[From Samhain to the Solstice]: All Fall, Harry/Theodore, R, 2/3

[lomonaaeren]

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Part Two

Harry paused when he was a few meters away from his front door, a small cottage in Hogsmeade. He tilted his head a little, and sniffed. When a vampire’s magic was bound to his, his senses did sharpen.

“I smell dust and worm-bait,” he called softly. “Is that you, Alicia?”

An angry hiss answered him, several descending notes that she probably thought were intimidating. Harry laughed at her. “You keep forgetting that I fought Voldemort.”

She moved out of the shadows that had concealed her on the side of his house, amusingly flinching at the name. She had dark brown hair, and pointed claws of the same kind that Nott had manifested, and an almost four-legged stance. Old vampire got like that, or powerful ones who had drunk from many victims.

Harry smiled at her and pulled his robe away from his neck, exposing the scar where Nott had bitten him. Alicia’s mouth fell open, and a slow stream of bloody drool cascaded down to the pavement.

“Come and get it,” Harry called, softly, tauntingly.

Alicia slammed her jaws shut and stared at him. Harry stared at her and waited.

“You must not heal young Nott,” Alicia said at last.

Harry shrugged. Alicia occupied some position he didn’t understand between the “civilized” vampires who drank from willing victims and the rogue coven who kept turning people. “Why not? He wants to be back to human.”

“This is a trap for you. The coven sent Nott on purpose, to seduce you into cooperating with them.”

Harry blinked at them. “Nott wasn’t a particular friend of mine in the past. He hasn’t said anything about wanting to seduce me. Why would they think he would make good bait?” He also wondered why Alicia was telling him this, but he didn’t ask. It wasn’t like he would get an honest answer no matter how he phrased the question.

Alicia’s fangs flashed, and Harry raised a shield in front of himself. But she didn’t spring, managing to sink down and hug the pavement again. Her teeth continued to show, and she spoke around them, her voice a little muffled.

“They think that he can convince you to become a vampire.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

She didn’t smell like anything in particular at the moment, other than a vampire’s usual dusty and grimy scent. Harry sometimes had luck in sniffing out a lie when his senses were enhanced like this, but not always. He held back his disbelief and just nodded.

“So you cannot go on trying to rescue him,” Alicia finished.

Harry rolled his eyes. “I’ve had many people try to seduce me, most of them a lot more tempting than Nott. And he only has twelve days before the treatment is finished.”

Twelve more days of feeling fulfilled and alive.

But Harry put that resentment aside. No one was going to pay the price for his pathological sexuality except him. He could do something that helped people with it. Why not go ahead with it and keep the mourning to himself the rest of the time?

“There is something about him that makes him extra tempting.”

“What?”

Again, Alicia crouched there and said nothing. Harry rolled his eyes. “Get out of my way,” he said, and took a long step towards her.

She leaped straight up, catching the branch of a tree that dangled over his house and scuttling away like some giant squirrel. Harry shook his head and went to unlock his door. His wards still glowed, undisturbed, which meant no vampire had been inside. And if the house was empty and cold, well, that was by his choice.

He wanked thinking about the strength with which Nott had held him against the wall, and then went to bed.

*

Harry winced when he heard the screams Nott was uttering as he threw himself against the door of his cell. He glanced at the Unspeakable escorting him this time.

“It started when you entered the Ministry,” they said, shifting their shoulders in what Harry supposed was a shrug, although the cloak largely concealed that. “We do thank you for coming in on a Saturday, Auror Potter. I suppose there is no way to keep him from doing this?”

“I’ve never worked with a vampire who did it,” Harry said absently, and lengthened his strides until he reached the door. Nott had gone quiet now, but Harry didn’t know if that was because he’d sensed Harry coming somehow or if he’d simply exhausted himself.

“We are reluctant to open the door and expose you to danger, Auror Potter.”

“His magic is bound to me. Ultimately, I can control his body if I need to.”

After long moments, the Unspeakable nodded and unlocked the wards on the cell. Harry was in place as Nott came dashing at him, wailing now, a long noise that would have done an Augurey proud.

“Nott, pay attention.”

Nott slammed to a stop as if against an invisible barrier, quivering like a dog. Harry glanced over his shoulder and made sure that the Unspeakable had shut the door and set the wards back in place. Then he faced Nott and began to undress.

Nott’s howl was more like a whimper this time.

“Don’t approach,” Harry said, twisting their combined magic so that Nott would have no choice but to obey the order, and then unbuttoned his robe in a leisurely fashion, before dropping it on the floor and kicking it away.

When he was down to his pants, he glanced at Nott, and chuckled at the way his eyes were bulging and his hand was dipping to his groin to squeeze. How much sensation he had there at the moment, without much blood in his body, Harry didn’t know, but it might simply be habit from the days when he’d been human.

He will be again, Harry thought, with something like a sigh, and reached towards Nott with one arm. “You can touch.”

Nott slammed into him, and Harry grunted as the back of his head rebounded off the door. For a moment, his vision swam, and Nott loomed over him, trembling and not lowering his head.

Why…Oh.

“You can bite,” Harry whispered, and kept his hands out of the way as Nott’s head dived at his neck.

Bliss.

The bite was sharper than the rest, and so was the pleasure that followed it. Harry didn’t even moan, all his surprise and wonder trapped in him as he rode the currents of the sensation. Nott sucked and worried at his throat, and probably made the scar worse. But the thought was distant, behind a shimmering veil of wonder.

When Harry came, Nott just kept sucking, and lowered a hand to trace his claw-like fingernail along Harry’s shaft. Harry surged back up, the first time that had ever happened, and he was so weak from his orgasm and the loss of blood that he could only tangle a hand in Nott’s hair and hang on.

Nott let him go just as Harry was about to come again. Harry snarled in discomfort and reached down.

Again, Nott’s hand was there before him, and it was tight and slightly warm and squeezing so hard he was almost wrenching Harry’s cock off. It didn’t matter, not when Harry was also harder than he’d ever been before. He pumped one more dribble into Nott’s hand, and collapsed against him with a hiss.

There was a long time that felt as if Harry was moving through a haze made of Unspeakables’ cloaks, and when he became aware again, he was lying on the pallet that stood in the corner of Nott’s room, cradled on the vampire’s chest, while Nott sang low crooning noises that Harry had never heard from any other vampire into his hair.

This is really strange.

Harry stretched lazily. Nott paused for a moment, as if he assumed Harry would stand, and then went back to stroking and crooning.

Harry lay still as he tried to figure out why this was so different. Did it have something to do with the warning Alicia had brought him? But that still didn’t say why it would be a man Harry had known only slightly who would wring this reaction from him.

In the end, Harry decided it was probably as useless as trying to understand why he was attracted to vampires or why his blood had burned the ones who had attacked him in Knockturn Alley. The Unspeakables had done their best, and they still didn’t know. In the meantime, Harry had other things to do than lie around with Nott, unexpectedly pleasant though this had been.

He shifted his weight up onto his elbows. Nott promptly hissed and tightened his arms around Harry once more. Harry smiled a little and touched the side of one arm, sinewy and cold in a way that no human arm was.

He’ll be human again soon enough, and then he’ll feel differently about you.

“Time to let go, Nott,” he said quietly. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

Nott’s voice was calm, but with an undertone of violence that reminded Harry of the way Alicia had sounded the last time they’d spoken. He tilted his head a little to the side and asked, “Do you want to force this confrontation?”

“Do as you’re told, and no one has any need to confront anyone.”

Harry sighed. “Nott. Let me go.”

“I want you to stay here,” Nott whispered. “And let them deliver meals to you through the door. You’ll eat and grow strong enough to feed me again, and I’ll show you levels of pleasure…I want to touch you…I want to break you with pleasure.”

A shiver started down at the bottom of Harry’s stomach, and Nott was holding him closely enough to feel it. A smile showed his fangs, and his tongue darted out for a second, holding Harry’s gaze.

But Harry was still an Auror, and what Nott said was a fantasy that couldn’t happen even if he was unequivocally in favor of it happening, which he wasn’t. He sighed again and braced his elbows. “Let me go.”

“No.”

“Your choice,” Harry said, and seized the magic that spiraled lazily back and forth between them, only all the more anchored in Nott because of the blood they’d shared, and twisted it.

Nott’s arms shot up into the air and his neck bent as though someone was standing on it. He yowled in what sounded like a mixture of surprise, agony, and confusion. Harry shook his head as he sat up. “I told you not to challenge me,” he said, and kept the pressure on as he straightened his clothes and cast the necessary Cleaning Charms.

When he stood near the door, he released the hold again. Nott was staring at him with what seemed to be diamond-bright hatred.

Harry wondered what would happen between them the next time Nott drank, if it was hatred, and the shiver coursed straight up his spine and back down again, while his bollocks tightened and his cock twitched.

“Get out,” Nott said, his voice as hoarse as the screaming of small animals.

Harry nodded and said, “See you tomorrow,” then did.

*

“Are you all right, Harry?”

Hermione and Ron had been waiting for him in his house when he got home. Harry had smiled at them and offered to cook dinner, but it had turned out they’d brought food over from Molly, a delicious combination of sandwiches and soup and salad, and no one had had to cook. Harry had eaten and laughed with his friends, while the back of his neck tingled with awareness of why they were really here.

Now Hermione had asked the question. Harry sighed and set his water glass down. He never drank while he was feeding a vampire, and not only because the alcohol might do odd things to his blood. “What do you mean, Hermione?”

“You’re sharper than you used to be, mate.” Ron was drinking butterbeer, and stared at him over the tip of the glass.

“Why, thank you, Ron.”

“I didn’t mean intelligence. I mean you’re more impatient, and you act as though you don’t want to talk to most people, and you’re more reckless.”

“I assure you that I’m taking all the precautions necessary to feed Nott and make sure that I can walk away with my throat intact.”

Hermione closed her eyes. “Does it have to be you who does this, Harry? They could find someone else who’s powerful. Or they could even find several people who would donate their blood and make sure that none of them are exhausted—”

“And the vampire would remain a vampire, in that case. They tried it before, when they realized that people who fed on me had recovered. Multiple victims means the turning is permanent.”

“But you shouldn’t have to make the sacrifice every time.”

“It’s not a sacrifice for me, Hermione.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it, and stared at him in a way that conveyed her worry more powerfully than words would have. Harry shrugged a little and picked up his water again, then eyed the sandwiches that were left thoughtfully. He should probably have more corned beef, to make sure that his blood and his magic were both as strong as possible.

Hermione spoke when he was halfway through that next sandwich. “Do you think this is healthy, Harry?”

Harry swallowed and shrugged. “What’s healthy? You remember when I was trying to force myself to date witches because I thought that was what I was supposed to do? Do you remember how miserable I was?”

“There’s nothing wrong with being gay. There’s—there’s something wrong with—” But then Hermione fell silent, the struggle between her concern for him and her principles clear on her face.

Harry rolled his eyes a little. “Yes, Hermione, I know. You worry that I won’t find a beautiful bloke to fall in love with if I confine myself to vampires. And you worry that I’ll lose control of the magic and let a vampire tear out my throat. And part of you worries that changing vampires back into humans is pandering to anti-vampire prejudice.”

“You know what I think.”

“Yes. And you know that I’m going to keep ignoring that and doing what I do.”

Hermione blushed and lowered her head. She opened her mouth, then closed it. So far, she hadn’t found the courage to address the sexual part of the equation, even though both she and Ron knew about that because Harry had been honest with them when they’d asked why he was so determined to give his blood to every vampire that rogue coven created.

She didn’t say anything now, either. Harry finished his sandwich and smiled at Ron. “So. How’s Charlie? Your mum mentioned in her latest letter that he was visiting Britain for a little while.”

Ron seized on the topic change with obvious relief, and Harry listened to his happy recounting of Charlie’s attempts to locate eggs of a local dragon subspecies that had supposedly gone extinct years ago. Hermione fidgeted on the couch now and then, but didn’t say anything else.

Harry was glad. He loved his friends. Part of him did wish that he wasn’t so attracted to someone who could actually threaten him, and that he could get out there and date a nice, normal wizard.

But the rest of him thought about the thrill of his blood pounding under Nott’s hands, and knew he would never give it up until he was forced to.

*

“You think I’m going to feed from you again after what you did to me yesterday?”

“I think you don’t have a choice, Nott.”

Nott trembled, but he remained standing on the other side of the small cell. Admittedly, the fact that he was closer to humanity than he’d been three days ago might have had something to do with that.

Harry smiled a little, and stretched lazily, and began to remove his clothing.

Nott lasted through Harry taking his shirt off and hanging it carefully over the doorknob, and beginning to pull off his trousers. But he leaped across the room like a jaguar when Harry hooked his thumbs under the waistband of his pants.

Laughing, Harry spread his arms to embrace him, and looped a leg around his waist, shuddering as Nott’s fangs sank home in him. He tilted his head back, blind with pleasure, feeling as if wings were spreading in his chest…

And then all the pleasure stopped.

Harry opened his eyes with a snarl. Nott stood there, so close that Harry couldn’t meet his eyes, his head bent and his fangs piercing Harry’s skin and blood trickling down that skin in a gentle wave—but he didn’t suck.

Harry had never heard of any vampire who would let blood go to waste like this. He arched his neck and wriggled a little, the only movement he could make with Nott pinning him to the door like this. Nott shook in response, but didn’t move.

He did reach out and pluck on the joined magic between them, though, briefly filling Harry with the sensation that someone was stroking burning harpstrings in the center of his chest.

“What the hell, Nott?” Harry’s voice was hoarse. He hated the way he sounded. He clenched his hands on Nott’s arms and tried to force him to bend his head, but he was no match for a vampire in sheer physical strength.

“I want you to wait to come until I’m done drinking.”

Harry’s eyes widened. Those words were perfect, as if Nott spoke without having his teeth in Harry’s throat. But they couldn’t be. And they had an odd, tinny echo to them, as if Nott were speaking through a metal tray.

They’re in my head!

Harry grabbed the magic, the way he should have done in the first place, and ignored his own intense need to come as he forced Nott back three paces with an invisible shield. His throat tore, and blood began pouring down, but Harry pressed his wand to the wound and healed it.

Nott paced back and forth on the other side of the shield, leaning on it now and then. His eyes were as bright as burning coals with rage and hunger and frustration and desire. And he was still speaking in Harry’s head, the way that no other vampire had ever been able to do, the way that vampires supposedly only could when they found a mate.

How are you going to turn me human again if you refuse me my meal for today?

Harry, holding Nott’s eyes, used his wand to open a cut along his left arm, and then twisted his arm back and forth rapidly. The blood flew through the shield, which was only meant to prevent the passage of vampires, and splattered across Nott’s face. He let his tongue dart out in shock, and not a second later, was obsessively cleaning the blood off his skin.

What are you doing?

Harry didn’t answer, but forced out more and more blood, and Nott drank it and shuddered a little with the fulfillment of his hunger. He never took his eyes from Harry, which was more than creepy, but also behavior Harry could understand now that he knew what he was dealing with.

A vampire’s mate is the perfect meal and the perfect complement to the vampire magically. There is no need for a mate to worry that the vampire will drain them, as their own bodies will produce all the blood that is needed. A vampire’s mate will be defended and protected as the vampire’s own offspring are not. They will be immortal, existing as long as the vampire…

The words were ones that Harry had read from a book on vampires Hermione had given him when he first started rescuing the newly-turned. He’d read it mostly to placate her, since it didn’t deal with any of the recent discoveries about vampires or the process that Harry had discovered to remove their curse and change them back into human beings. And he didn’t think it would ever apply to him, since what were the chances that a vampire he was feeding would turn out to claim Harry as their mate?

He didn’t know that he’d recall the words perfectly, for that matter.

And then he heard Nott’s mental voice echoing along with his, and he slammed the doors of his mind and body shut at the same time. He healed the cut on his arm, and turned away from Nott, shoving his fingers through his hair, his body and his breathing shaking with the tension.

“You want me.”

“Of course I do,” Harry said without turning. He lowered his wand to aim at his erection this time, and ignored Nott’s alarmed hiss as cast a spell that would make his hardness subside. He did glance over his shoulder and added, “Did you think I would castrate myself to escape you? How sweet of you to be concerned, Nott.”

“You cannot—you should not be able to shut your mind to me this way.” Nott prowled back and forth beyond the shield, shining eyes locked on Harry. “Not if we are mates.”

“Nothing about our connection is normal, Nott. And remember that you’ll be human again in ten days.”

“If I said that I did not want to be? That I wanted to remain a vampire with you as my mate?”

Harry’s breath caught for a long moment. And then he shook his head. That was a fantasy spawned most likely by the way Nott was feeling and thinking right now, and it would be giving the rogue coven of vampires exactly what they wanted. “I wouldn’t believe you.”

“This is what I want.”

“Then you’ll have to feed from someone else.”

“I only want you.”

“Then you’ll become human again in a few days.”

Nott spat a curse at him. Harry turned away and left the cell, making doubly sure that all the wards locked behind him.

*

As he lay in bed that night after jerking himself off, Harry thought about what would happen if he did have a vampire he could trust, a permanent lover, a mate who could make him feel what Nott did again and again—

Harry shut his eyes and shook his head. It was a stupid, dangerous fantasy, and the control he had allowed Nott to gain over him was stupid and dangerous as well. He would just have to make sure that the next time he fed the bastard, he held himself sternly against the pleasure of it. He had done that with the first few vampires he’d fed, before he’d decided that he might as well let himself take what he wanted.

He would do it again. Because stronger than his desire or his fetish was his will.

*

Nott had fed, this time, without any arguments, and Harry got to enjoy something, since the bone-deep lassitude seemed to linger in his veins regardless of whether he gave in to it or not. He sighed and began to cast the charm that would make his erection subside.

“Potter.”

Nott must have timed that interruption perfectly, because it meant the charm failed, when a moment earlier or later, it probably wouldn’t have. Harry cast Nott a look of dislike. He was standing all the way across the wall, against the same wall that held the unnecessary pallet. His cheeks were more flushed than Harry thought he’d seen them during Hogwarts.

“What?” Harry snapped, when it became clear that Nott wasn’t going to do the polite thing and continue.

“Have you considered what it would be like? Being my mate?”

“Annoying.”

“But I could give you what you wanted,” Nott continued, his voice lulling. “A permanent version of this arrangement, and you wouldn’t have to worry that I’d turn on you and kill you. It would be healthier for you than the constant adaptation to a new arrangement with a new vampire, wouldn’t it?”

Wouldn’t it?

The way the words echoed in his skull told Harry that Nott had slipped past the barriers and into his head again. He started to slam the barriers up, but before he could, Nott fed him a bunch of images that he must have carefully prepared in the day since Harry had seen him last.

Images of Nott and Harry lying in a bed, Nott with his hands buried deep in Harry’s hair, raking Harry’s scalp with his claws, never enough to hurt, but enough to give Harry that edge of pain and danger he craved.

Nott leaping in between Harry and some faceless Dark wizard who was trying to curse him, the Killing Curse having no effect because Nott was already undead, and the wizard’s head presented to Harry on a platter as a gift.

Nott visiting Rita Skeeter and whispering threats into her ear that made her cower and stopped her from ever writing an article about Harry again.

Harry as he looked when he came, his head tilted backwards and his throat bared and his eyes dazed with pleasure, naked on Nott’s cock.

Harry blazing with power on the day that he returned from the Forbidden Forest, and how Nott had stared at him and thought, If someone like that protected me, I would never have to be afraid again.

That last picture was so unexpected that it snapped Harry out of the thrall, and eased him back from the edge of coming, which he thought Nott had been trying to make him fall over. He stared at Nott and shook his head. “What the fuck?” he asked. “Why would you—is that part of the reason you let them turn you into a vampire?”

Nott leaped, an actual leap, although since he was against a wall he simply went up and not backwards. He came down and said in a monotone, “They told you, Potter. The rogue coven seized me from my bed while I slept and turned me.”

“No, I definitely felt the tail end of that last thought,” Harry said. The mate bond between them, or whatever the fuck it really was, was closed again, but Harry knew what he’d heard, what he’d felt. “You did it on purpose. You let them take you and turn you. You…” He concentrated a little, and what he’d picked up from Nott cohered in his brain like a distant song suddenly coming clear. “You lowered your wards so they could get in? What the fuck?”

Nott turned his head away and became a perfectly still statue the way only a vampire could. Harry knew it meant he wouldn’t be speaking anymore.

Harry didn’t bother asking him. He cast the charm that willed down his erection, healed the still-bleeding wound in his throat, and turned and marched out of the cell, pausing only so that the Unspeakables could check on the security of the wards.

But the words repeated in his skull.

What the fuck?

*

“You’re sure of what Nott told you?” Kingsley’s mouth was drawn tense as he listened to Harry.

Harry nodded and leaned back in his chair in front of Kingsley’s desk, his leg bouncing restlessly. “Yes, and I don’t understand it at all! Nott was one of those purebloods who was proud of being a wizard since the day he was born. His father was a fucking Death Eater. And now this?” He ran his hand through his hair.

“What bothers you the most?” Kingsley asked softly. “That he has no intention of going back to being human, or that he let himself be turned into a vampire specifically to seek you out?”

Harry scowled. “The second,” he admitted. “But even more than that, how did he know ahead of time that we’d be mates? It seems like a huge risk that paid off. But he didn’t have any way of knowing it would.”

“There is—well, there’s someone in the rogue coven who’s been sending us letters,” Kingsley admitted. “Apparently they’re tired of the coven’s antics and would like to live in peace with wizards if they were allowed. The latest letter had a paragraph in it that I thought was nonsense at first, but it does shed some light on this situation.”

“We have a potential source of information, and no one told me?”

“Frankly, Auror Potter, most of us thought you were too close to the case. You know there’s a reason that you were removed from it after the vampires began targeting you.”

“We never proved that was them,” Harry muttered. Yes, all right, so there had been three assassination attempts that could probably be traced back to the rogue coven, but he had assassination attempts focused on him all the time as Harry bloody Potter anyway, what were a few more?

Kingsley glared at him, but unlocked a drawer in his huge mahogany desk that could have given Dumbledore’s competition and pulled out a pierce of parchment. It was almost a scroll’s length, Harry saw as he unrolled it.

“Sixth paragraph.”

Harry scanned the neat handwriting that looked like scratches from a unicorn’s horn in sand until he found the sixth paragraph. It began bluntly, with what looked like no allusion to anything else, as if it was the first paragraph of the letter instead.

Our coven has turned one who claims that he can find and feel the mates of other vampires. This is an incredible gift if true, but I remain unsure that it is. It would mean that a spark of Divination survived his death, and no other vampire has retained any wizard magic of any kind.

Harry frowned and glanced at Kingsley. “When did you receive this letter?”

“Ten days ago. Why?”

Harry swore aloud and leaped to his feet. Kingsley immediately stood, and threw a locking ward across the door when Harry would have stormed out through it. “Harry, tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nott was supposedly only turned five days ago,” Harry snapped, spinning around. “How long has he been with the coven? Would it even be possible for a new vampire to hold off on his first meal that long? Because I fucking doubt it.”

Kingsley’s eyes widened. “He’s not—they needed us to bring him inside the Ministry for some reason. It was deliberate. We can’t tell the difference between newly-turned vampires and simply young ones, not that easily.”

“Yeah, you thought he called you the minute the coven finished turning him and left. But I don’t know how to judge the age of that memory I saw, the one where he let down his wards. It could have been even older than ten days.” Harry paced in a moody circle. “Are you sure that the wards on the cells the Unspeakables keep vampires in are strong enough to stand up to one who’s not brand-new?”

“Yes, we did test that.” Kingsley frowned harder. “But I still don’t understand what they were hoping to achieve with him.”

“He attacked an Unspeakable,” Harry said. “That means they’re probably hoping to use him to get some of the secrets out of the Department of Mysteries, or just for plain old murder. It would be enough for them. And Nott is mental enough that he might have agreed to do it just for the chance at belonging with the coven afterwards.”

“What makes you think he’s mental? You said you hadn’t interacted with him much at Hogwarts.”

“He let vampires turn him, Kingsley. Why in the world wouldn’t he be mental?”

“Says the man who gets off on being fed on.”

Harry felt as his face was on fire. He glanced away from the judgment he was sure was in Kingsley’s face, although it didn’t sound as if it was in his voice. “I hadn’t realized you’d—figured that out. I mean, other than that I used sexual means to tempt them into biting me.”

“It was evident from the way you were relaxed as fuck when you came out of the room after being fed on, Potter,” Kingsley said dryly. “But listen, I honestly don’t mean to taunt you about that. We can’t do anything about what lights our hearths.”

Harry grunted, convinced his face was the thing that was being lit on a hearth right now. He cleared his throat. “I would appreciate it if you would keep that on a strictly need-to-know basis.”

“Of course, Harry. I don’t think there’s anyone in the Aurors with a need to know in any case.”

“Thanks.” Harry managed to turn back, and thank Merlin, Kingsley’s face was calm and blank. “Okay. Well, I still think Nott is mental. I have my fetish, but I’d never let someone actually turn me into either a murdering vampire or a creature with lesser rights than a wizard.”

“Nott thought he had something to gain,” Kingsley murmured. “Status in the coven, maybe, with the way the letter talks about him seemingly having retained part of his wizard magic. And Unspeakable secrets?”

“Maybe he’s in possession of a secret himself,” Harry suggested. “Something that lets him predict which vampires and humans can mate. Maybe he’s trying to augment it by stealing something from the Department of Mysteries.”

Kingsley nodded, his eyes abstracted. “I don’t know of anything they’ve acquired recently that would merit that level of interest from a vampire, but I don’t know everything they do for very good reasons,” he murmured. “And in the meantime, Harry, I’m going to ask you to intrigue Nott as much as you can.”

Harry grimaced, but nodded. He wasn’t surprised, really. Nott had a plot to steal something from the Department of Mysteries, wizard magic despite no vampire ever being known to possess that after turning, or both. They needed to get as much out of him as they could.

He ignored the flicker of interest and anxiety from the center of his breastbone. Yes, this meant indulging his fetish and getting off. But it didn’t mean more than that, which gave him a sort of bleak pride.

He can call himself my mate all he wants, but I’ll never be his.