Disclaimer: I d not own Harry Potter or anything else belonging to someone else.

READ ME! Before I begin, I would just like to say that 'Nero Pazzia' was based on a disease from 'Upon A Fiery Steed' by Vathara, who tells me it was based on a disease in 'The Apocolyse Troll' by David Weber.

Enjoy.

He could feel the presence of one of the dark-eyed people in his room as he lay facing the wall in his bed.

The person was kneeling by the bed, arms resting on the sheets, watching him.

Harry was too deep in his despair to care that this was the closest any of them had gotten.

Perhaps he should have been angry at them.

He had seen them in the Department of Mysteries, but, while some of them appeared to want to help or were upset, they did not interfere.

They never interfered.

Even when they wanted to help, they didn't. Some fear was keeping them from interfering with his life.

Then Sirius had been thrown through the Veil and...

All Harry could remember was calm, focus and -huntkillhuntkilhuntkilll- . He had only a vague awareness of what he'd done before he'd resurfaced mid-Unforgivable, feeling tired and aching to his bones.

He'd been so tired that he'd almost been catatonic whilst Dumbledore arrived and fought Voldemort, rousing only when Voldemort attempted to take possession of him, lashing out with a cold hostility like the snarl and swipe of an irritable leopard.

As soon as he'd portkeyed into Dumbledore's office, he'd passed out curled up on a comfy chair in the corner, emotionally drained and exhausted, waking up two days later in the infirmary.

He wasn't even back a day and he had already seen more of the dark-eyed people than he had seen since he was about five.

The person shifted behind him (the rustling of hair against the sheets making him suspect it was the small woman or the slender man with thigh-length honey-brown hair), and stood. There was a sound of something being placed on his desk, then silence. The window softly slid closed.

(space)(space)(space)

It was a book.

The cover was old, faded-brown clothe stretched over wood, the thick pages dog-eared and yellow with age. There were small, written notes in the margins and occasionally there were pieces of paper or pictures placed between the pages. Though the spine was coming loose, another twenty or so pages had been added at the back in the last few years.

It was not a big book; only the size of a journal and couldn't be much more than one hundred pages long.

There was not title, only a note on the first page that read; 'Because we focused on the snake, we missed the scorpion.' Egyptian Proverb.

On the second page was the index, consisting of only I:The Beginning, II: The Snake, III: The Scorpion, IX: The Existence. There were no page numbers.

Harry turned to the first chapter.

At around 2000BC, a disease, later known as 'Nero Pazzia', the Black Madness, had swept through the magical races of the world like the Black Plague through Eurasia, killing all who contracted it. This disease, now known to have been airborne spores engineered through magic and adapted to target magical humanoids , ate the unusable host from the lungs and bloodstream out, often acting so quickly the unusable host would drop in their traces with no warning, going into coma and dying within minutes. The 'usable' hosts, now known to be those with the 'AB-' blood-type, would be able to partially bond with the spores, resulting in metastatic cancer and being pushed by the spores to 'spread'. The un-hosts, the carriers, would appear and act normal until something set off their adrenaline, at which point the spores, now a unicellular organism living in the blood and nervous system, would panic, causing a suicide-run to spread, making the carrier attack and cut themselves, spreading the disease to others via the carrier's blood getting into inflicted wounds.

There were twelve waves of the 'disease' over a period of 153 years before, on a small semi-isolated island in what is now called the Mediterranean, a strain of the 'disease' was released or somehow mutated close to the original strain which was later found to have come from the bloodstream of Nundus. This disease, though not always deadly, still killed most who were unfortunate as to contracted it, leaving only between 2 to 5 people as 'true hosts', many of them related in some way. The virus attacked the body voraciously, claiming 'territory' of the host body, regardless of race, and began a symbiotic existence with them. Those afflicted with the vampire virus or lycanthropy would spend several days sick as the Black Madness spores established themselves and eradicated the previously infected virus. Any additions to the make-up of the person would be retained while the virus based allergies would disappear (i.e. shapeshifters could still shift but were not restricted to moon cycles and silver, while vampires retained any talents they 'evolved' as a vampire without allergies to sunlight or the need for blood.). They universally became immune to any poison or sickness they came into contact while their blood became highly toxic to foreign bodies.

The resulting people were a new sub-race called the Veleno Se Stesso, the Poisoned Ones. These people eventually called themselves the Velen Clan.

The next chapter, titled 'The Snake', detailed how, with the assistance of the small enclave of 'Velen', the various races set about a more detailed investigation, headed by the former Vampire Clan Head turned Poisoned One, Sekhemet, and her clan formed from various races.

The virus was eventually tracked down to Mesopotamia, now Iraq and surrounding countries, more specifically the Akkadian Empire and parts of Sumar, the airborne spores transported all over the 'civilized' world in small green clay jars of incense. It was actually a little muggle girl training to be a priestess who gave one of the Velen an idea of where the virus came from.

The girl had been chanting aloud as she memorized an invocation against Lamashtu, whom the humans thought a demon-goddess of disease, amongst other things.

Investigation found that Lamashtu was the queen of a race cousin to the harpy called the Dimme. The Dimme were a race of winged beings, even the males appearing female, with a lion-like head, long, taloned fingers, hairy bodies and feet like a bird's. They had been extracting the virus from a Nundu cub they had muzzled and mostly kept petrified, modifying it, and breaking into the storage sheds of an incense merchant who lived at the foot of the gorge they lived in, where they removed a few, inserted the airborne spores into the incense jars, resealed the jars and put them back to be sold across the world. Their make-up rendered them immune to the spores.

The other races were not amused.

In roughly 1790BC, Sekhemet, backed by the vampires, shapeshifters, elves, goblins and every other race affected by the virus, led the assault on the Dimme, who were rendered extinct with extreme prejudice in just three years.

There ended the second chapter, and the third chapter, The Scorpion, began.

The Velen returned to the Mediterranean, a few scouts seeking any stragglers who had contracted and survived that strain, and congregated on an island off southeast of modern Greece, west of Cyprus. Members from most of the afflicted races had contracted the carrier strain, though mostly human, but were rejected by their own people. It was a Lamia, a Melusine and a vampire who individually had the idea to seek out Velen and bring them together, away from the prejudices of their former peoples. It was not long after the Dimme were eradicated that these three groups came together with Sekhemet and her warriors.

Over all, there were less than twenty thousand Velen, recognised by their eyes, which were a rich, gem-like green in the light, but were so dark as to be black when shadowed.

The island they occupied was renamed 'Sanctus', and was surrounded by shoal and reefs, the air was fast-moving and difficult to fly in.

The Velen, because of their immunities to poison and disease, were the only race to be able to domesticate the Nundu.

It was said that the air and rain of Sanctus was itself thick with enough poisonous miasma to kill a dragon with one breath, giving rise to an entire ecosystem dependant on the poisonous fumes.

Eventually, outsiders became aware that the Velen no longer aged, rendering children eternal children, old eternally old and so forth. And yet they were still breeding children who, unlike their infected kin, grew to adulthood before they stopped aging.

In fear that the Velen would attempt to spread when the island grew too small for their people, several vampire clans, not including Sekhemet's old clan, which had passed to her younger sister, Bastet, as well as the elves and magic-inclined humans, banded together and attacked Sanctus, hoping they could wipe out the Velen before they became too numerous.

It was a massacre.

The majority of the Velen were tired of death and war, and had no interest in fighting and bloodshed.

Starting from the south-west and moving in sectors, the invaders systematically slaughtered half the island in under a week before a former member of Sekhemet's warriors managed to avoid the culling and ran for the military on the eastern end of the island, warning ever town he passed.

What followed was a bloody struggle for survival. The entire island was surrounded and the elves had put up a barrier to negate magical transportation and messages.

The Velen could not get out, nor could they call for help.

At the end of three weeks, less than one hundred remained, half of them Sekhemet's warriors, a third of them very old 'Immortals' of various races, and the remainder children and 'Childs', the Childs being those who contracted the virus as children and ceased to grow. It was around this point that the Immortals were able to create a small tear in the wards deep under the water, allowing the survivors to swim out.

In their retreat, they triggered a trap, rendering all non-poison-based entities crippled, if not dead. Many of the invading forces found themselves prey to freed Nundu and poison-spitting dragons before they were forced to abandon the island due to the increasingly thick and potent miasma misting forests, fields and mountains of Sanctus.

Managing to reach Albania, the group of Velen split into three and set out into the world to find a place to call home, agreeing to meet back at Meteora, Greece, in ten years.

The team led by Sekhemet, consisting of a third of the remaining warriors, a lamia, a melusine, two drow and three Childs, was sent to find out who was involved or knew about the massacre and kill them, as well as collect the scouts and spies out of country that hadn't been quietly offed by the invaders.

The second team, headed by a swanmane simply called 'Little Swan' or Maralika, took the children, most of the remaining Childs, the surviving civilians, merchants and most of the scholars into the muggle world where they would wait until the time was up, subtly gaining knowledge and stockpiling stores and gold. Only five of the warriors accompanied this team.

The last team was led by a former travelling-scholar of indeterminable race named Razin. Razin's team was made up of the remaining warriors, the five Childs with assassination, informant or scouting training and the three former elves who would 'steal' their chosen area and displace it from the mundane plane of existence until they had place to 'put' it and anchor the place to.

Seven years in, they 'removed' several islands from what was now the Trang Archipelago, 'bubbling' the area to keep the ecosystem intact and separate from wherever they put it, rendering it effectively as attached to the planet as a castle in the sky, the weather linked to the place of origin to simulate the proper habitat of the wildlife.

Upon returning to Meteora with only a few weeks to spare, they found the other two groups already there, having grown in size from the retrieved scouts and spies, as well as a string of new children.

Bastet, unaware that her sister had survived, had gathered her warriors when the involved clans had bragged, and wiped no less than six vampire clans from existence in less than a year. The humans, thereafter, were systematically hunted to the ground, their children claimed by the clan as compensation, and, after the other races born from a magical disease, mostly lycanthropes and remaining vampires, found out what had been done, the elves were declared persona non grata outside their hidden Realms.

The Velen are still considered an extinct race as no survivors were ever confirmed.

Harry, despite feeling very sorry for the Velen, could not help the uneasy feeling squeezing his stomach in a vice.

He dropped the book in shock and denial when he opened the chapter titled ; The Existence.

'Identifying Carriers and Dormant-Hosts:

Offspring born to a Velen and a member of another race invariably have a one-in-four chance of being a carrier, and a one-in-four chance of being a Dormant Host. While Carriers may differential with racial and familial breeding, Dormant-Hosts invariably have memorably bright green eyes...'

Harry was vaguely aware of hyperventilating before the blackness crept over his sight.

(space)(space)(space)

It was several days before Harry picked up the book from where he'd left it on the floor and opened it, needing to know if he was really a Dormant-Host.

Continuing on from where he left off, he began reading.

'While Carriers may differential with racial and familial breeding, Dormant-Hosts invariably have memorably bright green eyes.

An unfortunate side-effect is that, while Carriers may continue having children and the Carrier-strain will die out after four generations, the Dormant-Hosts are not so lucky. As soon as the body reaches the end of its growth rate at between sixteen and eighteen for females and eighteen and twenty-one for males, the Nero Pazzia attached to the DNA of the Carrier or Host parent can no longer become active, resulting in the eventual development of metastatic cancer, resulting in death before the age of thirty. Any child born to a Dormant-Host has a fifty percent chance of being a non-Carrier, but also a fifty percent chance of being a Dormant-Host.

The Dormant-Host will also invariably have a bloodtype of AB-.

Signs of a Dormant-Host Awakening into a Velen:

The Nero Pazzia is mildly empathetic and wakes up and starts spreading immediately when faced with extreme emotion such as rage or grief.

The initial awakening can result in muting or a complete loss of the time when the virus is active. A side effect of the nor-adrenaline emergency-converted by the virus is a temporary loss of survival-hindering morals such as guilt or mercy. Adrenaline is what creates the 'fight-or-flight' response, which can result in panic and 'freezing', but with nor-adrenaline, which is strongly prevalent in cats and other large predators like the dragon, will result in someone who is calm, rational, sane, happy person without the 'safety trigger' that would normally stop a person from acts they would not normally carry out, such as murder or torture.

This is a carry-over from when the virus was originally a symbiotic entity living in the Nundu, which is fundamentally a large cat. The virus works by the modus operandi 'if it's not broken, don't fix it'.

In the weeks where the virus is further integrating into the host's system, the host will cannot be held responsible for many of their actions and should be kept calm until the virus settles in.

Supervision of Dormant-Hosts:

All children known to be half-Velen are monitored for Dormant-Hosts, as are their descendants as far as ten generations to be safe. When a Dormant-Host becomes apparent in a bloodline, the child has a loose support network around them to support them if the virus becomes active, usually after the onset of puberty.

As the newly-awakened Velen will become unable to change any aberrations to their body or change their appearance in any way (i.e. their hair will not grow, nor will it allow for colour-changes or cutting), one or two of the Velen assigned to supervise the child will appear and assist in any changes the new Velen will want to make before the virus locks in the appearance of its host and will not allow for changes after the third week

As soon as the change is complete, the Velen will be taken to the Archipelago to be taught their history, abilities and choose what to do with themself.

Thank you for reading and we hope you will be able to adapt to our family.

Aoelus

Keeper of Records

Councillor of the Learning Circle'

Harry put the book down and drew his legs to his chest.

'Great.' He thought, depressed. 'Even if I did somehow manage to survive Voldemort, if the virus didn't awaken, I still would have died.' He sighed. 'To the wizarding world, I might as well be now.'

Hearing his window open and soft sounds of clinking bottles, Harry glanced up to find the short woman reaching back through the window for a potion carry-case handed to her by the man with the long brown hair.

The woman gave Harry a warm, but sad smile, speaking in a voice that was oddly deep for someone who couldn't have been taller than 4'11 ft.

"Hello, Harry. My name is Rosalene. I have been chosen as your female mentor, and it will be an honour to do so."

The man came through the window long legs first. He looked around with dark eyes that flashed gem-green in the afternoon light before settling into Harry's only chair like a languid cat.

"I'm Razin, and I will be your male mentor." The man said, focussing on Harry with a genuine, good-natured warmth that most wouldn't expect from someone as physically attractive as him. "We've been watching you for a long time, and I, personally, hope that you will see this change, not as a loss, but as a beginning of what you never had, but should have been given unasked."

Razin smiled, his eyes crinkling.

"A family."

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