Happy birthday, ms_mindfunk! ~Mongoose, R, 1/2
Title: Mongoose
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: R/M
Pairing: Harry/Draco preslash, Draco/OMC mentioned, past Harry/Ginny
Word Count: ~15,000
Warnings: Creature fic (vampire Draco), DH spoilers but ignores epilogue, violence, bloodplay, profanity, heavy angst, several character deaths (not Harry or Draco). Somewhat dark Harry.
Summary: Draco has the power he has always dreamed of in the nest of vampires that have adopted him as their own. But then his nest leader decides to hunt Harry Potter.
Author’s Notes: Dedicated to ms_mindfunk for her birthday! (Which is now much belated). She’s done some excellent beta work for me this past year, and this is a thank-you fic for her as well. She said that she’d like to see a vampire fic I mentioned, so here it is. Just in case anyone wonders: there will most definitely be a sequel to this, maybe two, as the story has a pace and scope that won’t fit into a one-shot. This is also a pretty dark story, as I hope you can see from the warnings.
Mongoose
Draco closed his eyes and let his head fall back. He knew the picture he must make, because he had acquired an excellent imagination since he was turned. It was necessary, because he no longer had a reflection in mirrors or water.
The nest was gathered in the middle of a vast underground chamber, which had once been a cave and now was the lowest floor of a great manor house. Their leader, Caspar, had enthralled the owner of the house several months before he died, and he had willed the building to Caspar. Now the former owner crouched among them, turned, his slavery never-ending.
Just as Draco’s was. Caspar was his sire, and now he pinned Draco to the middle of a block of black stone, basalt or obsidian-Draco thought it was the latter, from the sheer silky smoothness of the surface against his back and shoulders-and straddled his legs and chest with steely strength. Draco flexed to give a show of struggle, but he had not the slightest chance of standing whilst Caspar clasped him, and everyone there knew it. The torches in carved bronze sconces along the walls flickered and danced and turned every droplet of sweat running down Draco’s pale, bare torso as red as blood.
But vampires were not to be fooled by imitations. Real blood was running from the slight wound on Draco’s neck, where Caspar’s fangs had nicked him and now dug in, pressing down until Draco could feel the cling and clasp of them and knew it would take only a single movement for Caspar to turn his head to the side and rip his throat out. Any other vampire might inflict such a wound on him, and Draco would recover in time; having his throat torn was not the true death, and meant merely a night of hunger. But Caspar was Draco’s sire, master of his movements and half his will. He could kill Draco if he chose.
Draco once would have hated to find himself in such a position, but that fact hung, remembered but unimportant, in the back of his mind. He had changed since he was bitten, by Caspar and one other vampire, Thalia, now dead in France. To be close to power was enough, since he would never wield it again. It swelled over him like a red-black thundercloud and whispered in the terrified pulses of his heart. Vampires, unlike what most of their victims believed, did keep their hearts beating most of the time, to ensure that the blood in their veins did not stagnate. Caspar found particular pleasure in commanding the hearts of his get to throb like frightened rabbits’ when he held them in the killing posture, and Draco had been obedient to that command from the first.
Now Draco shut his eyes more tightly and draped his head so that his hair flowed over the sheer side of the block like a blond waterfall. His heart beat harder and harder. His breath, which he was forcing in and out of his lungs again to gratify Caspar’s ambition for screams, scraped against his lips. He could feel the moments turning and tumbling around him, and knew the one was coming when Caspar would suddenly intensify the display, because he had grown bored of the almost erotic tension that held them now.
But whilst the tension lasted, Draco enjoyed it as long as he could. He was the youngest vampire in the nest, except for Caspar’s former lover, and he almost never got to enjoy the sexual favors of anyone but Caspar himself, who was choosy. This, complete with the scrape of nails on his chest and the punishing weight that made his ribs creak, was as close as he would come for some years, probably. Caspar hadn’t shown much inclination for captures of toys rather than victims in the last few months.
And then the moment came, and Caspar leaned closer, a line of grave-cold saliva sliding across Draco’s neck. “Scream,” he said, his voice muffled with the flesh in his mouth, but Draco understood him perfectly, and would have even if he spoke from a distance. The faint movements his jaw made thrilled Draco. There was the slightest chance, the smallest, that the mere voicing of the words would cause his fangs to slew to the side and shred Draco’s skin past hope of recovery. Tingles shivered up and down Draco’s spine and made his erection ache under Caspar’s arse. Caspar, of course, disdained to notice the spasmodic jerks he was causing simply by mounting Draco. “Scream for me. Show the nest and any victims watching who owns you.”
He bore down so that the sharp clutch of his fangs transformed into true pain. But Draco would have cried out without the stimulus, merely from and because of the command.
His voice woke clamoring echoes in the chamber before it died away again, and Caspar growled at him and flung his head sideways and up. The wound widened across Draco’s throat, but he knew immediately that it wasn’t fatal. He opened his eyes and held them half-lidded as he watched Caspar, who was running his tongue around the corners of his lips to catch the dripping blood.
To go into such darkness, and then to be spared…
It replaced the dangerous thrill that had once been Draco’s when he hung from a broom above the Quidditch pitch at Hogwarts and flirted with mortality.
How strange, he thought, as he sat up and carefully patted the blood from his throat. He hadn’t thought about Hogwarts in years. It was probably impatience at the reminder that he wouldn’t have sex for years that had spawned it. Impatience cast Draco back to what he had been, the young man, not vampire, who had once strained against Caspar’s grasp because he had thought being turned a horrible thing.
Now, he thought, watching with adoring eyes as Caspar whirled to face the murmuring nest, he was close to power, basking in the shadow of it, rolling in the musk of it. Why would he desire anything else?
“I have grown bored with easy victims,” Caspar announced. He was magnificent, light flashing from but not entering his dark eyes, his dark hair curled close to his head like black marble. He held up one hand, but Draco couldn’t see what was there from this angle. He could smell it, though. His own blood. His throat contracted and his nostrils widened, but he held himself still. Caspar would think Draco undignified if he reacted like a youngling just turned. “With victims I can command. The nest should have one that is the prize of resistance. The one who stands for heroism in the popular mind.”
Suffocating silence orbited his words. Draco slid from the block of stone and to the floor, because Caspar would have commanded him to do so if he had remembered. The wound in his throat had stopped bleeding. He lowered his head nonetheless; Caspar found the sight of Draco’s pale flesh writhing as it healed disgusting.
“Harry Potter,” Caspar said. The words drifted across his audience like chaff, but fell like a chain. He planted one foot in front of him, and his fangs drank the light that his eyes could not swallow. “We shall claim and kill him.”
An ancient, distant alarm clanged in Draco’s mind, and he shifted his weight.
Caspar turned to him in moments. “What is the matter, Draco? You disapprove?” His voice slithered and scraped now. Of course he could sense the movement of thoughts in Draco’s mind; that kind of telepathic bond was common between sires and spawn, as it was between master vampires and their Long-Desired.
“Harry Potter,” Draco said, reaching back to the memories of a mortal lifetime he rarely disinterred, “is dangerous.”
“Is that all?” Caspar smiled, shielding his fangs this time, the way he would smile at a mortal. Draco bowed his head further from the implied insult, and the nest members rustled and brushed their papery hands against each other. “I fear no danger, Draco. Are we not a nest half a hundred strong?”
Excitement flowed around the room like strong wine, raising Draco’s head as if on strings.
“Are we not a nest that has moved across France and England, Scotland and Wales, and never yet attracted attention due to the cleverness and speed of our kills?”
This time, the excitement called out hisses.
“Are we not the nest that can capture Harry Potter if any nest of vampires can?” Caspar spread his hands and stood there, an etching of white and black against the darkness, splendid, aglitter with brilliance that the most powerful living wizard could not have matched.
This time, shouts were tugged from them like the snarls caused by blood-hunger, and Draco forgot his worries in the shared glory.
*
“I don’t think this is a good idea, Harry.”
Harry kept his eyes on the ropes he was winding around his body and didn’t answer.
He was startled when Ron stood up, crossed the distance between their desks, and put his hands on his shoulders. In all the hunts Harry had gone on before, he’d never done such a thing. Harry fixed his eyes on Ron’s face and waited patiently for an explanation of this strange behavior.
“It’s gone on long enough,” Ron said, and shook him a little. His eyes were steady and filled with old shadows and old sorrow and new pleading. “I miss her as much as you do, Harry, but it’s enough. No matter how many you kill, it’ll never bring her back.”
Harry was quiet for long moments, but not because he valued the argument. Ron’s words were not about to turn him from his self-appointed purpose. He was considering only whether he should tell Ron the real reason he did this.
No, he knew Ginny wouldn’t come back. The very last possibility of her ever doing that had ended when Harry staked her, beheaded her, burned the body, and scattered the ashes over water.
But Ron thought he didn’t know that. Harry felt his lips lift in a smile that would probably look terrifying in the mirror. At least, he had been told that it did, by some of his allies and some of his victims.
“It’s not for her,” he said at last, and lifted his eyes to his old friend’s. “It’s for me.”
Ron recoiled from him, though he couldn’t really know what the words meant, not yet. Then he tried to pretend that he hadn’t done any such thing by patting Harry’s arm awkwardly. “For you? What do you mean? You can’t-Harry, you can’t mean that you enjoy killing vampires.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
This time, Ron looked at the floor as if he expected to find a different answer written there.
“I like to see them withering and dying,” Harry went on, whilst he picked up a glittering red vial with a surging, seething golden liquid inside, and cast the spells that would render it impervious to casual breakage and undetectable by any sense-even a vampire’s keen sense of smell-to anyone but him. He would place it in a pocket over his heart when he was done. “I like to see their faces curling and their fangs breaking and their bodies dissolving.”
“But that’s…” Ron didn’t say what it was. He only shook his head like a shaggy-haired pony and pushed on, though he must have known he was pushing uphill. “Not all vampires are like that, Harry.”
“I know,” Harry answered tranquilly. It had taken him a while to accept the “licensed” vampires who followed the rules and didn’t go on rampages, but he had forced himself to accept them, because otherwise he would be banned from the Ministry and lose his job as an Auror-and thus, his access to powerful magical materials and good Potions brewers. “That’s why I only hunt the ones who kill people.”
“It’s wrong to take pleasure from something like that,” Ron repeated earnestly. “It’s wrong.”
“Oh, I’m sure it is,” Harry said. “And if there’s a heaven or a hell, then I’m sure I’ll be punished when I go there.” He considered whilst he hid the vial and then shrank a mirror and stuck it into one of his inside pockets. “Probably hell,” he added. “I don’t think I could merit even a sight of heaven, the way I am now.”
“Harry,” Ron whispered. He hesitated, as if trying to choose a new tactic. Harry watched him with some interest. There was always the chance that Ron would come up with something he hadn’t heard before.
“Harry,” Ron said, and his voice had risen and grown stronger. “Don’t you know what your death would do to Hermione and me?”
Harry shrugged. “I’ve died once. I’m not afraid of it.”
Ron fell back a step from him. Harry watched him with a little regret. He hadn’t meant to introduce Ron to the truth of what he was now so suddenly and sharply. He would have softened the words if he had the time to think.
But he knew, with that heightened perception he had gained since Ginny’s death, after he bathed in the ashes of the vampire who had killed her the way one of the old Black books said he should, that a nest of vampires was moving through Britain right now. And the Ministry wouldn’t do anything about it. Fear of paperwork, caution about danger to the Aurors, certainty that they’d manage to kill a “harmless” vampire who “just happened” to be visiting the harmful nest, lack of willingness to put details together and connect widely separated deaths into the overall pattern…Harry knew all their reasons.
And understood them.
And didn’t even scorn them, because he would do the work on his own, that was all.
Ron, best friend that he was, covered for Harry when he went out hunting. He knew Harry only hunted murderous vampires, those who refused to register with the Ministry or drink willingly donated human blood. And Harry knew he wouldn’t report this conversation to the Head Auror, either, despite what must seem intolerable temptation to do so.
At the moment, he did look a bit green, and probably needed reassurance. Harry clasped his hand. “I promise I’ll come back,” he said. “Have I ever not?”
“No,” Ron said. “But all it takes is one lucky vampire. And you seem not to care much about your own life lately, mate.”
Harry smiled. “I have to live so I can kill more vampires. And you know I have a few unique advantages when I hunt.”
Ron nodded reluctantly. Harry’s resistance to the Imperious Curse translated into a resistance to the thrall that most unregistered vampires used to coerce their victims into coming nearer so they could kill them. And the power of his magic ensured he could clean up any traces he left behind, including the hiding of his own magical signature.
No one but Ron and Hermione knew Harry was the most successful vampire hunter in Britain, perhaps in Europe. And though Ron sometimes tried to have conversations with him like this, though Hermione furiously scolded Harry and tried to make him think of vampires as people, too-
Ha. That’s a good one. Like mice thinking of a cat as just another furry animal.
-they didn’t give up on him, and they didn’t turn him in. His eleven-year-old self had had better taste in friends than Harry had ever known.
He wished he could appreciate them more. But Ginny had been the only person who really knew how to connect with his emotions other than anger and fear and excitement and bring them out. Since she’d died, he spent most of his time in a quiet, neutral world that only burned and acquired color when he approached a hunt.
The way it did now. Fire of emotion shivered and danced at the corners of Harry’s vision like stained glass windows with a sunset behind them.
“Be careful, mate,” Ron said.
His voice seemed to come from another world. Already Harry was halfway along the road to the place where he lived when he was coursing the vampires, that cave of brilliant and subtle shadings.
He waved a hand absently and walked from the office. He was prepared, and now he had only to use the other power, besides the one to sense nests, that he had acquired from bathing in the ashes of Ginny’s killer.
It never took much effort; on the other hand, it was a useless ability without a murderous nest nearby. Harry concentrated, built up the image of a whirlwind in his mind, held it until it was practically foaming with the suppression he placed on it, and then released it in a soundless burst of energy. He tracked it mentally for a few paces before he lost “sight” of it.
Sometime within the next few hours, the impulse to stalk and attack Harry Potter would arrive in the mind of the nest leader, leaving him or her to decorate it with plausible reasons.
All Harry had to do was wait.
*
Night had its own beauties, Draco mused, leaning one elbow on the shining white boulder that rose from the moors and marked the end of Potter’s wards. He would never have believed that before he was turned. His mother-
Draco faltered for a moment. Caspar, for the best of reasons, had thrown a cloak across the memories of Draco’s mortal life, but Draco had the blurred impression of something involving blood and flailing arms when he had gone back to visit his mother.
He shook his head. The memory wouldn’t come, sinking like a weighted stone into the depths of his mind, and he wanted to finish his thought.
Night had its own beauties. The full moon hung overhead tonight, and Draco could see, thanks to his enhanced sight, the glittering shadows that it pulled from the stones and the humped hillocks around them, even the small plants. This was the other side of darkness, the one most humans would never see because they weren’t sensitive enough. Draco could feel the tiny currents of air passing over his skin, too, and trace them to the swaying of a piece of heather in the next instant. The smells, the smells were everywhere, delicate and blossoming, rich and fruitful, traveling in and out of his nose. They would have worked him into a dancing frenzy if Caspar had not ordered him to sit still. As it was, Draco tilted his head back both to further enjoy them and to be sure he could catch a clear sniff when Potter appeared.
His orders were strict. “You knew him best of any among us,” Caspar said. “You will remember his scent.” His fingers had sunk into Draco’s shoulder, rousing a delicious ache that still lingered. “Alert us when he is near.”
And so Draco crouched on the path that they knew Potter must take to get to his home-he was absurdly incautious; the route had been published and noted in the Daily Prophet-and waited. He sniffed, and rejoiced, and felt, and saw, and waited.
Then another smell drifted into his nostrils and overwhelmed the others in importance.
Blood. Potter’s blood.
Draco lifted his head, his nose working frantically but silently, to make sure he was not mistaken. No. Already he could see the long-legged shadow striding along the path that wound past the white boulder. Draco wondered for a fleeting moment why Potter didn’t Apparate directly to his cottage, but he reckoned that was of a piece with his arrogance in taking the same route every night. He must think he was completely safe after-
After the war, Draco told himself, and stilled the crinkling tension in his forehead that had sprung out with the effort to recall more specific memories. Caspar would not like it. He had done what he was ordered to, and smelled Potter. He opened his mouth to call the alarm.
And then he froze, because something was wrong. He could catch the edge of a tantalizing but, he thought, dangerous scent under the thrum of Potter’s blood. He leaned nearer, working his nose again, trying to define it.
Hunger gathered in his throat, smoky lumps building up and clinging to the sides. Draco heard himself growling, and though he knew the sound was below any threshold of human ears, what frightened him was that he did not remember when he had begun to make the sound.
And then he became aware that he had risen and taken a step towards Potter, and that was the worst thing of all. He had actually acted as if he wanted to take his sire’s prey.
Draco cowered back into the shadow of the boulder and hissed the alarm, sending a mental message to Caspar at the same time. He received a curt acknowledgment and a sliding sweep like a sword across his mind, promising retribution later.
He would be glad of it, Draco knew. He had never done something like that since he was turned. Because he was Caspar’s spawn, his mind and will and body and blood belonged to Caspar.
But even now, some corner of him whined and growled like a caged dog, longing to go near, enfold Potter in his arms, and concentrate on that scent until he worked out what it was.
*
Harry opened his eyes slowly. Of course, he didn’t betray that. He slitted them only, and looked through the slits.
Around him he could hear contented hisses and smell the distinctive scents of a vampire nest: old blood, scraps of cloth tossed aside from previous victims, bone dust, flesh on the edge of putrescence but held there by obscene undead magic. Harry did not smile outwardly, but dark victory bloomed across his mind. They had taken him as he hoped, then, and with the swiftness and silence that marked experienced hunters.
How many have you destroyed? he asked the vampire leader silently. How many others went to feed your spawn’s hunger, or become your slaves? I shall enjoy destroying you.
He listened, but could hear no speeches at the moment-and to be fair, he didn’t know that this nest leader would be the kind who liked to make speeches recounting his or her victories. They often did, and then Harry would listen carefully and make note of any specific victims’ names, so he could owl their families anonymously later and explain that their dead loved ones had been avenged.
Then he took stock of himself. He still wore his clothes, which meant he had the mirror and the vial with him, and the ropes wound about his body had not been discovered. Good. When vampires took someone they meant to torture before he died, they usually undressed him slowly to increase the fear.
Still, he had woken naked once. Harry had survived, but he would carry the curving silver scars on his back for the rest of his life.
But he would continue to hunt, until the vampires killed him or the dark fire that burned through and drove him, the fire that demanded payment for Ginny’s death, smothered itself in ash at the last.
Harry had to admit, he couldn’t see that second thing happening. He liked the thought of himself as a destroyer still, someone who hadn’t been reduced to tamely running down criminals and dragging them to Azkaban when Voldemort was gone. He liked to envision himself as a mongoose, a small, swift creature that still managed to break the backs of fanged predators.
There is something wrong with me, yes. But he’d left warning word with Hermione. The moment a registered vampire died or suffered injury when he was in the vicinity, she would stop him no matter what she had to do.
It was the only compromise Harry could make, and she was the only person he would trust with it.
Abruptly a hand as strong as a steel pincer grasped the back of his neck and lifted him high. Harry felt a thrill like a current of underground water that had never seen the sun move through him.
Show time.
*
Potter looked around the nest’s home with frantic whips of his head, his eyes widening fearfully. Draco found it comical to watch him. Each time he thought Potter’s eyes couldn’t open any further, and each time he proved Draco wrong, his eyes spreading like some slimy green pool with the light of the torches reflecting in them.
Slimy green pool. Yes, Draco, that’s good. Since he had become a vampire, he had a heightened demand for beauty in those he was allowed to couple with. Disgusting metaphors could drive him away from consideration of Potter.
Except they couldn’t. Even as Caspar lifted him by the back of his neck-and he lifted him effortlessly from the ground, of course he did, where was there strength like his sire’s?-Draco found himself staring at Potter. He trembled in every limb and his voice escaped him in pitiful wailing cries. His dark hair curled untidily across his forehead, as unlike Caspar’s polished cap as possible.
Still he didn’t look ugly. Still that tantalizing, on-the-edge-of-dangerous smell drifted across to Draco.
As if-
Draco buried the thoughts, because Caspar was turning to face them, and he knew Caspar could read his thoughts with a single glance into his eyes. It would not do to be rebellious in the teeth of his sire.
“We have here the great Harry Potter,” Caspar drawled, “who thought he could walk safely to his home once the Dark Lord was destroyed. As if wizards were the only threat to a hero in England!” He laughed aloud, and the nest swayed and laughed with him. Draco was perfectly glad to blend in with the rest. The more he listened to the cadences of his sire’s voice, the more he forgot the effects of his peculiar attraction to Potter. Caspar twisted, and Potter spun to face him. The motion must be making him dizzy by now, Draco thought, and surely he would vomit any moment. “What have you to say for yourself, hero?”
*
Harry swore quietly to himself as he revolved and looked at the nest. It was the biggest he had ever seen, fifty vampires at least, all of them with the thick faces and adoring eyes that marked them as the get of the nest leader. That was bad. If other master vampires, spawn whose sires were dead, had existed in the nest, then Harry could exploit their natural independence and open the gaping cracks that usually waited beneath the surface of their fragile unity. He’d done it before, to great success.
And one of them was Malfoy.
Harry stared when he recognized him, but there could be no mistake. Vampires often changed in appearance when they became undead, but blonds less than most. Malfoy’s hair looked like gold by moonlight now, he had no color in his cheeks at all, and his grey eyes stood out from his face with glistening, unnatural clarity, but it was him.
For a moment, Harry felt sorry.
Then Malfoy’s lips parted, and at once Harry saw the lean hollow of his cheeks, the snake-like, triangular jaw that replaced the normal human one when someone was turned, and the fangs that projected from beneath his upper lip, curving like a viper’s. His certainty returned. Draco Malfoy was dead. What remained was only a slave, the spawn of the vampire who held Harry. It would be a kindness to kill him.
Then the leader began to make his speech, and Harry changed his plans. He would have to act sooner than he normally did. It interfered with his hunting procedure in a way he didn’t like. Still, no one had ever accused him of not knowing how to improvise.
He waited until the moment the leader turned to him. This was a plan that would work, he was certain, but it had to be carried out when the master vampire was close enough.
He looked dead, Harry thought dispassionately, his black eyes as emotive as buttons, his hair staying still even when his head wagged or his neck swayed. It was beyond him to understand how there were people who found vampires beautiful.
Then the leader paused expectantly, and Harry knew he had to give a reply to the question.
He smiled, and spat into the leader’s face.
The leader staggered away with a hissing cry, clawing at his eyes. Harry had been chewing garlic most of the afternoon and evening.
As he was dropped, Harry rolled, and so came back to his feet whilst the nest was still hesitating, without orders from their leader. He reached straight for the vial that nestled above his heart. He usually saved it for when the leader had been killed and he had to destroy the last pitiful remnants of a nest, but this one was too strong.
Someone smashed into him, and he saw that the leader must have sent a mental command to one of his followers. Harry took the moment to feel himself embraced by strong arms and judge that he could still get his hand on his wand-overconfident vampires; they never took the time to remove a wizard’s wand, any more than a cat would to blunt a rat’s teeth-and then shouted one of the spells he had learned specifically in order to combat vampires. “Advoco árbol de rowan!”
*
Draco gaped as he watched Mnemosyne, the vampire grappling with Potter now, suddenly crowned and draped in crawling twigs and glittering red-orange berries. She screamed, hopelessly, the sound piercing Draco’s chest like a stake. She lifted a hand as if she would remove the wreath, but it slid down her body instead.
Where the berries and bark touched, she burst into sheer white flame.
Draco dived for cover as Potter tore something from his robes; he was the least powerful of the nest except for the just-turned owner of the manor, and he had received no specific order from Caspar to attack. He scuttled behind a rack that had once been used to hold wine bottles, and which Caspar had now decorated with human bones. He flung himself flat and clasped a hand over his eyes.
An instinctive reaction, he thought a moment later, dazedly. Against what?
Against that, evidently, as the entire room filled with devastating brilliance.
*
Harry loved the Rowan Spell. Rowan was a protective tree, once used by the European Muggles to ward off dark magic. They had been wrong about how it affected witches and wizards, but not about its purity and strength. Vampires couldn’t bear its touch any more than they could bear the touch of Muggle holy water.
Harry didn’t have the kind of faith that would let him use holy symbols, more was the pity. But he did have plenty of weapons.
He drew out the vial at last, canceled the Impervious Charms, and smashed it on the floor with a powerful jerk of his arm that he also loved; it felt as though he were casting out some of his demons when he did it.
Many of the specific spells for defeating vampires were powerful, too powerful for ordinary wizards who couldn’t even manage a Shield Charm to learn, and targeted to individuals-not good for protection against a nest. But Harry could use such spells, and he’d had the patience to find out a Potions master within the Ministry who would bind one of them to a potion for him.
The vial smashed, and sunlight flooded the room.
Harry flung his head back, laughing, his eyes shut as his only concession to the power of the spell that shone red through his eyelids, and spread his arms in welcome to the warmth. He was still human. He could still do that. It was a gift denied to these poor bastards.
Screams started to soar and then were cut off. The sunlight acted more quickly than the Rowan Spell. The moment it pierced the eyes or touched the skin of the nest members, fire consumed them from the inside out. Harry could picture it, because he’d watched it on occasion from a distance: the roaring, the upwelling of golden-red flame that ascended through blue to white and then became a shining pillar in the seconds before it blazed out, too hot to sustain itself for long.
Harry cast a quick spell that would restrict any lingering afterimages in front of his eyes and then studied the cave-which had once been a cellar of some kind, he thought, seeing the polished rock walls and the remnants of wooden and metal racks and cases. Over half the nest was gone, but he couldn’t estimate how many; shadows still flickered uneasily and limbs still scrabbled behind the racks. As long as the sunlight didn’t touch the vampires’ skin or eyes directly, they could survive.
Harry grinned and began to prepare for his next spell. There was a specific reason he had invited the vampires’ nest to attack him so close to home.
And then, abruptly, they all rose from their places and flew at him at once.
As he fell back, concentration disrupted, to lean against a wall, Harry’s one thought was that this master vampire had the best control over his nest that he had ever seen.
*
The killing light was gone, but Draco didn’t want to venture out. Let him crouch here in the safe silken shadows that had spared him from the sun’s fury. Let him lower his head until his mouth almost touched the ground and pant, and only dream of blood swirling around his fangs, rather than seeking it.
But then Caspar’s will invaded his limbs and jerked them as if on strings.
Attack Potter.
Draco found himself rising and rushing forwards. With him came the others, at least twenty left of the major nest, their mouths open and the air passing out of them in breaths scented with grave-dirt. Energy shot and coiled through Draco, and he joined his fellows in hissing.
So wonderful to hunt at someone else’s command. How could he act on his own, with his senses enslaved at a whim and his mortal memories obscured? Yes, to be a master vampire’s spawn was the best fate that could befall a turned human.
*
Harry saw in moments that he couldn’t escape, and he knew no spell powerful enough to drive them all back, except the one he had already been working on. What he must do was win enough time to go on working that spell. He couldn’t let them kill him.
Ron and Hermione would mourn. And who knows how many others they would go on to murder?
Harry flung his arms over his head, shielding his throat-and thus the major source of temptation for the master vampire’s spawn-and whimpered, calling, “I yield!”
The rush slowed. The nest was all around him now, seething and hissing, their necks curving in odd swan-like twists and their limbs sweeping the air like scythes. But none of them had touched him. His words had reached the nest leader and made him curious.
“Why?” asked the master vampire’s voice, as resonant as before, but not quite as confident.
Harry whimpered a little more, then whispered, “I don’t want to be devoured like that. Not whole, not by a pack of-wild beasts.” The nest bristled, growling, and he whimpered again. “I’d rather you turn me. Then at least I’m only your slave.” Bitterness, they would expect to hear that. Harry didn’t think he could actually imitate the cringing fear that would probably be most realistic, and the master vampire would probably be suspicious of it if he could, anyway.
Long moments passed. The nest didn’t move forwards. Harry let out a sigh of relief he didn’t have to feign. Being eaten alive by a nest was a fate that he wouldn’t wish on Voldemort. Any survivor would become the slave of every vampire in the nest, its will and mind divided among so many masters that it would be little more than a vegetable, unless the spawn were ordered to cooperate by their leader.
At last, the leader emerged. He looked unchanged, except that his manner had become much more that of a stalking predator and less that of a conquering hero. His spawn swayed away from him, and Harry saw their hands trembling. They were naturally attracted to reach out and touch him, but because he didn’t desire that, they didn’t.
It was, by far, the most complete control he had ever seen. Harry’s dread and admiration increased. Maybe it had been accident that put this vampire in charge of so many spawn; he had probably shared some of his kills with at least one other master vampire, and when that one died, then control of the turned vampires would pass entirely to him. Technically, those slaves could be considered half-free-they would be used to being ruled by two masters, and not react as strongly to the control of one alone-but most of them wouldn’t exploit the loophole.
The vampire halted in front of him. His eyes were enormous, drowning black circles now, pupils completely submerged. He bared his fangs and leaned forwards to nuzzle them against Harry’s throat.
This was the moment when, if he was in a vampire romance novel like the rubbish constantly produced by the same press that published the Daily Prophet, Harry would have swooned and offered his throat to the vampire, because “he was irresistible in his dark heat and promise of seduction.”
But Harry was immune both to the thrall of a vampire’s gaze and the slight poison on the fangs which made a bite seem desirable. That poison, as Harry had discovered after detailed research, really only worked because of the suggestion in a vampire’s gaze.
He could still be turned. He could not be made to want it.
“You say that you want to be mine?” the leader breathed. “Yield to me. Give your will into my keeping. That will be the sign. That will be the only reason I have to trust you.” His hand shot up with terrifying speed and grasped Harry’s hair, yanking his head back. “You have proven resistant so far. I want you to surrender.”
Harry’s body shook with hatred of the word. He had to fight hard to keep his lip from curling into a sneer. Even now, he was less afraid of the vampire nest than he was of the impulse that might arise from the depths of his soul and tell him to go painlessly to his death.
But that impulse wouldn’t arise, he knew. He didn’t have the weakness, the twist, he had seen in some other people, who either wanted to dominate others or wanted to be dominated. Harry was self-sufficient in himself, complete and whole, freeborn.
But at the moment, his life depended on convincing the vampire leader otherwise. He let his head droop forwards and his eyelids flutter. “You promise it won’t hurt?” he whispered. It was the thrall that made a vampire’s bite sexual.
“I promise,” the leader said. His breath smelled like dead rats.
Harry nodded and rolled his head back on the wall, still staring into the leader’s eyes. He let his jaw relax, his gaze become glazed and unfocused. In the meantime, he reached for the power to continue casting the spell that would destroy the lot of them.
The leader growled in victory and sank in his fangs.
It hurt. It hurt like fury. But less than the Cruciatus had, or the knowledge that he was trapped in the dungeons of Malfoy Manor whilst Bellatrix tortured Hermione. Harry put the pain to one side and cast his magic like a lasso, chanting the necessary, long incantation steadily in his head.
*
Draco shifted uneasily. He didn’t understand why, but the sight of Casper biting Potter started an awkward fire low in his belly.
It felt like-
It felt like the revelation of the Long-Desired.
Which was ridiculous. Draco knew that he couldn’t have one of those. No vampire could who was spawn and not master.
But still the impulse was there. Thalia had been the one to tell him about the Long-Desired, explaining the concept with graceful motions of her sharp-nailed hands. In general, she had been kinder than Caspar, which meant she had taught Draco some of what he had needed to know but not fulfilled his craving for power.
“The humans think we have mates. That’s only because they’re used to thinking of us as animals.” Thalia had tossed her hair over her shoulder with a snort, and then bit casually into the throat of the young girl tucked under her arm. “But we are vampires, and thus the superior blend of animal and human. What we may have is a Long-Desired, a wizard who will lend us both the power and the blood we crave. The blood is a matter of taste, and many wizards will have that. Likewise, many wizards, even the weakest, may have a power level that can tempt an individual vampire. But the balance of the two is rare, and rarer still is the person who will give his express permission to be taken as such, without which the power is unreachable, the blood only blood. You will not find only one person who could be your Long-Desired, but you will not find a hundred, either.” She had paused and run a hand down Draco’s cheek. “But you will not need to worry about that for long centuries, little one. Both Casper and I are your masters, and neither of us has any intention of dying any time soon.”
Thalia had died, spitted on the stake of a witch who got lucky.
And now Draco discovered the free half of his mind that he had ignored.
It shone like a doorway with light coming through it, an arch from darkness into radiance. Draco hesitated; the impression was unnatural for him. Sunlight would destroy him. He rejoiced in night.
With one half of himself.
He had been mortal, and now the mortal memories came swimming back to him, still blurred and rippling like fish seen underwater, but there. He thought, if he concentrated, that he would be able to reach out and touch them.
He started to, but then his intentions crashed into the chains on his will and his own desire to be Caspar’s slave. Half free, half enslaved, he fought, his body twitching and his mind flexing with contradictory impulses. If three master vampires had made him, and two had died, would he be two-thirds free and one-third captive?
Thoughts. Thoughts he hadn’t believed he would ever have again, racing and redoubling and splitting and breaking and reflecting. Draco took a few heaving breaths, not because Caspar had commanded him to scream but merely because he wanted to move his lungs, and watched with shadowed eyes as Caspar drained Potter. Did he want to stand here? Couldn’t he move a step backwards?
He could, if he wanted to. He had simply never wanted to before. But now he did it, and the nest gave way for him, their gazes never wavering from their lock on Caspar. They all assumed, of course, that if he was doing something, it was because their leader had commanded him to do it.
He could be closer to the power he had always wanted than he assumed. He could wield it for himself. He had given up that dream because-well, it was a dream of his mortal days, and thus half-forgotten, and because it was simply impossible. Caspar was the one who wielded the power for him and made Draco into a willing instrument. That was enough. That was the way it always should be.
But if-
It was more for himself than Potter that Draco moved as he did then. Perhaps the strange impulses he was receiving had come about because Potter was a potential candidate for Draco’s Long-Desired; perhaps not. But Draco wanted to find out how much he could rebel.
Part 2.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: R/M
Pairing: Harry/Draco preslash, Draco/OMC mentioned, past Harry/Ginny
Word Count: ~15,000
Warnings: Creature fic (vampire Draco), DH spoilers but ignores epilogue, violence, bloodplay, profanity, heavy angst, several character deaths (not Harry or Draco). Somewhat dark Harry.
Summary: Draco has the power he has always dreamed of in the nest of vampires that have adopted him as their own. But then his nest leader decides to hunt Harry Potter.
Author’s Notes: Dedicated to ms_mindfunk for her birthday! (Which is now much belated). She’s done some excellent beta work for me this past year, and this is a thank-you fic for her as well. She said that she’d like to see a vampire fic I mentioned, so here it is. Just in case anyone wonders: there will most definitely be a sequel to this, maybe two, as the story has a pace and scope that won’t fit into a one-shot. This is also a pretty dark story, as I hope you can see from the warnings.
Mongoose
Draco closed his eyes and let his head fall back. He knew the picture he must make, because he had acquired an excellent imagination since he was turned. It was necessary, because he no longer had a reflection in mirrors or water.
The nest was gathered in the middle of a vast underground chamber, which had once been a cave and now was the lowest floor of a great manor house. Their leader, Caspar, had enthralled the owner of the house several months before he died, and he had willed the building to Caspar. Now the former owner crouched among them, turned, his slavery never-ending.
Just as Draco’s was. Caspar was his sire, and now he pinned Draco to the middle of a block of black stone, basalt or obsidian-Draco thought it was the latter, from the sheer silky smoothness of the surface against his back and shoulders-and straddled his legs and chest with steely strength. Draco flexed to give a show of struggle, but he had not the slightest chance of standing whilst Caspar clasped him, and everyone there knew it. The torches in carved bronze sconces along the walls flickered and danced and turned every droplet of sweat running down Draco’s pale, bare torso as red as blood.
But vampires were not to be fooled by imitations. Real blood was running from the slight wound on Draco’s neck, where Caspar’s fangs had nicked him and now dug in, pressing down until Draco could feel the cling and clasp of them and knew it would take only a single movement for Caspar to turn his head to the side and rip his throat out. Any other vampire might inflict such a wound on him, and Draco would recover in time; having his throat torn was not the true death, and meant merely a night of hunger. But Caspar was Draco’s sire, master of his movements and half his will. He could kill Draco if he chose.
Draco once would have hated to find himself in such a position, but that fact hung, remembered but unimportant, in the back of his mind. He had changed since he was bitten, by Caspar and one other vampire, Thalia, now dead in France. To be close to power was enough, since he would never wield it again. It swelled over him like a red-black thundercloud and whispered in the terrified pulses of his heart. Vampires, unlike what most of their victims believed, did keep their hearts beating most of the time, to ensure that the blood in their veins did not stagnate. Caspar found particular pleasure in commanding the hearts of his get to throb like frightened rabbits’ when he held them in the killing posture, and Draco had been obedient to that command from the first.
Now Draco shut his eyes more tightly and draped his head so that his hair flowed over the sheer side of the block like a blond waterfall. His heart beat harder and harder. His breath, which he was forcing in and out of his lungs again to gratify Caspar’s ambition for screams, scraped against his lips. He could feel the moments turning and tumbling around him, and knew the one was coming when Caspar would suddenly intensify the display, because he had grown bored of the almost erotic tension that held them now.
But whilst the tension lasted, Draco enjoyed it as long as he could. He was the youngest vampire in the nest, except for Caspar’s former lover, and he almost never got to enjoy the sexual favors of anyone but Caspar himself, who was choosy. This, complete with the scrape of nails on his chest and the punishing weight that made his ribs creak, was as close as he would come for some years, probably. Caspar hadn’t shown much inclination for captures of toys rather than victims in the last few months.
And then the moment came, and Caspar leaned closer, a line of grave-cold saliva sliding across Draco’s neck. “Scream,” he said, his voice muffled with the flesh in his mouth, but Draco understood him perfectly, and would have even if he spoke from a distance. The faint movements his jaw made thrilled Draco. There was the slightest chance, the smallest, that the mere voicing of the words would cause his fangs to slew to the side and shred Draco’s skin past hope of recovery. Tingles shivered up and down Draco’s spine and made his erection ache under Caspar’s arse. Caspar, of course, disdained to notice the spasmodic jerks he was causing simply by mounting Draco. “Scream for me. Show the nest and any victims watching who owns you.”
He bore down so that the sharp clutch of his fangs transformed into true pain. But Draco would have cried out without the stimulus, merely from and because of the command.
His voice woke clamoring echoes in the chamber before it died away again, and Caspar growled at him and flung his head sideways and up. The wound widened across Draco’s throat, but he knew immediately that it wasn’t fatal. He opened his eyes and held them half-lidded as he watched Caspar, who was running his tongue around the corners of his lips to catch the dripping blood.
To go into such darkness, and then to be spared…
It replaced the dangerous thrill that had once been Draco’s when he hung from a broom above the Quidditch pitch at Hogwarts and flirted with mortality.
How strange, he thought, as he sat up and carefully patted the blood from his throat. He hadn’t thought about Hogwarts in years. It was probably impatience at the reminder that he wouldn’t have sex for years that had spawned it. Impatience cast Draco back to what he had been, the young man, not vampire, who had once strained against Caspar’s grasp because he had thought being turned a horrible thing.
Now, he thought, watching with adoring eyes as Caspar whirled to face the murmuring nest, he was close to power, basking in the shadow of it, rolling in the musk of it. Why would he desire anything else?
“I have grown bored with easy victims,” Caspar announced. He was magnificent, light flashing from but not entering his dark eyes, his dark hair curled close to his head like black marble. He held up one hand, but Draco couldn’t see what was there from this angle. He could smell it, though. His own blood. His throat contracted and his nostrils widened, but he held himself still. Caspar would think Draco undignified if he reacted like a youngling just turned. “With victims I can command. The nest should have one that is the prize of resistance. The one who stands for heroism in the popular mind.”
Suffocating silence orbited his words. Draco slid from the block of stone and to the floor, because Caspar would have commanded him to do so if he had remembered. The wound in his throat had stopped bleeding. He lowered his head nonetheless; Caspar found the sight of Draco’s pale flesh writhing as it healed disgusting.
“Harry Potter,” Caspar said. The words drifted across his audience like chaff, but fell like a chain. He planted one foot in front of him, and his fangs drank the light that his eyes could not swallow. “We shall claim and kill him.”
An ancient, distant alarm clanged in Draco’s mind, and he shifted his weight.
Caspar turned to him in moments. “What is the matter, Draco? You disapprove?” His voice slithered and scraped now. Of course he could sense the movement of thoughts in Draco’s mind; that kind of telepathic bond was common between sires and spawn, as it was between master vampires and their Long-Desired.
“Harry Potter,” Draco said, reaching back to the memories of a mortal lifetime he rarely disinterred, “is dangerous.”
“Is that all?” Caspar smiled, shielding his fangs this time, the way he would smile at a mortal. Draco bowed his head further from the implied insult, and the nest members rustled and brushed their papery hands against each other. “I fear no danger, Draco. Are we not a nest half a hundred strong?”
Excitement flowed around the room like strong wine, raising Draco’s head as if on strings.
“Are we not a nest that has moved across France and England, Scotland and Wales, and never yet attracted attention due to the cleverness and speed of our kills?”
This time, the excitement called out hisses.
“Are we not the nest that can capture Harry Potter if any nest of vampires can?” Caspar spread his hands and stood there, an etching of white and black against the darkness, splendid, aglitter with brilliance that the most powerful living wizard could not have matched.
This time, shouts were tugged from them like the snarls caused by blood-hunger, and Draco forgot his worries in the shared glory.
*
“I don’t think this is a good idea, Harry.”
Harry kept his eyes on the ropes he was winding around his body and didn’t answer.
He was startled when Ron stood up, crossed the distance between their desks, and put his hands on his shoulders. In all the hunts Harry had gone on before, he’d never done such a thing. Harry fixed his eyes on Ron’s face and waited patiently for an explanation of this strange behavior.
“It’s gone on long enough,” Ron said, and shook him a little. His eyes were steady and filled with old shadows and old sorrow and new pleading. “I miss her as much as you do, Harry, but it’s enough. No matter how many you kill, it’ll never bring her back.”
Harry was quiet for long moments, but not because he valued the argument. Ron’s words were not about to turn him from his self-appointed purpose. He was considering only whether he should tell Ron the real reason he did this.
No, he knew Ginny wouldn’t come back. The very last possibility of her ever doing that had ended when Harry staked her, beheaded her, burned the body, and scattered the ashes over water.
But Ron thought he didn’t know that. Harry felt his lips lift in a smile that would probably look terrifying in the mirror. At least, he had been told that it did, by some of his allies and some of his victims.
“It’s not for her,” he said at last, and lifted his eyes to his old friend’s. “It’s for me.”
Ron recoiled from him, though he couldn’t really know what the words meant, not yet. Then he tried to pretend that he hadn’t done any such thing by patting Harry’s arm awkwardly. “For you? What do you mean? You can’t-Harry, you can’t mean that you enjoy killing vampires.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
This time, Ron looked at the floor as if he expected to find a different answer written there.
“I like to see them withering and dying,” Harry went on, whilst he picked up a glittering red vial with a surging, seething golden liquid inside, and cast the spells that would render it impervious to casual breakage and undetectable by any sense-even a vampire’s keen sense of smell-to anyone but him. He would place it in a pocket over his heart when he was done. “I like to see their faces curling and their fangs breaking and their bodies dissolving.”
“But that’s…” Ron didn’t say what it was. He only shook his head like a shaggy-haired pony and pushed on, though he must have known he was pushing uphill. “Not all vampires are like that, Harry.”
“I know,” Harry answered tranquilly. It had taken him a while to accept the “licensed” vampires who followed the rules and didn’t go on rampages, but he had forced himself to accept them, because otherwise he would be banned from the Ministry and lose his job as an Auror-and thus, his access to powerful magical materials and good Potions brewers. “That’s why I only hunt the ones who kill people.”
“It’s wrong to take pleasure from something like that,” Ron repeated earnestly. “It’s wrong.”
“Oh, I’m sure it is,” Harry said. “And if there’s a heaven or a hell, then I’m sure I’ll be punished when I go there.” He considered whilst he hid the vial and then shrank a mirror and stuck it into one of his inside pockets. “Probably hell,” he added. “I don’t think I could merit even a sight of heaven, the way I am now.”
“Harry,” Ron whispered. He hesitated, as if trying to choose a new tactic. Harry watched him with some interest. There was always the chance that Ron would come up with something he hadn’t heard before.
“Harry,” Ron said, and his voice had risen and grown stronger. “Don’t you know what your death would do to Hermione and me?”
Harry shrugged. “I’ve died once. I’m not afraid of it.”
Ron fell back a step from him. Harry watched him with a little regret. He hadn’t meant to introduce Ron to the truth of what he was now so suddenly and sharply. He would have softened the words if he had the time to think.
But he knew, with that heightened perception he had gained since Ginny’s death, after he bathed in the ashes of the vampire who had killed her the way one of the old Black books said he should, that a nest of vampires was moving through Britain right now. And the Ministry wouldn’t do anything about it. Fear of paperwork, caution about danger to the Aurors, certainty that they’d manage to kill a “harmless” vampire who “just happened” to be visiting the harmful nest, lack of willingness to put details together and connect widely separated deaths into the overall pattern…Harry knew all their reasons.
And understood them.
And didn’t even scorn them, because he would do the work on his own, that was all.
Ron, best friend that he was, covered for Harry when he went out hunting. He knew Harry only hunted murderous vampires, those who refused to register with the Ministry or drink willingly donated human blood. And Harry knew he wouldn’t report this conversation to the Head Auror, either, despite what must seem intolerable temptation to do so.
At the moment, he did look a bit green, and probably needed reassurance. Harry clasped his hand. “I promise I’ll come back,” he said. “Have I ever not?”
“No,” Ron said. “But all it takes is one lucky vampire. And you seem not to care much about your own life lately, mate.”
Harry smiled. “I have to live so I can kill more vampires. And you know I have a few unique advantages when I hunt.”
Ron nodded reluctantly. Harry’s resistance to the Imperious Curse translated into a resistance to the thrall that most unregistered vampires used to coerce their victims into coming nearer so they could kill them. And the power of his magic ensured he could clean up any traces he left behind, including the hiding of his own magical signature.
No one but Ron and Hermione knew Harry was the most successful vampire hunter in Britain, perhaps in Europe. And though Ron sometimes tried to have conversations with him like this, though Hermione furiously scolded Harry and tried to make him think of vampires as people, too-
Ha. That’s a good one. Like mice thinking of a cat as just another furry animal.
-they didn’t give up on him, and they didn’t turn him in. His eleven-year-old self had had better taste in friends than Harry had ever known.
He wished he could appreciate them more. But Ginny had been the only person who really knew how to connect with his emotions other than anger and fear and excitement and bring them out. Since she’d died, he spent most of his time in a quiet, neutral world that only burned and acquired color when he approached a hunt.
The way it did now. Fire of emotion shivered and danced at the corners of Harry’s vision like stained glass windows with a sunset behind them.
“Be careful, mate,” Ron said.
His voice seemed to come from another world. Already Harry was halfway along the road to the place where he lived when he was coursing the vampires, that cave of brilliant and subtle shadings.
He waved a hand absently and walked from the office. He was prepared, and now he had only to use the other power, besides the one to sense nests, that he had acquired from bathing in the ashes of Ginny’s killer.
It never took much effort; on the other hand, it was a useless ability without a murderous nest nearby. Harry concentrated, built up the image of a whirlwind in his mind, held it until it was practically foaming with the suppression he placed on it, and then released it in a soundless burst of energy. He tracked it mentally for a few paces before he lost “sight” of it.
Sometime within the next few hours, the impulse to stalk and attack Harry Potter would arrive in the mind of the nest leader, leaving him or her to decorate it with plausible reasons.
All Harry had to do was wait.
*
Night had its own beauties, Draco mused, leaning one elbow on the shining white boulder that rose from the moors and marked the end of Potter’s wards. He would never have believed that before he was turned. His mother-
Draco faltered for a moment. Caspar, for the best of reasons, had thrown a cloak across the memories of Draco’s mortal life, but Draco had the blurred impression of something involving blood and flailing arms when he had gone back to visit his mother.
He shook his head. The memory wouldn’t come, sinking like a weighted stone into the depths of his mind, and he wanted to finish his thought.
Night had its own beauties. The full moon hung overhead tonight, and Draco could see, thanks to his enhanced sight, the glittering shadows that it pulled from the stones and the humped hillocks around them, even the small plants. This was the other side of darkness, the one most humans would never see because they weren’t sensitive enough. Draco could feel the tiny currents of air passing over his skin, too, and trace them to the swaying of a piece of heather in the next instant. The smells, the smells were everywhere, delicate and blossoming, rich and fruitful, traveling in and out of his nose. They would have worked him into a dancing frenzy if Caspar had not ordered him to sit still. As it was, Draco tilted his head back both to further enjoy them and to be sure he could catch a clear sniff when Potter appeared.
His orders were strict. “You knew him best of any among us,” Caspar said. “You will remember his scent.” His fingers had sunk into Draco’s shoulder, rousing a delicious ache that still lingered. “Alert us when he is near.”
And so Draco crouched on the path that they knew Potter must take to get to his home-he was absurdly incautious; the route had been published and noted in the Daily Prophet-and waited. He sniffed, and rejoiced, and felt, and saw, and waited.
Then another smell drifted into his nostrils and overwhelmed the others in importance.
Blood. Potter’s blood.
Draco lifted his head, his nose working frantically but silently, to make sure he was not mistaken. No. Already he could see the long-legged shadow striding along the path that wound past the white boulder. Draco wondered for a fleeting moment why Potter didn’t Apparate directly to his cottage, but he reckoned that was of a piece with his arrogance in taking the same route every night. He must think he was completely safe after-
After the war, Draco told himself, and stilled the crinkling tension in his forehead that had sprung out with the effort to recall more specific memories. Caspar would not like it. He had done what he was ordered to, and smelled Potter. He opened his mouth to call the alarm.
And then he froze, because something was wrong. He could catch the edge of a tantalizing but, he thought, dangerous scent under the thrum of Potter’s blood. He leaned nearer, working his nose again, trying to define it.
Hunger gathered in his throat, smoky lumps building up and clinging to the sides. Draco heard himself growling, and though he knew the sound was below any threshold of human ears, what frightened him was that he did not remember when he had begun to make the sound.
And then he became aware that he had risen and taken a step towards Potter, and that was the worst thing of all. He had actually acted as if he wanted to take his sire’s prey.
Draco cowered back into the shadow of the boulder and hissed the alarm, sending a mental message to Caspar at the same time. He received a curt acknowledgment and a sliding sweep like a sword across his mind, promising retribution later.
He would be glad of it, Draco knew. He had never done something like that since he was turned. Because he was Caspar’s spawn, his mind and will and body and blood belonged to Caspar.
But even now, some corner of him whined and growled like a caged dog, longing to go near, enfold Potter in his arms, and concentrate on that scent until he worked out what it was.
*
Harry opened his eyes slowly. Of course, he didn’t betray that. He slitted them only, and looked through the slits.
Around him he could hear contented hisses and smell the distinctive scents of a vampire nest: old blood, scraps of cloth tossed aside from previous victims, bone dust, flesh on the edge of putrescence but held there by obscene undead magic. Harry did not smile outwardly, but dark victory bloomed across his mind. They had taken him as he hoped, then, and with the swiftness and silence that marked experienced hunters.
How many have you destroyed? he asked the vampire leader silently. How many others went to feed your spawn’s hunger, or become your slaves? I shall enjoy destroying you.
He listened, but could hear no speeches at the moment-and to be fair, he didn’t know that this nest leader would be the kind who liked to make speeches recounting his or her victories. They often did, and then Harry would listen carefully and make note of any specific victims’ names, so he could owl their families anonymously later and explain that their dead loved ones had been avenged.
Then he took stock of himself. He still wore his clothes, which meant he had the mirror and the vial with him, and the ropes wound about his body had not been discovered. Good. When vampires took someone they meant to torture before he died, they usually undressed him slowly to increase the fear.
Still, he had woken naked once. Harry had survived, but he would carry the curving silver scars on his back for the rest of his life.
But he would continue to hunt, until the vampires killed him or the dark fire that burned through and drove him, the fire that demanded payment for Ginny’s death, smothered itself in ash at the last.
Harry had to admit, he couldn’t see that second thing happening. He liked the thought of himself as a destroyer still, someone who hadn’t been reduced to tamely running down criminals and dragging them to Azkaban when Voldemort was gone. He liked to envision himself as a mongoose, a small, swift creature that still managed to break the backs of fanged predators.
There is something wrong with me, yes. But he’d left warning word with Hermione. The moment a registered vampire died or suffered injury when he was in the vicinity, she would stop him no matter what she had to do.
It was the only compromise Harry could make, and she was the only person he would trust with it.
Abruptly a hand as strong as a steel pincer grasped the back of his neck and lifted him high. Harry felt a thrill like a current of underground water that had never seen the sun move through him.
Show time.
*
Potter looked around the nest’s home with frantic whips of his head, his eyes widening fearfully. Draco found it comical to watch him. Each time he thought Potter’s eyes couldn’t open any further, and each time he proved Draco wrong, his eyes spreading like some slimy green pool with the light of the torches reflecting in them.
Slimy green pool. Yes, Draco, that’s good. Since he had become a vampire, he had a heightened demand for beauty in those he was allowed to couple with. Disgusting metaphors could drive him away from consideration of Potter.
Except they couldn’t. Even as Caspar lifted him by the back of his neck-and he lifted him effortlessly from the ground, of course he did, where was there strength like his sire’s?-Draco found himself staring at Potter. He trembled in every limb and his voice escaped him in pitiful wailing cries. His dark hair curled untidily across his forehead, as unlike Caspar’s polished cap as possible.
Still he didn’t look ugly. Still that tantalizing, on-the-edge-of-dangerous smell drifted across to Draco.
As if-
Draco buried the thoughts, because Caspar was turning to face them, and he knew Caspar could read his thoughts with a single glance into his eyes. It would not do to be rebellious in the teeth of his sire.
“We have here the great Harry Potter,” Caspar drawled, “who thought he could walk safely to his home once the Dark Lord was destroyed. As if wizards were the only threat to a hero in England!” He laughed aloud, and the nest swayed and laughed with him. Draco was perfectly glad to blend in with the rest. The more he listened to the cadences of his sire’s voice, the more he forgot the effects of his peculiar attraction to Potter. Caspar twisted, and Potter spun to face him. The motion must be making him dizzy by now, Draco thought, and surely he would vomit any moment. “What have you to say for yourself, hero?”
*
Harry swore quietly to himself as he revolved and looked at the nest. It was the biggest he had ever seen, fifty vampires at least, all of them with the thick faces and adoring eyes that marked them as the get of the nest leader. That was bad. If other master vampires, spawn whose sires were dead, had existed in the nest, then Harry could exploit their natural independence and open the gaping cracks that usually waited beneath the surface of their fragile unity. He’d done it before, to great success.
And one of them was Malfoy.
Harry stared when he recognized him, but there could be no mistake. Vampires often changed in appearance when they became undead, but blonds less than most. Malfoy’s hair looked like gold by moonlight now, he had no color in his cheeks at all, and his grey eyes stood out from his face with glistening, unnatural clarity, but it was him.
For a moment, Harry felt sorry.
Then Malfoy’s lips parted, and at once Harry saw the lean hollow of his cheeks, the snake-like, triangular jaw that replaced the normal human one when someone was turned, and the fangs that projected from beneath his upper lip, curving like a viper’s. His certainty returned. Draco Malfoy was dead. What remained was only a slave, the spawn of the vampire who held Harry. It would be a kindness to kill him.
Then the leader began to make his speech, and Harry changed his plans. He would have to act sooner than he normally did. It interfered with his hunting procedure in a way he didn’t like. Still, no one had ever accused him of not knowing how to improvise.
He waited until the moment the leader turned to him. This was a plan that would work, he was certain, but it had to be carried out when the master vampire was close enough.
He looked dead, Harry thought dispassionately, his black eyes as emotive as buttons, his hair staying still even when his head wagged or his neck swayed. It was beyond him to understand how there were people who found vampires beautiful.
Then the leader paused expectantly, and Harry knew he had to give a reply to the question.
He smiled, and spat into the leader’s face.
The leader staggered away with a hissing cry, clawing at his eyes. Harry had been chewing garlic most of the afternoon and evening.
As he was dropped, Harry rolled, and so came back to his feet whilst the nest was still hesitating, without orders from their leader. He reached straight for the vial that nestled above his heart. He usually saved it for when the leader had been killed and he had to destroy the last pitiful remnants of a nest, but this one was too strong.
Someone smashed into him, and he saw that the leader must have sent a mental command to one of his followers. Harry took the moment to feel himself embraced by strong arms and judge that he could still get his hand on his wand-overconfident vampires; they never took the time to remove a wizard’s wand, any more than a cat would to blunt a rat’s teeth-and then shouted one of the spells he had learned specifically in order to combat vampires. “Advoco árbol de rowan!”
*
Draco gaped as he watched Mnemosyne, the vampire grappling with Potter now, suddenly crowned and draped in crawling twigs and glittering red-orange berries. She screamed, hopelessly, the sound piercing Draco’s chest like a stake. She lifted a hand as if she would remove the wreath, but it slid down her body instead.
Where the berries and bark touched, she burst into sheer white flame.
Draco dived for cover as Potter tore something from his robes; he was the least powerful of the nest except for the just-turned owner of the manor, and he had received no specific order from Caspar to attack. He scuttled behind a rack that had once been used to hold wine bottles, and which Caspar had now decorated with human bones. He flung himself flat and clasped a hand over his eyes.
An instinctive reaction, he thought a moment later, dazedly. Against what?
Against that, evidently, as the entire room filled with devastating brilliance.
*
Harry loved the Rowan Spell. Rowan was a protective tree, once used by the European Muggles to ward off dark magic. They had been wrong about how it affected witches and wizards, but not about its purity and strength. Vampires couldn’t bear its touch any more than they could bear the touch of Muggle holy water.
Harry didn’t have the kind of faith that would let him use holy symbols, more was the pity. But he did have plenty of weapons.
He drew out the vial at last, canceled the Impervious Charms, and smashed it on the floor with a powerful jerk of his arm that he also loved; it felt as though he were casting out some of his demons when he did it.
Many of the specific spells for defeating vampires were powerful, too powerful for ordinary wizards who couldn’t even manage a Shield Charm to learn, and targeted to individuals-not good for protection against a nest. But Harry could use such spells, and he’d had the patience to find out a Potions master within the Ministry who would bind one of them to a potion for him.
The vial smashed, and sunlight flooded the room.
Harry flung his head back, laughing, his eyes shut as his only concession to the power of the spell that shone red through his eyelids, and spread his arms in welcome to the warmth. He was still human. He could still do that. It was a gift denied to these poor bastards.
Screams started to soar and then were cut off. The sunlight acted more quickly than the Rowan Spell. The moment it pierced the eyes or touched the skin of the nest members, fire consumed them from the inside out. Harry could picture it, because he’d watched it on occasion from a distance: the roaring, the upwelling of golden-red flame that ascended through blue to white and then became a shining pillar in the seconds before it blazed out, too hot to sustain itself for long.
Harry cast a quick spell that would restrict any lingering afterimages in front of his eyes and then studied the cave-which had once been a cellar of some kind, he thought, seeing the polished rock walls and the remnants of wooden and metal racks and cases. Over half the nest was gone, but he couldn’t estimate how many; shadows still flickered uneasily and limbs still scrabbled behind the racks. As long as the sunlight didn’t touch the vampires’ skin or eyes directly, they could survive.
Harry grinned and began to prepare for his next spell. There was a specific reason he had invited the vampires’ nest to attack him so close to home.
And then, abruptly, they all rose from their places and flew at him at once.
As he fell back, concentration disrupted, to lean against a wall, Harry’s one thought was that this master vampire had the best control over his nest that he had ever seen.
*
The killing light was gone, but Draco didn’t want to venture out. Let him crouch here in the safe silken shadows that had spared him from the sun’s fury. Let him lower his head until his mouth almost touched the ground and pant, and only dream of blood swirling around his fangs, rather than seeking it.
But then Caspar’s will invaded his limbs and jerked them as if on strings.
Attack Potter.
Draco found himself rising and rushing forwards. With him came the others, at least twenty left of the major nest, their mouths open and the air passing out of them in breaths scented with grave-dirt. Energy shot and coiled through Draco, and he joined his fellows in hissing.
So wonderful to hunt at someone else’s command. How could he act on his own, with his senses enslaved at a whim and his mortal memories obscured? Yes, to be a master vampire’s spawn was the best fate that could befall a turned human.
*
Harry saw in moments that he couldn’t escape, and he knew no spell powerful enough to drive them all back, except the one he had already been working on. What he must do was win enough time to go on working that spell. He couldn’t let them kill him.
Ron and Hermione would mourn. And who knows how many others they would go on to murder?
Harry flung his arms over his head, shielding his throat-and thus the major source of temptation for the master vampire’s spawn-and whimpered, calling, “I yield!”
The rush slowed. The nest was all around him now, seething and hissing, their necks curving in odd swan-like twists and their limbs sweeping the air like scythes. But none of them had touched him. His words had reached the nest leader and made him curious.
“Why?” asked the master vampire’s voice, as resonant as before, but not quite as confident.
Harry whimpered a little more, then whispered, “I don’t want to be devoured like that. Not whole, not by a pack of-wild beasts.” The nest bristled, growling, and he whimpered again. “I’d rather you turn me. Then at least I’m only your slave.” Bitterness, they would expect to hear that. Harry didn’t think he could actually imitate the cringing fear that would probably be most realistic, and the master vampire would probably be suspicious of it if he could, anyway.
Long moments passed. The nest didn’t move forwards. Harry let out a sigh of relief he didn’t have to feign. Being eaten alive by a nest was a fate that he wouldn’t wish on Voldemort. Any survivor would become the slave of every vampire in the nest, its will and mind divided among so many masters that it would be little more than a vegetable, unless the spawn were ordered to cooperate by their leader.
At last, the leader emerged. He looked unchanged, except that his manner had become much more that of a stalking predator and less that of a conquering hero. His spawn swayed away from him, and Harry saw their hands trembling. They were naturally attracted to reach out and touch him, but because he didn’t desire that, they didn’t.
It was, by far, the most complete control he had ever seen. Harry’s dread and admiration increased. Maybe it had been accident that put this vampire in charge of so many spawn; he had probably shared some of his kills with at least one other master vampire, and when that one died, then control of the turned vampires would pass entirely to him. Technically, those slaves could be considered half-free-they would be used to being ruled by two masters, and not react as strongly to the control of one alone-but most of them wouldn’t exploit the loophole.
The vampire halted in front of him. His eyes were enormous, drowning black circles now, pupils completely submerged. He bared his fangs and leaned forwards to nuzzle them against Harry’s throat.
This was the moment when, if he was in a vampire romance novel like the rubbish constantly produced by the same press that published the Daily Prophet, Harry would have swooned and offered his throat to the vampire, because “he was irresistible in his dark heat and promise of seduction.”
But Harry was immune both to the thrall of a vampire’s gaze and the slight poison on the fangs which made a bite seem desirable. That poison, as Harry had discovered after detailed research, really only worked because of the suggestion in a vampire’s gaze.
He could still be turned. He could not be made to want it.
“You say that you want to be mine?” the leader breathed. “Yield to me. Give your will into my keeping. That will be the sign. That will be the only reason I have to trust you.” His hand shot up with terrifying speed and grasped Harry’s hair, yanking his head back. “You have proven resistant so far. I want you to surrender.”
Harry’s body shook with hatred of the word. He had to fight hard to keep his lip from curling into a sneer. Even now, he was less afraid of the vampire nest than he was of the impulse that might arise from the depths of his soul and tell him to go painlessly to his death.
But that impulse wouldn’t arise, he knew. He didn’t have the weakness, the twist, he had seen in some other people, who either wanted to dominate others or wanted to be dominated. Harry was self-sufficient in himself, complete and whole, freeborn.
But at the moment, his life depended on convincing the vampire leader otherwise. He let his head droop forwards and his eyelids flutter. “You promise it won’t hurt?” he whispered. It was the thrall that made a vampire’s bite sexual.
“I promise,” the leader said. His breath smelled like dead rats.
Harry nodded and rolled his head back on the wall, still staring into the leader’s eyes. He let his jaw relax, his gaze become glazed and unfocused. In the meantime, he reached for the power to continue casting the spell that would destroy the lot of them.
The leader growled in victory and sank in his fangs.
It hurt. It hurt like fury. But less than the Cruciatus had, or the knowledge that he was trapped in the dungeons of Malfoy Manor whilst Bellatrix tortured Hermione. Harry put the pain to one side and cast his magic like a lasso, chanting the necessary, long incantation steadily in his head.
*
Draco shifted uneasily. He didn’t understand why, but the sight of Casper biting Potter started an awkward fire low in his belly.
It felt like-
It felt like the revelation of the Long-Desired.
Which was ridiculous. Draco knew that he couldn’t have one of those. No vampire could who was spawn and not master.
But still the impulse was there. Thalia had been the one to tell him about the Long-Desired, explaining the concept with graceful motions of her sharp-nailed hands. In general, she had been kinder than Caspar, which meant she had taught Draco some of what he had needed to know but not fulfilled his craving for power.
“The humans think we have mates. That’s only because they’re used to thinking of us as animals.” Thalia had tossed her hair over her shoulder with a snort, and then bit casually into the throat of the young girl tucked under her arm. “But we are vampires, and thus the superior blend of animal and human. What we may have is a Long-Desired, a wizard who will lend us both the power and the blood we crave. The blood is a matter of taste, and many wizards will have that. Likewise, many wizards, even the weakest, may have a power level that can tempt an individual vampire. But the balance of the two is rare, and rarer still is the person who will give his express permission to be taken as such, without which the power is unreachable, the blood only blood. You will not find only one person who could be your Long-Desired, but you will not find a hundred, either.” She had paused and run a hand down Draco’s cheek. “But you will not need to worry about that for long centuries, little one. Both Casper and I are your masters, and neither of us has any intention of dying any time soon.”
Thalia had died, spitted on the stake of a witch who got lucky.
And now Draco discovered the free half of his mind that he had ignored.
It shone like a doorway with light coming through it, an arch from darkness into radiance. Draco hesitated; the impression was unnatural for him. Sunlight would destroy him. He rejoiced in night.
With one half of himself.
He had been mortal, and now the mortal memories came swimming back to him, still blurred and rippling like fish seen underwater, but there. He thought, if he concentrated, that he would be able to reach out and touch them.
He started to, but then his intentions crashed into the chains on his will and his own desire to be Caspar’s slave. Half free, half enslaved, he fought, his body twitching and his mind flexing with contradictory impulses. If three master vampires had made him, and two had died, would he be two-thirds free and one-third captive?
Thoughts. Thoughts he hadn’t believed he would ever have again, racing and redoubling and splitting and breaking and reflecting. Draco took a few heaving breaths, not because Caspar had commanded him to scream but merely because he wanted to move his lungs, and watched with shadowed eyes as Caspar drained Potter. Did he want to stand here? Couldn’t he move a step backwards?
He could, if he wanted to. He had simply never wanted to before. But now he did it, and the nest gave way for him, their gazes never wavering from their lock on Caspar. They all assumed, of course, that if he was doing something, it was because their leader had commanded him to do it.
He could be closer to the power he had always wanted than he assumed. He could wield it for himself. He had given up that dream because-well, it was a dream of his mortal days, and thus half-forgotten, and because it was simply impossible. Caspar was the one who wielded the power for him and made Draco into a willing instrument. That was enough. That was the way it always should be.
But if-
It was more for himself than Potter that Draco moved as he did then. Perhaps the strange impulses he was receiving had come about because Potter was a potential candidate for Draco’s Long-Desired; perhaps not. But Draco wanted to find out how much he could rebel.
Part 2.