Raphael thrashed back and forth in the bed, slowly waking Nathaniel, until he fell completely out of it with a sob, on to the floor. And there he rolled, under his bed, and in the silence, Nathaniel could feel his shaking even through the distance between them.

Nathaniel slid out from the covers of his own bed next to Raph's and dropped to the floor.

"Raph? You awake?" he asked softly in the velvety darkness.

"Yeah," came the reply, and the voice was shaky: full of tremors. "I was... dreaming." But the words were sticking, they weren't right. A nightmare. That was the word.

Nathaniel didn't say anything for a long moment. "It's cold, Raph, come on up to surface level."

Raphael didn't move, he couldn't face it for a moment, because it wasn't cold down here: surrounded by wood, closed in, he was safe. But -

In the end, he rolled out, and grabbed his covers and wrapped himself up, and sat down on the end of his own bed, hugging his legs tight and staring into space.

"I'll get hot chocolate." Nathaniel scuffed into his slippers and pulled his heavy dressing gown on over the T-shirt and jogging pants he usually slept in. "Want anything to munch?"

A nod was his reply, although Raphael didn't move much, his posture tight and enclosed, unable to relax.

"Anything in particular you fancy?"

The question seemed to pull Raphael out of his memories of the nightmare a little, pulling him out of the tight ball. "Perhaps," he murmured, "just something bready?"

"I'll see what I can find." Nathaniel slipped out of the door, half certain that when he got back, Raph would be hiding under the bed again.

While he was gone, even just for the moment, Raphael felt the nightmare start to crowd around him again, stalks of trees looking down on him with malevolent gazes. He remembered running - not being able to stay on the porch - not being able to find somewhere to hide - screams - and the trees, crowding in and grabbing at him, trying to tear him apart.

Starting to shake again, Raphael slipped off the bed and went under, and curled into his blankets.

Fifteen minutes later Nathaniel returned with a tray, which he set on the bedside table, and then bent to peek under Raph's bed. "Hey there." he said softly.

Raphael's eyes were open, but his movements were stiff as he forced himself to get out from under the bed. He didn't like sitting on the beds – so exposed - he sat on his covers and leant against his bed.

Nathaniel sat companionably close next to him and handed him a large mug full of hot chocolate and a bread roll so freshly baked that it was still warm and the butter had melted into it.

"Thanks, old man," muttered Raphael, and slowly started to munch on the hot food, looking into the bed opposite and trying not to look at the shapes of shadows on the roof.

"Want to talk about it?" Nathaniel offered after a few more minutes had slid by in hot bread and chocolate, sipping at his own drink.

Did he want to talk about it? Raphael never found out. The words were there - coming spilling out - without control.

"Woods. The porch of the house. Trussed up in rope. Running," he muttered, indistinctly.

Nathaniel put his mug back on the tray and gently extracted the mug from Raphael's hands. They were shaking so much that it was a wonder he hadn't spilled his drink everywhere.

But the shaking boy didn't notice, there was nothing that could calm his hands here, nothing he could reach out and grab, so he slowly hugged into himself. "There was - the sound - there was - a fiddler in the woods."

Nathaniel put his arm around Raphael's shoulders.

Raphael looked up to the other, and Nathaniel could feel the fear in his eyes, fear overwhelming the other. "I can't remember if - "

"You don't have to." Nathaniel said soothingly. "You don't have to remember. Let it slide."

Raphael nodded emptily at the others words, letting his head start to fall, struggling against the quaking that flooded him. But the questions wouldn't go away. "Was he a fiddler... or was he...?" he started, trailing off to nothing but shameful terror.

"Was he what, Raphael?" Nathaniel cradled the other boy close, holding him as closely as he would Sarah. Raphael was more than trusted. There was no harm in letting him close to him. Everyone else could stay at arms length.

On words he stumbled, failed to say. Only one image stayed with him, and he couldn't look at it, not at all. Trying. Trying to see. The struggle was obvious to Nathaniel. "Was he a - " Raphael started.

But he couldn't look.

Through the forest.

Through the dark.

Figure in the firewind.

Figure in the shards.

Holding -

Holding -

"Holding - " he whispered.

The words, the tune slid into Nathaniel's head.

"Cause I'm a picker
I'm a grinner
I'm a lover
And I'm a sinner
I play my music in the sun

I'm a joker
I'm a smoker
I'm a midnight toker
I sure don't want to hurt no one "

Nathaniel sang softly, without quite knowing why. The sliding mellow song that could soothe if Raph let it.

Sitting, entranced. Listening, and calm. Raphael watched the other, and nodded when the music finished, because it was true. He'd been the wanderer in the forest. He was the one who watched as the fae fell from the trees as dusts of light. He was one who saw.

Guitar.

"Why did he play a guitar?" Raphael asked the other, the fear of the question there, softly. The fear of the answer.

"Who played the guitar, Raph?"

Who played the guitar? He knew the answers. They tore him apart.

"There is no beginning," Raphael started, the sound of tune in his breath. "There is no end. There is only change. Progression, backwards, is this where we are heading?" he sung to Nathaniel, the words of the song in rhythm to a guitar far away. "Take back your soul, forget your - forget your - " but then the tune stopped. "I can't remember the last line," Raphael admitted to Nathaniel, his eyes burning as if fevered but his voice without tremor.

Nathaniel stared off into the darkness. The words came slipping back easily. Music was part of Nathaniel's blood by now.

"Progression backwards is this where we are heading - take back your soul forget your emptiness. There is a thin line between what is good and what is evil; and I will take you down that line but I feel unstable.." he sang just as quietly.

"Emptiness," repeated Raphael tonelessly, and the look was there again, unbending fear. Could Nathaniel see the figure on the hillside in his eyes, Raphael wondered, could he see its face? And the thought was ice in his mind.

"Is that what you're afraid of?" the question soft in the mostly dark.

Raphael's hands were shaking. No sweat broke on his forehead but the ice-fire of his eyes in the darkness burned a silence into Nathaniel.

Nathaniel just kept his arm around his friend, and waited.

And Raphael looked at him. How could he speak? Words that burned him?

"The guitar," he uttered. But that was too much. "He played the guitar," Raphael offered, but the tension was still there, still playing across his shoulders like stabbing shards of ice. "I..." he started, before trailing off.

But he had to speak, the stare of his elder demanded it. "I played the guitar," he whispered, and the words broke him, falling, hiding his face in Nathaniel's dressing gown, shudders, fear, radiating, warmth of tears, shame of tears.

"Raph, tell me what's eating you up..." Nathaniel held the boy who had come to be his brother in his heart, and wished that there was something more that he could do. "Set the truth free, kid."

All there was was the truth, as he could see it, nothing else. He didn't know more, and his vacancy was his pain.

"Words," he uttered into Nathaniel's gown, logic overridden. Nathaniel would know. Nathaniel had to know. The words. He always knew the words.

The words. The right words.

Nathaniel did not always knew he knew them until they came. This was once such occasion. Something rough, hard, something Metallica.

"In madness you dwell
Not dead which eternal lie
Stranger aeons death may die
Drain you of your sanity
Face the thing that should not be
Fearless wretch
Insanity
He watches
Lurking beneath the sea
Great old one
Forbidden site
He searches
Hunter of the shadows is rising
Immortal
In madness you dwell"

Nathaniel sang out his own fears in a voice of tears, of sliding notes of anger and chaos and pain. The words were their together fear.

And Raphael, for the moment, was calm, the fear gone, looking at Nathaniel with eyes of sadness but no pain. "I'm a stranger, in the eyes of the maker," Raphael sang softly, "I could not see for the fog in my eyes, I could not feel for the fear in my life." He knew what the words meant. "Burning, in the eyes of the Maker. Burning, in the eyes of the Maker.

"One day," he whispered to Nathaniel, "one day, though, you'll be without me. Live. Love. Her. For me. And I'll be peaceful."

But, before Nathaniel could comment, Raphael blinked his eyes, and slipped into sleep, profound, deep, all the shaking of his body gone away. Pure restful sleep. And Nathaniel was alone.

"We made a three this time." Nathaniel whispered softly to the sleeping boy, tucking the coverlet up around him as he gently retrieved the arm still around Raphael's shoulders. "Remember that."

***********

Piotr had spent the past few days avoiding Nathaniel like the plague. He had successfully managed to be wherever Nathaniel wasn't, disappearing into the shadows whenever the boy caught sight of him. This time, however, he found himself cornered in the library.

"Can you pass me that book...?" Nathaniel pointed to a large dusty tome on vampirism about two inches beside Piotr's ear. There was already a tottering stack in Nathaniel's arms, containing such titles as 'What's at Stake: Vampirism and what the Ministry doesn't want you to know" and "First Year Primer: Runes".

"You're being remarkably subtle about this, I see," said Piotr, coolly taking the book down and dumping it in Nathaniel's arms. "Look, forget about it. I...wish I'd never said anything in the first place."

"Subtle? About research?" Nathaniel looked at Piotr as though he'd turned into a bat before his eyes. "I'm a Fourth Year newbie, do you have any idea how easy it is for me to get away with this?"

Piotr shrugged. It was an expression he was remarkably well built for. "I have no idea. I'm a fourth year 'newbie' myself, remember?"

"You're not a fourth year newbie that can't do sparks with his wand though are you?" A slightly bitter note at the edge of Nathaniel's voice.

Piotr found himself feeling a little sorry for Nathaniel. "It will come," he said, softly. "It took me a long time to stop...sparking. My private tutors...despaired of me until about a year and a half ago. It will come."

Nathaniel's lips narrowed as though he was biting back on something. A moment later he managed a shrug, and some of the tension in his shoulders eased. "What I do sometimes, I can't do now. Not in a classroom, not with a wand, and certainly not when I'm trying to. It's like it uses me, instead of me using it."

Piotr smiled vaguely. "I recognise that feeling. Stop fighting it, and eventually you'll gel." He glanced around uncomfortably. "I have to go, anyway."

"Yeah, sure. I've got some stuff arriving by owl tomorrow. When do you want to start work on this, then?"

Piotr's eyes glowed angrily behind the shades. "Look, Nathaniel...I...appreciate this. But you don't have to do it. What if...someone finds out?"

"Finds out? Finds out what?" Nathaniel's green eyes showed vague confusion. "How? You're a potions expert, I'm not. I've got some Muggle stuff coming by owl so that we can work together and compare potions to chemistry and shed some light on this for me."

Piotr ducked his head a little unhappily. "This afternoon...I have a free period between Potions and Defence Against the Dark Arts. How does your schedule fit in with that?"

Nathaniel slid the stack of books onto a table and patted down his pockets, extracting an already well-worn and marked timetable. A minute later he nodded. "Yeah, I can do that."

"OK. In the dungeon." Piotr managed a thin-lipped smile. "Thanks."

Nathaniel put the timetable away, shoved his hands into his pockets and just looked at Piotr. "I'm not pushing in where I'm not wanted, am I?"

Another shrug. "I guess I'm not used to anyone particularly caring. And...knowing, of course."

"Yeah, I was the same for a long time about my contact juggling." A quick grin. "Not that the two are in any way equal, but I... know what it's like to be different."

Another smile, and Piotr left the library.

Nathaniel sighed, kicked at the table, picked up his books and found a quiet spot to catch up on the reading.

***********

3pm came and saw Piotr slink gratefully down to the dimly lit dungeons. He took off his shades and pocketed them in his robes. He opened the door of the barely used classroom he and Nathaniel had agreed to meet in. He was the first there, which surprised him, but he made himself comfortable, feet up on a desk, and his eyes began to droop. He was extremely tired, and before five minutes had passed, had fallen into a light doze.

"Sorry, got lost..." Nathaniel excused himself five minutes later as he arrived, the mostly black kitten skulking at his heels.

Piotr didn't respond.

"Hey, you." Nathaniel grinned, touching him lightly on the arm.

The response was totally unexpected. Piotr's chair crashed away from beneath him and within milliseconds had his arm around Nathaniel's throat.

"I'm...sorry," he said, embarrassed, letting Nathaniel go. "You startled me." Stating the obvious.

Nathaniel had a remarkable reaction time. Not as high as Piotr's, but high enough not to fight back when Piotr grabbed him. "You and me both..." A wry smile. The kitten found a perch on a bookcase and curled up, looking most disinterested.

"So..." Piotr was clearly unnerved by his reaction and tried to brush it away. "What do you need from me?"

"Until tomorrow's owl post, just information. What's in the potion and how did you get to that mix..." Nathaniel pulled up a chair and found himself a notepad and a quill. "...gods, these things are awful to write with, don't you think? Oh yeah, and garlic. Talk to me about garlic."

Piotr laughed quietly. "I have no problem with garlic. Neither does my father, and he's a fully fledged vampire."

He pulled out his potion and reeled off the list of ingredients. He took a small vial down from one of the shelves and poured some in. "Might help if you studied it, I guess. A lot of it has been guesswork, really."

"Yeah, I'll wait for the microscope tomorrow... I'll need some samples of blood too, but not for a couple of days." Nathaniel scritch-scratched with the quill and made blobs all over the paper. "Anything else vampires are really allergic to?"

"Light sensitive, but not too bad in terms of how I am at the moment. When my father goes out in daylight, he wears about 20 layers of vampire-level sunblock, and even then he has to limit his time outside." He considered. "Loud noise," he said, softly. "And strong smells. Our senses are super-heightened, because at night, our vision goes completely. We see by the other senses. It's hard to explain."

"Try me."

"Well...I guess its...I feel my way around by scents. They become visual to me. Blood is the driving force, of course. I can sense it flowing through living things."

Nathaniel scritch-scratched some more and then looked up at Piotr. "You don't have to tell me this if you don't want to. But it would really help if I knew how you got infected, or whether you were born like this.'

"I wasn't born like this," he said, a little bitterly. "My father was a vampire of the Umbra clan. They have a strange method of succession. It's the...second child who gets the honours."

Nathaniel leant back and said nothing, letting Piotr tell him as much or as little as he wanted to.

Piotr closed his eyes. "I was eight years old when the Change was put on me. I wanted it at the time, my father did nothing but crow on about what a great honour it was...and for the first time in my life...I felt like I could get one over on my brother."

"That's no choice at all." Nathaniel said softly.

"I got scared at the last minute, but it was too late by then. I was...bitten."

"Bitten?"

For the first time, Piotr showed real emotion. "By my father. He took all but the essential amount of blood out of my system during Initiation."

Nathaniel leant forward and touched Piotr's hand gently. "You don't have to say any more if you don't want to."

Piotr, however, didn't seem to notice. "It takes a full year for the effects of the Initiation to take effect. I became ill to start with. Seriously ill. When I recovered, my eyes were no longer brown, but as you see them now."

There was a long pause. "Nearly eight years since it happened," he said, softly. "My blood is now coursing with the blood of those animals I've killed to survive. Most vampires do not need the full Ritual at sixteen - they have killed humans and completed the change. But not me. Not ever me."

Nathaniel looked at his notes, at the traitor quill, and ran his hands through his long black hair. "I don't understand... what else happens between being drained of blood and wanting to feed."

"I don't know either," said Piotr, finally opening his eyes.

"I don't suppose you could find out?"

"That'd mean speaking to my father, and I don't have any desire whatsoever to do that."

"Isn't there another family member who might know?"

A long pause. "The Almighty Andrei might know something."

"The ..." Nathaniel blinked.

"My brother. Andrei." Piotr smiled, humourlessly. "Mind you, he hasn't put in an appearance for eight years. Not since...Initiation."

"Is he a vampire... or not...?" Nathaniel was still a little confused..

"No. The Umbra leave the eldest child and wait for more offspring. If a child is still an only child by the age of twenty-one, then they are bitten. My mother...loved Andrei very much, and suddenly realised she would lose him. He was twenty years old when I was born."

"I see." Nathaniel said quietly, and suddenly found it important to make sure the nib of his quill wasn't bent.

"I wouldn't even know where he was," said Piotr, a hint of sadness in his voice.

"The owl from the lawyers will deliver the stuff I need tomorrow morning." Nathaniel replied quietly, steering the subject gently away from Piotr's familial ties. "I don't suppose you ever did Muggle chemistry?"

"Afraid not."

Nathaniel shrugged and hoped Piotr had missed Nathaniel's slip of tongue. He knew in his heart that Piotr was too sharp to do that. "I don't know how much it'll help. I'm just more used to a more precise art than dumping it all in a cauldron and hoping for the best."

Piotr smiled. "Best not let Snape hear you say that," he said. "He's very particular about 'dumping things into a cauldron'."

"Yeah, I know, I found that out the hard way." Nathaniel grimaced. "I just can't reconcile it with the precision of chemistry. Maybe I'm just too new to this stuff."

"I said it before, and I'll say it again. It'll come." Piotr suddenly went quiet and paled. "I have to take my potion," he said. "Is it worth getting a blood sample right now and one after I take it?"

"Tomorrow." Nathaniel shook his head. "I need to keep it on ice or work with it straight away. And I'd rather take it with a sterilised needle.... I need you to moderate my Muggleness in this, Piotr, remember ..." he winked in an effort to lighten the mood a little.

Piotr smiled a thin lipped smile and took out his big potion bottle. He took a draft, then hesitated before taking a little more.

"The measure is getting difficult to judge," he explained. "Like I said. I think my body's fighting back."

"Some sort of antigen... your immune system must be shot to all hell."

Piotr cocked his head on one side. "You're speaking in tongues to me, I'm afraid."

"Alright... how does magic explain illness? Like flu, or rabies, or cancer?"

Piotr looked confused. "I don't know. Hey, come on, give a guy a brea..." He paused and looked suddenly as though he would be sick. Then he took another draft of his potion and buried his head on the desk. "I hope this works," he said, into the wood of the desk.

"What happens when the potion doesn't work?" Nathaniel put down his notepad and quill.

"The thirst gets greater and greater."

"Is it like an addiction?"

"I wouldn't know...but I guess so. It's like...I have to feed, or I'll lose my mind."

"OK, this is going to sound weird but can you try and wean your hunger onto something else? Oranges for example.. the world's first vegetarian vampire... " Nathaniel aimed to make Piotr smile.

Piotr shook his head, which he raised from the desk. "It doesn't work. It has to be blood, and it has to be warm. Sorry to be so graphic," he added, seeing the flicker of distaste on Nathaniel's face. "Cold blood is almost like poison to us."

"Has to be warm..." Nathaniel stared at him. "Do you remember what it was like right after the Initiation...? Maybe... " He pounced on a notebook filled with blobs of ink and his scratchy handwriting.

Piotr shook his head. "I just remember waking and needing to drink. My father made sure that I had animal blood right off, then once it was explained to me, I made him angry by refusing. He said that I had to drink, or die."

He shuddered. "I can deal with killing faceless, nameless creatures like rodents, vermin that nobody really cares about. I'm part of their food chain in a way. But my father...got increasingly angry over my refusal to kill human prey. I think that's why he sent me to school. Hoping the temptation would be too much."

"So it's feeding from a human that sparks the final change?" Nathaniel seemed preoccupied as he flipped through his notebook.

"Yes. Something in the blood that causes a reaction."

"And what... what's the final changes?"

"Complete dependence on blood to exist - loss of normal vision...extended lifespan..."

"Complete dependence? You mean you don't need to eat , or you can't eat?"

"I don't need to. I CAN, but it will leave me feeling uncomfortable. My father has mastered the social grace of eating just enough not to be rude."

"Red blood cells." Nathaniel slammed the notebook shut triumphantly. "Maybe your blood doesn't naturally recreate red blood cells. Like sickle cell anaemia. But.. uh ... not."

"Whatever you say, Nathaniel. If that's the case, can it be stopped? Because at the end of the day, if I don't show for Ritual on my sixteenth birthday...they will come for me anyway."

"Maybe we can stimulate your body back into creating it. Maybe. I don't know." He shook his head in irritation. "What's Ritual?"

"Final change. I don't know exactly what goes on, but I guess it involves my killing a human. Whether that be on a Hunt or in an organised sacrifice, I don't know. It is forbidden to speak of it."

"Well, Christ, it's not going to be much point us coming up with a cure if they're going to force it down your throat." Nathaniel spoke without thinking for once. "Sorry. But we've got to find a way to make you ineligible for it."

"Whatever," said Piotr, uncomfortable with Nathaniel's show of rage. "Look, if this is something that you don't want to do, back out now. It doesn't matter, I'll not bear any grudges."

"No. I'm not going to back out." Nathaniel said with determination. "I'm not... angry with you, or at you, or anything like that. We've... all got our own demons." On the bookcase the kitten stirred, and opened one eye a fraction.

"OK." Piotr reached into the pocket of his robe and put his shades back on. "Tomorrow, then? What time? Where?"

"I'm going to ask Snape if I can have some dungeon space for catching up on potions vs. chemistry."

"Good luck to that. Just don't mention me anywhere. Snape despises me completely. He knows, by the way."

Nathaniel shrugged and started gathering up his bits and pieces. "So I guess we'll decide at lunch."

"Right. And...thank you." The words came awkwardly to Piotr's lips.

"Nah, thank you."

"For what?" Genuine surprise.

Nathaniel shrugged. "Trusting me. Giving me something to do to keep my mind off... other stuff."

"Just swear, please, Nathaniel." Sudden uncertainty. "You won't let this slip? I could never kill a human, you have to believe that. The last thing I need is even less trust."

"I swear." Nathaniel met Piotr's gaze steadily. "I haven't told anyone and I won't without your permission. And I trust you."

"Thank you," he said, again, awkwardly.

Nathaniel looked at the floor for a moment and then looked back up. "It's probably small potatoes compared to what you've entrusted to me, but my parents kicked me out when this Hogwarts stuff happened. Called me a freak. Cut me off. I don't have a home, I don't have a family. I have a house in Cornwall that got bequeathed to my father when my aunt died, and I have a lawyer firm in London to handle communication between myself and ... Mr and Mrs Greenleigh."

Piotr didn't answer for a long moment, then reached out unexpectedly and gripped Nathaniel's shoulder in a hug. "Take some of that strength you gave me, my friend," he said, in a soft voice. "And keep it for yourself."

"Don't tell anyone. Not even Raph or Sarah know yet." It was Nathaniel's turn to look pleadingly at Piotr.

"Your word for mine." Piotr loosened his grip on Nathaniel's shoulder. "I swear."

Nathaniel nodded, and stretched out an arm for the kitten to leap onto his shoulder. The cat peered at Piotr and managed a half-hearted purr.

Piotr smiled, and nodded. "You too," he said. Then he sighed. "Defence Against the Dark Arts. How much fun is that?"

"Fascinating." Nathaniel grinned back. "For me, anyhow."

The two of them left the classroom together, the kitten riding on Nathaniel's shoulder like an emperor.