Chloe Cullen 4 - A Harry Potter and Twilight Crossover

Chapter 14: Adjustments

Adjusting to vampire life is a lot harder than I thought it would be. Everyone makes it look so easy. I constantly feel like I'm on the brink of sensory overload. I feel like a small child again with the shortest attention span. Every time a new sensation comes within my radar, I'm distracted. For instance, the day after I turned, I was learning how to identify fabrics based solely on smell when I hear a clap against my back wall. My head snaps in the direction of the noise and I sniff. I don't smell anything out of the ordinary. I'm then distracted by that when I hear something. It sounds like crunching. "Close your eyes and focus on the sound," mom instructs and I do as she tells me. Accompanied by the crunching is the sound of an engine. I sniff, and my mouth floods with venom. It's a car, driven by a human.

Fortunately, I've been forewarned. The human is Charlie, and my mom told me yesterday that he's coming by today to see Nessie. I'm staying in my room. Not because I'm a newborn - although that is part of it - but the biggest reason is simply because I'm supposed to be in Scotland right now and also because I'm supposed to be my mom's younger sister and not her identical twin. Even though I'm not going to be able to be in the same room as Charlie, I plan on using this to my advantage. With my parents in the room, I'm going to force myself to continue to smell him, so I can continue the process of controlling myself. Renesmee wasn't that hard because there's enough vampire to balance out the human.

Once Charlie is in the house, I sniff again. He's Bella's father, he's Bella's father, I keep telling myself. He smells ten times better than the humans in the forest. It's like Charlie is a delicious chocolate brownie and the humans in the forest are a pumpkin pie. Both are good, but one is clearly better than the other. Shifting my focus would be a temporary solution, but that won't work when I go back to Hogwarts. There are too many humans there that would distract me. I have to focus on him as a person and not as food. He's Bella's father, Renesmee's grandfather, the sheriff of Forks, the boyfriend of Sue Clearwater, a friend to so many people, someone that my dad likes to talk to about football. Someone like that definitely doesn't deserve to be killed for the mere reason that I'm feeling thirsty. I can feel myself getting more and more relaxed.

Then, I'm distracted again. This time by a rustling sound, that sounds like it's coming from a few feet from my window, and it smells like an animal. I look in that direction, and I see Maple! She flies in my window and lands a few feet away from me. She's used to being around vampires, so I don't think this'll be an issue once she warms up to me again. After 2.4 seconds, she drops the letter she's holding and goes to her cage. Apart from paper, the letter has the smell of human and bird. I take the letter and I slowly smell it. It's more than one human, that's for sure. After a sixty-fourth of a second, I'm able to detect three different scents, one more appealing than the other two. It has about the same appeal as Charlie's does. I open the letter and see that it's from Hermione.

Dear Chloe,

The first task is over! For the task, the champions had to get past a dragon to get a golden egg among real dragon eggs. Harry got the Hungarian Horntail, which, as you know, is considered one of the most dangerous breeds of dragon. It can shoot fire more than forty feet away! Harry successfully got the egg without crushing any of the other eggs, and he got away with only a scratch. Him and Cedric are tied for first place now.. Even though he was only allowed a wand, he used the summoning charm to summon his Firebolt to him and was able to lure the dragon away from her nest. The golden egg is supposed to be a clue for the next task, which is taking place in February. We had Harry open the egg, but the only thing that came out was this piercing, shrieking sound! Seamus said he might have to face a Banshee, but I don't think that's likely. That might be a little too easy. I keep telling Harry to try and figure out what the clue is, but he keeps putting it off. I don't know why.