Chapter : {Five}

"...Wow," Was all Harry could say.

Dracula looked pleased with himself while Voldemort looked murderous. Well. More murderous than usual, anyway.

"SECTUMSEMPRA!" Voldemort yelled, "HOW DARE YOU TELL THE BOY THAT!"

Dracula easily dodged, of course, and glibly responded, "You know you could have stopped me at any point during that entire monologue. I mean, it must have taken fifteen minutes at least. You could have killed the boy, too, or knocked him unconscious or something. So I'm hardly all to blame, am I?"

"I- you- LUMOS!" The Dark Lord screamed in a last desperate attempt to harm the vampire.

Dracula fired off one of his patented "darkness balls" that enveloped the light and nullified it.

"You know," Harry commented, "It seems to me like you have your epic battle to the death going on right here. Can't see why you'd need me for that. Seems to be doing splendidly so far."

This said as the Gryffindor cheerfully munched on a bit of cake that he had finally gotten(during the earlier monologue), swinging his legs back and fourth from atop the dessert case whilst he watched the two bickering/battling Dark Lords with interest.

Both Lords paused mid-fight (Dracula had been swinging fire at Voldemort while the Dark Lord threw off another volley of spells) and stared, incredulously, at the boy.

"Heyyyy," Harry complained, "Don't stop now, I was enjoying the show."

"Then why did you interrupt?" Voldemort asked.

"Huh." Harry pondered, "You know, I don't know. Just seemed like the thing to do. But don't mind me, carry on then!"

When neither moved, Harry snuck forward and whispered conspiratorially to Voldemort, "Dracula said you were a bad lay earlier, by the way."

"He WHAT?-!" Voldemort screeched, and proceeded to throw more curses at the vampire, who returned them.

Smirking and satisfied with his work, Harry grabbed his food and sneaked back out the door.

Several corridors and sections of the castle later, Harry faced off against what appeared to be an enraged and quite likely insane woman with bird wings and a spear doing nose-dives. Out of pure luck, Harry managed to tangle one of her wings in the whip, tripped her up and sent her crashing to the ground where she impaled herself on her own spear.

"Huh. Neat," Harry said.

His eyes then grew round when the woman disappeared and a melon dropped from her body.

Okay, so he'd noticed that sometimes things in this castle dropped stuff when you hit them. Bizarre stuff. Things that made no sense for an enemy, or a lamp, to be carrying. But what on earth was a melon doing dropping from a winged bird woman? I mean, where did she fit it?

Then, Harry considered that she did have a pretty impressive rack, so it probably made sense. Definitely made more sense than some weird guy dressed like a pirate carrying around a rotten tin of food, anyway. I mean, who even does that?

Still further inside the castle, Harry came to another room with a weeping girl inside.

"A-hah!" Harry cried as he made his way back out, "I'm not falling for that again!"

But as he turned around, he noticed he'd accidentally stepped to far into the room and the door slammed shut.

"Well, hell."

The succubus got up and flew over, then groaned as she caught sight of him.

"Oh. You again," she said, clearly displeased, as she advanced on the wizard.

"Er- Stay back..I-I've improved since we last met!" Harry shouted, and attempted to snap the whip impressively.

…But the whip flopped rather unimpressively.

"Uh, I guess I still haven't quite got the hang of this thing yet..."

The Succubus giggled. Then snickered. Then full out laughed raucously.

"Ahahah- hahah—Your whip appears- (snicker) to be a bit limp and (snort) ineffective!"

"Er, what's so funny?" Harry asked, whip still held out in front of him, dangling uselessly.

"Oh, darling, you have no idea, do you?" The succubus said as she smirked nastily, "Hah, even your whip is as bent and dysfunctional as you are!"

With the succubus distracted, the doors went up, and moping, Harry slumped out of the room with the Succubus' hysterical laughter trailing behind him.

As Harry made his way farther into the castle (he knew he should probably be running out of it, but Well, really he had no idea where he was in relation to England ,) he'd noticed the increasing frequency with which he'd discover enemy-less rooms with just a statue inside. When he walked in, he immediately felt all the fatigue of running around the castle leave him, and any injuries he had would heal.

Just what was the purpose of that? Harry has no idea why Dracula or whoever planned out the castle (the castle itself?) would want to be user-friendly for any humans inside. Wasn't the whole point to make sure they didn't make it out alive?

Harry sighed. So many things just didn't make sense to him.

Vampires, for one thing. He'd been thinking about it and... what was the deal with Dracula? Did he have a soul? And for that matter, being undead and the whole heart not beating thing... how was his body not rotten and decomposing since blood wasn't circulating? How was he not brain dead? Either he had a soul, and that was what controlled him, or he had no soul and somehow the brain would still have to be functioning, otherwise what would be in there making him... un-alive and stuff- or, undead- or whatever.

And furthermore, what was the purpose of drinking blood? If his system wasn't working, how was he getting nourishment out of it? What did it do?

Harry felt he may never know.

A bat was fluttering annoyingly around his head. Harry lashed out the whip a few times, coming nowhere near hitting the darn thing. Harry was pretty sick of bats at this point; the castle seemed to be full of them of various sizes, and though they didn't hurt much when they attacked, they were blasted annoying.

"I see you've become slightly better with the whip," said the bat.

Harry paused for a moment. "A talking bat? This castle has everyth-" He stopped short when a sudden realization came over him, and began whipping at the bat even more furiously.

"Harry, stop, it's me," said Bat-Alucard.

"I know," said Harry, not stopping.

"Your anger is misplaced. I'm not the villain here."

"Oh yeah? Did you forget that you left me here all alone?"

"Think you I forget such at thing? No!"

Harry stopped whipping. "Wait, what?"

"I mean, do you think that... look, nevermind." Alucard transformed from the flittery bat into his pretty white-haired form. Harry considered resuming with the whipping, but he couldn't quite bring himself to attack that pretty face.

"Why did you come back?" Harry asked instead.

"I noticed a complication. Your Lord Voldemort-"

"He's not my Lord Voldemort!"

"Well somebody's Lord Voldemort began fighting my father. That is not supposed to happen. It must be you."

"Yeah, yeah, I know, but it must be me that fights Voldy too, so they're kind of working out amongst themselves who I get to fight."

As if on cue, the castle rumbled from a distant explosion that seemed to come from the direction Harry left the two Lords.

"So if Voldemort is defeated, that leaves you free to fight Dracula? Who besides you has the knowledge to defeat him?"

"I, uh... I guess Professor Dumbledore, but he-"

"I shall return," interrupted Alucard, and before Harry could blurt out "Quit doing that you bastard!" he had transformed back into a bat and flown out the window.

Sighing, and becoming sadly used to abandonment, Harry headed off in another random direction of the castle.

Somehow Harry managed to get turned around, and no matter where he went, he always ended up back outside the same room. After about two hours, with a sigh, Harry went in.

"I had wondered how long that would take you." Alucard said, appearing in the room with Dumbledore. Harry just glared.

As Dumbledore stepped in, and Dracula caught sight of him, the battling wizard stopped a moment to say,

"Oh look, it's a miserable little pile of secrets."

At that little comment, Dumbledore glared and said,

"Your words are as empty as your soul!"

Then turned and made to leave, but Harry yelled, "WAIT!"And jumped on the wizard just as he apparated away. With dumbfounded expressions, the three watched them go (which really didn't take long, since they disappeared quite quickly.)

"That was most inconvenient," Alucard declared.

"Hm. Seems I don't have much reason to be here anymore," Voldemort observed.

"Have at you!" Dracula snarled at Voldemort, pouncing, but the other Dark Lord disappeared before the attack met, with a parting comment, "After I've killed Potter, I'll come destroy you!"

"Damn," Dracula said, then noticed Alucard, "Ah, hello my son."

"Father," Alucard nodded, "I will just be off now to go round up the Belmont again, so he can come kill you."

"Ah, yes," Dracula said, "Very well. Will you for dinner later be home?"

Alucard glared.

"Of course,"

Then flittered off.

After some time, all was silent and Dracula paced about, bored.

"Oh, to hell with this," the Dark Lord said, and took off after them.

Author's Comments:

Yay, I'm back. How was this chapter? Next Chapter, where should I have them meet? I was thinking Hogwarts, but... Well, I'm not entirely sure where to take this from here. Any suggestions? Btw, for those not in the know, some of the dialogue was actually taken from/inspired by Castlevania : Symphony of the Night. Most notably:

Dracula: "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets! But enough talk... have at you! "

Alucard: "Think you I would forget such a thing? No!"

Richter Belmont : "Your words are as empty as your soul!"

I love the Castlevania games. But you just have to admit the dialogue is hilarious sometimes, and not necessarily because it was meant to be. :)