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lomonaaerenTitle: Harry Potter’s Life Contains Too Many Vampires
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/OMC
Content Notes: AU after the Third Task, discussion of past torture and character death, vampires, angst, humor
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: This part 3100
Summary: Sequel to “Lord Voldemort’s Life Consists of “What?”” Neville invites Harry to join him in visiting a vampire Court on the Continent during the summer after fourth year. Harry, thinking that he might be able to gain tips on making himself a tougher enemy for Voldemort to fight, agrees. He has no idea what he will find there.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” series, chaptered fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. This is the second part of the “Heir and Horcrux” series, and will probably have three parts, to be posted over the next few days.
Harry Potter’s Life Contains Too Many Vampires
“Harry?”
Harry blinked and looked up from the lake, which he’d been staring out over while visions of Cedric’s death played in front of his eyes again and again. “Oh, hi, Neville.”
Neville sat down next to him. Harry allowed it. Neville was one of the few people, other than Ron and Hermione, who had stood by him and not whispered behind their hands or acted as though he thought Harry had murdered Cedric. That alone made his company valuable.
“I wanted to ask you something.”
Harry stirred and managed to force his way past his own despair to smile at Neville. He sounded so nervous about something. It had taken real courage for him to approach Harry. “What is it?”
“I wanted to know if you wanted to come to a vampire Court with me and my Gran this summer.”
Harry felt his mouth fall open. Then he closed it, because that probably looked rude, and cleared his throat. “I—wow, Neville, that sounds—interesting. But I don’t know if I can. I always have to stay with my Muggle relatives during the summers.”
“But that would be a bad idea right now, wouldn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, You-Know-Who could just show up and take you right out of a Muggle house. They don’t have the protections that magical homes do.”
Neville looked a little sick talking about it, but he still talked about it. Harry paused, combing his fingers restlessly through his hair.
He wanted to say that the Dursleys’ house had blood protections around it, but the truth was, he didn’t know how well those would work when Voldemort had taken his blood. It was probably safe, but it wouldn’t be as safe as staying with a bunch of—
“Wait, would vampires welcome me?” Harry struggled to remember what he had read about vampires, but there were really only a few chapters in the book for Professor Lupin’s class last year. “I don’t know—why are you going to visit them?”
Neville smiled. “My great-aunt, Gran’s sister? She married a vampire and got turned by him a long time ago.”
“Really?”
Neville nodded. “That’s what vampires do with humans they fall in love with. They turn them as soon as they can, so that the person can be immortal and with them forever. Great-Aunt Agatha seems happy.”
“They drink blood, though, right?”
“Right! But they would never do that from an invited guest.”
“Would they invite me if you invited me?”
“I promise they would.” Neville hesitated, and then reached out and grabbed Harry’s hand. Harry was so startled that he allowed it, even though he hadn’t really liked anyone touching him but Ron and Hermione since he came back from the graveyard.
“I thought you were dead,” Neville whispered. “You looked like you were about to die when you came back. And then when you confronted—Crouch.” He swallowed. Neville had taken the revelation that they’d had a Death Eater teaching them all year almost worse than Harry, and Harry could see why, after learning about Neville’s parents. “I never want to go through that again, Harry. You’re—almost the only friend I have.”
Harry looked down, ashamed. He hadn’t always treated Neville like a friend. He’d thought Neville was clumsy and stupid. He’d been impatient with him.
But now Neville was offering the kind of protection he thought Harry needed, so Harry wouldn’t end up dead.
“I—I need to train my magic,” Harry whispered, something he’d told no one else since he came back. “I don’t—Voldemort—” Neville flinched, but his hand tightened on Harry’s. “He just kind of tossed me around. I only survived because of luck and because the ghosts of my parents were there. I can’t count on that. I need to learn the kind of magic that he knows. I need to become more powerful to defeat him.”
Neville was pale when Harry looked at him again, but also smiling gamely. “I promise that you can learn that in a vampire Court,” he said. “They practice all kinds of magic, and they have their own code of honor, so they really don’t care much about laws that wizards and witches make.”
“I could practice magic during the summer?”
“Of course you can. And you can learn alongside me. They could probably even teach you about how the magic that let you survive when you were one and You-Know-Who attacked you. Or Parseltongue.”
Neville looked solemn. Harry sat back with his mind whirling. He almost didn’t dare to hope this was a real escape. If it was so simple to just walk away from the Dursleys during the summers, why hadn’t Ron ever invited him to the Burrow to do that, or Hermione to her house?
But maybe it hadn’t occurred to them.
“Yeah,” Harry whispered. “Yeah, I’d like to come, Neville.”
Neville’s smile was still shaky, his face pale, but he squeezed Harry’s hand, and Harry squeezed back.
*
They took a Portkey from the train station, which was nauseating. Harry was still swallowing back bile when they came out of the Portkey on the top of a high mountain. He stared in all directions at the dazzling view, mouth dropping open.
“We are in the Alps,” said Augusta Longbottom, Neville’s Gran. She had peered at Harry in stern silence for a long moment before she’d told him to call her Augusta. Harry wasn’t sure he could, though. “Technically, the Court of the Riviera Pack is near here.”
“Technically?”
“It’s really Underhill,” Neville said. He’d been quiet since they got off the train, but now his eyes were shining with a confidence that Harry had never seen before, and he spoke exactly like Harry should know what he was talking about.
“Underground?”
Neville and Mrs. Longbottom both looked at him with identical shocked expressions. Harry put his hands in his robe pockets and ducked his head. He felt stupid, the way he did whenever he stumbled across some magical thing he didn’t know.
“No,” Mrs. Longbottom said, still peering at Harry. Harry didn’t dare look up, just in case she regretted inviting him along. “Underhill. In the realm of the Sidhe and the faerie-kind. The Lord of the Riviera Pack, Elfric, was once a Sidhe.”
Harry didn’t want to betray his ignorance again, so he just nodded. Mrs. Longbottom examined him one more time, harrumphed, and then reached into her robe pocket and took out a dazzling sapphire that made Harry blink several times.
“This is the token that will bring us to the Court,” Mrs. Longbottom explained, and extended her hand. Neville gripped it and held out his hand to Harry, who took it.
Mrs. Longbottom said a long, cold, sighing word that sounded like wind rushing down a tunnel to Harry. He just barely bit his lip to keep from yelling as blue light flooded out of the sapphire and lit the world around them.
Shadows turned to glittering coldness. Harry thought he could feel his head spinning upside-down and turning inside-out. At the same time, he was speeding through the sapphire’s facets, or something like them, down endless tunnels and through sharp-edged doors.
Someone spoke his name in a shrill laughing voice, and then Harry stumbled, and it was Neville’s voice again. He lifted his head, and his jaw dropped.
They were standing in an immense and shining place. Harry almost thought “cavern,” and then he saw the softness of the walls, covered with tapestries and silver and blue grass, and thought “hill.”
Or “hall.” That could have been it, too.
Everything was full of glittering motion: rushing waterfalls, spinning blades in the air, the wings of silver birds as they darted back and forth, and vampires coming and going in the soft shining light. They turned to look at him, and Harry straightened his back and forced himself to make unnaturally bright blue and red and golden eyes. He had faced down Lord Voldemort. He could do this.
A vampire who looked younger than some of the others stepped forwards and bowed. He wore a costume that looked medieval to Harry, with flowing sleeves and leggings and a long red cape.
“Mrs. Longbottom, Mr. Longbottom,” he said in a voice like a hollow flute. “Welcome. We await an introduction to your guest.” He turned and faced Harry.
His eyes were a bright and blazing green, a color Harry had never seen except in his own reflection and the pictures of his mum. Harry stared in wonder. Then Neville nudged him, and Harry realized he was supposed to introduce himself instead of waiting for someone to do it for him.
He cleared his throat. “My name is Harry Potter. Thank you for, ah, inviting me.”
“I am Lord Constantine,” the vampire said, “Lord Elfric’s grandson in the blood, and his heir. Allow me to escort you to my sire.”
Harry nodded, dazed, and wondered for a second how grubby his little trunk and his school robes looked in comparison to the rich robes that the Longbottoms were wearing. But Neville had said he wasn’t to worry about that, so Harry did his best to just walk after Constantine and not look like he was gaping like a fool.
*
“So.”
If Constantine’s voice was a hollow flute, Elfric’s was a full bass orchestra. Harry bowed in front of him, copying what he saw Neville do from the corner of his eye.
He was pretty overwhelmed. They’d passed through some of the most beautiful rooms he’d ever seen on the way here, and now they were in the middle of a throne room covered with a shallow, shimmering sheet of silver water, surrounding small artificial rocky islands. It was so big Harry couldn’t see the walls or the ceiling.
Elfric sat on a throne on one of the islands, and he was taller than any human, and paler. The way his limbs curved sort of reminded Harry of a praying mantis’s. Instead of hair, even the curly chestnut hair like Constantine had that was too bright to be real, he had shining strands of silver frizz like spiderwebs.
His eyes were black and depthless pools. Harry had been glad to bow so that he wouldn’t have to look into them.
“So,” Elfric repeated, and leaned forwards to study Harry. Harry nervously bowed again. “It is a long time since we have welcomed a Parselmouth to our halls.”
Harry nearly froze in panic, but he saw Neville nodding and making “go on” gestures from the corner of his eye. So it must be all right. Harry took a deep breath. “Yes, I’m a Parselmouth, sir, er. Your Majesty.”
“You may say ‘my lord,’” Elfric murmured. He was absorbed as he studied Harry. “You have survived death often for one so young.”
Vampires were undead, Harry remembered that much, so he supposed he wasn’t surprised that they could sense that. He nodded. “Yes, s—my lord.”
“And it is your will to continue surviving for many more years?”
Harry straightened his back. If the vampires could teach him powerful magic, this seemed like the time to ask about it. “Yes, my lord. I’d like to live.”
“Then,” Elfric said, and smiled in a way that bared fangs gleaming like ivory bars, “you shall.”
*
Life in the vampire Court was different from anything Harry could have dreamed.
He and Neville and Mrs. Longbottom were all given rooms in a less overwhelming part of the Court that Neville said was designed for humans, but they didn’t have to share a bedroom or anything like that. Every morning that Harry opened his eyes, he felt like he was dreaming.
The bedroom was a huge, sprawling thing with seven walls, and on all of them were tapestries that seemed to depict vampire history. The floor was covered with a blue carpet that rustled around Harry’s ankles when he walked across it, and might be actual grass. There was a bathroom with a tub Harry could swim in if he wanted, and a desk in a room off to the side of the bedroom that seemed to be made of pure silver, and bookshelves crammed with books.
Harry couldn’t read all of them—most of them seemed to be in other languages—but there were spellbooks in English. He read and he read, and he learned.
There were all kinds of powerful spells that weren’t Dark Arts, he learned. Some of them were variations of Charms or Transfigurations he had already learned. If he Transfigured the air into knives or charmed his enemies’ robes to strangle them, he wasn’t breaking any laws.
It was more than he had ever expected to find.
*
Constantine was more than he’d ever expected to find, too.
Harry had met the young vampire waiting for him outside the round room that contained breakfast on his second day in the Court. Harry jumped a little. He’d opened the door that led out of the dining room by mistake, absorbed as he was in a book he was reading. He’d meant to go back to his rooms. Neville said it wasn’t a good idea to wander around the Court without a guide.
But now there was Constantine in front of him, who bowed his head, smiled a little without showing his fangs, and murmured, “Would you like a tour of the Court?”
“Um.” Harry could feel himself blushing. He hated the fact that he might be being inconvenient or rude, either by refusing the escort or needing one. “I don’t want to put you out. You must have lots of duties.”
“I also have much more time than you do, given that I do not sleep,” Constantine said, and this time, his smile widened and displayed his fangs. Harry didn’t feel threatened, though. Neville had said the vampires would never attack a guest, and so far, Neville had been right about everything else. “I have completed my duties for today, and I would like to spend time with you.”
“Um. Why? My lord.”
“Save that for my grandfather. I don’t need it.” Constantine’s eyes shone. “It has been years since I saw a Parselmouth.”
“I don’t really understand why a vampire would want to speak with me because of that,” Harry admitted. He tucked the book in a pocket of the wide, stretchy silver robe that he’d found waiting in his wardrobe yesterday morning. At least he didn’t have to go around wearing school robes or Muggle clothes. “Do vampires have a close association with snakes?”
“Not all vampires, but our Pack does, because of our Court.”
“What’s the difference between a Pack and a Court?”
“The Pack is the group of vampires,” Constantine said, and waved his hand. Harry followed him down a hall that bent and wavered back and forth as if it was made of mist, and they came out in a room of dazzling blue, as if they were inside the sapphire that Mrs. Longbottom had used to transport them here. “The Court is the place we live.”
“Oh. Okay. Makes sense.”
Constantine nodded. Apparently, nothing could disrupt the faint smile on his face. “This place was ancient when my grandfather found it and began to sculpt it to his will. And even then, it belonged to the serpents.”
They crossed part of the vast room, which narrowed down, with the ceiling sinking towards them, and the walls seemed to float around them. Harry reached out to brace himself on one of the walls, and found Constantine’s cool hand awaiting his.
“It’s just through here,” Constantine murmured, and they seemed to skim through a door and come to rest in front of a carved stone serpent that was so realistic Harry almost expected it to move. Of course it didn’t, but he bowed his head before it and spoke without thinking, unselfconscious about his Parseltongue for the first time in his life.
“Hello, Great One.”
The carving writhed, and the tongue, which had been projecting beyond its mouth, darted back inside. The smooth curves of silver stone flowed into scales, and the snake looped back on itself and studied him.
“I have heard no voices in such a long time. Tell me, do my kind still crawl beneath the sky?”
Constantine caught his breath beside Harry. Harry didn’t know why. He hoped the vampire wasn’t about to show that he was afraid of Parseltongue. That stirred a hurt inside him that he didn’t understand.
“I do not know, Great One. I do not know what your exact kind are. You are not like anything I have seen before.”
The snake extended its neck towards him, and Harry held very still as the slender snout nudged at his arms and shoulders. Then the snake withdrew and extended its tongue again in apparent pleasure.
“My kind are all who speak with a serpent’s tongue and seek with a serpent’s soul. They still crawl beneath the sky. I can feel that you have the language and the soul.”
Harry wondered uneasily what that last part meant, but he knew he probably wouldn’t get answers if he asked. He just nodded and bowed, about halfway as deep as he had bowed to Lord Elfric. It seemed right. “Thank you for the compliments.”
“Truth. Compliments.” The snake seemed to be easing back towards sleep again. “They are the same, and it is well that they are.”
Harry took a step back and bowed again as the serpent returned to sleep, and then turned to face Constantine. To his relief, the vampire was smiling at him in what seemed to be genuine wonder, not fear.
“That was marvelous,” Constantine said. “I have never heard a Parselmouth speak the language so beautifully.”
Harry flushed, and wondered if he should tell the vampire about what Dumbledore had said, that Harry wasn’t a real Parselmouth, but got the power from Voldemort. But he decided that might sound rude. “Thank you.”
“Does he value you, the lord you are heir to?”
Harry blinked. “I’m not sure who you mean.”
“Perhaps it is not time yet,” said Constantine, which didn’t make sense, either, but he went on before Harry could ask what he meant. “Come, I will show you a meadow where time breaks in pieces and returns on itself.”
Harry followed, intrigued, and thinking that was probably going to count as his best summer yet, if it didn’t already.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/OMC
Content Notes: AU after the Third Task, discussion of past torture and character death, vampires, angst, humor
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: This part 3100
Summary: Sequel to “Lord Voldemort’s Life Consists of “What?”” Neville invites Harry to join him in visiting a vampire Court on the Continent during the summer after fourth year. Harry, thinking that he might be able to gain tips on making himself a tougher enemy for Voldemort to fight, agrees. He has no idea what he will find there.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” series, chaptered fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. This is the second part of the “Heir and Horcrux” series, and will probably have three parts, to be posted over the next few days.
Harry Potter’s Life Contains Too Many Vampires
“Harry?”
Harry blinked and looked up from the lake, which he’d been staring out over while visions of Cedric’s death played in front of his eyes again and again. “Oh, hi, Neville.”
Neville sat down next to him. Harry allowed it. Neville was one of the few people, other than Ron and Hermione, who had stood by him and not whispered behind their hands or acted as though he thought Harry had murdered Cedric. That alone made his company valuable.
“I wanted to ask you something.”
Harry stirred and managed to force his way past his own despair to smile at Neville. He sounded so nervous about something. It had taken real courage for him to approach Harry. “What is it?”
“I wanted to know if you wanted to come to a vampire Court with me and my Gran this summer.”
Harry felt his mouth fall open. Then he closed it, because that probably looked rude, and cleared his throat. “I—wow, Neville, that sounds—interesting. But I don’t know if I can. I always have to stay with my Muggle relatives during the summers.”
“But that would be a bad idea right now, wouldn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, You-Know-Who could just show up and take you right out of a Muggle house. They don’t have the protections that magical homes do.”
Neville looked a little sick talking about it, but he still talked about it. Harry paused, combing his fingers restlessly through his hair.
He wanted to say that the Dursleys’ house had blood protections around it, but the truth was, he didn’t know how well those would work when Voldemort had taken his blood. It was probably safe, but it wouldn’t be as safe as staying with a bunch of—
“Wait, would vampires welcome me?” Harry struggled to remember what he had read about vampires, but there were really only a few chapters in the book for Professor Lupin’s class last year. “I don’t know—why are you going to visit them?”
Neville smiled. “My great-aunt, Gran’s sister? She married a vampire and got turned by him a long time ago.”
“Really?”
Neville nodded. “That’s what vampires do with humans they fall in love with. They turn them as soon as they can, so that the person can be immortal and with them forever. Great-Aunt Agatha seems happy.”
“They drink blood, though, right?”
“Right! But they would never do that from an invited guest.”
“Would they invite me if you invited me?”
“I promise they would.” Neville hesitated, and then reached out and grabbed Harry’s hand. Harry was so startled that he allowed it, even though he hadn’t really liked anyone touching him but Ron and Hermione since he came back from the graveyard.
“I thought you were dead,” Neville whispered. “You looked like you were about to die when you came back. And then when you confronted—Crouch.” He swallowed. Neville had taken the revelation that they’d had a Death Eater teaching them all year almost worse than Harry, and Harry could see why, after learning about Neville’s parents. “I never want to go through that again, Harry. You’re—almost the only friend I have.”
Harry looked down, ashamed. He hadn’t always treated Neville like a friend. He’d thought Neville was clumsy and stupid. He’d been impatient with him.
But now Neville was offering the kind of protection he thought Harry needed, so Harry wouldn’t end up dead.
“I—I need to train my magic,” Harry whispered, something he’d told no one else since he came back. “I don’t—Voldemort—” Neville flinched, but his hand tightened on Harry’s. “He just kind of tossed me around. I only survived because of luck and because the ghosts of my parents were there. I can’t count on that. I need to learn the kind of magic that he knows. I need to become more powerful to defeat him.”
Neville was pale when Harry looked at him again, but also smiling gamely. “I promise that you can learn that in a vampire Court,” he said. “They practice all kinds of magic, and they have their own code of honor, so they really don’t care much about laws that wizards and witches make.”
“I could practice magic during the summer?”
“Of course you can. And you can learn alongside me. They could probably even teach you about how the magic that let you survive when you were one and You-Know-Who attacked you. Or Parseltongue.”
Neville looked solemn. Harry sat back with his mind whirling. He almost didn’t dare to hope this was a real escape. If it was so simple to just walk away from the Dursleys during the summers, why hadn’t Ron ever invited him to the Burrow to do that, or Hermione to her house?
But maybe it hadn’t occurred to them.
“Yeah,” Harry whispered. “Yeah, I’d like to come, Neville.”
Neville’s smile was still shaky, his face pale, but he squeezed Harry’s hand, and Harry squeezed back.
*
They took a Portkey from the train station, which was nauseating. Harry was still swallowing back bile when they came out of the Portkey on the top of a high mountain. He stared in all directions at the dazzling view, mouth dropping open.
“We are in the Alps,” said Augusta Longbottom, Neville’s Gran. She had peered at Harry in stern silence for a long moment before she’d told him to call her Augusta. Harry wasn’t sure he could, though. “Technically, the Court of the Riviera Pack is near here.”
“Technically?”
“It’s really Underhill,” Neville said. He’d been quiet since they got off the train, but now his eyes were shining with a confidence that Harry had never seen before, and he spoke exactly like Harry should know what he was talking about.
“Underground?”
Neville and Mrs. Longbottom both looked at him with identical shocked expressions. Harry put his hands in his robe pockets and ducked his head. He felt stupid, the way he did whenever he stumbled across some magical thing he didn’t know.
“No,” Mrs. Longbottom said, still peering at Harry. Harry didn’t dare look up, just in case she regretted inviting him along. “Underhill. In the realm of the Sidhe and the faerie-kind. The Lord of the Riviera Pack, Elfric, was once a Sidhe.”
Harry didn’t want to betray his ignorance again, so he just nodded. Mrs. Longbottom examined him one more time, harrumphed, and then reached into her robe pocket and took out a dazzling sapphire that made Harry blink several times.
“This is the token that will bring us to the Court,” Mrs. Longbottom explained, and extended her hand. Neville gripped it and held out his hand to Harry, who took it.
Mrs. Longbottom said a long, cold, sighing word that sounded like wind rushing down a tunnel to Harry. He just barely bit his lip to keep from yelling as blue light flooded out of the sapphire and lit the world around them.
Shadows turned to glittering coldness. Harry thought he could feel his head spinning upside-down and turning inside-out. At the same time, he was speeding through the sapphire’s facets, or something like them, down endless tunnels and through sharp-edged doors.
Someone spoke his name in a shrill laughing voice, and then Harry stumbled, and it was Neville’s voice again. He lifted his head, and his jaw dropped.
They were standing in an immense and shining place. Harry almost thought “cavern,” and then he saw the softness of the walls, covered with tapestries and silver and blue grass, and thought “hill.”
Or “hall.” That could have been it, too.
Everything was full of glittering motion: rushing waterfalls, spinning blades in the air, the wings of silver birds as they darted back and forth, and vampires coming and going in the soft shining light. They turned to look at him, and Harry straightened his back and forced himself to make unnaturally bright blue and red and golden eyes. He had faced down Lord Voldemort. He could do this.
A vampire who looked younger than some of the others stepped forwards and bowed. He wore a costume that looked medieval to Harry, with flowing sleeves and leggings and a long red cape.
“Mrs. Longbottom, Mr. Longbottom,” he said in a voice like a hollow flute. “Welcome. We await an introduction to your guest.” He turned and faced Harry.
His eyes were a bright and blazing green, a color Harry had never seen except in his own reflection and the pictures of his mum. Harry stared in wonder. Then Neville nudged him, and Harry realized he was supposed to introduce himself instead of waiting for someone to do it for him.
He cleared his throat. “My name is Harry Potter. Thank you for, ah, inviting me.”
“I am Lord Constantine,” the vampire said, “Lord Elfric’s grandson in the blood, and his heir. Allow me to escort you to my sire.”
Harry nodded, dazed, and wondered for a second how grubby his little trunk and his school robes looked in comparison to the rich robes that the Longbottoms were wearing. But Neville had said he wasn’t to worry about that, so Harry did his best to just walk after Constantine and not look like he was gaping like a fool.
*
“So.”
If Constantine’s voice was a hollow flute, Elfric’s was a full bass orchestra. Harry bowed in front of him, copying what he saw Neville do from the corner of his eye.
He was pretty overwhelmed. They’d passed through some of the most beautiful rooms he’d ever seen on the way here, and now they were in the middle of a throne room covered with a shallow, shimmering sheet of silver water, surrounding small artificial rocky islands. It was so big Harry couldn’t see the walls or the ceiling.
Elfric sat on a throne on one of the islands, and he was taller than any human, and paler. The way his limbs curved sort of reminded Harry of a praying mantis’s. Instead of hair, even the curly chestnut hair like Constantine had that was too bright to be real, he had shining strands of silver frizz like spiderwebs.
His eyes were black and depthless pools. Harry had been glad to bow so that he wouldn’t have to look into them.
“So,” Elfric repeated, and leaned forwards to study Harry. Harry nervously bowed again. “It is a long time since we have welcomed a Parselmouth to our halls.”
Harry nearly froze in panic, but he saw Neville nodding and making “go on” gestures from the corner of his eye. So it must be all right. Harry took a deep breath. “Yes, I’m a Parselmouth, sir, er. Your Majesty.”
“You may say ‘my lord,’” Elfric murmured. He was absorbed as he studied Harry. “You have survived death often for one so young.”
Vampires were undead, Harry remembered that much, so he supposed he wasn’t surprised that they could sense that. He nodded. “Yes, s—my lord.”
“And it is your will to continue surviving for many more years?”
Harry straightened his back. If the vampires could teach him powerful magic, this seemed like the time to ask about it. “Yes, my lord. I’d like to live.”
“Then,” Elfric said, and smiled in a way that bared fangs gleaming like ivory bars, “you shall.”
*
Life in the vampire Court was different from anything Harry could have dreamed.
He and Neville and Mrs. Longbottom were all given rooms in a less overwhelming part of the Court that Neville said was designed for humans, but they didn’t have to share a bedroom or anything like that. Every morning that Harry opened his eyes, he felt like he was dreaming.
The bedroom was a huge, sprawling thing with seven walls, and on all of them were tapestries that seemed to depict vampire history. The floor was covered with a blue carpet that rustled around Harry’s ankles when he walked across it, and might be actual grass. There was a bathroom with a tub Harry could swim in if he wanted, and a desk in a room off to the side of the bedroom that seemed to be made of pure silver, and bookshelves crammed with books.
Harry couldn’t read all of them—most of them seemed to be in other languages—but there were spellbooks in English. He read and he read, and he learned.
There were all kinds of powerful spells that weren’t Dark Arts, he learned. Some of them were variations of Charms or Transfigurations he had already learned. If he Transfigured the air into knives or charmed his enemies’ robes to strangle them, he wasn’t breaking any laws.
It was more than he had ever expected to find.
*
Constantine was more than he’d ever expected to find, too.
Harry had met the young vampire waiting for him outside the round room that contained breakfast on his second day in the Court. Harry jumped a little. He’d opened the door that led out of the dining room by mistake, absorbed as he was in a book he was reading. He’d meant to go back to his rooms. Neville said it wasn’t a good idea to wander around the Court without a guide.
But now there was Constantine in front of him, who bowed his head, smiled a little without showing his fangs, and murmured, “Would you like a tour of the Court?”
“Um.” Harry could feel himself blushing. He hated the fact that he might be being inconvenient or rude, either by refusing the escort or needing one. “I don’t want to put you out. You must have lots of duties.”
“I also have much more time than you do, given that I do not sleep,” Constantine said, and this time, his smile widened and displayed his fangs. Harry didn’t feel threatened, though. Neville had said the vampires would never attack a guest, and so far, Neville had been right about everything else. “I have completed my duties for today, and I would like to spend time with you.”
“Um. Why? My lord.”
“Save that for my grandfather. I don’t need it.” Constantine’s eyes shone. “It has been years since I saw a Parselmouth.”
“I don’t really understand why a vampire would want to speak with me because of that,” Harry admitted. He tucked the book in a pocket of the wide, stretchy silver robe that he’d found waiting in his wardrobe yesterday morning. At least he didn’t have to go around wearing school robes or Muggle clothes. “Do vampires have a close association with snakes?”
“Not all vampires, but our Pack does, because of our Court.”
“What’s the difference between a Pack and a Court?”
“The Pack is the group of vampires,” Constantine said, and waved his hand. Harry followed him down a hall that bent and wavered back and forth as if it was made of mist, and they came out in a room of dazzling blue, as if they were inside the sapphire that Mrs. Longbottom had used to transport them here. “The Court is the place we live.”
“Oh. Okay. Makes sense.”
Constantine nodded. Apparently, nothing could disrupt the faint smile on his face. “This place was ancient when my grandfather found it and began to sculpt it to his will. And even then, it belonged to the serpents.”
They crossed part of the vast room, which narrowed down, with the ceiling sinking towards them, and the walls seemed to float around them. Harry reached out to brace himself on one of the walls, and found Constantine’s cool hand awaiting his.
“It’s just through here,” Constantine murmured, and they seemed to skim through a door and come to rest in front of a carved stone serpent that was so realistic Harry almost expected it to move. Of course it didn’t, but he bowed his head before it and spoke without thinking, unselfconscious about his Parseltongue for the first time in his life.
“Hello, Great One.”
The carving writhed, and the tongue, which had been projecting beyond its mouth, darted back inside. The smooth curves of silver stone flowed into scales, and the snake looped back on itself and studied him.
“I have heard no voices in such a long time. Tell me, do my kind still crawl beneath the sky?”
Constantine caught his breath beside Harry. Harry didn’t know why. He hoped the vampire wasn’t about to show that he was afraid of Parseltongue. That stirred a hurt inside him that he didn’t understand.
“I do not know, Great One. I do not know what your exact kind are. You are not like anything I have seen before.”
The snake extended its neck towards him, and Harry held very still as the slender snout nudged at his arms and shoulders. Then the snake withdrew and extended its tongue again in apparent pleasure.
“My kind are all who speak with a serpent’s tongue and seek with a serpent’s soul. They still crawl beneath the sky. I can feel that you have the language and the soul.”
Harry wondered uneasily what that last part meant, but he knew he probably wouldn’t get answers if he asked. He just nodded and bowed, about halfway as deep as he had bowed to Lord Elfric. It seemed right. “Thank you for the compliments.”
“Truth. Compliments.” The snake seemed to be easing back towards sleep again. “They are the same, and it is well that they are.”
Harry took a step back and bowed again as the serpent returned to sleep, and then turned to face Constantine. To his relief, the vampire was smiling at him in what seemed to be genuine wonder, not fear.
“That was marvelous,” Constantine said. “I have never heard a Parselmouth speak the language so beautifully.”
Harry flushed, and wondered if he should tell the vampire about what Dumbledore had said, that Harry wasn’t a real Parselmouth, but got the power from Voldemort. But he decided that might sound rude. “Thank you.”
“Does he value you, the lord you are heir to?”
Harry blinked. “I’m not sure who you mean.”
“Perhaps it is not time yet,” said Constantine, which didn’t make sense, either, but he went on before Harry could ask what he meant. “Come, I will show you a meadow where time breaks in pieces and returns on itself.”
Harry followed, intrigued, and thinking that was probably going to count as his best summer yet, if it didn’t already.
