Curse of Fate

Title: Curse of Fate
Author: Mistress Nika
Rating: PG-15 (Yes, 15. That's somewhere between PG-13 and R)
Summary: Thousands of years into the future, vampire Harry only wants to join his loved ones in death. However, his curse of immortality is absolute. Therefore he sends himself back into the body of his infant self, vowing to this time refuse eternity. When do things ever go according to plan? Unexpected changes to the timeline, people who aren't as they once were and more send his life spiraling out of his control.
Pairings: Harry/Lucius(main), possible Harry/Severus, possible Lucius/Severus, possible Harry/Lucius/Severus, Sirius/Remus, Theo/Hermione, possible Theo/Blaise, possible Hermione/Ginny, Draco/Luna, possible one-sided Harry/Luna on Luna's part, possible Hermione/Pansy, Cedric/Eleanor(OC), past Harry/Ginny
Warnings: AU, het, slash, angst, language, violence, time travel, VampireHarry, DarkLordHarry
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

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Chapter Seven:
Harry's eyes snapped open, instantly focusing on the ceiling above his bed. A smile spread across his lips. He felt rested, rejuvenated, invigorated...bouncy even. Despite his spectacular failure at freeing Sirius, he at least knew the man was safe and there would be another chance.

It was dark outside his window, probably getting close to dinner. A quick check of the house with his senses, both physical and magical, showed his aunt in the kitchen and both Vernon and Dudley in the living room most likely watching television.

With a grin, Harry rolled off the bed to his feet. A wave of his hand had the protective spells and wards he had placed on the room gone, allowing free access once again. He ran a hand absently through his hair, untangling whatever knots may have formed, before striding from the room.

He bypassed the living room, not even deigning the two males engrossed with the flashing images on the box with a glance and headed for the kitchen. He was in a relatively good mood. Perhaps he'd treat Petunia and cook dinner for her to make up for frightening her this morning.

He was surprised to find dinner ready and the thin woman just setting the last bowl on the table. There were four places. Obviously he was seeing things.

"Uh..." he said articulately.

Petunia's eyes snapped over to him making him wonder how she managed such a feat without breaking her reed-like neck. They narrowed as if cautiously considering him before she spoke.

"You'll be eating at least one meal a day with us from now on."

"Why?"

Her eyes narrowed even more and she glared at him.

"Don't ask questions," she replied haughtily. "Get your uncle and cousin. Dinner's ready."

Shrugging, Harry left the room to do as instructed. What did he care why he was suddenly being fed at the table like a normal person? He assumed he had simply put the fear of unholy freakishness into them. If it became too suspicious, he could simply extract the information from his aunt's mind. Occlumency was never his favorite ability, even after having it drilled into his head. Legilimency, on the other hand, was a different story. He was much more of an offensive person. Not to mention a vampire's innate ability to read minds. However, right now, he just couldn't be bothered.

Poking his head around the corner, Harry called, "Dinner's ready", then stepped back against the wall at the two man stampede that drove by him. It was the only time he saw the two whales move any faster than a slow shuffle. Mention food and they suddenly became Olympic sprinters. He heard the kitchen chairs groan as they both fell into them heavily.

Harry arrived at a more sedate pace, walking in with a confident swagger that had Petunia chewing on the end of her oven mit. Yes, he was definitely unnerving her at least, even if the other two were too dense to sense a threat unless it was baring down on them with the force of a speeding train.

Half the food had vanished into the bottomless pits the two male Dursleys called their stomachs by the time he sat down. Just as he was reaching for the mashed potatoes, Vernon finally seemed to notice his presence.

"What are you doing, boy?" he growled around half masticated steak.

Harry just stared at him transfixed, hand still poised to grab the spoon. If it weren't such an insult to Sirius, he might have said the man reminded him of a feral dog who intended to bite off his hand if it came any closer to his food.

Petunia was now chewing on her napkin while watching them nervously. After realizing the stare down wasn't coming to an end anytime soon, she spoke up.

"Vernon, leave the boy alone."

Vernon's response was quick and explosive, just like his temper.

"Don't tell me what to do in my house!" he yelled, slamming a meaty fist down onto the table and knocking his drink over into his plate.

Dudley, at this point, took notice. He looked up from the television situated so he could watch at the table and whined, "Daaaad! I can't hear!"

Vernon whirled on his son and stuck a finger in his face. "Don't you whine at me!" Then, turning to Harry, he shouted, "You! Upstairs! Now!"

Harry blinked a few times at hearing Vernon shout at his son before shrugging and standing up. "Fine," he replied nonplused. "I've got something to set ablaze anyway."

Petunia pleaded once again with her husband to let the boy eat at the table. He was almost at the door when he heard a chair thrown back against the wall as the largest Dursley leapt to his feet. There was a slap followed by a sharp cry and Harry spun around to find Petunia clutching her cheek, Vernon glaring at her angrily.

Never, in either of his lives, had he witnessed Vernon Dursley strike his wife. However, his aunt had never stood up for him in even the smallest of ways either. Dudley was sitting in his chair, food forgotten and watching the scene with shock and fear in his eyes.

Just as Vernon raised his hand for a second blow, a small hand clamped down over his wrist. Turning, surprised, to face the interloper, he found himself staring into the angry red eyes of his nephew. The boy's face held a cold fury the likes of which he had never seen before on anyone, much less this small child. Memories of the boy's words the day before flooded his mind. He had convinced himself that the freak was bluffing, but the vice like grip on his arm told just how serious the boy had been in his threats.

When he spoke, it was with carefully controlled precision and venomous hate. "Don't . Touch . My . Aunt."

With a flick of his wrist, Harry sent Vernon sailing across the kitchen to crash into the far wall. He turned back to the wide-eyed Petunia and his expression softened ever so slightly. He may not have been particularly fond of her, but she was family after all. If there was one thing that his Master had instilled in him, it was that one should always protect one's family.

"Are you hurt?" he asked, his voice holding very little in the way of emotion.

Petunia shook her head and took a deep breath. "P-please? Just go to your room?" she begged him. "Don't hurt him."

His eyes narrowed at her protecting the pathetic excuse of a man. "Very well." he replied with a nod and turned to leave, not sparing a glance for either the unconscious elder Dursley nor the child hiding under the table who watched him with fearful eyes.

Almost an hour later, Harry was disturbed from a bit of light reading by a tentative knock on his door.

"Enter," he called, placing his book to a side and sitting up straight on his bed with his hands folded neatly in his lap.

The door opened with a click and Petunia appeared, holding a glass. Her eyes darted quickly around the room, as if checking every dark corner for a threat, before coming to land on him, the child that had turned her house on it's head with his freakishness. She studied him carefully for a few moments, as if she were just now seeing him clearly.

His physical appearance was so unassuming. He was around average height for his age, maybe a bit shorter. The too large clothes that would have shamed anyone else seemed completely unnoticed by him as he lounged comfortably. His hair was as dark as a moonless night, lightly brushing against his petite shoulders in careless waves, a lock or two falling in front of his eyes only to be pushed back by a pale, slender hand. His eyes were a piercing green that seemed to peer into the very depths of her soul, weighing her up and finding her sorely lacking. His features, though still a child's, bore a sort of aristocratic grace one usually only found in the well bred elite.

More than the forbidden "m" word, all this combined to form something beyond "freakish". Something she had never conceived could even exist. The boy was unnatural. Not human, nor a wizard, nor even a vampire. He was a demon inhabiting the flesh of a child. However, somehow not malicious. He didn't seem to gain any kind of perverse pleasure from other's suffering. No. Then perhaps he was a god? Yes, some sort of dark god who had chosen, for whatever reason, to deign the lowly humans with his presence.

"Yes?" he spoke, breaking her out of her contemplation.

"I brought you some orange juice...since you missed dinner." she said in a small voice, taking hesitant steps toward him. He took the offered glass and she quickly backed away, putting as much distance between them as possible. "I-I also want to apologize...for Vernon." she began. "He's never hit me before. He's just frustrated. You... You scare him and he doesn't know how to react, so he strikes out at what he can."

"Defend him if you like," the boy replied. "But don't doubt that if he ever touches either you or Dudley again, I will kill him. You both share my blood and I will defend my family from those who threaten them." Here he paused and absently took a sip from the glass. A frightened shiver ran through Petunia's body as his eyes narrowed and he stared at the cup a moment in thought before pinning her with a frosty gaze. "You know," he said with certainty. She took a step back as he rose from the bed. "Where did you get it?" he nearly growled. "Who gave you the substitute?"

"I-I-" she stammered and backed up another step.

Seeing the effect he was having on her, he sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I'm not going to hurt you. Just tell me."

"I went to the Ministry this morning." she said with a tremor in her voice. "I went to...ah...'Vampiric Children Services Family Support Division'. They gave me the powder and told me to mix it with your food and it would stop your...cravings. They said you wouldn't notice."

Harry almost chuckled. While the blood substitute issued by the Ministry was commonly believed to be odorless and tasteless, he knew different. Nothing was truly tasteless to one such as him. He had trained himself early on to identify various smells and flavors and exactly how things were supposed to taste. After the attempted poisoning of his daughter, Mariette, when she was a child, he had made it a rule that each member of his family learn the same. Ironically, this rule resulted in the first Potions Master of the Potter line. Young Alexi, whom Harry would continue to call 'Young" until his eighty eighth birthday, took the title at the tender age of nineteen.

The thought of Petunia knowing she had a vampire in her house and, instead of making an attempt on his life or fleeing the country in terror, going to someone to help him, and of course herself by default, was almost laughable.

"How did you know where to go and why did you?" he asked, setting the glass down on his desk and returning to his seat on the bed.

"Well, I..." she began hesitantly, not sure whether to tell him or not. Eventually, fear of the boy won out. She cleared her throat and said clearly, "I'm a squib. My parents, your grandparents, were magical. They were hiding from someone in the norm- muggle world. I found an old diary of my mother's when I was sixteen, right after they died. It had all this...knowledge, of things she shouldn't have known about, things my perfect sister talked about constantly. I also found a medal in Dad's things. 'Order of Merlin, third class' it said. Mum was planing to tell Lily and I when we were eighteen, but she never got the chance. After they were killed by that maniac, I choose not to tell my sister nor my husband or son. I wasn't magic and I was certain Dudley wouldn't be either. I thought, better Lily deal with the discrimination of being a muggleborn than the danger of being a hunted pureblood. Lot of good it did her."

For a moment, as Petunia paused, Harry was certain he saw a glimmer of sadness in her eyes. Maybe, just maybe, she did love her sister after all.

"And as for you... you... you're... Well, like you said, we're family. Vernon's never liked anything to do with the magical world and I've played along, but in my eyes, you're normal. Or... you were... And you still are! That is... I mean, my parent's were normal, even if they were magic. Lily was normal. Hell, even that man was normal. So, that means you're normal, no matter what you may be. And even if you weren't, not being normal wouldn't make you bad!"

Harry almost laughed. His aunt was trying so hard to be comforting and supportive to someone she'd been little more than ambivalent to all his life. She reminded him of that time he'd been subjected to 'the talk' by McGonagall and the normally stoic, controlled woman had been reduced to a stammering, blushing wreck.

He finally let go and gave into great peals of laughter when Petunia began comparing vampirism to sports team preferences.

Maybe, just maybe, he could learn to get along with his mother's sister.

-SCENE BREAK-

A week passed. Harry convinced his aunt to cancel the meeting with the representative from the Ministry and not go back. He told her, without telling her much of anything, that he knew what he was and could deal with it himself. She didn't seem to want to question him.

He never saw Vernon move to strike Petunia again in his presence. In fact, he hardly ever saw the man anymore. Vernon, to put it simple, was scared shitless of his nine year old nephew. Even Dudley avoided him now.

Harry immediately began putting plans in motion. The first thing he would need was a sanctuary. Somewhere he couldn't be found by anyone. He knew exactly where that was. A certain plot of land owned by the Potter family that didn't technically exist. It had been made unplottable to protect the Snidgets that nested in the forest in that area by his grandfather, as well as several other spells, wards and charms to keep it unnoticed. In the future, or what had been the future, Harry had built his family home upon that spot. Now he was rebuilding it using nothing more than his raw magic. From the ground up, the structure itself would be a part of Harry, semi sentient and able to change as he wished. Like Hogwarts, it would be far more than it seemed.

Unfortunately, it was extremely taxing. Conjuring something and making it permanent was powerful magic. Not since the Founders had someone tried to create a building that large out of pure magic. He could finish maybe one room each day before falling into unconsciousness. Most of the time, he didn't even have the strength to apparate back to the Dursleys. He just slept in a wizard's tent he'd purchased in Diagon Alley.

After a month of constant work, he had finished the first floor. It was then he took a few days off to research his mother's family.

He had never made any inquiries into that side of his family. He had taken the story at face value and never had any reason to doubt. He started by going through the things Petunia had in storage. An unexpected and happy find was his grandparent's wands. Apparently, when they had begun their masquerade as muggles, they had placed them both in a locked box to avoid the temptation of using them.

His grandfather's wand was 16 inches of oak with a dragon's heartstring as it's core. A good wand for defense, he noted absently.

His grandmother's was surprising. At first glance it seemed quite normal. Teak, nine and a half inches and carved with intricate vines to bestow peace and tranquility. When he did a scan of it's core, however, he found that it was pure silver that had been liquefied and allowed to harden inside the wand. That spurred a search for where exactly his grandmother hailed from. Only certain families used stones, gem or otherwise, as wand cores.

In the diary his aunt had mentioned, he found that his grandmother had written her name in the front and it was obvious that particular diary had been started before they had gone into hiding. She had signed it Catriona Quinn. He quickly found his grandfather's name was Andrew Owens and decided a trip to a public wizarding library was in order.

He crafted a glamour to cover his identifying features, namely his scar and the Potter hair, and ventured into the magical world. Should anyone question him, which was sure to happen as he did have the body of a young child, he would pin them with a golden gaze, flick his waist length red hair over his shoulder and bare his fangs at them. If they didn't get the hint after that, he would coldly inform them that he was over a thousand years old and was it his fault that his master was an asshole who decided to turn a child for sport? He was left alone after that.

After a few weeks of intimidating innocent librarians, one had a habit of ducking under her desk and peering at him from behind it whenever he entered, he had the information he was looking for. Six years before his mother was born, one Catriona Quinn of old pureblood Irish origin married muggleborn English wizard Andrew Owens, thereby pissing off her already unstable elder brother and having him vow to kill them both. Deciding his threat was real, they fled to Andrew's hometown of London and went into hiding under the names Kathleen and Andrew Evans. They lived happy lives and had two daughters, a squib named Petunia and a pretty young witch named Lily. When Lily was fourteen and away at school, her mother's unstable brother found the two and murdered them both, then killed himself. Apparently, his intention was to end the family line since it had been 'tainted' by Catriona's traitorous actions. As Petunia was a squib, she didn't count as a part of the Quinn family and had she been born 'legitimately' would have been disowned anyway. Neither of the couple mentioned their second daughter who, even as a halfblood, would be considered an heir to the family.

Since then, the family had been all but forgotten. He did find that several distant cousins survived and were living in a close knit wizarding community somewhere near the west coast of Ireland. It was a bit hard to pin down a magical community.

After learning all this, he swore that he would one day visit these distant cousins.

When school began again, Harry attended during the day, but spent his nights working on his house and sleeping a few hours as he could grab them. He could go for up to a week without feeling any effects of not sleeping, but it was best to rest whenever possible.

December found his house completely finished with four floors, a spacious attic and a sturdy basement. He also built greenhouses for growing herbs, lush gardens full of rare and beautiful flowers and a large owlery sectioned off into individual habitats and capable of holding several hundred owls. Some might think the owlery was going a bit overboard when only one person intended to live there, but Harry had found just how necessary multiple owls were. Too many times he had sent Hedwig out with a letter and suddenly found himself needing to send more. Also, not all owls were suited to all tasks.

The common barn owl, for example, while a good general owl, was not suited for extremely long flight or heavier than usual packages. A screech owl couldn't carry heavy packages and wasn't the best during the day, but was incredibly fast and therefore good for quick notes at night. Harry had used them often during his work with the Order. The absolute best post owl was an eagle owl. They could carry large packages, operate well at just about any time except midday, could fly for amazing distances and would viciously defend their cargo. Having any other owl attack an eagle owl would only result in injury and possible death. The downside was that they were easy to spot and, while completely silent in flight, weren't the most subtle. Not to mention, they were a bit expensive for the ordinary wizard.

The pride of the owlery was the greater sooty owl, also known as a black owl, that he had managed to acquire. They were very rare and notoriously difficult to find. He thought Nemesis contrasted beautifully with the pure white Hedwig, whom he had purchased first. Each owl had been named for a god or goddess and each one he knew personally. After all, it wouldn't do to ask one to deliver something for him and have it bite him in reply because he never spent anytime with it. Of course, Nemesis bit him anyway, repeatedly. Rather antagonistic, that bird was. Good thing he didn't intend to actually use her. He was hoping to breed her, if he could find a male of the species and provided that male met her high standards.

-SCENE BREAK-

Christmas morning found Harry putting the final touch to his home; elaborately carved words over the front door. "Lux et tenebris unita." It was a bit different from what he had placed there before, but the house was different now. It's purpose had changed, though it's name was still the same. Above the motto were the words "Night Haven", for that was exactly what it was. In the previous timeline, it had been safe haven for his family and later other vampires who were being persecuted and hunted. Now, it was his haven away from the rest of the world.

With a smile, he picked up a small package and put it in his pocket before apparating into his bedroom at the Dursleys. He and his aunt had actually managed to form some sort of bond since she had stopped treating him like filth and admitted to the magic in her family. He had a very special Christmas present for her and knew she would enjoy it.

He was at the top of the stairs when he noticed something wrong in the house and his smile faded. There were sounds of a fight downstairs, as well as screaming. Rushing down, he found Petunia on the floor in the living room surrounded by a mass of destroyed presents and torn wrapping paper. Blood spattered her white nightdress and it appeared that her arm was broken by the way she cradled it protectively to her chest. From behind the sofa, Dudley peered out while whimpering. Vernon stood over her with clenched fists and a splotchy red face, breathing irregularly and muttering angry words. Harry watched as he mumbled something about a freakish whore of a wife and brought one of those meaty fists down her jaw, knocking her back to the floor after she had sat up. Her head cracked against the stone tile of the fireplace and Harry saw red, both figuratively and literally.

He didn't know what exactly happened next. The blood pounded in his ears and he felt all his glamours fall away as his magic left the strict control he had placed upon it. All he knew was that in the end, Vernon Dursley lay dead at his feet. It appeared as if his magic had torn away at his body, ripping flesh and crushing bone until nothing so much as a bloody pulp that vaguely resembled the man it had once been remained.

Petunia huddled in a corner, using the Christmas tree to shield herself from the blood and flesh that now covered the room. Dudley had been sick at some point and was now sobbing brokenly.

Harry took a deep steadying breath before speaking.

"Shit."