Author’s Note: Before you read, I’d just like to note that this is a story heavily influenced by many of my aspirations. I am an avid fan of vampires. Ok, so yes, they probably don’t exist, but that didn’t stop me when I was twelve years old from leaving the window open every night, hoping that one would sneak in and politely enquire if I should like to join the damned, or, if not, just bite my neck and then I could join them anyhow. ^_^
Anyway, here are my tributes/inspirations: Thirsty, Vampirates, Vampire Beach, and last but heavily NOT the least, the Darren Shan saga. I adore all of these books and have read them more times than I could ever hope to read Harry Potter. Therefore, cross Harry Potter with these books and it’s a dream-come true for me!! I’m very much looking forward to writing this story, and hope very much that you enjoy it too.
My chapter titles are going to be lyrics from Night Wish, just because I love this band and furthermore feel they suit the attitude of this fan fiction. You’ll probably find that this Blaise is much the same as I write him in Tainted Angels, perhaps a little toned down, but not much. Sorry if that seems repetitive, but it’s how I like to write him overall.
I’ve spelt vampires - vampyres, just because I think this way is pretty. No other reason. Just pretty, and slightly archaic.
If anyone is slightly OOC, it’s because I’ve intended it. Sorry if that annoys you, but that’s just the way it is. Mostly, however, I like to imagine I’ve gotten most of the characters, well, in character. :p
Lastly, this is the prologue, the set-up for my story. It’s the basic background of this AU Hogwarts/Magical world I have created for a foundation, the characters being the pillars, the plot structuring a roof for the story, the AU Hogwarts being the little tiles on the floor. Metaphorically, of course. Don’t worry, you’re not about to find a story about a temple.
Happy reading!!
*Prologue*
Spring, it is said, brings vampyres to our doors. They come at night, alone of course, for vampyres are told to be solitary creatures, hunting quietly in case they startle their prey. In the wind, you can smell them. Their scent is carried inside the light drifts of breeze, their essence promised in the slow drifts of dust that ascend in allures of sunshine. Vampyres are hunters. Witches and Wizards of the magical world promise their friends and families that at night, they will hang strings of garlic on their doors.
Vampyres like to play pranks. Where once you would find food in your larders, you will find bodies propped up neatly against the wall, two pinpricks indented in their necks. When you sit down for a meal in the evening, and you come to sip your wine, you find that it is not wine at all. It is blood. Sometimes, when you go to kiss your child goodnight, you will find they are not a child at all, but a monster. Vampyres are a cruel race. Their sense of humour is not alike to ours.
Its difficult to tell a vampyre apart from your friends, to separate them from humans, but doctors claim they are knowledgeable in this area, that there are certain aspects to look for. One such doctor, Healer Ark, states in his works that vampyres are “a paler species than humans, their fangs subtle but razor sharp, their nails tougher and used to claw. Their hair is always rich, thick and full of health, and at night, beneath the gaze of the milky moon, they are always pulsing with energy”. Yet that is just a theory. That all vampyres are works of beautiful perfection is, to some, and perhaps even you, hard to comprehend. It seems slightly incredulous that a beast of the night can remain ever beautiful, and what’s more, ever young.
There was a time, perhaps three or four years ago, where a man claimed he imprisoned a vampyre. He placed it in a cage, away from sunlight and inside the cloak of velvet dark. Yet when you attempt to look at it, he refuses and shakes his head. He declares roughly that “some tests are underway, and to look upon such a creature would be of interference”. But to some, he allowed observation. They say the beast was a woman, idyllic and dark, her hair a silky sheen of rivering ebony. Her skin was ivory like the moon, the column of her throat bearing two fang marks. But everyone knows this can’t be true, for vampyres are not stupid. It is rare that they are caught.
The vampyre, they say, took her captor as a lover, and in sunlight she did not burn. However, when media occasioned a visit to attempt a report, they found only silence awaited them. The investigator lay inside that room of deep dark, his body abandoned by his spirit, a trail of blood threading in scarlet ribbons across the floor. When they came to find the vampyre, there was naught to be seen. Gone, they claimed, despite the room being locked and secure. And when they tracked down those who had taken the liberty to observe the creature, they discovered that each human was dead, all in a similar way, their blood drained and their eyes staring.
No one gazes upon a vampyre and lives to tell the tale. Sooner or later, they all fall down.
The closure of September offers solace of a draughty winter. Vampyres are rarely seen during this season. It is said that they disappear to the forest of woods, taking shelter in the leafy cold. It is this month that we come to celebrate and mourn our dead. It is this day that we cast spells to bind the vampyres to their gloom, where we embrace one another and congratulate survival. These days, death by vampyre is rare. The Dark Lord could barely win such beings to his side, and therefore could not wield their strength as his sword.
We call it Dark Evening.
On Dark Evening, you enjoy the warming scents of candles that stand like pillars against wooden shelves, and you gaze into the fire to laugh and smile. The people around you rejoice and grow light-headed on both ale and wine. As they sing and squeeze your shoulder for good luck, you find your eyes smouldering, your skin itching, your body beginning to plead that it is changing.
This is the last curse of the vampyres. Before they retreat from their reign over both Summer and Spring, they cast spells and spread disease. Such infections are rare during this century, and if one is unfortunate enough to catch an illness, it will be naught but a fever, to blame upon a cold or a virus. Yet there are those who wave their fingers and smile their crooked smiles.
“Be careful,” they say, their eyes astonishing, “nurse your illness and bind yourself with spells next spring. For you have caught the magic, the disease they spread to mark their victims. If you’re not cautious, dear, then the vampyres will get you.”
Some say that the time of the vampyres is fading away. It grows less and less common to hear the report of another death, and lesser so that people speak of vampyric events. Dark Evening has become a tradition, for festivities and social enjoyment, and there are few who sit and remember what Dark Evening is a calendar date for. But at night, during spring, you’ll find the doors of houses are always locked, lamps burning in the hope to destroy vampyric eyes, cloves of garlic netting in tiny threads across doors. In the chill of the cold, and deep in the slumber of night, you and I both know that banished inside the winter forest, the vampyres are still there. Somewhere, out in the torrential wind and battering rain, the night creatures are moving.
In reality, they are only waiting.
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