The fog of Harry’s mind was slowly getting less dense. He could just make out bits and pieces of a conversation going on around him. Something about “relatives” and “vampires” and “the Dark Lord.”

But Harry had more important things on his mind. Like how cold it was. And if he had the strength to get to the bathroom rather than soiling his clothes again.

He felt as though he were suffocating; something cold was covering his face. He could breathe fine, but the feeling was unlike any oxygen mask he had ever had on. His arm was also rather sore from where the IV had been inserted.

Harry knew all of these feelings too well. Even in his slightly delirious state, he knew one thing was for certain: he was back in the hospital. Again. This would be the fourth time this year and it was barely June. Or it was last time he could remember anything. It had been early June when Uncle Vernon had thrown him into the cupboard.

How long had it been this time? How many days had the Dursleys left him unconscious in his cupboard before they finally brought him in? How many days had it been since he had last been conscious?

How much longer did he have?

Every hospital visit was worse than the last. His body was simply giving up. The tube feeding wasn’t helping, it was only making him feel worse and giving him horrible stomach cramps. The only thing that helped was when he would be given blood transfusions, but those were only when his haemoglobin was less than 70.

Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were not ones to want to take him to his follow up appointments though. The paediatric haematologist was in London and that was far too far away for them to take a freak like him. The tube feeding could be sent to the house, but the blood was a different story. Besides, the longer he was in the house and the sicker he got, the more attention the Dursleys received. When he would go to hospital, the neighbors would fret for a while, but eventually they stopped coming by with their gifts and ‘support.’ When he was home, however, he was easy to put on display.

Groggily he reached out and tried to grab for a blanket. He was so cold all the time, why couldn’t the nurses remember that? It wasn’t like he wasn’t a regular at this point. And who was touching his hair?

As he reached out, his fingers trailed along the sheets. Odd, they were much softer than normal. The mattress itself was also much nicer than he was used to, softer than his mattress in the cupboard and with none of the normal indentations the normal hospital beds had.

Harry moaned softly as he groped around for a blanket. He was too tired for this. He was tired and he could tell he had been given tube feeding recently as his stomach was beginning to cramp and he was cold. Even the tips of his ears were freezing. Where was the cap he had been given? It wasn’t much but it helped keep his ears warm.

Harry finally gathered the strength and opened his eyes.

This wasn’t the hospital.

‘Hospice,’ he thought to himself sadly, tears filling his eyes. He was finally dying. He had felt in his heart that this day would be coming soon. No doubt word of this would already be spreading through Privet Drive.

“Oh, the poor dear!” Mrs. Tuttle would say as she poured yet another cup of tea for herself. “You know, my Augie loved working for hospice…”

She was always on about “her Augie” and how wonderful of a son he was.

He moaned again as the stomach cramps wracked his abdomen, interrupting his thoughts of home, and weakly tried to roll to his side and pull his knees up. He didn’t have his glasses on so he couldn’t make out very well what was going on around him, but he was fairly certain there were two people standing a few feet away speaking in low voices to each other.

The hand touching his hair pulled away and started gently rubbing his back. It felt good to have someone actually seeming to care for him.

“Harry? Can you hear me?” a voice said from behind him. Possibly from the person rubbing his back?

Harry just moaned in response as the cramps came and went. God how he hated those cramps.

Both of the people who had been talking to each other stopped speaking and rushed over to his bed.

“Are you hurting Harry?” a female voice said, coming from the maroon colored blur standing in front of him.

Harry swallowed thickly and clutched at his stomach as another cramp hit. The cramps always made him feel so cold, even colder than normal, and cold made the cramps worse. If he could just find a blanket.

“Cooooooold,” he moaned, pulling the thin blanket over him more and trying to conserve as much heat as his stick-thin body would allow. Violent shivers were beginning to wrack his body due to the temperature.

The maroon colored lady grabbed a thick blanket off the end of his bed, a blanket he recognized as the one he was allowed to use at the Dursleys, and waved what could’ve been a stick at it before gently lowering it onto his shivering frame. It was much warmer than expected, though he still felt quite cold.

The person in black then handed the maroon lady something which she then waved her stick at, and gently helped Harry lift his head to slip on. It was his hat. At least now his ears wouldn’t freeze.

The maroon lady waved her stick again and started muttering something under her breath in another language. Harry felt a tingle race over his skin followed by a warming sensation in his gut. He suddenly felt… empty. He didn’t feel like he needed to go to the toilet any more, and he was extremely thankful for that. He didn’t know what happened, but it helped. Now that his stomach was empty, the cramping started to die down and he could uncurl himself slightly.

One more wave of her stick and she nodded in approval.

“Much better. Still not out of the woods, but much better than he was,” the lady said.

Harry was confused, if he was at hospice why were they working to make him better? He was certainly feeling much stronger than he had for quite a while, but why? He knew he hadn’t kept up with the medication regime the doctors wanted him on, and it was hard to convince himself to do his tube feedings when he knew he would get sick if he did. So then, where was he?

“Wha-” Harry tried to speak, but his mouth was so dry it was hard.

“Hello, Mister Potter,” the man in black said, his deep voice matching that of the man who had carried him out of the Dursley’s house.

Harry squinted at the dark man, trying to make out his features. Without his glasses it was a struggle for him to see much. In a brightly lit room, it was even worse as he found he could hardly make out the differences in shades when they were washed out by light. And as he had gotten sicker, the vision problems had gotten worse. He was fine with this, however, because he was unable to work outside during the day anyways and the Dursleys hadn’t liked him using the electricity in the house.

“Hello, Harry,” the woman said. “My name is Madam Pomfrey. Right now you are in the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts.”

This statement didn’t help Harry’s still sluggish brain. Hogwarts? What kind of hospital was Hogwarts?

“I don’t think he understands what’s happening, Albus,” Madam Pomfrey’s voice said. “I’m not seeing any obvious brain damage on any of the scans, but who knows how many times he has been like this in the past. He may need more time to recover.”

“Are you warm enough now, Harry?” the man’s voice from behind him said, continuing to rub his back comfortingly.

Harry shook his head slightly. Warmer, yes. Warm enough, no.

Suddenly, the temperature around him increased. It was like magic. One minute he was cold, then next he was warmer than he had been in years. Finally comfortable, he found his eyes beginning to droop closed.

“Rest, child,” the dark man’s deep voice said as Harry drifted off to sleep again, comfortable for the first time in years.

---

Once Harry’s eyes drifted closed, all the adults in the room let out a collective sigh of relief. Severus’s blood was doing the trick.

Poppy cast the diagnostic spell on him again. Blood pressure was increasing to a more normal level, heart rate was actually quite rapid but that was to be expected as his body was no longer on the verge of dying, oxygen was still stable. As the blood finished running into the tiny child’s body, Poppy set a timer.

“He needs his haemoglobin rechecked in half an hour,” Poppy said, explaining to the two confused looks she received.

Both men nodded and continued looking at the small boy in front of them. This was the saviour of the wizarding world, emaciated and almost dead.

“Poppy, do you still have the screening potions I brewed for you?” Severus said, heading to the matron’s potion supplies.

“Top shelf. I can’t say I’ve needed to test any students for vampirism the entire time I’ve been here. A few Veelas and one werewolf scare, but those were the only ones I’ve ever had to use.”

Severus quickly found the potion he was looking for. As Poppy stated, there were very few of the screening potions that were used with none of the potions testing for vampirism having been used.

Poppy conjured a pair of tweezers and lifted the boy’s hat and plucked one of his long hairs as gently as possible. The hair was then added to the vial and a few minutes later the potion began to turn from a milky white to a dark, blood red.

Poppy closed her eyes as tears welled up in them.

Positive. The test was positive for vampirism.

It was no surprise then why the boy was so sickly. The vampire who attacked him must not have known he was a wizard and would be changed if not completely drained of blood. It was surprisingly easy for wizards to be changed, but it was rare for a child to be attacked and bitten. They were too small to be considered more than a snack for a hungry vampire.

But as he had been living in a muggle neighborhood, a vampire may very well have done just that to him. A small little pick-me-up en route to wherever the vampire was going.

It was well known that vampires would need their sires to be around them to teach them how to hunt and how to manage their new bodies so as not to die.

Vampires were classified as magical creatures afterall, but they straddled the line between human and creature even more than the humanoid Veelas or even the werewolves as they were constantly in a pseudo-creature state. They were magical beings, though few would consider themselves wizards as they were not frequently able to tap into their magic in the same way.

While sunlight would not kill a vampire, it would rapidly drain their magical core and reserves. And without a magical core, any magical creature would be more vulnerable to any kind of … degradation. Biting another being was the way a vampire received its nutrients and magic, which it then processed and removed a small amount of life force from the victim.

“He didn’t have a sire,” Severus said, his face stoic but sadness creeping into his voice.

Albus nodded his head sadly. Clearly some crucial details had been missed by Arabella during her yearly reports on the boy’s well-being. If they had known of this … development… there was a chance they could have found a surrogate sire to help the child through the transition. Few vampires existed in the world and even fewer were registered in Britain. Fewer still had been willing to side in the war against Voldemort, and even that single one had cut all ties to Dumbledore following Voldemort's defeat.

“Severus, in your opinion, what would your former associates do if they knew about this?” Albus asked, knowing in his gut what the answer would be.

Severus looked the headmaster in the eyes and shook his head slightly, lips pressed into a thin line.

“You know exactly what would happen to the boy, Albus. Don’t even try to feign ignorance on that.”

Albus nodded, looking every bit his age. Then a small twinkle came into his eyes as he looked at the sleeping child barely visible under the covers.

“What if he wasn’t Harry Potter?” Albus asked.

“What are you getting at, Albus?” Poppy responded, knowing from the look in his eyes he had formed a scheme already.

“What if he was the child of someone else,” Albus said, looking directly into the potion master’s eyes.

“You can consider this my resignation then,” Severus said, raising an eyebrow. “I can barely stand the brats I teach here. I don’t need, want, or desire in any way a child of my own.”

“Severus, did you or did you not just finish your version of Wolfsbane?” Albus said, continuing to smile slightly.

“I did, but I don’t see how this has anything to do with my completion of that project.”

“You’d have a vampire living with you. You’ve already done such a great service to the werewolf community, why not assist the vampires next?”

“Albus, no. Absolutely not. I do not want to take care of a child! Let alone a vampiric one!”

“Severus, please. It would keep him safe. And after all he’s been through, it would be nice for him to have a father.”

Severus glared at the barmy old man in a way that could easily melt through steel. He was certainly not fatherhood material, what with his own loathsome upbringing. Not only that, but he also had the law to contend with. If he were caught with a dark creature, especially one as potent as a vampire, he would immediately be placed in Azkaban.

“But would you be able to keep me safe, Albus?” Severus asked, dropping his voice. “Would you keep me out of prison if I get caught?”

Albus immediately nodded, “That would be a non-negotiable part of the deal.”

“I do not wish to discuss this at this time, especially not with a key player in this being unconscious. ”

Severus stood up and began to stalk towards the door, knowing his robes were billowing behind him for effect. However Poppy stepped in front of him.

“Severus,” she said. “I normally do not care for Albus’s schemes, but I must admit I agree with this one a bit more. You are the same age as his actual parents, and quite frankly the only professor on staff who could feasibly pull off having a child. You are a known recluse who spends hours doing Merlin knows what in your private lab. It really wouldn’t be a stretch to say the hours you spent in the lab were partially you spending time with your ill son.”

Severus folded his arms across his chest and flared his nostrils.

“I do not approve of us forming these plans without Potter’s consent.”

“Is that a yes then?” Albus said, grinning.

“No, it is not,” Severus said. “I will not consent to any of this until it is discussed with him. We would be turning his entire life upside down. More so than what we will be doing already in informing him he is a vampire. He deserves to have a voice in this.”

Poppy nodded in agreement. Harry had had so much upheaval in his life, he deserved to have some form of choice in this matter.

“Fine,” Albus said, rising from his seat. “We shall discuss this matter further when Harry is awake and able to communicate his wishes with us. Poppy, if you would please notify us the next time Harry is awake or if there are any changes.”

Severus looked on the pile of blankets on the bed one last time before leaving the hospital wing. Lily’s child, a vampire. His heart ached at the unfairness of it. How could this happen to her child?