Chapter 42

Perenelle was the one who had healed the other occupant of the room. Harry had been surprised to learn that the slightly haughty woman was a skilled practitioner in healing magics. She had most likely just gotten finished checking on her patient. That, or she was waiting for him to come in. It was impossible to tell which.

And there, laying on the bed was the very girl Harry had rescued last night. To say he had been shocked when the girl had proven to be alive was like saying Perennelle was not the one wearing the pants in her relationship with Nicolas. Understatement just didn't begin to cover it. Harry had gone nearly catatonic when the girl had latched onto him and opened her eyes after he had killed those men, proving that she was alive.

Well, technically alive, considering she was a vampire.

Thinking back on that whole incident in hindsight, Harry actually felt kind of stupid for not having realized what she was. The people who had 'killed' her mentioned that she was an 'abomination' and used silver bullets to harm her. Those should have been indicators right there that she was not human, though he would have assumed she was a werewolf rather than a vampire due to the silver used in the bullets.

Let it be known that having eidetic memory does not always mean someone makes the connections in various pieces of information right away.

Then again, Harry did not really know much about vampires. Or anything at all, really. There were many movies he had watched featuring Count Dracula and many historical text on vampires, but how accurate was the information found there? It was all just superstition and hearsay. There was no telling if anything in those books and movies were actually accurate.

Perhaps he could learn though, once the girl woke up. It would be interesting to actually speak with a real life vampire and see how they saw things from their perspective.

"How is she?" asked Harry as he walked up to the bedside, his gaze never leaving the vampires face. She looked much more peaceful now than she had when they last met. Though that could just be because of the setting he was seeing her in.

"She iz doing fine," Perenelle looked up from her newspaper to look at the vampire in the bed, then to Harry. "I 'ealed 'er wounds last night. I 'ave also purified her blood of the silver poisoning her. Ze blood you gave me helped greatly as well." She gave him a surprisingly calculating look. "You're blood contains much magic. I would almost assume you 'ave ze blood of a magical creature in your veins."

"Well, aren't witches and wizards technically magical creatures?" asked Harry, causing Perennelle to snort.

"Not to zem, apparently."

Harry chuckled a bit, finding the same irony in his statement that Perennelle did, before reaching down and pulling his mother's wand out from his ankle holster. Using it, he conjured himself a much more basic looking chair than Perennelle's elegant looking one (he was not that good at Conjuration yet) next to the beautiful woman so he could sit down.

It had been a very pleasant surprise to him when Perennelle and Nicolas Flamal had informed him that he could use his mother's wand for magic without alerting the Ministry. According to them, the trace, which was the way all magical governments belonging to the ICW tracked underage magic, was taken off the wand of a witch or wizard after they reached the age of majority, seventeen. Since his mother was in her twenties when she was killed, the trace did not exist on it. Ergo, he could use magic with it.

As Harry sat down, he began checking over the girl's vitals to make sure she was still alive. He knew that Perennelle had already done so, but he preferred double checking everything himself, just to make sure.

Of course, because the girl was a vampire, he couldn't use normal means for checking to see if she was alive. He had to use a spell for that, one that Perennelle had taught him the night before when he had brought the girl back.

"It iz amuzing to watch you act like a mozzer 'en, 'arry," Perennelle's lilting voice teased him, an amused smile curving her beautiful lips. It was a different side from the haughty woman he usually saw, though that could just mean she was warming up to him.

Harry flushed a bit, but did not stop checking the girl over.

"I rescued her and brought her in. That makes her my responsibility."

"Zat you did," Perennelle nodded as she looked at the young man, her gaze thoughtful. "Still, it iz awfully unusual for someone so young to act so... mature and responsible."

Harry took a deep breath. He knew that Perennelle was not saying that to point out his age like Nicolas had when he mentioned it, but simply stating an observation that illuminated a part of his character that she found did not fit the criteria of someone his physical age represented. However, hearing those words from her and Nicolas, from anyone really, bothered him more than he would ever care to admit.

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