YokaiAngel - I'm glad you think so!

You - what was unexpected? I mean, I'm guessing George but still.

AnimeNerdX - glad it wasn't awful! As for Ron... neither? He was being tortured with Cruciatus.

Since I figure many of you expected Harry in the lake, I will explain. For one, I felt it might be a little... cliche. But more strongly, I felt like Vlad would not have been in any way cooperative if Harry had been missing that morning? He would absolutely not have focused on anything but where Harry was, and his sense of where his mate was would have made the task quite unfair.

-YDHP-

"I don't want to do this."

"You want to be able to fake a transformed vampires powers. This is one of them... according to Bertrand. Come on, I trust you."

Vlad grimaced, focusing his magic. Occlumency hadn't seemed nearly this difficult, but Legilimency was awful. It was as best he would get to replicating vampiric telepathy until he could do that, would even make it easier to master when he transformed. But Vlad didn't want to invade other peoples minds.

"Maintain eye contact. Don't try and angst through it, you need to be able to look calm."

"Be quiet Bertrand, I'm focusing. Otherwise I'm just going to fail to hypnotise him."

His tutor backed off, leaving Vlad staring into Harry's eyes. Which was very distracting. Harry had beautiful eyes... focus Vlad. Having not practiced this yet, Vlad still needed to speak his incantation.

"Legilimens!"

He wasn't sure what happened, except that it felt like he had rammed his head into a brick wall and the wall had come out victorious. Harry was rubbing his head too, apparently feeling similar sensations.

"What the hell was that?"

Bertrand watched the two, walking over to Harry with an expression of deep thought on his face.

"I have a theory... would you mind looking up at me Harry?"

Vlad made himself not hex Bertrand for touching Harry like that, staring deeply into his eyes with fingers on his temples.

"When did you take up occluding?"

"Uh... what?"

Bertrand dropped his hands and took a step back, considering Harry like a scientist would an experiment.

"He has a solid barrier protecting his mind... much like your own Vlad, except yours was hard won through practice and study. Harry doesn't appear to have done that."

"No idea what you're talking about."

Vlad tried again, going more gently and finding the thick barrier... which, as he took a closer 'look', he could only describe as the texture of scales.

"It's because of the basilisk venom. That barrier around his mind? Identical to basilisk scales."

"Interesting."

Bertrand was the first to hear about Harry's quirks from the basilisk bite after it happened, was probably aware Samael no longer lived under his home but hadn't asked.

"So I have a natural occlumency barrier from Samael? Is that good?"

"Generally, yes. It does make training Vlad's mind magic more difficult if you can't control it though."

"How would I do that? Control it?"

Bertrand tapped his fingers against his leg as he thought, clearly enjoying the engagement of new magic to learn despite his own lack of actual magical abilities.

"Part of it is protecting your mind without conscious thought, which you are clearly already doing. The other is an ability to lower it, then to manipulate it to appear as though it isn't even there while only letting what you want to allow through. These are more advanced skills, the barrier protecting your mind is an advantage in itself."

"I guess, though it isn't doing a bloody good job. I'm still getting the Riddle-mares."

"Perhaps that is down to a deeper connection than just Legilimency. Such as your scar, or even genetics. I must confess this is not my area of expertise, but now... I'm all you got."

"Bertrand, you're a good teacher. Don't knock yourself."

"This would still be Severus' area of knowledge."

"You can do telepathy. The two aren't much different. Teach us like it's a telepathy barrier instead, don't focus on magic. Focus on the mind."

Bertrand seemed to straighten up a little, and Vlad felt good for boosting his confidence. Even if it was only a small amount. He talked Harry through dropping his defenses to let Vlad in, then imagining the barrier back up afterwards. Somehow he doubted Harry would have much trouble picturing Samael.

"Ok, try again. Gently though, don't hurt yourself."

There was something so wrong about invading anothers mind... but at the same time, Harry had no fear of letting Vlad inside his head. Which made him a little giddy inside. Turning to face each other again, Vlad tried to focus on something other than how beautiful his eyes were.

Legilimens!

This time, it was easy. He didn't go delving through Harry's head, but he could feel Harry's immediate emotions, his innate trust in Vlad and his confusion about the strange feeling in his mind. Vlad withdrew voluntarily, watching Harry's face clear.

"That felt strange."

"Master Legilimens will almost always be able to invade a mind without you feeling it. Only a master of Occlumency will be able to sense it, but the hope is that you'll be able to repel an intrusion, and Vlad be able to read surface thoughts without being sensed himself. All the better to fake his telepathic abilities."

Mind magic really took it out of them, but Harry could raise and lower his Occlumency barrier on command and Vlad could at least perform the spell silent and wandless. It was a start.

"Same time next week, focus on keeping those barriers intact for now."

Bertrand knew Vlad had other training to be doing - magic with Tonks, potions and Healing with Ingrid and Harry, on top of homework with Hermione which was rigorous all on it's own as she insisted he be prepared for the exams he wasn't going to take. It was actually sort of nice, homework required enough attention to stop him worrying over the third task.

Harry was a much better distraction though.

"Don't worry, you're perfectly safe. I checked."

Somewhere in his mind, Vlad was aware it was supposed to be the other way around. But that wasn't at the forefront of his thoughts when Harry's sharpened incisors pressed to his neck. Lovebites were more dangerous territory when both parties had bites with something extra. Though Vlad's vampiric virus wasn't actually active yet, nor did he have the fangs to inject it. Harry's venom wasn't mature either, but basilisk venom was extraordinarily destructive so that might not mean much.

Still, Harry had his mouth on Vlad's skin and sensible thoughts were not a priority. And besides, Samael said Vlad was safe. He trusted... maybe not the basilisk, but he trusted Harry's sense of Vlad's safety, and Samael definitely cared for Harry. So when Harry actually bit him, skin breaking beneath the 'fangs' he had gained, Vlad was awash with many feelings. None of them negative. He felt the bruise form, something cold sinking into his body and very little pain at all.

"My vampire."

"Mhmm."

Vlad had forgotten how to talk. Harry ran a thumb across the bite mark, face creasing in thought.

"Huh, weird. I can see where your skin broke... sorry about that, but it's healed over."

Vlad reached for the mark, feeling the two little bumps of scar tissue where he had felt skin tear a minute before. Focusing when Harry was still on top of him was tough, but he managed eventually.

"No clue. I don't know how basilisk and vampire mix... there's never been a vampire mated to a human, never mind a part basilisk human who bites. Still... I hope that stays. It's like a vampire first bite, that always leaves a scar."

"So vampires and humans don't usually..."

"No. I mean, it's happened but it's illegal. Dimidius vampires are incredibly rare. I don't know much about them, but yeah we aren't supposed to play with people that way."

Harry considered his words, then kissed him.

"Less talking now."

Vlad investigated the mark in the mirror the next morning - there was a fairly unremarkable bruise (if you ignored it being from Harry) but there were two faint scars there too. Harry pouted when Vlad glamoured it, but cheered up when Vlad kissed him and promised to remove the glamour when they were alone.

"You don't want anyone to know. Nor could we explain how you left a scar. You know it's there and I know it's there."

"Hmphh. Fine. Breakfast?"

As usual, Harry was distracted by his stomach. Sometimes Vlad thought Harry could eat an entire cow and still have room for pudding. Eyeing the taut muscles of his mates torso though... worth it.

"What if I get stuck with like... one wing and one arm?"

"Then we use this mandrake draught that makes me sneeze to be near... it'll return you to normal. You've proved you can do it, so it's time you learnt to control it. You can control your Occluding shield no problem, this is the same sort of thing. Focus your magic, don't worry about anything else."

Harry rolled his eyes, stretching his arms out at his sides to try and loosen up. He didn't love remembering the first time he transformed - he had almost blown the chance to be with Vlad. Which was madness, because they were pretty perfect together. Hermione watched jealously, having not mastered her own form just yet.

Wings. Feathers. Beak.

"Oh, very fetching."

Harry didn't feel any different, but Hermione pointed to the mirror in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom - it was available. Peering into the cracked, dirty glass surface, he noticed his hair had all turned to feathers of the same midnight colour. She was snorting into her hand, laughing as Harry touched the feathers awkwardly.

"Alright. Instead of trying to finish the change, try to turn your hair back to normal. Baby steps."

Closing his eyes, Harry focused on picturing his normal hair, willing it back.

"Perfect."

When he looked again, his hair was all Potter mess again. So he could do it on his magic alone. Focusing harder, something entirely different happened.

"Ok... that's new."

Harry looked down at his forearms, the biggest expanse of exposed skin he had at the moment. Except... no skin, all scales. He was still human shaped, but everywhere he looked skin had become scales. Patterned like Samael, only a brighter hue of green. His nose felt a bit flatter, though it was still there at least. To an untrained eye, it looked like some kind of extravagant body paint experiment.

"Can I... I'm curious if they feel like scales."

Vlad held out a hand, and Harry nodded - he couldn't tell himself, everything felt different. The vampire touched his scales, oooh-ing. He wasn't sure how he knew, but Harry was sure he couldn't speak English right now.

"Wow. Identical."

"So... he has two potential animagus forms?"

Hermione asked, and Vlad continued to stare at Harry with a mix of scientific curiousity and sheer amazement.

"I don't know. It's never been heard of before, even werewolves who had become their animagus forms before they were bitten lose their old forms to the wolf. Can you turn back? Only... it's going to be hard to get around Hogwarts unnoticed like that."

Turning back to skin was much harder, but Harry eventually got it right. He was itchy as hell again for his troubles though, and left to take a bath while Vlad and Hermione continued working on her transformation. Vlad came back about half an hour after Harry was done soaking his itchy self, dressed and lazing on his bed reading. Fred and George were displaying some kind of pocket firework set in the common room, so everybody else was down there.

He suspected at some point Malfoy Manor would host them over the summer, which meant he would get an up close look.

"Any luck?"

"She managed ears and a tail... so it's progress. Amazing progress, neither of you have had secondary magic spurts yet."

"Cool. What's not cool is suddenly turning halfway into a snake out of nowhere."

"Yeah, I was thinking about that. I don't think it's an animagus form... I would say it's more likely you may have an 'other' form."

Vlad was making less sense than usual.

"Huh?"

"Ok. Vampires can turn into bats. That'll be my 'other' form. No learning, no variant. Vampire equals bat. Basilisk equals... basilisk. Not like Animagi, where Harry equals bird while Hermione equals panther."

"Wait. You think I might turn into a basilisk? Like, sixty foot snake with deadly eyes?"

"I don't know. It could be simply a snake 'other' form. I think only he can tell you."

Vlad was right to an extent - he was flying blind on new turf, working with the scant information he had about something that had never happened before. They did that alot.

"If I'm still itchy tonight I'll be sleeping down there anyway. I'll talk to him later... and try not to do it again."

"If you do and someone sees you... blame a stray hex?"

Harry chuckled, arching when Vlad scratched that spot on his back again. Even as he remonstrated him for scratching, but he also seemed to quite enjoy Harry's reaction.

"Come on, Charms homework."

"Yawn. Boring."

"It's with me now, or with Hermione tomorrow."

"Good point."

Harry jumped up and grabbed his workstuff, plopping down next to Vlad who already had his quill to parchment. Bookworm boyfriend.

"What relevance do shrinking and enlarging charms actually have? Aside from laziness and convenience carrying luggage."

"Well, small writing can be enlarged. Furniture storage. You can enlarge and reduce fires, doorways, beds, trunks... Even animals to an extent. I mean, Samael is living in one big expansion charm."

"Alright, alright. I only ever see you using it on your backpack and my trunk."

Vlad nodded, smiled and continued scratching out his essay. Loud bangs periodically emanated from under their closed dormitory door, and Harry was waiting for Hermione to hex the twins to Merlin and back for corrupting the younger students... again.

"How long until Easter?"

"Uh... A month. So it's three and a half weeks until you can eat half of Honeydukes again."

Harry tried to look sheepish, but he thought it probably came out much less apologetic than it should. A faint ringing sound started coming out of Vlad, which turned out to be his two-way diary with Ingrid inside his pocket. Vlad flipped it open, reading what it said and cracked up laughing.

"What?"

"Hang on."

He scribbled a reply, still snickering to himself before looking back up at Harry.

"Crabbe and Goyle were picking on one of the half-blood first years, not realising they had a seventh year sibling and most of our friends in green on their side. Apparently there was a rather colourful, mish-mash of curses and jinxes in a mini-Slytherin duel. Ingrid included a detailed description."

Vlad turned over the diary, allowing Harry to read the blow-by-blow account Ingrid wrote involving some kind of hybrid results, like a boils jinx mixed with jelly legs that gave Goyle little tentacles all over his face. Nobody looked to see if they were anywhere else.

As spring encroached, the evenings grew longer and dragged out the time until it was officially night, making Harry wait longer until he could jump down to Samael. The serpent was napping, but stirred almost as soon as Harry was down there, stretching himself along to bump against the wizards chest.

"Ah. You have developed."

"How can you tell?"

"Your scent has changed."

Harry immediately turned to Vlad, curious.

"Vlad, do I smell different to you?"

Never one to miss the chance, Vlad leant closer and inhaled at Harry's neck. He hummed happily, then remembered to answer.

"Now you mention it... yes. Not by much, but definitely a change there."

"So... am I going to turn into you? Am I going to become a basilisk forever? This is all so confusing for me. Not to mention itchy."

Samael flicked his tongue out, choosing his reply carefully.

"I am a Basilisk. You are more like... my human child. You will be able to transform, but you will also be able to change back. And no, your gaze will never kill."

"I'll be a Basilisk with safe eyes? You promise?"

"Yes."

"What about lifespan? I mean, you live for hundreds of years."

That was a question Harry had had for a while, wondering about his immortal boyfriend. Samael's answer stunned him.

"You were already immortal before I changed you."

-YDHP-

Very short chapter, but most of the time between second and third task is going to focus on Harry, since the task will focus on Vlad. Obviously. So forgive the shortness here. Expect more dreams, maybe a couple of only-Harry chapters depending how I feel. Then... the third task!