Daphne's tone was cold and numb as she recounted what she had witnessed. Harry knew she could feel his guilt for having left her behind when they ran after Rosie. He hadn't even noticed that she wasn't there until they were nearly at the house with the smoking chimney he had smelled earlier, but they had been struck by an ambush before he could even turn around. He wished he could tell what she was feeling right then, but her end of their connection had been steadfastly closed, and he wasn't about to pry if she wanted the privacy he had robbed of her when his Animagus form had imprinted on her.

He watched her describe in a cold voice the man with the blades hunt down the poor bastard laying on the ground not twenty feet from them and proceed to cruelly rip him to shreds while her face remained expressionless, and he was reminded of when they first met on the Hogwarts Express over two years ago. While she still maintained her cold demeanor now from time to time, there was a distinct difference in it. She was no longer seen as cold and vicious. His younger students had no problem approaching her to ask for help when he was busy during his nightly study sessions, and she almost always gave it (though she had to try her best not to simply wind up doing their homework for them, as Harry had explained that they wouldn't learn anything that way), and seeing her smiling or laughing in public was no longer considered breaking news within the Hogwarts Grapevine.

Once she had answered all of Lucas and Newt's questions, Harry pulled her away while they went over to inspect the corpse. They stopped about thirty feet from the other two in front of the massive form of Harry's biggest surprise that evening.

"Is that –"

"Hagrid?" Harry asked. "Yeah. We found him half dead not far from where we were ambushed. No sign of Madame Maxime though. He must have been walking for weeks to get here from the northern part of Germany."

Daphne did a very good impression of a goldfish as she gaped at Hagrid's unconscious body and Harry smiled fondly for a moment before his concerned frown returned and he gently reached out to grab Daphne's arm.

"Are you sure you're alright?" He asked.

Daphne's lip twitched at his concern. "I'm fine."

"Do you want to go back to Hogwarts?"

In an instant, she had wrenched her arm from his grip, and her cold mask lowered just enough to let him see her fury at what he had just asked. "No," she hissed. "I already told you that I'm fine and perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I don't need you playing the overprotective boyfriend."

Harry squashed the instinct to react with his own anger as her control slipped just a tad, and he saw a hint of emotion spark behind her eyes. He was suddenly reminded once more of his third year, after he had uncovered that Hermione had applied her prodigious intellect into constructing a runic array to eavesdrop on him and record whatever he said.

*(OoO)*

It was almost a week since Harry had discovered that one of his best and, until recently, only friends had gone so far as to spy on him. Since then, his emotions seemed to be in a constant flux, making him rather frustrated with himself as he had been trying his hardest to master the techniques described in the books that Severus had given him and Daphne on Occlumency. All of them built on the idea of controlling oneself; of acknowledging one's feelings and mastering them, but Harry didn't even know what he was feeling other than anger. As a result, his frustrations continued to mount, and he had started snapping at the slightest thing.

It had all come to a head when he had been distracted during Potions, and he had not caught Malfoy levitating extra fire seeds into his poor excuse for a Confusion Concoction until he was instinctively pulling Neville to the ground as flaming hunks of cauldron went flying around the room as his potion exploded and it was only thanks to the many, many wards he had set up around the Potions' classrooms to account to being forced to teach in a poorly ventilated dungeon with barely enough funding to refill his storerooms every year and Severus' quick reflexes that no one was hurt. When Harry had pulled himself to his feet, Severus had already vanished the remains of his potion and cauldron and was marching towards him, looking angrier than Harry had ever seen him, even before they had come to a truce over whatever it was that Harry's Mum had left for him.

"Tell me, Potter," he sneered. "Are you really so incompetent that you can't understand that leaving a potion to simmer means you stop adding ingredients?"

At that point, Harry felt something snap as he heard Malfoy snickering across the room. He forgot that he and Severus were playing a part and couldn't stop himself as the words tumbled out of his mouth.

"No, sir, I just figured I would see how many fire seeds it would take to make an explosion to get me out of class for the rest of the year."

Snape had taken fifty points from Gryffindor for reckless endangerment of his fellow students and assigned Harry detention every day for a month. Harry just rolled his eyes and gathered his things before storming out. He wound up skipping the rest of his classes and spent the rest of the day in the Chamber of Secrets, undoing much of his hard work restoring it as he fired spell after spell at everything around him, reducing the outer chamber to rubble.

By the time he had calmed down and repaired everything, Harry had missed both lunch and dinner and was feeling irritated once more as he made his way down to the dungeons. He fully expected to be spending the next month cleaning cauldrons while listening as Severus reverted back to the snide git he had been during Harry's first two years.

Instead, he entered Severus' class and found him sitting calmly behind his desk. There was only one cauldron laid out on one of the desks, and it was in pristine condition.

"Good evening, Professor," Harry said cautiously, not sure what to expect.

Severus reached into his robes and pulled out a small vial, placing it on the corner of his desk without taking his eyes off the essay he was marking. "Drink that."

"What?"

"Drink it," Severus said, finally lifting his eyes to meet Harry's.

"What is it?"

"A variation of the standard Calming Draught. You and I are going to talk while you brew me a perfect Confusion Concoction, and I won't have you losing control of your emotions this time."

Grabbing the bottle, Harry ignored Severus' piercing gaze as he reached into his bag for his various potion supplies. Unpacking his kit, Harry opened the bottle and poured a little bit of it onto a small metallic sheet. He then wafted the potion carefully before carefully inspecting its colour, thickness, and transparency. When he was done with that, he pulled out one of the newer books on Potions that he had bought and flipped through to the page containing the various diagnostic, analysis, and scanning charms before quietly casting them. Most of the spells took a few attempts, as he hadn't had much practice with them and they were coming from a book that opened with a warning that stated the materials and subjects it covered would eventually go beyond what was seen during standard wizarding education.

Severus didn't say a word the entire time as he watched Harry methodically reverse engineer his potion to confirm that it was indeed a Calming Draught before analysing the supposed variations Severus had made, and what their effects would be.

Finally, nearly half an hour since he had arrived, Harry had determined that it was indeed a Calming Draught, and that Severus had modified it to negate the usual mental fogginess that drinking the potion usually resulted in. Instead, when Harry drank it, it would make both his body and mind physically incapable of becoming agitated or excited in any way. Satisfied with what he had found, Harry took the rest of the potion and downed it in one gulp – not even tasting it as he threw it past his tongue and down his throat.

Immediately, he felt the simmering anger in his chest ease off, and he breathed deeply as he headed towards the storeroom to collect the necessary ingredients. When he came back and started to carefully cut his eel eyes into perfect quarters with practiced ease, Severus finally started to speak.

While Harry worked on his potion, Severus calmly guided him through the maelstrom of emotions he was feeling – his blunt honesty making short work of explaining and elaborating on the many confusing feelings coursing through Harry – before forcing Harry to look inward and ask himself why he was feeling each of those emotions. When Harry would finally give an answer, they would then talk about his reasoning and figure out whether he needed to move on or, if not, how to properly sort the emotion so that it could be easily managed. By the time Harry went back to his dorm and started another attempt on his Occlumency training, he felt significantly lighter.

He had seen a Mind Healer when inside the Dilation Chamber at Gringotts, and while Barggurk had done wonders with helping him recover from the last twelve years, Harry had never been able to properly open up to the goblin. He had managed to move past most of the more debilitating psychological effects that came with spending over a decade being trapped with monsters, the trauma that came from experiencing so many near-death experiences in such a short amount of time (one of which involved him killing a man with his bare hands), and the betrayal of learning that the only man that he thought was maybe trustworthy had been planning on manipulating Harry's entire life to meet his own ends. Barggurk and Griphook had even congratulated him on managing such tremendous progress in the six short months they spent together – but despite Harry now having recovered some of his mental health, it wasn't until that night in the dungeons that his emotional wellbeing started to improve.

He and Severus had formed a bond as Harry stood there, carefully preparing a potion he, quite frankly, thought was too simple to be taught in third year, under Severus' critical, yet approving, gaze. Before Zephyr and Tipsy had saved him, Harry had the feeling that he might be able to trust Dumbledore, but Severus, despite – or maybe because of – the fact that he worked as a spy for Dumbledore, was the first adult and authority figure that Harry felt he could trust not to share his secrets. Yes, he knew logically that Severus had made a vow on his magic not to divulge Harry's secrets, but, as he was starting to learn, logic and emotion had the tendency to work in diametrically opposite directions from time to time.

*(OoO)*

Snapping back to the present, Harry sighed as he saw Daphne close herself back off.

"So, what was it you found?" She asked snippily, crossing her arms and stamping her feet in place to fight off the cold February air.

"You might want to try summoning that broomstick up your girlfriend's behind before it gets frozen there," Lucas grunted in French, and Harry made himself feel bad for snorting as he cast a quick warming charm over her before joining Lucas and Newt over the body.

"This is truly remarkable," Newt said as he examined the multitude of lacerations all over the man's body. "If I didn't know better, I would have sworn that this man died as a result of a werewolf attack."

"Even though the full moon isn't for another ten days?" Harry asked.

Newt nodded and ran his wand over the corpse. "I never believed them, but there were a number of reports during the War of werewolf attacks despite the lack of full moon. For the most part, they were dismissed as hysteria, or someone stumbling into the territory of a wolf born from two werewolves who mated during the full moon."

"I can see why," Daphne said. "Voldemort's forces were terrifying enough with the werewolves only coming during the full moon. If he found a way –"

"I'm not talking about Voldemort," Newt said, cutting her off.

Daphne scowled and narrowed her eyes. "But you said –"

"Voldemort may be a Dark Lord of extreme power and skill, but he's not the first," Newt replied sternly. "Nor will he be the last. What happened in Britain before Harry's parents were taken from him, while tragic, wasn't even classified as a war by the ICW, despite people calling it such."

"You're talking about Grindelwald," Harry concluded.

Newt nodded, a faraway look in his eye, and Harry couldn't help but wonder if it was the same look that he had whenever he thought about his life or the war.

"You fought in the war against Grindelwald?" Daphne asked, her cold tone touched with a hint of awe.

"Everyone fought in that war," Newt replied sadly. "We shared the battlefield with the muggles those days, as Grindelwald tried to reveal our world and subjugate them. Luckily, muggle warfare has somehow gotten even more chaotic in recent years, so they generally didn't even know what it was they were seeing as they slaughtered each other."

"If anyone could figure out how to replicate what Grindelwald did, it would be Voldemort," Lucas stated.

"Except he didn't," Harry argued. "You both heard Daphne. All of these wounds were inflicted with knives, not by a werewolf."

"I'm afraid there just isn't enough information," Lucas said with a sigh. "I've already made requests for the autopsy and investigation reports from the other attacks that you told me might be linked, but they seem to have been caught in bureaucratic purgatory somewhere. Until they get through, I think that we've done all that we can do."

"Would you mind terribly if I recorded some initial observations?" Newt said as Lucas pulled out his wand, probably to request back up.

"Be my guest."

Pulling out a roll of parchment and a quill from his robe, he tapped both with his wand and they floated up to a spot near his right ear as he pulled on a pair of gloves.

"Subject is a white male, roughly five foot nine. Based on matching facial structure and eyes of a similar shade – brown with hints of green along the outside – as well as timing and location of the body –"

"They're red."

Newt stopped his recording and looked up from where he was kneeling next to the body.

"Pardon?"

Daphne's face remained impassive, but Harry couldn't help but smile as her cheeks burned from him, Lucas, and Newt all suddenly fixing her with their attention. "His eyes," she said. "They aren't brown, they're red. I saw them."

Lucas and Newt both stiffened as a look of dread crossed over their faces. "Are you absolutely sure?" Lucas demanded. "There is no possible chance that it could have been a trick of the light, or anything of the sort?"

Daphne shook her head, her blonde hair flying side to side. "You don't mistakenly see eyes like he had. They almost glowed, and were nearly the exact same colour as his blood."

"Monsieur Scamander, how certain are you that this man is related to the two that we found earlier?"

"A passing glance would tell anyone that this man is the father and husband of the two we found after the ambush," Newt replied. "I can cast a few spells to confirm it when we get back there to confirm it though."

Harry stiffened as he just barely heard a pair of cracks in the distance and held up his hands to indicate they all be silent. He closed his eyes and threw his senses as far out as he could, snapping them open just in time to tackle Daphne to the ground as the two rapidly approaching presences burst from the surrounding trees on either side of them. The one nearest him just barely missed Harry's back as he fell while the other managed to take a slice out of Lucas' arm before forcing him and Newt back as they crouched protectively in front of the corpse and glared at Harry as he got himself and Daphne up on their feet.

"Who are you?" Harry demanded as he stared down the two figures.

Both of them were men and quite tall. Judging by the way their higher-end combat robes hung off them, they were also fairly thin. Their skin was white as the snow on the ground and they both looked strangely well-groomed for a pair of people snarling viciously in front of a dead body. What did catch Harry's attention, though, were their eyes. Both men had burning red eyes and Harry briefly thought of the only other person he had ever encountered with red eyes. But where Riddle's eyes were completely filled with a bright, fiery red with the exception of the snake-like pupils, in the case of these men, it was only the iris that was unusual as they burned with sanguine fury.

"So that's how you've been hunting us, Lycan," the one that had sliced Lucas hissed. He had long, pale blond hair tied back into a neat ponytail and reminded Harry of someone you would see in a portrait of an old, abandoned castle. "But don't think siding with a filthy Day Walker will save you from being skinned like the animal you are."

The man snarled at Harry once more, and he suddenly realised what Lucas and Newt had been so worried about as he watched the man's teeth grow longer and sharpen into an impressive set of fangs before he burst forward with speed that no human would be able to attain. Never before had he been so grateful for Griphook's brutal combat lessons as he and the vampire was suddenly raining blows upon him with nearly bone-breaking force. Grunting as the force of the vampire clawing at his ribs knocked the air out of him, even if he had managed to transfigure his skin just in time to prevent what would probably have been disembowelment, he ducked another punch being thrown his way and slammed his hand up into the vampire's face, conjuring a bulb of garlic in the palm of his hand just before the impact, and breaking the vampire's nose.

The vampire screamed in pain and Harry pulsed his magic into his leg before kicking the vampire in the chest and sending him careening towards his friend who had been keeping an eye on his friends. His friend was just about to trade places and go after Harry next when he found himself staring into the angry faces of a miniature dragon and bird while a lion held an orb between its jaws that glowed like the sun.

"Make any move and I'll roast you both where you stand," Harry growled. The vampire's snarled and Harry rolled his eyes as he vanished the remnants of the garlic that he had conjured. "I didn't kill this man."

"You think we'd believe a filthy mutt like you?!" The vampire who had attacked him shouted.

"Julian, that's enough," the other ordered. He had hair darker than Harry's, and it was neatly slicked back to show off his high cheekbones and strong jawline. The newly dubbed Julian looked like he wanted to protest, but a hard look from his companion made him settle for simply glaring at them all. "I'm sorry for my associate's behaviour. He means well, but he still hasn't mastered himself."

"How'd you know I have Lycanthropy?" Harry asked.

"Our senses are just as sharp as yours," the vampire replied. "Though, I admit that you don't smell quite like what we normally expect Lycans to."

"I'm not a normal Lycan," Harry said. "Who are you two anyways?"

The vampire pointed to himself and said, "I am Adrien. The man acting like a freshly sired whelp is Julian."

"I'm Harry, and this is Daphne, Lucas, and Newton," Harry replied, pointing to himself and his respective friends in turn.

"I would say it was a pleasure to meet you, but you have yet to prove you didn't kill this man or lower your staff," Adrien said calmly.

"Daphne witnessed the murder," Harry replied, lowering his staff. "She said that a man came and used a series of blades to make it look like a werewolf attack."

"Lies!" Julian exclaimed. "You wand-waving beasts just want to hide the fact that you've figured out how to change on will."

"He's telling the truth," Daphne said harshly, stepping forward to stand next to Harry. "I only regret there was nothing I could do."

"If it is as you say," Adrien began. "Would you consent to me observing the memory?"

"Adrien!" Julian cried. "You can't be serious! Who knows what perverse things are lurking in her mind?"

"I said that's enough, Julian," Adrien growled. "Your prejudices do nothing but reduce us to the monsters the humans would think we are."

"But she's a Day Walker!" Julian argued. "Her very existence is a crime against nature itself!"

A flash of light was the only warning Julian got before Harry was standing over him, a light hissing noise and a tendril of acrid smoke rising from where his sword was pressed against Julian's neck.

"Feel that?" Harry asked lowly, his eyes having reverted to their bestial form. "That's goblin-wrought silver imbued with basilisk venom. You so much as twitch and you'll have killed yourself within minutes. Now, apologise to my mate before I let her take matters into her own hands."

Julian growled, but the steady hissing from the point of contact made him wince in pain before mumbling a less than sincere apology to the ground. Harry removed his sword from his throat but kept it on hand as he turned back to Adrien.

"Now, what exactly is a Day Walker?"

Adrien frowned and raised an eyebrow in confusion. "You claim to be this girl's mate, and yet you cannot sense our venom running through her veins."

"Wait," Daphne held up her hands in confusion. For the first time since Harry had found her, her side of their connection opened up and he nearly drowned in the flood of confusion and panic. "Are you trying to say I'm a… a vampire?"