A/N: I really did mean to have this chapter out earlier, but I got stuck at one point and then the muse made me work on a different project. I finally finished tonight, so even though my editing was fairly minimal due to exhaustion, I wanted to post it right away. Hopefully, I won't look at it tomorrow and cringe and hopefully, after all the lovely reviews I received, it'll live up to your expectations as well.
Once again, no money being made here. I wish there was, but that's unfortunately not legal.
To the Night, Chapter Four
Harry gazed out over the open ravine. The sun had technically set, but it was close enough to the edge of the horizon that the western sky glowed orange and pink and purple. A stream that ran along the bottom of the fissure reflected light from the nearly full moon. The view was beautiful.
It was odd for Harry, being so far out in the middle of nowhere and feeling no discomfort and none of his usual fears. They were replaced with new ones, though, more than he could count. He was afraid of what he'd become and of what it might mean for the resistance he'd been fighting. He was afraid of his magic and why it still felt so wild, searching for the smallest opportunity to escape from his control. He was afraid that he might never see his parents or friends again, in all of eternity. He was afraid of what he felt every time he looked at Carlisle.
"I don't know quite where to begin," Carlisle said, standing a good distance away from Harry but looking in the same direction at the quickly fading sunset.
He was standing very close to the cliff's edge and Harry had to fight back the urge to tell him to step away from it. Carlisle was a vampire; he would not fall unless he wanted to fall, and even if he did, he would not be harmed.
"There are so many things I could ask you," the blonde added.
Again, Harry did not reply. He was debating how much he should reveal about himself and his past. Obviously, he was going to have explain that he was a wizard, but to tell it all, to tell the story of the Boy Who Lived and the resistance, would be exhausting. He wasn't sure he could do it if he tried, and he wasn't at all sure that he wanted this group of vampires to know everything.
He was roused from his memories when Carlisle appeared right next to him. Harry was already used to the new speed and agility with which his own body moved, but he was still startled by the sudden actions of the other vampires when he wasn't focused on them. Carlisle was now standing very close; it was nearly too uncomfortable for Harry, but he forced himself to stay where he was.
"It's gorgeous out here," Harry said, not looking away from the sky. There were many questions he could ask as well, but suddenly they didn't seem urgent; he was afraid that he might prefer not to know the answers.
Carlisle seemed to both ignore Harry's words and take them as a cue to begin their conversation. "Why wouldn't you feed on a deer?" he blurted.
Harry turned his head and raised an eyebrow. Carlisle didn't seem the type to blurt anything but rather to carefully consider the words he spoke, making his choice of question all the more intriguing.
"Out of everything, that's what you most want to know?" Harry asked.
"I thought perhaps it would break the ice a bit," Carlisle explained. "You know, that it would be a good place to begin."
"Well, it's not," Harry informed him. "It's a rather loaded question; I don't think I could explain right now."
"Just try me," Carlisle offered.
Harry debated and decided that it couldn't really hurt anything. Actually, it was considerably less revealing than a number of things Carlisle could have asked him. Plus, it might be interesting to see his reaction.
"All right," he agreed. "My father was a stag."
Silence reigned for a moment while Carlisle stared at him. At first he seemed to think that Harry was joking, that he was trying to avoid the question. When he realized that this was not the case, he simply looked confused.
"Your father was a stag," Carlisle repeated. "So … how does that work exactly?"
"I suppose I should have said that my father could turn into a stag," Harry amended. "He could turn into a stag at will."
Really, it was more than that, more than that James could turn into a stag. An animagus form, for those who could manage it, was more than just a creature to become when desired; it was another part, another facet, of who that person was inside. Harry could remember Sirius telling him about it, explaining the intense feeling of relief and joy that had overcome him when he mastered the final step of the transformation. Supposedly, James had felt the same way. This was the reason that nearly every witch or wizard who had the ability to become an animagus did so. Completing the change, accepting and becoming the animal, was the only way to fill the void that would exist in any of them should they choose not to stray from human form.
Harry himself, unlike his father, had never been able to learn the animagus transformation. Snape was not one himself, so it had not been a part of their lessons, and Harry hadn't the time to join Hermione when she'd asked McGonagall for instruction. Of course, even she had never completed the change. She had come close – she knew that her form was a fox – but she had not managed to finish … and Harry still considered that his fault.
He remembered the many nights they'd spent, hiding out in their tent in the middle of nowhere, alone and scared. The animagus spells were a few of the very small number which actually had to be performed without a wand, but Hermione had never attempted them since leaving Hogwarts; she couldn't risk being stuck with a paw or a tail or some other animal part because Harry and Ron wouldn't be able to reverse it without using their wands and thus giving away their location. She had tried to instruct the two boys in the first stages of the transformation, which were meditative only and did not entail any outward changes. Ron hadn't gotten anywhere with it at all, and though Harry had reached a point of semi-consciousness wherein he'd been running faster than any human with a strength that was not his own, he'd never made it so far as discovering what his form would be; after Hermione had died, he did not have the desire to find out.
His memories were then interrupted. "So I'm assuming that your father being able to turn into a stag somehow relates to how you knew what you were. How much do you know about vampires?"
Carlisle had allowed the lapse in conversation for a short while but it seemed that he was becoming impatient. Harry honestly couldn't blame his companion; his mind was so busy processing all of the changes that there was hardly room for him to hold a conversation simultaneously. He decided he would have to make more of an effort from this point forward.
"Clearly more than you expected I would," Harry answered. He didn't like this question. It was far too broad and he could end up revealing too much. "Let me ask you something. How much do you know about the … ah, supernatural world?"
"The supernatural world?" Carlisle asked, raising an eyebrow.
"You know as well as I that in the wider world, vampires don't exist," Harry explained. "But there are many other things out there that muggles would never believe in but which are just as real as you and I, and I'm asking how much you know about those other things."
Carlisle paused for a moment. "Did you just say 'muggles'?" he asked. "What does that mean?"
Harry nearly cursed his slip-up. Carlisle obviously had a keen intellect and it made Harry extremely uneasy. What else might he accidentally divulge? He'd have to be more careful.
"It's just a term for the majority of people in the world, all the people who … don't believe in anything fantastical. Who don't know any better."
"A term used by whom?" Carlisle pressed.
Harry frowned. Yes, he was definitely too observant. "I'm getting to that, all right? Answer my question first."
"Well, I know that vampires exist, obviously," Carlisle stated. "And most people wouldn't believe that. In fact, it's rather a rule among vampires to make sure that no humans know of our existence, in order to keep things that way. I also know that certain other 'mythical' creatures – werewolves, for instance – do exist. But you're clearly not any of them … or weren't, I should say."
"So, nothing about, say, wizards? Witches?" Harry asked.
"I've heard of them, yes," Carlisle replied. "But I didn't know they were real."
"Well, they are," Harry told him.
"So that's what you are, then? A wizard?"
"Yes." Harry paused. "Or, I was. I don't know if it's technically possible to be both a wizard and a vampire at the same time."
"But the mirror," Carlisle said. "You were able to do things like that before?"
Harry considered this. The answer was "yes" of course, but it wasn't really the same. Wandless magic was notoriously hard to do; most wizards couldn't manage one bit of controlled magic without their wands, and accidental outbursts were nearly unheard of for those who had grown accustomed to channeling their magic through a core. Harry was an exception to both of those rules, of course, but he'd struggled for every bit of wandless magic he'd wanted to perform and his accidental magic had always come at the height of emotional episodes. But standing in front of the mirror earlier that day, his magic had risen so quickly and easily to the surface and he hadn't really been feeling very emotional at all. If anything, at that moment, he'd felt rather frozen more than anything. Cold and hard and just wishing that the image in front of him would go away, would cease to be true.
"I was able to do much more than shatter a mirror, but I don't really know what I can do now," Harry decided to tell him. He was surprised at Carlisle's odd lack of reaction to this latest revelation. "Aren't you at all shocked by this?"
"I can't say that I was expecting you to tell me that you're a wizard. That you can do magic. But …" Carlisle shrugged. "I'm a vampire. Does it really shock me? Not in the sense that it would shock those muggles you were talking about."
Harry nodded. He supposed he could accept that.
Carlisle interrupted the short lull. "So that's how you know that vampires exist and what they're like?"
"Yes, but keep in mind that I certainly don't know everything there is to know about vampires," Harry replied. "I didn't know that newborns, as you call them … us … are stronger than older ones. And until today, the existence of vampires who don't drink human blood was a rumor I'd heard, not a fact."
"Vegetarian vampires, we call ourselves," Carlisle explained fondly. "It is quite rare. Just my family and one other coven; they live in Alaska and stay away from humans, for the most part."
"But your coven doesn't," Harry stated. "How is that? Why? Isn't it very difficult?"
"It is, more for some of us than others. For instance, I have been around human blood so often that I'm hardly tempted by the scent anymore, if at all."
"Why exactly have you been exposed to so much human blood?" Harry asked.
Carlisle almost laughed at the other vampire's suspicion. "I'm a physician, Harry. I've been practicing in various places for quite a number of years now. I suppose I feel that if there is any redemption for me, it is by healing the very creatures I was made to prey upon."
"So you smell human blood all the time? And you don't wish to drink it?" Harry asked. He couldn't imagine ever being free of this horrible thirst.
Carlisle stopped for a moment then; Harry could tell that he was debating something in his mind, and when he spoke next, the subject became clear. "I don't think any vampire will ever be able to completely repress the desire for human blood. But I will say this: your blood was the strongest … the most appealing that I have come across in ages. Perhaps forever. I was enthralled by it, but I was not in any danger of losing control when I found you."
Harry took a moment to absorb everything Carlisle had just told him. It was unbelievable that the vampire would have the desire to live among humans at all, let alone be able to work with them as a doctor.
"How old are you, anyway?" he asked.
"Over three hundred years old," Carlisle replied with a chuckle.
"Is all of your coven that old?" Harry asked, amazed.
"Oh, certainly not. The next oldest would be Jasper, who was born in the eighteen hundreds, although comparatively he's new to our … lifestyle. Edward was my first companion. He was my patient, and I turned him when he was dying. I knew it was the closest I would get to having a child of my own. I never imagined I would have a whole family."
"I've never heard of vampires having families," Harry mused, sounding nostalgic. "I mean, covens yes, but the way I've seen you behave together, it seems like something more. Like in some ways they really are siblings and you really are their father."
"It is more than being a coven," Carlisle told him. "In most every way. I tend to think it has something to do with our diets, because we're so different from others of our kind, and we're all in it together. By necessity, we must be more compassionate. Thus, we do not have to stay together simply to help hunt humans or make the nomadic life less lonely. We support each other in other, more human ways. We don't judge … or, well, we try not to judge."
He smiled at something Harry was not privy to. It made him terribly sad; it made him want to know everything about Carlisle, to understand him, though he didn't know if that was even possible. How could he ever understand a vampire who denied what he was in nearly every way?
"I want you to meet the rest of them. I want you to know all of them," Carlisle told Harry. "But I also want to protect them …"
"And I'm something you need to protect them from," Harry finished for him.
It was almost amusing; perhaps now he truly was a creature that others needed protection from, but so many times in the past, when he'd been an innocent human, a harmless boy, people had thought the same. Of course, that was now long ago, before the war had ended, when he was still a student at Hogwarts. He'd done so many things since then that he'd probably been a monster already, if no more of a monster than despotic leaders of the new wizarding government. He decided, then and there, that Carlisle could not be allowed to know his past as it truly was.
"I don't mean any offense," Carlisle added. "I just know so little about you."
"And I know so little about you," Harry confirmed. He remembered something Carlisle had said before. "Or your family. How exactly are there seven and a half of you?"
"You caught that, did you?" Carlisle asked. "What I meant was seven and a half vampires."
"My question stands," Harry replied.
"Yes, well, it's just that. Seven vampires and one half-vampire."
"How exactly does one become half-vampire?"
"One doesn't become half-vampire," Carlisle said. "I apologize. I'm not explaining this well. Renesmee is the daughter of Edward and Bella. Bella became pregnant by Edward when she was still human. And before you go thinking us evil, we had no idea that such a thing could happen. For lack of a better way to put it, we thought that our venom was the only bodily fluid that vampires produce. As it is, we were wrong."
Harry swallowed nervously. "But that means he … with her as a human. I know what it felt like when I killed that bear. It was nothing. How did he not destroy her?"
"Edward has always had remarkable self-control, but it progressed to a new level when he met Bella because he refused to turn her for quite awhile," Carlisle answered.
Harry nodded, but he wasn't entirely convinced. How was it possible to have that much self-control?
"What about you?" Carlisle asked then. "Have you left behind some kind of family? I wasn't thinking about it when I turned you. I didn't want to think about it. But you would have been leaving them, anyway."
No, I would have finally been joining them, Harry thought, but didn't say. He wanted to say it, actually. He wanted to shock Carlisle, to make him see what he had done to Harry; he wanted Carlisle to understand.
"No, no family," Harry replied instead. "I've never really had a family."
"Never?" Carlisle asked.
"No," Harry replied. "My parents died when I was a baby, and I grew up with my aunt, my mum's sister, and her husband and son. I was never close to them."
If that wasn't an understatement …
"That must have been lonely," Carlisle said.
Harry shrugged. "I went to boarding school starting at age eleven. So I didn't have to put up with them as much after that."
"They sent you to boarding school to get rid of you?"
"Er, no," Harry replied. "They actually didn't want me to go. It wasn't a normal boarding school, it was for witches and wizards. I learned magic there."
"You learned magic in school?" Carlisle asked. "That must have been interesting."
"It was school," Harry replied shortly. He didn't feel like talking about Hogwarts; too many of his experiences at the school were tied in with the issue of Voldemort, and he'd decided that Carlisle would hear none of that.
Harry realized then that he hadn't so much as moved more than his head in ages. It didn't feel odd for him to have simply stood there speaking to Carlisle for hours on end without growing tired or uncomfortable, and that in itself was disconcerting. He shifted his weight around but ended up in exactly the same position he'd been and so, needing some kind of distraction from their conversation, he plopped down at the edge of the cliff, watching as the moon now started to fall in the western sky.
Carlisle waited a long moment, as though Harry would stand up again, then lowered himself to the ground. Harry noted that the blond vampire did not come any closer as he did so.
"That can't be all you have to tell me," Carlisle said softly. "You have to be, what, late twenties? Right around my age, physically. And you're a wizard. Hasn't your life been …?"
"What? Exciting?" Harry asked. He had to be sure to choose his words carefully. "I guess when you have the ability to use magic, it's not as impressive as it seems from the outside. That's not to say that it was never impressive. But it wears off after awhile. It just becomes … life."
Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Carlisle frown. "You seem so disillusioned."
Harry nodded a bit. Now he would have to be most cautious with what he said, if he didn't want Carlisle to know the truth or to guess that Harry was not telling it. Snape had once told him to keep any lies or misdirection as close to reality as possible; that was what he must do.
"So, there's this whole wizarding world out there, right? Just hidden amongst everything else. There are whole parts of London that only witches and wizards can access. They have all kinds of shops, selling magic wands, attire – which is quite a bit more … medieval … than the current fashion – and books on magical topics, cauldrons, ingredients for potions and species of pets that shouldn't exist. I was amazed when I first found out about it all, and I was amazed by school. But then, what eleven year old wouldn't be amazed by all of those things?
"See, it's not just about that, about how wonderful it is to be able to do things that have no logical explanation. There's a whole other world, an entire separate government to run that world, and with the good comes the bad. You don't realize it when you're eleven, but witches and wizards are no different from other people; they have strengths and weaknesses, and they can be intelligent and awe-inspiring, but they can also be close-minded and prejudiced. And as in the wider world out there, more of them tend to be the latter than the former."
Harry paused for a moment, feeling bogged down and weightless all at once. Before, even when he'd been as still and silent as possible, breathing in and out so softly that even a vampire probably wouldn't have been able to hear him, even then, his heart had always been hammering away in his chest. The complete absence of movement and sound belied his very existence and conjured again the intense desire he felt to simply not subsist.
"When I started school, things were different; they weren't so bad. The Headmaster, he was one of those awe-inspiring wizards; he was not prejudiced at all, and he had a great deal of influence in our world. But he was also very old. I mean, maybe even as old as … who was it, Jasper? I know he was definitely born in the nineteenth century. In any case, he died, and things started to change. By the time I left school, it was not a world to which I wanted to belong, not in its current state, but neither was it a world I could bring myself to leave entirely.
"You want to know what I've been doing for the past ten years? I don't have a formal education in anything but the wizarding world so I've just worked odd jobs, in restaurants and stores, moving around all the time. And I've tried to find a way to change that world, but I don't know how. I have no power, no leverage, no rights."
"Do you mind me asking," Carlisle began, interrupting, "what exactly are these prejudices based upon? I mean, I know in various cultures it can be due to race or religion …"
"Blood," Harry answered. "Purity of blood. If you were born to parents who have as much magic as a teaspoon, then you're pretty much completely screwed. It doesn't matter if you're intelligent or personable or powerful – magically powerful I mean. It's all down to something as stupid as ancestry."
"So you're in this group that doesn't have the right ancestry to have any sort of status in the wizarding world?" Carlisle clarified.
Harry did not answer directly because saying "yes" would technically be a lie. If he wasn't Harry Potter, if he'd been born a day later and the prophecy had never applied to him, if he hadn't been so staunchly against everything the purebloods stood for, then perhaps things might have been different. But all of that was out of his hands.
"It doesn't even make any sense," he replied instead, turning to face Carlisle "One of my best friends in school, Hermione … she was absolutely brilliant. Everyone, all of the professors, said she was the most talented witch they'd seen in ages, right? But both her parents were dentists. She would be working in some mindless job right now, a clerk at the bookshop or an assistant taking notes and fetching cups of tea at the Ministry. They would be wasting her."
Carlisle's eyes looked terribly sad at the moment, but he held Harry's gaze. "So she left the wizarding world, like you?"
"No," Harry said, his whole body seeming to constrict. He turned away, knowing he'd be crying right now if it was possible. "No, she died."
"Oh. I'm sorry," Carlisle offered.
Harry did not reply. He couldn't. All he could do was picture Hermione's body as it had been when he found it, lying mangled outside their tent. She'd only been waiting for him so they could apparate away together, and they'd found her and ambushed her, leaving her remains behind for him to find.
"Harry?" Carlisle asked softly. "What happened to you, before I found you? The injuries you had, they were catastrophic. How did you get them?"
Harry tore his mind away from thoughts of Hermione as best as he could, which was not very well at all. "I was in an accident," he answered.
It was the one complete lie he would tell, and only out of necessity. There were only so many ways such injuries could be explained, and he couldn't very well tell Carlisle that he'd gotten them escaping from the captivity of a government official without putting his earlier explanation into question.
"I had a flying motorbike, see," he elaborated. "It was my godfather's, before he died. I hadn't flown it in awhile – hadn't much occasion to, living amongst muggles – but I had a bit too much to drink and decided that taking it up in the air would be a good idea."
"I didn't hear a crash. And I didn't see a smashed motorbike anywhere near your body," Carlisle replied sounding more curious than skeptical, as Harry had feared he might.
"Oh, I didn't crash it in the woods. I crashed it just on the outskirts of a muggle town," he said. A gale of bitter laughter escaped him before he even knew to expect it. "I apparated away when I realized that people were coming to help me, to take me to a hospital."
"But why wouldn't you have let them help you?" Carlisle asked. He paused for a moment. "Or were you trying to, ah … what was that word you just used? Were you trying to get to someone who could heal you with magic?"
Harry spun then, pulling his legs up over the edge of the ravine so he could face Carlisle dead on. The rawness of his anger and despair was palpable.
"Do you seriously not get it?" he asked, nearly yelling. "Do you honestly not understand?"
"Understand what?" Carlisle asked. His face seemed suddenly different, his cheeks more hollow and his eyes more heavily lidded.
"I apparated to those woods to die!" Harry shouted. "You found me, nearly dead, and turned me into this when all I wanted was to finally be dead!"
~CE~
Well, I hope you all enjoyed that. It was a bit more resistant in coming out the first three but I made it through.
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