Chapter Text
Harry was sure Paris was lovely: the City of Love and all that, the Eiffel Tower, croissants, a gondola ride down the Seine, maybe a quick visit to the Louvre…
Unfortunately, Harry wasn’t in Paris anymore. He wasn’t even sure this place had a name, but if it did, he’d call it Répugnant. He was in a sewer, for one, and even before that, the hospitality was lacking, Harry’s primary school French (and a tiny bit of butchered Francais with Fleur) no help to him, and he’d had his arm chewed on by a teenager who then disappeared into a storm drain.
A vampire. The Ministry of Magic dossier he’d been given called them ‘Daywalkers’. Harry had looked at the photos in the files - glittering youths with fangs - and thought about Sanguini, and… yeah, there was definitely a difference. For one, these vampires didn’t give a toss about the sun. It turned them into a disco ball, but it didn’t seem to hurt them from what the Ministry could tell. For two, Sanguini was… kind of creepy. If Harry had been in Transylvania exploring an abandoned castle and found a coffin, he’d expect to find a vampire like Sanguini in it, arms folded across their chest like- a vampire.
Looking at the few photos they had of their Daywalkers - crimson eyes, unblemished and glittering skin, and venom dripping from their fangs - Harry just felt sad. They all looked young, and while Harry wasn’t an expert in modern Muggle clothing, the victims and the vampires wore similar clothing - the same kind Harry used to wear: worn, oversized, holes for days, and barely appropriate for the weather.
Their vampires were runaways, drifters - and killers. They also had a habit of hiding in sewers; that, or Kinsley’s French contacts were pulling his leg. Harry would’ve given them a piece of his mind, if he hadn’t seen one pop out of nowhere and latch onto his arm. Harry had yelped, throwing off an Incendio that didn’t catch, but did startle. The Daywalker hissed and vanished back where he came from: the drain.
Harry’s arm burned, then tingled. There was a nasty black film around the edges of the bite - venom, his mind provided helpfully - but it slid off his skin and fizzed when it made contact with the tarmac. With a wandless Tergeo and a quick flurry of healing spells, it was bandaged up and he was ready to give chase. The Daywalker was quick, but Harry was practiced and armed to the teeth (ha) with magic. Cornered in a dead end, the vampire lunged again, but Harry was ready this time.
“Impedimenta,” Harry incanted, the Elder Wand singing as the Daywalker froze in place, legs no longer obeying. He raged, hissed, and seethed as Harry followed up with a stickfast hex, and he was stuck on the spot. “Who sent you?” Harry tried asking, flinching back as teeth snapped in his face. “Who… turned you?” was his next question - with no avail.
Harry hated France. He wanted to get out of the sewer, shower, and go back to his hotel room and watch eight hours of trashy TV, raid the mini bar for snacks, and have a nap. So, with dispensation to do whatever he needed to (and a quick apology to the vicious kid in front of him), he made his choice, and levelled the Elder Wand.
“Legilimens.”
The trail took him forward. From the sewers to Marseille, then to a basement that reeked of blood and perfume in Lyon. Then, a lead through Genoa and Pisa, and then Tuscany. Siena was a dud, but Harry’s knack for finding trouble like a bloodhound caught up with him in a ruined chapel just outside the walls of Volterra.
Harry’s Italian was patchy at best; a quick Translation Charm of Hermione’s invention clued him in on the phone call in front of him. The wizard - who sounded like Draco Malfoy if he were Italian instead of bratty - was promising the voice down the line a whole season. The best brawls he’d ever seen, with good money on victory. Harry had heard enough.
A fighting ring. He felt sick.
Harry made his presence known, cloak off, Elder Wand singing in his wand hand, crackling like ozone. “Phone down,” he said.
The man didn’t look like Malfoy, which was slightly disappointing. Harry had invented a story already, and seeing a tanned man, maybe closer to Lucius Malfoy’s age, with dark hair and eyes, he felt a little bit cheated. The first spell cut the phone clean in half and set fire to a patch of dry shrubbery just behind him. The second pinned the man to a pillar with ropes that bound him tighter than a trussed pig. The man snarled; Harry heard the distinct sound of rushing air behind him and spun, ducking out of the way and to the side without thinking.
There was no need.
From the pillars of the ruined church, four cloaked figures unstitched themselves from the shadows: one tall, one lean, and two little ones on the end.
Daywalkers.
Harry knew this, but found himself struck with the oddest thought. Cloaks, drama, and subtlety were three traits that Harry definitely hadn’t seen in the Daywalkers he’d come across so far. The Daywalkers the Ministry and ICW were tracking were aggressive, bloodthirsty, and attacked more or less on sight. Movement above the four, up in the balconies where the organ used to sing, and three more arrived.
Well shit.
The hoods of the four came down. The two little ones were blonde twins, probably Teddy’s age, with faces like little angels, and crimson red eyes that made Harry want to flinch. When he felt a needle of agony trill down his spine, he really did wince. It had nothing on the Cruciatus spell, that was for sure, but it was hardly comfortable. After a moment of awkward, bewildered silence, it was gone, and the girl was scowling at him.
“Was that you?” Harry blurted. “That was… weird.”
He got the distinct feeling that was the wrong thing to say.
“Interesting,” one voice murmured from the balcony. Male, but that was all Harry could work out. Thankfully, the three lowered their hoods and saved the guessing games. The one who had spoken was in the middle - all of them had crimson eyes like the Daywalkers Harry had encountered, but the middle one’s were wide and curious, like a toddler about to pull a kneazle’s tail. Long, dark hair fell in a curtain around his face, and he looked to be in his mid-twenties. Harry suspected he was, in fact, not in his mid-twenties, the same way Harry wasn’t seventeen. On his left was a pretty, blonde vampire whose eyebrows were promising homicide, and to his right, a tall, mournful figure with black hair and milky red eyes. None of them looked old enough to buy an energy drink in a Muggle shop without being asked for ID.
Harry was in good company, at least.
“This is our land, and our law,” the blonde told him. The glare told Harry he’d probably made lesser men wilt with a word and a look alone. Thankfully, Harry had grown up with glares from Snape. From Dumbledore. From Professor McGonagall. This vampire had nothing on the soul-crushing looks he’d earnt at Hogwarts for his crumpled essays, splotchy handwriting, and Transfigurations of questionable quality.
“Well your land has a poaching problem,” Harry informed him cheerfully, pointing at the man tied to a pillar.
The wizard heaved against the ropes. “You don’t know who I work-"
“Yes,” Harry said, and flicked his wand. The ropes tightened and the man reconsidered his words. “I do.”
That was a lie. Harry had no idea who was on the other end of the phone, and realised much too late that he’d destroyed his only lead so far on that front. He was going to have a long, hard think about that later, when he survived an impromptu meeting with seven vampires.
The middle vampire, who seemed to be ‘in charge’ as far as Harry could tell, drifted forward from the row before appearing a scant metre away from Harry, faster than he could blink. Harry did his level best not to yelp and fall over. The vampire inhaled, delighted.
“You smell like a thunderstorm.”
“Stop trying to recruit wizards, Aro,” said the wintery blonde vampire without looking back. He descended the stairs at a much more sedate pace, came to the nave, and stopped exactly far enough away that Harry wasn’t sure if he’d crossed or closed a line. “Identify yourself.”
“Harry.” He didn’t offer a second name; the wand had already tipped his hand drastically, he didn't want to lose everything he had to gamble with.
“Aro,” the delighted one supplied for himself, hand hovering like an invitation he knew wouldn’t be taken. Harry had taken enough courses with the Aurors to know when something was suspect, and squinted at the hand not-quite offered. “These are my brothers, Marcus,” with a vague gesture back toward the man who looked deeply, deeply bored. “And Caius,” the one who actually had a face like thunder, and apparently, a temper to prove it.
The handler tried one last time. “You can’t-”
Caius didn’t turn his head. “I can,” he said, and the guard in the front removed the man from the conversation without fanfare.
Caius considered Harry. “You will lower your wand, and you will explain why your kind have decided to become our problem.”
Harry explained. Partly. A crash course on wizards delivered to immortals who genuinely thought wizards had gone extinct thanks to their own hubris (a win for the Statute of Secrecy, yet Harry still felt like he’d lost), and the abridged version of the wizard - now despatched from the discussion - who decided to set up some kind of twisted Daywalker fighting ring across Europe. Aro vibrated, Marcus showed absolutely no reaction to the story whatsoever, and the tiny blonde vampire girl looked disappointed that she wouldn’t get to fry Harry’s brain. When Harry was done, there was a pause as Aro, Marcus, and Caius exchanged a glance between them.
“We have few laws, Harry no-name,” Caius said, “but one is that humans who know of our existence must be silenced.” With that, the guard threw the handler into the fire without hesitation, and it was hard enough that a sickening crack echoed through the ruins. If the fire weren’t enough to ensure his death, then bleeding out in the middle of nowhere would do the trick instead.
It was at that point that Harry’s brain caught up with Caius’ words. The wizard handler wasn’t a Muggle, but he was human, and they’d killed him without a second thought.
Ah, he thought faintly, as the group closed in on him, perhaps that was my cue to run.