Feel my Fangs

Chapter Two – Vampire Settlement

The fourth person to become intimate with Harry Potter's newfound fangs was Lucius Malfoy.

By then, Harry had no doubt he'd been turned and not just merely bitten. Being bitten didn't necessarily mean that a normal would be turned. An actual exchange of blood between vampire and human was necessary for the human to be turned. Harry desperately wanted to know who had done him in and, especially, why he didn't remember being bitten.

"Tell me, Lucius, about the plot on Harry Potter's life," he hissed in the pureblood's ear.

Lucius struggled but his eyelids drooped and his muscles refused to respond. The extremities of his body felt numb. "I-I don't know, I haven't heard of anything."

"You lie, my dear Lucius," Harry savagely sunk his teeth deeper and felt the skin break around the wound.

Lucius' neck ached a thousand deaths. He wimpered, "I swear! I swear! The Dark Lord has been busy dealing with the werewolves in the North. We all know Harry Potter is untouchable during the summer!"

Hidden in the shadows and behind Lucius' back, Harry murmured suggestively in Lucius' ear. "You will forget this encounter. This is all but a dream. You will wake up tomorrow morning and attend to your usual affairs. We have never met."

Lucius slumped down, his eyes closed. The wound on his neck healed and closed. It occurred to Harry that the same might have been done to him when he had been bitten, which might explain his lack of memory of being bitten.

But Harry knew he had some sort of immunity against mental suggestions, as his resistance to the Imperius curse had demonstrated. Either way, Harry was back to square one and had no answers to any of his questions.

Harry spared a look of disgust at the older Malfoy. He decided to let him live. Malfoy had not yet outlived his usefulness.

Harry had come to find the Death Eater for information. Harry had been sure that if there had been any plans or deeds done to harm him, Lucius Malfoy would have known about it—if not the perpetrator.

Harry knew that Lucius was a superb liar, but not so in the face of unplanned adversity or in situation where he was cornered and his life threatened. Harry was forced to admit that Lucius had been telling the truth. He really wasn't aware of any plans to harm the boy-who-lived.

Harry pursed his lips in discontent and climbed out the window. He was going to go to the source of his problem if he was going to solve it.

Harry was going to find a vampire lair.

……………………………………………..

Harry blasted the last vampire standing with a well-placed reducto curse. The rest were in various stages of disarray. Most of them were letting their natural cell-regenerating system heal the holes in their stomachs. This boy sure knew how to cause the greatest amount of pain—without killing them—with the least amount of effort. He had only used the reductor curse.

Every single one of the vampires, however, was stunned at Harry's display of magic. Vampires have no magic whatsoever, as the wizard understands the term. Their cell-regenerating system seeps the magic out of their blood and uses it to sustain survival. Vampirism turns wizards into squids and muggles die from it.

And so, when Harry, an obvious vampire, had all but blasted them away using his wand, they couldn't decide whether to gap at him or to look pained.

Harry was furious with the lot of them. "You blood-sucking leeches! Have you no mind at all? I refuse to be herded into some kind of stupid vampire destiny. Turn me back human you dim-witted senseless barbarians!" (They had told him to just deal with the vampirism and that it was fate that had led him to what he had become. Obviously, Harry wasn't going to accept this hands down.)

"We cannot. It is impossible. It has never been done. Once a vampire, always a vampire."

Harry's head swiveled around to glare at the owner of the voice. It was an old vampire, even by the species' standard. His years could be felt.

"I can do magic, can't I?" retorted Harry. "That's never happened either according to your history, so why couldn't I be turned back?"

The old vampire sighed and gingerly got to his feet. He groaned and placed his hand over his tender stomach. "A life is different from magic, it is unidirectional. Magic…magic has its own agenda."

Harry frowned, "explain yourself, old man."

"A person can be alive, can become undead and can die. In that order. If you could bring back the dead, there would be no sense to life and thus this never occurs in nature," the old vampire said. "Magic, on the other hand, is as flexible as liquid water or as unchanging as ice. I cannot further explain this, as this is as far as our comprehension of the matter goes."

"This is absurd," Harry stated. "I refuse to believe your ramblings. Arrghh. Never mind. Your attempt at a philosophical lecture has given me a headache. Just tell me who turned me and I shall deal with them personally."

"Please, we do not know," the old vampire said. "Leave us be."

"No, someone deliberately played with my mind, transformed me into some dark creature and then let me hang. I want answers, and I mean now," Harry hissed threateningly, his magical aura flaring.

The vampires cowered.

"He has the same strength as…" a young vampire murmured to his neighbor, who nodded vigorously, his eyes staring straight ahead.

Harry's heightened hearing caught the last bit and he turned his chilling green eyes to the offender.

"Who is this 'he'?" Harry demanded.

The young one, caught by surprised, stuttered incomprehensible words and then looked helplessly at the old vampire.

The old vampire sighed and turned to Harry. "We value power amongst the vampires. We also have our own code of honor. We value your power and we wish you not to renounce your abilities," he said to Harry. "We do not have answers for you plight, but we will send you to the Vampire Council. If they cannot help you, then no one will be able to."

"Fine, but first, I want to know about this person who has supposedly the same strength as me," Harry eyed the youngster, very much like the falcon eyes his caught prey.

This time, a middle-aged female vampire answered. "Young Kaldon was referring to Sythe. He is the head of the vampire council. Go to France. Your pleas will be answered there."

"Yes, he will help you," the old vampire repeated, his tone final. "And now you will leave our settlement, you have exceeded your welcome."

Harry snorted and took out his wand. He smiled in satisfaction as the vampires tensed. "Yes, I shall leave, but because it is I who have grown weary of your company. I will go see this so-called council, but if I find out you were herding me around, there will be hell to pay."

Harry let his sentence hang in the tense air for several seconds before he apparated away.

The vampires all sighed in relief. The ones who had already healed themselves went to the aid of the ones still recovering. Slowly, the settlement went back to its usual routine.

When the rest of the vampires had dispersed, the middle-aged female turned to face the old vampire. "He has great hamenleei, you know."

"Yes, he has the ability to affect great change in the world. We can expect great things from him," replied the aged vampire, his withered hands clasped behind his back.