The air in the Greengrass manor was thick, sweet with the scent of aged wood and something else I couldn't name. Dust motes drifted like tiny lanterns in the pale dawn light. I stepped lightly, barefoot, across marble floors that felt impossibly cold beneath my soles, and the house seemed to breathe around me. Every creak of a floorboard, every whisper of the walls, felt like recognition.
I touched the banister as I ascended the main staircase. The wood was smooth beneath my fingers, worn by generations of hands that had carried secrets, grief, and, I realized with a shiver, their own curses. My reflection in the darkened windows revealed her—Daphne's—face framed by pale gold hair that shimmered like moonlight trapped in silk. Porcelain and glass, the shadows said, fragile yet untouchable.
It was the same house I had only read about—seen in family records, histories, and the few glimpses my borrowed memories allowed—but it felt alive in ways I had never imagined. Portraits of Greengrass ancestors lined the walls, each face staring from oil and canvas as if they knew I was awake. Their eyes glittered with a faint inner light, the magic of wards woven into paint and canvas. I recognized none of them personally, yet the blood remembered, whispering in a rhythm that pulsed beneath my skin.
I wandered into the library, and the smell of old parchment was intoxicating. Shelves rose to the ceiling, carved from dark oak, cradling tomes bound in leather and whispers. I ran my fingers along their spines. Some hummed faintly at my touch, wards recognizing the presence of a Greengrass daughter—or something more.
I pulled one down at random. The pages were brittle, gold-edged, and filled with handwriting that was half Latin, half an unfamiliar script. Magica Sanguinis. Blood magic, though not the sort I remembered reading about in casual wizarding fiction. The words on the page seemed to lift from the parchment, curling toward me, sensing me. I recoiled slightly—hunger? curiosity? the words made no distinction.
Everywhere I looked, the house felt alive with memory. Candles in sconces flickered even without wind. Tapestries shifted slightly, as if breathing. The floorboards whispered beneath me.
And yet, despite the strangeness, it felt familiar. Every turn, every corridor, every locked door I had never opened before carried the faint echo of footsteps I somehow remembered. My pulse quickened at the realization: the body may have been her's, but the house remembered too.
I lingered in a small sitting room. The morning light fell through tall windows, catching my hair, turning it pale gold into something almost silver. I reached for the curtains, letting them fall with a soft clatter. The room smelled faintly of roses, dust, and lavender—her perfume? Perhaps. Perhaps my mind simply filled in the gaps.
The house seemed endless, yet I knew every corridor would fold into itself eventually. I opened a door and found a study. Shelves lined with parchment and ink bottles, quills and scrolls, a single open book on the desk. I stepped closer. Vampiric studies? Old Greengrass research, perhaps. I could feel it: magic laced into the very fibers of the pages. Reflexive, instinctive, ancient.
I sat on the edge of a chair. My reflection in the polished desk surface revealed the unnatural perfection of my new face. Porcelain, cold, beautiful—and a little terrifying. The shadows of the room seemed drawn to me, curling around my wrists, brushing my fingers. I flexed my hands experimentally, and the shadows retreated only to hover again, obedient.
The hunger whispered faintly behind my teeth. Not for flesh—not yet—but for something more abstract: magic, recognition, acknowledgment of what I had become. My body hummed with it, and I felt, in the quiet, a stirring beneath the surface that belonged to centuries of Greengrass blood.
Somewhere in the house, a door creaked open. I froze. Nothing moved. Perhaps it was just the wind—or the manor settling. Perhaps not. The house was alive with me now, and I with it.
I wandered to the upper floors, finding corridors lined with portraits, old rugs, and locked doors. Some halls were empty, some smelled of warmth and cooking, though the kitchens were silent. I found a mirror in a landing alcove. My reflection caught my eyes, emeralds glowing faintly in the dim morning light. I touched the glass. The hunger stirred again, faintly, like the murmur of a heartbeat I didn't own.
It was thrilling. Terrifying. And oddly exhilarating.
I understood now what my father had meant when he said he would keep the others away. Not for safety from me, but from those who knew the truth—those who would act swiftly, decisively, and without mercy if the blood curse had awakened. For now, I was hidden. Untouched. Undetected.
I let the manor embrace me. Each room, each whispering shadow, each warded book and polished frame became a part of me. I could feel the curse stirring beneath my skin, the hunger waiting patiently. I did not yet know how to control it. I did not yet know what it wanted. But for the first time in months—or years—I felt alive in a way I could not have imagined.
The house exhaled. I exhaled with it.
The manor seemed to stretch endlessly, halls folding over themselves like some impossible labyrinth. I wandered, barefoot, trailing my fingers along the smooth wood of the banisters, letting shadows curl around my arms like dark silk. Every corner smelled of dust and lavender and old magic. Every sound—the drip of water in some faraway pipe, the scrape of stone—seemed amplified, magnified by senses I wasn't yet entirely in control of.
And then I saw it: a door I hadn't noticed before. It was small, unassuming, set into the wall behind a tapestry depicting the first Greengrass ancestor I had ever met in any portrait. The wood was darker than the others, etched faintly with runes that pulsed faintly at my touch.
Instinct, or something older, pushed me forward. I pressed my hand against the runes. The door clicked. It opened.
Inside was a narrow staircase spiraling downward. The air smelled different here—heavier, metallic, sharp, and faintly sweet. A pulse of magic, ancient and potent, hummed beneath the stone beneath my feet. I descended carefully. Every step echoed, though the echoes were somehow alive, shifting as if the house was listening.
At the bottom, I entered a chamber lined with shelves, cabinets, and tables. Ancient books crowded every surface. Scrolls tied with red ribbons sat stacked in neat piles. Jars of dried herbs, vials of strange liquids, and bundles of things I couldn't identify filled the space. The faint hum of protective wards pulsed faintly against my skin. I realized I could feel the magic like a second heartbeat.
I picked up a large tome bound in black leather. The spine was etched with a single word: Sanguinem. Opening it, I found diagrams, incantations, and notes about blood, life, and the essence of magical creatures. My pulse quickened. I flipped through the pages carefully. Some of the runes seemed to react to me, glowing faintly and shifting as though alive.
The realization struck me with a wave of vertigo: I wasn't supposed to exist.
Vampires in wizarding history were anomalies—rare, dangerous, and almost universally non-human. The books hinted at power, certainly—but always as something that consumed the host, something that twisted humanity into shadow. I had awakened in a child's body. My magic was there, latent, untrained, and fused with blood that should have belonged to a creature I could barely comprehend.
And yet… here I was. Alive. Undead. Breathing in a world that had rules I had only glimpsed in books, movies, and scraps of memory. Hogwarts. The Ministry. Wizards and witches who would either be terrified or fascinated—or both. I shivered, imagining what would happen if anyone knew. My senses flared. I could hear the faintest pulse of magic in the air, detect the residual scent of wards, and even, somehow, trace the echoes of spells from decades past.
A laugh escaped me, hollow and disbelieving. I was—impossibly, undeniably—a vampire. Yet not the type recorded in any history. No one would have expected a Greengrass girl to awaken like this. No one would have expected me to awaken at all.
The chamber offered both sanctuary and temptation. I ran my fingers over the bindings of the books, feeling the pulse of blood magic within the ink and parchment. This was knowledge meant for someone like me—or perhaps someone far worse.
A small desk caught my attention. Open notebooks were filled with precise handwriting: diagrams of veins, notes on the inheritance of blood traits, references to curses, and warnings about those who survived them. A sketch depicted a girl, almost exactly my age, in mid-transformation: eyes bright, lips pale, shadows crawling across her skin. The annotation read:
"Daughter of Greengrass. Blood curse manifests most potently in those unaware of its nature. Survival unlikely. Observe closely."
I swallowed hard. The pulse in my veins quickened. This was me. The text, the diagrams, the warnings—it all aligned with what I had felt the moment I woke. I was untrained, unprepared, and yet here, standing in the heart of Greengrass secrets, alive in a way the family had never expected.
The shadows in the corners of the room seemed to lean toward me, curious. My fingers twitched. A whisper of instinct—hunger, yes, but something older—made the candles flicker. Reflexively, I could feel the wards in the room react to me, bending slightly around my presence, testing me. I was more than human, yet less than the vampire histories described. A hybrid, in a way that the world could not account for.
I sank to the floor and let the words, the history, and the pulse of the room wash over me. My mind—modern and borrowed—struggled to keep up. A single thought repeated itself with a frightening clarity: I am a vampire. I exist. I have awakened where none should awaken.
And yet, beneath that fear, a thrill ran through me. Power, potential, knowledge—here, in these hidden halls, I could begin to understand what I was. I could begin to learn, to prepare. The hunger was there, faint but insistent, reminding me that survival would not be simple. But the manor, the books, the shadows—they were my allies. For now.
I ran my hand across the floor, feeling the hum of wards beneath the stone. I could feel everything now—every thread of magic, every pulse of lingering spells, every faint echo of family blood. It was intoxicating. And terrifying.
I sank to the floor of the hidden wing again, the leather-bound tomes pressing around me like the walls themselves were leaning closer. My hands hovered over the open pages, unsure where to start, yet compelled by something older than curiosity. Shadows curled and flickered in the corners of the room, attracted by my presence—or perhaps by the awakening within me.
I read first of those who had come before me, Greengrass daughters and sons, carefully cataloged in small annotations, sketches, and charts. Some were precise: names, dates, and outcomes. Killed at the moment of awakening, the ink would note in red, sometimes with a jagged exclamation mark scrawled beside it. Others survived. Few. Most had been left alive under careful supervision, their growth stunted or unnatural, their bodies forever half-formed until they reached eighteen.
I paused over a diagram detailing this developmental stunting. The note beside it read:
"Pre-adult transformation halts natural growth until the individual reaches the magical equilibrium of eighteen years. Body dead; magic alive. Energy rebalances. Skeleton, musculature, and magical resonance evolve as one."
I swallowed hard. My body—childlike, porcelain, fragile—was not simply frozen in time. It was incomplete, still bound by rules it had once followed, yet violently reshaped by forces I could barely begin to understand.
And yet… the hunger, the senses, the reflexive power pulsing in me, were fully awake. Fully ancient. Fully dangerous.
I leaned back against the shelves, letting the words wash over me. I could feel the weight of centuries pressing down through the inked pages, every Greengrass who had awakened before me whispering their experiences across time. Some had been slaughtered immediately—others had been watched, feared, studied, imprisoned in hidden wings like this. A few survived long enough to become what the notes called Nocturnus or Blood Sage, their strength and control dependent entirely on their ability to resist the call of their own blood.
I shivered. And yet, I was not like them. Not fully. The man I had been, the life I had borrowed, made me different. I remembered the mundane world, its comforts, its rules, its impossibilities. And now, these impossibilities had become real. I was real.
A thought rose then, insistent: I was under eighteen. I felt the pulse of my body—limbs still growing, muscle fibers tightening, bones stretching subtly beneath skin that should have been dead, yet was more alive than any child could imagine. Somehow, the magic in the Greengrass blood, in the curse itself, recognized that I had not yet reached equilibrium. The text had suggested it was more than biology; the energy of life and magic merged into a delicate evolution, a final shaping that could take months, perhaps years, until I reached eighteen.
I shivered. Not from cold. From the knowledge that I was on a timeline I couldn't control, and that hunger—the curse itself—would only grow stronger as my body approached that magical threshold.
I let my hands wander over more tomes. One was a diary, ancient and faded, belonging to a Greengrass girl who had awakened decades before. The writing was tight, hurried, anxious:
"I awoke, and the shadows spoke my name. They were not outside me; they were me. I had teeth that could rend, eyes that saw too clearly. I felt the curse stirring beneath my skin, and yet… I could not move as an adult, though I could feel my body lengthening, growing. They say the curse respects age, or perhaps power—but I am neither. My reflection is perfect, my flesh pale, yet hollow."
I paused. She had been ten, like me. Her eyes had been the first to see the inevitability, the hunger, and the danger that came with blood awakened too early.
Another journal entry told of a boy, awakened at twelve:
"The Ministry came quickly. They were not kind. I survived, but only barely. They feared the curse, feared the blood would spread beyond the family. I learned quickly to mask my senses, to let others think me dead. And yet… I am no longer fully human, no longer just a child. Magic flows through me like poison and lifeblood entwined."
I closed the book, running my fingers over the worn leather. The parallels were undeniable. I was in the same position—alive when I shouldn't be, my body incomplete, my soul a collision of two identities, and my blood a conduit for power I could barely control.
I could feel it now, in the hollows of my wrist, the tension in my spine: the hunger waiting patiently. It wasn't simply thirst—it was a resonance of magic, of energy, of potential I was only beginning to understand. My senses were heightened: I could hear the faint pulse of a warded rune on a shelf above me, the vibrations of magic lingering in the parchment, the weight of ancestral expectation pressing invisibly against my chest.
I took a breath, the sound echoing unnaturally loud in the chamber. I was Daphne Greengrass—or the vessel she had been. And yet, I was someone else. Someone older, wiser, and simultaneously naïve in ways that terrified me. I was alive, yet dead. Human, yet not. And the Greengrass blood in me remembered everything that should have killed me.
I looked down at my hands. Small. Cold. Beautiful. Porcelain and glass. My hair, golden as moonlight, framed a face I hadn't yet learned to inhabit. And somewhere, in the back of my mind, I realized: the body would continue to grow until I reached eighteen. Until then, the curse would ride me like a shadow tethered to bone.
A shiver ran through me as I whispered to the empty chamber:
"I am not supposed to exist. And yet… here I am."
The shadows at the corners of the room responded, stirring toward me, pulsing faintly with life. It was not a threat. Not yet. A welcome. A recognition. The manor itself seemed to acknowledge the impossible truth: a Greengrass vampire had awakened before her time, and for now, she walked unseen.
I rose unsteadily. The journals, the diaries, the texts—they whispered their warnings, their stories, their failures. Some were dead. Most were gone. And yet their knowledge lingered here, waiting for me to understand it.
I swallowed, and the pulse of hunger beneath my skin surged slightly stronger. I could feel it threading into the magic of the manor, weaving with my own essence. This was only the beginning.