#guuuuh I love these two and their relationship so much I can't even

[carewyncromwell]

“I know you -- I walked with you once upon a dream... I know you: That look in your eyes is so familiar a gleam...”

~“Once Upon a Dream (cover),” by Lana Del Rey

When he was growing up, Atticus Grimsley @cursebreakerfarrier​​ was something of a teacher’s pet. Thanks to the influence of his father who put such stock in the Grimsley family’s reputation and legacy, Atticus grew up with a hyper-focus on his studies and so ended up having a rather solitary and lonely time at Hogwarts. Therefore when he met Bartholomew “Bat” Varney as an adult, Atticus wasn’t incredibly well-practiced in the art of making or maintaining friendships. Fortunately, despite his and Bat’s obvious differences in attitude and life experience, the two men ended up slowly building a bridge of understanding and camaraderie between them. The big turning point was Atticus agreeing to help Bat track down and capture a vampire who had stolen Bat’s identity and used it to target and murder a wizard just outside Hogsmeade, even if it put Atticus at considerable risk not just with that vampire, but with the Ministry, since Bat was still considered a suspect at the time. After this, Bat finally accepted Atticus into his heart enough to start calling him by the nickname “Grim,” rather than the more detached and nondescript “Professor” -- in essence, seeing Atticus as an individual and allowing himself to “get attached,” even if Bat would no doubt out-live Atticus and mourn him when he died. Bat opened up, showing a genuine warmth and a love of life’s trappings that encouraged a youthful sense of fun out of Atticus he’d never really experienced before.

As the two friends got to know each other better, Atticus -- like Adelia Selwyn @that-ravenpuff-witch before him -- started to notice certain inconsistencies and interesting word choices in his conversations with Bat. Bat was very evasive about how he became a vampire, but he’d also make weird off-the-cuff comments about his condition, like that "his body didn’t truly belong to him.” He could give a full history lecture about the War for American Independence and describe multiple battles in great detail, and yet would immediately go quiet and disinterested as soon as any mention of the Battle of Yorktown propped up. He’d sometimes even compare Atticus to his best friend at school, telling full, exciting stories about their exploits and laughing at the memories, but seemed oddly tight-lipped when Atticus asked him his friend’s name. After a while, the man the Department of Magical Law Enforcement would go to whenever they had a case they had trouble solving found himself way too curious about all this to let it lie, and so set about tackling the mystery of Bat Varney’s past on his own.

Through his investigation, Atticus found out more and more things that just didn’t add up. Bat always seemed pleased whenever Ravenclaw was in the running for the Quidditch Cup, but an enchanted portrait of Bartholomew Varney in his Hogwarts robes that was commissioned by his family featured him wearing a red and gold Gryffindor tie. Bat was well-versed in Muggle society and culture, and yet the Varneys had been a prominent wizarding family who had shares in a large assortment of businesses in Diagon Alley back in the day. Then there was the story Atticus had collected from the merpeople about the three students who had helped save their queen a hundred years ago -- Robert Harker, Cecelia Crouch, and Bartholomew Varney. “Robert” had to be the mysterious best friend that Bat had mentioned, Atticus thought -- after all, he and Bartholomew had gone to war together as if they were Muggles despite both being wizards, so they were clearly incredibly close. But why had Bat never mentioned his other best friend, Cecelia Crouch? Particularly since, according to letters, she and he grew up together, and according to Ministry records, she’d eventually become his wife.

At long, long last, Atticus conjured up a terrible theory -- that Bat, in fact, was not the real Bartholomew Varney. His suspicions were confirmed when he tracked down a shady contact in Knockturn Alley who explained the unforgivable Dark process of creating a vampire, which requires not just a person feeding their subject a potion containing both their own and the caster’s blood, but also the caster cursing the soul of the person upon death to be forcibly chained to a body against their will. Atticus realized that his friend -- the vampire called Bat Varney -- was in truth the soul of Bartholomew Varney’s best friend Robert Harker, chained to the first’s reanimated corpse by Bartholomew’s wife and Robert’s once-friend, Cecelia.

The knowledge shocked Atticus -- he hadn’t known such a thing was even possible, and if it were true, it’d be a horrific thing for anyone to go through. The Defense Against the Dark Arts professor took some time to himself to get a handle on what he’d discovered, only to be surprised one evening by the sight of a familiar Irish Wolfhound sitting in his office chair. Bat had noticed Atticus wasn’t in Hogsmeade at all for more than a week after having come to visit nearly every evening prior, so he thought he’d pop up to the castle to see what was going on. So Atticus took the opportunity to tell Bat everything he’d found out.

Whatever reaction Atticus had been expecting, it was not Bat looking hurt.

“Robert?”

“Don’t -- ”

The word came out in an oddly sharp, barking voice. Bat gave a very painful-looking swallow to try to restrain himself, even as his red eyes pulsed with pain.

“ -- don’t call me that.”

Atticus was confused. “What? But...it’s your name, isn’t it? Your real -- ”

“Shut up,” Bat said very harshly.

He turned his back on the professor, his fist absently clenching at his side.

Atticus’s skin prickled with an emotion he couldn’t yet place. It made him suddenly feel like the ground he was on was very unstable.

“Bat, what’s wr -- ?”

“I don’t want to talk about this. I didn’t want to talk about this. And yet now you’ve forced my hand and are now trying to make me talk about this. Well, I don’t want to talk about this with you! I know time is different for you than it is for me, but do you truly have no patience at all? Do you truly have so little respect for me, that I wasn’t allowed a choice in whether or not you knew? I...”

The vampire’s eyes were going redder, as was often the case when his heart was beating painfully fast or his lungs were breathing heavily. Although Bat’s voice never got incredibly loud, there was a very low, growl-like aspect -- something oddly raw.

Atticus knew what the emotion he was feeling now was -- it was guilt. Remorse.

“Bat -- ”

“I have to go,” Bat cut him off lowly without skipping a beat or turning around.

And in a blur of motion, he’d become a dog again and darted out the open door.

Bat didn’t reappear in Hogsmeade. Nights went by, and no one Atticus spoke to had seen him. The Honeydukes family even said he hadn’t returned to roost in their attic in the daytime like he always did. And Atticus knew why -- he knew that Bat’s sudden disappearance was all his fault.

In the nights following the argument, insomniac Atticus had even more trouble sleeping than usual. Once he ended up fitfully nodding off in the armchair of his bedchambers around 3 AM -- and there in his dreams, he was confronted by a vision of Robert Harker, looking just as dark-haired and handsome as he did in the enchanted portrait Atticus had found of him and Bartholomew in their army uniforms, signed with Cecelia Crouch-Varney’s name. Robert was smiling just as he did in the picture, and his brown eyes shone with the same sharp, bright gleam Atticus knew so well from Bat’s eyes. He even spoke in Bat’s voice.

Robert Harker bent down over Atticus sitting in the armchair, his handsome face mere inches from his. The proximity immediately startled Atticus, not just because he wasn’t used to people being in his personal bubble, but because Bat in particular so carefully avoided getting too close to him due to his blood lust. The Defense Against the Dark Arts professor shakily brought up a hand against the taller man’s chest as if to try to push him back, but his limbs lacked strength.

“W-wha -- what are you -- ?”

“Now, now, Grim...you were looking for me, weren’t you? It feels good to have solved the mystery, doesn’t it -- to know all those terrible things your mysterious associate was keeping under wraps?”

“Th-that...”

“Well, really, how else were you going to find out? I certainly wasn’t going to tell you. Why would I want to revisit the time when one of my dearest friends stabbed me in the back and turned me into a bloodthirsty animal? Made it so I could never be a professor like you, the way you know I wish I could?”

“You’re not an animal, you’re my -- ”

“Your what? Your friend? Oh, now, that is a cute sentiment.”

“What...?”

“You don’t have any friends, Grim, old boy. You never have. What I was, who knows...a pet, perhaps -- someone to talk to, to pass the time -- but a friend? I don’t believe friends go behind each other’s backs and betray their trust. Oh...but I suppose mine already did. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, that you’re just the same...”

“Robert -- Bat, I’m...I didn’t mean to -- ”

“At least now, things can go back to the way they were before. You’re all on your own again. All alone with your books, just like before. Just like you’ve always been...”

The nightmare was really rather short, but it was still enough to make Atticus wake up in a icy cold sweat.

Two weeks later, Atticus caught wind from his students that Bat had returned to Hogsmeade. Despite the anxiety and shame he felt, Atticus dropped everything that night to go find him, catching up with the vampire just outside the Three Broomsticks, not far from where they’d first met. Atticus immediately launched into an extensive apology, as Bat listened with a rather blank, placid expression on his face. It was only when Atticus started getting really emotional that Bat actually reached out and took hold of the man’s shoulder. The vampire immediately had to use his free hand to take out his flask and take a long drink of blood, and then he had to bury his face in his winter scarf and turn his focus onto the closest chimney to try to ignore Atticus’s scent and blood pulsing through his skin and clothes -- but he held Atticus’s shoulder anyway, his voice very low and soft in his throat when he spoke.

“I’ve...already forgiven you, Grim.”

Atticus’s guilt lingered somewhat even after that, but the whole affair ended up strengthening the two men’s relationship even more than before. Since this point, Atticus has become the only person who knows Bat’s real name and will, on occasion, use it in private conversation.