International Wizarding School Championship (IWSC); Round 1
Theme: Beauxbatons—the past haunting you
Year: 5
Mandatory Prompt: [Character] Vampire
Additional Prompt: [Setting] Beach
Word count: 2391
AU: I based off the vampires from Twilight. So, hardened marble and ice-cold skin, bright red eyes, can't cry physically, glows like a disco-ball when out in the sun, superhuman speed and strength. Basically all senses are heightened.
Additional info: Yes, I took Elsa's physical appearance and name from the movie 'Frozen' after watching Frozen II this afternoon.
Beta readers: Kelsey, Esme, Sloane, Mandy, Ash
The sound of the waves lapping against the shore soothed his internal turmoil a bit. Some parents shouted warnings to their children not to go too far, a few were helping their kids build sandcastles, and—the one that hurt the most—some couples were kissing.
Sam watched them and his heart ached. He should've been here with his wife. Laughing at some silly joke, kissing each other passionately. His first trip to the beach shouldn't have been so sad.
His mind flashed back to that awful day.
Sam walked as fast as he could without making it seem like running. He'd gone to Knockturn Alley to buy some rare potion ingredients. However, for the past ten minutes, he felt like someone was following him. The hair on the back of his neck stood up; a feeling of foreboding settled in his gut, as if something was about to go wrong. Very wrong. He looked over his shoulder and focused his hearing, but he couldn't see or hear anything. Except, his instincts had never failed him before.
Suddenly, a silken, perfect voice came from the shadows behind him, and he froze in fear.
"So, my prey is running, is he?" crooned the seductive voice. "Well, I do like it when they try to flee. But no one can outrun me."
Sam knew that voice. He had heard it enough times on the Wizarding Wireless. It was the mysterious vampire who'd been turning any witch or wizard he could find and then taking them to…somewhere.
Not being able to help himself, he turned around and gulped.
The creature was perfect. He looked like his body was carved from marble by a skilled sculptor. His aristocratic appearance, pale skin, lithe body, and red eyes would have made the vampire an object of lust if it weren't for the primal instinct to run away from the creature as fast and as far as he could. But Sam knew there would be no outrunning him. The red eyes tracked his every move. Suddenly, the vampire moved with a speed faster than lightning and bit him in the pulse point of his neck. He screamed out in pain as the venom started its work.
He didn't want to be taken by the vampire—his sire—and someone seemed to have heard his prayers. A voice eerily familiar shouted 'Incendio', the only spell lethal to vampires. His last vision was of the shocked expression on the vampire's perfect face as he burned.
Sam closed his eyes and fell into the deep abyss of unconsciousness.
Unconsciousness was a peaceful void. Consciousness was a red reality where everything burned. Every cell in his body was on fire. He screamed for someone—anyone—to kill him. Nothing existed apart from the pain, not even time. So that made it infinite, with no beginning and no end. An infinity of pain.
It could have been seconds or days, weeks or years, but, eventually, time came to mean something again.
Two things happened together: time restarted and strength started returning to his frail body. He could feel the control of his body come back to him in increments, and those increments were his first markers of time passing. The burning did not decrease one tiny degree—in fact, he began to develop a new capacity for experiencing it, a new sensitivity to appreciate, separately, each blistering tongue of flame that licked through his veins. He discovered he could think around it.
That didn't stop him from screaming.
His hearing improved next, and he could count the frantic, pounding beats of his heart. He could count the shallow breaths that gasped through his teeth. He could also count the low, even breaths that came from somewhere close beside him. Those were the slowest, so he used them to mark the time.
He continued to get stronger, his thoughts clearer. He realised that a voice somewhere close beside him was speaking. It sounded familiar, and he was able to understand that it was his fiancée's voice. She sounded broken that he was screaming, so he tried to lower it to a minimum.
"Sam? Sam? Can you hear me? It's been three days. Sam, can you hear me?" She sounded worried and, even though he could twitch his fingers just fine, he knew that if he made even one tiny twitch of his body, he would lose control and resume screaming and writhing in pain, begging her to kill him. It would kill her. So, he didn't move. He stayed paralysed even when her voice started growing increasingly frantic.
"Sam, I love you. I'm sorry I couldn't save you," she said in a choked-up voice.
He wanted so much to answer her, but he didn't. Through all this, the fire continued burning. But there was so much space in his head. Room to ponder their one-sided conversation, room to remember what had happened, room to think about the future, with still endless room left over to suffer.
She said that he looked dazzling which gave him hope that maybe he didn't resemble the charcoal briquette he felt like. It seemed as if every cell in his body had been razed to ash.
Then, twenty-one thousand, nine hundred seventeen and a half seconds after he first heard her beloved voice, the pain changed.
On the good side of things, it started to fade from his fingertips and toes. Disappearing slowly but surely. And then the bad news, the fire in his throat wasn't the same as before. It wasn't only on fire, but now he was parched, too. Dry as bone. So thirsty. Also bad news: the fire inside his heart got hotter. His heartbeat, already too fast, picked up—the fire drove its rhythm to a new, frantic pace.
"Sam? Can you hear me? Sam?"
He was wondering whether he could answer without screaming. And, at that moment, his heart took off, and he thought it might grind through his ribs. The fire flared up in the centre of his chest, sucking the last remnants of the flames from the centre of his body to fuel the most scorching heat yet.
The pain was enough to stun him, to break through his iron control. His back arched, bowed as if the fire was dragging him upward to his heart.
It became a battle inside him—his sprinting heart racing against the attacking fire. Both were losing. The fire was doomed, having consumed everything combustible, and his heart was galloping towards its final beat.
Then, with a final burst of pain more intense than anything else, his heart thudded once before stopping completely. His fiancée took a sharp intake of breath.
For that moment, the absence of pain was the only thing he could comprehend.
Then he opened his eyes and looked around in wonder. Everything was so clear. He could distinguish the individual grains in the dark wood ceiling above him. A spider tried to climb up a wall some fifty feet away, its gangly limbs flailing in its attempts. He looked in the direction of the frantic heartbeat.
"Elsa?" he whispered.
As he saw her, he realised that he had never properly appreciated her beauty. Her hair, which he had once thought was platinum, was neither platinum nor blonde. It was a mixture of both, giving her hair an eerie but beautiful color. Her eyes—which he had thought to be the simple shade of sapphire—were actually a mixture of hundreds of shades of blue, most of which he couldn't even identify. They reminded him of the waves near the beach. Her eyes glowed slightly, leaving their piercing blue tint ingrained into his mind. Her pale skin was marred with dark rings under her eyes which signified that she hadn't slept for a few days. They were a hundred times more pronounced, and he could identify several shades of purple in them.
His fiancée managed a weak smile and said, "You look good, Sam."
"But, how?"
"I followed you since I was afraid that something might happen. Especially with the vampire on the loose. And, sure enough, he was following you. Fortunately, he seemed too engrossed in you to notice me. I couldn't kill him just yet since he would detect me, evade my spell, and then kill me. But, oh Sam! I was too late to save you! I managed to kill him and brought you here. You've been unconscious for three days. I'm so sorry." With a final sob, she launched herself at him.
He caught her easily with his inhuman reflexes. She felt as if she could break under the slightest touch. She felt warm and soft against his ice-cold, marble body. He carefully hugged her close and inhaled her scent. She smelled of roses and the forest and a weird metallic scent which he thought was the smell of blood.
However, he didn't have the urge to drink her blood even though he was thirsty.
"Why don't I want to drink your blood?"
"I used a spell that would negate any desirable qualities in my blood. So you would still be able to smell it, but you wouldn't have the desire to drink. Speaking of drinking blood, here. I hope you like O negative," she said, still sitting on his lap. She brushed her blonde hair away from her sapphire blue eyes and gave him a bag full of the sweetest blood he had ever smelled.
He instantly started drinking from the bag. Only after finishing it did he realise that it might be gross for Elsa to watch him.
"I'm sorry—"
"Don't be. You are who you are. You can't go against your instincts."
She had always been there for him. She'd never judged him for his vampirism. However, one day, tragedy struck.
Elsa had forgotten to cast the spell that masked her blood.
The minute he smelled her, he knew all was lost. Her blood was the perfect mixture of sweetness and tanginess. He couldn't stop his body from reacting. He rushed over to her with a lightning fast speed, overcome with the desire to taste her. It was the first time he was actually drinking blood from its source—Elsa brought him bags of blood from a nearby Muggle blood donation camp—and it felt brilliant. The adrenaline spiked up the tanginess of the blood and made him yearn for more. He could faintly hear Elsa screaming and trying to push him away, but he was too far gone for those to have any effect. He felt like if he moved his fangs from where they were, then he would die. Slowly, the light in Elsa's eyes dimmed until, finally, they became dull.
With her last breaths, she told him that she did not blame him and that he had to be strong.
He was devastated by her death. He was even more devastated by the fact that he was the one who caused it. His only consolation was that it had been painless. He never forgave himself. He kept on whispering, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
For three days, he dry-sobbed over Elsa's body. Then, when he somehow got a semblance of control over himself, he gently lifted her from the floor and buried her near the graves of her parents—her last wish. He wanted to turn himself in to the Ministry. They would execute him, no doubt. However, he couldn't. Elsa wouldn't have wanted him to commit suicide. She would've wanted him to live, and he couldn't bring himself to dishonour Elsa's memory like that.
So, without seeing any alternative, he ran. He ran until he stumbled across a vampire coven who behaved like a family and feasted only on the blood of rapists and murderers. The coven, or 'family', wasn't large—comprising a father, a mother, and a daughter—and they welcomed him with open arms. With time, they became his surrogate family.
It took him months to talk about Elsa or anything related to her without breaking down and crying. However, one day, he told them, and they were wholly supportive of him and helped him in any way they could to come to terms with her death and ensure that every moment in his life wasn't filled with heart-wrenching guilt and self-loathing. He'd never be able to thank them enough for that.
After thirteen years of living with them, he decided to roam the world alone. Along the way, he gained a new name for himself, got the respect of several vampires and practically became vampiric royalty because of the feats he had done. Even though he saved the vampiric world multiple times and lead and won wars against werewolves and wizards, that didn't stop his surrogate mother from smacking him across the head when he did something stupid.
However, in the thirty years he travelled the world, never once had he gone to a beach. The beach reminded him of Elsa with its calm, blue waves reflecting her eyes and the unpredictability of the sea. No one could say for certain whether there would be a peaceful day at sea or whether the fishermen's families would mourn their loved ones. It reminded him of Elsa. When she'd looked at someone, they hadn't known whether she intended to punch them or tell them a joke.
Elsa loved the beach. She said that the waves lapping against the brownish-white sand, people of all ages surfing, swimming, bathing or playing with a ball, people sunbathing and talking to their neighbours all brought a sense of peace and exhilaration which she wanted to last forever. He didn't see what was so good on the beach, but it didn't matter. If Elsa was happy, then he was happy.
He'd known if he went to a beach, it would open a can of memories he hadn't been ready to confront yet. However, when he found out that his surrogate sister dearly wanted to see a beach, he decided it was high time to face Elsa's memory head-on. Seeing his sister playing around in the water and his parents laughing and enjoying themselves brought a genuine smile to his lips, and his eyes twinkled with merriment—a sight nearly unseen since Elsa's death.
His life would've been whole if Elsa was there with him.
It had been forty-three years, and Elsa's death still felt like yesterday but, perhaps he was finally beginning to heal.
A/N: Hope you all enjoyed it. Please read & review. Have a wonderful day/night.
