A\N: Hello! Thank you for reading. I remind you that English is not my first language, so let me know if you find any mistakes. Reviews are welcolmed with open arms.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in the Harry Potter universe, it all belongs to J.K. Rowling. If you read something that remind you of The Vampire Diaries, then it probably comes from The Vampire Diaries.
From the previous chapter:
"Is it what I think it is? Blood?"
"Of course."
"Whose is it?"
"You don't need to know. Now think about it, Katerina. You are now in a transient state between human and vampire: this is why your wounds haven't healed yet. You are nor the one nor the other. If you drink this blood you'll complete your transformation and become a vampire; if you don't, you'll die for good in a few hours. The choice is yours."
"Why are you telling me this just now?"
"It wasn't important," he frowned. Katerina watched him closely.
"Maybe you thought you could just keep the blood for yourself and let me die, if I were a threat to your secret," she accused him.
"Even if you drink it now, don't you ever think I wouldn't be able to kill you," he answered raising his eyebrow. But he didn't deny.
Katerina didn't say anything to that. She kept the phial in her hand as if it was a bomb about to explode. She stared at it with caution and fear. Finally she began to raise it towards her mouth, but then hesitated, and lowered it down.
Katerina cautiously stared at the phial in her hand. It undoubtedly smelled like blood, but for some reasons it didn't irk her senses at all; on the contrary, it was a strangely tempting smell, just as intriguing as the sudden sight of food in front of a starving man. But she couldn't force herself to drink it, even though Louis was very clear: if she didn't drink, she would die.
She kept looking at the blood, suddenly wondering what would be her father's advice in that circumstance. A clear image of him appeared in her mind: tall as a giant, with kind and reassuring dark eyes. She didn't have many memories of her father, but in one of them she remembered him taking her in his arms and telling her to be always careful. Growing up was a wonderful but dangerous thing, he had said, and she had better learn not to blindly trust everything around her, because appearances might not be always truthful.
That phial, with its alluring smell and irresistible promises, kept inside everything that her father had warned her about. But now her father wasn't there to explain to her what was right and what was wrong, like he did when she was a child. He would have known what to do, but she didn't, because she hadn't heard the sound of his voice for too many years.
She raised again the phial toward her lips and warily drank a little sip. It unquestionably tasted like blood, but with a disturbing thought she realized she didn't find it disgusting at all. It felt like drinking a cool fruit juice after the burning heat of the desert.
Her instinct commanded her to drink again, and she did. When more blood filled her throat, its pungent taste almost choked her and forced her to cough a few times, smearing her hand and chin.
"Slow down," Louis warned her with a slightly bored tone. "Don't worry, it's normal. You are turning into a vampire, and your body is not ready to take blood yet. Try again."
When she was able to normally breath again, Katerina restarted to drink, now slower. Within a few seconds, however, the phial was empty.
It was an odd feeling. Her bones were burning more and more with a sudden strange aching. She absently noticed that her hands were relaxing, and a sound of broken glass seeped through her foggy mind to let her know that the phial was now on the floor.
Her head started weakly spinning. The lights in the room were much brighter, and she had to blink a few times to fight the annoying feeling of the light burning her head on the inside. Her ears were now detecting a dull, throbbing sound that she had never heard before, and that seemed to come directly from her veins. She blinked again, but her sight was now blurry; everything – the tables, the chairs, Louis' unreadable eyes gazing at her – was unfocused. So she just closed her eyes, leaning on the desk to stand steadily, and trying to ignore her aching legs. She had been cold before, but she hadn't realized until she felt warmth on her cheeks. She was tired too, she noticed, and suddenly hungry; or maybe she was thirsty, she couldn't tell the difference. It was some kind of throbbing pain in her stomach that made her mouth feel like full of sand.
She opened her eyes. Louis was still staring at her closely, carefully watching every one of her movements.
"I feel exhausted," she weakly said.
"You'll be fine," simply said the boy.
His words had a weird echo, she thought; or maybe it was his voice that sounded different. No, it was her that listened differently.
The pain in her stomach was stronger and stronger. She couldn't take it anymore, but something inside her was telling her how to exactly make it stop, and she couldn't help thinking about it.
"Do you have more blood?", she said, a bit unwillingly.
"Not here, I'm sorry. But I have something else that might help you."
As before, Louis Evoked a red phial and gave it to her. Katerina smelled its content and grimaced: even if it didn't smell bad, her brain registered that there was something unnatural, wrong. She didn't know what it was, yet if she had to chose a word to describe that liquid she would have used rotten. But the increasing pangs in her stomach were becoming unbearable, so she held her breath and drank it quickly. Her thirst subsided at once, while the tiredness didn't leave her bones.
"You just drank a conveniently modified Blood-Replenishing Potion. Instead of replenishing the taker's blood, this version partly reproduces the effects of human blood on vampires. It's nothing as the real thing and it loses its effect after a while, but at least it temporarily mitigates the thirst. It's not difficult to make; I'll teach you how to do it."
"Did you invent it?"
"No," he snorted, amused. "I suck at Potions. Someone taught me to produce it."
Katerina didn't say anything, but kept staring at the phial, feeling numb. Her mind was filled with weariness and confusion. A slight tinge of depression started to creep up on her when she thought that the bottle in her hand contained something she would have to depend on forever. She also had the feeling she was in shock.
"I can't believe it," she murmured. "I just drank blood - real blood. I am a vampire."
"It's not that special, you know. It involves a little bit of blood stains and murderous feelings, but with a bit of practice you can hide all the symptoms."
"Symptoms," she repeated. "Like a disease."
"Yes, sort of. Look at it this way: you got terminally ill of vampirism. The good news are that the 'terminally' part is already gone."
Oddly, the idea seemed to entertain him.
"I don't – w-what should I do?", she asked, and winced when she felt the note of desperation in her own voice. "I believe you, but this is too much. I can't just forget everything and go on as if nothing happened."
"In fact you won't. You made your choice, you can't go back to the life you had before," Louis sharply retorted, and then added in a softer tone: "But you'll manage. It isn't easy for anyone at the beginning, and it will take time, but you'll learn how to live as a vampire. For the here and now, let me tell you exactly what you will do in the next few hours. Now you'll go back to your Common Room, before your roommates realize you haven't returned yet. You will behave in a perfectly normal way, as if nothing happened. Try not to be too close to other people, because you may have a sudden urge to attack them and you haven't learned to control yourself yet. Then, you'll have to find a way to stay hidden all day."
She jerked her head up, looking at him bewildered.
"As you may know, the direct light of the sun can incinerate a vampire. It's part of the curse cast on us, and I assure you it's extremely inconvenient. What you don't know, however, is that there are ways to bypass the problem and walk in the sun like everyone else. I'll take care of it, but I need some time to get the correct spell – a day or two, I think. Until then you'll be careful to stay away from the light – direct light, so if you are in some room inside the school you should be fine. Unless you want to burn alive, that is. And Katerina… I remind you you live in the highest tower in the castle. This means you'll have to leave your dormitory before the sun rises, and stay far away from it until dusk."
"I can't just stay hidden all day!" she snapped. "I swear, I'll be careful not to get hit by light. Don't you think someone would notice if I just disappeared?"
"Then find a credible reason. You are a Ravenclaw, use your brain," Louis retorted shortly. "I think they would notice you more if your skin inexplicably started to be covered in burns. Trust me: avoiding the sun is more difficult than you think. Even the ceiling in the Great Hall could kill you, if it's sunny outside."
"Killed by a ceiling," Katerina muttered.
"Indeed, by a ceiling," Louis repeated in a sarcastic tone. "You are not planning to die twice within twenty-four hours, aren't you? I wouldn't even be surprised."
"You stay away from me and I'm sure nothing bad will happen to me."
"Don't get your hopes too high. I will decide when to stay away from you," Louis hissed menacingly. "You don't know what you're getting into, and you have absolutely no idea of what's waiting for you. Just remember you came back as a vampire only thanks to me, and you should be grateful that I didn't decide to kill you at once afterwards, even though you are a huge risk. If you are discovered they will begin looking for vampires all around the castle, and I'm not going to stay hidden all my life because you were too dumb to do as you were told."
"Then why didn't you let me die?" she icily asked.
"I was tempted to, but it's not a great idea to leave around human bodies with vampire blood mixed with theirs or, even worse, dead vampires. We don't want to draw attention on something that should stay secret: it's much better to arrange things in a way that nobody realizes that something has changed. But I swear on everything that's sacred in this world – make one mistake, Katerina, and I will kill you."
His tone was deadly serious.
Since she had gone back to her dorm, a few hours before, Katerina had kept shifting and turning on her bed. The only idea of falling asleep seemed ridiculous. She laid down on her back, a hand on her chest. Did dead people sleep, anyway?
Because that she was: dead. It sounded completely illogical, a strange thought that she could not relate to herself. Less than twenty-four hours ago she had woken up alive, without a care in the world except a stupid headache – that was caused by a forgotten loss of blood, it was clear now. If only she had a Timeturner she would go back and tell herself – what? Maybe something similar to 'this is the last day in your life'. Perhaps she was destined to die – the sand in her metaphorical hourglass would stop to flow in any case – but at least she would have known. She really would have preferred to know.
She had never thought much about death before, but she surely had never imagined to still be able to walk around as if nothing had happened. Certainly not like Professor Binns, whose career was still quite active thanks to his indifference toward everything. But he was a ghost, and ghosts weren't difficult to understand; it didn't matter how much weird and unsettling they could be, in the magical world they were still part of the order of nature, just like ghouls or the rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin.
But now that she was alone, in the total dark of her bed, lulled by the sound of the gentle breeze that caressed the Ravenclaw Tower, she had to admit that something had changed. She had changed, unexpectedly and without noticing. A minute before everything in her life was fine, the next she was injured, covered in blood and hostage of a vampire. And surprise, now she was a vampire too. Her personal world had crumpled and was now just ashes under the shoes of the people that had hurt her.
Her hand pressed her chest again. While she was still alive she had never been aware of it, but now that her heart had stopped beating she realized how much she missed it. It was an incessant hole, a heavy burden that took her breath away and made her desire to scratch and dig and pull her heart out to see what was wrong. For a long moment Katerina begged her heart to restart, to throb again and pump the blood in her veins. Nothing happened. She was dead.
It was the real reason why she had started to believe Louis' words: she had literally listened to her heart.
Eyes wide open in the dark, Katerina focused on the sounds around her. She heard quite clearly her roommates breathing, as if they were lying at her side. They seemed deeply asleep. In the silence of the room, she could also hear the asynchronous beating of their hearts. If she concentrated hard enough, she found out she could even tell apart what was outside the bedroom. Paces in the Common Room – someone was awake, and was apparently walking in circle. A far, stifled sound – she associated it with the murmur of the plants in the Forbidden Forest. Someone who was turning in his bed. A bird spreading its wings in the night. A laughter in the distance, piercing the air with its never ending vibrations. The sudden suffocating sound of dozens of people living breathing moving inside the Tower –
She put her hands on her ears, shocked. She could hear everything. She hadn't been ready to welcome a thousand sounds inside her head, so she desperately tried to keep them all out. Maybe the trick was to not think about it. She closed her eyes and tried to focus only on one single sound – her breath. Slowly, it seemed to work.
Now that she was a damn vampire, her sense were apparently much more sharpened than before.
She thought again of the night she just had. A few hours before, after Louis had finally let her go with hundreds of warnings, she had walked towards her Common Room as if lost in a dream. Luckily she had not met anyone along the way, and in a blink she was inside the Tower. She had stared at the empty room for a while, unmoving, and then she was standing in the bathroom looking at herself in the mirror. She didn't see anything she could recognize, even if the figure in the mirror had her long hair, her dark eyes, her worried face and the same features she had always seen.
"Seen a ghost?", had said the mirror making her jump. She hadn't answered; instead she had took a quick shower to clean herself from all the dirt and blood.
Abigail was awake, and had asked in a low voice where she had been. I fell asleep in the Library, she had answered, and it wasn't even a lie.
Remembering the mirror, Katerina gently touched her face and her neck. Her skin was cold and smooth; there was no trace of the scary wound she had felt before drinking the blood. It was like it had never existed, as if all that had happened that night was just part of some strange nightmare. Yet the truth was different, as she knew very well: it had existed, but the vampiric magic in her blood had already healed every injury, like Louis had said.
Louis. They had never talked to each other before, but of course she had seen him around the castle, with his short dark blond curls and some of his fellow hateful Slytherins on his side. She didn't remember what his surname was, even if he was a sixth-year Prefect. It wasn't surprising: she knew quite a lot of students from the other Houses, but only a few from Slytherins – only the ones in her year, in fact.
While the rivalry between Slytherin and Gryffindor was more or less personal, the rivalry between Slytherin and Ravenclaw was principally intellectual. The Sorting Hat sent smart and curious people to Ravenclaw and smart and ambitious people to Slytherin, so those were the Houses whose students usually fought the most to achieve better grades at school. The mixed Ravenclaw-Slytherin class of the current sixth-year was especially famous for taking drastic measures in order to keep members of the rival House from gaining points during lessons, to the point that the Professors were forced to raise magical walls to prevent the two groups from sabotaging each other's potions or from mutually setting their wands on fire. It was open warfare.
But after what happened that night, after all, the struggle for grades had lost importance. Louis' only concern seemed to be finding a way to prevent Hogwarts from discovering about their presence. She could understand him: public opinion said that vampires were one of the worst kind of Dark creatures, inhuman monsters ready to slaughter everything that breathed. She honestly couldn't say if public opinion was right or wrong; however, she was sure that any wizard would not hesitate to kill a vampire should they see one. Even if for some sort of miracle she was allowed to live, Headmaster Dippet would never let her stay at Hogwarts; she was too dangerous for the other students.
Was she making a mistake? Remaining in a suddenly hostile school – to which she was a potential danger – looked like a terrible idea.
With a pang in her heart – that mockingly remained motionless – she wondered what she would do when she got thirsty. Louis had given her a few phials of modified Blood-Replenishing Potion to drink when she felt the need, but she was still afraid of what would happen. She felt lonely and scared. What would she do if the next day she was immediately discovered?
From an impersonal point of view, she was surprised that Louis ha let her "live"; he looked perfectly capable of killing someone without thinking twice. She knew she was a gigantic threat for him: having another vampire around meant doubling the chance of being discovered. Moreover she was inexperienced, and the boy didn't know her; he couldn't know how she would react to all that undead-thing.
But as he had said, probably leaving bodies full of vampire blood around was a suicide. She imagined that that sort of Dark components would leave a trace perfectly clear to the Aurors or the Healers; vampiric blood would leap out like a dragon inside a drawer.
The best solution, she dispassionately reasoned, was to kill her at once and hide her body. But in that case her disappearance would have drawn the attention of the whole school; investigations would have been made to find out what happened to her, maybe discovering things that Louis preferred to keep buried.
No, letting her live was actually a risky move, but at the same time there was a chance that everything would go well and nobody at Hogwarts would ever hear about vampires.
Thinking about Louis caused an unpleasant feeling in her stomach, a pang of anger that she struggled to fight. Despite all of his chatter about her being alive only thanks to him, he had done something terrible to her. He had attacked her, bitten her and erased her memory – she was actually thankful for not remembering those hateful details, but she would certainly never tell him so. And yes, she was alive because his cursed blood had brought her back to life, but he had been very clear – it was an accident; she was a mistake. She wasn't supposed to survive.
Who knew, maybe if she wasn't so tired after his attack she would have left the Library at another time, escaping her fate. And anyway he was supposed to keep an eye on her exactly to avoid that sort of things, but he failed. Maybe he didn't take that job very seriously.
There was also another big, enormous problem that had her thinking. That day someone or something had killed her, maybe accidentally or maybe not. That thought would normally shock her, but after the day she just had she found that nothing would ever be the same. She felt cynical, and maybe that was a good thing: ingenuity had not kept her alive.
It didn't matter how much she tried – she couldn't remember that fatal attack, nor the face of her killer. She only knew that the next day someone might be greatly surprised to see her. She hoped she was able to handle it.
Dear Merlin, and to think her usual nighttime troubles concerned homework or tests in class.
Katerina sighed, watching the sun rising in the distance. She was in the Library, in the Section of History of Magic, her favorite place in the castle. She was extremely careful to stand in the shadows, at a safe distance from the great window. After all she was trying to hide from the light, just like Louis had told her.
She had sneaked off the Tower before dawn, trying to be quiet but without too much effort. She actually could make much less noise than that, but she needed to wake someone to whom she could lie to. Abigail, who was a light sleeper, predictably asked her in a sleepy voice where she was going, and Katerina told her she would visit the Infirmary because she didn't feel very well. It was a stupid excuse, she knew that, but she couldn't think of other lies that allowed her to get up so early and to miss her lessons. It was a long shot, and soon she would have to think of something better.
Clearly, she had no intention whatsoever to go to the Infirmary for real. That room was far too illuminated, and she bet that Madam Wainscott could figure out that something was wrong with her in less than a minute. Now that she thought about it, she would have to stay away from the Infirmary for the rest of her career at school: it was too dangerous.
After leaving the Tower she had not known where to go or what to do with herself, so her feet had automatically brought her in the Library.
Standing there with crossed arms, she watched the light flooding the halls, enlightening the shelves next to her. After a brief hesitation, she slowly stretched her hand to touch the light, hoping that maybe -
She had to cover her mouth with her other hand to suffocate a shriek.
The light had covered her fingers for just half a second. Horrified, she stared at the ugly blisters that were forming on her trembling hand. The skin was red and burned. It was so painful she wanted to cry. And then, after less than ten seconds, her fingers suddenly started to heal, and after that there was no trace of burns at all. She incredulously looked at her hand, turning it in front of her eyes a few times. It was as pale and smooth as before. She gently touched it. The pain was gone.
So, the place she felt the safest in all Hogwarts was apparently off-limits.
She suddenly wanted to cry.
Yet she didn't, because she knew it wouldn't help her.
Depressed, she quickly left the Library and tried to avoid all the enlightened areas, reflecting on how weird her zigzag route would appear to a casual observer. Luckily there was no one else to see her – she only met the ghost of an old woman who didn't even give her a second look, as if she was completely invisible.
She was safe in the inner corridors, while she avoided the ones with windows. She knew she had to keep distant from the Great Hall. The spells reflecting the weather outside must be really powerful, she mused; but after all, they said it had been Rowena Ravenclaw herself to perform that magic. For the first time since she was at Hogwarts she wished her Founder wasn't so intelligent.
She decided to head towards the dungeons, wondering if she could stay in the kitchens for a while. It was still early, but not so early that she would be punished if someone found her wandering around. Anyway there was no one to be seen, so she walked undisturbed.
She walked past the entrance of the dungeons, but then she suddenly decided to make a detour from the main route. She had to find a way to distract herself, after all; she had all day ahead. At least she could wander in the dungeons without risking to be hit by the light of the Sun.
She didn't knew that place very well – the truth was she avoided it like the plague, unless she had Potions. Maybe she could spend the last two years and a half at Hogwarts hiding in the dark of the dungeons, scaring students away and brewing potions like the Cure for Boils or something as unpleasant.
Walking had a positive effect on her. While she was exploring the dusty corridors, undisturbed, she could ponder on the events of the last days. The dungeons were so big she could even get lost inside them – she may enter and never come out again.
She was so deep in her thoughts that a sudden crack in the wall beside her made her violently jump. The stones were relentlessly moving, making a noise so loud that her now sensitive ears hurt. She turned to face what was happening and saw a boy in front of her, where just a second before there had been no one – it was Louis.
She felt a cold shiver running down her back, as she watched his grey eyes blankly staring at her. She made a step backwards. Fear was blocking her tongue and draining her breath. She didn't expect to see him so soon – she wasn't ready.
A glimmer in his eyes, and then he smirked at her, perceiving her fear. He put a finger on his lips to suggest her to be silent, and he quickly glanced behind him, blonde curls shining in the light. She followed his gaze and saw a glimpse of a rather large room made of stone and a fire blazing in the fireplace. She gulped. Apparently, in her careless wandering she had reached the Slytherin Common Room.
He turned again towards her. He seemed ready to say something, but then he changed his mind and looked at her as if considering something.
"Play along," he whispered after a moment. Then, before she could even try to understand what was going on, he said loudly:
"What a nice surprise, a solitary raven at our doors! I always thought you Ravens had your nose so up in the air that you weren't even capable to find the entrance of the dungeons."
His tone was contemptuous. Katerina blinked, uncertain, and then replied:
"Oh, we know where it is. We just avoid it because of the stink."
She raised her eyebrow. Louis smirked again, this time in a challenging way. In the meantime a few other Slytherins had come out from their Common Room to see who was making all that noise. Louis stepped into the corridor to make space for his housemates, and then pulled out his wand.
"Don't they tell you, up on your perch, that it's not polite to go to other people's houses and insult them? Five points from Ravenclaw for your baffling bad manners, Miss," he said with a satisfied sneer.
Katerina watched him agape. She didn't know what he thought to accomplish, but – had he just taken points away from her?
Meanwhile, the other students were snickering, and she felt herself reddening for the anger and the embarrassment. She really just wanted to run away from that horrible place. But now Louis was staring at her and was moving his lips to whisper something that sounded like "curse me". What?
Well, she didn't need to be told twice. She said, "I'm afraid this day was already awful even before your interference," and calmly pulled out her wand.
"Incendio!", was the first spell that came to her mind. Louis faked surprise, but blocked easily her spell and then raised his wand towards her with an unreadable expression on his face. His housemates, instead of stopping the fight or helping him, started to merrily talk to one another and moved to surround them – some of them jostled their neighbors to have a better view, and then began to cheer loudly. Katerina had the odd feeling that those sort of fights actually happened quite frequently, down there.
"Incarcerous," said Louis with a lazy flick of his wand. Katerina created a Shield to block it, and felt her magic slightly tremble at the collision with his spell. She raised her eyebrow, trying not to let her surprise show too much. Louis moved with self-confident grace, and even if he had only cast a basic incantation, she had perceived more power than she had expected. He looked quite skilled with spells.
She thought about all this in a brief moment, and then performed a nasty Bat-Bogey Hex. They weren't exactly mortal blows, and she heard disappointed sounds coming from the audience.
They kept dueling for another minute or so. They never hit each other – but not because of lack of trying. It was almost infuriating: she was trying everything she knew, while he didn't even seem to put so much effort. But then their eyes met, and something in his gaze let her know that she shouldn't defend herself from the next curse.
"Lux Exumain," she heard.
A flash of black light hit her fully in her stomach, forcing her to bend and erasing her breath. It wasn't painful – she only felt an annoying prickling on her skin. She heard the Slytherins exult and laughing at her. Luckily, Professor Slughorn chose that moment to check the origins of that turmoil.
"Boys, what's going on here? I hope it's not that illegal fighting club again – oh dear," he worried, seeing her there. He spoke towards his students. "This is no way to treat a lady. Now off you go, there is nothing to see here!"
While the others unwillingly started to walk towards the Great Hall, the Professor spoke again. Louis had come near her, and had an amused glimmer in his eyes.
"I thought I told you quite clearly, Mr. Henry, that if you were caught cursing one of your Ravenclaw fellows again I would have to take measures. What did you do to our poor Miss Farley? No, don't tell me." He didn't even sound angry, only resigned. "I recognize the bluish halo. Again a Photosensitivity Spell, am I correct? I really don't see why you find this charm so funny. I am forced to give you a detention; come to my office tonight at seven o'clock. My dear," he then told Katerina. "I am afraid there is nothing we can do, except waiting for the curse to run out of your system. This spell makes your skin really sensitive to light, but it's only temporary, don't be afraid. Now, we shouldn't let you leave the dungeons, or you'll be in a terrible discomfort."
"But Professor, I have lessons to attend," Katerina said. She was starting to understand what all that mess was about.
"Nonsense," he said loudly, moving his hands up and down. "I will explain the situation to your Professors. Which lessons do you have today?" Katerina told him. "Right, right. You are excused, but only for today! In the meantime you can stay in my office. As you dueled in the corridors, your detention will be to brew three cauldrons of Cure for Boils. That potion is too popular in this school," he sighed.
While Slughorn started to lead the way, Katerina briefly turned towards Louis, who made a dramatic bow. She watched him almost shocked and then shook her head, amused.
The rest of the morning went by without any extraordinary events, except when she almost blew a cauldron up because she confused the jar of horned snails with the one of eel eyes.
Brewing the Cure for Boils was without any doubts long and boring, but at least the Photosensitivity Spell gave her a good excuse to stay hidden all day. The prickling on her skin was still present, but it was nothing compared to what the light had done to her hands before.
What really worried her was the hunger she felt. She didn't have breakfast, but she doubted it was the lack of tea and biscuits to cause all that pain in her stomach. When her hands started to tremble and her sight to become fogged, she Evoked one of that phials prepared by Louis and drank it. She felt better, but she didn't know how long it would last.
After she finished brewing the potion, she decided to examine the books on the shelves in Slughorn's office. Most of them were old and worn out, but one in particular drew her attention. She pulled it out, opened it at the right page and started to study the Blood-Replenishing Potion and its variants.
The Professor came back a few hours later, praised her work and ordered the houselves to bring her lunch. When he asked her how she felt, Katerina, who hadn't felt the effect of the spell for a full hour, lamented an unbearable prickling on her skin. Slughorn nodded and invited her to stay there until she felt ready to leave. Then he added with gleaming eyes:
"Miss Farley, maybe in the meantime you could brew a Strengthening Potion. I know we haven't made practice in the Lab yet, but yesterday you did so well in your test that I don't think you'll face any problems trying by yourself."
Blushing slightly, Katerina began to work.
When she went away from Slughorn's office, the Sun had already set. She walked towards the Entrance Hall, but after a corner she almost bumped into Louis. He seemed to be waiting for her, because he looked at her rather impatiently.
"Go to the Library tonight at nine. Bring a jewel, a ring, or a necklace – something that belongs to you and that you can always carry with you," he quickly whispered, before walking past her without adding anything else.
When she reached the Entrance Hall, she released a sigh. Louis had been cryptic, and she didn't dare to hope he had find a solution for her little problem with the light – but she was just happy to think that in the next thirteen hours she wouldn't have to worry about it too much.
She didn't see her housemates until dinner. When she sat at the Ravenclaw table, she discovered that everyone already knew about the duel and was absolutely outraged by Louis' behavior.
"He must have told you something really horrible. You are usually so quiet and reserved," said Matilda.
"He deserved it! Louis Henry is in my Potions and Charms classes. He is an arrogant snob – he and his little gang always bother us while we are working," complained a sixth-year girl, Sunday Davis.
"Once he hit me with the same curse he used on you. It was a nightmare. We were outside, by the lake," remembered Stanley Ichabod with a grimace.
"Right. But the Bat-Bogey Hex you then cast on him was the best I've ever seen," added Sunday with gleaming eyes. Stanley laughed.
"Anyway, don't worry. The lessons you lost today were the most boring lessons ever," said Abigail to Katerina. She smiled.
"Well, I spent all day brewing Cure for Boils and Strengthening Potion. I know what you mean when you say 'boring'," she joked. She heard Hayley Watson hold her breath.
"You didn't! Strengthening Potion? But we only saw the theory!", uttered the girl with a tinge of envy.
"Oh dear, someone here is going to be invited to the next party of the Slug Club," Abigail sniggered. Katerina stared at her and then made a face. She didn't need to meet the most influent people in school, now that she was supposed to stay hidden. She briefly wondered if Slughorn would be happy to have a vampire in his club; for some reason she doubted it. During the next Potions lesson she would have to blow up a cauldron. Or maybe two, for good measure.