Happy birthday, ms_mindfunk! ~Mongoose, R, 2/2
Second post of two. Don't start reading here.
Harry could feel his mind darkening responsively to the pull of blood. He was being drained, he thought with hallucinatory calm. When the leader slit his wrist and held out the blood for Harry to drink, then he would be dead.
But his body and his magic were separate at the moment. Vampires had never figured out a way to drink a wizard’s power. Instead, Harry slumped, and Caspar licked and sucked and drew and hurt him and thought he was getting it all, whilst instead Harry’s mind and magic extended outwards in a steady call.
Come here, he told the force he demanded strength from. I need you.
The same words repeated over and over again. He had used them before. The vampires might have their nests anywhere, but what was important was that they ambushed him in certain specific sites. He had cast the first half of this spell, each time, before they took him captive.
And the force he called heard him and rolled nearer and nearer each time, separated into millions of small disparate flying particles, but ready to come together and act together when they reached the nest.
The world wavered and flickered in front of him. This was further than Harry had ever forced his body before. He hung on the edge of turning, he knew; he could hear his own slowing heartbeat, feel the blood leaving him in a steady, agonizing pull from his neck.
But he had not yielded in truth, and so the beast did not have the advantage it normally would have, when a victim gave in. Harry’s will did not hurry him towards union with his predator. He didn’t want to be a vampire.
Vampires could not drink a wizard’s power, but they could use it against the wizard himself, making the blood-drain more pleasant and potent, seducing him with the notion of becoming a creature who could do this.
Harry would never find that fascinating.
Come here. I need you.
And then the master vampire’s body shook as if someone else had answered Harry’s silent plea, and he found himself opening his eyes in astonishment.
Malfoy was fastened to the master vampire’s back, one hand curving around his neck to strangle him, nails lifted as if he would rip open his throat. His lips were drawn back in that obscene snarl that Harry knew had consumed more people than he could count, and his fangs stuck out far enough to look bare and pale near the top, where they gradually lost color. He was twisting his head as if he intended to bite his owner.
Of course he couldn’t, but the leader withdrew his fangs from Harry’s neck and turned to deal with this newest threat, and Harry discovered that he still had the strength to stand on his own. The leader must have drained less blood than he thought; in fact, he decided, as his mind cleared more and more, it was probably his own concentration that had come near to paralyzing him, rather than the drain. The leader wanted to play with him, wanted to go slowly.
It would cost him now, Harry thought, as he spread his arms and cast himself fully into the power.
Come here! It was an exultant shout, and he heard a distant rumble. I need you!
The magic rose, and surged, and crested, and broke, as the drops Harry had summoned from the stream near his home forced its way through the cracks between the stones, came together again, and descended as running water on the vampires.
*
Draco had never imagined how absolutely strong Caspar was until that moment.
An iron hand seized his fingers and bent them backwards until they broke. Needles drove into Draco’s mind, making him scream with the pain. Each needle carried a command for obedience like poison on it. Together they stuck Draco, draining his strength, drinking his independence, trying to make him the crawling wretch he’d been before.
But he was astonished, too, at his own strength of resistance.
He escaped into the free half of his mind. Even as his body began, mechanically, to break his own fingers and claw at himself, bringing the old blood flowing out, he seized his will and wheeled around with it like a hawk clutching a sword in its talons.
Vampire magic was uppermost in him now; it had been since his turning. But the wizard magic was still there, layered underneath. It had to be, or the Ministry would have no reason to forbid vampires from carrying wands.
Draco hurled the constrained wave of that power against Caspar, whom, he knew, had been a Squib before his transformation. Thalia had explained that when she was also explaining why Caspar broke the wands of all the wizards and witches he turned.
Caspar growled, and the hold on Draco’s hands and mind faltered. He sprang backwards immediately, rolling over three times in midair, and landed on a projecting shelf high up the wall where the owner of the manor house had been accustomed to keep bottles of wine. The shelf was barely three inches wide, but for someone with a vampire’s sense of balance, that was nothing.
Caspar hissed at him. His throat hung in ragged shreds, but the blood pumping out of it had already stopped flowing, and, as Draco watched, the shreds began to tie themselves together like bandages done up by invisible hands. He stalked forwards, every step graceful.
“You were content to let me rule you for months, Draco,” he said, his voice lovely and also trembling with rage. Draco didn’t think the mere beauty of that voice would have the power to take him in again. “I will forgive you if you yield to me now.”
Draco rolled another breaker of wandless magic at him in answer. Caspar staggered, gasping as he writhed under the Cruciatus.
But Draco was used to channeling his magic through a wand, and though his recollection of the time he had spent as a vampire was vague, he thought it had been at least a year. He was too out of practice. The magic faded, and Caspar was striding towards him again, driving his will forwards like a hammer to batter Draco into submission.
Draco had just started to prepare a response when the water spun through the cavern, an immense flowing stream.
He was safely above the rush, and Caspar, whose senses and reflexes were superior to any of them, leaped onto another shelf.
But the others were caught by surprise, and still focused on Potter and the blood dripping from his throat, and too unused to taking action on their own without a command from Caspar. They hesitated, and the stream caught them, sluicing the undead magic from their bodies, undoing the forces that bound bone to skin and fangs to mouth.
Caspar cried out in loss.
Draco found himself howling, the sound bursting from his throat as steadily as a werewolf’s song, in triumph.
He knew, the knowledge taking possession of him in that instinctive fashion which Thalia had told him he would use to recognize the Long-Desired, that Caspar was weaker without his nest. He would be stung and battered by so many deaths at once, and he would be confused for at least a few moments, a few vital moments, by the sensation of losing limbs and minds he had been used to wielding like his own.
Draco sprang at him, and the next moment they were swaying back and forth on the shelf above the water, limbs clasped around each other’s shoulders and necks, fangs scraping skin, Caspar’s control over Draco and Draco’s determination to be free locked into a confrontation as inescapable and deadly.
*
Harry had never called the water with such urgency before.
Perhaps that was why he had neglected to leave himself an escape from it.
The river snatched him off his feet and swirled him through the cellar. His head went beneath the water. Harry firmly held the direction of the surface in his mind and struck for it, breaking the water for a moment and gulping air hastily before he spun under again.
Stupid current, he thought, and then it smashed him against a wall and he almost lost consciousness.
He clung grimly to it, the way he had when he was fighting the drain of his own blood and the dizzying effects of his own magic. He remembered he had a wand, told himself that no wizard was helpless as long as he had that, and stuck a hand into his robes to search for it.
Smooth wood brushed through his hand at the same moment as his ears and head began to ring with the pressure that accompanied drowning.
Harry controlled the impulse to spit a curse. He contorted his body in a sharp motion and pushed himself as near to the surface as he could, whilst fumbling for the wand still.
The incantation for the Bubble-Head Charm was there, floating just under his tongue, but he couldn’t say it yet, or he would lose his air.
It was escaping anyway, of course, forcing its way past his lips in tiny bubbles. Harry jackknifed upwards again, and for a moment seized the space to expel the foul air.
Then his head dropped beneath the surface again, and he could see only murky green and drifting black, and the wand was near to slipping from his nerveless grasp.
No!
Harry’s will leaped like a winged horse in flight, forcing the last burst of wandless magic he was capable of into the Bubble-Head Charm. He gasped in clean, pure air a moment later and breathed it hastily, smacking his lips; nothing had tasted better in his life.
Of course, that took away the strength that he’d been using to fight the current. Hanging on to his wand the way he might have a much larger piece of wood in a shipwreck, Harry had to let himself be tossed from point to point, bouncing off walls and barking his shins on hidden crates.
*
Draco was bent backwards with Caspar’s fangs at his throat as if he were the lover he had so often pretended to be. Caspar was snarling in small, constant puffs of air against his skin, trying to twist his head against the implacable hold of Draco’s arm to find the right angle.
Draco pressed the arm down further, and heard Caspar’s spine creak warningly. Of course, if he could break Caspar’s back, it would be ideal, but Caspar’s bones had the same light, flexible strength his did; they would bend before they broke.
He was stuck.
Draco panted for long moments, his fangs extended, his fingers clamped like manacles, his muscles aching. He knew he had to let go and do something else, but if he let go, Caspar would plunge his head and rip the skin of his throat, and the true death would overcome him.
And he wanted the blood he could smell under Caspar’s skin so badly. He literally ached to drink it. He had to have it. He licked his lips with a tongue he knew would be pale now and tried to inch closer, but once again Caspar’s embrace closed on him and he was held fast.
“Yield, Draco,” Caspar whispered. “Yield, and I will be merciful. Your death will be pleasant.”
Well, fuck that. Caspar still controlled enough of him that Draco couldn’t use his full strength the way he’d like, but he could refuse commands that were intended to subdue his will instead of his body. He snarled and didn’t move.
“I should have known better than to share kills,” said Caspar reflectively, and he began to bear down. Draco could feel the strength in him, burning like a white flame, beyond anything he could match. It wasn’t natural, wasn’t limited by the physical frame that enclosed it, whilst Draco’s still was. Caspar was a master, with full access to all the skills that being a vampire entailed.
I should break free and try it from a different angle, if I can. But Draco still couldn’t force himself to move, with that tempting blood so close. His instincts clashed with his common sense, and the clash held him still.
Then a hand seized the shelf near Caspar’s foot, grabbed his ankle, and yanked.
Normally, Draco knew, Caspar could have held out against a pull like that, but his focus was on his arms and fangs right now, and not bracing his feet. He slipped, and Draco yanked himself free of the hold and sprang up, clinging to the wall with his fingers and toes. He knew he would have to move fast.
*
The current had finally slowed, as the confined water became more akin to a lake than a river, and Harry had been lifted high enough to find a projecting shelf. He shot a hand across it, found something to grab that might haul him out of the water, and took hold of it.
The thing moved in his hand, and Harry, too late, recognized the heel and ankle bone of a vampire.
Harry didn’t hesitate, but lifted his wand and cast a fire spell. It wasn’t ideal, but he was weak and tired from magical exhaustion and blood loss and the physical exertion of trying to breast the water. And undead flesh did burn more easily than human skin, although a mere fire wasn’t enough to kill a vampire.
A ringing scream and a smell like a firework greeted his effort. Harry fell back into the water and tilted his chin to be out of it, panting as he stared through the haze of the Bubble-Head Charm at the vampire.
It was the leader, and Harry felt his heart rise again, his will to battle returning, as he saw the vampire hopping madly around, stamping his foot and trying to put the fire out. He could destroy the monster still.
If he could only find the strength.
*
Draco saw all the factors of the solution that would save both him and Potter as if in slow motion, but his mind put them together with a speed like sheet lightning.
The water had slowed. It could no longer properly be called running water.
The hand belonged to Potter, who was staring at Caspar with alert eyes and seemed to be trying to gather up the wherewithal to attack.
Potter had a wand.
Draco gave himself no time to consider the plan that revolved in his mind like a twist of wire. He let go with his fingers at the same time as he kicked off from the wall, which caused him to drop in a vast arc over Caspar’s head and into the water.
The moving current brushed and slammed against him, making Draco shriek aloud in torment; one of the fingers on his left hand loosened and drifted away. But his guess had been correct. The water no longer resembled a river. It was running water that had the power to harm a vampire.
He grabbed Potter’s arms, looped them around his neck, seized his wand, and aimed it at Caspar. He had put out the fire on his ankle and was preparing to spring into the lake. After all, if it hadn’t harmed Draco, it was unlikely to harm him.
Draco cast a spell through Potter’s wand, pulling on his magic since he couldn’t access Potter’s power except by Potter’s express permission. The unfamiliar core pulsed against him, resisting for a moment, but Draco had seen how naturally Potter used his hawthorn wand during the war. That suggested a sympathy between them, which would only make sense if Potter had the ability to become his Long-Desired. Draco could do this.
The modified sunlight spell hit Caspar in the middle of the chest and illuminated his ribs for a moment, which glowed like white-hot barrel staves. Then Caspar had to beat on his chest and scream and try to muffle the flames with his robes, and Draco knew he would be busy for a time. He didn’t think the sunlight spell was strong enough to kill Caspar-even if the wand hadn’t resisted Draco, magic based on light had-but they had a few moments to discuss their strategy.
He dived. He had no need to breathe, and Potter was wearing a Bubble-Head Charm. They swam underwater towards the far side of the cavern. Now and then Draco winced as he lost bits of skin from his arms or upper back, but there were no more losses as large as his finger.
And he had a skill and grace as he swam that he had never suspected before, and his eyes revealed a murky, blue-grey, surprisingly beautiful world that sank little by little as the water found its way out through minute cracks in the floor and walls.
He surfaced with Potter near the entrance into the cellar, where they could sit on a set of mostly dry stairs and converse. Draco shook his hair out and listened for long, intense moments. He didn’t hear any sounds of movement from Caspar, and he didn’t feel a pressure on his mind, either. However, there was an echo of pain if he concentrated.
He deserves it, for enslaving me.
Now that he was awake, the notion that he had ever welcomed that enslavement seemed preposterous. He had not rejoiced in the Dark Lord’s domination over him; why would he accept someone infinitely less impressive as a master?
You had no choice. He controlled you before Thalia died, and when she passed, you never pressed to the logical conclusion. No doubt he asserted as much control as he could so that you wouldn’t think of it. Pleasure was his bridle on you.
And it would have been still, except that Potter had awakened him.
Potter…
Draco turned to face him, only to encounter narrowed eyes and an uplifted head that told him Potter was far from finished yet. And probably considering the best way to kill Draco.
Draco laid his mouth against the side of the bubble surrounding Potter’s head, keeping his voice low enough that he knew Caspar wouldn’t hear him. He could hope the spell would distort Potter’s voice enough that Caspar wouldn’t hear him, either. “You have to let me drink your blood. That gives me a conduit to your magic, and we can use it against Caspar. We don’t have a chance if we remain separated. He still has part of my mind in his thrall, and you’re too weak physically to stand up to him.”
There. That was good sense. Hopefully Potter’s survival instinct would let him see that and agree.
*
Ah.
Harry relaxed. He had been tense, wondering why Malfoy had saved him. It wasn’t any vampire behavior Harry was familiar with.
But it made sense that Malfoy had saved him to eat and use. That fit both the beast he was now and his personality before his turning.
“Even if I gave you my blood, I couldn’t give you my power,” he said. “I know you can’t drink magic.” He coughed and winced as he heard a bubbling in the wound that Caspar-that seemed to be the master vampire’s name, if he could trust a lying Malfoy-had given him. Malfoy’s eyes went to the neat punctures. Of course. “You’re lying and trying to gain some revenge on me before Caspar kills you. No, thanks. I’ve lived free, and I’ll die free.” He took his wand back from Malfoy and turned to face the water again, peering into the darkness. The water had put out the torches, and Harry didn’t dare cast a Lumos that could lead his enemy right to him. He would have to make do with the moonlight that fell through the entrance above the stairs.
Malfoy seized his wrists in a punishing grip and leaned towards him. “I don’t care what you think,” he whispered. “I know more about vampires than you do. There’s something called the Long-Desired-“
“Spare me the vampire mythology.” Harry was certain he’d heard a small splash that might be Caspar swimming towards them. He gave a sidelong glance at Malfoy, making sure to hide the direction of his gaze, to see how he could push him into the water. With any luck, he could destroy them both with one spell.
“It’s no mythology,” Malfoy said, speaking so fast and with such agitation that Harry felt some of his words as vibrations against the bubble more than he heard them. “It’s no joke. We can find wizards compatible in blood and magic whom we can work with. But it has to be willing.” His fingers stroked up and down the sides of Harry’s neck. Harry ignored them effortlessly, despite the urge to throw up he briefly felt. “Do you grant me permission?”
“I would rather die,” Harry said. “I never yielded to a vampire’s thrall, and I’m not about to start now.” Malfoy might talk as if he had reason, but he’s still a beast.
Malfoy’s eyes darkened and flashed as if a storm were building in the middle of a winter sky. “But Caspar-“
“I only pretended to surrender,” Harry said. “I’m immune to it.” He heard another splash and whirled around, but at the moment he could see only dark water. He cursed softly as he remembered that, probably, Caspar was swimming beneath the surface and wouldn’t show a sign of himself at all. On the other hand, maybe the sunlight spell Malfoy had cast had damaged him too much for that.
“It’s the only way we can survive,” Malfoy said, his words more rapid still. “Stupid Potter, don’t you understand that?”
“Why should I care about your survival? You’re already dead.” And Harry whirled around and planted an elbow in Malfoy’s ribs, trying to knock him off balance and drive him into the water.
*
Draco went down with a whoof and a cry, but he didn’t slide into the lake. Potter was weaker than he must have thought he was. In a moment, Draco lunged up and pinned him to the stair with his hands above his head, keeping that dangerous wand at a safe distance.
Even then, Potter didn’t look intimidated. He panted, but in the way a cornered predator might, to give warning. He stared into Draco’s eyes as if Draco was only another of his many enemies, whom Potter would defeat in the end because that was what he did. He moved a knee as if he would try to strike Draco in the groin, in fact.
For a moment, Draco shivered. The thought of all that splendid power and wild mastery yielding to him was wonderful. He almost met Potter’s eyes and tried to seduce him with a gaze. If he wouldn’t give his compliance one way, he should give it another.
But words returned to restrain him-Thalia’s words reminding him that the Long-Desired must give willing surrender, and Potter’s statement that he was immune to the thrall.
Draco growled, exposing his teeth, and leaned near so that Potter could feel his strength. Potter’s eyes didn’t change, except to move from fearlessness to grim acceptance of his own death.
“This doesn’t need to happen,” Draco hissed at him. “You can become stronger-we can become stronger-and escape.” Sudden inspiration struck him. Of course. I can use his own stubbornness against him. “And if you’re immune to the thrall, then I can’t rule you, no matter what I do. Just allow me the use of your blood and magic in the fight against Caspar, and after that, you can go back to your own independence.”
He knew that he would never give up on trying to persuade Potter unless Potter died or he found someone else to be his Long-Desired, but that was a long-term goal, not a short-term one. Potter didn’t need to know it.
Now Potter was staring at him as if attempting to determine his angle. Draco held his gaze and tried to look as reassuring as possible.
*
A temporary alliance? I never thought about that. Vampires are too selfish for those sorts of things.
But Harry had been able to see reason since Ginny died-it was why he could continue to attack unregistered vampires instead of every one in sight-and he had to admit that Malfoy’s words made sense. Even wounded, Caspar was probably too powerful for them to escape alive. And Harry wanted to live. He wanted to see Ron and Hermione again.
And he wanted to destroy more vampires.
He rolled his eyes at himself, at Malfoy’s words, at the ironies that life forced him into, and rolled his head to the side as he dissipated the Bubble-Head Charm. “Make it quick,” he said.
Malfoy didn’t make it quick enough, of course, even though he bent his head to the task like a striking snake. He flicked out his tongue and tasted Harry’s throat first, which caused Harry to roll his eyes again. When will the git realize that I’m not going to go into a romantic swoon over it, no matter how long he takes?
“This would be easier if you would let me use the thrall,” Malfoy whispered, his breath coming out in puffs that might have been erotic if they were warm. Harry’s fetishes didn’t include cold air and a stink like newly turned earth and rotting flesh, though. “It would be more pleasant for you and less painful. It would take up less of your physical strength. You’ll resist me physically when I bite, you know. You can’t help it.” Malfoy’s left hand anchored itself firmly in Harry’s hair. “Let me enthrall you.”
Harry laughed. Malfoy didn’t let him go, but Harry knew from the slight hissing of indrawn breath that he was startled.
“I’m not someone who’s always harbored secret fantasies of someone taking care of me and making my thoughts go away,” Harry drawled. “Just do it.”
And Malfoy did.
It was more painful than Caspar’s bite, because this time Harry was tense, not faking relaxation to make the vampire think he was enchanted, and Malfoy was tearing open a new wound, as if he couldn’t bear to touch the punctures Caspar had left. Harry grimaced as the blood flowed out of him, and more so as an invisible hand seemed to reach into him and scoop up his magic. He had to do this; he didn’t have to like it.
And that was what separated him from a vampire’s hapless victim. He was doing this because of his desire to survive, not because of his desire to surrender.
Malfoy began to suck. Harry flinched. He hated having cold, worm-like lips pressed against him.
But he had agreed to do this. And at least the magic was rising up and spreading over them like a sheltering tree, spreading branches above the water and sinking roots deep into the stone. Harry would have felt like a fool if it turned out that giving Malfoy permission to access his power didn’t work after all.
*
This was bliss.
Potter’s blood was exactly the kind that tasted good to Draco, deep and rich and meaty with the fragrance of adrenaline and bravery. Draco sucked it the way he would have sucked an orange or a peach when he was mortal. Juice trickled down his face and was captured by his tongue. His body shook with the sweetness and the flavor.
And the magic.
It flowed into his, and just the way Thalia had said he would, he knew instinctively how to handle it. He whipped it around them into a protective, embracing shield. The shield took the form of a tree, and Draco wasn’t sure if he had adopted that from Potter’s mind or his. He could sense Potter’s thoughts, dimly, coursing past him like fish in a stream. He might have absorbed the conception from them without realizing it.
Draco moved closer to Potter, hardly aware he was doing so, or that his hand locked in Potter’s hair had begun to caress him. He wanted, needed, had to have more of this. He tried to capture Potter’s hands so he could exert his thrall without interference. Potter said he was immune to it, but he was weakened and tired now. He might give in without knowing it, and then he would be Draco’s forever.
But a splash and a roar behind him distracted Draco’s attention.
Caspar had arrived.
*
The master vampire rose from the water like something out of nightmare. Harry stared, startled and impressed the way he had been several times this evening by the creature’s uniqueness.
His chest was hollowed out, the skin and bone in the torso mostly burned away. Tatters of cloth clung around it, and inside veins and the shrunken remains of inner organs clustered like roosting bats in the middle of a cave. The smell of rotting and old blood that emerged from the hollow made Harry gag. He tried to draw up his hands to cover his nose, but by this time, he had lost so much blood that his arm rose and then flopped back uselessly.
Caspar tried to charge at them-
And one of the invisible branches of the tree caught him in the hollow and speared him.
Harry tried to wrap his arms around himself, but once again he couldn’t move. The sensation that traveled through him when his magic was used demanded some response, however, so he gasped.
He could feel the tree, even though he couldn’t see it. He could have reached out with one hand and shaped the curve of its trunk, the graceful droop and arch of its branches, the smoothness of the bark. He could feel the way it moved as it recoiled from the blow struck against Caspar and readied itself to defend.
He shut his eyes, and suddenly so much seemed clear. His magic wielded this way had no visible effect except when it struck, but he could feel it, hear the leaves rustling in the wind, and smell a faint fragrance like gum or resin.
Malfoy’s hand rested on his chest, even as he finally drew his head up from Harry’s throat and his fangs out of the punctures. Harry felt his gesture with his left arm, as if invisible cords bound their limbs together.
The tree turned and splayed its branches in front of it like a circle of stakes, holding Caspar at bay. Harry could feel him, too, a faint, throbbing malignancy, perhaps connected to the power that he supposedly wielded over Malfoy. He heard him hiss, and it sounded like Nagini.
Malfoy laughed, and he started speaking. Harry paid more attention to the tree than to his words, thinking Caspar might seize the chance to attack whilst his former slave was distracted.
*
“I’ve found my Long-Desired,” Draco said. His vision sparked and twined with distant but distinct light, which outlined the tree he used against Caspar, and the connections that flowed back and forth, breaking soft as water, between him and Potter, and the blood flowing through his veins that had come newly from Potter’s throat. He was lit from inside like an angel. How many vampires could say the same thing? “Do you care to challenge me now?”
Caspar answered without words, but with a sudden, vicious pounding into Draco’s mind, a single command where before he had tried to command all of his muscles at once. Give up the magic.
Draco gasped as one of his hands opened and waved towards the tree as if he would dismiss it. Half the branches vanished. Caspar laughed quietly and walked a little closer. His fangs were so extended that Draco could see the place where they became transparent near the top. The ends glittered, sharp enough to cut hope on. Again, the command struck Draco like a kick from a dragon. Give up the magic.
And more of it slipped his grasp, even as Draco retreated desperately into the free part of his mind. He was no match for Caspar in brute strength, and he knew it. And now Caspar was stepping within the guard of the invisible branches, stooping over Potter, Draco’s Long-Desired, who lay with his eyes shut and a furrow of concentration wrinkling between his brows.
Draco sprang.
He hit Caspar, and they tumbled down the stairs towards the water again, but Caspar locked a leg on the step beneath the one where Potter lay and caught them. Once again he bent Draco’s head back, but this time he had madness and pain lending strength to his arms. He smiled, his eyes sunken into his head.
“I am going to enjoy this,” he whispered.
*
Harry opened his eyes, sighing in annoyance. Of course Malfoy was in trouble, and Harry reckoned he had to rescue him; Malfoy had kept his word and not tried to enthrall him.
He snatched at the magic hovering above him and wrapped it around his limbs, drawing himself to his feet like a puppet on strings. Then he picked up his wand, which Malfoy had laid on the step beside him, and aimed it.
He fumbled for a moment as he tried to figure out how to force the ambient magic through the wand core. Malfoy’s spine creaked warningly.
But his power and the phoenix feather core in the wand knew each other of old, and the spell Harry was trying to cast this time wasn’t very complex. The ropes tied around his body unbraided and slithered down his sleeves and robes and into the air.
They were soaked, but that didn’t matter. They’d been magically, not physically, infused with essence of garlic and rowan.
With a smile he knew was twisted, Harry used the invisible scoop of the magic to fling the ropes across the space between him and the struggling vampires and drape them over Caspar’s shoulders and head.
He couldn’t bind them tightly, because at that moment he sunk back in utter exhaustion, close to fainting. But he had done enough.
*
One moment Caspar’s fangs had begun to pierce his skin, slowing his movements, taking the blood Draco had rightfully drunk, stealing the warmth-
And then he was crying out, long, shrill shrieks of pain that could not spiral high enough to become other than beautiful to Draco’s ears.
He slithered free and took a moment to pause in admiration. The ropes Potter had thrown were coiling around Caspar as if alive, fibers shivering like the teeth of hungry sharks. Draco could smell the garlic and the rowan from where he stood, and though he had never known vampires were allergic to rowan, he would know to keep his distance from now on. The ropes were flaying Caspar, turning his skin, muscles, and bones to delicate rains of ashes that pattered to the steps and into the water.
Draco hesitated, wanting badly to spring on his former master and destroy him. But that would mean risking exposure to the ropes. He preferred to draw off and wait patiently, now and then reaching towards the magic that hovered between him and Potter. When he could touch it freely, he would know that Caspar’s command had dissipated, and with it his life.
It seemed to take a long time. Caspar’s skull remained, rocking on top of the debris of his spine, long after the rest of him had fallen to dust. Draco could almost see the preternatural flame of the undead life flickering behind his eye sockets, and the jaws moved and clenched impotently, fangs clashing, seeking a drop of blood.
Draco had the impulse to kick the skull into the water, but again, it would mean a risk. Caspar’s fangs might gash his thigh. He refrained.
And then the skull dissolved into a whirlwind of white particles like snow, and Potter’s magic flooded into Draco, warm and welcoming.
And the chains on his mind fell off.
And he was master, for the first time, of all his skills, all his strengths, all his senses, and he threw back his head and laughed as he hadn’t done since he was mortal, for pure joy.
*
When Harry woke, the first thing he felt was a breeze on his face. He smiled drowsily. He’d had the strength to crawl into the open to die, after all.
A hand brushed his hair back from his scar. “You’re not going to die, Potter.” A wrist brushed against his mouth, temptingly. “If you would drink, then you would gain back your strength faster.”
But memories of Ginny’s death, when the vampire had nearly overcome him and then demanded a similar thing, saved Harry. He shook his head and clamped his lips over his teeth, his fingers twitching for his wand. “No, thank you,” he muttered.
Malfoy sighed. Other memories had returned to Harry by then. “Very well,” he said, and braced his shoulder under Harry’s arm so that he could sit up. “Then I reckon I’ll just have to heal you a different way. Hold on.”
Harry’s magic surfed back into him like the breaking wave he had directed against the vampires. He gasped, his eyes widening and spine arching until it almost cracked. His legs drummed the air like a hanged man’s.
Malfoy chuckled, but didn’t stop pushing the magic through him. Threads of fire chewed up Harry’s weariness and left strength behind. They treated his limbs like straws and sucked the weakness out. Last, the magic went off like a firework inside Harry’s skull, and he found himself forced to almost painful awareness of his surroundings. They sat on the moors near his home, with a white boulder gleaming not far away, and the song of the wind was in his ears. From the full moon descending in the west, it was the same night.
“Hmmm.” Malfoy nuzzled under his ear, his breath warm with stolen life. “You’re certain you won’t change your mind and stay with me as my Long-Desired? We could become powerful together. You have no idea-“
“And I don’t want to.” Harry was on his feet in instants, wand aimed. “Get away from me, Malfoy.”
Malfoy remained sitting where he was, looking up at him. His arms were folded on his knees, and his smile was tolerant. It might have been human, except for the fangs that marked him as an animal and no more. “Now, Potter, is that the way to talk to someone who saved your life?”
Harry stared at him steadily. “You did it for your own motives. You wanted me to join with you and give you even more power than I did.”
“And do the motives diminish the actions?” Malfoy rose gracefully to his feet. Harry retreated further. He knew that Malfoy, now that his sire was dead, was a master vampire himself, dangerous beyond anyone that Harry had faced in the last month except the nest leader.
Malfoy only looked at him, gaze lingering and proprietary and sexual in a way Harry hated. No one had looked at him that way since Ginny had died. No one had dared.
Malfoy arched an eyebrow, and Harry was reminded that he had never answered the idiot’s question. “When it’s a bloody vampire doing the deeds, yes,” he growled.
Malfoy laughed and shook his hair back. It still looked like gold washed by moonlight even under moonlight. Harry hated it. And him. And the sense of connection that hovered between them, though Malfoy’s healing of him seemed to have used the last of the magic he’d pulled from Harry.
“Now,” Malfoy said. “I’ll leave you for a time. But expect to hear from me again, Potter.” His eyes flashed, and for the first time, Harry saw a good mimicry of living passion on a vampire’s face. “The power and the connection that I want from you are good for you too, you know. Together, we can be as gods.” He sounded as though he were quoting something.
Harry laughed at him. “I don’t want that power. I don’t want that connection. I’m going to bring you into the Ministry, Malfoy. You saved my life, so I’ll be lenient, but you still need to register and drink only donated human blood-“
A blur of contrasting images like doves’ wings moving across the sun, and Malfoy was in front of him, holding his shoulders firmly. “Can you take me right now?” he asked. His breath had already begun to cool. “A young vampire in the pride of his power for the first time, when your strength is fading?”
Harry felt his breath quicken in frustration. He knew he couldn’t. Every trick was exhausted but the mirror, and Malfoy would never let him reach that. He was too weak at the moment to cast powerful sunlight spells.
“I have to stop you,” he said. “You’re a vampire who’s killed humans. You might start building your own nest now.”
“I don’t want a slave,” Malfoy said intensely. “The only person I want to have power over and share power with is you, Harry.”
“I’m not submissive,” Harry said, and tried to hook his ankle behind Malfoy’s right leg.
Malfoy leaped gracefully into the air, dodging the sweep of Harry’s foot as if it didn’t exist. His eyes stayed locked on Harry’s all the time, and he was smiling now, a faint, appreciative expression.
“You might not want to be dominated,” he said. “But you might consider what kind of help I could give you in your continuing quest to hunt my kind.”
The offer stole Harry’s strength in a way that the mere fading of the magic never could. He stared at Malfoy. “No vampire betrays-“
“Not most of them,” Malfoy said. “But most vampires don’t build a nest as large as Caspar did, either, or try to keep as tight control over us as he did. I haven’t learned most of the traditions of my kind because he refused to teach them to us, thinking we’d demand more independence if he did. I’m free. I’ll act in my own best interests, the way I’ve always done. And it’s in my best interests to ally with you.”
Harry shook his head. “You haven’t even said what you would use the magic for.”
*
Draco kept from grinning with an effort. That would bare his fangs, and he didn’t think Harry needed the reminder right now.
He’s considering it.
“Power in itself is enough for me right now,” Draco said simply. He could feel the wind whistling through his ears and nose, and he had to fight the temptation to leap into the air simply to see how high his newly free muscles could take him. “I’d use the power to defend myself and keep any human from trying to kill me or any master vampire from trying to coerce me into joining him. And other goals as I figure them out.”
Harry closed his eyes and swayed on his feet. It had been a long night for him, Draco thought, watching him hungrily. But he had survived, thanks to a degree of cunning and strength that Draco had never seen from him in Hogwarts.
He was smarter and stronger than Caspar, in the end. And so was I.
His eyes went to the pulse that beat wildly under Harry’s skin, and to the almost invisible golden shimmer of power around him, which anyone but a vampire would have found difficult to see.
I want him. Why shouldn’t I have him? There’s no one with a better claim.
Harry opened his eyes and started, as if he had expected to find Draco retreating. He immediately pointed his wand and said, “Go, then. But I’ll hunt you down the moment I sense you forming a nest.” He grinned himself, and the expression cut across his face like a knife scar. “I have ways of doing that.”
Draco stifled his curiosity and bowed. He should leave some things to learn about Harry, which would make their next coming together all the sweeter.
For the moment, he would leave him with promises. He wanted to go to Malfoy Manor and see whether he really had killed his mother, as his memory seemed to suggest. He wanted to sniff out other vampires who might be in the area and drive them away. He wanted to run over hills and test the strength of his limbs.
“I don’t intend to form a nest,” he said. “I don’t intend to be any trouble or bother at all.” He paused, and then leaped closer and leaned in to sniff at Harry’s neck. With difficulty, mostly by concentrating on thoughts of future feasts, he restrained himself from biting.
“Look for me on your next hunt,” he whispered.
And then he turned away and ran, pelting across the moor, gliding faster and more smoothly than any mortal could have managed, into the night, into freedom.
*
Harry shook his head and lowered his wand. His hand shook, he noted absently.
That has to be why I let Malfoy go. Because I knew I would get myself killed if I tried to kill him. There’s no other reason.
But Harry suspected the shadow of this night’s work would walk beside him long after he had healed the wounds and the weariness that came with it.
Still, he did not care. He was already thinking ahead to the next nest, which would probably arrive soon. Vampires had a habit of moving in on “unclaimed” territory left vacant by the destruction or splitting of a nest.
For you, Ginny, he told the other and stronger shadow in his mind, who still watched him with shining eyes and a gentle smile from beyond the world. For you, I will remain free, and destroy them.
And I will destroy myself before I surrender to him.
End.
Harry could feel his mind darkening responsively to the pull of blood. He was being drained, he thought with hallucinatory calm. When the leader slit his wrist and held out the blood for Harry to drink, then he would be dead.
But his body and his magic were separate at the moment. Vampires had never figured out a way to drink a wizard’s power. Instead, Harry slumped, and Caspar licked and sucked and drew and hurt him and thought he was getting it all, whilst instead Harry’s mind and magic extended outwards in a steady call.
Come here, he told the force he demanded strength from. I need you.
The same words repeated over and over again. He had used them before. The vampires might have their nests anywhere, but what was important was that they ambushed him in certain specific sites. He had cast the first half of this spell, each time, before they took him captive.
And the force he called heard him and rolled nearer and nearer each time, separated into millions of small disparate flying particles, but ready to come together and act together when they reached the nest.
The world wavered and flickered in front of him. This was further than Harry had ever forced his body before. He hung on the edge of turning, he knew; he could hear his own slowing heartbeat, feel the blood leaving him in a steady, agonizing pull from his neck.
But he had not yielded in truth, and so the beast did not have the advantage it normally would have, when a victim gave in. Harry’s will did not hurry him towards union with his predator. He didn’t want to be a vampire.
Vampires could not drink a wizard’s power, but they could use it against the wizard himself, making the blood-drain more pleasant and potent, seducing him with the notion of becoming a creature who could do this.
Harry would never find that fascinating.
Come here. I need you.
And then the master vampire’s body shook as if someone else had answered Harry’s silent plea, and he found himself opening his eyes in astonishment.
Malfoy was fastened to the master vampire’s back, one hand curving around his neck to strangle him, nails lifted as if he would rip open his throat. His lips were drawn back in that obscene snarl that Harry knew had consumed more people than he could count, and his fangs stuck out far enough to look bare and pale near the top, where they gradually lost color. He was twisting his head as if he intended to bite his owner.
Of course he couldn’t, but the leader withdrew his fangs from Harry’s neck and turned to deal with this newest threat, and Harry discovered that he still had the strength to stand on his own. The leader must have drained less blood than he thought; in fact, he decided, as his mind cleared more and more, it was probably his own concentration that had come near to paralyzing him, rather than the drain. The leader wanted to play with him, wanted to go slowly.
It would cost him now, Harry thought, as he spread his arms and cast himself fully into the power.
Come here! It was an exultant shout, and he heard a distant rumble. I need you!
The magic rose, and surged, and crested, and broke, as the drops Harry had summoned from the stream near his home forced its way through the cracks between the stones, came together again, and descended as running water on the vampires.
*
Draco had never imagined how absolutely strong Caspar was until that moment.
An iron hand seized his fingers and bent them backwards until they broke. Needles drove into Draco’s mind, making him scream with the pain. Each needle carried a command for obedience like poison on it. Together they stuck Draco, draining his strength, drinking his independence, trying to make him the crawling wretch he’d been before.
But he was astonished, too, at his own strength of resistance.
He escaped into the free half of his mind. Even as his body began, mechanically, to break his own fingers and claw at himself, bringing the old blood flowing out, he seized his will and wheeled around with it like a hawk clutching a sword in its talons.
Vampire magic was uppermost in him now; it had been since his turning. But the wizard magic was still there, layered underneath. It had to be, or the Ministry would have no reason to forbid vampires from carrying wands.
Draco hurled the constrained wave of that power against Caspar, whom, he knew, had been a Squib before his transformation. Thalia had explained that when she was also explaining why Caspar broke the wands of all the wizards and witches he turned.
Caspar growled, and the hold on Draco’s hands and mind faltered. He sprang backwards immediately, rolling over three times in midair, and landed on a projecting shelf high up the wall where the owner of the manor house had been accustomed to keep bottles of wine. The shelf was barely three inches wide, but for someone with a vampire’s sense of balance, that was nothing.
Caspar hissed at him. His throat hung in ragged shreds, but the blood pumping out of it had already stopped flowing, and, as Draco watched, the shreds began to tie themselves together like bandages done up by invisible hands. He stalked forwards, every step graceful.
“You were content to let me rule you for months, Draco,” he said, his voice lovely and also trembling with rage. Draco didn’t think the mere beauty of that voice would have the power to take him in again. “I will forgive you if you yield to me now.”
Draco rolled another breaker of wandless magic at him in answer. Caspar staggered, gasping as he writhed under the Cruciatus.
But Draco was used to channeling his magic through a wand, and though his recollection of the time he had spent as a vampire was vague, he thought it had been at least a year. He was too out of practice. The magic faded, and Caspar was striding towards him again, driving his will forwards like a hammer to batter Draco into submission.
Draco had just started to prepare a response when the water spun through the cavern, an immense flowing stream.
He was safely above the rush, and Caspar, whose senses and reflexes were superior to any of them, leaped onto another shelf.
But the others were caught by surprise, and still focused on Potter and the blood dripping from his throat, and too unused to taking action on their own without a command from Caspar. They hesitated, and the stream caught them, sluicing the undead magic from their bodies, undoing the forces that bound bone to skin and fangs to mouth.
Caspar cried out in loss.
Draco found himself howling, the sound bursting from his throat as steadily as a werewolf’s song, in triumph.
He knew, the knowledge taking possession of him in that instinctive fashion which Thalia had told him he would use to recognize the Long-Desired, that Caspar was weaker without his nest. He would be stung and battered by so many deaths at once, and he would be confused for at least a few moments, a few vital moments, by the sensation of losing limbs and minds he had been used to wielding like his own.
Draco sprang at him, and the next moment they were swaying back and forth on the shelf above the water, limbs clasped around each other’s shoulders and necks, fangs scraping skin, Caspar’s control over Draco and Draco’s determination to be free locked into a confrontation as inescapable and deadly.
*
Harry had never called the water with such urgency before.
Perhaps that was why he had neglected to leave himself an escape from it.
The river snatched him off his feet and swirled him through the cellar. His head went beneath the water. Harry firmly held the direction of the surface in his mind and struck for it, breaking the water for a moment and gulping air hastily before he spun under again.
Stupid current, he thought, and then it smashed him against a wall and he almost lost consciousness.
He clung grimly to it, the way he had when he was fighting the drain of his own blood and the dizzying effects of his own magic. He remembered he had a wand, told himself that no wizard was helpless as long as he had that, and stuck a hand into his robes to search for it.
Smooth wood brushed through his hand at the same moment as his ears and head began to ring with the pressure that accompanied drowning.
Harry controlled the impulse to spit a curse. He contorted his body in a sharp motion and pushed himself as near to the surface as he could, whilst fumbling for the wand still.
The incantation for the Bubble-Head Charm was there, floating just under his tongue, but he couldn’t say it yet, or he would lose his air.
It was escaping anyway, of course, forcing its way past his lips in tiny bubbles. Harry jackknifed upwards again, and for a moment seized the space to expel the foul air.
Then his head dropped beneath the surface again, and he could see only murky green and drifting black, and the wand was near to slipping from his nerveless grasp.
No!
Harry’s will leaped like a winged horse in flight, forcing the last burst of wandless magic he was capable of into the Bubble-Head Charm. He gasped in clean, pure air a moment later and breathed it hastily, smacking his lips; nothing had tasted better in his life.
Of course, that took away the strength that he’d been using to fight the current. Hanging on to his wand the way he might have a much larger piece of wood in a shipwreck, Harry had to let himself be tossed from point to point, bouncing off walls and barking his shins on hidden crates.
*
Draco was bent backwards with Caspar’s fangs at his throat as if he were the lover he had so often pretended to be. Caspar was snarling in small, constant puffs of air against his skin, trying to twist his head against the implacable hold of Draco’s arm to find the right angle.
Draco pressed the arm down further, and heard Caspar’s spine creak warningly. Of course, if he could break Caspar’s back, it would be ideal, but Caspar’s bones had the same light, flexible strength his did; they would bend before they broke.
He was stuck.
Draco panted for long moments, his fangs extended, his fingers clamped like manacles, his muscles aching. He knew he had to let go and do something else, but if he let go, Caspar would plunge his head and rip the skin of his throat, and the true death would overcome him.
And he wanted the blood he could smell under Caspar’s skin so badly. He literally ached to drink it. He had to have it. He licked his lips with a tongue he knew would be pale now and tried to inch closer, but once again Caspar’s embrace closed on him and he was held fast.
“Yield, Draco,” Caspar whispered. “Yield, and I will be merciful. Your death will be pleasant.”
Well, fuck that. Caspar still controlled enough of him that Draco couldn’t use his full strength the way he’d like, but he could refuse commands that were intended to subdue his will instead of his body. He snarled and didn’t move.
“I should have known better than to share kills,” said Caspar reflectively, and he began to bear down. Draco could feel the strength in him, burning like a white flame, beyond anything he could match. It wasn’t natural, wasn’t limited by the physical frame that enclosed it, whilst Draco’s still was. Caspar was a master, with full access to all the skills that being a vampire entailed.
I should break free and try it from a different angle, if I can. But Draco still couldn’t force himself to move, with that tempting blood so close. His instincts clashed with his common sense, and the clash held him still.
Then a hand seized the shelf near Caspar’s foot, grabbed his ankle, and yanked.
Normally, Draco knew, Caspar could have held out against a pull like that, but his focus was on his arms and fangs right now, and not bracing his feet. He slipped, and Draco yanked himself free of the hold and sprang up, clinging to the wall with his fingers and toes. He knew he would have to move fast.
*
The current had finally slowed, as the confined water became more akin to a lake than a river, and Harry had been lifted high enough to find a projecting shelf. He shot a hand across it, found something to grab that might haul him out of the water, and took hold of it.
The thing moved in his hand, and Harry, too late, recognized the heel and ankle bone of a vampire.
Harry didn’t hesitate, but lifted his wand and cast a fire spell. It wasn’t ideal, but he was weak and tired from magical exhaustion and blood loss and the physical exertion of trying to breast the water. And undead flesh did burn more easily than human skin, although a mere fire wasn’t enough to kill a vampire.
A ringing scream and a smell like a firework greeted his effort. Harry fell back into the water and tilted his chin to be out of it, panting as he stared through the haze of the Bubble-Head Charm at the vampire.
It was the leader, and Harry felt his heart rise again, his will to battle returning, as he saw the vampire hopping madly around, stamping his foot and trying to put the fire out. He could destroy the monster still.
If he could only find the strength.
*
Draco saw all the factors of the solution that would save both him and Potter as if in slow motion, but his mind put them together with a speed like sheet lightning.
The water had slowed. It could no longer properly be called running water.
The hand belonged to Potter, who was staring at Caspar with alert eyes and seemed to be trying to gather up the wherewithal to attack.
Potter had a wand.
Draco gave himself no time to consider the plan that revolved in his mind like a twist of wire. He let go with his fingers at the same time as he kicked off from the wall, which caused him to drop in a vast arc over Caspar’s head and into the water.
The moving current brushed and slammed against him, making Draco shriek aloud in torment; one of the fingers on his left hand loosened and drifted away. But his guess had been correct. The water no longer resembled a river. It was running water that had the power to harm a vampire.
He grabbed Potter’s arms, looped them around his neck, seized his wand, and aimed it at Caspar. He had put out the fire on his ankle and was preparing to spring into the lake. After all, if it hadn’t harmed Draco, it was unlikely to harm him.
Draco cast a spell through Potter’s wand, pulling on his magic since he couldn’t access Potter’s power except by Potter’s express permission. The unfamiliar core pulsed against him, resisting for a moment, but Draco had seen how naturally Potter used his hawthorn wand during the war. That suggested a sympathy between them, which would only make sense if Potter had the ability to become his Long-Desired. Draco could do this.
The modified sunlight spell hit Caspar in the middle of the chest and illuminated his ribs for a moment, which glowed like white-hot barrel staves. Then Caspar had to beat on his chest and scream and try to muffle the flames with his robes, and Draco knew he would be busy for a time. He didn’t think the sunlight spell was strong enough to kill Caspar-even if the wand hadn’t resisted Draco, magic based on light had-but they had a few moments to discuss their strategy.
He dived. He had no need to breathe, and Potter was wearing a Bubble-Head Charm. They swam underwater towards the far side of the cavern. Now and then Draco winced as he lost bits of skin from his arms or upper back, but there were no more losses as large as his finger.
And he had a skill and grace as he swam that he had never suspected before, and his eyes revealed a murky, blue-grey, surprisingly beautiful world that sank little by little as the water found its way out through minute cracks in the floor and walls.
He surfaced with Potter near the entrance into the cellar, where they could sit on a set of mostly dry stairs and converse. Draco shook his hair out and listened for long, intense moments. He didn’t hear any sounds of movement from Caspar, and he didn’t feel a pressure on his mind, either. However, there was an echo of pain if he concentrated.
He deserves it, for enslaving me.
Now that he was awake, the notion that he had ever welcomed that enslavement seemed preposterous. He had not rejoiced in the Dark Lord’s domination over him; why would he accept someone infinitely less impressive as a master?
You had no choice. He controlled you before Thalia died, and when she passed, you never pressed to the logical conclusion. No doubt he asserted as much control as he could so that you wouldn’t think of it. Pleasure was his bridle on you.
And it would have been still, except that Potter had awakened him.
Potter…
Draco turned to face him, only to encounter narrowed eyes and an uplifted head that told him Potter was far from finished yet. And probably considering the best way to kill Draco.
Draco laid his mouth against the side of the bubble surrounding Potter’s head, keeping his voice low enough that he knew Caspar wouldn’t hear him. He could hope the spell would distort Potter’s voice enough that Caspar wouldn’t hear him, either. “You have to let me drink your blood. That gives me a conduit to your magic, and we can use it against Caspar. We don’t have a chance if we remain separated. He still has part of my mind in his thrall, and you’re too weak physically to stand up to him.”
There. That was good sense. Hopefully Potter’s survival instinct would let him see that and agree.
*
Ah.
Harry relaxed. He had been tense, wondering why Malfoy had saved him. It wasn’t any vampire behavior Harry was familiar with.
But it made sense that Malfoy had saved him to eat and use. That fit both the beast he was now and his personality before his turning.
“Even if I gave you my blood, I couldn’t give you my power,” he said. “I know you can’t drink magic.” He coughed and winced as he heard a bubbling in the wound that Caspar-that seemed to be the master vampire’s name, if he could trust a lying Malfoy-had given him. Malfoy’s eyes went to the neat punctures. Of course. “You’re lying and trying to gain some revenge on me before Caspar kills you. No, thanks. I’ve lived free, and I’ll die free.” He took his wand back from Malfoy and turned to face the water again, peering into the darkness. The water had put out the torches, and Harry didn’t dare cast a Lumos that could lead his enemy right to him. He would have to make do with the moonlight that fell through the entrance above the stairs.
Malfoy seized his wrists in a punishing grip and leaned towards him. “I don’t care what you think,” he whispered. “I know more about vampires than you do. There’s something called the Long-Desired-“
“Spare me the vampire mythology.” Harry was certain he’d heard a small splash that might be Caspar swimming towards them. He gave a sidelong glance at Malfoy, making sure to hide the direction of his gaze, to see how he could push him into the water. With any luck, he could destroy them both with one spell.
“It’s no mythology,” Malfoy said, speaking so fast and with such agitation that Harry felt some of his words as vibrations against the bubble more than he heard them. “It’s no joke. We can find wizards compatible in blood and magic whom we can work with. But it has to be willing.” His fingers stroked up and down the sides of Harry’s neck. Harry ignored them effortlessly, despite the urge to throw up he briefly felt. “Do you grant me permission?”
“I would rather die,” Harry said. “I never yielded to a vampire’s thrall, and I’m not about to start now.” Malfoy might talk as if he had reason, but he’s still a beast.
Malfoy’s eyes darkened and flashed as if a storm were building in the middle of a winter sky. “But Caspar-“
“I only pretended to surrender,” Harry said. “I’m immune to it.” He heard another splash and whirled around, but at the moment he could see only dark water. He cursed softly as he remembered that, probably, Caspar was swimming beneath the surface and wouldn’t show a sign of himself at all. On the other hand, maybe the sunlight spell Malfoy had cast had damaged him too much for that.
“It’s the only way we can survive,” Malfoy said, his words more rapid still. “Stupid Potter, don’t you understand that?”
“Why should I care about your survival? You’re already dead.” And Harry whirled around and planted an elbow in Malfoy’s ribs, trying to knock him off balance and drive him into the water.
*
Draco went down with a whoof and a cry, but he didn’t slide into the lake. Potter was weaker than he must have thought he was. In a moment, Draco lunged up and pinned him to the stair with his hands above his head, keeping that dangerous wand at a safe distance.
Even then, Potter didn’t look intimidated. He panted, but in the way a cornered predator might, to give warning. He stared into Draco’s eyes as if Draco was only another of his many enemies, whom Potter would defeat in the end because that was what he did. He moved a knee as if he would try to strike Draco in the groin, in fact.
For a moment, Draco shivered. The thought of all that splendid power and wild mastery yielding to him was wonderful. He almost met Potter’s eyes and tried to seduce him with a gaze. If he wouldn’t give his compliance one way, he should give it another.
But words returned to restrain him-Thalia’s words reminding him that the Long-Desired must give willing surrender, and Potter’s statement that he was immune to the thrall.
Draco growled, exposing his teeth, and leaned near so that Potter could feel his strength. Potter’s eyes didn’t change, except to move from fearlessness to grim acceptance of his own death.
“This doesn’t need to happen,” Draco hissed at him. “You can become stronger-we can become stronger-and escape.” Sudden inspiration struck him. Of course. I can use his own stubbornness against him. “And if you’re immune to the thrall, then I can’t rule you, no matter what I do. Just allow me the use of your blood and magic in the fight against Caspar, and after that, you can go back to your own independence.”
He knew that he would never give up on trying to persuade Potter unless Potter died or he found someone else to be his Long-Desired, but that was a long-term goal, not a short-term one. Potter didn’t need to know it.
Now Potter was staring at him as if attempting to determine his angle. Draco held his gaze and tried to look as reassuring as possible.
*
A temporary alliance? I never thought about that. Vampires are too selfish for those sorts of things.
But Harry had been able to see reason since Ginny died-it was why he could continue to attack unregistered vampires instead of every one in sight-and he had to admit that Malfoy’s words made sense. Even wounded, Caspar was probably too powerful for them to escape alive. And Harry wanted to live. He wanted to see Ron and Hermione again.
And he wanted to destroy more vampires.
He rolled his eyes at himself, at Malfoy’s words, at the ironies that life forced him into, and rolled his head to the side as he dissipated the Bubble-Head Charm. “Make it quick,” he said.
Malfoy didn’t make it quick enough, of course, even though he bent his head to the task like a striking snake. He flicked out his tongue and tasted Harry’s throat first, which caused Harry to roll his eyes again. When will the git realize that I’m not going to go into a romantic swoon over it, no matter how long he takes?
“This would be easier if you would let me use the thrall,” Malfoy whispered, his breath coming out in puffs that might have been erotic if they were warm. Harry’s fetishes didn’t include cold air and a stink like newly turned earth and rotting flesh, though. “It would be more pleasant for you and less painful. It would take up less of your physical strength. You’ll resist me physically when I bite, you know. You can’t help it.” Malfoy’s left hand anchored itself firmly in Harry’s hair. “Let me enthrall you.”
Harry laughed. Malfoy didn’t let him go, but Harry knew from the slight hissing of indrawn breath that he was startled.
“I’m not someone who’s always harbored secret fantasies of someone taking care of me and making my thoughts go away,” Harry drawled. “Just do it.”
And Malfoy did.
It was more painful than Caspar’s bite, because this time Harry was tense, not faking relaxation to make the vampire think he was enchanted, and Malfoy was tearing open a new wound, as if he couldn’t bear to touch the punctures Caspar had left. Harry grimaced as the blood flowed out of him, and more so as an invisible hand seemed to reach into him and scoop up his magic. He had to do this; he didn’t have to like it.
And that was what separated him from a vampire’s hapless victim. He was doing this because of his desire to survive, not because of his desire to surrender.
Malfoy began to suck. Harry flinched. He hated having cold, worm-like lips pressed against him.
But he had agreed to do this. And at least the magic was rising up and spreading over them like a sheltering tree, spreading branches above the water and sinking roots deep into the stone. Harry would have felt like a fool if it turned out that giving Malfoy permission to access his power didn’t work after all.
*
This was bliss.
Potter’s blood was exactly the kind that tasted good to Draco, deep and rich and meaty with the fragrance of adrenaline and bravery. Draco sucked it the way he would have sucked an orange or a peach when he was mortal. Juice trickled down his face and was captured by his tongue. His body shook with the sweetness and the flavor.
And the magic.
It flowed into his, and just the way Thalia had said he would, he knew instinctively how to handle it. He whipped it around them into a protective, embracing shield. The shield took the form of a tree, and Draco wasn’t sure if he had adopted that from Potter’s mind or his. He could sense Potter’s thoughts, dimly, coursing past him like fish in a stream. He might have absorbed the conception from them without realizing it.
Draco moved closer to Potter, hardly aware he was doing so, or that his hand locked in Potter’s hair had begun to caress him. He wanted, needed, had to have more of this. He tried to capture Potter’s hands so he could exert his thrall without interference. Potter said he was immune to it, but he was weakened and tired now. He might give in without knowing it, and then he would be Draco’s forever.
But a splash and a roar behind him distracted Draco’s attention.
Caspar had arrived.
*
The master vampire rose from the water like something out of nightmare. Harry stared, startled and impressed the way he had been several times this evening by the creature’s uniqueness.
His chest was hollowed out, the skin and bone in the torso mostly burned away. Tatters of cloth clung around it, and inside veins and the shrunken remains of inner organs clustered like roosting bats in the middle of a cave. The smell of rotting and old blood that emerged from the hollow made Harry gag. He tried to draw up his hands to cover his nose, but by this time, he had lost so much blood that his arm rose and then flopped back uselessly.
Caspar tried to charge at them-
And one of the invisible branches of the tree caught him in the hollow and speared him.
Harry tried to wrap his arms around himself, but once again he couldn’t move. The sensation that traveled through him when his magic was used demanded some response, however, so he gasped.
He could feel the tree, even though he couldn’t see it. He could have reached out with one hand and shaped the curve of its trunk, the graceful droop and arch of its branches, the smoothness of the bark. He could feel the way it moved as it recoiled from the blow struck against Caspar and readied itself to defend.
He shut his eyes, and suddenly so much seemed clear. His magic wielded this way had no visible effect except when it struck, but he could feel it, hear the leaves rustling in the wind, and smell a faint fragrance like gum or resin.
Malfoy’s hand rested on his chest, even as he finally drew his head up from Harry’s throat and his fangs out of the punctures. Harry felt his gesture with his left arm, as if invisible cords bound their limbs together.
The tree turned and splayed its branches in front of it like a circle of stakes, holding Caspar at bay. Harry could feel him, too, a faint, throbbing malignancy, perhaps connected to the power that he supposedly wielded over Malfoy. He heard him hiss, and it sounded like Nagini.
Malfoy laughed, and he started speaking. Harry paid more attention to the tree than to his words, thinking Caspar might seize the chance to attack whilst his former slave was distracted.
*
“I’ve found my Long-Desired,” Draco said. His vision sparked and twined with distant but distinct light, which outlined the tree he used against Caspar, and the connections that flowed back and forth, breaking soft as water, between him and Potter, and the blood flowing through his veins that had come newly from Potter’s throat. He was lit from inside like an angel. How many vampires could say the same thing? “Do you care to challenge me now?”
Caspar answered without words, but with a sudden, vicious pounding into Draco’s mind, a single command where before he had tried to command all of his muscles at once. Give up the magic.
Draco gasped as one of his hands opened and waved towards the tree as if he would dismiss it. Half the branches vanished. Caspar laughed quietly and walked a little closer. His fangs were so extended that Draco could see the place where they became transparent near the top. The ends glittered, sharp enough to cut hope on. Again, the command struck Draco like a kick from a dragon. Give up the magic.
And more of it slipped his grasp, even as Draco retreated desperately into the free part of his mind. He was no match for Caspar in brute strength, and he knew it. And now Caspar was stepping within the guard of the invisible branches, stooping over Potter, Draco’s Long-Desired, who lay with his eyes shut and a furrow of concentration wrinkling between his brows.
Draco sprang.
He hit Caspar, and they tumbled down the stairs towards the water again, but Caspar locked a leg on the step beneath the one where Potter lay and caught them. Once again he bent Draco’s head back, but this time he had madness and pain lending strength to his arms. He smiled, his eyes sunken into his head.
“I am going to enjoy this,” he whispered.
*
Harry opened his eyes, sighing in annoyance. Of course Malfoy was in trouble, and Harry reckoned he had to rescue him; Malfoy had kept his word and not tried to enthrall him.
He snatched at the magic hovering above him and wrapped it around his limbs, drawing himself to his feet like a puppet on strings. Then he picked up his wand, which Malfoy had laid on the step beside him, and aimed it.
He fumbled for a moment as he tried to figure out how to force the ambient magic through the wand core. Malfoy’s spine creaked warningly.
But his power and the phoenix feather core in the wand knew each other of old, and the spell Harry was trying to cast this time wasn’t very complex. The ropes tied around his body unbraided and slithered down his sleeves and robes and into the air.
They were soaked, but that didn’t matter. They’d been magically, not physically, infused with essence of garlic and rowan.
With a smile he knew was twisted, Harry used the invisible scoop of the magic to fling the ropes across the space between him and the struggling vampires and drape them over Caspar’s shoulders and head.
He couldn’t bind them tightly, because at that moment he sunk back in utter exhaustion, close to fainting. But he had done enough.
*
One moment Caspar’s fangs had begun to pierce his skin, slowing his movements, taking the blood Draco had rightfully drunk, stealing the warmth-
And then he was crying out, long, shrill shrieks of pain that could not spiral high enough to become other than beautiful to Draco’s ears.
He slithered free and took a moment to pause in admiration. The ropes Potter had thrown were coiling around Caspar as if alive, fibers shivering like the teeth of hungry sharks. Draco could smell the garlic and the rowan from where he stood, and though he had never known vampires were allergic to rowan, he would know to keep his distance from now on. The ropes were flaying Caspar, turning his skin, muscles, and bones to delicate rains of ashes that pattered to the steps and into the water.
Draco hesitated, wanting badly to spring on his former master and destroy him. But that would mean risking exposure to the ropes. He preferred to draw off and wait patiently, now and then reaching towards the magic that hovered between him and Potter. When he could touch it freely, he would know that Caspar’s command had dissipated, and with it his life.
It seemed to take a long time. Caspar’s skull remained, rocking on top of the debris of his spine, long after the rest of him had fallen to dust. Draco could almost see the preternatural flame of the undead life flickering behind his eye sockets, and the jaws moved and clenched impotently, fangs clashing, seeking a drop of blood.
Draco had the impulse to kick the skull into the water, but again, it would mean a risk. Caspar’s fangs might gash his thigh. He refrained.
And then the skull dissolved into a whirlwind of white particles like snow, and Potter’s magic flooded into Draco, warm and welcoming.
And the chains on his mind fell off.
And he was master, for the first time, of all his skills, all his strengths, all his senses, and he threw back his head and laughed as he hadn’t done since he was mortal, for pure joy.
*
When Harry woke, the first thing he felt was a breeze on his face. He smiled drowsily. He’d had the strength to crawl into the open to die, after all.
A hand brushed his hair back from his scar. “You’re not going to die, Potter.” A wrist brushed against his mouth, temptingly. “If you would drink, then you would gain back your strength faster.”
But memories of Ginny’s death, when the vampire had nearly overcome him and then demanded a similar thing, saved Harry. He shook his head and clamped his lips over his teeth, his fingers twitching for his wand. “No, thank you,” he muttered.
Malfoy sighed. Other memories had returned to Harry by then. “Very well,” he said, and braced his shoulder under Harry’s arm so that he could sit up. “Then I reckon I’ll just have to heal you a different way. Hold on.”
Harry’s magic surfed back into him like the breaking wave he had directed against the vampires. He gasped, his eyes widening and spine arching until it almost cracked. His legs drummed the air like a hanged man’s.
Malfoy chuckled, but didn’t stop pushing the magic through him. Threads of fire chewed up Harry’s weariness and left strength behind. They treated his limbs like straws and sucked the weakness out. Last, the magic went off like a firework inside Harry’s skull, and he found himself forced to almost painful awareness of his surroundings. They sat on the moors near his home, with a white boulder gleaming not far away, and the song of the wind was in his ears. From the full moon descending in the west, it was the same night.
“Hmmm.” Malfoy nuzzled under his ear, his breath warm with stolen life. “You’re certain you won’t change your mind and stay with me as my Long-Desired? We could become powerful together. You have no idea-“
“And I don’t want to.” Harry was on his feet in instants, wand aimed. “Get away from me, Malfoy.”
Malfoy remained sitting where he was, looking up at him. His arms were folded on his knees, and his smile was tolerant. It might have been human, except for the fangs that marked him as an animal and no more. “Now, Potter, is that the way to talk to someone who saved your life?”
Harry stared at him steadily. “You did it for your own motives. You wanted me to join with you and give you even more power than I did.”
“And do the motives diminish the actions?” Malfoy rose gracefully to his feet. Harry retreated further. He knew that Malfoy, now that his sire was dead, was a master vampire himself, dangerous beyond anyone that Harry had faced in the last month except the nest leader.
Malfoy only looked at him, gaze lingering and proprietary and sexual in a way Harry hated. No one had looked at him that way since Ginny had died. No one had dared.
Malfoy arched an eyebrow, and Harry was reminded that he had never answered the idiot’s question. “When it’s a bloody vampire doing the deeds, yes,” he growled.
Malfoy laughed and shook his hair back. It still looked like gold washed by moonlight even under moonlight. Harry hated it. And him. And the sense of connection that hovered between them, though Malfoy’s healing of him seemed to have used the last of the magic he’d pulled from Harry.
“Now,” Malfoy said. “I’ll leave you for a time. But expect to hear from me again, Potter.” His eyes flashed, and for the first time, Harry saw a good mimicry of living passion on a vampire’s face. “The power and the connection that I want from you are good for you too, you know. Together, we can be as gods.” He sounded as though he were quoting something.
Harry laughed at him. “I don’t want that power. I don’t want that connection. I’m going to bring you into the Ministry, Malfoy. You saved my life, so I’ll be lenient, but you still need to register and drink only donated human blood-“
A blur of contrasting images like doves’ wings moving across the sun, and Malfoy was in front of him, holding his shoulders firmly. “Can you take me right now?” he asked. His breath had already begun to cool. “A young vampire in the pride of his power for the first time, when your strength is fading?”
Harry felt his breath quicken in frustration. He knew he couldn’t. Every trick was exhausted but the mirror, and Malfoy would never let him reach that. He was too weak at the moment to cast powerful sunlight spells.
“I have to stop you,” he said. “You’re a vampire who’s killed humans. You might start building your own nest now.”
“I don’t want a slave,” Malfoy said intensely. “The only person I want to have power over and share power with is you, Harry.”
“I’m not submissive,” Harry said, and tried to hook his ankle behind Malfoy’s right leg.
Malfoy leaped gracefully into the air, dodging the sweep of Harry’s foot as if it didn’t exist. His eyes stayed locked on Harry’s all the time, and he was smiling now, a faint, appreciative expression.
“You might not want to be dominated,” he said. “But you might consider what kind of help I could give you in your continuing quest to hunt my kind.”
The offer stole Harry’s strength in a way that the mere fading of the magic never could. He stared at Malfoy. “No vampire betrays-“
“Not most of them,” Malfoy said. “But most vampires don’t build a nest as large as Caspar did, either, or try to keep as tight control over us as he did. I haven’t learned most of the traditions of my kind because he refused to teach them to us, thinking we’d demand more independence if he did. I’m free. I’ll act in my own best interests, the way I’ve always done. And it’s in my best interests to ally with you.”
Harry shook his head. “You haven’t even said what you would use the magic for.”
*
Draco kept from grinning with an effort. That would bare his fangs, and he didn’t think Harry needed the reminder right now.
He’s considering it.
“Power in itself is enough for me right now,” Draco said simply. He could feel the wind whistling through his ears and nose, and he had to fight the temptation to leap into the air simply to see how high his newly free muscles could take him. “I’d use the power to defend myself and keep any human from trying to kill me or any master vampire from trying to coerce me into joining him. And other goals as I figure them out.”
Harry closed his eyes and swayed on his feet. It had been a long night for him, Draco thought, watching him hungrily. But he had survived, thanks to a degree of cunning and strength that Draco had never seen from him in Hogwarts.
He was smarter and stronger than Caspar, in the end. And so was I.
His eyes went to the pulse that beat wildly under Harry’s skin, and to the almost invisible golden shimmer of power around him, which anyone but a vampire would have found difficult to see.
I want him. Why shouldn’t I have him? There’s no one with a better claim.
Harry opened his eyes and started, as if he had expected to find Draco retreating. He immediately pointed his wand and said, “Go, then. But I’ll hunt you down the moment I sense you forming a nest.” He grinned himself, and the expression cut across his face like a knife scar. “I have ways of doing that.”
Draco stifled his curiosity and bowed. He should leave some things to learn about Harry, which would make their next coming together all the sweeter.
For the moment, he would leave him with promises. He wanted to go to Malfoy Manor and see whether he really had killed his mother, as his memory seemed to suggest. He wanted to sniff out other vampires who might be in the area and drive them away. He wanted to run over hills and test the strength of his limbs.
“I don’t intend to form a nest,” he said. “I don’t intend to be any trouble or bother at all.” He paused, and then leaped closer and leaned in to sniff at Harry’s neck. With difficulty, mostly by concentrating on thoughts of future feasts, he restrained himself from biting.
“Look for me on your next hunt,” he whispered.
And then he turned away and ran, pelting across the moor, gliding faster and more smoothly than any mortal could have managed, into the night, into freedom.
*
Harry shook his head and lowered his wand. His hand shook, he noted absently.
That has to be why I let Malfoy go. Because I knew I would get myself killed if I tried to kill him. There’s no other reason.
But Harry suspected the shadow of this night’s work would walk beside him long after he had healed the wounds and the weariness that came with it.
Still, he did not care. He was already thinking ahead to the next nest, which would probably arrive soon. Vampires had a habit of moving in on “unclaimed” territory left vacant by the destruction or splitting of a nest.
For you, Ginny, he told the other and stronger shadow in his mind, who still watched him with shining eyes and a gentle smile from beyond the world. For you, I will remain free, and destroy them.
And I will destroy myself before I surrender to him.
End.