Monsters by Nightfall

How was Evan Rosier still alive?

Severus had been there when his and Wilkes' death had been declared. He had heard the News from both sides. Had heard Moody boasting about another new scar that had finally marked the death of Evan Rosier. Heir to one of the oldest pureblood houses in France. Best dueller of the class of 1971. And just like his friends Black and Crouch Jr, a genius in the dark arts that rivalled even Severus knowledge.
Therefore, of course, just as bat-shit crazy as the rest of his bunch.

So how was he standing there, right above Severus, staring down with a pair of weary blood red eyes? Evan Rosier, a vampire king?

“I got to disappoint you though, I’m not getting involved in the war again. We’re a peaceful coven. We don’t bother anyone, and no one bothers us. That’s how it’s always been and will always be. I’m sorry.”
The vampire came a step closer, making Severus back against the tree trunk.

“The war has been long over. The dark Lord is dead.”
The potion master argued. Insanity still laced Rosier's tone, when he broke out into laughter.
“Oh the dark Lord isn’t dead. He will never die as long as there are people to follow him, so the war isn’t over either. Don’t think me stupid, Snape. Just because I don’t live amongst wizards anymore doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s going on. The rally at the World Cup? The dark mark? We both know that he’s coming back and I won’t be dragged back into all this blood purity nonsense. I should have realised a long time ago that vampires and wizards don’t mix. That wizards will always think themselves above us. Don’t you think it’s sad, that you’re still running around for him tending to his every whim? Don’t you think it’s pathetic?”

“The dark Lord is gone. I’m not here in his name. I’m not a Death Eater anymore.”
Rosier looked down at him, his eyes narrowed, in disbelief. Then, suddenly, he came closer.
“What are you doing?”
Snape asked glancing around, at the other vampires, who were fletching their teeth. In a quick movement, Rosier was crouched right in front of Severus, wandless slicing open the professor's shirt and coat up the left forearm to reveal the dark pulsing mark that lay beneath.
“See this?”
Now Rosier lifted his own sleeve to his elbow, exposing his black ink, which was just as vibrant. Severus noticed that his entire arm was laced in scar tissue, underneath which the dark mark, however, still didn’t seem to fade. The scars were deep and etched into the skin in perfect parallels, like vampiric teeth marks, while others looked more like claw marks.

“We will always be Death Eaters, no matter what we tell ourselves. This mark will never go away. Believe me, I tried removing it. The pain we caused, the people we killed or sacrificed will never come back either. The only thing we can do is to learn from it. To get ourselves as far away from it all as we can, and to never look back. Voldemort didn’t only destroy his enemies. He destroyed everyone and everything around him. And I won’t let him destroy what I’ve built up now.”
Severus looked up at him, really looked at him this time.
This was no vampire king. This was a scared little boy who had lost everything, everyone he loved, to a war for a species he hadn’t even been a part of. One that didn’t even accept him.

Severus didn’t know much about this broken man before him, Had barely ever talked to him, but he did know that he felt sorry for him.

Rosier turned away, facing neither the vampires, who were still eyeing the conversation with unreadable expressions nor Severus while setting his shirt sleeve.

“I have to obliviate you, I’m not keen on you running back to the Dark Lord and reporting that one of his most trusted followers faked their death to go run a vampire coven. As I said, we don’t want any trouble.”

Rosier turned back to Severus and took another step forward, extending his hand to put it on Severus’ head. Not drawing a wand, Severus noted. Was he gonna obliviate him with wandless magic? Was such advanced magic even possible without a wand?

“Wait, I’m not on his side anymore. Why do you think I’m able to work at Hogwarts? He killed my best friend too.”
That had at least made Rosier stop to raise an eyebrow at him.

“So you’re on the old man’s side now? And you think he’s any different? Tell me, Does Dumbledore still rally children to do his dirty work?”
Severus's thoughts went to Potter.
“Believe me, He’s no better than Mr. Let-Me-Just-Kill-Your-Family.”

“This isn’t about either of them though. I’m here for my Godson, Draco. Lucius’ and Nacissas son.”
Severus's voice had gotten louder, without his consent.
“Of course, the Malfoy’s are still alive.”
Rosier murmured to himself.
“Well, perhaps not for long. Draco is sick.”
“Why would that concern me?”
“He’s half vampire half wizard, just like you!”
This made Rosier halt in his tracks. The vampires were glancing at each other with concerned uncertainty.

“He was bitten a few years back. He found out about vampiric runes last year and then he was suddenly almost human, told me he solved the problem, and that I needn’t worry. Then there was a fight with another classmate, and now he’s in a coma, and he just won’t wake up. I tried everything, I really did, every Potion or Spell I know, but nothing works.”
An owl cooed somewhere far away, its sound reverberating through the silence.

“It’s as if he-“
“Deprived himself of food? Starts to pale more and more? Has his skin gone flakey yet?”
One of the vampires suddenly interrupted, eager to prove himself. He was probably the youngest of the bunch, though they all looked fairly young and even in their pale glory eerily good-looking, even one vampire who stood to Rosier's right, a woman who seemed to be approaching her late 40’s.
“Tristan it’s none of our-“
Evan replied in a hushed voice, turning to face the vampire.
“Yes it is our business,” the older woman now argued, hitting the Vampire king with a pointed stare. “He could be the piece to the puzzle, Evan. He could be the one. Have you forgotten the oath? You know what happens if we don’t help him.”
Evan’s jaw clenched and his Addams apple bop.

What oath?
At least they seemed to know what this was all about. So they could help him, right? Whatever Draco had, it was curable, right?
“That’s not the only oath we swore though is it Genevieve’s? We have to protect our own. The children.”
Rosier pointed towards the ruins.

“He’s just as much one of us as they are. If he could really be a royal, we will need him.”
One of the other vampires, a woman in her twenties chimed in. As with all of them, her clothing wasn’t in a bad condition, did however look rather worn all around. It was muggle clothing, Severus realised, probably stolen with how too big it looked on some and how small on others.
“He’s on their side.”
Rosier argued, pointing at Severus accusingly, who had finally stood up again now, leaning against the tree.

“He’s on no one’s side. He’s a child. He’s barely 14.”
Severus found himself speaking up, drawing the eyes of all four vampires.
“Listen, I don’t care whether you obliviate me afterwards. But you have to help him. Please!”

“The wizard is right.”
“What if it’s a trap?”
Tristan, the youngest now hesitantly, asked.
“I can take a vow! An unbreakable one, if it’s necessary.”
Severus declared, taking a step closer and grabbing for his wand, only to find it wasn’t there in its sleeve holder.

Rosier drew Severus's wand out of his own robes, hiding a smirk while twirling it around in his hands. He was testing the weight and size with interest, clearly lost in thought.
“Alright. Swear it then. An unbreakable vow, like you suggested.”

Rosier stepped up to Severus, grabbing his hand in his ice-cold one, murmuring the necessary incantations, without giving the wizard time to think about it.
“Swear that this is not a trap, that you will tell no one that I am still alive without my consent. Swear that no one will know about my involvement in any of this. That you will escort me to your wounded and never come searching for us after that again.”

Severus repeated after him. He suddenly felt his hand burn with the vampire’s magic, felt the unpleasant drag against his heart, and watched the Green lines wring themselves around their connected hands, until they suddenly vanished into thin air, marking the vow sealed.

Rosier finally disentangled their hands and gave Severus his wand back.
“Naomi, would you grab my medicine pouch please, Snivellus and I have got work to do.”

—

“Do you still remember your first train ride on the Hogwarts Express?”
They had been walking in silence since leaving the vampire lair, which made Severus look up at Rosier quizzically, surprised by the sudden question.
“I still dream about that day sometimes. Pandora and I sitting in that plain compartment like any other, in our own little bubble, an actual bubble, by the way, that was the first charm our mother taught us. Back then we had no idea what was coming. A time before the war. I thought we would always stay together.”
Evan smiled sadly. Severus, looked away again, contemplating his own first steps in the wizarding world. The vampire’s story reminded him of Lily and Him. Best friends since childhood. He too had thought their time together would never end.
“When she was sorted into Ravenclaw instead of Slytherin, I was devastated. Dramatic little boy.” Evan chuckled, “I was so angry that I didn’t say a word to her for that first entire week. As if she had chosen to be sorted into another house.”

Evan kicked a rock out of his path.
“If I wouldn’t have met Regulus at the feast, I don’t know whether I would’ve ever made friends at school. He was the only one who could match how awkward I was back then. I mean, I wasn’t a vampire yet, but I might as well have been, with how frightened I was of people not taking me seriously or rejecting me.”

“You were pretty small for your age, I remember. Even Flitwick dwarfed you.”
Severus supplied amused, toeing the waters cautiously, which made Evan hide his laugh under a scoff.
“Well, At least I didn’t wear an awfully bright green scarf for an entire year, thinking of myself as fashionable.”

Even after all these years the memory still made Severus’ skin colour scarlet. He had burned himself out of all the photos he had owned of his third year. Still, that scarf sat in his office at the bottom of a drawer. One of the only memories left of her.
“Lily had bought it for me and said it looked good.”
They both chuckled. A sad sort. A memory of times long lost.
“Well, we should have seen her getting together with Potter coming then, with that bad a taste.”
Evan mused, staring up at the sky. The memory of Lily and James together, Severus realised, was still sore, making him ache to change the past. But what was done was done. Nobody could bring back the dead. Not even to punch them in the guts.

“I’m glad that I didn’t ignore her for long, Pandora I mean. I would’ve never survived Hogwarts without my twin by my side. And she brought Barty right with her.”
At the mention of his name, Severus could see the aww return to Evan’s face at the memory. The love.
“I thought Crouch Jr. was a Slytherin too?”
Evan laughed out loud.
“That’s what he wanted people to believe. Everything that made him different from his father was a win for him. But in the end,” Evan swallowed heavily, his eyes glistening in the moonlight, “standing on the opposing side of his father…meant his downfall.”

The last part was more muffled. Severus could tell Evan hadn’t really made his peace with that decision yet. Which made Severus even more curious.

“How did you escape that same fate? I thought Alistair Moody had killed you. You made him scar up pretty badly but still, he told everyone that…”
Severus trailed off.

“He almost did kill me. Any normal wizard would have been dead now. Wilkes died. My wand was gone…”
Evan stopped, staring at the ground, “They’d dumped our bodies in a ditch. No funerals for the orphaned enemies. There were so many dead… I crawled out, drank…”, Evan swallowed again, “drank Wilkes dry, and I ran.”

There was a prolonged silence. Severus was staring at the vampire, while Evan was staring anywhere else.

“I wanted to go and find the others. Find Barty. But Panda was dead and Reggie was gone and… I was just so…” a tear glistened on his cheek, that was brushed away in a fluid motion, “Tired. Tired of all the fighting. Tired of being on the wrong side of history, with people that wouldn’t have respected me or seen me as equal if they would’ve known.”

Again, Severus glanced over to the broken man next to him.

“I tried to take him with me. I went back to our flat, but Barty was already gone and… I was just too fucking scared that they had him too. That they’d find me. That he laid in some ditch, just like me. Or worse, that I was gonna lead them to him. I was tumbling around Grizedale Forest when Genevieve found me and brought me back to the coven. They needed a healer, a royal, after all the destruction the war had brought to their land. Their people. So many vampires and dark creatures had been caught between the lines. We all needed a new beginning, so we helped each other.”

There was another pregnant silence, occupied only by the rustling of leaves above and the animals, who were slowly rising from their slumber.
The sun wasn’t up yet, and wouldn’t be for another few hours, but there wasn’t much time left.

“Is that what you are to them then? A healer? Is that why ‘Royals’ as you say, are so special?”
Evan kicked another rock.
“We monarchy thing doesn’t really mean the same as it does for muggles or such, not anymore anyway. Royals don’t lead a coven, the oldest mostly do, since they are the ones who turned most of their coven. These titles come from back in the day probably the Middle Ages or something. Vampires used to be way better at hiding back then, but they didn’t hide from people, only from the sunlight. Wizards were only starting to establish themselves back then and muggles were none the wiser. There were even entire vampire villages, that covens took over, the elders turning them and the younger feeding on the muggles.”

“Don’t elders have to drink blood too?”
Severus questioned the Vampire.
“Of course they do. Not as urgently as the young, but that hunger never goes away. It does, however, take a certain amount of time for a vampire’s venom to mature enough to turn anybody, sometimes up to a hundred or two hundred years. That’s why they are responsible for broadening the covens. When wizardkind, however, started to organise themselves, they started sanctioning the vampires, isolating those cities of their human food supply and inventing methods and runes to keep them at bay, even teaching the muggles to do the same.

“One day, however, so the story goes, one of the wizards tasked to hunt down the vampires fell in love with one of them. So in an act of love, he let himself be turned, promising to help his vampire lover. And he did. The first Royal, The first King was born. He helped them lift the runes and burn any information the wizards had on the vampires, helping them flee. He was their leader, their healer, their teacher, their saviour, you could even say their prophet. Some vampires believe to this day in a prophecy once made by the first king. It says that there will come a Half-Vampire, Half-Wizard who is trained in the ways of both and will free all vampires from persecution. Who will unify all creatures, will bring light and dark together. People thought he was talking about himself but then he died years later after-“ Evan stopped to rephrase but then went on, “an unfortunate few circumstances.”

Severus was quiet for a moment, taking in all the Information.

“Why have we never learned about all this? It seems to be just as much wizarding history.”

“The old generations purged the knowledge from magical records. That doesn’t change much though. Nowadays, most vampires don’t survive long enough to turn others anyway.”

“Because of the extermination of Vampires by Wizards that goes on to this day.”
Severus added his knowledge.
“That too, yes, but that’s hardly as bad as the Vampire purge.”
Severus drew up his eyebrows in confusion, asking Evan to elaborate. Severus had never heard of something like it.
“Older Vampire generations have been killing newly turned Vampires, killing children, for centuries now. They say they want to keep them from growing old, keep them from turning others, so they won’t reveal our secret to the muggle world, but Genevieve says they feel threatened by the newer vampires. Want to keep them from creating more, from creating royals. Don’t ask me why, no one really knows.”

They were passing a clearing now that Severus recognised from his weekly ingredients walks, meaning they weren’t too far away from the castle.

“So does your coven think you are the royal talked about? That you are their Kin made Evan laugh.
“Yes some actually do, They even call me their king or your highness,” he grimaced,” though I’ve never believed in that sort of stuff. I didn’t take divination back in school for a reason.”
He grinned as if remembering something.
“No, the future was always Pandora’s stuff.”
His face darkened then.
“Sad that she never got to experience what she was always interpreting and predicting.”

Severus could imagine them all now, their ghosts following Rosiers every footstep. All the people he’d lost were still on his side, bound to him by the love he still held for them. This made Severus wonder, was Lily still by his side, or had he not only lost her in life but in death too.