A Little Knowledge: Missing Scenes

When I was a small child, I liked to sit on the window sill in the library and look out over the overgrown garden behind the house in which I was never allowed to play. There were gnomes and briars in that garden. I was never sure which one my mother was most afraid of. But I would sit there in the window for hours, listening to my father scribbling on parchment -- he was a well-known and brilliant writer -- and imagining the adventures I might have had in that garden, if I had only been allowed.

Then my mother would come into the library sometime before dinner and spoil even that:

“Come away from the window, Andrea, before you fall out and hurt yourself.”

The window was locked and warded. The seat itself was not even very high. I could climb up and down very easily without any assistance by the time I was six years old.

That would have been two years, I believe, after we departed from our home in Italy; we had left soon after Grindelwald began his attack upon our country.

My mother had been very frightened. My father had wanted to make her happy again. A house in England was supposed to have done that. But I don’t think anything could have. She was still frightened even there in that house where it was safe. Nothing changed. Only the language we spoke and the school that eventually sent me my acceptance letter: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry instead of La Scuola di Magia in Rome.

I cannot say I would have been happier there. Most likely, I would not have been. My parents had very different legacies there, and I could not have lived up to them both. Nevertheless, I feel as though I can say with some certainty that I would not have been bitten by a vampire at La Scuola.

The room I live in now is not a dormitory nor has it ever been. It was perhaps a classroom in better days when the world of wizards was greater in scope and their offspring more numerous than we are at present. Before my professors moved a bed into the room and sealed the single, high window, it was nothing more than another unused dungeon chamber. Now it is my room and I am the only prefect with private chambers for himself alone. I like the quiet and the additional space, but not the solitude and darkness. But that darkness keeps me safe.

I find myself looking at the high window of the chamber quite often. More often, in fact, than I feel that I should. It was merely boarded up at first. Then Professor Flitwick and Professor Krohn magically sealed it to prevent even the tiniest beam of sunlight from entering my sanctuary. I cannot say that I am not appreciative. I am. But I also miss the sunlight. I miss looking out at the grounds from the few windows that reach the Slytherin dormitories, which are now so far away that I cannot even hear the din from the common room, though I can hear many other things in the darkness. I can see many things as well. Poor compensation, I think.

I wish I had seen more that night when he came, when the one who took my natural life from me and gave me this one invaded the school. If I had seen more then, perhaps I could have drawn my wand against him. Perhaps we could have dueled. I am a good student, apt at Ancient Runes, like my father, and good enough at Arithmancy, but I know I could not have defeated the vampire. But perhaps if I had struggled ... if I had had the chance ... I would not be closed up in a dungeon room. I would be properly dead instead of whatever I am now.

“Vampire.”

I do not like saying the word. But this is what I am now and I should get used to it. I will be a vampire forever and ever ... or until someone finds reason enough to slay me or I venture into the sunlight. But what a terrible death that sounds. Burned alive, like the witches and wizards of old who were burned at the stake, but not with fire ... with the very light of the sun. Terrifying, yes?

Being a creature of darkness, such as I have become, I cannot fathom the life I should have led if I had remained human. I was to leave Hogwarts in the spring, just before my eighteenth birthday, with excellent marks in several subjects, possibly as many as four Newts in various subjects. Then I was to find a wife suitable to my station in life -- that is to say, a pureblooded witch of whom my mother approved -- and possibly find gainful employ somewhere. I cannot say that those notions ever bothered me.

Now I don’t believe that I can have that life. What woman would let a drinker of blood kiss her with his tainted lips? Lie with her at night? Father her children? Hold those children to his still breast and unbeating heart while he sings them a lullaby? None of the girls I have ever known. I am lucky to be immortal then, because I believe that it would require much longer than a lifetime to find anyone who would or even could truly love a vampire.

I have come to regret every gentlemanly courtesy I ever extended to the young witches I courted or even only made show of courting. I should have stolen kissed from them. As many as I could steal. I should have accepted every proposition and every show of affection offered to me by that fairer sex. But I was a gentleman from a family with a proud and honorable history. We do not do such things. We are above such things. And now I regret it very much.

Such is life. I know not what to make of mine now. My choices seem limited. The whole of my life seems as limited as the walls of my sanctuary that close in around me, keeping me safe, but not free, and making me too keenly aware of all the things I may not have.

And just as much aware of the things I now want.

My desires have come to include warm blood. I have not tasted human blood ... other than a bit my own from a split lip as a second year. I brawled then only for the honor of my house. That should be understood. I am now given goat’s blood to drink at dinner, when I may chance to dine with my house or when I am alone, which is far more frequent. Why blood from a goat? I did not think to ask. I think I would rather not know why. Perhaps it is easy to acquire. Perhaps it is as near to human blood as can be come by legally. If I could say that it was utterly unpalatable, I would do so and be glad. But in honesty, that draught is the thing I await every day. I hunger and thirst for it as some may hunger for chocolate or thirst for sweet wine. And of that I am ashamed.

Sometimes I believe that my fellow students, when I have had occasion to dine with them or see them after dark in the common room, have sensed that shame and reviled me all the more for it. I do not blame them. I am not angry with even those few whom I considered my closest friends. But I am saddened that they act as though they no longer know me.

If only I could find a way to make them understand that I am still the same Andrea Zabini who sat with them at Quidditch matches, screaming my throat hoarse as our house team brought us victory and glory, and the same who studied with them through the nights before we took our Owls together. But I have not found a means by which to accomplish this. I fear that I may never find it.

Professor Krohn tells me that they will all ‘come around’ in time once they have grown accustomed to the change. He says that I can still have a full and productive life. Just as Professor Dumbledore says. I want to believe them, but, unfortunately, I have a lot of time to think about such things and cannot understand how either of them have arrived at their conclusions. My head of house is not an optimistic man, so he is especially puzzling just now.

My parents are less so.

My mother was understandably upset. She would not stop crying when she saw me for the first time that second night after I became what I am. But this was what I had expected of her. Before she married my father, I was once told, she had been a Sicilian witch from a family of good blood and no money: perhaps a bit simple, but happy and beautiful. My father had rescued her from her poverty and given her many things. But to me, when I was old enough to understand such matters, she always seemed like an honest woman from a gentle country upbringing. I wonder how long it shall be before she stops crying for me.

But my father bore the adversity of the situation with quiet stoicism and a pained look in his eyes. He thinks perhaps that I shall no longer be able to give him an heir. Perhaps he also thinks that our family shall have no need of one as I will live for ... a very long time. I do not wish to plan to live forever. I fear I would lose my humanity, if I possess this quality anymore, through such desires.

It is late in the evening, and I can feel the shadows lengthening and the sun growing dim in the world outside my private chamber. The castle is slowly going to sleep just as I awaken from my slumber and from my thoughts. I want to lie in bed for a while longer. I want to think and consider my past and my future for a bit more. But I have classes, special lessons arranged with my professors, during these earliest hours of the night and not for the world would I keep them waiting.

I gather my Arithmancy text from my bedside table and my book on runes from the floor. For a moment my red eyes linger on the sealed window high above me.

“Come away from the window, Andrea,” I chide myself softly before tearing my eyes away from it and going off to my lessons.

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