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lomonaaerenTitle: All Fall
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Theodore Nott, minor background pairings
Content Notes: Creature!fic (vampire Theo), angst, dubious consent, violence, ignores the epilogue, Harry has a vampire fetish, bloodplay
Wordcount: This part 5100
Rating: R
Summary: Harry Potter is an Auror, but he’s also one of the few wizards strong enough to enable a newly-turned vampire to return to human, as long as he feeds them his magically-charged blood for a few weeks and they neither kill him nor feed on anyone else. Thus, Harry’s not surprised when he’s called in to help Theodore Nott return to himself. He only wishes he understood why Nott is acting as if he doesn’t really want to be human again.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics, being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice this year. I’ll post this as three parts over the next few days.
All Fall
“Potter? They’re waiting for you.”
Harry nodded and walked past the Aurors standing guard outside the conference room known informally as the Vampire Hole. The minute he stepped through the door, the difference between inside and outside was noticeable. The magic here pressed and thrummed against his skin, and Harry could smell delicately drifting scents. The spells here sharpened an Auror’s senses to try and give them some of the same advantages their confined prey would have.
Not prey, Harry reminded himself, as his gaze locked on the man huddled at the end of the table. A victim. Someone to help.
The man jerked his head up, sniffing desperately, and for a moment Harry only saw the red-tinged eyes and sharpened fangs. Then he made out the pale skin and dark eyes and tangled dark hair, and blinked.
I know him. That’s Nott.
His former yearmate gripped the table with elongated nails and tried to heave the whole thing out of the way. Harry sat down in a chair and said in the bored tone that he’d found more effective than an angry one when talking to newly-turned vampires, “Really, Nott, you flatter me.”
Nott ripped his head back at an angle that made his neck twist in a way no human could have survived, and hissed. Harry stared at him and said, “And that wasn’t Parseltongue.”
“Potter, you smell…”
“And here I was so sure that I’d showered this morning.”
A throat cleared, off to the side. Harry turned one eye to the other Aurors and Ministry officials who stood there without removing his attention from Nott. No matter how high-ranking the other people in the room, they weren’t as dangerous as someone who could clear the distance between him and Harry with a leap if he wanted to.
Honestly, the only reason most new vampires didn’t was that they were disoriented by their own blazing thirst, and didn’t know about the limitations of their abilities yet.
“Well, Mr. Potter, it does appear that you know what to do.” That was the nasal voice of Alicia Borden, the new Head of the Magical Creatures Division. The heads seemed to come and go, at least since Hermione had decided she didn’t want the job. “Are you sure that you can handle this creature?”
“Nott,” Harry said. “Not a creature.”
“I assure you, Mr. Potter, he is a vampire—”
“I think Harry means that that’s Mr. Nott’s name,” Kingsley said, calm as always. At least one position had stayed the same over the last seven years. Kingsley made an excellent Minister, and his trust in Harry had only grown since Harry had emerged from Auror training and proven there was more to him than a lucky sod who’d defeated a Dark Lord. “Yes, Harry, Theodore Nott. You were acquainted?”
“Barely.”
“Hungry,” Nott whispered, staring at him. He might have tried to drink from the others already, but all his attention would have swung to Harry the moment Harry, and his magic, and his scent, entered the room.
Harry leaned slowly back in his chair and crossed his legs, tilting his head to the side. It would send a wash of scent at Nott, and he would pay attention to Harry before anything else, which was as it should be. That was the only way Harry could convince him to accept the conditions that might turn him back to human.
“Hungry,” Nott said, and this time his nails scored long grooves in the surface of the table.
Harry nodded. “I know. But there are a few things you need to know before I give you my blood.”
“Give me?”
Harry chose to take it as a question, even though it might simply have been Nott repeating what he’d said. “Yes. You can’t kill me. I’ll maim you if you try. And you can’t feed on anyone else during these first few weeks, at least not if you want the chance to try and return to being human.”
Nott shuddered at the words and then, with obviously enormous effort, shoved his feral side back under control. He blinked, licked his lips, and whispered, “Returning to human isn’t a possibility.”
“It is and it can be,” Harry said simply. “We’ve found out that the reason the change is permanent for most newly-turned vampires is that they kill their first victims. They can’t do that, and they can’t feed on multiple victims, or, yes, they do become vampires until something kills them. It has to be one victim, and it has to be a slow, controlled feeding. The exposure to just one person’s blood and magic, and the continuing nature of it rather than succumbing to frenzy, is enough to reinstate the human side of the vampire. You’ll remember what it’s like to survive without blood, to live without being undead. And your ability to use a wand will come back.”
“Need you.”
“I know. But you need to return to being human more than you need to drink from me.”
Nott swept him with a ravenous gaze. “Not true.”
“At the moment, I know it feels that way,” Harry said, and paused until Nott’s eyes returned to his face instead of lingering on his throat. “But you want to be human more than you want to be a vampire, I’m sure. You won’t have as many rights if you stay a vampire. You’ll be treated as a creature. You’ll be subject to your thirst as if it’s the Imperius. And you won’t have any way to use a wand.”
Nott paused for a long moment. Harry waited quietly. That last one was the part that got most purebloods to think through the hunger and agree to the program.
“I have other powers now,” Nott said at last, forcing the words out through what sounded like blood in his mouth already. “Vampire powers.”
Harry nodded at the claw marks in the table. “Yes, you do. Impressive in their own way. But you’ll do what I’m telling you to do, or you’ll never hold a wand again, never do anything that isn’t purely physical again. Is that what you want? To be considered a mindless beast by most wizards you meet, and to act like one when you haven’t drunk recently enough?”
Nott’s nails rasped another layer of wood off the top of the table. Harry stared at him, and was grateful that their audience remained quiet. This was often the trickiest part of the process, when he had to make sure that the vampire focused only on him instead of turning to someone else in the room who might seem like easier prey. Sure, Harry’s magic and scent were attractive, but his demand that the new vampires think wasn’t.
“Why you?” Nott finally asked, this time acting as if he had to maneuver his tongue carefully around his fangs.
It was actually a good sign, since it meant that his instincts were no longer gripping him so hard that he did it without thinking. Harry nodded. “You can smell me. Something about me is attractive to vampires, more than other humans. That part, we don’t understand as much.
“And the other part is my magic.” He held up his hand and spread his fingers, then drove his will through them. Wandless magic sparked and surrounded each finger with a brilliant yellow glow.
Nott’s growl rolled around the room, nearly enough to drown out the sigh of the hooded Unspeakable representative. One of them always came to these ceremonies. They always thought they could persuade Harry to turn the vampire over to them for experiments, or Harry to join their ranks.
No, Harry thought, keeping it off his face, because if Nott picked it up, they might have a problem.
“Powerful magic,” Harry said. “Strong enough to stop you if you do decide it would be a good idea to kill me.” He smiled at Nott then, and Nott shifted and uttered a high whine.
“And strong enough to make my blood taste like the food of the gods, according to other vampires I’ve healed.” Harry let his eyes become half-lidded, and surveyed Nott as if he was thinking about taking him to bed.
He wasn’t, of course. A vampire’s feeding was more intimate than that. And if they had become lovers, there was every chance that Nott would have lost control in the pleasure of feeding and Harry would have had to kill him.
No, this would only be drinking. A fortnight of it. And at the end of it, Nott would be human again, and the coven of vampires that kept turning wizards in an attempt to take vengeance for being forced into the shadows would have lost another round.
Harry lived to make them lose. Unlike most of the other vampires in wizarding society, they refused to agree to a steady supply of willing victims in return for living under certain restrictions. They considered themselves, literally, the top of the food chain, and wanted to make other people miserable because they were.
Harry wasn’t about to let them.
“I want to have them,” Nott said, his voice barely distinguishable from a moan.
Harry nodded. “But first, you have to agree that you won’t feed on anyone else or try to kill me.”
“You would trust a vampire’s word to hold against the power of the thirst?”
“Not exactly. We’d have you bind your magic to mine, and if your broke your word or started to seriously hurt me, then both my magic and yours would strike back at you and compel you to stop.”
Nott reared his head back, his growling slowing for the first time in more than a minute. He stared at Harry with wide eyes. Harry stared back and waited.
“That is not something anyone can do,” Nott whispered. “You cannot force—no one can force—”
“I can,” Harry said. “Of course, you have to give me the permission to bind your magic in the first place. That’s probably why most people think it can’t be done.” He leaned back and stretched his magic out again, making Nott’s eyes darken with a red gleam. “Will you do it, Nott? Or will you give up the chance to remain human, and with it, the chance to taste me?”
“Harry,” Kingsley said, in a chiding, breathy voice. He always thought that Harry shouldn’t use sexual tactics to attract the vampires’ attention.
Harry ignored him. After so many successes at turning vampires back to humans, he knew his prey—or perhaps he should say that he knew his hunters. He kept looking at Nott, and slowly, Nott nodded.
“Good,” Harry said, and glanced at the audience. “Outside, if you please. Allow Mr. Nott some privacy.”
“Mr. Potter, you cannot mean—”
That was the Unspeakable objecting this time, although the voice was so hollow and echoing because of the charms on the cloak that it sounded as if they were speaking down a tunnel. Harry made his eyes flinty, and after a long moment, the grey-cloaked figure turned with the others and left.
Harry listened for the snick of the spells that would bind the door shut against Nott’s increased strength as well as anything magical he might try, and then nodded. “Your permission to bind your magic.”
“What’s to keep me from taking you right now and killing you?” Nott probably thought he was being subtle, sinking his body into his chair for what would undoubtedly be a spring across the table, but Harry knew how to read the signs.
Harry raised his eyebrows. “Oh, just me.”
Before Nott could anticipate what he did or look away, Harry flicked his wand into his right hand, and then aimed it at the table. A small ball of pure sunlight coalesced there, without the heat of a real one but with all the light, and all the deadliness to vampires.
Nott screeched and recoiled, his hands rising to shield his eyes. Harry curled his left hand so that it shaded the ball of sunlight from sight after a second, and gave Nott a small smile. “Do you want to try again?”
Nott licked his lips. As Harry had suspected would happen, small trails of bloody drool were running down the sides of his mouth, and none of them came because his fangs had cut his lips. His fangs had lengthened to the point that they projected absurdly outside his mouth now.
It was the sight of Harry’s magical strength, and the idea of what it would be like to drink blood infused with it, that had inspired Nott.
“Paying attention to me?”
Nott’s eyes flickered up from the shaded ball of sunlight at last, and rested on Harry’s throat. “Yes,” he whispered.
“Your permission to bind your magic to mine,” Harry said.
Nott visibly shivered. Then he whispered, “Yes, whatever you need, Potter. As long as I can drink from you soon.”
That was pretty open permission, and pretty good for a vampire who had to be as close to the edge of feeding frenzy as Nott was. Harry half-closed his eyes—not a fool enough to close them all the way in the presence of a vampire who wasn’t bound yet—and snapped his wand out to point at Nott.
“By your will,” he said in Parseltongue.
Nott caught his breath, but it was too late to protest or take the permission back, if that had even been what he was going to do. The snake language carved the air with power, established hidden, sparking paths of power between Harry and Nott, and then curled tight as ropes.
Nott gurgled a little, and Harry felt the first inflow of his magic. Dark and brackish at first, it became quieter and clearer as Harry went along. It felt as if Nott hadn’t been casting many spells for a while before he got turned.
Harry raised his eyebrows, but he was in the middle of the binding now, and his attention turned to winding those dark, watery streams along the ones made of his magic. What felt like a warm swamp coalesced in the middle of his chest, throbbing with his heartbeat. Harry paced the expansion of their magic carefully, sighing a little as he completed the pattern.
Then he opened his eyes and leaned back in his chair to nod at Nott.
Nott completed that spring over the table this time, and came down straddling Harry. Harry smiled fearlessly up at him, not moving his wand for all that he still had it dangling from his right hand. He didn’t need to cast a spell to hold Nott at bay, and he reveled in his own sensation of power as he reached up and drew his hair back from his neck.
Then he reveled in the sheer pleasure as Nott’s fangs sank into his throat.
Harry tipped all the way back, at least as far as he could go without the chair falling over, and moaned freely as the blood flowed out of the vein. His magic stretched and pulled with it, shared and spilling into another being, and he felt himself growing hard between Nott’s legs. He shuddered and humped up into him, fingers digging into the curve of Nott’s shoulder that felt like wood right now.
Nott’s neck flexed, and he drove his fangs deeper. Harry gasped, and the pleasure cut down towards his groin.
Ordinary vampires made mortals docile with that power, and held them still even as their lives drained away. With his magic bound to Harry’s, Nott couldn’t do that, so the wave of energy drove Harry’s passion higher instead, and pushed physical pleasure on him that—
Harry’s thoughts broke apart and wavered, on the edge of darkness. Merlin, he hadn’t had a newly-turned vampire feeding on him in nearly six months. His breath rushed past his ears, hoarse and sweet, and Nott’s hands clamped him hard enough to hurt.
He reared back, and the chair went over. Nott’s hand shot behind Harry’s skull to cradle him, and his head dipped, further and further, and more and more of Harry’s skin parted like silk, and his blood flowed down towards his collarbone, and Nott’s tongue shot out to catch it—
Heat blazed and leaped through Harry’s veins, through his skin, through his hair, everywhere they touched. It threaded through his chest, following the paths of veins and arteries, and met the pleasure heading for his groin.
Harry came violently, clamping down a hiss between his teeth. Nott’s sucking became wilder. Harry smiled lazily, drifting in the aftermath of his orgasm. If his magic heated his blood, and whatever mysterious allure his scent had for vampires apart from the magic, then he could only imagine what his pleasure was doing.
Nott drew back at last, at the same moment as their joined magic tightened like a leash on his actions. He licked his lips, and when Harry opened his eyes slowly, managed to make it look as if he would have chosen to draw back just then.
“I have never tasted anything like that in my life,” he whispered, his nails curving for a second as if he would tear out Harry’s throat with his hand.
Harry exerted his control over the magic that was joined to his, and Nott’s mouth opened in a gasp that was no longer of hunger. Harry sat up, nodding, as Nott inched slowly off him and spider-crawled towards the chair that he’d started out in.
“That’s the way this will work,” Harry said. He stretched, humming, feeling the remnants of the exhilaration still pouring through him. “You’ve survived the first feeding without killing someone, which is all to the good. Remember, you’ll be escorted to a cell in the Department of Mysteries and remain there for the day. Tomorrow, we’ll have the second feeding.”
“Does anyone else know that you have a vampire fetish?”
“Not to give it that name. They all think it’s a manifestation of my saving-people thing.” Harry grinned at Nott. “And it would be to your benefit not to mention it, or they’ll take me away from you for ‘my own good.’”
Nott’s eyes flashed as bright red as Voldemort’s sometimes had. “I’d like to see them try.”
“You’re too young to do much damage to them,” Harry said lazily. He’d built up some tension today from dealing with a stupid Auror who wouldn’t accept that Harry didn’t want to date him. “Just go with the nice Aurors, now.”
He drew his wand and flicked a Cleaning Charm at himself, then another that smoothed his robes back into place, and then a third that would knock on the shielded door and let the Aurors know they were done.
“Potter.”
Harry glanced at Nott. He was tapping one hand on the table, looking as if he was being careful this time not to score the surface with his nails.
“What if I decide that I want to stay a vampire? I have more power than I’ve ever had before. And I have you.”
“Too late, Nott. You shouldn’t have allowed me to bind your magic to mine if you wanted to be a vampire. I’m going to force you to go through your one feeding every day for a fortnight, and you’ll change back to human at the end of that.”
“I could refuse to eat.”
Harry pulled his robes away from his throat, in the moment before the door started to open, and Nott’s fangs lengthened in response. Harry laughed and left him there.
*
There was a brand-new scar on his throat, fresh and pink-shining, and Harry couldn’t help turning his head to admire it in the conjured mirror he was holding. Then a memo shot towards him, and he sighed and banished the mirror with a flick of his wand.
It turned out to be an actual letter. The Ministry had tightened its security protocols after an attack by the renegade vampire coven, and owls now were stopped at the wards, their messages removed and sent with ordinary memos.
Harry, dear, it began.
We haven’t seen you at the Burrow for the past several months, and I hope that you’re doing all right. Ron and Hermione haven’t mentioned they had an argument with you, and I know you’re long past that slight awkwardness with Ginny. Are you avoiding us because you think we disapprove of your work with the vampires? Hermione said something about that. Please, dear, never think that. We applaud your determination to rescue everyone, even the ones at the bottom of society.
Arthur and I would so enjoy seeing you at the Burrow on Sunday. Please consider coming. Charlie will be there, and I know you and he missed seeing each other the last time he visited.
Always your mum in spirit,
Molly.
Harry sighed and shook his head a little. In a way, it would have been a relief to go to Molly and tell her everything. And he didn’t miss the unsubtle hint regarding Charlie. Since she had a son and a foster son who had both turned out to be gay, and they were probably the only gay people she knew, Molly had decided that it would be best if they were together.
But Harry didn’t want Charlie. What he wanted, no one could give him permanently. No vampire would stand to be enslaved, as they would consider it, to Harry’s magic; he couldn’t trust an unbound one not to kill him; and the ones that were just-turned, like Nott, would become human again in a few weeks.
Harry sighed one more time. He wasn’t normal in lots of ways, so he supposed it wasn’t a surprise that he couldn’t have a normal sex life, either.
He wrote a short note back to Molly, reassuring her that everything was fine and rejecting the invitation for Sunday, and sent it off with the memo system before he turned back to his paperwork. His veins already hummed with anticipation at the thought of seeing Nott later that night.
*
“He tried to attack one of our people.”
Harry blinked and pivoted on one heel. He’d been met at the lifts by one of the Unspeakables, as usual, and walked towards the warded cells where the vampires stayed while they were the Ministry’s “guests.” But never before had they spoken to him.
Or given him news like this.
“Did he try to eat them?” Harry asked. He should have received warning of that through their bound magic, enough to haul Nott back before he actually managed it.
“No. He attacked with his claws, not his teeth. He was howling that they couldn’t keep him prisoner and he had to find you.”
Harry shook his head a little. Yes, he had known that Nott would want to feed, but most newly-turned vampires didn’t focus their anger on Unspeakables or Aurors or anyone else who might be seen as having a part in keeping them captive. They turned everything on Harry, and if they were enraged, he would get that through the bite.
Which, frankly, was the way he liked it.
“I’ll talk to him, try to calm him down,” Harry murmured, and brushed past the Unspeakable, who turned their head to watch him walk. “It’s odd that he would do that when none of the others did.”
“All right.”
The Unspeakable’s voice was muffled and distorted as all of theirs were, but Harry thought he caught a faint note of dissatisfaction. He shrugged as he waited for the Unspeakable to open the cell door and let him in. Not his problem.
The door clanged open, and Harry stepped through, just in time for a whirlwind to take him. Nott grabbed his shoulders and slammed him back against the wall. Harry was peripherally aware of the Unspeakable shutting the door, but his attention was taken by his own breathing and his widening eyes and his surging blood and cock.
“You kept me waiting all day.”
“I had important things to do.”
As Harry had hoped it would do, that drove Nott to the limits of his control. He roughly yanked Harry’s hair aside and buried his fangs in the scar he’d opened before.
Harry’s heart galloped, and so did his blood as it raced to the edge of the wound. He clutched Nott’s arms, but he couldn’t bring him closer. They were already so close that he could feel the rough cloth of the robes Nott wore against his, could sense Nott’s body warming and flushing with his blood, could rut—
And so he did, against the knee that Nott positioned for him, and Harry lost himself to guttural moans and sharp pants. The end was coming, but it was a complicated spiderweb of pleasure through his chest, and he would be just as happy if Nott held off for a while.
As if sensing that, the probe of Nott’s fangs gentled. Harry opened his eyes to see Nott staring at him as if he was a stranger, his hand smoothing down the side of Harry’s face. Harry let his eyes droop shut as the cold fingers, claws on the end of them, slid sideways. The claws might have cut his eyelids, but they didn’t.
But they came so near.
Harry shivered, impatient of restraint, and tried to draw Nott back towards him. But Nott resisted, sliding his fangs out of the wound, and although Harry could have compelled him with their entwined magic, he let his eyes open.
“What?” he demanded. His voice sounded as if he was about to start howling.
Nott traced his claws over the side of Harry’s face, and this time, they cut, bringing forth shallow runnels of blood. Nott quivered as he stared at them, but still didn’t lunge and feed. Harry tightened his body, but Nott whispered, “Why are you so different? Why do I hate the others and want to kill them, but I want to eat you?”
“You’re a vampire, you want to kill everybody. You’d kill me if not for the magic bindings I have on you.” Harry yanked him closer.
“No. It’s not like that. I—”
“You want to talk about this now, Nott? Seriously?” Harry slid his hand under Nott’s robes and felt at the edge of his cock. He was only half-hard, given that most of the blood in his body right now was from feedings, but he could still feel pleasure there. “Come on, fuck the blood out of me.”
That was the right thing to say. Nott shuddered and bowed his head, first lapping up the blood on Harry’s face with a tongue that felt like the edge of a cat’s, and then returning mindlessly to the wound in his throat. Harry gave an encouraging cry, and Nott leaned closer, shifting his knee back and forth.
It was good. It was right.
Harry came with a reeling sensation, as if he was being cast out of his body and tossed back, and for a moment, he thought he could see himself from above, plastered against the door and Nott, so nearly a victim in the only way he knew how to be.
*
“You are different, Potter.”
Harry glanced up. He’d cast the Cleaning Charm on himself and readjusted his pants, and Nott had retreated to the pallet near the side of the cell. Harry wasn’t sure whose idea it was to give a vampire a bed, but then again, Nott would be human in twelve more days.
“I told you I was.” Harry shrugged. “We don’t know what about my scent attracts vampires so much.”
“When did the attraction power start?” Nott was staring at him obsessively, as if he could pull blood from Harry with his eyes alone.
“After the war.” Harry yawned and checked his watch. Good, he still had enough time to eat dinner. A full one was a necessity after the blood he’d lost. “Probably a few weeks after it.”
“Probably?”
“I’d only been around one vampire I could remember in the past and he didn’t react that way.” Harry had to snort at the thought of what would have happened if Sanguini had tried to eat from and fuck him in the middle of Slughorn’s party. That would have been a disaster in more ways than one, and not just for him. He hadn’t understood himself then. “But I encountered a couple of them in Knockturn Alley a few weeks after the battle at Hogwarts, and they nearly tore me apart trying to drink from me. I reported it to the Ministry, and after that, we started working on figuring out how we could use it to help people.”
“What happened to the two vampires who attacked you?”
Harry studied Nott. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“What is this nonsense? Of course I do, Potter, or why would I have asked the question?”
“They burned. Burst into flames the moment my blood touched their lips.”
Nott opened his mouth, then closed it slowly. His tongue slid along his teeth for a second, visible as a bulge beneath his lips. Vampire mouths didn’t function much like a human’s, no matter how new they were. “And you decided that you could help people?”
“No one had ever seen a reaction like that before. The Unspeakables conducted some controlled trials. That’s how we learned that it’s really their first kill, and feeding from multiple victims, that makes a vampire, and we could turn them back if I worked with them for a fortnight.” Harry turned to the door.
“Potter.”
Harry glanced over his shoulder. Nott was looking at him with eyes that had probably been an ordinary dark blue at one point, but now looked like sunset skies. Harry knew that was a function of the turning. He still enjoyed being able to look at them without Nott doing anything to enthrall him, though.
“Don’t you think this is worthy of more careful study? Not just as a way to get you to come?”
Harry smiled a little. “They did pretty careful studies before they let me near anyone, Nott, believe me. And they’ve proposed various hypotheses for why I am the way I am, and no one’s been able to prove anything one way or the other. Besides, coming is a side-effect. Turning you back to human is the point of this exercise.”
“I think there has to be a reason for this.”
Harry just shook his head and let himself out of the cell by tapping the correct sequence with his wand, something Nott would no longer be able to do until he became human again, since he didn’t use a wand now. He did glance back once to see Nott staring at him like he was a Potions ingredient specimen.
Let him look all he likes. He’ll be able to touch tomorrow.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Theodore Nott, minor background pairings
Content Notes: Creature!fic (vampire Theo), angst, dubious consent, violence, ignores the epilogue, Harry has a vampire fetish, bloodplay
Wordcount: This part 5100
Rating: R
Summary: Harry Potter is an Auror, but he’s also one of the few wizards strong enough to enable a newly-turned vampire to return to human, as long as he feeds them his magically-charged blood for a few weeks and they neither kill him nor feed on anyone else. Thus, Harry’s not surprised when he’s called in to help Theodore Nott return to himself. He only wishes he understood why Nott is acting as if he doesn’t really want to be human again.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics, being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice this year. I’ll post this as three parts over the next few days.
All Fall
“Potter? They’re waiting for you.”
Harry nodded and walked past the Aurors standing guard outside the conference room known informally as the Vampire Hole. The minute he stepped through the door, the difference between inside and outside was noticeable. The magic here pressed and thrummed against his skin, and Harry could smell delicately drifting scents. The spells here sharpened an Auror’s senses to try and give them some of the same advantages their confined prey would have.
Not prey, Harry reminded himself, as his gaze locked on the man huddled at the end of the table. A victim. Someone to help.
The man jerked his head up, sniffing desperately, and for a moment Harry only saw the red-tinged eyes and sharpened fangs. Then he made out the pale skin and dark eyes and tangled dark hair, and blinked.
I know him. That’s Nott.
His former yearmate gripped the table with elongated nails and tried to heave the whole thing out of the way. Harry sat down in a chair and said in the bored tone that he’d found more effective than an angry one when talking to newly-turned vampires, “Really, Nott, you flatter me.”
Nott ripped his head back at an angle that made his neck twist in a way no human could have survived, and hissed. Harry stared at him and said, “And that wasn’t Parseltongue.”
“Potter, you smell…”
“And here I was so sure that I’d showered this morning.”
A throat cleared, off to the side. Harry turned one eye to the other Aurors and Ministry officials who stood there without removing his attention from Nott. No matter how high-ranking the other people in the room, they weren’t as dangerous as someone who could clear the distance between him and Harry with a leap if he wanted to.
Honestly, the only reason most new vampires didn’t was that they were disoriented by their own blazing thirst, and didn’t know about the limitations of their abilities yet.
“Well, Mr. Potter, it does appear that you know what to do.” That was the nasal voice of Alicia Borden, the new Head of the Magical Creatures Division. The heads seemed to come and go, at least since Hermione had decided she didn’t want the job. “Are you sure that you can handle this creature?”
“Nott,” Harry said. “Not a creature.”
“I assure you, Mr. Potter, he is a vampire—”
“I think Harry means that that’s Mr. Nott’s name,” Kingsley said, calm as always. At least one position had stayed the same over the last seven years. Kingsley made an excellent Minister, and his trust in Harry had only grown since Harry had emerged from Auror training and proven there was more to him than a lucky sod who’d defeated a Dark Lord. “Yes, Harry, Theodore Nott. You were acquainted?”
“Barely.”
“Hungry,” Nott whispered, staring at him. He might have tried to drink from the others already, but all his attention would have swung to Harry the moment Harry, and his magic, and his scent, entered the room.
Harry leaned slowly back in his chair and crossed his legs, tilting his head to the side. It would send a wash of scent at Nott, and he would pay attention to Harry before anything else, which was as it should be. That was the only way Harry could convince him to accept the conditions that might turn him back to human.
“Hungry,” Nott said, and this time his nails scored long grooves in the surface of the table.
Harry nodded. “I know. But there are a few things you need to know before I give you my blood.”
“Give me?”
Harry chose to take it as a question, even though it might simply have been Nott repeating what he’d said. “Yes. You can’t kill me. I’ll maim you if you try. And you can’t feed on anyone else during these first few weeks, at least not if you want the chance to try and return to being human.”
Nott shuddered at the words and then, with obviously enormous effort, shoved his feral side back under control. He blinked, licked his lips, and whispered, “Returning to human isn’t a possibility.”
“It is and it can be,” Harry said simply. “We’ve found out that the reason the change is permanent for most newly-turned vampires is that they kill their first victims. They can’t do that, and they can’t feed on multiple victims, or, yes, they do become vampires until something kills them. It has to be one victim, and it has to be a slow, controlled feeding. The exposure to just one person’s blood and magic, and the continuing nature of it rather than succumbing to frenzy, is enough to reinstate the human side of the vampire. You’ll remember what it’s like to survive without blood, to live without being undead. And your ability to use a wand will come back.”
“Need you.”
“I know. But you need to return to being human more than you need to drink from me.”
Nott swept him with a ravenous gaze. “Not true.”
“At the moment, I know it feels that way,” Harry said, and paused until Nott’s eyes returned to his face instead of lingering on his throat. “But you want to be human more than you want to be a vampire, I’m sure. You won’t have as many rights if you stay a vampire. You’ll be treated as a creature. You’ll be subject to your thirst as if it’s the Imperius. And you won’t have any way to use a wand.”
Nott paused for a long moment. Harry waited quietly. That last one was the part that got most purebloods to think through the hunger and agree to the program.
“I have other powers now,” Nott said at last, forcing the words out through what sounded like blood in his mouth already. “Vampire powers.”
Harry nodded at the claw marks in the table. “Yes, you do. Impressive in their own way. But you’ll do what I’m telling you to do, or you’ll never hold a wand again, never do anything that isn’t purely physical again. Is that what you want? To be considered a mindless beast by most wizards you meet, and to act like one when you haven’t drunk recently enough?”
Nott’s nails rasped another layer of wood off the top of the table. Harry stared at him, and was grateful that their audience remained quiet. This was often the trickiest part of the process, when he had to make sure that the vampire focused only on him instead of turning to someone else in the room who might seem like easier prey. Sure, Harry’s magic and scent were attractive, but his demand that the new vampires think wasn’t.
“Why you?” Nott finally asked, this time acting as if he had to maneuver his tongue carefully around his fangs.
It was actually a good sign, since it meant that his instincts were no longer gripping him so hard that he did it without thinking. Harry nodded. “You can smell me. Something about me is attractive to vampires, more than other humans. That part, we don’t understand as much.
“And the other part is my magic.” He held up his hand and spread his fingers, then drove his will through them. Wandless magic sparked and surrounded each finger with a brilliant yellow glow.
Nott’s growl rolled around the room, nearly enough to drown out the sigh of the hooded Unspeakable representative. One of them always came to these ceremonies. They always thought they could persuade Harry to turn the vampire over to them for experiments, or Harry to join their ranks.
No, Harry thought, keeping it off his face, because if Nott picked it up, they might have a problem.
“Powerful magic,” Harry said. “Strong enough to stop you if you do decide it would be a good idea to kill me.” He smiled at Nott then, and Nott shifted and uttered a high whine.
“And strong enough to make my blood taste like the food of the gods, according to other vampires I’ve healed.” Harry let his eyes become half-lidded, and surveyed Nott as if he was thinking about taking him to bed.
He wasn’t, of course. A vampire’s feeding was more intimate than that. And if they had become lovers, there was every chance that Nott would have lost control in the pleasure of feeding and Harry would have had to kill him.
No, this would only be drinking. A fortnight of it. And at the end of it, Nott would be human again, and the coven of vampires that kept turning wizards in an attempt to take vengeance for being forced into the shadows would have lost another round.
Harry lived to make them lose. Unlike most of the other vampires in wizarding society, they refused to agree to a steady supply of willing victims in return for living under certain restrictions. They considered themselves, literally, the top of the food chain, and wanted to make other people miserable because they were.
Harry wasn’t about to let them.
“I want to have them,” Nott said, his voice barely distinguishable from a moan.
Harry nodded. “But first, you have to agree that you won’t feed on anyone else or try to kill me.”
“You would trust a vampire’s word to hold against the power of the thirst?”
“Not exactly. We’d have you bind your magic to mine, and if your broke your word or started to seriously hurt me, then both my magic and yours would strike back at you and compel you to stop.”
Nott reared his head back, his growling slowing for the first time in more than a minute. He stared at Harry with wide eyes. Harry stared back and waited.
“That is not something anyone can do,” Nott whispered. “You cannot force—no one can force—”
“I can,” Harry said. “Of course, you have to give me the permission to bind your magic in the first place. That’s probably why most people think it can’t be done.” He leaned back and stretched his magic out again, making Nott’s eyes darken with a red gleam. “Will you do it, Nott? Or will you give up the chance to remain human, and with it, the chance to taste me?”
“Harry,” Kingsley said, in a chiding, breathy voice. He always thought that Harry shouldn’t use sexual tactics to attract the vampires’ attention.
Harry ignored him. After so many successes at turning vampires back to humans, he knew his prey—or perhaps he should say that he knew his hunters. He kept looking at Nott, and slowly, Nott nodded.
“Good,” Harry said, and glanced at the audience. “Outside, if you please. Allow Mr. Nott some privacy.”
“Mr. Potter, you cannot mean—”
That was the Unspeakable objecting this time, although the voice was so hollow and echoing because of the charms on the cloak that it sounded as if they were speaking down a tunnel. Harry made his eyes flinty, and after a long moment, the grey-cloaked figure turned with the others and left.
Harry listened for the snick of the spells that would bind the door shut against Nott’s increased strength as well as anything magical he might try, and then nodded. “Your permission to bind your magic.”
“What’s to keep me from taking you right now and killing you?” Nott probably thought he was being subtle, sinking his body into his chair for what would undoubtedly be a spring across the table, but Harry knew how to read the signs.
Harry raised his eyebrows. “Oh, just me.”
Before Nott could anticipate what he did or look away, Harry flicked his wand into his right hand, and then aimed it at the table. A small ball of pure sunlight coalesced there, without the heat of a real one but with all the light, and all the deadliness to vampires.
Nott screeched and recoiled, his hands rising to shield his eyes. Harry curled his left hand so that it shaded the ball of sunlight from sight after a second, and gave Nott a small smile. “Do you want to try again?”
Nott licked his lips. As Harry had suspected would happen, small trails of bloody drool were running down the sides of his mouth, and none of them came because his fangs had cut his lips. His fangs had lengthened to the point that they projected absurdly outside his mouth now.
It was the sight of Harry’s magical strength, and the idea of what it would be like to drink blood infused with it, that had inspired Nott.
“Paying attention to me?”
Nott’s eyes flickered up from the shaded ball of sunlight at last, and rested on Harry’s throat. “Yes,” he whispered.
“Your permission to bind your magic to mine,” Harry said.
Nott visibly shivered. Then he whispered, “Yes, whatever you need, Potter. As long as I can drink from you soon.”
That was pretty open permission, and pretty good for a vampire who had to be as close to the edge of feeding frenzy as Nott was. Harry half-closed his eyes—not a fool enough to close them all the way in the presence of a vampire who wasn’t bound yet—and snapped his wand out to point at Nott.
“By your will,” he said in Parseltongue.
Nott caught his breath, but it was too late to protest or take the permission back, if that had even been what he was going to do. The snake language carved the air with power, established hidden, sparking paths of power between Harry and Nott, and then curled tight as ropes.
Nott gurgled a little, and Harry felt the first inflow of his magic. Dark and brackish at first, it became quieter and clearer as Harry went along. It felt as if Nott hadn’t been casting many spells for a while before he got turned.
Harry raised his eyebrows, but he was in the middle of the binding now, and his attention turned to winding those dark, watery streams along the ones made of his magic. What felt like a warm swamp coalesced in the middle of his chest, throbbing with his heartbeat. Harry paced the expansion of their magic carefully, sighing a little as he completed the pattern.
Then he opened his eyes and leaned back in his chair to nod at Nott.
Nott completed that spring over the table this time, and came down straddling Harry. Harry smiled fearlessly up at him, not moving his wand for all that he still had it dangling from his right hand. He didn’t need to cast a spell to hold Nott at bay, and he reveled in his own sensation of power as he reached up and drew his hair back from his neck.
Then he reveled in the sheer pleasure as Nott’s fangs sank into his throat.
Harry tipped all the way back, at least as far as he could go without the chair falling over, and moaned freely as the blood flowed out of the vein. His magic stretched and pulled with it, shared and spilling into another being, and he felt himself growing hard between Nott’s legs. He shuddered and humped up into him, fingers digging into the curve of Nott’s shoulder that felt like wood right now.
Nott’s neck flexed, and he drove his fangs deeper. Harry gasped, and the pleasure cut down towards his groin.
Ordinary vampires made mortals docile with that power, and held them still even as their lives drained away. With his magic bound to Harry’s, Nott couldn’t do that, so the wave of energy drove Harry’s passion higher instead, and pushed physical pleasure on him that—
Harry’s thoughts broke apart and wavered, on the edge of darkness. Merlin, he hadn’t had a newly-turned vampire feeding on him in nearly six months. His breath rushed past his ears, hoarse and sweet, and Nott’s hands clamped him hard enough to hurt.
He reared back, and the chair went over. Nott’s hand shot behind Harry’s skull to cradle him, and his head dipped, further and further, and more and more of Harry’s skin parted like silk, and his blood flowed down towards his collarbone, and Nott’s tongue shot out to catch it—
Heat blazed and leaped through Harry’s veins, through his skin, through his hair, everywhere they touched. It threaded through his chest, following the paths of veins and arteries, and met the pleasure heading for his groin.
Harry came violently, clamping down a hiss between his teeth. Nott’s sucking became wilder. Harry smiled lazily, drifting in the aftermath of his orgasm. If his magic heated his blood, and whatever mysterious allure his scent had for vampires apart from the magic, then he could only imagine what his pleasure was doing.
Nott drew back at last, at the same moment as their joined magic tightened like a leash on his actions. He licked his lips, and when Harry opened his eyes slowly, managed to make it look as if he would have chosen to draw back just then.
“I have never tasted anything like that in my life,” he whispered, his nails curving for a second as if he would tear out Harry’s throat with his hand.
Harry exerted his control over the magic that was joined to his, and Nott’s mouth opened in a gasp that was no longer of hunger. Harry sat up, nodding, as Nott inched slowly off him and spider-crawled towards the chair that he’d started out in.
“That’s the way this will work,” Harry said. He stretched, humming, feeling the remnants of the exhilaration still pouring through him. “You’ve survived the first feeding without killing someone, which is all to the good. Remember, you’ll be escorted to a cell in the Department of Mysteries and remain there for the day. Tomorrow, we’ll have the second feeding.”
“Does anyone else know that you have a vampire fetish?”
“Not to give it that name. They all think it’s a manifestation of my saving-people thing.” Harry grinned at Nott. “And it would be to your benefit not to mention it, or they’ll take me away from you for ‘my own good.’”
Nott’s eyes flashed as bright red as Voldemort’s sometimes had. “I’d like to see them try.”
“You’re too young to do much damage to them,” Harry said lazily. He’d built up some tension today from dealing with a stupid Auror who wouldn’t accept that Harry didn’t want to date him. “Just go with the nice Aurors, now.”
He drew his wand and flicked a Cleaning Charm at himself, then another that smoothed his robes back into place, and then a third that would knock on the shielded door and let the Aurors know they were done.
“Potter.”
Harry glanced at Nott. He was tapping one hand on the table, looking as if he was being careful this time not to score the surface with his nails.
“What if I decide that I want to stay a vampire? I have more power than I’ve ever had before. And I have you.”
“Too late, Nott. You shouldn’t have allowed me to bind your magic to mine if you wanted to be a vampire. I’m going to force you to go through your one feeding every day for a fortnight, and you’ll change back to human at the end of that.”
“I could refuse to eat.”
Harry pulled his robes away from his throat, in the moment before the door started to open, and Nott’s fangs lengthened in response. Harry laughed and left him there.
*
There was a brand-new scar on his throat, fresh and pink-shining, and Harry couldn’t help turning his head to admire it in the conjured mirror he was holding. Then a memo shot towards him, and he sighed and banished the mirror with a flick of his wand.
It turned out to be an actual letter. The Ministry had tightened its security protocols after an attack by the renegade vampire coven, and owls now were stopped at the wards, their messages removed and sent with ordinary memos.
Harry, dear, it began.
We haven’t seen you at the Burrow for the past several months, and I hope that you’re doing all right. Ron and Hermione haven’t mentioned they had an argument with you, and I know you’re long past that slight awkwardness with Ginny. Are you avoiding us because you think we disapprove of your work with the vampires? Hermione said something about that. Please, dear, never think that. We applaud your determination to rescue everyone, even the ones at the bottom of society.
Arthur and I would so enjoy seeing you at the Burrow on Sunday. Please consider coming. Charlie will be there, and I know you and he missed seeing each other the last time he visited.
Always your mum in spirit,
Molly.
Harry sighed and shook his head a little. In a way, it would have been a relief to go to Molly and tell her everything. And he didn’t miss the unsubtle hint regarding Charlie. Since she had a son and a foster son who had both turned out to be gay, and they were probably the only gay people she knew, Molly had decided that it would be best if they were together.
But Harry didn’t want Charlie. What he wanted, no one could give him permanently. No vampire would stand to be enslaved, as they would consider it, to Harry’s magic; he couldn’t trust an unbound one not to kill him; and the ones that were just-turned, like Nott, would become human again in a few weeks.
Harry sighed one more time. He wasn’t normal in lots of ways, so he supposed it wasn’t a surprise that he couldn’t have a normal sex life, either.
He wrote a short note back to Molly, reassuring her that everything was fine and rejecting the invitation for Sunday, and sent it off with the memo system before he turned back to his paperwork. His veins already hummed with anticipation at the thought of seeing Nott later that night.
*
“He tried to attack one of our people.”
Harry blinked and pivoted on one heel. He’d been met at the lifts by one of the Unspeakables, as usual, and walked towards the warded cells where the vampires stayed while they were the Ministry’s “guests.” But never before had they spoken to him.
Or given him news like this.
“Did he try to eat them?” Harry asked. He should have received warning of that through their bound magic, enough to haul Nott back before he actually managed it.
“No. He attacked with his claws, not his teeth. He was howling that they couldn’t keep him prisoner and he had to find you.”
Harry shook his head a little. Yes, he had known that Nott would want to feed, but most newly-turned vampires didn’t focus their anger on Unspeakables or Aurors or anyone else who might be seen as having a part in keeping them captive. They turned everything on Harry, and if they were enraged, he would get that through the bite.
Which, frankly, was the way he liked it.
“I’ll talk to him, try to calm him down,” Harry murmured, and brushed past the Unspeakable, who turned their head to watch him walk. “It’s odd that he would do that when none of the others did.”
“All right.”
The Unspeakable’s voice was muffled and distorted as all of theirs were, but Harry thought he caught a faint note of dissatisfaction. He shrugged as he waited for the Unspeakable to open the cell door and let him in. Not his problem.
The door clanged open, and Harry stepped through, just in time for a whirlwind to take him. Nott grabbed his shoulders and slammed him back against the wall. Harry was peripherally aware of the Unspeakable shutting the door, but his attention was taken by his own breathing and his widening eyes and his surging blood and cock.
“You kept me waiting all day.”
“I had important things to do.”
As Harry had hoped it would do, that drove Nott to the limits of his control. He roughly yanked Harry’s hair aside and buried his fangs in the scar he’d opened before.
Harry’s heart galloped, and so did his blood as it raced to the edge of the wound. He clutched Nott’s arms, but he couldn’t bring him closer. They were already so close that he could feel the rough cloth of the robes Nott wore against his, could sense Nott’s body warming and flushing with his blood, could rut—
And so he did, against the knee that Nott positioned for him, and Harry lost himself to guttural moans and sharp pants. The end was coming, but it was a complicated spiderweb of pleasure through his chest, and he would be just as happy if Nott held off for a while.
As if sensing that, the probe of Nott’s fangs gentled. Harry opened his eyes to see Nott staring at him as if he was a stranger, his hand smoothing down the side of Harry’s face. Harry let his eyes droop shut as the cold fingers, claws on the end of them, slid sideways. The claws might have cut his eyelids, but they didn’t.
But they came so near.
Harry shivered, impatient of restraint, and tried to draw Nott back towards him. But Nott resisted, sliding his fangs out of the wound, and although Harry could have compelled him with their entwined magic, he let his eyes open.
“What?” he demanded. His voice sounded as if he was about to start howling.
Nott traced his claws over the side of Harry’s face, and this time, they cut, bringing forth shallow runnels of blood. Nott quivered as he stared at them, but still didn’t lunge and feed. Harry tightened his body, but Nott whispered, “Why are you so different? Why do I hate the others and want to kill them, but I want to eat you?”
“You’re a vampire, you want to kill everybody. You’d kill me if not for the magic bindings I have on you.” Harry yanked him closer.
“No. It’s not like that. I—”
“You want to talk about this now, Nott? Seriously?” Harry slid his hand under Nott’s robes and felt at the edge of his cock. He was only half-hard, given that most of the blood in his body right now was from feedings, but he could still feel pleasure there. “Come on, fuck the blood out of me.”
That was the right thing to say. Nott shuddered and bowed his head, first lapping up the blood on Harry’s face with a tongue that felt like the edge of a cat’s, and then returning mindlessly to the wound in his throat. Harry gave an encouraging cry, and Nott leaned closer, shifting his knee back and forth.
It was good. It was right.
Harry came with a reeling sensation, as if he was being cast out of his body and tossed back, and for a moment, he thought he could see himself from above, plastered against the door and Nott, so nearly a victim in the only way he knew how to be.
*
“You are different, Potter.”
Harry glanced up. He’d cast the Cleaning Charm on himself and readjusted his pants, and Nott had retreated to the pallet near the side of the cell. Harry wasn’t sure whose idea it was to give a vampire a bed, but then again, Nott would be human in twelve more days.
“I told you I was.” Harry shrugged. “We don’t know what about my scent attracts vampires so much.”
“When did the attraction power start?” Nott was staring at him obsessively, as if he could pull blood from Harry with his eyes alone.
“After the war.” Harry yawned and checked his watch. Good, he still had enough time to eat dinner. A full one was a necessity after the blood he’d lost. “Probably a few weeks after it.”
“Probably?”
“I’d only been around one vampire I could remember in the past and he didn’t react that way.” Harry had to snort at the thought of what would have happened if Sanguini had tried to eat from and fuck him in the middle of Slughorn’s party. That would have been a disaster in more ways than one, and not just for him. He hadn’t understood himself then. “But I encountered a couple of them in Knockturn Alley a few weeks after the battle at Hogwarts, and they nearly tore me apart trying to drink from me. I reported it to the Ministry, and after that, we started working on figuring out how we could use it to help people.”
“What happened to the two vampires who attacked you?”
Harry studied Nott. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“What is this nonsense? Of course I do, Potter, or why would I have asked the question?”
“They burned. Burst into flames the moment my blood touched their lips.”
Nott opened his mouth, then closed it slowly. His tongue slid along his teeth for a second, visible as a bulge beneath his lips. Vampire mouths didn’t function much like a human’s, no matter how new they were. “And you decided that you could help people?”
“No one had ever seen a reaction like that before. The Unspeakables conducted some controlled trials. That’s how we learned that it’s really their first kill, and feeding from multiple victims, that makes a vampire, and we could turn them back if I worked with them for a fortnight.” Harry turned to the door.
“Potter.”
Harry glanced over his shoulder. Nott was looking at him with eyes that had probably been an ordinary dark blue at one point, but now looked like sunset skies. Harry knew that was a function of the turning. He still enjoyed being able to look at them without Nott doing anything to enthrall him, though.
“Don’t you think this is worthy of more careful study? Not just as a way to get you to come?”
Harry smiled a little. “They did pretty careful studies before they let me near anyone, Nott, believe me. And they’ve proposed various hypotheses for why I am the way I am, and no one’s been able to prove anything one way or the other. Besides, coming is a side-effect. Turning you back to human is the point of this exercise.”
“I think there has to be a reason for this.”
Harry just shook his head and let himself out of the cell by tapping the correct sequence with his wand, something Nott would no longer be able to do until he became human again, since he didn’t use a wand now. He did glance back once to see Nott staring at him like he was a Potions ingredient specimen.
Let him look all he likes. He’ll be able to touch tomorrow.
