it wasn't like he really had a choice in the matter, or a choice in his
own head.
The same head that denied any strong feelings for the vampire.
The boy paced, looking at alleys and passageways which were either too narrow
or too wide or not the right kind of stone to be the one that he was in; other
than that, they all looked the same.
He stifled the panic that blared off in his brain and pushed it to the back;
repressing thoughts that, maybe, Auguste was waiting for him and disappointed
he hasn't shown up, will assume Harry lied to him, and the two would never ever
see each other again; or maybe, without Auguste, the boy would be open to
attacks, like on that one night-
He exhaled slowly. No, none of that would happen.
He closed his eyes; at this rate, he wouldn't find anything either.
When he opened his eyes again, a few seconds later, he had been startled by two
strong arms tugging around his waist, dragging him into his chest.
He thrashed, screaming, until the unknown attacker put his hand on Harry's
mouth.
Oh no, no, no, no, no.
"Shush," the man said, "It's Auguste."
He stopped reacting violently, fists still clenched and wavering at his chest;
he didn't speak, heavy breathing filling the silence.
The vampire rested his chin on the top of Harry's head, sniffing, and gripping
even tighter around the boy's waist, "I almost thought you had run away, daft
boy."
They stayed like that for many minutes, revelling in the sensation of being
close to each other; at least Harry felt like that, he couldn't speak for the
other man. But he could hope.
Auguste brought his lips to the boy's ear, "Let us leave this place."
Harry shivered, "To where?"
"To my palace."
Harry turned around to face the vampire, pushing against his chest, "You have a
palace?"
He blinked, regarding the boy, "Well, of course; I am a ruler. Where else would
I live?"
"I just didn't expect that," he nibbled on his inner lip, "How do we get
there?"
"Like this," the man said, pulling a locket from out under his clothing and
whispering something, until there was a rush of color and sound and then a few
moments later, finally, Harry's eyes rushed to meet the ground.
The moment his feet hit tile, Harry's knees buckled despite the grip the other
man had on him, and he felt nausea well up in his throat not only from the
unexpected whirring motion, but also from particularly bad memories with
Portkeys that he'd rather not repeat.
When the man let go of him, hoping he'd find his balance, the world only
whirred even more quickly, almost making him topple over completely.
A stray hand patted on his back, pulling him forcefully into a standing
position by tugging roughly at his collar.
When Harry's vision and nausea quelled, he was able to look more deliberately
at the room; finding himself closely examining the rich reds and subtle oak
accents of the floor, a lush carpet which expanded all over until it met with
walls so thick with paint that it looked creamy and velvety to the touch.
Defensive wooden shelves, what he thought must've been mahogany, lined the
entirety of the far right wall, packed with various tomes that either looked
very old or relatively new; the shelves shot straight up to a very, very tall
ceiling.
The rest of the furniture were varying shades of dark brown, oaker woods;
including two thick, cream arm chairs around a circular coffee table, a persian
rug, and a tall desk cluttered with papers and misplaced quills.
The man, still tugging on his collar, plopped him in an armchair, "Sit, you are
not to move until I return; do you understand?"
He nodded, sinking into the furniture, "Where are you going?"
"That is none of your concern," he said, "I will return shortly."
He left out the door and padded down the hall, and Harry sat obediently for
only ten minutes before his curiosity about the room made him get up and start
looking around.
It looked very rich and elegant, the whole room a little too dark and Gothic
for Harry's taste; he would've preferred more and taller windows which would
have really let the light in. He smiled wryly when he remembered the man was a
vampire.
Taking very quiet steps, Harry was met with the desk and, leaning over, he soon
found he was unable to not touch anything; he started rifling through the
papers, catching trace words of 'uprising' and 'confidential'. When he was
done, he organized them so they looked much like they did before- undisturbed-
and set his eyes on the attached drawers of the desk.
They were bare of any personal collections or photographs, only housing a few
papers; not even a jotted note or a journal existed.
Harry leered even more over his surroundings, edging to the shelves and inching
out very large tomes, not even for the curiosity of academic pursuit, yet more
so for the childish interest of seeing just how many pages some of the bigger
ones had.
It was a naturally quiet place; a big study, he supposed. If it were only the
study, than just how grand was the rest of the palace?
He could scarcely imagine it; any room in Hogwarts would be hard pressed to
look this grand, and it was probably pretty small compared to the rest of the
castle, or palace, or Chateau- whatever this place was.
Itching to leave the room, Harry edged even closer to the door, turning the
knob slowly and with a calculated deliberation, peaking out into a very wide
and robust looking corridor that seemed to expand for miles.
The walls were a very warm tone that the boy couldn't make out in the lighting,
lined with a trail of large, raucous oil paintings; the walls were as tall as
towering arcades, near the top a lingering triforium and stained glass hooded
with an overarching vaulted ceiling.
It was grand and magnificent, and the boy couldn't help moving out of the
doorway, pacing along the marble tiling, and eyeing everything he could
possibly see.
Halfway down the corridor, he noticed the vague whisperings and portraits that
pointed at him suspiciously; he blinked at a very loud, old one, who was
fingering his scraggly, long beard and eyeing him distastefully, "Boy," it
said, lips raised in obvious contempt, "Just who are you?"
"I'm Harry," he blinked, stuttering, "Pleased to meet you."
"And your family name?"
The boy narrowed his eyes, wondering if he should say it, "Potter."
The elder man in the painting leaned back, examined him with oily black eyes
and looked as if he were deep in thought. In only a moment, he leaned to the
painting to the right of him, poking his head in the other portrait, "I don't
recognize that surname, dear Gertrud, he is not of a proper lineage."
She snarled at him, "A thing like that, in the manor? Preposterous! Dare I say,
our great-great-great grandchild actually let a creature such as this inside
the castle walls?"
Harry opened and closed his mouth, wondering if he should say something, yet
inched along through the hall instead, ignoring the couple.
The noise of the portraits grew louder and more distrustful of him until a
younger portrait burst out, in all the fighting, "Intruder! Intruder in the
castle!"
Harry quickened his pace past the portraits, yet more and more saw it fit to
join in the roar, chanting, like members of a witch-hunt: "Intruder! Intruder!"
He spun the other direction and, panicked, starting bolting back to the study
and then his head collided into chest armor, making it whir, and him falter
backwards.
He stared up at ten separate figures, all decked in the same metal outfit,
looking a lot like Medieval knights. They all pointed wands directly at his
head and he gulped.
"Intruder, you are encroaching upon His Highness' territory! What do you have
to say for yourself?"
Harry, confused and dizzy, stood, reactively putting his hands to his chest
when they all took another step closer; "Halt! Move again and you will be
killed!"
"Speak."
He quaked, a stream of liquid which he guessed was blood rolling down the side
of his cheek; not daring to shuffle even slightly, "I'm not an intruder! I'm
here with Auguste-"
A red jet of light collided with his chest, making the boy screech in pain and
almost topple over if not for his fear of being killed; he hadn't moved an
inch, what had he done?
Low growls filled his ears, "You dare speak His name! You dare! Treason!"
His heart thumped against his ribs, threatening to break them and tear from his
own chest, "I swear, I'm not lying to you!"
Ten different wands pointed even more steady to his head and, without notice,
the two guards on his left and right each took an arm and wrestled him through
the corridor, the rest of them marching by at his sides.
He wriggled, hissing, and yet another jet of red light was sent barreling into
his chest, making him roar in searing pain, "If you do not go along obediently
and silently then your punishment will be exponentially worse!"
The boy felt ready to pass out, or to expel the contents of his stomach
violently; the world was breaking out of its own axis and tumbling through
space with reckless abandon.
The moment he had stumbled, not able to take the forceful and steady pace of
the guards, two wands, one hovering around his right ear, the other on his
left, were already brimming with red magic even before they even cast it.
Right then, eyes painfully wide and a reflected crimson, he saw a figure
approach quickly through the corridor and-distantly- he heard a, "Stop!"
followed by a feral sounding, "Let him go!"
The guards immediately dropped their wands and his arms without question,
sending the earth plummeting downward through the universe and him straight to
the ground.
He heard the metallic clink of metal-covered knees on marble, "But My Grace,
this..."
The man sounded more angry than Harry could scarcely imagine, and he couldn't
tell if the man was mad at him for leaving the study or the guards for handling
him so roughly, "You are not permitted to touch him; to lay a finger on him, do
you understand?"
He heard a unanimous, "Yes, m'Lord."
"Leave," he had said and, right as the the sound of metal clinking died down
and he was tugged up to his feet by a strong arm, the world washed away in a
haze of black.
When he awoke again, it was buried under massive covers and satin, and the
moment he breathed his mind was assaulted with information much like how it was
only hours before; 4:30 am and fifty-five seconds, thirteen degrees celsius,
hot wind caused by inversion pressure ready to pass over the basin-
It made him blink into consciousness, confused, and wondering where he was.
A steady breath wafted over his neck and chest, warmth along his back and
entangled in his legs making him feel hot.
He rolled, pushing against the warmth and sat up, looking at the figure beside
him who had likely been awake for some time, "Auguste?"
The man said nothing to this, regarding him balefully, and stepped off of the
bed, turned away from him so Harry could only see the back of his head; "I
presume you're not going to stay for long, that you are going back to your
little school and human friends soon?"
Harry rubbed at his scalp, feeling a gauzy material over his head.
The man had taken the time to heal him.
"Are you mad?"
The vampire growled, folding his arms, "You disobeyed me when I strictly
ordered you to sit; idiot boy, worthless ruffian," his whole body looked taut,
"Why I am putting up with you, a damned human, is something I will never
understand, to be forced to deal with such blatant incompetence and
intemperance-"
Harry covered his ears, "I would never have come if I thought I'd be told I'm
useless; and yes, I want to leave to my little school and little human
friends."
The man snarled, "You are not to continue doing such grievous and unmistakably
idiotic things again, lest you get yourself killed," he took a deep breath with
his chest, pulling a locket over his head and swinging it like a pendulum over
Harry's eyes, "If you are going to go back to that school, I would like for you
to return here some evenings."
"You would like for me to come here?" Harry asked, incredulous, "Really, you
won't force me?
"It's clear that structure and orders do not work for you," Auguste said, as if
articulating something very hard for him to admit, "So I would enjoy it if you
returned; It will not work in the Hogwarts' wards."
"What's in it for me?"
Auguste's lips twitched as if he were laughing at his own joke, "Firstly, I'd
be able to further monitor that head wound of yours; secondly, you'd get
company of your own kind, and, thirdly," he stressed, leaning in closer to the
boy, "You should not try to kid yourself by denying our own attractions."
"I'm- I'm not into men," Harry said with a blush that betrayed his true
feelings, scrunching the sheets with his hands, "And are you admitting that you
like me?"
Auguste breathed through his nose, giving him a lingering look that made the
boy shudder, "Harry, isn't it obvious that there is something which connects
the both of us, which transcends physical boundaries?"
The boy said nothing.
"Isn't it obvious, can't you feel it- the threads that are attaching two
kindred souls?" Auguste mumbled, visibly frowning at the nauseatingly romantic
quality of his words, "Somehow, someway, we are bonded to each other."
Harry breathed, saying nothing for the moment, "I should go now."
Auguste nodded, "The phrase is Soif," the man said, "Stress the S, like a hiss;
hold it tightly and do not take the necklace off."
Harry nodded, "I'll see you soon," he mumbled, before, grasping tightly the
locket around his neck, said, "Soif."
Appearing back at Hogsmeade, he sneaked into the still-closed Honeydukes and
through the secret passage, back into Hogwarts and into his own dorm room to
sleep before classes started.
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
Chapter End Notes
     Notes:
     1) Soif: Thirst (in French), pronounced Sw-off
***** Chapter 22 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing,
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
Days had passed. Five days, to be exact. Five days had passed and still Harry
hadn't gone back to see Auguste. One hundred and twenty hours.
Five days of seeing nothing but the same castle grounds, walls, and windows he
was long familiar with and never the other one he knew of. Five days of classes
and friends and professors, five days without robust portraits, palace guards
and Auguste.
He felt much more different than he felt all those nights ago, and whenever he
thought about it had always surprised him it was only last Saturday night.
That's all it was that had separated him from the other man, five days, and it
made all the difference.
The ache and the exhaustion was coming back, streaming from the base of his
neck to every nerve, tendon, muscle, and fibre. He could feel it, the pain
pivoting through him, and it was more than just the aches but the persistent
loneliness-
A loneliness that, even surrounded by all his friends and fellow Gryffindors,
was always there. There was a piece of himself missing, another half that was
yet to found. A hole in his very being that he tried to fill with routine,
class, and Hogwarts, which before had always worked, yet for some reason, not
now.
He was changing. He was a stranger in his very own skin.
In those long, withdrawn moments he'd spend in class, whether it be in Potions,
or Transfiguration, or even the hated DADA, he'd find himself in the perpetual
haze of vague sadness, apathy, and physical pain. And at those times, he'd
allow himself pull the locket out from under his robes and graze the cold metal
with his thumb.
It always made him feel a little bit better, a little more alert. And he didn't
know why.
Then, when he was able to finally think more clearly than he could only minutes
before, he'd promptly stuff the locket back under his heavy set of robes, and
redden in shame. He shouldn't be thinking about that man, Auguste; he shouldn't
ever see him again.
It was a miracle that he was able to leave the palace last time, but surely the
locket was just a trap, a trap that was supposed to make him trust the vampire.
The Dursleys' had done much the same thing when he was younger; after a
particularly bad day, Vernon would lead him out of his cupboard- more soft and
affectionate than ever- and give him a piece of bread, and Harry would almost
believe that the man loved him, and then, right then, when the man would smile
at him and he'd give a wide smile back- that was when Vernon would shove him
back in the cupboard. Those moments were always more painful than a punch, or a
kick, or even a sneer; he'd make sure something like that never happened again.
Vernon did that to Harry because he was stuck with him, yet the boy knew that
Auguste would do that to him for much, much darker purposes. With Vernon he'd
always known what was coming, yet with the vampire, it was a mystery, and
surely he'd have the capability to do a lot worse.
The boy didn't know what idiotic whim entered his head when he actually went
back that night, went back because he trusted this man who he didn't even know;
a man who he had encountered only three times. Not to mention, two of those
times, he'd been seriously injured.
If he could, he would never see that vampire again.
He ignored the overwhelming pang in his chest at the thought.
Having any sort of relation with someone like that- someone with that much
power and who was a dark creature did not bode well.
Harry rubbed at his neck, he supposed he was also a dark creature, too, but he
wasn't going to act on any sort of blood lust, at very least. Never. Nor was he
going to associate with anyone that did. Simple as that.
But...
Was the man really so sure Harry would return that he gave him the free will to
both leave and come back? So certain of the inevitability that, despite his
freedom, the boy would find it within himself to return?
He'd given Harry this locket. He'd given him the power to leave which, even
when Vernon was acting very nicely, was never an option that he'd had before.
Auguste was a very calculated, paranoid and, not to mention, controlling man,
would he really take that sort of risk if he wanted to toy with Harry's
emotions that much?
This was how the boy's thoughts fluctuated each day, at one moment being
entirely certain of himself yet at another moment questioning the veracity of
his beliefs; it was dizzying and confusing. Did he trust the man or not? He was
never quite sure.
It would be the safest route not to trust the vampire, and yet that option made
him physically sick. He didn't know how but it was like when he was with that
man, he almost felt okay. And when he was away, the aches came back.
Harry was continually shifting his priorities from safety to comfort and he
wondered if, just maybe, he could visit briefly with the man and nothing would
happen.
Yet he knew if he did, the more he went, the more likely it was that each time
he'd be captured, or trapped, or used in ways he'd rather not think about.
Each evening he presented himself with a question, pulling the locket from out
of his robes and watching the brass hinges gleam in fused light: Was it worth
the risk?
Then, each evening, he'd shudder, dropping the locket back to his chest yet
never moving or even thinking of taking it off, crawling in bed and trying to
ignore the ache in his bones by asking inane questions like:
How many hours had it been since he'd touched the man's skin?
Or, what was the last thing he said to him?
It made him grimace and swallow thickly, trying to stifle such thoughts yet
finding himself unable to.
He couldn't risk it. He couldn't see that vampire again.
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
Five days. Five completely infuriating days. Five days with an innumerable
amount of quills broken, five times the regular amount of pacing and loathable
anticipation for the same event that continued to not happen.
Five days of sitting in the same desk, tapping fingers on the dark wood and
waiting for that familiar pop; but nothing.
That boy hadn't come back.
That damn boy.
Wasn't he feeling the same effects as the man? Considering how young he was,
the effects would be even more pronounced and yet, the boy evaded him! Like it
was nothing more than getting rid of a pesky fly!
Incorrigible brat.
The vampire took a deep breath; he'd return. It was inevitable. The effects of
whatever bond they had would necessitate close physical contact in regular
intervals, as well as emotional proximity.
How unfortunate, the vampire had never planned to grow close to anybody. It
horrified him to think that his well being was directly reliant on another
individual.
And his whole kingdom, if the boy was the so-called Kindling.
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
On the sixth day, Harry perhaps felt the most remote he'd ever felt in his
life. And he couldn't tell why.
The only comparable times in his life were during the darkest, longest stretch
of hours in his cupboard, at night when it was pitch black and dusty and he
couldn't fall asleep in the cramped space. All he could hear was the sound of
scuttling in the walls which he supposed were spiders or rats.
In Hogwarts, he had never felt this way, even in second year and mildly at the
very beginning of this year-fifth year- when he had been outcasted by everyone
except for his friends.
Yet now, there was an unbridgeable gap between him and everyone else, and he
found it scarcely possible to make it through the day if not for the fact that
he didn't have to talk to anyone during class.
He was distant from even himself; regions of his mind felt tired and stretched
like a small square of butter over toast.
He was an empty shell.
He had nothing to offer anymore, not to himself, or anyone.
The day passed in a distant haze, colors seeming more dull than he had
remembered them before, people he had known turning into unrecognizable blurs.
When he finally allowed himself to drop off into bed, pulling the curtains
around him and either ignoring or not realizing the hushed whispers that
started right as he left the common room, he pulled the locket into his hands.
He examined the hinges and the cold metal like he had often done; for the first
time, he pushed on the side opposite of the hinges, watching it open with a
soft, metallic clink. He blinked stupidly, he had not thought of that before.
The inside was barren of small pictures or notes and, dissatisfied, Harry
almost closed it again until he noticed faded letters.
Cecile Augustus Beliveau
Beloved Mother
1671-1980
He swallowed the thick lump forming in his throat. That was a year before his
mum died.
The engraved letters were faded and hard to make out, it was clear that the
locket was old and someone had probably often stroked the words for comfort.
Her middle name- Augustus- it was...
Harry suddenly remembered something.
"Auguste," the man had said, "Like the emperor."
This was Auguste's mum.
The boy regarded the letters more reverently and sadly; why on earth would the
man entrust him with something like this? Something this special?
If Harry still had his mum's photo album, he'd never hand it over to anybody.
Unless...
Unless that person meant something to him.
Why hand this over to someone you were only going to hurt?
The boy thought for a long while, waiting impatiently for all of his dorm mates
to go to bed, before he rose from his own and skated through the halls.
Evading, somehow, both Filch and his damned cat just in time to make it to the
portrait.
He had made his decision.
He needed to see Auguste.
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
***** Chapter 23 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing, SEXUAL THEEEEEMES
See the end of the chapter for more notes
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
Harry clasped the cold brass tightly in his hands, staving off the late evening
chill by pulling his robes tighter over himself- approximately twelve degrees
Celsius, a cold wind was passing over the basin, as his mind liked to tell
himself.
He breathed, feeling the rusticated edges of the hinges, and listening to the
tiny mechanisms creak and groan under the weight of his thumb.
He had no idea what he'd meet when he went back there- back to Auguste- but he
knew that, shivering like mad in the dead cold of Hogsmeade and aching like
hell, it must be better than whatever he was feeling right now.
He didn't know if he was crazy or, somehow, staring up at the sky like looking
into an infinite blank canvas, he was meant to find the words on the inside of
the locket.
Either way, it was time to go.
One, two, three, "Soif."
Instantly he recognized the familiar whirling, the dizziness and terrible
nausea that went hand in hand with the blurring and narrow squeezing; all of
which he was, unfortunately, accustomed to.
The place on the other side of the world he was heading to opened up like a
big, black massive pit- wafting up with the most recognizable of reds he had
ever known- before he popped into the unidentified room and toppled on the
floor from a foot up in the air.
When he opened his eyes again, only a moment later, it was when the back of his
collar was being tugged forcefully upwards, sending him sprawling ineffectively
the other direction, only to be pulled right back.
"You," a terrible growl that made him shudder, "You are late."
Oh, Merlin.
The man was angry with him.
A part of his mind screamed at him, hearing another growl in his ear; run. Run
before you're trapped forever, he's could do anything to you-
This was it, Harry was sure. The life he had known was over and now he was
trapped, the man was going to do unspeakable things to him-
He couldn't make himself move, staring ahead at the cream wall closest to him;
the man was breathing on his neck from right behind him.
He could feel the man pausing, the briefest flicker of hesitation in his
breathing, and that was right when his strong hand pulled on his collar again,
making the boy collide into the man's chest.
Lithely and more gently than Harry could have expected, those arms wrapped
around his own torso. It took him a moment to realize the constant ache which
had been plaguing him was ebbing away and, against all belief, the loneliness
was dissipating like grains of sand out of loose hands.
An irritated huff, "Idiot."
Harry chuckled, fingering the locket still under his thumb's grip, "Yeah."
They stayed like that for a while and, as the minutes passed on, they sunk to
the plush carpet with Harry stuck in the awkward position of resting on the
man's lap and placing his head against the man's chest. He didn't know if he
really cared or not, especially when Auguste's casually draped arms started
meticulously rubbing his back.
The elder vampire traced the boy's hairline with his own eyes, "This
relationship that we have..."
Harry cringed at the word, "I wouldn't call it that."
Auguste shifted slightly, "The denotation of relationship is the dynamic
between two or more individuals with an interpersonal or even a fleeting
interaction between each other," he started again, more coolly, "In this case,
and in the way that you personally define the term, I would say, yes, we do
have a relationship. That you cannot deny."
Harry remained quiet, reddening silently and burrowing himself even more firmly
into the vampire's tailored clothing.
"As I was stating; this relationship that we have," he stressed, "This
relationship we have, is, certainly, undeniably- I suppose- not normal."
"What is it, then?"
Auguste switched from stroking Harry's back to lightly curling the boy's hair,
taking in a nasally breath and admitting through gritted teeth, "I don't know,"
he said, adding quickly, "But it is to my understanding that what we do have
goes deeper than a personal connection; you remember what I said the last time
you were here?"
Harry remembered quite clearly, perhaps more clearly than he would've wanted-
"Harry, isn't it obvious that there is something which connects the both of us,
which transcends physical boundaries?"
"Somehow, someway, we are bonded to each other."
He didn't like that word- bonded. It skeeved him out, "I don't even know who
you are."
Auguste gave him a lingering look, pausing as if wondering whether or not he
should say something, "If it's any consolation to you, then maybe it'd be best
if I admitted that there's not anyone I know more than you."
At that admission, Harry grasped more tightly into the man, giving him a strong
hug as humanly strong as possible, "I know the feeling."
He himself had been very much acquainted with knowing a broom cupboard more
than an actual person.
Auguste patted him, casually shifting him back into the position they were in
before, "I don't need your pity, Harry."
"More like empathy," the boy muttered to himself, not realizing that the
vampire had heard and given him a particularly suspicious look. The man decided
he'd tuck that information away for later.
Harry fingered the locket, feeling the brass chain links underneath his hands,
and in the smallest whisper, he said, "Auguste, I can't possibly keep this."
When he heard no reply, the boy turned up to watch, watching the man's eyes
narrow.
"I know what it says, inside, I mean," He looked down at the locket more
reverently than before, "It's too much, it's too precious."
Auguste yet again said nothing, diverting the boy's attempts to hand him back
the locket by brusquely slashing it away and finally, when Harry was
unattaching it from his neck, whopping the boy's hands away and reclinking it.
At that point, seeing the man's growing irritation, he decided to keep it. For
now.
They stayed like that for another hour, feeling like one solitary being, and
Harry realized he felt more comfortable with the ensuing silence then he'd had
with anyone ever before. It was unnerving.
It was later that Auguste had lifted himself off of the carpet, rousing the boy
from half-consciousness and tugging him back up by the collar- something Harry
was infinitely irritated by. He was then slinging one arm across his waist when
they were both off of the floor.
"Would you like to see the rest of the castle?" the man asked.
His head perked up at the thought and he nodded eagerly, "Is anyone going to-
to freak out? Like last time with the guards and everything?"
"No," he said, face darkening, "It will be fine. They will treat you with the
proper deference that you deserve, being near my side."
Harry nodded, allowing himself to be led through broad corridors that stretched
over his head just as tall and as infinitely as he had remembered, zipping past
him for what seemed like miles more than his feet could possibly walk.
He wondered how Auguste could manage to navigate the halls, if he ever,
embarrassed enough, had to ask a house elf or a servant or something like that,
for directions. Harry certainly would.
Who could have so many rooms and figure out what to do with them? Just how many
offices did "His Majesty" have?
Sure enough, Auguste had introduced him to rich, splendorous receiving rooms,
one very broad ballroom, and a dining area with a table that was so long Harry
knew without his glasses he wouldn't be able to make out the plush chair clear
on the other side of the table. The dining room branched off into other,
smaller 'cubiculi' as Auguste called them, and the man led him back through the
corridors again- showing a private, more personal dining room, living room
dotted with more tapestries and cozy chaises than Harry could count, dazzling
offices and cabinet rooms, a kitchen (which, not surprisingly, made Harry
wonder why there'd need to be one for a vampire), and many other off-shooting
rooms. More notably, he'd been taken down to the cellars.
Through the experience in the humid room he learned that Auguste very much
liked his wines, pointing out to obscure French ones like- oh, what was it?- a
savin-yon blanck? He then went on into some long, rambling lecture about how
important it was to use manganese-rich soil, with only a little bit of nitrogen
and a dash of zinc, and how 'one must make the grapes suffer' and 'grapes that
don't swelter under the heat of the French sun, grapes that are soaked to the
marrow, are weak- and they produce weak wine not worthy under any jurisdiction
to be called wine in the first place'.
Harry wasn't really listening, yet was embarrassed to note that anytime the
wavering, soft French notes hovered over the brink of Augustes' mouth, he would
get a strong jolt of pleasure shooting straight to his crotch.
The man, thankfully enough, had not yet noticed, until he'd given the boy a
half-lidded glance and said some saying that Harry didn't know- "La vie est
trop courte pour boire du mauvais vin,"- and made the boy shiver visibly.
At that, the man instantly recognized his lust, and chose to act on it.
The two leaned into each other after that, Auguste touching his cheek and
tracing kisses along his jawline, the man pushing him up against some wine
cabinet or another and started murmuring the names of more wines into his ears,
"Chennin Blanc,"- a playful lick- "Riesling,"- a nip along his neck-, "Pinot
Blanc."
Harry would, reddening in a mixture of pure pleasure and the deepest of shame,
try in vain to hold back a throaty groan.
The room was damp and very dark, he could scarcely make out where he began and
Auguste ended, their figures like two soft palettes brushing against each
other; sometimes the red glare of a wine or a brief flicker of light outlining
their forms that were otherwise indistinct.
He wouldn't admit it, but he loved the humidity of it, much like how it had
been with the two of them stuffed in the corner of the alley, forced against
each other.
Harry rocked into the man, letting one moan froth out of his throat- the sound
guttural and deeply pleasured.
Auguste brushed the collar of the boy's robe off of his shoulder, unlatching
the tie and letting it drape off of his body and onto the ground; hasty,
dominant hands pulling his sweater over his head, not even fumbling with the
wool, eagerly rushing to the tie, and then buttons.
One by one, their tongues lashing against each other, battling or dancing or
doing something that Harry concluded was terribly confusing, the man unbuttoned
his shirt, sliding a coarse hand over his chest, playfully caressing his
nipples and making him emit another breathy moan. And soon those lips would let
go of his own-saliva dotting his face and currently puffy lips- they would
stroke over his collarbone and a tongue would latch over one of his nipples
much like how his hands did, ringing around the edges and undoing more buttons.
Finally, the buttons were done, and Auguste let the shirt gather to the ground
much like how his robes did. The two worked to the gritty concrete, Harry
shoved against his clothes dotting the floor; the man worked lower- admiring
the one, big silvery button restraining the boy's aching erection under his
slacks.
The man toyed with it, unable to contain his excitement, and quickly unlatched
it, dropping Harry's trousers down to his knees. He eyed the plaid boxers,
sliding lower down Harry who was spread out on the ground, and nipped at them
with his teeth.
Sensually, Auguste slid the boxers off with his teeth, watching as the boy's
length sprung out in the humid air, so hard that he could've sworn it was
pulsating.
How delicious.
The man stroked at it with the back of his hand, watching Harry writhe in
delight and whimper with need. He positioned his mouth directly above the head,
letting a small, delicate string of saliva drip from his tongue and pool onto
the boy's length.
Harry dug his fingers onto the concrete, wailing, "A-Auguste, please."
A small drop tilted over the edge of his head, drizzling down the sides and
making him whimper at the barest touch.
The pink tongue flickered like a devilish snake, sneaking so close yet never
touching him, teasing and nipping and much too playful for Harry's liking.
"Please-"
As soon as he started saying this, body preparing for yet another wracking
groan, the door to the wine cellar rebounded open, a temperate voice
exclaiming, "My Grace-"
Harry covered his parts with the clothing scattered on the ground immediately
at the sound of the voice.
Auguste, on the other hand, gave out a long, drawling growl that Harry had
never heard before; it was a very angry, instinctual sound that sent the boy's
teeth on edge.
The voice suddenly stopped, the man- likely a servant, judging by what he was
wearing- shielded his eyes and bent low to the ruddy concrete, "My Lord, I ask
for your deepest, deepest apologies, I never meant to-"
Far from waving the servant away, the man's normally yellow cast eyes turned a
metallic, familiar shade of oxidized blood. He closed in on Harry, wrapping
protective arms around the boy's back and hoisting him upward, making sure to
keep as much of his body possible covered from the eyes of the servant.
"Get out."
Harry flinched at the voice, thinking for a moment that the man was talking
about the boy himself.
He cowered lower, "Mi'Lord, I would not insist it if it were not of utmost
importance-"
A cold, calculating hiss, "What?"
"Attacks," the servant said simply, "Along the East barr-"
"Quiet."
The man huffed silently, unmoving for a whole minute; Harry then whispered in
his ear, "It's alright, I'll just get dressed and go," there was a pregnant
pause, adding, "I will be back tomorrow night, really. I promise."
Auguste looked at him, eyes still that muddy red-brown color, "You are certain?
And you have the-"
"Yes, I have the locket," Harry said, pointing to the warm metal against his
chest.
"Tomorrow night, then," a quick nod, and the man couldn't help but start
dressing the boy until Harry started shoving away and putting on his own
things.
The King exited out of the room, beckoning the servant with the twitch of a
hand and coolly asking for the details, before Harry couldn't hear anything
else.
The boy wondered what it was about, pulling on his shirt, buttoning quickly and
inaccurately, and finally pulling on his robe until, finally, his grasped the
locket in his hands as tightly as he could and said, "Soif."
HPhpHPhpHPhp
Chapter End Notes
     Notes:
     -La vie est trop courte pour boire du mauvais vin: "life is too short
     for bad wine"
***** Chapter 24 *****
Chapter Summary
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I do not make money of this
     Warning: none
     *(a/n):
     Sorry! Technical Difficulties happened and this chapter was not
     posted.
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
Two, perhaps three- that's how many times the dark creature had entered and
left the school.
Dumbledore leaned back in his desk, intermittently stroking long, wrinkled
fingers through his beard and adjusting his half-moon glasses higher over the
bridge of his nose.
"Fawkes," he started, the bird giving him an inquisitive look, "What do you
think of this?"
The bird only gave a half-hearted, confused chirp, and Dumbledore was left
again to his own devices.
Just how? How could something like that transverse the wards so casually? No
students had been attacked yet- not under his watch- and yet it still likely
presented a very large threat. He just didn't know what yet.
The old man leaned back into his armchair, watching intently the glass orb that
sat in the center of the mahogany that gleamed a bright red. It told him that
the creature had just come back into the school.
Just what was it doing? Was it working for Voldemort and attempting to allow
him passage into the school? Such a thought was- he didn't care to admit to
himself- utterly terrifying.
And the question remained- how? The thought was a heavy, calcified weight that
sat in the base of his head; how could a dark creature make it's way into the
school, so simply? What secret- what loophole- was it using to get through the
wards?
Dumbledore lifted himself to his feet, choosing instead to shake off the
terrible feeling in his chest by pacing through his office; his actions mustn't
be too preemptive, the consequences of that were innumerable.
However, if he didn't take action soon and precisely then the students would
become too comfortable. The students had waited long enough without seeing any
direct effect to their own, and they were already drifting back to their
regular recklessness.
It made the situation much more delicate.
He had to choke out the threat as soon as he possibly could, as carefully as he
possibly could, and yet caution and hastiness were not two factors that often
coincided.
He was attracted yet again to the gleam of the orb on his desk, watching it
brighten like an ominous red sunrise.
"Fawkes," he said, startling the bird with the gravity of his voice, "I need
you to call all of the teachers into my office, aside from, of course,
Professor Umbridge."
He chirped in reply, disappearing in a blur of fire and smoke, and Dumbledore
leaned against the surface of his desk for several minutes until the professors
started appearing one by one from the fireplace.
When all of them had entered, the green haze cast by the fireplace vanished,
and the flames turned their familiar bright red.
Snape was the first to speak, giving him a silently displeased look, "What is
it, Headmaster?"
Dumbledore inhaled slowly, shifting, "The dark creature has been entering and
disappearing from the school-"
"What? How many times?" McGonagall spoke.
"Two, perhaps three."
"And what of the prefects? How are they safe?"
Dumbledore gave her a long look, "It leaves late in the evening, after all the
prefects have gone to bed; I would even theorize it does this strategically so
no one can catch it- whatever it is-"
Sprout fiddled nervously with her hands, "What is it doing? Where is it?"
"We have no way of knowing; there's no precise mechanism that could lead us to
the creature, it's much like how the ministry's trace operates over underage
wizards because, in large populations, there's no way to tell who was casting
magic, and in this case, there's no way to tell where it is exactly or even
what it's doing."
Flitwick piped in, his voice hopeful, "There have been no attacks, Headmaster,
how can we even conclude that it's dangerous-"
Dumbledore sagged, "There is no other conclusion we can make on its behalf;
could something harmless, with no strong intent to enter the school, really
bypass the wards?"
"We've already strengthened the wards, they're-"
Snape snapped at the smaller professor, glowering down at him, "Yes, well they
don't appear to be working too well, do they?"
"Severus," the elder man warned, making the potions' professor step down
hesitantly, and then addressing the entire room, "Besides, there is only one
option we have at the moment."
Nobody said anything to this.
"This castle will be put on strict night watch, but we must- I repeat, must- be
careful not to be too noticeable, otherwise it may take note and act
accordingly or worse, lash out. This is the best chance we have to capture the
creature."
"And what does this entail?" Snape questioned.
"Everyone takes turns staying up and watching the corridors; shifts, I suppose
you'd call them," Dumbledore said, running fingers through his beard, "I will
alert the Order and they will help too."
"And the ministry?"
"They shouldn't know that the situation has gotten to such a degree, elsewise
they may further their own idea that the school is unfit to protect its'
students; be cautious of Professor Umbridge, in other words."
There was a collective nod around the room, the professors tiredly rubbing at
their faces.
Dumbledore looked over them, Fawkes hopping onto his shoulder and butting
against the side of his head, "Remember- we don't know its intent or how it's
entering the school, much less how much of a danger it presents- this situation
must be engaged with mindfulness."
The professors soon disappeared back to their respective quarters, leaving the
bird and the Headmaster alone again.
The orb on his desk still gleamed that terrible red, making him take a silent,
shuddering breath of air; he'd do what he could to rid the school of the
threat. No matter what it would take, no matter what the means were.
If that included taking his supply of Aurors away from Order duties, he
supposed it would have to be a temporary sacrifice until he could find the
creature.
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
***** Chapter 25 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing,
HPhpHPhpHPhpHPhp
Harry found himself unable to fall back asleep after he had returned, instead
opting to lie in the dormitory and stare aimlessly up at the stone wall above
his four-poster bed. He sure was that, come morning time, he'd be appropriately
exhausted and the embarrassment would've taken its time to fully sink in.
Embarrassment about, well, about actions he'd rather not have participated in,
he realized a full hour after it had happened. At the time he'd been rather
cool-headed about it but now, sheathed in darkness and only having the sound of
snoring from the other beds greeting him, he'd had a while to think about it.
He felt like a melting pot with a number of different feelings coming to him-
it was a strange and rather unpleasant amalgam of shame, confusion, regret, and
a vague hangover of lustiness that he absolutely refused to "take care of",
even though he did admittedly have the time and, not admittedly, a large part
of himself asked why it would matter.
Harry curled his arms around his own waist, squeezing into his own sides with a
reddening face; he'd acted like a cheap whore- a few choice words that he
couldn't help but imagine his uncle saying to him. It's true that maybe he had
been manipulated, perhaps just slightly, but still it was with a guy.
And he didn't like guys, he liked girls! Sweet Merlin, he wasn't- at least he
didn't think of himself as, well, gay.
He liked girls, girls, girls! Hadn't Ron and him been talking about how
Hermione's skin looked nice a while back? Well, not Harry himself, since that
girl was like a sister to him, afterall.
Even more than that, he'd had a crush on Cho once. Cho was most definitely a
girl. He never thought about her beyond a kiss, but still!
The boy nibbled on his lower lip- maybe it was just this one man. Just this
once. He only felt an attraction to one man, and one man didn't constitute a
person's whole sexual basis for the rest of their lives!
He stared up at the imposing, rusticated stone walls a few feet above his head,
as if to ask them for answers.
It's not as if being gay was particularly bad, but it was definitely something
that he couldn't see himself as; not really. Not at all.
His mind was quelled for only a few moments before leaping back into action and
accusing him, as per usual, for what he had done wrong. More specifically, what
he had let Auguste do to him.
His face grew an even deeper shade of red, making him dig his palms into his
eyes squeezed shut- trying, in vain, to get rid of the images. And even worse
than that was the memory of the servant walking in on them- on him- in that
position!
The embarrassment grew unbearably stifling, making him wish that the floor
would swallow him up, or he could just get some damned sleep so he wouldn't
have to think about it any longer.
This, unfortunately, was not the case and he was confined to wallow in self
pity for the whole night, unmoving aside from the brief flits of turning over
to find the elusive side that could get him to sleep.
He would quickly learn there was no such side, and that soon it would be more
than just embarrassing thoughts keeping him up at night.
In the morning, he was awoken from a semi-unconscious, wavering-on-dreamy phase
by Ron, who saw it fit to tear open the curtains surrounding his bed and shove
his shoulder, shouting, "Breakfast is almost over! We're gonna be late, mate!"
That made Harry lift his head, giving the redhead a gloomy look.
Ron only gave him a nervous chuckle, "You look horrible."
"Thanks," he had grumbled, getting up and sifting through robes he wanted to
wear.
He threw another glare at the other boy when Ron only continued to give him an
inquisitive look, "Did you really fall asleep in those?"
Harry remembered with a start that he'd never changed out of his school robes,
"Uh..."
"You left the dorm last night, didn't you?" Ron questioned, his words followed
with a terse silence and a terrible feeling in Harry's gut, "Blimey! Without
me? You could'a gotten me up!"
Ron inspected him more closely, arms crossed, "Looks like you got caught in a
tornado."
Harry looked back down at his shirt that was missing buttons and with others
that were misplaced- he really had been in a rush to leave the palace, he
remembered with a ruddy blush.
"Wait a second, I think I know what's going on," the other boy said,
circumventing him with narrowed eyes, "Leaving the dorm at odd hours, returning
who-knows-when; it all makes so much sense. How could I not see it before?"
Harry felt his stomach flip.
Oh, Merlin. This was bad. This was very, very bad.
Ron gave him a wide smirk, with an oddly approving gleam in his eyes, "You got
a girlfriend, didn't you? That's why you've been sneaking away."
Harry found the statement so ironic and relieving that he couldn't even process
it in time to reply.
"It's all over your face!" the boy laughed, pacing madly, "Who is she? Oh, I
can't wait to tell Hermione- what're Fred and George going to say? Oh man, your
very own girlfriend! So that's why you've been spending so much time with the
mirror- pro'lly applying glamours- so you'll look good for your girl?"
"How did you know that?" Harry asked before he could keep his mouth shut.
"These stones are parchment-thin! I can hear you casting them all bloody
morning like an alarm," he said, as if it were obvious, adding, "You gotta tell
me who she is!"
"I hate to ruin your, uh- burst your bubble, but I don't have a girlfriend,"
Harry said, almost laughing in relief.
The boy rolled his eyes, "Merlin's beard, get dressed and let's get to the
Great Hall so I can tell everybody!" he said, "You've probably been snogging
her senseless, am I right? Is she not in Gryffindor?"
Harry ignored him, heading to the bathroom and throwing on his clothes, still
hearing Ron chatter about one thing or another that he wasn't really paying
attention to until he left the room. His friend then proceeded to grab his arm,
pulling him along and asking him more inane questions.
"Well, if she ain't a Gryff, than at very least she's in Hufflepuff, definitely
not a Ravenclaw- that'd be like Hermione but worse," he paused, shock and
horror dawning on his face as he looked back at Harry, "Please say she isn't in
Slytherin!"
Harry rolled his eyes, "No."
On and on it went, until he sat down in the Great Hall and started loading his
plate with food he wasn't going to eat, which then caused Fred and George to
take the seats on either side of him.
"Did I just hear someone say 'girlfriend'?" Fred started, giving George an
exaggerated and shocked look.
"Why, I think so, my dear brother!"
Fred shook his head, "Confound it!"
The other twin whispered something in Harry's ear along the lines of, "Who is
this foxy little minx of yours, you devilish charmer?"
Hermione leaned in, interrupting the chattering with an ahem, "Obviously, it's
not that big of deal! Harry probably doesn't want anyone to know about it-"
George and Fred continued to give him interrogative looks, as ruthless as
Aurors questioning a captive death eater, and it was only when people started
leaving the Great Hall that they were forced to make it to their first class.
As he left, he barely noticed the pouting girls that were crossing their arms
on his table, flashing indignant and suspicious looks to their fellow female
students.
The day passed in a similar blur that his morning had started on, leaving him
ready to scream bloody murder by the end of the day. His friends would ask him
incessant questions and he was forced to throw them small lies just to get them
to stop, dropping little hints that didn't exist about how the supposed mystery
girl was in Hufflepuff, had mousy brown hair and was, apparently, very adept
under the sheets.
This had the opposite effect from what he'd intended, making Ron, Neville,
Seamus, Dean, and even once Hermione (who was forced to by her naturally
curious nature), beg him for more clues.
Now that he thought about it, one of the Patil sisters had emerged from a
giggling, shy group of girls and had asked him a question along the lines of
what he found to be a good trait in a girl.
Harry, not knowing how to answer, scratched the back of his head, and said, "A
big heart."
This, unbeknownst to him, caused the group standing on the opposite side of the
common room to giggle even more flirtatiously. He could make out some words
from the quick whispers, a few of them including, "so cute!", "how adorable",
"I wish he was my boyfrie-"
All of it left him reeling. In short, he'd never known how much influence he
had over that particular sector of the population.
Unable to escape the questions, he found himself sneaking away from his friends
and anyone else who crossed his path by trailing like a lost puppy through
empty corridors.
To think, it had all started because he'd been too sloppy with putting his
robes back on.
The more he traversed up the castle, the more deeply he found himself thinking,
rubbing at his aching temples and not noticing another person until he bumped
into them.
He stepped back, apologizing profusely, "Oh, I'm so sorry!"
Until he realized, with an uncertain blink, who it was, "Remus!"
He gave the man a tight hug, the werewolf patting him on the back
affectionately, "Harry, how've you been?"
"Just brilliant," the boy said, saturating the words with a sarcastic voice, "I
suppose you've heard?"
Remus pushed a hand through his graying hair, "About what?"
The boy waved it off, "Never mind it," he said, adding in a hopeful voice,
daydreaming that the man was kicking out Umbridge and taking over the Defense
classes this year, "What is it that you're doing here?"
Remus leaned in, throwing a suspicious look in both directions, "You've heard
about the dark creature in Hogwarts, right?"
Harry gave a nod, realizing with a start that he'd almost forgotten that in all
the activity.
"I suppose I should tell you this purely for your safety," Remus said, as if
justifying something to himself, "I just got out of a meeting with the
Headmaster."
The boy neglected to say anything, a bad feeling spreading within him like
algae.
"Well, word is that the creature's been entering and leaving the school at
night sometimes," Remus whispered in a conspiratorial manner, "The Headmaster
has no idea how, but of course the wards don't lie; he needs us Order members
to watch over the school at night and protect the students, maybe even catch
it."
The man continued to string some narrative along the lines of him letting the
adults handle it, but Harry didn't listen- nor could he listen- over the
terrible, deafening ring in his ears.
He scarcely recognized the expanding dots of black over his vision and the
accompanying dizziness, as well as the horrible, familiar confusion that
leached like a beleaguered phantom over him- spreading out from the center of
his lungs and slickening his gut in dread that almost sent him tumbling down a
flight of stairs if it were not for Remus' hand clawing at his wrist and making
the boy lurch forward into his arms and into unconsciousness.
When he finally awoke on the ground and looked up at a very concerned Remus,
he'd realized with chuckles that threatened to turn into hysterical, wrenching
sobs, that he'd only passed out because he forgot to breathe.
***** Chapter 26 *****
Chapter Notes
     Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling and I make no money off of this
     Warnings: swearing
HPhpHPhpHPhpHP
"Harry!"
The boy felt what he could only describe as emerging out from an abyss, staring
up at the world around him as if he hadn't ever truly looked at it before.
Remus shifted into his vision, the man's head wavering above his line of sight
and only making the boy even more confused than he already was.
His mind couldn't piece together what had happened.
However, when he considered the feeling of cold tile radiating out from the
stones and over his back, he had immediately recalled the pressing confusion
and dizziness that had plagued him only moments before- realizing, with
scrunched brows, that he had passed out.
That was precisely when the laughter had started, at first only a brief flit in
his chest but then becoming full blown chuckles that made his ribs ache
fiercely.
He had forgotten to breathe; Merlin!
He didn't even know why he found it so hilarious, more funny than anything he'd
ever thought before, but it was. How awfully and wickedly funny.
The boy had faced Voldemort on numerous occasions, been held under Imperio,
Crucio, and various other dark spells, but it was this- forgetting how to do
the most basic, instinctual thing he'd ever done- that sent him into
unconsciousness.
"Are you okay?"
The concern in the man's voice just made the boy laugh harder, his sides
pivoting up and down with gasps of air.
Remus gave him an odd look, examining him as if he'd gone bonkers, "Have you
hit your head?"
His laughter grew high pitched, a deep, wrenching breath of trembling air
making tears well in his eyes. He couldn't help it, he couldn't help the way
he'd desperately huffed, the way his lungs felt the need to gasp frantically
for air, and how his splitting sides trembled profusely.
He couldn't control how the feeling got to him- how the dizziness and
confusion, coupled with the pain in his head and chest and sides, had made him
tear up.
The ground was cold and hard and uncompromising, and he couldn't bare to watch
the flickering concern in Remus' eyes; he was an abandoned child again, and he
couldn't control it.
There was the frantic scrambling of some great and terrible sadness in his
chest, and fear cast like a slithering snake crawled up his spine.
"Harry, please, are you-"
The boy covered his face with his hands, grasping at his hair and pulling hard,
"No," he said, his voice sounding like the breaking strings of a harp, "I'm not
okay, I'm not bloody okay."
Remus could only blink down at him, helping him into a sitting position against
the corridor wall that, thankfully, was empty besides the two of them.
Remus stood, looking out of the corridor and opening his mouth with more than a
small amount of confliction, "I should get Madam Pomfrey."
"Wait," Harry said, tugging on his godfather's robes when he started to move
away.
Remus gave him an expectant, even more concerned look, waiting for him to
speak.
"What was it like," Harry started, struggling to find the words, "What was it
like when you first became a werewolf?"
There was a deep shadow that passed over his face and the man instantly
crouched down to the boy's level, giving him a harrowing look, "Harry, did
someone hurt you?"
He said nothing to this.
The man grew more insistent, his face looking the consistency of oatmeal as he
clutched onto the boy's arms, "Answer me."
Harry wiped at his damp face, "I'm not a werewolf."
Remus could only swallow, looking visibly relieved, "You're not acting like
yourself."
"There's something I should tell you," the boy said, using the wall to help
himself up back onto his feet, "But I don't know how you'll take it."
Harry faced the wall, finding himself unable to turn around and look at his
godfather.
He felt a warm hand on his shoulder.
"Something's happened to me," the boy said, "I'm not-"
"You're not..."
He pressed the top of his head against the wall, wondering what he thought he
was doing when his senses started returning to him.
"Lupin!"
A scratchy voice and the clunk of a cane on the ground made him turn around,
both him and Remus staring at a very annoyed Alastor Moody.
The cane stamped on the ground again, the man tousling with his coat and a
spindly eye rotating off of its normal axis, "We've got work to do."
Remus looked back at Harry, causing the other man's eyes to lock on him.
The spindly one seemed to bulge, a bright, slightly scuffed blue iris sending
him a piercing look. It was a look that had seen too far, a look that set Harry
on edge.
He quickly yet just barely managed to stifle the inhuman growl that was about
to rise out of his throat, feeling his canines start to protrude past their
normal length and grow sharper edges.
His brain booted into action; it was twenty degrees celsius in the castle,
twelve degrees celsius outdoors, a wind from the north was blowing in over the
basin, an inversion would likely cause the entrapment of air around the
vicinity of the castle which was approximately a three-mile radius until the
inner wards were met. There were roughly one thousand and two-hundred fifty
occupants within the castle with fifteen casual visitors- the Order.
The fifteen Order members were clustered into three different groups,
consisting of one group within the Headmaster's office, another a staircase
lower than himself, and then finally Lupin and Moody, with him. His senses
could not identify who exactly they were or their future movements beyond that.
As soon as he noticed the changes occurring as well as the pattern of his
thoughts, they had stopped; it was strange, he'd never had such a reaction to
another person before.
Some part of himself felt threatened by Moody and his magical eye.
Their exchanged looks continued on for another few seconds until the imposing
yet stout man cajoled Remus further, as if nothing had happened, "Well, let's
get a move on, Lupin."
"This discussion is not over," Lupin said, eyeing Harry, "I should be taking
you to the Hospital Wing right now."
Moody said nothing to this, the scars lining his brow puffing up more than
usual when his face had scrunched up.
Harry had to think fast, scrubbing at his teary face, "You're busy though,
right? Hannah," he started, faltering only briefly, "Hannah Abbott has extra
lessons on this floor- only a couple rooms over- I can get her to take me, to
make sure I don't pass out again and kill myself on some stairs."
His godfather sighed, "All right, I suppose so," he scratched the back of his
head, "We are going to talk about what you wanted to say to me."
Harry nodded, dismissing the pair who wheeled around and started trekking up
the stairs; the boy only moved when he was assured he could see them no longer.
In an effort to get away from trouble, he'd created more of it for himself.
Passing out, then freaking out, almost exposing what he was- Remus must think
he was an absolute nutter.
Maybe he was; afterall, Hogwarts felt awfully similar to an insane asylum.
And now he was trapped, not only in the castle but also with himself.
He was trapped with his own looming volatility, trapped with a bite on his neck
now recessed under a fine layer of scarring- a bite that often sent pounding
through his body and most notably to his teeth.
Hogwarts was not safe, but this time it wasn't because of a possessed
professor, a giant snake, an escaped convict, or even a resurrected Voldemort-
it was because of himself.
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