First of all I would like to say thank you to all who reviewed my last chapter. It was really great to see the review bar go up and know that people were actually reading this and actually liked this story. So yeah, thanks. This is also going much better than the last one as everything doesn't happen quite so cheesily (I think that there's still some chessiness in it but that might just be me) or as quickly. If your not happy just tell me and I'll try to make it right but I might not be bale to do that. Sorry.
Disclaimer: Since the last chapter missed this out I'm putting it here for all to see. I don't own Harry Potter or The Saga of Darren Shan. they are unfortunately the ideas of JK Rowling and Darren Shan.
Chapter 12: Malfoy is almost lunch
Harry's POV
I was surprised to see Darren at breakfast but I was glad that he had been let out of the hospital wing. After finding him completely lost yesterday I had been planning on going to see him and asking him when he was supposed to leave. Darren had looked relieved when I had found him yesterday and he looked much happier now than when he had been dressed up in the Prince costume a week ago. I felt a little sorry that I had to leave him for lessons since he wasn't dressed as the Prince yet and everyone thought that he was professor Evanna's assistant.
Double potions first thing with Snape though should be banned. He had us brewing a concoction for curing boils although Neville ended up melting his cauldron and everyone apart from Hermione had ended up concocting the potion for creating boils instead of curing them. By the end of the lesson, Harry felt as if he was coming to the end of his tether. It was bad enough that the Daily Prophet kept printing crap about me but Malfoy was taking it to the next level.
"Going to come up with some new story for us Potter? Didn't you just love posing for the camera last year that you just had to make up something to get back into the papers." Malfoy should know damn well that Voldemort is back. He just wants to make as much 'fun' as possible by using it as an excuse for picking on me.
After Potions I had Transfiguration with McGonagall (which didn't go too badly if turning your cockroach into a combination of roach and pocket watch will give you top marks) and finally lunch. After lunch I had planned to meet up with Darren and visit Hagrid. Darren though, seemed to have other ideas. I hadn't seen him at all today, other than at breakfast and I had begun to wonder if he was lost again. Instead he was stalking past the Great hall dressed as the Prince again. By the way that the air around him seemed to have dropped a few temperatures I took it that he wasn't in a good mood. In fact he was stalking right towards the Gryffindor common room. I decided to stay quiet for now and wait for him in the Great Hall if he ever appeared. I wondered briefly what could have made him so annoyed.
Darren didn't reappear during lunch and by the time I, Hermione and Ron had finished, it still didn't look as if he was going to turn up.
"I told you that you can't trust a vampire," Ron said as we stood a little anxiously outside the Great Hall again.
"Perhaps he's just lost," Hermione said quietly. It was a possibility. Darren had only been here for a week and a bit and most of that had been spent in the hospital wing.
"Who have you lost this time Potter? Your mother or your father?" Malfoy's voice came accompanied by the usual snickers from Crabbe and Goyle. I gritted my teeth and ignored Malfoy. It wasn't worth it to start a fight with him now.
"You know insulting someone's parents is just asking for you to be hit straight across the face," said a voice, floating into the conversation almost as if it belonged there. I turned to see Darren standing behind Malfoy, his eyes blazing. His normally emotionless brown eyes were blazing a bright red which was pretty scary.
"Oh, its Professor Evanna's lost assistant. Did your race throw you out because you're so scrawny?" Personally, harry thought that Darren was anything but scrawny but Malfoy didn't know that. Malfoy just thought because his father was so close to the minister he could get away with anything. Except the minister had allowed Darren to come to the school. So… this was not going to end well.
"Say that again and your head will no longer be connected with your shoulders. Thank that again and you won't be breathing in the next five minutes," Darren growled. The shadows around them seemed to jump and flicker as if reacting to Darren's anger. Harry was alarmed to see a pair of fangs within Darren's normally, human-looking teeth. Harry had known that his teeth were stronger than the average human but he distinctly remembered Evanna saying something about vampires not actually having fangs. There was something going on here that harry didn't know or understand.
Apparently Malfoy had the same idea as he went pale at the sight of Darren's new set of teeth. "Y-You can't do anything to e. When my father hears about this you'll be kicked out," he stuttered. Harry almost wanted to laugh if he hadn't felt the temperature drop another couple of figures. He was starting to wonder when icicles would start sprouting from his nose. It felt cold enough.
"You want to know something," Darren said with a leer. Malfoy's face went an ashen grey. "The Minister for Magic invited me here. Unless he's your father no one gives a damn about what happens to you. One less annoyance on the planet then." He gave Malfoy a malicious grin, turning his whole face pretty scary. Harry almost gulped.
"Darren you can't possibly mean that!" Hermione gasped. Harry wondered what she was thinking but had to grudgingly agree. As great an idea it might be to have Malfoy off his back, they couldn't let him be killed. Darren blinked for a moment and his expression went from leery maniac to just pissed off in about a second.
"Don't ever make me that angry again," Darren snapped at Malfoy before he stalked off in the opposite direction; ironically towards Hagrid's hut. Malfoy didn't hesitate to clear off and for a moment I stood where I was, unsure whether or not Darren would want to be followed. Then I started after him.
"Are you mad? He nearly ate Malfoy and now you want to go after him!" Ron shouted, waving his arms around in the air like he was trying to attract my attention from far away.
"No. He looks as if he needs a friend or at least someone to talk to," I replied, ignoring him and walking on. Hermione just followed me. She still looked a little scared but she was putting on a brave face. Darren was like nothing we had ever faced before and he was our friend. Well, my friend anyway. I didn't care that Ron couldn't handle being around him nor did I care that people steered well clear of him after they knew who he was. No one could be on their own all the time.
Darren was far ahead of us by the time we caught up with him. In fact he was seething right in front of the Quidditch pitch which made me remember the match that was scheduled for later this afternoon. Gryffindor vs. Ravenclaw. Not as bad as it could be but still. Darren didn't seem to notice or care where he was. He was just sat in the shadows of the pitch glaring out at anyone who came past (and even if they did they turned back after about two second of being under that glare). I took a deep breath before approaching him. No matter what I thought about him he was pretty scary at the moment.
"Hey," I said. Darren just nodded his head to acknowledge the fact that I was there. "Are you all right?" Darren sighed and glared at the ground.
"Just peachy," he muttered under his breath. I paused for a moment. I had never seen Darren this pissed off and I didn't want to find out the consequences of that.
"You know if you don't want to talk about it that's fine but if you do… What happened?" I asked cautiously. There was a long silence and then Darren sighed. His eyes slipped closed for a moment and suddenly I didn't see Darren, the Vampire prince or Darren, assistant to Evanna. I saw a boy a long way from home who, like me, had seen too much in too little a space of time. He didn't look threatening. In fact he looked a little… sad.
"I was just angry and let my feelings run away with me. It was wrong and I shouldn't have got so worked up over it but he was really pissing me off. Ad I don't like bullies who think that they're better than you or the people you know," Darren said quietly. I thought about that for a moment.
"So how comes your eyes went red?" I asked. Darren's head shot up at that one.
"My eyes did what?" he said, startled. I looked at his eyes carefully and noticed that they had gone back to their normal brown. I shrugged.
"Well, back when you were talking to Malfoy your eyes were blood red. You looked kind of scary and… hungry." Darren cringed at the mention of hunger.
"Sorry. I need to drink soon and I may have gotten a bit carried away." He looked sheepish at that. I wondered what it must be like, to have the very thing you need to live all around you and yet you couldn't take a sip. I was thankful that Darren had the restrain to not feed on everyone in sight.
"That's ok. You know what will take your mind off this?" I asked. He looked a bit baffled.
"Err… no."
"Come with us to see Hagrid. You'll like him. His food is terrible though so if he offers, just kindly decline." Darren laughed at that.
"I think I'll try it before I make any judgements on that. Trust me, some of the food that I've eaten, you people here wouldn't touch. You have no idea how much you're being pampered here." I snorted.
"My family back home barely feed me. They think that I'm a waste of space." Darren raised an eyebrow at that and I felt a bit sheepish. I shouldn't have said that but it was too late to take it back now.
"I've been through worse but I'm sorry your aunt and uncle don't care much for you. I can't really say that I feel for you since my family-" Darren suddenly cut off, looking a little misty eyed. He looked back at the floor again and it struck me that Darren was a lot older than he looked even if he did only act like a child sometimes. I wondered how long he had been alive for and when he had been 'blooded' as Evanna called it. I didn't want to intrude so another long silence passed. Darren suddenly sniffed and looked up.
"So… your elusive friend Hagrid then?" he said. He seemed much happier than earlier but I wondered what he was really thinking. No one went from being unhappy, remembering those who were probably dead, to be happy again. That wasn't exactly human and while Darren wasn't he certainly acted like it.
"Right," I muttered.
We ended up going with only Hermione since Ron refused to go anywhere near Darren after the whole I'm-going-to-eat-Malfoy fiasco. Hagrid didn't seem and took to Darren pretty well. After Darren had gotten over his initial shock that we had come to see a half-giant he and Hagrid starting sharing tales, the likes of which I was glad that we had left Ron in the Gryffindor common room. At the moment Darren was munching on one of Hagrid's biscuits that we hadn't been able to decline.
"These are one of the better things I've tasted in life," Darren said, his earlier feelings forgotten. I was surprised that Darren was enjoying Hagrid's cooking but then again he had vampire teeth and so was actually able to bite through the biscuits without a problem. "Much better than boar guts and bat broth!"
"Excuse me?" Hermione squeaked. If anything named 'boar guts' or 'bat broth' had ever come her way, or even mine, I don't think either of us would have eaten it.
"Eh, delicacies of vampire mountain. They don't exactly get imports from the local area do they?" Darren said, practically laughing.
"Right," I said, "so you just readily eat boar guts and bat broth?" Darren shrugged.
"Better cooked than raw. Wouldn't eat it otherwise." We all laughed at that.
"So, what d'ya know abou' dragons Darren?" Hagrid asked. He seemed chuffed that he would know something better than a vampire. Darren thought for a moment and picked up another biscuit.
"Well… I haven't seen that many but I know that they sometimes travel in packs and that the males mainly hunt for the females and offspring. Oh, and they don't like visitors in their territory. Mind you this might be a bit ahead of your guys time so what do you know about dragons?" Darren said. I felt my mouth fall open at his words. Even Hagrid looked a little shocked.
"D-Did you just say ahead of our time? Wouldn't you mean before?" Hermione asked when she found her voice. I blinked realising that she was right as usual. Darren blinked himself.
"Err… forget I said that," he said. I wondered what he was hiding. Apparently Hermione thought the same.
"You can't mean that you have seriously been to the future because that's impossible. If it's impossible to go completely back in time more than a few hours then it's impossible to move forwards in time," Hermione said in her usual know it all voice. Darren shrugged.
"Then do as I said and forget I said that. You'll be better off not knowing, trust me." Darren looked at her right in the eyes, not caring (or probably even noticing) about the deep blush that was starting to form. He then changed subject.
"So, what kind of spiders do you get around here?" I groaned inwardly. If anything, spiders were a worse subject than dragons.
"Oh, well, yer don' get many but we do have some very large ones," Hagrid said. I was surprised that he was sharing information about his giant hairy friend in the Forbidden Forest. Darren just smiled like he had had a brilliant idea.
"Poisonous ones?" he asked sweetly. Hagrid frowned but answered all the same.
"Well, the biggest ones are but yer don' go near those," he said. Darren just smiled.
"My mentor used to own a spider. Deadly poisonous but if you knew how to control her she wouldn't kill you. In fact, I can just about control any spider that has the brain capacity to control a tribe of others. But the spider I learnt to do it on was called Madame Octa and she was the best." Darren looked as if he was remembering happier times and I wondered who his mentor was but knew better than to ask. Darren could flare up at the smallest thing and the use of past tense made me think that his mentor was dead.
"Must o' been a beau'iful creature, that one," Hagrid said, tears brimming in his eyes at the thought. Darren nodded.
"Mmmm… she was brilliant but she was no pet. If you couldn't control her you were dead. There is no cure now for her bite."
"So there was one before?" Hermione asked suddenly. She looked slightly hopeful, as if the mention of a cure meant that there must be some somewhere in the world.
"Yes but… it's a long story." Darren looked pained again. "Let's just say that there was some and it was used up so now there isn't any in the world." After that Darren barely spoke again, lost in whatever memories he was thinking of. I glanced at me watch and then swore. It was time for the Quidditch match.
"What?" Darren asked, snapped out of his reverie.
"I'm late for Quidditch! I can't let Gryffindor down by not turning up! They'll think we've gotten into trouble again!" And with that I ran out of the door, not caring about the confused look on Darren's face and Hermione's quiet explanations to him about what Quidditch was. If I had known then that a Quidditch match could mean so much then I would have stayed at Hagrid's. Gladly.
I'm going to set this challenge since I think it will be interesting to see how many get this. It's not that obviouos but the ending is kind of a Darren Shan rip off but it'll be interesting to see if you do. So the challenge is this:
Who do you think is going to make an appearence in the next chapter?
Can't wait!
