Chapter 37

Entranced

Harry groaned as he opened his eyes, the room around him was going in and out of focus, making him squint irritably. He then caught sight of two figures standing at the foot of his bed. He tried to focus on them but his eyes refused to cooperate with him.

"Its good to see that you are awake." a voice came from the figure on his left.

"Who are you?" Harry asked, still squinting at them.

"The better question is whom are you, but I will answer your question nonetheless. My name is Gemini and my friend here is Nikolai. We are two of the nine elders from the vampire council. You will meet the seven other elders at a later point in time." the figure on his left said.

"Now, who are you?" the one on his right, Nikolai, demanded rather gruffly in a deep voice that signified that he was a man just as Gemini was.

"Harry. Harry Potter." Harry groaned as the room gave another sudden lurch, making him feel rather ill.

"Ah, I see that the thirst is rising in you, fledgling? When was the last feeding?" Gemini asked, coming to the side of Harry's bed and placing a hand on Harry's forehead. Suddenly everything became calm, clear and lucid. Harry looked up slowly at Gemini and saw the most beautiful man that he had ever seen before.

He had shaggy blonde hair that hung in loose curls, delicately framing his face as if it were a gold gilded picture frame. His eyes were a deep blue that seemed to both pierce and suck you in. Long dark lashes that weren't too girly, made them seem darker, wider, more mysteriously alluring. His skin was an egyptian-like gilden brown that seemed to shimmer, glow, with a golden aura in the gloomy room. His lips were full and pouty, a dark burgundy shade that looked so unnatural that it looked natural. His face didn't have aristocratical build, but his features were striking and soft mixed together. His nose was small and straight while his cheekbones were high and striking. His jaw was firm and manly while his chin was soft and feminine. He was a very beautiful man.

"When was the last time you fed?" the man, Gemini, inquired once more. Harry stared at the man, entranced by him.

"I don't know." intoned Harry, his British accent reappearing from his inattention to everything but the stunning vampiric beauty before him.

"Gemini, look at his eyes." breathed Nikolai. "Childe, whom is your sire?"

Harry's eyes turned towards Nikolai and saw an equally stunning man. Jet black hair that fell straight but with natural blue and red highlights shimmering gently and almost unnaturally in the light. Golden eyes, like a cat's eyes, that were almond shaped gleamed at him, piercing him to the very core and beyond. Ivory skin glowed, unblemished, making him even more unearthly, god-like. He was definitely not tall, but he was quite lithe and entirely feminine looking except for his definitely masculine jaw.

"Childe, answer me!" Nikolai growled, irritated that Harry was only staring at him rather than answering.

"Mirage," Harry breathed, still awed by Nikolai's beauty and stilled enthralled by his cravings. "Mirage adopted me. I was turned by two other vampires who changed me when I was taking a walk through a park."

"Gemini, what the-" Nikolai began but stopped, gasping as he stared at Harry. "He's one of mine!" he breathed, releasing the air that he had just suddenly inhaled at his surprise.

"And mine. NIkolai, we've found our second prince." Gemini murmured. He brought his free hand to Harry's face, gently cupping his cheek and stroking it with his thumb. Harry whimpered as the thumb brushed across the bottom of his lip.

"Please," he breathed, a burning sensation that he had never felt before erupted in the put of his stomach.

Nikolai's eyes flashed brightly as he moved lithely to Harry's side, his hand shimmering along the teen vampire's side up to his chest, along his pectoral, briefly encircling a nipple before continuing to the crook of his neck, pressing his thumb against Harry's jugular vein.

"Oh fledgling, we'll do that and more." Nikolai breathily whispered as he bent down, nipping gently on Harry's collar bone.

"Yes!" Harry moaned, then hitched as Gemini bent to kiss him on the lips, his fangs gently piercing Harry's lower lip.

"Have you ever had sex with another vampire, fledgling?" Nikolai asked, traveling up his neck. Gemini released his lips, allowing him to answer.

"No," he groaned, arching forward in order to regain that magnificent touch, that magnificent feeling.

"Then prepare yourself, fledgling. This will be most... transcendental." Gemini lustfully informed him, breathing the last word against his lips before once again capturing them with his own.

Mirage's eyes flashed as she ducked and dodged through the chaos, irritated. What was going on here? She hadn't seen this many vampires fighting like this in more than four decades.

"Mirage!" a soft voiced chimed, surprising her into stopping inthe middle of the chaos. Mirage turned to find Hallucia, a girl identical to her in every way except that he hair was acid green and piled into two messy buns on the top of her head. He baby sister.

"Hallucia, what in the hell is going on here?"

Hallucia giggled, her eyes flashed brightly, glittering with amusement. "Politics. It's a debate, Mirage. Its time to change head clan members and everyone's debating on whom will compete in the vampiric honor trials. I'm just here to watch. My caln's twelve candidates have already been decided."

Frowning, Mirage demanded, "Why has your clan already decided?" They only chose head clan members every half century. Had it already been fifty years since the last? Time seemed to fly by so fast.

"Because we're lovers, not fighter, silly." Hallucia playfully admonished her sister. Mirage growled and took a swipe at her, not all that playfully.

"Vampire politics. At least we're more civilized than werewolves. They just let the strongest rule. At least we incorporate wit, intelligence and tactical coordination in our brutally physical politics." Hallucia mattered darkly, showing maturity for the first time that night.

"That's true." Mirage muttered darkly, remembering, as her sister was, back to the night they had tried to forge a treaty with the werewolves in Britain but had run into the werewolve's political interchanging of leaders which resulted in the failure of all negotiations. Fenrir Greyback had not wanted to forge any sore of a relationship with vampires except as their executioners.

"Ah, lets go somewhere more quiet. I have some juicy gossip to share with you." Hallucia waggled her eyebrows playfully before disappearing into the fighting masses of vampires. Rolling her eyes at her sister's antics, Mirage slipped into the chaos after her little sister.

Hermione blinked in surprise at the letter that Ron had sent her. Apparently he had overheard his parents speaking with Dumbledore over the floo and heard that the entire school was taking part in an exchange program that the United Magical Nations of the World (the U.M.N.W.) had decided to instigate to better encourage better relations world wide and to also help broaden horizons. What kind of horizons apparently wasn't mentioned during the conversation.

From what Dumbledore had mentioned, according to Ron, is that two schools had randomly been chosen and a coin was flipped to see which school would visit the other first. Dumbledore had lost the coin toss so Hogwarts would be going to visit a school whose name Ron couldn't remember and that they would be staying at the school all year, even during holidays.

Of course, this was all supposed to be a surprise like the Tri-Wizard Tournament had supposed to have been.

Hermione considered the letter for a bit before she set it down. She looked about her room at all the souvenirs that she had collected over the years from her parents' globe hopping. She never did understand how her parents got so much time off and why she'd never been to their dental office, but she had grown up with things like this and she wasn't going to start asking questions about what she had always known and felt safe with. But that wasn't what occupied her thoughts at the moments.

She looked at her snowglobes from Germany, Italy and Sweden. She had three posters showing landscapes from Iceland, Bulgaria and Ireland. She had a stuffed toy kangaroo from Australia, an alligator from Greenland, a wolf from Russia and a panda from China. She had a golden pendant from Egypt, a decorative fan from Japan, a tribal necklace from Africa, and a jewelry box from Poland. In pictures around her room showed her in France, Romania, Austria and Transilvania. It had just occurred to her that she had never been to America in all of her life.

Hermione then rose from her bed, a determined look on her face. Clad in a pair of blue flannel pajama pants with a baggy tie-dye shit that she had bought from a sidewalk shirt vendor in London, she strode from her clean and orderly room, down the immaculate hallways, down the narrow stairs and into the horrendously cluttered and messy living room.

Her parents were both watching the television set, which was turned on to a movie that was familiar but unfamiliar enough so she couldn't quite place it. Both of her parents turned to gaze at her, muting the movie so they could give their beloved only daughter their undivided attention.

"Mom, dad, can we take a vacation to America? I've never been there and I want to learn more about it before my school year starts because my school's taking a trip to another school there and staying there for the year. So, please, may we go?" Hermioned asked, hopeful that they would condone her request.

Jane and John Granger both looked at each other, considering their daughter's request. She had never asked them to go somewhere for their vacation except for last year when she had asked that they make a brief two week visit to Bulgaria to visit her friend, Victor Krum, but she hadn't asked them to take their entire vacation there. A request like this just didn't seem normal for Hermione.

"Hermione dear, are you sure you want to go to America?" Jane asked. Hermione nodded, her frizzy brown hair bobbing with her head.

"Yes, I want to learn more about their culture because I know that it's vastly different from ours! I mean, they don't even drink tea! And over there they drive on the wrong side of the street and it's alright to swear and be violent." Hermione began to ramble off all of the differences that she saw between the two countries which made her parents smile.

"Alright dear, we'll book our vacation this weekend. Now off with you, your mother and I were watching this movie." John shooed his daughter, turning the volume back on the television. Hermione let out an uncharacteristic squeal of joy, that she only did at home, and hugged her mother and father in thanks before darting back upstairs to write to Ron to tell him about this big new development in her vacation.

Harry let out a load groan of protest as he returned back to the land of the living. He blearily blinked about the room when he heard a soft chuckle that sounded rather close. He jumped when he felt an arm cross across his hip.

I tried to make it longer in apology for taking so long. I got caught up in school but I promise that I won't this semester. I've got my classes balanced, I'm no longer getting up at 5:00am just for school, I'm getting up at 8:30am, I no longer have a job (although I am applying for a photographer position at a local portrait shop) and I am trying out for a bunch of competitions for FFA, but I promise that I will devote at least 20 minutes to at least 1 hour of time each night to write. So, I hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Please review and tell me if you liked it or not. I plan on taking this somewhere where I doubt you'd expect and Victoria is soon going to get her "reward" for what she did to Harry.

Promise.