Chapter 282: Crimson Devil

If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr

I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

I would like to thank my beta, Awdyr, for his help in this chapter.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

21 November 1994, Rome, Italy

Harry had left the cheering crowd the moment the task started. It was a shame since he would have loved to see what was going to happen, especially considering the sandstorm that the Spanish Champions had spun up. His prediction was that half of the teams would go directly at the Hogwarts delegation, while the others, the smarter ones, really, would go after the beasts and the keys they hold, since taking them all out would mean that Harry definitely wouldn't enter the task…

Unfortunately, Harry had more important things to worry about, mainly Dumbledore's plan, whatever that was. He wanted to locate the release of magic. The moment the task began, Lily's detectors started going wild… The task was definitely involved in the magic somehow.

But, that didn't make any sense… The magical release was far more powerful than what it was taking. It had to be a seal… There was no other explanation. Harry followed the trail outside the giant Gladiator pit that the Italians had built for the task.

The ritual couldn't be too far away from the crowd since magic does tend to dissipate into the atmosphere surprisingly quickly. Hundreds of thousands of people cheering, releasing their feelings and their excitement, meant that a minuscule amount of this magic was released as well, which was then collected by whatever Dumbledore had planned. The former headmaster wasn't even stealing the magic, he just used the fact that there were so many mages in the same place, so it had to be some released filter magic. It was strangely similar to what the man had planned to do to Harry with the Gardens of Avalon, only instead of just stealing all of Harry's potential magic, he was taking just the waste of hundreds of thousands of people at once. The tournament had made it so there would be at least seven events which should have similar attendance records….

But, what did Dumbledore do with the harnessed magic? The magical release was many orders of magnitude more powerful than whatever energy Dumbledore could ever harness in just a day. There was a reason why Harry was so overwhelmed by it during the first task.

Harry followed the trail with his wand raised, which kept taking him deeper into the Roman countryside, then a forest, where the air felt strangely alive. It wasn't any kind of specific enchantment, but there was magic in everything there. Leaves glimmered with a spectral light, and every tree seemed to whisper in the wind. Flickering sprites danced between branches, leading him onward. The flora was vibrant, with flowers glowing softly under the moon's caress, their colours more vivid than any artist's palette. The entire woodland thrummed with a harmonious magic, so potent and pure it felt as though the very earth under his feet pulsed with the heartbeats of centuries.

Which made the dark ominous portions inside all the more concerning. He felt the forest grow dark as if someone had turned off a cosmic light switch… It was odd. He felt as if everything around him was illuminated by moonlight and yet there was no moon in the sky. There was no sun. There were no stars. Just darkness. Harry heard something approaching him very quickly with his Arcane Hearing. He quickly warped space to the side and dodged whatever was coming at him.

He groaned when he realized what it was, "I hate vampires."

With a flick of his wrist, the vampire froze into solid ice and shattered into pieces. It was just a thrall, but he could feel the forest was filled with them. It definitely wasn't their natural habitat, and the forest was trying to reject them.

Harry noticed that he was being swarmed. He conjured a quick ice blade, cutting a few of the thralls that tried to sneak behind him, and then transformed it into an arrow that kept going after the thralls with blinding speeds, killing them all. It was a pretty handy spell that Harry had modified. Harry had tried to create a spell that could change directions mid-flight, but all he had managed was a conjuration with a few animation charms and space manipulation to create the illusion. It was far too much effort for a single spell, but it was surprisingly efficient when it came to fighting multiple enemies that didn't have a strong resistance to physical objects.

He heard clapping behind him, and another vampire materialized from the shadows. It was an Elder Vampire. Harry could tell by how similar it felt to the one that had attacked the Quidditch World Cup finals. Immediately, the young wizard was on guard, "Recognized what I am, have you? I'm even more impressed with that than with your fight against my thralls."

"Why is a Vampire Elder working with Dumbledore?"

"Oh, the little dear knows a lot, doesn't he? He does indeed. I wonder if I should tell you? I wonder if you'll even be able to handle it…"

Harry started to grow irritated, "Are you going to make sense anytime soon?"

"Oh, so hasty. Patience, young one, is a virtue. You're so fascinating, you know that? I haven't seen someone with such skill in magic in a while… Maybe a last remnant of the age of gods. No, that's not it. It's something more… Something sinister…. Something cold…."

"For fuck's sake, just answer the question. Is that so damn hard? Why are you working with Dumbledore?"

The Elder Vampire giggled, "Oh, you mean the white one. He's so passionate… Filled with so much hidden anger… He's our natural enemy, but for the first time in eons, the Light and Dark have become grey, because the circle must close… Or else everything will be lost. The circle must close."

"The white and dark have become grey?" Harry asked out loud, "Dumbledore is working with Grindelwald?"

"It not the time for answers, young Peverell. The circle must close…"

"Yeah, I got that. My question is about what you're doing here. What are you using all this magic for?"

The Vampire smirked, "Leave this forest while you still can. You will walk no further down this path…"

 "I think I'm going to risk it. You're not the first Elder Vampire that I've fought."

"Perhaps, but I did not come here alone…"

Harry turned and saw four other elder vampires appear from thin air, and with them at least fifty Vampire Lords, and an entire army of thralls. He couldn't help but gulp slightly. To his Arcane Hearing, it was like a fifth of the forest had gone dark.

Instead of looking intimidated, he gave them all a large smile, "Greetings, Elders, Lords, and Thralls, if you can think, that is… As you all probably know, my name is Harry Potter. I'm guessing you're in the middle of something… I'm guessing some kind of ritual or unsealing. I'm very curious about that, but I don't think you're going to tell me about it. I want you to know before we start fighting and everything, that I'm fully prepared to accept your total surrender and let you go in peace…."

That seemed to have stunned them into silence, exactly like Harry wanted it to, "I know what you're going to say. I'm being extremely generous. But what's the point of being human if I didn't have a bit of mercy in me… Or so they say. I'm not really sure about that one, but what's life without trying out new things?"

Silence. Absolute silence. That was what met Harry's little speech. The sheer incredulity and confusion that the vampires expressed almost made the young mage burst into laughter. Unfortunately, it seemed like this was all the time he could buy; a few of the Vampire Lords, accompanied by their thralls, were leaping towards him.

Huh, it was enough to put a plan together. Hmm, five Elder Vampires, dozens of Vampire Lords, an entire swarm of thralls… All of them protected whatever ritual was being performed. It had to be something very important… Dumbledore definitely didn't want whatever this was to be interrupted.

Harry tilted to the side to avoid a spear of shadows by one of the Vampire Lords, before warping space to dodge a few of the leaping thralls. He quickly created a space pulse that threw them away and summoned one of them to block a beam of blood coming at him. He used his amateurish knowledge of Alchemy to turn the cursed body into flames, which he quickly manipulated using his space warping. The flames quickly morphed into a giant ring of fire that Harry pushed outwards.

The vampires did their best to either stifle or swallow the flames using their shadow magic. Unfortunately for them, this was not elemental magic, but primal fire created using Alchemy and imbued with their own blood curse. Almost half of the Vampire Lords and their thralls had perished in the attack before one of the elders sent a giant ball of darkness that swallowed the flames whole.

Harry wiped some of the dust from his coat and gave them all a large smile, "See what you made me do? I was all for talking and accepting your surrender… But no, you had to go out in style."

The Vampire Elder who had stopped the fire gave him a pointed look, "I was not aware that you were well-versed in Alchemy, child. As odd as your use of it is, I recognize the principles used."

"Well, I always did like being different. You know there was this whole rave about Flamel's journal and I thought I'd at least have a passing understanding of his field so that I could get something out of what was in there when I won… Unfortunately, it seemed like people had other ideas, but you know what that's like… But, there's something I noticed… You don't seem so broken up about me essentially killing off your lieutenants…"

"They were disposable…"

Harry didn't believe that. During the event of the Quidditch World Cup, the Vampire Elder attacking didn't care about a single Vampire Lord dying but became extremely agitated when Harry killed a lot of them. From what he had learned about Vampire Elders, they tended to gain long-term power from the Vampire Lords sworn to them…

If they didn't care about their underlings dying, it meant only one thing, "You don't care…"

"We live to serve our lord," one of the Elders simply retorted.

Harry decided to file that away, "You know, there's something I'm very curious about. I know you won't say anything about your lord's plan or whatever, and I'm sure I can figure it out. But what I did notice is the fact that people just do nothing when I talk. People never asked me why I do it… But if you examine things very carefully, I only really do it when I'm surrounded… It's often considered foolish to talk during battle, as many of you know… Unless, of course, you're stalling for something."

Before they could do anything, Harry opened a portal in front of him. The other side wasn't far in any way, just outside of the forest… More importantly, the location was fully exposed to the sun. And the moment the sunlight appeared from the portal every single Vampire Lord and thrall turned to dust.

Just as they were starting to come to terms with what had happened, Harry conjured another blade of ice which he imbued with the power of the resurrection stone. He warped space in front of the Elders and stabbed them each with the blade as he had done to the Elder during the Quidditch World Cup finals.

He had hoped to take them by surprise, and all but one, the first one who had spoken with him, had immediately turned to ash, dead… It was a lot easier to deal with them when he knew how to kill them.

The last remaining Elder Vampire had somehow conjured a blade of shadows and blocked his sneak attack. Harry conjured an illusion of himself that the enraged Vampire Elder pretended to be fooled by and suddenly leapt towards Harry. Just as he had planned, the last Potter activated his cloak and phased through the vampire's incoming attack, stabbing him in the back with his enchanted ice blade.

Unlike the others, Harry's last opponent didn't immediately turn into ash. He must have been stronger than the other Elders as well. The vampire went to his knees and gave the young mage a victorious look, "Do you seriously think you've won here? Distraction and misdirection can be very powerful indeed. For all your talent, you have much to learn, young Peverell."

Harry didn't let him continue and just threw the blade at the vampire, impaling him once more. He quickly dissipated into dust, but Harry didn't have time to celebrate his frankly very impressive victory. He felt the stream of magic coming from the stadium stop and heard a very loud scream on the other side of the forest.

He warped space at a ridiculous degree towards the noise. By the time he arrived, he noticed that the screaming had come from a glowing ritual circle, where a masked man was raising a glowing ritual knife towards a bound young girl.

Just as he was going to bring it down, Harry instinctively opened a portal in front of the blade to protect the girl. However, he gaped when the blade just cut through the portal as if it wasn't there. What the fuck?

He didn't have time to think of a magical explanation for what had happened, as the blade reached the young girl's heart. He felt like the entire world held its breath, then screamed. An immense pulse of magic originated from the girl's corpse, vaporizing the wizard in question, and Harry created a portal to outside the forest, landing heavily on the ground.

Harry slowly got up, feeling disoriented, and looked at the forest once more. He saw the woods darken and the leaves visibly fall… It was as if the forest itself had died during the ritual, whatever it was…

The last Potter found himself processing what the fuck he just witnessed. He had never heard or even read about something like this. He needed to speak with someone more knowledgeable than him about this stuff...

Harry looked at his watch and winced. He had disappeared for almost half an hour. He needed to get back to the tournament or his absence would be noticed, if it hadn't been already.

He couldn't help but feel like things had gotten a lot more complicated with this.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

AN: To be honest, I'm kind of thinking I went a bit overboard with the whole death ritual thing, but I decided to keep it anyway since it's important for later. That said, I wanted to know your opinion on the matter and if you had any suggestions.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr

I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.