Lights flickered all over Hogwarts. Inside, the students were allowed out of their Houses, but no one was to leave the building and the staff was scrambling. Spells were cast and recast. Wards were tested and strengthened. Unused parts of the castle were sealed off. From a distance, the whole castle glowed with different sparks of color.
Any Muggle who made it close enough to see would’ve been baffled and probably awed to see the shimmers coming from the ruin. It was eerily beautiful, like Northern Lights on the mist. The only eyes that could see Hogwarts from the outside weren’t able to appreciate the light show.
Red eyes squinted at the castle from beneath a very deep, very thick hood, and from behind a pair of glasses tinted black. Brohm had learned something from the hunter that had come after him, and while it didn’t spare him the pain of daylight, it did keep his eyes from dissolving in their sockets.
He was draped in layer upon layer of thick fabric and stood only a pace from one of the tunnels. He hadn’t been out in the sunlight since… It didn’t even matter how long. He hated feeling so small and exposed under the sky, and angry that it could make him feel anything at all. He blamed it on his new body, which was slighter than his original one.
Brohm had been a tall, broad-shouldered man. He had been physically powerful in life, and even more so as a vampire. Like a lion, one of his admirers had said. In the body of the young Nalicus, he was more like sight hound, he thought. Not that that mattered either. It was just his pride, left over from human days. He had always been intimidating. It was merely annoying to appear weaker than he had been, and it didn’t change the power he had.
“Lord..?” hissed one of his followers from the tunnel. “Forgive me. I can’t bear much more…”
“You may return,” Brohm answered. Even his new voice felt light and weak. It would take some practice to get his rumbling purr back. Like all his kind that lived to his age(and there weren’t that many) he didn’t care for sudden change. He liked to watch things brew for a few years before they leapt into action.
“I would be too ashamed to leave you, Lord…” The apologetic hiss pulled him away from his own thoughts.
“You aren’t by my side now,” he reminded it, not sharply enough to hurt yet. His eyes were burning now, the moisture that filled them too red to be tears.
There was silence from the tunnel after that. The follower wasn’t ashamed enough to venture into the sunlight, but didn’t dare go home alone. He could sense it lurking there in the shadows just inside the tunnel. It was as muffled in cloaks as he was, cringing from the weak gray light that made it through the clouds. Even Brohm knew better than to have gone out in the daytime if the sky had been clear.
As it was, the clouds hung heavy with snow over the castle. There would be more snow by morning. Temperatures didn’t matter to Brohm anymore, but he liked the smell of snow. The purity of it appealed to him. Perhaps it reminded him of his youth in the desert, he thought, amused a fraction before the whisper of his underling distracted him again.
“What is it, Lord?” It asked after another moment.
“A place,” Brohm answered. “This flesh remembers it from his boyhood… not altogether fondly, but that is to be expected.”
“Forgive us, Lord… The flesh we found to house you is not perfect. Not worthy.”
Brohm’s vision blurred and he closed his eyes for a moment to let them recover. Despite the pain, his voice was calm.
“Hush, childe. Oaks from acorns, eagles from eggs.”
The underling would have gone on, but Brohm was through listening and froze the creature’s vocal cords. A monster that didn’t breathe couldn’t choke, but the sensation was unpleasant.
“No,” Brohm said, still speaking casually. “This flesh will suffice. If I’m to deal with magic-users, wearing the body of one their own may well be the best way.”
He gave Hogwarts a final searching look, then finally turned to duck back into the tunnel. The underling pulled the hidden door down over it, and shut them into the darkness. Brohm sensed the curiosity in his servant, but didn’t bother to enlighten it. It wasn’t quite brave enough to risk speaking again.
Brohm had found himself in an unfamiliar country, in an unfamiliar skin. The magic-using humans had kept the non-magical humans so carefully in the dark that they would probably barely notice vampires among them anymore. The Magic-users themselves were just as easily manipulated. They only lived a little while, and their arrogance in their superiority made them blind to things prey animals should notice.
Domesticated, he thought. It happened. Complacence was inevitable when they hadn’t been hunted in so long. It had been hundreds of years since a Vampire Lord had ruled in Europe. It was due. The first thing he would need was a castle.