I wish there was more to say about the Great Transylvania Train Fire. It happened under the cover of muggle repelling charms, so the mundane side of the world was never aware of it. The casualties were entirely vampiric, so the wizarding world didn't care about it. Dracula himself was in far too rough a shape to care at the time, and after everything was settled he just waved me off, laughing and saying not to sweat the little details. Here is what information we do have, and if you're familiar with the event yourself, almost none of this will be news.
There were thirty-two victims in total, thirty-three if you count the injuries Harry himself suffered. Of the thirty-two vampires, twelve were killed. Of those twelve, ten were what the vampires call 'neophytes', those who had lived for less than two-hundred years. One was, well, there really isn't a proper title for vampires between the ages of two-hundred and four-hundred and ninety-nine, but that's what she was. And the last one, the mastermind behind the plot, was an 'Elder'. Basarab Hunyadi was his name, a vampire who'd been turned during their king's impaling days.
Now, this next part might be news. When most people heard that Harry had wiped out nearly three-dozen vampires, they assumed he'd used his magic.
He hadn't.
Well, except the trolly vampire.
Don't get me wrong, as we saw last chapter, Harry is as dangerous with a wand as… Well, there really aren't any fair comparisons for a man such as him. In between his curse-breaking adventures and quidditch seasons, every shaman, priestess, warlock, twirl-wand, occultist, and magi with half a reputation and a poor sense of paranoia were forced to put up with him banging on their door and demanding to find out about how they did what they do. If this were the sort of biography you write to try and polish someone up, I'd say he'd done it for the noble pursuit of erudition.
He'd actually just done it to see if they could put up a fight against him.
So when an opportunity came to crack bone and steel against dead flesh and jagged teeth, he took it with aplomb. He apparently gave each of the blood-draining passengers one chance to surrender and be paralysed for the remainder of their trip, and if they didn't comply, he beat them senseless with the knuckle dusters the Ministry had given him. One by one he swept through the compartments until the actual would-be assassins took notice of what was going on, and then all hell broke loose.
They, obviously, didn't stand a chance. Harry's description of the fight was worthless. All he said was 'I just kept punching, they kept on coming, and before too long there wasn't any left.' Although some of the employees had cleaned up the bodies, I did manage to steal a few peaks at the autopsy photos thanks to the king.
Even if we actually had the funding to include photographs in these books, I couldn't possibly do so.
Heads were… Heads were just gone. Described with fancy medical words that more or less amounted to 'beaten into a fleshy pulp'. Arms and legs were broken. There were so many pictures of the teeth. I mean, it makes sense I guess for vampires to care about things like that, but it was absolutely dreadful. One of them wasn't even theirs, it was Harry's.
I'm sure some people reading this are disappointed by the lack of vivid description regarding the way that Harry saved the day, how he broke the vampires' bones and ended their lives, but believe me when I say there's more to come. Things that I may, or may not, have been there to witness. We'll get there, just trust me.
In the meantime, just know that the most 'glorious' part of his fight was against Hunyadi, the elder vampire. The two had gone back and forth like rutting stags, punching and stabbing and biting and everything else you can imagine as Harry slowly drove the vampire further and further into the train cabins until he reached the charcoal-fueled engine.
Runes and pipes were coating the cart's walls, the space was blisteringly hot, and in the middle of it all was a massive furnace. There was a drum like beat to the machinery as it took the molten-hot chunks of magical charcoal and converted their empowered heat into propulsion. It would store up the energy for a second and a half, then pump it out like a heartbeat.
(Someone verify if that's close to how it works, I don't want the train enthusiasts to get after me.)
When the two got into the cart, Hunyadi tried to wrestle Harry into the furnace, which inspired our hero to do the same to him. After some more back and forth, the wanna-be Van Helsing planted a kick into the elder vampire's chest and sent him screaming and wailing into the burning pile of charcoal. Before it could escape, Harry slammed the furnace door shut, and returned to his now very pointless and over the top duty of locking down the rest of the patrons.
Once Harry had finished with his paranoid paralysations, he returned to their carriage, forcing open the door and batting away Blaise's reactive spell like it hadn't been a vile curse that would've boiled his eyeballs. He fell back against the sliding entrance and beamed at them.
"Well that was fun!" he said. "I told Hermione I could kill a vampire."
Blaise shook his head. "Anyone can kill a vampire. It's killing their bloody king that's a problem."
"A problem for you maybe."
Before the two boys could begin to argue properly, Luna chimed in. "Are you alright?"
"Fine as a fiddle," he lied and mis-idiomed. "Few scratches, but no bites."
Underneath the robes he wore, something Luna should've remembered he hadn't had on before he left, was a trio of lacerations running the length of the back of his forearm. Someone had managed to get a shallow stab in his shoulder. One of his ankles had been dislocated and re-set so the joint was beginning to swell like a balloon. And, as we already know, he was missing one of his teeth. The second-molar-thrice-grown, as the Vampires' autopsy report called it.
(Someone figure out what the polite way to capitalise vampires is. I feel like we should capitalise it when we're referring to their culture/people as a whole? I don't know.)
"Shoulda seen me out there," Harry continued on. He held up his still-armed hands, proud of the aching pain in his bones. "These puppies are awesome. What was that lady's name who gave 'em to me?"
"I don't remember," Luna said, taking her turn to lie. "But Blaise is right. I know you want to have fun, but please don't go and pick a fight with Dracula for no reason. I promise I'm not saying that because I think you'd lose." She did think that. "I'm saying it because it'll cause a massive amount of headaches for everyone else back home, as well as me and Blaise, okay?"
"Yeah, yeah." Harry folded his arms behind his head, frowning. "I should just call it lucky that I've even had this much fun already."
Harry was… Still is, really, a strange man. When the war first ended, according to Ginny, he wasn't like this. Every little 'mundane' aspect of life was appreciated and brought him a laughing joy that melted his ex-beau's heart. Soon it became 'boring' though. Everything became boring. He was able to fill the gap a bit with his short stint in quidditch, but with two seasons played, and two 'perfect' years under his belt, that quickly became monotonous as well.
I'm sure you can put the pieces together from there, but to call him an adrenaline junkie is both an understatement and a whitewashing.
"Do you guys smell that?" Harry asked, turning his nose up to the air and giving several hard sniffs. "Smells… Bad."
"How descriptive," Blaise snarked before taking a deep breath. "I don't… Actually, that smells like smoke."
Harry turned and slid the door he'd been leaning against back open, and his eyes widened. He spun back around, slamming the door shut, and offered his compatriots a nervous smile. "Listen, nothing to worry about, but there's something I need to take care of."
"What?" Luna stood. "Did you set the train on fire?"
"No!" Harry sort-of-lied again. "I'll just need to—"
He was cut off by the sprinkler above their head going off, dousing them in awful, metallic-smelling, brackish water that nearly made Luna lose her lunch. Even Blaise, who in his youth had seen more than his fair share of death, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket to cover his mouth and nose. Harry just glanced up at the spigot, back down at them, then bowed out of the carriage and gently closing the door.
Outside of the room, the now extinguished and recently burned-to-an-unrecognisable-mess corpse of Hunyadi lay against the opposite wall, just shy of his goal. More sprinklers were dotted along the train sections and although the disgusting water had mostly cleared out of the pipes by now, the downpour did little to make his exploration of the fire's path back to the engine any more enjoyable. Luckily for him, and thankfully for the other paralysed passengers and staff, the fire safety system had done its job and no one was hurt by the flames.
Of course, the engine room was another story.
Hunyadi had damaged the furnace when he broke out of it, breaking and bending the metal thus disrupting the flow of power. Despite Harry's best attempts at using a repair charm, there were just too many intricate parts and magically resistant materials for him to scratch the surface of what was needed. Unlike before when the engine was thumping along in a uniform rhythm, now it was making crunching gasps as it tried to force out the energy that was trapped inside it. Once he'd decided that the system was a lost cause, Harry cut the cart loose before it either exploded or died on its own and weighed them down.
As soon as the cart was free, he clambered up to the top of the train to make sure it kept going for the rest of the journey.
The one upside to the situation was that Harry's violent in-transit playtime had taken up the majority of the trip. It was only a few dozen more minutes before they arrived amidst a wailing, screaming, ear-piercing screech of the train's whistles. Hermione had said that Dracula liked to hear his guests coming, but she hadn't mentioned that everyone else in a thousand-kilometre radius needed to hear it too. The famous wizard got it the worst since he'd been outside for the experience.
When Luna and Blaise stepped out of their carriage, they discovered for the first time just how violent an affair it had been. The sprinklers were meant to put out fires, not wash away blood stains, and they definitely hadn't gone above and beyond what they were meant for. Although Harry hadn't rejoined them, Blaise insisted they make their way to the front of the train to exit.
When they got there and stepped out, our story's hero dropped down beside them like nothing was wrong, whistling and twirling his wand around his fingers like a student would a pen. The stewards and stewardesses, the ones who hadn't drawn the short straw anyways, all quivered and bowed when he appeared. It turned out there had been a brief and one-sided 'negotiation' regarding whether or not the train staff should be included in the wizard's mass-paralysis of travellers. The end compromise was that seven of the staff members were allowed to remain free, including the conductor and the engineer who'd run in terror at the sight of Harry kicking an elder vampire into the furnace. The other one-hundred and twelve employees were paralysed.
To be fair, the train really didn't need that much staffing, but Harry probably could've been more generous.
While they were getting their bearing, Luna noticed something.
"Harry," she said. "Why's there a massive smoke plume back there?"
The man turned and shaded his eyes to look, as though he wasn't very aware of the mostly-destroyed cart he cut loose from the rest of the train. "Huh, no clue." He turned back towards where they were supposed to go and locked up. "What the fuck?"
And 'what the fuck' was an extremely appropriate reaction to the man who'd come to greet them.
He had bleach-dyed hair whose blonde went down to the roots without a speck of the natural colour showing, and the locks themselves swam all the way to his ankles. His suit clung to his body like it had been stitched-on around him, not hiding a single groove across his immaculately sculpted body. Even his fanged smile did nothing to diminish the attractive aura. If it weren't for the fact that Luna remembered checking to see if her shirt was dry afterwards, she'd have assumed she could've filled a children's pool with her drooling.
"The fuck is this?" Harry demanded. "Why'd Dracula send Adonis out here to meet us?"
The man laughed, a sound like perfectly-rounded stones cracking against one another. "You're too kind, Mr. Potter."
"Like hell I am." He gave Blaise a once-over. "Alright, you're definitely still ugly, so I'm definitely still straight." He turned back to the stranger. "What's going on?"
"King Dracula employs a wide variety of people," the man said. "My name is Tantellize. I don't believe there's a human term for what I am, but I am the result of a particularly drunk satyr managing to somehow 'bag' a siren instead of a nymph."
"Call you 'handsome fuckers' and be done with it." Harry shook his head. "Anyways, get a move on. Let's meet this so-called king of yours."
"Of course, Lord Potter." Just as the man was about to turn on his heel, he paused and began to sniff the air. "What's that?"
"Don't worry about it!" Harry wrapped his arm around Tantellize's shoulders and Luna bit her lip at the sight. "Come on, lead the way!"
I later put together that Harry was feeling a bit miffed that he couldn't show up properly improperly dressed for the occasion, so was being a bit of an extra pain in the ass. He constantly stopped the group to tie his shoes, to ask about some piece of foliage they spotted along the way, or just to 'catch his breath'. Luna and Blaise had grown as sick of him as possible long before they reached the outermost entrance to Dracula's castle, but Tantellize seemed to lap it up, to Harry's annoyance.
This would probably be a good time to describe just what greeted them when they stepped outside the train, besides the most jaw-dropping chunk of man you'll ever see and a distant plume of ebony smoke.
If you were to look down on the area from the sky, Dracula's living space was a circle surrounded by two more circles. The first, outermost circle was made up of trees. It was a veritable forest that stretched for miles, with only a singular gap that allowed trains to come and go. The second was nothing but grassy plains. That circle allowed the watchmen along the towers of the castle's walls to have a clear view of anything and everything that approached.
The innermost circle was Dracula's home itself. Unlike most castles, which had a wall and then some separate buildings to keep things, well, separate, this one had brickwork stretching from the inner side of the walls and towers all the way inwards to form a singular, one-piece building. The 'building' was so massive and spaced out it would put any shopping centre to shame; it was like an entire city under just one gargantuan roof.
"Follow me, if you please," Tantellize said. "His majesty prefers to keep his throne room far from the entrance, I'm sure you understand."
"Nope." Harry shoved the handsome man out of the way and began to swagger down the hall. "Only a moron would put his escape route so far away from where he likes to plant his ass."
The rest of the trio, if you couldn't assume, were not pleased with their figure-head's tone.
"Potter!" Blaise snapped, stomping forward to catch up with his compatriot. "What the hell are you doing?"
"I'm gonna meet with their stupid king and tell him to keep it in his pants." Harry smacked the hand Blaise had put on his shoulder away. "At the end of the day, this is all about the rest of the world not wanting to put up with his temper tantrum, so if I can just get him to not have one we'll be all clear." He put his hands behind his head as he speed-strolled ahead of Tantellize who was trying to catch up and lead the way. "All without this detective bullshit."
"W-, Wait, Lord Potter!" The vampire king's attendant called. "That's not the right way!"
"I know how to find my way to the strongest person in a room," Harry called back. "Don't you worry."
Of course, Lord Potter's self-proclaimed talent led them to several restrooms and a boiler room. It wasn't until one of the leaking gaskets in the latter spritzed him with a jet of near-burning steam that he gave up the ghost and allowed their delicious attendant to lead them to the throne room properly. Blaise and Luna had the wherewithal to not call out their 'leader' for his folly, even as he continued to say there must be something wrong with the castle itself.
Despite the brutalist architecture outside the walls, inside the place felt much more modern; avant garde even. Portraits and landscapes, magical or otherwise, lined the walls and their were various plinths to hold up things like urns or statues or vases. They passed by a few butlers and maids, all of whom were as attractive as they were stately. None were as attractive as Tantellize, mind you, though I'm not sure anyone possibly could be. They also occasionally passed by some vampire that they could only assume was another noble, or at least important enough to roam freely about Dracula's home.
When they finally got to the king, Blaise and Luna regretted not wasting more time calling Harry out on getting lost or doing anything else that could've delayed their arrival.
The throne room was as ostentatious and ornamental a space as you could possibly imagine. Everything seemed to be made out of marble, as though the entire hall had been carved out of a singular slab of the stuff. Intricate pillars had been sculpted into works of art unto themselves with depictions of various gorgeous and handsome beings. The floors were carpeted in a shade of red that lightened and darkened in such a pattern that it made them feel like they were standing atop a sea of blood. Orbs of light danced about the room to a tune that didn't at all match the music that was playing.
The orchestra and choir making that music were stationed in one remote corner of the hall, and their every note and fluctuation was caught by a series of sound-amplifying runes so intensive that it nearly blew the trio's eardrums out just by being there. The walls around them shook and shifted with each twang and tweet as the instruments and voices cried out in a melancholic symphony that practically screamed with angst and agony.
At the centre of it all, draped sideways across his throne like he'd been dropped there from the ceiling, was King Dracula.
The most ancient vampire in the world looked… Well, he looked miserable. His dark, near-tawny locks draped down to the floor, partially obscuring his pale, gaunt features. Although he wasn't wearing a shirt, his leather trousers were clearly more expensive than Luna's entire wardrobe combined. He held in his clawed, but well-manicured, hands a wine glass filled with blood, wine, or both. His muscles rippled and stretched as he brought the glass to his lips, and he drank it down to its bottom before throwing the vessel to the side in a shattering explosion.
"Fuck this," Harry muttered. "Silencio!"
Despite the fact that he'd just single-handedly propelled an entire train for over thirty minutes, he still had enough power for his spell to ripple throughout the room and instantly mute everything besides the people. For a brief moment the choir accompanying the orchestra kept singing, but they quickly fell apart and went silent too when they realised their backing track was gone.
Their silence shot Dracula up. "Don't stop!" he roared. "I didn't tell you to stop! Play till you die you insipid, ingracious fucks!"
After a moment the choir started up again, and the king of all vampires drooped back down into his throne. Harry stared at him with a wrinkled nose and furrowed brows. Despite his assurances to the others, he had almost definitely come here looking for a fight, and now it seemed like he wasn't going to get one.
"You gotta be kidding me," he muttered.
Harry stomped towards the vampire and Blaise, Luna, and Tantellize all seized up. Logically they knew they should try to stop him, but it wasn't until that exact moment that they, or at least Luna, realised that there wasn't really much they could do to stop a man like him. Once he'd gotten close enough to Dracula, Harry lifted his hand into the air and brought it down with a crack against the vampire's cheek.
The choir's amplified gasp rocked the room and echoed in their following silence.
At first no one moved. The fading echo of the gasp died out, and when it did, with slow and conscious movements, the king of all vampires stood. Harry might've been half an inch taller than the immortal, but Dracula looked like he could've been sculpted from the same marble as the room itself. The vampire's eyes were unique compared to others of his kind; they had the same cat or snake-like pupils, but rather than having irises, the veins around the edges coalesced around the slits of black to give them a haunting and horrific appearance.
Harry stared into those eyes without flinching. He looked deep into the soul of the monster who'd impaled thousands of people, rampaged across half the world in various points throughout history, committed more atrocities than most could even think up; and he did it without so much as blinking.
"You dare?" Dracula asked.
"I do," Harry answered.
Even though the others were nearly two dozen paces away from the two of them, they could feel the power radiating out between them. Dracula's strength was a primeval force that seemed to carry with it the screams and laments of all his sins and victims. Harry's magic stood against it like a tumultuous hurricane that could blow away anything that dared to oppose him. You could hear the singers and musicians in the corner whispering in fear as they either prayed or tried to assure one another that everything would be fine.
"You-, you…" Dracula's hands clenched into fists as Blaise drew his wand and Luna's grip on her book and pen tightened. "Awwghh!"
It wasn't a roar of anger or a scream of defiance, it was… a sob. Dracula wrapped his arms around Harry, buried his head into his chest, and began to cry. It was an awful, ugly cry like you'd hear from a toddler who'd scraped their knee as they ran to their mother. The monster clutched onto Harry like that same child would've when they finally got to her. Luna and Blaise turned to Tantellize who had a single tear running down his perfectly chiseled cheek.
"Oh, my king," he whispered as he drew a handkerchief and wiped the moisture away. "My poor king."
As the vampire continued to weep, Harry turned back to his companions and mouthed, 'What the fuck?'
TMwS
And there's chapter 2. Some new characters introduced, a twist to what's going on with Dracula, and more. Still trying to get the right sense/habit for this 'voice' I'm writing in, still trying to nail the right vibe, but better to get it out there and keep going then to keep holding on to it without keeping the story going.
Thank you to those who have reviewed/commented, favourited/bookmarked, followed/subscribed, viewed/hit, and clicked the kudos button on Ao3 since there's not an equivalent to that on FF. So far just compliments so no feedback to respond to. Just like with my main-focus work I'll respond to anything that comes up/needs a response, otherwise we'll just keep the notes short like this.
Again, thank you all, love you all, lessthanthree, see you when I see you!
