While I was heading back to Hogwarts, I found my arms shaking as the adrenaline was coursing through my veins. Thankfully, by the time I made it back, the shaking had mostly stopped. Knowing that I needed more information before I decided how to proceed, I headed towards the room of requirement.

The first thing I requested from the room were books on vampires. On the table, dozens of books appeared on the subject. As I started perusing through the books, the first thing I noticed was the clear bias in the stories. Most of the information contained in the books was second and third-hand accounts about how evil vampires were, and how they were the enemies of all wizard kind. If that wasn't annoying enough, many of the wizards seemed to spend most of their time bragging about how superior wizards were and that vampires should bow down and be subservient.

Rolling my eyes at the obvious grandstanding, whoever wrote these books, clearly didn’t have the faintest clue how to write an unbiased report on the subject. If that wasn’t bad enough, there were many inconsistencies. One book would say one thing, and another would say something different.

Throwing the book that I was reading across the table, I grunted, “Useless. What I really need is an unbiased book and one not full of nonsense.” As soon as the words left my mouth, all the books except for two disappeared, and the first title I saw didn’t inspire much confidence, Peering Beneath the Coffin.

However, as soon as I started reading, I knew that this was the book I needed. The author included proof backing up his information and clarified many of the false assumptions about vampires. Like vampires being undead creatures, they were very much alive, just vastly different than humans. He explained that some false beliefs came from muggle-born wizards who grew up reading about vampire characters, and other beliefs were just consistently repeated so much that many people assumed they were true.

The author dove deep into the origins of the vampire species, tracking vampiric bloodlines dating back 4 thousand years. While there is no clear evidence on where vampires came from. The author spent years seeking out ancient stories and myths and even spoke with some of the most ancient vampires in existence. He even claimed that the first vampire was a wizard, who was fearful of death and somehow transformed himself into the first vampire. However, many wizards condem this point of view.

As far as traditional weakness, according to the book, religious fixtures hold no power over vampires, a wooden stake through the heart theoretically kills one, but anything would die with something driven through the heart. The same holds true, if you cut the head off, as far as being allergic to garlic, the author pointed out that vampires have extremely acute senses, and for whatever reason, they find the smell of garlic intolerable to be around. But, otherwise, it has zero effect, other than pissing off the vampire for making him smell something nasty. In which case, they may attack you out of annoyance.

However, it seems there is some truth to the matter of vampires being allergic to silver. Apparently, natural silver can restrain them, although the author pointed out that magic was far more effective than silver. A strong vampire would be able to ignore the pain silver caused them and retaliate. Whereas, most vampires had no defense against magic.

It was then; the author explained that there were two different classes of vampires, low ranked and blood ranked. Around 95 percent of the vampire population consists of what is known as low ranked or lowlies, and the other 5 percent are known as blood ranked. The main difference between the two is that blood ranked vampires far stronger and have limited magical abilities. High ranked vampires are the only ones strong enough to sire more vampires.

However, the book warned that the lowlies should not be underestimated, while they don’t have magic, they are strong, fast and can see perfectly in the dark and they tend to swarm when there are many of them attacking. The book also explained that vampires get stronger as they age, and it is possible for a lowly vampire to accumulate enough power and transform into a high ranked vampire, although it is incredibly rare for them to do so.

Most of the high blood vampires that exist were once wizards who were turned, but it is rare for a wizard to wish to be turned, most wizards can’t imagine losing their magical powers. Wizards consider themselves to be at the top of the magical food chain; not many would be willing to be turned into a magical creature, where they would be subject to their maker’s wishes. Vampires have an enormous amount of control over their progeny, and many wizards couldn’t imagine being subservient to something that they had considered beneath them.

If being at the mercy of your maker doesn’t scare most wizards off, the other glaring weakness that comes along with being a vampire, chief among them daylight. While sunlight doesn’t kill them, should the sun’s rays touch their skin, all of their strength will be drained away, and they would slip into a death-like state, leaving them completely vulnerable to attack. As a result, most vampire lairs are built underground giving them protection from the sun.

As soon as I read that, being turned into a vampire would make me lose the majority of my power. I quickly stopped entertaining any thoughts of being turned. I loved my magic; there was no way I was ever giving it up, not in a million years. While it seems like an easy way to achieve eternal life, I bet there are other ways it could be achieved. Hell, I bet there have been others, throughout the ages, who have found different paths to immortality or at the very least extended their lives, like the previous Hogwarts headmaster, Armando Dippet, who lived to be 355 years old.

In a small way, I began to pity the beast because I understood how the beast felt. He wanted to live forever but didn’t want to lose his magic, so he tried to find a different path, which was a sentiment I could understand. Perhaps, when I’m older, I will look into a way to become immortal or at the very least living a very long time.

As I continued reading, I learned a lot of intresting factoids about vampire society. After finishing the book, I thought I had a good idea on how to proceed with Octavius. The book mentioned something called the blood oath. Apparently, it’s the vampire equivalent to the unbreakable vow. Although there were some differences, if a vampire breaks their oath, they won’t die, but most of their power would be stripped from them. Whereas if a wizard breaks the unbreakable vow they would die.

One surprising detail was left out of the book, and that was how vampires are created, the author explained that the process is extremely secretive and vampires seem reluctant to discuss it.

Curious about the other book, I noticed it was written by an ancient Romanian wizard named Van Helsing, who hated vampires with a unholy passion. In his book, he listed out dozens of spells, enchantments, potions, and strategies to deal with vampires. He also seemed bitter about the peace treaty that had been signed with the vampire, which forbade vampire hunting.

Luckily the book explained that vampires had no immunity to magic; the main cause of concern was how fast they are. But the book gave several spells designed to counter their speed; there were even some really good ideas on how to deal with threats from multiple vampires in case you were in danger of being overrun. One of my personal favorites was the bottled sunshine potions, rather than drink the potion; you smash the bottle, and when the potion is released, a light brighter than the sun explodes out, disabling any vampires it touches, leaving them at your mercy.

Finished reading the books, I began planning out my next move. Obviously, I could just tell the teachers about what I had found. But I doubt they will do anything about it, and I would just probably get in trouble for entering the forbidden forest. The teachers seem to have a strict hands-off policy when it comes to the forbidden forest. As long as the creatures in the forbidden forest stay away from Hogwarts, what does it matter that there is one more beast out there?

Not to mention, I was wary of bringing myself to Dumbledore’s attention; I preferred to fly under the radar for as long as I could. Although I imagine eventually, we will cross paths, and I was putting that day off if possible. Luckily, it seems it’s rare pretty rare for students to cross paths with the headmaster.

Even though I was concerned about coming to Dumbledore’s attention, I wasn't afraid of him. In the books, it was made clear that he loved being a teacher, and he would do anything to protect his students. In my past life, there were those who believed that in some ways, he was just as bad as Voldemort in his manipulation. But I have always believed that for all his mistakes and manipulation were done with the best intentions. Being able to make the hard choices is what being a great leader is all about, and sometimes you must be ruthless if you want to achieve victory. ‘

Deciding that dealing with Dumbledore issue could wait, my mind turned to the journal I snagged. Opening it up, I was able to confirm that it was written in Latin, by comparing the words to a Latin language primer that the room provided, apparently since European spells are derived from the Latin language, it wasn’t uncommon for some wizards to learn it,.

Although it makes me wonder, I know for a fact that my aunt’s spells are Arabic based, which implies that there are probably many cultures whose spells derived from different languages. I wonder if there are two identical spells out there but have different incantations due to being based in different languages. If there was, that would imply that language doesn’t really matter in spell casting. It’s just the medium used to activate the magic. On the other hand, it’s also entirely possible that no two spells are the same, and they are different spells that just happen to produce similar results. Slightly annoyed that I didn’t know the answer to this puzzling question, I made a mental note to peruse and experiment when I have the chance.

Deciding that translating the journal by myself would take too long, I decided to bring Cedric, Anna, and Alicia into this. Hunting my friends down across the school took forever. Annoyed by how much time it took to track everyone down, I made a mental note to find a solution that would let us quickly find one another.

Sitting across from me in the room of requirement, my friends were giving me curious looks, wondering what the impromptu gather was about. Not wanting to beat around the bush, I went straight to the point and said, “Earlier today, I went into the forbidden forest.”

After explaining everything that had happened during my trek into the forest, I noticed all my friends had different reactions, Alicia looked impressed, but considering she is in Gryffindor house, she probably thinks what I did was proper behavior. However, Anna looked far less impressed. While Anna was giving me the stink eye, I noticed Cedric’s easy smile fade away, revealing a decidedly neutral expression.

Glaring balefully at me and clenching her teeth, Anna hissed at me, “What were you thinking, you could have been hurt.”

Rolling my eyes, I waved off her concern and replied, “Well, nothing went wrong; it’s fine.”

Interrupting me, Cedric neutrally asked, “Why didn’t you ask me? You know I would have backed you up and gone in there with you.”

Shooting Cedric an apologetic smile, I replied weakly, “It was my mess that got me into this situation. I wanted to clean it up myself.”

Shaking his head in disappointment, Cedric replied, “Friends are supposed to count on one another, you can’t do everything by yourself.”

Not about to let me get a word in, Cedric continued, “You were lucky today, what if the beast who lived down there was present. You don’t know what the creature is; it could have deadly powers you know nothing about, and you could have easily been killed.”

Before I could come up with a counter argument, Cedric continued, “Did I ever tell you about my grandfather.”

Curious, I replied, “No,”

A sad look appeared on Cedric's face, after sighing he explained, “My grandfather was a curse breaker, he loved exploring ancient ruins and exotic locations. He was kind of famous in certain circles, he was very good at what he did, but that didn’t save him. One day, he came upon some information leading to an old abandoned ruin. Curse breakers normally work in small teams, so if they run into a sticky situation, they have back up to help them. But my grandfather’s team was busy and wouldn’t be available for months. He didn’t want to wait that long, so he went into the ruin all by himself, and was never seen again.”

Hearing Cedric’s story about his grandfather killed any notion I had of defending my actions. Holding my hands up in surrender, I said, “I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”

Wanting to lighten the mood a bit, I added, “I promise, next time I explore a deadly place where I could die; I will make sure your there right alongside of me, that way if something goes wrong and we die, at least we die together.”

Cedric rolled his eyes at my joke and accepted my apology, but I could tell it really bothered him that I left him behind. Looking towards Alicia it looked like she was fine with how everything turned out. But, seeing Anna’s narrowed eyes, I could tell she hadn’t forgiven me, and I would be paying for my transgression.

Alicia asked, “Did you at least find your ring?”

Shaking my head, I responded, “No, I think it's trapped down there somewhere. My best guess is that the creature came across it in the forest and took it down to its nest.”

Pointing at the old leather journal on the table, I informed everyone, “This is the beast’s journal I found in the abandoned study. I was hoping that by translating the journal, we could learn what he was up to and hopefully get information that would prepare us for an encounter with him.”

Eyeing everyone hopefully, I said, “I don’t suppose anyone knows how to read Latin.”

My hopes were dashed seeing Anna, Cedric, and Alicia all shake their heads. Sighing I said, “Well, that was a long shot; it's going to take some time for us to get this journal translated.”

Cedric spoke up with a concern, “I don’t think it will be very useful to have four people trying to translate 1 journal.

Luckily Anna provided a solution to our problem, she had a self-writing quill that was enchanted to copy, but it would take a week or so for the pen to copy out 4 identical books.

Concerned, I pointed out, “You know those things are forbidden at school; you could get in trouble.”

Winking and grinning evilly at me, she replied, “Only if I get caught.”

We spent some time in silence watching the magical quill write out copies. After a while we decided to call it a day and left the quill copying behind in the room of requirement.