Could be early, could be late. They changed my meds again and I keep forgetting what day it is... It's not fun but let's do some fanfiction!
-YDHP-
"Who has Harry?"
Vlad demanded, in no mood to wait or ask politely. Sirius Black looked at him oddly for a moment, then the amassed adults behind him and gulped.
"Wormtail. You know him as Peter Pettigrew."
"Pettigrew is dead. You killed him!"
Black shook his head, looking over at Lupin but Vlad didn't care for their broken school friendship.
"No I didn't. He blew that street up and cut off his finger, then transformed into a rat and vanished because he knew that would lead to me being blamed for it all."
None of this was helping find Harry, and Vlad was growing desperate.
"Let's pretend I believe you, or care. Why does this Wormtail have Harry? Where is he?"
"Because Wormtail was turned, he followed You-Know-Who. I saw him drag Harry off into the secret passage, but he had disapparated before I could catch up in time. Then I had to wait for you to notice he was missing, or you would only think I had taken him."
"That was over two hours ago! If he's dead because you waited around" the thought stung, Vlad was sure he would know but still "I will kill you myself."
Running through potential ways to find Harry, Vlad turned to Bertrand desperately - only he was fast enough to get them away from the teachers. He was fairly sure he heard the tutor sigh, but all of two seconds later he was being flitted along, landing with Bertrand and Severus Snape in the courtyard.
"Does the freaky tattoo tell you where to go?"
They were short on time, had maybe a minute or two until the others could catch up with them.
"Sort of. It guides apparition, but it's not like a map in my mind."
Vlad couldn't apparate, and he wasn't about to ask Snape to risk his life for Vlad. Reaching his hand out slowly, Vlad tried to focus on the magical guidance, though the dark, blackened magic was uncomfortable and clearly so was his teacher as Vlad touched the mark.
"I have to go. If you can buy me time? Great."
Glad he had perfected the invisibility spell silently, and that he had his backpack shrunk down in his pocket, Vlad ran for the Whomping Willow, ignoring Bertrand calling after him. He knew the passage under it would take him past the school boundaries to Hogsmeade, meaning he could charm a quick portkey without being followed. If he had had the time, he could have done the same in the Chamber of Secrets, but it was too late now. The first portkey took him only a couple of miles away, just to buy more time as he landed heavily in a field.
The 'sense' he had picked up, and the lack of Hogwarts wards blocking his sense of Harry meant he was going on feelings when he charmed the second portkey. Vlad had zero idea what he was potentially going to find, but Harry was in danger so it didn't matter. Feeling shaky, he grabbed for the flask of replenisher and swallowed a few mouthfuls - above the recommended dose, but he needed all the help he could get.
Shrinking his backpack back down, Vlad pocketed it and grabbed the wooden block he was using as a portkey. Whispering 'Harry' to activate it, he felt the still-terribly-uncomfortable tugging behind his stomach, magic yanking him along and every atom of his body focusing on 'feeling' for Harry. A ward of some kind slammed into him, or he into it, Vlad wasn't sure until the dizziness passed. Harry was nearby, he could feel it. His mate wasn't far, but the portkey couldn't bypass the security spells.
Looking around, there was a rotted wooden sign on the edge of a field, the vague shape of what Vlad thought was a church in the distance.
"Little Han... Hangleton."
He traced the letters, not that they told him a great deal - Vlad didn't know where Little Hangleton was. Squinting at the magical protections, he could see the wards had weak points that he could probably break. Whoever set them probably wasn't that powerful. Probably not Voldemort then. His wand was in his pocket, and though Vlad was getting used to going without it he held it anyway. That way, if anyone knocked it out of his hand, they would probably think him disarmed.
Seeking one of the weak points, almost like a crack in the wall of warding, he pressed his wand to it and murmured a finite spell. The crack extended, but didn't break open. The magic reminded him of how the Voldemort tattoo on Snape's arm had felt... Maybe one needed one of those to get through. Attempting the finite again, a small break in the wards opened up and Vlad managed to get through. This side of the spell, he could see more shapes in the dark. Graveyard?
If he strained his hearing, Vlad could hear voices. Most of all, he could feel Harry. Pulling Harry's invisibility cloak out of his bag, Vlad threw it around himself - he could make himself invisible without it, but perhaps he could pull Harry beneath it and get him out of danger. Spelling his shoes silent, he started walking, slow and carefully keeping eyes out for anyone. The voices grew louder, so he headed towards the sound.
Shapes that became people appeared, and there was a figure strutting, preening as he circled the others. That faded into the background when Vlad spotted the statue, some representation of an angel of death with a scythe and hood. The scythe was held up across its stony body, and in the narrow gap, there was Harry. His arms were physically trapped so he couldn't reach his necklace, his wand on the ground by his feet. Vlad summoned it silently when everyone's attention was on the bizarre, inhuman center focus - Lord Voldemort, or Tom Riddle to Vlad and Harry after so much research.
Harry's eyes seemed to follow the wand, head turning slightly and a panicked expression crossing his face. There was a stone monument near Vlad, still several feet away from anyone and he squinted to see it in the limited light. "Tom Riddle Snr" and "Tom Riddle" complete with years of birth and death, the letters worn from time and the elements. When they got out of here, there was research to be done. For now, Harry was trapped and potentially seconds from death at any moment.
When he got close enough, Vlad could smell blood. Harry's blood. Someone had hurt his mate. Taking a few seconds to look around, there was a sort of circle formed, but it had gaps - missing followers? - and there was an enormous cauldron over a fire, the main source of light. If he weren't positive it was the same person, Vlad would never have matched the attractive teen male from the Chamber of Secrets to... this creature.
As a non-human himself, Vlad was quickly realising you didn't have to be undead to be inhuman. It was like a skeleton with skin stretched over it, no trace of fat or muscle to him. It was a little grotesque if he was honest. Now he was close enough to hear words, rather than unintelligible voices, he realised Voldemort was bragging about how he was going to kill Harry, how he was going to hurt his mate.
Edging within touching distance of Harry, he could see the blood came from a gash on his arm, too neat to be an accident. Waiting for Voldemort to turn away again, Vlad placed his fingers on Harry's wrist, the way he had done against Quirrell, or to bolster him against the dementors. Harry jumped in surprise, but he could see the cogs turning in his mind.
"Vlad?"
The name was barely breathed, almost completely silent. Rather than answer aloud, Vlad brushed his fingers over Harry's neck, along the necklace he had given him and he had to fight not to get distracted by the fact Harry's pulse was fluttering beneath his fingertips.
"And now, my loyal followers" Voldemort was talking again, facing Harry now and looking right through Vlad "it is time to kill this bothersome child. After tonight, nobody will ever question my power again."
Vlad couldn't see a way to free Harry from the angel of death statue, focusing his magic and trying to shift it enough for Harry to reach his portkey necklace, cursing that it was touch activated right now - they both had to have hands on it to be taken, Vlad could use it and leave Harry alone if he touched it and Harry didn't. Not that that was an option. The stone arm shifted, just enough and Harry nodded infinitesimally as if to say he could reach.
Voldemort looked confused for less than half a second, as though unsure what he saw but then he was raising his wand, pointing it directly at Harry and his face turned even darker, angrier.
"Avada Kedavra!"
Vlad didn't even think, he just jumped directly in front of Harry as the bright green light shot towards them. It hit him in the chest, and the last he remembered was it must have looked like Harry had an invisible shield absorbing the killing curse.
His head hurt. That was Harry's first thought as consciousness found him again slowly. A vague memory of the passage in Hogwarts returned, the sound of scratching and a sense of unease before there was a voice, and then something hit him. Cracking one eye open, Harry couldn't see a thing. There was a stick laying on the floor a few feet away, and he could feel a sort of... muffling of the world around him. Vlad and his weird magic senses would come in handy right now.
Vlad! He had the emergency portkey Vlad had given him... but this was where Harry discovered his arms were trapped completely, pinned so tight to his chest his elbow joints were protesting and his knuckles were digging into his shoulders. The thing pinning his arms was stone, and not moving a jot. A fire blazed out of nowhere, and Harry could see his wand, laying on the ground a teasingly close distance to his feet and totally useless to him right now.
Carefully lifting his head to look over towards the flames, pain throbbing at the join between his neck and back and radiating dully down his spine, Harry squinted and saw a huge cauldron being slammed down over the fire. In the light of the flames, he could see a short, pudgy looking man with a small, pointed nose and watery, squinty eyes, all complimented with a large balding patch on the top of his head. The fire light caught him just right to make the lines in his skin vanish for a second, and Harry realised he recognised the face.
"Peter Pettigrew. But... You're dead!"
The man looked up, and that was confirmation enough for Harry. But if Pettigrew was alive... what really happened in the street when Sirius Black apparently murdered him? Spying one of the mans chubby, stubby hands, he saw the missing finger, just below the knuckle and even with magic at his disposal, it was healed unevenly.
Struggling against the stone holding him, Harry changed tack and let his muscles go as lax as possible, hoping it might allow a little wiggle room. No such luck. Scanning the surrounding area, he realised they were in a graveyard, weathered headstones scattered through the dark. Something splashed into the cavernous cauldron, and Harry felt unease settling thick in his stomach.
"I can only assume I'm going to get killed here at some point. So humour me. How did you get into Hogwarts with the dementors?"
Pettigrew froze, raising a large knife that glinted steely in the fire light.
"So few notice a rat. When the Weasley boy was in England to do his school shopping, I hid amongst his little sisters things and I was carried in like luggage."
The mans smile made Harry feel nauseous, and he remembered Ron being in Diagon Alley, back before school started for the year. Rat...
"Scabbers? You were Scabbers? I have to tell you, you must have really liked gingers, since you were Percy Weasleys pet first."
Harry was rambling, he knew, but any words he dragged from Pettigrew could be useful to surviving, which was the best case scenario right now. Whatever was happening, Harry knew it wasn't good. However, Pettigrew wasn't even listening by now, hands shaking slightly over the cauldron. He wasn't about to... Harry swallowed bile as the man literally cut his hand off there and then, a bloodied stump clumsily bandaged by wand.
"Flesh of the servant, willingly sacrificed."
Harry was no expert, but this was a ritual if ever he had seen one.
A nearby grave rumbled, then cracked and a fine dust rose from it, trailing through the air and sprinkling itself over the cauldron, which bubbled and smoked and turned a sickly grey colour.
"Bone of the father, unknowingly taken."
Heart hammering, Harry realised Pettigrew was advancing on him, clutching the knife in his hand and the smell of blood heavy on the air. The way his arms were pinned, he couldn't even try to dodge the blade as it pressed to his skin. Unsure if it was even possible, Harry imagined the protection and power Samael had given his blood being held back - if someone wanted his blood, they weren't taking the basilisk immunity too if he could help it.
The blood shone on the knife, the pain where he had been cut barely registering in his absolute, utter panic. Pettigrew tilted the blade over the cauldron, Harry's blood dripping slowly into the greyish liquid that began to glow scarlet.
"Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken! The Dark Lord will rise again!"
The mixture began to roil, hissing and spitting and an ominous buzzing filled the air, like white noise closing in on Harry's senses. If Voldemort was about to rise again here, Harry was very, very screwed. His scar began to ache, slowly and subtly at first but as the scarlet liquid rose from the cauldron, coalescing into a humanoid shape, it felt like someone had taken a soldering iron to his forehead. He wouldn't give them the satisfaction, biting the inside of his cheek until the need to scream faded a little.
Pettigrew conjured a huge pile of black fabric, which wrapped itself like a funeral gown around the skeletal, ethereal white thing that had come from the cauldron. As the thing turned around, Harry's whole body tried to shrink inwardly on itself. This was his grandfather, the man who had fathered his mother, a beautiful woman with purity and goodness in her heart. It was irreconcilable.
"Harry Potter. The boy who lived, completely at the mercy of Lord Voldemort at last. I'm going to kill you, of course" a pale, bony hand wrapped around a long, thin wand handed to him by Pettigrew "but first, I think I should call a few old friends. Wormtail, your arm."
Pettigrew held out his bloodied stump, but Riddle - he wouldn't dignify him with his chosen 'lord' name - scoffed, shoved it aside roughly and paid the sniveling cries of pain no mind.
"The other arm."
Riddle yanked the mans uninjured arm harshly, ripping back the ragged fabric of his sleeve to expose the ugly tattoo etched on his arm. Riddle sighed happily, as though it were a work of art to be savoured, then pressed the very tip of his wand to it. Pettigrew screamed aloud, and Harry could see the mark darkening, moving and imagined it was like being re-branded based on his reaction.
All around the graveyard, pops and cracks sounded and multiple people appeared, each wearing a white mask over their faces, nothing but their hands exposed beneath the heavy black robes they wore.
"I confess myself disappointed. I had hoped more of you would return, but then I suppose I should be disappointed. Not one of you tried to find me."
"I-I-I did, my-my-lord."
Pettigrew was shivering, whether from fear or cold or blood loss, Harry wasn't sure. They seemed to mostly be ignoring him, and he wished more than anything he could get a hand free. His arm felt cold and sticky where blood was drying on his skin, and his whole body hurt.
"Out of fear Wormtail" Harry needed to find out why he was called that "not loyalty. However, you have proved... useful"
Riddle drawled, then waved his wand through the air and left a shimmering streak of liquid silver. The liquid solidifed, moving to form a hand that attached itself seamlessly onto Pettigrews arm.
"Thank you master! It... it's beautiful."
Riddle waved a hand dismissively, then seemed to look around expectantly and the robed, masked strangers moved quickly, kneeling and all taking turns to kiss the hem of Riddles robes, then taking clearly learned places in a sort of circle. The fire light was starting to hurt his eyes, so Harry looked down... and his wand zoomed off. Naturally. Turning to where it had shot off to, there was nothing there but more darkness.
"I will punish you later. For now, my dear followers, I present to you my prisoner. Harry Potter."
Harry wondered if Riddle knew they were related, that he had murdered his own daughter. If he had chance to have a conversation, maybe he would tell him. Or not. He didn't want anyone to connect Lily Evans to the depraved killer smirking malevolently at Harry's trapped, bleeding form.
There were actual cheers, but then Harry was distracted by something else. He might be delirious, but he thought someone, maybe something, invisible was near him. He couldn't see anything, or even hear breathing or footsteps. Riddle continued waxing poetically about the things he planned to do to prove his power over Harry, but Harry was too busy jumping in surprise when fingers brushed against his wrist, gripping in a familiar gesture.
"Vlad?"
He almost didn't ask, because there were eyes on him and he didn't want to give away he may have backup. There was no answer verbally, but soft fingers traced along the string of his necklace, the one Vlad had given him. That was all the confirmation Harry needed to relax a little - he wasn't alone, Vlad had somehow found him in the middle of nowhere with 'Lord Voldemort' and co about to kill him. If nothing else, Harry mused, at least he wouldn't die alone.
The stone pinning his arms seemed to vibrate slightly, shifting all of a few millimetres but Harry thought he could reach his necklace now and nodded as subtly as he could, praying Vlad was looking and waiting for some sort of signal.
Whatever Vlad had been planning to do was cut short as Riddle raised his wand, pointing directly at Harry and his face twisted, looking even less human than before (if that were possible) and he all but screamed the curse.
"Avada Kedavra!"
The sickly green light shot towards Harry, but it never made purchase as the spell vanished inches in front of him. If anything, Riddle was more surprised than Harry as the spell didn't hit him. A wave of emotions washed through Harry as he realised Vlad must have taken the hit, throwing himself in front of Harry again and again. Growling as he looked at the man that had taken yet another person from Harry, a rush of anger filled him and the thing pressing him into place crumbled, broke as he pushed and dropped to the ground.
Thinking 'protego' as hard as he could, Harry fumbled in the wet grass for Vlad's hand, knowing there were seconds left before Riddle would try again. Now was not the time to fight, Harry wasn't ready. When he was, Riddle would pay. For Rose, for Lily, for James, for Vlad and then for everyone else he had hurt and killed and tortured for who and what they were, or because they were in his way or wouldn't follow him.
Finally making purchase with Vlad's cold, slender fingers, Harry hoped this would work as he wrapped both their hands around the snake charm on his necklace and whispered "Samael" feeling it pull them along, but only a few feet outside of the fire light before they hit the equivalent of an invisible brick wall. Clutching Vlad's invisible wrist and hearing a scream of "FIND HIM" behind them, he realised they must have hit a ward of some kind.
How did Vlad get through? Harry willed the magical vision he had been wishing would vanish constantly until now forward, and the air was suddenly alight with so much magic it hurt. There was a gap through which only night was visible, with the image of cracks in the magic around it where Vlad must have broken through to save Harry. Not even noticing the weight, Harry ran for it, still clutching Vlad's hand to the necklace as they fell through the gap.
"Samael!"
This time he knew it worked, the world around him spinning so fast he almost threw up, then the Chamber of Secrets was all around them as he landed on the cold, damp floor. Safe, at least for now, Harry felt hot tears of anger and grief well and spill over his cheeks, fumbling for the edge of the invisibility cloak and yanking until the heavy fabric fell away to reveal Vlad, laying deathly still and clutching Harry's and his own wand in the hand Harry hadn't wrapped around the portkey.
He rolled Vlad onto his back, and a raw sort of sob tore from his chest. When would people stop having to die for him? The idiotic vampire had saved Harry, yes, but he should never have jumped in front of the spell - Harry had previous in surviving, he might have lived.
Clutching at his hand, he felt his usually-slowed heartbeat pulse and throb in his ears, there was an ironic sense of dejavu as he leant over Vlad's body - just as Vlad had when Samael had bitten him. Except Harry had been fine, but Vlad wasn't moving.
"Why? Why did you do this?"
He was hardly going to answer, Harry chuckled humourlessly to himself. He must have been shaking harder than he realised, as he thought for a second Vlad's hand twitched in his. Wishful thinking in the midst of grief, that was it.
Then it happened again. One twitch, then another, then Vlad's fingers squeezed tight around his own. Reaching down to Vlad's wrist, Harry realised he could feel something, the steady tick of life in the 'untransformed' vampire.
"Vlad? Are you alive? Undead? I don't care, just say something!"
He was frantic, reaching for Vlad's chest to feel his heart beating steadily beneath, but Vlad's body recoiled, his face scrunching up in pain.
"Ow. Don't suppose you remember, being a baby" Vlad coughed, eyes flickering open for a second then closing again "but that hurt."
Harry couldn't help it, he cried.
"You stupid, bat brained idiot. What were you doing taking that spell?"
Vlad dropped the wands in his not-claimed-by-Harry hand, slowly reaching for his t-shirt hem and pulling it up slowly. It was hard to see amongst the storm cloud of bruising at first, but the 'magic sight' hadn't yet faded, and there was a faint green glow. In the shape of a lightning bolt.
"I'm not human Harry, takes more than a curse to get rid of me."
-YDHP-
Almost decided to leave you guys hanging, but I would have felt a bit bad all week long then.
Yes, I am aware Voldie is back third year instead of fourth, I'm not that drugged up!