This story is an accompanying fic of my story "Basilisk-Born". It can be read alone, but it contains major spoilers for the main story.

Disclaimer: I'm too young to be Rowling so there is sadly no way Harry Potter is mine…

DebaterMax: Hello y'all! We're proud to return after the very long gap between uploads. Real life is a Dumbledore (aka pain in the donkey) at the best of times.

Need to know for readers that don't know Basilisk-Born: Harry Potter travelled back in time and was named Salvazsahar after being adopted, so I usually call him "Sal". Everything else important should be explained in the story.

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DEAD TO THE WORLD

PROLOGUE

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1996

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Vampires are one of the most interesting species that walks this earth. Sadly, their existence is for the most part unexplored. In this book, I will point out and explore some well-known and some unknown facts about vampires that I learned thanks to my good friend, Sanguini.

I will start with the most commonly known fact: that vampires are sensitive to the sun. The moment they are bitten by their sire, they will slowly end up developing an allergy to the sun. If they end up in the sun for too long, they will be burned.

(Excerpt from 'Blood Brothers: My Life Amongst the Vampires' by Eldred Worple)

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"How by wind and fire did he end up buying the drivel you told him?"

The vampire pouted at those words and pulled his knees to his chest to sling his hands around them.

"It's not drivel," he countered. "It's the truth!"

The other man looked pointedly at the sun-lit windows to the right and left of the chair the vampire was crouching in.

"Just because I'm the exception doesn't mean that it's not true!" the vampire immediately declared and when the other man raised one of his eyebrows.

"What?" the vampire asked, looking like a five-year-old caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "It's the truth! You can't say that I grew up normally!"

The other man opened his mouth to say something. He hesitated, thought about it some more and then he closed it, sighed, before he buried his head in his hands.

"I guess," he said slowly. "You might have been raised a bit unusually for a vampire."

Then he looked up at the vampire.

"But that doesn't mean that you didn't grow up normally!"

"If you look at today's standard, I did!" the vampire immediately objected. "And if you look at the standard back then… then I definitely did!"

"I raised you well!" the man immediately objected.

The vampire nodded.

"Yes," he agreed. "You just raised me far too lenient for back then and far too strict for today!"

"Then I guess I found a good middle ground," the man countered. "But that doesn't explain why you told Worple that drivel about vampires being allergic to the sun…"

The vampire opened his mouth.

"And don't you dare to tell me that you are allergic!"

"But… you're my Pater and not all-"

"This has nothing to do with me not being a vampire!"

Ana opened his mouth. "And even less with the fact that you weren't raised by vampires!" his father added immediately, sensing where his son's thoughts had taken him.

The vampire closed his mouth, thought about it for a moment, and then pouted.

"I… was joking and he believed me?" he hesitatingly offered.

His father raised an eyebrow.

"Alright," the vampire sighed. "I liked the idea of it! Bram used it, too!"

"That's not a reason, Anastasius Arthur Lucidarius Sanguini…"

"Well, you should have raised me differently if you wanted me to tell the truth to everybody…"

At that, the father snorted.

"No matter how unusual, I still think I raised you just fine…"

And Ana couldn't even disagree there…

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845 A.D.

Sal was in the outskirts of Rome. Over the last decades, Sal had been working and living near Roma Aeterna, visiting the glorious city whenever he had time or needed certain supplies for his work.

Two decades ago, the Saracen raiders began their conquest raid. Over time, they began to threaten other cities on the mainland expanding from Sicily– and now they had reached Rome's outskirts. Only the Aurelian wall – a line of city walls around Rome – held them back from sacking the eternal city itself.

Sadly, Sal wasn't inside the eternal city.

Instead, he had ended up in the outskirts – and of course, he had ended up in a situation that he couldn't have predicted in any way or form.

He mentally sighed and looked down at the child who was sucking on his wrist, then he looked at the dead woman lying next to him on the ground. She was the dead mother of the child who was sucking on his wrist – a woman he hadn't been able to save – and not far away from them was a man lying in a puddle of blood, who was most likely the child's father.

The parents were dead, and the only one left was the child.

Your child, the mother had said to Sal.

HIS child?!

"Great," he muttered in Parseltongue. "I really wanted to have a son – especially a vampire for a son."

The boy stopped sucking on Sal's wrist. Sal sighed, healed his wrist, and then buried his head in his hands.

"And what should I do with you now?" he asked the child rhetorically. The boy looked at him with huge, dark eyes.

"Dada?" he finally said, his voice high-pitched and slightly nervous sounding.

"Yes, I guess that's me now," Sal said before sighing again. His eyes wandered back to the dead woman. "I also guess we should cremate your… former… parents…"

In the end, he burned the woman and the dead man not too far away from him. Then he scooped up the child and turned away from the ashes.

His mind was made up.

Rome had lost its charm for a while…

"Let's go home, Anastasius," he said to the child who was perking up after hearing their name.

Sal guessed that the child was around four years old – and therefore not really able to understand what happened to their parents.

"Home?" the child repeated innocently.

"Yes," Sal agreed. "Home. Back to Britannia."

"Momma?" the child asked hesitatingly.

Sal grimaced.

"Momma is dead now, Anastasius. Momma and Dada are in heaven now. They will not come back."

"Heaven?"

Sal sighed again and pointed at the midday sky.

"At night you might see them up there, looking down to you, watching out for you," he said to the child. "You just have to search for the brightest stars in the sky."

It was something he had heard his atr, his father, say before. It had been the belief of the magicals when Sal had grown up. People died, they'd watch over their living relatives, wait for them until said relatives died before they returned to earth to be reborn.

Sal, for all that he had never believed in anything, had always been able to see it as a possibility. He had always hoped that someone on the other side of the veil was waiting for him. Growing up with his atr's belief, he had been willing to adopt that belief at least a little.

The child meanwhile didn't say anything to Sal's explanation. Instead, he buried his head into Sal's neck.

"You will understand some time soon," Sal whispered softly in Parseltongue.

It was a bitter truth.

Every child had to grow up one time – and in a world like this, a child wouldn't be able to keep their innocence forever.

"Not to mention that I will end up messing up anyway," Sal said to himself with a grimace. "I have no idea how to raise a child… and I definitely don't have an example to model myself after."

He didn't mean that he did not have a good father – he just meant that he'd been raised more than a thousand years ago – and he was pretty sure that the way to raise children might have changed after all that time… at least a bit, that is.

"I have no idea how to raise a child in this day and age," Sal sighed. "This will be chaos."

He shook his head with a sigh.

"And I have no idea who to ask," he added, his face turning thoughtful. "Well… except my grandparents… but I'm pretty sure they know less about raising a child in this day and age than I do."

He hesitated for a moment.

"But they might be able to help me with your vampire part," he added thoughtfully. "Since I don't know what I have to expect with you at all."

But… until then, Sal would be the one to raise the boy.

"I hope you're resilient," Sal said with a grimace. "Because I'm pretty sure raising you will end in a disaster."

…

Sal was standing on a hill near the city of Milano. He was carrying his son on his hip and was waiting for his grandparents.

He didn't actually have to wait that long.

Within minutes, they stepped up next to him.

"A child?" Sal's grandfather asked the moment he was close enough.

"A vampire child, dear," his grandmother corrected the red-haired man at her side. She, just like Sal and the vampire child, had black hair, even if her eyes, unlike Sal's green ones, were a poisonous yellow.

The red-haired man's red eyes met hers and then he looked back at the child in Sal's arms who curled closer to Sal at his gaze.

Sal carded through the boy's hair.

"His name is Anastasius," he told them. "He's my son, I guess."

His grandfather raised an eyebrow. "You guess?"

"His dying mother handed him over and named him mine," Sal elaborated with a grimace.

"So, he's drinking from you?" Sal's grandmother asked.

Sal sighed. "He is."

"Then he's yours," was the grandmother's judgement.

"The blood of other magical beings is poisonous for a vampire," the grandfather added. "If the childe can drink from your veins, he's your son. The only magical blood that can be consumed by a vampire is that of their parents. That he can drink yours means that you're his father."

Sal reached with his free hand towards his face and pinched his nose.

"I feared that," he said tiredly. "So… I guess that means I'm going to raise him…"

"Since you are the only one who can until he learns to hunt for himself, I fear that that's the only thing you can do without abandoning him to death," his grandmother agreed and then smiled at the child. "His name was Anastasius, you said?"

Sal hummed.

"I don't know the rest of his name," he agreed.

"He most likely won't have more than that," his grandfather immediately said. "Vampires normally use one first name and maybe, sometimes, a last name. They don't follow the magical tradition of giving the child three names as a first name very often."

Sal looked at the child thoughtfully.

"If he's going to be mine to raise, would it be better if I adopted him through magic and soul?" Sal asked with a frown. "I mean… I know how to do it, and… I don't want him to feel like I didn't want him or like he's not part of the family when he's older…"

His grandparents exchanged a look at that.

"I fear that soul-adopting the child might be to his detriment," Sal's grandmother finally said cautiously. "The boy is a vampire-born… and vampire children already react oddly to a soul adoption by another creature. Adding to that the age of the child and the fact that vampire aging is a bit of a hassle to calculate… Well, I wouldn't risk it. The chances are higher that the child will be harmed than that the adoption will take hold as it should."

Sal grimaced and then looked at the boy.

"Vampires have their own form of adoption," his grandfather added. "The fact that he can drink your blood means that you are his father in the vampiric understanding. Vampire children don't survive drinking magical blood with the sole exception of their parent's, after all."

"And you think that's enough?" Sal didn't know what to think of that suggestion. He knew that the fullest adoption you could do was the soul adoption – which gave the child part of their new parent's soul. Oh, there were blood adoptions, too, but with them, some magics simply weren't shared.

"Do you want to risk him?" his grandfather countered.

The trouble with soul adoption was that only very young children could survive it – children from a few days old up to about twenty-four months. After, it was a risk to undertake and seldomly ended well for the child.

Sal grimaced.

"No," he said.

"You could adopt our great-grandson solely by blood," his grandmother added calmly. "It wouldn't hurt him and if we added a naming ceremony it would bind him as close to you as you can without risking him. No one would ever question that he's your son if you did that."

For a moment, Sal looked at the child in his arms. Then he looked back at his grandparents.

"Let's do it this way, then," he agreed.

Like that, Anastasius Lucidarius Arthur – later known as Anastasius Sanguini or Ana – would end up as Sal's son.

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Well, this was an idea I had ever since I ended writing "Basilisk-Born". I started to write it back then, but the story grew and grew and it took some time until I could get everything in a passable order and actually write it down into a comprehensible story.

I hope you liked it.

Ebenbild

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Remarks:

845 A.D.: Historical event. In the 820s, the Aghlabids of Ifriqiya – known as the Saracens – had begun their conquest of Sicily. In 845 they finally reached Rome and plundered the outskirts of the city, sacking and pillaging everything outside the Aurelian wall – a line of city walls around Rome – which prevented them from entering the city.