Blood Sight and Bludgers
Harry was having a nightmare. He was moving quickly through a collage-landscape of Diagon Alley windows, classroom corners and the Dursleys’ kitchen, trying to find Blaise, who was supposed to be taking him to a Halloween party. Harry didn’t want to go to the Halloween party, but he kept moving, out of control of his own dream-body. As he moved, he became aware (suddenly, but as though it had always been there) of a presence in his left-hand peripheral vision. His heart picked up and he tried to run faster. But the presence on his left was faster, and moved in front of him to reveal the face of Albus Dumbledore. Harry tripped trying to run backwards and fell, fell, fell, down into the brightness all around…
…and woke up with a start. When his heart had finally stopped thundering, he slipped out of bed. It was still dark. Harry put on his slippers and a jumper and left the room, wraith-like, without waking anyone up. Green fire slumbered in the grates in the common room. No one else was up, which was unusual. Slytherins were usually plagued with insomnia of some kind, and there was almost always somebody in the common room. The empty chairs and tables looked like mined-out mountains as he snuck around them.
The noise of a tapping click startled him into freezing. It paused, then came again, an arrhythmic tap like a pencil against a mirror. Harry looked to the windows but they were submerged in the lake - little silver fish darted around, but rarely collided with the glass. Had it been the knuckle of a mischievous mer? The tapping came again as Harry approached the far wall; it was emitting from above him. Harry looked up. High in the dungeon wall, a row of tiny flat windows along the ceiling let in some weak morning light. In one window, a brown owl flapped, its beak knocking against the glass.
“Hold on!” Harry whispered, as if the owl could hear him, and cast about for something to climb on. None of the chairs or tables would make him tall enough to reach the latch, and he didn’t want to fall off with a crash and wake everyone. He pulled out his wand and pointed it at one of the fire pokers. “Wingardium Leviosa!”
It took him a couple of tries, but soon the poker was wobbling through the air towards the window. Harry guided it with his wand until it bumped into the latch. “Good… now down a bit,” he muttered to himself. The poker twitched. It clattered against the latch, knocking it aside, and fell onto the armchair below. Above, the owl nudged the window open and swooped inside, down to Harry in a wide arc. It landed on the table. There was a rolled up newspaper tied to its foot. Wiggling it free, Harry unfolded the parchment label that read Zabini. The owl butted its head into his hand and he patted it absently.
“I don’t have the money, but Blaise is in there.” Harry pointed behind him at the door to the dorms. “One floor down, on the right. Go wake him up.”
The obedient owl disappeared. Eagerly, Harry unrolled his roommate’s newspaper and read the front page. It was something to do with trading negotiations but it might as well have said, NO NEWS ON THAT SCALLYWAG DUMBLEDORE, YOU PATHETIC POTTER (get a hobby). He flipped through the first few pages in disgust, but there was nothing good. Checking the wizarding grandfather clock by the common room door, Harry saw it was five minutes until “optimal waking time for individuals who go to sleep at 10pm exactly”; there was still time for him to chuck the paper on Blaise’s bed and get out of there before the owl woke his friend.
**********************
“Yoohoo, kids!” came the cheerful hoot of the Defence professor down the hallway. The class’ heads turned and they all sat up a little straighter. Professor Tonks, their hair an electric blue and their eyes slitted like a sheep’s today, entered the room laden with a couple of cardboard boxes cradled in their arms. “What ho,” they said, dropping the boxes onto Parvati Patil’s desk, and dropping what looked like snorkelling goggles out of the top. “Oops! Sorry, mate. Would you grab that for me - thanks. Thanks awfully. Right!” They stood and clapped their hands. “Anyone know anything about vampires?”
Many hands shot into the air. They’d been back at Hogwarts for a few weeks now, and Tonks was quickly becoming everyone’s favourite professor. Their infectious grin and their total lack of organisation in lesson-conducting were a welcome break from the more traditional professors. Tonks bounced all over the curriculum and seemed to intend to continue all year, teaching what they felt like that day, abandoning it in favour of something new, and returning to it when they felt like it again. Today, apparently, it was vampires.
“They drink blood,” said Seamus Finnigan proudly.
“That they do indeed!” Tonks snapped their fingers and pointed at him. “Blood. Good. Any of you guys ever drunk blood?”
There were some anxious giggles from the Gryffindors; next to him, Daphne raised a single incredulous eyebrow at Harry.
“Not - not to quench thirst or anything,” the professor was quick to clarify. “Just a little sip if you get scraped. No? The Muggle scientists will tell you it’s good for cleaning the wound. But, well, you can ask your Muggle Studies professor next year.”
“Did you take Muggle Studies, professor?” asked Finnigan.
“Call me Tonks, please. I’m not old enough to feel like a professor.” Tonks mock-shuddered. “But yes, I did take Muggle Studies. Well, I had a head start, my dad is a Muggle. If you’d like to talk about third-year choices, I’d be very happy to give advice?”
While the Gryffindor girls began to ply Tonks with questions about Divination and subject choices, Tracey leaned back on her chair.
“I didn’t know Professor Tonks was a half-and-half, did you?” she exclaimed in a whisper.
Daphne wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t know. It’s a bit weird.”
“What’s a bit weird?” Tracey’s chair legs clattered down as she twisted to face them properly. “Is being Muggleborn weird, then, Greengrass?”
“Calm yourself down,” Daphne replied coolly. “I never said that. But you’re not a half-blood, are you? You’re not genetically non-magical. I’ve never heard of a half-blood teacher, that’s all.”
“Shut up, Daphne,” huffed Tracey and turned back around, sticking her hand up in the air. Next to Harry, Daphne tensed, anticipating the scolding that was about to come. Instead, Tracey said, “Professor Tonks, what’s in the boxes?”
“Boxes!” Tonks interrupted their own monologue about Care of Magical Creatures and their friend Charlie, to leap over to the boxes and pull them open. “I ordered something special and cool for you lucky ducks today. Get this - Blood Heat Goggles by Galahad.”
They yanked a pair of gangly goggles, two heavy glass eye pieces bound on a set of complex leather straps painted with runes, and tied them around their head. “Now, you put them on like this - if you have long hair, you might want to tie it back for this one, especially you, ‘Mione. Or, you could do this!”
In a wink, they vanished their blue hair in favour of a shaved head, and tightened the straps. “Looking through these goggles, you’ll get an idea of how vampires see the world. All righty, who wants a shot?”
Everyone wanted a shot. Fortunately, there were enough goggles to go around. On either side of Draco, Harry and Daphne both grabbed a pair when the box was passed around. Harry glanced at his blindfolded friend. Draco had been speaking less and less these days, as if the adrenaline of merely getting to school had died down, leaving only the hollowness of his eyesight loss. At least none of the professors had been setting him homework or calling on him in lessons. Draco spent most of his time doing just what he was doing now - drawing fractal spirals in frantic quill circles on his parchment and frowning at the wall. Harry poked him in the arm and he jumped back.
“Merlin, Potter,” he hissed under his breath.
“No, it’s Harry Potter,” Harry corrected jovially. “Want me to describe what I see through the Blood Goggles for you?”
Draco’s head flicked up but quickly returned to staring at the far wall. “Go ahead.”
Harry put the Goggles on - the eyepieces clacked annoyingly on his glasses. He had to remove his glasses, rendering everything in the room (including an already-Goggled Daphne) blurry, then tie the Goggles on. He blinked. Everything had gone darker and out-of-focus, like a bleary winter evening. Then he turned to face Draco and nearly jumped out of his skin.
Draco was gone, or at least Draco as Harry knew him. Instead of his physical outline, his features or clothes, all Harry could see were the miles of folded, snaking, tidal blood vessels that were definitely supposed to be behind Draco’s skin and not visible to his friends-
Harry ripped off the Goggles with a cry. “No thank you!”
Across the room, Tonks laughed. They still wore their pair of Goggles and had their hands on their hips as if enjoying the view. “It’s definitely spooky the first few times, but congratulations, mate! Harry’s reaction has just revealed to all of us that he’s not a vampire in disguise! Reassuring, mate.”
Harry gave an involuntary chuckle as the rest of the class laughed. Pansy had both hands on the sides of her head, staring around the room in fascination, which in Harry’s opinion, was even spookier than the view.
“Well?” said Draco churlishly beside him. “What was it like?”
Harry grappled for words. “So strange. It’s like it’s night, and I can’t see anything clearly, except… everyone’s blood…”
“Oh, well, of course,” said Draco. “Vampires, Potter. They do blood. Surely you know that?”
“I do know it,” Harry grumbled.
“It’s something like a night-vision charm,” Daphne put in. “Except, blood-specific. It makes sense for vampires…”
“Here.” Harry shoved the Goggles into Draco’s hands. “I want to know if you can see anything through them.”
“I can’t see anything, Potter, you know that!” But he put them on anyway, in the spirit of exploration, after folding his blindfold and handing it to Harry. He looked through for a second, “No. Nothing,” sounding a bit disappointed when he took them off again.
“Now, another thing about vampires!” Tonks exclaimed, getting everyone’s attention by spreading their arms widely and transforming them into bat-like wings. “They tend to be very tall. No offence to all you twelve-year-olds, but much taller than you! So why don’t we get an even better picture of their vision? Who wants to climb up on this table with me?”
Hands flew into the air.
“How about you, Crabbe? You’re nice and tall already. And Miss - erm, I’ve completely forgotten your surname…”
“Brown, professor,” Lavender breathed. “Lavender Brown?”
“Perfect; join me up here! And… how about you? And you? Get on up here, let’s get everyone!”
Tonks and the mob of selected students scrambled onto the desks. Finnigan began flapping his arms and cawing (much more like a crow than any bat) and Crabbe (on Tonk’s encouraging) hissed and growled in a fairly frightening fashion. Hence, the volume in the classroom rose as the new vampires egged each other on, glaring down over the few Slytherins who had opted to remain in their seats. Harry shivered as the goggled gazes swept over him. The knowledge that they were seeing beneath his skin was unsettling.
“That’s it!” Tonks yelled over the furore. “This is what a vampire will see when they look at you; useful to know for field work!”
“I’M GOING TO DRINK YOUR BLOOD,” Dean Thomas bellowed in response, in a terrible Transylvanian accent.
It was at that moment that the door slammed open.
“What,” said a crisp, Scottish voice, “is going on here?”
The class was silent. The mob of vampires on the table stopped flapping gradually, and a couple of them stepped down. Professor McGonagall walked forward, pushing her glasses up her nose.
“Students, this is unacceptable; there are other lessons going on around you-” She stopped abruptly, and her tone changed. “My apologies, Professor, I didn’t see you.”
Still stood on the table, Blood Vision Goggles pushed up onto their forehead, Tonks smiled at McGonagall. “We’re learning about vampires. Some first-hand experience, I thought, would be useful…”
“I see,” said McGonagall, looking a little green.
“...if they ever have to face Magical Creatures as part of their jobs later. Or, you never know, it may come up on their OWLS!” Tonks shrugged.
McGonagall’s lips pursed. “I trust that you will not be bringing a vampire into this classroom in the flesh, professor.”
Anyone else faced with that tone of voice may have turned to dust on the floor, but Tonks just laughed. “No, professor. This is the next best thing, though!”
“Indeed.” McGonagall wavered for a second, then turned and nodded her goodbye.
The minute after she left the classroom was silent, before Tonks began to giggle. “Well, that’s a teaching first!” they said cheerfully. “Who hasn’t yet been on the table? Let’s get them up here.”
**********************
The sun was beginning to sink below the clouds as Harry made his way across the Quidditch pitch with a broom in hand. A light wind ruffled the grass and his hair, playing teasingly with the first leaves to fall from the Forbidden Forest, and he knocked his fringe out of his face. He’d invited Daphne to come play a few rounds of Seeker’s game with him, but she hadn’t shown up yet. Harry decided to start anyway, and kicked off from the ground.
He couldn’t believe how good it felt just to fly. Feeling the ground rush away from him, as if the pitch itself was rocket-powered, was incomparable. He couldn’t help but let out a “Whoop!” of joy and freedom as he scaled the fading sky and circled the pointed tower roofs. The growing wind whipped through his hair more efficiently than any brush had ever been.
After several minutes, he perched on a gable, holding the broom in one hand and swinging his legs. He squinted as the sun glare alighted on his eyes, before it slipped below another snatch of cloud. A small movement below caught his eye - a group of students crossing a green section of grounds. They huddled together and ran around each other, robes rippling in the wind, before they were gone into one of the stone doorways. Still no Daphne.
Eventually, Harry remounted the broom and cast off from the gable. He flew in wide circles, like the Daily Prophet’s owl. There was a shout from below.
“Harry?”
And something whistled past his ear at high speeds. Harry’s instinct threw him sideways, barrel-rolling his broom over. He glanced back as the projectile turned mid-air and began to return to him; it was a Bludger.
“What?” he muttered but there was no time to understand it. The Bludger was rocketing at him again and Harry had to zip up and away, arching himself in almost a full circle which the iron ball shot through. Harry angled towards the ground, pursued by the Bludger. As he grew closer to the ground, he saw that there were two figures in Slytherin green standing there. Or, one was standing, the other was hopping all around like a leprechaun, babbling.
“...ly Merlin, there’s no way he’ll make it, NO WAY, oh Merlin, youngest Seeker in a century, OH KRUP THAT WAS CLOSE OH MERLIN…”
“Calm down, Blaise!” Harry skidded to a landing next to his friends. Blaise was bouncing around next to Draco, who was stoically silent in his blindfold and scarf. Next to them, an open Quidditch ball casket lay on the grass with one empty socket. “Er, who let the Bludger loose?”
“On ACCIDENT,” Blaise pleaded. “Here it comes!”
Harry turned. Sure enough, the Bludger was speeding towards them, rocking slightly on its trajectory. “Stand clear!” Harry cried.
He snatched up the casket and whirled around, holding it in front of the three of them like a shield. With a bone-shaking thud, the Bludger landed directly in its socket. Harry snaked his hand in and snapped the socket shut before it could cause any more chaos. He turned around, shutting the casket. “So?”
Blaise looked sheepish. His robe sleeves covered his hands. “Sorry, Harold. We were trying something.”
“Trying something?”
“Zabini found a spell,” Draco said. “He thought it would improve my… directional capacity.”
“And did it?” Harry turned a raised eyebrow to their friend.
“A little! Malfoy got himself all the way across the lawn without my arm. Progress!”
“Your spell doesn’t help me differentiate between a Quaffle and Bludger in their casket, though,” Draco muttered. “So I’m blaming Potter’s almost-murder on you, Zabini.”
“I’ll tell the police that,” Harry promised, slinging an arm around Draco to guide him away. Draco adjusted the green blindfold, which had slipped down an inch. “You know,” Harry broached, “blind Muggles tend to wear sunglasses, tinted glasses, instead of these cloth things.”
“You think I should wear Muggle glasses?” Draco’s voice dripped with scorn. “I’m blind, not desperate.”
“Of course not.” Harry paused for a moment, then began, ”Well, have you heard anything from any of the professors about aids-”
Draco shoved him off, quite hard. “Merlin, Potter,” he shouted. “Just stop! Why can you never stay out of things?”
Harry’s mouth dropped open. “Stay out of things?” he echoed with incredulity.
“You’re always harpy-ing on at me! It’s none of your business. I’m handling it.”
“Yeah, you LOOK like you’re handling it,” Harry yelled back. “Nearly killed me with that Bludger. How am I supposed to stay out of it? You came to ME this summer to help get you back to Hogwarts. It is my business!”
Draco’s shoulders were tensed against the words - arms crossed, glaring away to the side. Then he spun on his heel and marched back towards the castle. After a glance and shrug at Harry, Blaise followed, the Quidditch casket under his arm.
“And you’re still my friend,” Harry yelled at their retreating backs. “OK?”
There was no answer.