Corridor at Night

A dark corridor at night, only lit by the moonlight. Students are restricted from running around at this time, if you are a student and you get caught - Beware!!

There was one thing that no one knew about Juria, not even herself. She was half Vampire. A Vampire had bitten her during her days "serving" the Dark Lord, yet she is not completely vampire. Every half a year, during the full moon, her Vampire side takes over and she must have human blood. This was one of those times.

Juria had gone berserk and her vampire side was in control. She wandered, hungrily along one of the corridors of Hogwarts. The light of the full moon shone in on her form. Juria was so pale she was almost white, graceful but terrifying, claws had retracted from her fingertips and the K-9's of her teeth were elongated, useful for biting. Juria's normal striking blue eyes were now turned to the color of vivid blood that seemed to glow on their own accord, and even if the background was dark, they could be seen.

Juria heard silent footsteps of a human and in less that someone could blink; she quickly snapped the student's neck and fed. Juria would never have ever even considered doing anything like that, however a Vampire must feed. Juria feed on her first victim and knew that the night was still indeed young.

Viper had been doing her patrol duty late at night when she heard a disturbance down the corrider. Not a normal, student caused disturbance. No, she could care less about those. This disturbance was something different. Way different.

She turned a corner and almost gagged by the sight before her: a Vampiric form of Juria feasting on a student!

"What the hell..." Viper breathed out, drawing her wand.

Juria finished her bloody feast, not caring about anything; her Vampire senses heard a person approach. Juria wheeled around to see Viper, however Juria didn’t care who she was right now.

Juria's fierce red eyes pierced through the night and saw the wand out, she saw it as a threat. Juria went into defensive mode and growled out to the Professor,

"What do you want!?"

The tone in Juria's voice was evil and seemed to say to not mess with her. This was totally opposite from the human Juria. This Juria seemed to be very evil, most likely the same attitude that she had displayed while under the Imperio curse. Juria's eyes burned in the darkness at Viper.

Viper raised an eyebrow at the tone used. She didn't want to use any spells on Juria. After all, from what she had gathered and rumours floating around, Juria was quite important to one of her best, and only, really, friends.

"Juria, relax. Look, I don't like the girl either, but come on now. Fight it off. Kiara's going to burst a vein if you off another one of the students." she attempted at reasoning before flicking her hand, conjuring blinding veil of smoke towards Juria.

Juria laughed and showed her vampire K-9 teeth, she didn’t care about any of that. Juria didn’t know who the student was nor did she care at all. As she saw Viper flick her wand, faster than a blink of an eye, Juria conjured a red orb of magic in her hand and sent it flying towards Viper.

The orb of magic hit the Professor squarely in the chest and send her flying backwards. Because Juria's power was intensified tenfold due to her being a magical creature at this point, the intensity of the magic knocked the Professor so hard backwards that she flew through the wall, creating a large hole in it.

Though the pressure was great enough to break bones, Juria made it possible that Viper would not hit her head and get knocked out, so she was still conscious. Juria grinned at her handy work then said so Viper could hear her, though she was a little distance away,

“I am relaxed.”

Juria grinned and with a flick of her wrist made the window side of the castle shatter and Juria expanded two large black wings out of her back. Juria jumped up and flapped the impressive wings once and took off into the night. Expecting to feast on clueless humans in the town she first came to. This was her night to feast and she knew that when the morning came, she would disappear for a while so tonight she was determined to have fun.

((ok let us adjourn to Juria’s Personal Chambers ^_^ ^_^ and the timeline is for that morning lol!!! Viper is going to be very interested XD XD!! O_o… Kiara is going to be wondering how a vampire snuck into Hogwarts… hmmmmmm well Juria would be the last person on everyone’s mind… except Vipers XD lol. Ok meet you in Juria’s Quarters and the timeline is in the morning lol^_^))

Before she could conjure a decent-sized shield, an orb met Viper straight in the chest, followed by an intense pressure and various crunches and shattering noises, though Viper hoped it wasn't from any of her bones.

Due to the impact, Viper was fairly conscious, yet drifting in and out with blurred vision. It took a moment for her vision to return to normal and for feeling to come back to her sprawled, injured limbs. At that point, all Viper could do was watch as Juria flew away...

Kiara walked briskly down the hall with Sevastyan right behind her. Her heart was beating ferciously in her chest as she neared the corridor the missing student was in.

"Please Merlin let this feeling be wrong for once.." she thought just as she entered the resricted corridor.

The scene of Viper on the corridor floor and a students.... Body? made her freeze and her eyes widened.

"Viper? Merlin... what....what in the world?...." she breathed, worry the now thick and evident in her voice, as she gripped her wand, worried that whatever did this was still near.

Gray eyes, made more alert by a feeling he couldn't describe, darted this way and that for any sign of an irate Head of Slytherin scolding a shamefaced student. Sevastyan was right behind Kiara, considering she knew where the student was and he did not.

Of all the things he expected to see, the one with a heavily injured Viper on the floor and a student's body not very far away was not one of them. Immediately he scanned the rest of the scene for anything else out of place. A shattered window... but little else it seemed. Was whoever or whatever did this still near? Sevastyan didn't know, but he wasn't about to let something like that scare him off.

The student was closer, and if the crumpled form and oddly-positioned head weren't enough then surely the blood on the collar of the kid's robes indicated that the student was dead. "Vot in the vorld, indeed..." Sevastyan murmured and crouched down next to the student, rolling the body onto its back.

"Broken neck..." he reported with a strange mixture of concern and calm. In his darker days, this was nothing compared to some of the cadavers he'd seen. Sevastyan was about to check for a pulse, despite the blood, but didn't need to when he noticed the wound. "If I didn't know better... I vould say this vos the vork of a vampire..."

"The student is dead, I'm afraid," Sevastyan informed neutrally before striding over to Viper to check on her now. He hoped she was still alive. Elsewise, this Russian would be hunting vampire for many weeks to come. He even knew of a few other Russians with the same last name that would help him, no questions asked.

"Amaranth?" Sevastyan queried softly, placing a hand on her shoulder to shake. When something didn't quite feel right about said area, he instead caressed her cheek. His other hand felt for a pulse at Viper's neck, the worry on his face relaxing slightly. "She is still alive," he told Kiara with no small amount of relief.

Kiara looked at the body of the student, never had she thought that she would ever have to write a letter to someones Parents, telling them there child was dead. Would the school be closed? Until the Vampire.... if that was what did it was found and killed.

Holding back tears she conjured a blanket, and placed it over the body of the student.

Then she walked over beside Sevastyan and Viper and breathed A sigh in releif when Sevastyan said she was still alive.

Kiara took out her wand and cast a dianostic spell on Viper, to see just how badly she was injured.

"Viper? are you with us?" she asked.

Viper twitched slightly back into consciousness as she felt a light, tender caress on her cheek. Emerald eyes opened slowly, taking a moment to return back into focus and stop blurring, revealing two worried people: Kiara and Sevastyan.

She hadn’t meant to linger for as long as she had. If anything, she had intended to pick herself up and find Kiara herself, taking the time it took to reach the Headmistress and formulate a proper answer. The best answer she could. The question was, what could she tell Kiara? What should she tell Kiara? What possible outcome would benefit the most people? Before drifting back into unconsciousness, Viper had formulated a plan that, in her mind, worked out the best for everyone.

The Potions Mistress took a moment, blinking slowly, looking from the other witch and the wizard. “S-Sevastyan, Kiara? What happened?” she asked softly in disorientation, attempting to sit up. While she was quite disoriented at the moment, right to the point where she couldn’t stare at something for more than a minute before it blurring in front of her, she was dramatizing it, just a bit, playing as though the blast had robbed her mind of recent events. In reality, she knew and recalled exactly what had happened. It was her motive for the deceit she was weaving this very moment.

It took Viper a few tries to sit up correctly, as her shoulders seemed to be limiting her movements, along with what felt like a broken collar bone that had now pierced through her skin, poking out at her neck in a gush of blood, streaming down her tight chest. Along her neck, chest, and arms were cuts and scratches: some flowing with blood and others barely hitting the surface, from the impact and her crash.

“Don’t worry about it,” she whispered with a slight shake of her head, though the action caused an instant wave of dizziness. With a muttered spell, Viper conjured a healing potion and levitated it towards her.

Sevastyan started slightly when Viper twitched, but did not pull away. Gray orbs were getting more concerned by the minute. "Yes, ve're here..." he whispered hastily at her question. He should've looked for her sooner! "Ve... ve do not know exactly..." Sevastyan added and was about to explain what little they were aware of when a gush of blood sent off alarms in his head.

Seeing the bone sticking out of her neck made all the color drain from Sevastyan's own face. Without thinking, the wizard conjured a cloth to attempt to staunch the flow of blood with one hand, and cast a spell to mend the bone enough to prevent it from piercing through the skin, but it wasn't a full mend. Sevastyan was most proficient in survival medical magic, which allowed one to mend just enough to keep going, but was by no means a full recovery. It was at this moment that he wished he knew more about the medical field, whether his love could feel the pain of what had happened or not. Seeing her wounded made him wish it was him lying there suffering instead...

Sevastyan noted the cuts, and wondered what had caused those. Another glance to the broken window and Amaranth's proximity to it gave him one possible answer. "How can you expect us not to vorry... least of all me... ven you are lying here bleeding?" he asked softly, with a quiet chuckle, before noticing the hovering potion. Immediately Sevastyan spelled the cork off and brought it to his love's lips, cupping and supporting the back of her head with his other hand to make sure she wouldn't choke on the liquid within the phial. It's hue, he identified, was that of a healing potion.

The wizard silently thanked Merlin that Amaranth had one on hand, and reminded himself to keep his own supply of potions on his person at almost all times as well.

Kiara sighed in releif when Viper woke up, but was still very concerned when it seemed she didn't remember anything.

"What is the last thing you remember Viper" she asked, trying to put together how this could have happened. How could a vampire if that was indeed what it was that killed the student and injured Viper.

She cast another Dianostic charm on the potion mistress to make sure the potion was enough to heal she more serious injuries.

"Honestly Viper, you think you would know you are talking to the two biggest worry warts in the school. Of course we worry. Find you bady injured by a broken window, and a dead student, which appears to be from the work of a Vampire. I would say we have casue to worry" Kiara said in short also explaining what happened from what she could gather.

Viper's mouth twitched slightly in an attempt of a smile at Sevastyan's healing, both the spells and the gesture he carried out as she drank her potion, whispering her thanks. A tiny part of Viper felt a a slight prick of guilt over what she was doing. After all, both Kiara and Sevastyan more or less trusted her. She sighed inwardly, pondering how to go on. It was alot harder, she realized, to lie to someone she loved, but nonetheless she pressed onward. After all, if all went according to her plan, it truly would all work out for the best. The dead student would have opened the doors to the possibility of saving thousands of lives.

However, despite these reassurances, the Potion Mistress's mind still wasn't wholly at ease. After all, it was this very logic she was using now that had annihilated ECHO...

"Well don't worry about anything else. Worry about that." Viper replied, gesturing to the dead student. "You'll need to start the notifications. The sooner the better." While in no way did she mean it to appear, a slight underton of icyness appeared in her voice.

Kiara nodded, "I was planning on sending out notifications within the hour" she said solomly.

She would contact and meet the parents first then she would deal with the ministry, after the parents took care of the afairs.

Of course a full investigation would need to be done, to find out what happened and it could have happened in such a guarded school.

Mentally she placed the school on high alert, actively searching for anything... out of the ordinary.

She stood up and walked over to the students body and levitated it off the floor.... she was dreading this, she more then anyone knew what it was like to find out your child was dead.

Eglantine entered the corridor, having heard a commotion. Although she had had to send a young Gryffindor back to her dormitory and had been delayed, the Deputy Headmistress had hurried to the corridor with as much speed as her levitation charm and tired mind would allow.
Horatio had desired to go with her after they had been disturbed in the middle of their chess game, but Edwin had awoken at that moment and Esis had been too drunk to get him...

As she floated into the corridor, her heart skipped a beat as she saw the covered body and Viper's broken body with Sevastyan and Kiara with her. Kneeling down, she peeled back the cover on the body, a strangled scream/gasp erupting from her mouth as she saw the student's body...

Sevastyan grasped Viper's hand gently as she drank the potion. The student's death was a cause for concern, and he knew that. But... at the same time he couldn't help but worry about Viper more than the cadaver. There wasn't much they could do about a corpse. If anything, they would need to worry about the complications surrounding the death of the student on a legal sense of things. Notifications, final arrangements, and the like.

But yet another thing confused him: why was Amaranth's tone icy? Did she think they thought she'd done that? Once she had downed the potion, Sevastyan removed his hand from the back of her head to rest it upon the witch's shoulder as Kiara spoke.

He nodded in acknowledgment. Sevastyan wasn't really sure what he could do to help with the legal stuff, and even still he felt his place was with Viper for the moment. "If there is anything I vould be able to do to help..." he trailed off, addressing Kiara. However, he hadn't yet moved from Viper's side.

Sevastyan hadn't heard or seen another professor enter the corridor, and hence started when the strangled scream pierce the semi-silence of the area. Gray eyes snapped up in alert, wand at the ready in case what had killed the student had returned. The wizard relaxed, however, when he realized Professor DeLanquar had only been frightened to see what had happened.

"Vill you be all right?" Sevastyan whispered to Amaranth, just to be sure she was alright even though he'd seen her take the healing potion.

A soft smile slowly appeared on Viper's face as she gave Sevastyan's hand a gentle squeeze as she drained the goblet, though she purposely looked down, avoiding eye contact. lying to Sevastyan was already hard enough, and technically, according to her own upbringing, she wasn't even lying. Yet. Merely not speaking for the moment.

She winced slightly upon hearing a shriek echo through the halls, followed by another wave of dizziness and more blurred vision. While the potion had healed her injuries, Viper still needed rest, and considering she had yet to sleep that day and was no longer used to her insomniac schedule.

Viper shifted slightly into a position where she could sit with her legs folded in front of her, resting her head on her knees in an effort to banish the dizziness and regain most of her vision, not hearing the rest of the words being said around her.

"If I am no longer needed and no one has any objections, I'm going to retire." she replied in a flat tone, struggling to maintain her balance as she stood up, facing the others as best as she could. "Actually, I'm lying. I'm going back to my rooms regardless. I really can't deal with anything right now..."she breathed out, trying to keep her balance and see her way back to her Quarters.

"I'll speak to you, later, if you wish." She added, eager to be on her way back to her rooms, under her emerald covers and regain her strength so she could speak to Juria later on.

Kiara turned and shock her head at Sevastyan, "No it is alright Sevastyan, I can handle it" she said.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard Eglantine yell and she spun around.

"Eglantine.! Merlin... there is a reason I covered it" she said as she drapped the cover back over the childs head.

"I was just about to head to the hospital wing, and send the notification to the parents" she said slowly.

She turned slightly to Viper and nodded when she said she was going to retire for the night, due to the students death all classes would be cancelled.

She then said to Sevastyan, "I can take care of this, you go with Viper make she makes it to her quarters alright" she said her headmistress attitude kicking in, she would take care of everything.

Then she face Eglantine again "Don't ask how this could have happened.... I don't know" she said grimly walking down the hall the student floating behind her.

Eglantine's eyes were still wide from the sight of the dead child. Her hand over her thundering heart, she approached Viper and Sevastyan.
She said nothing as her green eyes scanned over Viper's form.
Not wanting to interrupt the couple, she turned to follow after Kiara, vanishing the blood left on the floor as she went.

"A vampire, Kiara..." she murmured, "Where do you think it went? and we must protect the rest of the students." Her voice was soft and calm. Once she had gathered her wits about her, she was able to control her emotions.

Sevastyan had no idea why Amaranth wouldn't look at him. However, he hadn't forgotten Miranda's observations: that Amaranth Viper carried herself as an independent woman. Sure, he could see that for himself... but perhaps it was because of this independence that she wouldn't look at him.

The wizard nodded to Kiara when she said she had everything under control. Sevastyan wasn't going to question it. He knew she would push herself to the limits, just as she had when there was no choice but to kill Daniel Lestrange. Only, this time, they had an unknown killer and the motive likely completely different. That was perhaps one of the most disconcerting things about this happening. He nodded politely to Professor DeLanquar and stood to his feet along with Amaranth, doing his best to give the witch her space but yet not wanting to be too far away in case she lost her balance.

Sevastyan wasn't sure if his love was attempting to be comical by stating that she was retiring regardless, but even if she was decided not to laugh. It wasn't the time or the place. "I intend to do precisely that..." Sevastyan murmured to Kiara's suggestion that he go with Viper, following after his love's departing form.

Once he caught up - which hadn't taken very long at all - Sevastyan reached for to place an arm around Viper's waist. "I could carry you if you vish..." he offered in a quiet half-whisper even though they were close to or already out-of-earshot. That way, he reasoned, she could rest along the way.

Kiara's eyes glanced at Eglantine as she walk briskly down the hall.

"From the look of the broken window, it went outside. I have put the castle on full defence. Common rooms have been sealed and any student of bed, I have signels the house ghost to tell them to go the Great hall which has a protection ward around it" she said softly as she walked down the hall.

Viper winced a bit inwardly upon hearing that Sevastyan would be accompanying her. While she expected it and loved him even more for wanting to take care of her. She just hoped he wouldn't ask her any more questions, for she was certain lying wouldd be even harder when it was just the two of them. The temptation to let Sevastyan in on her plans was already great and she was torn on what to do next. After all, technically, although she claimed she couldn't remember anything, she was witness to what had happened and she knew the lengths the Ministry took to ensure cooperation in Investigations.

She smiled softly at Sevastyan's offer, leaning into the embrace. "I'm fine, love..." she replied in a voice a little more than a whisper. "You don't have to go through the trouble. My Quarters aren't too far away."

Eglantine nodded, her thought straying to her son, no doubt asleep by now. The image of the student's bloody body sent a wave of fear over her mind as she replaced the student's fear stricken face with that of her young son...

She blinked aware that Kiara had said something, but unsure of exactly what it was she had said...
"Pardon?"

Sevastyan smiled at Amaranth's leaning into him as they walked. It was a soft, warm smile. "I just thought you vould be able to rest a little along the vay," he commented in a whisper and gently rested his head against hers. "Not to mention I certainly vouldn't object..."

"I am just glad you seem to be okay, all things considered..." he half-murmured, half sighed. "Vould you humor me and see the nurse after you rest? To make sure that collarbone vos set correctly? I did my best vith it, and it is probably nothing..." Sevastyan continued, though let what he considered to be his babbling trail off. Though they were not spoken, it was clear that something along the lines of 'but I still worry, and I love you' hung in the air. Insofar as he was concerned, there was no need to say the words: actions said enough.

A kiss to Viper's forehead immediately followed the pause.