As soon as the flames had cleared from his vision, Dumbledore took in his surroundings. The terrain around him was studded with small boulders, and frighteningly steep. Greenery and small shrubs rose halfway to his knees, but the land was barren of trees or any significant vegetation. Fawkes cooed softly, and Dumbledore stroked the phoenix's back.

"Yes, I'm afraid this may take a while. You may head on back to my office – I will call for you when it is time for me to return."

Fawkes dipped his head, and vanished in a blaze of flames. Dumbledore freed his wand from his pocket, and apparated to a better vantage point. He now stood on top of the nearby peak. From his new position, he could see a small village in an adjacent valley. The architecture of the homes – stone houses with tiled roofs – was a stark reminder that he was no longer in Britain.

There was more vegetation down in the valley than on the surrounding mountainsides. In fact, much of it looked to be cultivated. Dumbledore decided he should take a closer look, so he apparated to the middle of a field at the base the mountain. Now that he stood closer, he recognized the plants as a muggle herb long banned by Flitch. He made his way through the field and towards the center of the village. As he approached the houses, the quality of the air began to change. The crisp mountain air was now polluted by a hint of smoke, and an even fainter trace of the sickly-sweet odor of rotting flesh. He gripped his wand more tightly, and slowed his cadence to a cautious walk.

He had spent most of the morning analyzing the subtle magics impressions left behind by Quirrel on the letter, and had determined that it had originated in this place – or very close to it. Now that he was here, Dumbledore was puzzled. It was an odd location for a vampire coven. The area was secluded, which was a plus, but the village looked far too small to support any significant number of vampires. More likely, a nomadic group had moved through the area. This set of warning bells in the headmaster's head. Nomads were usually far more dangerous than established vampire covens. The later had to be careful not to give away their presence to the muggles, and went to great pains to cover their tracks and preserve their food supply. The nomads didn't stick around, so they could and often were extremely brutal. They had been outlawed by the international wizarding community, and the last nomadic clan in Britain had been hunted down in the 16th century. Every now and then, a rogue vampire would try to establish a new clan, but they were quickly hunted down and eliminated by the aurors. In other parts of the world, and evidently in Albania, the nomadic clans had more leeway.

The stench grew stronger as Dumbledore neared the center of the town. He spotted a house with a shattered door, and stepped through the doorway. Bulletholes lined the wall behind him, and steel casings littered the floor. The sheer number was consistent with muggle automatic weaponry – a threat Dumbledore had come to respect during the war against Grindelwald. He raised his wand in front of him, and crept up the stairs. He encountered a corpse on the second floor. It was charred beyond recognition – it's fingerless hands clutched around a scorched mass of metal that appeared to have been a Kalashnikov. Evidently, the vampires had burnt the corpses to prevent their reanimation. That was reassuring – at least they were not completely devoid of reason.

Dumbledore made his way back to the first floor, and stepped back onto the street. He searched the rest of the houses one-by-one, coming across more incinerated bodies. As he was stepping into the next to last house, a noise alerted him to another presence. He whirled about just as a figure pounced from behind the door. Dumbledore slashed his wand across his chest, and a torrent of air threw the figure backwards. It rose to its feet in an instant, snarling, its eyes bloodshot and dilated. A fledgling vampire – female by the looks of it – crazed with thirst. Her body was racked with bruises and scratches. It was silly to think she had fought off the vampires before they could torch her, but something had stopped them nonetheless. Dumbledore quickly stepped back out the door. The vampire tried to follow, but screamed as soon as the sunlight touched her skin. He used the brief distraction to cast a wordless incarcerous – binding her from limbs against her body and sending her to the floor. Immediately after, he transfigured the rope to steel.

The vampire snarled and gnashed her teeth as she struggled against the unyielding bonds. Meanwhile, Dumbledore scanned the rest of the room for more vampires, and cast a wide-range revealing charm as extra precaution. Assured that there was nothing else in a 50-meter radius, he looked more closely at the surroundings. There were no bullet holes in this home. Instead, massive chunks of stone were blown out of the floor, walls, and even the ceiling. Dumbledore recognized them as impact craters from blasting charms, and strong ones at that. He walked to one such crater and closed his eyes, placing his hand against the wall. Quirrel. It was unmistakable – the exact same magical signature as the one on the letter. He took a step back, and turned to face the vampire. She was quiet now, staring at him with bulging eyes.

"Would you care to explain what happened here?"

She snarled once more, the black veins in her neck popping as she strained against the steel binding. Dumbledore sighed. He knew that was too much to hope for. Locking eyes with the vampire, he cast the legilimency spell. Normally, he took a more passive approach to mind-reading, but it would take quite a bit of power to break through the blood frenzy and into her memories from before she had been turned. Clenching his jaw, he probed deeper. Images flooded through his mind. As he had suspected, this was a farming village, albeit their crop was of the illegal variety. That would explain the weapons. There had been an attack. At first, she had thought it was a feuding gang, but began to realize something was very wrong when the attackers had swept through the village with ease, shrugging off bullet wounds that should have been lethal. The nature of the attackers had become crystal clear when one of them sank its fangs into her neck. The vampire had been interrupted when a man burst through the door, brandishing a wooden stick. The vampire had lurched towards the man, but the latter had managed to repel it with something she couldn't define, but Albus knew to be magic. Quirrel had slain the vampire, but not before sustaining a bite.

Dumbledore thought about what he should do next. Undoubtedly, one of his actions would be alerting the international wizarding federation to the existence of this vampire clan. They would send squads out to track down and exterminate the creatures. As for the woman, he would look into having one of the regulated British covens take her in. They could teach her the rules that she would need to follow in order to coexist with wizards and muggles. As for Quirrel, the way forward was clear. He shared the same sire as the vampire Dumbledore had captured, so a sample of her blood could be used by Severus to track down Quirrel's location. The potions needed for the tracking ritual would take several weeks before they were ready, so Dumbledore could only hope that Quirell could keep his thirst in check until then.

With a sigh, Dumbledore flicked his wand and levitated the woman towards himself. He signaled Fawkes through their bond, and the phoenix appeared in a blaze of flames. Seconds later, the trio were in the atrium of the International Confederation of Wizards headquarters. Miraculously, only one of the receptionists fainted at the sight of the vampire.

Snape stabbed his steak with a fork, perhaps more forcefully than necessary. Besides him, Filius and Hestia were discussing their plans for the dueling club. Jones seemed to be talking more loudly than usual, and her excitement only served to worsen Snape's mood. He wasn't sure why he cared. After all, he didn't want to spend any more time around snot-nosed students than he contractually had to. Yet despite this, he couldn't help feeling slightly jealous of Flitwick. Hestia should have come to him if she needed somebody to help with the practices. The fact that he didn't want to help her was besides the point.

The entire weekend had turned on its head the previous day when Albus had stopped by the dungeons. The headmaster needed a tracking potion. Not just any tracking potion, but the highly complex kind that only a few wizards in Britain could brew. At least the old man had sounded apologetic. He was no doubt aware exactly how much work he had just saddled on the potions master. Just the ingredient prep would take two weeks, and the potion brewing itself another couple of weeks in a best-case scenario. Snape was fuming before he even sat down for dinner. Hestia's veiled provocation further soured his mood.

He listened to Jones and Flitwick blabber on for over half an hour. When their conversation was over and Jones made to leave the great hall, Snape approached her discretely. "Jones, can I have a moment?"

She stopped walking, and turned to face him, her hands on her hips. "Have you come to apologize?"

"Not here... follow me out." Snape stepped out through one of the doors near the head table. It led to a small room that was typically off-limits to students - it was were the professors would gather before entering the great hall on feast nights or special occasions. At this time, it was deserted. Hestia followed behind, her arms crossed against her chest. Snape locked the door behind them, and turned to face her. "What do you mean, 'apologize'?"

"APOLO-GIZE. For mocking me when I asked you to help me out with the dueling club."

Snape frowned, a little offended that she felt she was owed an apology. "Spare me your bruised ego… I had no way of knowing you could actually pull it off."

She raised an eyebrow.

"It was your first week of teaching. The dueling club has chewed up far more experienced professors; after all, it is a nightmare to organize. It was only logical to assume Dumbledore would deny your request."

"Wow, thanks for that impressive display of wit..." Hestia muttered, rolling her eyes. "What do you want?"

"I want to know why you backed out of having me as your co-instructor."

"You mean besides you laughing at me the first time I asked you? Why do you even care? I thought you didn't want the job."

"I don't. I just think I should be offered the position in case I do want it."

Hestia threw her hands in the air. "You are impossible. You know why I didn't ask you a second time? I have it on good authority that Flitwick is better with his wand." Hestia smirked at Snape. She drew her wand, and countered the locking charm on the door.

Snape turned slightly red, and whipped his head around to see if anybody had heard. Fortunately, there were no students in sight. Meanwhile, Hestia was half-way out the door. Snape took a step after her. "I'm not done talking to you."

"Oh, I think we're finished here," Hestia called back.

Snape scowled after her as he followed out into the great Hall. He would find a way to show her what she was missing out on - tutoring Potter seemed like an opportune way to do this. Contrary to Snape's initial expectations, the boy was quite gifted with magic. With the proper guidance, he had the potential to be the best in his class. That would show Hestia what a real DADA teacher could do.

Moments after Snape had left the room, a painting in a dimly lit corner shifted to the side revealing a passageway. A pair of red haired figures stepped out, and the silence was broken by an enthusiastic high-five.

Twenty minutes into the first dueling practice, Harry realized that something would have to change. He already sported a collection of bruises from a week's worth of quidditch practices. Getting knocked around by dueling partners on top of the bludgers he already had to deal with was just too much. He was one of the top first years, but their collective spell repertoire lacked any good defensive options apart from dodging. He was jigged out of his thoughts by his dueling partner.

"Harry?"

"Right, let's do this."

He took a ready stance across from Neville, his knees slightly bent and shoulder width apart; prepared to maneuver out of the way at a split second's notice. He let the other boy cast first, and managed to sidestep his disarming charm. Harry responded with a disarming charm of his own, but his aim was thrown off when another duelist knocked into him. With a dozen duels going on at the same time, it was a common occurrence. Jones did nothing to stop it, claiming aurors trained in a similar way to replicate the chaos of real life magical combat. Just as Harry was about to regain his balance, he was blasted off his feet by Neville's knockback jinx. While the Gryffindor had come a long way in toning down the power behind his spells, it still hurt quite a bit. Harry rolled out of the fall, and cast a tickling jinx at Neville. While the other boy was shaking with laughter, Harry followed up with a disarming charm.

Jones kept them at it for half an hour until nearly every student was exhausted both physically and magically. Harry felt a bit relieved in that he was in slightly better shape than the rest of the duelists. He wondered if it was the quiditch training paying off. It didn't seem like a week's worth of practices could be paying off so soon. At any rate, Harry's mind was made up. He would ask Flitwick to teach him some better defensive measures after the next day's charms class. It would probably eat up even more of his time, but he enjoyed dueling and knowing how to block spells would make it even more fun.

After a quick dinner, Harry headed over to the library and sat down at his usual table with Hermione. She seemed to be doing better – encouraging her to befriend Neville and Boris had been a good move. After they finished their history of magic essay, he asked her where the two boys were. She scrunched her face.

"They hardly ever come here. Most of the time, they do their homework in the common room."

"I see. It's the same with Draco and Theo. Have you tried persuading them?"

"No. I know I can be pushy sometimes, so I'm trying to give them some space."

Harry nodded. He had noticed the change in her behavior. He wondered what had brought it about, but couldn't think of any way to ask without sounding like a muggle psychologist.

"That's good. They will probably come around when our classes get tougher. I'm kind of surprised by how slowly most of them are moving. It feels like we have been learning the disarming charm for two weeks now in DADA."

Hermione bobbed her head rapidly. "I completely agree. I wish the professors would pick up the pace. I said as much in the common room yesterday, and Seamus threw a book at me."

"Umm… you may want to keep this between us. I don't think many other people want extra schoolwork."

"Do you think we should tell the professors what we think?"

Harry shrugged. "I don't think they would change the class just for us, but if you want, you could probably ask them for guidance on learning stuff outside of class."

"Have you tried that before?"

"Professor Jones helped Draco and I work on our dueling skills so that we could help pitch the club to the faculty."

"Oh, so that's why you were reading up on dueling a couple of weeks ago?"

"Yeah."

"She seems nice – I think I will talk to her."

"Just don't do it in earshot of any of the Gryffindors," Harry quickly added.

When Harry walked into the potions classroom on Wednesday morning, he immediately noticed that Snape was in a foul mood. He winced internally – class was never pleasant when the potions master was like this. He prediction turned out to be true. For the next hour, Snape was like a hawk. Not even the slightest error could slip by without the potions master swooping down on the poor first-year in question. Harry made it to the end of the class without incurring the man's wrath, but he was told to stay behind anyway. Snape waited until the rest of the students had cleared out of the room before addressing him.

"Potter. You were at the dueling practice yesterday, correct?"

"Yes sir."

Snape crossed his arms. "What was it like?"

Harry paused for a moment. He wasn't sure what the potions master was getting at. When he held Harry after class, it was usually for occlumency training, but he couldn't see what this conversation had to do with that.

"Umm, it was alright. Kind of fun. I'm a bit ahead from the preparation I did for the exhibition. I wish I knew some defensive spells though. Between quidditch and dueling I feel like a human punching bag…"

Harry trailed off as he noticed that Snape wasn't paying attention. "The exhibition…yes." The professor turned to look at Harry. "How committed are you to improving your defense?"

"I'm pretty certain I want to. I was thinking of asking professor Flitwick to help me."

Snape's clenched his jaw slightly before assuming his blank stare once more. "Don't do that – I will help you." The man began to pace back and forth. "The shielding charm is a versatile piece of magic. Most adult wizards have some token measure of competency over it, but few achieve mastery. As you will learn, casting the shield is challenging. Maintaining it for any length of time, more difficult. Doing so under spellfire – that is the true test. Not to mention that some spells hit harder than others, and a number of them can bypass a shielding charm entirely."

Harry began to doubt himself. He tried to speak, but Snape kept talking over him. "Now, you are a first year, so nobody will expect you to even be able to cast the charm in the first place. With my help, you may be able to prove them wrong." Snape paused for a moment, looking at Harry expectantly.

"I would greatly appreciate that, professor."

"You should. However, you will have to do something for me."

Harry knew this was too good to be true. "I'm listening."

"I want you to be my eyes and ears inside the dueling club. You can fill me in on what happens when we have our weekly occulumency sessions. In addition, if you succeed in learning the spell, you will tell Jones that I was the one that taught it to you."

That didn't sound so bad to Harry. In fact, it barely required any effort on his part, and he saw no reason to hide who had taught him the spell. As far as informing Snape of what went on in the dueling club – it wasn't exactly a secret in the first place.

"I'll do it."

"Good. We can begin now. Let's start off with some occulumency exercise. You will find that there are parallels between blocking mental attacks and blocking spells…"

The week was almost over when Harry remembered that he had promised to pay Hagrid a visit. In fact, they had agreed to meet the previous week, but with all of the quidditch excitement, he had completely forgotten. As soon as he finished his dinner on Thursday, he walked towards Hagrid. The half giant was just leaving the staff table, and turned to face him as he approached.

"Evenin' Harry!"

"Hello Hagrid. I'm sorry I forgot to visit last week. I was wondering if I could drop by today?"

The groundskeeper grinned widely. "Don' worry, now's a good a time as any. Why don' you come on over, I can put some tea on. I baked some rock cakes las' week, but I reckon they are still good."

The half-giant began walking towards the main entrance of the castle. His stride was so large that Harry nearly had to jog to keep up. It was nearly dark outside, but there was still enough light to make out the cabin next to the forbidden forest. When Hagrid opened the door, they were greeted by a huge dog. Harry's heart skipped a beat when the beast rushed at him, but his fear proved to be unwarranted.

"Don' mind him, tha's Fang. He's real friendly."

Harry cautiously maneuvered around the dog that was feverishly trying to lick his face. The interior of the cabin was quite cozy. A large bed occupied one half of the room, and a big table and kitchenette the other. There was a plate of pastries on the table, and Hagrid offered them to him. Harry took one of the smaller cakes, and took a bite. Or rather, he tried to take a bite. They were rock hard! He wondered if he could persuade Hermione to have her parents check on his teeth pro-bono. When Hagrid turned around to put the tea on the fire, Harry held out the rock-cake. Fang took it, laid down under the table, and got to gnawing.

"How 'as school been fer you so far?"

"Fantastic. The classes are all great, and I've gotten involved in quidditch and dueling."

Hagrid beamed at him. "Not jus' involved it seems. I've heard yer the new seeker for the Slytherin Quiditch team!"

Harry smiled back, his cheeks slightly red. "Yeah, I was surprised I made it on."

"Nonsense, yer a champion, just like yer dad. Let me dig up that old photo album."

True to Hagrid's word, the album contained several pictures of his parents. In one of them, they were surrounded by a group of other people, including Dumbledore and Hagrid. Harry assumed this was the order of the phoenix that Dumbledore had referenced when he showed him his memories. In another picture, Harry's parents were by themselves. In a third, Lily – no – mom, was holding a baby. With the figures in the pictures moving, it almost felt like they were still alive. Harry looked at the last photo for a few minutes.

"Why don't you hold on to that one, Harry." Hagrid removed the picture from the album, and placed it on the table. Harry picked it up, wiping his eyes with his sleeve.

"Thanks, Hagrid. This means a lot to me."

"Of course, 'arry. I think I'll put the rest of 'em together in a little album for ya. Shoul' be ready by Christmas." The groundskeeper walked over to the table, and poured them both some tea. Over the next half hour, they talked about quidditch, the forbidden forest, and a whole host of other topics. Harry felt oddly comfortable around Hagrid. The half-giant seemed like the most genuinely happy person he had ever met.