First and foremost - if you don't agree with this 'theory', awesome. Just don't complain about it to me. I'm currently in a bloody awful personal situation and I wanted to write something different to cheer myself up.
Also, I know mostly that my Vlad/Harry work belongs in Chosen One Shots, but I just didn't feel like it fit in there.
Mostly Canon-compliant up to Voldie's death? And YD compliant except for... Talitha and Malik in S5?
-YDHP-
At first, the end of the war had seemed like a brilliant thing. Everyone was safe, Voldemort was dead and Harry had fulfilled the prophecy.
Or so he thought.
Staring back at the face that hadn't really aged, but still somehow looked weighed down with time, Harry straightened his black robes that had seen far too much use lately. At over a hundred years old, he really ought to invest in new funeral robes.
Though, as he stands over in the shadows of his ex girlfriends funeral, Harry casts a glance over the new generations. He knows some of their names, has met many of them at other funerals. Hermione dying had probably hit him the worst, because she was the only one who seemed to understand why Harry hated his life, she was the first to work out why Harry stopped aging.
"I was prepared to die. I wanted to be reunited with my parents at last. I wish I had known coming back meant staying here forever."
Dumbledore knew, and had been too much of a coward to tell Harry - by fulfilling the prophecy and striking down Tom Marvolo Riddle a.k.a Lord Voldemort, he had sacrificed something he didn't realise how much he needed - Death.
Neither can live while the other survives... Ironic really, because even with Voldemort dead, Harry hasn't truly been alive in decades. He lost the ring in the Forest, and despite searching for years Harry never found it. Then the Elder Wand was burned in phoenix fire until it finally became nothing more than ash in Fawkes' nest. So even the occasional wistful calling across the veil between life and death was lost to him. His whole family was lost, snatched away by war or slowly taken by time.
"You're him right? Harry Potter?"
After more than a century, his novelty had begun to wear off. There was a healthy mix of distrust and awe for Harry and his immortality, because many assumed he must have used nefarious means while others said the magical backlash of Voldemort's death had kept him there. Still, he was easily recognisable from the history books.
"That's me. I just came to pay my respects to Ginny."
"You knew my gran at Hogwarts right?"
The young, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old, redheaded girl had Ginny's brown eyes, a smile that reminded Harry of Fred and George Weasley.
"Yeah. She was brilliant."
"She used to tell us stories about you. Did you really fly a dragon like my Great-Uncle Charlie used to?"
Harry humoured the girl for a few minutes, but being the bitter recluse he had become after watching everyone he knew and loved die, he felt stifled by such memories flashing before his eyes and made his excuses.
Grimmauld Place was actually welcoming in its gloomy isolation as Harry apparated in, the solitary elf - Kreacher and Winky's daughter (he didn't want to know) Doreen - taking his robes to be laundered without a peep.
The last of his friends and family, gone. They had children, and grandchildren and even great grandchildren, but Harry had refused to even bother with dating and family. What was the point, if he would only outlive them anyway and have to bury more loved ones? Over time, their very different lives had begun to push them apart. And now they were all gone, Ginny the last.
Harry didn't even have it in him to cry about it anymore, like his emotions were coated in dust, dulled from lack of use. Life ceased to mean much at all. He ate mechanically when Doreen placed food in front of him, bathed when he noticed he started to smell, left the house only to check the world was still there really when the four walls became constricting.
This was what he had fought for? Monotony and loneliness, a curse of immortality that his old nemesis would never have dreamed of?
If only he had succeeded in killing Harry. Voldemort would have gotten his coveted immortality, and realised how utterly soul destroying it was.
"Just do it. Raise your wand to your face and say the spell."
Most of the cursed objects were cleared from Grimmauld Place, but Harry had, maudlin and darkly amused these days, hung on to a talking mirror that over time, had apparently absorbed the vitriol of all who had glanced into it's glass.
"Maybe tomorrow."
"And straighten your shirt, you look like a first year!"
Reaching automatically to adjust the fabric like his old Professor McGonogall was the one barking the order, Harry rolled his eyes and continued on pacing. Suicide had always seemed so... wasteful. He didn't want to live like this, but to actively try and cause his own death for the sake of dying? It seemed like spitting on the sacrifice his parents made.
Still, he didn't age, didn't sicken and no injury short of a dark curse even left a mark. It was like his body just snapped back to the way he had been in the clearing that fateful day. Minus the Killing-Curse bruise, which left a shadow of a scar on his chest to match the faded one on his forehead. Neither had pained him again, but that was the closest he had to an upside these days.
"Dinner is served Mas- sorry, Mister Harry."
Fifty years of pleading with Doreen not to be called Master had done little for his cause, though she clearly tried and Harry had banned self-punishment the day Doreen bound her magic to his home.
"Thanks Doreen. That's all I need this evening, feel free to catch up on your knitting or something."
His chicken soup was well made but Harry barely tasted it, ate only to stop his useless immortal body becoming a useless immortal skeleton with skin on.
Harry didn't need to work for at least another... three hundred years, with his minimal needs and sizeable inheritance, plus the bribe the Ministry gave him against his protests to not try and take over the world out of boredom when it became clear the boy-who-lived was going to be the boy-who-lives-forever. He had considered getting a job, or creating a career of some kind, but there was nobody to bounce ideas of other than Doreen, who was irritatingly blase and answered everything with "Yes Master Harry."
Maybe he should get a pet. A phoenix maybe, something that lived for a really long time, rather than punish himself every ten or fifteen years having to bury another cat or dog. No dogs... A faint feeling, almost reminiscent of a tear rising, hit Harry as he remembered his godfather.
He realised how ridiculous that sounded - a phoenix was a magical, sentient and remarkable creature full of warmth and fire. Harry was a magical accident full of bitterness and ice. He shouldn't force the poor flame bird to suffer his company.
Harry had seen technology slowly integrate the magical world over the last century, which meant he inevitably had a telephone and a television. The phone had zero use really, because nobody ever called him. The television was vaguely intriguing - there were a lot of channels. Resigning himself to another weary night with a few sips of firewhisky and channel hopping, Harry sank into his well-worn armchair.
At least he still slept. That would have been even worse, he mused, remembering that bloody awful book-and-movie series about sparkly immortal vampires who didn't sleep or have fangs. Not that Harry had met many vampires, but Sanguini had definitely had fangs at Slughorns party. He remembered that much. And he certainly didn't sparkle.
Thumb mashing the 'next' button on the remote, the lettering long gone as Harry couldn't be bothered updating things as long as it worked - and as he could repair it magically, it did - so it was old. Not as old as him, obviously. Harry dozed off like that, waking up to those shopping adverts where they tried to sell special cooking pans and make-up.
Flicking off the screen, Harry realised the late hour, pocketed the wand he scarcely ever used these days and grabbed a jacket before heading out. London streets were his second home now, because when Harry woke from nightmares even now, he could feel safe enough to trawl the streets. Nobody could kill him, so even if some drunk knife-wielding maniac came up to him, Harry would still make it home no problem.
He passed the line where everything became solid buildings and grey streets and smog after about an hour, finding himself with lungfuls of air that didn't taste of petrol and factories as he traipsed for miles - he could always apparate back if he got too tired.
It always surprised Harry when he made it to the areas most looked out at as landscape. Green hills, farm pasture and animals. Cocking his head and hand curling around his wand, Harry could have sworn he caught movement. A human-shaped movement.
"I'm getting paranoid in my old age."
Casting a wary glance and picking a spot in the field, Harry apparated down there, peering around a haystack. If that was a farmer, Harry had no clue why he was wearing a cape. And it looked as though they were... whispering in the cows ear. Did cows have ears? Presumably, but Harry didn't know where. Edging along to get a better view, he realised either this weirdo really liked the animal, or he was biting it.
The cow moo-ed balefully and the biter pulled away, wiping his mouth. He appeared to check the animal over, as though one often tended to their... meal?
"Are you gonna stand there all night? Only, I have to be gone before the sun comes out."
Flushing, Harry realised he had been caught and pulled his wand before stepping out. Taking a stab between the sun comment, blood drinking and fangs he could just make out in the limited light, Harry guessed he was facing down a vampire.
"Weird looking stake. You can come closer - I already ate."
Immortality had made him stupid, Harry mused, taking another couple of steps and making out a youthful face, dark hair and darker clothes. He felt himself being appraised by the creature, as though it was normal to meet in a dark field over a cow-drink.
"Can you talk? Only, this conversation is feeling very one sided. Hi, I'm Vladimir Dracula."
Merlin, Harry thought, I'm meeting a cliche!
"Harry. Harry Potter."
It was surreal after so long to not be recognised, as nothing in the Dracula teens face gave a sign of awareness that Harry was no ordinary human, that he was famous.
"Is it crude of me to ask what are you? Only, you smell strange. That could be the field, but most humans would run from me and a slayer would stake me."
"Wizard. You aren't the first vampire I've met."
'Vladimir' nodded, casting a glance up to the sky.
"I should get going soon. I don't normally drink any real blood, but I was out of soy substitute and I stopped for a quick sip. The cow should be fine, I promise."
Then the strange vampire was gone, and Harry was stood surrounded by cows and holding his wand out at thin air. He cast a quick healing charm on the cow, then took a look around before disapparating home.
The smell of farmland and various other things he didn't want to consider clung to his clothes, his skin. Dumping them in the laundry, Harry immersed himself in a bath and considered whether or not he had dreamed the whole thing.
He didn't go walking again for a while anyway.
Eventually, he grew a little stir crazy, and he had spent way, way too long in the Black Library reading about vampires. He was immortal, and it wasn't like he had run into anyone supernatural on his nocturnal jaunts before. A one off, a strange incident that probably only occurred to people who had lived for a hundred years or more, and had thought they'd seen it all before. The universe proving him wrong, maybe.
He let his mind wander, legs treading routes they knew by heart. This time, he ended up in one of the older abandoned wasteland areas, where sometimes he found teenagers drinking and taking illicit substances. At one time, Harry would cast invisibility charms and creep around, give them a fright and try to scare them out of such juvenile behaviour. Now, he just didn't have the energy to care anymore.
"Are you following me?"
Given that he had ended up sat on an empty oil drum, staring out at the derelict, demolished buildings left only as haphazard piles of bricks that painfully reminded him of the Hogwarts battle scene, Harry had no idea how the stranger could think that. Recognition pinged eventually.
"Vladimir, right?"
"You can call me Vlad if you like."
"No, I'm not following you. I've been trawling London streets for sixty years now, only just started running into you. As stalking goes, I would call that a bad track record on my part."
"Only sixty? Do... wizards normally look seventeen at seventy?"
Why was this vampire not noticing Harry's negative body language? He wasn't exactly giving much encouragement.
"No. Do vampires?"
Vlad shrugged, indicating himself with a broad hand gesture.
"I mean, I haven't seen my reflection for over a century, but we don't age much. I'm one hundred and twenty three. I think."
To hear someone describe it so casually, an offhand comment about the way a long life drained joys like birthdays away until you forgot your real age... Harry was suddenly intrigued.
"It's been a while since I met someone my own age."
"Wow. So, if wizards don't... stay young, why are you? I mean, I'm a vampire. Immortality is part and package."
"Most wizards aren't immortal, no. Something happened when I was a teenager, and I've been a frozen remnant of myself ever since. It wasn't part of the plan, I can tell you that much."
"Huh. Sounds alot like my story. I transformed at sixteen, I've been a vampire since then. I spent the time before that trying to find a way out. I never wanted to live forever either. I say live... I'm still technically dead."
If anyone overheard their conversation, Harry thought they would be very confused. Or assume the two were on a hallucinogenic drug, perhaps.
While Harry was searching for something to say, Vlad glanced down at a pocketwatch he pulled from the depths of black clothes layered over more black clothes.
"Bats, I'm going to be late."
"Why are you in London anyway? Don't your kind live in Transylvania?"
Vlad didn't seem offended by his brisk tone, clicking the watch shut and pocketing it.
"Actually, I live in Lancashire. There's a major Slayer hub here in London, I'm working on the peace treaty between vamps and slayers. Sometimes I go for a fly if I'm early, and I recognised your scent when I was passing."
He said a lot of words Harry barely comprehended - peace, slayers, flying - he didn't look like a broomstick type. Plus, being recognized by scent... that sounded odd.
"Right. Well, you had better go."
Vlad seemed to deliberate for a few minutes, though it was probably seconds really. He pulled a piece of paper with a weird logo at the top, all big looping letters in a dark red ink. He hoped it was ink. Apparently vampires were faster than humans too, because his pale hand was a blur for all of a second.
"Here's my address. Write to me if you need a fellow reluctant immortal to talk to. Make sure to put my name on, or my dad will open it and start going on about how immortality is a gift, not a curse and I will be forced to stake him for my own sanity."
Harry had barely made out there was now writing on the paper before Vlad vanished, leaving him with confusion and an address that included the word school. Who lives in a school? Though, Harry had for many months of the year as a student. Was it term time, or a boarding school for vampires? Not that it mattered, Harry wasn't going to use it. Apparating home, he tossed it on his desk to forget.
Twenty minutes later, he was looking at it again.
Had he really accidentally found someone who could understand this depressing, empty existence that immortality had given him? No, Harry wasn't that lucky. And anyway, what would he say? Shaking his head, Harry tried to look at the tv, not the note with the funny letterhead. Under bright candles, he now made out the lettering said V H C. Not that that meant anything to Harry.
Not unless it stood for Very Hot Chocolate.
Digging out the books full of fantastical stories about him and the things he had done, Harry highlighted a few passages with his wand and charmed them into sufficient postal packaging. On a sheet of parchment, he wrote a short note. This is my story. Mostly. Folding and sealing it, he scrawled the address Vlad had handed him across the front, jotting 'Vlad' across the top - it felt wrong to write Dracula so blatantly.
He added a secondary note with the special postal address Vlad should reply to - he wasn't sending an owl to a vampire school, but no ordinary postman could find Grimmauld Place.
He only had one owl now - the Black owls had all either died of old age or been rehomed by Harry, but it paid to have a postal owl to hand. Apologising for the weighty package, he instructed Apollo to take the package to the office that worked between Muggle and Magical post. He regretted it almost instantly, feeling like a bit of a desperate creep for rushing to harass this stranger with stories of his fame. Harry had clearly lost it.
Knowing from a vague remnant of memories of childhood that Muggle post was slower, and he had sent Vlad three books, Harry felt doubly pathetic for all but sitting by the door to wait for the reply. It quickly became apparent that in spite of becoming accustomed to it over time, Harry was lonely.
Living forever was such a daunting prospect, especially alone.
When the owl squawk at the window alerted Harry to an answer, he found a hefty but sort of squishy parcel waiting. He dropped a couple of Galleons into the owls pouch, and it hooted rather happily before soaring off as Harry fumbled to open the black envelope, red ink in an elaborate script spelling out his address.
You told me your story. This is mine.
The package transpired to be full of scrolls, some old and musty and others clearly very well cared for and kept pristine. There were sticky post-it notes on some of them, apologizing they weren't in English or were hopelessly dull. Asking Doreen to make up a Thermos-full of coffee so she could go to sleep and he could have several drinks to hand, Harry settled in his reading room and got started.
It was quite revealing - like him, Vlad was born into a prophecy of sorts, chosen to do things no teenager should have to. There were newspaper clippings from publications like Transylvania Times and Vampire Quarterly about Vlad, stationary digital images showing the face hadn't changed much even though some were dated eighty years back.
"Grand High Vampire cements ceasefire between vampires and slayers."
He said it aloud, finding it sounded just as bonkers outside his head. Vlad hadn't mentioned he was no ordinary vampire - he was the leader of the entire race. And Harry had found him drinking a cow and holding (sort of) pleasant small-talk conversations.
And I thought I was weird.
Dawn had broken outside before he realised he had spent at least twelve hours in effectively the same position, devouring the information about his fellow immortal. Stretching out his stiff muscles, Harry knew the languid and lengthwise stretching motion was indicative of his animagus form few were aware of.
Harry contemplated how best to answer as he stood under hot needles of water, letting the long shower ease his sore muscles and enjoying Doreen's signature blueberry porridge more than usual. Chewing at a strip of bacon, Harry scoured through his piles of magical items, unsure what he was looking for until he found it.
Here's your scrolls back. The blank book I added is a two way journal, saves my owl a lot of weight carrying. Just write in it, it'll turn up in mine and vice versa.
You didn't mention you were this super powerful leader when you were saying you wished you weren't a vampire.
He slept a good fourteen hours the next night, waking up to the low hum that alerted him to a message waiting in his journal.
So, how does this work? Though I expect you'll just say magic... We haven't seen warlocks in a long time, my dad kind of drove them away, so anything not innate to vampires hasn't been a part of our world for a while.
Harry went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth and noticed for the first time he looked a little less... downtrodden. Still a mass of bitterness, loneliness and resentment, but now he had somewhere to vent. Dropping back onto his bed, Harry picked up his self-inking quill and tapped it against his mouth.
Yeah, magic. The books will have been charmed together, ensuring they were linked only to each other. Who's your dad?
Count Dracula. He's not quite the picture Bram Stoker stories painted, but he was the inspiration for it. I... I read how your parents were killed when you were only a baby. That must be tough on your immortality.
He wasn't sure how, but Vlad had apparently seen right through to the heart of Harry's resentment for eternal life. Meandering into the kitchen, he thanked Doreen for his bacon and eggs, sipped some tea before he put quill to paper.
That, and now all my friends are dead. Save the world and end up alone. I would do it again even if I had known this would be the out come, but at least I wouldn't have hoped to see my parents again someday.
I don't even have friends. Can never be too sure a biter isn't just planning to stake me when my guard is down, and my human friends are long gone. What's the point in watching people grow old and die again and again?
Glad he was done eating before Vlad finished scratching out that rather maudlin answer, Harry downed the last of his juice and wondered where the random urge to be comforting had sprung from.
I wouldn't change having known the friends I had, but by the time I realised I was stuck here I didn't bother to find younger peers and condemn myself to it all over again. Plus, even after a century I'm still finding myself with fanatical fans sometimes, I would much rather talk to a painting.
You talk to paintings?
I don't know about you, but our portraits can move, talk, even think to some extent. So it would be an actual conversation.
I suppose that's less strange. I'm very glad our paintings can't talk, because my dad has a dozen of himself hanging around the place, it's hard enough to avoid him. And I dread to think what my Nanny Klontaff would come up with to say.
Eventually, his night-creature conversation-partner had to beg off to get some sleep, as he had vampire things to do that night. Harry absolutely didn't spend the whole day with his journal no more than a foot away from him, waiting for a response with a thrum of anticipation. It was gone six in the evening before Vlad woke and answered, and he practically jumped on the journal to answer.
Have you ever had to convince ten millenia old vampires to pay attention to you? It's not as easy as it sounds.
No, but I did once attend a wedding of a family with over a dozen children under ten. That was pretty scary.
Yeah, at least I can threaten these guys. It's bad form to threaten children last I checked.
Harry found himself laughing, actually smiling with long-unused muscles and the alien feeling of his mouth tipping up at both sides. Somehow this total stranger who wouldn't leave him alone at night was a lifeline, and Harry himself became mostly nocturnal just to talk to Vlad.
Each night they talked back and forth. Harry talked about the magical world, enjoying the excitable novelty Vlad gave in reaction to his words. Vlad swore his own life was maddeningly boring, but Harry eventually convinced him to talk about it.
Pretty much every guy she's ever met has fancied Ingrid. It's made for some hilarious, awkward and downright disturbing situations. At one point, she almost became my mother-in-law.
Excuse me?
I was bullied into an engagement, and Ingrid was flirting with my 'fiancee's' father to get him to do her bidding. Standard vampire thing really. He proposed, so yeah for a hot minute I almost became my sisters son in law.
That... that is disturbing. I'm guessing she said no? Or you didn't marry the girl. Or both?
Both. Ingrid's married to some Scottish computer geek she bit like ninety years ago. He's pretty cool actually.
She bit him?
Oh, right. That's how we turn a human into a vampire. Slightly different, we call them half-fangs and some see them as lesser than full-fangs. Personally, I don't care so long as nobody is killing humans.
We have similar issues with magic. Mostly it's genetic, if you have a magical parent you yourself will be magical. Sometimes though, someone with no magical family at all will suddenly be magical. My mum was one, my best friend at school was one, and they were both amazing.
Wow. My mum was human.
What? So you're half human?
Sort of. It's complicated and doesn't translate well in writing.
Harry felt his heart rate peak out of nowhere, suddenly anxious to see this vampire again before mentally scolding himself. Just because he said vampires don't hunt humans anymore didn't mean he wasn't dangerous. Even if he would probably struggle to kill Harry anyway. He meant to write something along the lines of 'try', but that wasn't what came out.
So tell me in person.
He realised his hands were a little sweaty with nerves, anything but boredom or sadness with occasional bouts of anger and frustration a strange feeling now.
Really? I thought you came up with magic books so you didn't have to see me again.
No, I gave you the 'magic book' so my owl would stop looking at me like I was torturing him.
You say 'your owl', is that like, a pet?
We use them for postal deliveries, but since everyone I know is dead now Apollo doesn't see much action. He's getting fat and lazy.
Back to your earlier statement. How do we meet?
Mouth suddenly dry, Harry didn't know what to say for a minute.
Where's this Slayer place in London?
When Vlad wrote down an address, Harry realised that was all of four miles from his house. They could have been crossing each others path for decades by now and he had never noticed.
That's about an hours walk from my home.
It's about a twenty minute fly for me, but then bats are fast. Just say when.
Tomorrow night?
Desperation very, very apparent now, Harry was for once glad nobody was around to see him cringing at his own behaviour and silently shouting 'why' at his quill.
"Master Harry?"
Doreen was stood at the door, holding out Harry's tray of tea and biscuits. He had recently rediscovered a love of confectionary, like bit by bit the immortal was becoming alive again.
"Oh, thank you Doreen. Don't worry about me, I'm just embarrassing myself."
"Very well Sir. Enjoy your tea Sir!"
She popped off before Harry could reprimand her for calling him sir and master, and he could almost have sworn she was giggling about getting away with it. Heart hammering as the book gave off a sound of notification, Harry flipped it open, bracing himself for rejection that he suddenly realised would hurt.
I'll be there thirty minutes after it gets dark.
Harry realised he was now grinning like a fool, and he didn't know why but the swooping feeling somewhere around his navel could almost have been mistaken for butterflies. Quite possibly for the first time in about a century, Harry actually had the thought 'what should I wear?', only faltering for a second before he went to dig through his wardrobe.
"Do I have a crush? On a guy? A vampire guy?"
"If you have to ask me, then the answer is probably yes!"
Forgetting his mirror could talk for a second as he wondered aloud, Harry stopped dead. He had lamented the lack of relationships and family before, but always in a very heterosexual context of no wife or girlfriend, no children. He had never once thought 'no boyfriend'.
Then he realised he was getting very ahead of himself. Vlad had mentioned an ex girlfriend, an ex fiance who was female. The thought he was developing some insane infatuation with a straight vampire... it was absurd enough that Harry started laughing, unsure how he had gone from a monotonous cycle to absolute madness with only a cow and a two way journal.
Remembering Vlad had seen him in his trudging clothes after miles of walking, he couldn't really do much worse than that and just tried to look for something not older than Doreen. He hadn't needed new clothes for a long time, and between himself and his elf most things could be repaired or cleaned with no need for replacement. Harry thought the last time he bought new clothes was probably about twenty years ago. For all he knew, fashion was a very different world now.
Black jeans he hadn't worn much. Green t-shirt Hermione used to pester him to wear more because it brought out his eyes apparently, but Harry didn't see the point. Until now. It would have to do.
It seemed to be an unspoken agreement that now they had an actual meet time and date, they didn't need to continually talk over the journals. Which left Harry with a large chunk of time and suddenly nothing much to fill it. The butterflies ran rampant as he showered, tried in vain to make his hair do something other than stick out all over the place before giving up and staring out of the window to await darkness.
Vlad had said he would be there thirty minutes after nightfall, which didn't explain why Harry apparated to the nearest apparition spot and walked to the address, a good twenty minutes early. The building looked pretty damn ordinary from the outside, some big factory plant. It was weird to think there could be vampire slayers in there.
Harry wasn't even sure what he was looking for, only that Vlad said bats were fast and he would be flying. Looking up for bats in London's night sky seemed daft, but Harry found his eyes gravitating upwards anyway.
"Looking for me?"
Turning behind him to find a human-shaped Vlad, Harry loosened the grip on his wand.
"Thought you flew."
"I did, but bats can't talk much so I speed-walked the last stretch. Besides, the Guild don't love it when I swoop in all dramatic and batty."
He gestured to the nearby building, then took a swallow from a bottle full of red liquid. When Vlad caught him looking, he offered a reassuring smile.
"Soya substitute. Veggie option for my kind. So, where to?"
Feeling a little like his heart wanted to beat it's way out of his chest, Harry swallowed thickly.
"Hang on, this is quicker."
He had obviously checked that Side-Along apparition and vampires wouldn't do serious injury to Vlad, though the sound of surprise when Harry grabbed his arm, and the mildly nauseated expression when they landed in Grimmauld Place said it probably wasn't a thrill-ride.
"I feel like I was just jammed through a straw."
"Yep, that sounds about right."
Vlad took a minute to... did vampires have breath to catch? Harry didn't know. Then he looked around the place.
"Wow. You have similar decorating taste to my dad."
"I didn't decorate, this is the Black ancestral home. Or was. My godfather left it to me in his will, and I just never bothered changing it. I took down the screaming portrait, and the stuffed elf heads that used to be on the staircases."
"Lovely. We turn to ashes when we die, so it would be jars of dust for us. What's an elf?"
"House elf. Hang on."
Harry called Doreen out, watching Vlad's eyes widen comically as the little creature with enormous ears appeared in the hallway.
"Master Harry! Master Harry! This be a vampire!"
"I know Doreen, it's fine. I invited him here."
Vlad raised an eyebrow, watching as the house elf scampered away mumbling to herself.
"I don't think your little pet gremlin likes me."
"I probably should have warned her there would be a vampire visitor. There hasn't been anyone but me and her in this house for a good... thirty five years now."
He tried not to think about when Hermione had died, residual dark-magic injuries from the war that while treated, could never truly be removed and slowly wore her health down. Merlin, he missed her so much. A voice tripped him out of memory lane.
"Harry? You alright?"
"Fine, why?"
"Well, it's just... You're crying."
Harry hadn't cried in years. Still, when he wiped at his eyes, his hands came away damp with tears.
"I was just... remembering. Sorry. Come on through."
Vlad didn't bug him for more information, which Harry appreciated greatly as they traipsed through to Harry's kitchen. Doreen popped in with a tray, left a pot and two mugs alongside a plate of biscuits then vanished. Harry was perplexed when she returned with a plate of something raw and bloody looking, holding it out to Vlad.
"What is that?"
The vampire took the plate and sniffed it, grinning.
"That is a chunk of" he sniffed again "sheep. Thank you Doreen."
Harry had only ever eaten raw meat in his animagus form, which he rarely ever used anyway and particularly not outside. Vlad didn't immediately set into it, which was something of a relief because that would have been slightly strange. He showed Harry the 'soya substitute' bottle he had been drinking from, with 'veggie vamps' written across the label.
"Vegetarian vampires?"
"My uncle Ivan was a vegetarian for a while. It didn't last that long, but meant I knew that when I was eventually landed with this eternal torture, at least I didn't need to hurt anyone. Tastes bloody terrible, but keeps me going."
"What do other vampires eat? You said there was a peace treaty?"
Vlad smiled to himself, face softening into something that made Harry's insides feel squirmy.
"Donated blood, in blood banks all over the world. It's been going for about a century now, and we've had problems upon problems, but it works and my kind are safe from slayers, and humans are safe from us."
Harry's destiny had been done with long ago, whereas it seemed Vlad's was an eternal commitment. That must be exhausting.
"Anyway, you invited me for more exciting subjects, like my half breed status."
Vlad reached into an inside pocket, pulling out a pile of photos and small painted portraits.
"That's my dad, and who I thought was my mum."
Both were very, very 'goth', all in black and red with aristocratic high cheekbones and even-paler- than-a-Malfoy skin.
"That's Ingrid, my sister. That's Piers, this was taken at their binding."
Harry suddenly understood why Vlad had said pretty much everyone crushed on Ingrid a little. She was... wow.
"Do you want a bucket for your drooling?"
Harry jumped, hand automatically checking he hadn't only to find Vlad laughing at him.
"Kidding. So, that's the family I knew until I was seventeen. Then I started... it was weird. I got a cold, which vampires can't get. And that almost killed me. Then a cough, then I didn't get burned by sunlight. After several arguments with my dad, he admitted I was half breather."
The next picture Vlad showed him was of two very ordinary looking females, mother and daughter at a guess.
"That's Sally, my mum. And George, my little sister."
"George?"
Vlad's smile was sort of sad then, but the recognition of the name sparked in Harry's mind and he had to ask.
"Georgina, but from the second I met her she adamantly refused to be called that. I miss them so much."
"What... did something happen?"
He shook his head, looking downed by what he had to say.
"When I turned eighteen, I had a choice. Stay a vampire or become human. I was totally set on becoming human, going with them to have a normal, human life. A beginning, a middle, an end. Sunlight and garlic bread, no bats or blood. Then when it came to that moment, I had to stay a vampire to save my family from a really dangerous thing. Just like that, I got stuck with immortality."
He took a deep, shuddering breath, reaching for something Harry hadn't managed to see against black clothes in the dark before. Vlad's pale hand displayed it perfectly - it was the black half of the yin-yang symbol.
"I had to wipe their memories. I gave my mum the light half of this, so we could always be connected. She was even buried with it. But they forgot I ever existed. It was the only way to keep them safe. George died about twenty years back, I visited her in the nursing home one night not long before... I asked her if she was happy with her life. She said she was. That's what I wanted."
"Still, that can't have been an easy decision."
Vlad shrugged.
"The choice itself was easy - I could leave them at risk, or protect them. It's living with the after effects of a choice that suck."
That sounded eerily similar to Harry's thoughts on his own situation.
"Yeah, I know what you mean."
They talked some more, and Vlad eventually ate the hunk of raw meat Doreen so kindly provided. Harry chose not to look, and conjured a toothbrush (much to Vlad's awe) for the vampire when he accepted Harry's invitation to stay the day - he couldn't go out in the sun.
"If you wake up, feel free to explore. I'm up on the top floor, my secrets guard themselves I guess."
Vlad nodded, smiled gratefully and headed into the room Harry offered him - one without any windows. Harry called Doreen and asked her to make sure all the curtains and drapes were closed, lest he wake to find Vlad had 'dusted' himself in the sunshine. Nostalgia still strong, Harry opened his bedside drawer, pulling out the worn, thumbed-through-many-times photo album he had had since he was eleven.
He hadn't been able to even look at this album for a long time, painfully reminded of the fact he couldn't find solace in the notion of death reuniting them anymore. Still, sometimes he needed to see the photos, his parents smiling faces and doting love for their baby boy. It was strange to equate that smiling infant with the bitter immortal he had become.
He put the album aside to show Vlad, since Vlad had already done show and tell with his family. Assuming the vampire didn't run away that was. He could scarcely sleep, even after the emotional exhaustion of their conversations, eventually drifting off around midday and wide awake again by six. He found Vlad in the kitchen, being regarded warily by Apollo and fussed over by Doreen - the biter had already won over his elf.
"Morning. Evening. Whichever. Your pet gremlin makes excellent tea."
"She's an elf, not a gremlin. Gremlins are green."
It was startlingly easy to fall into conversation, as the two already knew they shared a resentment for this endless cycle of life they were trapped in - it served as the ultimate icebreaker it seemed. Harry was shoved into a chair by Doreen, who seemed to thrill in Harry's improving attitude and slowly budding energy for life and apparently attributed it to the vampire judging by her all but force feeding him tea.
"What's that?"
Vlad indicated his head at the old leather-bound album next to Harry's plate after he was done eating, bright blue eyes alight with curiosity.
"Take a look."
He pushed it across, and Vlad treated it very carefully - he didn't flip it open violently, taking care to be gentle with the cracked leather spine and long-aged parchment each picture was mounted on.
"Similar facial structure, identical eyes. Your parents?"
Harry could only nod, watching as Vlad carefully worked through each one.
"Who's the werewolf?"
"What?"
Vlad pointed at Remus Lupin, the picture one from his parents wedding.
"I'm a vampire, we signed a treaty with the wolves about seventy years back. Amber eyes, sharp canine teeth, premature greying of his hair at the temples. He is a bitten werewolf, and judging by the symptoms he had been for at least... ten years when this was taken."
"Bitten?"
"Two kinds, like vampires. Bitten, and born. Born wolves are immortal creatures like me, but bitten wolves tend to age and die much younger because of the strains of transformation each month."
Slightly dumbstruck, Harry had an image of this vampire and Hermione having long, fact-filled discussions about such minutia.
"Oh. Right. Well, you are correct on all counts. Remus Lupin, one of my dad's best friends. He was nineteen in that picture, and was bitten at... four. Think he was the youngest ever to survive. As for aging, he was pretty grey when I met him in my third year, but I don't know that he would have died young. He died in the final battle."
He saw Vlad's face drop slightly, wondering about the vampires personal feelings toward werewolves.
"Sorry."
He continued through the album slowly, stopping at a picture of Hermione and smiling sadly to himself.
"Wow. With that hair, she and George could have almost been twins."
"I miss her. She was the one to work out what happened to me, she always kept my head on straight. Since she died... I've been pretty lost, I guess."
Harry saw Vlad's hand twitch, but then it stilled and he turned the page, finding a few pictures from Hogwarts and finally, the picture Mad-Eye Moody had given him of the original Order Of The Phoenix.
"I'm guessing you didn't like him?"
Vlad indicated the scribble across Wormtails face on the picture, where Harry had a fit of rage and tried to carve out the traitorous rats eyes. He couldn't bring himself to deface the wedding photos that practically bled happiness, but that had been oddly satisfying.
"He got my parents killed. Then faked his own death to cover it up and got my godfather locked up in prison. Then kidnapped and killed multiple people, before finally dying himself."
"That's... fair. My ex girlfriend swore she loved me then left me for my brother, who had gotten her brother killed, and helped him try to kill my whole clan. As far as I know, they are both dust. Good riddance."
"She sounds charming."
Vlad chuckled shortly, reaching the end of the album and closing it very delicately before handing it back to Harry.
"Oh, she was. Still, she taught me a very valuable lesson."
"Which was?"
"That I'm gay."
Harry choked on his tea.
"Sorry, is that a problem for... wizards?"
Wheezing as he tried to evacuate hot liquid from his airways, Harry shook his head. Regaining normal breathing and flushing beet red, he tried again.
"Not at all. Just wasn't expecting it in the midst of a conversation about murder and betrayal."
"Fair point. I realise I can't kill you, but are you alright now?"
Adding a petulant glare, Harry nodded and tried desperately to ignore the squirming of his insides at this joyous news that Vlad wasn't straight.
"Spectacular. I'm going to go put this away, want the tour while I'm heading that way?"
Vlad shrugged, nodding and slipping elegantly from his seat. Harry would normally have apparated just for speed, but Vlad didn't seem much set on that. Apollo gave a lazy hoot as Harry passed, taking the piece of bacon rind from his owners hand and glaring beady-eyed at Vlad.
"I don't think your owl likes me either."
"Apollo doesn't like anything but sleep, bacon and soggy cornflakes."
Harry awkwardly pointed out the rooms along the way, wondering if a long climb up all these damned stairs was his brightest idea.
"A hippogriff used to live in there. Kind of... part giant eagle, part... horse, I think?"
"As opposed to part hippo and part griffin as the name would suggest."
"Don't expect logic from wizards. Our chess pieces beat each other to pieces."
Vlad hung at the door of Harry's room, glancing around at the stack of books, that weeks pile of Daily Prophets before Doreen had them recycled, an empty mug and Harry's glasses, folded up and left there on the table Harry was tucking his album back in next to.
"When did you stop needing them? They are in all the photos, but I've not seen you wear them."
"The day I stopped aging, like the template I revert back to was fixed. I don't get sick either. But... I don't know, I can't seem to throw them away."
Suddenly very aware Vlad was in his bedroom, Harry felt his heart rate completely betray him - he already knew a vampire would be able to hear such things. May well work out Harry and his burgeoning crush... Well, this was awkward.
"I'm not going to attack you, if you were worried. I'm a vegetarian remember."
Oh. He thought Harry was scared of him. If fear was his only problem as nine decades of little but his own company caught up with the suddenly and devastatingly attractive vampire in his room, Harry would... well he couldn't die a happy man.
"I'm not... I'm not scared of you."
If his voice could stop wavering, that would be brilliant.
"Well then you must be having a heart attack."
Was he deliberately obtuse, or utterly oblivious?
"Nope. I feel fine."
Vlad cocked his head, considering him. Harry felt his hands shake, wondered if it would ruin the moment entirely if he apparated out of the room to escape the thick tension.
"You're going to have to be straight with me here, or I'm at great risk of making a fool of myself. Am I reading the signals wrong, or are you checking me out?"
Somehow, he had forgotten - in the last ten minutes, his brain was clearly useless after a century - that Vlad had a tendency to go straight for the point. So Harry's reaction was a very eloquent
"Uhhhhhh."
Vlad backtracked immediately, apologising profusely and no this was all going terribly wrong.
"I'm sorry, I think I'll just save us both the embarrassment and leave."
Harry did the only thing he could think of, and apparated to his front door to stop the bloody fast vampire from escaping. Vlad literally ran into him, and at the speed and strength Harry thought it might have been like running into a block of concrete, but he managed to keep Vlad in his house.
"That's cheating, popping about when I have to run."
"You can fly without a broom!"
All the tension melted away instantly as Vlad dissolved into hysterical laughter, landing on the floor next to the big troll-leg umbrella stand that had been gathering dust for years.
"You actually" Vlad clutched his ribs, tears of mirth filling his eyes "fly on a broomstick? Cackling away" he broke off to laugh again, and Harry would be offended except he was beautiful with a big smile on his face "into the night!"
Harry reached down to help him up, and used the grip on his wrist to pull Vlad closer. On a whim, almost, Harry kissed him. Vlad was cold, and Harry was awkward and out of practice. Neither of which seemed to matter, because they were both grinning when they broke apart.
That was remarkably similar to the first time Harry had kissed Ginny... maybe he needed to learn new moves. Though Vlad didn't seem to mind, his sudden excitement infectious.
When it came to Vlad needing to leave - he was the leader of all vampires, apparently - Harry demanded to go with him, rather than fester away in his boredom and loneliness again.
"Could be dangerous."
"What are they gonna do? Kill me?"
-YDHP-
I'm not sure I like this. Ah well, it kept me distracted for about two days.