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Seventh year is harder than Albus had expected, but in some ways easier, too. The homework load and curriculum gets a lot harder a lot faster, naturally, and he's chest-deep in Rose's study guides the minute he enters her presence, but there are perks, too. Seventh years have a few privileges that no other year did.
His favorite one is the opportunity to explore. Hogsmeade, in particular—an entire war memorial had been built on the outskirts of the village after the Second War. It's beautiful and depressing and he loves simply wandering around the site, looking at the names inscribed in the marble that was everywhere. Scorpius and Rose don't understand his fascination—both would rather be up in the castle studying or in the company of Madame Rosmerta's world-famous hot chocolate.
Scorpius tells him that he'll never get a date if he's too busy staring at the names of dead guys. Years later, Albus will tell him, with not an ounce of smugness, of course, that he was wrong. Because that's where Albus met her.
She's quite a sight, running into the memorial with her bronze curls flying loose of their ponytail, dark eyes gleaming with triumph, pale skin marred with burn marks and scars. She's dressed simply, inconspicuously, in a muggle jacket, scarf, shirt, jeans, and sneakers. She's nothing out of the ordinary.
But she's running from a blazing fire, and from the look in her eyes, Albus has the strangest feeling that she, this tiny little muggle girl, is the one who caused the fire.
"Who are you?" he asks suspiciously, one hand on his wand as he moves nearer, but nor too close. If she really is an arsonist, he doesn't want to take any chances.
The girl looks up and manages, after several heavy breaths, to tell him her name. "Nessie. You?"
Albus frowns. She hands out her name easily, as if she's not an arsonist. As if she's just a girl, but no ordinary girl can enter the war memorial. Much like Hogsmeade, it is wizard-only. She's either a witch or a squib (and an American one at that, judging by her accent).
Maybe it's the sunlight in his face, but her eyes appear to flash gold for an instance, and a chill runs down his back. Maybe she's neither. Maybe she's something else entirely.
"Albus," he says finally, realizing she's still waiting for an answer. "What are you doing here?"
"Running." Nessie wipes sweat from her face and flashes him a weak smile. "What does it look like?"
Albus raises an eyebrow. "Um, it looks like you just started a fire and then ran away to here. Speaking of which, how did you get in here anyway?"
Nessie looks around and her eyes widen. "Oh. Is this a wizard site? I'm sorry. I usually try to stay away from those."
She turns back to him, a light smile on her face again. "You're a wizard, aren't you? Well, I'm no mort—muggle, if that's what you're worried about."
"All right." He doesn't miss her slip of the tongue. "So, you're not a muggle. I'll buy that. But what, exactly, are you, then? And why did you start a fire?"
Nessie tugs her scarf looser, frowning at the dewy grass below their feet. "What am I? I wish I knew."
That's not the kind of answer he was expecting, and his wand is half-way into his hand before she finishes speaking. She's a lot more than just a witch or a squib, he already knows. And the fact that she calls muggles mortals is more than telling.
His brain hisses the word to him. Vampire.
But Albus instinctively knows that she isn't.
Brown eyes meet green. "Legends call me a dhampir."
Daylight slips away from them that afternoon. He never meets up with Rose and Scorpius like he promises, and instead spends the entirety of his trip sitting on a bench in the memorial courtyard, talking to Nessie, soaking up all the information she gives him in a way that would make Rose proud.
He learns her life's story through insistent prodding. She seems reluctant to tell him, and when she finally does, he can see why.
"Your family is a coven of vampires?" he asks in disbelief. "And yet, you're a vampire hunter?"
Nessie sighs. "I didn't kill them, if that's what you're wondering. I ran away. Master Leonard—he's the leader of the American Hunters, and a dhampir himself—told me that if I ever met them again, it would be as their enemy, and I would have to kill them or die trying, even though they're vegetarians, simply because they might try to kidnap me back. So I left the States entirely. I may be a murderer, but even I'm not capable of that kind of evil."
Albus has heard of Master Leonard—his father's Aurors are world-renowned, and they've worked closely with vampire hunters in at least twenty countries that he knows of. He wouldn't be surprised if his family had had Master Leonard over for dinner one afternoon when he was young.
"What were your parents like?" he asks, instead of trying to talk about and around the touchy subject of murder. (If they're already dead, he reasons to himself, can it be called murder?)
Nessie snorts. "As parents or as vampires?"
Albus shrugs. "Both."
"Pretty bad," she admits, looking down at her hands. There's blood on them, both metaphorical and literal. "As parents, they named me Renesmee, for crying out loud. Have you ever heard of a more ridiculous name?"
Albus grins. "Yeah. Try Albus Severus Potter on for size."
Nessie giggles. "I mean, I know they were trying to honor my grandmothers, but smushing their names together isn't really the best way to go about it."
"My father wanted to honor his mentor and 'the bravest man he ever knew'. Considering one was born in the 1800s and the other in the 1960s, you can imagine how well that turned out."
Nessie flashes him the first genuine smile he's seen out of her yet. "It doesn't seem that odd in your world, from what I can tell. Don't you have a friend named Scorpius?"
He chuckles. "Yeah. Honestly, I think his is the worst yet. Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy."
"That poor kid," Nessie says sympathetically.
Her comment reminds him of something. "Hey, how old are you, anyway?"
Nessie tilts her head. "I'm seventeen. Same as you. Why?"
She sounds far too innocent, though. "So you were born in 2007?" he challenges.
She grins at him. "2008, actually. Y'know, you're pretty smart for a mortal."
Albus returns her smile. "And you're pretty nice…you know, for a murderer."
They share a laugh, and more daylight slips away.
"So…" Rose begins on their trek up to the castle, and Albus prepares himself to be grilled like his father after a life-or-death adventure.
"Who was the girl?" Scorpius interrupts before Rose finishes her dramatic pause. Rose shoots him a look, but he ignores her, as usual.
Albus rolls his eyes. "Her name was…" He debates with himself for a minute over whether to use her full name or her nickname. "…Nessie."
Rose frowns. "Was she named after the Loch Ness monster?"
Albus stifles a laugh. "Something like that."
"Anyway," Scorpius says. "She doesn't go to Hogwarts, does she?"
"No, she doesn't," Albus agrees, keeping his answers as simple as possibly, because he knows it annoys them.
Rose sighs impatiently. "All right, Al. Spill. Who is she, what is she, and why were you flirting with her?"
Albus blushes. "I wasn't flirting!" he says defensively. "We were just talking! And I told you, her name is Nessie, and she's…"
He stops. While Nessie didn't exactly make it a secret that she was a dhampir, he's not sure he should be telling this fact to anyone else, even his two best friends.
"She's just a girl," he says finally, and swerves in the direction of the dungeons, where his Common Room is. "I'll see you two, later, then," he says, leaving them staring after him, flabbergasted.
In the privacy of his dorm, Albus pulls out a roll of parchment and a quill and begins writing a letter.
Dear Nessie,
Will I ever see you again?
Sincerely,
A. S. Potter
He sees her every Hogsmeade visit from that point on, and the minute he introduces her to Rose, his cousin figures it out. Thankfully, she has the tact not to say anything before Nessie leaves.
When she does, Rose rounds on him. "She's a dhampir, Al!" she cries, hands gesturing wildly. "A vampire hunter! Why are you hanging out with her?"
Albus crosses his arms and stands his ground. "What's the problem, Rose? Our fathers join up with the British Hunters from time to time! How is this different?"
"Our fathers don't kill the vampires. They lock them up if they're a danger, let them go if they're not!" Rose defends. "And Aunt Evangelique is a vampire, Al! If this girl meets her, she might kill her!"
Albus rolls his eyes. "I know Aunt Vanni is a vampire, Rose. I was at the wedding, too, in case you forgot! Do you remember the reason Dad and Uncle Ron left Aunt Vanni alone when they met her?"
Rose frowns at him. "Because she's a vegetarian vampire, and she doesn't eat humans," she answers primly.
"Exactly. Nessie leaves vegetarians alone, too. Do you realize what dhampir means, Rose?" he challenges, and continues before his cousin can speak. "She's half-vampire. Her parents, her aunts, her uncles, and her grandparents are vampires. She's not some mindless killer. She didn't kill them; in fact, she ran away from home so she wouldn't have to kill them. You're stereotyping her as a murderer, Rose, the same way people stereotype Hagrid or Aunt Vanni."
Rose looks half-sheepish, half-annoyed. "Since when do you care so much about her, anyway? You just met her a few weeks ago, and you've only talked to her about three times."
Albus kicks a rock, frustrated. "Rose, we've been writing back and forth for weeks now. I know her, all right, at least more than you do. She's not a murderer. It's not her fault she was born a dhampir. It's not her fault she was born to be a vampire hunter. Did you know her parents expected her to marry a shapeshifter?"
Rose looks confused. "What does that have to do with anything? There's nothing wrong with shapeshifters, especially if—"
"He was her mother's age," Albus interrupts. "He imprinted on her when she was a baby or something—I'm a little fuzzy on the details—and everybody expected her to marry him. To want to marry him. And for a while, she did."
"But—that's child-grooming!" Rose says, scandalized.
Albus nods. "Exactly. When she reached maturity, she realized how wrong it was. That was one of the reasons she joined the Hunters."
"In all honesty, Rose," Scorpius adds, "she seems like a perfectly nice girl. And I know you don't care that she's a half-breed."
Rose huffed. "Oh, fine. I'll trust your judgement on this. But don't bring her to any family reunions if you can help it."
He kisses her for the first time at the end of January, when he's just returned from Christmas break, on their first Hogsmeade weekend back, after ditching Rose and Scorpius on the way to The Three Broomsticks. She's waiting for him there, looking more like an inhumanely-beautiful vampire than a mortal vampire hunter, her ponytail whipping in the breeze, a smile on her face, and the silver glint of her favorite knife strapped to her hip.
"Hey, there," she greets lightly, reaching up to hug him. "How was Christmas?"
"Fun. Noisy. Messy. The usual," Albus grins at her, absently brushing away her loose bangs. "How about yours?"
Nessie steps back and studies him for a moment, making him shift uncomfortably. Finally, she says, "Why didn't you tell me your aunt was a vampire?"
Albus's eyes widen. "You—she—what? How did you find out?"
"I ran into her on one of my bi-monthly trips to Transylvania," Nessie says, raising an eyebrow. "I was about to kill her. Then some redhead guy who has the same nose and jawline as you comes over and threatens to curse me and somehow, in the resulting explosion of witty and hurtful verbal insults, he let it slip that they were Weasleys."
"So?" Albus prods when she stops talking. "What happened?"
Nessie smiles brightly. "I stayed for dinner. First time I've ever had dragon blood. It's surprisingly tasty—even if it leaves a very strong aftertaste."
Albus rolls his eyes. "Okay, there's a reason I don't ask for information about your dietary habits, Nessie."
She sticks out her tongue. "Not my fault. It's a craving. And you're changing the subject. Why didn't you tell me?"
Albus shrugs. "Well, honestly, I didn't really know how to bring it up. What was I supposed to say, 'Hey, by the way, I know you're a vampire hunter and all, and my aunt's a vampire, so here's her address, enjoy!'"
Nessie considers. "That might have worked, actually."
Albus tugs on a curl and grins at her. "You're a brat, you know that?"
She smiles warmly up at him. "And you're a nerd. What else is new?"
There's something in her eyes, something bright and happy and beautiful, and it makes him want to just lean down and—
(Later, he justifies himself to Rose by saying that 'the urge to kiss her was just too much for a hormonal, teenage boy like me'.)
She tastes like strawberry lemonade, the most out-of-character taste he could have imagined for a girl like her, and she responds almost instantly, raising herself up so she can wrap her arms around his shoulders and kiss him back as if she's wanted this as much as he has for the past few months.
He pulls back first, resting his forehead on hers and trying to get his breathing back to normal. "I kissed a dhampir," he says out loud, just to see how it feels, and the answer is pretty damn awesome.
"Well, I kissed a wizard, so I think I win this one, Potter," Nessie laughs, her strawberry-lemonade breath fanning his face, and Albus decides that once just isn't enough.
Author's Notes: Um. Well, then. Twilight. Nessie. So not my thing. But this plot bunny bit me and wouldn't let me go, and I'll be the first to admit that I don't know nearly as much about vampire (and dhampir) folklore as I'd like to, but I hope you enjoyed it all the same! I tried to make Nessie less of a Mary-Sue, but I'm not sure it worked that well. Either way, though, please review and tell me if you liked it or not! (And tell me if I managed to cross the two series well enough or not, because this is my very first crossover ever and I'd appreciate some feedback). Thanks!
Also, Albus Severus + Renesemee Carlie = True Love or Truly Horrific Names?