Harry glanced all around the platform, uncertain whether he ought to be looking for Silviu or Petri. In the end, a tap on his shoulder startled him, and he whirled around, searching fruitlessly for a minute before he spotted Petri on the far end, gloved hand and wand outstretched. Harry sighed. Of course there was a spell to poke someone at a distance.
"Er, hi," Harry said, ducking around a boisterously chattering family and narrowly avoiding an elbow to the head.
"Welcome back, Harry," said Petri with more poise. "We shall be taking the floo to Sixty-six Knockturn. Come along now."
There was a queue before the row of fireplaces at the back of the platform, and they stopped behind a couple who were accompanied by an older Slytherin girl.
"I read about the fire in the newspaper," Petri said, in German, for some reason. "Was Dumbledore really harbouring an illegal dragon?"
"Well it was er, one of the staff, not Dumbledore," Harry clarified.
"He must have known," Petri insisted.
"Why? He's not all-knowing. He told me he didn't know about the Dark Lord and Professor Quirrell either. I don't think he was lying," Harry said.
"You would never know if he was lying," Petri told him with a snort.
They arrived at the front of the queue, and he took a handful of floo powder out of his pocket, depositing some into Harry's open palm. Harry tossed it into the crackling grate and stepped into the ensuing tongue of green flame with a deliberately enunciated, "Sixty-six Knockturn Alley," keeping a firm grip on his trunk. Then all the wind was knocked out of him, like someone had rolled him into a carpet and then unrolled him down the stairs. Countless fireplaces whooshed past, destroying his sense of balance, and finally he was spat out at the end of the flickering green tunnel to stumble into the musty, dank shack that passed for the graveyard's floo station. A pair of disgruntled owls hooted reproachfully at his soot-covered form.
Petri, somehow entirely composed and soot-free, arrived a second after, stalked past him, and pushed open the rickety door, blinding them both with the afternoon light. Harry struggled to catch up, leaning on his trunk for balance.
"I'll never get used to the floo," he muttered.
"It takes practice," Petri allowed. "Speaking of practice, have you practised your animation?" And as if it were an afterthought, he added, "How were your marks?"
"Er, good. I got the top spot in Charms," Harry said, and somehow under Petri's stoic gaze it seemed like an expectation, rather than an accomplishment. "I've got animating mice down, but I couldn't really find something, er, bigger to practise on."
Petri nodded distractedly as they picked their way through the tall grass between the gravestones. "We can get some rabbits. Or perhaps you can move right to a muggle."
It occurred to Harry how unfair it was that he had literally just got off the train from school, and here Petri was, already talking about more spell practice. But the image in the mirror haunted him—his parents, alive and proud, because of him. Parlour tricks with mice weren't going to cut it.
So he said, "Tonight?"
Even Petri seemed to think this a little ridiculous, however, because he stopped and turned to give Harry a raised eyebrow. "Our landlord wants to meet with you tonight," he said.
Harry stiffened, suddenly remembering about the vampire business.
"I drank blood," he blurted out, before he could put all the events littering his mind in the proper order. He hadn't even mentioned the Dark Lord's possession yet, had he? Shaking his head, he tried to clarify, "and, er, I liked it. And the matron, she said I had the vampire curse at a late stage, but I thought I'm not supposed to be changing because I'm not dead."
Petri bore this rapid deluge with grace, and waited a beat after Harry finished before he said, "I miscalculated," which was the last thing Harry wanted to hear. He held his panicked tongue and waited for Petri to continue. "Do you remember the reconstruction where you died?"
"Yeah," Harry confirmed. How could he forget that? He tried not to leap ahead to wild conclusions.
"It likely accelerated the curse," Petri said.
"So I'm going to turn into a vampire?" Harry demanded, voice jumping up an octave. Petri sighed and shook his head.
"If you do not die again, it should not progress any further," he said, turning to continue walking. "And unless you stay dead for an entire night or more, no.I do not believe you will turn into a vampire."
"But does it matter?" Harry asked. "I'm basically halfway a vampire, aren't I? I drank blood!"
"It matters because your fate remains open," Petri insisted. "As long as you remain fundamentally a wizard, you will have the power to choose your destiny."
He descended into their coffin house, and Harry scrambled to follow, pulling the trap door shut behind him.
"The Dark Lord said that muggles don't even have destinies. What's the difference between choosing one and not having one?" he asked. Petri froze at the bottom of the stairs.
"The Dark Lord spoke to you?" he demanded.
"The Dark Lord possessed me for a while," Harry admitted. "He told me some things about arithmancy."
"How long is 'a while?'" Petri demanded.
"Er, around two weeks," said Harry.
"Two weeks," Petri repeated as if dumbfounded, "and Dumbledore…"
"He doesn't know. I didn't tell him," Harry said.
Petri digested this information in silence for a few moments, and then sat down at the table with a sigh, touching his hand to his temple.
"I suppose I should count myself lucky that you are telling me all this," he said. "And did the Dark Lord give a reason why he decided to possess you in particular?"
"Er, he said he needed to regain his strength. And Professor Quirrell wasn't doing so well. He was possessing him before," Harry said.
"But this professor of yours is still alive?" Petri asked. Harry nodded. "He cannot have been too badly off then. Think, boy! A conjured spirit can temporarily occupy even a dead body, so your professor could easily have remained possessed until he died, and even for a short time afterwards."
Harry frowned at the gruesome thought.
Petri forged ahead. "The Dark Lord wanted something from you, specifically. But why only two weeks? Where is he now? Still at Hogwarts?"
"No. I dunno where," said Harry. "He escaped, er, with the philosopher's stone."
"He what?" Petri demanded, turning white. His hand dropped to the table with a dull thud and Harry got the sense that his mind was suddenly somewhere else. He took the opportunity to drag his trunk to his bedside and sit down on his duvet instead.
At length, Petri's lined face regained some colour, and he exhaled deeply. "We don't have much time then," he said, peering at Harry with curiously dull eyes. "We need to prepare for the Dark Lord's return."
"What do you mean, prepare?" Harry asked. Was there some standard checklist of things to do before the Dark Lord resurrected himself?
"You asked before what it means to choose your fate," Petri said. "As wizards, we have the power to know what the future may hold. Not just to guess, but to know, if conditionally. Because of that, by choosing present conditions, we are effectively choosing future outcomes. But you must understand that using that power means sacrificing another sort of power, the power of ignorance. The future is open, there are infinite possibilities—until we try to look. When we look, when we grasp at those infinities, only a finite handful remain."
Harry blinked. That actually made—well, a frightening amount of sense. "So you mean, you already, er, looked at your future then? So that means you can pick the best one, right?"
Petri snorted, still frowning. "Sometimes, one must do something, even knowing that it will lead to a worse outcome."
Harry tried to wrap his head around this strange statement, but he kept coming back around to the thought that a worse outcome couldn't possibly actually be worse, if it was the one that he would pick.
"I don't understand," he finally said.
"I hope you never need to," said Petri, and Harry noticed for perhaps the first time that he was an old man. Though there was no sign of frailty or uncertainty in him, he spoke with an undeniable world-weariness that Harry only ever remembered hearing from Professor Dumbledore.
"Okay," said Harry. "So you picked a, er, worse outcome. What exactly is that, then?"
"You do not want to know," Petri told him without irony. "You will not be able to prevent it, so it is better that you find out when it happens."
"It," Harry said with a frown. "It's some specific bad thing that's going to happen, then?"
Petri glared, and Harry knew he wouldn't get any further with this line of questioning. Instead, he asked, "So do I have to do anything then, to 'prepare?'"
"That depends. I suppose you can decide if you want to see and pick the 'best' outcome, as you said, or if you would rather not know," Petri said.
Normally, Harry knew he would jump for the 'knowing' option. Now he wasn't so sure. Knowing, he realized, was irreversible.
Or was it?
"Er, if I don't like it, can I, you know, get memory charmed?" Harry asked, hoping he didn't sound like a complete fool.
Petri drew his eyebrows together. "That is an interesting question," he muttered. "I do not know if it's been tested. Or how one would even go about testing it. How can you confirm whether something happened if you don't remember the information? Perhaps you could write it down and hide it…"
"I want to try seeing," said Harry, half certain that he was going to regret saying it immediately. Of course, he didn't actually regret it—he still wasn't sure what to feel. It was something between excitement and nausea.
"It might not even work," Petri warned him. "You have a talent for divination, but there is significant technique to this method as well."
Harry shrugged.
"Tomorrow then," said Petri. "As I mentioned before, you have a meeting with our landlord tonight."
He did not elaborate, so Harry asked, "What kind of meeting?"
Petri wrinkled his nose. "I believe some kind of gathering with his entire company. You'll have to humour him, since he believes that you are a part of it. Better have some dinner before you go. He's expecting you at sunset."
He gestured to the table, where Harry had to do a double take. What he had at first dismissed as the usual pile of books and papers included something that very much didn't belong. Underneath a translucent, hemispherical dome was a plate laden with a piece of bread, a slice of ham, and a hunk of cheese. The dome vanished when Petri waved his wand.
Harry opened his mouth and then closed it, uncertain if he should question this turn of fortune. Memory of the lavish leaving feast was still fresh in his mind, dampening the appeal somewhat, but even a simple meal was miles better than the chalk-flavoured nutritive potion he had been expecting.
Suspicion won out. "Did we run out of potion or something?" he asked.
Petri smiled with eye-crinkling sincerity, which was never a good sign.
"Rosenkol learned to… cook is perhaps the wrong word. Prepare food," he explained. Harry gaped.
"Rosenkol? Really?" he muttered. It seemed almost less plausible than if Petri had claimed that he himself had produced it.
"Rosenkol, show him," said Petri. Instantly and without a sound, Rosenkol stepped out of the corner and into the light. Harry blinked rapidly. Had the elf been there the whole time? Rosenkol raised his hand and Harry's jaw dropped even further. He was holding a wand, and it wasn't Petri's wand, either.
The elf waved the wand very violently at the plate of food. The piece of ham slid on top of the bread, and the cheese melted over it.
"Wizardling is eating his dinner now," Rosenkol said, his bulging black eyes gleaming with some unknown emotion.
"Er, thanks, Rosenkol," said Harry, shuffling over to the table.
Settling a little uncomfortably in the hard-backed wooden chair, he picked up his open-face sandwich. He wasn't sure what exactly he had been expecting, but it tasted exactly like it looked. Just fine.
"It's good," he told Rosenkol, who for some reason looked relieved.
Harry was not sure if it would be rude to ask about the wand, but he could not help glancing back at it every now and then.
Petri finally took pity on him and told him, "It's my latest project, another experimental wand. Rosenkol has been assisting me with the testing."
"That's pretty brilliant," said Harry, because it was. He swallowed down the last of his dinner and Rosenkol immediately cleared the plate with further brandishing of his wand.
After dinner, Harry busied himself with some unpacking, which largely consisted of moving things from his trunk to the space underneath the bed and slinging his few casual robes over the backboard.
They set out for Silviu's at twilight, just before eight, though it was plenty dark on account of being overcast. Harry had no doubt that Silviu was already up and about—the vampire was awake during the day far more often than he had the right to be. Indeed, as they entered the Coffin House accompanied by mournful tolling of bells, it was Silviu and not Leticia who stood behind the counter.
"Ah, Harry, Peters, welcome!" Silviu greeted with a jovial, close-lipped smile. He slunk around the counter to shake their hands. Harry's he held for longer than strictly necessary, taking a moment to scrutinise him. Harry held his gaze, but could read nothing in it. "You're right on time. The others are still trickling in."
Even as he said this, the doorbell tolled again and an unfamiliar woman entered. She was short, perhaps only a few inches taller than Harry, and wore her black hair in a very severe bowl cut that did nothing to hide her pointed ears. Her dark skin was practically grey with vampiric pallor.
"Shy, welcome!" Silviu exclaimed, turning to the new arrival.
"Chairman," said the presumed Shy, nodding. They clasped hands, as if to arm wrestle, and held them in the air for a few seconds before letting go.
"I'll see you at midnight," Petri told Harry.
"You're leaving?" Harry demanded under his breath.
"I'm not invited. You'll be fine," Petri said, and gave Harry a firm pat on the shoulder before exiting the shop.
"Shy, this is Harry, our newest member. Harry, this is our treasurer, Shyverwretch, though she prefers Shy, yes?" said Silviu, reaching out and steering them to face each other.
"Er, nice to meet you," said Harry, holding out his hand. Shy reached for it from below, like she and Silviu had done, and Harry raised his arm somewhat to go along with the alternate handshake.
"Likewise," said Shy, her expression bland. Up close, Harry saw that her eyes were a disconcertingly bright green, like a cat's.
"Do you run the poison shop?" Harry asked, remembering the name from a nearby storefront.
"Yes," said Shy. "You should visit some time. Not afraid of snakes, are you?"
"Oh, no, I don't mind them. I, er, I can talk to them," said Harry. Shy seemed to warm up at that, though her ensuing smile revealed her dagger-like eyeteeth, which was perhaps not an improvement.
"Can you really? You've got to come by then. After the meeting," she said.
"I'd love to, if I have time. My uncle is expecting me at midnight, though," Harry told her.
"Plenty of time," said Shy. "The meeting's usually only an hour or two. The Crystal Wonders man is your uncle then?"
"Yeah," said Harry, wondering if Petri had visited the poison shop before, or vice versa.
"I've been wondering about that. You're in the company and he's not?" Shy asked.
"It's a complicated situation," said Silviu. "The man's a necromancer."
Harry started, not sure how comfortable he was with that fact being tossed about casually, but he supposed there was nothing he could do about it.
"Oh, I see, I see," said Shy, nodding her head slowly, almost mechanically. Then she peered carefully at Harry, and said, to Silviu, "How did you manage that one? When did you manage that one?"
"A year ago," said Silviu. "I couldn't just let him run through our alley unchecked."
"A year ago," said Shy flatly. "Why are we only now hearing about this?"
Silviu sighed deeply. "You aren't going to like it," he said.
"What a marvellous way to start," Shy sneered.
"I kept postponing the announcement because I was hoping the bond would dissolve. It was involuntary," said Silviu.
"What?" Shy demanded, taking a threatening step forwards. "You're saying you broke the charter and risked all our lives and didn't say a word? For a year?"
"I risked nothing," Silviu said firmly, his eyes glowing orange like two pinpricks of candlelight in the dim illumination. "Have patience and listen."
Shy reeled, stepping back suddenly as if struck.
"First of all, we all agreed that we should not rely on the charter in a situation of mortal danger. All of us were, to the best of my knowledge, in mortal danger at that time. Perhaps something even worse than that. Annette can attest to it."
"I'll be sure to ask her," said Shy.
Silviu ignored her confrontational tone and continued, "Afterwards I performed the memory charm and intended to allow the bond to dissolve. But not only did the bond hold, the charm itself was broken."
He glanced to Harry, who looked to Shy, who had made a soft sound of surprise. Harry wondered if she had made the connection between a broken memory charm and torture. He winced a little. Did Silviu really need to go into such detail?
"I had hoped, after a year of little contact, that the bond would finally fade, but it has not, and I can no longer deny it. Does that satisfy you?"
"Fine. Thank you, Chairman," said Shy, looking away. "I'm sorry for questioning you."
Silviu winced audibly. "No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to exert my gaze."
"You shouldn't apologise for that," said Shy. "I'll see you at the meeting."
She turned away and made for the back room.
"What was that about?" Harry asked Silviu when she had disappeared behind the door. "What's this bond that you're talking about?"
"The blood bond between you and me," said Silviu. "It's what makes you part of the company."
"You mean, it formed when you bit me?" Harry asked.
"And then shared my blood," Silviu added.
But they hadn't shared blood, had they? Harry's thoughts flitted to Petri, who seemed convinced that nothing of the sort had happened.
"You don't remember, perhaps," said Silviu. "I'm sorry for memory charming you."
"You're sorry it didn't work," Harry corrected. Silviu smiled sadly.
"I wanted to introduce you to everyone tonight. Officially. But if you really don't want to be part of my company, you don't have to. We can keep waiting. The bond is supposed to fade on its own if I don't renew it," he said.
It suddenly occurred to Harry that he was talking to an actual vampire. Surely Silviu knew more than the bits and pieces he'd puzzled together from the Hogwarts library, Hermione, and Madam Pomfrey?
Even as his thoughts flashed to the hospital wing, and the blood, Silviu's face fell.
"You drank human blood?" he asked, though by his expression Harry knew that he already knew. Of course.
"Stop reading my mind," Harry demanded.
"Stop thinking of me while you think other things," said Silviu.
That was the problem?
"It won't keep me out," Silviu admitted, "but I won't look."
The image of a dark tunnel and two passing ships struck Harry suddenly. Also, it goes both ways.
"Oh," said Harry, feeling a little thick. For some reason, he'd assumed Silviu was doing it on purpose. The actual problem was probably that Harry had no skill at mind magic, and could not take advantage of the connection.
"Anyway, you haven't felt tired during the day? No? Paralysed by running water? No. Aversion to garlic? Yes? But like an allergy, curious. Show me what drinking blood felt like. Yes, that's exactly it; seems like you really do need it. Hmm. It's like you're halfway turned. I've never seen anything like this," Silviu concluded.
Harry looked away, privately—now that he knew how—privately thinking of what Petri had said about him momentarily dying, and how he would not become a vampire unless he "stayed dead." It sounded like Petri was probably right, which was simultaneously troubling and reassuring.
"So what does that mean?" Harry asked. He felt confused and troubled, and it took a moment to realise that these were Silviu's emotions.
"I'm not entirely sure," said the vampire. "I—"
Just then, the front door opened again to allow some newcomers inside, and Silviu broke off to go greet them.
Talk later, go join the others, Harry understood, and he entered the back room.
It looked completely different from usual. The model coffin houses had all been pushed against one wall, eclectic seating arrangements set up in their stead. Rickety wooden stools and large cushions were crammed between overstuffed divans, floral-patterned armchairs, and bean bags. It reminded Harry a little bit of the Ravenclaw common room, only squashed into a much smaller place. At one end of the room there was some clear space and small table had been stacked on top of a larger one to make a podium of sorts.
There was already an assortment of people there. Harry recognised several of them—the hag from the Spiny Serpent, who was cackling merrily with Leticia, Mr Moribund the solicitor with his blackboard, and of course, Annette, who was sitting primly in a chair in the front row, whispering to Shy. Annette waved at him as he entered.
Harry went up to her and was about to take a seat when Annette beckoned for him to come even closer.
"Hello Harry. Front row's for the presenters," she whispered, and Harry felt his ears heat up a little, though of course he couldn't have known. He sat down cross-legged on a low pouf towards the back, instead.
More people trickled in over the next few minutes, mostly hags and vampires, though Harry saw a handful of probable-humans as well. There didn't seem to be anybody else his age. The room had mostly filled up when Silviu finally entered, securing the door behind him with several wordless spells.
"Good evening everyone," he said at an even volume, and all the chatter in the room abruptly ceased. "Are we all here? Looks like it. Before we get started, I'd like to introduce you all to our company's newest member—Harry, could you stand up?"
Feeling exceedingly self-conscious, Harry got to his feet, which did not really give him much height advantage over sitting. Dozens of eyes turned on him, and he wasn't sure where to look. He turned to the front, and Silviu gave him an encouraging smile and nod.
"Hi everyone. I'm Harry," Harry said, hoping that that was enough.
He got a sense of approval and a mental thumbs-up from Silviu, and he sat down again.
"There'll be time to socialise after the meeting. Tonight's agenda."
Silviu stopped talking and instead Harry got the literal image of a piece of parchment in his mind's eye, with the word, "Agenda" scrawled across the top, and below it, "General news." Then came the leering face of a goblin, a pile of gold, Shy's face from a strange, high angle, Annette, a red-robed auror, the concept of prison, Leticia and the Leaky Cauldron, and finally the sound of a chattering crowd and the image of raised hands.
None of this made much sense at first, but over the course of the meeting it all grew clear.
"For the general news," Silviu began, out loud once more, "Markus and Cordelia are officially engaged as of yesterday evening. Congratulations, Markus."
Enthusiastic clapping and whistling broke out, and Harry joined in uncertainly. He followed everybody's gaze to a gangly man with a nasty scar across his throat and subtly shimmering tattoos covering almost every inch of his skin. He was grinning widely with flat, obviously human teeth. Whoever Cordelia was, it seemed that she wasn't present.
"When's the wedding?" asked Silviu, though he clearly already knew.
"October eleventh. We got a muggle place," said Markus.
"Looking forward to it," said Silviu. He paused to allow another round of applause. "Next, ELM is looking for somebody interested in becoming an undertaker's apprentice. Please spread the word. Squibs and non-humans welcome. That's it for me. Our treasurer will give an update on the situation with the goblins."
Silviu stepped down from the makeshift podium and sat down next to Annette, while Shy took his place. She was too short to look over the top of the stacked tables, and elected to stand in front of them instead.
"The goblins still haven't found a way to force us to declare commercial vaults, and I plan to keep it that way. If you recall, last month they raised our vault fees to five percent, the maximum on personal vaults and barely better than commercial. Luckily, they have no idea who is and isn't in our company, and they hit Borgin and Burke's with the rate hikes as well. They've got some friends in high places, and our rates are back down to one percent, retroactively. I'm sure the goblins will realise their error soon enough, but we can expect to be left in peace for at least one quarter. Any questions?"
Shy paused and looked all around the room.
"Sales are up in pre-fabricated everyday items and down in dark arts paraphernalia. The main driver is the DMLE focus—aurors have been increasingly cracking down on hex hobbyists. Overall gross margin was behind plan this month by five hundred galleons due to an unexpected rise in floo powder costs. However, operating income is ahead because of our lower Gringotts fees. Dividends will be disbursed on Monday as always. That's all I have."
Shy waited a few moments more for questions before returning to her seat. Harry had only a vague idea of what she had talked about, made rather worse by her stoic, unwaveringly flat tone of delivery.
Annette stood up next, shuffling to the front.
"Hi everyone," she began, at a strong whisper, "The alley watch is reporting increased auror presence during the day. There's no sign of them backing off, so everybody, please be careful. I received word that two of our tertiary brothers were arrested for possession of cursed artefacts with intent to afflict."
"Edwin and Melville," said an old woman, hunchbacked but probably not a hag, from the left side of the room. "Reckless boys."
"It's a shame. Azkaban will do 'em in," said the hag from the Spiny Serpent. Her enormous hat slid down over her nose, muffling whatever she said next.
"Aw, don't say that," said Leticia, "They're strong boys, they'll show the dementors what's what."
"Wonder what they were possessing," said another hag. "Next thing you know, lads getting arrested for possessing sleepy candles."
For some reason, all the hags tittered at that.
Annette cleared her throat, and speculation died down.
"Let's move on. On the other side of the wall, the muggle monitors have found three new friends. We're also looking for more monitors. If you're interested or know anybody who might be, please let me know after the meeting. Thanks."
With that, Annette returned to her seat, slumping so that her hair hung in front of her face like a closing curtain.
Next up was Leticia, who hobbled up to the front and clambered onto the large table, grinning widely and swinging her pointed feet.
"I made a new friend last week. His name's Tom. That's right, Tom the barman at the Cauldron. Friendly chap served me up some pork liver. Highly recommend. Nothing so good as a good muggle liver, but it hits the spot."
Leticia jumped down and shuffled back into her corner without saying anything else. Harry was half horrified, half bemused by her announcement, but from the excitable whispering of the hags in the room, he figured Leticia's words had not been intended for him.
Silviu went up to the podium again. "Thank you Leticia, Ettie, Shy. I want to open up general discussion now. Please raise your hands."
A dozen hands went up, one after the other, and Silviu picked up a quill from the desk and began scribbling, presumably to note names.
Harry sat back, still completely bewildered by the meeting. Why was he here? He didn't like to think of himself as a child, but in a room surrounded by adults discussing things that he did not understand, he could not help feeling painfully young.
The open discussion was even more confusing than the announcements. People brought up everything from ill pets to potions ingredient prices to international news. All inquiries seemed to be directed at Silviu, and impressively, the vampire had a ready answer for everything.
After the meeting, just as Harry was floundering in his corner, wondering whether to leave or stay, Shy shoved through the crowd to reach him and held out a hand.
"Come on, kid, let's go hang around my shop," she said.
Fleetingly, Harry thought that it was perhaps not the best idea to leave with a stranger in the middle of the night without Petri's knowledge, but then he was already halfway out the door. Silviu smiled and waved at him, apparently unconcerned.
"What's your favourite sort of snake?" Shy asked as they walked along the starlit alley.
"Er, I don't really know," said Harry, feeling ignorant.
"I have a runespoor," said Shy. "You'll love it."
They arrived at Shyverwretch's Venoms and Poisons in no time, and Shy kicked open her door and snapped her fingers. A dozen candles flared to life and revealed a dingy, cramped shop stuffed with crates and shelves, all crammed full of phials and flasks with multicoloured contents. Harry glanced back to the door and saw that the frosted glass there and in the window was opaque with what looked like centuries of encrusted grime.
"This way," said Shy, leading him through a labyrinth of shelves. Harry stepped gingerly, wary of catching his elbow somewhere and sending vials of what was presumably poison crashing to the ground. They squeezed through a tiny opening to get behind the narrow counter and Shy ushered him through a back door into a pitch dark room.
Harry got a bad feeling, like he was about to have the door slammed behind him, but Shy only snapped again to illuminate this new room, revealing rows of gigantic glass terrariums stacked one on top of the other from floor to ceiling.
Whispers flared up along with the firelight.
"It's back!" said a chorus of voices.
"What's that? Another one?"
"Hungry, so hungry."
"Shut up. You just ate. I'm the hungry one."
"I'll eat the both of you."
Harry's head whipped left and right, trying to follow the raucous dialogue of what appeared to be dozens of snakes, many of which had vibrant hues or even flashed multiple colours.
Shy led Harry all the way to the back of the room, where the entire wall was taken up by a single terrarium that housed an enormous, three-headed snake that was twice as long as Harry was tall. It was bright orange, with uneven black stripes, like a tiger. For some reason, there was a metal cone strapped to one of the heads, but not the other two.
Naturally, Harry asked, "What's the cone for?"
"To protect the right head, so the other two don't off it. And to protect the others from it. The right head is the one that's venomous," Shy explained.
"Look, there's a new one," said the left head.
"I can't bloody look, look for yourself," the right head snapped.
The left head knocked into the cone, hissing angrily. "I wasn't talking to you!"
"It's brought a hundred mice for us," said the middle head, swaying and pressing close to the glass.
"You don't even know how big a hundred is, idiot," the right head muttered.
"They're bickering," Harry told Shy with some bemusement.
"That's what they do," Shy said. "Try talking to them."
"Hello," Harry tried. All three heads froze and turned to him as one, and the runespoor reared up.
"It talks. Ask it for mice," said the left head.
"All you ever think about is food," the right head spat.
"One hundred mice," the middle head ordered.
"Have you got any mice?" Harry asked Shy.
"Loads," she said. "You can feed them if you want. Though it's not that exciting."
Shy walked back up the room a ways and opened a narrow door that was between two tanks, revealing a closet full of barrels that were about Harry's height. She dragged one out with little effort and popped the lid off, reaching inside and coming up with a very stiff-looking brown mouse.
"They're petrified, but it wears off when I put them in," she said, going up to the glass.
"A mouse, a mouse!" the left runespoor head hissed wildly. "Get it!" It made a sort of halfhearted lunge, smacking against the glass with a low thud.
"Ouch! You dunderhead," the right head snarled. "Get a hold of yourself."
"Eat tree bark," the left head retorted, snapping its jaws at the right.
Shy closed her fist tightly around the frozen mouse, and it seemed to shrink until it disappeared into a little shadowy miasma. It appeared about a meter away, inside the runespoor's terrarium, where it dropped to the ground and darted off, now unpetrified.
"You can apparate objects like that?" Harry demanded.
"Neat, innit?" said Shy. "But you're a wizard, right? So you can do loads of different magic."
"Nothing like that," Harry said. "At least, I've never seen anything like it. I only just finished my first year at Hogwarts, though."
"That's school?" Shy asked. Harry nodded. "How old are you, anyway?"
Harry frowned. Why were people always interested in his age? "You first. How old are you?" he shot back.
Shy laughed. "I'm twenty-one. How's that? Your turn."
"Eleven," Harry said. "Almost twelve."
"And the chairman put his teeth in you without asking?" Shy muttered, shaking her head. "Well, I suppose some of the friends are about your age."
"What friends?" Harry asked.
"Friends of the company. You know, kids that come to us for protection or goods. He really didn't tell you anything, did he?"
"No, nothing. And I didn't understand any of that meeting," said Harry, eager to hear more. In fact, as much as Silviu seemed to love hovering over Harry and nosing into his business, Harry had never felt like the vampire actually listened to what he had to say.
"Well of course you wouldn't have," Shy said, "At your age I barely knew my way around percentages, forget financial reports. All the main company attends those meetings though. Say, is Crystal Wonders one of the company's businesses, then?"
"Er, I'm not sure," said Harry. "It's under my name, but my uncle runs it."
"I see. Your uncle. The necromancer? I pretended I knew what the chairman was talking about but actually I don't have the faintest idea. What's so bad about necromancers?" Shy asked.
"Er, I don't know either, really," said Harry. He knew for sure that Petri was a criminal, a dark wizard, but what that had to do with necromancy specifically was not totally clear to him. In principle, animating dead bodies and using them for divination did not hurt anybody.
Then again, there were horcruxes.
"Oh, okay. I thought it was just me being ignorant again. I don't know much about you wizards, to be honest. I used to be what you lot call a muggle," Shy told him.
"But your name's Shyverwretch," Harry protested, after a beat of surprise. That was the least mugglish name he'd ever heard. The Dursleys would have gone into hysterics at the sight.
"I made that up because my old name's too plain for a vampire," Shy explained, "but it's a little over the top. Shyverwretch sounds like some nasty old hag's name."
"I think it's pretty wicked," said Harry. Shy flashed him a fanged grin.
"Thanks."
"Strike! Kill! Go, go!" the snake shrieked behind her.
"Shut up! I'm trying to concentrate," said the right head, lunging for the scrabbling mouse. It dashed its cone against the ground, sending a flurry of wood chips clattering into the glass. The mouse streaked diagonally across the terrarium, whereupon the middle head swooped down lazily to snatch it up.
"Where'd it go?" the right head demanded, swivelling about.
"Mm… mouse..." murmured the middle head.
"Does it need to eat three times as much, or does it only have one stomach?" Harry asked Shy, gesturing to the runespoor.
"One stomach," said Shy. "Or something like that. To be honest, I have no idea what's inside that bloody thing. Did you know it lays eggs through its mouth? Mental, innit?"
"That does seem strange," Harry agreed, though perhaps it was perfectly reasonable for magical creatures.
"They're worth good money," Shy said, shrugging. "Say, how'd you learn to talk to snakes, anyway? You weren't having me on, were you?" She narrowed her eyes.
"No, look, I'll show you," said Harry.
Actually he was a little nervous that he would embarrass himself completely by speaking plain English, as that was how the snake language sounded to him. He focused on the runespoor's left head and said, "Hey, do you want another mouse?"
"Ninety mice," said the middle head.
"Ninety-nine," the left head corrected.
"You two are real tree biters!" cried the right head. "Yes, I want a mouse."
"I'll go get one," Harry said. He turned to Shy, who was staring at him open-mouthed.
"That's so wicked! Can you teach me?"
"Talking tree, go now and get us a mouse," the left head commanded. Harry realised it was addressing him, and wasn't sure whether to feel offended.
"Er, let me get a mouse first. That's all it seems interested in," Harry said. Shy snorted and helped him retrieve another mouse, which she apparated into the terrarium as before.
"How do you say 'mouse'?" she asked Harry. "Actually, how does this even work? There's no way it's hearing that hissing you're making. I suppose it's a kind of magic?"
"I dunno," Harry admitted. "It just sounds like English to me, actually. Let me try saying 'mouse.'" He turned to the snake and said, "Mouse," trying to focus on listening to what he actually said. Sure enough, even though the English word was echoing around inside his skull, it turned out that what had come out of his mouth really was a low hissing.
"I've got this. Us vampires do plenty of hissing too, you know? Let me try. Listen," Shy said. A strangled, inhuman hiss seemed to emanate in every direction, echoing around the room and carrying with it the vague connotation of food.
"Food?"
"Mice? Where?"
"Hungry!"
A flurry of susurration erupted all throughout as the snakes grew agitated in their tanks.
"It worked!" Shy shrieked. "This is so brilliant. Teach me other ones."
They spent the next hour going through vocabulary that was commonly used by snakes. As far as Harry could tell, it was possible to say anything in the serpent language, but actual snakes mostly talked about eating, sleeping, hunting, and danger. The runespoor was also fond of various tree-related insults.
"I'm surprised you can make some of these sounds," Shy said, after they'd spent a particularly long while working on the word, "big." "I had to collapse my lung for that one."
"Er, that sounds painful," said Harry.
Shy shrugged. "I don't need to breathe to live so it doesn't matter. Still, I think that's enough for tonight. When were you supposed to be getting back?"
"Midnight," said Harry, panicking as he fumbled for his wand. "What time is it?" he muttered. The wand read out eleven thirty, and he sighed with relief. "It's only eleven thirty," he said.
"Your wand works like a watch too? Neat," Shy said. "How about I walk you home? You won't run into any trouble with me around. I am the trouble."
Harry agreed, and Shy locked up her shop temporarily.
"Do people buy poisons a lot?" Harry asked. There had been no customers for the past hour.
"In person? Not really," said Shy. "Who wants to be seen buying something they can't use? I get plenty of owl order business though, don't you worry. So er, where do you live?"
"Sixty-six Knockturn. The graveyard," Harry told her.
"What, in the plots? That's where I live too!" Shy exclaimed.
Of course, Harry realised; she was a vampire, after all.
"I live in C-10, what about you?" she asked.
"D-12," said Harry.
"We're practically neighbours. I can't believe I've never seen you."
"I don't get out much, and I was at Hogwarts all year," Harry pointed out.
"You were out learning magic all year?" Shy asked. Harry nodded. "Why does it take so long? I got all my powers down in a month, and I thought I was slow. I suppose it's different for wizards?"
"It must be. Hogwarts is seven years," Harry informed her.
"Blimey," she muttered. "Do you do that on top of the usual maths and history and such?"
"Er, not really, there's no maths, and we only have magical history," said Harry.
"No maths?" Shy demanded. "Sacrilege."
Harry, for his part, was perfectly fine with there being no more maths. Primary had been bad enough.
They reached the gate to the cemetery, and Shy paused. "Are you fine to go from here? I just realised… I think the chairman probably wouldn't want me meeting with your uncle, by myself, I mean, not in public. No offence, but you know, or maybe you don't know; none of us know."
"It's fine," said Harry, agreeing completely. It was probably for the best that as few people met Petri as possible. "Thanks for walking with me."
"No problem. You know where I live now. Feel free to come by. I close shop around six. You're free to come by the shop too, of course," said Shy.
"Alright, thanks."
It was an uneventful walk across the cemetery, and Harry made it to the coffin house unmolested. He slotted his round key into the cover and the door clicked open.
"Harry?" said Petri, sounding surprised. "Did you walk home by yourself?"
"Er, no, one of the other vampires walked with me," he said.
"One of the primary company?" Petri asked.
"Er, I suppose? What does primary mean?"
Petri sighed. "The vampire's direct victims are part of the primary company. If one of the primary company members becomes a vampire, then their victims are the secondary company, and so on. I received a reference on this topic from an illustrious neighbour of ours. Accio."
A vaguely familiar red volume extricated itself from the pile on the table and zoomed towards Petri's outstretched hand. He deflected it at the last moment and banished it at Harry instead. He glanced down.
Blood Brothers: My Life Amongst the Vampires.
"I've read some of this before," Harry said, remembering his unfruitful foray into the Hogwarts library on this topic. "Are you sure the stuff in here is true?"
"While the style is questionable, the content is most informative," Petri assured him. "You can read it later. How was the meeting?"
Harry wrinkled his nose. "Boring. Most of it was way over my head. They were talking about business and not getting arrested by aurors."
"Ah, so it was with the whole company?" Petri asked.
Harry was about to nod when he remembered, vaguely, that Silviu had once claimed his company had hundreds of members. There had only been maybe twenty people at that meeting, but there had been talk of others, so Harry said, "I think it was just the, er, primary company."
"I see. So it was all strictly business? Nothing untoward?" Petri pressed.
"Nothing untoward," Harry confirmed. What had Petri been expecting? A bloodbath? If that was the case, he ought not to have sent Harry in the first place.
"Good, good. I looked at your exercises while you were gone. Overall, good work. We can talk about the details later," Petri said.
Harry's nodded, a little surprised that Petri had not torn his half-hearted answers apart. His exercises had been rather low-priority for him, and by the time he reached them he had usually spent all his eloquence on essays for his school subjects. Harry shrugged to himself and prepared for bed.
He dreamt about snakes with red eyes, potions, and pneumothorax, and woke up feeling very groggy.
Petri was already up and sitting at the table again, making notes of some kind. The whole picture didn't make any sense.
"Did you sleep?" Harry asked him.
"No," said Petri, but he didn't look or sound sleep-deprived. "I have moved to a more nocturnal schedule, as it is better for business."
"Oh. Uh, how's the shop?" Harry asked.
"Doing quite well. I hired one of our landlord's 'friends' as a shop boy on weekends," Petri said, making air quotations around the word, "friends."
"Friends are people who, er, work with the company?" Harry asked, for confirmation.
"Mostly squibs and muggles who've been bitten, but not killed or given blood," Petri corrected.
Harry remembered Shy saying that she used to be a muggle.
"Isn't that bad for, er, secrecy? Muggles?" he asked.
"From what I've seen, our landlord keeps his 'friends' very well-contained," was Petri's cryptic answer.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Harry pressed, immediately suspicious. He knew Petri was being vague on purpose.
"Why don't you ask him yourself? He is your company, after all," Petri said.
Even though he got the feeling that Petri was trying to bait him into discovering something he wouldn't like, the idea at face value wasn't a bad one. Harry had a lot of questions for Silviu, and last night had done nothing to answer them like he'd hoped. He had been so distracted by Shy's shop and the fun of sharing the snake language with someone so genuinely friendly and enthusiastic that he had forgotten about his intention to talk with Silviu.
"Wouldn't he be asleep by now?" Harry asked.
"Perhaps not," said Petri. "It's still early."
"I'll go check his shop," Harry said. He paused and peered at Petri, wondering if the man was going to take issue with his intent to go outside alone. But there was no reaction, even as he climbed to the top of the stairs and pushed open the front door.
Not questioning this sudden lack of concern—it seemed like Petri had really bought into the whole idea of being part of the vampire company protecting him somehow—Harry hurried outside.
It was still early morning, not too muggy yet, and thankfully not raining. However, the clouds were grey and dark overhead, effectively blotting out the sun. It looked like vampire weather.
Petri had been right; Silviu certainly was still awake. He was leaning over the counter, talking with Leticia when Harry walked into the Coffin House, and he broke out into a smile when he turned around and saw who had entered.
"Harry!" he called. Leticia immediately burst into peals of unpleasant laughter. Silviu turned to shoot her a reproachful look.
"Fixated you are, you old dog," Leticia hacked out in between giggles.
"I'm not fixated," said Silviu evenly, obviously trying not to sound defensive. It didn't work. The hag peered at him from under her tangle of grey hair with shrewd eyes.
"I don't blame you. He looks very tasty. Don't you, Harry?" Leticia addressed him directly. Harry was a little taken aback, and uncertain whether to be offended.
He didn't get the sense that the hag was trying to be mean, so he shrugged and said, "Er, thanks."
This response nearly unseated Leticia as her whole body shook with mirth. If nothing else, she seemed to have a very robust sense of humour.
"Not that I'm not glad to see you about, Harry, but what are you doing here?" Silviu asked, ignoring the hysterical hag behind him.
"I, er, I wanted to talk," Harry said. "I want to know more about the bond, the company, everything."
"Of course, you must have so many questions," Silviu said, nodding. "I have some errands to run, but why don't you come with me? We can talk on the way."
Harry agreed, though he had some misgivings about what sorts of errands a vampire would be running. Surely not getting groceries?
For the first time, he noticed what Silviu was wearing. He wasn't clad in solid black robes as usual, but instead in an equally black muggle tailcoat and trousers. With his high-heeled shoes, silver hair tied back severely, and rounded hat, he looked like a displaced nobleman out of the last century.
"Where are we going?" Harry asked.
It transpired that he was going to have one of his burning questions answered directly, and that Silviu was, in fact, getting groceries, in the vampire sense.
"First, we're going to see some friends," the vampire told him. "I need a pick-me-up."
"Friends of the company?" Harry asked. Silviu nodded. "Shy told me they're, er, squibs and muggles who come for protection." He decided not to mention the things Petri had said.
"Something like that," said Silviu. "Usually it's more that they have nowhere else to go. I don't want to lie to you Harry, so I won't sugarcoat it. We don't take them in out of the goodness of our hearts. They're the majority of our blood supply."
It became obvious to Harry also, when they arrived at their destination, what Petri had meant about the friends being "well-contained."
"They're prisoners," Harry said, eyeing the grim, three-storey complex that was surrounded by a tall, iron fence topped with wicked barbs.
"The gate is to keep dangerous elements out," Silviu said evenly. "But yes, you're right, though not for the reasons you think. Our friends—it's impossible for them to leave because they would never want to. They're very happy here."
Harry thought Silviu might be making some kind of sick joke, but he looked completely serious, and a little sad. It was that hint of sadness that stayed Harry's tongue. He nodded and stayed close to Silviu as the vampire unlocked the gate with a spell and stepped into the forbiddingly ramshackle courtyard.
The invasive, bright green plant that grew all around Knockturn, which Harry now recognised as pygmy knotweed, from Herbology, had run rampant over the place, sprouting out between cracked bits of stone that must have once been part of the pavement. Silviu sighed and slashed his wand in a wide severing charm, clearing a path up to the front door.
Harry spotted movement in a grimy window, and the front door opened up before they could even reach it. A girl and a boy who looked maybe sixteen or seventeen ran out with wide smiles on their faces.
"Chairman!" they exclaimed, coming alarmingly close to Silviu and almost shoving Harry out of the way. Still, they stepped back easily as Silviu continued walking.
There were at least a dozen more people inside, all young, some, Harry saw, even about his age, as Shy had mentioned. They all looked genuinely delighted by the visit. There was nothing obviously off about them—they wore clean shirts and trousers and looked well-fed—but their open enthusiasm was disconcerting.
They moved forward as one, crowding Silviu and greeting him by his title, and craning their necks to get a good look at him—no, Harry realised with sudden horror, they weren't trying to glimpse him, they were showing off their necks on purpose, offering them to the vampire.
"Friends, I know I have kept you waiting, but please, one at a time," Silviu admonished, as one might unruly schoolchildren. Remarkably, the friends queued up in an instant, with only minimal jostling. Silviu glanced over to Harry.
"You don't have to stay for this if you don't want to," he said.
Harry, though he felt a little queasy, shook his head. "It's fine," he said. "Er, if you're fine with it."
Silviu nodded. He motioned to the first friend, who practically leapt into his arms and tilted her head back eagerly. Silviu leaned forward, and if Harry hadn't known better, he would have thought that he had given her no more than a kiss. The contact was extremely brief, and the vampire swallowed exactly once.
He repeated this process with every friend in the queue. There were a few, Harry noticed, who had hung back and not joined the others. Silviu took no notice of them. By the time all the friends were through, Silviu was flushed and rosy, and had shed about ten years of age. He wiped his mouth on a handkerchief, an unnecessary motion as no blood had escaped, and gestured to Harry that he was ready to leave.
Harry was bursting with questions, and wasn't sure how to feel. The first thing he asked was, "Is that sanitary?"
Silviu's now-dark eyebrows shot up into his hairline. "What?"
"They won't get infected?" Harry clarified, but Silviu still looked confused.
"I'd have to give them my blood to change them," he began, but Harry shook his head impatiently.
"Not with vampirism, I mean they won't get, you know, normal infection?" he said.
"What normal infection?" Silviu asked. Harry was incredulous for a moment, and then decided that maybe he was the ignorant one, though he didn't see how. He could already guess that wizards didn't get non-magical infections, but these weren't wizards.
"They don't get feverish and die?" he tried. "It's just, when muggles get cuts, bites, especially, they sometimes get worse instead of better."
"I've never seen that happen. It always heals up fine as long as I don't take too much," Silviu said, and Harry couldn't detect any hint of guile, only honest confusion. He supposed he had no choice but to believe it.
"All right then. Why were they, er, so excited?" he asked next. He didn't remember very clearly what it was like to get bitten, but he did recall that it had hurt as much as one might expect.
"They're enthralled by me. Literally. The effect is very short-lived on wizards but on muggles it's essentially permanent unless I try to end it on purpose," Silviu explained.
"Is that legal?" said Harry flatly. "I thought it's illegal to hex muggles."
"It's illegal to hex them, of course," said Silviu. "This isn't a hex, it's a natural effect. Every one of my friends invited me to bite them the first time, for various reasons, and I erased the memories of any muggles who refused me. It's all above board."
All this sounded plausible to Harry, and he did not know enough about law to contradict Silviu, so he reluctantly nodded.
Something still seemed vaguely wrong about the situation, like he knew he should have been outraged by it, but he couldn't put his finger on the problem. After all, he didn't get the sense that Silviu was lying, and what he had said made logical sense. Harry had assumed that Silviu must be doing something fishy because he knew for a fact that hurting people was wrong, and couldn't imagine how Silviu could drink blood without hurting people, but those people had looked far from hurt.
"Where are we going now?" Harry asked, not quite able to formulate any of his other thoughts on the friends. He would think about the matter more later.
"The muggle world," said Silviu.
"Maybe I should leave my robes at your shop," Harry suggested.
"Do you have something to change into?" Silviu asked.
Harry unbuttoned his robe and Silviu flinched away for a second before he saw the T-shirt and trousers underneath. They were old, ratty, and slightly to large for him, having once belonged to Dudley, but he didn't have any other undershirts. Petri, like many wizards, as Harry had learned in the dormitories at Hogwarts, did not believe in wearing anything under his robes. Personally, Harry thought that at least trousers (and certainly pants, for Merlin's sake) were a must.
Silviu took his robe and shoved it into what appeared to be an errant shadow, which left him empty-handed. It was the same thing Shy had done with the mouse last night.
"How do you apparate things like that, without yourself?" Harry asked. "Is there a wizard spell that can do that?"
"I think that would be vanishing and conjuring," said Silviu, "and not apparating. Splinching, I think it's called, seems much more dangerous for wizards. I've heard you can lose body parts. But maybe you can learn to walk like a vampire. I'm still curious about your partial turning… do you need any blood, by the way? I'm sorry, I should have asked earlier."
The thought of drinking blood from a live human was a little too much for Harry, and he shook his head vigorously. "No, I'm fine. The healer said I'd feel sluggish if I needed to. Does that seem right?"
"Yes, like you can't stay awake," Silviu confirmed, "though excessive sunlight can feel like that as well. And, more obviously, I should think, you'll be unbearably thirsty."
"I don't remember feeling thirsty," Harry said, trying to think back to the visit with Madam Pomfrey. Surely he would have noticed such a symptom. Silviu hummed under his breath.
"Interesting. Well, like I said, I've never seen whatever this is, with the bond not fading and you half turned, so I don't know much more than you do," he said.
Harry remembered that Petri had also been under the impression that the vampire curse would get better on its own, at least until the matter of his dying.
"So the bond is supposed to go away?" Harry asked. Silviu made a weird pained noise.
"It's supposed to be reinforced frequently," he said. "To go over a year—it's been almost a year and a half, really—without any reinforcement is unheard of."
Harry had a suspicious feeling about the word "reinforcement."
"You mean you're supposed to, what, bite me again?" he demanded.
"Share blood," Silviu corrected. "It's really not as bad as you're imagining. It's not bad at all. I know you don't remember the first time properly, and, well, it wasn't proper anyway. I'm sorry. I want to make it up to you however I can."
Harry hated that Silviu always apologised whenever the matter was brought up, because he couldn't justify staying angry at somebody who had already owned up to a mistake multiple times.
"It's fine," Harry said. "I'm just still not interested."
They turned onto the bright and lively cobblestones of Diagon Alley for a short moment before ducking through the transforming brick archway into the Leaky Cauldron, which at this time of morning was serving only a handful of groggy patrons.
At the threshold, Harry briefly wondered if Petri would have a problem with him gallivanting around muggle London, but then decided that he didn't care.
Courtesy of the muggle-repelling charms, nobody paid them any mind as they exited the Leaky Cauldron and appeared in the middle of the pavement. Harry blinked rapidly, feeling as if all his senses had dulled suddenly. He had spent so long in the wizarding world that he had forgotten what it was like outside.
It was simultaneously too fast and too slow. People and things were moving—a bus was trundling by and there were muggles milling about everywhere—but the buildings were stone and silent, their colours unchanging and their shadows unassuming. There were no raised voices, no boisterous shouts, only the low, unintelligible hum of people passing each other by in a hurry.
"Hold my hand. We're walking," Silviu said.
Harry assumed he meant the unpleasant sort of walk, and asked, "Why did we come out here first then?"
Silviu grimaced. "Can't leave or enter the Alleys without being traced. Out here, no one will know where we're going."
Harry put his hand in Silviu's, and braced himself. They took a step forward and sunk into a nearby shadow, which seemed to leap up and smother them in black tar. Harry held his breath this time, and shut his eyes tightly until the warm, slimy feeling disappeared.
Maybe it was a touch better than apparition, he decided, when they emerged on the other side into crisp, cool air that carried off the last of the unpleasant sensation. At least there was no compression.
"Where are we?" he asked, squinting against the stiff breeze. They appeared to be on the roof of some building.
"Hospital," said Silviu. As Harry could not think of any legitimate reason for them to be visiting a muggle hospital, he felt some trepidation. Silviu peered over the side of the building and gestured for him to approach. "Get on my back," he said.
"Why?" Harry demanded.
"So we can get down." Silviu said impatiently.
"Can't we walk down?" Harry asked. Silviu shook his head.
"More effort than it's worth," he said. "Come on."
Reluctantly, Harry put his arms over Silviu's shoulders and held on tightly. The vampire stood with no difficulty and swung himself over the side of the roof.
Harry loved flying, and had no fear of heights, but dangling from Silviu's back while he scaled a relatively smooth building with his bare hands was not the most pleasant of experiences. His fingers were stiff and bloodless by the time the reached the bottom, and Silviu had to peel him from his back.
Silviu glanced at the sky and frowned.
"It's getting late. We'll have to hurry," he said, stepping out of the alleyway between the hospital and the adjacent building. Harry stuck close to him, unable to help glancing about in all directions. There weren't any people around, only some cars parked on the side of the road. Silviu led him straight through the open gate underneath a great arch that read, "Saint Mary's Hospital."
"What are we doing here?" Harry whispered.
"Gathering food," said Silviu, which was not really what Harry had wanted to hear, and raised more questions than it answered.
"What do you mean, food?" he demanded.
"Dead bodies," Silviu clarified.
Then they were inside the hospital. Silviu walked confidently up to the receptionist and stared her in the eyes. She immediately acquired a slack expression and waved her arm vaguely. Silviu wasted no time in striding over to a nearby door and entering like he had every right to be there.
"This way," he said, tapping Harry's shoulder and steering them through myriad hallways and staircases. Whenever they ran into somebody, Silviu would repeat whatever trick he had done at the front desk and leave the person dazed, as if they had been confounded. Any secured doors he bypassed with a quick unlocking charm.
"Aren't there cameras?" Harry whispered.
"Don't worry, we can't be photographed," Silviu tried to assure him, though this statement left Harry more bewildered than relieved. He didn't have time to think more on the matter, because then Silviu barged right into a very populated room.
Four heads whipped up to stare at the intruder. Silviu wasted no time in ensnaring the muggle doctors with his eye magic. One of them even dropped her clipboard in sudden inattention.
The room was large and there was medical equipment everywhere, jutting out from plastic boxes in the corners like twisted spider legs and running along the walls into bulky machines. No, those boxes—they were cots, Harry realised. There were babies in there, tiny and almost plastered over in patches and bandages and who-knew-what.
Silviu stared the doctors down for a few seconds more before he made a pleased sound.
"We're very lucky, there's a dead baby," Silviu informed Harry cheerfully, and he strolled over to the far corner of the room and popped open the muggle device as one might crack a nut to get at the tasty morsel inside. Carelessly, he ripped the stickers and wires off the limp infant before re-wrapping it in its blanket and tucking it under his arm.
"What are you doing?" Harry hissed. "You can't just—just take it."
Silviu frowned. "It's already dead," he said. "The muggles certainly don't need it."
"But the parents," Harry tried to protest, but Silviu held up a clawed finger and smiled indulgently.
"Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about them. Come on, that's our last stop," he said.
Silviu led them to a nearby room where a young woman was sleeping on a hospital bed, her presumed husband slumped over in the corner on a stool. The vampire took out his wand this time and cast memory charms on both of them.
"Now we can go," Silviu said, holding out his hand. Harry was a little hesitant to hold the same hand that had just been touching a dead baby, but he couldn't exactly refuse and strand himself in the middle of a muggle hospital, so he took it and shut his eyes.
Another encounter with the warm tar, which for some reason seemed to last twice as long this time, and they were back in front of the Leaky Cauldron.
As they stepped back into the wizarding world, Silviu with his prize in hand, Harry kept thinking that somebody would have to notice something wrong, and that they would be stopped, but they literally walked right past a pair of red-robed aurors and did not get so much as a sideways glance.
Harry managed to hold everything in until they returned to the Coffin House, whereupon he exploded in the threshold.
"What the bloody hell was that?" he cried. There were no words strong enough for this. "That can't have been legal."
Why did he care so much whether something was legal? Even as the word passed his lips, it seemed wrong to him, like he should have said something else. It was impossible to decipher what he was feeling, because none of it made sense.
Legality wasn't important. He knew that. Petri was always doing illegal things, and Harry could not realistically do anything about it. The same logic extended to Silviu. But if legality did not matter, then what did? Something was the matter here. Harry just knew that he should be indignant, even though the only thing he could put his finger on right now was a sense of bewilderment.
Silviu didn't look worried or offended. "Don't be so sure about that," he said conspiratorially. "The only spell I ever used on those muggles was the memory charm. It's perfectly legal for me to do that, as I have an Obliviator's license."
"But you confounded all those other ones," Harry protested, grasping for the easiest argument at hand.
"It wasn't a spell," said Silviu, smiling with his teeth now. "The Ministry can't even put a name to it, let alone regulate it. They have no business telling us when we can or cannot use our natural defences anyhow, as long as we aren't going around attacking wizards."
Of course, that made sense; the Ministry of Magic was primarily concerned about wizards.
"But, the baby," Harry said weakly.
"Did I hear 'baby?'"
Leticia sprang out of her seat, disappeared behind the counter for a moment, and then came bounding up to them. She extended long arms with gnarled, twisted fingers.
Silviu held the baby up out of her reach, but did pull back the blanket to expose its wrinkled, slack face. Harry averted his eyes.
"Oh Silvy," Leticia said, real tears in the corner of her eye, "you're too good to us, you are. Let me have a closer look."
Silviu snorted. "You can have a look at the same time as the others."
Leticia withdrew her hands, her mouth twisting up. "You don't trust me, Silvy? Only want a little taste…"
"There's no need for that," Silviu admonished her, "You know you'll get your due. Get the others. Quickly. I'm exhausted."
Harry looked Silviu over again and noted the creases at the corners of his sunken eyes and the silver streaking his hair. Perhaps doing magic was more taxing for Silviu than he had let on.
It was by now obvious that Leticia was intending to eat the baby. Hags ate children, didn't they? He supposed the baby really was already dead, and that was better than if they had to kill somebody.
Leticia reached into the high collar of her robes and extracted a necklace of tiny bones. She pinched one between her fingers and used it to tap the others like a mallet. A moment later she said, "They're on their way."
Silviu nodded and handed the baby over. Leticia squealed in delight and cradled it to her chest, as if it were alive. She stuck her warty, pointed nose into the blankets and inhaled deeply.
"You have Harry to thank that we found it," Silviu told her. Harry started, glancing back and forth between the baby and Silviu in confusion.
"Oh?" said Leticia.
"I was planning on going to the mortuary, but I didn't want to take Harry too far and the hospital was closer. Hospital is hit or miss but obviously it went very well this time," Silviu explained.
Leticia chuckled. "Harry's a real lucky charm," she said, grinning at him.
Harry didn't feel very lucky; he just felt queasy again.
"I think it's about time for me to turn in. Do you want me to walk you home?" Silviu asked Harry.
"No, it's all right," Harry said. "Er, I'll just get going then. Good day, and thanks for letting me tag along."
"Good day," Silviu said, inclining his head. Leticia waved cheerfully as Harry left the shop.
Despite how out of sorts he was, he didn't regret joining Silviu on his "errands." The trip had answered more questions than he had even known he had had.
It was just starting to rain, and Harry wished he knew how to cast the water-repelling charm. How was it that he had learned so many charms already, but still came up short at every turn? By the time he made it home, he was soaked through and muddy.
Petri was asleep, tucked neatly into his bed. Harry grimaced and tried to dry himself off with the hot-air charm, with limited success. He checked the time. It was half past eleven, and he was starving, having forgotten about breakfast.
"Rosenkol," he whispered, and the elf appeared instantly with a quiet pop. "Was gibt's zum essen?"
He hoped the answer wasn't nutritive potions.
Rosenkol glanced to Petri, put a long finger up to his lips, and then gestured for Harry to follow him into the trunk.
The space had been totally transformed. The extra furniture that had once been crammed into the front room had been cleared away and there were new cabinets installed above the narrow counters at either side. The makeshift jars of bluebell flame were gone, replaced by enchanted light orbs floating on the ceiling, which provided much stronger illumination and lent the room an almost welcoming air.
Rosenkol snapped his fingers and the cabinet doors flew open to reveal shelves stocked full of actual food. Harry saw heads of cabbage, wheels of cheese, bags of onions, potatoes, flour and more. His jaw almost dropped.
"When did we get all this?" he asked. The elf looked away, and seemed almost hesitant.
"Rosenkol is meeting others," he began. "They are not considering Rosenkol well, they are saying that Rosenkol is unworthy of Master, that Rosenkol is a bad elf." He was wringing his hands and had pressed his ears close to his head.
"Others? Other elves?" said Harry. Rosenkol nodded vigorously, and then tugged at his ears. Harry couldn't believe it. Rosenkol had been, what, peer-pressured into learning to cook? "But what about, er, Master Joachim? He doesn't think there's anything, er, wrong with you, does he?"
Tears welled up in Rosenkol's eyes. "Master Joachim is most kind and generous, he is saying that Rosenkol is a special elf, with special duties, and not worthless and wretched. He is even giving Rosenkol a wand to help, instead of sending him away." The elf was sobbing now, though he was smiling at the same time. He produced the experimental wand that Harry had seen him using the previous evening. It didn't look like any wand he had seen before. For one, it was very short, proportional to Rosenkol, who only came up to Harry's chin, and for another, it was sharpened to a point.
"That's good," said Harry, who was rather confused. He knew that wands could make magic stronger and more precise, and that some spells could only be cast with wands, but based on the wonderful meals prepared wandlessly by the house elves at Hogwarts, cooking spells did not fall under that category. Harry had seen Rosenkol conjure spirits and vanish bodily remains with a snap of his fingers. He could not imagine how the elf could have trouble with cooking, wand or not.
Perhaps the problem was that Rosenkol did not know what human food was supposed to be like?
"Are the other elves teaching you how to cook then?" Harry asked. Rosenkol sniffed and rubbed at his eyes with his funeral shroud.
"They are not teaching what should already be known," he said.
Harry frowned. "Well that's unfair. They had to have learned it somehow too, right?" Even Aunt Petunia had never expected that Harry would magically know how to make food, and had spent time showing him.
"They are knowing," said Rosenkol, shaking his head. "It is being in their blood. Rosenkol was a very bad elf and is not knowing anymore."
Anymore? "What do you mean?" Harry asked. "Did something happen?"
"Wizardling is telling no one?" Rosenkol asked, eyes narrowed.
"You're keeping my secret, so, er, Harry will keep yours," Harry promised, remembering that Rosenkol liked it when he spoke in third person also. The elf wiped away the rest of his tears and nodded.
"Rosenkol was a very, very bad elf. Rosenkol…" his voice dropped to an almost inaudible level, "killed his bad master."
"Oh," said Harry. The first question that popped into his mind was how that was even possible. There had to be something to prevent assassination by house elf, didn't there? Otherwise he figured he would have heard of it happening more often. He wasn't sure if it would be insensitive to ask. Instead, he said, "He, er, he must have been really bad master then."
Petri was a terrible person and Rosenkol adored him, after all.
Rosenkol twisted his ears. "He was putting Blumenkol in the fireplace for burning his dinner, so she would know what it is like to be burnt, yes, a fitting punishment." His fingers curled against his head until they drew blood.
"Hey, what are you doing? Stop it," Harry said, but Rosenkol didn't seem to hear.
"Little Blumenkol was weak. She screamed and screamed but bad master had no mercy and she burnt up." Tears dribbled down Rosenkol's face, but still he continued with the story, "He said, he said, he would be having Blumenkol for dinner instead."
He wasn't talking about cauliflower. Harry's mind froze in horror. Rosenkol's name… it was like a sick joke. Rosenkol and Blumenkol. Had they been siblings?
"Rosenkol put the poison in his t-tea," Rosenkol's voice cracked. Harry didn't know what to do. He put his arms around the bawling elf and patted his back.
He could not help going back to his first thought. How had Rosenkol managed it? How could this "bad master" still dare to eat or drink elf-made food after having so gruesomely murdered one of his own servants for a simple mistake? Wasn't it obvious that the other house elf would exact revenge?
"You didn't do anything wrong," Harry said. It was the surest thing he had said all day, as if his mind and heart were finally in the same place. "He deserved it."
Notes: In canon Dobby explains that he ironed his hands, and then he was flogged (presumably by Lucius) when he burned his master's dinner. And Harry's reaction to this is 'you nearly got me and Ron expelled! I'll strangle you!' Okay Harry...