Travels with Severus

Travels with Severus; Severus does New Orleans

Book One; Chapter Three

Dinner, or should I say, breakfast turned out to be quite good. As I told Severus last night, his ability to cook was most surprising. As was the whole damn evening, actually. The shrimp alfredo was just the topper.

I am really a singer, a vocal stylist, a chanteuse if you will, and I love to sing jazz. The whole vampire hunter thing was purely accidental. But I jump ahead of myself. Perhaps I should begin at the beginning, as it were.

I am a thirty-six-year-old half-blood witch. My mom was an ordinary witch, and my dad a Muggle jazz musician. My parents met at a party one night and once dad got over the shock of mom's little secret, they married and had me. I got my powers from mom and my love of jazz from dad, just in case you hadn't guessed.

I was raised in both worlds. I attended Muggle school until I went away to Salem for my magical education when I turned twelve. Other than the typical teenage angst, defiance of parents, etc., my childhood and adolescence was pretty dull. I now call it the 'Calm before the storm' era.

Life got exciting for me after Salem. I had decided to pursue a career in entertainment, so I applied and was accepted into Loyola University's music program. I was close to home and to the source of the music that I love so much. To earn some money I sang back up to various bands. I got my feet wet and earned respect. The contacts I made and the exposure that I received wasn't anything to laugh at either. With the exception of last night's performance I have never once, used spells to get a gig or to enthrall an audience. It's just plain wrong. No, I worked my ass off to get to where I am today. I had cast my Glamour last night for Severus, as sort of a 'I know what you are' signal. (I had recognized him almost at once, when I first saw him at the Café duMonde. We have Chocolate Frogs here too although I prefer a nice cold Snickers bar. He was so adorably flustered at the attention he was getting that I just had to challenge him.)

But, I digress.

I became a vampire hunter because my fiancé was murdered by one.

We had met much in the same way mom and dad met. I was twenty-four and performing in my own show. Marcus was there in the audience, flirting with me. He was very, very cute, and very Muggle. After the show, he asked me if he could buy me a drink and it took off from there. We did the typical Muggle dating thing for a while, and eventually fell in love. All the while I had managed to conceal the fact that I was a witch. But discovery was as inevitable as the sun rising and setting.

Marcus discovered the secret of my heritage on one of our dates. We had gone to the theater and were walking back to the car after the show. It was very late, about midnight. Suddenly, there was a gun pointed at Marcus' head and a demand for money. I just reacted, I pulled my wand and hexed the Hell out of the bastard with the gun. I don't know who was more surprised, Marcus or the mugger I had just turned into a toad. I think it may have been Marcus and my explanations seemed to make matters worse. Marcus was stuck in the middle of being grateful about what I had done and being stunned about what I had done. He avoided me for a couple of days then took me for a very long walk around City Park. We talked about my family and about my being a witch. I told him about my mother and her family and how, yes, I had this wonderful gift, but that I didn't use it everyday. In the end I apologized for not telling him about my powers and he thanked me for saving his life. Things progressed from there and eventually he proposed marriage.

We had been engaged for about six months when he was murdered. I was in my first recording session for my first album. We had worked into the night, trying to get the last track down, and Marcus had been there for half the day. I was desperate for food and he volunteered to run for burgers. I wish that I had told him no.

I know that his killer was a female. I know that she lured him into the alley she killed him in. I knew he was dead the minute his heart stopped beating, and caring not who saw, Apparated to his side. There was nothing I could do but scream.

I knew that vampires roamed the city. One could not fail to notice them if one was really looking; Muggles can even discern them if they want to. You just have to be observant. Being that the creatures were the subject of my senior paper at Salem, I was in the habit of observing and avoiding them. It's what I was taught to do in school. So why did I not think to warn Marcus? He would have believed me, I'm sure with me being a witch and all. I should have warned him, taught him to look for the signs of a vampire or anything dark, but I thought I could protect him from all of that.

The Aurors staged the scene, so that no questions would be raised, even going as far as oblivating the production staff in the studio. We buried him and I retreated into my grief. I lived as a hermit for almost two years, refusing to finish the album, refusing all company save my parents.

My career as a vampire hunter was an accident, but now that I look back on it, a natural choice given the way Marcus died. I eventually came out of my self-imposed prison and started singing in the clubs again. It was soon after my return to the stage that I encountered my first vampire. It nearly ended up being the death of me.

The show had been going well and then near the end I spotted him.

Vampires are, on the surface, beautiful creatures. This one was one of the most beautiful I had ever seen and I don't know how I managed to finish the set, when I couldn't take my eyes off of him. He was brazenly sitting in the middle of the crowd, and had even danced a dance with some woman in the audience. His hair was dark as ravens' feathers, his skin stark, pale and smooth like marble. His eyes were this arresting shade of green, and his lips sensual.

So tempting, he was. I wondered how many he had killed, and how long he had walked as a vampire. He was meeting my gaze, trying to tempt me. Nearly succeeding in tempting me, actually. For after the show ended I found myself making my way toward him. We said not a word to each other and before I realized what was happening, I was following him outside and into a shadowed doorway across the street.

He kissed me. I snapped out of the spell when I felt his cold flesh on mine and shoved him away. I managed to draw my wand, but he was too fast for me. The son of a bitch broke my wrist. That was the least of my worries though, because he had wrapped his other hand around my neck and was slowly strangling me.

I thought of Marcus. I remembered the pain and the mourning. I felt the emptiness and the sharp shards of my shattered dreams. One of these creatures had taken my love from me and was about to kill me too. I glimpsed the ugliness beneath the beauty of this creature and something in me snapped. Fuck 'em all, and fuck this guy too, I wasn't going down without a fight! I kneed him in the groin, which gave me just enough time to make a run for it, which I did as I Summoned my wand.

He chased me into an alley (really, New Orleans has too damn many of them) and somehow I managed to evade his grasping hands as I summoned a wrought iron fence post, whirled and plunged it into his chest. I had never seen that much blood in my life, and it was cascading over me in a wave of crimson. It was really nasty smelling and sticky, but it was the most wonderful thing I had felt on my skin in a long time. I am not sorry to say that I gloried in the creature's destruction. I've been killing them ever since.

I don't actively hunt them--well, that's not true. I go to places where I know vampires go. It just so happens that my career as a singer takes me to places like this. As for the no pictures on the album cover thing? Well, as I explained to Severus last night, it is purely a marketing gimmick. It just happens to work well with my side job.

Good thing too, because for the last few weeks I've been followed, and I'm pretty sure it's a vampire that's following me.